Patrick skipped cocktails with his family, cleaned up and was waiting for Iris Cash in the Village View lobby at sunset. He walked her to his truck. Her face with the sunlight on it was lovely. His head ached all the way down to his toenails. He told Iris he dinged himself roughhousing with buddies the night before. “I apologize for ditching you yesterday.”
“That memorial was one of the most emotional moments of my life,” said Iris. “And you were the only person there I knew, and I’ve known you for less than a week. It was just really, really... I’m not sure what it was, Patrick. I can’t describe it. I’m writing a series about it for the paper. Trying to find words.”
“I never expected anything like that. Even when I enlisted for infantry I never thought it would include such a thing. A ceremony for the mangled and dead and all their families.”
Iris considered a long moment before speaking. “You must be terribly proud and terribly sad.”
“Those words are good, Iris. And really, I’m sorry about leaving you there with my family and just running off.”
“I’ve been reading about soldiers coming home.”
“I’m a Marine, not a soldier.”
“I didn’t know there was a distinction. But I do know from my reading that after deployment, Marines really need their friends.”
“I know I need to move on, get out of Afghanistan.”
They came to the truck and Patrick held open the door for her. She put her soft fingers on his freshly shaven cheek and turned his head to one side for a better look at the wound. “Roughhousing with buddies? You’ve got stitches, Pat!”
“It was purely foolish.”
He handed her up to the cab and watched her as she swung in. They set out for La Jolla. Patrick could smell Iris’s scent and he felt like he was gliding down I-15 on it. Iris talked of the Marines of the Three-Five she’d seen at Pendleton, and how she’d like to talk to every one of them and put it all in a book. She said it would be fiction and Patrick wondered why you’d make things up about a war that was actual. You couldn’t make it any truer than it was. Iris said she talked to some of the Gold Star families and absolutely refused to cry, even if they did, because she felt superfluous and trivial in their presence.
She told him the Village View was going to run her story on the discovery of the arson evidence front page, and Fallbrook Fire might even give them a photo of it to accompany the article. The point of the whole thing was to get people involved, maybe find a witness, or someone who had overheard someone saying suspicious things.
She said this DHS arson specialist, Knechtl, was a very intense man who wouldn’t say much about his investigation. He wore a dark suit and had a pale complexion and a big forehead and a small mustache. He looked more like an undertaker than a special agent of the DHS, in her opinion. Knechtl said that he’d questioned several persons of interest but he wouldn’t say who, or where they lived, or if there were any leads. He addressed the whole Village View staff, then asked each of them to list three local people they thought might set a fire like this. He passed one sheet of blank white paper and one pencil to each person in the room, then asked them to meditate for one full minute before answering. About one minute into the silence Iris had peeked and caught Knechtl checking his wristwatch. She’d left her sheet blank, as had her editor, who was sitting on one side of her, and the art director, sitting on the other. She did note two people writing away, voluminously, it looked, arms around their papers for privacy.
Iris looked intently out the truck windows, often turning back to study something they’d just passed. She was alert and curious. Just a glimpse of her did something good to Patrick’s heart. She talked about the latest developments in the Cruzela Storm benefit concert for the lighted Fallbrook crosswalks. She thought it was weird that some people were trying to make their town better while at least one other person was trying to burn it to the ground. Fire Chief Bruck had told her that no terrorist organization had stepped forward to claim responsibility for the Fallbrook fire. He doubted that Al-Qaeda was behind it. He went on to say that 80 percent of arsonists lived within five miles of where they started their fires, which put this guy in Fallbrook, Bonsall, Rainbow, or De Luz.
“He said guy, because there are very few female arsonists,” said Iris.
“You ladies have too much good sense to do that.”
She looked at him dubiously. They made La Jolla in an hour. Patrick looked up at the LDS temple aglow in the night, and the golden trumpeter fixed to the top of the east spire and he wondered if Mormons were anything like Presbyterians. They take care of their own, he thought. He followed his GPS toward the address, which turned out to be a mansion that stood in a neighborhood of mansions staggered high upslope above the city.
Patrick looked down at the ocean below and the lights of La Jolla flickering. He used the intercom and the gate slid open quietly. He came up the drive and spotted the Mako, trailered and displayed beautifully as a jewel in the driveway lights. He felt a quiver of excitement and he braked carefully and pulled up in front of the house. The front lawn was an emerald expanse and sprinklers hissed upon it. Patrick got out and smelled the ocean and thought it went well with the smell of Iris.
He walked slowly around the craft, port to starboard. It was a foam-construction skiff, seventeen feet long, with room for two clients and one captain. It was old but looked well cared for. There were dents and scratches in the decks and gunwales but Patrick saw no patches or dark spots or other signs of waterlogged foam beneath. The cleats and latches looked new. The engine was a Mercury, to which Patrick was partial. Her CF tags were soon to expire but her name, Fatta the Lan’, was clear in black cursive and recently redone. He felt dizzy with hope. He chanced a glance at Iris, who was looking at him.
A man came down the walk from the house. Patrick heard him before he saw him. He wore a white dress shirt tucked into dark slacks, suspenders, and dress shoes, and he was not much older than Patrick, who half expected the man’s father to come out next. Instead, two small blond boys, dressed in matching red polo shirts, hustled through the door and came down the walk. The man introduced himself as Kevin Pangborn and shook hands with Patrick and Iris. He had a small potbelly — not a couch-potato’s potbelly, Patrick thought, but the potbelly of a well-off man, a man who ate well and played some sport — and his brown hair was short and brushed back. He wore gold cuff links.
“Just back from overseas?” he asked.
“Ten days now.”
“Thank you for keeping this country safe and free. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”
“You’re welcome, sir.” Patrick watched the boys watching him.
“You said you’re going to guide fly fishers in the bay?”
“That’s right.”
“Great.”
“What do you do for a living?” asked Iris. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“We raise capital and turn around ailing companies. I’ve done some fly-fishing. It’s not easy. Maybe I can hire you to guide me.”
“I’ll need a boat first,” said Patrick.
“No!” said one of the boys. “It’s ours!”
Pangborn turned to face them and the boys looked down into the Fatta the Lan’. “Well, Patrick, this Mako would be good for guiding fly fishers. Both casting decks are nonskid and that fore railing I had built will keep your clients from falling overboard. The Mercury’s only got twenty hours on it. The beam is wide so it’s a dry ride even when the chop is bad. The aerator for the bait tank is touchy. I’ve got the GPS and sonar inside the house, and they’re part of the deal. I paid sixteen-two, have the records and service receipts.”