“What is it?” Ariel asked.
“Our song.” Berke turned around to face her bandmates and her mother. Berke’s eyes were red, but she was a big girl, a tough girl, a strong girl, and she was not going to cry today. “My part for our song,” she said, and she drew it up from memory: “Try and try, grow and thrive,” she recited. She decided to alter one word. “Because no one here gets out alive.”
“Weird,” said Terry, and Berke thought that was exactly how Mike would’ve expressed it.
“Have I missed anything?”
They all turned to see Truitt Allen, wearing a white polo shirt and gray slacks, standing in the open doorway. Before anyone could answer, True took stock of Nomad’s eye. “Ouch,” he said. “That even hurts me.”
“Where’ve you been?” Nomad asked.
“Why? Did you miss me?” True was carrying a leather satchel that held his laptop.
“Like salt misses pepper in vanilla ice cream,” Nomad told him. He still felt dazed and his eye was throbbing. “If I even liked ice cream.”
“I think you need to go back to bed for a few days,” True said. “But not starting today.” His voice had gotten serious, and he looked from one bandmember to another. “Come on, let’s go inside and I’ll tell you how you music stars are going to handle this…” He glanced again at Nomad. “Gig.”
TWENTY-THREE.
“I can tell you more about him now.” True was eating a bowl of vegetarian stew and having a glass of iced tea at the kitchen table. Joining him at lunch were Terry and Ariel, while Nomad, Berke and Chappie stood at various points in the kitchen. “His name and address on the driver’s license checked out, and his parents were notified yesterday evening. The information was released to the press while I was there, so it’ll probably be on the next news cycle.” By there, he meant the FBI field office on the corner of Aero Drive and Ruffin Road. He’d spent the morning planning security for the ‘gig’ tonight and smoothing everything out with the San Diego police, at the same time keeping a call in for details from the FBI and the police in Tucson.
“I told you already he was nineteen and from California.” True spent a few seconds to wipe his mouth with a red-checked napkin. “His name is Connor Addison. He’s from a nice middle-class neighborhood in Oceanside. From what we’ve learned, Connor took his father’s car on Wednesday afternoon, hit the San Diego Freeway using the dad’s credit card for a fillup, and headed to Stone Church. Where he got the pistol from, no one knows.”
“It was a .25, right?” Terry asked.
“Yeah, a .25 Beretta Jetfire. You’ve had experience?”
“I just figured, from the sound. My dad’s a pistol collector. He took me to the range a few times.”
“Small gun,” True said, speaking to all of them again. “Easily concealed.” He didn’t say that when he’d heard the pistol fire at Stone Church he thought it had been at least a .38, due to the sound being amplified by the microphone Nomad had knocked over. “Anyway, Connor lives at home with his parents. He doesn’t have a car of his own. He’s gotten into some trouble with meth and cocaine, flunked out of community college, lost a couple of jobs, wrecked his car last year…kind of a mess.”
“He was copycatting Jeremy Pett, wasn’t he?” Chappie asked. “That’s what Nancy Grace said last night.”
“Maybe.” True took a sip of iced tea, which was very cold and very minty. It had been released to the press right after the incident that the shooter was not Jeremy Pett, but Addison’s name hadn’t been put out there for the media until the details were taken care of. “He’s not talking. They can’t get him to utter a word.”
“He’s a nut,” Nomad said. “They ought to go ahead and throw him in the nuthouse.” He was a nut with a hard fucking head, though.
“Addison has an interesting story.” True continued to eat his stew, taking small spoonfuls and then some of the wheat bread that had been offered with his lunch. The agents outside, God bless ’em, would have to make do with trips to the nearest fast food window. “His family was in the news there in Oceanside in 2003. One evening his parents went out and left him at home to watch his eight-year-old sister. Addison evidently got pissed, called some friends over to do drugs, and he told the little sister to go out and ride her bike. She did, and that was the last anybody saw of her until her bones were found in a trashbag in the marsh just off Jefferson Street, five months later.” He took another drink of tea, to wash down the bread. “Some material in the bag was traced to a laundry, and they got a Russian immigrant who lived maybe five miles from Addison’s house. This individual’s great pleasure in life was driving through neighborhoods searching for little girls to kidnap, rape and murder, which he had enjoyed doing in Portland and in Sacramento. And oh boy, did he enjoy talking about it to the Oceanside cops. Just painted a very beautiful picture of it, which wound up in some of the sleazier news rags.” True decided he’d had enough lunch, because he’d seen the digitized articles the field office guys had pulled up for him.
“So what does this have to do with a scumbag druggie nut trying to kill Ariel?” Nomad asked. “And where’s Jeremy Pett?”
Good questions, True thought. He’d been going over both of them at the field office, in a conference call connection with the Tucson office, the Tucson police, the San Diego badges, the city attorneys and, it seemed, everybody else with any splinter of a stake in this. He’d even gotten a call from Austin about an hour ago, and that brought him to his next statement.
“Hold onto your questions,” he said. “Roger Chester called me. You’re headlining at the Casbah tonight.”
“Oh whoopie whoopie yay yay!” Nomad was nearly back to his bristling, snarly self. “Where’s that fucking Jeremy Pett, is what I want to know!”
“Just listen for a minute.” True couldn’t begin to tell John Charles what he’d been going through with the Casbah management to meet the security standards. One big problem was that, being out by the airport, the area was full of parking decks. There were a couple of them right across the street, and he was going to have to put men on every level. “After the Casbah is what I’m talking about now. Tomorrow night. The tickets have sold out at the Cobra Club, and you’re headlining there too, by the way. They’re wanting you to headline again on Sunday night. Then, on Monday night, you’re booked into…wait, let me get this.” He reached for his wallet, a slimline, and brought out the piece of paper with the FBI seal at the top that he’d used to write down The Five’s new schedule. “Okay. You’re booked into the Sound Machine on Santa Monica Boulevard on Monday night. Headlining with—I cannot believe I’m saying this—Sack Of Buttholes.” True looked at Ariel. “Is that for real or did I get set up?”
“It’s for real,” she told him. The SOBs were also out of Austin and were repped by the Roger Chester Agency.
“Jeez,” True said. “Alright, then. Pardon this paper, I’ll get all the info to my PDA. Now…on Tuesday night, you’re playing at Magic Monty’s in Anaheim. Chester thinks you’ll sell out of merchandise tonight, so he’s making direct shipments to Hollywood and Anaheim. You still with me?” He looked up at his charges.
“This is crazy,” Chappie said, her eyes wide. “Are you wanting them to get killed?”
“Mom,” Berke cautioned. “It’s our job, okay?”