Penelope, back for thirds: “I’m sorry for what I said. Please find my daughter.”
And just as suddenly, gone.
Old Hawk lifted the trunk lid and left it open, then walked to the magnolia tree. He conversed with Atlas in a terse, all-business kind of way. I wasn’t close enough to hear their words or even the sound of their words. Guessing from Atlas’s gestures — his open hands and interrogative expressions — he was asking for something. Old Hawk seemed to listen patiently, but nothing in his posture or movements gave me any indication of positive or negative. To Old Hawk, Reggie Atlas could have been a branch to perch on or a mouse to eat.
Old Hawk tapped a finger against Reggie’s chest. Words from a dry smile. Atlas poked the older man back and said something in return.
Old Hawk marched long-legged into the garage, turning on the lights, and opened the trunk of a gleaming black Mercedes AMG sedan. Lifted out a metal Halliburton case and walked to his car. Set the Halliburton in the trunk and closed the lid with a touch of a button.
Reggie stepped from under the tree and joined the old man by his car. The two men talked for less than a minute, then Old Hawk climbed into his Cadillac. The silver sedan made a wide turn and headed down the drive.
I followed him through the winding roads of Rancho Santa Fe to Del Dios Highway, and all the way to Escondido. Plenty of traffic for cover. Out on the east side of town the homes got older and smaller, and the business signs turned to Spanish and the barrio said hola. The silver CTS proceeded comfortably down the avenue, went right on Holiday Lane, then made a sharp left and stopped at a gate.
End of my welcome. I drove past, made a U-turn, and came back in time to see the CTS heading up the drive. It was narrow and curvy but paved. No buildings or dwellings, only a poorly kept grove of orange trees. The Cadillac’s headlights raked through trees with thin branches, sparse leaves, and small stranded fruit. More oranges in the dirt than on the trees. On top of the hill stood what looked to be a cluster of buildings surrounded by trees that nearly hid them from sight. A few lights through the foliage. When the Cadillac was about halfway to the top, security lights came on along the road, leading the way through the dark to the buildings within the trees.
27
FBI Special Agent Mike Lark was not quite a friend but much more than an acquaintance. We had had the same boss, though at different times in our careers. Her name was Joan Taucher. Joan was a tough and complex woman, and her death last year — shot by a terrorist on my property — rocked Mike’s world and mine considerably. I killed that terrorist, a few seconds too late to save Joan’s life. A soul-bruising series of events. I will take them to my grave.
Mike Lark had been not only Joan Taucher’s FBI understudy but her lover, too. I hadn’t seen him since her funeral, late last December. Now he looked more than nine months older. Mid-twenties. Same short blond hair, but leaner in the face and harder in his brown, Taucher-like eyes.
We met in the pay lot at Torrey Pines State Beach, shook hands. I told him I’d explain my most recent facial improvements later. We headed north on the dry, low-tide sand. Plenty of surfers on the small waves. Walkers and runners and kids with beach toys. On this mid-September day I could feel the change of seasons coming on. Just a liner of cool in the air that hadn’t been there a week ago.
The license plate number I’d taken down from Old Hawk’s CTS had led me to Lark, whose FBI database had swiftly revealed the registered owner of the car, and his history.
“Alfred Battle is the godfather of San Diego’s once formidable white supremacists,” said Lark. “Two years ago returned from Idaho. Even Hayden Lake was glad to be rid of him. He told the media here he was ‘returning to the land of the mud people’ to live permanently. ‘Mud people’ being blacks and Hispanics. He bought his old spread up in Escondido, where he held the Aryan rallies and conferences in the seventies and eighties. Hoping to recapture his glory days, like everyone else. He has informal rallies on Sunday mornings. Bills them as the ‘White Power Hour.’ Guest speakers, glossy propaganda, fruit punch and sandwiches. Late in the morning, though, so he’s not competing with church. I stopped by with a couple of other agents one Sunday and they were happy to escort us out. We’ve got nothing actionable on him. We’d love to shut him down, but it’s a free country. He’s got the city and fire permits, the porta-potties, plenty of parking. It’s a big compound. Views to the ocean, much too nice a place for him. Battle’s a hateful sonofabitch and it shows. A nasty dude in his day. Yet he’s never spent a night behind bars. What else do you want to know about him?”
“I’d like to know why he picked up a Halliburton case from Pastor Reggie Atlas last night,” I said. “For starters.”
A sharp-eyed question from Lark. “You’re sure it was Reggie Atlas?”
“I’m sure.”
“It tracks. If Battle worked for a college, you’d say he’s in development. He raises money. He lectures, gives these long, booming speeches. He writes propaganda blogs on Reddit and 4chan and any other Internet platform that will have him. Agitates. Riles people up. Big in Europe. He’s a modest trust-funder himself. His wife has the deep pockets, though — Marie. An heir to the Knippermeir family fortune — Knippermeir’s Breakfast Meats. She’s the nominal owner of most of Alfred Battle’s portfolio. Law-abiding, a generous donor, protected by money. Reclusive. There have been questions about her mental health, over the years.”
I thought that over for a moment. “You think we have a briefcase full of cash meant for the Cathedral by the Sea, but actually going to Alfred Battle’s haters?”
“They’ll take money anyplace they can get it,” said Lark. “They prefer Bitcoin, but church dollars spend well, too. Plus, the Cathedral by the Sea gets the big tax breaks, which drives our lawyers bats.”
“Is Battle on your watch list?”
Lark stopped, picked up a flat black oval rock, and skipped it over the incoming soup. I wanted to do that, too, but my rib shrieked at the thought. Mike gave me a long look.
“Probably,” he said. “There’s social buzz about the Cathedral by the Sea discriminating against blacks and browns. That catches our federal attention. Hate crimes give us certain, well, latitudes. Nothing actionable yet, like I said.”
“Atlas insulted Mexico in his Sunday sermon.”
“Why are you looking at him, Roland?”
I told him about runaway Daley Rideout, the murder of Nick Moreno, Daley’s link to Adam Revell of SNR Security, and my discussion with said security guards when I surprised them at Paradise Date Farm. Also about Penelope Rideout’s and Reggie Atlas’s sharply divergent stories regarding Daley’s nativity, and her most recent sighting at the Blue Marlin restaurant in La Jolla. Told him that I’d staked out Atlas’s house and Alfred Battle had come up in the net.
Mike mostly frowned at the sand as he walked and listened, but again, he studied me intently when I spoke of Reggie Atlas.
“So you really don’t know if the girl is being held against her will or not,” said Lark.
“She wasn’t at first, but now I’m not so sure,” I said. “She left for school that morning, came home at lunch with Moreno, changed clothes, packed, and went to Moreno’s condo. Followed by Connor Donald and Eric Glassen of SNR. She knew them. She and some of her girlfriends had accepted rides from them after school to an Oceanside teen club. More than once. She left the condo with them, after they’d killed Moreno. Left willingly, too — although she couldn’t have known what they’d done to him at that point. Later seen on the beach at San Onofre, possibly partying with friends. Who either scared her or pissed her off or both — no details. Maybe they said something about Nick. They took her phone. I think they were SNR handlers, based on a description from a surfer who talked to her — possibly Connor and Glassen, possibly not. She surfaced late that night in San Clemente, apparently trying to ditch them. She called her sister from a 7-Eleven in San Clemente to come get her. Or her mother. To be determined. Then left, possibly with the same SNR handlers she had gotten away from. Vanishes completely for days. Last seen at dinner with SNR people from Paradise Date Farm, at an expensive restaurant in La Jolla. She flips and flops, Mike. I don’t get her.”