Dan Strickland smiles widely now, changing his whole stern countenance. The boy comes through when he lets his emotion show. He offers his open hands toward Bettina as he did in the lobby, but makes no move toward her. Bettina does likewise. Strickland kneels down again to hug Felix.
“You made my day, Ms. Blazak,” he says. “I can’t wait to see you two again.”
“Down, boy,” Bettina tells him.
At home that night, Felix on the floor beside her, Bettina does due diligence on Dan Strickland.
Her truthmatters.com service spits out the basics:
Daniel Knowles Strickland, 33 years old, LKA 521 E. Cedar St., San Diego, CA.
Son of investor Dyson Strickland and attorney Jennifer Knowles-Strickland.
Sister Allison Strickland-Stewart, 26, of Greenwich, CT.
No criminal record or current warrants; Newport Harbor High School graduate 2008; one semester Orange Coast Community College 2010–2011; Marine Corps service 2012–2013, one tour of duty in Afghanistan; Silver Star awarded 2013.
San Diego Police Department 2013–2014.
California Private Investigation certification 2015.
Strickland Security, LLC, 2016–2019.
Apex Self-Defense 2020 to present.
Bettina finds Dyson Strickland and Jennifer Knowles had combined assets of $145 million at the time of their recent divorce. Dyson now residing in Newport Beach, CA, and Jackson, WY; Jennifer in New York, NY.
Apex Self-Defense, including the building, is valued at $2.1 million. Dan Strickland is sole proprietor; no liens or judgments.
“Boy, that former master of yours sure goes fast,” she says, looking at Felix, who cocks his head and lets his ears rise as if he’s trying to catch every syllable. “One day he’s graduating from high school, and eight years later he’s been to college, gotten the Silver Star, been a cop, a licensed private eye, and has his own security company. One thing to another. With years off, in between. What was he doing? Not marrying, not having kids. Estranged from Mom and Dad. Estranged from sister.”
She finds the social media slide on truthmatters.com, but Strickland doesn’t do social media. He comes up on an old SDPD website photo of young officers, then she sees the same picture way down on her Pinterest SDPD search.
“Maybe he gets bored,” she tells the dog. “Maybe he’s got ADHD. One semester of college? Who drops out of college after one semester? He seems calm and reasonable. Maybe that should worry me — the ‘seems’ part.”
On the real estate / residence slide she finds seven former addresses, all in Southern California. When she calls them up with Google Maps, they’re modest-looking places, small single-family homes, usually in coastal towns.
Apex Self-Defense, which apparently is Daniel Strickland’s residence as well, looks like an old brick warehouse beneath an overpass and surrounded by taller structures, older and newer. A tangled urban mess, Bettina thinks. No sign on it, no clue that there’s shooting and hand-to-hand combat going on inside. Not many windows, except for the third floor, which has big, new-looking windows all around. Still, thinks Bettina, not a place I would want to live.
She pictures Felix inside that building, mixing it up with the shooters and fighters.
Truthmatters.com tells her that “Private Strickland was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action against the Taliban in Helmand Province in 2011.”
Leaving Bettina curious about what he actually did to earn the Silver Star. She’d ask him that herself, on the small chance that she accepts his offer of a “playdate” for Felix. The very small chance. It intrigues her that Strickland has been trained to kill, and now trains others how keep from being killed.
She’s always been interested in people who accept — and even welcome — danger. She’s written and posted about a police officer who survived an on-patrol shooting and returned to duty as fast as he could, and a decorated soldier back from his third tour of Afghanistan, and a married couple whose business is taking people down into the ocean to view great white sharks. She has also interviewed her idol, surfer Bethany Hamilton, who survived a shark attack and continues to surf professionally with only one arm. Try paddling out on a ten-foot day without that. What draws her to these people is her own willingness to go fast and fall hard: barrel-racing horses, surfing waves taller than she is, road-biking up and down the hilly Southern California coast at breakneck speed, asking questions in dangerous places — such as in Tijuana with Fidelito and the mean cops. Even her trapshooting as a teenager had an element of danger in it, guns being instruments of death.
Bettina likes the risk of danger and the excitement of being close to it. The excitement of beating it. Her mother is that way; her father is not. Only one of her brothers sides with her mom — Nick is a high-risk guy, joined the Army and came back decorated. Connor was his opposite, as was Keith — cautious and measured.
Now she considers a USMC photo of Strickland being presented his Silver Star. Even with the buzz cut and the desert camo, he’s good looking. A strong chin and nose. Clear gray eyes. No emotion. Calm but ready.
There’s a story in this guy, she thinks.
For her, a problematic one. She can’t profile a San Diego self-defense wizard in Laguna’s Coastal Eddy. Jean Rose would shoot that idea down in a heartbeat. Going to Tijuana for the dog rescue sanctuary and the Fidelito follow-up story were hard enough for Bettina to pull off. She’s not going to get freedom like that now. Not with the timid readers complaining that the Felix and Fidelito stories are violent and don’t matter in Laguna Beach.
However, Bettina thinks, a good story is a good story. It has value. Not every one of them has to be written.
Just lived.
The most interesting thing of all about Dan Strickland is he’s the second person to have identified her dog as Joe, and claimed to have owned him for a year, and wants to see him and buy him back.
First Teddy Delgado’s Joe, and now Dan Strickland’s.
What are the chances that even one of their stories is true?
Or both?
Later she gets another email from Teddy:
Dear Ms. Blazak,
It will be a while before I can come get Joe in Laguna. I have a job at a bowling alley called Rock and Bowl, and there’s only two dishwashers and I’m one of them. We are very busy. Plus school. I made honor roll but I’ve been truant and the principal is mad at me.
You asked about some stuff. We were living in Otay Mesa when Mom and Dad died. Uncle Art and Aunt Nancy adopted me but not Joe because of allergies. I haven’t seen him in four years.
I hope to see him soon. My boss here doesn’t give dishwashers time off, but I don’t want to just quit.
I watch “Felix: The Rescue of a Mexican Street Dog” over and over. I like what you say about him and how you pet him. He loves to wrestle on grass. Joe was not a Mexican street dog when he lived with me. I named him.
Will you at least think about selling Joe to me?
Sincerely,
13
Late the next morning, Bettina meets Billy Ray Crumley and his brother Arnie at the Cliff restaurant. At Arnie’s request, they get seats way at the end, out of earshot. Felix accepts ice water from a waiter, then curls up under Bettina.
Arnie is a shorter, thicker version of his younger brother, Bettina notes, the stout boyhood baseball catcher of future big-league, kid-brother Billy. They have similar open, easy-to-read faces and pretty brown eyes under heavy brows.