I wasn’t sure if I wanted Dalton to be lying or telling the truth. Either way, after my talk with Harris Broadman, what could I possibly make of Dalton Strait?
As the bourbon spread through me, things began to expand. I smelled the wood smoke again from that day, the lamb and the cumin. I thought of Dalton and Broadman and Avalos, and the net of the war that had snagged us all. And the millions more. The Five. I tried hard to put us in perspective, cast us all as blips of light in the universe. But I couldn’t. We’re forced to see ourselves as the center of life. Because we have only one self with which to experience it. Just me. Just once. Just now.
I glanced back up into the reflected snout of Roland Ford, PI, and thought, One foot in front of the other, man. You’re okay. You’re okay.
I sat almost an hour. I’m always surprised how far a mind can wander and find its way back, how many memories can pass through one slim hour of life. Harris Broadman left me a text saying he’d call if he thought of anything that might help me.
I left the rest of the bourbon in the glass. The bartender gave me a look and I shook my head, dug out the wallet, left a nice tip.
Halfway to Borrego Valley Airport I got a phone picture and a brief message from FBI Special Agent Mike Lark:
Ramona FedEx security video of mail bomber. Return address bogus. Familiar?
I pulled onto the road shoulder. My rental car shivered in the wind and a dirt devil spun its way through a meadow of past-their-prime wildflowers. The security video image was better than the earlier post office picture of the Fallbrook bomber. But not much. An average-build, dark-haired woman, hair loose and large Jackie O sunglasses. A plaid flannel shirt. The same in-a-hurry clench of jaw. Same woman. I’d bet on it.
I stared at her, letting the details sink in. Ten seconds later the picture and Lark’s message vanished in a pixelated explosion.
Fifteen
The next morning, wanting to contact Kirby Strait, I was referred by Virgil to granddaughter Tola, who said that Kirby was “camping” on her property in the mountains near Palomar Observatory. She said that I was free to enter the property and told me a back way in, around the main gate that Kirby had elaborately padlocked. She said with a bright laugh that she’d order him not to shoot me.
“So much for Kirby’s prison rehab,” I said.
“Yep. And by the way, my previous invite to you comes with a twenty percent first-timer’s discount at any Nectar Barn. I need to be present, though, so call ahead. You don’t get the discount without enduring me.”
Now Kirby Strait, six months fresh from the California State Prison in Corcoran, eyed me with clear reptile eyes and an engaging smile. Swim trunks and a knife sheath clipped to the waistband. He was lanky and tall and freckled, all prison yard muscle under a lopsided pompadour of red hair.
“I didn’t do it,” he said, standing in front of his tent.
The tent was an enormous rope-and-pole construction, certainly military surplus. A four-wheeler, an Indian motorcycle, and a pickup truck were parked along the shady side. A scoped long gun leaned against an oak sapling near the entrance.
“Kirbs?” asked a voice within.
“I heard about Natalie,” said Kirby. “Bad news, peckerwood. You help me get some water, I’ll talk to you. Because Tola told me I should.”
He put on flip-flops and a work shirt, pointed to an array of mismatched plastic buckets in the shade of the huge tent. Near the buckets was a two-hundred-gallon cistern with a spigot and garden hose at the bottom, sitting on sawhorses. We each took two buckets and Kirby led us down a game trail to a swale of willows through which a small stream gurgled.
“Itty-bitty trout in this stream, if you can believe that,” he said. “I catch ’em with a plastic colander and fry them up.”
“Have you seen Natalie since you got out?” I asked.
He let the current fill one of his buckets, drew it up by the handle and set it on a flat rock. Took up the next.
“I haven’t seen Natalie in twenty-five years, except on TV,” he called back over his shoulder. “In spite of what Virgil might think. He overestimates the wickedness in almost everyone’s heart. Certainly mine.”
“You have some history with her.”
“Virgil tell you about that, too? Or Dalton?”
“Neither one. I’m a PI so I privately investigate.”
“Well, ain’t that quaint. I’ve run across your type in court. Funnier than cops, dumber than lawyers. Know-it-all little bastards.”
“I stand six-three.”
He looked back at me and shook his head.
“I found out that you and Dalton fought over Natalie way back when you were teenagers,” I said. “Fairly serious. A concussion and stitches for Dalton. And later, a baseball bat and grandpa’s hospital for you.”
“Maybe Dalton bashed her over the head and dumped her,” said Kirby. He rose from the streamside, set his sloshing bucket near the first. Dug a smoke and lighter from his shirt pocket.
I filled my buckets and found a place to set them down, my ribs still sore from last year’s bout against six security men.
“Why would he do that?” I asked.
“Naw, he wouldn’t. I can’t think of a why. Dalton and Natalie always stuck things out together. As weak and gutless as Dalton always was. No matter how widely he spread his thankless seed. You couldn’t get a pry bar between them.”
I thought a moment about that. “You’re my age,” I said. “Married twice from what I learned.”
“You circle like a lawyer.”
“Just wondering if you could carry a torch for Natalie after twenty-five-plus years.”
He smiled and picked up his buckets, his pompadour swaying in the breeze. “You cannot know the frozen cold in this man’s heart. I was a kid when I tried to kill Dalton over Natalie Galland. When that failed, I grew up and said farewell to both of them.”
“And haven’t seen her since?”
“I made it clear the first time you asked.”
We lugged the heavy buckets back to the tent, took turns upending them into the cistern, then headed back to the creek for another round.
“Ford, the thing about Natalie is she’s a man magnet. She’s pretty and smart and funny and she has that other thing. The extra thing. The thing that makes you want to stand next to her. Be in the same room with her. Call it whatever you want but she’s always had it. Always known it. Hooking up with Dalton was a way to control it. And she’s always been just a little bit crazy, too. Which appeals to men such as myself. And Dalton.”
“You haven’t seen him in twenty-five years, either?”
“When he came home the hero and all blown up I saw him at the VA a couple of times. I felt sorry for him. But he was always a spoiled little wretch.”
“So he got what he deserved?”
“Looks that way to me.”
I loaded my buckets with the cold, clear water. Chased out a small trout from his beat alongside a rock. Tried to balance out Harris Broadman’s idea that even in war, character isn’t fate, with Kirby Strait’s notion that you get what’s coming according to who you are.
I set the buckets down and Kirby waded in. “Do you hate him?” I asked.