“Did they pay off Natalie’s gambling and shopping jag in Las Vegas?”
“The families stepped up. Mom and Dad. Me. The extended Straits, of course. The dire Straits. In all their tainted glory.”
Ash gave me a half smile, acknowledging the reputation of her East County in-laws. In this moment her face seemed like a psychological negative of her sister’s — the same shape and shades of hair and skin and eyes, but opposite spirits. TV Natalie was big-smiling and exuberant. Kennel Ash was tight faced and controlled.
“These may help you understand Natalie better,” she said, un-pocketing her phone. The picture gallery was mostly selfies of Natalie and Ash, with an assortment of others thrown in. Natalie and Ash and Dalton, of course; Natalie and Ash with Natalie’s BMW cohorts; Natalie and Ash with a skinny old man I recognized as Virgil Strait; Natalie and Ash and a pale, red-haired hombre with a killer’s grin.
“That’s Dalton’s older brother, Kirby,” she said.
I flipped through the rest of the images in that folder and handed back the phone, catching Ash in a focused study of my face.
“Would you send me those?”
“Of course. You’re not the first one to come snooping around my sister lately. There were state people, and the FBI.”
Interesting.
We headed back up the road, Wendy at perfect heel. Ash told me that these aforementioned “leeches” were interested in Dalton and Natalie’s personal finances. Which were complicated. Since part of Natalie’s responsibility as head of the Strait Reelection Committee was tracking donations and thanking the voters for their generous support, she’d been deluged with questions from both state and feds.
“I’m not sure if what I just said helps you,” said Ash. “But maybe it will lead to something you don’t expect.”
I heard a rustling in the grass and saw Wendy lock on point. Body down, left front paw up, tail out. Movement in the wild buckwheat ahead of her.
“Hold,” said Ash, stretching out the “o.”
Wendy held beautifully and shivered. The quail chick-chicked like they do before bursting into the air.
“She’s too young to hold that point very long,” said Ash.
As if in agreement, Wendy bolted toward the birds. Two quail whirred into the air ahead of her, curving up and away, twin blurs, Wendy humping after them.
“We will walk you out.”
Wendy maintained a perfect heel as we went back up the dirt road toward the barn.
When we got to my truck, she said, “I haven’t slept well since Natalie disappeared. My nerves are shot and my patience is gone. The dogs all know something is wrong. So, sorry for my brevity.”
I told her there was no need to apologize at a time like this, gave her a card and asked her to call if she had any contact with Natalie, or remembered anything that might help me locate her.
Headed back down the hill. I stopped in Valley Center and found a coffee shop. Incidentally, Valley Center is where the largest grizzly bear ever killed was killed. Two thousand something pounds. It was called Bear Valley then. A much smaller bear is on display in a small museum here. I’ve always been fascinated by the top of the food chain.
The coffee shop’s windows were hung with campaign signs for Dalton Strait’s opponent in November, whom Dalton was threatening to link to terrorists in the Middle East.
Three
Special Agent Mike Lark was in his late twenties, with a boyish face, a budget haircut, and raptor’s eyes. We sat in a windowless conference room in the new FBI building off Vista Sorrento Parkway in San Diego. It was afternoon but you wouldn’t know it.
Lark swiveled the monitor so we both could see it, then anxiously spun the cursor about the screen. Mike, all energy. We had a history, brief but intense.
“Not the best quality pictures,” he said. “What is it about post office security cameras?”
“The cameras in the Fallbrook post office are old-school,” I said. “I watch them as I stand in line.”
Lark moved the cursor some more. “Bomb makers are rodent secretive,” he said. “Kaczynski up in Montana. McVeigh at the lakeside compound. Or our very own terrorist Caliphornia in his Chula Vista storage unit. The city hall bomb came from the Fallbrook post office, Roland. We have two almost decent images of who dropped it off. So maybe you can help us. Maybe she’s a neighbor of yours.”
“She.”
“Why not a she?”
“Well, the post office has the return addresses in their computer,” I said. “So just knock on her door.”
“Her alleged return address is a Fallbrook gift shop whose owner has never seen this woman.”
The cursor finally stopped and Mike clicked the mouse.
In the macro shot, a young dark-haired woman wearing skinny jeans and a dark sweater. Thick shoulder-length hair parted in the middle, partially obscuring her face. Jackie O sunglasses. In the closer-up shot her expression looked pinched, as if she was in a hurry. Impatient. Again, the quality was poor. She could have been almost any dark-haired woman — Latina, Greek, Italian, Armenian, Semitic, or Arabian.
“I’ve never seen her,” I said.
“Take your time.”
“I don’t need time.”
“There were showers in Fallbrook that morning,” said Lark.
“But she’s got sunglasses,” I noted.
Mike nodded. “Sure, spring showers — they come and go fast. Okay. Maybe she needed sunglasses. But if she knew what was in that box, maybe she was wearing them for curious people like us.” I thought. “Maybe the mailer was running an errand for a friend or employer. Part of a job, or a favor. Had no idea what it contained.”
“Of course. It happens.”
Mike cued up three more pictures, none more helpful than the first. The longer I looked at the screen the more I was sure I hadn’t seen the woman.
“What can you tell me about that bomb?” I asked.
“Smart, thrifty, and reliable. Commercial gunpowder, ground match-heads for ignition and a rubber-band striker that went off when the package was opened. Common materials, hard to trace. This is interesting: there wasn’t enough charge in it to do more than blow off a finger, maybe take an eye. Not even enough to destroy the return address on the box. The pipe was hardware store PVC, not metal — less pressure to build the blast. So we figure that’s what they wanted to do. Frighten and maim, not kill. The restraint worries me as much as the anger behind it.”
“They? Do you believe this committee stuff? Bombers like working alone.”
“They almost always have help,” said Lark. “I sense organization here, Roland. Planning. This isn’t some moron living out of a van. This committee’s the real deal — one guy or a hundred. The surest way to miss the possible is to close your mind to it.”
I liked Lark’s young, federal, not-afraid-to-state-the-obvious kind of thinking. He handed me an enlarged copy of the Chaos Committee letter that was published by the Union-Tribune. It was marked up with notes and questions in his condensed, fast-forward handwriting.
Dear California,
The bomb sent to the mayor of San Diego is the first that will be mailed to government thugs and conspirators throughout our once great state. We deem these acts to be necessary to stop the spiral of decay that is rotting our republic from the inside out, namely our broken non-government; a fraudulent one-party system, maintained by the rich on the backs of the poor; narcissism and moral decay through technology. We are post-political. We, the Committee, believe that only the People can overthrow this system, and that only chaos, fear, and terror can drive the power brokers, the moneylenders, and the godless technocrats from our collective temple. We will provide the protection of anarchy, fear, and terror. The People will rise and take back the levers of power and California will once again be of and by and for the people. People at one with the great land that we have inherited. Rise when you are ready.