“But if I learn anything I’ll share it with you,” Lark said. “We’re letting Hazzard run with it. For us feds, it’s all Chaos Committee now. They’re operating in my backyard, too, Roland. They’re fomenting revolution, making me look bad. It’s triage and priorities right now. So get on that security video, will you? Jackie O mailed that first bomb from Fallbrook. Find her again. Use that twenty-ten vision of yours for something more than beating me at the range.”
“Glad it pissed you off.”
“Everything pisses me off.”
I ended the call. Checked the Vigilant 4000 to find Brock Holland’s white Suburban en route from Borrego Valley to San Diego.
Perfect. Two fewer people to deal with.
Burt stepped into my office. “Ready when you are.”
The Bighorn Motel parking lot was down to two vehicles: Cassy Weisberg’s Beetle and a wind-blasted station wagon circa 1975 with rust patches the size of dinner plates.
Better than I’d planned for: No Harris Broadman. No Brock Holland or Gretchen Deuzler. Just me and the motel from which Natalie Strait had apparently disappeared less than twelve hours earlier.
Once again I waited just off Palm Canyon Drive. My lucky spot. Watched Burt’s perfect red Eldorado convertible sail into the lot and park outside the office. White leather and a red-and-chrome dash. Burt got out and looked around, dressed for golf — green pants, yellow shirt, black PGA vest and visor. Wiped a folded white hankie over a spot on the driver’s door and palmed it back into a rear pocket.
The truck thermometer read 92 degrees. I gave Burt a moment to engage Cassy, then locked up and trudged out into the desert again to approach bungalow nineteen out of view from the office.
Someone had locked the door since I’d last picked it open. And turned off the interior lights. Interesting. The cleaning people? I doubted it.
I picked the lock again and stepped in. The AC was off and the room was warm. Curtains drawn as they were last night. The big white cat was on the couch, green-eyed and dreamy.
I toured the place once more, gun at the small of my back under a loose shirt. The cat followed me, nosing the wall edges, tail up.
I parted the curtains over the picture window. Burt’s car was now parked outside of unit two. From the back seat he pulled a small rolling suitcase and set it on the asphalt. Then shouldered his precious clubs — woods, irons, and putter all cloaked in red-and-white covers embossed with his initials. He didn’t let them touch the ground. He rarely uses the cavernous Eldorado trunk because he has to jump to close the lid. I tease him about the BS but never about his height. He locked up, grabbed his suitcase handle, and bumped his way to his room.
In the hallway I looked directly up at the attic access panel. All I needed for that was the ladder in the closet. One of my detective friends with the SDSD taught me to look up. At a crime scene, he said, always look up.
I fetched and climbed the ladder, slid aside the attic lid and looked in. Hit the handy light switch. Small and not much to see: beams and rafters with roll-in insulation in between, the air conditioner exchange unit, ducts and electrical and copper water lines to and from the heater below. Two un-sprung rat traps, freshly baited. Not enough room to stand.
I made sure the cover was as before, put the ladder back, and studied the floor hatch. No handles or grip. A switch, I thought, or a button.
Nothing obvious on the walls, but I found a promising candidate in the bathroom just across the hall — an everyday light switch hiding behind a hung hand towel.
Flipped it and watched the hallway floor hatch rise, pavers and all, to form a neat square opening just big enough for human traffic. The hinges were stout and the motor was quiet. A nylon strap nailed to the underside. A light went on. Metal steps and metal railings.
Down I went. Four-by-four uprights rose on either side of me, bound by flat steel T-straps. Two-by-four framing, with heavy sandbag walls down low, and lighter plywood sheets up higher. A tunnel designed for the treacherous desert soil. The ceiling was just high enough that I didn’t have to duck. A line of overhead lightbulbs ran straight down its center, every bulb working. The reinforcement lumber still looked fresh, the nail heads glimmered, and the T-straps were shiny black.
Recently built or well preserved by the desert dry?
By my difficult reckoning, the tunnel ran along one side of the pool and toward the first wing of rooms. The light was good but it was difficult to get a sense of direction underground. I moved slowly and made a soft left turn.
Then on to the first row of the Bighorn Motel horseshoe, aimed roughly at Broadman’s unit six. Where I saw a trapdoor very much like the one through which I’d just descended. I looked up at the ladder tucked under the hatch and the dangling pull-rope, feeling a vertiginous dread — Alice falling down the rabbit hole.
The tunnel continued another fifty feet past what I guessed was the office, then began to lead me away from the motel. But this was not the same tunnel I’d started off in. The walls became solid rock — not reinforced by beams, sandbags, or plywood. It took another gentle turn and, if my sense of direction was right, headed into the hills behind the Bighorn, to the east. The hills that I’d seen the first time I came to the Bighorn — scarred by old mine tailings and scaffolding and pits, and, apparently, undercut by tunnels. The hills with the homes built into the boulders.
A hundred feet more to another turn, then a hundred feet more.
Bringing me to another ladder and another trapdoor.
I’m not claustrophobic but my gut was tight and a pool of panic simmered.
I climbed up and muscled open the hatch. Heard the grind of the hinge and felt the weight on the strap as I lowered the cover to the floor.
Pulled myself up and out and into a large, faintly lit room.
No windows and almost no light. Found a switch and the room flickered to life.
It was large, with brick walls and a low ceiling of recessed fluorescent lights. Bunker-like. Stone silent. One wall fitted with heavy shackles for arms and ankles. Bookshelves on three sides. Desks and tables with newspapers and magazines piling up. Stacks of books. Lamps for reading. Fast-food litter, drink cans. Rugs on a polished concrete floor. A closed door with a poster of a Guy Fawkes demonstrator on it.
A torture chamber? A library? Study hall? Museum?
The far wall arrested my attention. It was hung with masks from around the world, crowded together cheek to cheek: African, Greek and Roman, European, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islands, Australian. Many I couldn’t place. Both ancient and modern. Washington and Lincoln. Reagan and Nixon. Obama and Trump. Superheroes. The world in masks. Grotesque. Amusing. Unnerving.
And down low, within easy reach:
A Hannya theater mask.
A madly grimacing Iroquois.
A WWI splatter mask.
Standing in the cool silence, I couldn’t take my eyes off them.
I let Burt into bungalow nineteen through the back patio door, out of Cassy Weisberg’s view from the Bighorn Motel office.
A few minutes later we stood in the bunker, before the wall of masks.
“Hair and makeup for The Chaos Committee,” he said.
“Check the Iroquois,” I said. It had the same insane grin and crazed eyes, the same stumpy wooden teeth, and a head of bristling black hair that looked much like the horsehairs found in Natalie Strait’s blue SUV.
“Broadman, Holland, and Deuzler make three of five committee members,” said Burt.
“Leaving two ninjas from the TV takeover,” I said. “One female and one male. Possibly Jackie O. For a committee of five — minimum.”
“Let’s see what Mr. Fawkes is guarding,” said Burt.
I couldn’t get the lock open. I learned my lock picking on residential American models and this one was German, industrial and expensive.