“One more round, champ,” Burt said.
I finally got the tension wrench and pick working together and the last pin moved into place. I pushed open the door.
An apartment, spacious and apparently lived in. Bars on the windows and just the one door leading in and out. Brick walls and beam ceilings, a hardwood floor. A good-sized fireplace, black with the years, in the corner of the living room. A stack of firewood left over from winter.
Dishes in the sink, food in the refrigerator, bread, jam, and peanut butter on the counter.
A bath towel hung from the bathroom door hook. A blue dress dried on a hanger hooked to the shower. A shower cap on the nozzle inside. A brush on the vanity counter, matted with dark hair.
“She was still here this morning, when I saw Broadman,” I said. “After I left, he got her out of hiding and they hit the road.”
“Which means they made you last night,” said Burt. “Maybe that’s a good thing. They could have jumped you but they didn’t.”
I checked the Vigilant 4000. Saw that Brock Holland’s Suburban had been stationary for the last fifty-seven minutes at the same GPS coordinates in Ramona, a little over an hour away from Borrego Springs.
Ramona, where Natalie Galland had grown up and met earnest Dalton Strait through his bad-boy older brother, Kirby. Where the second Chaos Committee bomb had been mailed to San Diego County Administration Center.
Burt looked at me.
“I have to tell Lark what we found,” I said. “But I’m not done with Natalie. It’s better we retrieve her than our overworked and sometimes reckless bureau.”
“Certainly.”
“Time kills, Burt. Natalie Strait is a valuable captive and these people will exploit her any way they can.”
“Sounds to me like she was dressed for combat last night,” Burt said. “Stockholm syndrome? Or maybe another psychotic break? More than enough has happened to her in the last two weeks to bring one on. But don’t forget that they expect a ransom. What kind, I don’t know.”
“Is Holland still in Ramona?”
I checked the Vigilant and nodded.
An hour later, Brock Holland’s Ramona GPS coordinates led us to a dirt shoulder of Pine Street, from which we stared through a chain link fence to the empty lot beyond.
No Suburban.
No Harris Broadman, Brock Holland, Gretchen Deuzler, or Natalie Strait.
Just weeds going brown and ground squirrels leading their squirrely lives. Trash flapped against the windward side of the fence, from which hung a collection of campaign posters.
Something flashed red in the empty lot.
I used my binoculars to find the Vigilant 4000 blinking from atop a boulder in the afternoon sun. Passed them to Burt just as the Suburban came up fast behind us, someone spraying three-round bursts that sent us scrambling under the truck and returning fire from the ground. Dirt and gravel kicked up in my face, rattled off my sunglasses. Bullets twanged above. I heard the lead punching through the truck body and the windows as I squeezed off rounds at the driver. Burt fired away beside me. The Suburban’s windshield blossomed and the vehicle swerved suddenly onto two tires — hovered a perilous second — then righted itself and roared back onto the street and away.
“We can run them down but we can’t match the firepower,” said Burt.
“I hate calling cops,” I said.
“Me too.”
I called 911.
Thirty-Six
That night, the Irregulars, Tola Strait, and I watched a San Diego News special titled “Chaos in California” on the big TV in the palapa. My phone sat on the table for updates from Proetto. Silence. The white Suburban had so far vanished into the highways of Southern California, Proetto speculating that The Chaos Committee might have many sympathizers and safe havens.
Burt and I had been lucky. I had a bandaged shrapnel cut on one cheek and Burt’s right knuckles were wrapped in gauze.
Here at Rancho de los Robles, Wednesday is known as Catfish Wednesday. Which means that Grandpa Dick deep fries his favorite dish and all participants bring something at least vaguely Southern to complement the fried fish.
We all try to be thankful and contrite on Catfish Wednesdays, no matter what strife, rancor, or disappointment might be piling up inside us or in the world around us. We agree to let the day be more than the sum of its problems.
And try we did: ice-cold prosecco or lemonade at cocktail hour; social Ping-Pong with evenly matched teams; an upbeat “I–Ching” consult for each of us from Odile; much sympathy for and genuine interest in Tola, her business, and her bereaved family; improved guitar from Frank on his native Salvadoran folk songs; reduced squabbling between Grandpa Dick and Grandma Liz; Burt garrulously refilling drinks and offering bacon-wrapped devil dogs from Fallbrook’s Oink and Moo restaurant; even the mongrel Triunfo napped under the picnic table rather than chasing and crunching the Ping-Pong balls.
For a while I felt the blessing of surviving machine-gun fire, the goodness of our world and the people in it, the comfort of kindness and respect, the hope that comes from belief that the next day can be better and the day after that better still. Why not? In Tola’s occasional looks I felt the optimism of love, how it takes you over and makes you want to be better. I remembered her tearful words after the slaughter on Palomar, the way she blamed it all on herself. This is my lowest valley. My bottom. I’m going to do better with everything I touch in life.
But as I turned on the gigantic-screen TV to watch “Chaos in California” I felt cold dread wash over me, knowing that the show would flood our little campfire of human decency like an icy river.
Cohosting “Chaos in California” were familiar San Diego News anchors Loren Clement and Amber Hunt.
Over a video backdrop of burning cars jamming a street in San Bernardino, Clement led off:
“Never in history has California experienced the willful taking of life and destruction of property of the last two weeks. This unprecedented violence is being inspired by the self-proclaimed Chaos Committee, a group of masked terrorists as mysterious as it is deadly…
“But first, the facts,” he said.
Clement’s affable mug was replaced by a street brawl in Oakland, over which Clement narrated offscreen:
“CC-claimed victims” were three — a small-town police chief, one U.S. congressman, and his aide — all killed by mail bombs. But murders “directed or inspired” by the CC were thirteen across the state, and included six sworn officers, four of whom were shot in the back from long distances.
“CC-inspired destruction of property” statewide was estimated at $675 million and consisted mostly of arson-set fires of government buildings, schools, and places of worship. Scores of retail businesses had been set on fire, hundreds of cars had been torched, thousands of windows smashed. Emergency rooms across the state were experiencing record numbers of gunshot injuries and violently broken bones.
“Over half of California’s public schools have experienced shutdowns of three or more days,” said Amber Hunt, whose usually pleasant face now appeared tense and determined.
“Most hard hit are high school students, teenagers who have grown up with classroom killings and active-shooter drills and who seem almost unanimously to have expected this terrible violence. And then, there are elementary school children who have little understanding at all of what is happening in their world. Let’s let some of these terrified people speak for themselves…”