“I’m a law-abiding citizen,” Priest said. “I’ve never even had so much as a parking ticket.”
He was, I decided, one of those guys who looked guilty. He definitely bore further scrutiny.
Zambelli was yelling at him to call the authorities, demanding that I be arrested for violating his restraining order. I wanted to deck him but I knew that I couldn’t. I wanted to watch the men in black load Savannah aboard that jet, in her metal box, but I knew I couldn’t do that, either, not without giving my former father-in-law the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
I turned and walked away.
Carlisle’s jet wasn’t on the ground long. Twenty minutes, if that. It taxied to the south end of the field, passing me as I sat in my truck, then thundered into the crystalline blue, banking over the lake, departing the pattern to the east. I watched until it was no longer in sight.
So long, love. Blue skies.
A bitter burning taste filled my mouth. I couldn’t decide if it was rage or my heart breaking.
Buzz, my old Alpha buddy back East, had somehow already heard about what had happened to Savannah when I called him that night from my room at the Econo Lodge. How he knew, I have no idea, but he did. I told him I needed Gordon Priest’s home address. He didn’t give me any grief about it.
“We’ve been through a lot together, Logan, you and me. You need me to help you put the goddamn son of a bitch who did this out of his misery, I can be on the first plane out of Dulles and out there first thing tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll keep you in mind.”
“Even if you just need somebody to talk to. I’m serious, Logan. Talking helps. According to Oprah, anyway.”
“I didn’t know you were an Oprah fan, Buzz.”
“Who isn’t?”
He told me all about what Oprah said regarding open and honest communications, how cathartic they can be. I listened, but not very well, thanked him for his support, and signed off. I pulled the covers up around me, not bothering to dress, and slept fitfully until just before dawn. My day, I decided, would be spent hunting. Hunting, like flying, requires complete focus. I liked that. It would take my mind away from my grief.
The complimentary continental breakfast at the Econo Lodge was the usual assortment of cold cereal, bad Danish, apples so mushy as to be inedible, and coffee so strong, you could refinish furniture with it. I ate quickly, zipped up my jacket, went out to my truck, scraped the frost off the wind-shield with my only credit card, and drove to Gordon Priest’s residence in the dark.
Priest lived two minutes away in the Skylark Mobile Home and RV Park off Lake Tahoe Boulevard. His weathered, single-wide aluminum trailer, among about a dozen in the “park,” exuded all the charm of a discarded beer can. Across the street was a large thrift shop. I parked in the lot, the rear of my truck facing his trailer, and established an eyes-on surveillance using my mirrors only. At 0750, Priest emerged carrying a small paper sack that I assumed was his lunch and exchanged angry words with a big-boned, bottle blonde in a red kimono robe who followed him out of the trailer, and whom I assumed was his wife. He got into a blue Ford Escort station wagon. I waited while he hooked a U-turn on Lodi Avenue, almost directly in front of me. That was followed by an immediate left onto Lake Tahoe Boulevard.
I followed him at a prudent distance, motoring north toward the lake.
He passed a lumberyard, crossed a creek, and made a right turn without signaling into the parking lot of a US Bank branch, while I deviated into the parking lot of the Denny’s across the street so as to avoid suspicion. He withdrew some cash from the ATM and then proceeded to drive to the Iranian-owned Dutch Mart Gas and Grub, where he went inside.
I parked a block away and waited.
After ten minutes or so, Priest reemerged, accompanied by Reza Jalali. The two men spoke for a long minute, both occasionally glancing over their shoulders. They shook hands. Then Priest got in his station wagon and drove away. Jalali watched him go.
Neither man observed me.
We were headed south. At the intersection of Lake Tahoe Boulevard and Emerald Bay Road, a sign pointed in the direction of the airport, but he continued straight, picking up speed.
Odd.
I followed him for another three minutes or so, passing a fire station, the road out of town narrowing to two lanes, before Priest turned right onto a residential street called Stony Mountain Court that ended in a cul-de-sac. As I pulled over and watched, Priest proceeded to the end of the circle, and parked in front of a large, not unattractive custom home, the kind middle-class folks build to convey the sense to their neighbors that they’ve arrived.
Priest got out of his station wagon and walked up the driveway with his sack lunch. He must’ve been satisfied nobody was following him, because he never looked back.
As he walked up the driveway toward the front door, it opened. A woman stood inside the doorway, impatiently awaiting his arrival.
Gordon Priest, it seemed, had a big dark secret.
TWENTY-ONE
A sturdy brunette — mid-forties, big shoulders, big breasts, big hips — she stood with her arms sternly crossed just inside her doorway in knee-high leather boots, a leather miniskirt, and matching leather bra. A tattooed astrological sun took up the whole of her belly. In her right hand was a riding crop. In her left was what looked like a spiked dog collar. Gordon Priest tried to kiss her, but she backed away as he entered her house and whipped him once across the butt. He was getting down on all fours when she closed the door.
The manager of Summit Aviation appeared to be on a close personal basis with Lake Tahoe’s resident dominatrix. Or at least one of them. Given the tongue lashing his wife had delivered to him that morning as he left home, I could more or less understand the appeal.
I telephoned Summit Aviation and asked Marlene when she expected him in.
“Probably not ’til late this afternoon,” she said. “He called this morning and said he’d be away at meetings pretty much all day.”
“The man is obviously dedicated to his work.”
Marlene seemed anxious to know if I’d had a chance to pass along to the sheriff’s department what she’d confided to me the day before about how Priest had lied regarding his whereabouts the day Chad Lovejoy was murdered, and how his relationship with Lovejoy was strained.
“Not yet,” I said.
“Well, when you do, like I said, just don’t say you heard it from me directly. I don’t want to lose my job.”
“No worries, Marlene.”
I got out of my truck, walked up to the house, and put my ear to one of the two frosted glass panels that flanked the ornately carved oak door. From inside, I heard the following exchange between Priest and a woman whom I assumed was the dominatrix I’d seen standing in the doorway:
“You will lick my boots if I tell you to.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“You will get down on your knees before me if I tell you to. If you don’t do what I tell you quickly enough, you’ll be disciplined. Understood?”
“Yes, mistress.”
Crack went the riding crop.
“Louder.”
“Yes, mistress!”
I rang the door bell.
The house went conspicuously silent.
I rang again.
No answer.
I rang. And kept ringing until the dominatrix came to the door. She was lathered in perspiration, a black leather trench coat hastily thrown over her sadomasochistic accoutrements. Her fingernails were pointy and the color of the devil himself.