“You’re sure it was two male voices?” asks Gale.
“Yeah, I’m sure. I was listening hard, hoping they weren’t headed into the restrooms.”
Gale watches a plump red-shouldered hawk perched in a tree, tugging off shreds of something in its talons and swallowing them down.
“Got to admit, Detective, I never thought I’d call a place like this home. I had my own restaurant in Santa Ana for two years. Pesco’s. I had a decent apartment on Bristol, not far from your headquarters. I had a girlfriend and she had a daughter. We all got along just fine. But I hit the needle and shot up all the money and lost my girl and closed the place. Ann-Marie filed a complaint against me for molesting Analiese, got a restraining order but the DA didn’t file. Lack of evidence.”
Gale looks at Pesco in profile, just a cooler away, sizing up the man’s story. Guilty men rarely confess a crime, but child molestation is in a class of its own when it comes to denial.
Pesco seems to read Gale’s mind.
He turns and looks at the detective with clear, pale blue eyes. “I never touched the girl in any way like that. I really liked her. She told the cops that. It was a vengeance thing. I hit the streets in Tucson, then came back to Santa Ana, then came here. I honestly for the life of me don’t know what’s next.”
Gale’s bullshit monitor sounds only a soft alarm. He’s somewhat trusting — for a cop. And in his twenty years since choosing that path, he’s only been wrong a few times.
“Any convictions?”
“Drunk in public is all. I was always real careful with the H. And lucky.”
Pesco takes a long draw of beer. “I kind of like it here.”
“What color was the Suburban?” asks Gale.
“Midnight blue. I had to see that interior so I used the flashlight. Jet-black leather, perforated. So good looking. Didn’t check out the van because it was old.”
“Did you try to open the Suburban door?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Look at the plates?”
“No, I didn’t. The van’s neither.”
“Did you hear or see the men out there on the trail ahead of you?”
“No,” says Pesco. “It was dark and that trail splits and splits again. Goes forever. What did you think when it turned out the mountain lion didn’t kill the guy?”
Gale thinks about this. “I was happy we didn’t have to shoot him.”
“What if it gets a taste for humans?”
“Well, Mr. Pesco, that could be a real problem.”
“Bears can.”
“I’ve heard it said.”
Gale watches Mendez approaching, checking her phone while she walks, then sliding it back into her rear pocket. She looks at him, her hard face without expression, palms up as if she’s had enough of this place.
7
Bennet Tarlow’s new midnight blue Suburban sits in the sheriff’s impound yard in Santa Ana.
It’s already drawn a light coating of dust, which reflects dully off the darkened glass of the windshield.
Mendez stands with her hands on her hips, parsing the big blue beast.
Gale stands aside and lets the impound deputy unlock the driver’s-side door.
“All yours, Detectives. They’ve dusted for prints, used luminol for blood and body fluids. Shot pictures and video. This vehicle was just put into service last week, so it’s pretty clean. They took a leather briefcase off the passenger seat for processing. Left everything else like you see it. Kind of a mess.”
Gale circles the Suburban clockwise. Notes the road dirt on its tires and the heavy blanket of fine dust accumulated on the liftgate window. He notes the High Country model designation on the rear liftgate and the subtle dark blue glitter of its body, subdued by the dust.
Wonders why Tarlow and his companion would come in separate cars to the same place, park near each other, walk side by side from the campsite to the trail, then down into the brushy creek wash where Tarlow was shot in the head and left in the sand to bleed to death.
Gale takes from his jeans pocket a leather-bound notepad, made by a distant nephew of his in San Juan Capistrano, and writes his speculations regarding the separate vehicles used to transport Tarlow to his execution. Wonders if a third party was waiting for them. Possibly. But no third set of footprints in the creek bed. Though a third person might have taken a different exit route from the dying Tarlow. Might have used the wash, but obscured the prints with a leafy tree branch, or even a broom or blanket or garment — an old Native trick that might have been applied by his Acjacheme/Juaneño ancestors on his mother’s side. He’s seen the Taliban do that in the Sangin Valley sand, using the opium poppy stalks uprooted after harvest. Specifically, the old man going to and from the long-abandoned village house, from which he fetched his shotgun, whom Gale later assassinated as the sniper he was not.
Third party in dark? he neatly writes. Cover tracks w/ flashlight or cell phone like Pesco?
Unlikely, he thinks.
Camera, big lens, tripod. Why?
Gale opens the door and retractable steps drop into place, and he climbs into the driver’s seat. Mendez takes the passenger side and they close the doors.
The new-car smell is strong. The black leather looks top-grade. White fingerprint dust marks the dark dash, the computer screen, the black leather steering wheel and shifter, the turn signals, and window controls. The chrome and brushed aluminum accents have been dusted with black.
The console stowage and dashboard glove box have been left open, and their contents appear to be stuffed haphazardly back into place.
“No Good Housekeeping seal of approval,” says Mendez.
“Sure smells good, though.”
“I do love a new car. What do you drive, Lew?”
“An old 4Runner that won’t give up. You?”
“A red Corvette to make me feel young. It’s the only expensive thing I’ve ever bought myself.”
Gale nods. “I’ll bet you’re worth it, Daniela.”
“I’m convincing myself of that.”
Mendez runs the beam of her laser pointer over pale smudges of luminol on the floor mats, in which blood, body fluids, and secretions glow blue in infrared light, but Gale sees no such glow.
“I’m drawing a blank on why Tarlow and his companion took two vehicles to the same destination,” he says. “It suggests that Econoline Man knew he’d ride out alone.”
“Yes, planned,” says Mendez. “Not impulse. I can’t see a third person out there. Two voices heard by Pesco, right? You made sure to confirm that?”
“He said two.”
“Well, then I agree with you,” says Mendez. “Tarlow’s buddy knew he’d need his van. But why not shoot him from the front, or through an ear, wipe down the gun, and put it in Tarlow’s hand? Pretty easy way to throw us off.”
“Because this way it’s a statement,” says Gale. “A warning. Maybe punishment.”
“Sure,” says Mendez. “A guy with that much money and power. You know he’s made enemies. Probably a lot of them. And Tarlow was a social creature. I’ve seen him in the society pages for years — those glossy Orange County magazines. A bachelor. Nice looking. Always with a woman or two. Or three. Plenty of jealous husbands around.”
“Maybe jealous girlfriends of Tarlow’s, too,” says Gale, again remembering Tarlow’s companion at the Las Vegas heavyweight fight that night. Norris.
Gale checks the compartment of the door beside him, running his phone light down into the black recesses.
Then turns down the sun visor and slides open the vanity mirror and light. More black fingerprint dust on the mirror.
Checks the eyeglasses bin, which opens at his touch. Empty, except for a scrap of heavy paper, folded in half, with a faint black line running near the torn top. Gale wonders if the CSIs overlooked it. Would be easy, he thinks, tucked up near the roof by the interior lights that shine in your eyes.