I SAT IN my office in the dimming evening light. Let my eyes wander across the bronzed pond and the hills and the sun melting into layers of orange and blue. But my mind did not enjoy the sunset. It was busy chewing on the problem of exactly where Daley Rideout was, and what she was doing, and what was being done to her. I felt frustration and a desire for violence, like a father might.
I wondered how SNR was controlling her. So many possibilities. The sex trader beats his new girl, then injects her with heroin or opioids to kill the pain. The beating breaks her spirit—because she’s been told she’s beautiful, and she’s been touched tenderly, and she’s gotten pretty gifts—and suddenly she’s a bruised and aching girl, plainly despised by the man she thought liked her. The narcotic brings a soft cloud of relief and creates a craving for more. A dependence within hours, an addict within days.
But I had no convincing evidence that Daley had been befriended, seduced, or abducted for the sex trade. It didn’t strike me as SNR-like. Hard to say why. They seemed more . . . sophisticated than that. In spite of the unsophisticated fact that onetime missionary Connor Donald had likely shot Nick Moreno in the forehead as the young man watched TV in bed. And that they’d beaten me just for saying Daley Rideout’s name.
But there are so many methods of control that don’t require powerful narcotics or physical force at all. I remembered Daley’s apparent familiarity with the two SNR men as they boarded the silver Expedition at Nick’s condo and drove away. I thought of her ignoring two SNR escorts as she talked with surfer Jake at the San Onofre Surfing Club. And of her arguing with two SNR men in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven in San Clemente—arguing but not resisting—then willingly getting into their vehicle.
As I pictured that scene playing over and over again, I believed that at that moment in the 7-Eleven parking lot, under the bored but curious gaze of Yash Chowdhury, the clerk, the balance of power between Daley and her not-quite-abductors had changed. They wouldn’t lose her again. No. And the easiest way to control her? Take her phone, put her in a remote house or building, lock the doors, and post some guards. SNR had plenty of those to choose from.
On my desk, Dale Clevenger’s big red laptop suddenly jumped to motion-activated life. Camera three: Two adults I’d seen earlier—Tattooed Forearms and Flat-Top Woman, both of them with guns on their hips—came from the house with two young boys and a girl. I guessed them at seven, five, and three years old. The boys wore white shorts, black canvas sneakers, and plaid shirts buttoned all the way up. The girl wore a pink dress and shiny pink shoes. Her hair was pulled into a yellow ponytail and she carried in both hands a baby doll easily half her own size.
They stood around the flagpole and the boys lowered the flag that Adam Revell had raised early that morning. They were careful with it, stretching it out for the long folds, then gradually stepping closer as the triangle of stars and stripes thickened.
The older boy presented the flag to the woman and the five walked in loose cadence back into the house, boys first, adults next, girl trailing behind, all of them just steps ahead of the dark.
* * *
—
AN HOUR LATER I was driving back up the coast to San Clemente, headed for the last place I knew for certain that Daley Rideout had been seen.
I could sense her out there, this girl I’d never met. Both a moral duty and a paycheck. She was close, but drifting from my reach. One moment I felt puzzled but hopeful, like a dog returning for a buried bone that had disappeared just hours ago: I will now dig again. The next moment I felt only foolish and beat-up.
I pondered what Penelope Rideout had said about my willingness to dig to the bottom of things. And that she had chosen me for this labor because of it. It had made me proud, the choosing. I will now dig again. I wanted to do it well and show her the quality of man I was. I wanted her to truly see me. And here it came again, the forbidden jump of my heart. Forbidden why? Justine? Enter the cave of your past, and ask the ghosts that sleep there.
Light fog clung to the coast. Just off Interstate 5 the new Camp Pendleton Navy Hospital loomed in lighted glory like an immense barge floating on a wide black river. I’ve never set foot in it. My brethren were treated in other VA hospitals, and I had visited three of them and sat beside their beds and slowly walked the halls of rehab with them. Waited for appointments with them. San Diego. Long Beach. Phoenix. Separate but related hells. Two are doing just fine now. One is not and never will be. There is nothing sadder or more infuriating to see than a once strong young man or woman surrendering their desire to live. We warriors kill ourselves off at roughly twice the rate of the rest of you.
I pulled into the 7-Eleven parking lot, saw Yash Chowdhury behind the counter. Parked around the dark side of the building, where I wouldn’t take up a prime spot.
Got a big cup of coffee and paid Yash. He hadn’t seen Daley again, though her sister had been in earlier this evening. And two hours before her, a man who looked somewhat like the man who had dropped Daley off here that late morning had been here, too. He had told Penelope about seeing this man, but wasn’t sure enough to call me or the police.
“Daley is very popular,” said Yash.
“The van driver,” I said.
“Yes. He came in, bought a hot pepperoni stick and a thirty-two-ounce beer. He said he was looking for a girl. She had been here very early last Thursday morning. I told him I was working then. He described her. And the hoodie that she wore, with the humorous question on it. He said he was her uncle.”
Late forties, said Yash. Short, stocky, medium brown hair, wearing shorts, a light blue Hawaiian shirt with outriggers and coconuts on it, and leather flip-flops. Needed a shave. Runny blue eyes.
Yash didn’t like his attitude. He told the man he didn’t remember such a girl. The man left. Didn’t give a name or leave a number.
“And the sister?” I asked.
“We talked and talked,” said Yash. “She was nothing like the first time I saw her. When a customer needed to pay, she stepped aside and drank her Slurpee. The Raspberry Blast stained her gums red, so we laughed. What a positive spirit she has. But so worried. She’s very conflicted.”
I was still trying to figure her out, but at least I had to agree with Yash’s assessment of her.
20
////////////////////////
I WORKED the city of San Clemente from north to south, on both sides of I-5. A searcher, all motion and hungry eyes. Drifting fog and stars. Good strong coffee from Yash. Camino de Estrella, Pico, Palizada. Nice neighborhoods, homes built close together down by the ocean, not so close up in the hills. Light retail. Not much traffic. A sleepy beach town.
I was fooling no one, not even myself. I knew my chances of spotting Daley Rideout were too small to matter. But just big enough to create hope. So I drove, looking for that tiny dot of hope, smaller than a taillight but big enough to see. I studied the pedestrians. The faces in cars, briefly lit, then gone. Kept my eyes out for silver Expeditions and old white panel vans. Because Roland Ford digs to the bottom of things.
South all the way to the city limit. San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station loomed half-lit in the middle distance, its spent fuel rods cooling in their casks. Cooling for the next hundred thousand years. Protected from earthquake, tsunami, thieves, and terrorists by SNR Security, who would not be interviewed for this story. Who had jumped me near a desert date farm for mentioning a girl’s name. As the pain faded, my thirst for vengeance grew.
Downtown. Avenida del Mar. Pedestrians out on this summer night. Not as many as in Laguna or Newport to the north, or La Jolla or Encinitas to the south. Here in downtown San Clemente you don’t even have to pay for parking. I cruised past the restaurants and cafés and the folksy little shops, half of them already closed. Backed into a parking space for a good view of the street. Right in front of the Mongkut Thai restaurant, and through my cracked window the air smelled very, very good. Salt air and spi
ces.
Thought I’d sit for a minute before I left my truck, hit the street, and made my long-shot rounds with pictures of missing Daley.
That was when I saw Penelope Rideout’s bright yellow Beetle parked across the street and ahead, ragtop up, a light slick of fog on the windows.
Well, now.
What brings you here on this late-summer night?
A few minutes later she came around the corner of El Camino Real. Opposite side of Del Mar, slowly walking toward her car, hugging herself against the cool, looking through the storefront windows. Skinny jeans and white sneakers, a black cowl-neck sweater, hair loose and curled by the damp. The small white purse over her shoulder.
She stopped in front of the first store she came to, put both hands to the glass, and pressed her face up close. It was a touristy T-shirt shop, closed. She spent some time looking into the dark store. More than I would have. Maybe she liked the humorous shirts.
No. Not looking for shirts, I thought. She’s doing what I was doing—looking for her sister.
From across the avenue she came toward me, lingering window to window, door to door. The Seagull Café was open and Penelope went in. I watched her through the glass, picking her way along the booths with a frankly accounting air, looking for something specific. She disappeared into the dining room, then came back into view as she approached the cashier. Asked questions. Most of the answers were headshakes or no’s. She pointed. To the 7-Eleven? Held out her phone. More headshakes and no’s, but also concern. Penelope stepped aside so a customer could pay. She scanned the dining room while she waited. When the cashier was free again Penelope asked her more questions and I could see some annoyance in the woman’s face.
Penelope came out, pocketed her phone, snugged the cowl, and continued. Measured, purposeful. If the business was open she went in. If not, she stared through the windows. Stared long and patiently. As if she could draw out the object of her desire with the desire itself. The humble seed of hope, I thought. The same seed that had brought me here.
She worked past me without a glance in my direction, down Avenida del Mar, crossed just before the library, and started back my way. Went into the coffee place, came out a few minutes later with steam trailing out the lid hole. The optometrist, closed. The yogurt shop, open. Penelope through the window glass, interrogating a young man who looked eager to help but kept pursing his lips, shaking his head. He looked at her phone pictures and shrugged. Seemed to offer her a yogurt, which she declined.
I watched her approach, but she didn’t look my way. My truck windows are almost illegally dark. Her face looked tired and drawn. Hugging herself again. By the time she walked into Mongkut Thai, she was directly behind me. I could see her in my oversized sideview mirror, starting in on a hostess with a colorful brocade dress and a welcoming smile.
I watched them in the mirror, the hostess’s no-longer-smiling face and Penelope’s backside as she asked her questions. I wanted to go help her, but that seemed like a crude intrusion. I felt sneaky and ashamed sitting there in the dark, watching my client struggle. Wearing out her luck against the odds. Pressing her hope so hard it began to dull. That was my job. But I didn’t move. Just watched her and the hostess, oddly proportioned in my mirror, conversing in the angled half-light, half-dark lobby. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
A moment later she was crossing Del Mar again, an easy trot to avoid the traffic, heading toward her cute yellow convertible.
I followed her a few cars back to the I-5 ramp off El Camino Real, then south. She drove at exactly the speed limit, middle lane if it was open, signaled her changes. Always a pleasure to tail a model citizen.
She cruised past San Onofre and through Camp Pendleton along the fog-dusted Pacific. Past the dark hills and the shining hospital and into Oceanside, where I expected her to exit for home. Where I would leave off and let her return to her domicile unfollowed.
But she continued south, all the way to Encinitas. Wound her way toward the Cathedral by the Sea, where Daley had been showered with attention by the youth minister whose gender Penelope had somehow gotten wrong.
I let her get some distance, watched her pass the church’s sign on Matilija, signal, and come to a complete stop at King’s Road. Turned and continued toward the church.
I followed to the first rise and pulled off the road. The coastal brush thumped and scratched at my truck as I squeezed in. Got my night-vision binoculars from the console and shouldered open the door, my cracked rib shrieking. Pressed my way through the buckwheat and manzanita to the top of the rise.
In the shorn fog stood the Cathedral by the Sea. Shapeless but graceful. Walls of marble and wood snugged together by shiny stainless-steel cables. The upswept copper roof. Outdoor and inside lights on. Double doors open wide. Through my field glasses I saw Pastor Reggie Atlas standing in the doorway, a man and a woman coming out, stopping to say goodbye to him, all cast in eerie green sniper’s light.
Penelope swung the Beetle wide into the big parking lot, keeping to the edge, as if for cover. She followed the curb past the central campus with its stately Canary Island palms and the classrooms and administration building, but stopped well short of the cathedral. Her lights went out and she waited, half hidden in the near dark, just as I had done at the 7-Eleven. Eight other vehicles in the lot.
People continued to leave the cathedral, all stopping to speak to Atlas. I recalled the Cathedral by the Sea calendar from the From the Lighthouse bulletin that I’d picked up on Sunday—Adult Bible Study: “By Jesus Chosen.” I glassed Penelope, black cowl unfurled high, face upturned and motionless.
Twenty minutes later, the Bible students had left. Pastor Atlas went back inside. The last of the cars trailed out of the lot toward King’s Road. Only the yellow Beetle remained, a muted swatch in the foggy half-dark.
Penelope got out, shut the door, and locked it with a fob. Zipped the fob into her purse as she headed up the sidewalk toward the church. Hugged herself again and leaned forward, as if into a headwind. Resolve over dread, force of will.
She climbed the steps and approached the open doors. Stopped at the threshold and said something. A moment later, Pastor Atlas came to the door and stopped. Ten feet apart.
In the night-vision green he spoke to her and she spoke back. No introductions that I could see. Something familiar in the exchange. A conversation resumed? She terse; he patient. Jab and feint, thrust and parry. Then an escalation, inaudible to me, but I could almost hear it in their postures—the accusatory aim of Penelope’s finger, the sad-faced appeasement from Reggie Atlas.
He looked past her, frowning. Then turned slightly and opened his hands in a welcoming manner, inviting her in. Penelope hunched in her black sweater, the white strap across her back. It looked like she was deciding whether to accept the invite.
With a suddenness that caught me by surprise, she yanked a silver cross from her purse and raised it at Atlas. Held it high. A vampire movie. Atlas looked disgusted, then flummoxed and hurt. He was mouthing a defense when she turned, ran to the steps, and started down. Fast and sure on her feet, white sneakers in descent, white purse swinging, and the silver cross still in hand.
Which was when a silver SNR Expedition pulled into the lot from King’s Road.
The driver cruised the perimeter, just as Penelope had done, heading for her car. About halfway there, he must have seen Penelope running, or the light on in the cathedral, or Pastor Atlas standing at the top of the steps. The Expedition cut across the vacant lot and swung to a stop in the handicapped parking as Penelope ran for her car and Atlas stopped halfway down the marble steps.
Adam Revell climbed out of the SUV, Atlas yelling at him, his words muffled by the heavy air. Penelope almost to her car, horn chirping and its lights flashing once. Revell caught between them, unsure what to do, looking at the fleeing woman, then to the pastor.
Atlas’s next wo
rds cut the night air: Get over here, you dumb sonofabitch!
Penelope’s car swerved sharply, then plowed for the exit, horses whining.
I broke brush to my truck, cranked it to life, and crunched backward through the scrub onto King’s Road. Threw her into drive, shot across the road, and tucked into the far shoulder. Plenty of room for Penelope to get by.
Headlights in the rearview.
* * *
—
SHE HAULED BUTT back to the interstate, where she tossed the speed limit and passed the slower cars. Still signaled her changes. I followed her home, watched her pull into the garage. The door lowered and a moment later the front-yard security flood came on but the house stayed dark.
I studied the small green bungalow in the patch of light: fence and porch and the ragged central palm. The living room blinds opened, then closed again.
I tried to interpret the hexagrams. But sometimes you need a place to start.
Time for an audience with the riddle herself.
I called her and she picked up.
21
////////////////////////
WE sat in her small living room, the knockoff Tiffany lamp beside the sofa casting varied light through its stained-glass shade. Penelope took the plaid couch with the lamp next to it and I got a director’s chair.
She stared at me, lamplight and shadow on her face. “How long have you been following me?”
I explained my mission in San Clemente, Yash, cruising the streets—my last known address for Daley. My surprise at seeing Penelope there, interviewing the shopkeepers on Del Mar. My decision not to interfere. Following her first to the Cathedral by the Sea, then home.
“You think it’s okay, spying on your employer?”
“I had your back. You know Atlas, don’t you?”
She looked at me sharply, then away, sending her curls back with the shake of her head. “I already told you that. I met him in late August. When I was checking out his church. On behalf of Daley.”
The Last Good Guy Page 12
