Striking Back

by Mark Nykanen

  “Back up.” Trenton smacked the windshield and shouted, “I mean it. Now!” Then he walked up to Gwyn, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “What am I doing? I’m doing what you should be doing. Stopping this maniac and asking him questions,” she shouted hoarsely.

  “I should arrest you for setting up this incident.”

  “Arrest me? You got a guy stalking me, lying to me, someone commissioned by the court to work with him, a wife batterer, a bona fide pathological liar, and you’re threatening to arrest me?”

  “Cut the engine,” Trenton said to Barr.

  Barr rolled down his window. “You guys arresting me? Otherwise, I’m free to go.”

  Warren turned on him. “You want us to arrest you, pal? Do what the man says.”

  As soon as Barr backed the Nova to the curb, Gwyn sidestepped Warren and stormed up to Barr. “What were you doing yesterday sitting outside my condo?”

  Barr looked up from the driver’s seat. “That’s rich, you complaining about me after you tailed me all afternoon.”

  Gwyn was so stunned she couldn’t respond. He’d not only made her, but she’d never caught him casting so much as a glance in her direction.

  He seemed to enjoy her surprise. “I knew the only way to shake you was to do what I did. It worked, too. You took right off.”

  “Who are you?” she finally said.

  “I told you who I am.” He climbed out of the car, stood with his arms crossed.

  “Then answer this,” she said, following her plan. “Who’s Larry Sabato? Richard Neustadt?”

  Barr stared at her as if she’d just floated down from one of the palms.

  “John Rawls? Do any of these names mean anything to you?”

  “They’re not guys in the group,” he said with authority.

  “No, you’re right about that. Definitely not guys in the group. They’re famous political scientists, so drop the USC bullshit. The only Trojan you’ve ever seen is the one you put on your dick.”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Warren said. “This is getting nasty.”

  “Did I hear you right? Did you say ‘nasty?’” Gwyn turned on Warren so fast the detective actually reared back. “Do I have to remind you guys that he’s lying to the court when he’s lying to me. Or don’t you care? I set this up because nothing about him adds up. And you know he lied to me about the fire.”

  “That’s your word,” Trenton said before turning to a car full of teens slowing down to scope out the burn victim. The detective waved them on as rap music thundered from the open windows.

  “I’d like to think my word means something,” she said in a voice loud enough to be heard over the music. But Trenton didn’t acknowledge her, kept waving on the car.

  Her own gaze returned to Barr, realizing at some barely perceptible level that she’d stopped noticing his scars. “What’s with the acting school? You want to explain that? Or your limp, the way it comes and goes?”

  “That’s when I saw you, when I was walking across the street to my car.”

  “Busted, huh?”

  “No, trying to learn how to walk again. This is a pile of shit,” he said, appealing to Trenton and Warren. She could feel Barr’s resistance stiffening, but what struck her as strange was how Trenton and Warren appeared to be enjoying this the way men in her groups sometimes smiled and laughed and took a guy’s defiance of her or another female co-leader as a victory for all of them. Male privilege dying slowly—if at all—even here, even now.

  “That’s total horseshit,” she said to Barr. “You go to physical therapy if you want to learn how to walk again. You go to acting school to learn how to act. I’ll tell you one thing, you’re not winning any awards with this performance.”

  He made no response.

  “They didn’t arrest you in Pomona, either. All that crap about the inkpad, that’s a lie, too. I checked.”

  He stared at her, studied her openly.

  She held steady, stared back, tried to give away nothing with her body language or breath, knowing that if she’d gone too far, if he called her bluff, all the momentum would slip away in an instant. She could already see him smirking and driving off. But she’d nailed him on the political scientists and acting school, and figured he had to know that if she caught him in another lie he was as good as finished. The silence was so intense she heard a single bird chirp as a scream, and had to force herself not to flinch.

  “I slipped away,” he said.

  She did her best not to breathe in open relief, pressing on without pause. “You? You slipped away? With all due respect, Barr Onstott, or whoever you are, a man who looks like you does not ‘slip away.’ What year were you born?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a simple question. Your age was on the records I got. Don’t stall. What year were you born?”

  “1987.”

  “Why is there no record of you in L.A.? I can’t find anything on you. I can’t even find your phone number in the reverse directory. What gives? Since when is a USC grad so invisible?”

  “One thing I’m not, in case you hadn’t noticed, is invisible.”

  “Stop playing the sympathy card with me. I’m way past that. Who are you?” She looked at Trenton and Warren. “How come you two are just standing there? You got a guy here who adds up like two and two is seven.”

  “This is too much fun to stop,” Trenton said, confirming her earlier, cynical suspicion. But she wasn’t certain she’d heard even a snippet of amusement in his voice.

  What were they hiding?

  Gwyn shook off her confusion and turned back to Barr. “You told me you came to my studio because you were scared. That’s a lie, too. I knew that as soon as I saw you protecting Lupe Sandoval in that fight.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ll thank you as soon as you tell me who you are.”

  “This is stupid. I’m leaving,” Barr said, and Trenton stepped aside to let him get to his car.

  “Here’s my deal,” Gwyn announced. “You tell me who you are, or I start returning calls to the Times. I’ve done plenty of digging, and I know you’re not who you say you are, so let’s get them digging, too. My mother’s their number one suspect,” flashing furious eyes at Trenton and Warren, “and you’re mine, so you might as well be everyone else’s, too. If there’s going to be a war of words every day in the Times, I’m not going to lie down and play dead, not while I’ve got you around.”

  Barr stopped opening his car door and turned toward her. “Don’t,” he said.

  It wasn’t the simple word that triggered her strangest thought yet about Barr Onstott. It was the way he’d loaded the word with threat, made it sound both as natural and as frightening as a thunderhead. That’s when she realized what he was. And as hard as it was to believe as she stood there staring at his scarred face, she knew his role as well as she knew the unadorned anger of the moment. There was only one answer for all these questions. She’d worked for more than a decade on the margins of the criminal justice system. Perhaps if she’d lacked that experience she might have wavered, questioned herself so closely that her well-founded conclusion would have turned to mist and burned up in the summer heat. But you pick up a brutal sense of life’s underbelly when you work with the wards of the court. You pick up the criminal justice vibe, the vibe of batterers and crooks and all kinds of common scum. And you pick up the cop vibe, the way they make their threats known with a single, “Don’t.”

  “You’re an undercover cop.”

  Barr waved her off in disgust. She might have called him a snake or a leper or a suicide bomber for all the sense he appeared to grant her.

  Trenton bellowed, “Now that’s bullshit.”

  “No, no, you are,” she insisted, remembering how the judge had rushed Barr into her group two weeks after it had started, which was right after the homicide division had realized that the men’s group murders weren’t a coincidence and the poems weren’t a cheap ploy.

  But
even before Barr showed up at the group, he’d put on a stunning performance during the intake. Easy to see it now as acting school inspired. First, she’d been his audience. Then she’d become his casting director: Barr the Batterer. Welcome to the group. Make yourself at home. Or don’t, considering the pummeling you gave your partner.

  What partner? There probably wasn’t any Vickie, much less semen-soaked underwear. Just as there had been no Chatsworth quake fire and no USC.

  Every encounter with him had brought more questions, and they all came flying at her now. He’d limped into that first group only to face down that brute, Frank Owens. Then, after they’d listened to that horrifying 911 tape, and Jesse had threatened to kill Owens, Barr had hobbled over to the skinny motorcycle freak during the break and chatted him up. Just like a detective would have done.

  What was it—three days later?—he shows up at her studio, toys with the door handle, and when she calls him on it says that he always checks them to see if they’re locked in “situations” like that. It had made her wonder how many “situations” he’d found himself in. But back then she’d feared he was a killer, not a cop.

  He’d also noticed that someone had tampered with the locking bolt in the handle. That had also raised questions, even if she’d been too distracted to ask them at the time. It was as if all these details were tiles, and they were finally coming together to form a mosaic of this terribly scarred man.

  That night at her studio should have been a revelation for other reasons. The two of them had been cuffed, sitting in the hall next to each other, when he’d bragged about posing as a handsome guy on the net. When she’d pointed out that the Julia Roberts look-alike who’d responded to him might have been posing, too, he’d even said, “Maybe none of us is what we seem.” A pretty damn big tile. How’d she look past that one? Then Trenton tossed him a few easy questions after he’d had the cuffs taken off, while treating her like Grade A grilling material. She’d figured Barr’s scars had bought him a pass. Not unreasonable until she looked back and saw the mosaic tiles arranging themselves.

  If she’d been paying closer attention, the second men’s group meeting might have put together the whole picture. Right from the start she’d suspected him of lying when he’d denied receiving her phone messages. But that was still a tiny tile compared to his jumping into the fray to protect Lupe. And then later Lupe had told her that he’d said “I got your back.” A cop line if there ever were one.

  But it was the desperation in his “Don’t” that sharpened what had been her most piercing impression of him. It had come during that first group when she’d realized that he reminded her of a handful of men she’d worked with, guys who as much as said they had nothing left to lose. She looked at Barr standing by his car, squinting in the sun, and sensed this all over again.

  He hadn’t said a word, just waved her off, and despite Trenton’s quick denial, he, too, had turned silent.

  Only Warren spoke. “You’re dreaming, girl. You’ve seen too many cop shows.”

  “Or not enough,” Trenton rallied. “What, you think we’re recruiting in burn units now?”

  She glanced back at Barr Onstott, or whoever he was, and wished she hadn’t. He glared at her with a look as cold as a corpse. A sliver of icy fear slid under her skin and spread with the speed of blood. She wished she could shake off the shiver, chalk it up to surprise or the price of revelation. Everything costs you, especially the truth. You move from illusion to reality, and it’s a fast trip with no stops.

  “This is your last chance,” she said to Barr. “Come clean with me, or I’m going straight to the Times, CNN, everybody.”

  Barr locked his gaze on her. “If this gets out, you blow what’s left of my life. You understand that? This is all I’ve got now.” He pulled out his wallet, flipped it open, and the last tile fell into place: L.A.P.D. Homicide Division.

  “You hear me?” he went on, and she heard the desperation speaking again, felt its stropped edge. “Don’t do it. Don’t go to the Times or anyone else. Don’t.”

  “I don’t like being threatened,” she peered closely at his ID, “Detective Paul Jamison.”

  “It’s not a threat. It’s a fact of my life, and now it’s a fact of yours. I’m not gonna lose this.”

  Trenton rested his hand on Detective Jamison’s shoulder.

  Jamison shook it off and said, “Next time tell me you’re setting up a meet.”

  Warren issued an uncharacteristically blunt, “Fuck,” and his partner turned away.

  “When were you going to tell me?” Gwyn asked.

  “Never,” Jamison and Warren said at the same time.

  “We got him into your group after the first two murders so he could work the case from inside,” Warren said. “We knew if we put a regular looking guy in at that point everyone, including you, would have been thinking ‘cop.’”

  “But your scars, they’re real.”

  Jamison must have heard hesitancy in her voice because he thrust out his hand. “Go ahead, touch the goddamn things and you tell me.”

  She did as he demanded. At any other time in her life Gwyn would have declined, but this was unlike any other moment she’d ever known. His fingers were rough and smooth in all the wrong places, and hot, as if he had only one thin layer of skin to hold in all that heat, blood as close to air as rain, and as likely to fall.

  “How did it happen?” she asked.

  Jamison stared at her once more. He seemed a man who knew his life was on the line, who considered every word before he spoke.

  “It might help if you told her,” Trenton said, but Jamison’s eyes didn’t leave hers.

  “I was working undercover narcotics. A meth ring in Bakersfield. They were bringing in a hundred, two-hundred pounds a week to L.A., the Valley. They were a bunch of bikers. I was pretty sure they were doing some dirty work for the Hells Angels. Someone made me, and I still don’t know who it was, and the next time I rode with them they locked me in an abandoned meth lab in the middle of the desert and burned it down. Is that enough? Or you want to hear about them laughing when I started screaming?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What’s done is done,” he said. “I was on disability till this broke.”

  “Did they get them? The guys who did this to you?”

  “The asshole who locked me in that lab is dead.”

  “He sure is,” Trenton said. “Dead as they come.”

  “And if I ever find out who made me . . . ” Jamison’s voice trailed off, as if those few words were warning enough, not just to the unknown person who’d identified him, but to Gwyn, who’d said she’d go to the Times, CNN, “everybody.”

  She felt the savage force of his unspoken words, but this time she didn’t confront him over his threat. She couldn’t. The story of his burning lent him a strange moral standing, a claim to justice as flinty as retribution itself.

  Warren shattered the brittle silence. “It was his idea, going into the group.”

  That’s why Barr, no, Jamison, she corrected herself, wears his scars like a uniform, because they’re his undercover garb.

  “We had to get someone in that group. All those guys were suspects,” Trenton said.

  “Me, too,” Gwyn said.

  “Yeah, you, too.”

  “Now you’re looking at my mom.”

  “Among others,” Warren said. “It’s a strange situation we’ve got here, so let’s cut to the chase. You could blow Jamison’s entire career.”

  “And you could put my mother up on murder charges. I’m not going to let that happen.”

  “You’re still protecting her?” Warren said.

  “She’s my mother.”

  “You two have had your moments.” Trenton spoke as if he knew a lot more than he was saying.

  “Do I really have to repeat myself? She’s my mother.”

  “You’re covering your own ass, too,” Trenton said. “Don’t kid yourself about that.”

  “Only
because you guys threw me back in the mix. There wouldn’t be any Big Bear if you hadn’t started with this.”

  “There wouldn’t have been any of this without Big Bear, another way of looking at it,” Trenton said.

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  “Prove it,” Trenton said.

  “You’ve got it backwards. You’re innocent till proven guilty.”

  “You say so.”

  “How do you think you’re going to stop us if your mom’s killing them, or having them killed?” Jamison questioning her like a detective for the first time.

  Gwyn looked at him, saw the same cold stare, but spoke her thoughts anyway. “I’ve got leverage now. Lots of it.”

  Jamison shook his head and got in his car. She stepped to the curb while he pulled away.

  “I wish you hadn’t done this,” Trenton said to her with his eyes on the Nova.

  “It’s not pretty, but it’s survival. I’m protecting my mother, which I wouldn’t do if I thought she were killing people.” Gwyn turned and walked back to the Starbucks for her car, felt the sun on her back, and smelled car exhaust in the air, tangible as tar.

  She remembered staring into Jamison’s eyes, and again sensed the desperation of the damned, a small bitter circle that included not only Mommsa and a handful of guys from her group, but the man she’d just unmasked.

  Chapter 12

  Gwyn drove to her condo, glancing warily at the spot where Barr—no, Detective Paul Jamison—had parked on the highway less than twenty-four hours ago.

  He hadn’t returned, and she felt a wisp of relief until she reminded herself that he was a cop, not a killer, and that it might be nice to have him around with the men’s group murderer still free to carry out his butchery.

  She pulled into the garage, glancing in her rear view mirror before climbing out of her car. The parking level was all concrete, windowless with bare bulbs that cast a sickly pale glow where they weren’t throwing shadows into the corners. There were a lot of places to hide, if you were so inclined, especially for a freak like Jesse, who was wiry and short. On the drive home she’d remembered his glazed expression during the fight in Pomona, the way he’d raced to lock the exit before raking her body with his eyes. All these thoughts were scoring her nerves when she spotted a motorcycle in the corner. She startled, even though she’d seen it before and was almost certain it belonged to a woman on the first floor.