The Triggerman's Dance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  VALERIE: Please?

  JOHN: Well, I really would be grateful for a place to stay tonight.

  HOLT: Then it’s settled. You’ll be comfortable with us for a night, John. We’ve got plenty of comfort on Liberty Ridge.

  JOHN: Liberty Bridge?

  VALERIE: Ridge. Dad names everything. Can’t even have a house without making it a proper noun. You’ll like it, though—and of course your dog is welcome. I’ve got fourteen springers and Dad’s got another six, so there’s plenty of kennel run.

  JOHN: Well, there might be a problem there, because I’ve got two more out on the property. I left them with the groundskeeper when I went hunting this morning.

  VALERIE: Are you kidding? Three more dogs won’t even be noticed.

  HOLT: She’s right.

  JOHN: At some point I need to go back to the trailer and see if anything’s left. I mean, I don’t want to burden you with that.

  HOLT: Understood. We’ll do it before we leave, give you a hand if you want.

  JOHN: I’d like to bury Rusty out there, too.

  HOLT: With honors.

  JOHN: That would be great.

  “That would be just one-hundred percent totally fucking great,” Weinstein whispered. “I’d scream right now, but I’m afraid they’d hear me.”

  “You can bellow all the way back to Orange County.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  But he didn’t. Instead, while Dumars drove, Josh called Norton in Washington and told him that Wayfarer was now the proud owner of Owl, Joshua’s chosen code name for John.

  “All the Hollywood stuff go down okay?” Norton asked.

  “One take.”

  “How’d it look?”

  “Rated X for violence.”

  “You didn’t get the live rounds and blanks mixed up? The girl didn’t rip Sammy’s blood bag off his shoulder?”

  “It was perfect.”

  “Rusty die nobly?”

  “Yeah, he was great.”

  “Fast?”

  “Instantly.”

  “You know that dog cost us seven thousand, four hundred dollars? That’s room, board and training for three years. Club and Fang actually let us amortize him because we wouldn’t be sending him back. Those wags.”

  “Club and Fang sent us one perfect dog.”

  “True. Things here are odd, Josh. Frazee can’t get enough of Wayfarer and Owl. He’s old enough to confuse one with the other half the time—you know how Crazy could never keep the code names straight? Anyway, he’s riding this one like a jockey. He’s good for the money, so long as I let him feel involved. It’s like having a banker involved in your remodel. You need the loan but you wish he wouldn’t hang around the job site.”

  “How bad could he jam us?”

  “He holds the Hate Crimes purse. You know that.”

  “I also know he goes all the way back to Quantico with Wayfarer. Student and professor, by way of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”

  “He believes his ongoing interest is atonement for Wayfarer’s lapse. Frazee is atoning vigorously. He actually mentioned ATF—some crack about letting them storm the walls of Liberty Ridge once and for all. A joke, of course. But I think it’s obvious he doesn’t just want to bust Wayfarer—he wants to humiliate the living shit out of him too.”

  “If Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms gets within one mile of this case you’ll have my resignation.”

  “What could that possibly matter to Walker Frazee?”

  “Christ, Norton, we can’t let ATF into this! It’s—”

  “—We’re not letting ATF into this, we’re just letting Crazy Frazee pass gas. Now, next we put Owl’s toys in place, right?”

  “Goddamn, Norton. Don’t say things like that to me.”

  “It doesn’t hurt for you to know where the wind’s blowing back here.”

  “From a windbag. I just can’t believe he’d even joke about—”

  “—Hush, son. I said I’d take care of Walker and I’ll take care of Walker. Now, do we put Owl’s toys in place?”

  “Yeah, if Frazee keeps the Bat Boys off the walls long enough to—”

  “—Joshua, comport yourself professionally, please.”

  “Yes, we deliver the toys. And we start to leak news of our prime suspect.”

  “Blow the smoke, young man.”

  “Sharon will actually do the blowing, sir.”

  “Well, tell her I could say something that would get me disciplined as a sexual predator.”

  Weinstein told her.

  “You’re a dirty old lech,” Dumars piped across the car toward the phone, smiling but her face quite red.

  “Tell her thank you, Joshua.”

  He told her.

  Back in the Tech Services yard, Weinstein collected his tape and binoculars and checked the van with the services clerk. The billet was already stamped with a direct Washington charge number, the Bureau version of a credit line. The clerk nodded reverently to Joshua as he accepted the keys, and Weinstein nodded back at him.

  Then he did something he had never done before. Without stating a business-related reason, without pulling rank, without even asking her to do the driving, Joshua asked Sharon Dumars to an early dinner—his treat.

  Sharon noted his flushed face, the tightened bobbing of his Adam’s apple.

  “I wish I could, Josh, but I’ve got plans tonight. Another time?”

  He blushed even more deeply, but smiled. It was the non-smile of Joshua’s, she saw—mirthless, forced and false.

  “Sure,” he said. “Whatever.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  Early the winter when John was nine, his parents flew their new plane to visit friends in Oregon.

  John stood beside the dinner table one evening as his father traced their itinerary on a map—air route in red, ground stops shown by black circles. He listened to them talk about the flight; he helped them pack.

  A few weeks before their departure, he made an amulet from a fossilized sea shell, three redtailed hawk feathers, a dried thistle pod and a strip of wild gourd tendril he gathered with some forethought in a local wilderness now called Liberty Ridge. John prayed that God would instill the amulet with protective properties and not come apart.

  He and his uncle Stan watched the little Piper lift off from the Martin Aviation strip and groan into the air. John could smell his mother’s perfume, still on his cheek from her lengthy parting kisses. She had worn the amulet around her neck, holding it to her breast as she knelt to kiss him to keep it from getting crushed. He could still see his father’s ramrod straight back as he walked across the tarmac in his silk flight jacket, heading for the plane. The weather was cool and clear. They would be gone one week.

  That night, Stan and his wife, Dorrie, were expansive, gracious, amusing. But Stan took a phone call midway through dinner, and when he came back to the table he was preoccupied and subdued. Later, John watched some television and saw them in the kitchen, talking intently. Dorrie’s face was resolutely tragic.

  Stan seemed to be trying to talk her out of something, imploring her, palms up, head shaking, ending his plea with a thumb hooked out toward John. Then Stan joined him in the den with a massive amber cocktail.

  The next day around noon, Stan and Dorrie broke the news: John’s parents had lost radio contact late the afternoon before, and had not been seen or heard from since. It could mean a hundred things, Stan told him. Most likely, his impulsive father simply set down early to wait out the storm. Yes, a fairly good sized storm had blown down from Alaska. With all the interference, radio contact is first to go, anyway. Just a matter of sitting tight and waiting to hear. You know how your father can be.

  The plane was listed as missing and presumed down. Search and rescue aircraft couldn’t penetrate the storm front, which was all the way south to Fresno by then. That evening, as the first gale-driven drops of rain roared against Uncle Stan’s roof, John stood at a window and realized—with a h
uge wave of relief—that no amount of raindrops could foul his father’s plans. He hadn’t called because the phone lines were down, too. It was reassuring, almost amusing, to watch Stan and Dorrie fret like hens. John had seen the truth already. He could clearly imagine the yellow Piper emerging through a black wall of clouds, guided by the amulet.

  For the next eight weeks, through the heart of winter, storms pounded the state. Even the local mountains were buried in snow. John was treated with all the privilege and dignity of the bereaved. He met with relatives he’d hardly known. He was asked about plans. Everything fine with Stan and Dorrie? You are courageous and we’re proud of you.

  His schoolmates, as if all coached by the same powerful figure, offered a sort of quiet respect to John. They kept away from him. One day on the playground when a little plane flew over, John stopped to watch it and the noon-duty supervisor, unbidden, wrapped a huge perfumed arm around his shoulders and started to weep. He told the woman “hold your mud”—a favorite expression of his father’s—then walked off to the far corner of the school yard to get away from all these lugubrious, presuming fools.

  By late June the snowpack had melted back enough to reveal the yellow Piper.

  Stan and Dorrie drove him up to the Siskiyou County morgue, to identify and claim the bodies. It was a long ride from Orange County, punctuated by Dome’s breakdowns. John bought a pair of “Jackelope” postcards from a diner up on 395, addressing one each to his mother and father and writing out a brief message: “Be home soon.”

  There was some unutterable problem at the morgue. Stan and Dorrie consulted with the Sheriff-Coroner’s deputy until Dorrie retreated to the lobby sofa, blubbering incoherently. Stan disappeared with another deputy, then returned to the lobby, sheet-white.

  “I just can’t say, for sure,” Stan confessed.

  “I can,” said John. “They’re my parents.”

  The deputy would have none of it. John was too young—both legally and emotionally—to make a valid identification. The Sheriff himself stepped in and called the party of three back to his office. His deputy explained the circumstance. The Sheriff was a big man with a bored but honest face, and John appreciated that the Sheriff did not look at him like a dying patient.

  “You’re willing to do this, young man?”

  “I’ve said so several times, sir.”

  The identification room was small and official. It had four chairs along one wall, a sink and a faucet. Two large boxes of tissue sat on a counter, beside an arrangement of plastic flowers in a gray vase.

  A morgue tech entered through a large sliding door on the opposite side of the chairs, pulling a wheeled gurney behind him. He looked at John and the Sheriff, then excused himself and returned shortly with another.

  “They were exposed to fire, then the elements for some time,” he said.

  “He knows,” said the Sheriff.

  The first body was unquestionably not that of his father. John knew it less by what was left than by what was gone. It was easy to extrapolate. Add some flesh here. Muscle there. The flight jacket. Eyes. Hair. No—it wouldn’t add up to Dad.

  He nodded but said nothing.

  Likewise for the body they thought was his mother’s. Definitely not her, John thought. Everything is just wrong. He looked at the Sheriff.

  “These are not my parents.”

  The big bored face was plainly startled. It blushed. For a moment the Sheriff’s ice-blue eyes held John’s, then the Sheriff waved away the tech. The tech pulled both gurneys from the room and the sliding doors met silently.

  “You sure, young man?”

  “I’m sure, Sheriff.”

  “Well, then there we have it.”

  He shook John’s hand and they went back to his office. Stan and Dorrie were there, prim and ghastly. The Sheriff explained that the bodies did not belong to John’s parents, and John just had to sign the papers to make it official. John signed in six places. The Sheriff leafed through the little stack, then placed it on the table in front of him. From his desk drawer he removed a small plastic bag and handed it to John.

  “You may as well keep these.”

  John pressed the plastic tight and looked at the two wedding bands inside. Even through the plastic he recognized the engraving and the inscription inside each—”Love, Cherish and Honor.” A fossilized sea shell rested in one corner of the bag.

  “I understand,” John said.

  “Good man,” said the Sheriff.

  A moment of pregnant silence passed, then all three adults as if on cue skidded back their chairs.

  On the long drive back home, John stared out the window and wondered where, exactly, his parents had gone.

  The earth is a small place, but there is sky everywhere, and it never ends. All you need is a little piece of earth to stand on. From there, you can look up and wonder, and find the things out there that are yours.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  John awoke at eight on Liberty Ridge. He had just showered, shaved and dressed in yesterday’s clothes when he heard a knock. Looking down from the loft he saw Valerie through the glass inset of the door. When he called out the door opened and the dogs, damp and spiky from the lake, burst in ahead of her. She followed and looked toward the kitchen inquisitively. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She had on a white sleeveless blouse tucked into a pair of khaki shorts, white socks folded to the tops of the heavy suede hiking boots favored by so many young women that year. Her skin was brown, but not overly so, a natural shade produced by activity out of doors rather than hours basting on a beach.

  “There’s coffee on,” he said.

  She looked up and he noted the deep brown of her eyes and the arched, interrogatory brows. “Good morning,” she said.

  “Good morning.”

  “Beautiful morning, in fact. Fall’s my favorite time of year.” She looked away, glancing at one of the ubiquitous Liberty Ridge computers, which in this case was stationed on one corner of the dining room table. “What’s yours?”

  “Spring.”

  “The labs sure like the water.”

  “They don’t get much, out in Anza.”

  “Hey, I got to thinking we should go get you some clothes.”

  “Not a bad idea. Yesterday’s wardrobe feels a skosh used.”

  “We can take my Jeep. It’s a good day to have the top off.”

  They stopped at the Big House so John could call his boss at the paper. Valerie led him down the cool, vast foyer, which was framed in massive rough-cut timbers that looked a century old but were in fact older. The walls were hung with Indian blankets and baskets, each lovingly specified by a recessed light. A series of wrought-iron candelabra hung down from the cavernous ceiling on thick black chains. John looked into the huge living room as he walked by, noting the quiet fire in the tremendous fireplace. It looked almost distant. Then the kitchen, which was roughly the size of the house he’d grown up in. There was no sign of Holt and his guests, nor the Liberty Ridge staff, nor any of the dozen Liberty Ops insiders with whom Joshua Weinstein had made John familiar. He committed what he saw to memory. Valerie poked a few preliminary digits on the phone, saying that the system was a bit complicated here—”basic security.” The phone was a cordless with an automatic channel search. The numbers to call out—this day’s, at least—were 3-9-9.

  John started to explain what had happened, but Bruno—his garrulous and unlikely publisher—was full of questions: Did John shoot three or four of them; how many trailers did they burn out at the High Desert Rod and Gun Club; did the rape actually occur inside Olie’s or in the lot itself; and since when did John travel with a pack of attack dogs? The publisher told him that the entire city—all 2,450 citizens of Anza Valley—was talking about the incident, and that some people feared the bikers might return for some kind of retribution. Riverside County Sheriffs wanted to talk to him. And of course, a first-person account in the Anza Valley News would draw advertisers, “fly off the stands,�
�� and was due before four p.m. the next day. A special section was a possibility for the week after. Did anyone take pictures?

  John said he’d be in at the regular time tomorrow, pressed “off,” and listened for any sound of a recording being made. He heard none, then put the phone back in its cradle.

  “So, will there be a hero’s welcome for you back in Anza Valley?”

  “A ticker-tape parade, major media, key to the city.”

  “You deserve it.”

  “Sheriffs, too.”

  “That bother you?”

  “Better than bikers.”

  They drove up the freeway to South Coast Plaza, a mall nationally known for its size, crowds and variety of stores. The Jeep—a bright red Wrangler—bounced along on its parsimonious shocks, the roll cage rattling happily, the warm October air blasting through the cockpit. There was no real point in talking. Valerie drove the Jeep fast but with concentration—hands at ten and two, her eyes often on the mirrors, the radio turned up high enough that its static almost matched the roar of the road.

  John sat back and watched Orange County go by. Nothing much had changed in the last six months along the freeway here. It was coveted real estate that had been built up decades ago. The new airport gleamed off to his left while a silver 737 wavered toward the landing strip. Traffic was bad, especially around the mall parking lot, but it was always bad. Almost any time of day, any season of the year, this retail metropolis would be crammed with people buying and eating things. The place had seemed to give rise to an entire class of people—the shopping class—though John realized that the mall didn’t create them, but simply gave them a place to gather.

  He looked over at Valerie several times, indulging the simple-minded pleasure of admiring her. She looked back at him once, then, smiling, returned her gaze to the road.

  By the time they parked, her hair was a bird’s nest of tangles that she attempted to organize in the mirror, then matter-of-factly gave up on.

  “Let’s go consume,” she said. “Be good little wheels in the capitalist machine.”

  “I’ll bet your dad cringes when you talk like that.”