He remembered the simple shock on her face when he told her, six weeks after moving into her cheerful little apartment, that he was going to marry Paul Zolorio’s niece from Guadalajara. He really had to, he explained, really, it wasn’t quite arranged in the old-fashioned way, but his marriage to Miriam would solidify the families and the business they did, it was practically his duty to Paul to…
He remembered how softly she shut and locked the door when he left her apartment that night, and the heaviness in his heart and the painful clench of his throat as he drove south into the night. It was nothing like walking away from Hallie Jaynes and her insatiable desires, her murderous guerra selfishness. No, Ofelia was uncorrupted, untouched except by him. She was drugless and guileless and had the purest heart of anyone he had ever known, and the wildest beauty to her smile.
ONE YEAR AFTER he had married Miriam, shortly after she had given birth to John, Tavarez secretly traveled to Nayarit to find Ofelia.
With doggedness and patience he was able to learn that she had joined a convent in Toluca, Mexico’s highest city. It took him another day to fly to Mexico City, then rent a car for the drive up to Toluca.
Sister Anna of the Convento de San Juan Bautista scolded him for coming here unannounced with such a request. She said Ofelia never wanted to see him again, after what he had done to her. Yes, she was healthy and happy now in the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was not a love given and taken away according to lust, commerce, or advancement. She looked at him, trembling with disgust.
Tavarez set five one-hundred-dollar bills on the desk between them. “For the poor,” he said in Spanish.
“They don’t need your money,” Sister Anna said back.
He counted out five more. “Let the poor decide.”
“I have decided for them.”
“Okay.”
Tavarez rose, leaned across the desk, and grabbed the holy woman by her nose. He pulled up hard and she came up fast, chair clacking to the tile floor behind her. He told her to take him to Ofelia or he’d yank it off.
“You’re the devil,” she said, tears pouring from her eyes.
“Don’t be silly,” said Tavarez, letting go of Sister Anna’s nose. “I’m trying to see an old friend, and help the poor.”
She swept the cash into a drawer, then led Tavarez across a dusty courtyard. The other sisters stopped and stared but none of them dared get close. Sister Anna walked quickly with her fist up to her mouth, as if she’d just been given unbearable news.
The vesper bells were ringing when Sister Anna pushed open the door of Ofelia’s tiny cell. It was very cold, and not much larger than the one he’d spent five years in, noted Tavarez. She had a crucifix on the wall. His cell had pictures of Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.
Ofelia rose from the floor beside her bed. She looked up at Tavarez with a stunned surprise. She was thinner and pale, but her eyes still held the innocent wonder that he had loved. She was not quite nineteen.
In that moment he saw that she loved him helplessly, in the way that only the very young can love, and that the greatest gift he could give her would be to turn around and walk away. It would mean denying himself. Denying his desires, his instincts, his own heart. It would mean giving her life.
He reached out and put his hands on her lovely face. Sister Anna flinched.
“Love your God all you want, but come with me,” he said.
“We’ll both go to hell,” she said, her breath condensing in the freezing air.
“We’ve got three days and a lifetime before that.”
“What about your wife?” asked Ofelia.
“I have a son too. Accommodate them. I love you.”
Tavarez watched the struggle playing out in Ofelia’s dark eyes but he never doubted the outcome.
“I don’t have much to pack,” she said.
Sister Anna gasped.
Tavarez looked at her and smiled.
EVEN NOW, TEN years later, Tavarez thought of that moment and smiled.
But finally—as always—he remembered what Matt Stromsoe had done to Ofelia. And with this memory Tavarez canceled her image as quickly and totally as someone changing channels on a TV.
11
The first For Rent sign he saw in Fallbrook was for a guest cottage. The main house was owned and occupied by the Mastersons and their young son and daughter. The Mastersons were early twenties, trim and polite. She was pregnant in a big way. They were willing to rent out the cottage then and there, so long as Stromsoe would sign a standard agreement and pay in advance a refundable damage deposit. The rent wasn’t high and the guest cottage was tucked back on the acreage with nice views across the Santa Margarita River Valley. A grove of tangerine trees lined the little dirt road leading to it. Bright purple bougainvillea covered one wall of the cottage and continued up the roof. It had an air conditioner, satellite TV, even a garage.
Within forty minutes of driving up, Stromsoe had written a check for first and last month’s rent and deposit, and collected a house key and an automatic garage-door opener.
Mrs. Masterson handed him a heavy bag full of avocados and said welcome to Fallbrook and God bless you. Included in the bag was last week’s worship program for the United Methodist Church.
Frankie called him around noon and asked him over for lunch before their drive south to the studio.
“I just moved to Fallbrook,” he said.
She laughed. “You’re kidding.”
“The butterflies sold me. And I’m minutes away if you need me.”
She was silent for a beat. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“WHAT ARE THE wooden towers for?” he asked when the lunch was almost over.
“The one in the picture?”
“The ones in the Bonsall barn.”
Frankie set her fork on her plate. Her expression went cool. “For meteorological instruments,” she said. “I study weather. How do you know about them?”
Stromsoe explained waiting for the idling car and seeing nothing until Frankie came blasting out of the dark in her Mustang.
“So, Mr. Stromsoe—are you a bodyguard or a snoop, or a little of both?”
“You’re being stalked. I hear a vehicle idling near your house. Half an hour later, you leave your home on a code red. What would you have done?”
“Followed me.”
Stromsoe nodded. “Who’s Ted?”
Stromsoe tracked the emotions as they marched across her face—embarrassment, then irritation, then confusion, then control.
“Came right up and listened in, did you?”
“Yep.”
“I don’t like your attitude right now.”
“It comes from thirteen years of being a cop.”
“But you’re a private detective now. You have to act polite and charming.” She smiled. It reversed the stern lines of her face and Stromsoe remembered a time when he actually had been polite and maybe even a little charming.
“Ted’s my uncle,” said Frankie. “He’s a retired NOAA guy. That’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. They study climate and report weather.”
“I apologize for following you. I was slightly worried.”
“I’m glad you were worried. That’s why I pay you. You were curious too.”
He nodded.
“The towers are made of redwood and finished with a weather seal,” she said. “They’re twenty-two feet high, and we anchor the legs in concrete on-site.”
“Where do you put them?”
“Mostly around the Bonsall property.”
“You sit on the platforms to escape from yourself?”
She smiled and colored. “No. I told your boss the property was a place I went to be alone, because I didn’t want him asking the same questions you’re asking now.”
“Who cares if you study weather?” asked Stromsoe.
“I was a lot more relaxed about it until I saw that guy on my fenced, posted property, inspecting
one of my towers.”
Stromsoe wondered about that. “Are there commercial applications to what you’re studying?”
“Possibly,” said Frankie Hatfield.
“You think the stalker is a competitor?”
“I don’t believe so.”
Frankie explained the value of weather prediction. Its applications were endless—agriculture, water and energy allocation, public safety and security, transportation, development—you name it. When you studied climate you had long-term charts to go on, she said, and generalities became apparent. But predicting weather was a whole different thing from predicting climate. Within a general climate, the weather itself could be very unpredictable. That’s where she came in. She was trying to find ways for extremely accurate thirty-day forecasts. Right now, the best they could do was five days. Seven tops, but even NOAA had dropped its seven-day radio forecasts because they were so often wrong, useless, and sometimes even dangerous.
“Global warming is interesting but it’s not my thing,” she said. “I’m interested in telling you what’s going to happen—I mean exactly what’s going to happen—exactly where you live, one month from now. The precise temperatures, wind, and humidity. The exact amount of precipitation, if any.”
“I didn’t think the conditions arose thirty days ahead.”
“They do but they’re not apparent. That’s where I come in. I’m on the verge of nailing a way to see and measure them.”
Stromsoe waited for that smile again but it didn’t come. He watched Frankie Hatfield’s face as she stared out the window of her dining room to the bright Fallbrook afternoon. She didn’t blink. A flat patina came over her eyes, and it looked as if she were seeing nothing, lost in a thought that overrode vision.
“Right on the verge,” she said quietly, glancing at her watch. “I guess I should go to work.”
FRANKIE AND HER crew shot the live spots around downtown that evening—outside the ballpark, in front of the old Horton Grand Hotel, up on the Cabrillo Bridge leading into Balboa Park. She wore a polka-dot sundress with a white cotton jacket, and a straw fedora. Her weather forecasts were almost identical to the ones of the day before, making Stromsoe wonder how challenging a San Diego meteorologist’s job really was.
Frankie did say that it was looking more and more like the jet stream would carry the low-pressure system into San Diego County, and that Sunday night would very possibly be wet. Monday looked “promising” for rain too, with two more low-pressure troughs “stacked up” behind the first.
The little crowd that had gathered groaned at the thought of a wet weekend in mid-October.
“Rain is life,” said Frankie, smiling. “Sorry.”
The urban settings in which Frankie did her stories made Stromsoe hypervigilant and a little nervous, and he realized how limiting his monocular vision was when it came to surveillance. He wondered if he could accurately fire the Colt Mustang .380 he carried on a Clipdraw on his belt. He hadn’t fired the thing since the bomb. This was one more reason to regret his two-year decomposition in Miami, though at the time it had seemed his only choice. A time for casting out stones.
By Frankie’s last broadcast at 8 P.M. Stromsoe hadn’t seen the stalker, much less entertained drawing his sidearm.
Just after nine o’clock he was once more following her through the dark orchards toward her home in the fragrant Fallbrook night. The butterflies lilted through the beams of his headlights.
Again she pulled into her garage and again Stromsoe stopped to make sure she got into the house safely. He heard the dogs start barking inside again too, and he wondered what it was like for this young woman to live alone in the middle of ten acres of avocado and citrus trees, with two dogs, a stalker, and a gun.
She came up to his window, pulling up the collar of her coat against the October chill. Her hat sat back at an end-of-the-workday angle.
“Come in for a cup?”
“I’d like that.”
12
Frankie pushed open the French doors to let in the breeze and the smell of the orange blossoms into the living room. Ace sniffed systematically at Stromsoe’s pants. White-faced Sadie lay down and looked up at him.
“I read those articles about you,” she said. “And Dan Birch told me some things.”
“So, are you a weather lady or a snoop or a little of both?”
“I haven’t followed you anywhere yet.”
“You might have a better chance of running down your secret admirer than I did.”
“My money’s still on you,” said Frankie.
Stromsoe nodded.
“I want to say I’m sorry that all those things happened to you and your family,” she said. Her voice was softer than Stromsoe was used to, more confidential. “I felt very strongly that you had endured more than your share. And your wife and son, well, there’s nothing I can say that would do them any justice.”
They were silent for a moment.
“They got the guy, so there’s some of that kind of justice,” said Stromsoe, trying to be helpful.
“There’s no justice when the irreplaceable is taken away,” she said. “Someone’s vision, someone’s life.”
“No. After that you settle for what’s left.”
She looked down at aged Sadie. “Dogs have less problems with that.”
Stromsoe smiled and nodded. For a moment they sat and said nothing. He listened to the frogs and crickets.
Frankie was gone for a while, then back with tea service and a basket of biscotti on a tray. She set it down on the coffee table between them.
“Dan told me you took some time off,” she said.
“Yes, down in Florida mostly. I was here for part of the trial.”
“Are you satisfied with the life sentences?”
“Yes.”
“I would have wanted death,” said Frankie.
“At first, I did too,” said Stromsoe. “Then I realized that if you aren’t alive you can’t suffer.”
“Brutal and true,” she said.
“Exactly. I’ve seen Pelican Bay. He did a year in the Security Housing Unit, which is so bad it can drive men crazy. But he conned his way out. Still, the line is nobody’s idea of fun.”
“Line?”
“The general population.”
Frankie swirled a tea bag through her cup. “I can’t compare any tragedy of mine to yours,” she said. “My parents are alive. I’ve never married and have no children. A good friend died of cancer when we were both twenty-one. That’s the biggest loss I’ve had.”
“I think we’re measured by what we give, not what’s taken,” said Stromsoe. “That was awfully pompous. I mean, I just now made it up. I was talking about you, not me.”
She looked at him with a frankly evaluative cock of head. Again they said nothing for a few moments.
“You seem like a good man, Matt. I’m done with my questions for now. I just like to know who I’m in business with.”
“No apology needed. Questions bring up memories and memories can be good.”
“I’m glad you feel that way.”
“It took a while, but now I do.”
“Will you tell me about them someday, your wife and son?”
“Okay.”
More silence, during which Stromsoe drank his tea and looked out to the very distant lights beyond the avocados.
“Want to see my pickled rivers?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“Come on back.”
The first room off the hallway contained three rows of glass-topped exhibition tables as might be found in a museum. Each row was lit from above by strong recessed bulbs.
But instead of rocks or gems or spiked insects there were mason jars filled with varying shades of clear liquid.
“One hundred and eighty-two rivers, creeks, and streams,” she said. “So far. They have to run year-round to qualify. Eight of them don’t even have names, which I think is majorly cool. My furthest one is the Yangtze in Chin
a. My favorite is the Nirehuao in Southern Chile. Very sweet to the taste, very clear, and full of large trout. I boil and filter the water before I taste it. I’m not a complete fool.”
“No, I can see that.”
Stromsoe noted that each mason jar was approximately three-quarters full. Some had sediment on the bottom. In a small stand beside each jar was a color photograph of the body of water, with the name, location, date, and time of day handwritten in elaborate cursive script. On another stand was a map of the world with a tiny blue-, red-, or white-headed pin marking the location.
“Blue for river, red for stream, white for creek.”
“What’s the difference between a stream and a creek?” he asked.
“A stream is a small river. A creek is a small stream, often a tributary to a river. A creek can also be called a branch, brook, kill, run, according to where you go. The truth is there are creeks bigger than streams or rivers. The terminology isn’t precise, which adds to the romance and fun of it.”
Stromsoe nodded as he toured the tables. The woman had traveled to every continent to collect jars of river water.
“Why not lakes?” he asked.
“It has to be moving water. That’s just a personal standard I have.”
Stromsoe stopped at the Nile and looked at the pale, sandy-colored water.
“They didn’t turn out quite like I’d hoped,” she said. “I thought each jar would have a kind of spirit to it, something talismanic. After fifty rivers I realized a jar of water is pretty much a jar of water, though the argument has been made that we drink the same water that Jesus did or Hitler or Perry Como. But when I sign up for something, I’m in for the duration, you know? I go down with the ship. I don’t quit on anything, ever.”
“I’m impressed,” said Stromsoe. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a passion displayed so literally and scientifically.”
Storm Runners Page 7
