by John Farris
The silver hilt of Beatrice’s throwing knife was canted at an upward angle and snug to the chest wall slightly below Francesca’s breasts. I guessed that her eyes had been closed; postcoital nap, maybe. Then they had opened wide at the brute thrust of the blade, stayed that way as the blade ripped her heart nearly in half. A complete surprise to Francesca, obviously. Whoever had done it was both deft and strong. Filled with rage and poisoned passion or maybe just the sadness of saying goodbye in a lethal way.
My first thought was of Miles Brenta.
My second thought was, Setup.
“OhGodohGod,” Beatrice said sofly behind me.
“Are you going to throw up?”
“I did already. In the toilet. I didn’t make a mess. I’ve got such a headache. I didn’t like her, but—how brutal. How awful.”
I approached the bed. Bea said, “Do you have to touch her?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll wait in the front room for you.”
Francesca’s murder wasn’t ILC business; she belonged now to BHPD’s homicide division and the rest of the Privilege’s efficient inquest process. I only wanted to get an estimate of how long she’d been dead.
There was congealed dark blood at one corner of her slightly parted lips. But no sign of rigor, which made TOD less than two hours.
I called homicide and asked for Burt Ferguson, whom I had known for years. Burt was in. Ten minutes, he said.
Then I joined Bea, who wanted to be held.
“My fingerprints—” she said.
“The cross-hatched hilt wouldn’t take a print. The blade is clean from Fran’s blood.” Bea shuddered. “Forget about your knife. Here’s your story. Short and simple. You ran into Obregon mid-afternoon in the hotel lobby. She invited you to stop in after the fashion show for a drink. You’d met her at Max Thursday’s hacienda and kind of hit it off, but you didn’t know her very well. That’s all you need to say. We’ll be out of here in less than an hour.”
“All right. Poor Max. He needed Francesca. I’m so sorry for him too.”
She cried, and was getting over it when Burt Ferguson and a detective I didn’t know walked in with a couple of uniforms.
They took a few minutes, then Evidence Response arrived, followed by the Beverly Hills ME. A lot of traffic, muted voices. Burt was a short guy with heavy brows and the introspective eyes of a priest bored with sinners. He spent less than ten minutes with Beatrice, two with me.
“You know the vic?”
“Not very well.”
“No ideas, then?”
“Wish I could be of more help, Burt.”
He shrugged. “I wonder how many Brenta execs besides her had the run of the bungalow? We could have a lot of DNA to process. Most of it might belong to Brenta himself.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” I said.
“The help around here will be able to tell us if he was doing her on a regular schedule. So there she was, naked and waiting for him in her peekaboo hat. Why can’t my wife think of something like that?” He looked back at the bedroom where the ER team was doing its meticulous work. “Ain’t it just too good to be true?” he said, wistfully.
“I thought you’d never notice,” I said. “Okay if I take Miss Harp home now?”
He’d already detected the nuances of a relationship. He grinned his feisty grin.
“You do all right for yourself. Have her come by the office tomorrow and we’ll take a statement. What the hell is going down at ILC these days?”
My turn to shrug. “Nobody tells me anything.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”
I walked outside with Bea. A couple of cops loitered near the door. It was full dark now. A stiff breeze earlier had become boisterous gusts of wind throwing the shaggy shadows of deodars across the flagged path that wandered among the bungalows. The path was lighted Hawaiian-style by torches. I thought we were probably in for a couple of days of Santa Anas. I looked up, saw clouds adrift around the moon like stuffing pulled from eviscerated dolls. I had a knot in my stomach as if something sharp were pointed at my navel.
I glimpsed someone standing behind trimmed shrubbery a few feet off the path. Too dark for me to make out a face.
He called to me, his voice just above a whisper.
“Rawson.”
Bea loosened her grip on my right arm and stepped aside. I put my hand on the butt of my holstered Glock.
“Come out where I can see you.”
He moved carefully in our direction. Bea sucked in a scared breath.
“Take it easy,” he said. “It’s Miles Brenta.”
“The man we all want to see,” I said, drawing the Glock but letting my gun hand fall slowly to the side away from him. “Go on in. The lights are on and the cops are waiting. The homicide dick in charge is Burt Ferguson.”
“Is it Francesca?” he said. “Is she dead?” He might have been asking if she were putting on her makeup.
“Just the way you left her.”
He looked slowly at the bungalow.
“I haven’t seen her today.”
“No?”
He looked back at me.
“I don’t have anything to talk to cops about. But I need to talk to you.”
“Do you want to get shot? Step over here where I can get a good look at you.”
There were three types of murderers who lurked near the scene after they’d killed: a few who enjoyed the spectacle they had created, some who didn’t care if they were caught, and those in an emotional blackout who couldn’t remember having done it.
Brenta came a couple of steps closer to the lighted path, a flare of torches on the pupils of his dark eyes. I read what there was to read in his eyes. He wasn’t enjoying himself and his mind was on other matters, not in a state of confusion. I didn’t sense fear. But the herpes breakout on his lower lip still looked painful.
“I know what I told you this afternoon,” he said. “But I got here just five minutes ago. I have witnesses to prove that.”
“Then where have you been?”
“Taking care of business. I don’t mean Francesca. How long has she been dead?”
“Long enough to keep you out of it if your story’s good.”
Brenta nodded, looked again at the bungalow. No regrets, just that long goodbye look. Either he was emotionally cold, or heartlessly pragmatic.
“Rawson, it had to be Raoul Ortega. I don’t have time now to go into the whys and wherefores with the Beverly Hills police. But it was Ortega, all right.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“This is the way the Diamondbackers dissolve partnerships they don’t need anymore. Look, I can show you what I mean better than I can tell you. You’ll just have to trust me.”
“That’s rich,” I said. “Go ahead, hand me another laugh, Brenta.”
He gestured; follow me.
“I have a helicopter waiting. We’ll talk on the way.”
“Prior engagement,” I said.
He had turned away from us. He looked back with a frown of impatience, but he spoke calmly.
“There still may be time to stop Ortega from distributing those wolfmakers like the one you showed me.”
Bea said softly, fear in her voice, “Is he talking about the Really Bad Thing?”
“Probably a lot more of them than I thought there would be,” Brenta said. “Are you interested, Rawson?”
“Yeah,” I said after a few seconds. “I’m interested.”
We flew north over the San Gabriel Mountains to Antelope Valley in what I had heard described as the Ferrari of personal helicopters. There were only about a hundred of them in the world. This one was black and gold, needle nosed, and rocket fast. Very nearly soundproofed inside, loaded with communications gear. The cabin was outfitted clubroom-style in plush carpeting and pale leathers. There was ample space for eight passengers, a lavatory with gold fixtures, and a nicely stocked bar.
Besides Brenta and me there were two pilots and a flight atte
ndant with hair the color of ginger ale and wide-set gray eyes that had the enchantment of the northern lights in them. I wasn’t too tired to be enchanted.
I had arranged for Bea to be driven to the hospital where Ida Grace was waiting to see how Duke’s tests came out. Afterward, because she didn’t want to be alone at the minka even with guards at my gate, she would wait for me next door at Ida’s.
I had e-mails from Booth Havergal chewing me out for not reporting back to ILC to be debriefed after the Stork McClusky fiasco. A lot of people were very angry with ILC and Booth Havergal in particular. The media was, as usual, recycling the limited amount of information they had. I was able to monitor three different channels as we flew. The flight attendant, whose name was Ulrike, opened a new bottle of Scotch and poured three fingers into a crystal tumbler. Where I could see and admire her, Miles Brenta drank black coffee. The single-malt whisky soothed my nerves somewhat; still we were edgy with each other. Brenta kept touching his sore underlip.
“The XOTECH facility was evacuated shortly before noon today,” he told me. “Some bullshit about a security breach from an unnamed source. Everyone was dismissed for the day. There was no subsequent search of the premises, as there should have been. By four o’clock XOTECH was deserted except for a couple of security guards.”
“I seem to recall there’s only one road into the facility.”
“That’s right. A few minutes before five the Diamondbackers moved in. There were at least twenty of them, on Harleys or driving big rigs. They didn’t meet with any resistance.”
“What’s the source of your information?”
“A ranger in a fire tower about three miles southwest of XOTECH.”
“Where were you after you dumped me into a spare villa at your place?”
He had the integrity to look troubled by that action, although there was no apology. I didn’t see the point of reminding him he’d committed a felony that could fetch him up to four years at Rocky Peak if I wanted to put him there. At some point in the future I might need a big favor from Miles Brenta; meanwhile I figured I had the bulge on him and I was content to hold his marker.
“Most of the afternoon I was at my office at NANOMIM initiating a review and search of outgoing shipments of LUMOs with supervisors.”
His shrug indicated it hadn’t gone too well.
“Did you speak to or make an attempt to contact Francesca?”
“Yes, I tried. You can have a look at my phone log if you’d like.”
I shook my head and resumed soothing my nerves. I looked at Ulrike; she smiled and produced the bottle again.
Brenta said, “One of Cesca’s assistants recalled hearing her say she needed to go up to XOTECH because of the security thing. And that’s why I went there.”
“And ran into Diamondbackers.”
“Manner of speaking. They were all over the facility like ants on a sugar cube. I had Zeke—he’s my pilot—circle near the fire tower I mentioned while I looked things over through binoculars. Dozens of cartons from Shipping were on the loading dock. They were being packed into the trailer of a semi. I think I forgot to say the Diamondbackers were armed to the teeth.”
“Um-hmm. So you left the area.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you go to the hotel?”
He was beginning to look exasperated. Some red had seeped into his eyes.
“I hadn’t slept since Bucky—I needed a hot shower, food, time to think. The hotel is much closer from here than Paradiso Palms.”
“But you had no idea Francesca was in the bungalow.”
“We’ve been through that. NO.” He glared at me. “You’re an obnoxious son of a bitch.”
“I can get a lot worse, Brenta.”
He didn’t want to fight. He was still tired, still hungry, holding on to his poise and nerve like a hoocher clutching a threadbare coat around himself on a bone-chilling night.
“Mr. Brenta,” Zeke the pilot said on the intercom, “we have XOTECH at three o’clock, range three-quarters of a mile.”
The facility’s perimeter floods made a yellow smudge on the underbellies of clouds above three one-story buildings. Wind-borne grit ticked against the helicopter’s windows. The Santa Ana was bringing in a lot of dust off bare-bones desert east of Victorville, the lights of which were indistinctly visible as we crossed a forested ridgeline at about five hundred feet. From a left-side window I had a glimpse of two steadily glowing red lights atop the fire tower that Brenta earlier had referred to.
“Any sign of activity?” Brenta said. The copilot was glassing the floodlit surround.
“No, sir.”
I couldn’t tell if Brenta was disappointed or relieved.
“We should have a look inside. Take us down.”
“Yes, sir,” Zeke said, and lowered our airspeed to under a hundred knots.
The white adobe-style concrete buildings occupied a not very deep barranca that backed up to the northeast slope of the San Gabriel range. As we approached I saw a difficult fence, steel posts ten feet high, hedged in razor wire like a battlefield barricade. The fence continued on both sides of the paved road to a farm road about a mile east of XOTECH.
We pitched down toward a helipad in one corner of the parking lot a hundred yards from the loading dock. The Ferrari of the skies was buffeted by sudden explosive gusts of wind. Zeke had his hands full getting us down. Cartons and other trash skipped and danced across the asphalt below.
Ulrike came unsteadily out of the lavatory, dropped into a seat, and strapped herself in.
Three big tractor-trailer rigs were parked rear ends to the loading dock and about fifteen feet apart. They all looked road-weary, battered, dented, and scraped. None of the three had any sort of identification.
“Those trucks weren’t here before,” Brenta said. “There was only one new-looking semi that the Diamondbackers were loading the cartons into.”
Zeke nosed the helicopter toward the pad, finding it difficult to read the wind, which sheared around the corners of the linked buildings. I thought he might be overcontrolling the tail rotor pedals, but what did I know? What I usually flew was temperamental junk compared to this aircraft.
He fine-tuned his landing a little too much and a hard gust lifted us back into the air. I didn’t envy Zeke; set down too hard and bust something, try to be gentle and bounce around like a beach ball. Ulrike was making fists in her seat but she smiled gamely when I glanced at her.
“Those trucks all look like derelicts,” Brenta said. “What are they parked here for?”
I don’t know what it was about his observation that triggered the warning in my mind: why indeed? But it inspired a closer look at the parking lot as we descended again. Twelve feet from touchdown. Eight. Momentarily the winds were muted or absent. I recalled the small red arming eye of Stork McClusky’s incendiary grenade and was puzzled, wondering why I should be seeing it again, a solemn red blinking behind the cab of the truck parked nearest the helipad.
“Zeke!” I yelled to the cockpit. “Get us off the deck now!”
There was probably a second’s indecision on Zeke’s part before his hand on the collective reacted and sent us soaring. But it was just enough time for the heel of the left skid to break the laser beam crossing the asphalt at a height of about four feet from the helipad to the big rig.
We rose straight up. Fast, but not fast enough. I had time to click on my safety harness. Then the fulminating black and orange, volcanolike cloud from the trailer truck exploding below caught up to us, engulfed the fuselage in a dazzling fury. There was a sensation of breathtaking compression and great violence. Shrapnel slammed through the metal skin around us. It fouled the steering and obliterated the electronics. My brain glowed with a fierce white light.
We all might have been screaming. I don’t know. I know that we continued to fly, beyond the certain death of the subsequent fireballs from the other two rigs. The rotors had to have been damaged, but they didn’t break apart.
Miles Brenta had been sitting opposite me; I didn’t see him. There was a jagged hole toward the back of the helicopter where a window had been torn out. I saw the face of Ulrike, pale, young, uplifted, illuminated like a Madonna by churchlight. She coughed and blood ran from her mouth and she lowered her gaze apologetically to me, coughed up more blood and died. I felt a terrible wrenching sadness, aware that I probably wouldn’t be far behind her.
The helicopter shook and flailed the air and I was very frightened. But, instead of breaking up, we autorotated. Hit something in the dark with a grinding crash, rebounded, fell again, tumbled down a hill or the side of an arroyo. The terrific jolting blacked me out.
When I was conscious again I smelled smoke and heard the crackling of fire. I wasn’t strapped to the leather chair anymore. I didn’t know where it was. I was lying faceup. I saw a few stars and heard the keening of the Santa Ana. I had dirt on my mouth. I heard voices. There were flashlights in the darkness.
One of the beams centered on my face. I raised a hand weakly in protest. The toe of a heavy boot nudged me in the ribs on my right side, which is how I learned that at least two of them were badly bruised or broken. My short scream attracted more attention.
Someone kneeled beside me. The light was still in my eyes. I turned my head, tasting blood along with the dirt. A white handkerchief appeared to float through my limited field of vision. Pure alcohol or 150-proof liquor stung my nose. Dirt was brushed from my face with the tequila-soaked handkerchief. It stung my dry lips. I licked a few drops. Tasted pretty good.
Breathing was an ordeal. I managed to speak to my samaritan.
“Is everybody dead?” I remembered Ulrike, who probably had taken some hot hard metal in vital places.
“No todos uno.” Not everybody. “But you lockier than most, hombre.”
He laughed then. I was the joke and the punch line. I was the butt of his humor.
“Rawson. Como el gato, no?.”
In the dark behind him another man snickered.
I knew then who I was talking to, he who had solicitously cleaned my face.
Raoul Jesus Ortega.
