Spider Web

by Earlene Fowler

  He stood up and went to the picture window, stared out at the ocean. Next to me, Isaac quietly picked up his camera and snapped a couple of photos. Pete Kaplan didn’t even turn around. His rich voice seemed to fill the corners of the airy room.

  “I went to Harvard, like my father. I became a doctor like my father. Both decisions made my parents happy. But against their wishes, I chose psychiatry rather than Father’s specialty, heart surgery. And I made a life outside of the hospital walls, outside of the privileged society I grew up in.”

  I glanced over at Isaac, surprised. Pete Kaplan was a psychiatrist? He certainly didn’t look like one, though I’m not sure what I thought a psychiatrist looked like, since I didn’t remember ever meeting one. Isaac’s gaze didn’t move from Dr. Kaplan.

  Dr. Kaplan turned to look at us, the lines around his eyes softening in memory. “I was drafted in 1968, and despite my mother’s demands that my dad ‘fix it,’ I chose to serve my country, even though I personally didn’t agree with the war. I felt like I had something to offer the other young men who’d either been sent there without choice or went in voluntarily, not understanding what was truly going to happen to them. I arrived in-country two days before the Tet Offensive. Grandma Jack died of a stroke while I was patching up emotionally broken soldiers so they could be sent out to be broken again.” He shook his head, his lips a straight line.

  “Grandma Jack’s best friend found her in her bed here in this house, just like she’d gone to sleep. Father died shortly after she did, ironically, of a heart attack. Mother moved back East to live with her sister in Boston.” He rubbed his hands up and down his thighs, as if drying them. “She’s still there, healthy and cranky as ever at eighty-nine.” He gave a small chuckle. “Still tells me every time we talk that I’ve thrown away a perfectly good Harvard education.”

  He glanced over at the stone fireplace. A dark brown earthenware jar painted with daffodils sat in the center of the pale wooden mantel. “Father’s buried in San Celina in the Catholic cemetery, and Grandma Jack is partly here.” He pointed at the jar. “And partly out in the dunes she loved so much. That’s why I retired here. After ’Nam, I practiced medicine in San Francisco, volunteering at the VA one weekend a month. When my wife died—we didn’t have any children—I came here. Grandma Jack left this house to me in her will. I came because this is the first place I ever thought of as home.”

  I listened to his story, fascinated and feeling embarrassed that I’d misjudged him so completely.

  Isaac took three rolls of thirty-six shots, some of them outside in Dr. Kaplan’s driveway, next to his hippie van, some with the ocean in the background. Then he switched to his new digital camera, and I watched his method change. He would take a shot, look at the screen, and then take another shot.

  When Dr. Kaplan opened his garage door at Isaac’s request, it revealed another vehicle, a more practical gray four-door Honda. Even I could see the juxtaposition of the image.

  He patted the hood of the car. “I still volunteer at the VA hospital in San Francisco. I love my van, but it’s getting too old to make the trip. My Honda is as dependable as the sunrise.”

  While Isaac photographed Dr. Kaplan, I faded into the background and let him work. I walked across the street to a small neighborhood park with an incredible view of the ocean. The concrete bench was cold enough to chill the back of my thighs through my jeans. The sun started inching out from behind the cloud cover, causing diamond-bright sparks on the ocean. The water seemed to turn from gray to blue before my eyes. I knew that Isaac preferred taking photos in the diffuse light of a cloudy day, so he was probably rushing, trying to find the image he sought before the sun burst out from behind a cloud.

  I thought about what the doctor said about this being the first place he felt was home. It made me think of what I considered home—the Ramsey Ranch, of course. The Harper Ranch, where I was a newlywed . . . yes, that too. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have bothered me so much to see a stranger wandering through the old ranch house. I thought about the house where Gabe and I had lived. We’d bought it less than five years ago. The first few months we were married we’d lived in the tiny Spanish house I’d rented in one of San Celina’s older neighborhoods. I loved our present house with its built-in bookcases and Mission-style banister and fireplace. But did it really feel like home? I’d never say it out loud, but no. It was where Gabe and I lived. It was our house. But it wasn’t my home. Not yet.

  “Ready to go?” Isaac said behind me.

  I looked up at him. Any fatigue he’d felt on the drive over had been banished the minute he picked up a camera. Something about taking photographs energized him, seemed to make him more vibrant, like a three-way lightbulb turned on high.

  I’d mentioned that once to him, after we’d spent a day driving around the county while he took photographs of old adobes and cemeteries. Nothing excited Isaac more than a bunch of cracked, lichen-covered headstones.

  He’d laughed and said, “There are many cultures who believe that when you take a photo of someone you steal a part of their soul. I do believe something special passes between the photographer and their subject. It’s why during the time I spend with a person when I’m photographing them, it sometimes feels as if we have a relationship. And we do for that short amount of time. A good photographer can make you feel like you are the most interesting, important person in the world.”

  “And then you leave.”

  He’d nodded. “Yes, that can sometimes make a person feel abandoned. I’ve felt it myself.”

  I took down Dr. Kaplan’s phone number and said I’d call him next week to set up an appointment to finish our interview. Then we loaded the equipment into the car.

  “Where to now?” I asked Isaac.

  “To the dunes. I want to test this digital camera on landscapes.”

  “Sounds good to me, Pops.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon traipsing around the Oceano Dunes and the shoreline. While he took photos of birds and the few crazy people driving their dune buggies on this chilly Tuesday afternoon, I played around with the little Nikon he’d loaned me and took surreptitious photos of him. I’d packed us a lunch of Swiss cheese, Granny Smith apples, a loaf of San Celina’s famous sourdough bread and Isaac’s favorite drink, a combination of cranberry juice and sparkling lemonade. Though we did need to work on the book, this day had also been about Isaac taking a break from the intense Ramsey Ranch household. Though he’d been married five times before, he’d actually never lived with any of his wives. He had traveled the world, living out of suitcases and hotel rooms.

  “The Ramsey Ranch is the only home I’ve known since I was a child,” he said to me while photographing the shifting sands of the dunes, capturing subtle shadows and forms that I would be surprised to see in his final photographs. He told me something once that I’ve never forgotten because it occurred to me that it could apply to anything on earth—photographs, people, places, experiences, stories.

  “What’s not in the photograph,” he’d said, “what you don’t see, is often just as important as what you do see.”

  We ended up back in Pismo Beach, where he took photos of the Cowgirl Café for his anniversary gift to Dove. Right after dusk, we headed back to the Subaru. An icy wind had started to blow off the ocean, freezing our fingers and noses.

  On the drive back to San Celina, with the car’s heater turned to high, we were lulled into a comfortable silence. It was after six thirty and dark by the time we arrived at the folk art museum. The parking lot was empty except for my little purple truck and D-Daddy’s green Ford F150 pickup.

  “You go on home,” I told Isaac. “I’ll check with D-Daddy and see if anything needs my attention. I know you’re itching to develop that film.”

  “Guilty as charged,” he said, rubbing his hands together, looking about ten years old. “I think it’s the sisters’ book group tonight, so I’ll steal myself a chicken salad sandwich or two and hide out in the washhouse.” />
  Isaac had taken over the old washhouse where Dove’s washer and dryer had resided before the addition of a laundry room to the main house. With plumbing already installed, he and Daddy converted it without much trouble into a perfect little darkroom. Isaac worked almost exclusively in black and white photography and rarely let anyone else develop his photographs. He believed that the artistry of a photograph lay not only in composition but also in the developing.

  I gave him a fierce hug. “It was a perfect day, Pops. Thanks for letting me tag along.”

  “Thank you for being such a wonderful companion.”

  I unlocked the museum’s front door and disabled the alarm. It was dark in the lobby except for the yellow moon-shaped night-light. After checking to make sure everything was in its place, I relocked and armed the alarm and headed around the building to the studios. My hand reached for the door when it flew open and D-Daddy’s scowling face startled me.

  “Ange,” he said. “You hear?”

  “Hear what?” In that split second, a dozen scenarios flashed through my mind, none of them good.

  “Sniper. This time he get one.”

  CHAPTER 6

  AFTER A MOMENT OF STUNNED SILENCE, I SAID, “WHERE? WHO?” Like a splayed deck of cards, my mind scanned the faces of the officers I knew.

  “They didn’t say,” D-Daddy said. “But the reporters, they talkin’ from the General Hospital parking lot.”

  “I’m going over there.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  Before pulling out of the parking lot, I dialed Maggie’s number at the police station. I didn’t want to bother Gabe, but I needed to know the details. I wouldn’t even let myself consider for a second that it might be him. Surely, someone would have called me on my cell phone.

  She answered on the first ring. “Chief Ortiz’s office.”

  “Maggie, it’s Benni. Who got shot? How bad is it?”

  “I can only talk for a second. The phone has been ringing off the hook. It was a patrol officer. Bret Mitchell. It happened over at Laguna Lake. He was answering an anonymous report that some boys were attacking ducks. When he stepped out of his patrol car, he was shot. The shooter got him in the thigh. Detectives are still over there, but so far they’ve not found anything.”

  “Officer Mitchell? The name doesn’t sound familiar.”

  “Not sure if you’ve met him. Bret’s fairly new. He has dark brown hair, about thirty years old. Came to us from Riverside PD last year. He’s a pitcher on the baseball team.”

  “The one who pitched the shutout last summer?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “I remember him now.” After the team’s first choice for pitcher sprained his arm the first five minutes of the game, Officer Mitchell pitched a no-hitter in a charity baseball game against the San Celina Fire Department. No one had any idea he was a good ballplayer. The fire chief still ribbed Gabe about it, claiming Officer Mitchell had been a ringer.

  “Is he okay?”

  “He’ll likely be off the job for a while, but the wound was clean. Everyone’s spooked big time. Word among the officers is whoever is doing this is toying with us. Bret could have been killed. The sniper chose to shoot him in the leg.”

  “Gabe is at the hospital?”

  “Yes, along with half the city, I think.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I sat in my truck a moment trying to decide what to do. There was no doubt that my presence at the hospital would only add to the frenzy, which Gabe definitely didn’t need. Should I call him? Should I go home and wait? Waiting was not my long suit, but I decided it was the wisest course. So I drove home, fed and walked Scout, then sat out on the porch swing wrapped in a wool sweater, waiting for Gabe. The phone rang at ten after seven. It was Dove.

  “How’s Gabriel?” she asked.

  “I haven’t spoken to him yet, but I talked to Maggie. He’s at the hospital. I didn’t want to get in the way, so I came home. What’s scary is the sniper could have killed Officer Mitchell and didn’t. There’s speculation the sniper is just toying with the police.”

  “Oh, honey bun, I’m so sorry. Do you need me to come to town? Garnet and I can be there in a half hour.”

  “Thanks, but I’d feel better if you’d all stay out at the ranch. These days, it’s apparently safer.”

  “Call me when Gabe comes home. I won’t be able to sleep otherwise.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I went back out on the porch, Scout at my heels, and continued my vigil despite the cold breeze that swayed the tops of the trees.

  Gabe finally arrived home around eight thirty. When he stepped out of his car, he walked toward the house as if he carried a two-hundred-pound weight on his back.

  I waited for him on the top step. “How is Officer Mitchell?”

  “He’ll be fine,” Gabe said, dropping his jacket and briefcase on the swing and pulling me into a hug. “This is bad, querida. We don’t have any leads. My officers might as well have a bull’s-eye painted on their chests.”

  I hugged him hard, my fingers pressing into his damp shirt. “Let’s go inside. Have you eaten?”

  He shook his head no.

  I picked up his jacket and briefcase and opened the front door. “Let me heat up some soup.”

  While he changed, I called Dove, let her know he was home, then made us a quick dinner of tomato soup sprinkled with shaved Parmesan cheese, and fresh sourdough bread.

  “Your detectives really don’t have any leads?” I asked, pushing the plate of bread toward him.

  He took a slice and buttered it. “The first one we just chalked up to a random nut trying to harass the police. Troubling, but not planned.” He stopped, stared down at the piece of bread in his hand, a puzzled look on his face. “This second attack leaves little doubt this person is gunning for cops. And we don’t have a clue why.”

  I reached across the table and touched the top of his hand, wishing I could say something that would help. But all I could think was—I wish you weren’t a cop. I wish you did anything else for a living. Anything.

  “What is your plan of action?” I asked. If there was one thing I knew about my husband, it was that he battled his fears by being organized, methodical and unemotional. A marine through and through. Semper fi.

  His bottom lip tightened under his mustache. I could almost hear his breathing slow down. “Every available detective is assigned to the case. Detective Arnaud is heading the task force since she has a strong background in gang-related crimes. Besides, she headed a similar task force back in Louisiana.”

  “You think it might be gangs?” The thought chilled me. We’d had a run-in with a white supremacist group last summer during the Mid-State Fair, but would they have waited six months to retaliate?

  “We don’t know who or what it is, so we’re checking out all possibilities. Fortunately, this is a slow time for us in terms of major crimes, so I’m authorizing overtime so that way officers can travel in pairs until we catch this person. I’ve set up a task force. The sheriff’s department and highway patrol are on tactical alert. To make the mayor and the city council happy, I called the FBI. They’re arriving tomorrow. Everyone’s being cooperative . . .”

  “As well they should be. So far it’s been San Celina officers, but who knows what is going on in this crazy person’s head?”

  He took a small bite of bread. “Maybe the FBI will help with a profile, though I’m not thrilled about them being involved. They tend to take over.”

  I arched my eyebrows. Good luck with anyone trying to take over Gabe’s department. He was usually cooperative about help, but he’d never step aside for any other agency.

  “I’ll take Scout for his walk,” I said after dinner. “Why don’t you shower and go to bed. Watch something shallow on TV. America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

  “That’s a stupid program.”

  “The dog videos make you laugh.”

  He smiled. “
Yes, they do.” He yawned, stretched his arms out. “Maybe I’ll just go to sleep.”

  “Even a better idea.”

  “Stay close to the house. Better yet, take Scout out in the backyard.”

  “Okay.”

  After Scout’s final constitutional, I hurried back inside the house, my cheeks and nose tingling with cold.

  Gabe was in bed reading a magazine. Scout crawled into his dog bed in the corner and collapsed with a deep sigh.

  “I hear you, buddy,” Gabe said.

  “Now that I have my two guys settled, I’m going to take a shower and hit the sack myself.” I pulled my sweatshirt over my head and peeled off my silk undershirt.

  “What’s that?” Gabe’s voice was sharp.

  Dang it, I’d forgotten about the bruise. I turned my back to him, tossing my clothes into the basket next to Scout’s bed. “What?”

  “Benni, turn around.”

  I turned slowly to face him, keeping my hands at my sides. For some some crazy reason, I felt guilty. He threw back the down comforter and walked over to me. Though we’d been married five years and I should have been used to his body by now, I couldn’t help admiring his muscled thighs and strong forearms. Though he normally slept commando-style, tonight he wore the jockey shorts that I’d bought him as a joke for Valentine’s Day. They had snarling Marine Corps bulldogs printed on them. The bulldogs looked exactly like the tattoo on his upper back.