A photographer approached: ‘We need you for one more set of pictures—’
‘Sorry,’ Mike said. ‘We really have to be going.’
Nodding curtly at well-wishers, he grabbed Kat’s hand and led her and Annabel to the door, Andrés calling after him, ‘What the big hurry?’
Kat was beaming. ‘Dad said he built Green Valley for me.’
Annabel forced a smile. Mike rushed on, trying to leave Kat’s remark behind. A few guests had trickled outside, but for the most part the parking lot was empty of people. Gleaming foreign cars and a good number of hybrids. Mike hurried Kat and Annabel up and down the aisles, searching for that black Mercury Grand Marquis that he’d thought had followed him earlier in the week.
‘Mike’ – Annabel shifted the award plaque in her arms, nearly dropping it – ‘what’s going on?’
‘Just give me a minute.’
At the far edge of the lot, slant-parked across two spaces, a dingy white van stood out distinctly among the sleek vehicles. Wedged between windshield and dash was a torn-open bag of David’s sunflower seeds. Mike halted twenty or so feet from the van. The driver’s and passenger’s seats were empty, but beyond them the cabin was dark.
No front license plate.
Mike turned to his wife. ‘Take her, get into the truck, and lock the doors.’
Annabel’s forehead crinkled with concern, but she took Kat and hurried back toward the truck. Though a few more people were making their way to their cars, here in the farthest row it was dark and still.
Tentatively, Mike circled the van. An old Ford, late-seventies model. Checked drapes covered a high-set rear window, slid open to a dusty screen. With relief he saw there was a back plate, an old-fashioned California model with a blue background, the yellow numbers and letters so faded he had to crouch to read their raised outlines – 771 FJK.
The voice came at him, unnervingly close. ‘You let your wife go out dressed like that?’
Mike whipped upright. William’s face, leering out the van’s rear window, wore the checked drapes like falls of hair. The back door came ajar with a creak, Mike peddaling back, heart jerking in his chest. William unfolded painfully from the dark interior, the big man sliding out to loom behind him.
Mike’s breath fired hot in his lungs. ‘I don’t let her do anything.’
A car alarm chirped nearby, and Mike noted with relief more people heading to their cars, spreading out through the lot. Had the men been hiding in the van, waiting to follow him home?
With a little smirk, William lurched toward Mike in an odd, toein gait. ‘Why you harassing us?’ He swirled the wineglass, packed with half-chewed sunflower shells, for emphasis. ‘Following us out here, spying on our van.’ William spit a sunflower shell on the asphalt near Mike’s feet. He jerked his chin, a gesture he seemed to overuse. ‘Better get back to your family.’
Mike’s gaze moved uneasily from William to the big man, who stood silently, log arms crossed, his unreadable features half lost to shadow. ‘The hell does that mean?’
‘It means a family man like you’s got better things to do than stand out here jawing with a buncha lowlifes.’ He peered around Mike, and Mike turned.
From the passenger seat, Annabel peered anxiously through the windshield. The truck was two rows away, but Kat was visible in the rear, standing up, fussing with her backpack. Both of them right there in plain view, exposed. The night air, crisp in Mike’s lungs, tasted of mowed grass from the distant golf course. The faintest trace of cigar smoke laced the breeze. Annabel’s eyes implored him.
Mike wheeled back. ‘Is this about Green Valley?’
‘Green Valley?’ William looked genuinely confused.
‘You’ve been following me,’ Mike said.
William’s eyes jittered from side to side rapidly, an almost mechanical tic. ‘Sounds like you got people after you, Mr Wingate. Don’t take it out on me and Dodge here.’
Neither broke off his stare. Mike took a few backward steps, then turned and headed swiftly to the truck, Annabel watching him tensely. A few passersby offered their congratulations, and he nodded, his face still burning with anger. As he neared, Annabel threw open her door. Kat was facing away from the scene, pointing out the side window and laughing. ‘That lady has a cra-zy hat!’
Mike heard a pop behind him.
He turned. Pitifully, William clutched his trembling wrist, apologizing to the small cluster of folks who had gathered around, concerned. ‘I’m sorry. It just slipped.’ A man in a suit used a rolled magazine to sweep the broken glass away from his tires. Dodge crouched to help, his lips still sealed. Was he mute?
Annabel was out of the truck now. ‘Mike, what the hell is going on?’
He grasped her biceps, reversing her protectively into the passenger seat. ‘We’re going. I’ll explain in a second.’
‘That’s hurting my arm,’ she told him quietly.
He let go. His grip had turned her skin red. She climbed in, and he started around the hood to the driver’s seat.
But William and Dodge were on top of him already. He turned and caught Annabel’s eye. She read his expression, her face draining of color. She moved her arm, and he heard the click of the automatic locks. In the rear Kat reorganized her books in her backpack, distracted.
William stepped up on Mike, moving swiftly. His hips dipped a bit when he walked, but it was nothing like the pronounced gait he’d put on display earlier. Mike wondered how much he used the illness to his advantage, the way Shep had his bad hearing.
Mike squared off as William sidled into reach and said, ‘I see your CP cleared up some.’
William bared his yellow teeth. ‘Thank the Lord Jesus.’
Dodge stood with one massive arm curled behind his back. Hiding a knife? A gun?
Adrenaline pounded through Mike, the rush leaving him light-headed. He could drop William in a heartbeat, but Dodge was a wild card. From the looks of him, he could snap Mike’s neck with a twist of his hand. But Mike’s only concern right now was Annabel and Kat. His daughter remained focused on her book bag, but she’d look up at any minute and take in whatever was going to happen here. He tried to will Annabel to scoot across the console and drive away, but he knew she’d never leave him here.
William spit a scattering of shells across Mike’s shoes.
Mike said, ‘Don’t spit on me.’
William’s tongue dug around his mouth and then poked into view, a black crescent riding the tip. He blew it into Mike’s chest.
Mike said, ‘One more time and we’re gonna have a problem.’
William bunched his lips, the scruff of his chin bristling, his stare narrowing appraisingly. ‘Aah. There it is.’
Oblivious, a woman in a fur coat, begging Mike’s pardon, slid past him and climbed into a Jaguar. Her presence returned him to his senses. He exhaled, dissipating his rage. Then he took a step away, ceding ground, his eyes on the bulge of Dodge’s shoulder, that arm curling out of view.
Mike glanced quickly over his shoulder. Kat’s face pointed back at him, her sober expression a match of Annabel’s. He grabbed for a line of reasoning. ‘Look at all these people. This is an upscale gig. We don’t want to fight here.’
‘Fight? Fight?’ William grinned, and even Dodge’s face seemed to rearrange itself into an expression of amusement, a couple of spaced teeth peeking into view. ‘There are generally a few more steps of escalation in there. Shouting, chest bumping, shoving. We don’t want to skip all the foreplay, now, do we?’
‘Yeah,’ Mike said. ‘We do. Whatever game you’re playing, it ends here.’
‘No,’ Dodge said, the low voice, almost a vibration, surprising Mike.
Dodge moved his massive hand from behind his back and let fall a white stuffed polar bear.
Chapter 12
Mike’s first reaction wasn’t anger or fear but total disbelief. Everything slowed to a syrupy crawl – Dodge’s hand, still open from the release; William’s mouth bunching around the sunf
lower seeds with convalescent imprecision; Kat’s polar bear rocking ever so slightly on the parking-lot asphalt, one furry arm gone sleek and dark from an oil puddle. It was surreal – disorienting, even – to see that animal in this context.
Mike’s mind spun, cogs clattering, searching for purchase. The implications about how the polar bear had gotten here seemed too large for him to process.
‘Where’d you get that?’ he asked.
William, closest to him, said, ‘Found it.’ He popped a sly grin. ‘It is Katherine’s?’
Hearing his daughter’s full name emerge from William’s lips jogged something loose. The gears meshed. The scene – and Mike’s thoughts – lurched back into motion at full speed. The voice through the monitor. Kat’s autolocking window. These men, in his daughter’s room?
His blood thrummed like a well-plucked string. His vision went impossibly sharp, then blurred as he lunged, driving his forehead into William’s face. Bone clashed. William’s breath left in a huff, intermingling with Mike’s, their eyes inches away for a frozen instant, Mike catching a close-up of one brown pupil rolling obscenely in shock and pain.
William reeled back, howling, Mike feeling the man’s sweat across his own forehead. There was something so primitive about a headbutt, using your own face as a weapon. The street move, Shep’s favored ambush, left Mike breathless and transported, suspended somewhere closer to Shady Lane than to the Braemar Country Club.
Dodge regarded him with level interest, a cat tracking a canary.
William was rolling on the ground, clutching at his cheek, crying out, ‘Did you see? He hit me! This man hit me!’
Guests from the ceremony paused to gawk. Heads pivoted above car roofs. A few people stayed frozen at a ten-yard standoff, looking on, contemplating what the hell to do. William’s bad leg scraped the asphalt stiffly.
Dodge’s lips parted to show the thinnest sliver of teeth, but on him it seemed a massive display of kinetics.
Mike squared to meet him head on.
Somewhere he registered Kat screaming from the backseat of the truck. The sound broke through the muted rush of white noise pervading his head, knocking him back to the present. He halted, searching for restraint, breathing so hard his shoulders rose and fell with the effort.
Annabel was shouting for him to get into the truck, and he thought of her and Kat behind him, watching through the movie screen of the windshield. Everything he stood to lose seemed summed up in the countless glares pointed in his direction, all those well-dressed folks who’d watched him knock down a cripple.
Mike backpedaled to the truck, a few brave souls rushing in to aid William.
Dodge’s gaze never faltered from his. ‘Soon,’ he said, the word sending a line of fire up Mike’s spine.
Mike got into the truck, turned over the engine. A scrum of people now surrounded the two men, illuminated in the headlight glare. William, holding his face, was helped to his feet, but then his leg faltered and he collapsed again. Several women shot mortified glances at Mike.
Annabel asked, quietly, ‘What just happened?’
Mike said, ‘I don’t know.’
Throwing an arm over the seat back, he reversed out of the space. Kat lay curled up in the backseat, her cheeks glittering. The cluster of people dissipated as Mike pulled away, keeping his stare fastened on the rearview mirror.
In the red light of the brakes, William stayed down, twisted over his limp legs. At his side, Dodge stood inhumanly tall, head tilted, his insensate eyes watching them drive off.
Chapter 13
‘So we’ve got a William. And a . . . Dodge, was it?’ The detective edged his coffee mug meticulously into one of many ring stains blemishing the surface of his too-small desk. The big man had a lantern jaw, a wide and crooked seam of mouth, and a Slavic family name – Markovic – printed across a peeling nameplate.
His partner, a study in contrast, had precise, focused features and smooth, dark skin. Simone Elzey wore a cheap button-up with her sleeves cuffed. Callused hands and a bull neck betrayed a propensity for the weight room. An angel tattoo walling the left side of her throat gave her an intimidating air, which Mike assumed was precisely the point. After they’d run through the essentials, she’d gone to the back office to key in an incident report, which sounded like deputy shorthand for doing fuck-all.
The Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station, a few miles from the Wingates’ house, was tumbleweed-dead. Eleven o’clock on a Sunday, and everyone had better things to be doing, Markovic and Elzey included. Mike and Annabel sat on stiff wooden chairs, Kat slumped with exhaustion in her mother’s lap. They’d recounted the story a number of times, the detectives asking the same questions in different keys, a symphony of skepticism.
Since the confrontation had occurred in Tarzana, they’d been informed, LAPD would be called in if a formal investigation was opened. Because Mike and Annabel had agonized over what to do for most of the drive home, they’d wound up at their local station. It occurred to Mike that it was the only location he actually knew. What a contrast with the Shady Lane years, when he and Shep knew intimately the interiors of every cop shop within a joyride of the Couch Mother’s domain.
‘Yeah. Like I said.’ Mike rubbed his neck.
Markovic studied him with dull gray eyes. ‘You get a last name?’
The question, in its third incarnation, knocked Mike further off-kilter. He felt unease, and an odd creeping guilt that defied explanation. Sensing his discomfort, Annabel reached over and rested a hand on his shoulder.
‘A last name?’ Markovic prompted again.
Finally Mike sourced the echo, his mind racing back to that first hazy memory after his father abandoned him. A similar station, questions lobbed at him like fastballs, one after another, driving him further into his amnesiac haze: You don’t know your last name? How about your dad’s name? Do you know your dad’s name? Trying to regain his bearings, Mike soaked in the room around him – missing-children flyers, dark-complected men scowling from mug shots, the bitter scent of stagnant coffee. Parallel in so many ways. But – he reminded himself – completely different. He was an adult now. A taxpayer. A member of the community.
The Steve Miller Band, piped in through decades-old speakers, was flying like an eagle above the crackle of police scanners.
‘No,’ Mike said, perhaps a bit too firmly. ‘Like I said. I figured that license-plate number would be good.’
‘Like I said, the number you gave us is from a brown 1978 Eldorado last registered in 1991 to Jirou Arihyoshi, a gardener in Yuba City. So unless you made a mistake . . .’
‘I didn’t make a mistake.’ ‘Mmm.’
TV always made this look so easy. A book of mug shots, a fingerprint, and next thing you knew, Jack Bauer was kicking down a front door. But all Mike had was no last name, a white van, and a plate number that had been out of circulation for two decades. He thought of how he’d felt in Hank’s office when he’d confronted the File of Dead Ends. A needle in a stack of needles.
Annabel still didn’t buy that William or Dodge had broken into the house at night to steal the polar bear and whisper into the monitor; she was more concerned about their general menace. The fact that they’d picked up the bear somewhere meant they were either following the family or snooping around behind Kat. Clearly, they wanted something.
Markovic flipped through his notes. ‘You have this . . . stuffed polar bear?’
‘No, I . . . no, we—’
Annabel said, ‘We drove away and left it on the ground. It didn’t seem wise to go back and get it.’
‘Mmm.’ The gaze settled on Mike. ‘And you said another car followed you?’
Mike had mentioned the Mercury in passing, drawing a curious glance from Annabel. Now he regretted raising it at all. ‘I think. But I can’t be sure. On Wednesday. A Grand Marquis.’
‘But these guys tonight, William and’ – glance to the notepad – ‘Dodge, they had a van.’
‘They could own two vehicl
es.’ ‘Sure. Of course.’
Mike pressed his fingertips to the sore spot on his forehead, testing the bruise. Markovic had zoned out, contemplating his notes. In the adjoining office, her tapered back turned to the interior window, Elzey was still tapping away on a keyboard. She was on an old-fashioned phone now, the coiled cord stretching up into view. She hung up, dialed someone else. Her neck was flexed, and Mike didn’t like the intensity of her body language. She stepped to the doorway and curled a finger. ‘Marko.’
Markovic pushed back, his chair offering a feeble squeak of protest, and joined her. Something about the way they were talking flicked at Mike’s nerves. Faces close, teeth shut, lips barely moving. Elzey noticed him observing through the office window and closed the blinds with a single wrench of the turning rod.
Troubled, Mike refocused his attention on his family. Kat’s eyes drooped, then finally closed. Annabel whispered, ‘We gotta get this one home.’
‘As soon as he comes back.’
‘Do you think—’ Annabel stopped. Mike nodded her on. ‘Do you think this has anything to do with that sleazy contractor? Or the governor’s agenda?’
‘What are you guys talking about?’ Kat had stirred to life again. ‘What sleazy contractor?’
‘Nothing, Kat,’ Mike said. Then, to Annabel, ‘I doubt it. It’s hard to picture them doing this over that.’
‘Over what?’
‘Not now, Kat,’ Mike said. ‘Go back to sleep.’
She furrowed her brow at him before tilting her head against her mother’s chest. Annabel stroked Kat’s hair absentmindedly, her eyes fixed on Mike.
He hoped that this – whatever this was – had everything to do with PVC pipes and Bill Garner’s latest PR campaign for his boss. That felt containable, known, a world of clear-cut motives and back-scratching. So Mike didn’t say what he feared most: that this had nothing at all to do with Green Valley. That this was a whole different order of ugliness that had yet to reveal its face.
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