“You were the pilot, weren’t you?”
“It’s not my fault the engine stalled. I performed the auto rotation emergency procedure just like you’re supposed to. I crashed into the sea and nearly drowned. I couldn’t help those guys on the pugh. They were dead the second the engine stalled.”
“The County Sheriff’s department thinks Tanner killed those roustabouts because of you.”
“Why don’t they arrest him?”
“They’ve got no proof. You know anything that we could use to prove Tanner was behind that accident?”
“He hated me, for one.”
“For trying to unionize TANOCO?”
“That and being his son’s closest friend. That’s why he had to try to kill me. He couldn’t just fire me and give his son another reason to hate him.”
“Mike hated his father pretty bad?”
“Oh yeah, and he heaped all kinds of abuse on the old guy, I felt sorry for him actually.”
Cyrus turned and sat back down in the chair opposite Duncan. He picked up his tea from the coffee table and said, “I feel sorry for the guy, too.”
“Why’s that?”
“I guess he was getting stung from both ends. I mean he had to deal with the hostile takeover and you trying to unionize the company.”
“Well, employees have rights you know. There’s nothing illegal about forming a union.”
“Sure, what kind of a deal did the stockholders offer you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cyrus held up Mike’s nine mike and said, “Glock 17, the best 90 two on the market. Probably cost about eight hundred, maybe nine hundred. It’d be too bad if I had to run you in and confiscate this illegally possessed firearm.”
Duncan raised his hands, “Look, I don’t know nothing about any stockholders or deals. I wasn’t included in any of Tanner’s business meetings.”
“You just said you were Mike’s closest friend. And you don’t know anything about the stockholders trying to take over TANOCO?”
“All right, Mike said a couple a things about it, but why would I care?”
“Maybe those stockholders taking over the company meant you got another chance to bring in the union?”
“Maybe, but they didn’t contact me about it. Believe me; if they had I would have jumped at the chance.”
“Oh, I believe you. So if you were Mike’s closest friend, you must know Jeff Moon.”
Duncan looked down at the carpet before he responded, “I never heard of him.”
“Well, I guess you weren’t as close a friend to Mike as you thought.”
Cyrus put Duncan’s nine-mike down on the end table next to the chair and then walked over to the small bar between the living room and the kitchen where Briana stood. She had been watching them with her elbows on the bar supporting her head with her hands. She gave Cyrus a stern glance as he passed by her and headed for the door.
“You didn’t have to be so rough; he’s just a kid.” She said.
“I know,” he responded flatly, “I just don’t like him. I’ll talk to you later.”
Briana smiled and nodded as Cyrus walked out. When he got to the squad car, Max started the engine. Cyrus got in and they drove off, back down Main Street toward the 101. He rolled down the car window and sat back in the seat. Noontime always made the car hot; it smelled of leather cooked in sweat. He stretched and yawned. He felt his blood sugar going low and he was shaking a little. “I am getting too old for all this drama,” he said.
“You’re addicted,” Max replied, “same as me.”
Cyrus nodded. “Could you hear anything on the phone?”
“I heard everything; I still have the phone on. Say, aren’t you worried that they will find it and trace it back to you?”
“No, it’s not my primary phone. So what did you think?”
“I think you’re wrong about Santa Barbara, for one thing.”
Cyrus gave Max a bewildered look and then he said, “Oh, you mean about the rough neighborhoods. You forget I spent twenty years working in Long Beach. Anyway, I meant about Duncan.”
“He’s lying through his teeth.”
“That’s what I thought. He got real quiet when I asked him about Jeff Moon.”
Max was about to take the turn off Main St. that led to the 101 when Cyrus stopped him “Keep going straight and make a right at the first corner. We can see them from there when they pass by. Give me the cell.” Max handed Cyrus his cell and he put it to his ear for a moment. “I don’t think they’re talking right now,” he said, “but I can hear some traffic noise. What’s Duncan driving?”
“A black Ford pickup, just like the one the masked man drove.”
“I heard car doors slamming. You didn’t get a look at the license tag did you?”
“Yes, it says GOO; you think maybe Duncan is the masked perp and he changed it from ALGORE and GREEN?”
“Duncan is Jeff Moon, give me a break.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Duncan doesn’t impress me as the academic type,” Cyrus replied.
“What does GOO mean?”
“I think it probably stands for Get Oil Out.”
“What does that mean?.”
“It’s from the seventies. Bud Bottoms started the organization just after the ’69 oil spill. You didn’t notice if the rear windshield was riddled with bullet holes did you?”
“No, too dark.”
They drove for a while in silence, with Cyrus listening intently to the cell phone. Then he turned to Max and said, “When you interviewed Briana before she pointed Dana out in the line-up, did you ask her anything about what she did for a living?”
“Sure, she said she did the usual: typing, filing, arranging lunches, and keeping track of Dunbar’s appointments.”
“That’s all, nothing else?”
“Yes, she said once in a while she would participate in a focus group.”
“Did she mention what the focus groups were about?”
“The moratorium on offshore oil exploration, she said she was always picked for the environmental issues.”
“You check on her education?”
“She has an MBA from Stanford.”
Cyrus took the phone from his ear and said, “She is FBI, and that Sherriff friend of Dana’s was right, the FBI is all over this case. That administrative assistant job is a cover, has to be. Nobody with her education and background would settle for a mundane job like administrative assistant, even if it is with the Governor.”
“You sure you’re not just trying to rationalize away her being a part of framing Dana?”
“Maybe, a little, it’s true I like her.” Cyrus said. “I think she just made a mistake. When I was talking to her about her paintings, one of her contacts came out. Maybe she didn’t get a good look at the man standing over Mike. Maybe Dana wasn’t framed.”
“What do you mean? You think he’s guilty now?”
“No, of course not. I mean the murderer didn’t frame Dana. He was actually framed by himself. Think about it, the people who are friends with Dana are enemies with Mike. Suppose it was Jack Tanner. He had a strong motive to kill his son-he had to stop him from associating further with Jeff Moon and prevent him from printing any more negative articles about the company. But he had no motive to pin the murder on Dana. He needs Dana to find the oil.”
“What oil?”
“According to Grigoryan, Dana knows where a lot of oil is just offshore. He said that Tanner was counting on him. That’s why everyone is so hot to get stock in his company.”
“Thanks for filling me in, partner.”
“You were out on his front lawn, literally.”
“But why did Tanner ask Dana to take a plea?”
“I think he was genuinely interested in protecting his daughter.”
“The real problem is we got all kinds of suspects and lots of motives, but no proof of anything except Dana is innocent.”
Cyrus put the phone back up to his ear, “Well, we still have the mystery fingerprints. We need to get Jack Tanner and Grigoryan’s prints and see if they match. Meanwhile, we follow this Duncan clown. I know he’s headed straight for Moon.”
“Maybe Moon killed Mike Tanner; he’s responsible for every other murder committed in Santa Barbara the past three days.”
When the Ford took the sharp turn off from Main St. that leads to the 101 freeway, Max pulled away from the curb and sped up to catch them. They got a few cars behind them and watched to see which exit onto the 101 they would take. Cyrus noticed there was somebody riding in the bed of the pickup.
“Max, can you see who that is in the back of their pickup?”
“Yeah, I think it’s the homeless guy, the one who was hanging around the lobby of the Condo Manager. He sure gets around, doesn’t he?”
When they took the south exit toward Rincon Beach and La Conchita, Cyrus nodded his head toward Max.
“Just like I thought, he’s going the wrong way to be taking her to work.”
Cyrus kept the phone to his ear as they were driving along. He could hear only muffled tones and traffic noise. They kept behind them at normal speed as they went south on the 101 until they got to the turn off that led to an old oil farm just north of La Conchita. The Ford stopped as soon as it cleared the freeway. The homeless man jumped off the truck and started walking south, toward La Conchita. The Ford continued north for a mile or so and then turned right and then through the open gate of a more-than-head-high steel fence. They were trespassing on the property of the Mobil Company’s oil farm.
Max parked the cruiser in front of the gate.
“I don’t think they’ve spotted us,” Max said.
“You mean you hope they haven’t.” Cyrus listened on the cell phone for several minutes and then he heard the doors of the truck slam. No one was talking, or at least he couldn’t hear them.
“They parked and got out of the truck,” Cyrus said.
Max started up the squad car and slowly passed through the gate of the oil farm. It was a large parking lot. There were five, water tower sized, plain white, holding tanks for oil scattered from north to south. Cyrus spotted Duncan’s truck near the southern most holding tank, adjacent to an orange grove. He pointed out to Max a windowless, round, white, building the size of a football field. It was to the north of where Briana and Maverick had parked.
“I’m sure they won’t catch sight of us here,” Cyrus said.
Max parked the cruiser as close to the orchard as possible. Taking the binoculars out of the glove box, he and Max got out of the squad car and starting walking south through the orchard field. When they cleared the white, oil container building, Cyrus brought the binoculars to his eyes and searched for them. He pointed south at a row of orange trees directly in front of where they had parked.
“They are heading east towards Ranch Road,” Cyrus said, “They are probably going to La Conchita from the backside, down the slope of Rincon Mountain. Let’s go.”
As he crossed over a small ditch between the end of the parking lot and the orchard field, Cyrus noticed the displeasure on his young colleague’s face, “Don’t worry Max, I don’t intend to confront Maverick or Moon, I just want to see what they are up to.”
Max shook his head. “It’s not them I’m worried about; it’s the farmer that owns this orchard who worries me. If he spots us cutting through his field like this he would have every right to shoot us and we’d go to jail if we shot back at him. It is times like this that I wish I was still wearing a uniform.”
Cyrus nodded and darted between two rows of orange trees, Max following behind. Cyrus kept Briana and Maverick in view with the binoculars and Max took the cell phone. They were a comical sight, trotting through an orchard, one with a pair of binoculars raised to his eyes and the other with a cell phone plastered to his ear. The last lumen of sunlight had faded out by the time they reached Ranch Road and Cyrus could no longer see them through the binoculars. Ranch Road ran north and south along the lower portion of Rincon Mountain; below it lay the town of La Conchita.
La Conchita was a small community of about four hundred homes, settled at the foot of Rincon Mountain. In 1995, after an unusually long spell of rain, a large segment of the mountain softened and came sliding down on top of several houses instantly killing their occupants. The slide occurred on the section of Ranch Road which ran two hundred yards above the last row of houses bordering the foot of Rincon Mountain. One of those houses sat on the edge of the large dirt mound created by the landslide. It had been condemned and vacated, but had not yet been torn down. When they got near the end of Ranch Road that had been split by the cave in, they heard some rustling noises in the brush off to their right. They were heading for the condemned house.
“I see them,” Cyrus called to Max in a loud whisper, “They are down there in the abandoned house next to the earth mound. I saw them pass under a floodlight and into the house.”
They stumbled and slid their way down the side of the mountain to the backyard. Running across to the north side, they leaned against the wall and waited. Cyrus was wheezing like a freight train.
“I can hear someone talking now Cyrus.” Max whispered. He held the cell phone out so they could both hear.
“Wait here. Jeff will be up in a minute.” The voice on the cell phone said.
“That was Duncan’s voice, Max, I’m sure.”
A voice came through on the cell phone again, “I need to go to the bathroom, Duncan.”
“That’s Briana of course,” Max said.
They heard footsteps.
“She’s been there before, Max.”
“How do you know?”
“She didn’t ask him where the bathroom was. I hope she left her purse with Duncan.”
A loud voice cracked through the silence, “Hello Jeff, good to see you, my brother.”
Cyrus smiled. “She left the phone in her purse in the room with Duncan and Jeff alone.”
“Where is Briana?” The voice on the cell phone said.
“Relieving herself,” a second voice answered, “So what is going on? Are we ready?”
“Soon Duncan, everything will be ready. We won’t miss our deadline. Were you able to get our parts?”
“I have them in the truck, I’ll go get them.”
“Wait, I don’t want Briana to see them.”
“You don’t trust her? I thought you two go way back?”
“That’s the problem. We go too far back and I haven’t heard from her since the 99 WTO riots, after I bailed her out of jail. I think she has changed. I was hoping we could use her to spy on Dunbar and keep tabs on what he was up to. That was before I spied on her earlier today. She was talking to that pig, Fleming. I heard her tell him that she no longer belonged to Black Bloc and that she was sorry she ever threw rocks at cops. Seems her Daddy was a cop, too.”
“I was just with her-”
“This all went down before you got there, my man. Maybe it’s time we dumped Miss Briana, what do think?”
“Fine with me, Jeff. Where’s a good place to dump an old girlfriend?”
“The ocean is big and cold and stormy right now. Sometimes people fall into it and they’re never seen again.”
Several minutes of tense silence ensued from the last remark. Cyrus worried about Briana. Just as he was about to signal to Max that they should break into the house, a voice blared out from the cell phone.
“She’s taking a long time in the bathroom, even for a woman.”
“Let’s go see where she...”
The cell phone went silent.
“Max, I think they found the phone. I think they know we were listening to them.”
“Maybe not, Cyrus, they could have thought it was Briana’s phone and she was spying on them, or the battery may have run down.”
“We need to get in there now before something happens to her.”
Before Max could answer, they heard a doo
r slam from the rear of the house. Cyrus saw the shadows of two people running through the portion of the backyard lit up by the floodlight. They were heading toward the slope of Rincon Mountain from where they had just come. It looked like one of the shadows he saw was waving a weapon around.
“Go after them, Max, they got Briana!”
Max dropped the cell phone and headed for the bushes on the mountain’s slope; Cyrus picked up the cell and followed. Halfway up Cyrus heard him stumble, and then he heard a loud hiss and then a long, mournful, groan. By the time he got to Max, he was flat on his back, holding the calf of his leg and wincing in pain.
“Watch out! Rattlesnake!” Max said.
Remembering the LED flashlight he carried on his key chain, Cyrus got it out and looked around, “I think you scared him off Max.”
“I stepped right on top of him! Don’t stop, Cyrus, go after Briana. I think she is in a lot of danger!”
“So are you, besides I need you with me when I catch up to them.”
“I’ve been bit by a rattler before. I will be all right. My leg will swell up the size of a basketball and I’ll be on crutches for awhile, but I’ll live. The one thing I can’t do is move; that will speed the toxin through my body.”
Cyrus called the station, told them about Max and requested back up. “There’s a chopper on its way. You sure you will be all right?”
“Yes, get out of here, go after Briana. You heard them; they are going to kill her!”
Cyrus tossed him his LED flashlight and left. By the time he had made it up the slope, down Ranch Road and back through the orange orchard, the black Ford pickup was gone. He ran for the squad car, got in, and sat there disheartened. Where could he be taking her? The ocean is big, Moon had said. Where is a good spot to dump someone in the ocean around here? There’s no pier, not boat dock. Oh yes, there is a pier, an oil pier five minutes south of here, it extends a half mile into the Pacific to a manmade island. Rincon Island, that’s where he’s taking her.
He started up the Dodge and headed south on the 101. He pushed the throttle to the floor to squeeze out every one of the Charger’s four hundred horsepower. Cyrus slowed down and got behind the pickup. He dropped back pretty far so he wouldn’t notice him. He was afraid Duncan would panic and shoot Briana if he spotted someone tailing him.
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