“For rilla, Killah.”
They grin and bump knuckles.
“Man, I owe you. Thought a drivin’ all that way right now like to kill me.”
“I hear ya.”
She pats Lewis’ shoulder. “Go home. Get some rest. Those bones are older than you are. They ain’t going nowhere.”
“Yeah.” Lewis reaches around for her jacket. “I think I’mma take you up on that.”
Frank starts for her office, then stops.
“Oh, and Lewis?”
“Yeah?”
“No work tonight, you hear? That’s an order.”
The cop snaps out a sharp salute.
“Ten-four, Lieutenant.”
Frank settles with her feet on the desk, glad to be alone. She reads through Lewis’ notes, then types a couple of words into her computer. Peering at the monitor, she places a call.
“Soledad Police Department.”
Frank asks to speak to a detective.
“I think Sergeant Gomez is still around. Hold on.”
While she waits, Frank fiddles with her retirement forms.
“Gomez how can I help you?” a woman answers as if the sentence is all one word.
After a brief case explanation, Frank asks the sergeant, “Do you know a—” she searches for the daughter’s name in Lewis’ notes, “—Diana Saladino?”
“Diana Saladino,” Gomez repeats slowly.
In the ensuing pause, Frank hears clicking.
“I know her. What do you want with her?”
“Just some questions. Routine follow-up.”
The sergeant chuckles. “Well, good luck getting to her. She lives out on the Mazetti Ranch, up Wildcat Canyon. It’s all dirt road to the main house, behind two locked gates. We had to go out there a couple years ago in the middle of a storm. Got stuck twice. Pain in the ass. Second time we got stuck, we ended up walking the rest of the way. I don’t think Sal even lives at the main house. She’s back in the hills somewhere.”
“Sal?”
“Sorry. That’s what everybody calls her. Didn’t know who you were talking about for a sec when you said ‘Diana.’”
“How can I get in touch with her?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure she’s at Celadores—that’s just west of here—every Saturday, at the store. That’s all there is in Celadores, the store.”
“How will I recognize her?”
“Oh, that’s easy enough.”
She hears the clicking on the keyboard stop.
“But if you’re coming up this weekend, I’ll take you there myself. I haven’t been out that way in a while. Be good to check it out.”
“Sounds like a deal. Meet you at the station, what time?”
“Tell you what. Sal’s got business ’til about noon or so. But if you meet me at the station at eleven, I’ll buy you lunch.”
“Let me buy and you’re on.”
“Sounds good. See you Saturday. Can’t miss us. Get off on the frontage road, turn right on Main, and we’re a block down on the corner.”
Frank drops the phone into its dock and her feet go back onto the desk. She nods. It’ll be good to get the hell out of Dodge.
Chapter 9
The week passes quietly. The squad doesn’t close any cases, but neither does it get any new ones. Friday morning, before the sun is up, she heads north with a full tank of gas, a cup of coffee, and two jelly doughnuts on the passenger seat.
Not only is Pintar more competent than the last captain, she’s more willing to take turns on-call, and Frank hits the freeway with unaccustomed abandon. She’s pleased to have three days to go to bed early, get up late, and not be called out on a midnight shooting spree. Better yet, she thinks, sipping her coffee, is going someplace where no one knows her or expects anything of her. For at least forty-eight hours she is free to reinvent herself. The prospect is daunting as well as thrilling and while she’s certain to be the same old Frank she always is, it’s nice to have the option.
Traffic thins as she merges onto I-5, and she sets the cruise control to eighty. Frank eyes the second doughnut but decides to save it. East, over the desert, dawn oranges the sky. Cool ocean air riffs through the car as the LA jazz station fades. She turns the radio off, happy to have nothing in her head but wind and an endless horizon.
Most of the traffic she meets is southbound and Frank rolls into Soledad just shy of eleven. Gomez meets her in the police station lobby right on time. The cop is short and wide, more or less Frank’s age, and takes her hand with the grip of an arm wrestler.
Checking a wince, Frank flips her ID open.
Gomez waives it. “I know who you are. I Googled you while we talked.”
Frank offers her charming grin. “Could use you on my squad.”
“Fat chance. Born and raised in the Salinas Valley and I already have my plot picked out at the Soledad Cemetery.”
She walks Frank to an old Crown Vic that looks like it has been in service since the first time Jerry Brown was governor. She drives them to a gas station at the end of town which houses a Mexican restaurant, and a young man greets Gomez as they come in. Pouring water, he slides Frank a menu and asks Gomez if she’ll have the usual. “Yep.”
“What’s the usual?”
“Huevos rancheros, over easy.”
Frank flips her cup up for coffee and hands back the menu. “I’ll have the same.”
The boy nods, walking off as he shouts their order into the tiny kitchen. The women talk shop a bit, but when their food comes, Gomez says, “Tell me why you’re interested in Sal.”
“I think a body we’ve got might be her father. ID’d him off the date and initials on his wedding band, the rest from vital records.”
“Shoot, how sweet is that? A case falling into your lap like that?”
“Good thing, too. The lead detective on it just told me she’s pregnant. I’m gonna need all the help I can get.”
“Yeah, I wondered what would make a Lieutenant come all the way up here.”
Frank lifts a shoulder. “It’s not a big deal. Thought I’d come up, check things out, maybe head home via Carmel, Big Sur. Act like a tourist.”
“It’s a pretty drive, if you like that kind of thing.”
“You don’t?”
Gomez thrusts her chin toward the window. Beyond it, on the other side of the highway, dark mountains tower over the flat, dusty valley. “Santa Lucias keep the ocean on that side, where it belongs. You can keep your fog and your coast.”
Wiping her plate with a tortilla, Frank says, “Wanna tell me what you know about Diana Saladino?”
Pushing her clean plate away, Gomez cups her coffee and leans on her elbows. “She’s a character. But you should talk to my boss. I think he went to school with Sal and her sister. They were twins. I’m not sure if he was in the same grade, but he’d know more about them than I do.”
“Is he available?”
“On a weekend?” Gomez laughs. “Not unless you have a subpoena.”
“She have kids?”
“That’s who you should talk to. Mike Thompson. Sal’s ex. I don’t think they lasted more than a couple years, but they’re still friends, far as I know. They have a daughter down in your neck of the woods. I forget her name.”
“You said Sal’s a character. How so?”
Gazing out the window, Gomez tilts her head to the mountains again. “Do you know your Steinbeck?”
“’Fraid I don’t.”
“Where are you from?”
“New York, originally.”
“That explains it. You can’t grow up in Cali without getting him crammed down your throat. I hated it when I was a kid, but I’ve come to appreciate him now that I’m older. And a little wiser,” she adds with a crooked-tooth grin. “He wrote a lot of good history about the area. Not facts so much, but a feel for the place. Like those mountains.” Gomez points out the window at the muscled range. “Steinbeck called them dark and unfriendly, and if you spend enough time here you begin to understan
d why.”
Checking that she has Frank’s attention, Gomez continues, “The Saladinos were old Monterey County. The grandparents were part of the Swiss–Italian wave that came to the states in the mid-1800s. I guess the economy was bad there, so when they heard about all the gold in California it was natural to leave. Not many of them made it in mining, so they turned to what they knew, which was dairy farming. Which was perfect for this area. They just picked up where they’d left off in Europe. Actually, did a whole lot better for themselves. Land was cheap and plentiful—if you can imagine that.” The cop shakes her head. “They were hard workers, those Swiss, and used to tough conditions. Before you knew it, they’d built a huge dairy industry up and down the coast. A lot of the old names like Saladino are legacies from those dynasties. I think the Saladinos were originally from Monterey or somewhere on the coast, and it was one of Sal’s great-grandfathers that settled here. He started a ranch, and it was a big one, but when he died his oldest son sold it to pay off a gambling debt. Now it’s the Mazettis’.”
“So why’s Sal still there?”
The waiter comes over holding the coffee pot like a question. Gomez checks her watch. “We better get going.”
Frank lays money on the bill and they slide out of the booth. Gomez picks up a toothpick at the register, offers Frank one.
“No, thanks.”
Cleaning her teeth, Gomez explains, “When they lost the ranch, one of the boys stayed on as foreman. I think there were three boys, and I think it was the youngest ended up killing the oldest. Shot him in the dirt, right in front of Pasquale’s Bar. Beef about the ranch, I guess. Anyway, Sal’s grandfather, Domenic’s father, was the one that stayed on, so Domenic grew up out there. Married a local gal and raised the girls out on the ranch. I understand he was a terrible drunk and one day he just disappeared. Guess we know why, now, huh?”
Frank nods. “Hard to come back from the dead.” A sudden frisson passes through Frank, and she wonders if it really is.
They drive down the highway and take the next exit, west, toward the mountains. Frank studies them through the windshield, surprised at their heavily forested flanks. “What kinda trees are those?”
Gomez flaps a hand. “Scrub oak. Blue oak. Live oak. Bunch of different pines. Then when you get into the canyons you get madrone and redwoods, Doug fir. There’s things in there people probably don’t even know are in there. Hell, Bigfoot’s probably in there.”
Hunching over the wheel, she adds, “They say the Santa Lucia range is one of the wildest places on earth, and I believe it. Those mountains are their own country. It’s all cliff and gorge in there. And fire and fog and wind. The Santa Lucias aren’t tamable. They’re not meant for man.”
Frank leans forward, as if to get closer to the mountains. Her eyes lift to the ridges nipping at the sky. “You still haven’t told me why this Saladino’s such a character.”
The cop pulls the toothpick from her mouth. She flicks it out the window and rests her elbow on the sill. “It’s just different here, that’s all. There’s a lot of history. A lot of old blood. And like I said, you should probably talk to Sal’s ex. Or my boss. They know more about Sal than I do.”
“You seem to know plenty.”
“About the history.” Gomez shrugs. “The other stuff . . .”
“What other stuff?”
“You’ll see.”
Gomez slows as they come into a curve in the county road. She tells Frank, “This is where Sal’s sister flipped her truck back in the 60s, early 70s.”
The curve rounds a soft hill. On the left it falls off into a broad arroyo. Gomez stops and points to a small wooden cross on the face of the hill. Frank squints. She makes out “CASS SALADINO” in clean, square letters. Red roses rise behind the cross.
As if reading her mind, Gomez says, “In winter there’ll be a wreath on it and in spring iris and daffodils come up next to it.”
“Who tends it?”
“That’d be Sal.”
Gomez takes her foot off the brake.
“They were twins?”
“Um-huh.”
“Must have been rough.”
“I reckon.”
“Any chance of getting the accident report?”
“Nope. This is CHP jurisdiction and they throw all their reports out after a couple years.”
A truck speeds around the next corner, slowing when the driver sees the patrol car. Gomez lifts a finger off the wheel in a country wave.
“Asshole,” she grumbles, as the truck passes.
“Who is it?”
“Pete Mazetti. He drives like his balls are on fire.”
“Mazetti as in the Mazetti Ranch?”
“The one and only.”
“He must know the road pretty well.”
“He does, but folks driving through to Carmel don’t. In summer this is Blood Alley.”
“I’ll stick to domestics and drive-bys.”
Gomez agrees, “I’d pay to never see another head-on.”
The talk turns back to work. Frank lets it, aware that Gomez has again evaded explanation of Saladino. She settles for finding out herself but hopes Saladino’s eccentricities are limited to something as innocuous as a peg leg or bad case of Tourette’s.
They twist along the two-lane, parallel to the mountains. Nodding toward the high ridge, Frank asks, “You ever been up there?”
Gomez looks where Frank does. She shakes her head. “I’m happy down here.”
“You scared of ’em?” Frank teases.
Gomez scowls and crouches over the wheel. “You hear stories about them.”
“What kind of stories?”
“Old-timers say there’s spirits up there. That the mountains are alive. I believe it. I mean, just look at ’em.”
Frank does. Despite the noonday sun, the vertical flanks of the mountain appear almost black, as if the trees have grabbed and gobbled the light. Suddenly Gomez takes a curve and they are pointed straight into the heart of the mountains. Frank cannot look away. The more she stares, the more she feels the mountains are staring back.
Chapter 10
Southwest of Salinas, in a canyon tucked beneath the watchful gaze of the Santa Lucia range, is the tiny town of Celadores. All that’s left of the original stagecoach stop is a general store selling beer, tobacco, and sundry non-perishables. The town is rarely mentioned on maps. But for the few families remaining in the surrounding ranchos, Celadores is no longer a destination. Except on Saturday mornings. Then, in the slanting light from the friendly hills to the east, dusty cars and trucks drive up quietly to the silver-boarded store. The drivers park randomly on the side of the road or in the sprawling shadow of an oak old enough to have shaded the conquistadors. One by one, metal doors squeal open. Usually a woman gets out, an older woman, and usually she is a Mexican woman from one of the nearby farming towns. Sometimes they come from Salinas or as far south as King City, but more often than not the women are local. Sometimes their men drop them off and drive quickly away, other times they get out and stretch, resigned to waiting until the women have concluded their mysterious business.
On this Saturday it is late in the day and the light spills from the west. There is only one car left in front of the store, resting nose-in to the oak like a weary beast of burden. Slowly, so as not to raise dust, Gomez pulls the squad car off the road. She checks her watch and glances at the empty bench in front of the tilted store. “Looks like she’s about done.”
“She run the store?”
“No, Sal does her business in back.”
“What kind of business?”
“Well—” Gomez drums her fingers on the side-view “—that’s the interesting part.”
It’s taken the cop this long to come around to why Saladino’s such a character, so Frank stays quiet. The sun warms her lap and bees feed in a patch of mustard near the car. A breeze wafts the smell of dried grass and hot dust through the windows. Frank watches it nuzzle the bowed oak leaves.
“What do you know about alternative medicine?”
“Not much. I know some of it works.”
Gail had used acupuncture to help alleviate the pain of the cancer coursing through her body. Frank didn’t know if the practice worked because of actual healing properties or because her lover’s belief was enough to give it a placebo effect. In the end, Frank didn’t care; it had eased Gail’s pain and that was all that mattered.
“Have you ever had anyone—” Gomez makes quote marks in the air “—lay their hands on you?”
“Nope.”
“Well, that’s what Sal does. She’s like a curandera.” Gomez grins at her. “You know what that is, City Cop?”
“Hell, Country Cop, I work in South-Central. I probably know more curanderas than you have in your whole county. Have you ever used her?”
“No sir, not me, but a lot of people do. They swear by her.”
Frank shrugs. “I’ve heard stranger things.”
Gomez gives her a squinting look while a woman who looks like a raisin left in the field too long limps from the store. “Let’s go.” Gomez pushes her door, but Frank is suddenly reluctant to leave the patrol car. “That was probably her last customer,” Gomez explains.
Frank gets out but stands next to the car. “You’re not gonna lock up?”
The cop looks around. “What for? Come on.” She hitches her gun belt, waiting for Frank to move.
“How do you know she’s here?”
“It’s Saturday. She’s always here on Saturday.”
“Where’s her car?”
“Probably around back. What’s with the Twenty Questions? You should be talking to her, not me. Let’s go.” She starts for the store but stops again when she sees Frank isn’t following. “What the hell? Are we doing this or not?”
Frank glances at the store. The old boards shine whitely in the afternoon sun. She raises a hand to the glare, certain the store is a Rubicon and that if she crosses over she won’t be able to step back.
Gomez glowers with hands on her ample hips. “Are you big city cops always this flaky?”
“Give me a sec.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Jesus, Mary, and her husband Joe.”
Hold of the Bone Page 5
