Steel Breeze

by Douglas Wynne

  “I heard the killer broke into your house, saw the sword on the wall, and then decided to use it when your wife encountered him.”

  “Yeah. They called it a ‘weapon of opportunity.’”

  “What was she doing in the backyard in the middle of the night?”

  “Our dog always whined to be let out around four in the morning, and she’d gotten up to let him out. Usually she’d wait by the sliding glass door to let him back in when he was done before he could bark. When he didn’t return that night, she must have stepped outside and gone looking for him…the dog was killed first.”

  “And nothing was stolen?”

  “Nothing. Just the sword, later found in Harwood’s tent with her blood on it.”

  “It sounds like maybe someone disposed of it in the perfect place for a variety of suspects: some of them martial artists, some of them vagabonds.”

  “That’s what I’m beginning to think.”

  “Why now? What brought you here after all this time?”

  Lucas pushed through the curtain and crashed into Desmond’s lap. “Daddy, I’m hungry.”

  “Okay, buddy. We’ll go soon.” Desmond tousled Lucas’s hair. It was stiff. The kid was overdue for a bath. “Would you please go get Peter’s ball and bring it back to him?”

  “I can do it!” Lucas ran out of the room, and Desmond almost wished he could afford to enroll him in classes. The change of scenery seemed to have done him some good.

  “He’s a good boy,” Salerno said.

  “Yeah.” Desmond flashed a rueful smile. “Looks like time is short, but if I could squeeze in one more question: you mentioned fencing armor? Do you guys ever use samurai face masks?”

  Salerno looked confused. “Not sure what you mean. The Kendo helmets have a wire grille.”

  “So nothing like a wrathful face plate?”

  “No. I think I’ve seen what you’re talking about in books, but no, we don’t have anything like that, why?”

  “I get the feeling you and I will talk again.”

  “My door is always open to you.”

  “To be continued? Gotta feed the boy.”

  “To be continued.”

  At the front door, as Desmond and Lucas stepped out into sunlight, Salerno handed Desmond a business card. “Call me anytime. And, you know, Sensei Masahiro might be able to tell you more about those masks. He is Japanese. His number’s on the back. Super nice guy. Very approachable.”

  Chapter 6

  The wooden guard tower was the only landmark on the road to indicate that the site had once been an internment camp. Agent Drelick pointed through the dusty windshield. “That’s it,” she said, “pull over.”

  Pasco eased up on the gas and pulled the government-issued Crown Vic to the side of the road where it churned up a cloud of yellow dust that was immediately shredded by the wind. The tower was separated from the highway by a four-strand barbed-wire fence running along galvanized T-bars. The fence was mostly for show, the wires spaced far enough apart that the agents could have climbed through if they didn’t mind tearing a few holes in their clothes. Someone had climbed through last night.

  Pasco parked behind a police cruiser that had been posted to keep the traffic moving. The local law hadn’t shut down U.S. 395, but Drelick thought they probably should have. She shielded her eyes and looked up, saw a young man moving around on top of the tower. There was an aluminum ladder inside the x-braced frame of the structure, propped up against a wooden ladder built into the tower but that didn’t extend low enough for anyone to reach from the ground. The top of the tower was a simple cube: a guardhouse made mostly of windows, the roof constituting a platform surrounded by a 2 x 4 railing. The figure she’d spotted moving around up there was the forensics photographer, now leaning back against the railing to get a wide shot of the area where the bloodstains must have been.

  A young officer with a pockmarked face climbed out of the cruiser and came to stand beside Drelick as she stared up at the tower. Pasco stayed in the car with the engine idling.

  “Are you with the FBI, ma’am?” the officer asked, appraising her black trench coat and polished shoes, and thinking, no doubt, of some X-Files episodes he’d seen on Netflix. She knew her haircut didn’t help, but fuck it; she wasn’t going to change what looked good on her just because of some actress who wasn’t even on the air anymore.

  She nodded, flashed her ID, and read it to him, “Special Agent Erin Drelick.” She tilted her chin toward the tower. “Was that ladder here before today?”

  “No, ma’am. When they reconstructed the guard tower they only went halfway to the ground with the built-in ladder. Didn’t want to encourage the local kids, you know? Stunts, graffiti, etc. We brought the other ladder in this morning.”

  “‘We? Were you personally here when the ladder was brought in?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did you check the ground under the tower for impressions from another ladder used by the perp?”

  “There weren’t any.”

  “How about shoe prints?”

  “Negative again.”

  “Anybody take a picture of the ground before stomping around on it and erecting a ladder?”

  The officer pulled his hat down to shield his eyes and looked up. “We went up before the CSI got here. There was nothing on the ground to take a picture of, Agent.”

  “And what did you find up top?”

  “Just blood. Mostly soaked into the wood and not much of it considering what we found in the park.”

  “Do you think whoever went up there last night climbed the bracing to reach the half-ladder?”

  “Must have. Probably had the head in a backpack or something so he could use both hands for climbing.”

  “Where’s the head now?”

  “On the ground over there in Block 20 where the birds dropped it.” He pointed beyond the barbed wire at a spot in the patchy sagebrush where two figures stood over a white canvas sheet held down with stones. One of the figures was driving a pole into the ground with a hammer, but the wind was pulling the clanging in some other direction so it sounded out of sync with the blows, a dislocated sound, like the tolling of a phantom bell. “If it wasn’t for the crows fighting with him, that turkey vulture pro’ly woulda got away with it. Then all we’d have would be a little blood up there that wouldn’t be found until God knows when.”

  Drelick nodded. “Thank you, Sergeant….”

  “Wilkes, ma’am. Sherriff Knowles is waiting for you at the main entrance.”

  She climbed back into the car, and Pasco crawled up the gravel shoulder. They passed a wooden sign suspended from a pair of posts by rusty chains at the four corners: MANZANAR WAR RELOCATION CENTER. She recalled seeing a heated debate in the Los Angeles Times a few years back about the use of the phrase “concentration camp” at the site. Apparently, the more conservative party had prevailed. The park featured an auto tour but not today; another police cruiser blocked the entrance. Pasco flashed his ID, and they drove between a pair of stone huts to where the sheriff’s car was parked. Knowles started his engine at their approach, pulled out in front of them, and gave a curt “follow me” wave out the window.

  Drelick had looked at the web site, so she knew that the white building going by on the left had once been the school auditorium and was the only building that remained from the original camp. With a modern facelift, it now served as the Information Center housing artifacts, photographs (including the famous Ansel Adams set), and little theaters that screened short documentary films for visitors. All that remained of the rest of the village amounted to a few stone foundations, piles of rocks amid the sand‐blasted scrub, and signs indicating the places where numbered barracks blocks had once stood. They cruised past a replica of a tarpapered plywood barracks near Block 20 and parked in the scant shelter it provided from the dusty wind, behind the sheriff’s car.

  Sheriff Knowles shook their hands while shouting over the howling wind, “Welcome to Manzan
ar. What have you been told about this crime scene and your role here?” As a national monument, Manzanar fell into a weird jurisdiction where the Department of the Interior, the California State Police, and the FBI all played in the same sandbox.

  “We were told you have partial remains,” Drelick said. “Remains of a victim we may have the rest of. We’re here to make an ID.”

  Knowles nodded. “If it’s a positive, he’s yours. If not, he goes to the morgue in town. I sure as hell hope he’s yours because I’ll be damned if I know where to start looking for the rest of him.”

  “Let’s have a look,” Pasco said.

  Following the sheriff to the spot she had glimpsed from the road, Drelick felt like she was fording a river against a strong current. A ribbon of yellow police tape broke free of the barricade stakes that cordoned off the area, flashing past Drelick’s wind-lashed hair and snagging in a tree where it trilled with a staccato flapping sound. Dust as fine as flour filled her nostrils, and she wished for a bandana to tie over her face like a bandit in a spaghetti Western.

  Knowles gave a nod, and an officer rolled one of the boulders aside with his boot. The canvas flew up on the wind, releasing a cloud of black flies and wrapped tight around the torso of a park ranger who was caught off guard—holding his hat down on the crown of his head while batting at the canvas with his free hand. For a fleeting second he looked like a man fighting a ghost while he wrestled the fabric into a bundle.

  A severed human head stared up at Erin Drelick from the dusty ground, its skin painted in the purple-gray palette of death. The eyes and nasal cavity had been picked over by carrion birds, leaving ragged white necrotic tissue where the eyelids and nostrils should have been. The red cut along the neckline, however, was laser straight.

  “You have that photo?” she asked Pasco.

  He took a 2 x 3 from his pocket, a headshot of Geoffrey Lamprey, age 37. Pasco’s thumbnail blanched white as he squeezed it to keep the wind from stealing it. Drelick nodded and said, “It’s Lamprey. Confirm?”

  “Confirmed,” Pasco said.

  “Thank you, Sheriff. That’s our head. Have your men bag it. There’s a cooler full of ice in our trunk.”

  Sheriff Knowles worked his jaw through a couple of rotations like he was chewing on something. “A cooler of ice? You’re just gonna put it in the trunk of your car?”

  “You think we should FedEx it to L.A.?” Pasco said. “Taxpayers already put the gas in our car to come up here.”

  “Alrighty then. Officer Cook, you heard the lady; evidence bag.”

  Drelick turned to the park ranger in the straw hat and insulated vest. “Are you the one who saw it drop?”

  He nodded, still holding the bundled canvas to his chest.

  “Give us the play-by-play,” Pasco said.

  “I saw the birds from the road before I got to work this morning. They were fighting over something up on top of the tower, but I couldn’t see what. I drove right over there as soon as I was inside the park. Maybe seeing me coming made the vulture decide to take off with the head. He flew right over me, and a couple of the crows tried to dive-bomb him. That’s when he dropped it right here.”

  To the Sheriff, Drelick said, “Did you find anything on the tower?”

  “Just a little blood on the top platform where the head must have been left. Nothing in the guard booth. No prints, no fabric on the barbed wire. You can go up and have a look if you’d like. But tell me, Agent: what makes this a federal case if the rest of the victim was also found in sunny California? Believe me, I’m glad it is, but I’m also curious.”

  Drelick stepped closer to him and, speaking under the roaring wind so that only he could hear her, said, “There’s a resemblance to a case in Arizona.”

  “Huh.”

  “You have any leads on witnesses who may have seen a car parked near the tower last night?” Pasco asked.

  “Not yet, but I’m sure you noticed we are in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. We’ll see if anyone comes forward when it hits the news. So far no reporters have noticed we’ve closed the park, and I’m in no hurry to bring it to their attention.”

  “Good,” Drelick said, “Hold off until we’re gone.”

  The ranger shifted on his feet, suddenly looking uneasy. “Who did you call?” Pasco asked him.

  “Just my wife.”

  “She a gossiper?”

  The ranger shook his head. Drelick read his brass nametag. “Mr. Abath, my partner and I are going to need a tour of the grounds. Will you ride with us?”

  “Of course.”

  “Sheriff, did your men check the barracks replica for evidence?”

  “Clean as a whistle. The beheading wasn’t done here. And if the head belongs to your victim, then my understanding is there aren’t any other missing parts…are there?”

  “No,” Drelick said, “but whoever put the head on the tower wanted to frame it for presentation, to send a message or make a symbol out of it. And unless you’ve combed this entire square mile, there may be more to the message that we’ve yet to find.”

  “I’ll get a team together with some dogs,” the sheriff said.

  “Mr. Abath, have you or your fellow rangers found any foreign items in the park this morning?”

  “Beg pardon? Foreign?”

  Pasco said, “A machete would be good, but she means anything. A hankie, a food wrapper…litter.”

  “No sir, but people do leave offerings at the graveyard all the time. We don’t keep track of what’s left there from one day to the next.”

  “Take us there first,” Drelick said.

  The cemetery was at the southwestern edge of the site, beyond the gardens and the signs marking where the hospital and children’s village had once stood. It was stark, little more than a barren lot corralled by a fence of bark-stripped tree limbs in an X pattern. A few small circles of stones were the only indicators that six bodies were buried there. The desolate, snow-dusted Sierras dominated the horizon like a decaying animal jawbone under the cobalt sky. In the foreground, flanked on three sides by squat, rope-threaded posts, a three-tiered white marble base culminated in an obelisk with black-painted kanji characters carved into its face. Clusters of origami cranes hung from strings and huddled in the shelter of the monument, their bright colors incongruous with the somber desolation.

  “What does it say?” Drelick asked, pointing at the kanji characters.

  “To Console the Spirits,” Abath replied. Gesturing at the cranes, he said, “These are the offerings. People leave the origami birds, coins, rocks…all sorts of little trinkets. Hmm…. Haven’t seen that before.” He bent down to pick up a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles from the marble base, but Drelick seized his arm.

  “Could have fingerprints,” she said. She snapped a couple of photos with her phone while Pasco produced a latex glove and a Ziploc bag from his coat pocket. Drelick scanned the horizon and said, “The glasses were facing east, toward the watchtower.”

  “What do you think that means?” asked Pasco, zipping the bag shut.

  “Maybe nothing. But Lamprey’s driver’s license says he wore glasses. We should find out if they’re his.” She circled the obelisk, and when she came around the south side, her jaw went slack. “Ranger Abath, do you speak Japanese?”

  “That’s why I got the job.”

  “Can you read it, too, or do you just have that inscription memorized?”

  “Both. I mean, yeah; I can read kanji,” he said, following her around the side of the stone slab and seeing the scarlet brushstrokes there. “Holy shit, is that blood?”

  “What does it say?”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Shikata ga nai.”

  “And that means?”

  “It’s kind of a famous saying around here. It means, it cannot be helped.”

  “What can’t be helped?”

  “Anything. Everything. The internees used to say it to express their resignation. A more literal translation might be, ‘It
must be done.’”

  Chapter 7

  Desmond put on the Beatles CD as soon as they got in the car so he wouldn’t have to spend the entire drive answering questions about where they were going and what it would be like. He usually flipped the rearview mirror down so he could glance up and see if Lucas was getting into the music or nodding off to sleep, but today the mirror stayed up and he found himself looking more at the road behind than at the road ahead.

  Lucas soon tired of the music and started complaining that he wanted to skip ahead to the next track or to a favorite number. Just a few weeks ago, Desmond had thought it was cute that Lucas already had favorite songs and clever that he had memorized the track numbers. Now he regretted letting the kid boss him around like a personal DJ. He had his attention on the stereo controls more than the road, and when he had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a pickup truck that had pulled out of a donut shop, he jabbed the power button and announced that they were done with music. He tried to remember if the dark red metallic sedan two cars behind them had been there on Ocean Road, but he didn’t know. What he did know was that even grocery shopping with a four-year-old was nearly impossible for him, so why should avoiding a tail be any easier?

  Before long they were cruising through tree-lined suburban streets like the one they used to live on. Lucas craned his head around to look for kids, and covered his ears when they passed a loud lawnmower. When the sound faded behind them, he asked, “Is this where Carl lives?”

  “Yes, in one of these houses. I just have to figure out which one.” He looked at the Post-it note on the steering wheel. He had worked with Laurie Fisher at the school for three years and considered her a friend but had never visited her home. He was just grateful that she’d made him feel welcome, even when the first call he made to her since losing his job six months ago was to ask her for a favor.

  “Does Carl have trains?” Lucas asked.