Out at Night (26 page)

“You can buy that threat on the Generic Threat Website.”

“There’s a website called Generic Threat?”

“I’ve heard that one a couple of times before, that’s all. You keep the note?” Already knowing the answer.

He shook his head.

“What else you got?”

“A note stuck under my windshield in the parking garage. It had a picture of a dead sheep.”

“Moving up the food chain. You keep that one?” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

“Couple weeks ago, he killed my dog, Grace.”

That one got her attention.

“Muffy.” He looked close to tears. “This big, overgrown galumph of a rottweiler. Nobody messes with her. Or did.”

“What happened?” In the still place inside where things coalesce, she already suspected, she already knew.

“He
shot
her. At least, that’s what the vet said.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“Some nights, I’d go out with Muffy into the desert hills. I’d bring along the littlest flashlight so I wouldn’t kill myself by falling into a crevice or off a cliff or something, but you’d have thought she’d died and went to doggie heaven.”

He heard what he’d said and his face darkened.

“What happened?”

“I took her off the leash and she ran after something. She’d always come back, she’s a good dog that way, only this time. . .”

He shifted and she waited.

“I heard this bloodcurdling cry, and then I realized it was Muffy,
screaming
. I ran toward the sound and I saw, illuminated on the hillside—”

“Wait, there was moonlight?” Grace readjusted the image in her mind to include a big dog hit by an arrow in the silvery cliffs somewhere in the back country near Palm Springs.

Frank nodded. “I saw an illuminated figure. Wearing what looked like goggles. With a bow and arrow set on his back. He turned and melted away and then I saw Muffy, crawling toward me, with this
bleeding hole
. . .”

He blinked and looked away.

“How do you know the shooter was Bartholomew?”

“I don’t. But it was, I know it. Or part of his group.”

“His group.”

Frank twisted his fingers in his lap. “I was delivering soil and seeds—all organic—to Vonda’s greenhouse. I was early. Nobody was in the house, so I thought I’d try the greenhouse and unload stuff to save myself a second trip.”

“What happened?”

He sighed and massaged his jaw with his hand as if his teeth hurt.

“There was a meeting, Grace. A bunch of them in back. This woman started speaking. It was a voice I didn’t recognize.”

So it wasn’t Vonda. “What was she saying?”

“First of all, she called herself RD.”

“Like R2-D2.”

“That’s what I thought. Later I thought maybe I’d misheard. Maybe it was ‘Artie.’”

“What did she say?” She tried to hide her impatience.

Frank exhaled heavily, as if trying to expunge a memory. “She said everything was planned out, good to go. They were going to be moving the item in on time. And that one more shipment was coming in and she expected all of them to do their part. That’s what she said. And she thanked them for
practicing
.”

Grace straightened. “You told the police this?”

“And the FBI.”

“Any idea what the shipment is or when it’s coming in?”

Frank shook his head. “It’s like everybody knew, she was just confirming.”

“Anything else?”

“When Ted thanked her, he called her miss.”

“Miss.”

Frank nodded. “Like he wasn’t sure of her name, maybe.”

“What else?”

“It sounds crazy.” Frank Waggaman nibbled his lip.

“Throw it out there anyway.”

“I don’t know. I had the feeling she was telling them. . .” He stopped.

She waited.

“Telling them something was going to be. . .released. . .at the convention.”

Grace straightened. It was the same thing her uncle had said yesterday. So it must have come from whatever Frank Waggaman had overheard.

“And you told the FBI this.”

He nodded. “Have you heard of the Terminator gene?”

She’d read about it in a crime lab journal. “Isn’t that the one that if it’s planted, it dies after one crop, and so the farmers have to rebuy seed every year?”

“It’s one of the core reasons lots of countries are protesting the United States’ stance on GM crops. It sounds too much like a diabolical marketing tool used against the poor.”

He glanced around the room as if he feared they’d be heard over the noise in the display room.

“Okay, I’ll just come out with it. I think bad guys are here somewhere, in the Convention Center, and they’ve smuggled in something that could disrupt agriculture worldwide.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Grace, what better way to stop science in its tracks then to come out with the ultimate killer and then blame it on the GM scientists? Nobody would suspect do-good granola bar activists. Oh, one more thing. They called Bartholomew Mars.”

“Like the candy bar.”

He looked at her, his eyes glowing in hollow sockets. “Like the god of war.”

Grace was silent. She was thinking about the girl in the field. How black the blood looked, draining in a pool down her thin chest. “This voice. This RD voice. Did it sound young, old?”

“Young. Definitely. All of them did.”

“Frank, when you hire these young kids to man the volunteer booths here at the center, do you check them out?”

He picked at the paper. Shredded the corner. The corn protesters disappeared in a pile of newsprint.

“It’s been so busy here.”

“I take that as a big maybe.”

“Maybe’s about right.” He looked up and blinked. “Kids’ll know other kids. They do that Facebook thing if there’s a job. We pay by the hour. Not that much.”

“And they get clearance.”

“Of course they get clearance. At least I think they do.” He gnawed on his lip. “Of course they would. Why, do you think. . .?”

“Monday. Tomorrow night, can you think of anything that could be a target? Anybody?”

He shook his head.

“Anything else?”

“I don’t know. I just. . .I just get this feeling. Like there’s something here already. Something I’ve missed.”

She stood up.

“Not much to go on in the threat department, Frank, but thanks. I’ll share your concerns with brass.”

She walked to the door and stopped.

“One more thing. It pisses me off, it saddens me, Frank, that Jeanne pinned her hopes for a future on some guy who hasn’t said one word on her behalf in the last five minutes. She was taken away. You weren’t.”

Frank linked his hands and bowed his head. “She never told me she had a past.”

“You don’t?”

He raised his eyes. “You can’t imagine the shock, Grace. Jeanne isn’t who she said she was.”

“You are?”

He clapped a fluttery finger to his mouth, as if trying to contain a secret. After a moment he removed it and said reluctantly, “Wednesday, when we were in Gerry Maloof’s getting those fine linen pants—”

“I’ve heard about the pants,” Grace said irritably. “Move on to the threat part.”

“Maybe it’s not but—”

“Try it.”

“Well. I spotted him before Jeanne did. He was pulling something out of his wallet, staring at it hard, then looking at me, back and forth. He didn’t even see Jeanne at first and then he did.”

“What happened?”

“They stopped stock-still, rooted, frozen, shock on both their faces. I was going to do the introductions but it seemed pointless. Except. . .” His voice trailed. “She looked at him and a word slipped out. John.”

“Maybe it’s his middle name.”

Frank shrugged. “I asked her if she knew him. She turned pale, which is hard to do when you’re already a redhead.”

He said it with tenderness. Grace didn’t think it was the right time to remind him that Jeanne’s natural hair color was brown, now gray.

“She turns pale. And?”

“He takes her pictures and that’s it. That’s all. Except.” He ducked his head and Grace saw a blush rise along his stubbled jawline. “She makes me happy when I’m with her.”

“An inflatable doll can do that, if it’s positioned right.”

“She likes me. It’s not easy for people to like me, I don’t know why.”

Grace walked to the door and opened it.

“I try and try with these kids. To be a hero. A leader. I can lead. And they picked Bartholomew. They always picked Bartholomew.”

She looked at him. He was shaking his head, rocking over his knees.

He stopped and looked up. “Why did they do that, Grace? Why did they pick him?”

Chapter 31

Homicide Detective Mike Zslosky met her at the jail door and took her back to the booking area. On screens, different shots of the brown jail exterior and tan interior were visible, including the inside of every cell that held prisoners. Grace counted four men lounging on beds, heads against walls, eyes closed, and Jeanne.

Jeanne stared up at the camera and it distorted her face so that her eyes looked unnaturally spaced apart.

“I’m taking her back.” Mike slipped his Glock out of the holster at his belt and locked it into one of the safe boxes, pocketing the key.

The corrections officer with the gelled hair glanced up from the bank of monitors. She nodded and handed him a ring of keys. “This one. Lock her in and bring it right back.”

She turned back to the monitors. A man with a swastika shaved into his scalp jerked his hand up in spastic gang signs to the camera.

Mike padded ahead of Grace through the labyrinth of cells.

“I didn’t see her walking stick.”

“You know she can’t have that in there.”

“If she had a pacemaker, would you take that away, too, so she wouldn’t use it to start an electrical fire?”

“You’re welcome, Grace, for bending the rules so you can get in there tonight instead of waiting until ten tomorrow.”

“You can’t think she’s good for either one of them.”

Mike looked at her, his gaze steady. His hair looked permanently fried, as if it had been flash frozen, the ends frosted. “You’ve got ten minutes.”

He unlocked the door to the cell and stepped aside. She stuck her head in and pulled it out.

“Wait. That camera in the cell that looks like a motion detector. There’s sound on that, too, right?”

He relocked the cell door.

“As long as you’re bending rules, can you stick her in the VISITOR room?”

“Tell me you’re going home soon.”

__

Grace waited on the VISITOR side. What she said there wouldn’t be recorded. Before long, Jeanne limped through the prisoner door and sat on a cement stool anchored to the floor. She picked up the phone and pressed her other hand to the glass.

Grace did the same. “I see I get the good chair.” It was brown fabric, nothing special except it was on the side where the door unlocked.

“Good to know. Next time I’ll take that side.”

They smiled at each other and put their hands down.

“You eating okay?”

“Not so hungry at the moment; thanks for asking.”

She looked drained. The orange jumpsuit leached color from her eyes. Her hair was very red, except for a fine growth of gray right at the hairline.

“This is going to sound weird, but I need to ask you how you came in.”

“I’m not following.”

“Did a Palm Springs police officer burst into your shop, or go to your house? Did you ride back in a wire cage?”

Jeanne shook her head and Grace’s heart sank.

“No. A nice man called—Detective—I don’t know, it’s a Polish last name—”

“Zsloski.”

Jeanne nodded.

Son of a bitch. “He called and said what exactly?”

“Just asked if I’d come in, that’s all. They wanted my hit on the fight Bartholomew started with my Frank in Gerry Maloof’s. And I was happy to, because, well, the thing is, Frank had made me
promise
to stay far away from Palm Springs during the convention, but if I was there to help the police. . .”

Grace stared. “So you just got in the car and came.”

“Well, I took Helix in to the doggie kennel, like I told you. And then I gassed up. And then I came.” She studied Grace’s face.

Grace could see her reflected in the glass; it was like looking at two Jeannes, each with a dawning comprehension, eyes snapping open, both leaning forward in alarm toward the Plexiglas, mouth open so that Grace could clearly see two sets of crowns on her lower left back molars.

“What did I do?” The two Jeannes gulped air and their lips quivered.

Grace tried to soften her face.

“No, don’t be pulling that face on me, Grace, just tell me what in the hell I did.”

“If a person comes in willingly to talk to the police, the police don’t have to Mirandize that person until they have—oh, pretty much what they need to lock in an arrest.”

“They Mirandized me.”

Grace nodded. “Sometime after the part where they asked you about your commitment to save the environment and where you went to school, right?”

Jeanne blinked and leaned back on the stool and Grace realized that the reason the stool was anchored in cement, other than so that it wouldn’t be thrown through the window to launch an escape, was so that stunned prisoners wouldn’t inadvertently tip themselves backward upon hearing news exactly like this.

“Oh,” Jeanne said. She grabbed hold of the counter on her side to steady herself.

“Want to tell me about it?”

Jeanne looked away. “I’ve been waiting for it, for that shoe to drop, most of my life. It got to the point I thought it never would, you know?”

Grace nodded. She remembered hearing about the Rancho Santa Fe woman living a double life who had been arrested for leaving a jail in Michigan almost twenty-five years earlier. She’d said the same thing.

“We were in school in Humboldt County. Redwood country. That’s how it started. Saving the redwoods. Tree sitting, in the beginning. I wasn’t up in the tree, I was the support person. Easier for a guy to pee in a jar, or just over the side, so we sent up Ted. We called him John back then. Little play on words, for what he had to brace himself to do over the edge of that tree. He was a pretty private guy.”