Solitude Creek (42 page)

O’Neil was about to stop but Nashima directed him to the end of the lot, not far from where Dance had discovered the path that led to where she’d found the witness in the trailer, Annette, addicted to cigarettes and music.

‘Let’s take a walk,’ Nashima said.

Dance and O’Neil exchanged glances as together they climbed from the car and followed Nashima as he started along the path. Stemple plodded behind, boot falls noisy on the gritty asphalt. Both he and O’Neil kept their hands near their weapons. The unsub, armed with at least one nine-millimeter pistol, was still at large, of course.

Was he headed for the cluster of residential houses? And why did he seem to have no interest in the roadhouse itself?

I’ll confess …

He didn’t get far along the path, however, before he turned left and walked toward Solitude Creek, through the grass and around the ruins she’d seen earlier, the remnants of concrete floors, fences, walls and posts. As they got closer to the water, she found a barrier of rusting chain-link separating them from the glistening creek.

He turned to them. ‘When I said I didn’t know if the lawyer made an offer, that’s because of a blind trust.’

‘We know about it,’ Dance said.

‘I put all my assets in it when I took office. Barrett controls everything as trustee. But he knows my general investment and planning strategies. And when he heard about the roadhouse, I imagine he made the offer because he knew I was interested in all the property here.

‘But the trust sets out the guidelines he has to follow in purchasing property and he’ll stick to those. He’ll buy it if the conditions are right; he won’t if they’re not. I can’t tell him to do anything about it.’

Dance was beginning to feel her A-to-B-to-Z thinking might end up short of the twenty-sixth letter.

The Congressman said, ‘If you know about the trust then you know about the company it owns. The LLC in Nevada.’

‘Yes, planning to do some construction here.’

‘That company also owns all of this.’ He waved his hand. He seemed to indicate everything from the parking lot, along the shore of Solitude Creek almost to the development where Dance had discovered Annette.

Nashima continued, ‘The company I’m referring to is Kodoku Ogawa Limited. The Japanese words mean “Solitude Creek”.’ He fell silent momentarily. ‘Curious about the word for “solitude”, though. In Japanese, it also means isolation, desolation, detachment. “Solitude” in English suggests something healthy, regenerative.’ He turned to them with a searing gaze. ‘Have you figured out the purpose of Kodoku Ogawa Limited yet?’

No one responded. Stemple was gazing out over the grassy expanse, arms crossed.

Nashima walked to an ancient fencepost topped with rusted barbed wire. He touched it gingerly. ‘In nineteen forty-two, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order Ninety Sixty-six, which gave military officers the right to exclude any person they saw fit from quote “designated military areas”. You know what those military areas were? All of the state of California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona. And who got excluded? People of Japanese ancestry.’

‘The internment,’ Dance said.

Nashima muttered, ‘A nice word for pogrom.’ He continued, ‘Nearly one hundred and twenty thousand people were forced out of their homes and into camps. Over sixty percent were US citizens. Children, the elderly, the mentally handicapped among them.’ He laughed harshly. ‘Spies? Saboteurs? They were as loyal as German Americans or Italian Americans. Or any Americans, for that matter. If there was such a risk, then why in Hawaii, where only a small minority of Japanese were rounded up, was there
no
espionage or sabotage among the tens of thousands who remained free?’

‘And this was one of those camps?’

‘The Solitude Creek Relocation Center. It extended from that crest there all the way to the highway. It was a charming place,’ he said bitterly. ‘People lived in large barracks, divided into twenty-foot apartments, with walls that didn’t go up all the way to the ceiling. There were only communal latrines, not separated by gender. There was virtually no privacy at all. The camp was surrounded by barbed wire, five strand, and there were machine-gun towers every few hundred feet.

‘There was never enough food – diet was rice and vegetables, and if the prisoners wanted anything more than that, they had to grow it themselves. But, of course, they couldn’t just stroll down the road and buy a couple of chickens, could they? And they couldn’t fish in the creek because they might swim away and slit the throats of Americans nearby or radio the longitude and latitude of Fort Ord to the hundreds of Japanese submarines in Monterey Bay just waiting for that information,’ he scoffed.

He strode to a reedy plot of sand. ‘I’ve reconstructed about where my relatives were incarcerated.’ He looked the spot over. ‘It was here that my grandfather died. He had a heart attack. The doctor wasn’t in the camp that day. They had to call one from Fort Ord. But it took a while because, of course, the yellow menace would feign a heart attack to escape, so they had to find some armed soldiers to guard the medical workers. He was dead before help arrived.’

‘I’m sorry,’ O’Neil muttered.

‘He, like my grandmother, was a
nisei
– second generation, born here. My father was a
sansei
, third generation. They were citizens of the United States.’ He looked at them with still, cool eyes. ‘We need to keep the memory of what happened here alive. I’ve always planned to build a museum to do that. On this very site, where my relatives were so badly treated.

‘The sign at the entrance will read “
Solitude Creek Ky
ō
seish
ū
y
ō
sho Museum and Memorial
”
.
That means “concentration camp”. Not “relocation center”. That’s not what it was.’

Almost as an afterthought he said, ‘Before you go to a judge to get warrants to arrest me, look up the corporate documents for Kodoku. It’s a non-profit. I won’t make a penny on it. Oh, and about murdering people to buy some property cheap? You’ll see from the plans we’ll be filing for permits, I don’t need the roadhouse. If Sam Cohen sells we’d just doze the club down for an extension of the parking lot. If not, we’ll buy some of the property closer to Highway One. Or, if Sam would like to keep the land, he could tear down the building and put up a restaurant.’ The Congressman cocked his head. ‘I can guarantee him a good supply of clientele if he puts sushi and sashimi on the menu.’ His eyes strayed to the waving grasses, the ripples on gray Solitude Creek.

‘I know what you’re thinking: I could have told you this in my office, yes. But I don’t think we can ever miss an opportunity to remind ourselves that hate persists. What happened here happened only seventy years ago.’ A nod at the concrete borders along Solitude Creek. ‘That’s a drop in the bucket of time. And look now, on the Peninsula. Those terrible hate crimes over the past month. Synagogues, black churches.’

He shook his head and turned back toward the parking lot. ‘We haven’t learned a thing. I sometimes doubt we ever will.’

‘That didn’t go well,’ Dance muttered.

She and O’Neil were in her office.

‘Better than it could have gone. I don’t think there’ll be any lawsuits for … Well, I don’t know what Nashima would sue for.’

‘Wrongful accusation?’ she suggested, only half joking. She looked over the case material spread out on her desk and pinned to the whiteboard nearby. Evidence, reference to statements, details of the crimes. And photos, those terrible photos.

Dance’s phone rang. But it wasn’t Barrett Stone, Esq., asking where he could serve the papers. TJ sounded sheepish as he said, ‘Well, okay, boss, I guess I will admit that I didn’t exactly look over all those facts and figures. I mean, longitude and latitude of the deeds and the plots or plats, whatever they are, and—’

‘Is Nashima innocent, TJ? That’s all I want to know.’

‘As the driven snow. Which is an expression I don’t get any more than “When it rains, it pours.” The Nevada company’s construction plans have nothing to do with the roadhouse; it’s all the site of the old relocation camp and an area toward Highway One. And he was telling the truth: all the companies involved are non-profits. Any earnings have to be spent on education and support of the museum and other human-rights organizations.’

Nail in the coffin, Dance thought. Reflecting that
that
was one expression leaving little doubt as to meaning.

Another: back to the drawing board.

O’Neil’s phone buzzed. He glanced at caller ID. ‘My boss.’ The Monterey County sheriff. ‘Brother. Wonder what’s up.’ He answered. ‘Ted. Did Nashima call to complain? The Congressman? … No. Well, he might. I thought that’s what you were calling about.’

Then she noticed O’Neil stiffen. Shoulders up, head down. ‘Really? … Are they sure? I’m here with Kathryn now. We can be there in twenty minutes. What’s the internet address?’

He jotted something down.

‘We’ll check it out on the way.’ He disconnected. He looked at her with an expression she rarely saw on his face.

Dance lifted her eyebrows. ‘We?’

‘The case I was working on, about the man who went missing, Otto Grant.’

She recalled: the farmer who had gone bankrupt after his property was taken by the state. ‘You thought he might be a suicide?’

‘That’s what happened, right. Hanged himself. A shack out in Salinas Valley.’ He rose. ‘Let’s go.’

She asked, ‘Me? It’s your case. You want me along?’

‘Actually, turns out, it’s
our
case now.’

Michael O’Neil piloted his unmarked Dodge into the countryside, east of Salinas, a huge swathe of farm country, flat and, thanks to the precious water, green with young plants. Dance skimmed the blog entry Otto Grant had posted just before he’d taken his life, several hours ago. ‘Explains a lot,’ she said. ‘Explains everything.’

The reason the Otto Grant case was now both of theirs was simple: Grant was the man who’d hired the Solitude Creek unsub to wreak havoc on Monterey County. In revenge for the eminent-domain action that had led to his bankruptcy.

‘As much of an oddball as we thought?’

She scanned more. Didn’t answer.

‘Read it to me.’

‘
Over the past few months readers of this BLOG have followed the chronicle of the Destruction of my life by the state of California. For those of you just “tuning in” I owned a farm off San Juan Grade Road, 239 acres of very fine land which I inherited from my Father, who inherited it from his Father.

‘
Last year the state decided to steal two thirds of that property – the most valuable – under the totalitarian “law” known as eminent domain. And WHY did they want to take it from me? Because a nearby landfill, filled with garbage and trash, was nearly full to capacity and so they turned their sights on my land to turn it into a dump.

‘
The Founding Fathers approved laws that let the government take citizens’ land provided they give “JUST COMPENSATION” for it. I’m an American and a patriot and this is the best country on earth but do you think Thomas Jefferson would allow taking all this property and then arguing about the value? Of course he wouldn’t. Because HE was a gentleman and a scholar.

‘
I was given compensation equal to land used for grazing not farming. Even though it was a working vegetable farm and there are no livestock for miles around. I had to sell the remaining land because there wasn’t enough to cover expenses.

‘
After paying off the mortgages I was left with $150,000. Which may seem like a princely sum except I then got a tax bill for $70,000!! It was only a matter of time until I ended up homeless.

‘
Well, by now you know what I did. I did NOT pay the taxes. I took every last penny and gave it to a man I had met a few years ago. A soldier of fortune, you could say. If you wonder who’s at fault for what happened at Solitude Creek and Bay View Center and the hospital, look into a mirror. YOU! Maybe next time you’ll think twice about stealing a man’s soul, his heart, his livelihood, his immortality and discover within you a conscience
.’

Dance said, ‘That’s it.’

‘Phew. That’s enough.’

‘One hundred fifty thousand for the job. No wonder our unsub can afford Vuitton shoes.’

They drove in silence for a few moments.

‘You can’t sympathize but you almost want to,’ O’Neil said.

This was true, Dance reflected. Bizarre though it was, the letter revealed how the man had been so sadly derailed.

In fifteen minutes, O’Neil pulled onto a dirt road, where an MCSO cruiser was parked. The officer gestured them on. About a hundred yards farther on they came to an abandoned house. Two more cruisers were there, along with the medical examiner’s bus. The officers waved to O’Neil and Dance as they climbed out of the car and made their way to the front door of the shack.

‘Door was unlocked when we got here, Detective, but he had quite a fortress inside. He was ready for battle if we came for him before his hired gun finished with the revenge.’

Dance noted the thick wooden boards bolted over the windows of the one-story structure. The back door, the officer explained, was sealed too, similarly, and the front was reinforced with metal panels and multiple locks. It would have taken a battering ram to get inside.

She spotted a rifle, some scatterguns. Plenty of ammo.

Crime Scene had arrived too, dolled up in their Tyvek jumpsuits, booties and hoods.

‘You can look around,’ one officer said, ‘just mind the routine. Nothing’s bagged or logged yet.’

Meaning: keep your hands to yourselves and wear booties.

They donned the light blue footwear and stepped inside. It was largely what she’d expected: the filthy cabin, latticed with beams overhead, was dingy and sad. Minimal furniture, second-hand. Jugs of water, cans of Chef Boyardee entrees and vegetables and peaches. Thousands of legal papers and several books of California statutes, well thumbed, with portions highlighted in yellow marker. The air was fetid. He’d used a bucket for his toilet. The mattress was covered with a gray sheet. The blanket was an incongruous pink.