The Juan Doe Murders: A Smokey Brandon Thriller (22 page)

“I want to talk first,” David said, and nodded to a chair.

“M-m-m, I’m a little busy right now. But Dave, I know you’ll pay what’s owed on rent and utilities when the time comes.”

“You’re a piece of dog shit, Cheng. And I’m going to dig a hole and bury you.” He said this leaning in, as if ready to spring.

I stepped forward to calm him.

Cheng looked from him to me, then said, “Nice meeting you, then. Excuse me,” and eased back into the room from whence he came, shutting the door.

“The prick,” David said under his breath, then went to the room that was his and pulled a zippered suitcase from a closet. He threw in the few remaining clothes he had, and books from a dresser top, then moved a table to jerk cords out of the wall that led to a small radio and CD player. He stuffed the unit and a pile of CD’s into the bag along with some other odds and ends from the bathroom, then looked around the room and said, “I don’t care about the rest of this stuff.”

In the hallway, David set his bag down and made a move toward Greg’s door just as it opened.

“Are we done?” Greg asked.

The guy did have a smack-inspiring style about him.

David’s jaw muscles were working. “It’s all I can do not to bust you in the chops, Greg, so don’t make it worse. Now you listen to me: I want you and that asshole Lizzaraga to keep away from Binky, completely away.” He was trying to be a man, where he’d failed before.

“I have very little interest in what Hector Lizzaraga does with his placements, other than those which I require for assistance in
my business activities. But I’ll tell you what. If I see that young lady around anywhere, I will certainly give her wide berth.”

“You do that, you pond scum.”

Cheng actually chuckled at that. Then he said, “As far as Izzy goes, it may be she has already made her choice: him over you.”

David lunged forward. I yelled his name, then saw he’d only ripped Greg’s beeper off him. It was clenched in his hand. “You get in touch with that asshole before I get to Binky and I’ll see to it you are hurt in a way that can’t be fixed. Got it, butt-face?”

Cheng looked pale. I said, “Come on, Dave, it’s time to go.”

His eyes stayed fixed on his former roommate as we headed to the door. In the car again, he said, “I think I know where she might be.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

A
 hidden lake, he said. Not on any maps. “I looked. There’s no blue patch off El Toro Road. It’s where they bring some of the new ones. A migrant crash-pad until they find work.”

“This would be Binky who told you this.”

“Angela. I went up there last night.”

“You
what
?”

“Ray was in bed. I told him I was going out for ice cream. He was asleep when I got back. I can’t help it,” he said. “I feel responsible.”

“You’re not.”

“Why are
you
here with me if you don’t care?”

“I guess my coat’s caught in the car door, hon.”

“Same thing,” he said with a sad grin.

I persuaded David to let Ray in on what he wanted to do. Ray fussed, then said wait a while. He’d be off at five and come help.

In the intervening hours we called Joe. Doctors were with him now, a nurse said. We couldn’t talk, but I was appeased to hear he was much improved, arguing with them and cracking wise.

When Ray showed up he said to David, “So, you’re on the trail, huh, buddy?”

Dave looked a little sheepish. “It’s a start.”

Ray was wearing tan pants and a Hawaiian shirt with big white flowers on a green background. I made a crack about it and he said “I wish I’d been born rich instead of so good-lookin’.” Then he said to David, “You figure Binky’s out there at this lake place.”

“That’s what Angela says. I don’t know why she’d go back there, but…”

“We’ve checked three maps,” I said. “Let’s just take a drive.”

“You got it,” Ray said. “Why don’t you bring that piece of Tupperware you got?” I asked where his service piece was. “I mean for extra. You just never know.”

I went to a small safe in my closet and got out my Glock, made mostly of plastic but deadly all the same. I put on loose pants with large pockets, set my pocket holster inside and the Glock in it, and was ready to ride.

Once outside, David said to wait a minute, and he went to his car and brought out Binky’s red sweater. He didn’t say why, and Ray and I glanced at each other but didn’t say anything either. The heart has reasons, for a twenty-year-old boy…

When Dave climbed in, Ray said, “Ready, sport?”

We drove El Toro twice before finally pulling over to reconnoiter. That it was growing dark didn’t help. The road passes through a congested channel of strip malls until it gives into open country with rolling hills and old oak like a step into real country.

On the third pass, we crept along so slowly cars blew horns at us. But then we saw a narrow dirt road. Thirty yards in was a flimsy wire gate. Dave got out and opened it. We drove through, and then he got back in, a growing alertness on his face. The road went on for a while, and then we passed giant wood-framed tubs holding dead starter trees, and I realized this was an abandoned nursery. Nursery was big business in the county, but this one hadn’t made it. Ray drove slowly, gauging the land. Ahead, a covered porch came into view at the end of a tunnel of six eucalyptus trees; then the roof, and the side of the building.

We parked and got out. On a limb of chaparral a hawk hunkered like an old man full of grudges. A gust of wind blew through the trees and made the eucalyptus branches sway, and
brought to our hearing something like a chime, as of ice being stirred in a glass.

Ray walked ahead, the flowers of his shirt falsely bright in the dimness around us. He mounted the porch and peered into the low windows of the house while Dave and I stood off. Ray tried the door, went in, then stepped out of the cabin and said, “All clear.”

There were three rooms divided by flimsy imitation-wood partitions. The first showed only food wrappers and indentations in the low-grade carpet where desks or chairs had once sat.

The second had a ratty twin mattress on the floor covered with a dark blue blanket. Next to it was a six-pack of creme soda still linked in its plastic hood, and a package of Oreo cookies. A magazine called
Shooter’s World
lay on the floor. That room had the only rear window to let in light.

In the last room was a twin bed with a “pencil” headboard, its narrow wood slats spaced an inch apart. Sections of white nylon rope streamed down from each of the four posts. On the bare mattress was a flat, stained pillow, no case.

“Wonderful,” I said.

I felt Dave behind me. In a low voice he said, “Surely she wasn’t here?” His face showed anguish.

Ray, behind us, said, “Somebody was. Recently.” He nodded back to where the unopened creme soda was.

An old, overstuffed chair blocked the foot of the bed. Nestled in the angle between the arm and back was an empty cigarette pack with the Harley-Davidson logo, and a bean can with dead matches and stubs in the bottom. The chair wasn’t all the way back against the wall. I looked behind. Used condoms lay in an ugly mass.

“See anything?” Ray asked.

“No,” I said, pulling back off the chair. I’d spare David that.

Outside on the porch we could see a half-moon shying from incoming clouds above the tops of distant trees. I wished for a cleansing hurricane where none was bound to come.

We headed down a path toward the lake. The body of water was small, maybe the size of two basketball courts. Brush rose at different levels, some three times our height, and the scent of sage, creosote, eucalyptus, decay, and toxic lake filled the air.

Two tiny eyes broke the water’s surface as the path curved to the bank. A knot of gnats hurled our way, whirled around our heads, then departed as quickly as it came.

Such silence here, yet the city bare miles away.

David said, “It’s a fool’s errand.” He meant, of course, the girl with the small face and melted brown-sugar eyes was not here. I hoped she never had been. Some people think that what Tamika does for a living and what I did at one time myself is one rung away from sewer-flow. But there is low and there is lower.

We saw headlights on a high ridge and the outline of a truck against the faint horizon. Ray said, “Stake-bed, occupied five times, two in front. Worker-bees coming home to roost.”

“Not this road,” I said. “That’s another one.”

I looked toward the entrance where we came in and saw nothing. An American coot shot across the lake on tiptoes, leaving a milky wake. The North Star was livening. I saw a hawk slide down an invisible string to the earth.

We heard the tinkling sound again. “It’s close,” Ray said, narrowing his eyes.

I said, “What would you think of getting a dog out here?”

Ray studied me, while David’s face showed hope. “Why bring out the posse?” Ray said. “We don’t even know what we have here, if anything.”

“The department wouldn’t be involved. Believe it or not, I know a handler, a civilian, lives right down the road here, on a street called Hunky Dory Lane.”

“Hunky Dory Lane.”

“It’s true. It’s on the map, I didn’t make it up. Her name is Rosellen Richards. We met four years ago on a hike in the Saddle-backs.”

David said, “You think she’d come?”

“One way to find out,” Ray said, and gave me a wink. Humor him, it said. “We even have scenting material, right, bud? That red sweater.”

A look of great satisfaction that maybe he’d done something right flooded over the boy’s face, as he looked back toward the shack with the debris inside and out.

We trounced back through the brush and grasses. Ahead, a rabbit hopped across the path, halted, became a rock with ears, then bounded off.

Ray retrieved his cell phone from a pocket in the door of his truck, and I dialed Rosellen and I gave her the run-down. She came back with an unqualified, “Sure!”

My two
compadres
stood leaning against the raised porch, ankles crossed like cowhands talking over where to put the next post-hole. I felt curiously heartened, maybe just from the illusion that we were
doing
something. I remembered Rosellen telling me once, “Bloods fall dead last on the intelligence scale out of one hundred forty breeds,” she told me, “but if you can tolerate bad hips, poor eyesight, loud snores, a tendency toward cancer, and fountains of slobber, you’ll have a sweet companion.”

Now she asked, “You want a trail dog or a cadaver dog?”

“Not a body dog. As far as we know it’s not a crime scene, and if it were I wouldn’t want to compromise it.”

“That’s too bad,” she said, “because she’s only trained with pig parts, and I’d sure like to try her on human.”

We returned in the truck to the entrance to wait for her. At one point David said, “You think Binky’s dead, don’t you?”

Ray reached across me and clapped David on the leg. “After this, we ride up to Santa Ana again. Deal?”

“Deal,” the boy said.

Rosellen’s headlights came easing around the big bend on El Toro. When we got her through the gate and Ray was driving back
to the site, he said, “Hmp, she’s pretty.” And she is. Brown hair, good facial construct, and a body shown to advantage in jeans.

At the building, she slid open the door of her van, opened the cage, and brought her hound named Madam. The dog was already drooling great strands of slobber and shivering from excitement. Madam wore a metal-studded Martingale harness that went around her shoulders and between the forelegs to form a Y on the chest. She was alternately pulling on her leash, dancing, and peeing in the road.

“I keep her on six feet of lead and never work without a lantern,” Rosellen said when I warned her of the possibility of hidden barbed wire. She showed us the flashlight on her forearm and clicked it on with a finger.

David gave her Binky’s sweater. She bunched it under Madam’s nose. “
Geo-Say
,” she commanded in Navajo, and Madam took off in a steady tug, the rest of us plowing behind.

She went straight up the porch and into the building, her brindle tail twirling like a pinwheel. When she reached the back room, the dog barked once and once only, but joy shone in her eyes as she looked at her owner.

Rosellen praised her and said, “She found her scent right off. There’s been cases where a dog was so morose from not finding someone she would grieve for days and maybe die. Yes, yes, so they say. Where else now, you want to look?”

We went outside again, and Rosellen gave the “hunt ’em up” command. Madam’s nose was down and her tail twirling as she led us through the bushes in what seemed an aimless way. Willow, mulefat, and castor bean whipped us as we filed through.

Hearing the gentle jingling, Rosellen pulled up and said, “
Kee ki wah
,” then sent her light high across the brush. Ray’s small mag light traced it too. Something gleamed in the chaparral.

“What the hell? Look at this,” Ray said. We came closer and saw dangling from a tree limb a windchime made of
printed-circuit boards bound with copper wire. The chromed edges hit together; the plastic layers gave only a soft tapping.