The Juan Doe Murders: A Smokey Brandon Thriller (23 page)

“Somebody’s cute trail marker,” Rosellen said.

Madam pulled us onward. She broke into a lope and Rosellen had to call her down a bit. The dog went a few more yards pulling hard, then stopped, was absolutely silent, dropped her hindquarters and urinated.

“Big-time find,” Rosellen whispered.

With a fair moon now overhead, Ray said, “Let’s shut the lights.” Another gentle gust of wind and a tinkling of PCB chimes, stereophonic now.

We eased around a broad stand of pampas towering fifteen feet high, and made out an entryway built into the side of a cutaway hill. The front was shielded with a door made of close-set cane—
arundo donax
, to be exact. Rosellen dropped a hand to Madam’s back. The animal shivered from one end to the other.

Then a stubby hand slid the cane door back, and a voice sounded from within.

“Welcome to my humble jumble,” Cheng said.

TWENTY-NINE

C
heng held a pistol. A .40 or .45. He was a lefty.

“Greg!” David cried hoarsely.

Rosellen commanded, “
Ko Coween, Ko Coween
,” meant to quiet her growling dog whose rigid form seemed ready to burst from its platform of earth.

Cheng’s gaze took in Ray. This one was the threat. This one.

I moved tighter up to Ray so I could hide my hand as I slipped it into my pocket. Cheng said, “We meet again. You are trespassing on private property. You must leave.”

Binky came forward from the shadows behind Greg, her eyes large, luminous, and void. She had the Bugs Bunny shirt on.

David cried out her name. Madam barked, her tail flicking madly, her rear portion carried side to side with the force of the movement. Rosellen stilled her and slowly moved backward. Yanking Binky under his arm, Greg held her there and told us again to leave.

Ray flicked on his flashlight, Binky tugged away from Cheng’s hold, and Cheng divided his attention.

That’s all that was needed. Ray was in motion, leaping forward, striking out for the weapon. The flashlight plopped into the brush and stared like a wild eye.

In the next few moments there was yelling, grunting, growling, and barking, and what I knew for sure was that Binky had fled into David’s arms by nearly running over me, Rosellen was shouting “
Ko Coween!
” to Madam yards away, and I stood jostling for a good mark with my gun pointed ahead. What was behind
Cheng, in the cave? Know your target, know your target: That was my training and I couldn’t let go.

Cheng collapsed onto the ground, knocking the raft of cane down on top of them. The pistol exploded, the sound deafening, even outdoors.

My heart leapt. Where was Ray? I plunged forward, heaved the cane door off them with my left arm and shoulder, and aimed my weapon at Cheng’s temple. “Give it up, give it up!” I screamed.

Then Ray was on him, jerking Cheng’s pistol away. He put a knee on Cheng’s arm, while Cheng screamed in pain and dug fingers into the earth.

Ray dropped the gun’s magazine, ejected the round in the chamber, then tossed the weapon aside. He smacked Cheng with an open hand, then a backhand in quick succession, and yelled, “Pull down on me, will ya, you worthless piece o’ shit!”

He rolled Cheng over, feeling for other weapons. Cheng made the mistake of moving. Ray smacked him again and ended his search with a heavy kick to Cheng’s buttocks.

It made me wince, but what the public doesn’t know nor would want to accept is that kicking a subject is an allowable increment in “level-of-force” technique. Wiggle a finger, breathe too hard, you get clobbered. I said, “We got him, Ray. He’s done.”

Ray pulled back. “Stay there and don’t move, you little shit.”

Cheng stayed still as a stump. Ray grabbed up his flashlight and shone it in the hutch while we both still covered Cheng. Inside were several storage boxes and flats of soda cans.

“I own this property! You’re trespassing! I’ll have you arrested.”

“Arrest
this
, you slimey piece o’ puke,” Ray said, and kicked him again, this time in the thigh. Cheng yelped.

Then gunfire with a hot-yellow flash tore through the darkness. I threw myself to the ground and rolled. Ray jumped inside the cave, then darted out again, crouching. Greg Cheng was gone, and branches were switching.

Another blast flared, but I knew it wasn’t from Cheng: not the sound of a .45; something lighter. A second shot, and I heard the round pass through the bushes. I flattened to the ground and let out a grunt of relief when I realized I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t shoot for shit.

“You all right?” Ray said from his spot.

“Yes,” I whispered.

Over by the cabin a terrible howling lanced the night: Madam, having her say. I silently begged that Rosellen, David, and Binky were safe. A second howl set hairs on end. Ray made his way to my side. “Two o’clock,” he said. I nodded. The shooter at two, with us the center of target.

“It’s not Cheng. Who the hell is it?”

We eased away, cutting a crescent in the direction that would bring us behind the shooter. Ray stopped, touched my collarbone with a finger and pointed back toward the cabin. He’d keep going, take a ridge that ran parallel but more in line with the shooter.

“Keep your head down,” he whispered.

Beyond the ridge, a car ignition ground and caught and a radio came on, a guy singing how he was a ramblin’ man. Just as suddenly, it cut off. There was another way in, then, maybe an off-shoot of the road the stake-bed truck used. That was why Cheng was here yet we saw no other cars. “He’s leaving,” I said.

“Don’t count on it,” Ray said. Then his finger went to his lips to shush me. I heard it too: a woman’s voice, thin and plaintive. Then the sound of splashing. Again Ray pointed back toward the building. I’d go after the splash, counter-clockwise. “Can you handle it?”

“No problem,” I said, and believed it, whatever
it
was.

I slipped through brush made anemic by the moonlight, disturbing a grasshopper who rode the top of a shaft of grass. At a break in the scrub, I saw them: Binky, ten yards from shore at four o’clock if I was at six, trying to elude a man who kept reaching for her. Then another form on the bank at three o’clock, pulling off his shoes and diving in—David, trying to reach her.

Madam was in the water, lunging forward, springing back, lunging, barking, at four-thirty: Rosellen had lost hold of her lead.

Ray was somewhere at what should be about eleven o’clock, soon to set upon the man who caused the night to tear apart.

The path I had to take to avoid being seen from the ridge lost me my sight-line to the water. I came out at a clearing near the bank some thirty yards from Madam. Rosellen had the sense to hide herself low behind a tree. There was a fury of splashing, and now I saw David struggling with the man in the water. The guy socked David on the back of the neck. He dunked face forward in the water, then struggled to rise.

I saw the assailant’s face. Hector Lizzaraga. He reached out and pulled Binky up out of the water by the hair, her gasps like the sucking heaves of an ocean. “Back off! I’ll drownd her. I’ll drownd the fucking bitch!”

“Leave her alone!” Dave shouted.

Lizzaraga cranked an arm around Binky’s neck and walked her backward in the water. They rose on what must have been an underwater hump, then rapidly sank lower. She slipped and splashed down. Lizzaraga lost his grip.

Blam-blam!
A cop’s shot, a double-tap. Ray.

Lizzaraga flew back, caving into the water.

Madam, sprung crazy and brave with her own hoarse fear, crashed forward into the water, her leash leaping like a snake being dragged to death. Tearing out from behind the tree, Rosellen called, “
Noweta!
Madam,
noweta!
”

David stumbled for Binky and lifted her out of the water. He dragged her to shore, glancing back to see if the hated form would rise again. Izzy did lift his face from the water, hovered there, moaning, and tried to inch forward and away from Madam, who turned sharply in her paddling then to follow Binky.

I didn’t understand at first when I heard Ray’s voice call out, “Put the gun down,
now!
”

“
Que mosca te pico?
What’s the matter,
compadre?
I got no problem with you.” It was Julio! The little guy. Now I saw them. Ray was crouched, gun leveled in the direction of the ridge. Julio glided along the ridgetop toward a stand of brush.

“Stand up and die or lay down and live! Your choice, bud!” Ray said, moving forward now. He spoke in Spanish again, the guy who didn’t know Spanish, enough so I knew he had identified himself as an officer.

“I’m on him too,” I said.

Julio called out, “
El pito! Lui e una merda!
”

Ray’s flashlight clicked on, the beam cutting across the void. At last Julio’s arms slowly raised. “Don’t shoot!” he cried in a high-pitched voice. We saw the gun fall to the ground.

David and Binky sat on the porch, she with her red sweater on and he with the blue blanket thrown around his shoulders, repeating “It’s going to be all right.”

Lizzaraga lay inside, cuffed and quaking from cold and pain and fear. Piled onto his face was a wet T-shirt from Julio. Julio had caught him with a round from a .25, a Saturday-night special like we found in the hand of the Nellie Gail victim. He fired low, and he fired twice because the first one scared him. The projectile skated on the water, losing momentum, bounced, broke bone at the supraorbital, then cut across the nasal bone. It bled like a son-of-a-gun even after Lizzaraga submerged himself in the water.

Julio also wore cuffs, brought from Ray’s truck. He said he was sick of it all, sick of Izzy and Greg and the whole business. When he saw the struggle in the water he tried to help.

“You had your hands around a gun, pal. You’re toast,” Ray said, and Julio began to cry. Don’t send me back, he kept saying.

Ray was relentless. While we waited for deputies and emergency technicians he yelled in their faces, asking for
me
, about
my
Does found behind buildings, in culverts, by water tanks, under rocks. But neither one gave an answer. Several times Ray threatened to smack them, Izzy glaring and Julio pleading with his eyes but saying no more.

THIRTY

T
hree weeks after violent events at Oso Lake—that polluted body of water named for a bear though the biggest animal around for many a year had been Madam—I was in my car headed for Camp Pendleton, the marine base at Oceanside.

Along the freeway shoulders, golden California poppies shook violently in the crosswinds. Inland, the smoky-green leaves of Peruvian pepper trees and a shrub named Texas Rangers broke the stark lines of hills. I passed the yellow signs stamped with silhouettes of a family fleeing across the lanes. In daylight they looked different, but still read PROHIBIDO.

Don’t run. Don’t defy the lanes.

Greg Cheng had run. Cheng took a flier all right, but not before I shot into action and raised Boyd Russell from bed and said if he wanted to get the sheriff’s “Attaboy” big-time, here was his chance: Wake a judge and get a phone warrant to confiscate Cheng’s files. Cheng didn’t try to access his funds until that next afternoon, and that’s all the time we needed. His accounts were frozen. He tried it from a remote location, having enough sense not to return to his apartment, but we had him.

Sort of. He could not be located by either of the two case investigators. That sickened David. David kept saying, “He’s
out
there,” striking the heel of his hand on his leg. And we would say we knew, we knew, but he’d be brought up yet, on whatever, whenever.

I turned into the guard gate at Pendleton and gained admittance from a peach-fuzz youth in combat boots and khaki, then took a
road past signs reading TANK XING, TROOP CROSSING, and BATTLE SIMULATION CENTER. Camouflage nets hung over tents, tanks, and other military vehicles nested in pull-outs from the road.

I drove by a sign pointing the way to Cockleburr Beach, out-pacing a cadre of bicyclists outfitted in glow-in-the-dark riding outfits and half-shell helmets. A crow in my path nearly stood on its beak in a puddle to go after something tasty.