The Triggerman Dance (22 page)

Holt: She's right.

John
: At some point I need to go back to the trailer and see if anything's left. I mean, I don't want to burden you with that.

Holt
: Understood. We'll do it before we leave, give you a hand if you want.

John
: I'd like to bury Rusty out there, too.

Holt
: With honors.

John
: That would be great.

"That would be just one-hundred percent totally fucking great," Weinstein whispered. "I'd scream right now, but I'm afraid they'd hear me."

"You can bellow all the way back to Orange County." "Maybe I will."

But he didn't. Instead, while Dumars drove, Josh called Norton in Washington and told him that Wayfarer was now the proud owner of Owl, Joshua's chosen code name for John.

"All the Hollywood stuff, go down okay?" Norton asked.

"One take."

"How'd it look?" "Rated X for violence."

"You didn't get the live rounds and blanks mixed up? The girl didn't rip Sammy's blood bag off his shoulder?"

"It was perfect."

"Rusty die nobly?"

"Yeah, he was great."

"Fast?"

"Instantly."

"You know that dog cost us seven thousand, four hundred dollars? That's room, board and training for three years. Club and Fang actually let us amortize him because we wouldn't be sending him back. Those wags."

"Club and Fang sent us one perfect dog."

"True. Things here are odd, Josh. Frazee can't get enough of Wayfarer and Owl. He's old enough to confuse one with the other half the time—you know how Crazy could never keep the code names straight? Anyway, he's riding this one like a jockey. He's good for the money, so long as I let him feel involved. It's like having a banker involved in your remodel. You need the loan but you wish he wouldn't hang around the job site."

"How bad could he jam us?"

"He holds the Hate Crimes purse. You know that."

"I also know he goes all the way back to Quantico with Wayfarer. Student and professor, by way of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints."

"He believes his ongoing interest is atonement for Wayfarer's lapse. Frazee is atoning vigorously. He actually mentioned ATF—some crack about letting them storm the walls of Liberty Ridge once and for all. A joke, of course. But I think it's obvious he doesn't just want to bust Wayfarer—he wants to humiliate the living shit out of him too."

"If Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms gets within one mile of this case you'll have my resignation."

"What could that possibly matter to Walker Frazee?"

"Christ, Norton, we can't let ATF into this! It's—"

"—We're not letting ATF into this, we're just letting Crazy Frazee pass gas. Now, next we put Owl's toys in place, right?"

"Goddamn,
Norton. Don't say things like that to me."

"It doesn't hurt for you to know where the wind's blowing back here."

"From a windbag. I just can't believe he'd even joke about—"

"—Hush, son. I said I'd take care of Walker and I'll take care of Walker. Now, do we put Owl's toys in place?"

"Yeah, if Frazee keeps the Bat Boys off the walls long enough to—"

"—Joshua, comport yourself professionally, please."

"Yes,
we deliver the toys. And we start to leak news of our prime suspect."

"Blow the smoke, young man."

"Sharon will actually do the blowing, sir."

"Well, tell her I could say something that would get me disciplined as a sexual predator."

Weinstein told her.

"You're a dirty old lecher," Dumars piped across the car toward the phone, smiling but her face quite red.

"Tell her thank you, Joshua."

He told her.

Back in the Tech Services yard, Weinstein collected his tape and binoculars and checked the van with the services clerk. The billet was already stamped with a direct Washington charge number, the Bureau version of a credit line. The clerk nodded reverently to Joshua as he accepted the keys, and Weinstein nodded back at him.

Then he did something he had never done before. Without stating a business-related reason, without pulling rank, without even asking her to do the driving, Joshua asked Sharon Dumars to an early dinner—his treat.

Sharon noted his flushed face, the tightened bobbing of his Adam's apple.

"I wish I could, Josh, but I've got plans tonight. Another time?"

He blushed even more deeply, but smiled. It was the non-smile of Joshua's, she saw—mirthless, forced and false.

"Sure," he said. "Whatever."

Early the winter when John was nine, his parents flew their new plane to visit friends in Oregon.

John stood beside the dinner table one evening as his father traced their itinerary on a map—air route in red, ground stops shown by black circles. He listened to them talk about the flight; he helped them pack.

A few weeks before their departure, he made an amulet from a fossilized sea shell, three redtailed hawk feathers, a dried thistle pod and a strip of wild gourd tendril he gathered with some forethought in a local wilderness now called Liberty Ridge. John prayed that God would instill the amulet with protective properties and not come apart.

He and his uncle Stan watched the little Piper lift off from the Martin Aviation strip and groan into the air. John could smell his mother's perfume, still on his cheek from her lengthy parting kisses. She had worn the amulet around her neck, holding it to her breast as she knelt to kiss him to keep it from getting crushed He could still see his father's ramrod straight back as he walked across the tarmac in his silk flight jacket, heading for the plan The weather was cool and clear. They would be gone one week

That night, Stan and his wife, Dorrie, were expansive, gracious, amusing. But Stan took a phone call midway through dinner, and when he came back to the table he was preoccupied and subdued. Later, John watched some television and saw them the kitchen, talking intently. Dorrie's face was resolutely tragic.

Stan seemed to be trying to talk her out of something, imploring her, palms up, head shaking, ending his plea with a thumb hooked out toward John. Then Stan joined him in the den with a massive amber cocktail.

The next day around noon, Stan and Dorrie broke the news: John's parents had lost radio contact late the afternoon before, and had not been seen or heard from since. It could mean a hundred things, Stan told him. Most likely, his impulsive father simply set down early to wait out the storm. Yes, a fairly good sized storm had blown down from Alaska. With all the interference, radio contact is first to go, anyway. Just a matter of sitting tight and waiting to hear. You know how your father can be.

The plane was listed as missing and presumed down. Search and rescue aircraft couldn't penetrate the storm front, which was all the way south to Fresno by then. That evening, as the first gale-driven drops of rain roared against Uncle Stan's roof, John stood at a window and realized—with a huge wave of relief— that no amount of raindrops could foul his father's plans. He hadn't called because the phone lines were down, too. It was reassuring, almost amusing, to watch Stan and Dorrie fret like hens. John had seen the truth already. He could clearly imagine the yellow Piper emerging through a black wall of clouds, guided by the amulet.

For the next eight weeks, through the heart of winter, storms pounded the state. Even the local mountains were buried in snow. John was treated with all the privilege and dignity of the bereaved. He met with relatives he'd hardly known. He was asked about plans. Everything fine with Stan and Dorrie? You are courageous and we're proud of you.

His schoolmates, as if all coached by the same powerful figure, offered a sort of quiet respect to John. They kept away from him. One day on the playground when a little plane flew over, John stopped to watch it and the noon-duty supervisor, unbidden, wrapped a huge perfumed arm around his shoulders and started to weep. He told the woman "hold your mud"—a favorite expression of his father's—then walked off to the far corner of the school yard to get away from all these lugubrious, presuming fools.

By late June the snowpack had melted back enough to reveal the yellow Piper.

Stan and Dorrie drove him up to the Siskiyou County morgue, to identify and claim the bodies. It was a long ride from Orange County, punctuated by Dorrie's breakdowns. John bought a pair of "Jackelope" postcards from a diner up on 395 addressing one each to his mother and father and writing out a brief message: "Be home soon."

There was some unutterable problem at the morgue. Stan and Dorrie consulted with the Sheriff-Coroner's deputy until Dorrie retreated to the lobby sofa, blubbering incoherently. Stan disappeared with another deputy, then returned to the lobby sheet-white.

"I just can't say, for sure," Stan confessed.

"I can," said John. "They're my parents."

The deputy would have none of it. John was too young— both legally and emotionally—to make a valid identification. The Sheriff himself stepped in and called the party of three back to his office. His deputy explained the circumstance. The Sheriff was a big man with a bored but honest face, and John appreciate! that the Sheriff did not look at him like a dying patient.

"You're willing to do this, young man?"

"I've said so several times, sir."

The identification room was small and official. It had four chairs along one wall, a sink and a faucet. Two large boxes of tissue sat on a counter, beside an arrangement of plastic flower in a gray vase.

A morgue tech entered through a large sliding door on the opposite side of the chairs, pulling a wheeled gurney behind him He looked at John and the Sheriff, then excused himself and returned shortly with another.

"They were exposed to fire, then the elements for sometime," he said.