The Boys from Santa Cruz (26 page)

No, better to let it end here. But not quite yet, not until I get to see my grandparents again.

Asmador should be back with their heads any time now.

Tapocketa tapocketa ka-chunk.

Open lid, turn page of book, place book facedown on glass, push down lid to flatten book, press big green button.

Tapocketa tapocketa ka-chunk.

Open lid, turn page…place book…flatten book…green button.

Tapocketa tapocketa ka-chunk…

Pender and Epstein were in a rhythm now, slaving over a hot photocopier in the windowless room in the back of the Marshall County sheriff’s station, where they kept the office equipment. Laura Baldinger had agreed to let Pender enlarge Luke Sweet’s Pocket Pal diary for the purposes of the investigation, on the condition that he return it to her at the crime scene as soon as they’d finished.

“Here’s you,” Pender exclaimed, reading from a floppy, still-warm sheet of copier paper.
“A skinny guy with fading reddish brown hair.…Skip Epstein. …Bounty hunter.”
Pender glanced up at him. “Bounty hunter?”

Skip reddened—with his fair complexion, he’d always blushed easily—then flipped back through his copy of the sheets. “And here’s
you. A huge fat guy wearing a loud sport coat and one of those stupid little checked hats with feathers in the brim.”

Pender took off his trusty hat and turned it around a few times. “Looks fine to me,” he said, just as his cell phone began playing “Moon River” in his pants pocket.

A practiced hand by now, Pender flipped the phone open with a flourish while Skip continued to work the copier. “Pender here. …Uh-huh. …Uh-huh. …That didn’t take long. …Yeah, I understand. Okay, shoot. …Really?…That explains the smell. …Thanks, Doc, I—No, nothing from Cal-ID yet. I’ll let you know the minute I hear anything. …You bet. Thanks again. …Bye.”

He keyed the End Call button, snapped the phone closed, turned to Skip. “That was Dr. Flemm, the M.E. He’s reasonably convinced he’s got the cause of death for our deceased friend—provisional of course, pending blood work and toxicology, but he says so far, everything points to gangrene from a crushed ankle.”

The phone, still in his hand, went off again. Pender, who was heartily sick of “Moon River” by this time, gave Skip the upraised, sorry-gotta-take-this forefinger. “Pender here. …Oh, hi. …Tell me you have good news for— No kidding? Out-
standing
! Fast work! Hold on just a second. …Okay, shoot,” he said, notebook at the ready, pencil stub poised, cell phone jammed between his shoulder and his ear. But a puzzled look crossed his face at what must have been the caller’s first words, and the pencil didn’t move.

“Wait a minute, there must be some kind of mistake. Are we talking about a match from the card
I
sent you, or are we talking about the latent prints from the barn?…Oh, you haven’t? How good is the match?…That good…? Thanks, I guess.” He snapped the phone shut, then dropped it back into the side pocket of his jacket.

“What is it?” said Skip. “What’s going on?”

Dazedly: “That was Cal-ID. They got a ten-by-ten match on the dead guy.”

“And?”

“It was him, it was Sweet.”

Stunned didn’t quite cover Skip’s response; flabbergasted was closer. “Luke Sweet?” he said, his mind flashing back to last night’s dream.

“Little Luke himself, dead and in person. Ten-point match on all ten fingers—that makes the probability somewhere around ninety-nine point nine percent.”

“What’s the point one percent?” was all Skip’s muddled brain could come up with.

“Clerical error,” said Pender, as his phone began chirping yet again. “Pender here. …Oh, hi, Laurel. We’re just about finished
with— You did? Can we— Okay, yeah, sure.” He checked his watch: it was straight-up noon. “See you in about half an hour.”

“What now?” Skip asked.

“One of the CS techs found a second journal buried in the dirt in the back of the barn. Luke again, but the new one’s only ten pages or so, in regular-size handwriting. Laurel says we can look it over as soon as they’re done dusting it.”

“I can hardly wait,” murmured Skip, glancing over the last page of the Pocket Pal. “Maybe it’ll help us make some sense out of this,” he added, then read the final entry, which was hand-printed in capital letters, aloud to Pender:

“To Asmador: Your mission, by order of the Infernal Council, is to exact revenge for all slights and injustices visited upon Luke Sweet, Jr., by the traitors named herein. You will know neither peace nor rest until vultures have feasted on their remains.”

“What the fuck?” said Pender.

“My sentiments exactly,” said Skip.

April…something. Who knows, who cares. This is probably my last entry. I can’t feel my leg below the knee anymore, and every time I drop off to sleep, I sink a little deeper, stay a little longer, and come back a little weaker than the time before.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I have some good memories. Eating Marianne’s ice cream with my mother. Riding the Giant Dipper 67 times in a row. Making love with Shawnee, waist-deep in the sparkling river.

And at least I’m at peace, which is more than you can say for Fred and Evelyn. Asmador brought their heads back yesterday in plastic grocery bags and set them up on a plank so I can see them from where I’m lying. Judging
by the expression on their faces, their mouths wide open and screaming and their eyes practically popping out of their heads, those two were anything but peaceful at the end.

Serves ’em right: they should have treated me better when they had the chance. They
all
should have treated me better. And now, thanks to Asmador, who just left for the Marshall City library to research the current whereabouts of Judge Brobauer, they’re all going to pay.

How’s that for a happy ending?

Yours truly, Luke Sweet, Jr., Murphy’s Farm, Marshall County, California, USA, North America, Western Hemisphere, Earth, the Galaxy, the Universe, and whatever lies beyond.

A little more than an hour after losing their prime suspect, whose death had provided him with the most unimpeachable alibi of all, the ad hoc investigative duo of Pender and Epstein left Marshall County in Pender’s dust-covered, dirt-spattered rental car, with Skip behind the wheel and Pender working the cell phone.

“Dr. Gallagher, it’s Ed Pender from the FBI, I spoke to you Wednesday? Sorry to bother you at home, but it’s urgent.…Oh, please, don’t give it another thought. We all made assumptions. You assumed Luke Sweet was dead, I assumed he was our killer. Turns out we were both wrong.…No, according to this new journal he didn’t even kill his grandparents.…I was hoping
you’d
be able tell
us.
You said there were four people unaccounted for,
two orderlies, two inmates.…Right, the other inmate.…Sure, I’ll wait.”

“She’s looking it up in her computer,” he had time to whisper to Skip before Dr. Gallagher came back on the line. “That was quick,” he told her, notebook at the ready. “Okay, shoot.…Is that
M
for Mike or
N
for November? Right, got it. Do you have any other information about him? Relatives, home address.…Okay, I’ll be here.”

Pender closed the phone, glanced over at Skip. “We’ve got a name. Charles Mesker. With an
M.
She’s going to get back to me with the address where they shipped the so-called remains.”

He leaned over and turned the radio back up. Driving with Pender, Skip had already learned, involved a heavy dose of sing-along oldies. Pender rocked around the clock, got his thrill on Blueberry Hill, and was wakin’ up little Susie just outside Vacaville when his cell phone began chirping yet again. He reached over and turned down the radio, then out came the notebook and half-chewed pencil stub. “Okay, shoot.…Right, right.” Scribbling busily. “Got it. Thank you, Dr. Gallagher. I imagine we’ll be in touch.”

He closed the phone and turned to Skip. “Mesker’s next of kin were his parents. They still live in Santa Cruz. We should probably go check them out.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, tonight. You know, just in case.”

“Just in case what?” asked Skip, as he pulled out of the slow lane to overtake a little old lady from Pasadena on a long straightaway.

“Just in case son Charles is holed up there. He wouldn’t be the first fugitive in history to run home to Mommy and Daddy.”

Even with the accelerator pedal floored, it took the Toyota half a mile to put Granny in the rearview mirror. “Okay, you’re on,” Skip told Pender. “But first I want to stop by my apartment to change my clothes and pick up the Buick. I’m also thinking maybe we ought to call your friend Klug and arrange for backup.”

Pender laughed and clapped Skip encouragingly on his uninjured shoulder. “What do we need backup for?” he said. “We’ve already got him outnumbered two to one.”

There’d been no time to pack Friday afternoon, no time to plan, barely time for Asmador to toss the money and what was left of the weed into the trunk of the BMW and haul ass before the cops showed up at Murphy’s farm. Luckily the dirt road leading from the barn to the county road curved behind the hills to the north, blocking the view of the retreating Beemer from the deputies, so Asmador had gotten away clean, and was well into the next county by the time the cops finished setting up their roadblocks behind him.

“That was a close one,” he’d muttered, talking aloud to keep himself company.

“You think?” A voice from the backseat.

Startled, Asmador had glanced up at the rearview mirror, where he saw the reflection of a handsome, redheaded youth grinning at him mischievously. “Eyes front,” Sammael had remarked as a car horn blared. Asmador had turned back again, discovered he’d drifted into the lane of oncoming traffic, and jerked the wheel to the right just in time to avoid a head-on collision with a black Jetta. He’d caught a glimpse of the chalk white face of the other driver as the Jetta shot by.

“That was close,” the Poison Angel had said calmly; somehow he’d magically transported himself into the front passenger seat.

“What are you doing here?”

“The Council sent me. They are mightily p.o.’d.”

“The Book! I left the Book in the barn!”

Sammael had winked broadly. “Lucky for you, you have friends in low places. Bear in mind, though: this is a one-time only deal. You fuck up again, you’re on your own. Oh, and by the way, you stink to high heaven, as the saying goes. Better get out of those clothes before they arrest you as a health hazard.”

Then he was gone, and in his place, lying on the bucket seat, had been a perfect copy of the Book, identical to it in every aspect but one. This simulacrum was perpetually on fire, bathed in lambent blue flames that flickered and danced like heat lightning across its surface, but like the flames of the burning bush in Exodus, failed to consume it, or even scorch the leather upholstery on which it lay.

There were several messages on the answering machine in Skip’s kitchen. The last was from Warren Brobauer, thanking Skip for his work and sacrifice on the family’s behalf, hoping he was recovering from his ordeal, and notifying him that, insofar as the authorities finally seemed to have the situation in hand, his professional services were no longer required.

The apartment, meanwhile, was a wreck. Yellow tape, fingerprint powder, overturned furniture, chalk marks, evidence flags. Maybe the maid could come in a few days early next week, Skip started to tell himself, then remembered suddenly that she was dead—that was
her
blood in the hallway. And she wasn’t just a maid, anyway—she was
Anna.
Anna of the warm brown eyes and the thousand-watt smile and the valiant broken English; Anna who’d washed his underpants and scrubbed his toilet for five years; Anna who’d been gunned down and stuffed into a closet like a sack of old clothes. So to hell with Warren and his money and his
good wishes, thought Skip—Epstein Investigative Services was in this one for the duration, client or no client.

“I’m going to change my clothes,” he told Pender. “Feel free to help yourself to the good Scotch. It’ll go to waste otherwise.”

“You don’t drink?”

“I can’t,” Skip called over his shoulder as he limped down the hallway. “It’s all the acetaminophen in the Norco I take. My doctor says if I have one drink, even a beer, my poor liver will go belly-up like a dead salmon.”

After washing down two of the aforementioned Norco with a slug of tap water, Skip changed into a clean pair of chinos and a freshly laundered (by Anna!) blue oxford-cloth shirt, and retrieved the kidney holster containing his 9mm Beretta Parabellum from the shoe box on the top shelf of his closet before returning to the kitchen.

“You have a license for that thing?” Pender wanted to know.

“Sure do,” said Skip, clipping the holster to the back of his belt.

“Any good with it?”

“Pretty good. How about you?”

“As far as the Bureau’s concerned, I’m range-qualified,” said Pender. “But you remember those two shots I fired to scare away the buzzards yesterday?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I missed the sky. Twice.”

Leaving Marshall County one step ahead of the law, Asmador had driven north, for no particular reason, and after stopping at the Wal-Mart to purchase a complete change of clothes—another
denim shirt, another pair of jeans, another denim jacket—he’d spent Friday night in a rustic, trailer court–style motel with detached bungalows just outside of Red Bluff.

The square, low-ceilinged, wood-paneled room had been furnished with twin beds covered with musty old striped blankets, and had smelled of Pine-Sol and mold. Asmador had smelled of sweat and corpse until he treated himself to a long, hot shower. He’d slept poorly, dreaming of soaring vultures outlined against a scarlet sky, and had awakened in the dark. The only light in the room issued from the television, where the image of the Poison Angel grinned out at him from behind what looked like a news anchor’s desk.

“And in news of the Underworld,” Sammael had reported “authorities in the Blasted Land tonight revealed the identity of
your
next victim.”