T. Parker: The Jaguar

“I think Charlie’s blown Mike out of proportion in order to justify his own madness.”

“He put his life on the line for us. Is that what you mean by mad?”

Bradley shrugged and drank. “Charlie needs a quest. Human nature. Why not make it Mike? Mike isn’t innocent. He’s dangerous. I know that now.”

Erin sipped the wine and set one hand over her middle. “Well, when Charlie’s hair grows back, the scar won’t even show.”

“In his mind it will show.”

After a long moment Bradley put his hand on hers. It was another of the many acts of tenderness that he had offered since returning home. She had offered him not one. Still just the idea of her affection arced brightly across a dark gap inside him.

“We’re all carrying new things now,” Erin said.

That night they slept in separate beds again, and in the morning when Bradley came in from his early trenching Erin was gone.

Her note was brief:

Dear Bradley,

I cannot find enough love for you to take us through the coming days. I have searched and waited and searched and waited. When I think back on our joy and passion I see that they were based on lies, but they remain the standards of my heart. I used to have a dream of us, a belief. I will try to find that belief again. Whatever happens to us, your son will always be yours; I will see to that. Nothing can take him away from us.

Erin

Hood watched the operator swing the heavy bucket back over the hole, then lower it in. The excavator shuddered and roared. The rams hissed and the bucket rose, Buenavista rock and sand pouring through its teeth. Dwayne backed and swiveled the Cat, then rolled down the road. He dumped the load on the opposite side of Hood’s big lot, where there was already quite a hill forming. Dust rose.

Hood sat in the morning shade on his patio with a sweating pitcher of iced tea on the table. Also there were some notebooks and his laptop and Mike Finnegan’s laptop, recently configured by ATF tech wizards to accept the password of Hood’s choosing. So far Hood had found many interesting things on the heavy, battered little machine: voluminous files in Mandarin Chinese, Greek, and Spanish. Much of this material seemed travel-oriented-air schedules and fares, hotels and restaurants, tips from pros, blogs by tourists. The scarcer English-language files were mostly natural history articles focusing on a wide range of subjects, from the “earth star,” a North American fungus commonly found in damp areas near conifers and sometimes eucalyptus, to incomprehensible astronomical predictions stretching from the present into future centuries.

He looked down at his sleeping dog and touched his fingertip to the scar that ran just above his hairline. It was raised and relatively neat, with the plastic stitches taken from inside. Now, sixteen days after the cutting, it itched incessantly.

The Veracruz doctors had shaved and stitched him and dripped him full of antibiotics and turned him over to a U.S. consulate staffer named Bonnie. Josie had visited him often. Soriana flew down from San Diego, and later came Beth, who had to have an immediate look at the wound-“hmmm,” and the Mexican needlework-“excellent.” Veracruz Police interviewed him twice. Hood had invented a story about a crazed M. Doblado mugger, believed by neither of the detectives, but he stuck to it and never contradicted himself and that was that. He understood that the Veracruz Municipal Police were eager to be rid of him. Five days after the knifing he was home.

“Charlie, I officially give up,” said Beth. “I can’t think about it anymore. But I’ll do it. I’ll try to make the arrangement work.”

“I think the arrangement can work, Beth. I don’t see a better way.”

“All righty then.” She looked at Hood doubtfully, then out toward the excavator. “Think Dwayne will get mad if I look in the hole again?”

“I think he’d like it.”

Beth moved through the adamant fall sunshine to the excavation site, Daisy trotting at her side. Hood watched her walk. She was wearing cargo shorts and a tank and sandals and a big straw hat against the sun. When she got to the edge of the cavern she turned and squinted back at him, a smile on her face. She squatted on her haunches and looked down. She had already asked Dwayne twice to stop the job, slid down into the growing cavern and retrieved one very nice slab of petrified wood and several rough rocks studded with ancient shellfish. Beth was an enthused collector of rocks, shells, bones, fossils, and bird nests, though she was in Hood’s opinion a bit of a pack rat. Dwayne backed up the big Cat 245 and swung the bucket safely away, lit a smoke.

A while later she climbed back out with a heavy bounty stowed in her upturned blouse. She set the treasures on the picnic table one at a time. Hood examined a piece of petrified wood that would clean up nicely with some water and a brush. Beth looked skeptically at the other rocks, nothing truly wonderful, then moved her gaze to Hood.

“It’s funny that you’re calling this add-on a wine cellar.”

Hood nodded. “It says so, right on the drawings.”

“An underground wine cellar with three rooms, big enough for ten thousand bottles.”

“That’s right.”

“Plumbing and electric, bath and kitchen.”

“By all means.”

“And heating and air-conditioning with back-up generators, and six-foot concrete walls and double reinforcement bar.”

“The walls are only three feet thick, Beth.”

“But there are two of them smack up against each other and iron plates in between. And the seismic stuff. And the catwalk over it. And the grates, so you can see into every room without having to even leave your house. Do you plan to watch the wine age?”

“It will be secure.”

She sighed and smiled slightly, letting him off her hook. “Well, I am surprised and happy that you bought a home in Buenavista. I wish the reasons were somewhat simpler. But we’ve been over it and that’s the last I’ll say.”

“It’s best.”

She took his chin and turned his head slightly so she could look at the cut. “Well, you might be half crazy but you’re healing up good and clean.”

“I don’t believe I’m half crazy.”

“I really don’t either. But I think you could become that way.”

He nodded. They sat and watched Dwayne carve away the earth. Hood felt the sun on his legs and it was good.

He had almost nodded off when Beth put both her hands on his face. He opened his eyes to see her up close, studying him. Her fingers were cool.

“I worry about you, Charlie. Don’t let Mike take you over. He isn’t your superior. My training won’t let me believe he’s what you think he is, but I’ve been wrong before. Maybe what we call him doesn’t matter. Don’t let what he did to you and your friends determine your whole life, just part of it. Charlie Hood is the biggest and most important part of you. So take care of you. I’ll help within reason. But I have my limits, and I’ve got me to consider too. I listen to my heart, not the other way around.”

“I know. That’s good and true and as it should be. I love and treasure you, Beth.”

Her fingers trailed off his face as Hood looked out to the east where the dirt road climbed from the flat desert into the hills. A vehicle came forward dragging a cloud of dust behind it and there was no leisure as it barreled toward them.

A moment later Erin climbed from the SUV and Hood and Beth walked into the shade of the carport to greet her.