Roger Smith - Mixed Blood

As she lay there she remembered when she had met Jack Burn. How he had wooed her, pursued her relentlessly. She was young, used to the clumsiness of men, boys really, her own age, and she was no match for this man of nearly forty.

There had been a moment, just before they married, when she felt a momentary chill, as if a cloud had crossed the sun. She panicked. It was all going too fast. Could she really trust this much older man she barely knew?

Jack had done whations always did: took her in his arms and reassured her. Told her he loved her. So they were married, and Matt was born, and she was as fulfilled and happy as she had ever been in her life.

When she found out about Jack’s gambling, she thought her premonition was being realized. But he swore to her he would never gamble again.

She had believed him.

Then came Milwaukee and the series of events that had led her to Cape Town. Now she felt a superstitious dread, an almost karmic presentiment, that her happiness had been a borrowed thing, a thing that had never truly belonged to her, that it had come at a cost to others.

And that a price was yet to be paid.

Burn was at the front door when the landline rang. He was ready to ignore it. He knew it wouldn’t be the kidnapper. But what if it was the clinic? What if there were complications?

He went back and answered. Susan’s voice, distressed.

“Susan, is everything okay? With the baby?”

“Everything’s fine, Jack. I want to speak to Matt.”

Burn had to fight to keep his voice level. “He’s not here.”

“Where is he?” Anxiety tightened her voice.

He heard himself lie. “He’s gone for a walk with Mrs. Dollie. She went down to the store to buy some milk, and he went with her.” It had happened often enough before.

“Is he okay, Jack?”

“Of course he’s okay. Why?”

She hesitated. “I had a bad dream. I dunno. I just felt scared.”

“He’s fine. You’re just… anxious is all. Susan, when are… when will you have the baby?”

“Later today. Sometime after lunch.”

He could hear the distance creeping back into her voice. She was bringing up the barriers again. “Promise me, Jack, that everything is okay with Matty.”

“I promise.”

She hung up.

Burn hated himself more than he had ever hated himself before.

Disaster Zondi breakfasted in his room, his back to the sweeping view of blazing Table Mountain, the harbor, and the Waterfront. He had no use for scenic panoramas. While he ate slices of ruby grapefruit off a small silver fork, he considered the fingerprint and its owner, displayed on the screen of his laptop.

In April 1997 Susan Ford, a student at UCLA, had been arrested in possession of ten grams of marijuana. She had pled guilty to a first-degree misdemeanor and paid a thousand-dollar fine.

That was all he’d gleaned from the FBI database.

Zondi wiped his fingers on ainen napkin before executing the series of keyboard commands that allowed him to zoom in on the girl’s mug shots. Blonde. Pretty. Not looking too fazed at what was going down in her life. In the front view she seemed to be biting back a smile, like she had just shared a joke with the cop shooting the pictures.

Where had Barnard picked up her fingerprint? Was she holidaying in Cape Town, drawn by the mountains and beaches and wine estates like so many foreign tourists? She’d be in her late twenties now, that youthful glow maybe just starting to dim, but she’d still be attractive, he’d bet. He liked that wholesome blonde look.

He was reminded of a boer girl he’d met when he was ending the career of the corrupt commander of a rural police station. She couldn’t get enough of Zondi in her parents’ bed while they were off at Sunday devotions. Each time she had climaxed, she yelled Disaster at the top of her voice. Her father would have echoed those sentiments if he could have seen what was going on between his sheets.

Zondi pushed that thought away, bit into the grapefruit, and winced slightly at the bitterness. He would e-mail a request to U.S. law enforcement, via Interpol, asking for an update on Susan Ford. From prior experience he knew that would take at least a week. If he was lucky.

Zondi had run a check on Deputy U.S. Marshal Dexter Torrance, the man Barnard had e-mailed Susan Ford’s print to. Torrance, a member of the Marshals International Fugitives Task Force, had been in Cape Town a few years ago to escort an American fugitive back home. The fugitive had hanged himself in his cell, and Torrance had ended up accompanying a coffin. The suicide took place at Bellwood South holding cells. Where, no doubt, Barnard and Torrance had met. And become friendly enough for the U.S. marshal to do Barnard a favor. Zondi wondered about the kind of man who would feel an affinity with Rudi Barnard. Probably some redneck who let his sidearm do the talking. No shortage of those, he was sure.

Zondi scrolled his computer to a new page and faced the images of Barnard’s Cape Flats human barbecue. The two unknown men. And the boy, Ronaldo September. Ronnie. At least Mrs. September had been able to bury her child. The charred remains of the men burned with him lay in the police morgue awaiting their inevitable disposal in a pauper’s graveyard.

Forensics had given him very little beyond confirming that the victims were male and, based on surviving dental work, possibly in their twenties. They had found a. 38 slug still lodged in what was left of the abdomen of the tall man. It didn’t match the. 38 bullet they found in Ronnie September.

Two men in their twenties. Most likely from the Cape Flats. Most likely gangsters, given the world in which Barnard ran. Something occurred to Zondi, and he shifted windows, his fingers moving with deft certainty on the keyboards. There. Two nights before he disappeared, Barnard had put out an APB on a car, a red 1992 BMW 3 series with a CY registration plate. Wealthy Cape Town and the downtown area carried CA license plates; the working-class suburbs and the Cape Flats that sprawled north and east of the city carried CY plates.

So Barnard was looking for an early-nineties Beemer, car of choice for Flats gangbangers. It would seem that he had found it.

With two men inside.

Burn dove the Jeep up the hill toward the house, on his way back from the banks in Sea Point. Lion’s Head was above him to his right, etched against the blue sky. The slopes were blackened, and smoke rose like a funeral pyre. The helicopters were gone, but the wind was picking up, ready to carry sparks to the dry brush. The choppers wouldn’t rest for long.

Burn had the money crammed into a duffel bag on the seat beside him. It was after ten, and he had heard nothing from the kidnapper. He slowed outside his house, thumbing the garage door opener. Burn eased the Jeep into the garage. He stepped down from the car and reached across for the bag of money.

Out of the corner of his eye Burn glimpsed the silhouette of a man as he ducked under the descending garage door. The door bumped as it hit the cement floor. The man was locked in with him.

Instinctively, Burn swung the duffel bag. The man was fast. He grabbed the bag with his left hand, deflected it, and pushed Burn back against the car.

It was then, when a shaft of light from the small window above the garage door struck the man’s face, that Burn saw the livid scar and the empty eye socket. The watchman from the building site next door. In that moment everything made sense to Burn. The ugly freak had spied on them. He’d broken in and killed Mrs. Dollie and kidnapped Matt.

All the pent-up fear and rage exploded in Burn, and he went for the bastard’s throat. His fingertips had just brushed the watchman’s neck when he took a massive blow in the abdomen and fell to his knees, useless. He knew now that the watchman would take the money and disappear. And he would never see his son again. Then, as he was gasping for breath, he saw the watchman squat down in front of him, their faces almost level, the dark man looking at him like he was some alien life-form.