Т Паркер - The Last Good Guy

A few seconds later, the screen split in half for the camera-one feed — two date pickers trundling from one of the storage sheds with empty wicker baskets in both hands. They were talking. Waves of heat shimmered around them. Dale Clevenger’s video was very clear. As if on cue, camera four came to life on the laptop screen when an authentic wasp landed on it, legs straddling the lens, wings fanning in the sunlight as it checked things out.

By then, my disorganized thoughts were trying to advance, lining up like swells from different directions but headed for the same beach:

Daley Rideout.

Connor Donald.

SNR Security — khakis, black golf shirts, and silver Expeditions.

Uniforms and camouflage. Pistols, boots, and tattoos.

A barn full of schoolchildren and a cache of modified game freezers and protective gear.

An all-white lineup.

“Burt, who are these people and what are they doing?”

“They are Americans, acting out their version of the American Dream.”

“But what does keeping Daley Rideout have to do with the American Dream?”

“It makes sense to somebody,” Burt said.

But none to me. And more important, where was she and what had they done with her? A cool tingle came from the old boxing scar on my forehead. I tried to be open and receptive. I tried to quiet my mind and let the scar do its magic. Then it stopped. No tingle, no warning, no guidance. I’d failed to hear its message. My scar is no parlor trickster and will not perform on cue.

So I stared at my desktop monitor, at Burt’s hard-won picture of the unrevealing interior of the metal hangar, confronting the terrible truth that Daley Rideout had been gone for nearly a week and I had failed to retrieve her. Seven days is statistically disastrous for abducted children. The small candle in this darkness was that she’d been seen alive more recently on the beach at San Onofre, and very early the next morning at a convenience store in San Clemente.

IvarDuggans.com had precious little information on Adam Revell, but an image of his California driver’s license confirmed that I had the right guy.

Connor Donald was another story.

His picture was dated three years ago. Same casually handsome face. Shorter hair then. He was square-jawed, with a focused and present look in his eyes.

“Who would have thought that?” asked Burt. “Dumb-looking beefcake like him?”

Burt had already read the IvarDuggans bio. He reads faster than anybody I’ve ever known. He can absorb and retain the information on a book page or a monitor screen after looking at it for six or eight seconds. He once mentioned a speed-reading program his parents had given him for his fifth birthday, this plastic gadget with a long rectangular window through which phrases would pass as fast as you could push a lever. He said he got so fast it was like reading thoughts. He sold it to a friend and bought cherry bombs. He also claimed that his uncorrected vision was 20/10 and actually improving with age, attributable to homeopathic remedies.

“Give me a minute, Burt, will you?”

“A wet dose of arnica 6C and a daily euphrasia douche would help your vision a lot, Roland.”

“Noted.”

Our Connor Donald was twenty-nine years old, born in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, graduated top of his class from a public high school and got a football ride to Penn State. Quit the team after one season, forfeiting the money to study physics and philosophy. Graduated summa cum laude, hired by JPL, moved on to Aero-Dynamics in Orange County, California; then General Atomics of San Diego.

“A rocket scientist,” I said.

“And more.”

Four years ago, Donald had joined a Christian mission — Lions of the Lord — in Somalia, sponsored by the Western Evangelical Alliance, which, I remembered, was matching the Cathedral by the Sea’s Onward Soldiers Fund donations one-to-one. The adventure had turned into a nightmare when three of the missionaries and six of their armed bodyguards were murdered by Somali rebels. I recalled the gruesome horror, well covered by the press and media. One of the slaughtered ministers was a San Diego woman.

I linked from IvarDuggans to a New York Times article about the killings. There, Connor Donald talked at length about the day it happened. Surprise. Guns and machetes. Young men — just boys, by the look of them.

“I don’t know why they left me alive,” he said. “Unless it was so I could witness to the world.”

Donald’s IvarDuggans biography said that he left General Atomics shortly after the tragic African mission. He had apparently gone unemployed for two years, until the founding of SNR Security.

The IvarDuggans SNR folder informed me that the security company was privately held and tightly guarded its public image. Donald was believed to have been an original investor and possibly SNR Security’s first chief operating officer.

Back to Connor Donald: His bio had not been updated for a year.

Last known address, Buena Vista, California, home of Paradise Date Farm. I thought again of the beating I’d taken out there, and of the snarling lion tattooed on Connor Donald’s palm. Felt the cracked rib still aching in my chest, and the tight lump at my hairline.

Donald had no criminal record, no property or tax liens, no known associates I recognized.

An IvarDuggans query asked for “corroboration and updates on this subject.”

“Nice career moves,” said Burt. “From scientist to crusader to security guard to date farmer.”

I’d been thinking the same.

“Everything’s connected by SNR,” I said. “Daley. Alchemy 101. Paradise Date Farm. Even the Cathedral by the Sea, which interested Daley and repulsed her sister. The SNR guy at Paradise who wrote you the check? He’s part of the church, a deacon or an elder. I saw him there last Sunday.”

Burt studied me with curious, unemotional eyes. He produced his wallet and handed me the check.

It was drawn on a Paradise Date Farm account at San Diego Valley Bank. Signed precisely by Eric Glassen.

“Okay,” said Burt. “Another SNR connection to the church.” A moment later, Eric Glassen’s pugnacious mug was staring back at us from the all-knowing ether of IvarDuggans.

He was thirty-four, five years older than Connor Donald. And like Donald, Glassen had an unusual, almost contradictory, academic résumé — double undergrad degrees in mechanical engineering and history from UC Riverside. Grew up in San Bernardino. Surfed, had a rock band, played four years of varsity football as a cornerback.

He’d been arrested for assault in a bar fight when he was twenty-two, charges dropped. At twenty-three, a DUI that stuck. Employment at manufacturing companies in Los Angeles, San Jose, and Seattle. A brief stint in the UFC as a middleweight, professional record of 6–8, retired in 2014. Hired by Corvus Protection in 2015 and SNR Security two years later.

“Looks like a tough customer,” said Burt. “And that six-and-eight record in the UFC couldn’t have left him in a good mood.”

As a fighter who had done some losing, I agreed.

Later that evening, after Burt had left, I did another Internet search for information on SNR Security. The SNR website gave me the paragraph I’d already seen: The San Diego company was two years old, privately held, and specialized in armed and unarmed personal and property protection. It offered no grander mission statement than that, no pictures or bios of company officers, no testimonials from satisfied clients, no shots of their headquarters, no phone number, no jobs tab, no links to more. The one-page site did have a street address and a “Contact Us” email address, and a background graphic of the SNR logo I’d seen on the door of Adam Revell’s SUV — the eagle with the lightning bolts.