Joe Gores - Glass Tiger

Thorne parked near the foot of the marina’s boat ramp next to a Sheriff’s cruiser with a light bar on top. It was a beautiful California spring day with drifting white puffs of cumulus cloud; even this early in the season there were tourists in shorts and t-shirts, boaters in light wind-breakers they’d need out on the water.

The cafe was built right on the dock. Inside, dust motes danced in the late-morning sunlight. To his left, a family of four was eating a late breakfast in front of one of the wide windows that overlooked the guest boat-docking slips. Powerboats and sailboats could be lowered right off the dock into sparkling but cold-looking Little Potato Slough.

At the round table closest to the door was a husky early-thirties Latino in a tan Sheriff’s uniform. The creases of his sleeves and pantlegs could cut paper. A miniature purple heart and mid-East service bar were pinned above his ESCOBAR nametag.

He stood. ‘Special Agent Thorne?’ His voice was ice.

‘Just Brendan Thorne. Forget the Special Agent tag.’

‘Just Escobar.’ After a pause, he grudgingly took Thorne’s hand. They sat down. ‘Okay, so why are the Feebs sucking around now, five months after the fact?’

‘Routine. The Bureau likes to see if anything—’

‘I wasn’t on it long enough to screw anything up.’ Escobar was an obviously tough, brainy Latino cop with an even more obviously built-in shit detector. ‘The sheriff’s department got the call, me and my partner were in the barrel that night, we got to the crime scene just after the shootout with the suspect. He was long gone, you Feebs showed up, took over. End of story.’

‘Please, relax. I’m a day-tripper, not a lifer.’

After almost thirty seconds, Escobar settled back into his chair. Thorne regarded him thoughtfully.

‘Iraq?’ he asked casually.

Escobar’s sudden change of expression transformed his hard, bony face. ‘Afghanistan. Thirteen months, Army Reserve — I wanted to make a few extra bucks to supplement my cop’s pay and look what it got me. A Purple Heart. I loved it. And unless I miss my guess, you’ve been in the shit somewhere yourself.’

‘Rangers, then a contract killer for the CIA in Panama.’

‘Okay, no more bullshit. Why are you here? Really?’

‘Really? The federales aren’t really sure the guy who did it died that night. They’re afraid he might be a political with a personal hard-on against somebody in the new administration.’

‘I can guess who, us getting called in by the guy who’s now Wallberg’s Chief of Staff. Who then slams the door in our face.’

‘I’m surprised you’re even talking to me.’

‘You’re not like those regular FBI fucks. You and me, we can do a trade: what I know for what you know.’

‘Okay,’ said Thorne instantly, ‘what do you know?’

Escobar grinned, stuck with it. ‘Yeah. Well, me and my partner got the call-out at two-thirty a.m. Lots of fog. Jaeger had two plainclothes black security guys with him, said the suspect started shooting as they approached the houseboat. His guys returned fire — Jaeger didn’t have a weapon. No shots were fired at us. We worked the bullhorn, no response, so we put in teargas, went in. Two dead vics. White male, mid-thirties. White female, late twenties. Multiple gunshots. A Python .357 Magnum was on the floor near the bodies. Empty. I presume it was the murder weapon. I was afraid the civilians might corrupt my crime scene, so I took blood and fluid and tissue samples before I went back up on the levee to call it in.’

‘Presume? What about ballistics?’

‘Before I could call SIU, two carloads of feds showed up. I told them the perp must have slithered off the stern of the houseboat while Jaeger’s guys were shooting the shit out of the front of it. Told ’em he’d be bottled up in the slough — his car was half a mile away at the levee gate.’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘That’s when the Big G. dropped the hammer on us.’

‘Do you think the perp was wounded?’

‘There was a blood trail to the stern, but was it his blood? We never even got a courtesy call afterwards. Never got any DNA, never saw the results of the autopsies or tox screens, never were given any possible i.d. of the suspect, never learned the names of the vics. Never learned why a guy like Jaeger was out there. Never learned if the Magnum was the murder weapon or who it was registered to. All we got was a big load of national security bullshit. I’ve got the blood and fluid samples I didn’t tell the Feebs about, and nothing to compare ’em with.’

‘Victims, Nisa and Damon Mather,’ said Thorne. ‘Husband and wife. They’d been staffers on Wallberg’s election campaign until they quit and hid out here in the Delta because they were being stalked by someone. Wallberg’s people didn’t know anything about it until Jaeger got a phone call from Nisa on election evening. That’s why the FBI is on it instead of the Secret Service — the vics were no longer on Wallberg’s staff.’ Thorne told his lie smoothly. ‘The perp’s name died with the victims.’

Escobar nodded. ‘Thanks for telling me. I’ll drive you to the scene and bring you back afterwards.’ At his Crown Vic, he paused, then handed Thorne a three-ring binder from the back seat. ‘I always keep a personal Murder Book. Better read it on the way. Whoever the perp is, he’s one sick son of a bitch.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Thorne, surprised.

‘Just read the Murder Book.’

As they went east on gun-barrel Cal 12, Thorne read. Damon Mather was found lying on his back in the middle of the room in the classic death pose, arms and legs splayed. Loosened bowels and bladder. A single shot to the chest with a heavy-caliber slug consistent with the .357 Magnum on the scene.

Escobar slowed the Crown Vic, put on his right blinker.

‘It’s a half-mile walk from the White Slough Wildlife Area gate on Guard Road to where their houseboat was moored on Disappointment Slough. We can climb over the gate.’ Nisa had been pounded up against the bulkhead by the other five rounds. Unlike Damon, she had fought for her life: broken nails, dermis under two of them, head at an angle, eyes open and glazing, tongue out one corner of her mouth. Blouse ripped down.

Contact wounds, powder burns around each of them. One in the stomach, one into each breast, the final two rounds into her mons veneris. Her clothing was soaked in blood and urine. And something else. Corwin had masturbated on her body after he had killed her. The first, heaviest spurt into her face, the rest onto her bared breasts like some obscene pornographic film.

His own daughter. Thorne felt a wave of nausea. Nisa was long dead, but he still wanted to protect her from Corwin.

‘One sick son of a bitch,’ he agreed.

They walked along the raised levee road. Grass grew between the ruts. To their left was Disappointment Slough. To their right, sunken stubble fields waited for spring planting. A jackrabbit hopped up on the levee in front of them, afternoon sunshine turning his long erect ears red, almost translucent.

‘When you see a rabbit with light shining through his ears, you’ve entered the land of enchantment,’ said Thorne.

‘I could use a little enchantment.’

A cold breeze had risen, rustling the thistles flanking the track.

Herring-bone clouds stretched across the sky. A brace of mallard whistled by overhead. Across the channel was a brushy oval uninhabited land mass called King Island. Escobar stopped beside a knee-high thick-stemmed bush with a single white four-petal flower.

‘I used this bush as a landmark to come back after the feds left.’ He gave an embarrassed chuckle. ‘I was really pissed.’

‘You find anything?’