Т Паркер - Swift Vengeance

I said the obvious: “Kenny might be more likely to open his door to a woman.”

“Exactly.”

The breeze rose, rippling the bay.

“Lindsey’s with you, right?” asked Taucher. “Physically on your property? None of this motel-room-in-Las-Vegas bullshit?”

“She’s with me.”

“You think you can protect her?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You see what you’re up against?”

“I see it.”

“I hate amateurs, Roland.”

“I do, too, Joan.”

“My medical examiners say Caliphornia is a good beheader.”

“What is a good beheader?”

“It was relatively fast and clean,” she said. “Done with a long-handled, fixed-blade knife that was very sharp. They can tell by the length and depth of the cuts, and how cleanly the vertebrae were severed. ‘A sashimi-sharp knife wielded by a two-hundred-pound weightlifter’ is how one of them put it. Our MEs have such atrocious senses of humor.”

Very sharp, I thought. As a knife sharpened on a whetstone might be.

“The MEs won’t rule out two attackers, even though the crime scene people say one,” said Joan. “Two different sets of angles on the slashes.”

“Or one man with two knives,” I said.

“A ninja-style beheader?” asked Taucher. “Doubtful.”

“Maybe he’s high,” I said. I was thinking of fenethylline, a powerful amphetamine manufactured in Syria and Iraq, and sold to fighters on both sides. Fighting pills. The popular name is Captagon and it was once manufactured for profit in the United States. Coming from makeshift labs in the Middle East, Captagon is a crude brown tablet. In Fallujah we found bags full of them on insurgents. Captagon is alleged to stimulate unnatural strength, stamina, and cruelty in whoever takes it.

Taucher looked at me unhappily, as if I were adding to her problems. “Captagon?”

“Or something like it.”

“You think this guy is Middle Eastern?” she asked. “Careful what you say. They’ll start calling you phobic and obsessive. A burned-out witch on a mission.”

“Read the threats again,” I said. “The language of them. If you need reminding.”

“I don’t need reminding, and I can’t shake the image of Kenny’s decapitation. The lab said Caliphornia was able to use his victim’s weight — and gravity — to accomplish his mutilation. Really put his back and legs into it. The average human head weighs sixteen pounds.”

A surprising levity in her voice. Gallows humor? One way to deal with horror. Then shoes on the boardwalk, coming fast behind us. Taucher wheeled on the runner huffing past, eyes wide and not a little wild.

“Okay,” she said, her voice possibly one small degree more hopeful. “I’d like to thank you again for the Bryce pictures and the early heads-up. You helped me. You didn’t have to.”

I told her she was welcome and immediately asked her where Rasha Samara had been the night Kenny Bryce died.

She glanced at me, then away. “We’re working on it. We’re good at that kind of thing. But not even the FBI can watch everybody every hour. Think of all those faces on my office walls.”

I did, nodding.

“I’m sure you’ve gathered the basics on Samara,” she said. “What more do you want?”

“I want to know why you’re looking at him. He builds golf courses and rides horses.”

“Because he’s a rich American of Saudi descent who travels frequently to the Middle East, is widely known and connected, and has relationships with Saudi-Arabian political and business players. These people have money, rivers of it, all flowing down to them from oil. Rasha associates with some people whom the Bureau is this close to classifying as sponsors of terrorism.” She turned to me mid-stride and raised one hand to brandish a quarter-inch gap between thumb and forefinger. “ This close. And this ends the Rasha Samara discussion we didn’t have.”

“Understood. I thank you for your help.”

“I don’t dislike you and I want you to protect Lindsey.”

“I’m glad you don’t dislike me.”

“I do permit myself certain emotions.”

“Name one, Joan.”

I saw the flicker of humor on her face. Our pace slowed just a little. Taucher tried to get back on task but some of the fight had gone out of her voice. In its place was something new. Resignation? Disappointment?

Then ten steps each in silence, more or less synchronous, taking us farther down the boardwalk. Don’t know why I counted them. The fretful bed of gray clouds had still not seemed to move, even as the breeze came faster.

“I will now share a confidence with you,” said Taucher. “I don’t like being seen outside.”

“Why not?”

“Because of my makeup. You’ve noticed that I wear heavy makeup.”

“Yes. Why?” I asked. I felt like a compass needle unable to settle.

“Well, the makeup on my face is to hide what’s under it,” she said. “But around my eyes, the makeup is to show them off. My eyes are my only good feature.”

“I’ve never suspected you of vanity.”

“Doesn’t it scream out?”

“Your eyes look good, Joan. But what are you hiding?”

“I’ll tell you. I used to get kicked and punched in my face a lot in MMA. Goes with the territory, like with your boxing. One day, in a match, I got kicked really hard. Didn’t see it coming. Knocked me down but I got right back up. Won that fight, too. The downside was this acute hematoma that developed on my cheek. Kind of like a blood blister but deeper. Left cheek, over the bone but spreading down almost to my mouth, and up into my left nostril. And the hematoma never went away. It faded some. And it got a little smaller. But it turned from liver red to this cadaver-gray, raised, pore-dotted splotch that would look like hell on any person’s face. But this is my face, so I use the makeup. Of course, you can’t make up only a part of your face without calling attention to your secret. You have to go all in. That’s me. I’ve gone to dermatologists and cosmetologists and clinics and classes and consultants, all to learn how to put on makeup like a pro. I traveled to Tokyo to study makeup with an actual Geisha. I’ve worked at it. Still, when I’m outside, especially on a cloudy damp day like today? Well, if I’m not perfectly and heavily defended with my makeup, I look like an aging woman who got kicked in the face too many times and too hard. Which is what I am. I wish I didn’t have to make myself up like a whore. I dislike my vanity. But not as much as my hematoma. Does any of that make any sense at all?”

She laughed, brief and dry. Then turned to face the bay. The rain hit hard and suddenly. Slapped heavy on the water, raising mist like steam. We stopped under a metal restaurant awning built to protect waiting customers from the sun, raindrops roaring down.

“How are you going to handle Bakersfield with the media?” I asked.

“Publicly, we’re not involved,” she said. “I’m leaving it all to BPD. Their show.”

“Are they going public with the mutilation?”

“No,” said Joan. “Not with the threat, either. Just that he was found stabbed to death in his home. We weighed the value of telling the whole truth against the terror it might cause. It felt really good to deny this bag of dirt his moment in the sun.”

“He doesn’t seem to want publicity at all,” I said.

“You watch,” she said. “He’ll change, now that he’s followed through with Kenny Bryce. Classic pattern of radicalization. Anger, disillusionment, curiosity, commitment, action, escalation. He’s got confidence now. He’ll seek credit. He’ll be vulnerable to recruiters. We’ll hear some kind of communication from him. I expect it. I dread it.”