Т Паркер - Swift Vengeance

Then a YouTube video from Caliph2ReVenge of Kenny Bryce’s head on his bed, and narration in Caliphornia’s strangely inflected, surfer-Arabic English: Two down and one left to go. Pleasant dreams to you tonight, Lindsey, and all the unclean infidels you mate with!

YouTube took it down after five minutes, but it was already in the ether, the damage ongoing.

Which of course unleashed speculation on the identity of “Lindsey.” A specific woman or even man? A generic nickname for... a Western woman? A nonbeliever? An old lover? A prostitute? Why her, specifically?

Minutes before midnight, Frank Salvano, the tall and now haggard Western Region JTTF director, took to the lectern again while the cameras flashed and whirred. This time he had a large monitor beside him and a remote in his hand.

“We have identified two suspects in the murder of FBI agent Darrel Blevins in San Diego this evening,” he said.

The monitor blipped to life with a blowup of smiling Ben Azmeh and Kalima Amin, the image downloaded to Taucher’s phone by well-meaning Marah Azmeh. Their names were superimposed beneath them. Salvano spoke their names anyway, and said their last-known address was an apartment in Santa Ana. Next came an outdated DMV mug of one Ben Adams sporting dreadlocks and a humorless glare — clearly Ben Azmeh. Then a State Department head-and-shoulders photograph of solemn Kalima Amin, staring out from behind her hijab with just a hint of contempt.

“This picture of Kalima Amin was taken from her application for a fiancée visa, issued by our State Department in 2016,” said Salvano, the TV lights flashing on his glasses. He described the suspects physically and said they were last seen at approximately 6:30 p.m. leaving the parking area on Tuna Lane in an older white Ford Taurus, near the Unconditional Surrender statue on San Diego’s waterfront.

“Ben Azmeh is an American citizen,” he said. “Kalima Amin is a Syrian national in this country legally. They are armed and violent and should not be approached. Azmeh has pledged bayat — an oath of allegiance — to Islamic State. If you have any information on these suspects, call the number at the bottom of your screen immediately. If you’re having trouble seeing it, the number is...”

I watched and drifted. Watched and drifted.

Tired as I’d ever been.

Willing to hit back but no target.

Taucher’s desperate request for action gnawing inside.

I knew I wouldn’t sleep, not with Blevins’s blood under my nails and on my clothes and in my nostrils, my flesh held together by Burt’s neat stitch, and the kaleidoscope of gore turning relentlessly in my mind’s eye, with the threat of more upon the land.

This land.

Made for you and me.

JUST AFTER ONE in the morning I went to the barn and attacked the heavy bag with an anger I hadn’t felt in years. Not since the day that Justine went down into the ocean in her pretty pink airplane. I was too tired to be sharp. Wondered what it would be like to step into the ring at thirty-nine. Foreman a champ at forty-five. When I couldn’t throw any more good punches I jumped some rope and raised my heavy arms again to the speed bag.

Then shaved and showered and grabbed a handful of Oxley flyers.

I drove the dark curving streets of greater Fallbrook, stopping here and there to post a new one or replace a rain-faded original. It felt right to be doing something helpful. Something optimistic. Something. When I had covered miles and miles — trees and power poles and fences and the walls of buildings downtown — I drove to Los Jilgueros Nature Preserve, where Lindsey had twice met her son.

The preserve’s gate was closed and locked, so I parked my truck out of the way and jumped it. The moon was up and the sky was clear and I walked the dirt trails under the sycamores and the young oaks, past the spindly flowerless stands of matilija poppies and the dying-back sage and the wild buckwheat gone brown and brittle with fall. I stopped and listened and looked. Tammy Bellamy had been quiet these last few days, and I sensed surrender. How good was my chance of finding Oxley here? About as good as luring Caliphornia into the open again , I thought.

Since when was hope foolish? Even just the hope of finding a cat?

It angered me that hope was foolish.

I wanted to knock out Caliphornia with an uppercut. Feel his jaw cave in and see his lights go out. Hate on an empty stomach. I wouldn’t finish him off, though. I’d call Taucher. Or maybe just 911. Nation of laws. Roland Ford: model citizen.

I continued down the wide dirt road to the first pond, black and twinkling under the moon. Stopped and listened to a great horned owl hooting from the woods. Then heard the mate answer back — notes on the hunt, spoken in their own language. Something splashed near the close shore. Too cold for the frogs and birds. I wondered.

Sat on a bench donated in memory of a Fallbrook boy who’d died young. I knew nothing about him. I sat with my back to the water so I could oversee the central meadow.

What was this, looking for a lost cat while a terrorist stalks your city? The end of hope?

Then, the beginning of an idea.

Maybe just the idea of an idea.

You will know me again before forty-eight hours have passed...

Lindsey, and all the unclean infidels you mate with...

Lindsey. Forty-eight. My shy idea approached, brushed against me, then vanished.

What I really wanted to do was get Hall Pass 2 into the sky at first light and fly her up to Mammoth, go fishing for a few days. Nothing like a rainbow trout dripping silver water in the sun of a Sierra day.

Maybe ski, too. On the slopes I’m graceless but fast. Size is your friend going downhill if velocity is what you’re after. After that, dinner and wine in a good restaurant. Maybe get a farm-raised version of the trout I let go. Talk to a pretty waitress.

Or I could just go dancing in San Diego, right here close to home. I know the dance clubs and I have a calendar of the amateur ballroom competitions. I’ve done fairly well in some of them. Always content on a dance floor, so nice to be moved by music and to move with someone.

But instead, I sat on a boy’s memorial bench and looked out at the pale meadow. Let my eyes relax and tried to dismiss the brutality of the day, to let something like light come to my mind, something good or promising or optimistic, something like Oxley luxuriating in the moonlight, studying me with his hypnotic green eyes. Anything. Anything but what I’d seen.

I thought of you, too, as you know I often do. I always start at the beginning. It’s like getting to meet you all over again. The way you smiled at me when we met, at that awkward holiday party at the Grand Hyatt downtown. The big storm coming and you there with a friend and I alone. Of course, I liked the way you looked in the red party dress and your sleek red hair and your green eyes and the smile that gave up little and withheld much. And I said something male and witless, which you pointed out but seemed to forgive. Justine Timmerman. I landed in the public defender’s office about the time you ditched the sheriff’s... Right then, from the very beginning, we were Timmerman brains and Ford brawn and we were happy with that arrangement, weren’t we?

And, as you know, after that first night together, life changed. Went in a fifth direction. How can something so surprising be so right? Love just mowed down the opposition, trampled everything in its way, left me panting but eager to keep up. Those two years we had — from the time we first laid eyes on each other until God and Hall Pass took you down, Justine — those were us. Young and passionate and fearless. Our own soap. Not everyone gets that.