Т Паркер - Swift Vengeance

The first time I saw Lindsey Rakes she was burning down the high-stakes room in the Pala Casino north of San Diego. Roulette, and she could do no wrong. Big woman, big attitude. Daughter of a Fort Worth — area Ford dealer — “Hit Your Brakes for Rakes!” — and a high school chemistry teacher, I found out later.

Lindsey had drawn a crowd that night. Not difficult, in her lacy dress and leather ankle boots. And all that sleek, dark hair. She looked like some exotic life form, dropped from above into the chain-smoking slot-jockeys and the glum blackjack casualties. When the wheel stopped on another winner, her throaty roar blasted through the room: Baby, baby, BABY! Towers of chips rising from the table in front of her. Mostly hundreds and fifties. Just enough twenties to tip the cocktail waitresses, who kept the drinks coming. I had work to do, so I didn’t witness her crash.

Now, almost two and a half years later, Lindsey sat at a long wooden picnic table under a palapa behind my house. She looked not very much like that booze-fueled gambler who had moved onto my property the day after we’d met in the casino. Now she looked defeated and afraid. She wore a faded denim blouse and her hair was lumped into a ponytail that rode side-saddle on her shoulder.

I held the sheet of paper flush against the tabletop, a fingertip at diagonal corners, and read it out loud for a second time.

Dear Lt. Rakes,

I want to decapitate you with my knife, but I will use anything necessary to cause you death.

Until then, fear everything you see and everything you hear and dream. This terror is personal, as you are beginning to understand. Vengeance is justice. The thunder is coming for you.

Sincerely,

Caliphornia

Caliphornia.

One short moment ago, when I’d first read this note, I’d felt a tingle in the scar above my left eye. I earned that scar in my first and last pro fight. Its moods have become a kind of early-warning system for danger ahead: use caution. Now it tingled again.

The death threat was handwritten in graceful cursive script that looked like a combination of English longhand and Arabic calligraphy. The letters slanted neither forward nor back but stood up straight. A calligraphic pen had been used to vary the thicknesses of line and curve. The loops were large and symmetrical. The lead-ins and tails of each word were thick, straight, and perfectly horizontal, as if traced over invisible guidelines. They began and ended in pointed, up-curved flourishes, like candle flames. The letter had arrived one day ago, on Saturday, December 8, in Lindsey’s post office box in Las Vegas.

She set the envelope beside the letter. On the envelope were printed her name and her Las Vegas PO Box number. It was postmarked Wednesday, December 5, in San Diego, California. It had a Batman stamp and a return address that Lindsey had found to be World Pizza in Ocean Beach.

“Lindsey, this letter should be on an FBI light table, not on a PI’s picnic table.”

“Is it real? Do you believe it?”

“It’s real and I believe it. You’ve got to take this to the FBI. The agents are trained to deal with this kind of thing.”

“You know any of them?”

“One. Kind of.”

A failed smile. “I’d sure appreciate it if you’d take this letter to them. I can’t face law enforcement right now.”

I tried to make sense of this request. It was strange and irrational that I was sitting here with a rattled young woman who had been threatened with death by a murderer-terrorist-psychopath-crackpot calling himself/herself Caliphornia, and who was now refusing to talk with the law. Strange and irrational that Lindsey would come to me first.

“Because of your son,” I said.

Lindsey pulled off her sunglasses and tried to stare me down. Her temper is rarely distant. “Of course, my son . I’ve filed another request with the court for a custody amendment. You can only do that every eighteen months. I’ve been living clean as a Girl Scout, Roland. I’m teaching math at a private school, hitting the gym, no booze or dice. But Johnny’s growing up without me. He’s the whole reason I left here and moved back to Las Vegas. And if the court gets wind of this death threat, my custody petition gets red-flagged. The Bureau would poke around, right, talk to my employers. Investigate me. Right? Say good-bye to shared custody.”

She was correct on those counts. I wondered about her Girl Scout claim because I’m suspicious by nature and profession.

“You saved me once, Roland, and I’m hoping you can do it again.”

She slid her sunglasses back on.

Three years ago, Lindsey Rakes — then Lindsey Goff — had been flying Reaper drones out of Creech Air Force Base north of Las Vegas. She was the sensor operator. Or, as the drone flyers call them, simply a “sensor.” Her missions as a sensor were often top secret and CIA-directed. Some were surveillance, some were kill-list strikes. Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan. Her flight crew called themselves the Headhunters. We flagged some bad guys, she had told me more than once.

Then, at the end of her contract in 2015, she quit the USAF against the wishes of her superiors. Experienced drone operators were in high demand at that time; the Air Force couldn’t train them fast enough to keep up.

After six months as a civilian she’d fled to California, landed in the Pala Casino, and ended up renting a place here on my property. Back then, as we began to know and trust each other, she’d told me about her life at Creech: the six-day workweeks, the twelve-hour days, the strange psychosis brought on by sitting in an air-conditioned trailer in the desert and flying combat missions seventy-five hundred miles away. Then heading off-base at sunrise to pick up something for breakfast and maybe some vodka, too, on her way home to her husband, Brandon, and their young son, John. Little John. The light and anchor of her life. But not quite enough of an anchor.

Because some days, Lindsey had confessed, she’d get off work too nerve-shot and sickened to even look at her own son. And Brandon was always angry at her anyway. So instead of going home she’d blast off in her black Mustang GT, a wedding gift from her father, Lewis — “Hit Your Brakes for Rakes” — and race downtown to gamble hard, drink harder, and forget the things she’d seen and done in that cramped little trailer.

Until Brandon took Little John to a new home across town and filed divorce papers and a complaint of child neglect against her.

“How bitter was it?” I asked.

Behind the dark lenses, Lindsey studied me. “Very.”

“And how is Brandon Goff’s anger level these days, with your new move for joint custody?”

“No,” she said. “Brandon wouldn’t threaten me like this. He would do it clearly. Not hide behind a cryptic name and a threat.”

Lindsey would know her ex well enough to judge his capacity for murder. Or would she? I’d seen enough people fooled by their spouses to always leave a door ajar.

I looked out at the gray December sky, the breeze-burred surface of the pond, the cattails wavering. Fall, I thought. The big hush. The time to exhale. Always makes me feel the speed of life. I tried to warm up to the idea of cutting off the head of a living human being with a knife. Thought of videos of fear-blanched men in orange jumpsuits forced to kneel in the dirt. Told myself that Christmas was coming soon, birth of Jesus and forgiveness of sin, peace on earth, joy to the world.

“Roland? I’m afraid. I’ve been to war but my life was never at stake. Weird, isn’t it? But this has gotten to me. I have that Smith nine and know how to use it. I’d feel safe if I could land here for a while. This Caliphornia won’t know where I am.”