Jefferson Parker - Storm Runners

‘She’s tried to confront him?’

‘Confront him? Hell, she photographed him. Check these.’

Birch flicked four snapshots across the desk to Stromsoe. Stromsoe noted that they were high-pixel digital images printed on good picture paper.

‘Frances is not a fearful sort,’ said Birch.

Two of the pictures showed a sloping hillside of what appeared to be avocado trees. In a clearing stood a tapered wooden tower of some kind. It looked twenty feet tall, maybe more. In one picture a man stood beside the tower looking at the camera, and in the next three he was running away. He was dark-haired and dark-skinned, dressed in jeans, a light shirt, and athletic shoes. He looked small.

‘That was taken on her Bonsall property,’ said Birch.

‘How big is the parcel?’ asked Stromsoe.

‘A hundred acres. Says she goes there to be alone.’

‘Where’s Bonsall?’

‘Next door to Fallbrook.’

Stromsoe pictured a woman sitting in the middle of a hundred-acre parcel to be alone. It seemed funny, but it also seemed like she had a right to her privacy on her own land.

‘Frankie has a decent home security system,’ said Birch. ‘I set her up with a panic button that will ring the Sheriff’s substation in Fallbrook and you simultaneously. I set her up with one month of twice-a-day patrol. I sold her a bodyguard – that would be you – for trips to and from work and while she’s on the job, for the next thirty days. Handle it?’

‘I can handle it.’

‘This guy is pretty bold, Matt. She’s seen him three times in twelve days, plus the maybe on the freeway. I don’t think he’s a weenie wagger – he’d have whipped it out already. Obsessed fan? Rapist? Find out. Arrest the creep if you can, let the cops chew his sorry ass. Give Frankie some peace of mind. I told her you were our best. She’s expecting you at her home at noon today, to follow her into San Diego to the studio. She starts around one in the afternoon and heads home after the live shoot at eight o’clock. Keep track of your hours. If you shake this guy loose before thirty days are up, we’ll all talk.’

Birch handed Stromsoe the panic button, a concealed-carry sidearm permit for San Diego County, and a sheet of paper with Frances Hatfield’s numbers on it.

Fallbrook was a small town fifty miles north of San Diego, twelve miles inland, tucked behind Camp Pendleton. Stromsoe had never been there. The road in from Oceanside was winding and the traffic was light. He looked out at the avocado orchards and orange groves, the flowered undulating valleys of the big nurseries, the horses in their corrals, the houses on the hilltops or buried deep within the greenery. There was an antiques store, a feed and tack store, a drive-through cappuccino stand. He saw a tennis court hidden in the trees, and a very small golf course – obviously homemade – sloping down from a house with a red tile roof. He drove through a tunnel of huge oak trees then back into a blast of sunlight and thousands of orange butterflies. The sky was filled with them. A herd of llamas eyed him sternly from an emerald pasture. He rolled down the window of his new used pickup truck and smelled blossoms.

Frances Hatfield’s voice on the gate phone was clear and crisp. She enunciated well. The gate rolled to the side without sound.

Her property was hilly and green, planted with avocado and citrus. The avocado trees were tall, shaggy and heavy with small fruit. Stromsoe had no idea how much of the land was hers because the orchards rambled on, a hilly, fenceless tableau in the clean October sunlight. A hawk shot across the treetops with a high-pitched keen.

Frances Hatfield was a tall woman, dark-haired and brown-eyed. She looked to be in her midtwenties. A straight, narrow nose and assertive bones gave her a patrician face, but it was softened by her smile. She was dressed in jeans, packer boots, and a white blouse tucked in.

‘Hello, Mr. Stromsoe. I’m Frankie Hatfield.’

She offered her hand. A golden retriever itemized the smells on Stromsoe’s shoes and legs.

‘My pleasure, Ms. Hatfield.’

‘This is Ace.’

‘Hey, Ace.’ He looked up. ‘Nice butterflies.’

‘Painted ladies,’ she said. ‘They migrate by the millions every few years. They’ll be gone with the first rain.’

‘Are these your orchards?’

‘I almost break even on the avocados,’ she said. ‘They take a lot of water and water is expensive here. Please come in. Want to just go with Frankie and Matt?’

‘Good.’

The house was cool and quiet. Through the mullioned windows the orchard rows convened in the middle distance. Ace produced a ball but gave no hint of giving it up. Stromsoe smelled blossoms again, then a recently used fireplace, then brewing coffee. A grizzled gray dog with a white face wandered up to Stromsoe on petite feet and slid her head under his hand.

‘Hope you don’t mind dogs,’ said Frankie.

‘I love dogs.’

‘Do you have any?’

‘Not right now.’

‘That’s Sadie.’

They sat in the living room. It was large, openbeamed, and paneled with cedar. With its many windows the room seemed to be a part of the patio beyond it and the avocado orchard beyond that. The patio fountain trickled faintly and Stromsoe could hear it through the screen doors.

A series of softened explosions seemed to roll across the sky to them, powerful blasts muted by distance.

‘That’s artillery exercise at Camp Pendleton,’ said Frankie. ‘The sound of freedom. You get used to it.’

‘I used to live near the beach and I got used to the waves. Didn’t hear them unless I tried to.’

‘Kind of a shame, actually.’

‘I thought so.’

Stromsoe felt the faraway artillery thundering in his bones.

‘I have no idea who he is, or what he wants,’ said Frankie.

‘He does not seem threatening, although I take his presence on my property as a threat. I have no bad people in my past. I have skeletons but they’re good skeletons.’

Stromsoe brought her snapshots from his coat pocket and looked at them again. ‘Does he resemble anyone you know?’

She shook her head.

‘Brave of you to whip out the camera and start shooting,’ he said.

‘I lack good sense sometimes.’

‘I’m surprised it didn’t scare him off. What’s this wooden tower for?’

Stromsoe held out the picture and pointed.

‘I have no idea. It’s been on the Bonsall property forever.’

‘Is that where you go to be alone?’

‘Yes. I escape from me.’

Stromsoe noted that the tower didn’t look old enough to have been somewhere forever.

He brought out the panic button and set it on the rough pine trunk between them.

‘You flip the cover like an old pocket watch, push the button three times,’ he said. ‘If you hold the button down for five seconds or more, the call is officially canceled but I’ll show up anyway. So will the sheriffs if you’re out here in the county, or the San Diego PD if you’re downtown.’

‘GPS?’ She examined the gadget.

‘Yes. It’s always on.’

‘Can it differentiate between all the cities in the county?’

‘Any city in the United States, actually.’

‘Impressive.’

‘Not if you don’t have it with you.’

She smiled. The smile disarmed the angles of her face and brightened her dark eyes. ‘I will.’

Stromsoe told her he’d follow her to and from work, said not to get out until he’d parked and come to her vehicle, to leave the engine running until then, and if he didn’t get there within two minutes to hit the panic button, drive to the exit, get on the nearest freeway, and call the police.

‘Do you have a gun?’ she asked.