China Lake (17 page)

I stopped. The Explorer was scrawled bumper-to-bumper with spray paint. Runny red letters, two feet tall.
Bitch. Whore. Liar. Snitch.

Bile rose up my throat. A rear door screamed,
Blow job
. The tailgate said,
Doggy sty—
That one trailed off with a smear, suggesting that the vandal had been interrupted before spraying
-le
. Either that, or we were talking about an obscure insult that I didn’t understand.

In the darkness, muffled beneath the music, I heard an engine start. I turned and kicked a spray can. Across the road a vehicle pulled away fast, its taillights receding to hot red pinpricks. I picked up the can. It reeked of paint fumes, and I put it inside the back of the car. Evidence, as if the police would care. I looked around the parking lot, hoping someone had seen what happened. The only other people out here were Abbie and the two women, walking back to the bar along the far side of a row of trucks, deep in giddy conversation.

Abruptly they stopped. I heard, ‘‘Oh, my hell.’’

‘‘Abbie, hold still. Don’t move.’’

‘‘Look at it; something’s wrong with it.’’

I heard growling.

‘‘Abbie, it can sense fear. Hold still.’’

After that it happened quickly. Abbie turned, ran, and flew off her feet, struck from behind. She fell from sight and started screaming.

I ran toward her, through the row of vehicles, and pulled up with a gasp. She was down, balled up with her hands over her face, and a coyote was tearing at the sleeve of her shirt.

One of the women screamed, ‘‘It’s killing her!’’

And I had left the damned gun at Brian’s house.

I yelled, ‘‘Run into the bar. Get help.’’

I picked up a rock and threw it. Missed. The coyote sawed its head back and forth on Abbie’s arm. She kept on screaming. I found another rock, took aim this time, and hit the coyote in the face. It flinched and released Abbie’s arm. It looked up at me, its head low and tilted to one side, its eyes psychedelic gold in the light of the marquee. I thought I was going to wet my pants. Its muzzle was lathered with foam.

Abbie tried to inch away, but it crouched and snarled at her. She froze.

Dry-mouthed, I willed my arms to wave at the animal. ‘‘That’s it, look at me. Look over here. This way.’’ I glanced toward the bar. The band was blaring ‘‘Hollywood Nights.’’ Where the hell was help? I said, ‘‘That’s right, you stupid dog. Look at me.’’

It did. It raised its head and started padding toward me. I took a step back.

‘‘No. Stay.
Stay
.’’

The sound of gunfire cracked the night air, and I jumped. The coyote dropped to the ground. A man walked past me toward it, pointing a pistol at it. People began rushing out of the bar. Abbie stood up, holding her arm, grimacing.

Wally broke through the crowd. ‘‘Oh, Abs . . .’’

Blood seeped from between her fingers. She looked at me in shock, and then Wally led her inside, saying, ‘‘Watch out. She’s hurt.’’

People crowded around the fallen coyote. The shooter stepped back, and I recognized him—the square jaw and supreme self-possession. It was the pilot who had flirted with me at the gas station in Mojave, Garrett.

I said, ‘‘Is it dead?’’

He nodded distractedly. ‘‘That’s no regular coyote.’’ He looked at me. ‘‘I saw the way you drew it off of her. That was righteous.’’

‘‘It was rabid,’’ I said.

Men were meddling with the carcass, muttering comments. ‘‘Look at the size of that thing.’’ ‘‘What is it, part wolf?’’ They rolled the animal over to see where the shot had landed, grabbing paws and turning.

I said, ‘‘Don’t touch it.’’

Laughter. One man said, ‘‘Honey, dogs don’t bite once they’re dead.’’ To prove it, he lifted the head by the scruff. When he saw the lather around the mouth he dropped the coyote and jumped back, wiping his hands on his jeans. They all did.

When I returned to Brian’s house the wind was rattling through the trees, and shadows jousted on his lawn under the sickly yellow glow of a sodium street-light. Wally had taken Abbie to the emergency room. I had come straight home, deciding to report the vandalism to my Explorer in the morning, when sunlight would dispel the fear that was greasing the recesses of my mind.

The lights in the house were off. Brian and Luke must have gone for ice cream after the movie. I exhaled, knowing I needed to declare a truce with Brian, cool things down.

The front door was wide open. I stopped in the center of the lawn. ‘‘Hello?’’

No response. The interior of the house was an inky void. I got out my cell phone, about to call the police, but I didn’t want to put out a false alarm. My pulse was pinging in my ears.

From the depths of the ink, light flickered. Flashlights? I dialed 911.

‘‘I have a prowler.’’ What was that light? Not flashlights—their beams would have been white and directional, and this flickered yellow.

‘‘It’s a fire.’’ I started toward the door. ‘‘Send a truck, the house is on fire.’’ I broke into a run. ‘‘Brian! Luke!’’

At the darkened doorway I stopped. Gut check. Every self-defense lecture I’d ever heard said Do Not Enter. I held my breath and reached inside, groping for the light switch.

‘‘Is anybody in here?’’ My hand hit the switch. The hallway and living room lit up, the walls seeming to leap at me. They were covered with red spray paint. The living room had been devastated. Everything was flipped, strewn, trashed. Words on the walls picked up the themes scrawled on my car.
Faggot. Fascist. Devil.
And something new: scriptural references.
Mt. 4:8-9. Rev. 13:1, 4. Rev. 13:18.

My breath came harshly. My muscles felt rigid. An orange reflection jittered across the back wall. I kicked the door hard to check that no one was hiding behind it. It cracked against the wall. I ran inside.

‘‘Brian!’’

I ran down the hall, into the kitchen, and hit the lights. Nobody there. No fire. The flames were outside, in the back. I grabbed the fire extinguisher, ran to the sliding glass door that opened onto the back patio, and fumbled with the lock. The flames flickered brighter. Damn, how did this stupid door unlock? Through the curtain sheers I could see orange light reflecting off the back fence, and now I could hear a crackling sound. The door, the door! With a hard jerk it opened and I rushed outside, fire extinguisher up and aimed.

The smoke hit me right away, and the heat. And the smell—garbage, plastics, old food. The trash can sat on the corner of the patio, flames jutting above its rim. The smoke roiled the darkness. Leaves spun and jerked into the air, yellow dimming to red. The trash can had been stuffed to overflowing with branches that stuck out above the top. The flames licked upward along two tree limbs, and for the life of me it looked like a burning bush. I sprayed it with the fire extinguisher. Powder shot out in a cold white cloud.

The flames fell back and the heat broke in groping waves. The smell worsened—hot leather, rancid meat. Holding my breath, I inched forward. The extinguisher shoved away the smoke and revealed the fuel for the fire. My mind did a backflip, telling me, Uh-uh, that’s not what I’m seeing, not a chance in hell, bub.

What I had taken for branches were cowboy boots, protruding upside down from the trash can. Scorched and smoldering, they were attached to legs, and I knew why the overwhelming smell was beef barbecued in Levi’s.

Dropping the extinguisher, I stumbled backward, my hand covering my mouth, feeling that if I didn’t run, my skin and muscle would slough right off. I fled back through the house and crashed out the front door, knocking into the woman standing on the porch. She shouted, ‘‘Police!’’ but I couldn’t stop, kept going, and fell into the bushes, vomiting until I thought I’d choke.

It was a long time before they brought out the black body bag on a stretcher. The police cars had turned off their flashing lights, and the drone from the fire department’s pumper truck had died. Firefighters were reeling in the hose that ran from the truck through the front door and out to the patio. Even the neighbors had begun to wander back to their homes. Only small groups of them remained, huddled in their pajamas and jackets, watching and pointing and speculating, along the edges of the light.

I sat in the back of a China Lake police cruiser with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I felt cold, and very alone.

Brian and Luke had not returned home.

An officer approached, the woman I had careened into at the front door. It was the rangy China Lake cop with the big legs. Her name tag read, LAURA YELTOW. With her was Detective McCracken. His massive torso filled my field of vision.

Yeltow said, ‘‘Do you know who the deceased is, Ms. Delaney?’’

I felt as if something were ripping open inside, letting a cold wind blow through me. ‘‘No. I didn’t look.’’ I was too terrified to say that it might be my brother.

The paramedics rolled the stretcher down the driveway, toward an ambulance waiting at the curb. I said, ‘‘Wait. I have to see who it is.’’

I climbed out of the patrol car. Hesitated. ‘‘Is it . . . I mean, the fire . . .’’

McCracken said, ‘‘The face will be identifiable. The flames didn’t reach it.’’

Nodding, I went to the ambulance. McCracken told the paramedics, ‘‘Unzip the bag.’’

The zipper hummed. The smell flooded my sinuses, the night became bright and flat, and a buzzing began in my ears. I saw the face, and then I was sitting on the sidewalk with my feet splayed out in front of me. Yeltow’s hand was around my shoulder, her face a throbbing yellow underneath the sodium streetlights.

Her voice broke through the hum in my head. ‘‘Can you identify the decedent?’’

Maybe I nodded; maybe I didn’t. ‘‘It’s Peter Wyoming.’’

At one a.m., sitting in an interview room holding a cold cup of police station coffee, I was still answering questions for Detective McCracken.

I had gone out about seven, I told him. Brian was home, but planning to take Luke to the movie, the seven-thirty show. I didn’t know if they actually saw it. I left the Lobo about ten thirty, after catching a different show, the live-animal act.

McCracken said, ‘‘Being at the Lobo at ten thirty is no alibi.’’

I clarified. I had been at the Lobo all evening. My companions were Abbie Hankins and her husband, Dr. Wally, plus Chet the engineer, two rocket geeks, and half of China Lake. And I didn’t know why Peter Wyoming was at the house. I couldn’t believe Brian would allow him on the property.

Across from me, McCracken rested his thick arms on the table. His red hair shone under the fluorescent lights. ‘‘Do you have any idea who might have done this?’’

I looked at him as if he had a head the size of a tick. I said, ‘‘The Remnant.’’

‘‘You think the church had something to do with the killing?’’

‘‘Of course.’’

‘‘Wyoming’s own flock. The folks who practically regarded him as God.’’

‘‘You saw the house. The walls were covered with citations from the Bible.’’

He thumbed a piece of paper on the desk, creasing it with his nail. His breath trilled through his nose. ‘‘You’re very observant. I mean, noticing that while you were rushing to grab the fire extinguisher.’’

Brian had been mistaken to consider this man dumb.

McCracken folded the paper again and creased it. ‘‘You know, you keep telling me how this church group is out to get your family. But it wasn’t your brother dead at the house; it was their pastor.’’ Fold, crease. Fold, crease. Like origami. ‘‘The day you came into town. Is it true your brother threatened Reverend Wyoming?’’

‘‘What? No.’’

‘‘Right outside this station. He didn’t say Wyoming would regret crossing him? Something about putting him down permanently?’’

I heard a ghostly echo in my mind.
Smoking hole
.

I said, ‘‘No, it wasn’t like that. Brian told him to leave us alone, or else . . .’’

‘‘ ‘Or else’? Really.’’

‘‘No, that’s not what I—’’

‘‘Where is your brother, Ms. Delaney?’’

‘‘I don’t know.’’

‘‘You have any idea where he might have gone?’’

‘‘Gone?’’ The import of the question hit me. ‘‘He hasn’t gone anywhere, unless the Remnant has taken him. There’s a difference.’’

‘‘I understand the difference. And either way, believe me, we’re looking for him. Don’t worry, if he goes home he’ll see the yellow tape and figure out that he should call us.’’

The tape was strung up to keep crime scenes from being violated. But at Brian’s the scene had been violated when I ran through the house, when I sprayed the extinguisher around the patio, and especially when the firefighters trampled in, dragging hoses across the carpet and shooting a high-pressure spray at the fire, the body, and everything in a ten-foot radius around it.

I said, ‘‘How much forensic evidence will anyone be able to recover from the house? The fire crew wasn’t looking to preserve the scene when they went in.’’

‘‘Are you a criminal lawyer?’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘Then why are you preparing a defense?’’

There was a knock, and a plainclothes officer leaned into the room, a man with prematurely white buzz-cut hair. McCracken excused himself to talk to him in the hallway. After a few minutes he came back in rubbing the red stubble on his chin.

‘‘Ms. Delaney, about your vehicle.’’

‘‘I can’t get it repainted tonight. There’s nothing I can do about it.’’

‘‘Will you step out to the parking lot with us?’’

Outside, the plainclothes asked me if I minded letting them look inside the Explorer. I hesitated. They waited. I knew they would find a way to get in, with or without a warrant, and given the direction of McCracken’s questions I thought it wise to cooperate. I unlocked the doors. The plainclothes flipped up the tailgate. ‘‘There.’’

He pointed at the can of red spray paint. I had forgotten about it, and now, I knew, that meant I was screwed.