Fangs Out (3 page)

I asked if her killer was ever caught.

“They stuck a needle in him out in Indiana about a month ago. Ten years of appeals before he finally ran out the clock. The feds offered to pay our airfare so we could come out and watch, but I was worried I might put the sumbitch out of his misery myself. They put us up in a hotel in San Diego instead and put it on closed circuit TV.”

“I couldn’t watch it,” Crissy said.

“I did,” Walker said, staring glumly down at his drink. “Enjoyed every minute of it.”

Part of me wanted to offer a congratulatory toast. A rabid dog had gotten what he deserved. I’d helped exterminate a few of them myself working for the government, before I burned out, and before Savannah left me. After we divorced, I did some serious soul-searching and went looking for a new line of work. That’s when I found civilian flight instruction and the Buddha, who tends to frown on anything that smacks remotely of the kill-’em-all, let-God-sort-’em-out mind-set with which I’d been leading my life. I wasn’t sure where I stood anymore on the debate over state-sanctioned execution, only that I was glad I wasn’t the one to decide when to flip the tap.

Our tattooed, ear-studded, twenty-something server, who’d introduced himself at the outset of the evening as Gary, arrived with a fresh tumbler of whiskey for Walker. He ignored my empty water glass and tried not to stare at Crissy’s breasts.

“Another wine for the lady?”

“Please.”

The waiter’s lips curled in a leering smile as a thought came to him. “Excuse me for asking, but didn’t I see you in
Playboy,
like, twenty years ago?”

She raised her gaze to meet his, her eyes suddenly hard like jade.

“You have no idea,” Crissy said, “how often I get that.”

Gary got the hint and swallowed hard. “Be right back with that wine.”

“I could use some more water,” I said, but the waiter apparently didn’t hear me, or pretended not to, as he headed for the kitchen. I thought of going after him, putting him in a wrist lock or an arm bar and making him refill my glass. But that would’ve been bad karma. I’d probably come back in the next life as Gary’s busboy or, worse, his tattoo artist. I excused myself and fetched a water pitcher sitting on a shelf near the cashier’s stand. When I came back to the table, Walker was weeping whiskey tears.

“Losing a child, that’s something you don’t ever get over,” he said. “You wake up with it every morning. When your head hits that pillow every night, it’s the last thought on your mind.”

Crissy rubbed his shoulder and told him everything was OK.

“It’s not OK, Crissy. It’ll never be OK.” He swiped tears with the back of his hand and looked at me straight. “I want to tell you how she died.”

Not to sound insensitive, but I didn’t want to hear it. We mere mortals prefer our heroes unscathed by the kind of tragedies that randomly befall the rest of us, none being greater than having to bury a child. I didn’t know why he felt compelled to confide the painful details of so substantial a loss with someone he’d known all of one day, but changing the subject was a nonstarter. Hub Walker owned a Medal of Honor. Who was I to tell him no?

“Ruthie was a systems engineer, computers,” he said. “Served on a guided missile frigate after graduation. She didn’t much like sea duty, though. Never got past the throwing-up part.”

After she left the Navy, Walker said, he’d helped her land a job by introducing her to Greg Castle, the president of Castle Robotics, Ltd., a small but upcoming defense contractor headquartered east of San Diego in the hardscrabble suburb of El Cajon. Castle Robotics developed aerial drones for the Pentagon. Walker had done some promotional work for Castle’s company, and Castle was only too happy to hire Ruth as a computer design specialist. It was in that capacity that she met and began dating a cocky young engineer who worked for one of Castle Robotics’ main competitors, another San Diego-based contractor, Applied Combat Systems. Ruth’s new beau came from old money in Marin County. He’d gone to Stanford and boxed middleweight on the university’s intramural team. His name, Walker said, was Dorian Munz.

“They broke up, but not before Ruth got pregnant,” Walker said, blowing his nose with a cocktail napkin. “Munz didn’t want her having the baby. Told her he wasn’t about to be making child support payments the rest of his life. That’s when she told him it wasn’t his baby anyhow.”

Ruth would give birth to a girl she named Ryder. Munz grew convinced that the infant’s father was Ruth’s married boss, Greg Castle, who already had four children of his own. Castle dismissed Munz’s claim as “laughable.”

“Ruthie never would tell me who the real father was,” Walker said, “only that it was her own damn business and nobody else’s. She was a hardhead. Just like her old man.”

“That was Ruthie,” Crissy said, smiling wistfully, “always doing things her own way.”

According to Walker, Munz became suspicious that Ruth was spreading rumors about him: that he’d become fond of cocaine; that he’d developed a taste for high-end hookers. True or otherwise, they were the kind of rumors that can cost a man his top-level security clearance and his career in the defense industry. Dorian Munz would soon lose both. He started threatening Ruth over the telephone, Walker said, then began stalking her. Ruth took out a restraining order. Munz ignored it. He shadowed her to and from work, when she went to the grocery store, on dates.

“Phone records show that Munz called Ruthie the night she got killed,” Walker said. “We don’t know all of what was said, but the FBI thinks he lured her out by offering some kind of truce. She agreed to meet him on Coronado. That’s where they found her. She’d been stabbed.”

Because Ruth Walker’s body was discovered on Navy property, the case was quickly deemed federal. The U.S. Attorneys’ office announced in short order it would seek the death penalty. Munz’s lawyer argued that the government’s decision was influenced unfairly by the fact that the victim’s father was a Medal of Honor recipient. But Hub Walker insisted that his military accomplishments had nothing to do with it.

“The evidence against that miserable piece of filth,” he said, “was thicker than maggots on a dead possum.”

Southern colloquialisms. People are never merely upset. They’re angrier than a pack mule with a mouthful of bees. They’re never simply at a loss for words. They’re as tongue-tied as a coon hound chompin’ peanut butter crackers.

“At least he’s no longer taking up space,” I said, hoisting my glass. “To closure.”

“There’s no such a thing,” Walker said sadly.

He stared into the night, grieving over the loss of an only child, and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of there. I’m the first to admit, comforting others is not one of my strong suits. We’re born alone, we die alone, and in between, with rare exceptions, people invariably disappoint and deceive us. In the end, even in combat, the only human being you can count on is you. But the Buddha is all about understanding, and I’m all about trying to be a more compassionate, understanding human being, no matter how impossible the task might seem at times. And so, reluctantly, I swallowed down the urge to un-ass myself from my chair, and reached over and gripped Walker’s thin arm supportively.

“What’s done is done, Hub.”

“I only wish.” He looked over at me, fisting tears from his eyes. “After you left the airfield today, your mechanic buddy, Larry, told me you used to work some kind of intelligence assignment. Said he didn’t know much about it. Said the Los Angeles police couldn’t figure out who killed your ex-wife’s husband and you did. That true?”

Where to begin? Yes, it was true that after my fighter pilot days were cut short by a gimpy knee from days playing football for the Academy, I was transferred to Air Force intelligence and eventually to a Tier One Ultra unit within the Defense Department code-named “Alpha,” where operators were referred to as “go-to guys.” We functioned essentially as human guided missiles, hunting down terrorists abroad. That was before the White House got wind of our operations and shut us down for fear of political backlash. And, yes, it was true that I’d reluctantly agreed to assist in the murder investigation of the lowlife my ex-wife, Savannah, had left me for—Arlo Echevarria, my former Alpha commander—but only because her father had offered me $25,000 to do so. I’d subsequently spent most of that money covering an engine overhaul on my airplane, and paying Larry some of the back rent I owed him, which more or less put me back in the financial doghouse. Hub Walker, however, didn’t need to hear all that. So I responded to his question with what I concluded was a brilliantly deflecting one of my own:

“What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?”

“I want you to help prove that Greg Castle had nothing to do with my daughter’s murder.”

I looked at him, not understanding. “Unless I’m mistaken, Hub, you just said the evidence against this guy, Dorian Munz, was ‘thicker than maggots on a dead possum.’ I assume the jury must’ve agreed, or else they wouldn’t have put him on the bus to hell. Or am I missing something here?”

Apparently I was.

As Walker described it, when Munz was asked if he had anything to say before being executed, he said plenty. He had proclaimed his innocence, as he’d done many times before. Only this time, he asserted that Ruth Walker had been murdered after discovering that her boss, Greg Castle, had been bilking the Defense Department out of millions of dollars in fraudulent overcharges. According to Munz, Castle killed Ruth—or paid somebody to kill her—before she could go to the feds with proof. While Munz’s allegations failed to produce the reprieve that he’d hoped for, they did generate widespread news reports in San Diego.

“The press,” Walker said, “lapped it up.”

The result was a public relations nightmare for Castle Robotics and for Castle personally. The company’s chances of securing Defense Department contracts were in jeopardy, as was Castle’s marriage.

“I’ve known Greg Castle for years,” Walker said. “He’s a good family man. Honorable as the day is long. I
know
he had nothin’ to do with Ruthie’s murder. But that’s not the impression everybody in San Diego has, what with everything Munz said before he died. You spend a week or so snooping around, get me something I can throw the news media, something to show that Munz was talking out the side of his filthy, lying mouth before they executed him, and I’ll pay you $10,000, plus expenses.”

“I’m a flight instructor, Hub, not Kojak.”

“But you
did
used to work intelligence assignments, correct?” Hub said.

I shrugged.

“Well, that means in my book you
were
an investigator. And I got an inclination that if you were as good at investigating as you are flying, it’ll be money well spent.”

“Come down to San Diego,” Crissy said. “You can stay with us. We have a very nice place in La Jolla. Bring your wife. I’m sure she’d enjoy a little vacation.”

“I’m not married.”

“Well, you must have a girlfriend.”

I shook my head.

“
Boy
friend?” Walker said with one eyebrow raised.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Crissy quickly added.

“What I have is a cat. And that relationship is definitely on shaky ground.”

“Sounds to me like what you need is
The Cat Communicator
.”

I looked at her.

“It’s a reality show,” Crissy said enthusiastically. “He’s like
The Dog Whisperer,
only he deals with badly behaved cats. People call him up when they’re having problems with their kitties. He comes over and straightens them out.”

“
The Cat Communicator
. Can’t say I’ve ever seen it.”

“That’s because it’s still in development. That’s what I do. I’m a TV producer—trying to be, anyway.”

I wondered how many episodes of
The Cat Communicator
would involve issues such as retaliatory scratching and urination.

“Here’s the deal,” Hub said, “Larry told me you’re short on flight students right now. We both know you could use the money. Plus, it’d be a way for Crissy and me to pay you back for all that you did for us today, helping us get through that cloud deck and all.”

A quote from Thoreau bubbled up from the tar pits of my brain, an artifact from my Air Force Academy days. The first time I’d heard it was during my doolie year, when a fourth-year cadet upbraided me in a hallway after I deigned to point out that being a military pilot afforded certain privileges, not the least of which was earning a livable wage. Leaning in close, his nose squishing mine, the upperclassman reminded me that one joins the armed forces of the United States to serve his country, not to service his bank account. “Money,” he seethed, “is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.”

Maybe not. But money
is
required to cover the bills, of which I unfortunately had plenty.

Hub Walker jotted down his cell phone number on his wife’s cocktail napkin and slid it across the table. I said I’d sleep on his offer and get back to him in the morning.

K
IDDIOT
,
THE
world’s dumbest cat, sniffed his dish as if the chow I’d just served him had been stored in a Cold War-era fallout shelter.