Murder on the Horizon (15 page)

19

G
RACIE
and Baxter sat in chairs on the west-facing deck of the cabin. While the tang of smoke still clung to the air, a late-afternoon shift in the wind had blown the smoke from the Shady Oak Fire directly south, clearing the valley of most of the haze, revealing the mountains and a cloudless sky.

In companionable silence, they watched the sun drop to the horizon, a brilliant ball of orange fire against a pink sky.

“It looks so red because of the residual smoke in the air,” Gracie said.

The sun shrank to half an orb, a dot of flame, then winked out.

“That was cool, Gracie,” Baxter said. “We can't see the sun set from—”

Beep! Beep! Beep!

“Uh-oh,” Gracie said, sliding her pager off the waistband of her sweatpants.

“What's that?” Baxter asked.

“Search and Rescue pager.” Gracie read the minuscule screen.

“What does it say?”

“The Sheriff's Department has issued a non-mandatory evacuation.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they're advising people to leave the valley because of the Shady Oak Fire.”

“It's coming up here?” Gracie could hear the fear in his voice.

“No. This is a just-in-case. It means people should leave if they want to. And everyone else should get ready to evacuate. Pack up their stuff and be ready to leave at a moment's notice. They've put Search and Rescue on standby. That means we get ready in case the evacuation order becomes mandatory. We help with that. Try to get things organized a little bit so there's not mass chaos as people are leaving.” She clipped the pager back onto the waistband of her pants. “I have to go to a meeting first thing in the morning about it.”

“I heard my dad and Uncle Win talking . . .” Baxter said.

“That seems to happen a lot.”

“I like to know what's going on. They never pay attention to me.”

“Useful sometimes.”

“We're not leaving.”

“What?”

“If there's a fire. We're not going to leave.”

“That's your . . . or your parents' prerogative,” Gracie said, while at the same time thinking,
That's stupid. Asinine. Irresponsible.
Adults could make those decisions for themselves, but not evacuating children needlessly put innocent lives at risk, not to mention the lives of rescuers.

“Grandpop Martin says there's no fire. It's a government 'spiracy to get us to leave the property so they can take it over. He says anyone sets foot on our land, anyone tries to make us leave, they're going to shoot 'em. I know there's really a fire, but we'll be safe. If the fire comes, we'll go to the bunker.”

“You have a bunker?”

“Uh-huh.” The brown eyes had regained their sparkle. “It's really cool. There are beds and a bathroom and a kitchen with food and everything. Under the ground.”

“Really? I thought it was solid rock there.”

“They built it on the side of the hill. Then they covered it up with dirt.”

“Must have taken a long time.”

“They're always building on it. For as long as I can remember.”

Not that it was remotely her business, but Gracie asked, “That must take a lot of money. How can they afford all that?”

“Oh, my grandpop gets his disability check every month.”

“Why's he on disability?”

“He got shot in Vietnam. He only has one leg. He's in a wheelchair.”

Before Gracie could adequately process that information, Baxter added, “All the parents work. But don't worry. The older kids take care of the younger kids when they're gone.”

“Where do they work?”

“Um, my dad and Uncle Win work construction. Mom Brianna works part-time at the grocery store. Mom Michelle works at a bank. Mom Angela works in an office. She's a secretary or something like that.”

“You call all of them
Mom
?”

“Mom Brianna is my real mom. The others aren't my real moms. They're just married to my dad. We just call 'em Mom Brianna, Mom Angela, like that, to keep 'em straight.”

“So your dad . . . uh . . . so . . .” Gracie cleared her throat. “How many wives does he have?”

“Three.”

“Three. And your uncle Win? How many wives does he have?”

“Two.”

“And those are what? Your aunts?”

“Yup. Auntie Jennifer. Auntie Kimberly. Auntie Kimberly's my dad's sister.”

“And what about your grandpop? How many wives does he have?”

“Just one besides Gran Sharon.”

“I see. And what does your gran Sharon think about that?”

“She left Grandpop.”

“I don't blame her. How many kids live there . . . in the compound?”

“Um . . .” Baxter thought, tapping his chin with a finger. “Maybe twelve. Thirteen. Something like that.”

“So Jordan is your cousin?”

“Yeah.”

Gracie thought for a moment, then said, “At the training the other day, there were other people there—other men. Do they live at the compound, too?

“Some of them do. But not all of them. They just come with us when there's a training.”

“And what are they training for?”

“I don't know,” he said, raising a shoulder. “We just train.”

“Are they planning something?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh, come on, Bax. This is your family.”

He threw his hands out, palms up. “I don't know anything. I haven't been initiated yet.”

“Initiated. What does that mean?”

“When the boys turn fifteen, we're initiated. That's when I'll find out all kinds of stuff.”

“And what's involved in this initiation? What will you have to do?”

“I don't know that I have to
do
anything. I get a badge of honor though.”

“Badge of honor. What's that?”

“A tattoo.”

“What kind of a tattoo?”

“A tear. Right here.” He pointed to the outer corner of his left eye.

“That boy, that young man, Jordan,” Gracie said. “He
had something at the corner of his eye. I couldn't see it because I was too far away. Was it a teardrop tattoo? Was that his badge of honor?”

He nodded. “His birthday was in May, but he only got the tattoo a few weeks ago. I dunno why.”

“What does the teardrop signify?”

“I dunno. There're some other ones, too. There's this one . . .” He scrunched up his face. “I can't really describe it.”

“Can you draw a picture?”

“Okay.”

“Come on. Let's go inside.”

In the kitchen, Baxter sat down at the table. Gracie grabbed a piece of paper and pencil from next to the telephone, slid them in front of the boy, and sat down in the chair opposite.

Tongue showing at the corner of his mouth, Baxter carefully drew a picture, then he turned the paper around and pushed it across the table in front of Gracie.

She looked down, her breath catching. The symbol was one she had seen on the Anti-Defamation League's Hate on Display page. “It looks like part of a peace sign,” she said. “Upside down. Without the circle.”

“What's a peace sign?”

Gracie picked up the pencil and drew the peace symbol.

“Yeah,” Baxter agreed. “It does look kinda like that.”

“But you don't know what it means?”

Baxter shook his head, then said, “There's another one.”

Gracie slid the paper back in front of him.

Baxter started drawing. “Wait.” He scribbled it out. He tried again, but scribbled that out, too. “I can't get it. It looks like a spider web. They get that on their elbow.”

Gracie took the pencil from his hand and drew the diamond with legs with the 88 beneath. “Have you ever seen one that looks like this?”

Baxter slid the picture so that it was in front of him. He stared down at the picture, unmoving.

“Bax? Do you recognize it?”

“Yeah. I have that one.”

“You do?”

He stood up and, with both hands, grabbed the bottom of his black T-shirt and lifted it completely off his head.

Then he turned away from Gracie, pointing over his shoulder to his back. “See? Right there.”

Between the boy's shoulder blades was a small tattoo of the diamond with legs with the numbers 88 below. But instead of fixing on the symbol, Gracie's eyes were locked on black and yellow splotches covering Baxter's back and ribs—a mass of fading bruises. “Bax,” she breathed. “What happened to you?”

“It's just a tattoo.”

“No. Those are bruises.”

“Oh,” Baxter said, turning around again and donning his T-shirt. “That was Jordan. He got mad and hit me.”

He slid back onto his chair, hands in his lap, eyes lowered.

Gracie sank down into the chair opposite, staring at the bent head. She reached out to smooth the blond hair, but stopped and withdrew her hand. “Bax?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you told anyone about this, shown anyone this . . . what he did?”

The slightest shake of the blond head.

“Not even Grandma Sharon?”

Another shake of the head.

“Baxter, I have to report this,” she said in a gentle voice. “I have to call Child and Family Services.”

The boy's head snapped up, his eyes as round as full moons behind the heavy-rimmed glasses. “No!” he yelled. He jumped to his feet, shoving the chair back so hard it tipped backward, banged against the wall, and stayed there. “You can't tell! He'll do things! He'll hurt her!”

Gracie managed to find her voice. “Who will he hurt?”

“Swear you won't tell anybody! You have to swear!”

“Sit down, Bax.”

The boy stayed where he was, fists clenched, body trembling. “Swear!”

“Okay. Okay, I swear I won't tell anybody. For now at least. Sit down, Bax.”

The boy righted his chair and sat back down, hands hanging on either side of the chair, head bent.

“Why don't you want me to tell anyone?”

“Jordan said he'll hurt Grandma Sharon.” His eyes flicked up to hers, then back down again. “He likes to burn things. He said he would burn her house down.” He stopped, motionless in his chair. Then he looked up at Gracie and said, “I think he might have burned down 'Cacia's house.”

20

“H
E
likes to burn things,” Baxter had said about his fifteen-year-old cousin.

Gracie sat in one of the ladder-backed chairs, elbows on the kitchen table, head in her hands, stomach roiling like a witch's brew.

It was late, almost eleven o'clock. She should be in bed and asleep. Not only did she need to be at the SO at eight o'clock the next morning, she needed to be something resembling coherent.

But she knew she wouldn't be able to fall asleep.

At least not yet.

She pushed herself to her feet, poured herself a tumbler of skim milk, stirred in a tablespoon of baking soda, downed the concoction in three gulps, set the glass in the sink, and sat back down at the table to think about the boy/man with the angry eyes who, with the cool aplomb of a trained killer, had pointed a semiautomatic weapon at her.

Who had beaten his younger cousin black-and-blue.

Who had threatened to burn down his own grandmother's house.

What else was Jordan capable of?

Burning down the Robinsons' home?

Somehow—
somehow—
she had to find out.

First though, infinitely more important, she needed to facilitate the removal of Baxter from his abusive family.

Calling the county's Child and Family Services was the most obvious solution to that problem.

But she had sworn to Baxter, for the time being at least, that she wouldn't tell anyone.

Plus, the last time she had contacted the social services agency, she had almost lost her beloved dog.

She looked over to where Minnie was curled up and sleeping peacefully on her little round bed in the corner of the kitchen.

Was she willing to risk Minnie's life again? Or Sharon's? Possibly even Baxter's?

She couldn't
not
risk it. She wouldn't . . . couldn't . . . honor her promise to the boy. She had a moral obligation to report the physical abuse of a child.

No, she decided. Instead of calling social services, she would tell Sharon Edwards. Let her handle it. The woman was the boy's grandmother. Gracie was no one in particular to Baxter. She was just . . . Gracie.

That decision made, she closed her eyes and mentally sifted back through the events of that horrific day in June. The day all hell had broken loose at camp, the day she had almost lost her life, until she remembered exactly what she had done with the little flash drive containing the journal her friend Jett had left for her.

She stood up again, walked into the living room to where her day pack lay on the couch, unzipped a tiny outside pocket, and fished out the flash drive with two fingers.

Back at the table in the kitchen, she inserted the flash drive into the port on her laptop.

There was only one file—
Camp
.

Gracie clicked on it.

Her friend's diary began almost three years earlier. There were over six hundred files, one folder for every month, one file for each entry.

Months later, the pain of her friend's death was still so keen, Gracie avoided the portions of the journal describing what had been happening at camp and the events that had led slowly and inexorably to her death, instead doing a search for Winston and concentrating solely on those portions pertaining to Jett's relationship with him.

The story read like a bad bodice ripper, but without the happily ever after.

Jett had met Winston in the frozen pizza section at Stater Bros. and believed the man was the answer to her prayers. She had never been with a man who treated her as well—the perfect gentlemen, sweet, attentive, picking up the dinner tab, holding doors open for her, asking for permission to kiss her. She believed that she was in love with him and that he loved her back. He had resisted having sex with her until their fifth date, a first for Jett. And apparently what fabulous sex it was. Gracie skipped over long, graphic descriptions of contortions in various venues, face flushed with embarrassment at the intrusion into her late friend's sex life.

With the sensation of stepping off already shaky ground into a quagmire, Gracie read about Winston's increasing insistence for Jett to go off the pill, to have a baby with him. Then, several weeks into the relationship came the single jaw-dropping pronouncement: “He's married!” Jett's words screamed off the page in forty-eight-point typeface. “He admitted it!” she raged. “To my face! He said he loves me. Wants to marry me! Wants my baby! For his army! WTF? I'm so outa there!!!”

“Hell's bells, Jett,” Gracie whispered. “No wonder you dropped him like a cast-iron skillet.” The journal went on to describe how, when Jett had tried to break up with the man,
Dr. Winston Jekyll had become Mr. Winston Hyde. He had grabbed her, squeezing her jaw with his fingers, pressing the tip of a knife blade to the inner corner of her eye, whispering in her ear that he would cut it out if she left him, until finally she relented and promised to keep seeing him. For the months following, Jett had hidden out at camp like a frightened rabbit from a hunter, thankful for the camp's remoteness and inaccessibility by telephone. Winston had written letters, at first enraged, threatening, then remorseful and pleading. Finally, they had trickled away to nothing.

Gracie thought back to the reception following Jett's memorial service at camp, where she had met Winston for the first time. Within the first minute, he had told her that he loved Jett, that he was her fiancé, and he had asked Gracie if she was married. What made the event stick in her mind was that he had been wearing a wedding band. Eventually Gracie had shrugged off her suspicions, choosing the less creepy, more logical explanations.
Winston's a widower and still carrying a torch for his dead wife.
Or
He's divorced and still carrying a torch for his ex.
Or
He was asking for a lonely single friend
.

Gracie shivered. The answer had been none of the above. Her initial inclination that there was something not right with the man had been spot-on. Winston had been on the prowl for yet another wife with whom to have another baby for his so-called army.

“Yeeesh,” Gracie whispered. She exited the journal altogether and leaned back in her chair.

There was nothing in what Jett had written to suggest that Winston was a white supremacist or to connect anyone from the Edwards/Ferguson clan, including Jordan, to the burning of Vivian and John's home. Nothing to even suggest the fire was anything but an accident due to faulty wiring or an overturned candle.

She couldn't go to the Sheriff's Department with what amounted to three fistfuls of mountain air, a bunch of tiny
dots of information, none of which connected together in any coherent sense, much less amounting to anything criminal at all. Gardner would just use it as another notch in his anti-Gracie campaign belt.

Gracie returned the flash drive to her day pack, zipping it into the same outer pocket. Then she reopened the Anti-Defamation League's website and did a general search for
teardrop tattoo
. Nothing came up. She searched under General Hate Symbols, then more specifically Neo-Nazi and Hate Group Symbols. Still nothing. Frustrated and impatient, she exited the site altogether and did a general Internet search for
teardrop tattoo meaning
.

Pages of listings came up.

She clicked on the first site, Wikipedia, and read that the tattoo could have several meanings, including that the wearer had killed someone.

That the wearer has killed someone.

Gracie felt herself being sucked further into the mire.

Was it possible that the boy's tattoo, his “badge of honor,” indicated that he, in some way, had participated in a killing? Was he a murderer?

Gracie exited Wikipedia and clicked on the next site on the list. There she read that a teardrop tattoo completely colored in by ink, as Jordan's was, represented a murder committed by the wearer. A third and fourth website turned up similar results.

Gracie wiped her hands down her face.

She looked down at her watch. Eleven twenty-seven.

“So much for sleeping tonight,” she said. “I'm wide awake.”

*   *   *

“WHERE IS IT?”
Gracie leaned over the back of the driver's seat of her truck, throwing aside blankets, digging past storage bins and gear all the way down to the floor. “Where the hell's my ID?”

The lanyard holding her Sheriff's Department picture ID was always draped around the hanger from which her Search
and Rescue uniform shirt and field pants hung behind the driver's seat of the Ranger, ready for a callout.

Now, suddenly, her ID wasn't there.

She had already scoured every inch of ground between the cabin and the truck. Had it fallen out somehow at camp? There was no time now to drive all the way up there to look. The pre-evacuation briefing was slated to begin in twenty minutes, barely enough time to drive from her cabin to the SO.

“It's supposed to be
right here
!”

But it wasn't. She sat back on her heels and tipped her head back, closing her eyes. “Oh, God! Gardner!”

*   *   *

“YOU'VE PUT THE
lives of every law enforcement officer on the Department at risk,” Sergeant Gardner said in a voice much louder than necessary in the tiny office.

Hands clasped behind her, Gracie shifted her weight from one long leg to the other, then back again.

During the drive from her cabin to the SO, she had called Allen on her cell phone, asking him to double-check the Serrano Lodge and Gatehouse parking lots for her ID. A return call twenty minutes later had reported negative results.

Gracie slipped into the Sheriff's Office building along with Jon and Lenny. Sitting among the field of orange shirts, she could barely stand to look at Gardner standing pompously at the front of the room, giving the pre-evacuation briefing in a condescending tone, issuing instructions, explaining maps and procedures. She craned her neck, looking for Ralph's familiar silver crew cut, but he wasn't there. Surreptitiously she texted him:
WHERE ARE YOU? AT SO FO
R FIRE MEETING.
But she received no response. Throughout the briefing she sat on pins and needles, expecting someone to tap her on the shoulder and ask to see her Sheriff's ID.

Without an ID, she couldn't work the mandatory evacuation if it was issued, couldn't respond to any searches, couldn't participate in anything SAR-related. As the meeting
broke up, deciding to just get it over with, she walked down the hallway of the SO to the Watch Commander's office, feeling as if she were riding in a tumbrel to the guillotine.

“Get down to the HQ,” Gardner ordered. “Get another ID. Today. Capiche?”

“Yes.” Resisting the inane impulse to follow up with a thank-you, Gracie turned to leave.

“I got a report that you were brawling in public.”

Gracie turned back. “What?”

“In uniform.”

“Ah,” she said. Her altercation with Mrs. Lucas in the Stater Bros. parking lot. “I wasn't brawling. I—”

“Those are Department patches on your shirt.”

“I know. She—”

“As part of this department, you're an official representative of the Sheriff himself.”

Gracie had reached her Sergeant Gardner daily tolerance quota. “I'm aware of that,” she said, her voice sharp. “I wasn't brawling. I was attacked. Blindsided. Head-butted. I was defending myself. I can't really afford to replace all my front teeth.”

She hadn't thought it was possible for the man to narrow his eyes even further and still be able to see. “You think this is a joke?” he growled.

She snorted. “No. I don't think this is a joke.”

“You're a loose cannon, Kinkaid.”

Gracie opened her mouth to protest, but didn't get the chance.

“You're unpredictable and unreliable and that makes you unprofessional.”

“Now wait a—”

“Your judgment is questionable.”

Gracie shut her mouth, realizing suddenly that Gardner was lashing out with everything he could think of, valid and invalid, true and untrue, baiting her into a reaction he might be able to use against her. She took in a breath and made a
conscious effort to remain calm, unemotional, and to let the accusations slide off her armor of indifference. But Gardner's verbal darts found the chinks in the steel, penetrated, stung, humiliated, diminished.

“You're an embarrassment to the Department,” the Sergeant continued. “That makes you a liability and a problem—the Sheriff's problem. And
that
makes you
my
problem.” She heard him mumble what sounded like, “Goddam volunteers,” under his breath. Then, as if it had just occurred to him, he said, “I'm writing you up.”

Gracie found her voice again. “
What?
Why? On what . . . ?”

“You're lucky I'm not booting you off the team, Kinkaid. But, with this fire thing, all incompetence aside, I need every man I can get. I'm writing up an official reprimand. It'll go into your personnel file. Consider this your final warning. You won't get another chance. You screw up again, you're off the team.”

Gardner had scored a direct hit. The threat to kick her off the team hit Gracie like a sucker punch to the gut. Without Search and Rescue, she had her job, but not much else. The team was her life, the guys on the team her family. Without them, except for Minnie, and maybe Allen, she had no one. A yawning emptiness opened up at her feet.

Gracie spun on her heel and left the room. To her retreating back she heard the sergeant say, “ID. Today. Otherwise don't bother.”