FIVE

With its whitewashed, stucco walls and red tile roofs, Spanish is the dominant architectural style of Rancho Bonita, along with municipal construction codes that some say border on fascist. Every building plan is slavishly gone over to ensure that it conforms to the community’s carefully crafted image of a Mediterranean-like oasis. The three-story Rancho Bonita County Detention Center, perched on a hillside north of downtown amid a warren of other nondescript county government buildings, was the opposite: a shrine to utility, all concrete and concertina wire. It reminded me a little of Abu Ghraib, only without the charm.

The first thing I noticed as I turned my truck into the center’s parking lot were three television news vans camped in the tow-away zone directly in front of the jail, and a phalanx of media types waiting near the main entrance of the jail with their boom mikes and cameras. The second thing I noticed were the two dark-haired guys in a rust-bucket Chevy Nova prowling the back rows. A piece of newspaper hung from the Nova’s grillwork, conveniently obscuring the front license plate from view, as if it had somehow gotten stuck there. I nosed into a parking space, putting several rows of cars between the Nova and me, and observed.

They slowly drove around the lot before circling back and eventually stopping behind a newer Honda Accord, silver, with chrome wheels. A towel hanging out of the trunk partially obscured the Nova’s back license plate. The guy on the passenger side stepped out and walked over, glanced around to make sure nobody was watching him, then peered inside the Accord. Pasty skin, ginger hair shorn close, midtwenties, husky, wife beater T-shirt, abundant tattoos. He glanced around once more, then pulled a long flat metal rod out from the leg of his saggy jeans and shoved it down into the driver’s side door of the Accord. I picked up my phone.

“Nine-one-one emergency operator. What is your emergency?”

“I’d like to report a car burglary in progress.”

She sounded older and mildly disinterested. “When you say ‘in progress,’ you mean they’re there now?”

“Correct.”

“OK, and this is taking place where?”

“The parking lot of the county jail, directly across from sheriff’s headquarters.” I could hear the clicking of her keystrokes over the phone. “They’re breaking into a silver Honda Accord. I can’t read the plate from my present position.”

“Across from the sheriff’s department,” she said. “Wow, pretty ballsy.”

“Indeed.”

The Accord’s door was now open. The burglar was leaning into the car, rummaging around with one knee on the driver’s seat. Red plaid boxer shorts billowed out from the top of his jeans. Then he quickly jumped into the Accord and shut the door. I provided the emergency operator a running commentary.

“He’s definitely trying to steal the car.”

“And your name, sir?”

“My name doesn’t matter right now, lady. Do you have a unit en route, yes or no, because by the look of it, these two jokers are about to be gone.”

“We do have a unit on the way, yes sir. They should be there in a couple of minutes, if not sooner. Now, if you could please just tell me your—”

I hung up, waited, and watched. I told myself not to get directly involved any more than I already was. It was up to the professionals of law enforcement to handle the rest. Only the professionals seemed to be on their lunch breaks.

I could see the Accord shudder a little—the engine turning over—then white taillights came on as the thief shifted into reverse and began backing out. Prudence dictated that I stay put. I’d done my civic duty. I’d dropped a dime. That’s probably more than most people would’ve done. But that’s the problem with the world these days. Too much prudence. Too much, “It’s not my problem,” kind of thinking. The world is a dangerous place not because of men who are dangerous, but because of those who stand by and don’t stand up.

Outside the jail, less than 100 meters away, I could see two uniformed sheriff’s deputies chatting with the reporters and began pounding on my horn, hoping to attract their attention, but nobody so much as looked in my direction.

The guy in the Accord and his accomplice in the Nova were about to get away.

“Not on my watch,” I muttered aloud which, when I thought about it later, was a pretty boneheaded thing to say considering that I was hardly on duty. No matter. Like some old dog, I was a creature of habit.

I threw my truck into gear and raced along a parallel parking row toward the exit of the lot where both cars were angling. I got there first, sliding sideways to a screeching stop and blocking the way out.

The dude in the Accord stepped out and strode toward me with rage in his eyes and a folding knife with a three-inch blade in hand. I cracked my door an inch. When he got within range, I shoved it open with my foot and knocked him to the pavement. Then I stepped out.

He rolled to his feet and was screaming, “I’m gonna kick your motherfu-,” when I booted him in the face and down he went once more, this time out cold and missing a few teeth. His partner in crime exited the Nova and came at me too, armed with an aluminum baseball bat.

“Drop it!”

I turned as the two plump deputies I’d seen moments earlier came up huffing and puffing from behind me with their pistols drawn, news crews close on the cops’ heels. The dude with the bat quickly did as ordered and laid down face-first to the pavement with his arms outstretched like he’d been through the drill before.

“You OK, sir?” one of the deputies asked me, his pistol trained on the bad guys while his partner handcuffed them.

“I’m good. These two jokers were stealing that Honda.”

“In front of department headquarters?” The deputy shook his head. “Man, what’s the world coming to?”

“Tell me about it.”

He nodded toward the guy whose teeth I’d knocked out and who was still sprawled unconscious on the ground.

“Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Reality TV,” I said. “Ever seen The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills?”

The deputy told me to hang tight while he and his partner secured the car thieves, and said he’d be back in a bit to take my statement. Then he yelled at the reporters and the camera people to back the hell up. One of the reporters was Danika Quinn, whose report on Dino Birch’s arrest I’d seen the night before. She was even better looking in person.

“Sir, can you tell us what happened here?” Quinn asked me, flipping her silky auburn hair away from her face and shoving a microphone into mine.

“Just taking out a little trash. Excuse me.”

I pushed past her, got back in my truck. As I did, a black-and-white sheriff’s patrol car came barreling in with its siren keening and rooftop lights flashing. Quinn and several of her colleagues had to jump out of the way to avoid being hit. The cruiser’s driver and lone occupant, a white deputy built like an NFL defensive end wearing cool-guy sunglasses, got out with his right hand on the butt of his holstered pistol, like he was ready to go to war.

“Code four, in custody,” the deputy who I’d been talking to told him, “thanks to that courageous citizen.”

When I looked over, the news people were all zoomed in on me.

BOTH CAR thieves were out on parole. Not that I cared. I was there to see Dino Birch. After explaining my actions to the cops, I was escorted inside the jail, past Danika Quinn and the rest of the press corps. Somehow, in the interim, they all seemed to have learned the real purpose of my visit, to see Dino Birch. The reporters shouted questions. I ignored them.

Once inside, I was led to the second-floor office of the on-duty watch commander, a prim lieutenant of about forty with razor creases in her tan uniform shirt and the glossiest black leather gun belt I’d ever seen. She, too, seemed to know why I was there before I said anything.

I was made to empty all of my pockets as I would if I were at the airport, flying commercially. I went through a metal detector. I was then taken to a six-foot-by-six-foot cubicle surrounded by glass and positioned inside a detective squad room. Inside the cubicle were a metal table bolted to the floor and two metal desk chairs, unpadded. I was made to sign and date a statement saying I would be prosecuted fully if I were caught smuggling in any contraband, and another statement promising that I would not hold Rancho Bonita County responsible were I to meet injury or death inside the jail. Then I waited. For once, I didn’t mind cooling my heels. The air conditioning was on.

After about ten minutes, Birch was brought in, wrists chained to his waist over an orange jumpsuit. His dark wild hair matched his eyes. One of the two escorting deputies freed Birch’s hands as he sat opposite me, on the other side of the table. The other deputy knelt and padlocked Birch’s manacled ankles to a steel eyebolt embedded in the cement floor.

“So, you and my cousin Savannah,” he said after we were alone. “I didn’t really know Savannah. She was older than me. Met her once, I think, twice maybe. I was little. She was a real knockout.”

“That she was.”

I asked him if he’d been read his rights. He said he had, and that he’d refused to talk pending a meeting with his defense attorney, whoever that would turn out to be.

“Uncle Gil told my mother he was gonna help get me a good lawyer. I guess that’s why you’re here, huh? To make sure he’s not wasting his money?”

“Something like that.”

“Look, I didn’t do it,” Birch said. “I didn’t shoot those people.”

“Who was it then?”

“How should I know?”

“Did you ever threaten to hurt Roy Hollister for killing wild animals?”

“No.”

“You never sent him any letters telling him to stop the safaris or he was going to pay?”

“What’re you talking about? Letters? No. Never.”

Birch avoided my eyes and kept looking distractedly through the glass at people passing by in the corridor outside our cubicle, or up at the tiny video camera trained on us from the ceiling, or down at his meaty hands, which he kept flexing and massaging.

“Where were you the night Hollister and his wife were killed?”

“I have no idea. I can’t remember.”

“That would be the wrong answer.”

“OK, fine. I’m pretty sure I was home that night.”

“. . . Pretty sure? Dino, the DA’s about to fire a full broadside at you, two counts of murder, and ‘pretty sure’ is the best you can do?”

“Fine. I was home. The whole night.”

“You can prove that?”

“Sure,” Birch said, rubbing his hands, “why not?”

“What did you do that night?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not a trick question, Dino. I mean, what did you do at home that night? A crossword puzzle? Rotate your shoe trees? Organize your silverware drawer? I need specifics. Your uncle needs specifics.”

“I watched some TV, I guess, made myself something to eat, brushed my teeth, went to bed. How the hell am I supposed to remember?” He rubbed his temples. “Christ, this is a nightmare. The cops are telling me they have a witness that can put me at the scene that night.”

“What’s the witness’s name?”

“I don’t know. Some guy who lives down the street or something.”

“But just so we’re clear, you were at home that night. All night. Correct?”

“Jesus, Logan, I just told you that. Yes. Correct. I was home. All night.”

“Were you with anybody? Anybody come over?”

“. . . No.”

He’d hesitated—the first time he’d done that.

“So what you’re telling me,” I said, “is that you’ve got nobody who can vouch for your whereabouts that night, correct?”

Dino looked away and chewed on a fingernail before nodding in the affirmative.

“In essence, then, you have no alibi.”

He glared at me. “I thought you were here to help me, man. I thought that’s why my uncle sent you.”

Birch’s left carotid artery was throbbing visibly. The cubicle we were sitting in was about sixty-five degrees, but he was sweating. A lot.

“I can’t . . .” He wiped a trembling palm across his mouth.

“Can’t what, Dino?”

“I can’t talk about this right now.”

“Why not?”

He said nothing.

“You seem a little scared, Dino.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Are you telling me somebody’s trying to frame you?”

He nodded.

“Who would that be?”

He shrugged, then looked up at me, his eyes pleading. “I don’t know exactly.”

“What about Pierce Walton?”

“The congressman? Why would he frame me?”

Dino looked down and shook his head. “I voted for the guy last time he ran,” he said. “Beyond that . . .”

“Do you own any guns, Dino?”

“No.”

“When was the last time you fired one?”

“Afghanistan.”

“You went to sniper school at Fort Benning, correct? Isn’t that where the army trains its snipers?”

Birch looked up. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Whoever shot the Hollisters did so from considerable range. He had to have known about how to compensate for bullet drop and doping the wind. He had to have known ballistic coefficients to pull off shots like that. You don’t learn that kind of stuff plinking BB rifles in the backyard.”

“Look, I told you. I never threatened Roy Hollister. I didn’t murder him. I’m not a murderer. I fight murderers, every single day of my life. I protect animals who can’t protect themselves, OK? It’s what I do.”

I watched him and waited.

“You think I did it,” he said.

“I don’t know what I think,” I said.

He turned his head away and his nostrils flared. “This conversation,” he said, “is over.”

“Fair enough.”

I nodded through the glass to a deputy standing guard outside the room and pushed back from the table.

“Do me a favor,” Birch said as I got up to go. “Tell my uncle thanks for nothing.”

THE LOCAL press corps was gone by the time I exited the building. Only Danika Quinn was left. She was wearing a gray pencil skirt, five-inch stilettos, and a sleeveless green top, flipping through pages of her notebook. I was halfway across the parking lot to my truck before she noticed me and came running.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m Danika Quinn.”

“They teach you that in journalism school?”

“Teach me what?”

“How to say, ‘Hey,’ to strangers you’re trying to establish a rapport with so you can pump them for information?”

“Too casual?”

“Maybe a little.” I climbed into my truck. “Where’d all your other reporter buddies go?”

“There was supposed to be a press conference here to talk about Birch’s arrest, so everybody showed up, but then they decided to call it off until after he’s arraigned. And, by the way, they’re not my buddies. They’re my competitors. Can we talk? Off the record?”

“There’s no such thing as off the record.”

“Hey, I’m a professional journalist. I protect my sources. If you tell me something is between you and me, you can take it to the bank.”

“There’s that word again.”

“What word?—oh, yeah.”

I turned the ignition. Quinn leaned in, giving me a good look at her décolletage. Clasped to the open neck of her blouse was the top of a slightly oversized ballpoint pen.

“You’re a flight instructor,” she said, “out at the airport, right?”

“How’d you know that?”

She smiled. “Let’s just say I have my sources. I’m wondering how a flight instructor rates an audience with an accused double murderer even before the guy meets with his attorney.”

“The world works in mysterious ways.”

I gave her a wink as I drove off. Something told me I’d be seeing her again.