Chapter 9
THE LOCAL GUYS, THEY HAVE THEIR MOMENTS
Thursday morning it became official: Dale Pearson, evil developer, was a missing person. Theo Crowe was going over the big red truck parked by the pounding Pacific at Lime Kiln Rock in the Big Sur wilderness area above Pine Cove. This was the area where half the world's car commercials were filmed - everything from Detroit minivans to German lux-o-cruisers was filmed snaking around the cliffs of Big Sur, as if all you needed to do was sign the lease papers and your life would be an open road of frothy waves beating on majestic seawalls, with nothing but leisure and prosperity ahead. Dale Pearson's big red truck did look carefree and prosperous, parked there by the sea, despite the crust of salt forming on the paint and the appearance that the owner had been washed away in the surf.
Theo wanted that to be the case. The highway patrol, who had found the truck, had reported it as an accident. There was a surf-casting rod there on the rocks, conveniently monogrammed with Dale's initials. And the Santa hat he'd been wearing was found washed up nearby, and therein lay the problem. Betsy Butler, Dale's squeeze, had said that Dale had gone out two nights ago to play Santa at the Caribou Lodge and had never come home. Who went fishing in the middle of the night while wearing a Santa hat? Granted, according to the other Caribou, Dale had done "some drinking," and he was a little wound up from his confrontation with his ex-wife the day before, but he hadn't lost his mind completely. Negotiating the cliffs by Lime Kiln Rock to get down to the water during the day was risky business; there's no way that Dale would have tried it in the middle of the night. (Theo had lost his footing and slid twenty feet before he caught himself, wrenching his back in the process. Sure he was a little stoned, but then, Dale would have been a little drunk.)
The highway patrolman, who had a crew cut and looked to be about twelve - an escapee from one of the hygiene films Theo had seen in sixth-grade health class, Why Mary Won't Go in the Water - had Theo sign off on his report, then climbed in his cruiser and headed up the coast into Monterey County. Theo went back and looked through the truck again.
All the things that should have been there - some tools, a black Mag flashlight, a couple of fast-food wrappers, another fishing rod, a tube of blueprints - were there. And all the things that shouldn't - bloody knives, shell casings, severed limbs, evidence of bleach from cleanup - were not. It was like the guy had just driven up here, climbed down the cliff, and washed away. But that just couldn't be the case. Dale could be mean-spirited, crude, and even violent, but he wasn't stupid. Unless he knew the exact topography of these cliffs, and had a good flashlight, he'd never have made it down in the dark. And his flashlight was still in the truck.
Theo wished that he had better training in crime-scene investigation. He'd learned most of what he knew from television, not at the academy where he'd spent a miserable eight weeks fifteen years ago when the corrupt sheriff who had found his personal pot patch had railroaded him into becoming Pine Cove's constable. Since the academy, almost every crime scene he'd encountered had been turned over to the county sheriff or highway patrol almost immediately.
He went over the truck cab again looking for something that might be a clue. The only thing remotely out of order was some dog hairs on the headrest. Theo couldn't remember if Dale had a dog.
He put the dog hairs in a sandwich bag and dialed Betsy Butler on his cell phone.
She didn't sound that broken up about Dale's disappearance. "No, Dale didn't like dogs. He didn't like cats either. He was kind of a cow man."
"He liked cows? Did you guys have a pet cow?" Could it be cow hair?
"No, he liked to eat them, Theo. Are you okay?"
"No, sorry, Betsy." He had been so sure that he didn't sound stoned.
"So, do I get the truck? I mean, are you going to bring it here?"
"I have no idea," said Theo. "They'll tow it to the impound yard. I don't know if they'll release it to you. I'd better go, Betsy." He snapped the phone shut. Maybe he was just tired. Molly had made him sleep on the couch last night - saying something about him having mutant tendencies. He hadn't even known that she liked the salad shooter. He was sure that she could tell that he'd been smoking pot.
He flipped the phone back open and called Gabe Fenton.
"Hey, Theo. I don't know what that stuff is you brought me, but it's not hair. It won't burn or melt, and it's damn hard to cut or break. Good thing it was torn out by the roots."
Theo cringed. He had almost forgotten about the crazed blond guy he'd run over. He shuddered now, thinking about it. "Gabe, I have some more hair I'd like you to look at."
"Oh my God, Theo, did you run over someone else?"
"No, I didn't run over anybody. Jeez, Gabe."
"Okay. I'll be here all day. Actually, I'll be here all night, too. It's not like I have anywhere to go. Or anyone who cares whether I live or die. It's not like - »
"Okay. I'm coming over."
There were two men and three women, including Lena, in the offices of Properties in the Pines when Tucker Case came through the door. The women were immediately intrigued by him and the men immediately disliked him. It had always been that way with Tuck. Later, if they got to know him, the women would dismiss him and the men would still dislike him. Basically, he was a geek in a cool guy's body - one feature or the other worked against him.
It was an open stable of desks and Tuck went directly to Lena's desk at the back. As he went he smiled and nodded to the realtors, who smiled back weakly, trying not to sneer. They were beat from showing properties to Christmas vacation be-backs who wouldn't move here even if they could find employment in this toy town. They'd just failed to plan any vacation activities and so decided to take the kids out for a rousing round of jerk off the realtor. Or so went the party line at the MLS meetings.
Lena met Tuck's gaze and instinctively smiled, then frowned.
"What are you doing here?"
"Lunch? You. Me. Eating. Talking. I need to ask you something."
"I thought you were supposed to be flying."
Tuck hadn't seen Lena in her business clothes - a sensible skirt and blouse, just a little mascara and lipstick, her hair pinned up with lacquered chopsticks, a few strands escaping here and there to frame her face. He liked the look.
"I flew all morning. There's weather. The edge of a storm coming." He really wanted to pull the chopsticks out of her hair and throw her down there on the desk and tell her how he really felt, which was somewhat aroused. "We could get Chinese," he added.
Lena looked out the window. The sky was going dark gray over the shops across the street. "There's no Chinese place in Pine Cove. Besides, I'm really swamped here. I handle vacation rentals and it's Christmas Eve eve."
"We could go to your place for a quick lunch. You have no idea how quick I can be if I put my mind to it."
Lena looked past him to her coworkers, who, of course, were now staring. "Is that what you need to ask me?"
"Oh, no, no, of course not. I wouldn't - that would be, well, yes - but there's something else." Now Tuck was feeling the realtors watching him, listening to him. He leaned over Lena's desk so only she could hear. "You said this morning that that constable guy your friend is married to lives in a cabin at the edge of a ranch. It wouldn't be the big ranch north of town, would it?"
Lena was still looking past him. "Yes, the Beer-Bar Ranch, belongs to Jim Beer."
"And there's an old single-wide trailer next to the cabin?"
"Yes, that used to be Molly's, but now they live in the cabin. Why?"
Tuck stood back and grinned. "Then white roses it is," he said, a little too loudly for the benefit of the audience. "I just didn't know if they'd be appropriate for the holidays."
"Huh?" Lena said.
"See you tonight," Tuck said. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, then sauntered out of the office, smiling apologetically at the exhausted realtors as he went.
"Merry Christmas, you guys," he said, waving from the door.
The first thing that Theo noticed when he entered Gabe Fenton's cabin was the aquariums with the dead rats. The female was scampering around the center cage, sniffing and crapping and looking rat-happy, but the others, the males, lay on their backs, feet shot to the sky, like plastic soldiers in a death diorama.
"How did that happen?"
"They wouldn't learn. Once they associated the shock with sex, they started liking it."
Theo thought about his relationship with Molly over the last few days. He pictured himself in the dead-rat display. "So you just kept shocking them until they died?"
"I had to keep the parameters of the experiment constant."
Theo nodded gravely, as if he understood completely, which he didn't. Skinner came over and headbutted him in the thigh. Theo scratched his ears to comfort him.
Skinner was worried about the Food Guy, and he was hoping that maybe the Emergency Backup Food Guy might give him one of the tasty-smelling white squirrels in the cages on the table, now that it appeared that the Food Guy was finished cooking them. This teasing was as bad as when that kid at the beach used to pretend to throw the ball, then not throw the ball. Then pretend to throw the ball, but not throw the ball. Skinner had to knock the kid down and sit on his face. Boy, had he been bad-dogged for that. Nothing hurt like being bad-dogged, but if the Food Guy kept teasing him with the white squirrels, Skinner knew he was going to have to knock him down and sit on his face, maybe even poop in his shoe. Oh, I am a bad, bad dog. No, wait, the Emergency Backup Food Guy was scratching his ears. Oh, that felt good. He was fine. Doggie Xanax. Never mind.
Theo handed Gabe the sandwich bag with the hairs in it.
"What's the oily substance in the bag?" Gabe said, examining the specimen.
"Potato-chip flotsam. The bag is from my lunch yesterday."
Gabe nodded, then looked at Theo the way the coroner always looks at the cop on TV - like: You numbskull, don't you know that you're contaminating evidence just by continuing to draw breath and I'd be a lot more comfortable with you if you'd stop?
He took the bag over to the microscope on the counter, removed a couple of the hairs, and put them on a slide with a cover, then fitted it into the microscope.
"Please don't tell me it's polar bear," Theo said.
"No, but at least it's an animal. It seems to have a distinct sour-cream-and-onion signature." Gabe pulled back from the microscope and grinned at Theo. "Just fucking with you." He gave Theo a gentle punch to the arm and looked back into the microscope. "Wow, the medulla is absent and there's low birefringence."
"Wow," echoed Theo, trying but not really feeling the low-birefringence stoke that Gabe was.
"I have to check the hair database online, but I think it's from a bat."
"There's a database for that? What, Bat Hair Dot-Com?"
"That was supposed to be the whole purpose of the Internet, you know. To share scientific information."
"Not a Viagra- and porn-delivery system?" Theo said. Maybe Gabe was going to be okay after all.
Gabe moved to the computer at his desk and scrolled through screen after screen of microscope photos of mammal hair until he found one he liked, then went back to the microscope and checked it again.
"Wow, Theo, you've got yourself an endangered species here."
"No way."
"Where the hell did you get this? Micronesian giant fruit bat."
"Out of a Dodge pickup truck."
"Hmm, that's not listed as their habitat. It wasn't parked in Guam, was it?"
Theo fished his car keys out of his pocket. "Look, Gabe, I have to go. Meet at the Slug for a beer tonight, okay?"
"We can have beer now, if you want. I have some in the fridge."