Four hours later Hood was parked outside the Ozburn home waiting for Seliah to come out. In the time it had taken her to get here from Ensenada, Hood had called in a favor with his old LASD patrol sergeant and was now at the wheel of a white slickback Interceptor with screened-in backseats for transportees and a short bar of interior running lights and bulletproof windows. The sergeant had offered a backup unit and two uniforms but Hood had declined. He was afraid they'd set her off and she'd change her mind. He was afraid she might change it anyway. She said it would take a few minutes to pack up some things.
He pulled the buzzing cell phone off his belt.
"Charlie Hood, this is Mike Finnegan. Erin told me you wanted to talk. I was so truly happy to hear that."
Hood looked up at the Ozburn front door. No sign of Seliah. He felt the same uneasy suspicion he'd always felt when talking to Finnegan, a suspicion that the man was somehow outside of his own understanding and experience. Mike's companion, Owens, had once told Hood that the only way to comprehend Mike was to understand that he was insane. But Hood had wondered if it was more than that. As a boy, Hood had seen a tiger walking down a Bakersfield sidewalk-escaped from a private collection, he later learned-and Hood had realized that nothing in his life had prepared him to understand such a being. He had the same feeling now.
"How have you been, Mike?"
"I'm no longer in bathroom fixtures."
"Where are you living now?"
"I can't seem to leave L.A. Owens and I share some nice quarters here. She's getting lots of work."
"And you?"
"Well, the family sold off part of the old Napa County estate. My share was, well, not insubstantial. You wouldn't believe what a few thousand acres of grapes is worth. Of course, the new owners will build embarrassing mansions on it and probably let root rot kill the grapes, but that's progress, American style."
Hood thought back to the first and last time he'd actually seen Mike Finnegan's face. It was a year and a half ago and it was the day Mike had suddenly checked himself out of Imperial Mercy Hospital. His body cast lay in pieces on the floor of his ICU room. He'd been caught on security video, dressed in new street clothes, leaving the hospital with Owens.
Hood found his L.A. apartment abandoned and his phone number no longer good. No forwarding information. Neighbors knew nothing. Ditto Owens. Hood made inquiries but got nowhere. Hood suspected that Mike had tipped Bradley Jones and Ron Pace about ATF's surveillence of the Pace Arms gunmaking facility in Costa Mesa. But he could prove nothing.
"Why did you leave Imperial Mercy like that, Mike? What was the hurry?"
"I just can't sit still sometimes."
"You tore the cast apart with your bare hands?"
"What else could I have used?"
Hood glanced up at the Ozburns' front door. "Of course you know that Pace and Bradley smuggled the guns out of the Costa Mesa manufacturing plant, got them down into the hands of cartel shooters. A thousand of them. They're being used to kill people on both sides of the border."
"How sad. The chaos down there is bound to get worse before it gets better. But Charlie, this was a year and a half ago-ancient history. So, catch me up with your world. Who is this fascinating Sean Gravas character?"
Hood felt his scalp crawl. "You and I both know who Sean Gravas is."
"Yes. Few people do. We're all strange bed partners, aren't we-ATF and the North Baja Cartel and little old me?"
Hood looked up to the Ozburn home. No Seliah. Had she changed her mind? He checked his watch.
"Mike, a few days ago I stood in the Mexican desert where a rabid man had chained himself to a post so he wouldn't hurt anyone else. That's where he died. The post was still there. And his grave. I thought of you."
"Juan Batista! I love that part of the West. From the cerveza to the curanderas."
"You know everything, don't you, Mike."
"I absorb your flattery."
"So, what do you know about the Arenal Volcano and Father Joe Leftwich and his vampire bats?"
Silence.
Then: "Charles, I told you once that if there was something you wanted very badly, something I could help you get, that we might form a relationship."
"I don't want a relationship."
"Then what do you want? To make me your informant?"
"Call it that."
"What do I get in return? A lighter sentence when my day in court arrives? Perhaps some cold hard cash? An ATF windbreaker?"
"You can have any or all."
"I don't want any of that. I want like for like, Charlie. That's all I'll ever want from you."
"Okay."
"Okay? Just like that?"
"I said okay. I'll play by that rule. Like for like."
Hood expected Mike to laugh but he didn't. When he'd seen the tiger in Bakersfield, the huge svelte beast had lit a spark of panic in him but Hood had kept on walking toward school anyway. What else could he do? His destination was the only answer to his fear and he knew exactly how to put one foot in front of the other. And again. The tiger had faded into a stand of oaks, stripes blending into the shadows.
So now, too, Hood kept walking, toward what, he wasn't sure, but he was walking and his legs were strong. His eardrums buzzed but his eyes saw far and clearly as he looked out over the silver Pacific. He felt cold in his heart and knew this coldness was right.
"Charlie, who murdered the three young assassins in the Buenavista safe house? And the two others in San Ysidro?"
"We don't know yet. We suspect the Gulf Cartel but we don't have good evidence. We do know they're trying to move into the North Baja Cartel's turf in Southern California. The Zetas are going their own way so Armenta needs firepower. Now you, Mike, like for like-Arenal, Costa Rica. Speak to me."
"Where to start? Central America is literally crawling with us. The heat, the beauty of the land and the ocean and the proximity to Caribbean culture. But most of all, the generations of colonial exploitation and craven, power-mad governance. Dictatorships both private and military! Rampant corruption, rampant lust. From Papa Doc to Trujillo to Noriega-it's difficult to find a more fertile place to work. And factor in a widespread belief in magic-they believe! Garcia Marquez can bring tears to my eyes, even though I've never been to the Caribbean. I'd so love to meet him. The whole region is brimming with rich potential for us."
"Who is us?"
"I led you to that water once."
"You denied it later."
"We can be whatever you want us to be, Charlie. It has always worked best that way."
"Damn whoever you are. Tell the truth."
"I am trying to provide some context for you. Now, I say this with some embarrassment-all of Central America and the Caribbean is rife with our internecine squabbles. There are jurisdictional overlaps, petty procedural disputes, chasms of noncommunication, turf wars. Pity the human beings down there. You need to understand the history. But Charlie? Back to my question. My guess is Ozburn killed them. Too much pressure working undercover. Too much frustration. Surrounded by too many bad men. Takes it out on the handiest target he can find-the young sicarios. He either overrode the surveillence system or, better yet, he didn't. Which means you have him on video. Which means you have proof of a rogue ATF agent running wild along the border."
"He's AWOL as Gravas. We both know that much."
"Yes, but what is he doing? Is he on the run or part of some crafty ATF operation? His apparent madness isn't simply deeper cover?"
"No. It isn't."
"But would you be telling me ATF secrets if they were true, Charlie? Or do you only give me the lies?"
"Only the lies for you, Mike."
"How is Seliah?"
"Fine so far as I know."
"So, you are in her kitchen, so to speak. I mean ATF is, not you personally. You wouldn't personally go into Seliah's kitchen, now, would you?"
Hood looked back up to the Ozburn porch. No Seliah. What if she changed her mind and ran out the back door? "She's uncooperative, Mike. We're keeping her at arm's length."
"Do they communicate, the Ozburns? E-mail, video perhaps?"
"Perhaps."
Mike was quiet for a beat. "You're not quite as rule-whipped as I thought you were, Charlie. You're actually talking instead of interrogating. What if you slip up and let a truth drop?"
"Keep me talking and maybe I will. Now-an alleged priest at Arenal, Father Joe Leftwich."
"I've heard of him, of course, but we've never met. Different region, obviously. Reputation as a hardnose. Drinker, big temper when it blows. Not afraid to be hands-on. Speaks all of the Caribbean languages, even the unusual ones-Papiamento, Taki-Taki, Hindi, Urdu. Helped the Spanish find gold in Costa Rica-first gold on the American continent. Good move on his part. Nothing like an explosion of wealth to challenge an oppressive religious climate and to finance the chaos that ensues. I remember that Leftwich set back his career by consorting with cutthroats on the Spanish Main. They were small-time men, cruel but ultimately useless to us. Leftwich enjoyed the bloodshed, I heard. Later he upgraded, if you can call it that. Had the ears of Pinochet and Somoza. He's been using the priest costume off and on for centuries, Charlie. Apparently, it works."
Hood watched Seliah walk out to her front porch. She was dressed in a black tee, black jeans, the red sneaks. She wore a black bandana pirate style as her husband sometimes did. She had an overnight bag slung over one shoulder and a canvas book bag in each hand. One of them looked heavy.
"Next time we'll talk vampire bats."
"I'd be delighted."
"I've got your number now," Hood said, and punched off.
He got out of the car and trotted up the steps to the porch. He smiled and approached Seliah and hoped she didn't just run up and bite him. Instead she smiled weakly, her face very pale and mostly hidden behind big Jackie O sunglasses.
"Woof," she said.
"Seliah. Lemme take those."
She let him take the book bags and they walked toward the car.
"I tried, Charlie."
"I know you did."
"He wouldn't come. I couldn't make him do it."
"Let's get you fixed up, Seliah. We'll work on Sean next."
"I will not betray him to you."
"I'm not asking you to. How are you feeling?"
"I didn't think I could feel this bad." She stopped. "Holy crap. I gotta ride in the back of that?"
"Now you know how the bad guys feel."
"That ought to be funny. The fact that I have to ride back there isn't funny at all."
"Maybe it's best for both of us." He opened a rear door for her but left it for her to close. Then he went around to the other side and slung in the canvas bags.
"I wouldn't try to seduce you in a… Never mind. Never mind. I'm sorry for all that. The virus causes it. Dr. Brennan said he's waiting for me. I like him. And drive fast, Charlie. Because when I left Ensenada I took some pills to keep me calm but you know something? I can feel them wearing off. I feel like Lucy Westenra, changing into a killer vampire slut one cell at a time. You ever read Dracula?"
"Never."
"It's all told in letters and diaries. It hypnotizes you. None of the movies are as good. Francis Coppola got closest. When this first started happening I wondered if I was turning into a vampire. Then I wondered if all the vampire movies and TV and books were turning me into one. Then, well, it just turned out to be a drunk priest with a fucking bat. What did Sean and I do to deserve all this special treatment?"
Hood got in and turned to see Seliah through the screen. She looked like a captured mutineer. She reached out and grabbed the strap on the handleless door and Hood knew she knew she could not open it again.
"You and Sean didn't do anything to deserve it."
"Now's the time if I'm going to run for it," she said. "Every time I run I get faster. I bet I can outrun you, Hood. I could give you the slip."
"Close the door, Seliah. We've got places to go and people to see."
She sighed and pulled the door closed.
Hood took I-5 North for UCI Medical Center in Orange. He adjusted the rearview so he could see her. She looked out the window at the tan hills of Camp Pendleton Marine Base.
"What they do is pump me full of knockout drugs," she said. "Out I go. It's called a therapeutic coma and they keep the ketamine coming so I stay down deep. Then they give me antiviral drugs and antibiotics and immune system boosters. They pump me full of food and fluids. My unconsciousness allows respiration instead of paralysis. They monitor my blood and saliva to see if the protocol is working. They knock out some people just for a few days, and some they've left KO'd for almost two months. If it looks like I'm going to survive the rabies, they wake me up. Or at least they try."
She checked her watch, then turned her gaze to the bright silver Pacific. Hood tried to imagine what was going through her mind.
"Of course, if I wake up, I'll have some brain damage. They can't predict how much. Jeanna Giese had some, and she spent two months in the ICU. But she worked hard at physical therapy and learned to do most of what she could do before. She still has some difficulty enunciating words and her left foot is weak so she runs funny. She can't play sports anymore. But she can go to school and drive a car. A bright future, that girl…"
Hood watched Seliah as her voice trailed off. The sunlight stenciled her face through the security screen. She took off the black bandana and wiped her forehead and cheeks with it. She hugged herself and pressed up closer to the door to get away from the sun. For a long while she hung her head, her swaying platinum hair walling off her face from the light and the world. Hood's heart sank and burst with the clear presence of her peril.
"So, Itixa the maid found a live bat," she said.
"In the trash in Father Joe's room."
"She should have said something."
"She told the owner and he told his son to stay away from the priest. But neither of them told you or Sean."
"But you know, if she had told me personally that morning that she'd found a bat in Father Joe's room, I might not have connected it with the blood on Sean's toe. Down there you could wake up with a howler monkey in your room. Or a boa constrictor in your shower."
"It was your description that made me connect the bat to Father Joe and Sean. Something small and heavy wrapped in something loose, like a golf ball wrapped in a washcloth."
"I like the way you put it together, Charlie. You and Sean have minds like that. You're naturally suspicious of just about everything. Me? I was always a face-value kind of person. Whatever it said on the label, I believed. I loved that way of looking at things. If it said 'new and improved' I believed it truly was new and improved."
Hood caught the past tense.
"So have you found Father Joe?" she asked.
"I'm working on him. Nobody I talked to in Costa Rica had any idea where he'd gone. Back home, I went online and found mentions of two Father Joe Leftwiches but only one is Irish Catholic. And neither of them were in Costa Rica in July. I've talked to the Irish Embassy, their West Coast consulate, the Catholic Church in Dublin, the Catholic Diocese in L.A. and the Vatican. They don't just give out information on priests like you think they would. Too many scandals. I've checked all the law enforcement databases just in case he's got a warrant or a record. Nada. I suspect he's a complete fraud, not a priest at all. Don't you?"
She turned her gaze to him. "He looked realistic in the getup, Charlie, in that little black shirt with the round white collar. But there I go again, believing the surface of things. He never mentioned what his plans were."
Hood looked back at her reflection in the mirror. "Before I left the Volcano View I got one last look at the registration book. I wrote down the names and addresses of ten of the guests who were there when you were. I've written letters to two and e-mails to eight of them, asking if they remember him, and if he said anything about where he was going. I asked them to e-mail any picture that might have him in it. When I was there, everybody had at least two cameras."
"I took a picture of him. Joe said, 'No, don't do that, I don't need my fat little face on film,' but I shot it anyway. He really didn't seem to mind very much."
"I'd like to see it, Sel."
"When we got home it wasn't on the camera."
"Did you ever see it?"
"Oh, yeah, I know it was there. It was the night we partied. I took Sean's camera and shot them with their arms around each other and their glasses raised. Father Joe didn't quite come to Sean's shoulders. I clearly remember looking at the image to see if I should take another but it was a good enough shot. So I gave the camera back to Sean and he put it in the case on his belt. I shot more pictures the next day. No more of Leftwich. Then we came home. And when I was picking out ones to put on disc, I noticed that the Joe picture was gone. I suppose I could have deleted it by accident."
Hood pictured Father Joe's room at the Volcano View, the screens for windows, the cool tile floor, the bed. And he pictured his own digital camera and the three time-consuming steps it took to delete a picture. "Or, Father Joe could have deleted that picture while Sean was asleep."
"Yes, easily. What's the charge against him if he actually gave us rabies and we die from it?"
"Neither of you is going to die from it."
"Now you sound like Father Joe, telling us how special we are and how we're headed for great things. How come everyone seems to know my future except for me?"
"Murder one," said Hood.
"I'll bet there's never been a murder by rabies. Except when one of us bit someone, or maybe raped or even kissed someone. But it wouldn't be murder unless you knew you had it, right?"
"No. It would be something else."
"You could never convict Father Joe based on what we know."
"No, you couldn't."
Hood watched as Seliah brought one of the book bags to her lap and looked down into it. She held up a Colt Model 1911.45 semiautomatic and waved it at him.
"Yours from Sean," she said.
"Careful, now."
"Not loaded."
"I can't take that. It's his."
"Not if doesn't get back here in a hurry. He'd want you to have it."
She set the.45 back in the bag and brought out a Smith amp; Wesson.357 K frame, then a Glock.40-caliber. "These, too. I don't need them. Sorry; I didn't bring any ammo. I don't know where he kept it. This is from me."
She held up a bottle of wine. "It's ten years old. I've been saving it for a special occasion."
"Then keep it for one, Seliah."
"If I live to drink another glass of wine, maybe you can be the one to pour it for me."
"You can beat this thing."
"They've used the protocol eighteen times since Jeanna," she said. "They all died but five. Five, Charlie."
His eardrums started ringing. Brennan had said nothing of this and now Hood's soul felt fooled and helpless and angry. "Five?"
"Yes. Now, I want you to hang on to these medals and give them to my mom and dad if I don't wake up. If Sean and I both go, then everything goes to the families. We have a will on file and I left a few numbers for you at home, on the kitchen counter. But I want these medals to come to Mom and Dad personally, and I want you to say thank you for me. These are mostly from college but some from high school. Mom and Dad drove me to every practice and meet you could think of, paid my way across the country and to Canada and Europe, helped me go to a college where I could swim. I was too wrapped up in myself to appreciate it at the time. But I know these trinkets would mean a lot to them. You can have one if you want but not one of the Pan Am games, okay?"
She held up a handful of them for him to see and dropped them back into the bag and lifted out another batch. In the rearview Hood could see the tears running down her face. Her voice was high and girlish and forced. "Now, I want to have my ashes scattered at sea, of course. So in this other bag I've got some stuff I want to be tossed overboard, too. I'm sure there's a law against that so you just make sure to do it yourself, Charlie. Here's Daisy, a ceramic horse with a broken tail that I loved, and Sean named the dog after. And here's a doll named Betty, which is what Sean named the Piper after, and here's my dried-leaf collection from when I was a girl… Just pull out the leaves and throw them in. And this little wooden chest? There's a lock of Sean's hair and I'd like you to throw that into the sea, too. I want the hair to float for a while, then sink down with the ashes. In scatterings at sea, if the sunlight is right, you can see down deep into the water and the ashes get suspended in a big swirl where the boat has traveled. It's a pale streak left by the person, their last track on earth. It widens and lengthens and slowly fades. And that's where I want the hair to be, mixed in with me."
"Okay."
"Now, I don't think this is likely to happen, but if Sean lives through this thing, and you ever see him again, these are for him." She reached into the bag and lifted in succession a stack of envelopes, two small ring boxes, a thick black book. "Love letters and poems from when we were dating. His and mine. And my engagement and wedding rings are in the boxes. They'll make me take them off anyway. If I die, you give them to Sean. There's also a journal I've been keeping for eleven years now. Nobody should read it but him."
She pushed the book back into the bag and yanked off her sunglasses and dabbed at her eyes with the black bandana. Her pupils were tiny and the whites were hot red and the irises faint blue. His eyes met hers in the mirror. She stared at him in between dabs, then growled at him and laughed and growled again louder. She pushed the sunglasses back on and stuffed the bandana into one of the bags. She was shivering and he could see the throb of her pulse in her carotid.
They were halfway there by now. Hood called Brennan on the cell and told him where they were. He told him to have people ready who could handle her in case she was violent. She listened and watched him in the glass. "I can't do this, Charlie."
"You're doing really well, Sel."
"I've changed my mind."
"You have no choice."
"You do not offer or deny me choices."
"You can beat it."
"Pull over. I want out. Now."
"I won't do that."
"I demand that you do it."
"I won't."
"As a friend."
"A friend would not pull over."
"You're a weak man. It's all you are or ever were."
"Jeanna beat it. You can beat it. There are your parents and friends and Sean and all those things you have in the bags. They're all more reasons for you to be strong."
"Oh, what shit you pretend to believe, Hood. What pathetic, insulting garbage. You know what you are? You're play money. You're a boy. Grow some. You ever use that cock of yours to do anything but pee? Pull over and let me out of here!"
She hit the mesh hard with one fist, then the other. Hood heard the terrific crunch of flesh and bone on steel and when she hit the screen again he saw the blood on her knuckles and the dent in the mesh. She watched him in the glass as she licked her hands; then she wrenched her torso violently and uncoiled her right elbow against the bulletproof window. The impact was heavy. Hood wondered if it would hold. Then again, and again. She flew across the seat and battered the other window and Hood heard her grunting and growling and by the time he got the rearview trained to where he could see her, there were blood smears across the glass.
Hood hit the lights and gunned the Interceptor up tight onto the SUV ahead of him, whose driver quickly signaled and pulled over to let him pass.