If Angels Fall (47 page)

“Something like that, Zach.”

“Well, Mom’s pretty pissed at you.”

“She has every right to be.”

Reed saw Ann’s silhouette in the doorway, put his hand
on his son’s shoulder. As they went inside, Zach saw the white van drive off.

In the house, Zach did as his mother told him and went
upstairs to his room and closed the door. Loud enough for his parents to hear.
Then he quietly opened it, lay on the floor and listened.

“Where the hell were you, Tom?”

“Ann, I don’t blame you for—“

“You promised us you would be there.”

“I know, but something came up on the kidnappings, I—“

How many times had he hurt her by starting with “but
something came up.” Her face reddened under her tousled hair, her brown eyes
narrowed. She had removed her shoes, her silk blouse had come slightly untucked
from her skirt. Jesus, she was going to explode on him.

“You look like shit and you reek,” she said.

“It’s complicated. I can expla—“

“Were you with Molly Wilson, a last fling?”

“What? I don’t believe this!”

“You’ve been drinking again.”

“I never told you I quit. I never lied.”

“That’s right. You were always honest about your
priorities.” Her eyes burned with contempt. She thrust her face into her hands,
collapsing on the sofa. “Tom, I can’t take this anymore. I won’t take this
anymore.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “You told me you had changed, but you
lied. Nothing’s changed.”

That wasn’t true. He wanted to tell her, but all he
could manage was: “Ann, I love you and Zach with all my heart.”

“Stop it!” She spat, pounding her fists on her knees.
“Your words are cheap. They’re for sale any day of the week to anyone with
fifty cents! But one thing you can’t do with them is hold a family together!”

Ann stood, grabbing a copy of the morning’s
Star
from the coffee table, the one with Virgil Shook’s shooting splashed on the
front. “It can’t be done see!” She ripped up the paper tearing Shook on the
stretcher in half, tossing the pieces aside. “You can’t hold anything together
with paper.”

Ann sat again, her face in her hands.

He was stunned.

She had reduced him to nothing.

A zero.

Everything he had struggled to be, the thing by which
he defined himself was demolished. His eyes went around the room, noticing
their unpacked bags as he ingested the truth. Ann despised him not so much for
his trespasses, but truly for what he was. He searched in vain for an answer.
He wanted to tell her he had been fired, tell her everything. How he was
haunted by the accusing eyes of a dead man’s little girl. How he was falling
and needed to hang on to something. Someone. But he didn’t know what to say,
how to begin.

“Okay,” he said softly. “Okay. I understand.”

He turned and left.

Watching from his bedroom window, Zach saw his father’s
car disappear down the street, the Comet’s grumbling muffler underscoring that
promises had been broken. Tears rolled down Zach’s face.

Dust and pebbles
pelted acting Calaveras County Sheriff Greg Brader as he watched
the four helicopters descend one after the other, his shirt flapping angrily
against his back.

It was supposed to be his day off. He was painting his
garage at his home in San Andreas when his wife had called him to the phone. It
was his dispatcher: The SFPD and FBI were flying out immediately because of a
possible county connection to the kidnapping case in the Bay Area. Brader had
less than an hour to prepare.

While some small town cops may have gotten jittery at
the prospect of a profile case popping up in their yard, Brader was cool.
Before coming to the county eight years ago, he had put in twelve years with
the LAPD, six of them in Homicide. Without changing his torn jeans and stained
T-shirt, he kissed his wife and got in his marked Suburban. He made calls over
the radio and cellular while driving directly to West Point, a sleepy village
forty minutes away.

Brader and his two deputies cordoned off the ball
diamond and its parking lot, turning it into a landing zone for the San
Francisco FBI’s new MacDonnell Douglas 450-NOTAR and larger Huey, which carried
the FBI’s SWAT team. Sydowski, Turgeon, and a handful of others from the task
force landed next in the two CHiPs choppers.

Special Agent Merle Rust and SFPF Inspector Walt
Sydowski were the contact people, along with FBI SWAT Team Leader Langford
Shaw. Brader introduced himself, shouting over the noise of the rotor blades.

“You fellas best ride with me. My guys will bring the
others.” As requested, he had obtained a school bus for the SWAT Team and its
equipment. Other task force members rode with Brader’s deputies as they roared
off in a convoy of three police cars and the bus.

“We’ll be there in under twenty minutes,” Brader said
after making a radio call to his deputies at the property. “I’ve had two people
sitting back on the house since you called.”

“What have you got?” Rust asked.

“As you know, the pickup is currently registered to a
Warren Urlich. He’s a sixty-eight-year-old recluse, a pensioner. Makes extra
cash fixing cars and trucks; sells them, too. Neighbors say he never talks to
anybody and he’s got so many vehicles on his property, they never know when
he’s home.”

“What about the kids?”

“Like I told you when you were flying out, Urlich’s
nearest neighbor thinks she saw two kids on the place that maybe arrived recently.
A little boy and girl. She was only sure they weren’t living there before.”

Rust and Sydowski exchanged glances.

Stands of pine, cedar, and sequoias blurred by the
Suburban as it ate up the paved ribbon snaking through the Sierras of Cavaleras
County. This was where prospectors flocked during the gold rush in 1849. It was
home to Twain’s celebrated jumping frog, clear lakes, streams, tranquility, and
people who wanted to be left alone.

Cars and pickups in various stages of disrepair, junk,
a yapping dog on a long chain, and ramshackle outbuildings dotted Warren
Urlich’s land, a three-acre hilly site with an abundance of trees.

The FBI SWAT Team set up a perimeter around the
rickety house, while the county deputies and some task force members formed an outer
perimeter. Brader’s Suburban and the bus, which was the command post, were
virtually out of sight about one hundred yards from the house.

From the hood of Brader’s truck, Sydowski glimpsed a
broken toilet and a pit bull with a bloodied rabbit carcass in its jaws, as he
swept the property with Brader’s binoculars. He chewed a Tums tablet -- his
second since they landed -- and steadied himself for the worst. He feared
another deadly shootout like the one with Shook. He prayed for the children to
be alive, but if they were in this shit hole, they were ninety-nine percent for
sure dead.

He passed the binoculars to Turgeon. She rolled the
focus wheel slightly, bit her lip, then handed the glasses to Brader.

Sydowski studied her protectively for a moment.

Inside the bus, SWAT Team Leader Langford Shaw made
radio checks with his people. Everybody was in position. Fred Wheeler, the unit’s
hostage negotiator, called the house over the FBI’s satellite phone.

Someone answered.

“Mr. Warren Urlich?”

“Yup.”

“Mr. Urlich, this is Fred Wheeler. I’m a special agent
with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’d like to talk to you, sir. We
have heavily armed people positioned around your home and would like you to
please walk slowly out the front door with your hands in the air now.”

Wheeler was answered with silence.

“Mr. Urlich, Warren?”

Nothing.

“Did you hear me, sir?”

“I heard you, I just don’t believe you. This a joke?”

“We’ll sound a police siren now.”

Wheeler nodded to Shaw, who signaled Brader and the
Suburban’s siren yelped.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“We’ll discuss everything when you come out.”

As Urlich and Wheeler talked, SWAT team members
tightened on the house, peeking inside windows with miniature dental mirrors. A
girl of about seven or eight was playing with a doll near the back door. In a
heartbeat, an agent grabbed her, clasping his hand over her mouth, removing her
to the outer perimeter.

Shaw, listening on his headset radio, nodded, and
whispered to Wheeler, “We have a girl removed safely. She says it’s just the
man and a boy inside now and the man has lots of guns and bullets.”

On the phone, Urlich -- who did not know the girl was
gone -- had not decided to cooperate with Wheeler.

“You make me kinda nervous,” Urlich said. “Can’t we
just talk on the line here? ‘Cause if it’s about them kids, I don’t know
nothin’. That’s Norm’s business and I ain’t a part of it.”

“It would be much better, Warren, if we could talk
face to face.”

Shaw had more information.

“The girl says she and the boy were brought to the
property a couple of weeks ago.”

Urlich was getting impatient. “I told you I don’t know
nothing about nothing.”

“I didn’t say you did. We just want to talk, maybe you
can help us on a serious matter. Maybe this is all a misunderstanding. Please
come out now, sir. Help us clear things up, so we can be on our way.”

Several seconds passed before Urlich said, “I’m coming
out.”

Wheeler told Shaw, who alerted the unit. Nearly a
dozen FBI guns were trained on Urlich’s front door. It cracked open. A long,
rifle-like object slowly extended from it. A white dishrag was tied to what
turned out to be a broom. A weathered man in his sixties, dressed in stained
overalls crept out.

“Please put the object down, Warren.” A loudspeaker
ordered.

He obeyed, looking around for the source as his pit
bull howled, leaping at his chain toward him in a futile attempt to warn him of
the SWAT member who stepped from the front of the house and forced Urlich to
his knees, frisking and handcuffing him before escorting him to the command
post.

Rust, Sydowski, Ditmire, Turgeon, Brader, and Shaw
took Urlich aside. Urlich’s eyes went round the group. He seemed indifferent.
Rust and Sydowski began asking questions. Urlich answered them, and before long
they realized they were on the right track, but at the wrong address. The
children, a five-year-old boy and his seven-year-old sister, were Urlich’s
grandchildren, his son Norman’s kids. Norman had lost a custody fight, and last
month he had abducted them from his “ex-bitch Marcie” in Dayton, Ohio, and
brought them here.

“This is what this show is all about, ain’t it?”

Inside the shack, they found two kid’s video-movie
membership cards for a store in Dayton and two juvenile library cards for
Dayton. Calls made to the store, the library, and Dayton PD were further
confirmation of a parental abduction, contrary to a court custody order. The
children would be returned immediately to Mom in Ohio.

Meanwhile, two agents who checked every wreck on the
grounds approached Rust. “No pickup, sir,” one agent said.

Rust turned to Urlich. “According to California’s
Department of Motor Vehicles, you own a 1978 Ford pickup, license ‘B754T3’.
Where is it?”

Rust held an information sheet before Urlich’s face.
He leaned forward, hand still cuffed behind his back, squinting at the page.

“I can’t see. My glasses are in my bib here.”

Urlich was uncuffed. He slipped on his glasses,
studied the page.

“Well, shit, I sold that thing months ago to some
fella from San Francisco. For cash. Got a bill of sale in the house.”

“Why is this truck currently registered to you?”
Sydowski said.

“Guess the registration never got changed like it was
supposed to.”

“What’s the buyer’s name?” Rust asked.

“I got it in the house, in my office.”