The Triggerman Dance (2 page)

He went over to the blanketed form, knelt, looked up once at the ominous dusk, then lifted the material. He seemed to study Rebecca's face for a long time. He touched her lips, then her forehead, pressing a soaked blond curl back under the hat. He kissed his fingertips and touched them against her lips again.

After that he froze there, kneeling beside Rebecca for a long time. Then he slowly rose and stood over her, but to many of the observers—and they were trained, professional observers—the man who had kneeled beside Rebecca Harris was not the man who stood up a few minutes later. The new man had a different posture. He was stooped a little, whereas the original was erect. His face was no longer simply pale, but ivory colored and very hard, as if cast from a mold or sculpted. He was most definitely smaller. And certainly, the man who first approached the body did not have the very large black eyes that now challenged each of their faces—eyes so filled with fury and heartache that some of the journalists couldn't even meet them, let alone think of taking a picture.

Susan Baum, possessing the keenest instincts of all the
Journal
writers, felt in her pocket for the notepad and pen, and approached the bespectacled statue standing over Rebecca.

The young man in the leather coat and fedora had retreated from the throng outside the crime scene tape, and stood alone in the vague middle distance, studying this newly arrived official with the booming voice and the corded neck muscles. He thought: I wonder if that's
him.

The pale man took a few steps away from the body, and considered the dozens of people—police, sheriff department,
Journal
staff, plant security—still meandering on either side of the crime scene ribbon. He held up his badge again, showing it around. His voice was resonant and did not seem to belong to his slender, almost ascetic body.

"My name is Joshua Weinstein, FBI, Orange County Office. This is my partner, Special Agent Sharon Dumars. Anyone . . .
anyone
not on the other side of that tape in the next ten seconds will be placed under arrest and face federal charges of tampering."

Astonishingly, he actually started counting.

There was a generalized grumble from the crowd, but everyone inside the tape migrated toward it, their movements accelerating noticeably when the count got to eight. Everyone except Susan Baum, who on the count of ten stood directly before Weinstein and gazed straight into his huge dark eyes.

"God, Joshua," she whispered. "She'd mentioned you to me.

"Get behind the tape, Ms. Baum."

"If I remember right, the wedding was planned for June."

"You remember right. Now get behind the tape."

"Can we talk later?"

"We have forever to talk."

"I want to tell you something right now. I won't die before write the name of the man who did this in one of my column: He'll be identified. I swear this, to every god that's ever slept night in Heaven."

"Thank you. Now step back."

A tragedy creates waves, and waves can carry people away. For those involved, everything changed with those shots, at approxmately 4:45 p.m. on Wednesday, March 22. Rebecca Harris, age 24, a bright, kind-hearted and lovely young woman in the prime of her young adulthood, died almost instantly. Her fiance, Joshua Weinstein of the Orange County, California office of the Federal; Bureau of Investigation, was swept by one wave into a journey of hatred so deep that, according to those who know him, he has yet to fully return. Rebecca's father was carried away by another wave, straight to heart failure three weeks later. The young man in the long leather coat and fedora, a talented if underproductive staff writer for the
Journal
named John Menden, rode yet another wave outward from Rebecca. He quit his job and floated around the South Pacific for three months until both his money and liver were close to giving out, then returned to move into a batten old trailer way out in the bleak Southern California desert. The security guard with the radio was fired. In fact, his entire company was released from its contract with the
Journal
—financial waves for financial concerns. The photographer who snapped the now famous picture of Rebecca won an award, then several more. The only living things proximate to the event that remained truly unrippled were the eucalyptus tree and the poppies in the planter near where Rebecca, heart-shot and staggering, then heart-shot again, fell and died in the pouring rain.

Six months came and went.

During this time, the lead agency responsible for the case was the FBI, taking its powers under recent Federal Hate Crimes provisions. They worked in concert with the police and sheriffs and, intermittently, with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Joshua Weinstein took all his vacation time, then an unpaid leave of absence for nearly half a year. He said he was going to Israel, and vanished with hardly a good-bye for anyone.

Five months later he was back, his pallor gone to a ruddy tan, but his eyes still lugubrious and not a little haunted. His Bureau-mate, the dark-haired and strong bodied Sharon Dumars, noted that Joshua spent a lot of his extra time with the Rebecca Harris files before him—a case from which his official participation was forbidden by Bureau policy. But since Joshua spent twelve-hour days on the job, he could easily take an hour here, a few hours there, to venture out into this sacred and unsanctioned ground. Dumars saw that Joshua's own private file—which he carefully locked away each night before he left—was growing in thickness.

Driven by curiosity, she glanced once at his time card to find that Joshua had officially charged no hours at all to his private investigation. The idea crossed her mind that she might be the only one who even knew about it. She certainly wasn't the only one who knew about his long telephone calls, since all Bureau calls were recorded and saved for an unrevealed period of time.

All she knew for sure was that he talked almost inaudibly during certain calls (the longer ones), with his thin shoulder blades hunched up like a vulture's wings, his neck down and his back to her. He would then hang up and swivel his chair around to look at her with a kind of fierce nonchalance before going back to his work. For all Sharon Dumars knew, Josh could have been talking to his mother back in Brooklyn.

Then, on a blazing September morning six months after the death of his betrothed, Joshua Weinstein rang off from one of his near silent telephone conversations, stared blankly for a moment at Dumars, then stood, locked his files and put on his suit coat.

"Come with me," he said.

Following Joshua's lead, Dumars left the building with him failing to sign out or say a word to anyone. Never in her three years with the Bureau had she done anything so bold and so flagrantly against procedure.

Sharon Dumars drove her white Bureau Ford because Weinstein asked her to. They headed in silence out toward Riverside on the 91, then picked up Interstate 15 south to Temecula, then branched southeast on State 79. The highway ran along a green valley rimmed with estates on the left, oaks and pastures to the right, fruit stands and white fences. The stables of a well known Arabian horse ranch passed by on the right.

"Where are we going, Josh?"

"We are going by context."

"What case do I bill this context to?"

"Personal Time."

"There's no case called Personal Time, last I checked."

"Just pay attention, and later, I'll ask you what you think."

Finally, they hit State 371, which took them east and higher in elevation. Dumars handled the car well on the curving, rising road, passing a cement mixer and a pickup filled with hay bales without taking her left hand from the armrest. In fact, her shoulder holster and 9mm were uncomfortable enough against the left side of her rib cage without moving around any more than she had to. There were just a few houses out here, set far back amidst the boulder-strewn hills. They looked planted. Occasionally, a dilapidated trailer peeked into view from a deep ravine or precipitous hilltop.

"I guess the people who move out here don't like anyone around them," Sharon offered. The landscape was quite pretty in an austere way.

"Or no one likes to be around
them"
said Josh absently.

They passed a sign that said "Cahuilla Indian Reservation", then, a few miles on, a sign for the city of Anza Valley, elevation 3,918 and population less than that.

The town appeared ahead of them. Dumars cut her speed to fifty. They passed a real estate office that was closed, a hardware store that was open, and a liquor store that had three pickup trucks parked in the dirt patch out front and windows filled with beer posters featuring beautiful women.

"We want Olie's Saloon—it's on the left," said Josh.

They drove past the market, the gas and propane station, a tire and brake center and the Feed Bin. Dumars slowed behind a faded gold Mercury four-door slung so low to the asphalt it looked like its trunk was filled with bowling balls. She could see through its dirty rear window a passel of dark-skinned children in the back seat, a huge female with raging black hair behind the wheel, and beside her a graying head lost in a cowboy hat. Dumars thought of the current battle back in Orange County between two tribes claiming rights to the land—the Gabrielenos and the Juanenos—and all the backbiting, corruption and betrayal in the name of federal funds and perhaps a bingo palace. Dignity is a hard thing to come by anymore, she thought.

"Is this reservation land?" she asked.

"Not the city. But all around it."

Olie's was a fragile-looking structure of dark wood, with a sagging roof and a hitching post out front. There were more pickup trucks in the dirt lot. It was either built to look like something from 1870, thought Dumars, or actually was. She pulled in and parked where Joshua pointed. The air outside the car was clear, dry and hot. An Indian in a white shirt watched them as they pushed through the saloon-style doors and into the late afternoon darkness of the bar.

They took a booth along one wall and studied the plastic-sheathed menus. The chili cheese omelet was being heavily discounted that day. The waitress was a thin, dry looking woman in her fifties who smiled tightly at them and talked about the omelet. They ordered soft drinks. Dumars thought that they couldn't have been more conspicuous if they had dressed in sequins, though it hardly mattered.

"So, you come here a lot?"

"I want you to listen, and corroborate when you can. What I want, when we're finished, is a candid, honest, and hopefully helpful opinion."

"Joshua, does this have to do with Rebecca?"

"This has to do with everything. He'll be here in ten minutes."

In fact, he was there in less than ten minutes. He came through the saloon doors with a soft clunking of boots and, like the regular he was, walked straight for a row of bar stools that stood along one window, facing the street. He set his fedora on the counter beside him.

Joshua had covertly situated Dumars so that she would see his entrance. Joshua easily followed the reflection of John Menden, former
Journal
writer, in the bar mirror, as he arrived at his usual time, took his usual route to his usual stool, and put his hat down next to him. Joshua studied him, as those in law enforcement do, for some change, some new intelligence that might illuminate a subject. He found none. Menden looked as always, tall and on the slender side, with the easy, gliding gait of an athlete or, as Weinstein knew, a hunter. He wore the long denim duster he preferred for warm weather, the scuffed moccasin-style, flat-soled boots, the work shirt and brown cotton vest in the pockets of which he kept his cigarettes, lighter and pen. Weinstein quite frankly didn't know what to make of John Menden's style of dress. It was like something out of the past, part cowboy, part Indian and part gangster, maybe, what with the hat. The clothing seemed to suit him. Weinstein had observed John here, in his daily post-work lair, a total of five times, and the costume John wore had come to seem less foppish than simply eclectic and functional. As for Weinstein's own clothes, he had come in various guises—businessman, golfer, tourist, local—wanting neither Menden nor the regulars of Olie's to remember him. Joshua noted again that John's hair was the mix of brown and blond common to those who spend a lot of time outdoors, and it was kind of shaggy, falling onto a forehead from which he often had to push it back. His eyes were a pale gray. Like a lot of tall people, Menden stooped slightly, a habit developed early to help him fit into the pack, Josh decided. He smiled rarely and appeared relaxed. But Joshua had noted long ago that Menden's eyes were always alert and busy, whether he was choosing a bar stool, lighting a cigarette or taking a sip from the shots and beers he drank. Weinstein had learned from a routine medical history check that