“Part of the team — person who gathers as much information as possible on the suspect and anything else relevant to the situation. Ideally, there’s a separate, secured area where this person interviews anyone who has information that may be of some use.”
“And this time there wasn’t?”
“There was, but the intelligence officer got distracted when the kids were released. While the officer was trying to talk to the kids about the situation in the house, the brother decided to play the hero. Snuck off and tried to break through the perimeter we had set up, but didn’t make it. We caught him. All the same, there was scuffling and he started shouting. Husband heard the noise and decided we were sending the SWAT team in. He just lost it. Shot her, shot himself.”
I stared out the window for a moment. “How old are you, Cassidy?”
“I’m forty-two.” He smiled. “Now you know why I’m gray headed — sure as hell ain’t the years.”
Now I know why you understand people who have nightmares, I thought, but didn’t say it.
“I probably shouldn’t be talking to you about failures,” he said after a minute. “I don’t suppose I’ve inspired your confidence.”
“You’re wrong.” I looked over at him. “You know what? I think you
He laughed. “Hell, Irene, sometimes I really do just talk.”
“Sure, Cassidy. Sure.”
After miles of hills and mountain grades, we came to the highways that cross the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, which are flat and waste no time with curves. They practically beg for speed. We took the Highway 99 turnoff and flew past exits for Mettler and Pumpkin Center and Weed Patch. Tumbleweeds skipped across the highway.
“Lordy,” Cassidy said, “if it weren’t for the palm trees lining that road over there, I’d be afraid I’d died and gone to Amarillo to pay for my sins.”
“I like it out here,” I told him. “Makes me think of my grandmother’s farm in Kansas. Look — there’s a windmill.” I pointed to one that stood just east of the road. “She had one like that.”
“Excited over a windmill, are you? Things must be slow in the Las Piernas newsroom.”
I ignored that. “You can see for miles. Crops are growing. There are cattle and—”
“You see a couple of cows and a pumpkin patch, and you get all romantic about it, thinking of your grandma. I see backbreaking work. I moved from our family farm to Austin just so I could keep the bottom of my boots clean.”
“Did it work?”
“Nope. Got into law enforcement and I’ve been stepping in somebody else’s BS every day since.”
“At least you’ll enjoy the music out here. Bakersfield bills itself as the C and W capital of California.”
He grimaced. “Did I ever tell you how I came to live on the West Coast?”
What the hell. “No, Cassidy, even though I’ve known you for about a dozen hours now, I’m afraid you’ve never told me.”
“Well, I was in Texas, and I had my radio on. All I could tune in was Jesus men and country-western music. So I started driving, trying to get to where I could hear something different. Next thing I knew, I was in California.”
I laughed. “And I suppose you had to go to work in Las Piernas just so you could earn gas money to get back home.”
“Oh, no. Once I learned I could live some place that had something else on the radio, I never wanted to leave.”
“We’d better keep the radio off here, then, and plan on amusing ourselves with conversation.”
“A cinch.”
“Cassidy?”
“Hmm.”
“I’ve been to Texas — including Austin. I’d swear I heard all kinds of music there.”
He just grinned.
“Take a right on Truxtun,” I told him. “There are some lettered streets after that — A, B, C, and so on. But when you get to H, the next street is Eye — E-y-e.”
“I like that,” he said. “Somebody had a sense of humor right from the start.”
“Turn left on Eye. The paper’s at Eye and Seventeenth Street.”
Built in the 1920s, 1707 Eye Street is a handsome brick edifice. Tall, elaborate columns with composite capitals adorn the front of the building; a turret graces the upper right corner, a balcony the other.
“Bakersfield was a town of cowboys, miners, and railroad workers then,” I said.
“So what’s changed?”
I smiled. “Oil, for one thing. The business of agriculture, for another. You ought to give the place a chance, Cassidy.”
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Don’t mean to offend,” he said.
We stepped out of the car. I looked at my watch. One twenty-five. “You made good time. We’ve got five minutes to spare.”
