Ojo Negro didn’t show up on any of my road maps so I turned to an online service. The route summary warned of an unmarked exit 4.3 miles past Baca Station Road.
At ten p.m., Milo called again. Sitting in his car, three hours into surveillance, watching nothing happen at Tony Mancusi’s apartment.
I said, “Craving conversation?”
“Craving my own pulse. I just got hold of the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s detective who worked Bright-Tranh with Salmey. He told me the case was an unclosable whodunit from day one. But he’s retired and bored so he’ll do you a favor and meet with you. Donald Bragen, lives in Buellton. Used to be a sergeant, sounds like a guy who still digs the title. He’s flying up this afternoon to Seattle, catching a puddle-jumper to Alaska for a fishing trip. If you get to Santa Barbara by nine, he’ll have breakfast with you at Moby Dick on Stearn’s Wharf.”
“I’ll bring my harpoon.”
“Ciao. Back to my Red Bull and burrito.”
“You and Tony dig the same cuisine?”
“Not only that, the same greasy spoon,” he said.
“Empathy?”
“Cultured palates.”
I set out the following morning at seven a.m., endured the commuter crush from Encino to Thousand Oaks, got a little careless with speed limits when I cleared Camarillo, and was nearing Santa Barbara by eight forty. A few miles before the Cabrillo exit, Milo phoned to let me know Donald Bragen had caught an earlier flight and canceled breakfast.
I said, “No desire to talk about old failures?”
“Or the salmon decided to show up early, self-deluded bastards.”
“The fish?”
“Leaping upstream as if someone’s gonna be impressed.”
Now I was thirty miles beyond the beach town’s city limits, past where the 101 hooks inland and north and any notion of blue water vanishes. The Baca Station Road exit wasn’t much of anything. The unmarked turnoff was closer to six miles up. A bloodhound could’ve missed it.
Bumping along a carelessly maintained road, I sped through a cottonwood grove that ended as abruptly as a Hollywood marriage. The view on both sides was straw-colored, waist-high wild grass and a scattering of gray, twisted tree trunks. To the north, the Santa Ynez range showed a bit of skin but kept its distance, like an ambivalent starlet.
The old lime pit came into view and I slowed to have a look. Chain link hung with warped panels of corrugated plastic concealed most of the excavation but through gaps in the plastic I could see a dark maw. Skull-and- crossbones warning signs established a friendly ambience. As I started to drive away, movement caught my eye.
A mangy coyote slinked off into the grass, ruffling the blades, then disappearing.
It took a few cottonwood clumps and a lot more nothing before the grass gave way to an unattended junkyard and a bird-specked green sign proclaiming Ojo Negro to be ALT. 231 FT. POP. 927.
Half a mile later, I spotted a thin, black-haired woman walking along the side of the road, carrying a large metal cage. Using both hands to lug and keeping her back to me. The wrong way to do it.
The sound of my engine made her turn but she kept going toward an old brown jeep parked ten yards up.
I rolled to a stop and lowered the passenger window. She turned sharply, held the cage in front of her. Spring- latched animal trap, heavy enough to drag at her shoulders. Brown stains coated the bottom grid.
“You need something?” Early twenties, Latina, wearing a white western shirt, jeans, boots. Thick, shiny hair was tied back tight from a wide, smooth brow. She had gold-brown eyes, a strong nose, thin lips. Exceptionally pretty woman; all angles, like a raptor.
“I’m looking for Sheriff Cardenas.”
The trap lowered a bit. “Just keep going. He’s in town.”
“How far’s town?”
“Right around the first turn.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you that doctor from L.A.?”
“Alex Delaware.”
She said, “He’s expecting you.”
“You work for him?”
She smiled. “I’m his sister, Ricki.”
I held out my hand.
“You don’t want to touch me after I touched this.”
“What’d you catch?”
“Another ca-yote. One of the senior citizens George looks after has them messing with her garbage but she still won’t get cans that shut tight. She’s eighty-nine, so when she hears noise or finds scat, she calls George. It’s animal reg’s job, but try getting them out here.”
“You volunteer?”
“I’m visiting for a week, nothing much else to do.” She hefted the trap. “It was a little baby ca-yote, real scared, made pathetic noises.”
“I just saw a larger one near the lime pit.”
“They’re all over the place.”
“We get ’ em in L.A.,” I said. “Clever little rascals.”
“Not so clever they won’t walk into a trap full of cat food. George gets everything here. Bobcats, raccoons, rattlesnakes. He’s had reports of mountain lions but hasn’t seen one yet. Anyway, I need to clean up. George is in his office. You can follow me.”
Stashing the trap in the jeep, she drove off. The turn was half a mile up. Rounding it revealed a main drag named Ojo Negro Avenue, fishboned by diagonal parking spaces. Four vehicles for two dozen slots. Three pickups and a white Bronco with a cherry on top.
Ricki pointed to the left and kept driving. The road swooped upward toward a hill of dirt and a couple of struggling sycamores. I pulled in next to the Bronco.
The sidewalks were cracked and sunken, weeds taking advantage of loose seams. Most of the storefronts were dark. Some were boarded.
The active businesses were a white cinderblock cube painted with
The weekly specials at the bin were oats and hay and live breeder rabbits from “Belgium, Europe.”
In the sheriff’s office, a young, completely bald man in khakis sat at a PC keyboard. Behind him was a one-room jail as clean as his head. The walls were papered with the usual wanted posters, bulletins, and safety pitches. Cinderblock made an inhospitable bed for tape, and some of the papers had curled loose.
“Dr. Delaware? George Cardenas.”
“Morning, Sheriff.”
This sibling shook heartily and smiled without reservation. His skin was clear like his sister’s, his eyes the same gold-brown. But his face was round and soft, with none of that falcon-alertness. Baby-face; the lack of head hair did little to age him. “Coffee?”
“Black, thanks.”
Cardenas poured both of us Styrofoam cups, dosed his with Coffee-mate, and motioned me to sit. “You’re a little early.”
