and I felt bad about having to stir up all that pain again, but we were way behind the curve and needed something to get us back on track. We sat outside one of those Mexican restaurants that are a step up from Taco Bell but still the wrong side of the real thing, and got down to business.
“I’m Agent Reilly, FBI. And this is Agent Munro.”
“DEA,” he added.
She cut us off before I got any further with my introductions.
“This is about the clubhouse, right?”
I nodded.
“I saw the news, and you’re wasting your time. I don’t know anything about that,” she said, her tone firm and defensive. “I’ve had nothing to do with those guys for years.”
The anger and bitterness erupted so quickly it was almost a shock, though I’d learned over years of interrogation that the bad stuff always lurks right up against the surface, whether you can see it there or not.
“Your daughter, Naomi,” I told her. “She’s Marty’s kid, right?”
At her daughter’s name, Dani’s face hardened with a mother’s protective instinct, but then when I mentioned Marty, her face softened and her eyes flicked away for a moment as memory took over.
“Why are you here? Look, Naomi has no clue who her father was, and I want to keep it that way.”
Munro stepped in with perfect tag-team timing. He laid both hands palm-up on the table in front of him and gave Dani a wide smile. “We can see you’ve got a life here. We’re not interested in doing anything to hurt that. When people leave a bad life behind, get a job, raise a kid, pay taxes . . . it makes our job a whole lot easier. One less wasted life is one less violent death to write up. If all the girlfriends, wives, and mothers just got up and walked away from the gangs, how long do you think the guys would last before reassessing their life choice?” He gave her his patented gotta-love-me grin.
Dani relaxed visibly at that. Munro had hit just the right chord. The bastard was good at his job.
It was my turn. “We’re here ’cause we’re looking for Gary.” I watched for her reaction to the name, and I got the surprise I was expecting. “We think he can help us nail the guys who wiped out the club. I don’t blame you for not wanting to get involved, but these guys, they’re seriously bad. They also killed a deputy up in San Marcos. Guy had a kid. Same age as Naomi.” I let that percolate for a moment. “We think Gary knew one of them back in the day, and given what they did to the guys, I think he’d want to help us track them down. Thing is, we don’t know where he is and we need your help to find him.”
She took a deep breath, then sighed, suddenly resigned to the incontrovertible fact that one never truly leaves the past behind.
“He doesn’t want to be found and that’s okay by me. I’m doing just fine without any of them.” She looked at Munro as she added, “Just like you said.”
He nodded at that, clearly appreciating that she’d been listening.
“My parents near disowned me when I started hanging out at the club, but they helped out when Marty got himself killed. I think they were grateful I was still alive. They still look after Naomi so I can work. I paid for my father’s laser eye surgery last year. He says he can see better now than when he was twenty.”
She was proud of how far she’d come. And rightly so. But it was becoming clear that we’d made the trip down to Chula Vista for nothing. Dani’s eyes wandered off. Munro and I had been in the job long enough to let her go wherever she was going. After a long moment she landed back with us. I leaned forward, sensing that she might have brought something back with her.
“I don’t know where he is. He told me how much he’d miss hanging out with me and Naomi and said maybe things would change one day, but that day hasn’t come yet.”
I had to keep pushing, to keep prompting her in the hope that something would rise to the surface. “People rarely manage to disappear completely,” I told her. “They often miss something. Some detail, some contact, something they might have mentioned. Think about it, Dani. If this were a life-and-death situation and you needed to reach him, how would you do it?”
“I don’t know,” she said, visibly trying to come up with something. “He just wanted a new life.” Then something sparked on her face. “Maybe . . . You could try one thing. After I got pregnant, Marty and I once talked about what we’d do, if things ever got too hot. If we ever had to get out. I was thinking about the baby and worrying about the kind of life Marty was into. And he told me about this guy that Gary knew in the Marines. A real wizard for fake IDs. Marty said we’d use him before heading for the border. Maybe that’s what Gary did. Maybe he used the guy to get himself a new life.”
I shared a quick glance with Munro. This could be something. When people dropped off the grid they often used fake or stolen IDs, and knowing the source of the ID would be a huge boon.
“Did he tell you the guy’s name?”
She shook her head. “No. Maybe he did, but I don’t remember. Sorry.”
Another wall. Easy come, easy go, right?
“If you find him,” she added, “say hi from me. Tell him I think it’d be good for Naomi to get to know her uncle.”
She stood, smoothed down her jacket, and turned to go. After a second she looked back.
“Bear in mind, he probably wants to be found even less than I did.”
Then she headed for the escalator and was gone.
I called Villaverde and gave him the update. He needed to look for Marines from Walker and Pennebaker’s days who had done time for fraud, or had criminal records before they joined up. I also had another idea. Something more specific. Something that would fit with the two bikers’ feelings about the military. It was a long shot, but at this point we had to try anything that might move us forward.
“Look for soldiers over the past ten years that were listed as MIA, but then came back onto the grid. Start at Camp Pendleton and work out from there.”
Villaverde immediately grasped what I was suggesting. “So Pennebaker walks out of prison and somehow assumes the ID of a missing soldier?”
“Yeah. And most likely one with no living relatives. I get the impression that the new Pennebaker wouldn’t have wanted to hurt a soldier’s family, but would have no qualms about deceiving the government.”
“I’ll get my guys straight onto it. You coming back here?”
I said we’d head straight up to Aero Drive.
By the time we got back to his office, Villaverde was sitting at the main meeting room table with two other agents, going through army service records. I joined the party while Munro found an empty desk and put in a call to Corliss.
He told me he’d made contact with the USACIDC—the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command —at MCB Quantico and requested the service histories that we needed. With both the FBI and the DEA pressing for access—and adding into the mix that both San Diego PD and the SDSO wouldn’t back off until they found whoever killed Deputy Fugate—he hadn’t had to face any jurisdictional stare-downs.
There were seventeen soldiers who fit our profile. All of them had been listed MIA at some point over the past ten years, but only five of them had returned to the fold in one way or another in the last two, which was our window for Pennebaker. Of the other twelve, nine had been confirmed dead and three were still listed as missing.
We were trying to find someone born between 1970 and 1985 who looked enough like Pennebaker for him to assume his identity. There was one name that stood out. Marine Sergeant Matthew Frye. Born 1982. Listed as missing in 2003. Came back on the grid in 2009. Missed three psych evaluation appointments but had finally been discharged at the beginning of 2010. He still had his tags and had been identified by a sister, who was his only living relative. Placed side by side, Frye and Pennebaker could have been brothers, notwithstanding their choice of optional mustache.
“Where’s Frye now?”
One of the junior agents pushed a few keys on the laptop facing them, then spun it around to face Villaverde, who shared the details.
“Social Security has him in Los Angeles. Works at a private rehab clinic up in Montecito Heights. Sleeps there, too, by the looks of it. His work address and residential address are the same.”
