Voodoo Ridge

I remember him saying something about how very sorry he was for my loss. At least I think that’s what he said. I was listening more to several ravens, cawing in the trees above us. I remember thinking, Those birds are trying to tell me something.

Tracking terrorists through forests and jungles, it was the birds which always let us know when we were closing in on our targets. The closer the target was to us, the more agitated the birds grew, or the more silent. Whatever those ravens were saying was beyond my ability to comprehend. All I really fathomed amid my shock and grief at that moment was the crushing realization that the only woman I’d ever really cared about was gone forever.

The bar on Lake Tahoe Boulevard was named McJ’s Irish Pub, but it was apparent that its owner had never set foot on the Emerald Island. McJ’s was a straight-up, ski-town beer hall with blaring rock music, antique toboggans on the walls, and two floors of tall stools and sticky tables packed with mostly twenty-somethings, all looking to hook up after a fun-filled day on the slopes. I’d gone there that night for two reasons. One, because it was an easy walk from the Econo Lodge, where I’d checked back in, too devastated to drive back to Rancho Bonita that night. The second reason was that I pla

I’d sworn off liquor after Sava

Camped out alone at a corner table, I stared down at the double shot of Cuervo the young waitress with the black lipstick had dropped off. I wanted so badly to feel the tequila burn all the way down my throat and into my stomach, to cloud my mind and help me forget as only tequila can, if only for one night.

I picked up the glass. I held it to my lips. I set it back down.

Over and over, the exercise repeated itself until sobriety ultimately won out. I never took a sip. Not because I feared that after so many years of being clean, I might end up in detox, and not because the Buddha warned that practitioners of his teachings should keep their minds clear and lucid at all times. No, what deterred me from getting smashed that night was unadulterated rage.

I couldn’t very well find and kill the man who’d murdered Sava

“Hi.”

I looked up from my drink. Standing across the table, smiling at me, was a buxom, thin-waisted brunette in her mid-twenties. Gray-green eyes. Nice full lips. Black turtleneck. Black ski jacket. Jeans tucked into calfskin knee boots. She was no beauty queen, but nobody, as the old saying goes, would’ve tossed her out of bed for eating crackers.

“You mind if I sit here?” she said. “This place is crazy crowded.”

I gestured: have a seat.

“Great, thanks.” She pulled out the stool to my right and offered me her hand. “I’m Jessica, by the way.”

“Logan.” We shook. “You want some tequila, Jessica?”

“Sure.”

I slid my glass over. “Cuervo. Haven’t touched it.”

Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” was playing on the bar’s megaspeakers.

“You don’t want it?” Jessica asked over the music.

I shook my head no.

“Can’t let premium liquor go to waste,” she said.

She slugged it down like a marine.

“Is Logan your first or your last name?”

“Last.”

“You come to Tahoe often?”

“Hardly ever.”

“You seem sad to me.”

“Do I?”

“You do. You have this, like, aura or something. It’s pretty creepy, really.”

I told her it was a long story, and that she seemed like too nice a young lady to be burdened by it.

“Well, whatever it is,” she said, resting a comforting hand on mine, “I’m really, really sorry.”

A tall, ski

“What the hell, Jessica,” he said accusingly as her hand quickly retreated from mine. “You said you were with me.”

“Dude, chill,” Jessica said. “I just needed a place to sit down, that’s all.”

I recognized him before he did me: Preston Kavitch, the panty-sniffing creeper from the Tranquility House Bed-and-Breakfast. Even in the dim light of the bar, I could see the blood drain from his face as he realized who I was.

“What’re you doing here?”

“I was just leaving.”

I stood to go.

“Thanks for the drink,” Jessica said.

“This guy trashed my parents’ house, and you let him buy you a drink?” Preston was pissed, slurring his words, a little drunk. “He thinks I killed his chick. Can you believe that?”

“He thinks you did what?” Jessica stared at him with her mouth open, then at me.

I walked on — or tried to, anyway.

“Hey, where you going, man?” Preston said. “I’m talking to you, asshole.”

Blame what happened next on muscle memory. He clamped his hand on my right arm as I walked past him. In one fluid motion, I drove my right elbow into his midsection, shrugging off his grip, turned back, and snagged his wrist, bending it outward. With no option other than following the direction of his wrist or feel it splinter like a turkey bone, Preston crashed to the floor as the après-ski crowd scurried to get out of the way.

“Did you see that?” he screamed to no one in particular, sitting on the floor and holding his wrist, writhing in pain. “He assaulted me!”

“You deserved it,” Jessica said as she slid off her stool and made her way toward the ladies’ room.

“Call the cops! I’m filing charges!” Preston shouted.

Everyone seemed to ignore him as I headed for the exit. Nobody tried to stop me.

The red message light was blinking on the room phone when I got back to the Econo Lodge. Gil Carlisle, Sava

I had a moral obligation to do so. I understood that. I’d been married once to his daughter. I probably should’ve alerted him when she first went missing. It would’ve been the decent thing to do, certainly the less cowardly. Yet I hesitated. How do you explain to your former father-in-law, a captain of industry used to having his way in virtually everything, that the death of the child he loved more than anyone on this planet was fundamentally your fault? In what ma

“Hello?”

“It’s Gil Carlisle.”

I offered the only words I could think to say.

“I’m so sorry.”

“You should be, you son of a bitch.”

Gone was the deceptively honeyed twang in his voice. Gone, too, was any semblance of the weeping, disconsolate father. The Gil Carlisle on the other end of the line was a man, in the parlance of his native West Texas, fit to be tied. He told me he couldn’t believe it when Sava

“Why did you have to go and find that airplane?”

“I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times, Gil.”

“Why didn’t you call me back?”