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  A CORDELL LOGAN MYSTERY

  HOT START

  DAVID FREED

  Copyright © 2016 by David Freed

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication, or parts thereof, may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotes in a review, without the written permission of the publisher.

  For information, address:

  The Permanent Press

  4170 Noyac Road

  Sag Harbor, NY 11963

  www.thepermanentpress.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Freed, David, author.

  Hot start : a Cordell Logan mystery / David Freed.

  Sag Harbor, NY : The Permanent Press, [2016]

  ISBN 978-1-57962-433-0

  eISBN 978-1-57962-491-0

  1. Logan, Cordell (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Mystery fiction. 3. Suspense fiction.

  PS3606.R4375 H68 2016

  813'.6—dc23

  2016017186

  Printed in the United States of America

  In fond memory of Aurelia Valley

  “Man is the cruelest animal.”

  —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

  Who murdered Roy Hollister wasn’t the question. The question was, who didn’t want to murder him? Most residents of swanky, seaside Rancho Bonita were not surprised when somebody finally did. The surprise was that his third wife, Toni, was killed alongside him. Many may have spurned Hollister for the way in which he made his fortune, but all agreed that Toni, gracious and philanthropic to a fault, didn’t deserve to be butchered too—an innocent bystander foolish enough to have married a veritable monster.

  The high temperature in Rancho Bonita soared that afternoon to a record-breaking 101 degrees. The couple were enjoying a cooling, late-night dip in the pool behind their 8,000-square-foot French Colonial mansion when they were shot. The pool was shaped like the continent of Africa. The mansion was nestled on five lushly landscaped acres overlooking the central coast of California, a $25 million slice of heaven that Hollister could’ve never envisioned owning one day when he dropped out of high school and took a minimum-wage job sweeping floors at a gun shop in Fresno—the same store where he would later chance upon an article in Guns & Ammo detailing the rising popularity of big-game hunting expeditions, borrow ten grand from his sister, and begin chartering safaris to the Tanzanian bush. The irony that Hollister and his wife had been killed by large-caliber rifle bullets, the type used to fell elephants and cape buffaloes, was not lost on the police, nor among the couple’s mostly left-leaning, animal-loving neighbors.

  “I don’t wish bad on anybody, but let’s just say that what goes around comes around,” one neighbor, money manager Jackson Giamatti, told a Rancho Bonita television reporter two days after the shootings. “May he rot in hell for what he did to all those poor defenseless creatures.”

  Not that Giamatti or anyone else interviewed by the local media claimed to have actually ever talked to Hollister—“The King of the Big Five” as he touted himself on his website. All they knew of the man was what they’d read online about him or heard third-hand via the grapevine—that he was an arrogant jerk who charged well-heeled outdoorsmen upward of $50,000 apiece to shoot rare and exotic species in Kenya, Namibia, and other faraway hunting preserves. A few local residents said Hollister seemed pleasant enough, on the surface anyway. He’d even wave at them occasionally, rumbling past in his black Hummer with its “EAT LION” vanity plate. The consensus, however, was that he mostly kept to himself, a preternaturally tan sixty-five-year-old with hair plugs and a spouse twenty years his junior.

  A gardener discovered their nude bodies shortly after sunrise. Roy Hollister was found floating facedown in water tinged pink with blood. He’d been killed by what military snipers call a “catastrophic brain shot.” Investigators would retrieve pieces of his skull from the deep end, lodged in the pool’s drain. Toni Hollister had died apparently while climbing the pool steps, her legs still submerged in the shallow end, her arms splayed over the terracotta decking. One bullet had creased her scalp. Another had nicked her spine and exited her chest below her left armpit, leaving a hole the size of a Krugerrand gold piece.

  Several nearby residents reported being awakened by gunshots shortly after one A.M. Considering that the Hollisters’ computer-monitored privacy gates appeared not to have been breached that night, investigators deduced that the fatal rounds had been fired from considerable range, 600 meters or more. The shooter, given that distance, was assumed to have been an experienced marksman, possibly military trained. With palm trees and a row of Cypress pines blocking the pool from view on three sides, police also concluded that the shots could only have come from the sparsely inhabited hills to the north, looking down on the Hollister estate. From where specifically, though, no one could say. Cloaked in chaparral and veined by dry, narrow arroyos, the area offered myriad secluded firing positions where the killer could have lain in wait, unseen in the darkness.

  Less than a month after the shootings, Hollister’s older brother, Skip, the one who’d loaned him money to get started in the safari business, held a weekend estate sale at the late couple’s mansion. Neighbors who’d vilified Hollister in life descended nonetheless on his home like carrion. Some came out of curiosity, to gape at the pool where the bodies were found, or to stroll the mansion’s great room and stare up at walls ten feet high, thick with the mounted trophy heads of polar bears and springboks. Others came as bargain hunters always will: to snag a good deal.

  A glass-top coffee table held upright by two wooden, hand-carved African tribeswomen with garishly large breasts sold for $200. A stuffed, foot-long baby crocodile clutching in its jaws the likeness of a horrified miniature boy went for half that. Toni’s designer shoes and Vera Wang gowns were carted off at fire-sale prices, along with the custom-made cowboy boots and sweat-stained Stetsons her husband favored on safari. No one bought any of the mounted heads. Also unsold went Roy Hollister’s framed letter from then-National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston, applauding his “exemplary defense of our Second Amendment freedoms,” and his $100,000 contribution to the NRA. As for Hollister’s arsenal of rifles and shotguns, his pistols and revolvers, all were snapped up by an unidentified gun collector from Arizona.

  It was on the second day of the estate sale when Skip Hollister found the letters that police had missed in their preliminary search of the mansion. There were five of them, all tucked into the same zippered, inner pocket of one of Roy’s many leather hunting vests hanging in the late couple’s cavernous, walk-in closet. Each had been typed using the same font and printed on the same thin copy paper. Each had been stuffed into an identical envelope bearing a Rancho Bonita postmark and mailed anonymously to Roy Hollister over the previous six months. All conveyed the same ominous warning: stop butchering animals for sport or you, too, will be butchered. Investigators assigned to the case needn’t have passed Detective 101 to determine that the sender by his persistence meant business.

  A Rancho Bonita police spokeswoman said her department was unaware of any threats made against Roy Hollister before his death. There was no record of Hollister ever having alerted law enforcement officials to the potential danger he was facing. Others under similar circumstances, concerned about their safety, might’ve applied for a concealed weapons permit. Hollister never did. Whether he refused to take the letters seriously or believed that he could defend himself without Johnny Law’s help, no one could say in the wake of his death.

  Among the throngs of bargain hunters waiting at the gates for the estate sale to begin that weekend was none other than Jackson Giamatti, the money manager who weeks earlier had appeared on the television news, wishing Hollister eternal damnation for the safaris he’d led. With loc
al news crews again present to keep the story alive, the preppie Giamatti and his preppie fiancée loaded up on used kitchen utensils, an unopened case of Estée Lauder facial cleanser, a set of bath towels, and a blood-red Zulu tribal mask that bore a decided resemblance to Satan. Giamatti told a reporter he found the mask “provocative, like its former owner.”

  When he returned home, Giamatti discovered an old African proverb written on the back. “Consider the things that have passed,” it said, “for they predict what is coming.”

  He threw the mask in the trash.

  ONE

  “Open wide and say ahh.”

  “Ahh.”

  “Wider.”

  “Aaaaaahh.”

  Dr. Kurtis forced the tongue depressor down my throat and peered in with a penlight like he was looking for his missing car keys.

  “Tonsils intact. Larynx normal. No abnormalities noted.” Clicking off the light, he grabbed a small rubber mallet from an instrument tray parked next to the examining table on which I was sitting au naturel save for my boxers. “Now we’ll check your reflexes.”

  A tap below the right kneecap. My foot kicked forward. Dr. Kurtis leaned closer, examining the ugly, five-inch scar that ran vertically along my upper shin.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “The forty-yard line, coming across the middle. Linebacker tried to turn me into a human pretzel.”

  “High school?”

  “College. The Air Force Academy. We were playing New Mexico.”

  “Football should be outlawed,” the doctor said. “Any issues with the knee since?”

  “None,” I said, lying.

  He gave me a skeptical look. “I find that somewhat hard to believe. No problems on an ACL reconstruct after, what, forty years?”

  “Forty? C’mon, doc,” I said, “I’m not that old.”

  Another tap with his mallet on my left leg. My left foot kicked forward.

  “How does whacking me on the shins determine if I’m fit to fly an airplane?”

  “I don’t make federal aviation regulations, Mr. Logan, I only follow them.”

  He listened to my heart and lungs and declared them both normal, then peered closely at the quarter-size scar below my right collarbone.

  “Where’d you get this?” he demanded.

  “Get what?”

  “This gunshot wound.”

  “I hate to disappoint, doc,” I said, lying again, “but I got that one falling out of a tree when I was a kid.”

  He peered at me skeptically over his half-glasses and wanted to know how much alcohol I consumed on a daily basis.

  “None. I’ve been on the wagon for more than seven years.” This time, I was being honest.

  He made me jump up and down on one leg, then the other. He made me stand with my feet shoulder width, hands out, and touch my nose with my eyes closed. He made me walk heel-to-toe. Police roadside sobriety tests were less rigorous.

  “You can go ahead and get dressed now,” he said, finally.

  I’ve endured more flight physicals over the years than I can remember—first as a cadet at the academy, then as a combat pilot flying A-10 Warthogs, and now as a civilian flight instructor. The examinations have varied depending on the job, but not by much. Some probing, some prodding, some peeing into a plastic cup, sometimes some blood work. Check this eye, check that one. Ears, check. Reflexes, check. Respiratory system, circulatory system, pulse. Check, check, and check. Answer all the questions correctly—“No, Doctor, I’ve not been diagnosed with any personality disorders; no, I’ve not abused hallucinogens or any other illicit substances in the interim; no, I have not fainted or otherwise lost consciousness for some unexplained reason”—and, hopefully, if all goes well, your FAA medical certificate is renewed. Most civilian physicians who administer flight physicals take them fairly seriously. But this one was beyond the pale.

  Complaining would’ve been a mistake. I didn’t need to give Dr. Kurtis any excuse to deny my renewal. Without a valid medical certificate, I couldn’t legally fly. If I couldn’t fly, I couldn’t earn a living. With only my meager monthly pension check from Uncle Sugar, I couldn’t cover the rent on the converted garage apartment in Rancho Bonita where I bunked with Kiddiot, the world’s dumbest, most ungrateful cat, or maintain the Ruptured Duck, my near-antique, four-seat Cessna 172. More significantly, I couldn’t afford to indulge in my one remaining addiction on this rock: smothered green chili burritos.

  I pulled on my jeans and polo shirt while the doctor hunched over a small corner desk, jotting more notes in his file. He was a small, thin man with a prominent bald spot and a lab coat that smelled pleasantly of laundry detergent. My regular medical examiner, a frosty former navy flight surgeon who reeked of cheap cigars and whose physical exams took all of about ten minutes, had recently retired. This was my first go-round with Kurtis. Excluding another physician across town, a rumored pill pusher catering to Rancho Bonita’s wealthy and famous, of which there was no shortage, Kurtis was the only other FAA-certified medical examiner within thirty miles. As the Buddha said, you take what you can get.

  “You say here you’re six one and 190 pounds.” He turned from the paperwork I’d filled out before the exam and looked me up and down over his reading glasses. “I’d say more like six feet. This is what happens as we get closer to death. We grow closer to the earth.”

  “Thank you,” I said, forcing a smile and tying my hiking shoes. “I now feel so much better about myself and life in general.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He turned back to the desk and his note-taking. The man had the personality of a yield sign. Instinct compelled me to have a little chat with him about his bedside manner. The Buddha, however, teaches tolerance of all people. I had a long way to go before I could call myself a true believer. Here, I realized, was an opportunity, a self-teaching moment toward becoming a more complete human being. Without ridiculing him, without leveling any snide remark, I asked politely if I’d passed my physical.

  “Marginally,” he said, handing me my renewed certificate along with a bill for $150.

  It was all I could do not to put him in a headlock.

  EVER HAVE one of those mornings? This was one of them. First it was Dr. Kurtis and the flight physical. Then it was the knuckle dragger texting on his phone while riding a speeding motorcycle, who nearly sideswiped my truck as I was pulling out of the parking lot of the medical building, and who had the scones to look back as he was roaring away and flip me off after I laid on my horn. Then it was the barista at Starbucks who chided me as a schoolmarm would’ve a dunce for ordering a “small” black coffee.

  “FYI,” she said, handing me back seventy-nine cents in change and tucking a strand of dyed chromium blue hair behind her amply pierced left ear, “it’s not called a ‘small,’ OK? It’s called a tall. That’s what we call it here. ‘Tall.’ Maybe you can remember that next time.”

  “FYI,” I said, pocketing the change instead of tossing it into the “Tips Gratefully Accepted!” jar on the counter as I would’ve otherwise, “this is called getting stiffed for displaying condescending and obnoxious behavior. Maybe you can remember that next time.”

  Maybe it was the girl. Or maybe it was the vibe I was giving off. Or maybe it was the ridge of high pressure settled over California that had been baking Rancho Bonita for two weeks in triple-digit heat with no respite in sight. In a community where it’s easy to become spoiled by what is ordinarily the planet’s best, most mild weather, where few homes have air conditioning, the whole town seemed to be in a heated mood. My newest student pilot, a stern, bespectacled certified public accountant in her late thirties named Joy Shaheen, was no exception. One would have been hard-pressed to meet anyone with a more inappropriate first name.

  Joy, who wore her thin, dark hair stretched back in a tight bun, which made her large forehead appear even larger, was eager to earn her private pilot’s certificate so she could begin commuting by air to her accounting firm’
s satellite office in Hayward, across the bay from San Francisco. She’d arrived at the Rancho Bonita Airport that morning precisely at 1100 hours as scheduled for her third flight lesson. We had planned to practice ground reference maneuvers.

  “It’s not a good day to go flying,” I said as she stepped from her sensible Toyota Prius outside the World War II-era hangar where my Above the Clouds flight academy was headquartered.

  “Why not?” Joy demanded.

  I could feel the sun’s heat rising from the asphalt and through my shoes. “Because it’s already ninety-six degrees.”

  The air becomes bumpier and less dense as temperatures rise. Less dense air, I explained to her, means less lift, which means that small planes like the Ruptured Duck tend to not do what you want them to, like climb with any margin of safety. They tend to display the flight characteristics of a brick. I proposed instead that we spend the morning in my office going over the aerodynamic theories she needed to fully comprehend for the exhaustive written examination all would-be pilots have to pass.

  “I’ve got a package of Oreos inside my office and an unopened bottle of orange Gatorade in the fridge,” I said. “I’ll even turn the fan on high. C’mon, what do you say?”

  She glared at me with her arms folded. “I can study aerodynamics on my own, Logan. I paid you in full—in advance—to teach me how to fly, not to sit around overdosing on processed sugar inside some smelly storage closet you have the audacity to call an office. If you don’t want to fly with me today, I’ll go find another instructor at some other school who will.”

  Her forehead reminded me of a drive-in movie screen.

  “It’s your money,” I said.

  We went up for almost an hour. I’ve undergone root canals that were less harrowing. Even with the fuel tanks half full, at considerably less than gross weight, the Duck didn’t feel like flying. As the outside air temperature hit the century mark, it was all I could do to keep the airspeed needle just above stall, the warning horn moaning intermittently in my ears every few seconds. The vertical airspeed indicator never topped 300 feet per minute—less than half the Duck’s normal climb rate under cooler conditions. Spiraling up over the ocean, it took us nearly fifteen minutes to reach our assigned maneuvering altitude of 3,000 feet.