A wave of dizziness staggered me and the moment to give chase passed. I gulped for air until the roaring in my ears subsided and I was sane again, or trending in that direction. Pain wasn’t what shocked me sober. A glimpse at the unmasked face of evil and a thimble of common sense did.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I pulled myself together in the men’s room. Splashed my face with cold water, staunched the bleeding, and carried myself with sufficient aplomb to skate through security, all the while hoping that whoever manned the CCTV cameras in the garage hadn’t noticed anything unusual. I proceeded without incident and hopped a shuttle for the Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport. It’s a tiny facility. Quonset-hut-type hangar/boarding area and a concourse so short you can stroll the entire length in under sixty seconds. Mid-February is generally a pleasant time to visit the region if you’re escaping a wintry clime, such as the Midwest or Upstate New York. My timing was bad; forest fires engulfed large tracts of the coast and areas abutting Napa Valley. The inferno was on everybody’s mind. I stood atop the steps at the airport entrance, sniffing the acridness of the distant, steadily encroaching smoke. The dizzy spells were fading, although my right eye blurred and I squinted to keep the world in focus.

Linda Flanagan resided in a bungalow twenty minutes northeast of the airport and past Healdsburg among dusty hills. The land of vineyards. The rental agency offered me its last car, a dinky economy job. I squeezed in and zipped along 101 until the turnoff, where things got slightly complicated with the looping, winding blacktop byways and the thickening pall of smoke that drifted in through the vents and irritated my eyes and throat. Her house sat on a hill in a shady patch surrounded by maple and oak trees. The driveway was steep; a stream trickled under a shaky plank bridge near the base. The bungalow must’ve been built in the 1960s; humble and compact, yet elegant and expansive with ski chalet dormers and a wooden deck that hung out over a ravine. Unkempt yarrow flowers splashed yellow, red, and pink in terra-cotta pots.

I walked around the house, knocking on doors, banging on the walls, and peering into windows. Nobody stirred. The property extended farther along the hillside into the forest. There were a couple of small buildings—a shed and a metal cargo box—and a cute mother-in-law cottage. Squirrels and birds darted across my path. My car was the lone vehicle in the yard. The pall of smoke and bits of swirling ash made it difficult to discern whether or not she’d been home recently. Highly unlikely she’d return with Napa Valley on the ragged edge of combusting.

Debating my options, I rang the Campbell-Ryoko hacienda and got the recorder. I said I was en route and hung up. My phone buzzed ten seconds later. A man with a gravelly voice identified himself as Beasley. He asked where I was and I said Healdsburg. Okay, drive up to Mendocino, 128 to 101, to Shoreline Highway, and follow it home. Under no circumstances was I to approach the doctors’ house until I received an all clear. Get a room at the Blue Shell Motel. Call him back when I arrived. He hung up before I could say, yeah, see you in a couple of hours.