Sand Dollars by Charles Knief Page A

bring down a couple of Bradley Fighting Vehicles. And it would be convenient to keep my ace in the hole.
    Ignoring the elevators, I ran down the fire stairs to the garage level, got into Paul Peters’s Range Rover, and made it to Point Loma in less than ten minutes. The fury of the storm helped. Traffic was almost nonexistent. Few people, it seemed, wanted to test their abilities in this weather. It was a good night to stay home.
    If you had one.

11
    Juanita opened the door before I reached the porch. “I was waiting for joo,” she said. “Looking through the door.” She closed the door and locked it. I didn’t see it at first, but when she locked the dead bolt, her hand gripped a blue-steel revolver.
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œMees Claire, she say somebody outside. In the backyard. I look out. There was nobody. Then she say other side, by the tennis court. I go look out that window. There was nobody. It start to rain hard, so I can’t see nothing else.”
    â€œDid you call the police?”
    Juanita shook her head. “There was nobody there. But Mees Claire, she still say there was somebody. I don’t know. She call joo. Then you call back and she go up to her room and lock the door.”
    I looked at her hand. She carried the revolver with her forefinger outside the trigger guard, a sign she either didn’t know anything about firearms, or that she did and was very, very careful. She glanced down at the gun.
    â€œIn my country,” she said, “we had visitors in the night sometimes. Patrullas Muertes. Death patrols. We learned we must protect ourselves. My husband, the death squad come for him one night. He never come back. I had to leave the country and come here.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Juanita.”
    â€œMe too,” she said, her voice singsong. “It’s supposed to be better there now, but I don’t know. Mees Claire, she is very good to me. And I cannot leave her now.”
    â€œTake me to her, please.”

    â€œYou go upstairs. I wait down here.”
    Juanita, the survivor, the brave little guard at the gate. I nodded. “Come get me if you see or hear anything,” I said. “And call the police. Please.”
    She pressed her lips together into a tight line. “I do not like the police.”
    â€œIt’s not like in El Salvador. They’re here to protect you, not to kill you.”
    She shrugged, as if I didn’t know what I was talking about and she had no argument to convince me of my naivete. I turned and went up the stairs. Of the eight doors opening to the landing, only one was closed. I knocked.
    Metal slid against metal as the door opened about an inch. Claire Peters peered through the crack, one emerald eye poised over a 12-gauge muzzle. The eye blinked once, and then the door swung wide. I watched the shotgun lower slowly until it pointed toward the floor. Claire wore what looked like a powder-blue sweat suit, except it was made of a feather-light cashmere.
    â€œYou were safe,” I said, edging past the gun.
    â€œI thought so. But it’s nice to see you anyway.” She let me slide past into the room. Her bedroom. “Come in.”
    â€œI’m in.”
    â€œI noticed.”
    â€œYou, ah, know how to use that thing?”
    â€œI shoot skeet.”
    â€œHandy thing to know if a skeet ever breaks into your house.”
    â€œHave to be tiny things, skeet. I’m loaded with number six.” She moved to the window overlooking the backyard. “Someone was out there. I looked and saw someone looking in, toward the house.”
    â€œDid he … was it a he?”
    â€œOf course it was a he. Who would send a woman to scare me?”
    I’d known some women who would scare Rambo, but I let that alone. “What did he look like?”
    â€œDark. Wearing dark clothes. It was before it started raining
hard. Right at dusk. I couldn’t make out any features, but