They were seated in a rear booth, the latest pitcher of Bud half empty. The darkened interior of Long John Silver’s resembled the inside of a fishing boat; the walls were dark polished oak, and there were fake anchors and life preservers connected with rope hanging from various sections of the room. There was a beautifully stuffed eleven-foot swordfish mounted on the wall along with some other prize catches: a barracuda, a pike, a salmon. In addition to being a bar, Long John’s also served food: steaks, seafood, and burgers mostly. Danny sometimes ate here, and he’d dated one of the cocktail waitresses who worked here years ago.
Tom Jensen was laughing over some high school anecdote that had been dug up from the past. His cheeks were red from drink, and Danny discovered that in the years that passed, his old friend’s alcohol intake had grown to match his own. They’d been here three hours already and probably been through four pitchers of beer, as well as some dinner (steak and baked potato for Tom, fish and chips for Danny) and had talked about everything from sharing the usual trips down memory lane (Remember when we lost Fernando in Hollywood and we wound up in that really horrible part of town and were almost attacked by gangbangers? God, I thought we were dead! Bwwaahahahaha!), to trading the latest gossip on the people they used to hang around with or go to school with (Remember Alfonso? Guy’s a doctor now! Can you believe it? This is the guy who once shaved his head on an acid trip and didn’t show up to school for two months and now he’s a brain surgeon!). Over the course of their meal and a pitcher, they brought each other up on their lives and Danny learned what happened to Tom since the last time he saw him: graduated from Long Beach State in 1987 with a B.A. in Criminal Justice; entered the Police Academy that fall, became a patrol cop in Spring of 1988 with the LAPD and worked the streets for five long years. Then he was promoted to Homicide Detective and stayed with LAPD for eight years, and then came to Gardena P.D.
“Why Gardena?” Danny asked.
“Carol left me and I wanted to come back to my hometown, I guess.” Tom looked reflective. “Besides, my beat was getting to be a little too harsh. They had me working out of the Rampart Division and that was just awful. Drugs and gangs everywhere; most of what I was on was homicides involving gang violence. I guess the exception was the East Side Ripper case in the mid-nineties, and when that was over, I was done. You don’t get any harsher than dealing with serial killers and gang members. They’re both really sociopaths on different levels. Still, I liked my job, and I liked making a difference in people’s lives, but I needed a change of scenery. So when I heard a position was opening down here, I applied. You might think being a homicide detective in Gardena is no different than being one in East LA, but there’s a big difference. I still deal with the same gang violence, but Gardena’s gang problem is nowhere near as big as the parts of Los Angeles I was assigned to, and a lot of the murders I investigate here are what the old timers call the classic line-ups: you know, guy loses a game of cards at the Hustler Club on Normandie and waits outside for the winner to come out and pops him, or some loser beats his wife to death because she talked back to him, or something. Stupid shit, but it happens. It was the gang stuff that got to me, especially the ones involving children getting caught in the cross-fire.”
That long ago incident that Danny heard about in seventh grade surfaced in his mind. “I’m sure that happens here.”
“It does, but not as frequently,” Tom said. He took a sip of beer. “So I’ve been here ever since. I have a nice little apartment in Torrance and I’m doing pretty well. You gotta admit, Danny, we’re not doing too bad compared to some of the poor saps you told me about.”
Danny laughed at that. He’d brought Tom up to date on some people they’d known in high school, including one guy he knew who was currently homeless, another who was serving twenty years to life for drug smuggling, and another guy who committed suicide by jumping off a building in Hollywood.
He’d gone over his own history with Tom briefly, not mentioning the time he’d served in Los Angeles County for B&E. Some things were better left unsaid. Instead, he’d told Tom the basics: his job as a locksmith with Barney and Son’s right out of high school; his trouble with cocaine in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s; his marriage to Karen and the children they had; his job at WalMart. Danny felt a trifle embarrassed at first but Tom had nodded along, accepting Danny’s resume as who he was. At one point Danny thought he would turn on the honesty dial a little and mentioned his first DUI, but that he had gotten into rehab. Tom said, “Good for you for going into rehab, Danny. That was the best thing you could do for yourself.”
Hearing that made Danny feel a little better, made him feel more worthy being with Tom tonight. When the evening started and they’d started trading their life stories, Danny had started comparing himself to Tom—Danny was the loser and Tom was the guy who went out and became successful. Now he realized this wasn’t entirely the case. Talking to Tom made him feel like he was successful in his own way. When Tom praised him for getting help for his drinking, he told him that his children would benefit most of all and it would affect them at the most crucial point in their lives. Danny knew Tom was telling him the truth, and as they talked he quickly realized he had more in common with Tom as an adult than he did when they were kids. They were still into heavy metal music (“I actually like that nu-metal stuff,” Tom admitted with a grin. “Can you believe that? Almost forty years old and I listen to KROQ and bands like Disturbed and System of a Down.”), and they were both divorced and dealing with ex-wives (“My ex still wants to take half my pension,” Tom admitted, taking a sip of beer. “Bitch wants to have a lawyer void our pre-nup agreement and take me for half of everything I have. Can you believe that?”)
Danny could believe it. Karen had done the same thing to him. Taken half of everything he had by taking Chris and Tina.
When they finished the fourth pitcher, Tom signaled for the waitress. “Can we get some coffee, please?”
Danny glanced at his watch. Christ, it was almost midnight and he was starting to feel shit-faced and he had to be at work tomorrow! “Shit, I didn’t realize how late it is.”
“Me either,” Tom said. They waited until the waitress brought them two steaming cups of coffee and took their empty beer mugs and pitcher away. Tom sipped his coffee, eyeing Danny over the rim of his cup. “This is great. I’m glad we got a chance to do this.”
“Me, too.” Danny took a sip of coffee. It was hot and bitter, just the way he liked it.
“Next time we do this, it’ll have to be a night where you can stay up all night. We can hang out at my place or something and get plastered.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“You still drink even though you went to rehab and all that?”
Danny took a sip of coffee, the question burning. He knew he was a hypocrite for drinking and admitting his past problems with alcohol and drugs, but at least he was honest about it. “I went to rehab because I couldn’t control my alcohol and drug intake,” he said. “I literally craved it. I could not function without a toot of coke or a shot of whiskey in the morning. I know technically I’m not supposed to drink, that getting drunk still fucks me up, but I can control it now. I can say no, I don’t drink until I pass out like I used to.” He set his coffee mug down. “Plus, I’ve been off probation for seven years. I know my limits. I can actually get by on two hours of sleep, so I can hang out here the rest of the night and drink coffee and I’ll be fine. I know now that it isn’t cool to get into a car after I’ve been drinking, and I know it won’t be cool to try to drive home even an hour from now. Two hours from now though? Three? After six cups of joe, I’ll be fine.” He raised the cup again to his lips for another sip. “Then again, I’m with a cop. You can always do a sobriety check on me before we drive home.”
Tom laughed.
“What about you? You were really pounding them down yourself.”
“True,” Tom said, taking a hearty sip of joe and letting out a deep sigh. “But like you,
I know my limits, too. And I’m glad you’re fine with hanging out here for the next hour or so while we counteract all the beer we’ve drank with caffeine. It’ll just give us another excuse to talk more.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“It’s funny,” Tom said, sipping his coffee. “When I first moved to Gardena as a kid I saw it as this scary, urban place. My first year at Gardena High, I was petrified. We didn’t have gangs at Newport Beach High School in south Orange County it was like coming from Happy Days to The Warriors.” Tom’s father, a computer technician, had been transferred to a new field office located in downtown Los Angeles and moved the family to Gardena to be closer to work. “I spent that first year afraid I would get jumped.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Too bad we never hooked up before then,” Tom said. “You never know what could have happened if we’d met earlier.”
Danny shrugged. “Probably the same shit. We would’ve hung out at the malls and arcades more than we did, that’s all.”
Tom laughed and sipped his coffee. “That’s true. But you’ve gotta admit, I missed out on a lot of stuff that went on with you guys in Junior High. I didn’t share the same cultural background as you; I didn’t grow up with the same people. Know what I mean?”
Danny nodded. “Yeah, I think I do.” Being uprooted from the place he had been born and raised in when he was fifteen and moved sixty miles north to where he knew nobody would have been traumatic for him.
“Like this whole Raul Valesquez thing,” Tom continued, and now Danny’s stomach did a slow flop. “I’d never heard of it until I was assigned to the newly created task force that was formed when Doug Archer’s conviction was overturned three weeks ago. I can see why you never mentioned it when we knew each other in high school. I mean, shit! In 1981, it was ancient history, right? To you, it was water under the bridge, just some fucked up shit that happened in your neighborhood when you were, what? Thirteen? In the four years that passed between then and the time you and I started hanging out, it was ancient history. Four years seems like a long time when you’re a kid.”
“Exactly,” Danny said, wondering where this was going.
“I mean, I knew Rudy,” Tom continued, sipping his coffee. “Hell, we all did. And he seemed an okay enough guy, even if he was sort of a fuckhead. Dropped out of high school in what? Tenth, eleventh grade? I had no idea he had any siblings or that something awful happened to his younger brother. But you guys that grew up in that area, that went to One Hundred and Fifty Sixth Street school and Peary? You were there when it all happened. That must’ve been something to have experienced while it was happening.”
“It was kind of surreal, all right.” Danny drank his coffee. The waitress came by and refilled their cups. Danny’s mind raced back to those days. “I can see where you’re coming from, though. It must have been weird for you to have never heard of all this and then learn about it on the job. Must be weird to know that I lived around the corner from the guy before you and I even met.”
“Exactly!” Tom sipped his coffee. His gray eyes danced and seemed to twinkle with some kind of devil-may-care. “So I did a little homework. I wanted to find out what was going on back then and I found out stuff that probably you didn’t even know.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Like two kids were murdered in June and July of 1977. One was found in a garbage bin in some alley, not far from where you used to live on Atkinson. In fact,” Tom set his coffee cup down and regarded Danny, “it was the alley behind your house.”
“Yeah,” Danny said, nodding. He knew very well what Tom was talking about. He remembered the night he sat up listening to his mom talking to her friend a week after the body was found, expressing her worry for him and Tina. “I remember that all right. My mom had taken Tina and me to her sister’s for the weekend. They found the body the Saturday we were away. We got back Sunday afternoon and had no idea anything happened until a cop came around Monday or Tuesday evening and asked Mom if we noticed anything out of the ordinary that weekend. We hadn’t been home, so we couldn’t offer much help.”
“There was another one, too,” Tom said. “A boy, maybe eight-years-old. He was killed maybe two weeks earlier.”
“He was found in Alondra Park, I think,” Danny said, sipping his coffee. “I remember that one, too.”
“Then, there was Raul. His death in many ways was similar, but at the time it wasn’t connected because he was killed about fifteen miles away.”
Danny frowned, remembering everything so clearly now. “No reason they would be connected, I would think. Unless...” He looked at Tom. “You think they’re connected now?”
Tom shook his head. “Don’t know. It’s a strange coincidence, though, don’t you think? I mean, the first victim was a little boy about eight-years-old, was a resident of Torrance and lived in a neighborhood across the street from Alondra Park on Redondo Beach Boulevard.” Alondra Park comprised one square mile of winding paved paths with plenty of picnic benches and barbecue grills for family cook-outs. There were two playgrounds, a large outdoor swimming pool, and a man-made lake stocked with blue gill, trout, and other fresh-water fish. A little island sat in the middle of the lake, accessible by a wooden bridge. “The body was discovered near the lake, on the south side of the island. Kid’s name was Teddy Etchison. He was last seen playing in his front yard, and was apparently waiting for a friend to meet up with him. When the friend showed up, Teddy was gone. Parents called him in missing a few hours later and he was found that evening in the park.” Tom paused, eyeing Danny. “Teddy was found severely beaten and sexually assaulted.”
Danny shook his head. “I remember when that happened. My friend, Bobby, was freaked out about it.”
“The second murder occurred just two weeks later,” Tom continued, sipping his coffee. "Her name was Jessica Sampson, and she was ten. She lived on Atkinson, just across Manhattan Beach Boulevard and one block north. Apparently, she was playing in her front yard the afternoon she was found and just disappeared. An employee at Kinny Shoe’s found the body when he went behind the alley to dump trash in the garbage bin. She’d been beaten severely and sexually assaulted. Pretty savagely beaten, I might add. Coroner later said he was pretty certain the killer bit her.”
Danny winced.
“Sorry.” Tom sipped his coffee and sighed. “That alley was also infested with rats, so by the time the body was found any kind of physical impressions that could have been taken of the bite marks were destroyed. Rats had gnawed on the body.”
This was the most Danny had heard of this case. He clutched the coffee cup in both hands and sipped it, taking in its bitter taste.
“Then, there’s Raul Valesquez,” Tom Jensen said, and now his voice took on the cop edge he’d used when he first paid his visit to Danny three days ago. “Last seen on the afternoon of August 27, 1977 outside his house. Disappeared out of thin air, although it wasn’t unusual for him to take off to one of his friends and be away from home for a few days. He was found that evening by the owner of a house in Palos Verdes, lying at the bottom of their empty swimming pool, face down in three or four inches of muddy water. Beaten and raped.”
Danny sipped his coffee. Beaten and raped. It was that last act of violence that turned his stomach when he’d first heard it; it had kept him up at night for months, worrying and scared to death, his mind and heart racing in fear.
“You can’t believe how stunned I was when I came across those other two cases,” Tom Jensen said. Danny could feel Tom watching him and he drank his coffee, meeting the detective’s gaze. “It was almost as if the other two cases were swept under the rug.”
“They were never solved?”
“The original investigators tried to pin them on Doug Archer but they could never tie him to those two murders the way they could to Raul’s.” Tom finished his coffee and signaled to the waitress for a refill. When she finished refilling their cups, he resumed, leaning forward over the t
able. “See, the original investigation was focused entirely on Raul’s murder. The prosecution tried to suggest Doug was responsible for the murders of those other two kids but they could never offer concrete proof. They still can’t. But they were able to raise enough issues in those two murders that both investigations essentially ceased after Doug was convicted in Raul’s murder. The murders of Teddy Etchison and Jessica Sampson were officially never solved, but it’s pretty much taken for granted in this town that Doug was responsible.” Tom looked at Danny pensively. “I tend to think otherwise.”
“Really?” Danny sipped his coffee, hoping Tom couldn’t see his nervousness. He was alert and suddenly sober. “Funny you should say that.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, I don’t know too much about Doug Archer,” Danny said, choosing his words carefully. “But ... those other two kids? I ... well, I always had the feeling Raul killed them.”
Tom’s eyebrows rose in surprise and Danny could tell he’d hit a nerve. “What makes you think that?”
“Just a feeling,” Danny said, sipping his coffee, hoping he hadn’t said too much. He’d been scared to tell any authority figure his feelings back then; nobody would have believed him. It seemed that no matter how many complaints were lodged against Raul Valesquez and his family, the police back then turned a blind eye to it all. Danny wondered if enough time had passed now that with a fresh batch of detectives, they might look at the case and those who knew Raul back then with a different view. “It’s like you said earlier, I never mentioned any of this stuff to you before because it was ... you know ... ancient history.”
Tom nodded. “But you carried it around with you all this time?”
“Yeah, and I doubted myself, too. I still don’t know if ... what I think is even the truth.”
“But you really think Raul killed Jessica and Teddy? Surely you have to have a reason to think that.”
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