Bully

by Gonzalez, J. F.

  The night Raul whispered his threats to him through the door, suggesting he’d killed a whole family in their sleep, suddenly came to Danny and he took a hearty sip of his coffee. “Well, if you don’t mind, I gotta take a piss. And then if you don’t mind sitting here another couple of hours, I got a story to tell you.”

  Tom’s face lit up and he nodded. He glanced at his watch. “It’s still early. Two hours till closing time. Long as you don’t mind being wired the rest of the night, I’m all ears.”

  Danny headed toward the bathroom, his mind racing on how he was going to proceed. Tell Tom the basics. Tell him what happened the night Raul and David Bartell tried to break into the house. Tell him about the vile insinuation Raul made, and then tell him about the research he’d done at the library a few days later with Bobby.

  Tell him.

  When Danny returned to the booth he slid back behind the table and told Tom Jensen all about that night. Tom listened quietly. Then he told Tom about the day he and Bobby Whitsett went to the library and looked at back issues of the Daily Breeze and the Los Angeles Times, trying to verify Raul’s story. As he spun the story out, he felt his stomach muscles clench with nerves; he felt his hands tremble as he hoped that Tom would believe him. He heard his voice quaver and crack as he related how scared he was that day and in the weeks that followed, afraid that Raul was going to follow up on his threat. He told Tom about how he woke up one night, nerves on edge because he could have sworn he heard the ever faint sound of cracking twigs outside his bedroom window; he’d lain in bed stiff as a board, too afraid to move, holding his breath, and he’d actually sensed a presence outside his window. He’d sensed it, and he knew that if he turned around he would see Raul’s grinning face peering inside at him and he’d scream, he’d scream but it would be too late, Raul would have the screen unfastened and he would push the window up or break it and squirm through and Danny would be too paralyzed with fear to do anything, he’d be rooted to the bed, screaming, and his mother would burst in to see what he was screaming about and Raul would be on her, knife flashing out and —

  He told Detective Tom Jensen about the night Raul Valesquez suggested he was the murderer of a family of four and about the confirmation of those facts in the paper, and when he was finished he could tell his old friend believed him.

  AUGUST 15, 1977

  “Here it is.”

  Danny brought the newspaper up and shoved it across the table at Bobby Whitsett, his eyes wide with fear. Bobby had been perusing copies of the Daily Breeze and the Los Angeles Times from the week of July 12 when Danny spotted what they had come to the Gardena Public Library to research. He read the article in rapt dread, his heart slowing in his chest as the icy feeling filled his veins.

  “You shittin’ me?” Bobby whispered. He looked at Danny, his eyes wide with disbelief and fear, his long hair falling along his shoulders. Three days ago, Danny told Bobby everything; he’d gone to Bobby’s house and they’d sat in the garage on their skateboards while Danny told Bobby what Raul had whispered to him through the front door that night. At first, Bobby hadn’t believed him, but then the following day he pointed out an article in the Daily Breeze about the Teddy Etchison murder investigation and remarked, “You know, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Raul killed that kid.”

  “Why?” Danny had asked.

  Bobby had looked at him, his voice quiet. His dad was in the next room, which had been converted to a study. “I’ve seen him in that area. A lot. And I ... the day Teddy Little disappeared ... I was riding my skateboard up Redondo Beach Boulevard and I saw Raul across the street. He was heading west, the opposite direction I was going, and he turned down Lemole Street. That’s the neighborhood that kid’s from.”

  Danny understood clearly what Bobby was insinuating. They had seen Raul numerous times on their skateboard jaunts blocks away from his home just wandering around. At one point, they’d seen him picking on other kids from those far away neighborhoods and they’d always taken off in the other direction, not wanting to get involved with the inevitable. Danny always assumed some adult interfered to save whatever kid Raul was picking on, but every time they fled he’d felt a tiny pang of guilt, as if he and Bobby should have stepped in to stop the harassment. After all, the two of them could have taken on Raul by themselves. It was only years later when Danny realized how much Raul’s reputation had scared him and Bobby, as well as other kids.

  Now in the comfort and security of the library, tucked away at a table near the back of the room, the boys had gone to the periodical section and requested back issues of the Los Angeles Times and the Daily Breeze for the past two months, explaining they were researching a project for summer school. The librarian, a plain-looking woman in her twenties, helped them out, then retreated to her station, leaving Bobby Whitsett and Danny Hernandez to their research.

  Bobby read the article in rapt fascination. Danny watched him, turning over in his mind what he’d just read, his stomach doing slow flops in his belly.

  POLICE SEEK MOTIVE IN MURDER OF FOUR

  Torrance, CA – Homicide Detectives are seeking possible motives in the murder of a family in North Torrance that occurred in the early hours of Sunday morning, police said this afternoon.

  The murders stunned residents of the quiet, tree-lined street of Mayberry Drive, two blocks east of Prairie Avenue and Redondo Beach Boulevard. The victims were identified as Herb Sanders, 44, his wif,e Charlotte, 35, and their children, Eric, 14, and Sandra, 10. All four died from stab wounds.

  The bodies were discovered Monday afternoon when Herb Sanders failed to report to work as a computer analyst at All State in Torrance. Repeated phone calls were made to the residence with no answer, and the police were called. The first officer that arrived on the scene, Bart Philburn, noticed both cars were in the driveway, and with the assistance of the Torrance Fire Department the front door was forced open. The bodies were found in the bedrooms.

  “At this point, we’re not ruling out robbery as the prime motive,” Chief Torrance Homicide Detective Peter Jackson told The Daily Breeze. “The killer gained entry into the house through a back door, and we’re questioning family members and friends to determine if anything is missing.” Detective Jackson indicated that portions of the house were ransacked, but at this point it doesn’t appear anything was stolen. “We’ll reserve that judgment until the investigation is complete.”

  Residents of this quiet community are shocked. “I couldn’t believe it,” Elizabeth Bradbury reported. Mrs. Bradbury, a neighbor of the victims, reported she heard nothing suspicious during the time it was believed the Sanders family was killed. “I saw Eric yesterday afternoon fiddling with his motorbike. Herb was helping him with it. They were a lovely family.”

  With few clues available, investigators are following every possible lead. Anyone who may have information is urged to contact the Torrance Police Department at 213-575-3286.

  When Bobby was finished, he set the paper down and looked at Danny. He looked pale. “Is there anything else from that week?”

  Danny did a quick search in both The Daily Breeze and the Los Angeles Times in the days following the reporting of the Sanders’ murder, but found nothing. “No,” he said. He was scared too. “There’s nothing. I would think that ... I mean ... I thought a bigger newspaper like the Times would have run a story like this but—"

  “What about today’s newspaper?”

  “That’s the first one we looked at!”

  Bobby folded The Daily Breeze up, his blue eyes troubled. “It wasn’t in the Times at all?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder why? I mean...a whole family getting knifed like that? You’d think that—”

  “I know,” Danny said, his voice lowered. He cocked his head back toward the front of the library and Bobby immediately nodded; in his excitement, Bobby’s voice had gone up a little. “If the investigation is still ongoing, maybe they’re trying to cover it up. I saw that on Starsky and Hutch, and it ha
ppened on Baretta, too. They keep things quiet in the papers to weed out all the wackos that call the police and the newspapers to confess.”

  “Oh. Yeah, you’re right.” Bobby was a devoted fan of Baretta.

  “Come on, let’s go.” Danny picked up his skateboard and stood up.

  “Should we take this?” Bobby picked up the newspaper the story had been reported in.

  “Leave it here. They’ll keep it for another few months, then they’ll turn it into micro-film.”

  “Okay.” Bobby picked up his skateboard and the two boys left the library and went outside into the hot summer day.

  Eight

  WHEN ROBERT VALESQUEZ found out where the investigation into his brother’s murder was leading, he almost exploded with rage. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

  He was on the phone with William Grecko in his hotel room. He’d packed last night in preparation for his flight back home to Pennsylvania; the shuttle was picking him up at ten-thirty. He was just making one last sweep through the room for his belongings when William called to deliver the news.

  “I wish I was kidding,” William said. His tone of voice serious. “You don’t know how baffled I am by these turn of events.”

  “I’m fucking pissed off!”

  “As you should be, Robert. As you should be.”

  “Whose stupid ass theory is this?”

  “One of the detectives on the case. A Detective Jensen, I believe.”

  Robert was so angry he couldn’t see straight. His knuckles hurt and he realized he was holding the phone in a tight grip. “How the hell did he...why would anybody think that Raul would...that he could’ve been —"

  “It’s a blame-the-victim mentality,” William said, and Robert could tell the lawyer was using his voice to soothe his frayed nerves. “I see it all the time in my profession. Why it’s being bantered from the prosecution side, I don’t know.”

  “So they’re shifting their focus away from Doug now?”

  “Not exactly. They’ve just become...sidelined I guess you could say.”

  Sidelined was a term Robert wouldn’t have used. Fucked up would be how he would describe it.

  The news William Grecko delivered to him just thirty minutes before he was set to depart to LAX was shocking in its stark accusation. It was unthinkable; indescribable. After all Raul had gone through, now they were dredging up things from the past and making shit up.

  But what they were making up...Christ, it was like being trapped in a horror movie.

  His little brother, Raul Valesquez, had been a killer.

  That was the accusation William Grecko told Robert certain members of the new task force were suggesting. Raul Valesquez was now suspected in the murders of four children and two adults, all committed within a two month period in the summer of 1977. Just thinking about the starkness of the accusations, the fact that they were turning things around by suggesting Raul—an eleven-year-old kid!—could be responsible for such heinous acts was outrageous!

  Robert sat down on the rumpled king-sized bed. He patted his breast pocket for a cigarette, didn’t find his pack, and saw it on the nightstand. He reached across and got one out, lighting it with shaky hands as William calmly told him everything he’d learned; how in his investigation, Detective Jenson came across the files of two unsolved murders formerly attributed to Doug Archer and began looking closely at them. Robert was aware of both cases—he didn’t remember the kids' names now, but he remembered the prosecution suggested during Doug Archer’s trial that Doug was responsible for their murders, something they’d been unable to prove. No charges were filed in either case, and Doug was only convicted in Raul’s murder. As far as Robert knew, the other two murders remained open, but it had been pretty much common knowledge among the detectives who investigated the original case that Doug most likely killed both kids. Perhaps the most damning evidence that Doug had been their killer was the fact that after Raul was murdered, the child killings stopped.

  The other murders...that came as a surprise, and Robert grilled William hard on them. “So they’re saying that in addition to trying to blame Raul for killing two kids that the original detectives believed Doug was responsible for killing, they’re also saying he killed an entire family? In their sleep?”

  “That’s what it sounds like.”

  “Are they out of their fucking minds? What proof do they have? What would make them think—”

  “They have no proof, and it’s like I said before, they’re working at shifting blame.” William was trying to do his best to calm him down. “Look Robert, there’s no way they can officially pin these murders on Raul. No way. What we have here is one detective who got a little carried away and became enthusiastic during his questioning of witnesses, and he let his imagination get the better of him when he dug up some old files. My bet is he’ll follow his nose like the good little dick he is and see that it leads nowhere.”

  “What the hell would make him think Raul could be responsible for something like this in the first place? How does this tie in with that they’re supposed to be doing—solving Raul’s murder?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes murder investigations take on a life of their own and they go off on all kinds of weird tangents until they get back on track.”

  “They better get back on track pretty goddamn fast,” Robert said. He took a drag on his cigarette. “Do Doug and his sister know about this?”

  “I just spoke with Jessie before I called you.”

  “What does she think?”

  “How do you think? Obviously she’s glad the police are putting in more effort in solving Raul’s murder. They didn’t really put that much effort in it last time, and—”

  “What do you mean they didn’t put that much effort into it?” The more Robert stayed on the phone with William Grecko, the more pissed off he was getting.

  “It’s a proven fact that the original team didn’t put much effort in solving your brother’s murder,” William said, and now his voice was level and calm; his lawyer’s voice. “The minute they found out about Douglas, they focused on him and ignored everything else in the case until they were able to get a confession out of him. A confession, I might add, that was coerced and beaten out of him.”

  Robert’s mind was reeling; he knew all this. Knew that Douglas Archer had been relentlessly grilled for forty-eight straight hours with no sleep and little food or water, that they’d confused him, gotten him disoriented, threatened him and his family. He knew that twenty-four hours after Douglas confessed, he recanted. Despite that, for a long time Robert believed Douglas killed his brother—he even believed Doug killed those other two kids. It was only with the passing of time and deep reflection that the seeds of doubt were planted, and with the latest re-opening of the case, coupled with Doug’s conviction being tossed out three months ago, those seeds of doubt had taken root and sprouted. Robert Valesquez was now firmly convinced Douglas Archer was not responsible for the murder of his little brother. The physical evidence uncovered by the UCLA students and their professor proved that. Jessie Archer’s retaining of William Grecko as Douglas’s attorney helped tremendously as well; William was able to hire forensic experts to prove Douglas did not kill Raul. The question now was, who was responsible, and why did this one detective seem to think Raul could have been responsible for six other murders?

  “Fine,” Robert said, gritting his teeth. The horrible accusations against his brother, all the shit he’d gone through at home, not to mention what he and his other brother, Rudy, had gone through during their childhood, was barreling down on him like a freight train. Thinking about it was making his head throb. “So they’re digging around. I can accept that. It means they’re doing their job, like you said. There’s just a few things I’m having a hard time grasping.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The first and most obvious is why didn’t they think Raul killed those people before? I think the theory is full of shit, personally, but why now?
”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I have my suspicions,” William said. “They’re mostly based on similar experiences in my career as a criminal defense attorney, and they may not be true in this case, but the way this is pointing, I wouldn’t be surprised if even some of what I’m thinking turns out to be true.”

  “And that is?”

  “Doug Archer was framed for your brother’s murder. The Gardena Police Department knew they didn’t have a case, so they fabricated one. They planted evidence, beat a confession out of my client, and suggested that he was responsible for the murders of two other children. They did this without even considering other suspects, without even looking into what went on at your house when your mother was alive.”

  That stung. Robert knew exactly what William Grecko was talking about and hearing it, allowing it to enter his mind, was like wading back into the pits of hell. “I see what you mean,” he said, his throat dry. “There was so much shit going on at the house when we were growing up...I always wondered why the cops never looked at some of the other people I told them about.”

  “Exactly,” William said. “I apologize for being blunt, Mr. Valesquez, but let’s face it: the environment you and your brothers grew up in was a breeding ground for every conceivable crime and vice known to man. You know that, right?”

  “I knew it when I was a kid,” Robert said. He closed his eyes and sat on the edge of his unmade bed. He felt a headache coming on and pinched the bridge of his nose, willing it to stop. “At least I suspected as much. I...I tried to stay out of it as much as possible...tried to keep Rudy and Raul away from my mother as much as I could but—”

  “What went on at your house was the perfect set-up for the original detectives to frame Mr. Archer,” William Grecko continued. “You admitted as much yourself in his trial. There were so many men coming in and out of the house at all hours of the day that you couldn’t keep track of them. Isn’t that right?”