by A. W. Hill
“She doesn’t seem the type, does she?” said Aquino.
“No,” said Raszer. “And then again, yes. Something…missing.”
Aquino blinked. “Well, not like the sister, anyway. That one’s a pistol.”
And Ruthie was. For a few ticks, Raszer could not remove his eyes from the outline of Katy’s face, but once he did, a number of things became clear. The redheaded, nose-ringed, midriff-baring blur that was Ruthie Endicott flashed alter ego like a pop-up window. Even out of focus, all that was absent in Katy was aggressively present in Ruthie; all that was formless was flesh. How could a little sister, in this day and age, not have wanted to follow her down the rabbit hole? A sweet sickness, Silas had called her. To Raszer, she looked like rhubarb pie too good to spoil with vanilla ice cream.
In the subsequent photos, arranged in Detective Aquino’s surmise of sequence, Ruthie more than rose to her persona. She lifted her halter top for a low-angle shot that could only have been taken from between her legs, spray-painted the white wall with pentagrams, and sucked on a baby pacifier while being taken from the rear by Henry Lee. Although the grainy photo was not anatomically revealing, Raszer could only assume that Henry—if he had indeed been without testicles at the time of the photo—was one of those geldings who could still get it up.
From the accounts given by Silas and the Overseers, Raszer had taken Johnny and Ruthie to be the former high school sweethearts, but the Polaroids suggested that at least a passing change of partners had occurred. In every shot featuring Katy, it was Johnny Horn her eyes sought out: Johnny defacing bibles, Johnny torching a pile of Watchtower newsletters in the middle of the floor, Johnny spraying Nothing Is True . . . on the wall behind the lectern—and, in the photo that must have turned the walls of Silas Endicott’s heart to paper, shirtless Johnny resting the black rock on Katy’s head as she, on her knees, took him in her mouth.
All the sex play and schoolyard Satanism notwithstanding, the most transgressive photo was the last, taken when the quartet’s work was done, and again on a timer so that all could be duly credited members of this latter-day Clyde Barrow Gang. This time, the sisters stood side by side, flanked by the boys, with Henry the one to dash into frame at the last second (Raszer could not imagine Johnny hustling for anything but his own call to arms). The wall behind them was black with pentagrams and triple sixes, skater glyphs, and slogans, some of which evidenced surprising wit:
144,000 IDIOTS CAN’T BE WRONG.
HERE GATHER JEHOVAH’S WITLESS.
THERE IS NO GOD BUT CHAOS, AND JOHNNY JIHAD IS HIS PROPHET.
NOTHING IS TRUE. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED.
Also featured was Aleister Crowley’s DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW—known and misunderstood by every Luciferian punter and surfer of magickal websites. The psychological basis of most of this stuff was as clear as the sneer on a misfit boy’s face or the simmering resentment of a cast-off daughter, and for these and other reasons, Raszer felt sure that most of the handiwork was Ruthie’s and Henry’s. There was one strikingly original touch, however, that felt like Katy’s, and it made Raszer’s scalp tingle with precognition.
The sisters had exchanged outfits for the final shot. Ruthie stood doe-eyed and satirically demure in Katy’s dress, glance averted and hem raised in a vulgar curtsy. Despite the face jewelry and the butcher-chopped hair, it was the dead-on impression of a near twin. Katy, in Ruthie’s low-rise jeans and halter, had slung her hips out, made her eyes up like a dime-store vamp’s, and had both arms wrapped around Henry Lee’s naked waist. A wardrobe change and a little mascara, and she was Salome. The only thing left of her reticence was a downcast stare and the sweet sweep of her cheekline.
Aquino turned to Raszer. “I’d have a stroke, too, if she was my daughter.”
“Well,” said Raszer, “I’ll grant you that none of these kids look fit for the choir, but whether it’s Hollywood or Des Moines, they’re all good at playing bad nowadays. It’s the new normal. Hell, they do it on the Disney Channel. Would you mind printing me a copy of the first and last pictures—the group shots? And if you’ve got a more conventional photo of Katy—yearbook, whatever—I could use that, too.”
“Sure thing,” said Aquino, switching on his printer. “I’ll give you the one that’s gone out to all the law-enforcement and social-services people.”
“The thing is,” Raszer continued, “what do we really have here? Sex, sedition, and sacrilege. It’s not pretty, but you can see how four kids—brought up in a radically conservative sect that tells them all but 144,000 of the chosen are damned—might act out in some pretty transgressive ways, especially when three of them are kicked off the reservation and the fourth—Katy—watches her sister run off to Taos to do all the bad things she can’t. A year—almost a year and a half—later, we’ve got rape, execution-style murder, and kidnapping. What’s the connection?”
“Well,” Aquino said defensively, “we haven’t made it yet. We’re just small-town cops, Mr. Raszer. Maybe a sophisticated thinker like yourself—”
“C’mon, Detective,” said Raszer. “Azusa’s small-town, but you’re not. You’re a sharp and determined guy. You must have had theories.”
“As many as you can shake a stick at,” said Aquino. “First we thought drugs, like you said. Johnny and Henry were dealing. Meth, ketamine, PCP . . . they even had tanks of nitrous up there. And there’s evidence that Katy continued using even while the Witnesses had her on, uh, probation.”
“And could the limo guys’ve been old-guard drug lords or gangbangers, fighting a turf war over the foothills with this self-made potentate in his mountain stronghold? Azusa’s not all that far from Compton. Could Johnny’s customer base have grown fast enough to threaten suppliers with enough margin to afford chauffeured Lincolns?”
“Nah. Didn’t pan out. But in a related area, he might have been a threat.”
“What’s that?” Raszer asked.
“Prostitution. One of the girls questioned at the rave gave us the tip. We followed it up, found out Johnny had four or five female disciples, ages seventeen to twenty-one, hooking for him. He’d send them out fishing down in the flats . . . Upland, La Verne, as far east as San Bernardino. The amazing thing was, Mr. Raszer, he had them doing it for the cause. For his ‘war chest.’ None of these local girls made more than milk money.”
“Was Katy Endicott one of the girls?”
“Nobody’s gone on record with that,” said Aquino. “But it’s possible.”
“Okay. Interesting,” said Raszer. “That may explain the JWs’ theory that Katy was bartered into some kind of white-slavery ring. But still, putting four or five girls on the street wouldn’t ordinarily get you killed. And it’s not likely these thugs were interceding to prevent or even avenge a rape. They don’t sound like white knights to me.”
“Unless . . . ”
“Unless what?” Raszer asked.
Aquino’s modesty kept his self-satisfaction in check, but just barely. “Unless this particular sex ring was after girls who hadn’t been spoiled.”
Raszer began to nod slowly. “Virgins,” he said. A volley of hail hit the window like a spray of rock salt. “Was she?” he asked.
“At least until that night, she was,” Aquino replied. “If we can believe Emmett Parrish. Emmett called her ‘the last pure thing.’ Of course, we have no way of confirming that.”
“The last pure thing,” Raszer repeated. “And that night . . . was there evidence of actual penetration? Condoms? Katy’s blood or fluids on any of the boys?”
“The short answer is no,” said Aquino, handing Raszer a folder containing the photo printouts. “But this is where it gets foggy. And I mean that both ways. All we have is Emmett, and he’s back there in the bushes with an obstructed view. Henry and the other boy are holding Katy down on the trunk. Johnny is first up. He’s the only one who had a shot, and the only one found with his dick out. Emmett thinks he raped her, but the physical evidence suggests other
wise. There was no vaginal fluid, no tissue, no blood, and the only ejaculate we found was all over the trunk. You see, Mr. Raszer, he ejaculated when his neck was snapped, same time as he shit himself.”
“Uh-huh,” said Raszer.
“That’s about it,” said Aquino. “As far as we know, Katy may have left intact.”
Raszer looked out the window. Fog was coming down, and he had at best a scant two hours of light. Without shifting his gaze from the mountains, he asked, “Are you a fan of alternate histories, Detective?”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s a style of fiction,” said Raszer. “I guess they’d call it sci-fi at the bookstore. Anyhow, what the writer does is take some historical event and extrapolate what might’ve happened if just one or two little things had gone differently. Say, Hitler got the bomb before we did, or Linda Kasabian called the cops before the killing started.”
“Okay,” said Aquino. “I’m with you.”
“Well, let’s suppose your virgin theory is right. And let’s imagine the Lincoln got stuck in the mud and arrived ten minutes late. The gangbang goes on as planned, and it’s plain as day to the kidnappers that Katy Endicott has been defiled. What happens?”
“They don’t take her. She’s damaged goods.”
“Right,” said Raszer. “And what possibility does that open up?”
“You’re suggesting that Johnny Horn was trying to protect her?”
“I’m not sure,” said Raszer. “Inoculate her. Lay claim to her. Maybe he sold her out, then had second thoughts. We have to figure that as badly as these kids behaved, they were all raised up in the church—and that gangsters, no matter what period or place, always live in the dark ages. I know it’s a stretch, but we’re talking alternate history. And what’s Katy thinking? She leaves the dance hall without a coat . . . ”
“Probably hot and high as a kite. Between the dancing, the dehydration, and the drugs, some of these ravers run temperatures of 106, 108 . . . ”
“You’re right, Detective,” said Raszer, and pointed to the now neatly stacked manila folders. “In the version of history that’s in those case files, you’re right. But, like Richard Feynman said, reality is a sum over all histories, and A doesn’t always go to Z.”
Aquino smiled, a little impatiently. “Well, I don’t know Richard Feynman, but I do know perps, and I know that in your alternate history, these guys probably would have killed Katy Endicott, too.”
“What I’m afraid of, Detective, is that in almost any conceivable history, that may have happened. If Katy’s alive, it’s because they’re making use of her. On that I think we agree. Did you work any other leads?”
“Only one that matters,” said Aquino. “But I don’t think those crayon pushers in Homeland Security took it seriously. They were too busy making color charts.”
“Terrorism?”
“Johnny bragged about the ‘friends’ he’d made in Iraq. His ‘global network.’”
“But they never found any emails? Cell phone records?”
“Not that they shared with us. Maybe you can get something.”
“You’ll put me in touch with the boys’ families?”
“We’ll do whatever we can, Mr. Raszer,” said Aquino, rising from his chair. He smiled and pointed to the telephone. “And I’ll be on that grapevine.”
Raszer noticed for the first time that Aquino stood only about five-foot-five. Somehow, the broad shoulders, mustache, and cop body language had made him seem taller. Raszer found most L.A. cops to be more style than substance, but he liked Aquino. He liked that he had kids, and that he saw Katy Endicott as one of them.
Detective Aquino scrawled a set of directions on a Post-it note and handed them to Raszer. “You’re a very interesting man, Mr. Raszer. I’m glad to have you on the case. Just be sure you don’t get in over your head.”
They exchanged tight-lipped smiles. Given even what little he knew of Stephan Raszer’s history, Aquino could not have expected his advice to be followed.
With the Post-it stuck to his speedometer, Raszer ascended the steep grade into San Gabriel Canyon via Highway 39. The sky was churning overhead, as if ready to disgorge the Valkyries. At about 2,800 feet, signs informed Raszer that the road was open to the Cold Brook Ranger Station but closed to Crystal Lake, due to snow. That, he figured, ought to be enough pavement to get him to the east fork and, hopefully, to the 3,600-foot elevation of the old Coronado Lodge. The snow line was at five thousand feet, but he was bound to encounter hubcap-deep mud on the fire roads. He glanced down at his feet and cursed. Raszer had ceased being fussy about his Avanti—so long as its rebuilt V-8 growled—but he hated getting his good boots muddy.
Of the passable canyons along the Front Range, San Gabriel was the most dramatic in its sweep. The haunches of the five-thousand-foot peaks that formed its gateway described an almost perfect Delta of Venus, with the pyramidal mass of Mount Baden-Powell rising distantly to fill the cleft. The effect, in fair weather or foul, was to lure a traveler deeper into the breech, and with the mist hanging like a bridal veil and the lower slopes turned Galway green, the place was fit for hobbits. As the river that had carved this epic “V” eons ago came fully into view, surging and slaked by a month of rain, there was also evidence of giants—or at least of the gigantic ambition tapped by the public-works projects of the Roosevelt years. At three thousand feet, the broad span of the old Morris Dam appeared. It wasn’t shiny and Olympian like the Hoover Dam, but it was big enough, and somehow more epic with its old-school masonry and parchment patina. It looked like a Cinerama screen erected for the children of Odin.
Beyond the dam lay a sprawling reservoir as flat, green, and waveless as an Amazonian lake, but banked by rugged scree and chaparral, rather than viney jungle. L.A. was a city of reservoirs standing in for lakes and lagoons, of which there were no naturally occurring examples. That the city did not die of thirst—that it survived at all—was owing to the greed of cowboy capitalists and the past largesse of the federal government. The latter had now mostly left the state to fend for itself, and the former hadn’t done a thing for the infrastructure in decades. California was crumbling, but here stood mighty Morris Dam, holding back the floodwaters of the San Gabriel River in the name of the common good and the publicly owned Department of Water and Power.
Even after twenty years in California, the term canyon felt somehow unsuited to what Raszer saw around him. It evoked images of the stark, infernal fissures of Arizona and Utah; the British word glen seemed more fitting for this wooded gash cleaved between the shoulders of the fitfully slumbering beasts rising up on all sides. Canyon described a dead place, but these mountains were alive and still forming, spilling their soft earth into the chasm with each tectonic lurch left or right, threatening to close in on the narrow road at each dizzying switchback.
In spite of their immensity, the San Gabriels were fragile and trembling, big mounds of packed soil held fast by spiky yucca, whitethorn, and creosote at lower elevations; scrub oak, sycamore and walnut further up the slope; and, at and above the snow line, stands of Jeffrey, Coulter, and Lodgepole pine. Woven like pastel threads through the underbrush at all elevations were a hundred varieties of wildflowers.
The mountains extended enormous, furry forepaws of land into the reservoir’s mirroring emerald expanse, and from a dozen rocky outcroppings above, waterfalls sprang like ribbons of lace.
For a few minutes, Raszer unhitched both past and future, forgot himself and why he was there, and returned to a place from his dreams, where sweet woodsmoke rose from cottages of stone and fathers lulled daughters to sleep with tender half lies about twilight encounters with the fairy folk. He cleared a mud-slicked bend at a reckless fifty miles per hour, fishtailed briefly, and spotted up ahead the low trestle that spanned the San Gabriel’s rapids and led to East Fork Road. Then he remembered.
He pulled briefly off the road. At the start of each of his earlier assignments had been a moment like this, a moment when
he could have turned back to the comfort of fantasy; to his books, his music, his women, his Brigit. At this point, it would not be a difficult retreat. He’d taken no money, nor set anything of consequence in motion. He could exit now without leaving even a ripple of his presence, and with his boots clean. He stepped out of the car, lit a cigarette, and stared across the reservoir at the trestle.
In all likelihood, Katy Endicott was as dead as Johnny Horn. He knew the odds and had seen the forgone conclusion etched on Aquino’s face. No ransom note, no cat-and-mouse with the press or the cops, no grainy videotape of the victim pleading for her life or even boasting—Patty Hearst style—that she’d thrown in her lot with her captors. And if she were dead, pursuing her ghost would still be costly. There would be more victims—there always were—and always the chance that one of them would be him. And for what purpose? The girl’s father was gone, and Raszer’s prospective employers did not inspire a great deal of passion for the quest. Moreover, the whole Scotty Darrell debacle had handed Raszer an escape clause from his otherwise unbreakable contract with fate. He could still get a real job.