by A. W. Hill
“Because Henry and Katy were close?”
“Because Henry and Ruthie—Katy’s sister—were close. And two summers ago, Katy decided she wanted to be Ruthie. I don’t think Silas could make sense of that. He’d given up on Ruthie; she was her mother’s girl. But Katy, she was his.”
Aquino turned onto a cul-de-sac that backed up to the San Gabriel’s runoff basin and a chain-link fence bearing an ancient sign from the Department of Water Power that read: Trespassers Will Be Violated.
“I thought Ruthie was Johnny Horn’s girl,” Raszer said. “High school sweethearts and all that.”
“She was,” said Aquino, turning off the ignition, “until Katy came into the mix that summer. After that, Ruthie took up with Henry.” He gave Raszer a nod. “But I have a feeling you know that. Let’s go. I left a message telling Alice Lee I wanted to stop by and introduce you. I just didn’t say when.”
The Lees’ was the last house on the left. Their driveway was loose gravel poured over rutted earth, and they had no garage, just a sagging carport sheltering an old Ford van. The lawn had gone to seed and was as patchy as a worn carpet. The house itself, a small California ranch, was dark but for the flickering of a TV.
“According to Emmett Parrish and a few of the townie girls we talked to in the course of the investigation, Henry stayed in touch with Ruthie after she went back to Taos. Emailed her almost every day from an Internet café on Foothill.”
A raw wind blew through the fence, and Raszer considered retrieving his newly cleaned duster. Then he reconsidered, picturing the old squatter dead in it.
“Did you ever get a look at those emails?” he asked.
“The server was clean,” Aquino replied. “We subpoenaed the café’s backup drives, scoured them, nothing. I don’t know how he did it, but he wiped his footprints.”
“Maybe he learned that in Iraq, too,” said Raszer, half to himself.
“How do you mean?”
“Just thinking out loud,” said Raszer. “And you never questioned Ruthie?”
“No. She wasn’t a suspect or a witness. And she was in New Mexico.”
“What about the FBI?” Raszer asked. “They weren’t limited by the state line.”
“If they did talk to her,” Aquino replied, “they didn’t share it with us.” Aquino gave the aluminum door three unambiguous knocks. He turned back to Raszer. “Don’t expect tea and cookies.”
“Okay,” said Raszer. “Is there a Mr. Lee?”
“He works the docks down in Long Beach. Night shift. It’s just Alice and a six-year-old. But the kid should be in bed.” Aquino knocked again. A casement window squeaked open, and a woman’s voice called out, as raw as the March wind.
“It’s almost nine o’ clock, Officer,” she said. “You’ve got no business—”
“It’s Detective, Mrs. Lee,” replied Aquino. “And I do have business. I need to introduce you to Mr. Raszer. He’s a private investigator your church hired to find Katy Endicott. It was the last thing Silas did before he died.”
“Introduce me?” she exclaimed. “I’m a woman alone with a young child to care for, and you come here after dark to introduce me? No, sir, Officer. You can bring your friend back here in daylight, or Sheriff Maca can have my complaint.”
“You’re not as friendly in the daylight, Alice,” said Aquino. “C’mon, give us—”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lee,” Raszer broke in, stepping off the stoop. “Stephan Raszer. It’s my fault. The case is moving very quickly. There was a homicide and a hostage situation in the city today. Maybe you heard about it on the news—the police arrested a young man who may have been involved with your son’s killers—and Katy’s kidnappers. I need your help.”
Detective Aquino parked his hands on his hips and observed.
After a few seconds of silence, Alice Lee replied, “I only have one son, Mr. Raszer, and he’s here inside with me now. The other one was dead to me long before those men killed him. The other one died in Babylon.”
Raszer drew a breath of mountain air that still tasted of the day’s smog. “You mean to say Henry wasn’t the same boy after Iraq . . . is that right, ma’am?”
There was no reply, but Raszer heard a small voice call out, “Mommy?”
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Alice Lee whispered. “Just some men to see your daddy.”
Raszer sat down on the stoop and took out a cigarette. “How old is your little guy?” he asked.
“Just turned six,” she answered. “God willing, he’ll see thirty without a war.”
“What’s his name?”
“Ezra,” she replied. “And it’s past his bedtime.”
“I think you’re right, Mrs. Lee,” said Raszer softly. “I think something happened to Henry, and Johnny, in Iraq. I’d like to un—”
“I’m a patriot,” said Alice, not able to conceal the quaver in her voice. “But that war is Satan’s curse on this country. Now let the dead rest, Mr. Raszer.”
Raszer flipped open his Zippo and spun the spark wheel. He let the flame burn for a few seconds so that she could see his face from her window, then lit his cigarette. “I will, Mrs. Lee,” he said. “But I’m hoping that Katy Endicott is alive.”
“Alice—”Aquino said, but Raszer gestured silence.
“Maybe she is, and maybe she isn’t,” said Mrs. Lee. “I pray God for Silas’s sake she is, but I’ve got my doubts. Anyhow, whatever you want to know about Henry, you can ask that hell-bent sister of hers. She knew him a lot better than I did. She knows the whole sad story. Now kindly leave us alone. There’s been enough trouble on this house, and I don’t like the neighbors seeing the police on my doorstep.”
Raszer stood up and shook off a shiver. “If you want to talk—”
“I won’t,” said Alice Lee, and with that, the window closed with a ccrraack.
The Falls Steakhouse was a bar grill built in the late 1940s, when people still called them that. A weathered wood-frame building, it stood at the north edge of town, right at the gaping mouth of the canyon. Its white clapboard had long since yellowed, and its neon sign’s dark letters would never light up again. It was the sort of place frequented by old couples who remembered the fox-trot, and cops who knew they could get a decent T-bone and a full pour for the price of a blind eye to its lapsed liquor license. It was a place to be drunk and sad and listen to Julie London on the jukebox. The booths were dark and musty, and Raszer and Aquino had the whole row to themselves.
Raszer pushed away his plate, leaving the home fries and overcooked broccoli untouched, while Aquino nursed his third Cherry Coke. Had the detective ordered a cocktail, Raszer would have joined him, but he never drank when his dinner partner was cold sober, especially when the dinner partner was a cop.
“You didn’t like your meal?” Aquino asked, eyeing the plate.
“The steak was good,” Raszer lied.
“Not exactly Morton’s, is it?”
“No, but the atmosphere’s better,” said Raszer. “Right down to the bullet holes in the bathroom wall.”
“This used to be a mob spot,” said Aquino. “Back in the days when the Hollywood money still drove up through the canyon to the resorts on Angeles Crest. They’d stop here to get oiled. And if a guy didn’t have an escort for the weekend, he could find one here. All kinds of disreputable types.”
Raszer indicated the two highway patrolmen seated at a distant table. “Does that explain why it’s so popular with cops?”
“I guess like attracts like,” said Aquino with a smile. He cleared his throat. “I feel for your friend Borges,” he said, and let it hang.
“How’s that?” Raszer asked, after a beat.
“You know . . . one day he’s king of the roost and thinks he pretty much knows the score. The next day he’s got feds crawling all over his turf and doesn’t have a clue.”
“Is that how it happened up here? After the murders?”
Aquino drained his Cherry Coke and held out the glass for another
. “That guy Djapper and his team moved in within twenty-four hours,” he said. “Even took my office until they’d set up HQ at the ranger station. They used Katy’s abduction as a pretext. Somehow, they knew from the beginning she’d been taken out of state. Where the lead came from, I dunno. After that, they muddied up the trail for me real fast.”
Raszer sat back and scowled. “The papers played the story as if the JWs wanted the investigation kept within the family. One piece in the Times even hinted at some kind of inside scandal tied to these church sex-abuse allegations that are flying around. It struck me as wrong that a triple homicide would get so little media—now, even more so. Do you think it was the Bureau that kept the lid on?”
Aquino wiped his moustache and leaned forward. “Let’s just say that the feds wanted it contained because they were onto something bigger. Kept sqwawking ‘national security.’ And they had accomplices at the Kingdom Hall.”
“Even Silas Endicott?” Raszer asked.
“Even Silas,” Aquino replied. “Until he came to see you. I think something was stealing his sleep. Maybe the same thing that steals mine.”
Raszer heard the overlush string prelude to an old Al Martino ballad swell up, and watched a corseted woman of seventy with a tar-black beehive and eyeliner drawn out to her temples back away from the jukebox in three-inch heels.
“Man,” he said. “I didn’t think they built them like that anymore.”
Aquino turned discreetly to look. “That’s Agnes, “ he said. “The owner. Until 1975, she was Jimmy Fioricelli’s girl. Those bullet holes above the urinal . . . the bullets went through him first. I think the mob gave her the restaurant to keep her happy, but she never plastered over the holes. I figure she wanted to make sure that every time one of Jimmy’s killers took a piss, the thought would cross his mind that he could be next. The cops were there that night, too, dining on rare steak while they carried Jimmy out.”
“It’s never clean, is it?”
Aquino shook his head.
“What’s costing you sleep, Detective?”
“A lotta things. But mostly, something that hit me one day, after my last run-in with the FBI. These people, the ones who had those boys killed and took Katy Endicott, they’re in the woodwork like dry rot. And more and more, I think whoever is calling their tune might be right up at the rooftop, where the rot is worst. Sure, we’ve still got cops and generals, and some guy we call the president, but they’re window dressing. The real work is being done by private contactors, and they’ve got a different agenda. That’s what’s killing my sleep. I can’t take anything straight anymore. I don’t trust my chief, I don’t trust that guy Amos Leach, I don’t even trust the woman who shares my bed. And I sure don’t trust that tight-ass Bernard Djapper.”
“I don’t like him either,” said Raszer. “But he seems to be warming up to me.”
Aquino chuckled for the first time.
“Tell me about this Syrian girl,” he said. “And her boyfriend, the DJ.”
Raszer picked his words carefully. “I’m not altogether sure he was her boyfriend. But they did have a mutual interest in staying alive, and that makes for a pretty strong bond.” He gave a small sigh. “You know, Detective, one thing doesn’t add up. You seem like a solid cop, the kind of guy who wouldn’t be put off a scent easily. How could you not’ve checked out the DJ? Those guys are like owls—they see everything. You must’ve known about him . . . and the girl. From Emmett, if nothing else.”
“We did,” said Aquino, and a flush rose into his cheeks. “And we would have found them. We would have asked for LAPD assistance. Except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Djapper told us they’d both left the country, and that the Bureau was on it.”
“Sonofabitch,” said Raszer. “One of them—either the DJ or the girl—was an informant. And if it was the girl—”
It came back in stuttering images: how Djapper had suddenly appeared at Raszer’s car, anxious to make small talk, as he was waiting for Layla to come out.
“What are you thinking?”
“Something I don’t want to think: that Harry Wolfe wouldn’t be dead if they hadn’t let him be. And that my crazy kid Scotty is the perfect patsy.”
“Now you’re thinking like a cop. Now you know why I don’t sleep.” Aquino hailed the waitress for coffee. “So maybe the Syrian girl works both sides and the feds figure she can lead them to the end of the rainbow . . . but I don’t get your kid. How do you figure that someone you were hired to track from Vermont over a year ago showed up on cue in this case? To tell you the truth, that makes me wonder a little about you.”
Now, Raszer finally leaned forward.
“I can’t account for it,” he said. “Except by the logic you use when you say that these people are in the woodwork. The kind of logic that gets you locked away for a long time. If Silas Endicott came to me to find his daughter, it was in some weird way a consequence of my involvement in Scotty’s case. The connection is that there’s someone out there grabbing kids when they’re in that limbo between adolescence and adulthood, and using all avenues of approach: the Internet, the military, the fundamentalist churches . . . anywhere kids are in a passive, acquiescent state of mind. They lure them like the Pied Piper off to this ‘Garden’—wherever that is—do whatever it is they do, and then shoot them back into the world like time-release viruses. Whether Katy Endicott is being programmed as a sleeper agent or a sex slave, I couldn’t tell you, but it all serves someone’s agenda. What I want to know is whose.”
“Yeah,” Aquino whispered, and at last sat back and relaxed. “Thanks for sharing. I wouldn’t want to start mistrusting you. I’m just beginning to like you.”
“Don’t trust anyone but yourself and God,” said Raszer. “And keep an eye on God. She makes a lot of wardrobe changes.”
Aquino lifted his brows. The jukebox flipped from one Italian crooner to another. Perry Como was singing “Catch a Falling Star.” The place was stuck in 1959. “When you see Ruthie Endicott,” Aquino continued, “and I know you will, be sure and ask her if she’s had a visit from our friend Agent Djapper. It’s none of my business, really, but I’d like to know.”
From the Avanti, Raszer phoned Monica and asked her to come in an hour early the next morning to make his travel arrangements. He cursed when she told him he’d made the evening news in his makeshift turban. In the end, he thought, there was no way to avoid celebrity in Hollywood.
The last stop on Raszer’s long road home was the Kingdom Hall, where—if he had his days straight—the weekly meeting of the Theocratic Ministry School ought to be just letting out. He hoped to get a few words, and a check, from Amos Leach. He wasn’t at all in the mood for it, but it had to be done, and he wanted a second chance to size up Leach. There’d been something unnatural about the man, something not right: clothes a bit too loose on his frame, head and hair easily a size too large for the body. Then there was the voice—the voice of a ventriloquist’s dummy. The fundamentalist sects were rife with odd, sexually conflicted characters who’d sought refuge from their own shadows in Christian rectitude, but Raszer had never met anyone quite like Leach. He didn’t seriously suspect the man to have been complicit in Katy’s abduction, but he wanted to be sure Leach hadn’t made him a pawn in some larger game.
He spotted the stark, white building in the overspill of a streetlamp and adjudged that the assembly, if it had occurred, was long over. The curbs were empty, as was what he could see of the rear parking lot. The lights in the kitchen, however, were burning, and it stood to reason that if anyone was keeping late hours, it would be Amos and the Elders. Raszer dimmed his headlights and rolled up against the curb. For a few moments after he turned off the engine, he sat and listened to the frogs spawned by the heavy winter rains. Then another kind of croak made itself heard.
It was Leach’s voice, all right, issuing from an open kitchen window. He was engaged in what sounded like heated argument—more precise
ly, bickering—with another man whose own vocal timbre was too low to identify from this distance. Raszer opened and closed the car door quietly and crept up the driveway to a place just beneath the high window. He wasn’t able to see, but he could hear.
“You’re threatening me, Sam,” Leach shrilled. “You oughtn’t threaten a brother, least of all one who backed you all the way to Bethany.”
“I’m not threatening you, Amos,” replied a low, even voice that Raszer now recognized as that of Sam Brown, the ministerial servant. “I’m counseling you, as you’ve counseled me, but you don’t seem to be listening.”
“Listening to what?” Leach shot back. “Innuendo? Some fairy tale from eight years ago? Didn’t you learn anything from that McMartin business? Children lie, Sam.”