by Alan Drew
Ben read the file: mother in and out of rehab before overdosing, father a junk dealer who locked the kid up in the basement, perhaps for as long as five to six years. Signs of sexual abuse, suffering severe malnutrition when found, stunted growth. The small hands, Ben thought. Three foster families. First assault at twelve, a desk lamp cracked over the head of a foster mother. Placed in a group home and school for troubled kids. Restrained for trying to stab a pencil into his own eye. Restrained for banging his head against a cement wall. Restrained for carving words into his arm with a paper clip. Back in another foster home at thirteen. Claims to a therapist that foster mother “touches” him at night when the other kids are asleep. Ben highlighted this in orange. Placed back in group home while investigation takes place. Second assault at group home, punches female teacher in the neck. Briefly incarcerated at the California Youth Authority after the incident, in with the teenage heavies. Who knew what happened to him there, a thirteen-year-old in with violent sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds biding their time for the big house. Sent back to foster care, with the same woman who touches him at night; there was an opening and no evidence to prove she’d done anything wrong. He highlighted this, too. Spent three years there, complaining three times about the foster mother to a therapist who wrote his complaints off as “a regressive behavior” brought on by traumatic family memories.
“Are any of the victims,” Ben said, “this foster mother?”
“No,” Hernandez said. “Long Beach checked that out. She’s been dead for five years.”
“Natural causes?”
“Stabbed in the liver with a kitchen knife.”
“Another foster kid?” Ben said.
“You got it.” Hernandez nodded.
“Man,” Carolina said. “I hate the psychos with painful pasts.”
Marco threw the file on the table. “Ugly memories,” he said, referencing the killer’s song. “No doubt.”
Ben found the pictures of Ricardo as a twelve-year-old, when he was first put into foster care. His face looked swollen, the skin cracked at the edges of his lips. His hair was a strange red color, as though the red had been washed out of it and the stain remained. He tried to smile for the camera, his front teeth too big for his face, one canine stabbing sideways into his lip. No dental care in a basement. His eyes were yawned open, nocturnal, as though they were trying to suck in the light. Ben found the next shot, when he was thirteen and incarcerated at CYA. His jaw clenched so that the muscle showed, inverted triangles for cheekbones, a homemade tattoo scratched into his neck. His eyes hardened and black-looking, as though the pupils had swallowed the irises. The last photo was the adult Ricardo, twenty-one and booked for nearly strangling the prostitute. His face was all angles, his cheekbone knives ready to cut open the surface of the skin. He smirked in the picture, stared straight into the camera and gave it a crooked look of contempt. He was gone, completely gone.
“Last residence?” Marco said.
“Apple Valley,” Hernandez said.
“The desert.” Carolina closed the file.
“A year ago,” Hernandez said. “No address since. Apple Valley’s checking the place this morning. But it’s been rented out for nine months.”
“Make of car?” Ben asked.
“A 1980 Toyota Tercel.”
Ben remembered the car from last night.
“The back taillight cover was smashed out,” he said. “Just the naked bulb.” He flashed on the car that had passed him when he sat outside Wakeland’s apartment, too. A black Toyota Tercel. Shit, the killer had driven right past him.
“Not exactly a bat out of hell,” Marco said.
“Practical.” Carolina shrugged. “Gets good gas mileage.”
“Get a few hours’ rest,” Hernandez said. “Then start hitting the coffee. Everyone’s on tonight.”
Chairs slid across the floor, cups were thrown in the trash, but Ben stayed in his seat, reading the file. Jesus, locked in a basement for six years. Created his own language. Ben couldn’t move; he’d seen terrible things before, but nothing like this.
“Ben,” Hernandez said.
“Lieutenant.”
“Thought I’d lost you for a second.”
“I remember this case,” Ben said. “Kid locked in a basement. Made headlines for a few days, ten or so years ago.”
“Yeah,” Hernandez said. “The house was up in Norwalk, I think. Some old house with a basement.”
“Jesus,” Ben said. “There are monsters in the world.”
“You’re just now coming to that conclusion?”
“How can you do that to a kid?”
“Don’t get sentimental on me. He’s not a kid anymore,” Hernandez said. “Listen, I’ve got a special assignment for you.”
—
NATASHA WAS DRIVING down the Pacific Coast Highway, riding the cliffs of south Laguna, glimpses of turquoise coves between white high-rise hotels and squat bungalows with squares of manicured Bermuda grass. Salt Creek Beach curved below like bleached whalebone, the surfers carving hollowed-out swells, their wakes contrailing the water. The radio buzzed with Night Prowler coverage—a hotline had been set up, an award offered, lock your doors and close your windows, no matter how hot it gets. Ten minutes and the bay at Dana Point unfolded, the rock jetties and cement breakwater sheltering slips of white-hulled boats. Out in the open water, a tall ship, its muslin sails stretched triangular in the wind, leaned out to sea. And beyond the ship nothing but an opaque blue arcing slightly with the curve of the earth. It was beautiful, unbelievably so, but today it felt like a lie, this beauty, like something false and dissembling.
It had taken her only three hours to hunt down the Prestons, that was it. They were unlisted in the white and yellow pages, had severed ties with their former neighbors. She had called down to the Dana Point Police and asked if there were any arrest records—DUIs, outstanding parking tickets—if there were any filed complaints, any police reports. Nothing. She found them then by calling down to the Dana Point assessor’s office: 20019 Bonita Agua Street, purchased June 1979. She simply couldn’t believe Ben didn’t know about them. He must know. He just didn’t want to know.
The house was a split-level with dwarf palms swaying out front. It perched on the cliffs above the bay, the back patio propped on cement stilts stabbed into the crumbling hillside. Natasha could hear a pool-filter system humming from the side yard. It was 4:16, and the late-day sun radiated off the white plaster house.
Mrs. Preston opened the door, a fragile smile creasing her face, her frosted hair sprayed into a feathery nest. “What can I do for you?” she said, her voice frail and quiet.
Behind her, through the hallway and into the family room, a man was on the phone, pacing, his tie askew from an unbuttoned shirt.
Natasha introduced herself, her fingers pressed over the MEDICAL EXAMINER etched on her badge when she flashed it. The woman’s smile collapsed and Natasha immediately doubted herself. Tucker had said something; Tucker had spoken up—three hours ago, she saw strength in that. Now, though, facing this wafer-thin woman, she saw someone on the edge of breaking. The woman, whose right hand had never left the door handle, started to push the door closed.
“Please,” Natasha said. “It’s about a suicide, a boy’s.”
It was stifling inside, all the windows shut, a fan in the corner of the room swirling stale air. The house was immaculate—white walls, white carpets, a smudgeless glass-topped coffee table, pastel-tinted paintings of the sea, and through the hallway that led into the open kitchen the windblown blue of the Pacific. Mr. Preston cursed into the phone. “Dammit, Jim,” he said, leaning on the kitchen counter. “These assholes can’t go under when they owe us fifty thousand.” Mr. Preston held up an index finger to indicate he’d be with her in just a moment. “Don’t talk to me about bankruptcy regs.”
The white sofa in the living room was so perfectly symmetrical it seemed no one had ever sat on it, so Natasha was surprised when Mrs. Preston
offered her a seat there. Mrs. Preston sat opposite her on a piano bench and placed a tanned hand on the fallboard of a black grand piano.
“Do you play?” Natasha said, nodding toward the piano.
“When I was young.”
A framed photo of Tucker and a girl who must have been his older sister sat on the fireplace mantel behind the piano. It was a studio shot, at least ten years old, Natasha thought, Tucker’s elbow resting on his sister’s knee, both of them forcing smiles for the camera.
“My father used to play,” Natasha said. “We had a baby grand in the living room. I miss it.”
Natasha glanced at the photo again. Something about Tucker looked like Ben—the green eyes, the tanned skin, the depth of the eye sockets.
“I like it quiet.” Mrs. Preston lifted the hand from the fallboard and brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen across her forehead. “My husband won’t like that you’re here.”
“I don’t blame him.”
The slam of the phone and the swish of Mr. Preston’s suit slacks preceded his arrival in the living room.
“Mary Kay? Tupperware?” the man said, flashing the disingenuous smile of a man used to being in control. Sure, Natasha thought, I’m driving a pink Cadillac. She disliked him immediately. “You get me my fifty thousand back and I might buy what you’re selling.”
Natasha extended her hand.
“Sorry about the heat,” he said, taking only her fingers in his. “Not taking any chances with that maniac running around. Always said we should get central air.”
“Detective Betencourt,” she lied, squeezing his hand as hard as she could.
“Did he hit around here?”
“No,” Natasha said. “I’m down from Santa Elena.”
Mr. Preston glanced at his wife, blame in his eyes. She studied a spot on the carpet.
“What do you want?” he said.
Natasha told him about Lucero’s suicide, about the information she’d gotten from Helen at the high school. She started to ask about Wakeland, but Preston cut her off.
“Don’t say that name in this house,” he said.
“I understand,” she said gently.
“Do you?” Preston said. Sweat that had beaded on his forehead ran down the edge of his nose. “You come here unannounced, barge into my house, and utter that man’s name while standing in my living room.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she was. She had no right, no subpoena, no legal justification to be here. She was an intruder climbing unwanted into their lives. “It’s just—I think what happened to your son happened to this boy.”
Mrs. Preston turned her head and stared at the closed lid of the black piano. “It’s what I was afraid of, Mark,” she said. “We should have—”
Preston put his hand on his wife’s shoulder and squeezed the bone there.
“I am sorry to hear that.” He wiped the sweat from his nose with his free hand. “But it has nothing to do with us.”
But it does, she wanted to say. It does.
“This man,” Natasha said, “is still a teacher.”
“Please,” Mrs. Preston said, her palm turned upward as though begging for food. “It’s taken years of therapy, years of medication. He’s doing better—”
“Don’t,” Mr. Preston said.
“—now he has a job, he’s in college, he’s got a girlfriend.”
“I know there was a confidentiality agreement,” Natasha said. “But there are ways around—”
Mr. Preston hammered the top of the piano with the heel of his hand, knocking the strings into a discordant thrumming.
“We cannot talk about it,” he said, glaring at his wife. He turned to Natasha, his eyes like rock. “Now get out of my house.”
—
NATASHA HAD SLIPPED her 280Z into gear when Mrs. Preston pushed open the gate to the yard and jogged across the street.
“How old was the boy?” Mrs. Preston said, when she sat down in the passenger seat.
“Seventeen.”
She glanced at Natasha’s cigarette curling smoke into the car. “Can you put that out, please?”
Natasha flicked it out the driver’s side window, and Mrs. Preston sat there picking at a hangnail on her right thumb.
“Tucker has a class at five fifteen,” she said.
The curtains were pulled aside in the front window of the Preston house and Mr. Preston stood there framed by the sill, his face exploded by a sunburst on the spotless glass. Mrs. Preston was watching him through the open window of the car.
“Men don’t want to talk about these things,” Mrs. Preston said. She put her hand on the handle and cracked the door. “Advanced Poetry Workshop,” she said, before swinging her legs onto the street, “at Saddleback Community College.”
—
HERNANDEZ HAD CALLED in cops from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Mounted Enforcement Unit. The MEU guys rode the backcountry north of L.A., in the Santa Monica Mountains and the Los Padres, looking for plots of marijuana, busting kids with illegal campfires, occasionally tracking fugitives into the scrub pine higher elevations.
“You know the canyons around here as well as anybody,” Hernandez had said to Ben. That was his special assignment: heading up the mounted team to flush out the killer. The horses were in trailers doing 55 down the 101 as they spoke. “You’ll brief them tonight and then get up there.”
After the morning briefing, Ben drove up to the Norwalk Police Department and asked to check the files on the decade-old case. The twelve-year-old Martinez had been found locked in the basement at 3562 Grayland Street. Father charged with sexual assault, sexual abuse, willful harming and endangering of a child, severe neglect. The father—if you could call him that—had been sent up to Folsom, twenty-five years to life. Didn’t last long there, though: shanked in the liver with a filed-down toothbrush just two years into the sentence. In that respect, Ben appreciated the harsh law of the convict.
The house sat abandoned on a leafy street of 1930s bungalows, a desert grapevine devouring the left side wall, a chain-link fence cordoning it off. It wasn’t a wealthy neighborhood, but the rest of the homes were well kept, green postage-stamp yards behind cinder-block fences, trimmed hedges. There was a faded FOR SALE sign out front, but apparently no one wanted to buy a house with that kind of history.
Ben grabbed a flashlight from the trunk and then bent through a hole in the fence. The front door was knocked off its hinges. Inside smelled of cat piss and mold. A torn-open couch was pushed up against one of the walls, littered with empty beer cans. Leaves bunched in the corner. He found the steps at the back of the kitchen, three of them missing, the others tilted and rotting. He flipped on the flashlight and went down into the darkness.
It wasn’t a basement, really; more of a crawl space. A rusted combination lock was clasped to a hook on the wall. Weak light filtered through a painted-over window, beetle carapaces flittered in the wind funneling down the stairs. An old mattress leaned against the stairwell, and on the wall next to it strange symbols were scratched into the plaster, gibberish mostly, etchings with indecipherable patterns, a few vowels and consonants. The kid had created his own language, to talk with himself. Six years in a hole. Jesus. The killer’s father had locked him down there soon after the mother overdosed, according to the report. Social Services was alerted after the father had taken the boy to the doctor for severe diarrhea. Vitamin D deficiency, anemia, rickets, and softened bones. Still, it took nearly nine months after the first report to Social Services to get the boy out of here.
Ben crouched under the stairwell and turned off the flashlight and sat there in the dark, listening, letting his eyes adjust to the lightless place. The cement smelled of mold, a fecund rotting in the corners of the room, and the murky gray light was like being submerged in muddied water. He tried to imagine what it was like for the child, huddled down here in the dark with the insects, while the rest of the world went on above. Ben had felt alone most of his life, pushed out onto the
edge of normal existence, but this was a different kind of alone. What did this kind of powerlessness do to you? Lucero—and the others—hadn’t been locked up; they could leave. But why didn’t you? That was the question. That was always the question. Why didn’t you? That question made you hate yourself. But this, being locked down here: There was no choice, no blame to level at yourself. The blame was put outside you—onto the world outside. Almost nine months after the doctor’s visit. Nine goddamned months before Social Services and the police got him out.
A shadow flashed in the window.
Outside, he found an elderly woman next door, watering a rosebush. It had been her passing legs that disturbed the weak light seeping through the window.
“Are you going to buy that place?” she said, when she saw him emerge from the basement. “Tear it down?”
“No,” he said. Water from the hose was trickling a path past his toes. Her yard was lush with flowers, vines climbing a trellis. “Police business.” He showed her his badge.
She looked closely at him. “I already told them I never knew about the boy,” she said.
“You knew the people who lived here?”
“They were neighbors,” she said. “But I didn’t know them.”
Ben looked at the window and measured the distance in his mind. Ten feet, maybe twelve, to the spigot on the woman’s hose. How was it possible? Six years in a hole and no one knew? She seemed to guess what he was thinking.
“We heard things occasionally,” she said. “My husband and me. But those people never bothered us.” She sprayed a fuchsia basket dangling from the trellis. “They really should tear it down.”
—
“GOT TIME FOR an early dinner?” Rachel asked when he answered the Motorola in the cruiser later that afternoon. He’d been out in the barn, combing down Tin Man, filing the muck and horseshit from his hooves, when he ran out to answer it. He scraped clean his boots, dashed his neck with the Old Spice he kept in his desk drawer, and hit the road.
He indulged a fantasy on the drive over—the wedding china lifted out of the storage boxes, candlelight, Rachel slipped into the charcoal dress she liked to wear out to dinner. When he got there, she was wearing faded jeans and a V-neck with a wet stain on the belly. She wasn’t wearing makeup—nothing that had ever bothered him, but the few times he’d crashed a date of hers she was painted up, some of the makeup fancy stuff he’d bought from Nordstrom’s.