by Alan Drew
He found a line of ants running along the edge of the floor from the laundry room to the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. His mother had turned the television back on. “Don’t you dare,” Margaret huffed at the screen. He got down on his knees and sprayed the ants with glass cleaner, their black bodies wrinkling up with the chemical, and remembered the night he woke up soaking wet in his bed.
He was fifteen, for God’s sake, and he’d dreamed he was standing on the edge of the school pool during a tournament. Everyone was up on the blocks, waiting for the starting pistol, but Ben had to piss. He was bursting with it, and in the dream he pulled his dick out of his suit and let a stream go into the pool, standing on the damn blocks, the whole world watching from the bleachers. The gun sounded and he dove into the water and that’s when he woke up to find himself soaking wet, the smell of his own piss wafting from the sheets.
He panicked, stripped off the bedsheets, and carried them down in the dark to the laundry room. He closed the door and shoved the wet sheets into the washer and fiddled around with the dial, the stupid thing clicking loudly as he tried to figure out how to run the damn thing.
Then his mother was there, pushing open the door, her eyes squinting in the brightness of the room.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing.”
How did you tell your mother you’d pissed yourself? How could you explain that? He turned the dial and tried to get the goddamned thing to work, but the machine was broken or something. Then she put her hand on his and held it there on the cycle dial, and he burst out crying. He was so embarrassed—about pissing the bed, about the new things that had started happening at Wakeland’s apartment.
“I don’t feel good,” he’d said.
She touched his forehead. “No fever.”
“No, Mom, I don’t feel right,” he said. “I feel messed up.”
She ran her eyes over his face, trying to piece together his riddle. He wanted her to figure it out without him having to say it, wanted her to work some mother magic and suddenly understand everything.
“You’re tired,” she said finally. “Rest and you’ll feel better in the morning.”
The next morning out on the patio, Voorhees tried a man-to-man about the birds and the bees, while his mother fried up some eggs.
“It’s normal,” Voorhees said, misreading the situation entirely. “It happens to all boys.”
And then he told Ben that he knew he wanted to do things with girls, about how God says you shouldn’t do those things until you’re married, how it was sinful and dirty, and all Ben could do was bite his tongue and think about what idiots adults were, goddamned fools. They sat down together and ate their eggs and then Ben’s mother walked him into the laundry room and showed him how to use the machine. Yeah, he’d clean up his messes. In the dark, alone in the middle of the night, he’d fuckin’ do that.
Now Ben finished with the ants and threw the towel in the trash. A commercial was on the TV, and he got down in front of his mother again to block out the screen.
“How could you not know what Wakeland was?” he said.
“The show is back on.”
He hit the television knob and shut off the screen.
“You were always so much trouble,” she said, her watery eyes glaring at him. “Always yelling, always running away.”
“Why did you let me travel alone with him?”
“He’s getting you a scholarship.”
“No, he’s not.”
“I need to send him a thank-you card,” she said, and started rummaging in the drawer on the side table, pulling out a pen, pushing around the papers and paper clips and coupons. “You hurt William,” she said, her hand still shuffling things in the drawer—a bottle of aspirin, throat lozenges, a few playing cards. “Always fighting him, always pushing him away. I know he isn’t your father, but he tries. We both try.”
The pitch of his voice rose. “He’s dead, Mom.” He wasn’t going to get any answers, and he wasn’t allowed the relief of forgetting. “Both of your husbands are.”
She blinked.
“Look at me,” he said, taking her face in his hands. “I know I was a pain-in-the-ass kid, but didn’t you know what Coach Wakeland was?” She tried to wiggle her head away, but he held it between his palms. “I was just a kid. I was scared.”
She stared at his eyes, confusion and recognition swimming across them. She was there for a moment, her pupils registering the starkness of the question, but then she was gone again, clouds across the irises.
“You’re hurting my ears,” she said, brushing aside his hands. “And take a shower; you stink.”
—
BEN WAS ON the Santa Ana Freeway, on his way back from his mother’s, idling in late-afternoon traffic, when Ken Brady, the desk sergeant, called him on the Motorola.
“Some guy called in, asking for you,” Ken said. “Said he had some information about a case.”
“He leave a name and number?”
“No,” Ken said. “Said he’d leave a voicemail.”
“Another anonymous tip?”
“You got me,” Ken said. “But he sounded freaked out. Like he was coming undone, you know? Figured with this freak running around, I shouldn’t let it sit.”
Ben pulled the cruiser to the emergency lane, the traffic limping by, and dialed the voicemail number.
—
“I NEED YOU to look up a student,” Natasha said to Helen.
She had left Wakeland twenty minutes before, watched him struggle with his key to open the door to his Corvette and drive off.
“Current or past?” Helen asked.
“Current,” Natasha said.
Helen pulled the 1985–’86 attendance binder from the shelf.
“I keep seeing boys’ faces,” Helen said, her voice shaking. “I was up all night thinking about them.”
“It’s not your fault, Helen,” Natasha said.
“I knew something wasn’t right,” she said. “But I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Things like this aren’t supposed to happen here,” Natasha said. “That’s what we want to believe.”
Helen opened the binder. “Name?”
“Only got a first name,” Natasha said. “Freshman, I think.”
—
BEN WAS BACK at the barn by 4:17. He oiled the bolt action on his father’s Browning and disassembled the .45. He bore-brushed the barrel and oiled the firing pin and hammer spring, then reassembled it and locked a full magazine inside. He set both of the firearms on the table, next to the killer’s police file and the pictures of Lucero, and stared at them.
The voicemail had been from Wakeland.
“Benjamin,” he’d said, his voice out of breath on the recording. “We need to talk. Please.”
Ben had hung up immediately and sat on the side of the freeway for ten minutes, until a Caltrans truck came riding up his tail, trying to get to a stall a mile up the road.
Outside the window of the barn now, an owl swooped across the grass and lighted in the eucalyptus on the far side of the drive. Ben watched the bird in the afternoon light, a thumb smudge bending the tree branch, Wakeland’s voice playing in his head. “Please,” Wakeland had said. The man was frightened. Something had happened, something had shaken him up.
Ben unlocked the gun cabinet, pulled out the box, and set it on his desk. He sliced open the first envelope with his penknife and found three photos. He and Wakeland sitting in his Mustang, mugging for the camera with their sunglasses on. Ben’s mother had taken the shot, just before the two of them drove up to L.A. to have Ben swim for the university coaches. There was one shot at regionals, Wakeland grinning while yanking on the three medals hanging from Ben’s neck. Ben stuck his tongue out, pretending to be choked. Then there was another, a Polaroid taken by Wakeland at Laguna Beach. Ben had just climbed out of the surf, salt water dripping down his body. He remembered Wakeland taking the picture, the camera lens pointed at him in front of t
he sunbathing summer day-trippers. Three teenage girls watched Wakeland take the picture, one of them giggling at Ben, and Ben told himself they thought Wakeland was his father, though he was sure then that they could see the truth. In the shot, his bathing suit hung low on his hips, the wet fabric clinging to his body, the plates of his chest stretching across his swimmer’s shoulders. He hadn’t seen these pictures in nearly two decades. The sixteen-year-old in the shot looked younger than Emma. It was shocking, really, the child that he was. He’d remembered himself as an adult; he’d imagined himself to be one when he was sixteen. But here was the child Ben, newly shaving, his face plump with baby fat, his eyes stupid with miscomprehension.
He turned his attention to the file, flipping pages until he found the picture of the twelve-year-old Martinez, newly pulled from the basement cell and years before killing. There was hope still in the face, in the first picture; he wasn’t gone yet. Order could still be restored; the kid believed the police could do it, believed they could still hurt him or hurt the people who hurt him. There were laws, the police enforced them, and you could be folded back into the order of things in a way that made everything clear and safe. For most people, the threat of the law worked. It kept them in line; it gave them a sense of relief to be ticketed or arrested—it let them know that you could only push things so far into chaos before someone said no.
Ben was the one who was supposed to say no; it was his job to keep things from spinning into chaos. Natasha was right. The day he got his badge, he stood in front of a judge with forty-three shiny new officers and swore never to betray his badge, never to betray his integrity, never to betray the public trust. He swore to have the courage to hold himself and others accountable for their actions, and he meant every goddamned bit of it. He knew what it was to have trust violated. He understood the corrosive effect of a lack of accountability. That was his job—to protect and to serve—even if others hadn’t done it for him. That was his identity, the one he chose; it was how he left the child behind and became a man.
Ben reached into the box and pulled out an envelope with his name scrawled on the front. He opened the letter inside and spread it on the desk in front of him.
You’re a coward. You’ve silenced me, X’d me out. You couldn’t do a more terrible thing. Is this how you treat the people who love you? I’m still prepared to forgive you. That’s what friends do—they forgive, they forget.
The letter was from the end of Ben’s senior year, after he’d lost at the state swim tournament, when he stopped being able to sleep, when he stopped going to swim practice, when he started ditching classes and spending his days alone up in the hills, doing anything he could to stay away from Wakeland. He had lost ten pounds, he’d become distant—from Rachel, from his mom and stepfather, from everyone—and Rachel had started asking questions. “Tell me what’s wrong,” she said. “Talk to me.”
I’ve kept your secrets, Benjamin. I could have told your mother everything that’s happened with Rachel. But I haven’t. I don’t want to violate our trust, and I don’t want to hurt your mother.
Three weeks after he and Rachel slept together, Rachel missed her period. Ben had tried to confide in his buddies David Ross and Nick Distasio, both virgins, but as soon as he said, “We did it,” they couldn’t get past the fact of the event itself to listen to his panic about being a father. “What did it feel like, man?” “Dude, did you make her come, too?” (As though any of them understood what that meant.) Finally, exhausted and terrified, Ben had told Wakeland.
“When did this happen?” Wakeland asked.
Ben had promised the man, when he was fourteen and they’d started talking about sex, that he’d tell him when he “lost his cherry,” as Wakeland liked to say. But Ben hadn’t wanted Wakeland to know about him and Rachel; he didn’t want to lay out the play-by-play for the man who would use it as a pretense for other things. He knew Rachel was pregnant, though, and, God, he needed help.
“A month ago,” Ben said.
“I thought you’d tell me.” A look of betrayal flashed across Wakeland’s face. “Thought we’d drink some beers and celebrate.”
“I was scared,” Ben said. “I mean, I can’t have a kid.”
“All these years, all I’ve done for you, the attention I’ve given you, the hours I’ve worked with you on your stroke, on your homework, getting scouts from SC, from Berkeley, Stanford even. As if you could get into Stanford on your own.” He let that hang in the air for a moment. “I’ve let you into my home like it’s yours, like you’re my son, given you space to get away from your stepfather; all the money and time I’ve spent on you, and you don’t keep your word. You lie to me.”
It hadn’t been his word. At the time Wakeland had said, “You’ll tell me when it happens,” and Ben had simply nodded, unable to imagine at fourteen that he’d ever get laid and thankful for the tacit permission to do so.
“You’re too young to be sleeping with this girl,” Wakeland said. “You’re too stupid to even put a condom on. Your mother needs to know.”
“No! You can’t tell her.”
Wakeland retreated into the kitchen, clinked ice cubes into two glasses, and filled them with vodka. He came back, handed Ben a glass, and sat beside him on the couch.
“Listen,” Wakeland said, his voice quiet now. “Sometimes periods come late. She’s probably frightened, too. Stress can make it come later than normal. Chances are it’ll happen soon. If it doesn’t, then we can talk about what to do next. One thing at a time.”
Three days later, Rachel got her period, almost as if Wakeland had planned it, and Ben was locked into a new kind of confidence game.
You’re a good young man, Benjamin, but you get confused. You can’t see things clearly. I know you think you’re in love, but has Rachel given you more than I have? After all these years, after all I’ve done for you, how can you just push me aside? This is a stressful time, I know. Let’s talk, please. Let me, your closest friend, help you. We can work through it together.
He never answered that letter—though it took all his energy not to. The only person Ben could talk to about the things that were breaking him down was Wakeland. Wakeland would tell him it was all right, he would make it all seem okay, and the cycle would keep feeding on him. He couldn’t do that anymore; his body wouldn’t allow it. All Ben had was himself, and he retreated into silence, into the hills that surrounded the town, staying away from school as long as he could, knowing Wakeland was trying to find him. Three days later, Ben got another unsigned note, slipped into his school locker.
If compassion will not reach you, think about this:
Q: How do you think Rachel would feel if she knew you were a little faggot?
A: You know exactly how she’d feel, Benjamin, exactly.
It was clear to Ben now how terrified Wakeland had been of being exposed: so terrified that he’d put his fear into writing, into one last attempt to shut Ben up. For all Wakeland knew, Ben had already said something—or was about to. But the seventeen-year-old Ben had been far too frightened of his own exposure to recognize Wakeland’s fear, too much of a child to think rationally about it. He could have walked right into the counselor’s office and laid the two notes on the table, but Wakeland had bet on Ben’s cowardice and won.
Ben pulled out the slip of paper he’d taken from Lucero’s body and set it side by side with his own letter.
Q: How would she feel if she knew?
Some keep your secrets out of kindness, Ben thought, and some store them up as weapons to be used later.
A: You know exactly how s—
—
THE COUNTY SHERIFF’S Bell was spinning circles overhead, spotlighting ridges, exploding finger canyons with light, and Ben was in the dark zone between the grid of the city and the false daylight above. He was out in the wilderness with Tin Man, standing on the rise above Wakeland’s house, watching the warm light radiate from the backyard windows. From here he could see the pickers’ camp and the greenbelt
that ran across town to the apartment near the school, a leafy causeway that joined one world to the other. The streets of town were mostly empty, a few black-and-whites spinning their lights down the straight avenues, the stoplights switching from green to red to green again. From here, Ben could see the crescent of dark land scything Santa Elena into the western hills, a negative space in the electric basin. It was nearing 9:00 P.M., and the scanner was unusually quiet—an occasional 10-code, a chattering of locations called out, a few killer false alarms. The hills were silent, too, the animals hiding from the Nightsun spotlight that swiped back and forth across the ridges.
On the drive out to Trabuco to saddle up with the mounted unit, Ben had listened to the serial’s song on the cassette player. Now the song played a loop in his head—the singer’s voice like the voice of the killer himself. The serial was out here somewhere—hiding in the wilderness, cruising the streets, crouched in a backyard beneath an open window, ready to strike—and there was little anyone, including the police, could do about it. This town had never felt this kind of fear. It was in the air, hovering over the city, as palpable as the charge in the Santa Ana winds.
People who moved to Rancho Santa Elena were afraid of the world; that’s why they moved here, to escape it. They believed master-planned order—straight streets, identical houses, brightly lit shopping centers—would keep them safe from the outside world, as though Rancho Santa Elena were a walled-off city, a fortress against the ugliness elsewhere. When they watched the news—the L.A. anchormen recounting murders and gang wars—people here sat on their couches, smug with the self-satisfaction that their home was thirty-eight miles on the right side of paradise. The wolves lived in Los Angeles, and if wolves existed, someone had to be thrown to them—but not these people, not here.
That’s what the killer knew. Locked in a basement, the whole world just a few feet away, no one asking where the little boy had gone. He knew people didn’t give a shit until they thought the shit was coming for them. If you were the one thrown to the wolves, though, you understood fear, lived with it every day until it didn’t feel like fear anymore, and once that happened you were alone, pushed outside the boundaries of civilization where most people lived, forced into a wilderness with its own rules.