by Alan Drew
“I could never live up, either,” Ben said.
“There was someone before you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I wasn’t good enough, then I was special, and then I wasn’t good enough again. That was part of his deal.”
Tucker nodded and blew smoke, and they both watched three crows attack the fallen oranges in the grove. “We had a peach tree in our backyard,” Tucker said. “At the Santa Elena house. When the fruit was ripe, my mom would give them to the neighbors. She baked a pie once with the last of the fruit and gave it to Wakeland after state finals. He and I ate it together, the whole damn thing in one sitting. I think my mother had a crush on him.”
“He’s a con man,” Ben said. “The best kind make you believe anything.”
“I want to blame you,” Tucker said.
“I know.”
“Let me finish,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Ben. “I want to blame you, but then—then I guess that makes me responsible for this kid, Lucero, too.”
“I can’t help you with that,” Ben said. “I haven’t sorted that out myself.”
Tucker looked away. “What do you want from me?”
What he wanted was to find a kid in better shape than this one, one who wasn’t screwed up and jittery with nicotine shakes, a kid who didn’t have deep sleepless circles under his eyes, a kid who wasn’t bitter with anger and blame, someone who had come out the other side of this unscathed.
“There’s another kid,” Ben said.
“Jesus.”
“A freshman.”
“How do you know?”
“Wakeland’s getting him alone in the pool,” Ben said. “After practice.”
Tucker looked at the ground.
“That’s how it started for you too, right?” Ben said.
Tucker nodded slowly, less an answer to the question than the unspoken recognition that Ben was right. This new kid, Phillip, was in trouble.
“People like this don’t stop,” Ben said. “If it’s not this kid, it’ll be another. I can’t tell you if I’m responsible for what happened to you. But I can’t let this happen again. We can’t let this happen again.”
“You’re just going to drag me into this, aren’t you?” Tucker said. “That’s what you’re here to tell me, right?”
“You almost stopped him once,” Ben said. “You spoke up. You did more than I could do at the time.”
“I don’t know, man,” Tucker said, shaking his head. “The statute—”
“Is up, I know.” He did know. Six years. Penal code, section 800. He’d used the law as an excuse for years to pretend he was fine about the past. “We come forward, maybe others will. One accusation sounds like a personal grudge, two—or more—starts to sound like the truth. Even if he can’t be prosecuted, people will know what he is.”
“I don’t think I can go there with you.”
“That fear you feel,” Ben said. “That panic you have right now…that’s Wakeland. Wakeland’s still got you. Don’t let him.”
“It’s not just Wakeland,” Tucker said, disdain in his voice. “It’s my mom, my dad, it’s my girlfriend. I mean, she doesn’t even know and I don’t want her to. The fear…it’s everyone, you know?”
Ben nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“It’s everyone.”
Silence.
“Look, this is just about out of the bag,” Ben said, “and I can’t put it back in, even if I want to.” Ben stood and watched a crow struggle into the air. “I won’t expose you. I won’t do that to you. But I don’t know what others are going to do. I think you should be ready.”
Tucker squinted up at him and then looked back out over the orange grove, shaking his head.
“You know the best thing about this serial killer?” Tucker said.
Ben just looked at him.
“Seeing everyone else scared. It’s been kind of nice for a change.”
—
HE WAS HOME by six, alone in the barn, reading and rereading Wakeland’s letters from all those years ago. You’re a coward, Wakeland had written, and, damn, he’d been right. He was a coward, had been for years. Even choking Wakeland was the act of a coward, the desperate act of a man who still felt powerless. Why would Wakeland stop then, if Ben wouldn’t arrest him, wouldn’t use the power he did have?
He struggled through the photographs of Lucero, stared at the picture Natasha had given him of this new boy, Phillip, thinking about the evidence again—the birthday card to Lucero back at his mother’s makeshift home, Neil’s story about being caught holding hands in the apartment, the photographs Natasha said were hiding in the master bedroom closet of that apartment—trying to piece together some half measure he could live with to fix all this. It’s everyone, you know? Tucker had said. Yeah, and everyone would know about him, if he did this. Everyone. Rachel. Emma.
Ben pulled the photos of him and Wakeland from the box he kept in his rifle cabinet, glanced through them again, him smiling, him showing off his county freestyle championship medal. He won regionals a few weeks later, and then it was states.
He was the favorite to win the 200 free, nearly seventeen years ago. He’d been ahead of the pack, his body torpedoing down the lane, the silence of the water and then the roar of the crowd when he turned for a breath of air. Rachel was there, in the stands; his mother and Voorhees, too. Scouts were on the side of the pool—UCLA, USC, Stanford, UC San Diego. Coach Dixon, the USC coach who had timed, weighed, and measured him up in L.A. a few weeks before, was ready, Ben knew (or at least Wakeland had said), to offer him a scholarship. Before the race, Dixon and Wakeland shook hands, a fraternal swagger between them. Ben wondered then if Dixon knew about Wakeland, if this was a secret that handshakes secured; the two swam together back in the old days, bound forever by their triumph over bodily pain. If Ben took the scholarship, Wakeland would be there with him, too, in his friendship with the USC coach, in the reason Ben was at USC at all, in every breath Ben took above the flat surface of the chlorinated water.
Ben was coming into his last turn and it hit him: He could simply stop kicking and let it all go. He made the turn and dolphin-kicked off the wall. There was nothing but open water in front of him; everyone in the stands was on their feet. He could stop, blow it all up, but he kept pulling through the water, just thirty meters from winning it all. Stroke and a breath, just twenty-five meters from the wall, where Wakeland stood on the pool deck with a stopwatch in hand. It was his body, the power in his muscles, the strength of his mind, but the line on the bottom of the pool led straight to Wakeland. And he didn’t want that anymore. Not anymore.
Then he did it: He let his muscles ease off, let his body sink into the water. He couldn’t believe the relief; the tension seeped out of his body, and his head seemed to fill with clear light. He let the next three swimmers pass him, their wakes lifting him into his next stroke before he kicked into the wall, a disappointing fourth. The end of the scholarship. The end, he thought then, of Wakeland’s hold over him. When he got out of the pool—his shocked teammates murmuring, Wakeland yelling, “What the hell just happened?”—he cocooned himself in a towel and sat on the cement wall. Then Rachel was there, her arms around him, whispering to him that it was all right. “It’s just a race. It’s all right.”
—
BEN STAYED OUT in the barn until nearly 1:00 A.M., the distant sound of helicopters hovering over the mountains, the contents of the box spread before him on the desk. It’s yours to do, he remembered Natasha saying. For years this box had sat duct-taped closed in a dark corner of the attic or in the back of the garage. Wakeland had been stuffed inside the box, too. Reading Wakeland’s letters again, Ben realized they were a form of interrogation—the expressions of care and concern followed by threats and chastisement, the twisting of the facts to get your man to feel guilty, to get him to say what you wanted him to say, to make him do what you wanted him to do, to make him believe what you wanted him to believe. He had fallen for it for years, when he
was a six-foot-two child. When he grew up, he believed the man could do nothing more to him, and he was stuck for half of his life between his childhood self and his adulthood. These letters were the proof of that manipulation, of that half-life.
Here was the evidence.
—
THE NEXT MORNING, Ben met Hernandez in his office.
“You supposed to be driving yet?” Hernandez said.
“I gotta talk with you,” Ben said.
“They found the killer’s car,” Hernandez said, flipping through the pages of a report. “You were right. He busted it up just outside of Limestone Canyon.”
“He’s in the Sinks then.”
“What?”
“The Sinks,” Ben said. “That’s what the cowboys called it. It’s got steep cliffs, like the earth just fell away. It was easy to lose cattle in there. My dad hated the place.”
“The sheriff and the Ventura Mounted Enforcement Unit are up there,” Hernandez said. “Thanks for the tip. Sorry, I know you want to be up there, too.”
“I’m not here about the serial.”
“All right,” Hernandez said, setting the report on his desk.
The precinct was filled with cops, filing reports, making phone calls. Ben wanted to close the blinds, but that would only arouse suspicion, so he sat there with his back to the station desks, the murmur of the policemen sounding like whispers behind his back.
Ben handed Hernandez the file folder with the pictures of Lucero inside. When he opened it, Hernandez looked away and shifted in his seat.
“The Mexican kid?” he said, finally. “The suicide?”
“Yeah,” Ben said.
“He was one of Wakeland’s swimmers, right?”
“He was,” Ben said.
Hernandez fanned the pictures out, studying them carefully, and then turned them facedown on the desk. He got up and closed the door and sat back down and stared at the desk, his chin pushed close to his chest. He didn’t look at Ben for a while, something Ben was thankful for. Ben knew, though, that Hernandez was putting the pieces together. Ben’s swimming, accosting Wakeland at the scene, refusing to close Lucero’s case, defying orders the other night when he left his patrol in the hills and almost caught the killer. He could have interrogated Ben, could have asked him all the ugly questions, but Hernandez understood that some things shouldn’t be said between men.
“The case is still open, right?” Hernandez said, looking at him now. “You didn’t sign off on it this morning?”
“No.”
Hernandez nodded slowly. “How’d you get these?”
Ben told him, and Hernandez just kept nodding, his mind chewing on the problem.
“There’re more?”
“That’s what Natasha says,” Ben said. “She thinks he’s grooming another kid, too, a freshman.” He pulled Phillip’s school picture out of his coat pocket—he didn’t want the boy’s picture in the same file that held the ugly ones of Lucero—and slid it across the desk. “Phillip Lambert.”
Hernandez looked at the photo, and then let out a long breath. “We can’t use these to get a warrant,” he said, putting his hand on top of the Polaroids. “They’re gotten illegally.”
“I know.”
Hernandez tapped his fingers against the back of the pictures. “You got enough on this for a warrant?” he asked. “Without these?”
Ben told him what he had—Wakeland letting Lucero’s family use his apartment address, the apartment itself and all that might be hidden there, the testimony of a half dozen people at the school and in the picker’s camp, but he left Tucker out of it—and Hernandez jotted down notes on a legal pad.
Then Ben handed Hernandez the two letters Wakeland had sent to him years ago, and the note he got off Lucero’s body. Blood thrummed in his ears while Hernandez read them.
Ben had sent his own letter soon after Wakeland’s threatening one. He had written it nine days after states, in the middle of the night, at his desk in his room as his mother and Voorhees slept, just one sentence that he remembered as clearly as if he’d written it down yesterday: If you say anything to Rachel, if you even go near her, I’ll tell everything—to the school, to the cops—EVERYTHING. The next morning, he rode his bike over to the post office. He dropped the letter in the slot and then rode down to the beach and spent the school day there. He never went back to the pool, never spoke to Wakeland again, even as his mother and Voorhees begged him not to let his embarrassment at states ruin his relationship with the coach.
Now Hernandez set Wakeland’s letters on top of the Polaroids of Lucero and the picture of Phillip, and ran his hand through his hair. “We can get him another way,” he said, gesturing toward the letters.
Ben thought of Natasha, of her final declaration to him. He wanted to be the kind of man she expected him to be, the man she believed existed in him. Like he said to Tucker, the fear he felt now was Wakeland. Hiding it, living in shame, meant Wakeland still had a grip on him. Unless Ben stopped letting him.
“No,” Ben said. “This other kid, Phillip, is out there. It can’t be about me anymore.”
Hernandez nodded. “This will break wide open,” he said, “especially now that you’ve had your fifteen minutes. You ready for that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You won’t have a choice, if we move forward.”
“That’s probably a good thing.”
Hernandez looked at him a few moments.
“All right,” Hernandez said. “I’m going to get a couple patrols to keep an eye on that apartment. The coach walks in there with that kid, we’re going in. It’s my case. I’ll take care of it.”
Ben nodded, stood to walk out, but paused at the door.
“The Sinks,” he said, “Limestone Canyon, it runs north to south. If they’ve pushed the serial into the canyon, there’re basically only two ways out. There’re a lot of places to hide, but if you block up the north and south ends of the canyon, you’ve got him locked in.”
—
HE GOT HOME fifteen minutes before Rachel and Emma pulled into the driveway. When the wheels crunched on the gravel, Ben was there to meet them, and when Rachel stopped the car, he leaned his elbows on the door.
“Come take a walk with me,” he said to Rachel.
Emma was standing by the open door of the passenger side, watching the two of them.
“Em,” Rachel said, “go get started on your homework.”
Emma closed the door and walked up to the house, glancing backward twice before pushing through the front door.
Rachel waited until Emma was safely inside. “I’ve got Crucible essays to grade.”
“Rach,” he said. “Come on, I have to talk to you.”
“Talk to me here.”
“No,” he said. “Just, please, take a walk with me to the top of the hill.” He wanted to ride, wanted to get out on the horses, but he wasn’t going to leave Em here alone until they caught the serial. “It’ll be easier up there. I can’t explain.”
She stared at him and finally nodded.
They walked up the trail to Quail Hill in silence, an awkward five minutes that assailed him with doubt. Fog was pushing in from the ocean, and the sun turned to shadow and back again. At the top, they could see down into Bommer Canyon, where a front-loader was tipping over the last wall of the cowboy camp he and his dad used to rest at. They’d build a gated community here, homes with backyard pools, three-car garages.
“Come on, Ben. What is this?”
He turned to her and smiled nervously. He had almost told her, years ago. They had been married barely six months, and had just moved into the Marina Del Rey apartment. Ben was working on a criminal justice degree from Long Beach State—the only four-year college that would take him with his grades, without a scholarship, without swimming—and Rachel was up at UCLA working on an English bachelor’s. They’d just discovered that Rachel was pregnant, six weeks along, and they’d spent the evening looking through catalogs full of crib
s, her face shining with excitement. He couldn’t sleep that night, and through their bedroom window he watched a police helicopter circling on the other side of the freeway, its spotlight flashing back and forth through the dark sky. Twenty minutes or more it kept circling, its rotors incessantly humming, the Nightsun flooding the ugly streets with white light.
“I have to tell you something,” he had said, finally.
“What?” she had said with a dreamy late-night smile, her hand on her belly as though she could already feel the baby there. He wanted the relief of sharing it, of having her take some of the burden of it from him. But in that split second he realized there was no relief in telling her. He would have to explain everything, tell her all the ugly details, explain how it happened, explain how he could have let it happen, and he didn’t have answers to those questions. She was carrying his child, and all he had to offer her was grief with the admission.
“God, I love you,” he said, the back of his throat swelling, threatening tears. “I don’t deserve you.”
“It’s because you know that,” she said, a wry smile on her face, “that I love you.”
They both burst out laughing, and then he was inside her, his head buried in her neck, her lips kissing the top of his head, the helicopter circling outside in the dark.
“Sit down,” he said now.
She gave him a skeptical glance.
“Please.”
They sat together on a jumble of rock, looking down over what was once their house. The city, still glowing in late-afternoon sun, spread toward the mountains in the east.
“A case is being built,” he said, “that implicates Lewis Wakeland in the abuse of boys.”
“What? Coach Wakeland?” She shook her head in disbelief. “What’s the evidence?”
He took a deep breath. “Me. I am.”
She jerked her head back to get a clearer look at him. The sun disappeared behind a ribbon of fog, reappeared, and then disappeared again. She stared at him, her hand on her lips.