So tell me something fucking new, Decker thought. He clasped his hands together to prevent himself from lashing out. He wanted to throttle the boy. Just take him by the shoulders and shake him to death. Instead, he reined in his anger but not impatience.
“Speed it up!”
“I’m getting to it. This is very hard!”
Decker swallowed, counted to five. “Go on.”
“Anyway, I bolted. Just started walking, swearing that this was it. Never again, never again, never again! And I really meant it. Suddenly, Ruby caught up with me, grabbed my arm, and told me to slow down…that she wanted to talk to me. It was like her whole attitude changed—totally. Completely different. Like two separate people. It was weird.”
And eerily familiar. Both of them—Darrell and Ruby—masters of different identities. “Keep going.”
“We started talking. We talked for about twenty minutes outside the house…about two houses away actually. Then she asked me to take a ride with her…just to talk.”
“And did you?”
“Not right away. First, we went to her car and talked there.” He looked away. “Just talking.”
Decker gesticulated for him to quicken the pace.
“She had pills.” His eyes started watering. “I know I’m weak. It totally sickens me how weak I am. But that’s not the point right now. We both got totally wired…blitzed.”
“What did you take?”
“Some kind of stimulant…uppers. After a few minutes, things began to happen.”
Fury coiled up inside Decker’s chest. He clasped his hands tighter. “What kind of things?”
“Amorous things.” Jacob couldn’t look at him. “I was high and so was she. She started touching me. She knew what she was doing. I got incredibly turned on.” He whispered, “I don’t have to spell it out for you, do I?”
“You had sex.”
“It’s more complicated than that. She started the car and took me somewhere—I guess we were driving for about ten, fifteen minutes…it’s hard to get a time frame because I was so high and so aroused. We couldn’t have gone that far from the party, but it was somewhere pretty isolated, deep in the hills. She took me to this shack of a house…a place she’d obviously been before many times.”
For the first time, Decker could see the point of the confession. She took him somewhere. To a location!
Erin’s words: Try any point in the hillside between Santa Barbara and Orange County. I don’t think he’s left Southern California.
A location.
Don’t rush him, don’t rush him, don’t rush him. He’ll remember better if you don’t rush him.
Jacob dropped his hand from his cheek. The palm print had darkened. Decker felt shame coursing down his spine, but he didn’t dare interrupt. He watched his stepson drum the kitchen table.
“Nothing much inside,” he said. “Just a big room with a big bed. She had a closet filled with things—costumes.” He licked his lips. “Things for her fantasies.”
Decker waited.
“She had horrible, horrible, horrible fantasies.”
“What kind of fantasies?”
“She wanted…” He buried his face in his shaking hands. “She wanted to dress me up in a costume. She said it would really turn her on and make it really great.”
The boy had turned ashen. He dropped his voice to a whisper.
“It was an SS officer’s uniform. It might have even been the real thing.” He squeezed his eyes shut. But tears leaked out anyway. “She had it all—the leather whips, the boots, the ropes—she wanted me to pretend like I was…you know…one of them. She told me to speak to her in German. For some reason, she thought I knew German. Why the hell would I know German?”
He paused.
“She…she wanted me to tie her up. She wanted me to slap her…whip her. She wanted me to…to pretend to rape her. She said that’s how she got off.”
No one spoke. And now Decker understood where Ernesto’s fantasies were coming from…that combined with his grandfather’s vague origins. What vile seeds had she planted in that poor boy’s head? What had it done to his stepson’s fragile psyche? The seconds dragged on to infinity. Decker felt his whole body shake, felt his heart coming through his chest. He covered his mouth with his hand.
“Did you do it?”
Jacob shook his head in protest. “I was drugged, but…something primal…” Tears poured down the boy’s face. “I suddenly got viscerally ill. From intense arousal to utter nausea in, like, one breath. I thought I was actually going to die. I saw the grounds of the earth opening—like Korach in the desert—and had this vision of me falling down and down and down….”
A long pause.
“And…” Decker said.
Jacob wiped his eyes and forced himself to look at his stepfather. “It gets confusing for me here…because I was really doped up. I must have made tracks…and pretty quickly because she was out of breath when she caught up with me. We were outdoors, in the middle of nowhere. At least, I had no idea where I was. Ruby was a mess—horrible. She apologized profusely. It threw me off. I’d never seen her so upset before. She said she was just playing a little game. That she had played the game other times with other guys and they all loved it. She just wanted me to have some fun with her. She was trying to…loosen me up. Then she said she was sorry that I got so mad. She became very contrite. She started to cry. She kept crying and crying and crying. She wouldn’t stop! At that moment, I don’t know…I felt sorry for her.”
Again, he blotted his wet eyes with his fingers—silent tears that reddened his pale blue eyes.
“I had no idea where I was, and she was so…distraught. I thought about…well, at least, maybe I should calm her down so she would take me home. Just end this hellish nightmare. I swore to God that if I ever got out of this mess, I’d take steps to clean myself up for good. Stop stealing, stop going to the parties, stop taking drugs, stop goofing off—”
“Jacob, this woman is missing—”
“I know I’m rambling,” Jacob whispered. “I’m trying to cut it to the bare bones, all right?”
“Okay.” Decker leaned over and Jacob involuntarily flinched. Nausea swept through Decker’s stomach, his dinner turning over in belly acid. He took the kid’s hand and kissed it. “Go on, son. It’s all right.”
Jacob heaved his shoulders. “We went back to the place. I tried to tell her that it was okay, that I wasn’t mad, that we should both just go home.” He looked away. “We started being physical again. I don’t know how it happened.”
A long pause.
“We…had sex. Just…plain…no-frills sex. It was over in about…thirty seconds.” He faced his father’s stern eyes. “I was a virgin.”
Decker felt his heart beating so fast it took his breath away. The kid was in so much pain, all he wanted to do was hug him and make the agony go away. But he held back. “Did she ridicule you?”
“No…just the opposite.” He pulled his hand away and touched his sore cheek again. “It would have been better if she had. Then I could have hated her with a pure hate. Instead, she told me to lie still…while I was still in her…that I’d become aroused again in a few minutes, and the second time, it would last longer and it would be better. And that’s exactly what happened.”
Decker ran his fingers through thick hair. “Did you use a condom?”
“Yes.”
“You have to tell me the truth with this one.”
“Dad, I swear on Abba’s grave—”
“You don’t have to go that far,” Decker said. “Where’d you get protection if this tryst was totally spontaneous?”
“I don’t think the house belonged to Ruby. I think it belonged to a guy. He had a drawer filled with them. I think all the shit—all the stuff—the whips and boots and uniforms—I think it was his stuff, not hers.”
Darrell Holt’s sexual hideaway. Decker said, “What happened after the sex?”
Jacob said, “We got dressed
and she took me home. The ride was totally silent. Nothing. Not even a good-bye.” He blew out air. “I never saw her again. Never talked to her, never talked to any of them really. It was over a year ago, and I swear I haven’t touched anything stronger than an aspirin. I also swore off girls until I’m…older. It was just…too easy. The whole thing scared me to death! In a way that you never could. Nothing like a brush with hell to make you feel suddenly grateful. Since then, I’ve been playing catch-up with my life and it hasn’t been easy.”
“And you think that’s where Ruby is? At this shack?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“You have guts, I’ll give you that. You did the right thing by telling me.”
“I had no choice. We’re all Tselem Elokim—created in God’s likeness.” He smiled sadly. “Guess the rabbis taught me something.”
Decker closed his eyes and opened them. “I’m sorry I slapped you. It was reprehensible.”
“I lost my temper, you lost yours.” He gave another smile. “I would have slugged you back, but you’re bigger than I am. I’m pragmatic if nothing else.”
Decker got up. “You need some ice for that cheek.”
“Why? Is there a red mark?”
“Yep.”
“A big one?”
“Huge.” Decker took out a cold pack and gave it to him. “Here.”
Jacob put it on his cheek. “I get hit with basketballs all the time. I’m always getting red marks and welts on my face because I’m so fair. It’ll go down in a couple of hours. Don’t worry about it.”
Decker was quiet, feeling drained and sick. He was at least five inches taller and outweighed Jacob by sixty, seventy pounds. He was not only a failure as a father, but also a failure as a human being. Still, he had a job to do, which he supposed made him a decent cop. One out of three, pretty good odds in baseball.
Jacob patted his hand. “I mean it, Dad. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
Decker said, “Is there anything you remember about your location?”
“Yeah. That was the point of this whole awful thing. As we were riding home, I saw a street sign—Herald Way. About five minutes, maybe ten minutes later we were back on Devonshire. If I had been driving back then, I would have noticed more. But this was before I had my driver’s license. I didn’t know the streets like I do now.”
“How old were you?”
“About two months shy of sixteen. She was about twenty-two. Pretty heady stuff, huh. Obviously, she got off on younger boys—me, Ernesto, there were probably others.”
Consistent with what Erin had told him. Decker said, “She took you somewhere in the mountains, but not far from town.”
“Yeah.”
“If I drove you around up there, do you think you might remember more?”
“Possibly.”
Decker stood up. “Then let’s go for a ride.”
“What about Hannah?”
“You know where Sammy is?”
“Yeah.”
“Call him and tell him to come home to baby-sit. This takes precedence.”
“I could call up Eema—”
“Don’t do that!” Decker found his voice had risen. “She’d kill me if she found out I was taking you house hunting for a maniac.” His eyes went to his son’s cheek. “She’d also kill me for other reasons. I’m a first-class jerk sometimes!”
“Join the club.” He got up from his chair. “Forget it, Peter. I’ve been riding you pretty hard this last year. Whatever went on here will stay between us.”
Decker couldn’t remember the last time the boy had called him Peter. The anger was still there. He said, “While you’re calling Sammy, I’ll call up Webster and Martinez. I want some professional lookout riding with us. Besides, maybe they’ll know where the hell Herald Way is.”
35
It showed up on the map as a tiny vein that bled into the mountains. According to the latest L.A. street atlas, Herald Way did boast a single listed cross street—a bigger road but only in the comparative sense—called Manor Lane. Bert Martinez drove; Tom Webster sat shotgun, with his hand grazing against the butt of his holstered gun. In the back, Decker was belted in, but kept leaning his body over his stepson, covering him like a woolen overcoat. The valley daytime temperatures had reached triple digits, and the night remained warm and stuffy. Jacob was sweating under his father’s weight.
“Dad, I can’t breathe.”
“Stay down.”
“I am down! If I were any more down, I couldn’t see out the window. That sort of defeats the purpose—”
“Slow down, Bert.” Decker looked around. No streetlights; it was dark, empty, and wooded. The organic smell of decomposing foliage was mixed with the pungent stink of skunk markings. The humid air rang with a chorus of insect mating calls, accompanied by hoots from the local owls. The traffic from the distant boulevard came off as a continuous purr. “Okay, now stop here.”
Martinez put on the brakes. They were at the marked intersection.
“There are the street signs—Manor Lane and Herald Way.” Decker leaned over to the front seat and pointed out the windshield. “It’s right in the headlights.”
Jacob nodded.
“Do you remember this spot?”
The teen leaned forward as well. “Yeah…” Jacob’s heart was pounding. “Yeah, this is it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I remember the way the signs pointed down…off-kilter. You know, I should sit up front—that’s where I was seated when she drove me home.”
“I know. But the back is safer. You’re right behind where you were, so your view is pretty much the same.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have a view from the front windshield. It’ll make a difference, Dad.”
“We’ll have to forgo it. Which way from here, Jacob?”
“I…I’m not sure.”
“That’s okay. Take your time.”
His stepfather’s voice was soothing. Jacob’s mind was a swirl of unpleasant memories. He did some hand gestures that simulated turns, but shook his head. “I remember going down. So which way does the road rise the most?”
“To the left,” Webster answered.
“Then go to the left,” Decker ordered. “Sit back and put on your seat belt.”
“All right, all right. Stop being such a mother hen.”
“If I were a mother hen, you wouldn’t be here.”
Martinez turned left, dragging the Honda along a partially paved road. The shocks, even at the current crawl, protested with each bump, dip, and pothole. Gravel churned under the tires. Bert flipped the switch into all-wheel-drive mode. “I knew this car would come in handy one day.”
“First time you’ve ever used it?” Webster asked.
“For mountain roads, yeah. My wife uses AWD when she goes out in heavy rain.”
“Anything look familiar?” Decker asked his son.
Jacob’s eyes scanned the terrain of shapes and shadows. “No. It…it all looks the same.”
“Don’t worry. We’re going on a long shot. Nothing is expected from you.”
Which was good because nothing was what he was going to get. Jacob swallowed hard. It was impossible for Peter to imagine how drugs could distort perception. But being stoned had its paradoxical effects. Some things from that night had been indelibly etched in his mind, as unique as his thumbprint. The eucalyptus tree, for instance, its trunk bent and cracked from what had been recent canyon winds. It had reminded Jacob of a hunchbacked crone holding a walking stick, a role he had cast for Ruby even after they had been intimate. Even as her life hung in limbo, Jacob couldn’t help but demonize her.
His eyes scanned the clumps of mountainside, hunting for the unusual shape. During the summer, everything was in full bloom, the clumps of fertile fauna casting silhouettes against the charcoal sky. Branches danced in short breaths of wind. He hadn’t told his father about the broken trunk, because then Dad would have asked him every ten seconds if this one
or that one was the correct tree. For the integrity of his own psyche, Jacob couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes.
Where was that tree? Did it even exist?
The car inched along its path. Webster spoke. “Is this place on Herald Way?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Jacob answered.
“So we should be looking for a side street?”
“I guess.”
“Trouble is, there aren’t any listed side streets.”
“I remember turning…” Jacob licked his lips, now cracked from habit and heat. He took out a stick designed for chapped lips and smeared it over the raw areas. “It was a long time ago.” And I was flying at mach speed. “It could have been just a twist in the road.”
“There are certainly enough of them,” Martinez said.
And then he saw the crone. Son of a gun, it was still there, walking stick and all. Jacob said, “We’re on the right pathway. That broken tree…” He pointed. “I remember seeing that. I bet there’s a turn—”
“There it is.” Martinez brought the car to a standstill. “On the left.” The roadway wasn’t much bigger than a hiking trail, but seemed wide enough to accommodate a car. In the gleam of the headlights, he could make out thin tire tracks—a lightweight motorcycle or a mountain bike. “Should we go up, Loo?”
“We’re getting into tricky territory.” Decker was staring at the narrow passageway. “We’ve got to think about an escape route. If he came after us on a motorbike, we’d have some maneuvering problems.”
“But he’d be out in the open,” Webster said. “We’d be protected by the car.”
Martinez said, “But he could also run rings around us, pick off a tire or two while we couldn’t get near him. We should go up on foot.”
“Then we’d be sitting ducks,” Webster said.
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