Beyond This Point Are Monsters (13 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you know Robert Osborne personally, Mr. Valen­zuela?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How would you describe his physique?”

“He was tall, not heavy but well-muscled and strong.”

“Could two small men, both wounded, one of them quite badly, have been able to wrap Mr. Osborne's body in blankets and carry it out to a vehicle?”

“I can't give you a definite answer to that. Under spe­cial circumstances people can sometimes do things which ordinarily would be impossible for them.”

“Since you can't give a definite answer, perhaps you will tell the court your opinion.”

“My opinion is that O, the man who was wounded slightly, went to get help from his friends.”

“And got it?”

“And got it.”

“Mr. Valenzuela, in California jurisprudence it is held that where absence from any cause other than death is inconsistent with the nature of the person absent, and the facts point to the reasonable conclusion that death has occurred, the court is justified in finding death as a fact. However, if the person at the time he was last seen was a fugitive from justice or was a bankrupt, or if from other causes it would be improbable that he would be heard from even if alive, then no inference of death will be drawn. That's perfectly clear, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now as Mr. Osborne's lawyer I can testify he was not a bankrupt. Was he a fugitive from justice, Mr. Valen­zuela?”

“No, sir.”

“Was there, to your knowledge, any other cause, or causes, which would prevent Mr. Osborne from getting in touch with his relatives and friends?”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

“Can you think of any reason at all why an inference of death should not be drawn?”

“No, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Valenzuela. I have no more questions.”

As Valenzuela left the stand the court clerk rose to announce the usual afternoon recess of fifteen minutes. Ford asked that it be extended by half an hour to let him prepare his summary, and after some discussion the extra time was granted.

The bailiff once again opened the doors. He was get­ting bored and weary. Dead people took up a great deal of his time.

CHAPTER TWELVE

like an animal
that had sensed danger in its sleep, Mrs. Osborne awakened abruptly and completely. Her opening eyes were alert, ready to spot an enemy, her voice distinct, ready to challenge one: “What are you doing here?”

“You didn't answer your phone,” Devon said, turning from the window. “I came out to see why. The front door was unlocked, so I walked in.”

“To check up on me.”

“Yes.”

“As if I were some doddering old fool.”

“No. Mr. Ford suggested I find out why you didn't return to court this afternoon. He thought he'd made it clear that you were expected to testify.”

“He made it quite clear.” Mrs. Osborne sat up on the bed, running her fingers along her chin and cheeks and forehead like a blind woman reacquainting herself with her own face. “I don't always do what's expected of me, especially when I think it's wrong. I couldn't stop the hearing but at least I could keep from playing a part in it.”

“And you feel that's a victory?”

“It was the best I could do at the moment.”

“At the moment,” Devon repeated. “Then you have something else in mind?”

“Yes.”

“Such as a new reward?”

“So you saw the paper on my desk. Well, I was going to tell you anyway.” She stood up, holding the collar of the blue robe tight against her throat as if to protect a vulnera­ble place. “Naturally you disapprove. But it's too late. I've already arranged for the first ad in the paper.”

“It seems like a useless gesture.”

“Ten thousand dollars is more than a gesture. It's a good solid chunk of reality.”

“Only if it buys something,” Devon said. “And there's nothing to buy. The other reward didn't bring in a single usable piece of information.”

“This second one will be different. For instance, I'm going to arrange for a much wider distribution of reward posters. And the posters themselves will be redesigned. This time we'll use at least two pictures of Robert, full face and profile—you can help me choose—and the wording will be kept very simple and direct so that the meaning will get across even in the smaller Mexican villages where hardly anyone is literate.” She let out a sudden little laugh, almost like a schoolgirl's giggle. “Why, I feel better already just talking about it. It always cheers me up to take positive action on my own instead of waiting for other people to make the decisions. I'll put on a fresh pot of coffee to celebrate. You'll have some, won't you, dear?”

She left the room without waiting for an answer, and after a brief hesitation Devon followed her out into the kitchen. Mrs. Osborne poured water into the percolator and measured the coffee with a plastic scoop, humming to herself in a loud nervous monotone intended to cover up awkward silences, discourage awkward questions. It was like the piano playing Estivar had told Devon about during the noon recess:
“She'd start playing to cover up, a piece with good firm chords like ‘March of the Toreadors' . . . ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers' . . . Bang bang bang . . . Some­times I swear I can hear the sound of that piano, though it isn't even there any more, I helped the movers take it out of the house myself.”

Suddenly the humming stopped and Mrs. Osborne turned, frowning, from the window. “I don't see your car in the driveway. How did you get here?”

“Leo brought me.”

“Oh.”

“He had no trouble finding the place,” Devon said in a careful voice. “Apparently he'd been here before.”

“I sent for him two or three weeks ago to discuss a personal matter.”

“Ruth.”

“He told you, then.”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Osborne sat down at the table across from Devon, one corner of her mouth hooked in an iron smile. “He probably repeated that ugly story about Ruth and Robert.”

“Yes.”

“Of course you didn't believe it. Why, Robert could have had dozens of girls, young, pretty, rich. It's unthink­able that he'd have bothered with a woman like Ruth who had nothing. It simply doesn't make sense, does it?”

Devon said, “No,” because it was expected of her. She no longer knew what to believe, what made sense and what didn't. Each new piece of information cast a shadow instead of a light; Robert was gradually disappearing into darkness, and the months they had spent together were losing their outlines, changing shape like clouds on a stormy day.

The coffee had begun to percolate and for a time its cheerful bubbling was the only sound in the room.

Then Mrs. Osborne spoke again: “After she died, the gossips had a field day, of course. The funny thing was, they didn't blame Leo for neglecting his wife, or Ruth for seeking the company of another man. They blamed Rob­ert.”

“Why?”

“Because he was young and vulnerable.”

“That's not reason enough.”

“His very existence was reason enough for some peo­ple. Wherever Robert and I went, we stepped into the midst of whispers. The phone would ring and there'd be no one on the line, just the sound of breathing. Letters arrived, unsigned. I finally called the Sheriff's office and they sent Valenzuela out to the ranch to discuss the situa­tion. Well, we talked but there was no communication. He was carrying around in his mind a picture of Robert as the neighborhood seducer and destroyer of women, and I couldn't shake it loose. He's been prejudiced against Rob­ert right from the beginning, that's why he never really tried to find him. He didn't want to. Oh, he put on a good show, taking all those trips to the labor camps and into Mexico. It fooled his superiors for a while but they caught on eventually and fired him.”

“I heard that he quit because he got married again and his new wife didn't like him being in police work.”

“Nonsense. He'd never have given up the power of such a job, let alone his seniority and his pension, for the sake of some little tramp.”

“How do you know she was a little tramp? She might—”

“Word gets around. Valenzuela was fired. I heard it on the valley grapevine as well as the Mexicans'
parra grande.
”

“I talked to him this afternoon,” Devon said. “He apologized for the way things have turned out. He seemed very sincere. I can't believe he didn't do his best to find Robert.”

“Can't you . . . ? How do you take your coffee?”

“Black, please.”

“I'm afraid it's rather weak.”

“That's all right.”

Mrs. Osborne poured the coffee, her hand steady. “What else did he have to say? Surely he didn't just walk up to you and tell you he was sorry.”

“He said the case is over.”

“As far as he's concerned it's been over for a long time.”

“No. He meant that I—you and I—shouldn't go on hoping.”

“Well, his advice was wasted on both of us, wasn't it? You never really started hoping, and I don't intend to stop.”

“I know that,” Devon said. “I saw the cartons.”

“Cartons?”

“In the bedroom closet. The ones you told me you were going to take to the Salvation Army.”

“I made no promise. I agreed to take them because I didn't want to argue with you. You were so anxious to get them out of the house. It seemed the natural move to make, bringing them here instead of giving them away to stran­gers. Some of the things in the cartons were very personal. His glasses.” Her voice tripped over the word, fell, rose again. “How could you do that, Devon—give away his
glasses?
”

“They might help someone to see. Robert would have approved.”

“It saddened me terribly to think of a stranger wearing Robert's glasses, perhaps using them to see ugliness Robert would never have seen because he was such a good boy. No, I couldn't bear it. I put his glasses away for safekeep­ing.”

“What are you going to do with the rest of his stuff?”

“I thought I'd fix up the front bedroom, just the way his room was at the ranch, with the kind of things boys like— college pennants on the walls, and surfing posters and, of course, the maps. Did Robert ever show you his old maps?”

“No.”

“My sister sent them to him for his birthday one year. They were framed copies of early medieval maps showing the world as it was presumed to be then, flat and sur­rounded by water. At the edge of one map there was a notice saying that further areas were unknown and uninhabitable because of the sun's heat. Another said simply, ‘Beyond this point are monsters.' The phrase appealed to Robert. He printed a sign and taped it outside his door: BEYOND THIS POINT ARE MONSTERS. Dulzura hated the sign and wouldn't go past it because she believed in monsters, probably still does. She refused to clean Rob­ert's room unless I stood in the doorway to protect her, just in case. Dulzura's lucky. The rest of us have monsters too, but we must call them by other names, or pretend they don't exist . . . The world of Robert's maps was nice and flat and simple. It had areas for people and areas for monsters. What a shock it is to discover the world is round and the areas merge and nothing separates the monsters and ourselves; that we are all whirling around in space together and there isn't even a graceful way of falling off. Knowledge can be a dreadful thing.”

Devon sipped the coffee. It was like hot water, slightly colored, barely scented. “How old was Robert when he was given the maps?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Jaime's age?”

“A little more than that, I think.”

“Fifteen, then.”

“Yes, I remember now, it was the year he grew. He'd been rather small until then, not much taller than the Esti­var boys, and he suddenly started to grow.”

He was fifteen,
Devon thought.
It
was the year of his father's death and she sent him away to school. He never really came back. She's still waiting for his return to a room decorated with school pennants and surfing posters and a warning sign on the door.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

for the last time
that day the bailiff announced that court was in session, and Ford addressed the bench:

“Your Honor, I would like at this time to summarize the events which led to the filing of the petition by Devon Suellen Osborne alleging that her husband, Robert Kirkpatrick Osborne, met his death on the night of October thirteen, 1967, and asking the court to declare him officially dead and to appoint her as administrator of his estate. Nine witnesses have been heard. Their testimony has given us a fairly complete picture of Robert Osborne.

“Robert Osborne was a young man of twenty-four, hap­pily married, in good health and spirits, and planning for the future, both the very near future—he was driving into San Diego that morning to pick up a new tennis racket, attend a growers' luncheon, visit his mother, and so on—and the distant future—his wife was expecting a child. He was the sole owner of a ranch. It would never have made him a millionaire but it was operating in the black and he had only himself and his wife to support, his mother hav­ing inherited money from her sister. The troubles in his life were minor, mainly concerned with the management of the ranch, the difficulty of getting adequate help at harvest time, and so on.

“On the morning of October thirteen,1967, Robert Osborne rose, as usual, before dawn, showered and dressed. He wore gray lightweight gabardine slacks and a dacron jacket in a gray and black plaid pattern. He kissed his wife goodbye, asked her to be on the lookout for his dog, Maxie, who'd been gone all night, and told her he'd be home for dinner about seven-thirty that evening. Acting on doctor's orders, Mrs. Osborne remained in bed. Before she went back to sleep she heard her husband outside calling the dog.

“Mr. Secundo Estivar, the next witness, testified that Robert Osborne appeared at his door while the family was having breakfast. He had the dog with him and acted very upset because he thought it had been poisoned. There was an exchange of angry words between the two men, then Robert Osborne departed, carrying the dog in his arms. It was still early when he appeared at the veterinary hospital run by Dr. John Loomis. He left the dog at the hospital for diagnosis and continued on his way to San Diego. As he drove toward the highway he saw Carla Lopez walking along the street and stopped to ask her about the possibil­ity of her two older brothers coming back to work for him. He told Miss Lopez his present crew was no good and had no experience.

“The crew he referred to was composed of ten
viseros,
Mexican nationals with visas which allowed them to do agricultural work in the United States. Mr. Estivar made a record of the names and addresses of the men but he didn't examine their visas carefully nor did he check the registration of the truck they arrived in. Such things seemed unimportant at the time. The tomato crop was ready to be picked and crated and the need for pickers was aggravated by other factors. During the preceding month one of Mr. Estivar's sons, Rufo, had married and moved to Northern California; another, Felipe, had left to look for a non-agricultural job, and the border-crossers who'd been working the fields had their minibus stolen in Tijuana and were without transportation. It was a critical period at the ranch, with Mr. Estivar and his oldest son, Cruz, putting in sixteen-hour days to keep things going. When the ten
viseros
showed up, they were hired on the spot, no questions asked.

“They remained for two weeks. During those two weeks they kept, and were kept, to themselves. As Mr. Estivar remarked from the witness box, he was not running a social club. The bunkhouse where the
viseros
slept, the mess hall where they ate their meals were out of bounds for Mrs. Estivar and Jaime and his younger sisters, for Mrs. Osborne, for the cook, Dulzura Gonzales, and even the Osborne dog. This isolation made the job of the sheriff's department not only difficult but, as it turned out, impossi­ble. The men Mr. Valenzuela spent six months searching for were hardly more than shadows. They left no tracks and no pictures in anyone's memory, no gaps in anyone's life. Their main identity was an old red G.M. truck.

“The truck departed from the ranch late in the after­noon of October thirteen. Around nine o'clock that night, as Mr. Estivar was preparing for bed, he heard the truck return. He recognized it by the peculiar squeak of its brakes and the fact that it parked outside the bunkhouse. The Estivar family kept ranchers' hours. Shortly after nine they were asleep, Mr. and Mrs. Estivar, the two sons who were still living at home, Cruz, the oldest, and Jaime, the youngest, and the nine-year-old twin girls. We have reason to believe they all slept through a murder.

“The victim, Robert Osborne, had arrived home about seven-thirty from his trip to the city. He had his dog with him, completely recovered and eager to run after being cooped up at the vet's all day. He let it out and proceeded into the house, where he had dinner with his wife. Accord­ing to her it was a pleasant meal lasting an hour or so. At approximately eight-thirty Robert Osborne went into the kitchen to give Dulzura Gonzales some money for her birthday, since he'd forgotten to buy her a present in San Diego. He took a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet. Miss Gonzales noticed that the wallet contained a lot of money. We don't know the actual amount, but it hardly matters—murders have been committed for twenty-five cents. What matters is that when Robert Osborne left the house he had in his possession enough money to constitute what Miss Gonzales called ‘a real temptation to a poor man.'

“While Robert Osborne was outside looking for the dog, his wife, Devon, went into the main living room to play an album of symphonic music which had recently arrived by mail. It was a warm night after a hot day and the windows were still closed. The drapes had been opened after sunset, but the windows faced east and south toward the riverbed, the Bishop ranch and the city of Tijuana. Only the city was visible. Devon Osborne did some straightening up around the room while she listened to the music and waited for her husband's return. Time passed, too much time. She began to worry in spite of the fact that Robert Osborne had been born on the ranch and knew every inch of it. Finally she went out to the garage, thinking that her husband might have driven to one of the neighboring ranches. His car was still there. She then tele­phoned Mr. Estivar.

“It was almost ten o'clock and the Estivar family was asleep, but Mrs. Osborne let the phone ring until Mr. Esti­var answered. When he learned of the situation he asked Mrs. Osborne to stay inside the house with the doors and windows locked while he and his son, Cruz, searched for Robert Osborne with a jeep. Following instructions Mrs. Osborne waited in the kitchen. At a quarter to eleven Mr. Estivar came back to the ranch house to call the sheriff's office in Boca de Rio. Mr. Valenzuela, with his partner, Mr. Bismarck, arrived at the ranch within half an hour. They discovered a great deal of blood on the floor of the mess hall and called the main office in San Diego for reinforce­ments.

“More blood was found later that night on a piece of cloth caught on a yucca spike outside the mess-hall door. The cloth was part of a sleeve from a man's shirt, small in size. On the following Monday children waiting for a school bus came across the body of Robert Osborne's dog, which an autopsy later showed had been struck by a car or truck. About three weeks later, on November four, Jaime Estivar spotted the butterfly knife among the pumpkin vines. The floor of the mess hall, the sleeve, the dog's mouth and the butterfly knife—these were the main areas where blood was found and from which samples were sent to the police lab in Sacramento for analysis. Three types of blood were classified, B, AB and O. Type O was confined to the sleeve; both B and AB were in considerable quantity on the floor; B was in the dog's mouth and AB on the butterfly knife.

“Additional clues turned up in the lab. Tiny fragments of glass from the mess-hall floor were identified as the contact lenses Robert Osborne was wearing when he left the house. The torn sleeve contained particles of sandy alkaline soil with a high nitrogen content indicating recent use of a commercial fertilizer. Such soil is typical of the Valley area. Mixed with the sample taken from the sleeve was sebum, the secretion of human oil glands which flows more copiously in young people, and a nu
mber of straight black hairs belonging to someone from one of the dark but not Negroid races. Similar hairs and bits of human tissue were found in the dog's mouth, as well as a shred of cloth, heavy-duty blue cotton twill of the kind used to make men's work pants.

“From a police lab five hundred miles away, a picture began to emerge of the events which took place on the Osborne ranch that night and of the men who participated in them. There were three. The only one whose name we know was Robert Osborne. Let us refer to the other two, as we did previously, by their blood types. Type O was a dark-haired, dark-skinned young man, small in stature, probably Mexican, who worked on a ranch in the area. He wore a blue and green plaid cotton shirt of the kind sold by the thousands through Sears Roebuck. He was slightly wounded near the beginning of the fight and left early, catching his sleeve on a yucca spike as he ran out the door. Perhaps O was merely trying to escape further trouble, but it seems more likely that he went to get help for his friend, seeing that things were going badly. The friend, B, was also dark-skinned, dark-haired and probably Mexican. He wore Levis and carried a butterfly knife. Lum Wing re­ferred to such a knife as ‘jewelry,' but it was lethal jewelry. A butterfly knife in the right hands can be almost as quick and deadly as a switchblade. We know that B was bitten by the dog and also that he was fairly seriously injured in the fight.

“I will not attempt to reconstruct the crime itself, how and why it started, whether it was actually planned as a robbery or a murder, or whether it was a chance encounter that turned into a homicide. We simply don't know. The lab that tells us a man's age, race, stature, blood type, clothing can't reveal what's going on inside his head. Our only clue concerning events prior to the crime was pro­vided by Lum Wing, the cook, whose quarters were in a partitioned-off area at one end of the mess hall. Mr. Wing testified that he dozed off on his cot after drinking some wine. He was awakened by the sound of loud angry voices talking in Spanish. He didn't recognize the voices or un­derstand what they were saying, since he doesn't speak the language. Nor did he attempt to interfere in the argu­ment. He made earplugs out of small pieces of paper, put them in his ears and went back to sleep.

“While the circumstances leading up to the crime itself are and will probably remain obscure, what happened af­terward is somewhat clearer. First, there is the evidence of the blankets missing from the bunkhouse—a double flannelette sheet-type blanket and two brown wool army surplus—plus the fact that no bloodstains were found out­side the mess hall. Mr. Valenzuela has testified that the body of a young man Robert Osborne's size contains be­tween six and a half and seven quarts of blood. It's a rea­sonable assumption that the body was wrapped in the three blankets and carried out to the old red G.M. truck. Ten men had arrived in that truck. Eleven left in it.

“As the vehicle moved toward the main road three things occurred: the murder weapon was tossed out into the pumpkin field; the dog was struck and killed as it chased the truck in pursuit of its master; and some of the contents of Robert Osborne's wallet, if not the wallet itself, were thrown into the riverbed. One item, a credit card, was subsequently found downstream in a pile of debris after the season's first heavy rain. Unlike other cards Rob­ert Osborne carried in his wallet, the credit card was made of a heavy plastic, indestructible in water. If the men had been ordinary robbers they'd probably have kept the card and tried to use it. But the chances are that the
viseros
didn't even know what it was, let alone that it could be useful to them.

“In hearings like this one, as your Honor pointed out, an averment of diligent search should be included. The search was diligent, indeed. It began the night Robert Osborne disappeared and has continued until the present time, a period of one year and four days. It covered an area from Northern California to Eastern Texas, from Tijuana to Guadalajara. It included the posting, by the victim's mother, of a ten-thousand-dollar reward, none of which was ever paid out because no legitimate claim was filed.

“When a man drops out of sight, leaving behind evi­dence of foul play but no body, questions inevitably arise in people's minds. Was the disappearance voluntary and the evidence faked? Would a presumption of death benefit the man or his survivors? Was he in trouble with the law, with his family, his friends? Was he depressed? Ill? Broke? In the case of Robert Osborne such questions are easily answered. He was a young man with everything to live for. He had a loving wife, a devoted mother, a child on the way, a successful ranch, good health, good friends.

“I will let Devon Osborne's own words conclude this summary. She said in her testimony this morning: ‘I was sure my husband was dead. I'd been sure for a long time. Nothing would keep Robert from getting in touch with me if he were alive!'”