Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (5 page)

    
“She was
up in San Gabriel Canyon,” he began, his head lowered. “On a fire road. An
abandoned dance hall from one of those resorts they built back in the 1920s.”

    
“Up
there past the Morris Dam, right? On the way to Crystal Lake.”

    
“On the
east fork of the river,” Endicott said. “Closed down years ago because of the
mudslides, but the kids . . . that never stops them. They were having—what do
they call it when they dance all night, like pagans? All those drugs, all that
depravity.”

    
“A
rave,” said Raszer. “At least, they did in the ’90s.” Uneasiness fell over him
like a toxic dew. “I remember this story,” he said. “I was on a case, not
paying much attention to the news, but I remember. Kids were hurt. How did Katy
fit in?”

    
Raszer
was suddenly aware of a tremor, like that immediately preceding an earthquake.
Instinctively, he glanced up at the overhead lamp to see if it was shaking,
then to Brigit, whose toes were visible just inside the hallway, and finally to
Monica, whose eyes directed him back to the table and to Silas Endicott’s
hands. The source of vibration was in the old man’s breast, transferred through
his arms to the solid oak.

    
“She’d
fallen in with a bad crowd, Mr. Raszer, but why, and by whom, she was taken is
not clear.” Endicott’s voice thickened with a mixture of grief, shame, and
rage. “The boy who witnessed it was high on pills, and whatever he saw must
have . . . ” Endicott released his grip on the brim of his hat and folded his
hands in a moment’s silent prayer. After that, he spoke with odd, third-person
detachment.

    
“Katy
left the dance hall with four boys. It was cold up there—the altitude is about thirty-six
hundred feet—but she didn’t have a coat on.” He stared blankly, right past
Raszer’s left shoulder. “One of the boys was the witness. The other three were
animals. They tempted her, plied her with liquor. Lured her up the road to an
old Dodge convertible. Told her they had pills in the trunk. Then they . . .
they—”

    
Monica
cleared her throat.

    
“I
understand,” said Raszer. “Did she manage to escape?”

    
“No. Not
. . . in the way you are thinking. The fourth boy, the one who gave the story
to the police, backed out. He ran into the woods while the others pinned her on
the trunk. He testified that while the first boy was assaulting her, a black
car came up on the left and stopped. It came out of nowhere, he said. Out of
the fog. Three men in dark business suits got out. One of them pulled the boy
off her; another picked up Katy and tossed her into the backseat. He stayed
with her. The other men threw the boys against the trunk and . . . snapped
their necks. One, two,
three
.”
Now, finally, Raszer’s unexpected guest
looked him in the eye. “I don’t know, Mr. Raszer, if my daughter met with
avenging angels or with a fate even worse than what those hooligans had in
mind.”

    
“And the
boy, the witness . . . was he able to describe her abductors, or rescuers, or
whatever they were?”

    
“All he
could or would say was that they wore dark suits and had dark hair. For all
intents, they were without faces.”

    
“What
about voices?” Raszer asked. “Accents, a foreign language?”

    
“No.
They didn’t speak.”

    
“Any
indication whatsoever that Katy knew them?”

    
“The boy
couldn’t say. It happened too fast.”

    
“And the
car? I don’t suppose he got a plate, but what about make and model?”

    
“It was
a Lincoln Continental,” said Endicott.

    
“A
Lincoln. On a fire road at thirty-six hundred feet.”

    
“The
police have nothing. Nothing . . . after a full year. My daughter is a face on
a milk carton.”

    
Raszer
squinted, a habit whenever something didn’t fit. The tic, along with his
tight-lipped smile, lapis lazuli eyes, and a certain impishness of face,
accounted for the fact that even strangers sometimes mentioned his resemblance
to Steve McQueen.

    
“If this
were solely an abduction,” he said, “that wouldn’t surprise me. L.A. County has
the most undernourished investigative force in the country. If your child is
missing, you might as well be in Somalia. But we’re also talking about a rape
and a triple homicide.” He turned to Monica. “What’s been on the wires over the
past year? Why hasn’t there been more noise about this story?”

    
Monica
leaned forward, a strand of streaked hair falling over her right eye. She blew
it away with a practiced blast. “The boys’ parents”—she glanced at Endicott—”if
I’m not mistaken, Mr. Endicott, were all Jehovah’s Witnesses. The local press,
even Fox News, camped out up there for a few weeks, but they got nothing. No
interviews, no public statements. And because the assailants were . . .
deceased, there were no charges filed, except against the organizers of the
rave.”

    
Endicott
kept his eyes on Raszer. “We are a close community,” he said quietly, “and we
take care of our own. This—this event—was a grievous wound. None of us wished
to pour salt in it. The Overseers addressed the matter. Twelve young men and
women were disfellowshipped, along with two parents who had prior knowledge of
the . . . the
rave
, and said nothing.
The bodies of the three . . . the bodies were cremated. We closed the books and
we closed our doors, and waited for the plague to pass over.” He sighed deeply
and clutched his chest. “The only one left outside was my Katy.”

    
The
blood was quickly draining from Silas Endicott’s face. Raszer telegraphed a
look of concern to Monica and, after a beat, pushed back from the table.

    
“Let’s
get some air, Mr. Endicott,” he said, standing. “Bring your tea. I have a deck
out back. Covered.” He came around the table and took Endicott’s arm, and this
time, the proud man did not refuse the assistance. “Brij,” he called to his
daughter as they reached the door. “How about you and Monica heat up that
minestrone? Maybe our guest would like something warm.”

    
They had
been on the deck for fifteen minutes before Raszer returned to the subject of
Katy Endicott. They stood at the rail, at first in silence, then talking about
the ceaseless rain, the local flora, and finally about Silas Endicott’s faith.
About the Witnesses’ rejection of the Trinity, their strange insistence that
Christ had been put to death, not on a cross, but on a single upright beam
known as a
stauros.
About the sect’s
proscription against the mixing of blood, and hence its members’ refusal of
blood transfusions, even in critical circumstances. Raszer was curious about
all these things, and considered them as important to the case as forensic
evidence. Endicott addressed his queries without the slightest hint of doubt,
and all the while could not take his eyes off the bare-breasted, wild-eyed
statuary in Raszer’s garden.

    
Brigit
came out, bearing a tray with two steaming mugs of homemade minestrone.
Endicott declined, but Raszer spooned into his with relish. His appetite,
dormant for weeks, had returned with the prospect of a mission. After keeping a
respectful silence while Raszer ate, Endicott posed a question of his own,
though it had more the tone of a challenge.

    
“And
you, Mr. Raszer,” he asked, “are you a man of faith?”

    
Raszer
set his mug on the rail and lit a cigarette. “If you’re asking whether or not I
believe in God,” he said, directing a bluish stream of smoke toward Aphrodite,
“the short answer is yes.”

    
“Do you
believe in the power of Christ to lift mankind from its sin?”

    
“I
believe that if men followed Christ’s example, sin wouldn’t be an issue.”

    
“Then
why,” Endicott pressed, sweeping his arm out over the garden, “do you surround
yourself with pagan idols?”

    
“Because,
Mr. Endicott, every one of these images is a testament to man’s itch for the
divine. And by the way,” he added, aiming a finger east, “I think the Virgin
over there in the eggplant patch might take offense at your, uh,
characterization.”

    
“And
this ‘itch’ is something you can scratch with just any stick?”

    
“No,
sir. Although I do think that faith of any stripe—even misplaced faith—opens
doors that are closed to the faithless. That’s why I tread lightly on people’s
beliefs. I only step hard when risk exceeds benefit.” Raszer rested his
forearms on the rail and watched the smoke carried skyward on the updraft.
“I’ve been thinking on this for a while, and there are just four tests I hold
any church to.”

    
Endicott
folded his hands. “May I hear them?”

    
“It
shouldn’t charge admission. It shouldn’t ask you to give up anything but your
vanity. It shouldn’t substitute one authoritarian regime for another.”

    
“And the
fourth test?”

    
“That’s
the hardest,” said Raszer. “I haven’t found a church that can pass it yet—not
when it comes down to the bone. If anything were ever to happen to my own
daughter, Mr. Endicott, I’d want my church to tell me why I should keep
living.”

    
Moments
passed, with only the drumming of the rain to mark time. Raszer’s cigarette
burned down to the flesh between his fingers, and he didn’t budge. The blue jay
reappeared with a new beakful of straw, and Silas Endicott spoke his piece.

    
“If you
think you can help me find my Katy, Mr. Raszer, I’d like to hire you.”

    
“Okay,”
said Raszer, flicking away the cigarette. “Good. I assume you won’t mind my
talking to the police, and to the boy who witnessed her abduction.”

    
“Of
course not. But I’m not sure what more you’ll learn.”

    
“I’d
like to speak with the parents of Katy’s assailants. And with the other elders
of the church.”

    
“I don’t
know, Mr. Raszer. I—”

    
“Tell
me, Mr. Endicott: You said Katy was a pious girl. But she was also nineteen.
Was there a point—before all this happened, before the rave—maybe even some
years back, when she started to question the faith . . . and your authority?”

    
Endicott
drew a labored breath. “I guess it happened longer ago than I like to admit.
She was led astray.” He shuddered again, and a pungent odor came off him. “Katy
has a sister. Ruthie. A girl I can’t accept as seed of my seed; her mother’s
girl. When Constance, my wife, left, Ruthie went with her. But, like all
malignancies, she returned in time. Wanted Katy to go live in Taos. That’s
where they’d . . .
settled
.”

    
“And
Katy was drawn to her?”

    
“Like a
moth to a flame. She’d just turned seventeen. The age of Eve. Katy was strong,
but not strong enough. Ruthie wouldn’t leave her be. She’d moved into a trailer
up in Burro Canyon with a couple of apostate boys. Older boys. They were there
that night. They were the ones who . . . ” He grimaced. “May their black souls
never rest.”

    
“Ruthie’s
trailer mates were Katy’s assailants?” Raszer asked, making no effort to
conceal his surprise. Endicott offered only a grunt. “So . . . how long did all
this—”

    
“For a
summer,” said Endicott. “At first, it was just Ruthie, showing up on the porch
with her face pierced and her stomach bare, like some sweet sickness Katy
couldn’t help but succumb to. I chased her away, banished her, but it didn’t
stop. Next time she showed up, Henry Lee was with her.”

    
“Henry
Lee?” Raszer asked.

    
 
Endicott passed over the query. “Katy ran out
before I could stop her. Came home late. Drunk. I took her before the Overseers
that Sunday. They renounced Ruthie and sanctioned Katy. We tried to build a
wall around her . . . ”

    
“And
that made the forbidden fruit even more tempting,” Raszer said.

    
“Katy
never argued, never raised her voice against me. But I knew her faith was gone.
Ruthie’d punched holes in it. She came around one night with both boys. Henry
Lee, and that . . . that miscreant. It was a Friday in August. I’d gone out to
minister to one of our families and left Katy alone. The four of them went off
on two motorcycles, got high on cheap wine and pills, and broke into the
Kingdom Hall.”

    
The wind
from the northeast, the very wind that crests the San Gabriels above Azusa and
careens down through boulder-strewn arroyos into the L.A. Basin, had begun to
drive the rain onto the deck. Raszer would have cursed but for his new client.