The Boys from Santa Cruz (18 page)

“It looks like the Easter Bunny threw up on you.”

“That’s a good one, chief. Not new, but good.” Pender and McDougal went back a long way together. They’d shared an apartment as recruits, and after graduation they’d both been posted to the Arkansas field office in Little Rock, where during their rookie year, Pender had taken a bullet meant for McDougal. True, it was only in the buttocks, but a grateful McDougal had saved Pender’s job at least twice in the intervening decades, and he still ran interference between Pender and the Bureau-cracy on a regular basis.

Of course, even with Steve McDougal running interference, there was a price to be paid for individualism in the buttoned-down, black-Florsheimed world of the FBI. Pender would never make AD, SAC, or even ASAC, and after twenty-three years on the job, he had gone as high on the GS pay scale as a special agent could go. But he doubted he’d have been any happier in management, or that any bump in salary could possibly equal the satisfaction that came with getting serial killers off the street. And besides, Pender sometimes argued, when you were as bald and homely as he was, having people make fun of your clothes was something of an improvement.

Their minimum daily banter requirement fulfilled, McDougal leaned back in his desk chair and laced his hands behind his head. He was in shirtsleeves; the diagonal silver stripes of his
navy blue necktie matched his thick, brush-cut hair to perfection. “What’s up?”

“I think we’ve got a live one out in California. Kid from Santa Cruz—”

McDougal groaned.

“—name of Luke Sweet, Junior. Luke Senior was the perp in that snuff porn case in Marshall County, back in ’85. You loaned me out to Izzo in Organized Crime for the stakeout, remember?”

“Refresh me.”

“There were two filmed, or I guess I should say videotaped murders, but they dug up three female bodies altogether. Luke, Jr.—Little Luke, we called him—was implicated in one of the snuff films. He also strangled his girlfriend and threw her body over a cliff, nearly killed another boy, and according to the records Thom Davies pulled for me today, he was also a suspect in the murder of an Indian pot dealer in Stockton. But his grandparents managed to pull some strings, got him declared non compos, and committed him to a private mental hospital. Place called Meadows Road. Which burned down last month, allegedly with him in it.”

“Whose
allegedly
is that—yours or the locals’?”

“Mine,” replied Pender, unapologetically. “My gut tells me there’s a good chance it was Little Luke who torched it, and an even better one that he survived the fire.”

“Does your gut have any…What’s that word? Oh yes:
evidence
?”

“A week after the fire, somebody killed both of Little Luke’s grandparents.
Overkilled
them and scattered the pieces. And when I talked to the forensic pathologist who identified Sweet’s remains, she admitted they had no body—the ID was based on a process of elimination.”

“And our jurisdiction?” McDougal said dubiously. “Last time I checked, this was still the
Federal
Bureau of Investigation.”

“So was the original case, the snuff video. And we were called
in to consult by both the Marshall County and Humboldt County sheriff’s departments.”

“That’s a tad thin, don’t you think?”

“Steve, please, don’t go all Bureau on me now. I have one of my bad feelings about this one. I think this kid’s alive, I think he’s out for revenge, and I think more people are going to die unless we catch him soon. The way I see it, either we pursue this aggressively
before
he kills again or we sit around with our thumbs up our asses as per usual, waiting for the next corpse to turn up.”

McDougal said nothing; neither did he break off eye contact. “Put me in, coach,” pleaded Pender. “This is what I
do,
this is what Liaison Support is
for.
”

His boss sighed, shook his head like a mark who’d just made his choice as to which shell the pea was under, and wasn’t at all sure he’d gotten it right. “I’ll give you a provisional okay. Here are the provisions. First of all, what with the manpower drain from Oklahoma City, the Bureau is seriously understaffed. So I want this handled expeditiously. I’ll give you two, three days, then I want you back at your desk. Secondly, it’s only May and our budget’s already shot to shit, so you’re going to have to fly coach, rent a compact car, and stay at a Motel Six or the equivalent. And third, you are not to step on any toes, local or Bureau.”

“Three days, on the cheap, no toes,” said Pender, who was already halfway out the door. “I read you five by five, and I guarantee you, you will not regret this.”

He closed McDougal’s door behind him. Pool beckoned him over to her command station/front desk.

“I hear and obey,” muttered Pender, veering toward her. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Here, this is for you.” She handed him a small gray rectangular object with a plastic faceplate, telescoping antenna, and rounded corners.

“What is it, a new pager?”

“No, it’s a cell phone.”

“Kind of small, isn’t it?”

“That’s how they’re making them nowadays. I’ve put my number on speed-dial and set the ring tone for ‘Moon River,’ if that’s all right with you.”

“Peachy.”

“And here, this device is to charge the battery, and this one is for charging it when you’re in your car. So from now on, no excuses, no road trip disappearances. You can reach us twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and we can reach you.”

“Oh, swell,” said Pender.

Without the magic words
Federal Bureau of Investigation
after his name, it took Skip a little longer to track down Dr. Gallagher than it had Pender. But what he lacked in official standing he more than made up for by his refusal to take no for an answer. Or yes, for that matter. Even after Sergeant Bagley of the Santa Cruz County Coroner’s Office finally agreed to pass on his request for information to the appropriate forensic pathologist, Skip continued to pester him. After his second follow-up call, he received a chewing-out from the beleaguered sergeant. “What the hell’s your problem, Epstein? I gave her the message. If she wants to get back to you, she will, so don’t call me again.”

Skip apologized as meekly as you can when you’re grinning from ear to ear, then popped into the bull pen, waved a twenty in the air like Captain Ahab holding up the golden doubloon, and offered it to the first man or woman who could come up with a name and contact number for a female forensic pathologist who worked with the Santa Cruz coroner. His operatives, an independent-minded bunch who would have bitched about, forestalled, or even
ignored a direct order, dropped everything they were working on and threw themselves into the challenge.

The winner was Sandy Pollock, a tiny, T-shirted, jeans-wearing single mother in her mid-thirties whose forearms were blue to the elbows with tattoos. “There’s only the one,” she said, handing him a slip of paper with one hand and snatching the twenty from Skip’s fingers with the other. “Dr. Alicia Gallagher. Contract pathologist. The first number’s her office at U.C. Santa Cruz, the second’s her cell.”

“Fine work,” said Skip, to a chorus of grumbling. “Thank you, one and all.”

He made the call from his office, spinning his chair around to face the picture window overlooking the Marina Safeway parking lot. “Hello, Dr. Gallagher. This is David Epstein, Epstein Investigative Services in San Francisco. I’ve just been talking to Sergeant Bagley. I believe you were the lead pathologist on the Meadows Road investigation?” All true statements—just not connected.

“And…?”

“I’d like to ask you about your identification of one victim in particular, name of Luke Sweet.”

Long pause. Long, long pause.

“Dr. Gallagher? You still there, Dr. Gallagher?”

“I’m here.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Luke Sweet—is there a possibility he’s still alive?”

“That’s, um, currently under review.”

“Which means there
is
a possibility he’s still alive.”

“Which means precisely what it says.”

That was all Skip could get out of her, but more than he’d expected. Obviously there was now some official doubt as to whether Luke Sweet had perished in the Meadows Road fire. This didn’t necessarily mean he’d killed his grandparents or kidnapped Judge Brobauer, thought Skip—just that, alive, he’d be the number one suspect. And at the moment, there was no number two.

The answer is in the Book.

Asmador opens his eyes. The light in the tumbledown barn is dim and fawn-colored; dust motes dance in columns of sunlight shining through holes in the riddled roof. He unzips his sleeping bag to the waist, then reaches in and feels around at the bottom of the bag until his fingers brush the familiar, nubbly-textured faux-leather cover. He opens the Book at random on his lap, positioning his magnifying glass between the page and a pencil-thin shaft of sunlight. Even with the glass, the microscopic text is difficult to decipher—Asmador’s low forehead is furrowed in concentration—but luckily he only needs to make out a few words to fill in the rest from memory.

And at the bottom of the imaginary shoe box,
reads the illuminated paragraph,
there’s one last, dim snapshot of the traitor Epstein waving good-bye as they drag me away…

Epstein! A younger man than Brobauer, presumably with a stronger heart. Maybe this time the vultures can be tricked or persuaded to tear off a hunk of some living flesh—that’s a little wrinkle Asmador came up with all on his own, for extra credit with the Infernal Council, as it were; just thinking about it energizes him, motivates him out of his sleeping bag.

He stumbles outside, his joints still stiff from sleeping on the dirty wooden floor, and relieves himself against the side of the barn, then hurries back inside to get dressed: denim shirt, jeans, denim jacket. He peels a dozen or so bills off a brick of twenties from under the floorboard of the abandoned van to replenish his roll, checks to make sure the .38 is loaded and ready in the glove compartment of the BMW.

It takes half an hour to drive to the Marshall City Public Library. The librarian behind the checkout desk glances at Asmador
disinterestedly as he enters, then turns away. His senses on full alert, he heads directly for the wall of yellow-and-black California telephone directories in the back. Having neglected to bring the Book along with him, he closes his eyes to visualize it, then mentally flips through the pages until he finds the part he’s looking for.

…a skinny guy with fading reddish brown hair…two buddies cruising the Golden State…a private investigator from San Francisco.

San Francisco it is, then. Taking the appropriate directories down from the shelf, Asmador checks out the white pages first. There are dozens upon dozens of listings for Epsteins, but no Skip. So he flips to
I
for
Investigators
in the yellow pages, and hot damn if there isn’t a quarter-page advertisement for Epstein Investigative Services, featuring a photograph of the proprietor, captioned “David ‘Skip’ Epstein, Licensed Private Investigator.”

Asmador quickly memorizes the address on Buchanan Street, then turns back to the residential listings. There he finds an entry for one Epstein, David, on Francisco Street, which he also commits to memory. Then he flips to the map section of the directory, traces out a route with his fingertip.

Good job!
thinks Asmador triumphantly as he reshelves the directories.
And what’s more, you did it all by yourself.

“Oh, did you?” whispers a voice in his ear. “Did you really?”

Asmador whirls around, but there’s no one there. Just a faint whiff of demon—they smell like burned matches, in case you’re interested—and the echo of Sammael the Red’s mocking, sac-shriveling laughter.

The flying dream again. The school yard—Skip’s old elementary school. The usual chaos: a game of tag, kids running, dodging, shrieking in pretend fear. Skip stumbling, limping, ducking, hiding, making up in stealth what he lacks in speed. But the crowd of kids keeps thinning out and thinning out, until there are only two of them, Skip and the big kid who’s
it
. The sky is growing darker, the big kid is closing in on him, and Skip is clumping along as best as he can, pushing off on his good leg,
ka-thump, ka-thump.
The school yard is deserted except for Skip and his pursuer when Skip suddenly realizes this is no longer a game and starts running for his life. He’s running fast, faster than he’s ever run, and smoother, too, zooming along, picking up more and more speed, until the
next thing he knows he’s airborne, with the ground rushing along beneath him and his pursuer falling behind, growing smaller and smaller. And just as Skip is beginning to understand that he’s flying, really flying—

Most of the covers were on the floor when Skip awoke. The exhilaration of dream flying had given way to a pervasive feeling of loss and longing. But that was the way that particular dream always went: as soon as he realized he was flying, it was over.

Leaving his bedclothes and pajamas on the floor—today was Thursday, the maid’s day—Skip downed two Norco tablets, then took a hard-won dump (opioids’ll shut you down faster than seeing a highway patrol car in the rearview mirror), and a long hot shower.

On his way out, he paused to inspect his appearance in the hall mirror. Straw-colored sport jacket, open-necked shirt of royal blue oxford cloth, navy slacks; curly hair moussed and shiny. He patted through his pockets to make sure he had his keys, money clip, wallet, and cell phone. As he reached for the doorknob, his eyes were drawn to the lacquered, mushroom-shaped umbrella stand, where the cane his chiropractor had given him two months ago stood gathering dust.

No, not today,
he told himself. Because to Skip’s way of thinking, using a crutch when he could still manage without one would be like, well, like using a crutch.

The morning
Chronicle
was still on the doormat.
PROMINENT ATTORNEY STILL MISSING
had been relegated to the local news section. “Caddy still dead,” muttered Skip—he couldn’t get over how quickly the poorer and darker of the two victims had become a nonperson.