The Devil's Menagerie (8 page)

“How close did you look, Harry? Did you climb down there by the creek?”

“No! No, I just looked over from the bridge—the wooden overpass on the bike path. You can see for yourself, it’s not very far from the highway. I could see her all right. I didn’t have to get any closer.”

“How did you know she was dead?”

“Well, uh, I just … it was the way she was lying there, facedown and, uh, not wearing anything, you know. I just assumed.” Remembering that startling vision, Harry Malkowski turned pale. He licked his lips again. “I rode back to the Bright Spot as fast as I could and called 911. Wasn’t that, uh, the right thing to do? I mean, should I have gone down there to make sure …?”

“You did fine,” Braden said.

He leaned back in the booth, glancing around the diner as he sipped his coffee, which had become lukewarm. The blond waitress, aware of him, grabbed the coffeepot and started toward him. Braden smiled at her and waited while she refilled his mug.

“Everything okay here, gentlemen?”

“Fine.”

“You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“You want a doughnut?”

Braden grinned. “Come to think of it, I haven’t had breakfast. You got a cinnamon roll?”

“The best. Fresh this morning.”

“You, Harry?”

Harry Malkowski shook his head. He seemed to turn a little paler at the thought of food.

“One cinnamon roll, coming right up,” Iris said.

She bustled off, short skirt twitching above long, shapely legs that wore only their summer tan. Harry Malkowski was not too under the weather to notice.

Braden had not seriously expected the chemistry student to be a legitimate suspect, and after talking to Harry he was even less inclined to think so. It was not unusual for criminals, even murderers, to telephone the authorities about their crimes, but the method of choice was the anonymous tip. For a killer to make a 911 call and identify himself would be nervy as hell, and Harry Malkowski simply didn’t fit that picture.

“Did you recognize her, Harry? Ever see her before?”

Harry shook his head almost violently. “No! I mean … d’you think she’s a San Carlos College student? Oh shit …”

“We don’t know yet,” Braden said. “She’s the right age, and the crime scene isn’t that far from town.”

“You think she was killed right there?” Harry was stunned, as if the possibility had not occurred to him.

“The crime scene is where the victim was found, not necessarily where she was killed,” Braden explained. He fished in his wallet for one of his less beaten up cards. “Thanks for your help, Harry. Here’s my card. If you think of anything else, call me, okay? You’ll have to come into the station to make a formal statement. Can you do that today? Is that a problem?”

“Uh, no, sir.”

Braden looked at Harry Malkowski’s hands again as he took the card and slipped it into his wallet. Harry was a chemistry student, and Braden could picture those slim hands pouring liquid into a vial. He could picture them playing the piano or writing a letter home to his mom. What he couldn’t picture was those same hands as lethal weapons.

D
AVE
L
INDSTROM SLEPT
all day Saturday. That night, watching a favorite vintage movie on cable, a thriller with Ray Milland called
The Big Clock
, he missed the television newscasts. As a consequence he didn’t become aware of the murder of an unidentified young woman found in the wetlands south of San Carlos until he opened the paper Sunday morning. A half-dozen killings on a weekend being fairly normal for the Los Angeles area, the death of another Jane Doe did not rate a headline story. But it was on the front page of the
Los Angeles Times
down in the lower left-hand corner. The woman, according to the story, had been sexually assaulted and savagely beaten. She had been dumped beside a creek where her nude body was found early Saturday morning, without any identifying clothing or jewelry.

The story disturbed Dave. How could such things happen? Yet they had become commonplace in America, the stuff of countless news stories, films and novels, and even more nightmares.

Later that morning, after the family returned from church, Dave welcomed Glenda’s suggestion that he take Richie for a drive to the beach. She wanted him to be alone with Richie, who had been withdrawn and uncommunicative since the stunning Friday night phone call. Glenda knew that Richie admired Dave far more than Dave realized. “See if he’ll talk to you, honey. Maybe he’ll open up. This is hard for him. He has to let some of his feelings get out.”

Dave figured an outing with Richie would be good for both of them. He had forgotten that the road to the coast ran past the wetlands mentioned in the lurid news story.

There was a traffic backup for a quarter mile north of the point where the highway narrowed for a bridge crossing a creek. A sheriff’s car was parked along the side of the road, and some other cars had stopped on the shoulder on both sides of the bridge. There were also spectators gathered on the bike path just east of the highway, looking down at the creek where it ran under the bridge. Dave suddenly realized they were ogling the site where the murdered girl’s body had been found.

“Dad … can we stop?”

“The deputy is waving us on. I guess they have enough people stopped there.”

Clusters of flowers were tied to the railing of the wooden bridge on the bike path, along with candles, small cards and signs Dave couldn’t read. Another phenomenon of our times, he reflected, the creation of shrines to strangers who had been brutally slain or killed in automobile accidents. Telling ourselves that each of us matters.

Richie twisted around to peer back as they passed over the bridge, but his view was blocked off as Dave drove on, resuming highway speed.

“I wonder what it was,” Richie said.

“An accident, probably,” Dave said, justifying the white lie to himself. “Hey, you’re the one who gets queasy at the sight of blood, remember?”

“Yeah, but … an accident’s different.” There were a lot of people hanging around for just an accident, Richie thought. And there were no wrecked cars on the highway.

They drove in silence toward the ocean. The discussion over the “accident” had broken the ice with Richie, and when Dave caught his first glimpse of the surf ahead he decided it was as good a time as any to try to draw the boy out.

“About Friday night, Richie … are you okay with that phone call?”

After a brief hesitation Richie said, “Yeah.”

“What’s bothering you—what he said over the phone, or the fact that your father is here after all this time?”

“I don’t know … why hasn’t he been to see me?”

“Maybe he’s planning on doing that. It’s possible he’s not ready … and he wanted to get you and your mom thinking about him. He’s been away a long time.”

“I know.”

“You were what, two when he left? Do you remember much about him at all?”

“Well … I remember him. I mean, I’d know him if I saw him.”

“Sure, you’ve seen that picture your mom has of the three of you. She didn’t want you to forget him. I didn’t either, Richie. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah … I guess.”

Dave turned south along the oceanfront, wishing the sun would come out.

Richie said, “Why did he hang up? Why didn’t he talk to Mom or you?”

“I don’t know. But you’re old enough to understand that your mom and your dad had problems. Lots of married people do, even when they have kids. You must know some of your friends at school whose parents are divorced, just like your mom and …”

Dave was having trouble referring to Ralph Beringer as Richie’s dad. More trouble than he had anticipated. This isn’t about your feelings or your ego, he reminded himself. It’s about Richie’s being able to sort out
his
feelings.

“Why did he stay away so long?”

“He was in the Air Force. A soldier doesn’t get to choose when he comes and goes. The service tells him.”

It was a lame excuse, Dave thought. Soldiers in a peacetime army had leaves. Beringer hadn’t returned to the States for eight years because he chose not to. And even if such a trip was impractical, he could have done more for his son than send an occasional Christmas card or present. There had been few enough of those, no more than a half-dozen contacts of any kind that Dave Lindstrom knew about in the last six years.

To be fair, during part of that time there was a Cold War, along with a Gulf War and a number of other dustups involving the U.S. military. Ralph Beringer had not always had time on his hands.

“He doesn’t care about me.”

Dave sighed. “If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have come back now. Think about that, Richie.”

Dave parked in one of the big deserted parking lots at the beach and they walked across the white sand toward the pounding surf. The ocean looked gray and cold under the low clouds, but on the plus side the chilly weather had kept the usual Sunday crowds away, leaving the long expanse of beach relatively deserted. A few brave surfers were visible near the pier about a half mile distant, paddling out to catch a wave. A week ago, with the beach area enjoying warm Santa Ana winds and temperatures in the eighties, this strand had been paved with tanned flesh.

Carrying his shoes, Dave walked along the wet sand close to the breaking waves, while Richie searched for shells and interesting flotsam deposited by the tide.

Why had Beringer come back now?

Glenda was understandably upset. Perhaps she was afraid Beringer would demand visiting rights with Richie, a concern that had never surfaced while he was overseas. Suddenly the status quo was being overturned. The rules might change, dramatically altering the comfortable assumptions of their lives. Hell, Dave couldn’t blame Beringer if the man wanted some time with his son. He didn’t particularly like the idea, but …

What did Ralph Beringer really want? And what kind of a man was he to create such fear and revulsion in the woman he had once presumably loved?

Uncomfortable questions for a day at the beach. How did the line go? Life’s not a day at the beach ….

Staring out over the gray expanse of ocean, Dave felt a prickling sensation, as if someone were watching him. He turned quickly. No one. The strand was almost deserted. Only the seagulls making spidery tracks in the wet sand as, like Richie, they searched the foam left behind by receding waves.

*    *    *

G
LENDA
L
INDSTROM FELT
as if she were breaking apart.

She had tried to keep up an appearance of normality that morning, through Sunday Mass, a family breakfast of pancakes and sausages, the Sunday papers scattered around the living room in the usual cheerful chaos. Because the Raiders were blacked out on television—Richie’s favorite team—he hadn’t resisted her suggestion that he and Dave head for the beach.

Now Elli was across the street at the Schneiders’ house—five-year-old Connie Schneider was her best friend—and Glenda was alone. No need to smile now, to act unconcerned, to disguise her shaking hands with busywork.

She picked up the living room with a kind of frantic energy. Stacked the morning dishes in the dishwasher. Started a load of clothes in the washer. Walked back through the house and found herself peering out the front windows toward the street. Looking for what? No need to answer.

She went up the stairs, her hand absently caressing the polished banister. She loved her old house, the cornices and woodwork, the stairway, the details that couldn’t be found in new construction. Too expensive, everyone said, even while finish carpenters were begging for work. But this morning the house felt different. Emptier. Quieter. She caught herself listening to every creak and crack. A scraping on the roof made her nerves vibrate. A branch of the huge old jacaranda in the backyard touched the roof, and Dave had been promising to trim it back. He wanted to do it himself. Tree surgeons in Southern California were tree butchers, he said, creators of stunted skeletons. With its lavender petals the jacaranda was gorgeous in bloom, and neither of them wanted to see it butchered.

The house felt colder. In part that could be attributed to the gray, sunless autumn day, but Glenda knew it was more than that. The house had always felt warm, sheltered, secure, even in winter.

Everything had changed in the instant a stricken Richie had turned toward her, holding the phone in a trembling hand.

“Damn you!” she said aloud. “Damn you, Ralph, how could you do that?”

Even as she voiced the question she knew that it was exactly the kind of thing Ralph Beringer would do.

Why had he come back now? What did he want?

She stood at the front bedroom windows and stared out again at the quiet street, as if expecting to see Beringer standing there, returning her gaze with mocking nonchalance. Even after eight years she would know him at a glance. And she was afraid.

Ralph Beringer was the reason her home felt cold, vulnerable, no longer safe.

Dave made her feel secure and happy—God, how happy he had made her! In her eyes he had only one serious fault: his unwillingness to believe the worst of people. Glenda had looked into the pit of man’s potential for unimaginable cruelty and lived with the knowledge of its awful presence; Dave didn’t even know the pit was there.

Even Friday night, right after Beringer’s call, and again Saturday morning he had been infuriating. Listening to his patient attempts to explain or justify Ralph’s callous action, she had fought back a scream.
My
God,
how can you be so blind? Don’t you know what’s out there?

“Maybe he wants to try to make it up to Richie—not being there for him all these years,” Dave had reasoned. “It’s not surprising he doesn’t know how to go about it.”

He doesn’t want forgiveness! He wants to destroy us!

“Has it occurred to you that he might not even call again? He could just have been passing through Los Angeles.”

He’s not just passing through. He’s not going away, Dave … not until he does what he came for. I know him
.

“Honey, we’re going to have to help Richie work his way through this. We can’t ignore it. If Beringer calls again, I want to meet him.”