The Forgotten (30 page)

The girl was
a stick figure: one-dimensional arms and legs with almost no body. She had thin brown hair—long and straight and dull. Wide waiflike brown eyes were set over small lips. Her nose was red and dripping. She wiped it with a bony finger.

“She has a terrible cold,” Doreen said.

“Go upstairs, Mrs. Frammel,” Decker told her. More force was in his voice. “We’ll be fine.”

Doreen looked at Erin. The young girl nodded.

“I’m leaving the doors open,” Doreen announced. “Shout if you need anything.” Then she started the journey up the steps. Decker waited until he heard the footsteps recede. Then he sat on the edge of the bed. She was sitting on the opposite corner, legs tucked under her wasted body, head against propped pillows.

Decker pulled out his notepad and a small tape recorder. “Do you mind?”

She shook her head.

“I need you to talk, Erin. The recorder doesn’t pick up head movements.”

“You can record it. I don’t care.”

“Good.” Decker adjusted the volume, then set the machine in the middle of the bed. “How long have you been using?”

Erin’s eyes jumped around, landing on the machine.

Decker said, “I’m not going to bust you. I’m just curious.”

“I dunno. Over a year.” She rubbed her nose, then got up and closed the door. She plopped back down onto the bed, bouncing the tape recorder as she did so. “That’s why I stayed with Darrell so long. He supplied me.”

“What happened to the biker you took off with?”

“A real bummer.” She straightened her spine. “I thought he was gonna be my meal ticket…but then he made me work for it.” Her mouth turned downward. “Asshole.”

“What about Darrell?”

“He’s an asshole, too. A sick puppy, but so are most guys. But he didn’t make me work for my shit. All I had to do was give him what he liked, the way he liked it. Sex games—him and her.”

“‘Her’ is Ruby Ranger?”

She nodded.

“What kind of sex games?”

She shrugged.

“Did he take movies?”

“None that I saw.” She sniffed deeply. “The two of them…they liked to pick up teenagers at a party…screw them…mess with their heads. That’s what they really liked to do…mess with their heads.”

“How’d you meet him?”

She scratched her scalp with a dirty nail. “The biker that I went off with ran with a pack. The leader gave me to Darrell for money. Weird. Like they sold me for a grand or something.”

“Sold you?”

“Yeah, but it turned out okay. I didn’t have to turn tricks.”

“What
did
you have to do?”

“Just play the little games…get tied up and scream a lot…you know, act like I was scared.” She made a face, stuck out her tongue. “Stupid, but it beat the hell out of turning tricks. I think I could have made the break—Darrell wouldn’t have hunted me down—but I decided to stay. It was better than home.”

“Your home life was that bad?”

Her face turned hard. “My parents are assholes. My mom’s this perfect soccer mom who won’t stand up to my dad, who’s a super asshole. My sister’s the princess. I’m the dumb one in the family. Me, I could never do anything right. It was all about how stupid I was, how ugly I was, how I wouldn’t ever be anything because I was stupid and ugly….” There were tears in her eyes. “He never trusted me. He always went through my drawers. At first, he didn’t find anything, because I didn’t do anything. Later on, he found my stash. He locked me up in a place for users. God, I was only smoking pot, and he acted like I was this strung-out H addict. So he sent me away to the school for fuckups. I ran away. After that, he said he was sending me to reform school or juvenile hall or something even more shitty than the fuckup school. I told him over my dead body. And then I slugged him. Then he slugged me back. I fell and hit my head. The asshole almost put me in the hospital.”

“Why didn’t you report him?”

Tears fell from her eyes. “He has connections. The easiest thing to do was to take off. My mother was really mad that my father hit me. Of course, she wasn’t mad enough to throw him out. Instead, she suggested we all go away for a little time out. So we went to Woodstock. That’s where I met Brock.”

“The biker.”

She nodded, then slumped back down in the pillows.

Decker tried to be objective, but it was hard. All these wounded lives.

She went on. “Darrell was a perv, but at least he didn’t hurt me. And he gave me junk. He could afford it. He was always flush.”

“The Baldwins paid him well?”

She shrugged.

“What did he tell you about them?”

“Not much. I didn’t ask questions about things that weren’t my business.”

“What was your business?”

“Mostly I helped Darrell at PEI. At first, I thought he was a lunatic, but I didn’t care ’cause he was giving me money. Then after a while…I don’t know…I got into it. Darrell started making sense. Especially the stuff about the Jews controlling everything. Because when you got a father like mine—the most controlling asshole in the world—it’s easy to believe that. That’s what Darrell and I really had in common. We both hated our fathers!”

Somehow it always boiled down to bad parenting. Which made Decker feel queasy. Sure, there were lots of other explanations for Jacob’s rebellious behavior—the loss of his father at a young age, the molestation, the remarriage of his mother, a new baby, and his innate temperament. But did Decker do all he could have done to get the boy through it? All those nights working instead of taking care of business at home.

Erin continued. “After a while, I got into it…the whole PEI philosophy. He told me he got most of the ideas from some genius guy named Ricky Moke. I’m not the sharpest knife in the block, but it didn’t take long for me to figure out who Moke was. But I went along with it anyway. That was Darrell’s thing—different identities. He had a million of them. Most of them came out in his sex games.”

“When did Darrell use the name Darrell Holt, and when did he use Ricky Moke?”

“Ricky Moke was his baaaad boy.” She leaned forward and grinned knowingly. It made her look years older and decades harder. “He actually became this Ricky guy with separate identity pictures, a Social Security card, a
graduation
diploma. God, that was real impressive to me. I told him to get me one of those. It’s like Darrell cut himself in two. As Darrell, he was the political activator. Sometimes it was real weird because Darrell would talk about Ricky like Ricky was another person. A real ’nother person. Like they were really two people—”

“I get it.”

“And he’d say things like…like although he admired Ricky, he didn’t like him because Ricky was doing illegal stuff like hacking and bombing and being a sexual pervert. Tell you the truth, I liked Ricky better than Darrell. He was more exciting. Ricky’s wanted by the FBI, you know.”

“For computer hacking.”

“For hacking and for bombing.”

“I haven’t found the bombing to be true.”

“Yeah, look again. I wouldn’t put it past Ricky.”

“Ricky
is
Darrell, Erin.”

“I know,” the teen answered. “But they’ve been two separate people for so long, it’s hard to think like that. Darrell…he’s an alien, but he’s brilliant.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Why should you doubt it? Most pervs are brilliant.”

“No, Erin, that’s not true. There are many stupid perverted people.”

“Not the ones I know.”

“That may be. But I’ll tell you something. The smart ones are often the most dangerous, because they are able to plan their crimes. These murders didn’t happen at random. They were planned, and we both know who planned them.”

Water pooled in her orbs. She didn’t answer him.

Decker said, “I need you to tell me where Darrell is.”

“I don’t know—”

“Yes, you do know!”

But she denied it with a fierce stare and a shake of the head. “
No, I don’t know!
Darrell’s a survivalist, in case you forgot. He was in Old Man Baldwin’s camp when he was sixteen or seventeen. He hated it, but he did learn how to survive in the wild. What he didn’t pick up from camp, he learned later from Hank Tarpin after he joined PEI. Darrell’s been going in and out of the woods for years as Ricky Moke. He claims he’s got all these little campsites all over the state. He could hide out forever. You’ll never find him. The FBI hasn’t.”

“Can you give me a guess?”

“Nope. And if he called the apartment to say where he was going, I didn’t get the message. Soon as I heard about Ernesto and the doctor getting whacked, I took off.”

“The unit number you gave us was bogus. Where were you living?”

“With Darrell.”

“And it didn’t bother you that Darrell hadn’t come home that night?”

“Nah. Lots of times he was out all night.”

“Doing what?”

“How should I know?”

“Guess.”

“Maybe with Ruby.”

“And where does Ruby live?”

“Beats me.”

Decker thought a moment. Something was off. At the time of the synagogue vandalism, Ruby was living at home. Then she moved back up north. Wanda had given him the former listing. But then she disappeared and assumedly came back down to L.A. So where did she reside?

Alice Ranger swore that she hadn’t seen her daughter in months. The empty room seemed to bear that out. And Wanda had yet to find a temporary address for Ruby. She had checked with the DMV, the DWP, the gas company, local credit-card companies, Ruby’s former bank…No new address had popped up. So now Decker was beginning to think that maybe Ruby had a Ricky Moke–type alias as well. Both of them—Darrell and Ruby—knew how to manipulate the Internet. They could enter any world from thousands of miles away under hundreds of different aliases. It made for a vast arena for potential crime that was staggering.

Erin was talking.

“…stuffed all my shit into a paper bag and came here. I never did tell Darrell my real last name. But I know he could have found out if he wanted to.” She bit a nonexistent nail, her fingertips being raw and red. “Do you think he’ll come here?”

“The thought has crossed my mind.”

“This place is patrolled, you know. But the guys don’t look too scary. I could probably take ’em down if I had the weapons.”

Decker’s eyes went to Erin’s young face. The steely way she had spoken those words had sent a chill down his spine. “I’ll put in a call to West L.A. police for protection. They’ll send over some cruisers to keep watch until we can sort this out.”

“That’s good. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to my aunt. She’s the only person in the world who has ever been
nice
to me.”

Stated so plaintively. She was a broken soul, but that didn’t mean she was harmless. Street junkies—especially young ones who have experienced so much rough trade in so few years—were notoriously unpredictable.

“So even when Darrell was living with you, he stayed out all night?”

“Sometimes.”

“Ever tell you about it?”

“Nope. I just assumed he was with Ruby, doing their thing.”

“And you didn’t care what Darrell was doing?”

“You mean, was I jealous?” She laughed. “I didn’t care as long as he was nice to me.”

Nice, as in supplying her habit. He said, “I was thinking more like the illegal things. Weren’t you worried about the police catching up with you?”

“A little. Still, it was worth the free junk.” She rubbed her nose. “Think I should get tested?”

“For AIDS?”

“Yeah. When I started living with Darrell, he made me get tested. I was negative. I’ve only done it with, like, three other guys since then. Think I should get tested again?”

“It’s a good idea.”

“Yeah, I thought so.” She sniffed. “You’re gonna take me into, like, custody, right?”

“Right.”

“I gotta get a lawyer, right?”

“Right,” Decker said. “If you can’t afford one, we’ll get you one.”

“My parents are flush. They’ll hire me out someone.” She looked at him. “What about my jones? I’m not going cold.”

Barking orders as if she had a choice. But why rile her up? It would just make it harder to get her in. “If you cooperate, I’ll try to get you into a hospital under a doctor’s supervision.”

“You mean like methadone?”

“
If
you cooperate,” Decker stressed. “A couple more questions, Erin. Did you ever meet Ernesto Golding?”

She didn’t have to think about the answer. “Long time ago. Ruby brought him over to PEI a couple of times. Right before he trashed the synagogue.”

“Did you know that Ernesto was going to trash the synagogue?”

“You mean, like, before he did it?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

“No, I didn’t know before…just afterward. Because it was all over the news.”

“Erin, I think Ernesto had help in that crime. What do you think?”

“I dunno.”

“Help like in Darrell Holt help.” He looked at her. “It’ll help you to tell the truth, Erin. Help you inside your heart, and help you with the law.”

“Far as I know, Darrell wasn’t part of the synagogue mess.”

Decker smoothed his mustache. “How about Darrell as Ricky Moke?”

“Nah, not him either.”

Decker studied her. “You honestly think that Ernesto vandalized the synagogue all by himself?”

“I dunno. All I’m saying is Darrell didn’t do it. Or Ricky. Or me.”

“What about Ruby Ranger?”

She shrugged. “Nah, Ruby would never do it. Might break a nail or something. The girl never got her hands dirty. But I could see her manipulating Ernesto by using sex as a reward. That’s what they both liked to do…manipulate people.”

She looked down, her face reddening. Decker asked her what was on her mind. After more prodding, she finally spoke. “I was just surprised about Ernesto’s murder. It was…a shock.”

“You had no idea?”

“
No!
It freaked me out, man.” She sounded genuine. “I thought he was—” She stopped herself.

“Part of the Baldwin scam?” Decker filled in.

“I was gonna say ‘I thought he was one of us,’” Erin answered. “I don’t know if he was popped on purpose or he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”