The Boys from Santa Cruz Page 2

  The only good thing about the Mapes-Nguyen investigation, at least as far as Pender was concerned, was that it was over. Mapes was dead, Nguyen had fled, and one way or another, all the victims who could be identified, had been, leaving only a few charred bone fragments to be buried anonymously.

  And now that Unsub was (a) dead, and (b) an unsub no longer, having been identified through fingerprint records as an ex-con named Luke Sweet—last known address, a trailer in the Sierra foothills—Pender was hoping that the Marshall County investigation was all but wrapped up as well. He was looking forward to getting home, putting in a little R & R.

  “Going to eat some crab cakes, play a little golf, maybe get laid if the missus is in the mood,” he told Izzo, as their Bu-car, a dark blue Crown Vic on loan from the Sacramento field office, hitched on to the tail end of a law enforcement convoy consisting of basically every vehicle in Marshall County with a dome light and a siren.

  “You’re married?” said Izzo. “We’ve been working together, what, almost a week—I had no idea you were married.”

  Pender shrugged. “Yeah, well, you may have put your finger on part of the problem there.”

  5

  I suppose if I bothered to put myself in Teddy’s place now, I could work up some sorry. Back then, I was too busy putting out the fire to be anything but glad she’d killed herself instead of me. My eyebrows were singed and my face was starting to sting, so first I hosed myself off and then I dragged the hose out from behind the trailer as far as it would reach. I was still about fifteen yards short, but by aiming high I was able to arc a stream of water down onto the trunk.

  And onto Teddy, of course, who was still on her knees, but jackknifed over the trunk with her head and arms inside and her big ass sticking out. The fire hissed and steamed and bubbled, the smoke billowed out black, then white. I put the hose down and went over to take a closer look. Lucky for me I’m not squeamish, because not only was the smell completely toe-curling, but all that melted plastic and celluloid in the bottom of the trunk was hardening as it cooled. If they wanted to bury Teddy they were going to have to either cut off her head, or dig a T-shaped hole and bury the trunk with her.

  So now I’m soaking wet, slightly singed, and newly orphaned. I suppose I must have been in shock, too, because despite Big Luke’s warning, I still didn’t haul ass. Instead I hiked back up to my bus, toweled off, smeared Neosporin on some minor burns, took a couple aspirin, pulled on a pair of cutoffs and a T-shirt with WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT? hand-stenciled on the back, and rolled a fatty. Then I put a Bob Marley record on the turntable, switched on the outside speakers, cranked up the volume, then climbed up onto the roof of the bus and sat down on my lawn chair to get stoned and think things over.

  I didn’t get much thinking done, though. When I saw the turkey vulture circling low in the sky over my dad’s trailer, I could feel the anger boiling up inside me. Big Luke hated vultures. Sometimes he’d take me up into the hills and we’d use them for target practice. So I scrambled down the ladder, grabbed my thirty-ought-six and a box of shells, and crept down the path, barefooted and quiet as an Indian, with Bob Marley covering what little noise I did make.

  As it turned out, I could have driven down there in a tank and the vulture perched on the edge of the trunk probably wouldn’t have noticed. Hissing and grunting, its bald red head stabbing up and down, it tore off chunk after chunk of Teddy’s ass with its curved ivory beak, leaving deep red gouges in the charred flesh.

  I took cover behind the shed, then leaned out, took careful aim, and knocked the nasty old scavenger off the trunk with a single shot. Reloaded. Waited. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes…and here came another one. Gliding effortlessly, silhouetted black against the sky, it was an easy target. I led it a few inches, dropped it out of the sky. Reloaded. Waited. Half an hour later, a third vulture came soaring in from the north, but something, maybe the corpses of its buddies, alerted it, and it drifted away without ever coming into range.

  And now I was alone again, except for what was left of Teddy, and I was feeling so empty I almost missed the vultures. But then I had to laugh. Because in the distance, up the hill, I could hear Bob Marley singing about how he was gonna chase dem dirty baldheads out of de town.

  My next move was to drag a tarp out of the shed, drape it over Teddy and the trunk, then weigh the edges down with stones, not so much because I gave a shit about Teddy’s corpse, but because I just didn’t want to give the vultures the satisfaction. Then I searched the trailer. I didn’t find what Big Luke and Teddy called the inventory, but their personal stash was impressive. Close to two thousand bucks in cash, a couple ounces of weed, and a few grams of ice. (If you don’t know what ice is, that’s crank in a smokable form. If you don’t know what crank is, that’s meth. If you don’t know what meth is, consider yourself lucky.) I also found a bottle of Percodan in the medicine cabinet, along with all Teddy’s hormones and whatever. Swantzer, Theodora: take one every six to eight hours as needed for pain.

  I took the cash, the weed, and the pain pills, but left everything else. And now I had a hard decision to make. In the words of the Clash song, should I stay or should I go? I hadn’t done anything wrong, but when you’re fifteen, that doesn’t matter. If I stayed, there’s no way the cops would have just taken my statement and cut me loose. Instead they’d probably have put me in Juvie while they got things sorted out, then shipped me down to Santa Cruz in custody of my grandparents, Fred and Evelyn, who’d tell me what to eat, when to sleep, what to wear, and how to cut my hair.

  Either that, or they’d ship me off to some kind of foster care, probably a group home, where they would also tell me what to eat, when to sleep, what to wear, and how to cut my hair. Either place they’d make me go to school until I was eighteen.

  Of course, I could always just run away, but then I’d be homeless. Homeless with enough money and dope to make me the king of the runaways for a while, true, but then what?

  In the end, I decided to give Fred and Evelyn one more chance to do right by me, but on three conditions. One, I would get down there on my own, rather than waiting around for the cops to arrive and possibly spending several nights in Juvie while they got the custody issues straightened out. Two, I would arrive with cash and stash sufficient to see myself through the next few months. Three, I would not call first. If my grandparents didn’t want me, I decided, let them tell me to my face.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1

  Due to the length of the convoy blocking the driveway leading up to Sweet’s trailer, the two FBI agents had to hike the last few hundred yards. Pender had changed into a pre-rumpled blue-and-white-striped seersucker sport coat and peach-colored golf slacks before they left Marshall City. Izzo was wearing the same miraculously unwrinkled gray suit he’d worn throughout the stakeout and the chase, but had ditched the Kevlar vest.

  They arrived just in time to see the sheriff’s deputies pulling a tarpaulin off a bulky object in the middle of a clearing, unveiling a charred human body jackknifed over the side of a scorched metal steamer trunk. The upper half of the corpse was inside the trunk, which was filled with sooty, oily-black water. Chunks of flesh had been torn from the lower half, presumably by turkey vultures, two of which lay dead within a few yards of the trunk.

  “And me without my spoon,” Pender muttered, as the flashbulbs began to pop.

  Once the body had been photographed in situ from every imaginable angle, the deputies struggled in vain to remove it from the trunk. It wasn’t until after they’d drained off the water that they realized the head was firmly encased in eight to ten inches of melted, rehardened plastic.

  Yet another surprise was in order for the deputy who’d been assigned to free the body by chipping away at the plastic. Up close and personal, he announced, the corpse appeared to be female from the waist up and male from the waist down.

  One more important discovery was made by one of the weaker-stomached deputies. After getting a good look at the
star attraction, the man had staggered off into the bushes to launch his lunch and returned with a videocassette he’d found lying in the dirt. He handed it to Izzo, who showed it to Pender, who winced when he saw the label: Principals of Accounting, Tape 4.

  “C’mon, there’s bound to be a VCR in the trailer,” Izzo said eagerly.

  “Let me know how it comes out,” said Pender.

  Izzo thought Pender was kidding at first. He started toward the trailer, then turned back—Pender hadn’t moved. “What’s the problem, Ed?”

  Pender shrugged. “I’ve been chasing serial killers going on ten years now. I’ve seen shit that’d turn Jack the Ripper’s stomach. Half-eaten corpses, skulls stacked like cannonballs on the courthouse lawn, you name it. But up until three weeks ago, I’ve never actually had to watch the victims suffering before they died. Now it seems like everybody and their brother’s got a camcorder. Mapes and Nguyen, Sweet and Swantzer, it’s like a fad or something, and lemme tell you, podner: it’s getting real old, real fast.”

  Izzo, who’d taken a sudden interest in studying the dirt at his feet, waited a few seconds, then asked Pender if he’d finished venting.

  Pender nodded—a short, sharp nod, like a bull rider signaling for the chute to be opened.

  “Good,” said Izzo. “Because I’m at least as sick of this shit as you are, and I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to watch this thing by myself.”

  2

  Once I’d decided where I was going, my next problem was figuring out how to get there. After weighing all the options, I decided to take Teddy’s Olds. It seemed like it would be more fun than taking the bus and less risky than hitchhiking with a backpack full of dope. And if I did get pulled over, not having a driver’s license was going to be the least of my problems.

  The car was a ’77 Delta 88 with air-conditioning, a tape deck, and a V-8 engine that pressed you back against the bench seat when you floored the accelerator. I had all the weed I could smoke and enough money to buy all the fast food I could eat, so in spite of all the harsh things that had happened to me that day, once I got the hang of driving, I was almost happy.

  The closest I came to getting arrested wasn’t while I was driving, it was when I pulled in for gas at an ARCO mini-mart near Davis. By the time I saw the highway patrol car parked outside, I was already committed. I figured driving away without buying anything would have looked even more suspicious, so I pulled up to the pumps, got out of the car, went inside, gave the guy a twenty against a fill-up, went back out to the pump, pushed the button for the 87 octane, lifted the nozzle casually, turned around, and discovered there was no place to put it—the gas tank was not on that side of the car.

  I was sure the cop was checking me out. The scorched Mohawk alone would have caught his attention. Not to mention my WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT? T-shirt. Be cool, I ordered myself. Gas tank must be around the other side. Fortunately, the hose reached. Unfortunately, the tank wasn’t on that side, either. I nearly pissed my pants. Where’s the fucking gas cap? Is the cop getting suspicious? Don’t look at him, don’t look at him. But if he sees I don’t know how to fill up the car, he’s going to think I stole it. To cover myself, I knelt down and pretended to check the right rear tire. Think, dude, think! It’s got to be someplace!

  So now I was walking around the stupid car, tugging the hose as far as it would stretch, pretending to check all the tires and the lights and shit. The cop’s eyes were boring holes in me, and I was trying to act casual, but I was sweating bullets and my mind was racing a million miles a second by the time I noticed that the rear license plate was mounted on a spring. Suddenly it all came back to me. In the Olds, the rear license plate flipped down and the gas cap was hidden behind it. I must have seen Teddy do it a dozen times. End of crisis.

  The rest of the ride was a piece of cake. It was dark by the time I reached my old hometown of Santa Cruz, where the palm trees meet the pines. I have to admit I got a little lump in my throat when the candy-colored lights of the Boardwalk came into view. We’d had some good times in this town, me and my mom. I used to have a season pass for the rides. Once I rode the Giant Dipper sixty-seven times in a row. I even had a little gang of friends. We were eleven, we had bicycles and boogie boards, and we owned that town from the university heights to the beachfront flats.

  Then my mother died and I went to live with my grandparents, Fred and Evelyn Harris. That lasted about six months, until my grandfather slapped me for calling my grandmother a bitch (which I didn’t, I only said she was acting like a bitch, which she was). Anyway, I punched him in his droopy nuts, and they sent me to live with my father.

  But now my father was dead, too. I knew that for sure by this time: I’d heard it on the car radio. They said he’d shot himself to avoid being taken into custody, but they never said why he was being taken into custody in the first place.

  I didn’t know if Fred and Evelyn had also heard the news. They probably had, I thought, but since they hated my father more than they hated me, I hoped that would work in my favor. If they were willing to let bygones be bygones, I figured, so was I.

  3

  “Stop it there,” said Izzo. He and Pender were sitting side by side on the narrow, scratchy sofa bed in the living room of the trailer, watching Principals of Accounting, Tape 4 with the lights dimmed and the blinds drawn.

  Pender hit the Pause button. The background rattle and hum of the air-conditioning swelled to fill the silence. “What?”

  “You missed it. Run it back—there was a reflection in the window over the bed.”

  Pender reversed the tape, then ran it forward in slow motion, freezing the image when a figure wearing a backward-facing baseball cap and a San Francisco 49ers jersey appeared briefly in the dark glass of the horizontal window over the bed, peering into the viewfinder of the camcorder balanced on his shoulder. They couldn’t quite make out the face behind the viewfinder. All they knew for sure was that it couldn’t have been Luke Sweet or Theodora Swantzer, Sweet’s transgendered, ex-con partner, because those two were both clearly visible on the bed. Butt-naked save for their Lone Ranger masks and Swantzer’s genital-concealing panties, they were taking turns smacking around a skinny, teenage runaway who looked as if she were just beginning to realize how much trouble she was in.

  The agents exchanged grim smiles. It had been doubly hard on them, watching the victims suffering, knowing that the killers were beyond the reach of earthly justice. It felt as if Sweet and Swantzer were taunting them—look what we did, they seemed to be saying with every thrust and blow, look what we got away with—and you can’t…fucking…touch us!

  So the discovery that the unspeakable pair had had an accomplice buoyed the agents’ spirits a little. Izzo jotted down the time on the VCR counter—fourteen minutes into the tape—and made a note to have somebody blow up and tweak the frames in question. Then they settled back to watch the rest of the horror show, which ended shortly after the victim’s death, with Luke Sweet delivering a chilling throwaway line—“You like apples? Well, how do you like them apples?”—as he climbed off the corpse.

  The screen went dark. Over the hum of the air-conditioning, they heard the hackle-raising sound of a baying hound—the state police had brought in a cadaver-sniffing dog to search the property. “You look like you could use a drink,” Pender told Izzo, thirstily eyeing the nearly full bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the counter separating the living room from the kitchen area.

  “Didn’t anybody tell you FBI agents aren’t supposed to drink alcohol, especially on the job?” Izzo asked him.

  “Yeah, I think I heard something like that once,” said Pender as he rinsed out two water glasses. “Ice?”

  “Sure.”

  Pender was about to open the refrigerator door when one of the photographs affixed to it by magnet caught his eye. It was the former Unsub, standing in front of the trailer with his arm around a teenage boy. The boy was sporting a Mohawk hairdo and an adolescent scowl, and wearing a red 49
ers jersey with the number 16 across the front. Pender took it down and turned it over—across the back of the snapshot, someone had written “Big Luke, Little Luke, Father’s Day,” with a felt-tipped pen.

  “Oh jeez,” he said, wincing.

  “Beg pardon?” called Izzo.

  “That ‘accomplice’ we were looking for, the one with the camera? It’s Sweet’s son. Little Luke. Looks like he’s around fourteen, fifteen years old.”

  Izzo winced. “Man oh Manischewitz,” he groaned. “Just when you think it can’t get any sicker.”

  4

  Not only had it been four years since I’d last been to Santa Cruz, but back then I’d been getting around on a bicycle. I didn’t exactly get lost, but I must have made a wrong turn, because I found myself driving past the Boardwalk.

  I pulled over to watch the people hanging out on the steps near the carousel, thinking I might see some of my old friends. I didn’t, but I did see quite a few kids around my age, clusters of them laughing and acting goony, couples making out or strolling with their arms around each other’s waists. Some of the white kids were punked out like me. Part of me despised them, but another part of me could imagine a different world, where if you were alone and there was a group of kids your age and style, you could just hook up with them. Of course, if they’d known I had all that dope and money, it would have been them trying to hook up with me.

  It was around ten o’clock when I rang my grandparents’ bell. Fred was already in his bathrobe and pajamas. Tall man, severe, always looked like he’d just finished shaving. I could tell by the look on his face that he knew what had happened.

  “It’s him,” he called up the stairs to my grandmother. He didn’t say hello, but he didn’t slam the door in my face, either. A few seconds later Evelyn came bustling down the stairs in her nightgown and threw her arms around me. I was taller than she was, now. It was the first anybody had touched me since Teddy knocked me down this morning. For some reason I burst into tears. I didn’t even know I had any tears in me.