Beyond This Point Are Monsters (10 page)

“Mrs. Osborne offered a substantial reward.”

“Rewards are too official, too many people are in­volved, too much red tape. A bribe is a nice simple family type of thing.”

“Why didn't you explain the situation to me a year ago?”

“A cop can't ask a private citizen for bribe money. It wouldn't look pretty in the newspapers, it might even cause an international scandal. After all, no country likes to admit that a lot of its police, its judges, its politicians are co
rrupt . . . Anyway, it's over. All I'm saying now is I'm sorry, Mrs. Osborne.”

“Yes. So am I.”

She turned and walked toward the courtroom, holding herself rigid to counteract the feeling she had inside that vital parts had come loose and were bleeding. Someone saw the truck—noticed the men—watched them bury the body or dump it in the sea. She thought of the dozens of times she'd watched the men stooping in the fields, but they were always in the distance, always anonymous. She had wanted to get to know them a little, to be able to tell them apart, to call them by name and ask them about their homes and families, but Estivar wouldn't allow it. He said it wasn't safe, the men would misinterpret any friendliness on her part. The men, too, had obviously been given or­ders. When she drove past a field being harvested, they would bend low over their work, their faces hidden by the big straw hats they wore from dawn to dusk.

The light had been switched on in the sign above the door:
Quiet Please, Court Is in Session.
By the time Devon entered, the room was nearly full, the way it had been before the recess, but now the Lopez girl, as well as Mrs. Osborne, was missing.

In the aisle beside the seat Devon had occupied since the hearing began, Ford stood talking to Leo Bishop. Both men looked impatiently at Devon, as though they'd been waiting for her and had expected her to come back sooner.

Ford said, “Well?”

“There was no answer.”

“Did you let it ring several minutes, in case she might be outside or in the shower or something?”

“Yes.”

“Then I guess you'd better go over to the house and check up on her. Mr. Bishop here has offered to drive you or let you use his car, whichever you prefer.”

“Exactly what am I supposed to do?”

“Find out if she's all right and when she intends show­ing up to testify.”

“Why are you forcing her to testify?”

“I'm not forcing her. When I brought the subject up she seemed perfectly willing to be a witness.”

“That was just a front,” Devon said. “You mustn't be taken in by it.”

“Okay, so I don't know her front from her back. I'm a simple man. When people tell me something I believe it, I don't immediately conclude that they mean the oppo­site.”

“She—isn't ready to admit Robert is dead.”

“She's had a whole year to get used to it. Maybe she's not trying hard enough.”

“That seems a very cynical attitude.”

“You'd better watch it,” Ford said with a wry little smile. “You're beginning to sound like an honest-to-God loving daughter-in-law.”

The door to the judge's chambers had opened and the clerk was intoning: “Remain seated and come to order. Superior Court is again in session.”

“Call Earnest Valenzuela.”

“Ernest Valenzuela, take the stand, please.”

CHAPTER TEN

when they reached leo's car
in the parking lot, he unlocked the right front door and Devon stepped inside without protest. She didn't like being dependent on Leo but she liked even less the idea of driving a car she wasn't used to in a city that was still strange to her.

Leo got in behind the wheel and turned on the ignition and the air conditioning. “I've kept away from you all day because you asked me to.”

“It was Mrs. Osborne's idea,” Devon said. “She thought people would talk if they saw us together.”

“I'd like to think they had something to talk about . . . Do they?”

“No.”

“No period, or no not yet?”

Her only response was a slight shake of her head that could have meant anything.

She had taken off the white wrist-length gloves which she'd worn almost continuously since early morning. They lay now in her lap, the false passive immaculate hands she'd exhibited to the spectators in court and strangers in the hall and on the street. Her real hands, sunburned and rough, with calloused palms and bitten nails, she showed only to friends like Leo who wouldn't care, or to people she saw every day like the Estivars and Dulzura who wouldn't notice.

“I worry about you,” Leo said.

“Well, stop. I don't want you to worry about me.”

“I don't want to, either, but that's the way it is. Did you have a decent lunch?”

“A hamburger.”

“That's not enough. You're too thin.”

“You shouldn't fuss over me, Leo.”

“Why not?”

“It makes me nervous, self-conscious. I like to feel at ease with you.”

“All right, no fussing. That's a promise.” The humming of the air conditioner muffled the rasp in his voice.

He turned north on the freeway. Traffic had been slowed down to boulevard speed by its own volume. Peo­ple passing were without names or faces or any identifica­tion except their cars: a red Mustang with Florida plates, a blue Chevelle, a VW camper decorated with daisies, a silver Continental with matching silver smoke coming from its exhaust, a yellow Dart with a black vinyl roof, a white Monaco station wagon trailing a boat. It was as if human beings existed merely to keep the vehicles in mo­tion, and the real significance had shifted from the Smiths and the Joneses to Cougars and Corvairs, Toronados and Toyotas.

“Turn west on University,” Devon said. “She lives at 3117 Ocotillo; that's three or four blocks north.”

“I know where it is.”

“Did Mr. Ford tell you?”

“She told me. She called me one day and asked me to come and see her.”

“I thought you were barely on speaking terms.”

“We barely were,” Leo said. “In fact, we barely are. But I went.”

“When was that?”

“About three weeks ago, as soon as she found out the hearing was scheduled for today. Well, after a lot of chitchat she finally got to the point—she wanted to make sure my wife's death wasn't brought up during the hearing. She said it was irrelevant. I agreed. She offered me a drink, which I refused, and I drove back to the ranch. That's all. At least as far as I was concerned it was all. I can't be sure what was in her mind, perhaps something quite different from what was actually said.”

“Why do you suggest that?”

“If what she really wanted was to keep Ruth's name out of the proceedings, she would have called Mr. Ford, not me. I'm only a witness, he's running the show.”

“Maybe she called him, too.”

“Maybe.” He ran his left hand around the scalloped rim of the steering wheel as though it were a bumpy road he'd never explored before. “I think she was trying to make sure I didn't say anything against her son. She had to believe—and to make other people believe—that Robert was perfect.”

“What could you have said against him, Leo?”

“He wasn't perfect.”

“You were referring to something specific.”

“Nothing that should make any difference to you now. It was over before you even knew the Osbornes existed.” He added, after a time, “It wasn't even Robert's fault. He just happened to be the boy next door. And Ruth—well, she happened to be the girl next door, only she was push­ing forty and afraid of growing old.”

“So the gossip about them was true.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you tell me before?”

“I started to, many times, only I never went through with it. It seemed cruel. Now—well, now I know it's neces­sary, cruel or not. I can't afford to let you believe Mrs. Osborne's version of Robert. He wasn't perfect. He had faults, he made mistakes. Ruth turned out to be one of the bigger mistakes but he couldn't have foreseen that. She was pretty appealing in her role of defenseless little woman, and Robert was a setup for her. He didn't even have a girl friend to stand in the way, thanks to Mrs. Os­borne. She'd managed to get rid of all the girls who weren't good enough for him, and that meant all the girls. So he ended up with a married woman nearly twice his age.”

Devon sat in silence, trying to imagine the two of them together, Ruth seeing in Robert another chance at youth, Robert seeing in her a chance at manhood. How often did they meet, and where? Beside the reservoir or in the grove of date palms? In the mess hall or bunkhouse when there were no migrants working on the ranch? In the ranch house itself when Mrs. Osborne went to the city? No mat­ter where they met, people must have seen them and been shocked or amused or sympathetic—the Estivars, Dulzura, the ranch hands, perhaps even Mrs. Osborne before she shut her eyes tight and finally. Mrs. Osborne's references to Ruth had all been similar and in the same tone: “Robert was kind to the poor woman . . .” “He went out of his way to be neighborly . . .” “It was pitiful the spectacle she made of herself, but Robert was always patient and understand­ing.”

Robert—kind, patient, understanding and neighborly. Very, very neighborly.

Devon said, “How long had it been going on?”

“I'm not sure, but I think a long time.”

“Years?”

“Yes. Probably ever since he came back from school in Arizona.”

“But he was just seventeen then, a boy.”

“Seventeen-year-olds aren't boys. Don't waste sympa­thy on him. It's possible that Ruth did him a favor by distracting him from his mother.”

“How can you say such a terrible thing so calmly?”

“Maybe it's not so terrible. Maybe I'm not so calm.” But he sounded calm, even remote. “When Estivar was on the witness stand this morning he blamed the school for teach­ing Robert prejudice and keeping him away from the Esti­var family. I don't believe it was prejudice. Robert simply had something new in his life, something he couldn't afford to share with the Estivars.”

“If you knew about the affair, why didn't you try to stop it?”

“I did. At first Ruth denied everything. Later we had periodic fights, long and loud and no holds barred. After the last one she packed a suitcase and set out on foot for the Osbornes'. She never got there.”

“Then nothing was planned about her running away with Robert?”

“No. I think it would have been a real shock to him to look out and see her heading for his house with a suitcase. But he didn't see her. It had started to rain heavily and he was in the study catching up on his accounts. Mrs. Osborne was in her bedroom upstairs. Both rooms faced west, away from the river, so nobody was watching it, nobody knew the exact time of the flash flood, nobody saw Ruth try to get across. She was small and delicate like you, it wouldn't have taken much to knock her off her feet.”

Small and delicate . . .
“You remind me of someone back home,”
Robert had told her at their first meeting.
“Some­one nice—or she used to be. She's dead now. A lot of people think I killed her.”

“Leo.”

“Yes.”

“Her death was an accident?”

“According to the coroner.”

“And according to you?”

“To me,” Leo said slowly, “it seemed a crazy way to die, drowning in the middle of a desert.”

 

the house at 3117 ocotillo street
was built in the California mission style, with tiled roof and thick adobe walls and an archway leading into a courtyard. The arch­way was decorated with ceramic tiles and from the top of it hung a miniature merry-go-round of brass horses that twitched and pranced and chimed against each other when the wind blew.

The inner court was paved with imitation flagstones and lined with shrubs and small trees growing in Mexican clay pots. The orange of the persimmon leaves, the pink of the hibiscus blossoms, the purple of the princess flowers, the crimson of the firethorn berries, all seemed lusterless and pale compared to the gaudy high-gloss paint on their containers. The word WELCOME printed on the mat out­side the front door looked as though nobody had ever stepped on it. Devon's sandals sank into the thick deep velvety pile until only their tops were visible, crossed straps like two X's marking the spot:
Devon Osborne stood here.

She pressed the door chime. Her arm felt heavy and stiff like a lead pipe attached to her shoulder.

“I don't know what to believe,” she said. “I wish you hadn't told me any of it.”

“Sometimes it's easy to make a hero out of a dead man, especially with the help of his mother. Well, I can't com­pete with heroes. If I have to cut the opposition down to size in order to win, I'll do it.”

“You mustn't talk like that.”

“Why not?”

“She might hear you.”

“She only hears what she wants to. Anything I say isn't likely to be included.”

A gust of wind blew across the courtyard. The horses on the tiny merry-go-round danced to their own music. Royal petals escaped from the princess flowers, and bam­boo clawed and scratched at the living-room window.

The drapes were open and most of the room and its contents were visible. Side by side along one wall were the special possessions Mrs. Osborne had taken with her from the ranch house—the mahogany piano and the antique cherrywood desk. Both were open, as if Mrs. Osborne had played a tune and written a letter and disappeared. The rest of the furniture had come with the house, and Mrs. Osborne hadn't bothered to change any of it—a pair of flowery wing chairs facing each other across a backgam­mon table, a glass-fronted bookcase, and on the walls oil paintings of someone's childhood, remembered rivers, clear and sweet, emerald meadows, golden forests of ma­ple.

Leo had walked around to the side of the house to check the garage. He returned looking irritable and wor­ried, as though he suspected fate was about to pull another trick on him, that wheels were in motion he couldn't stop and booby traps set in places he didn't know.

“Her car's here,” he said. “You'd better try the door.”

“Even if it's unlocked we can't just walk in.”

“Why not?”

“She wouldn't like it.”

“She may not be in a position to like or dislike it.”

“What does that mean?”

He didn't answer.

“Leo, are you suggesting she might have—”

“I'm suggesting we make an attempt to find out.”

The knob turned easily and the door swung inward, slowed by its own weight and Devon's reluctance. As the door opened, a draught of air blew several of the papers off the desk. Leaning over to pick one up, Devon saw that it was covered with printing done with a thick-tipped black marking pen. There were sentences and half-sen­tences, single words, phrases, some in English, some in Spanish.

 

Reward Premio (Remuneracion? Ask Ford)

The sum of $10,000 will be paid to anyone furnishing information

(No, no. Keep it simple.)

On October 13, 1967

Robert K. Osborne, age 24, blond hair, blue eyes, height 6'1” weight 170

(More money? Ask Ford)

Have you seen this man? (Use 3 pictures, front, side, 3/4)

¿

!Atencion!

Please help me find my son

 

Devon stood with the paper in her hand, listening to the sound of Leo moving around the dining room and the kitchen. She wondered how she could tell him that this wasn't to be the last day after all. Mrs. Osborne intended to offer another reward and the whole thing was going to start over again. There would be still another round of phone calls and letters, most of them patently ridiculous, but some reasonable enough to raise faint new hopes. The lady who claimed to have watched Robert land in a flying saucer in a field near Omaha needn't be taken seriously, yet some consideration had to be given to reports that he'd been seen working as a deckhand on a yacht anchored off Ensenada, picking up a suitcase at the TWA baggage-claim department at Los Angeles International Airport, drinking rum and Coke at a swish bar in San Francisco, running an elevator in a hotel in Denver. All reports within reason had been checked out. But Valenzuela said, “He's not working or drinking or traveling or anything else. He lost too much blood, ma'am.”