The Boys from Santa Cruz (16 page)

Somewhere between two and three o’clock on the afternoon of the seventeenth, exact time still to be determined, there’d been an explosion in a private mental hospital known as Meadows Road, presumably in the basement boiler room, presumably caused by natural gas. It felt as if the entire building had been lifted off its foundations, reported one survivor. The subsequent fire had greatly complicated efforts to evacuate the confused mental patients, according to the chief of the Bonny Doon Volunteer Fire Department. Not long afterward (exact time again to be determined), the three-story building had suffered a “catastrophic structural failure.”

On the following day,
The Mercury News
again headlined the story. The number of injured had risen to thirty-seven, seventeen dead bodies had been identified, and a third category had been added: eleven persons “missing or unaccounted for.” At the end of the article, in smaller type (reduced to ant tracks on the fax), the newspaper printed the lists of casualties and m.o.u.f.’s for the first time.

Pender squinted over the small print long enough to realize the names were not in alphabetical order, then put the pages down, took off his half-moon reading glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He could feel a headache coming on—probably those damn drugstore glasses. One of these days, he told himself, he’d have to break down and visit an optometrist, get some real eyeglasses. The only
thing holding him back was sheer vanity, not over his looks (that train left the station when he began losing his hair at the age of nineteen) but over his eyesight. Having boasted about his twenty-twenty vision too often to too many colleagues over the years, he knew he’d be eating mucho crow the day he showed up at the office wearing specs.

Back to work, this time bending over the fax with the magnifying glass, skimming down, down…And there it was, toward the bottom of the list of persons missing or unaccounted for: “Sweet, Luke Jr., 25, Santa Cruz.”

But missing ain’t dead,
thought Pender. He skimmed past the text of the next day’s article to check out the appended, updated casualty list. Whoops: “Sweet, Luke Jr.” was now one of four names listed as missing, presumed dead.

Presumed—there was that word again. But why the change? Pender asked himself. How had four bodies gone from being unaccounted for to being presumed dead after only two days? It couldn’t have been through DNA identification—at that time, a one-week window was the best-case scenario for industry-standard RFLP testing, and then only if the samples were of good quality and high molecular weight. If they’d had to use the newer PCR technique to amplify the smaller or more damaged samples, the identification would have taken even longer.

So maybe they’d identified all four bodies through dental records, Pender told himself. Or maybe the Santa Cruz authorities had just assumed that no one could have survived an explosion of that magnitude. But Pender’s gut told him that someone had, and in the absence of high-molecular-weight evidence to the contrary, Pender always followed his gut.

The sun is low over the ocean when the old man’s surprisingly robust old heart finally ceases to beat. Asmador (he used to have another name, a human name he can no longer remember) presses his ear against Brobauer’s chest to be sure he’s dead, then gathers up his things and hides behind an elephantine live oak at the edge of the clearing to wait for the vultures.

And wait, and wait. The problem is that the corpse is too fresh, the process of putrefaction not advanced enough to attract the attention even of a
Cathartes aura,
which is able to detect the presence of a single molecule of cadaverine within a ten-mile radius. However, leaving the body to ripen into carrion on this hillside overnight is not an option. Vultures rarely scavenge after dark, and he hasn’t gone to all this trouble just to feed some mangy coyotes.

But the wind begins to shift as the sun sinks lower, swinging around to the south and carrying with it the faint, sickly sweet scent of decay. Asmador’s low forehead furrows, his nostrils twitch, and his unhandsome face takes on an expression of sheer animal cunning. Legs bowed, arms swinging, he snuffles along through the woods, bent double with his nose nearly to the ground, until he’s traced the odor to its source: a dead opossum hidden in a tangled thicket.

Its lips are drawn back in a snarl, revealing worn and yellowed fangs; its pelt writhes with oat-colored maggots. Asmador picks up the reeking carcass by the tail and carries it back to the clearing, lays it atop the dead lawyer’s chest. Retreating behind the live oak again, he sniffs his fingers—there’s something about the smell of carrion that he finds calming.

The sky is on fire to the west, and the sun has flattened itself against the vast, blue-gray horizon like a crimson-yoked egg sizzling on a griddle when the first turkey vulture comes swooping
in low over the hillside. Its wings are raised in a shallow, dihedral V, and its body tilts unevenly from one side to the other. It lands clumsily, its powerful black wings beating backward, and takes a compensating hop, looking for all the world like a gymnast trying to stick the landing at the end of a vault.

Instead of rushing in, the vulture circles the funereal offering unhurriedly, with a mincing, high-stepping gait, its red head cocked suspiciously to the side. Then the arrival of a second vulture galvanizes the first one into action. Interposing itself between rival and prize, hissing and grunting angrily, it spreads its wings to make itself appear larger as it backs slowly toward its intended supper.

That’s right,
thinks Asmador, peering out from behind the tree, his cheek pressed against the rough, elephant-hide bark—
you chase dat dirty baldhead out of de town
.

There were advantages and disadvantages to living in a National Historical Park. Nights were quiet, and the view from the raised back porch of the lockkeeper’s cabin was a knockout—the flat, silvery-smooth ribbon of the C & O Canal at the bottom of the hill, the swampy Potomac winding through the midground, the verdant Virginia countryside on the horizon. On the other hand, Pender’s lease required that all new exterior renovations be period, the period being the 1850s, and if you needed to borrow a cup of sugar, forget it: there were no neighbors within a mile of Tinsman’s Lock in any direction.

The term
cabin
was actually a misnomer. Chez Pender was sprawling and ramshackle, jerry-built by the lock’s first keeper on a wooded hillside overlooking the canal. It had six tiny, low-ceilinged
bedrooms lining either side of a corridor off the living room; the living room itself featured a peaked roof and grandfathered non-period sliding glass doors leading out to the back porch. Due to the severe slope of the terrain, the front entrance of the house was at ground level, while the porch was raised on stilts.

Only one bedroom had been habitable when Pender first moved in. On a forced leave of absence from the Bureau—which is to say, while he was drying out after his divorce—he had restored the others one at a time, refloored the living room, replaced the plumbing, rewired the house, propped up the sagging porch, and in his remaining spare time had rebuilt the engine of his vintage Barracuda. Amazing what a man can accomplish with no job and no booze.

After nuking a Hungry-Man Salisbury steak dinner and pouring himself a Thirsty-Man tumblerful of Jim Beam on the rocks, Pender set up a TV tray in the living room, intending to watch the Orioles game while he ate. Instead he found himself thinking about Little Luke. A flat-out, textbook psychopath, the Mountain Project shrink had labeled him—no wonder he’d ended up in a mental hospital. But had the boy ever been convicted of any murders? Or even been tried? Pender decided to ask Thom Davies to search the CJIS records first thing in the morning.

He also made up his mind to get in touch with the Santa Cruz coroner to find out whether Luke Sweet, Jr., was maybe dead, really dead, or really, really dead. And while he was at it, he decided to contact the homicide detectives investigating the Harris double murder to let them know it might not be a stranger killing after all.

Looking up at the television, Pender realized that although the Orioles game was in the third inning, he hadn’t seen a single play. Nor did he recall eating, although he must have, because the plastic tray had been cleaned out, right down to the dessert brownie.

Feeling cheated, he nuked another dinner, refilled his tumbler, and set up a second TV tray for the sheaf of faxed newspaper articles he’d brought home with him. Then he donned his half-moon
specs and read through the articles while he ate, glancing up at the television only when he heard a loud crack of the bat, or when the home crowd roared loudly enough to attract his attention.

The last clipping was dated April 25. Twenty-one confirmed dead was the final body count, which included Little Luke. No one left missing or unaccounted for. The initial explosion was held to be the result of arson at the hands of person or persons unknown, said person or persons believed to have perished either in the initial explosion or in the subsequent fire.

That last item, Pender realized, would explain why the investigation might not be vigorously pursued: the locals were assuming the perp was deceased. But then again, they were also assuming that Luke Sweet was deceased, and Pender’s gut continued to insist that they were dead wrong about that.

6:00
A.M.
, Pacific daylight time. The pain in his hips and lower back awoke Skip Epstein as surely and promptly as any alarm clock or telephone wake-up service. Rolling over onto his side, he fumbled around for the bottle of Norco tablets on the bedside table, and washed two of them down with a swig of bottled water.

6:40
A.M
. For the first and probably last time that day, nothing hurt. Skip might even have been a little buzzed—sometimes it was difficult for chronic pain sufferers to distinguish between a drug high and the euphoria that came with being temporarily pain free.
Five minutes,
he told himself:
you can have five minutes to enjoy it.

6:45
A.M
.
Okay, five more minutes.

7:30
A.M
. The thump of the
Chronicle
hitting the front door
of Skip’s two-bedroom flat on Francisco Street—he lived on the ground floor and rented out the top to a family of Russian immigrants—finally lured him out of bed. Even in San Francisco’s prosperous Marina district, there were people who saw a newspaper lying on the sidewalk as fair game. But the walk from the bed to the door reawakened the pain in his hips; bending stiffly from the waist to pick up the paper reaggravated the ache in his back.

One glance at the front page and the pain was momentarily forgotten.
PROMINENT SF ATTORNEY MISSING, BELIEVED KIDNAPPED
, read the headline.
CADDY FOUND SHOT TO DEATH
was the subhead, which seemed like kind of an ass-backward priority to Skip, but not particularly surprising.

Accompanying the article was a photograph of Ellis Brobauer shaking hands with Assembly Speaker Willie Brown at a black-tie charity event. Skip skimmed the story on the stoop, in his bathrobe. As he reentered the apartment, he heard the telephone ringing and hurried down the hall to the kitchen—you couldn’t say
ran,
though he did employ the awkward, hopping gait that had earned little David Epstein the nickname Skip in grade school.

Skip managed to snatch the wall phone out of the cradle just before the answering machine intercepted the call. He was glad he had, because it was his father on the line, and Leon J. Epstein, Esq., took machine-answered calls as personal affronts. “Did you see, Davey?”

“I saw.”

“What do you think?”

“I think somebody wanted that corner office of his real bad.” Though largely retired and spending most of his time at his second home in Pebble Beach, the Chairman Emeritus of Wengert & Brobauer had refused to give up his twenty-third-floor office with its power view of the bay from Alcatraz to Treasure Island.

“Not funny, sonny. You know how much our family owes that man?” With Ellis’s backing, Leon Epstein had become the
first member of his faith ever to make full partner at Wengert & Brobauer.

“I know, Dad.” When Skip first struck out on his own, folks weren’t exactly knocking each other down for the privilege of hiring a gimpy P.I. Jobs and referrals from W & B had kept him afloat that first year, and the law firm was still one of Epstein Investigative Services’s most important clients.

“So what
do
you think?”

“Professionally?”

“No, as a baseball fan.” Leon J. rolled his eyes—yes, over the phone. “Of course, professionally.”

“Unless there was some contact they’re not telling us about, this was no kidnapping for ransom.”

“Which you know because…?”

“Kidnappers who’re hoping for ransom almost always contact the family within the first few hours to tell them not to call the cops.”

“So if not ransom, then what?”

Skip shrugged—if his father could roll his eyes over the phone, Skip could shrug. “Who knows? Listen, I gotta go, Dad. If I hear anything over the grapevine, I’ll let you know.”

The Buchanan Street headquarters of Epstein Investigative Services were a vast improvement over the old digs, in a derelict warehouse south of Market that had been condemned after the ’89 quake. In the new offices, the receptionist sat behind a swooping art deco counter that looked like it belonged in an airport terminal, while the heart of the business, the bull pen, was situated in an airy, well-lighted room that took up over half the floor. There, skip tracers in soundproofed carrels employed telephones and personal computers in an ongoing campaign to threaten, cajole, hoodwink, and bamboozle bureaucrats, contacts, and functionaries into disclosing the whereabouts of debtors, deadbeat dads, repossessable vehicles, and white-collar criminals.

Although the Marina district location was only a few blocks from his apartment on Francisco Street, Skip drove to work as always, parking his Buick in a reserved space in the basement garage. He took the elevator up to the second floor, stopping off at the reception desk long enough to admire Tanya’s latest piercing and pick up his messages, one of which was from Warren Brobauer, Ellis’s son, currently the managing partner of Wengert & Brobauer.