His Father's Son

by Bentley Little

  What did it mean? he wondered as he tried to fall asleep. What did it mean?

  Twenty

  On Saturday morning, Steve went to his mother’s house to mow her lawn and pour some Drano down the bathroom sink to clear a clog. Strange how quickly his parents’ house had become his mother’s house. He’d thought the transition would take longer, but the human mind was endlessly adaptable, and though he thought of his father often, the old man’s hold on the material world had ceased with his life.

  He did think of his dad often, and seeing a commercial for Sea World on television the other night, Steve realized that he had never finished his pilgrimage, had never gone to San Diego to see the location where his father had killed what might very well have been his last victim. He wondered now if perhaps he should do so. He’d learned nothing, really, from that other trip, but it had cleared his mind and helped settle him. It had also made him feel closer to his father, and now that his dad was no longer alive, he had a longing to revisit that feeling, to reconnect with the old man in any way he could.

  On a more practical level, he was still curious about what his father had done. And how.

  And why.

  San Diego seemed to have been his swan song. For after that, the family had settled in Anaheim and had stopped moving. Although, now that Steve thought of it, that didn’t mean anything. His father could have changed his MO and kept killing but from a stationary home base. Perhaps, if he looked it up, Steve would find dozens of murders in and around the Orange County area that his father had committed.

  But he didn’t think so.

  He wasn’t sure why, but he was filled with the certainty that his father had gone cold turkey after drowning that single mother in the bay, and he wondered what had caused him to stop. Had he had a sudden epiphany? Had it been the result of a gradual buildup of regret? Or had he merely completed the job he’d set out to do and killed all the people who he thought needed killing?

  Steve still had the information he’d printed out about the San Diego case, and he did a little more research over the next several days, using all of the skills and tools at his disposal to construct a likely narrative. It was all theoretical, however, and he wouldn’t feel any of it was real until he actually talked to some people who had known the victim and seen the site where it had happened.

  He didn’t want Sherry along this time. He needed to do this alone, and he told her on Wednesday that he wouldn’t be able to see her this coming weekend yet again, that he needed to take his mother to visit her sister in San Diego. Friend! he thought, immediately after saying the word “sister.” He should have said “friend.” But the damage was done. Now he would have to remember forever that he was supposed to have an aunt living in San Diego, and if Sherry ever asked about her, he would have to come up with a name and believable background details that he would also have to remember forever.

  Lies had ripple effects, and he couldn’t afford to get caught in the crosscurrents. Not in his situation. He had to remember to keep things simple.

  He had a few hours saved up, and his plan was to take off early from work on Friday, drive down to San Diego—it was only an hour-and-a-half trip, assuming there was no traffic—and come back on Sunday afternoon. That would give him part of the afternoon Friday, all day Saturday and Sunday morning to do his investigating.

  So he skipped lunch on Friday, made sure his work was up-to-date, informed McColl that he was taking some personal time and set off shortly after one. There was a temporary tie-up by San Onofre, an illegal-immigrant checkpoint set up just south of the nuclear power plant, but other than that, the sailing was smooth.

  His family had not been back to San Diego since they’d moved to Anaheim—they had never gone back to any of the places in which they’d previously lived, something Steve should have realized was suspicious—and he found that he didn’t remember the city as well as he thought he did.

  On the outskirts, on a hill above the freeway, taller than a building, was a towering white cross, like a giant’s gravestone, and that odd and oversize landmark set the tone for his trip into the city proper. He had his laptop with him, and printouts concerning the single mother’s life and death, but he wanted to set up a base camp and check into a hotel before doing anything else. He’d made no advance reservations, was trusting to luck, and when he saw a green traffic sign announcing, HOTEL CIRCLE NEXT RIGHT, he took the off-ramp. On both sides of a narrow highway that ran through what had once been a canyon were hotels, motels, inns and lodges, all located right next to one another, with no room for anything else in between. Lit No Vacancy signs protruded from nearly every lobby roof or hung from nearly every chain logo. In the parking lot and on the sidewalk in front of one hotel, he saw identically attired men who looked as though they’d been extras in The Sound of Music. They were here for a convention of some sort, although he could not imagine what kind, and farther down the street he saw a line of Asian men, all wearing business suits and carrying briefcases, emerging from a parked bus into the lobby of a Holiday Inn.

  On the opposite side of the loop, between two new luxury hotels, was a tan- and rust-colored rectangular building whose worn sign read, HEARTHSTONE LODGE. The “No” was not lit in the No Vacancy display panel, and Steve pulled into the narrow parking lot to see whether he could get a room for the next two nights.

  Although its decor looked straight out of the 1970s, the small lobby was clean, and the older woman behind the counter gave him a friendly smile as he walked in. “Good afternoon, sir. May I help you?”

  “I sure hope so,” he told her. “I’m looking for a room.”

  “For tonight?”

  “Tonight and tomorrow night. Do you have any vacancies? I noticed your sign out there. . . .”

  She’d been consulting something on the desk behind the counter. “We do have a room available, but I’m afraid it hasn’t been cleaned yet. If you come back in an hour, though, we’ll have it all ready for you.”

  “Can I check in now?”

  The woman smiled. “Certainly. And I’ll be happy to store your belongings behind the counter for you.”

  “That’s okay,” he told her. “I only have one suitcase. I’ll just leave it in the car.” He gave her a credit card, showed her his driver’s license and wrote down the make, model and license plate number of his car on a form.

  She handed him a receipt. “Here you go. Check back in an hour. I should have the key for you by then. Are you here for Sea World or the zoo?”

  He shook his head.

  “Convention?”

  “No. Just a weekend getaway.”

  “You know, just around the other side of this hill a mile or two is Old Town. You might want to check it out. There are a lot of interesting sights and historic places. A state park, good food. We have one of the most haunted buildings in America there: the Whaley House.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” Steve told her. He looked around the small lobby. “Do you have a public restroom I could use?”

  The clerk nodded, pointing out the window. “Over there to the left of that ice machine. We don’t actually have a men’s room or a women’s room—just the one, for family use. So make sure you lock the door. Here’s the key to open it.”

  He took from her a gold key chained to a piece of wood on which was painted a pink flower. “Thanks,” he said, and headed outside.

  The restroom, like the lobby, was small but clean: sink, toilet, wastepaper basket, paper-towel dispenser. He switched on the light, locked the door behind him, balanced the piece of wood on the edge of the sink and lifted the lid of the toilet seat. There was a doll’s head in the bowl, staring up at him with glassy eyes topped by too-long lashes. The mouth was partially open in what could be interpreted as a mocking smile. Its neck was a gaping black hole. He stared for a moment. There was something oddly disquieting about the sight—

  Why is it here? Who left it? Why?

  —and he didn’t feel right urinating on the object, so he flushe
d the toilet ahead of time, watching as the plastic head bobbed about, went under, was sucked down into the drain.

  And popped up again.

  It stared up at him, rocked back and forth by residual ripples. He flushed the toilet again, trying to get it to go down, but the tank hadn’t filled up enough with water, and the doll’s head just spun in lazy circles, long-lashed eyes looking upward, red-lipped mouth partially open and showing too-white teeth.

  He no longer had to pee, and Steve left the bathroom, turning off the light behind him, not looking back at the toilet as he left. Returning the key and its attached piece of wood, he thanked the desk clerk and headed out to the parking lot and his car.

  The first thing he wanted to see was where it had happened, and he sat for a few moments in the car, looking through his materials and reading over the new information he’d obtained this week. The woman, Karen Somers, actually hadn’t been drowned in the bay, he’d learned. Those initial reports had been wrong. Further investigation had shown that she’d been stabbed first and then dumped in the water. Few details of the killing itself had been printed in the newspapers, and even the portions of the police report that were part of the public record did not illuminate the events leading up to the murder—probably because the killing remained unsolved and those facts remained unknown. But Steve knew his father, and, reading between the lines, he knew what had happened.

  He followed the course charted on his GPS and headed out to the bay, to a spot that had been open land fifteen years ago but was now home to a mini mall containing a Subway, a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream parlor, a women’s swimsuit store and a surf shop. He parked in the lot behind the buildings and got out of his car to look out over the water, standing at the edge of a chest-high cinder-block wall and peering into the distance. Off to the right, on what looked like an island, was Sea World, with its tall landmark spire towering over everything in sight. To the left, on the far opposite shore, were some recently built condos or apartments, white buildings with red roofs that were almost mirror images of his own complex in Irvine. Straight ahead on the other side of the bay was a section of undeveloped land: a weedy, bushy, swampy area that had probably been protected for environmental reasons.

  Down below . . .

  Down below was where it had happened.

  He leaned his arms on the wall, staring into the gently lapping greenish brown water.

  And he knew how it had gone down.

  She is in her bed, not asleep but simply lying there, staring up at the ceiling. Talking. To him, to herself, to no one. They are in her bedroom at her house, a rural dwelling from an earlier era. He is listening to her speak as he walks over to the chair on which he has hung his jacket. She continues talking and he continues listening as he opens the jacket pocket and pulls out a switchblade knife. He leans over her as though he is going to kiss her, but he raises his right arm and stabs her instead, and though she should have known it was coming, she does not, and her eyes widen in surprise as she dies.

  Afterward, with her children asleep in their bedrooms, he takes her body outside and puts it in the old jalopy that is parked on the side of the house, strapping it into the passenger seat. She sits stiffly, but if no one looks closely, it will appear as though she is drunk or, at most, asleep. He drives through the night to the bay, to a spot where he knows the water is deep, where there is not a gentle slope to the bottom but a sudden drop. There is no one to watch as he releases the brake and pushes the vehicle in.

  He walks back, down side roads, unseen.

  It is not the police who find her body a day or two later, but a fisherman whose line gets caught on the car’s windshield. He’s in a rowboat, and, looking down to see what has snagged his line, he spots her in the water, ghost white in the passenger seat, eyes open and staring at nothing, her hair waving in the flowing current like the seaweed that floats nearby.

  Steve remained by the wall until the belligerent manager of the surf shop, obviously thinking he was a transient, came out the rear door of his store and shouted at Steve to get out of there or he’d call the police. He pointed to a white sign with red lettering affixed to the wall some twenty feet to the left. “Can’t you read? No loitering!”

  Steve smiled, waved his acquiescence, and walked back to his car. It had probably been close to an hour, and hopefully his room was ready.

  Feeling hungry, he stopped off at a Carl’s Jr. on his way back to the hotel. It was an off-hour, and although there were three junior high school-aged kids leaning their bikes against one of the outside tables, the inside of the fast-food restaurant was devoid of customers. Steve ordered an extralarge Coke and a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger, then sat down at a table to wait for his order. The three kids came in a moment later, laughing to themselves at something they’d seen or heard outside. One of the boys looked at him, pointed and said something to his friends. The laughter intensified.

  The overweight clerk behind the counter called his number, and Steve walked over to pick up the food. The same kid pointed again, mumbled a single word Steve could not make out, and all three burst out laughing. A few minutes later their order arrived, and the boys carried their trays to one of the outside tables.

  Steve ate slowly, refilled his Coke, threw away his trash, then walked out the restaurant door. The boys were only about halfway through their meal, talking profanely about some girl they all knew, and he walked purposefully up to the punk who had pointed at him and punched the kid in the face. Hard. Blood sprayed out in all directions, not like the spurt that had coated his knuckles when he’d sucker punched that asshole in the Salt Lake City café, but a wild, uncontrolled eruption that not only drenched his fist but flew onto the table and the boys’ food. This was a kid, after all, and his face was neither as big nor as strong as the young man’s in Utah had been. It crumpled beneath his fist like a paper mask.

  The other two boys immediately jumped back, out of Steve’s way, and scrambled around another table, putting distance between them and him. “I’m calling the police!” the taller kid shouted. “That’s assault!”

  Calmly, Steve grabbed the hair of the boy he had hit and yanked his bleeding head up so they were staring eye-to-eye. His voice when he spoke was purposely low and calm. “You can call the police,” he said. “And they will arrest me. But I will learn your address from the complaint. And do you know what I will do with that information? After I am released, I will go to your house, kill your parents and any brothers and sisters you might have, and then kill you. I will gut your mom and make her eat her own stomach. Then I will cut off your dad’s balls and shove them in your mouth before I stab you in the eyes, in the chest and in the abdomen. You will die slowly and painfully.” Steve looked up. “And then I will go after your friends.”

  He let go of the kid’s hair and smiled, wiping his bloody hand on the boy’s T-shirt. “Or you can forget this ever happened. The choice is yours.”

  He walked slowly across the parking lot to his car and was gratified to hear no noise behind him. No whispering, no yelling, certainly no laughing.

  He smiled to himself as he got into the car. He took a napkin from the glove compartment, which he used to more thoroughly wipe the blood from his hand, and tossed the crumpled red and white paper on the asphalt of the parking lot.

  He took off.

  There was a traffic jam on the freeway, so Steve used his GPS to find an alternative route back to the hotel. He ended up taking a street that cut through a residential neighborhood before intersecting the eastern end of the hotel loop. Halfway through the neighborhood, he saw, up ahead and to the right, a dog dash out from between two houses. The dog sprinted across a lawn and in front of a parked car, heading directly for the street.

  He could have slowed down, but he didn’t. He sped up. There was a bump-thump-crunch as the car ran over the animal, and when he glanced in the rearview mirror, Steve saw an unmoving brown lump in the center of his lane.

  He smiled to himself.

  D
ead dog in the middle of the road.

  He wished at that moment that Sherry had come along on the trip.

  She would have liked this.

  That night, Steve went to Old Town, looking for that haunted house the desk clerk had told him about. The Whaley House. He followed the directions on a pamphlet he grabbed from the hotel lobby, and followed a throng of tourists walking down what looked like a dusty street out of the Old West.

  The Whaley House itself was a not particularly imposing brick structure that would have blended in with almost any old neighborhood in the country. It was closed for the evening, but Steve stood in front of the dwelling, looking at the darkened windows. According to the brochure, it was supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of men condemned to death by the judge who lived there, as well as by the judge himself and members of his family. A portion of the home had apparently been built over the town’s original gallows.

  Did Steve believe in ghosts? Not really. He had seen the figure of his father in his bedroom, but now that he’d had time to think about it, he was pretty sure that had just been a figment of his imagination. A hallucination caused by stress. Besides, if all ghosts were as vengeful as the ones supposedly haunting the Whaley House, he would have some angry ones on his tail. And he didn’t want that.

  He walked slowly down the street, along with a smattering of tourists. There was a clown in front of a well-lit gift shop, making balloon animals and either selling them or handing them out to the families that passed by. Steve gave the clown a wide berth. In his book, that makeup-wearing man blowing up and twisting balloons was far creepier than the supposedly haunted house, although he could not say why.

  Reaching a Mexican restaurant at the end of the street, he stopped, looking back. Had his family ever come here when they’d lived in San Diego? He didn’t remember it, but then he didn’t remember much about their time here. He could recall his school, his friends, their house, but for some reason almost everything else was a blur. What did that say about him? About his family? When you couldn’t remember the facts of your own life, something was definitely wrong. Steve wondered now if he had sensed some irregularity in his father’s behavior, in the old man’s words or deeds, that had seemed suspicious. Perhaps, on a subliminal level, he had known what was going on in the other part of his father’s life and his brain had chosen to block all of that out.