His Father's Son

by Bentley Little

  Whatever the reason, San Diego was like an unknown city to him, and whereas an hour ago that had made this nighttime sojurn seem fun, a tourist’s exploration of a vacation destination, now it just seemed weird and uncomfortable, an amnesiac’s exploration of what should have been familiar territory. He felt restless and uneasy, and he walked back the way he’d come, zigzagging between the strolling tourists, staying on the other side of the street from the balloon-tying clown, passing by the Whaley House and heading out to the parking lot.

  Back at the hotel, he turned on the television, stared at the screen for a while without knowing what he was watching, called Sherry and talked for about an hour, then masturbated joylessly and went to bed.

  On Saturday, he did nothing. He’d been planning to look up some of the people who knew Karen Somers or who’d been involved in the investigation of her death, but the truth was that he already knew what he needed to know and he didn’t feel like doing any additional research.

  It was after ten when he awoke, and outside the early morning clouds had burned off and the sky was swimming-pool blue. He’d brought a bathing suit, though at the time he wasn’t sure why, and now he thought he might spend the day on the sand. He asked the desk clerk for the location of a good beach where he could lie out undisturbed, and she pulled out a map, showing him a spot that was not scenic enough for tourists and where the waves weren’t good enough for locals. “It’s my favorite spot,” she told him. “There’s hardly anyone there.”

  Steve stopped by a place off the freeway called Happy Taco, picked up a breakfast burrito and a forty-four-ounce Coke, and drove through the city to the beach. Lying out on a white hotel towel, he fell asleep, waking up sometime in midafternoon with the realization that he’d gotten burned. He sat up, shielding his eyes against the sun. Off to the right, the sky was bisected by a gigantic bridge that led across the water to Coronado Island. It was higher than the Golden Gate, high enough that the tallest ship could pass beneath it with more than a hundred feet to spare, and Steve couldn’t help thinking that it would be the perfect spot from which to drop a body. Dead or alive. Because nothing could survive that fall.

  There had to be railings on it, though. Fences. Probably security cameras. The bridge was the biggest suicide magnet he had ever seen.

  He smiled to himself as he thought of what it would be like to throw McColl, screaming, over the side. He stood, shaking off the towel, his burned skin feeling tight, and wondered if his father had ever had a similar thought about the bridge.

  He probably had.

  He almost certainly had.

  On Sunday morning, Steve slept until noon.

  Then he checked out of the hotel and drove home.

  Twenty-one

  He killed Mark McColl on the day after he got back from San Diego.

  It wasn’t planned exactly, at least not in the way Gina’s death had been planned, but Steve was so intimately familiar with the day-to-day routines of the department head’s life that it was simple for him to step in without thinking and do what needed to be done. He knew McColl’s habits so well by this point that even a spontaneous killing might as well have been outlined weeks ahead of time, and while this wasn’t completely impulsive and unpremeditated, it definitely wasn’t something he had intended to do at this time.

  It just happened.

  McColl had called Steve into his office first thing that morning, ostensibly to talk about a new client, a junior high school in Reseda, but really to hint around about Gina’s murder.

  “What do you think of the new secretary?” the department head asked after they’d discussed the new client.

  “She seems fine,” Steve replied warily.

  McColl nodded. “I think she’ll work out. It’ll take a while to get her up to speed, but she should do well. I miss Gina, though.” He shook his head. “I still can’t believe she was murdered. In her own house. What kind of lunatic could do such a thing?”

  There was an emphasis on the word “lunatic” that Steve found insulting. It was obviously aimed directly at him, and he stood firm under the department head’s gaze, saying nothing.

  That was when he knew it was time for McColl to die.

  He didn’t make it look like an accident, as he’d originally intended, but he did make it appear to be a suicide; which, to a suspicious mind, might tie the death to Gina’s. It wasn’t exactly a frame and wasn’t even particularly well thought-out, but Steve trusted that the unstated haphazardness of the connection might lead observers, particularly the police, to think that McColl and Gina had been involved with each other, that he had killed her for some reason, and that guilt had led him to take his own life. Such a scenario was not implausible, and Steve wondered himself if the two of them really had been involved. The department head had certainly taken a personal interest in Gina’s death. And in her life. It was conceivable that he had been . . . intimate with her.

  Hell, his picture might even be in one of her collages.

  It was McColl’s good fortune that his wife and daughters were out, because Steve intended to kill the man no matter what. And if his family had been there, he might have been forced to dispatch them as well. He had no idea where they were or when they would be back, but if they were lucky they would remain at the gym or the basketball game or the band practice or whatever the fuck they were at, and not return until he was done. Because if they returned early . . .

  Trash pickup in McColl’s neighborhood was Tuesday morning, so each Monday evening, at eight or thereabouts, the department head took his two covered plastic garbage cans—one for household trash, one for yard waste—from the side yard out to the curb. He was vulnerable then, but too publicly visible. Steve could have taken him out in a drive-by at that moment, but guns weren’t his style. He was hands-on. McColl did leave his side door open when he carried out the trash cans, however, to enable him to get back into the house, and Steve took advantage of that: arriving early, hiding in the high bushes on the side of the house, and sneaking through the open gate into the side yard and then through the open door into the laundry room while the other man was out by the street.

  He moved quickly through the house—laundry room to kitchen to game room—staying at the back of the structure so he wouldn’t be seen from the street through those curtainless windows. There was nothing he could do about the exposed stairway, though, and, waiting until he heard the sound of movement at the side of the house, he dashed up the steps as quickly as he could, hoping no neighbors or passersby had been looking in at that moment. Hurriedly, he checked each room—master bedroom, the two girls’ bedrooms, guest room—before deciding to stake out the bathroom off the hall. Not only was it small, which was an advantage while lying in wait, but it echoed the location of Gina’s death, which would hopefully trigger comparisons in the minds of the police.

  From downstairs, Steve heard the closing of the side door, and then assorted knocks and scrapes and taps that indicated McColl was doing something in the kitchen. He remained standing just inside the doorway of the bathroom, wondering what his next move should be. Ordinarily, McColl would not go upstairs until bedtime—and by then his family would have returned. If Steve wanted to get this over with and get out—which he did—he would have to lure the other man up here. And soon. But he would have to do so in a way that did not arouse undue suspicion.

  Waiting until there was silence downstairs, until he was sure that McColl was either reading the newspaper or at his computer, Steve walked over to the toilet, lifted up the seat and then dropped it down hard. The noise seemed loud in the stillness, though he was not sure it was loud enough to be heard from downstairs. He waited a moment, and when he heard no corresponding noise, no indication that McColl was coming upstairs to investigate, he walked over to the bathroom sink, picked up a glass bowl filled with potpourri, lifted it high and let it crash and shatter on the floor.

  Now there was commotion downstairs.

  It was go time.

  He s
tepped into the shower stall, took the weapon from his pocket. He was wearing latex gloves and a raincoat. He expected this to get messy. And he was prepared.

  He stood still.

  Waited.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Footsteps sounded on the carpeted stairs, and a moment later, McColl was striding up the hall to the bathroom. Steve could see him through the narrow space between the hinges on the door. The department head didn’t seem particularly worried—just curious. Maybe the family had a cat or some other pet that was given free rein in the house and that was what he thought had made the noise. Whatever the reason, he approached unawares.

  And when he walked into the bathroom, Steve was waiting for him.

  With scissors.

  He wanted the advantage of surprise, but he also wanted McColl to know who he was, to be aware of who was taking him out. Steve was fortunate enough to see, for the split second after he emerged from the shower, recognition, and then, before the other man could react or respond, the scissors were slicing through the air and stabbing him in the throat, blood gushing like water from a burst pipe. Steve stepped quickly aside, not only to protect himself from the spray but to prevent an outline from forming on the floor and wall, a clear, bloodless spot that might indicate to investigators that someone else had been there.

  McColl fell forward, clutching his neck, trying to stem the flow, but he was too weakened already, and in a moment he was still, the only movement in the bathroom the feeble pumping of blood from the wound as his dying heart slowed, then stopped. The wall next to the shower looked like a red Jackson Pollock, and the white floor was covered with a growing pool of crimson. If he waited any longer, he would be trapped and have to step in the blood to get out, leaving incriminating footprints, so Steve took a mighty step over the expanding puddle and out into the hallway. Turning back around, he crouched down and gently took McColl’s right hand, placing it on the scissors protruding from his neck, making it look as though he’d stabbed himself.

  Both Steve’s raincoat and gloves had blood on them, and he smeared the blood around so it was evenly distributed. It made him look like a ghoul, but it also made it less likely that any of the blood would drip onto the floor as he went through the house on his way out. Strange, he thought. Moments before, that blood had been contained within McColl’s body, circulating through it, keeping him alive. Now it was on Steve. It felt wrong walking around with the vital fluid of a dead man smeared on his clothing, but it couldn’t be helped. He’d had no choice. He’d had to kill the department head. He hadn’t wanted to do it—McColl had forced it on him. It was the man’s own fault.

  Careful not to drip, careful not to touch, Steve made his way out to the landing, then hurried quickly down the stairs, once again hoping he would not be spotted through the window by someone on the sidewalk or in the street. He followed a reverse path back through the rear of the house to the laundry room. And stopped.

  The door.

  It was closed. Probably locked.

  How was he going to open the door and get out of the house without getting blood all over the handle or leaving fingerprints behind? Door handles would be the first things police would check in an investigation. He hesitated only a moment before using his left hand to pull off his right glove. Tugging down from the wrist, he turned the latex inside out and quickly put it back on. Cool, wet blood stuck to his skin, feeling slimy and revolting. But the outside was clear and clean, and he opened the door and went out into the side yard. It briefly occurred to him that he’d been sweating inside the glove and that some of his DNA had probably been left on the handle, but he pushed that thought away. Real life wasn’t a CSI show, and even if the police did suspect murder, his DNA wasn’t on file anywhere. He couldn’t be caught.

  What to do about the gloves, though? And the raincoat? If he brought them into his car, there’d be blood on the seats, on the floor, in the trunk. If he dumped them in McColl’s garbage cans, the police would find them. Where was he going to put this stuff? He hadn’t thought any of this through, and his mind was racing now, trying to come up with some way to dispose of the evidence.

  Next to the fence, adjacent to an old dented metal garbage can that obviously hadn’t been used in ages, was a black plastic sack filled with cans and bottles. It lay with its bottom flat on the ground, the top spread open to make it easier for the family to toss in their re cyclables. The sack was nowhere near full, and, grateful, Steve took off his raincoat, then took off his gloves, and tossed everything in. Pulling up on the edges of the bag, he twisted them and tied a loose slipknot to seal everything inside. The only disadvantage was that the shifting cans and bottles made a loud clattering sound when he picked up the trash bag, but that was a problem that couldn’t be helped. Treading as lightly and carefully as he could, he made his way out to the car, opened the driver’s-side door, pushed the sack onto the passenger seat beside him, and took off.

  The raincoat had been a long one, going down to his ankles, but the cuffs of his pants had still been exposed, and though he couldn’t see anything now, there were probably flecks of blood on those cuffs and on the tops of his tennis shoes. Later—tomorrow or the next day or next weekend—he would wash both and then donate them to a Goodwill or Salvation Army in another city far away from Irvine. The plastic trash bag he would toss in a Dumpster tonight, maybe driving to Garden Grove or Westminster or one of the poorer cities in hopes that, even if it were discovered before being taken to a landfill, its presence would be attributed to a person living there.

  Steve understood now the pressures his father had faced, and it amazed him to realize that the man had been able to simultaneously hold a job, head a family and kill the people who needed to be killed. He had not been close to his father, growing up. The two of them had never really gotten along, and after Steve left home, after college, they had drifted even farther apart. Theirs was a dysfunctional family, although that had never really bothered him. When he was living in the middle of it, the situation had seemed perfectly normal to him.

  But something had happened after his father’s stroke. Against all odds, the two of them had grown closer, and Steve had come to learn that he and his dad were more alike than not. He regretted all those years of emotional estrangement but at the same time was grateful that he had finally come to know his dad.

  His father might be dead, but Steve still felt closer to him than he ever had.

  He wondered if the old man had ever second-guessed himself or had ever felt remorseful about any of his kills. Steve didn’t. At least, not yet. Everything he’d done had had to be done, although he could foresee a time in the future when it all might not be so black-and-white, when there might be shades of gray or room for interpretation. In fact, if McColl’s family had returned and he’d had to take care of them, he would have felt bad about that.

  But they hadn’t.

  The wife and kids were okay.

  Things were good right now. All was right.

  Feeling better, Steve headed down MacArthur Boulevard before pulling onto the Costa Mesa Freeway and heading north toward Garden Grove.

  Twenty-two

  Friends

  “Sometimes it’s better when people die. Because then you can love them unconditionally, with all of their faults. Then their faults don’t matter.”

  Lydia had told her that when she was sixteen—and Zelda had never forgotten it. Yet it was not until now, after her own father had died, that Zelda finally realized the wisdom of those words. She’d always loved her father, of course, but he had often been thoughtless and unintentionally cruel. Most of the time he had thought only of himself, not caring how his words and actions might affect others. He had also sometimes been hard to get along with, even downright mean, and more than once she had wished that he was dead.

  Now that he was dead, Zelda realized how superficial her complaints were, how ultimately inconsequential her objections to his behavior had been. Even his worst attributes, even his most obnoxious
traits, were things that she could have lived with. She had been focusing on small negatives when she should have been looking at the big picture, and she regretted it now.

  “Sometimes it’s better when people die.”

  Well, maybe it wasn’t better. But it definitely put things into perspective. And perhaps the survivors learned something about themselves.

  It was to Lydia that Zelda poured out her heart after her father’s death. Lydia was not only her oldest friend, she was her best friend. They had been through a lot together. They had shared the good times, the bad times, the boring times. They had entrusted each other with their hopes, their fears, their successes, their failures. They shared knowledge they shared with no one else. Lydia knew of Zelda’s first sexual encounter. Zelda knew of Lydia’s brief flirtation with drugs.

  And Lydia had lost her father too. Her dad had died when she was fourteen, the victim of a freak accident at the foundry where he worked. So she knew what Zelda was going through.

  Her friendship with Lydia sometimes made her wonder whether events were predestined, planned by fate, or whether they were the random result of chance. Could it be chance that made her, in fourth grade, answer the pen pal ad in the back of a magazine that her teacher, Mrs. Levin, had given her to help with a report, and just happen to choose Lydia’s name from the list of two dozen the pen pal organization sent her?

  She did not think so.

  Something must have guided her.