by Alan Russell
“Tell me—”
“Can’t talk anymore. Got to get back.”
“Are you going to book him tonight?”
Alvarez made a little face. “That’s going to be the lieutenant’s call,” he said. “My guess is we’ll wait until tomorrow just to make sure everything is bundled up tight.”
He again pointed his index finger at her, winked, then walked out of the room.
An hour later Caleb left the interview room. He was hoarse and terribly tired. Only when he had started slurring his words, and appeared ready to swoon, had the detectives reluctantly terminated the interview. Friendly to the end, they had advised him not to leave town until matters were “better clarified.” They also asked him to come back for “a few more questions” the next day.
He had thought their questions would never end. Caleb had sweated through his shirt. He was surprised the polygraph hadn’t shorted because of all his perspiration. Caleb shuddered a little. He didn’t like being wired to anything.
They’d given him aspirin for his headache a few hours earlier, but it hadn’t helped. His head throbbed. All those questions. All those insinuations. And more than insinuations.
Do you love your wife, Cal?
Were you envious of your father’s notoriety, Cal?
Did you want to be like your father, Caleb?
Did you know Teresa Sanders, Caleb?
They already knew so many dirty things. And the whole time that damn machine had kept reacting, always scratching, scratching.
Have you ever murdered anyone, Mr. Parker?
He pushed the door open, glad to be free of the building. The night air, and his soaked shirt, made him shiver.
“Caleb?”
Her voice came from the darkness and made him jump. Elizabeth rose from the stairs.
“God, you scared me,” he said.
I’m the one who’s scared, Elizabeth thought. And crazy for being here. The lie detector says you’re a murderer. But she wasn’t as certain. Her inner polygraph knew that Caleb had been less than forthcoming with her. He was hiding things. Which was why her hand was inside her purse, cradled around her gun. But taking precautions was different from pronouncing guilt.
Damn him, Elizabeth thought. His features were just like his father’s. But she was standing there because he didn’t feel like Gray.
“How’d it go?” she asked.
He shook his head.
There was a melancholy so deep in him that Elizabeth didn’t know where it started and he ended. He averted his eyes when he talked with her. His father hadn’t been like that. Gray had been much more confident.
“I have some things for you,” she said, holding out a bag.
He took the bag without opening it, without asking any questions.
“My card’s in there,” she said. “I’ve written down all my numbers. My answering service knows how to track me down, so I prefer you only use my cell phone number if it’s an emergency.”
Elizabeth used her cell phone to call out but only rarely took incoming calls. She didn’t like to be obligated to answer the phone unless she knew it was an emergency.
Caleb pocketed her card. He had no intention of ever calling her.
“I know you’re probably exhausted now,” said Elizabeth, “but I’d like to talk to you later tonight.”
Caleb didn’t commit himself with either word or gesture.
“There’s also a book and MP3 player with a recording in the bag. They’re my story of your father.”
Caleb finally looked at her. She was shivering, he noticed. Is she trying to help me, he wondered, or is she just doing her best to get the inside track to my story?
“Why didn’t you bring a lawyer with you?” she asked.
“Why didn’t you tell me they suspected me of another murder?”
Neither answered. Neither had answers. Both just stood there looking at the other.
“I have to go,” he said. “I have to talk to Anna. Prepare her.”
But he didn’t leave, not immediately. “You’ve been through this lots of times before,” Caleb said. “You know the ropes. I don’t know which way the authorities are planning to go on this....”
Caleb paused, but Elizabeth didn’t respond to the opening.
“But if they decide to take me in, I need someone to look out for Anna and the kids, someone to be a buffer. They don’t know what kind of a zoo this can be.”
“I’ll help them,” Elizabeth said.
His exhaustion lifted for a moment, replaced by a look of relief. “Thank you. You know how bad it gets. All the sharks come out to feed, and they don’t care what they chew up in the process. Lots of innocent lives get ruined that way.”
Caleb looked uncomfortable with having offered that autobiography. He shifted uneasily. “Well, good night,” he said.
Elizabeth watched him walk away. He had respected her space, keeping his distance. She wondered if he had guessed about her gun.
She walked back to her car, aware of the night, of the sounds. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Over the years she’d learned to be vigilant, had been taught by the best and learned lessons from the worst. She started her car but didn’t immediately pull away. Her father had worked in a car lot while she was growing up and had trained his daughter to let the engines warm up before driving off. It was antiquated thinking, she knew. Newer cars didn’t need that kind of coddling. But old habits were hard to break. Elizabeth’s father had died ten years earlier, but the ritual of letting the engine run was her way of keeping kinship with him. While her car idled, she watched Caleb drive his gardening truck out of the parking lot. Mister Tree, his truck said.
No, she thought. Mystery.
Elizabeth was just putting her car into gear when Detectives Holt and Alvarez ran out to the lot. Their heads swiveled around in desperate search of something. Elizabeth drove over to them.
“You seen him?” Holt shouted. “You seen Parker?”
“He left a few minutes ago,” she said.
“What was he driving?” Alvarez asked.
For some reason, she balked on the truth. “I—I didn’t really notice.”
“That fuck,” Holt said. “That fuck.”
“What happened?”
“A body was just discovered at the Presidio in Old Town,” said Alvarez. “She’s got Shame’s handwriting on her—literally.”
11
CALEB PASSED BY the Interstate 5-805 merge. It was late enough that he didn’t have to fight the usual bottleneck.
He wouldn’t have minded traffic tonight, though. It would have delayed his having to confess to Anna. The night before he’d tried to figure out how to tell her all that had occurred and had ended up sitting in his driveway half the night. He still didn’t know how he’d break the news to her.
As the traffic lanes converged, Caleb looked to his right and left. In the darkness, he kept seeing a white envelope on the passenger seat. It wasn’t empty, judging by a rectangular bulge. One of the kids must have dropped it there, he thought, but he didn’t remember seeing it on the drive over to the Sheriff’s Department. He had been so nervous, though, it was something he could have easily overlooked.
No, he thought. I would have noticed it.
His throat started to tighten. The envelope was out of place, just as the open door at the Sanderses’ house had been. He reached for it, found it unsealed, and thumbed it open. There were some pictures inside. He turned on the map light, pulled the photos from the envelope, and took a look at them.
The pictures fell out of his hands. He grasped the steering wheel as if it was a life preserver, and he was in danger of drowning.
Another victim. Naked. SHAME scrawled across her privates. Seeing the photos was almost worse than when he’d been confronted with the body of Teresa Sanders. The pictures made him feel as naked as the victim, stripping away his illusions. Someone had targeted him. But as Caleb’s breathing steadied, his defense mechanisms started kicking in
. Maybe the photos were old, or staged. Maybe the Sheriff’s Office had planted them in his truck to put more psychological pressure on him.
He didn’t want to look at the pictures again, but he reached for them anyway. He had to see. There was enough light to make out the woman’s face. She looked familiar.
Everyone looks familiar, he tried to tell himself. More denial. But it didn’t work.
“No,” he said, but he remembered anyway.
The night before he had awakened from a grim memory to that sweet face. She was the smiling clerk from the doughnut shop. The girl—she was too young to be called a woman—had gently announced to him that it was closing time. He had been reliving his last meeting with his father. As far as he was concerned, her interruption had been only too timely, a rope thrown to a drowning man.
Caleb didn’t know her name, knew only that he was the cause of her death.
He paced the Solana Beach platform, waiting for the last train of the evening to downtown San Diego.
Caleb’s truck was parked on a residential street a mile from the station, far enough away, he hoped, for the police not to immediately assume his intentions. Not that Caleb knew his intentions beyond boarding the train and trying to get a little time to figure out who was setting him up. He hoped the authorities would assume he’d traveled north, to Los Angeles.
No one else was at the station. Caleb consulted the posted train schedule yet again. The Coaster was making its last southern run at 10:23—five minutes from now, if it was on schedule. Time enough to address the question he’d put off: Did I kill them?
He found himself shaking. Caleb wanted to believe he wasn’t capable of murder, but he knew that wasn’t true.
The whistle of the approaching train grabbed his attention. It also awakened him to the possibilities of another form of escape.
Just put the bad penny on the tracks.
The platform began to vibrate. Caleb could see the train’s light as it drew nearer. People who’d had near-death experiences often talked about the great white light they had seen. Caleb could almost imagine that was what he was looking at. All he had to do was focus on the light. It wouldn’t even be necessary for him to step onto the tracks. He could just lean forward, his eyes on the light, and let himself drop.
But killing himself would be taken as an admission of guilt. And his children would be left with the same horrible legacy his father had passed on to him.
The train came to a stop. Caleb stepped up, entering a compartment with only two occupants, businessmen commuting back from a hard day of it in Orange County or Los Angeles. Each gave Caleb the barest glance, then returned to his pursuit, one to his iPhone, the other a laptop. Before the train even picked up speed the conductor entered the compartment, offered the one-word conversation of “Ticket,” then collected the ticket Caleb had bought from a machine at the station.
Caleb was traveling light, carrying only the bag that Elizabeth had given him. Passing lights illuminated his window in brief flashes. There was more darkness than not. He listened to the rails rattle and tried not to associate the sounds with a death rattle. As a boy, he and Jimmy Doolittle had put coins down on the railroad tracks. He had proudly exhibited the results to his mother, but she hadn’t been impressed with the flattened coins.
“Waste of money,” she had said.
But he and Jimmy hadn’t thought so. Caleb had kept the coins for years. He supposed they reminded him of better times. When he’d had friends. When he hadn’t been the town’s outcast.
“Cain’t come out and play.”
The words were offered behind the refuge of a screen door. The two boys looked at one another. Neither understood the necessity of the restriction. Three times in the last week Gray had sought out the company of his best friend, Jimmy Doolittle, and three times he had been rebuffed.
“Why not?”
“Mama says I cain’t play with you no more.”
Mamas were the law, but Gray knew the law was known to change. “When’s she gonna let you play with me?”
A large body appeared behind Jimmy’s. Mrs. Doolittle had her hands placed on top of her ample hips. She was scowling.
“You’re not welcome around here, Gray Parker. Go on home.”
Mrs. Doolittle had been nice to him up until the time his father had been arrested. Since then she had made it her business to keep him and Jimmy apart.
“And don’t you come back,” she said, shutting the door on him.
Gray turned around. “And don’t you come back,” he repeated. Her voice wasn’t easy to mimic. He started down the walkway. “And don’t you come back,” he said again, but knew he still didn’t have it quite right. Mrs. Doolittle always sounded as if she was winded, as if just getting the words out was stretching her air supply. That’s ’cause she’s fat, he thought.
“You’re fat!” Gray yelled in the direction of the house.
Out on the street he started kicking a rock. Brad Forte was Gray’s other best friend, but Brad had told him he couldn’t play with him anymore either. Gray kicked the rock even harder.
His whole life he’d lived in Eden, Texas, but things had changed lately. Now people looked at him suspiciously, like he was some outsider they didn’t know. They didn’t wave anymore, just stopped what they were doing and silently waited for him to pass. It was like when a marsh hawk passed over the creek, and all the little birds and animals got quiet all of a sudden.
He kicked the rock again. Maybe he should go over to the creek. He liked listening to the birds and practicing their calls, was good at mimicking their whistles and chirps and songs and gobbles. Gray could copy any sound once he set his mind to it. He’d been born with that gift. He was working on a new one, the keen of a red-tailed hawk. Gray practiced the bird’s shriek: “Keeeeeer.” The sound broke through the humid air. Not bad, Gray thought. But next time he needed to make it a little harsher, and bring down the call as it went along. He decided to hold off practicing it, because he didn’t want to scare all the animals into hiding. It wouldn’t do to have the whole world going silent on him.
Gray reconsidered going to the creek. He’d been there the day before and met up with a group of older boys. They had tossed dirt clods at him, and then rocks. Gray had tried throwing back, but there were four of them and they had much stronger arms. They had yelled all sorts of things about his daddy as if they had known him real good. That was more than Gray could claim. His father had been away one place or another for most of his life.
Maybe he should go to the park. Usually there was a baseball game going on there. Or he could go to Wally’s. After taking a few weeks off, Mama was back working there again. But lots of times she was too busy bringing food to tables to be able to talk with him. And he could tell Wally wasn’t any too pleased to have him visiting there. It was almost as if Wally knew he was the one who’d put the Condemned by the Health Department sign on the front window. Even before all this business with his daddy, Wally had watched him close. He wasn’t anybody you wanted to rile. Wally had big eyebrows that looked like fat, white caterpillars, and a chest as big as a gorilla’s, and he was always holding a cleaver or a spatula and looking like he’d turn and use it on you without much cause.
Wally looked like a killer, Gray thought. Acted like one, too. Maybe there’d been some mistake. His father sure didn’t look like a killer. He was a handsome man. On that, everyone agreed. And he was smart, always was studying something or other.
The train slowed down as it approached downtown San Diego’s Santa Fe depot. As Caleb nervously gathered his bag, he wondered which biography scared him more—his own or his father’s.
12
THE BODY HAD been found on holy ground, just outside the Presidio in Old Town. The killer had found his shrine. The mission’s founder, Junípero Serra, was even being considered for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church.
The victim still hadn’t been identified. She was a young woman, believed to be no more than twenty, ma
rked and posed like the others.
As if all that weren’t bad enough for the Sheriff’s Office, Caleb Parker still hadn’t shown up at his home.
Promises to keep, thought Elizabeth, taking her leave of homicide headquarters.
“We got a situation here,” said Detective Holt, calling from his car phone.
Lieutenant Borman wiped the sweat off his face. It had been his decision to let Parker walk. It was the right call. In a homicide investigation, you had only one opportunity to do things right. If he had prematurely arrested Parker, it would have jeopardized the whole case. No one had thought he was a risk to run. But now two hours had passed since Parker’s departure. It should have taken him only half an hour to get home, which meant he was ninety minutes tardy. Parker still could be shopping, or at a bar, or talking with a friend, but Borman had a bad feeling that he’d skipped. A “Pick Up Or Check” directive had been sent out to all law enforcement, with a description of Gray Caleb Parker and his truck. The Sheriff’s Office, SDPD, the feds, the Border Patrol, and the FBI all had that directive. That still hadn’t produced Parker.
“What now?” Borman asked Holt.
“That writer just pulled up in her car. She’s making for the front door right now. You want us to intercept her?”
“Shit,” Borman said. Another decision. Something else for him to be second-guessed on. But his ass was covered on this one. The sheriff himself had given permission for that Line woman not only to circulate freely among them but to be allowed access to their investigation. The boss probably wanted a chapter devoted to him in her next book, a really complimentary one.
“Don’t try and stop her,” Borman said.
Anna recognized the woman from the night before. She wished the house looked a little better, but with both her and Cal working, and two active children, it was a moral victory that it was as presentable as it was. For a moment, Anna wondered if Cal was having an affair with this woman. She was older than Anna but still very attractive. Maybe that explained Caleb’s behavior and this woman’s showing up at their house two nights in a row. She had announced herself at the door by saying she had a message from Caleb. Though not dressed for company, Anna had still invited her inside.
