One on One

by Michael Brandman

  “Do you know who killed him?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Do you?”

  “I only wish it had been me,” she said.

  “You wish you had killed Coach Hank?”

  “I wish it was me who had plunged that knife into his stinking neck. I dream about it. I dream I did it. I only wish I had.”

  Chapter Forty-five

  It was late but I knew any attempt at sleep would prove fruitless. As dog-tired as I was, I still found energy enough to pour myself a stiff gin and tonic, plop down at my desk, and open the murder book.

  The meeting with Connie Nabors had unsettled me. My rage at Henry Carson was palpable. I’d come to feel as Connie does. I wish it had been me who did it.

  I brushed past the photos of the crime scene, opting instead to study those of the swim team members, a collection of youngsters, all in search of their grown-up identities, still experimenting with the lifestyle choices that would shape their respective destinies.

  Not readily apparent was the fact that each of these youngsters was freighted with a dark secret. Many of them were guilt-ridden over decisions that had been made for them by Henry Carson, decisions regarding their sexual awakenings, decisions that would weigh on their psyches for the rest of their lives.

  I pored over the myriad photos of Carson that had been collected in the murder book, pictures of him standing on the fringes of a swim team photo, broadly grinning while appearing in the center of a small group of team members, snapshots with various students, pictures of him alone.

  What was it about this guy that was so charismatic? Charismatic enough to have persuaded so many of these kids to surrender themselves to him in the misguided belief they meant something to him?

  Who was this guy?

  In photo after photo, he appeared to be brimming with warmth and love for those pictured with him. His focus was riveted on them, each basking in the cocoon of his undivided attention. He wasn’t a handsome man, but there was about him an aura of kindness and warmth that appeared attractive.

  In truth, he was a monster who possessed a talent for insinuating himself into the lives of others, and in so doing, earned their confidence and in turn, violated it.

  I sat back and downed the last of the gin. I poured myself another.

  I returned to the file and once again examined the individual photos of the various team members, focusing this time on the girls.

  Janet Swift was seventeen, wearing a deep blue sports bra that clung to her well-developed breasts and revealed her tightened abs. She had on a pair of cut-off blue jeans that didn’t quite cover her entire behind.

  What was it about Henry Carson that caused this young innocent to willingly surrender her virginity to him? And make herself available not only to him, but also to a gaggle of young boys, no more sophisticated than she.

  My gaze fell on a head shot of Paul Henderson, the football player/body guard. He looked younger in the photo than he did in person, but the picture served to accentuate a pair of carefully guarded eyes and his slightly opened mouth revealed crooked teeth. His lopsided smile oozed the kind of all-purpose malevolence that made me angry just looking at him.

  Finally I closed the file.

  I found myself wishing that Henry Carson was still alive so that instead of the swift and unexpected death he experienced, he would instead live out his life in a prison cell, a daily penance for the hateful crimes he committed when he stole the innocence and probity from a group of youngsters who deserved better.

  The effects of the gin barely served to dull my rage. I dropped onto my bed where, fully clothed, I wrestled a fitful sleep, replete with dreams of havoc being wreaked by me upon Henry Carson and the two despicable footballers.

  I awakened drenched in sweat, depleted and depressed, frustrated that someone had gotten to Carson before I could, yet grateful they had.

  I dreaded what I might have done had I found him alive. And how relieved I was not to have had to face the consequences of my actions.

  None of which made sleep any easier.

  Mostly I just lay there staring at the ceiling, grateful for the appearance of the first light of day and the chance to rid myself of these hellish dreams.

  At least temporarily.

  Chapter Forty-six

  “What would you do?” I asked my father.

  We were sitting on the back porch, he in his favorite chair, me on the swing.

  It was late afternoon and the cicadas were in force, loudly chirping, providing a discordant background to a melancholic afternoon.

  “Don’t think I’m not bothered by this, Buddy,” the Sheriff said. “That he got away with it. That no one blew the whistle on him. That these kids lived in such fear of reprisals. Makes no sense.”

  “The football players may have played a role in keeping it under wraps, but frankly, these guys are a pair of stupids. Terrifying, perhaps, in their size and musculature, but essentially witless.”

  “You’re holding them?”

  “Pending charges.”

  “Which will be?”

  “Unlawful sexual intercourse with minors and statutory rape, for openers. Plus anything else that would beg jail time and cause them to register as lifetime sex-offenders.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want them in the system and out of circulation. They’re a pair of thugs whose future will most certainly include violations of the law. I want these offenses to be part of their profiles. Sex crimes. Criminal assault. Stupidity. All of them serving as warnings to law enforcement that they pose a serious threat.”

  We sat silently for a while, listening to the insects and enjoying the breeze. He was wearing down. His movements were slow and studied. He had difficulty swallowing. He did his best to hide his discomfort, but I was aware of it. “Stupidity isn’t a chargeable offense.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “You know damn good and well it isn’t.”

  “Well, in their case, it should be.”

  He smiled. “You think someone else was involved in all this, don’t you?”

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t bring myself to say it.”

  “Fred Maxwell,” my father said. “The head coach.”

  I shrugged, reluctant to officially implicate the coach, although my suspicions of his involvement were through the roof.

  “You want to bring him in?”

  “Not yet. He’s been around for a long time. I’d want proof positive before I went after him. He doesn’t deserve to be identified without certainty.”

  “How do you achieve certainty?”

  “I’ve just started interviewing the sixteen-year-old girls. Very disturbing. More so than the older girls. Thanks to social media, seventeen-year-olds are far more sophisticated for their age than were previous generations. They’ve only known life in the technological era, where innocence is compromised way too soon.

  “The sixteen-year-olds are different. They’re still children, struggling to discover who they are. Their vulnerability has yet to be corrupted. I believe this circumstance, this havoc that was wreaked upon them by Henry Carson, has caused immeasurable psychological damage. They aren’t mature enough to fully process all they’ve been through. They’re troubled and confused. The break in this case, when it happens, will come from one of them.”

  “The sixteen-year-old girls.”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “I’m dancing as fast as I can.”

  “Meaning?”

  “My coply intuition tells me we’re on the threshold of solving this case. I just hope it comes sooner rather than later.”

  “You and me both.”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Kimber Carson closed the door behind me and leaned ag
ainst it.

  “What?” she said. “Why do you have that look in your eye?”

  “What look?”

  “Don’t demean me, Buddy. Something’s wrong. What is it?”

  “Can we start this by perhaps saying hello to each other? By acknowledging the rules of civility.”

  She stared at me. She had on a man’s long-sleeved blue dress-shirt over a pair of cotton leotards. As usual, her hair was a jumble. She wore no makeup. She looked tired. Weary, actually. As much a casualty of the mess her late husband had concocted, as was any of his victims.

  She had about her an air of remorse. Of guilt.

  What if she’d acted on her suspicions and brought them to the attention of the authorities? Would she have prevented not only her husband’s death, but her own suffering as well?

  What if it was her silence that had spawned the murder? That, with no help in sight, the killer had come to believe the only way out of hell was to eliminate the devil.

  “I’m sorry, Buddy. Perhaps you’d like to come inside?”

  I stepped around her and together, we wandered into the living room and sat on opposite chairs.

  “So, what brings you to my door?” she asked.

  “It’s worse than I thought.”

  “Why am I not surprised? How so?”

  “In your initial description, you neglected to mention that he would stop at nothing to get what he was after. That when the occasion called for it, he could be a paragon of charm. That he was relentless. And that once he got what he wanted, he no longer wanted it.”

  She stared at me empty-eyed. Her spirits low, she seemed freighted with regret.

  “I neglected to mention it because I felt stupid for having fallen for it.”

  “It being?”

  “His line. It was so intense, so all-consuming, so powerful that not accepting it was out of the question. Either you were in or you weren’t. Being ‘in’ carried with it the promise of unmitigated pleasure and joy. The idea that he was a phony was unimaginable.”

  She swept the hair off her forehead and looked away. It was as if she had been informed that the world in which she was living had come to a sudden end which left her dangling in space.

  “How many?”

  “Girls?”

  She nodded.

  “Several. Most of them underage. Many now exhibiting signs of psychological trauma.”

  “Do you blame me, Buddy?”

  “Do you blame yourself?”

  “I was with him for less than a year. He romanced me with more ardor than I could ever have imagined. You remember the expression, ‘swept off her feet’? Well, that was me. I didn’t know what hit me. He became my everything. I adored him. It was when we arrived here in Freedom that he turned his back on me.

  “Initially, I thought it was my fault. That I was doing something wrong. For a while I was catatonic. Then my sense of self-preservation took hold. It took time for that to happen, but when it did several months ago, we essentially lived separate lives in the same house. We rarely spoke. He was gone a good deal of the time. I told him I wanted a divorce.”

  “To which he replied?”

  “He never replied.”

  She stood and absently moved to the sparsely populated bookcase where she picked up one of the books that was lying facedown on a shelf. She looked at it without seeing it. Then she returned it.

  She stared at me through distracted eyes. She wandered toward the kitchen. I followed.

  She took a plastic water bottle from the fridge and offered it to me. When I declined, she dropped it on the table, then opened the kitchen door and stepped outside.

  The yard was postage-stamp size. What had once been verdant, however, was now dry and desolate, the result of either negligence or drought. Or both.

  She gazed at me briefly, then looked away. “You must think me awful.”

  “Why?”

  “For keeping his secrets.”

  We stood silently for a while, then she said, “I didn’t kill him. Do you believe me?”

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “You mean why do I believe you?”

  “Yes.”

  I considered my response for several moments. My opinions were subjective and still open to further examination. But she was suffering. And maybe my insights might help clarify things for her. So I took a deep breath and gave it my best shot.

  “You were as much his victim as were the others. But your circumstance was different than theirs. You were confronted by a changing reality that shattered all of your assumptions about marriage and relationships. Not an easy thing to endure. Either physically or emotionally.

  “We, none of us, can predict how we’ll behave when exposed to such unexpected suffering. We’re human and we improvise as we go along.

  “Could you have done things differently? Might you have had a greater impact had you done so? Maybe. Maybe not. But you did the best you could. Nobody could have predicted his murder. In hindsight, had you known, perhaps you might have behaved differently. But you were in unfamiliar territory and the first order of business was self-preservation.

  “Killing him wasn’t in the cards for you. He or she who did kill him was in deep emotional and psychological distress. Unlike the killer, you had determined to extricate yourself by leaving him.

  “The killer couldn’t do such a thing. He or she was cornered. Rooted to the spot. Incapable of going anywhere else. Frightened and helpless. Killing him was the only way out.

  “I’d bet anything that killing him was an obsession. Like there was no other option. You don’t match that profile, Kimber. I never thought for a minute that you did.”

  “So who killed him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  “We got him,” I told Chuck Voight when he answered my call.

  “How?”

  “He made a fatal mistake.”

  “I realize that evasion is your middle name, Buddy, but could you please find the point?”

  “He never noticed the tail.”

  “You mean he was tagging with impunity, not knowing he was being surveilled?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “Cleaning up after himself.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He’s whitewashing walls.”

  “You mean he’s painting over his graffiti?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d you get him to do that?”

  “I’m very persuasive.”

  “Don’t kid around, Buddy. How did you get him to do it?”

  “I threatened him.”

  “How?”

  “I told him I’d petition for a lengthy jail term.”

  “And he bought it?”

  “Seems like it.”

  “Wow. I’m jealous. Can I help?”

  “You mean you want to whitewash the walls with him?”

  “Must you?”

  “Must I what?”

  “Be such an asshole.”

  “I never gave it much thought.”

  “Time’s a wastin’,” he chided.

  “At some point his old man is going to enter this fray.”

  “And you want me to help with that?”

  “I’m guessing that a full-scale outing of the prodigal son down there in bleeding heart L.A. will become a major embarrassment. There’s no business like show business... except when there isn’t.”

  “So you want the crimes of the son to impact the father?”

  “I do.”

  “Because?”

  “I want the old man to take this arrest seriously. Pay a pr
ice for his son’s miscreance. Robaire’s incarceration in San Remo County needs to be perceived as a big deal. And when the LAPD also brings charges, it needs to become a whole lot bigger deal.”

  “To what end?”

  “To serve as a message to the so-called street artists that huge fines and meaningful jail time have become the cost of doing business.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “You in?”

  “Let me talk to the boss.”

  “What do you think he’ll say?”

  “Depends on how the political winds are blowing.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It’ll be the Mayor’s call.”

  I stopped by the site of the most ornate of Robaire Noel’s wall defacements, the exterior of a warehouse belonging to a small welding company, located on Highway 65, between Willard’s Crossing and Freedom.

  The size of the space appeared to have inspired Robaire to fill it completely. Curlicue designs, massive blotches of mismatched colors, and the largest of his signatures yet to appear in Freedom had seriously desecrated the warehouse facade.

  I stepped out of my Wrangler and approached Officer Jason Kurtzer, a newcomer to the Freedom Police Department, who had been charged with today’s care and feeding of prisoner Robaire Noel, aka Robber Xmas, who was currently on his knees in front of his self-proclaimed masterpiece, scrubbing it vigorously.

  He was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit with the word Freedom stenciled across the back. His ankles were shackled. When he heard me approach, he wheeled around and glared at me.

  Charges had been filed against him, but rather than allowing him to languish in a jail cell, I had tasked him with cleansing his graffiti, removing it from all of the walls in Freedom he had tarnished. He was surrounded by massive amounts of solvents and detergents, including ammonia, powdered bleach, citric acid, and sodium hydroxide—all of them having been charged to his newly opened credit account with the San Remo County penal system.

  “How’s he doing?” I asked Officer Kurtzer.

  “He’s not what you would call a happy camper.”