The Straw Men

by Marshall, Michael

'What about here?' she said, turning. She was wearing sunglasses now, businesslike. The camera hesitated for a moment, and wobbled, as if my father had taken his eye from the lens to look around him.

  His voice: 'A little further.'

  Onwards they walked, for perhaps another minute. Then stopped again. The camera panned round, giving a tantalizingly quick panorama of what seemed to be the top of a rise in the middle of a hilly city, tall buildings either side of the street. Signs at ground level declared the presence of grocery stores and cheap restaurants, but the windows above looked like those of apartments. People stood outside the stores, assaying produce, wearing hats; others walked in and out of the stores. A busy neighbourhood, coming up for lunchtime.

  Mother looked back at the camera and nodded. It was her call. She made it, reluctantly.

  Cut to later in the day. A slightly different view, but the top of the same hill. Where before it had been morning light, now the shadows were longer. Late afternoon, and the streets were nearly empty. My mother was standing with her arms down by her sides. An odd gurgling sound came from somewhere out of shot, and I realized it was similar to the noise I'd heard on the train.

  There was a little movement of the camera, as if my father had reached out to touch something. Then my mother moved forward a little way, or he stepped back. A harsh release of breath from my father.

  And then, thirty-five years later, from me.

  My mother was holding the hands of two very young children, one on either side. They looked to be the same age, and were dressed to match, though one wore a blue top, the other yellow. They appeared little more than a year old, perhaps eighteen months, and tottered unsteadily on their feet.

  The camera zoomed in on them. One's hair was cut short, the other slightly longer. The faces were identical.

  The camera pulled back out. My mother let go of the hand of one of the children. The one with the longer hair and yellow top, a little green satchel. She squatted next to the other child.

  'Say goodbye,' she said. The child in blue looked at her dubiously, uncomprehending. 'Say goodbye, Ward.'

  The two children looked at one another. Then the one with the short hair, the child that must have been me, glanced back at his mother for reassurance. She took my hand, and lifted it up.

  'Say goodbye.'

  She made my hand wave, then took me in her arms and stood up. The other child looked up at my mother then, smiled, held his or her arms to be lifted, too. I couldn't tell, not for sure, what sex it might be.

  My mother started walking down the street.

  She walked at an even pace, not hurrying, but not looking back. The camera stayed on the other child, even as my father walked away after my mother down the hill. They left it standing there.

  The child got further and further away, silent at the crest of the rise. It never even cried: at least, not until we were too far away for the sound to be heard.

  Then the camera turned a corner and it was gone.

  •••

  The image cut back to white noise, and this time nothing came afterwards. Within a minute the tape turned itself off, leaving me staring at my reflection in the screen.

  I fumbled for the remote, rewound, paused. Stared at the frozen image of a child, left standing at the top of a hill, my hands held up over my mouth.

  Chapter 7

  The slot opened. A dim light shone down from above.

  'Hello, my dear,' the man said. 'I'm back.'

  Sarah could not see his face. From the sound of his voice, it appeared he was sitting on the floor just behind her head.

  'Hello,' she said, her voice as steady as she could make it. She wanted to shrink away from him, put just an extra inch of distance between them, but couldn't move even that much. She fought to remain calm, to keep to her plan of sounding as if she didn't care. 'How are you today? Still insane, I guess.'

  The man laughed quietly. 'You're not going to make me angry.'

  'Who wants you angry?'

  'So why do you say these things?'

  'My mom and dad are going to be worried sick. I'm scared. I may not be that polite.'

  'I understand.'

  He was silent then, for a long time. Sarah waited.

  Perhaps five minutes later, she saw a hand reaching out over her face. It held a glass of water. Without warning, he slowly tipped it. She got her mouth open in time, and drank as much as she could. The hand disappeared again.

  'Is that it?' she said. Her mouth felt strange, clean and wet. The water had tasted the way she had always expected wine to, from the way grown-ups made such a big deal of it and rolled it around in their mouths like it was the best thing they had ever tasted. In fact, in her experience, wine generally tasted like something was wrong with it.

  'What else were you expecting?'

  'You want me to stay alive, then you're going to have to give me something more than water.'

  'Why do you think I want you alive?'

  'Because otherwise you would have killed me right off and have me sitting naked someplace where you could look at me and jack off.'

  'That's not a very nice thing to say.'

  'I refer you to my earlier comments. I'm not feeling very nice, and you're a sicko, so I don't have to be.'

  'I'm not a sicko, Sarah.'

  'No? How would you define yourself? Unusual?'

  He laughed again, delightedly. 'Oh certainly.'

  'Unusual like Ted fucking Bundy.'

  'Ted Bundy was an idiot,' the man said. All humour had vanished from his voice. 'A grandstanding fool and a fake.'

  'Okay,' she said, trying to placate him, though privately she thought he now sounded pompous as well as insane. 'I'm sorry. I'm not a big fan of his either. You're much better. So do I get some food or what?'

  'Later, perhaps.'

  'Great. I'll look forward to it. Cut it up small, so I can catch it.'

  'Good night, Sarah.'

  When she heard him standing, her pretend calm fled. The plan hadn't worked. At all. He knew she was frightened.

  'Please don't put the lid back on. I can't move anyway.'

  'I'm afraid I have to,' the man said.

  'Please…'

  It was replaced, and Sarah was in darkness again.

  She heard his footsteps receding, a door shutting quietly, and then all was silent once more.

  She licked frantically around her mouth, collecting as much of the remaining moisture as she could. Now that the initial shock of it was gone, she realized the water tasted different from the stuff she was used to at home. It must be from a different supply, which meant she had to be a long way from home. Like when you went on vacation. That was something, at least, something that she knew. The more she knew, the better.

  Then she realized that maybe it was mineral water, something from a bottle, in which case the taste didn't mean anything. It could just be a different brand. That didn't matter. It was still worth thinking about. The more ideas she had, the better. Like the fact that when she'd mentioned her parents, the man hadn't said again how he'd killed them. When he'd captured her he'd been very keen to talk about what he'd done to them. Maybe it meant something. Hopefully it meant that they were still alive, and he'd only said the other things to frighten her.

  Maybe not. Sarah lay in the darkness, her hands clenched into fists, and tried not to scream.

  Part 2

  Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation or creed.

  —Bertrand Russell

  Chapter 8

  The flight got in to Los Angeles at 22.05. Nina had nothing except her handbag and the file, and Zandt could carry all he owned with one hand and not look lopsided. There was a car waiting for them. Nothing sleek and official. Just a cab Nina had booked from the plane, to drop him in Santa Monica and then take her home.

  Lights and signs in the darkness, half-seen faces, the rustle and honk of life on just another of those evenings in a city whose heart never seems to be quite where
you are, but is always round a corner, or down that street, or the other side of hulking buildings in some new club whose glory nights will be over before you've even heard of it. Between there and here are a clutch of cheap hotels, dusty liquor stores, car lots selling vehicles of dubious provenance. A tatty herd of people waiting on street corners with nothing very positive in mind, in a veldt of concrete bunkers housing businesses that will swallow countless hollow lives without ever being quoted on NASDAQ. Gradually the change to residential streets, and then into Venice. From the outside, on the right streets, Venice can look like it's trying to claw itself back upmarket. Some of the property is expensive, in a crappy International style. Every now and then you'll see a tattered piece of 1950s signage, something exuberant that harks back to flash bulbs and frozen glamour. Most have been torn down now, replaced by brutal information boards stamped out in Helvetica, the official typeface of purgatory. Helvetica isn't designed to make you feel anything good, to promise adventure or gladden the heart. Helvetica is for telling you that profits are down, that the photocopier needs servicing and by the way, you've been fired. Finally, Santa Monica. Nicer houses, small offices, places to get Japanese food and the London Times. The sea, with a pier that was born in sepia but knows those days are over. The Palisades up above, busy Ocean Avenue, then the first line of hotels and restaurants. The sense, from somewhere, that this suburb had once been a town. Perhaps it's the sea that makes it feel that way, that gives an impression that this community is here for a reason. In places it still is, still feels as if it has a relationship to its environment that goes beyond simply having flattened it. Stores and cafes and places to be, places to walk into and to buy from. You could live there and understand where you were, as the Becker family had until recently. It's not a real place, but then so little of Los Angeles is real, and the parts that are real are the places you don't want to be. Real is for people with guns and hangovers. Real is what you want to avoid. LA believes itself full of magic, and sometimes can even feel that way, but much of this is a mutually agreed upon sleight of hand. You can stand in one place and believe that one day you'll be a movie star—stand somewhere else, and you'll believe that you'll soon be dead. You know that what you see is a trick, but still you want to believe. You can buy maps that tell you where the stars live, but not where to stand to become one: all you can do is walk the lots and prop up the bars, hoping that luck will come find you. LA is a city that has taken Fate to its heart, has bought her many drinks and scribbled her phone number down after long evenings making eyes: but to call Fate a harsh mistress is giving her the benefit of very many doubts. Fate is more like a malevolent little starlet on a downhill cocaine slide, doing a slightly good deed once a week just in case someone important is watching. Fate doesn't always have your best interests in mind. Fate just doesn't give a shit.

  'Good to be back?' Nina asked. Zandt grunted.

  The cab dropped him at The Fountain, a ten-storey tower of faded yellow stucco on Ocean, standing between the junctions where Wilshire and Santa Monica deliver people to the sea. The building has an Art Deco mien that makes it look a little classier than it is. Originally expensive apartments, it spent a while as a hotel before being converted back to short-term rentals again. The pool around the back was filled in, creating a large and somehow pointless seating area that is seldom used: despite the lanai, the plants, and the shaded chairs, it's too obvious that something's missing. The lobby was familiar to Zandt from a homicide he had worked back in 1993: a minor European actor and a young prostitute, a roleplay that got out of hand. The actor walked, of course. Zandt couldn't remember which room it had been. It certainly wasn't the suite he was given, which was large and well-furnished and had a good view of the sea. He dropped his bag in the living area, looked quietly around at the kitchenette. Empty cupboards, very little dust. He wasn't hungry, and found it hard to imagine cooking anything. The Fountain didn't have a bar or restaurant or room service. It wasn't a destination, which is why he had chosen it as a place to stay. That, and its position.

  He left the suite and went back down in the elevator, stood outside the building for a while. Nina had been taken off in the cab, and they were due to meet late the next morning. She'd already called the Bureau's Westwood branch from the plane, and previously from Pimonta, but presumably she had to show her face in the office once in a while. Something made him wait a moment, however, watching the cars parked along the street. He wouldn't put it past Nina to have gone round the block, then come back to watch what he did. Not because he was any kind of expert. Just so she knew. Nina liked knowing things.

  After five minutes he walked along to the corner, hung a right onto Arizona, and walked the couple of blocks to 3rd Street Promenade. Arizona Avenue was the street on which Michael Becker had dropped his daughter the night she had disappeared.

  He turned left and walked up the west side of the Promenade, heading up to the end where Sarah Becker had last been seen. It was coming up for eleven, much later than the time the girl had been abducted. Virtually all of the stores were shut. The street performers and musicians had long packed up for the night, even the Frank Sinatra impersonator who put in longer hours than most. That didn't matter. Without the presence of the abductor and the victim, the circumstances are irreproducible.

  He kept half an eye on the other people walking up and down. Killers often come back, especially those for whom murder is something more than a momentary expedience. They revisit and rewind so they can watch the memory one more time. He didn't expect to notice anyone in particular, but he kept watch anyway. When he passed the side street Nina had mentioned in her description, the place where a car had been seen parked illegally, he stood and looked down it for a while. Not trying to see anything. Just being there.

  'Waiting for someone?'

  Zandt turned to see a young man, slim and pretty. Mid-teens, eighteen at the most. 'No,' he said.

  The boy smiled. 'You sure? I think you are. I wonder if you're waiting for me.'

  'I'm not,' Zandt said. 'But someone will be. Not tonight, not here, but somewhere along the line.'

  The smile faded. 'You a cop?'

  'No. Just telling you the way it is. Go find yourself a date someplace light.'

  He went into Starbucks and bought a coffee. He got it to go and went back out to sit on the bench from which Sarah had been abducted. The boy had gone.

  You might think that such an event would leave a resonance. It doesn't. The human mind is organized to recognize faces. Its understanding of space is more tenuous. With appearance, it's simple: the more people who know your face, the more famous you are. We don't have to search for credentials. You're not a stranger, but instead part of our extended family: strong brothers and pretty sisters, kind parents, fake relatives to help us forget that our social groups have contracted down to nothing. With places, it's a case of knowing what events this space has played a stage to. But when that's stripped aside, when you've sat for long enough, you don't feel anything at all. You go back to the place as it was before anything happened there, to the way it was on that night. This is as near as you can come to going back in time, to before, to being able to hold a knife as it was when it came from the kitchen drawer, before it had been slicked with blood; when potential was all it had.

  He sat on the bench until it was just any place, and then he sat there some more.

  •••

  In his time as a homicide detective, Zandt had dealt with an unusual number of serial killers. As a rule such matters are handled by the FBI. They have the Behavioral Science lab in Quantico, their Profiling Procedures, the Jodie Fosters and David Duchovnys with the suits and neat haircuts. Like the killers themselves, the Feds seem a cut above the usual. But in eight years Zandt, a lowly mortal, a homicide cop, had found himself involved in several sets of killings that had eventually turned out to be the handiwork of someone who might be termed a serial killer. Two of those men had been apprehended, and Zandt had played a significant role in
both cases. He had a feel for it, and this was recognized. The first case concerned a man from Venice Beach responsible for the murder of four elderly women, and Zandt's involvement had been accidental. On the second investigation he was working from the start with the FBI, which is how he had met Nina Baynam.

  Over the summer of 1995 the remains of four young black boys were found half-buried in different areas of the city. The method of dismemberment, along with the leaving of a videotape with each victim, was enough to declare the killings the work of the same person. Each of the victims had been abducted from junk zips, and three were already acquainted with drugs and street prostitution. The first two deaths were largely ignored by the general population, dismissed as part of society's tidal culling of the underclass. It was only with repetition that the murders began to fight their way up out of random noise into story. The videotapes left with the bodies contained between one and two hours of roughly edited camcorder footage that made it clear how unpleasant the victims' last days had been. Each tape had a cover that featured a picture of the boy, his name, and the word 'Showreel'.

  The papers dubbed the killer 'The Casting Agent', which everyone agreed was very droll. Everyone apart from the parents, that is, but as their grief was embarrassing evidence of the underlying reality of these theatrical events, it was ignored except when required to hype public interest. The relatives were merely the audience to these deeds, not actors, and it's the actor we like best. Someone we can get to know, a face back-lit through the papers and television. We want a personality. A star.

  Zandt worked the case of the first boy, and after the second victim the FBI became involved. Nina was a young agent with experience, having worked a long bad case in Texas and Louisiana the year before. Between them, through a combination of Zandt's intuition and legwork, Nina's analysis of the placings of the bodies, and a break relating to the fact that the perpetrator had registered the camcorder used to make the videos, the killer was found. He was a thirty-one-year-old white male, employed as a graphic designer on the fringes of the music video industry, previously a child extra in long-forgotten movies. In a series of interviews with Zandt he admitted the crimes, providing corollary information and revealing the whereabouts of his talismans, the right hand of each of the victims—which had been squeezed into jars previously holding the product of a prominent instant coffee manufacturer. He eventually led the police to the bodies of two earlier victims, experiments in killing during which he had developed his technique. He placed the blame for his behaviour on having been molested on set as a child, an allegation which fit nicely with the public's desire for a beginning and a middle for every tale. The truth of the claim proved impossible to establish, and the end of the story was provided when the killer was sliced across the throat with a sharpened spoon by another inmate while awaiting trial. The food chain has victims at both ends: even rapists and murderers need someone to look down on, and kid killers will do nicely. Ultimately The Casting Agent's story became immortal and endless, celebrated in one moderately successful hack book and innumerable Web sites. A piece of buggy video editing shareware called CastingAgent enjoyed a brief notoriety, as did a store in Atlanta that offered a couch, in a deep splotchy red, which it called The Casting Couch.