Two Lost Boys

by L. F. Robertson

  Carla went on in a low, almost detached voice, breathing a faint acrid smell of cigarette smoke as she spoke. “Andy was always my little buddy.” The expression in her eyes softened. “You talked to my dad, so I guess you know I was raised by my grandparents and then Dad and Charlene. But I used to visit Mama for a few weeks every summer. Andy was the sweetest little boy. I just loved him; he was so good-hearted. But he was always being picked on by Emory and the other kids. I kind of took him under my wing. I used to give Emory and his friends hell for messing with him.” She smiled a little at the memory. “They were all scared shitless of me.”

  “Did you ever get the sense that Andy was mentally slow?”

  “Yeah. That’s why Emory and the others were so mean to him. He couldn’t keep up with them. They’d play games, and he’d mess up because he’d forget the rules—that kind of thing. They played mean jokes on him, and Emory called him dumb-ass and retard in front of his friends. It was really sad. I remember Emory would do things to ditch Andy like send him into the house to get them cans of soda, and then he and his friends would split. I can still see Andy standing there in the doorway, holding all the soda cans—” She shivered, as if trying to shake the image from her mind.

  “How did Evie and Len treat him?”

  “Len treated him like shit—but then Len treated everyone like shit. Mama acted like nothing was wrong. I think she was always that way with Andy and Emory; she just refused to see. She protected those boys too much. They couldn’t do anything wrong in her eyes. But I should finish telling you about Len. When I was fifteen I got sent to live with Mama because I was getting in a lot of trouble at home.

  “Len was out of prison by then, and staying at her house. Mama wasn’t happy about it. She told me he showed up one day after he was paroled and asked to stay for a few days until he could find a place, and then he wouldn’t leave. He wasn’t working; he just hung around the house and drank. When Mama was at work and we were home from school he’d smack the boys around and try to mess with me. And then one night he snuck into my room in the middle of the night. I yelled out, and Mama and the boys woke up. Len and Mama had a huge fight. He went after her, and Andy and Emory and I all jumped him. He shook us all off, then he just slammed out of the house saying he was gonna come back and blow us all away. Mama sat up all night in the living room, with a big kitchen knife on the table next to her, and we all sat up with her because we were too scared to sleep.

  “The next day when I got home from school, Len was there, sitting in his chair in the living room and drinking his usual, cheap bourbon and coke. He had a sawn-off shotgun across his lap. When Mama came home she told him he needed to leave, but he said no one was going anywhere. He just sat there and kept on drinking, and we all stayed out of his way.

  “It was the weirdest night. I remember it was a Friday night in January and snowing out. We were all scared to move, with Len sitting there with that shotgun and drinking his whisky and cokes. I kept thinking we could all just sneak away out the back door, but Mama kept going out to the kitchen and filling his glass, and I remember thinking at the time that was weird. I went into the kitchen for something, once, and I saw her crushing some sort of pill with a knife and putting it into his glass. I asked her what she was doing, and she said, ‘Giving him what he wants.’ She sent us all to bed early, even though it was a Friday night. I couldn’t sleep because I was so afraid.”

  She dropped her cigarette and crushed it absently under her shoe, and stood up.

  I got up, too. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She seemed to sway a little. “Yeah. I think I need a drink of water or something. There’s a fountain here somewhere.” She looked around, a little vaguely, saw it, and walked over to it. I wondered if she had decided not to go on with her story—not that I could blame her. But she came back and sat again on the bench. She reached into her purse, found her pack of cigarettes, glanced at them, and put them back with a shake of her head.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m trying to remember where I was. Oh, yeah—I was in bed, and I heard some noises from the living room—like something falling over—and I got up to see what was going on. Emory came out of his and Andy’s room, too.

  “Mama was in the living room with a pillow, holding it over Len’s face and kind of leaning on it. And I guess Len had kicked out or something, because the coffee table was on its side. We both just stood there, and Mama looked up after a while and saw us and said, ‘You both get back to bed!’ And that kind of snapped me out of it, and I said, ‘Mama, what are you doing?’ And she said, ‘What does it look like?’ And I wanted to say, ‘Like you’re smothering Len,’ except I couldn’t say the words. He was just laying in the chair with his legs and arms kind of splayed out. I think he was moving around a little, but I’m not sure. I must have been in shock or something, because it felt like time had just stopped. I was thinking I should try to stop her, but I didn’t really believe what I was seeing, so I just stood there.

  “Emory ran over to her, and I thought he was going to pull her away, but he didn’t. Instead, he got a plastic bag from the kitchen and moved the pillow away and stuck the bag over Len’s face. Then he told Mama to hold Len’s arms and took over holding the pillow down on Len’s face with the bag under it until he completely stopped moving. He made some noises, like he was choking, and he kept moving around for a while. It seemed to go on forever. I just kept watching; I couldn’t stop. It felt unreal, like a movie playing in front of me. It was so strange.”

  Carla had been looking down at her knees, as if concentrating on remembering. While telling the story her voice had been flat and almost emotionless, a reaction I recognized from interviewing other people about traumatic experiences. Psychologists I’d worked with said it was a sign of someone dissociating—separating their descriptions of what happened from the emotions associated with them as a way of avoiding re-experiencing a trauma.

  “Anyhow, after a while, Mama stood up and checked Len’s wrist for a pulse. Then she moved the pillow away from his face, leaned down close to his nose and mouth—checking for breath, I guess—and felt for a pulse in the side of his neck. His eyes were closed, and his face was kind of puffy and red; that’s about all I remember about him. She looked at Emory and said, ‘Well, since you’ve done this much, you may as well help get rid of him.’ And Emory said, ‘Oh, yuck, he barfed in the bag.’ Mama must have seen me move or something, because she looked over at me, and said, ‘You’d better come help, too.’

  “So Emory and I helped her put Len’s body into a sleeping bag and carry it out of the house. I didn’t want to touch it, and the vomit smell made me sick to my stomach. Emory was pretty strong, but Mama and I had a lot of trouble holding Len’s legs up so his butt didn’t drag on the ground. I remember being surprised at how heavy he was. Emory was kind of excited by it all, but I think that’s because he was a kid and hated Len, and it didn’t really sink in what we’d done. We put him in the trunk of her car outside. Something happened when we loaded his body into the trunk—a thunk the head made or something—and I just suddenly started throwing up, and Emory started laughing and just kept laughing, like he couldn’t stop—it was nerves, I guess. Mama told him to shut up or the neighbors would hear, and she put her arm around me, and helped me back inside.

  “Inside the house, I started crying—I guess I was having an attack of hysterics or something. Mama was shushing me, saying, ‘You’ll wake Andy up,’ and she gave me a glass of water with some bourbon in it to calm me down. Then she said, ‘We’re gonna have to pack Len’s stuff, make it look like he left.’ She and Emory and I took Len’s belongings and loaded them into his duffle bag and took it out to the car. Then she told us to go back to bed.

  “Early the next morning, she woke me up and told me she and Emory were going to drive somewhere and get rid of the body and Len’s truck and stuff. She told me to stay and look after Andy. They were gone all day until after dark. And while they were gone I found out that
Andy had seen and heard a lot of what happened. He’d been afraid to come out into the living room, but he stood behind the door of his room and watched. I told him never, ever to tell anyone, because they’d send Mama to prison forever.

  “Things were really strange with us after that. I mean, it was like we kept living a normal life on the surface, but I felt like I was looking at it from some other place. I had this huge, awful secret I couldn’t tell anyone except Mama and Emory. It kind of tied us together. Emory and Mama seemed to kind of bond after that; it was like they were together in some sort of conspiracy. I felt like I was in jail. We all seemed to be watching each other all the time, checking each other out to see if we were gonna stay true. I begged Dad and Charlene to let me come back, and they did, but I ran away after a couple of months, started using speed and coke because it made me feel less depressed.

  “I was scared, too. I asked Emory what they’d done with the body, and he said they’d driven way up into the mountains and pushed it over a cliff by the side of a road. He said it was really hard to move it from the trunk because it was stiff, and he slipped on the snow as they were pushing it down and almost went over the edge after it. I kept thinking someone was going to find him and it would all come back to us, and we’d all go to prison.” She hunched her thin shoulders. “I still have nightmares about it happening.”

  “I guess no one found him?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of. The only thing that happened was that Len’s parole officer came by a couple of times looking for him. Mama told him Len had just up and left, and I don’t think he came around after that. Oh, and Uncle Walter called. I remember because I answered the phone. He seemed kind of surprised that Len was gone like that, but nothing else.” She stopped talking and looked ahead of her, as if she had grown tired of thinking.

  It was chilling to think that a family of children could carry such a terrible secret. And that a man could break his connections to other people so utterly that he could disappear one day and no one would try to find out what happened to him. I thought of what Evie had done to her children—desensitized Emory to killing and burdened Andy and Carla with the terrible secret of Len’s murder. I wanted to do something to comfort Carla, take her in my arms and rock her like a forlorn child. The barrier between people, between strangers, felt like a thick glass wall, transparent but impenetrable. Feeling awkward, I just watched her, wishing I could somehow project compassion and strength. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  Her eyes snapped back into focus, and she shivered and turned to me. “I don’t know why I’ve told you all this,” she said, her voice tired. “I don’t even know if it will make a difference.”

  “I’m glad you told me,” I said, though I wasn’t sure why I should be.

  I knew I had to—for Andy’s sake—at least ask her to help. “I know this is rough,” I said, “but we can’t really do anything with what you’ve told us unless we can present it to a judge.”

  She hunched her shoulders and looked at me, shaking her head rapidly, emphatically. “I can’t tell anyone else—no way I could do that. You can see why, can’t you?”

  I had to say yes. Without much hope, I asked her if she would sign a records release. She took the copies from me and studied the top one for a moment. “This is just for stuff about me, right?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  She reached for the pen I was holding, set the releases down beside her on the park bench and signed all three copies, then gave them back to me decisively, as if she wanted to make sure she didn’t change her mind. “There. Maybe you’ll find something that will help him. I’m so sorry.”

  She looked at me again. “What time is it?” she asked.

  I checked my watch. “A little before three.”

  “I’ve gotta get back.” She stood up, a little stiffly, and I got up also. As we walked past the play structure, she paused and looked for a moment at a little boy hitching himself along a set of parallel bars. On our way back we saw a couple of small groups of children: ghosts in sheets, superheroes, a vampire or two in ghoulish makeup and black capes lined in purple, a fairy princess in silver gauze and sequins. The light was starting to fade. While we had been talking the sky had grown darker, and the air was cooler, with a breath of moisture in it.

  “Looks like it might rain,” Carla said.

  28

  After saying goodbye to Carla at the halfway house, I drove around the town until I found a coffee shop. I ordered coffee and pie, and after the waitress left with my order, I opened my iPad and started writing down everything I could remember of what Carla had told me. By the time I’d finished, night had fallen.

  Outside, it was raining, and the dark streets glittered with reflected light. There were no little trick-or-treaters here, and the sidewalks were nearly empty.

  In the parking lot I sat in my car for a few minutes, thinking of Carla and feeling like a visitor in the world of normal holidays and happy children. The burden of what she knew weighed on me; by comparison, my life and my son’s, even with Terry’s suicide, seemed prosaic. Suddenly I remembered sitting, sobbing, in a convulsion of heart-emptying grief, in a rental car in a strange city, a couple of months after Terry died, and for a few seconds the same feeling came over me again. This time I squeezed my eyes until the bone-deep ache subsided and then threaded my way through dark streets to the freeway, cursing Terry, Andy, Emory, Jim Christie, Evie, and fucked-up fate in general.

  The drive home seemed endless, and I took the last stretch of Highway One, along the cliff edge, in second gear, afraid of the wet road and the murky darkness. For the last twenty miles I didn’t see another car.

  The dark house felt damp and cold; the kitchen light, when I turned it on, saturated the room with a shadowless light that seemed to expose everything that hurt—each dent in the cabinet doors, every scratch and stain on the counter and floor. I poured some kibble for Charlie and the cats and went to the living room. I built a fire in the wood stove, feeling more at home in the quieter lamplight and the valiant, hopeful glow from the kindling. For several minutes I stood in front of the stove, shivering, watching the fire through the glass, and absorbing the heat. When I was sure the fire had caught well, I put a couple of big logs on it to keep it going overnight, made myself a hot milk and brandy and went to bed. The clock showed half past midnight—the Feast of All Saints.

  * * *

  I woke up at three in the morning with a sense of tumblers clicking into place. No one had ever determined the cause of death of the two young women whose bodies had been found on the ranch. Andy told Canevaro, with considerable prompting, that he had strangled them with his hands. The bodies were so decomposed that it wasn’t possible to see most of the signs a pathologist looks for in such cases, such as fingermarks on the neck and tiny burst blood vessels in the eyes. But the women’s hyoid bones—a small bone in the throat almost always broken during manual strangling—were intact. What if they had been killed the way Len had been—drugged in some way, and then smothered?

  Later that morning I called Jim’s office and left a message to call me as soon as possible. He called back himself, for once, that afternoon, and I told him what Carla had said to me. His reaction was a cold splash of reality. “How do we know she’s telling the truth?” he asked, dubious. “No one else has said anything about this. What do we know about her?”

  “Not much,” I said.

  “That’s the trouble. She could be lying or delusional—we don’t know, and there’s nothing to corroborate her story. I can’t even see how we could check it out. She’s vague about what they did with the body. There’s nothing here we could take to a judge.”

  I had to admit he was right. It was a bizarre story that could have been nothing more than a complete fiction—though it was hard to see what her motive might have been in telling me but refusing to put it in writing. I didn’t know Carla well enough to rule out the possibility. Even if she was telling the truth, we had no other evidence to
confirm it. It was hard to imagine a judge finding the story credible on her word alone.

  29

  The next week, I paid another visit to Andy.

  The Hallowe’en rain storm had lasted a couple of days, long enough to wash the dust off trees and hedges and raise a barely visible wash of green above last summer’s brown grass. The morning was silvery with changeable light, as one mass of clouds after another moved in front of the sun and past it. At San Quentin, a damp, penetrating breeze off the water seeped under the neck and sleeves of my jacket, and I was almost grateful for the overheated visiting area.

  I bought a cheeseburger, coke and chips for Andy and a coffee for me before he appeared, handcuffed and flanked by guards in drab olive, at the door from the cell blocks. As I moved food off the tray and onto paper towels on the scuffed table, I asked Andy how he’d been. “Okay,” he said. “Nothing much happening.”

  “I met Carla,” I said. “We had a pretty long talk.”

  Andy looked up at me and let go of the wrapper of the cheeseburger. He hesitated a minute, as if deciding whether to go on. “She told you about my dad, didn’t she.” It wasn’t a question.

  I was caught completely off guard. Trying desperately to figure out what to say, I asked, “What about your dad?”

  “That they killed him.”

  I’d made the wrong move. If I said now that I couldn’t tell him what Carla had said to me, I was as good as telling him he was right. I could lie and deny she had said it, but he would know I was lying; there was some reason why he was so sure she had talked about it. So I lied ambiguously. “They what?” I said.

  Andy looked puzzled, as if he couldn’t understand the turn the conversation had taken.

  “I saw them,” he said. “Carla knew it. She wrote me a letter and said she told you all about Len.”