Leonard Racine appeared at the threshold. He wore a pair of khakis and a long sleeve sweatshirt that both looked as if they had been slept in. Red streaks laced the whites of his eyes like tiny tree branches, and his light brown hair had messy tufts jutting at out odd angles. No doubt he spent the last twelve hours running his hands through them in frustration.
"Mr Racine?" Hector said, climbing the steps. "I'm Captain Hector Rodriguez from the thirteenth precinct. This is Detectives Ballaro and Barba." They exchanged handshakes and entered the house.
The three of them were led down a hall past the living room, into the dining room. Frank took notice of the oak table, the Louis XIV chairs, the glass cut chandelier. The Racines were collectors of antiques it seemed. Expensive ones too, and Frank was immediately impressed. They sat at the chairs, Leonard Racine at the head, Frank and Hector facing Ernie.
"Can I get you gentlemen anything to drink?" Mrs Racine walked in, a handkerchief knotted in her hands. She too looked disheveled, as though she had been spent wrestling on the floor with her husband. Judging by the fine decor and cleanliness of the place, the two of them without question hadn't looked this unkempt in years.
"This is my wife Amanda," Leonard said, barely looking up from the polished grains in the table. Everyone nodded, pleasantries were exchanged, but nobody offered a handshake—Amanda Racine included. This wasn't a welcoming situation, only painful, and amiable congenialities became unnecessary. The three of them kindly declined her offer, and she sat down opposite her husband at the other end of the table.
"Mr and Mrs Racine," Hector said, "We'll try our best to make this as short and as painless as possible, but please let me make this be understood. We need your utmost cooperation if we are to find your son's killer."
"Yes, of course."
Amanda forced a weak nod, dabbing the tissue at her nose.
Barba placed a micro-cassette recorder on the table, pressed 'record'.
Hector stated, "For the record, let this be known: Friday, October 21, 1998. Time, seven-fifteen PM."
Frank took out a small notepad from his jacket pocket, prepared to record any observations.
"Mr Racine, your son was how old?"
"Nineteen."
"Did he have any enemies?"
"No, no. He was a good kid, never had any trouble with anyone."
"Friends?"
"Some, but not a lot. Seemed to get along with them fine."
"Had he any other kind of trouble that you know of? With the law, school, or someone else?"
"No, of course not."
"Definitely not," Amanda Racine added, shaking her head.
"He work?"
"Part time, two days a week in the garment center as an assistant designer. He just started bartending on weekends maybe three weeks ago."
"Where'd he tend bar?"
"Honestly, I don't even know. I never asked. He just said he was tending bar, and I really didn't think anything further of it. I assumed it was at one of the college places he hung out at with his friends. He had talked about doing it so he could see his friends, and still make a buck. Like I said, he only started three weeks ago." Leonard stood up and pulled a napkin from the baker's rack in the kitchen, wiping his forehead. "Obviously now, I wish I knew. You think it could have been someone from the place he worked at?"
"Maybe. Maybe not." Hector leaned over to Frank. "You thinking the same thing I am?"
Frank scribbled on the page: Designer + Bartender=Gay? Hector's theory had suddenly come to mind, that the two boys indeed may have been having a homosexual rendezvous in the alley when the bald guy attacked them. Perhaps the bald guy could have been gay himself and attacked the boys in a jealous frenzy. Or just the opposite: a gay basher.
Hector pulled back from Frank, rubbed his chin. "Mr and Mrs Racine, was your son gay?"
Both their mouths dropped, either in surprise or due to being appalled. Regardless, their shock at the question was unquestionably evident in their faces.
Mrs Racine spoke up, her mouth trembling at the effort. "Do you know something about our son that we don't?"
"Right now we don't know much of anything. That's why we're here."
She nodded, looking at her husband, who sat back down and shook his head in an affirmative.
"Yes, of course," Leonard said. "No. Our son is not gay."
"Girlfriend?"
"Not at the moment, that we know of."
Hector said, "If you'll both pardon my saying so, it seems that you aren't up on a good deal of his personal life."
Leonard blew out, lines of guilt furrowing his brow. "My wife and I have been very busy. I'm a broker, Amanda's an antiques dealer. I've been spending big hours at the office of late, and Amanda, she travels quite a bit with her job. So to answer your question straightforwardly, no, we haven't spent as much time as we would've liked to with Patrick. But to be frank, I'm not too sure he had much time for us either. Between school and work, he was as busy as we were."
Motioning with his hands at all the expensive furniture, Hector said, "It doesn't appear that Patrick really needed to work two jobs."
Amanda replied, "We made a deal with him. We would pay for school, but he had to earn his spending money. Leonard and I agreed that we really didn't want him becoming too dependent on us."
Hector nodded, so did Frank. They understood, and were in agreement. The Racines were honest, hard-working parents, and although quite well-off, never spoiled their son to any extreme.
"Does Patrick have any siblings?"
They both shook their heads. "He was an only child."
A tremendous darting pain ran through Frank's body, a burning sensation that felt as if a hole had been seared right through his chest to the center of his heart. He had forgotten that they were talking about the sudden death of this family's child. But the harsh reality of it struck him like a boxer's unexpected blow to the midsection when he became aware that Patrick had been their only child.
Like Jaimie was to him.
Dear God-forbid. If he ever lost Jaimie to something as tragic as this, drastic sickness and devastation would consume him to a point highly unfathomable, incalculable, and surrealistically nightmarish. Without doubt he knew he would never be able to live through a single minute in such dire agony. His body would collapse, completely distressed, in shock. Amazing the fortitude the Racines had, to be able to sit here and converse about this tragedy just twelve hours after its taking place.
Suddenly, and unexpectedly, he felt a slight twinge of anger rise up in his blood, as if something had indeed happened to his daughter. It was Frank's irrational side, starting to swell from within. He took deep, calculated breaths, quietly calming himself, finding the willpower to suppress the emotional outrage, the fear. Thankfully, his inquisitive-detective self had reassumed control, had become the stronger identity at the moment. No battle would be waged—for now.
"Do you know where Patrick may have gone last night?" Hector continued.
They both shook their heads. "We were out to dinner with clients of mine," Leonard said.
"Working maybe? At the bar?"
Leonard shrugged his shoulders. "I don't think he had class until later on Fridays. So sure, he could have worked. But he also could have gone out."
"Did either of you notice any strange behavior of late? Him becoming reclusive, withdrawn?"
"No," Leonard answered.
"'No', you didn't notice, or 'No' he hadn't changed?"
"No, he was fine," Amanda offered. "As a matter of fact he was spending more time out. I assumed he was either working or studying at the library."
"When was the last time either of you spoke to him?"
Amanda and Leonard traded gazes with one another, and it appeared to Frank that they were both trying to figure out exactly when they had last spoken to their son. Leonard said to her, "You saw him Monday, right? Remember? You told me he came home late from the library, looked like hell? You said his eyes were all watery and blo
odshot."
"So it was Monday night then? Three nights ago."
"Yes," they both said in unison. Amanda, suddenly asking to be excused, stood and shuffled off to the kitchen. They heard her run the water and blow her nose. She quickly returned with four glasses and a pitcher of ice water. Frank helped himself as did Hector. Barba remained stoic and silent, watching the counter on the tape recorder.
"Did your son use any drugs?" Hector rubbed his thumb in the condensation forming on his glass of water.
Again the Racines looked shocked. "No," Leonard responded.
"Are you positive?"
Leonard leaned back in his chair. His face went red and he looked across at his wife who dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
"I won't say for sure that Pat hadn't experimented socially simply because I'm aware that most kids do it nowadays. Pot, some coke maybe, although I doubt Pat did anything more than puff on a joint."
"You said his eyes were all bloodshot and watery. Sounds like drug use, no?"
Leonard clenched his fists. Jewels of sweat beaded at his brow. "Captain Rodriguez, my son was not a druggie. If my wife believes he was just tired, then he was just tired. Nothing else."
"Mr Racine, please, I only ask for investigatory purposes. We're simply looking to rule out certain possibilities, one being whether his murder could be drug-related."
Leonard Racine nodded, frustration clearly eating him alive. "I understand. But you also need to be patient with us. This has been a very difficult day."
"Of course." Hector moved right on to the next question. "Had he made any new friends that you know of? Any phone calls, perhaps from someone unfamiliar?"
Leonard shrugged his shoulders.
"As a matter of fact..." Amanda said, "I remember receiving a phone call from someone who asked for Pat, about a week ago. I told him that Patrick was at school. I took a message and left it attached to the message board by the phone."
She pointed toward the kitchen. Adhered to the wall alongside the phone was a rectangular-shaped cork board with a number of messages pinned to it. Frank rose from his seat and examined them more closely. Three messages, two for Amanda, one for Leonard, each signed by someone named Emily.
"Do you remember the caller's name, Mrs Racine?" Hector asked.
"No," she answered, shaking her head apologetically.
"Where's the note? Could it still be around?" Frank questioned.
"Patrick probably took it. Could be in his room."
Frank raised an eyebrow at Hector. He couldn't help but notice the dark half-moons forming below the captain's eyes. He looked real tired.
"Mr and Mrs Racine, we'd like to take a look in his room. Is that okay?"
Leonard rose shakily from his seat. "Sure, fine. Hon?"
"Yes. Of course."
The five of them rose from the table. While Amanda cleaned up, Leonard led Frank, Hector, and Ernie down a hallway lined with Victorian art prints. Frank quickly admired the prints, each exquisitely displayed in finely carved oak frames, each one different from the next but all similar in size and design, as if exhibited as part of a gallery artist's collection.
They entered the second door on the right, Patrick Racine's room. Frank noticed at once that the room had been kept as meticulous as the rest of the house; the bed neatly made; furniture dusted; rug vacuumed. A desk sat beneath the room's only window, and a bookshelf ran against the length of the right wall. It held a variety of Patrick's things: a few text books, novels, a CD player, and plenty of CD 's.
Frank walked over and fingered through some of the CD 's. He saw the names of what he assumed to be bands, ones he had never heard of before: System 7, The Orb, Eat Static, Andromeda. Further on, Plastickman, Carrier Waves, Abduction. Of course he had never heard of them before. This collection of CD 's represented a teenager's taste in cutting-edge music, and weren't even vaguely indicative of the oldies he himself enjoyed so often. He looked further. At the end of the row, some CD 's were titled Techno Explosion, Ambient Space, and Alpha Waves, all claiming to be compilations of various bands. Thinking back, Frank had heard Jaimie use the term 'techno' at times when he begged her to turn down the volume on her stereo. Yes, she herself listened to this 'music' sometimes, which to Frank sounded like repetitive nonsense, as if a needle was skipping on a record.
Seemed Patrick Racine was quite the techno-music enthusiast.
Frank turned and looked at the desk. A computer and printer took up half the desktop, papers cluttering the remainder of the work area. He went over and fingered through a few sheets of paper, but found only class notes.
"Mr Racine," Hector said. "Do you have a housekeeper?"
"Yes. Emily. She cleans every day between three and five, usually before we both arrive home."
"When was the last time you spoke to her?"
"I rarely do. My wife speaks to her a couple times a week." He leaned out into the hallway. "Hon?"
Footsteps sounded and Amanda appeared at the threshold. She looked worse than she did when they first arrived, tears now streaming down her face.
"Mrs Racine, can you remember the last time you spoke to your housekeeper?"
"On Tuesday. I paid her."
"She mention anything about Patrick's room? Anything even slightly out of the ordinary?"
Amanda tilted her head in thought. Frank imagined that it must've been real difficult for her to capture memories when so much chaos stormed inside her head. "She did say that Pat's room had been cleaned. That the bed had been made. But that wasn't out of the ordinary. Sometimes he would help her out, 'do a few things to make her job a little easier' he would say. I used to tell him that she got paid for what she did, but he felt sorry for her. I just assumed he cleaned his own room. He'd done it before."
"Is it possible that Pat hadn't been home since the last time Emily cleaned his room?"
Again, looks of dumbfoundness compounded their sorrow. The Racines had never expected these assumptions to be made toward their son. "At this point, anything is possible." She buried her face in her hands and rubbed her eyes.
Frank, still prodding about the desk, opened the top drawer.
His heart started pounding. Hard.
It was there.
A phone note to Pat, signed by 'mom'.
Harold called. He'll call back.
Frank picked it up, showed it to Hector. Ernie glimpsed it too.
They all nodded to one another.
Time to pay Harold Gross a visit.
Chapter Eleven
Run, run, need to run...
David Traynor decided today, unequivocally, that he needed to run. Never in his nineteen years had he felt a comparable desire to move his legs in such a rapid fashion. To take deep regulated breaths, to watch intently as puffs of frozen breath spewed from his mouth like emissions from a geyser. The thrill of it captivated his being, clenched all his thoughts and commanded his sole means of personal motivation to an extent previously unfelt.
He needed to run, and at the moment, nothing else existed in life but to do just that.
Run.
Although there had been no doubt in his mind to enact himself in this behavior, many questions teetered on the periphery of his consciousness. How had he become so suddenly enraptured with the hunger to force his body into such a vigorous motion? What internal force—he had no doubts from the onset, whenever that was, that this behavior originated from within—had been triggered to initiate such a physical response? And why had he become so wholly absorbed with this desire to run? He knew that answers to these questions—logical explanations no doubt—had to exist somewhere deep within his realm of reason. But he also knew that his need for a purpose to this unforeseen aberrant conduct had become fully overshadowed by the quasi-primordial yearning to satisfy his immediate urge. That the answers were secondary and insignificant to his immediate desires. That justification for his motives didn't carry any concern.
As long as he ran.
Run, run, need to r
un...
Suddenly, after nearly two hours of burdening his body through an inundation of strenuous activity, after coercing it to withstand such intemperate discipline, another question slithered forth from deep within the barriers that held back his conscious, astute sensibility.
Where?
Where had he been going all this time? For two hours his legs demanded he run—albeit now he could demonstrate not much more than a labored jog—and although all previously self-imposed questions still distracted him, the answers to where seemed all the more timely and pertinent. His mind agreed, and allowed sole access to the deliberation of this conundrum.
He needed a place to go.
Where do I live?
As he queried himself for a location to his maddening travels, the walls inside his head holding his lucidity back collapsed for a fleeting moment. Suddenly a new sensation came into play. That of fear. The fear of being lost in a world with no place to go, with no one to help. The fear of being completely out of control, guided by an unseen force so damn powerful that visions of the world coming to a disastrous and painful end seemed a more viable alternative than the surrender to the darkness influencing him—infecting him—from within.
As quickly as it had revealed itself, it once again assumed control.
And again, David Traynor wanted to run.
But during the shockingly brief interlude where David had been free from the bond that held him captive, a multitude of memories stormed within his head. Who he was, where he lived, his age, his likes and dislikes, the music he listened to. Simple things about himself that he now no longer possessed the ability to grasp. They had all been there again. Inside his head. For him to realize, to feel.
He set his mind to thought. Prior to the brief interlude of coherence, he had asked himself a question.
Where do I live?
Now, because his mind had allowed a brief pinhole opening into his consciousness, he had the answer.
He gazed about his current surroundings. Dark monolithic buildings encompassed him, shadowy streets intersecting at all sides, grainy pavement greeting his footsteps, invisibly escorting him towards his new destination.
Atmosphere Page 9
