by Jan Burke
“I’m going home,” I told him when I reached the car.
“See you there,” he said, an announcement I was less than happy about, but I was in no mood to argue. I got into my car as he watched. I rolled down the window.
“Cassidy?”
“Hmm.”
“Should I wait here? This is where they left the message for me. Does that mean they’ll call here?”
“I’ve thought about that. I don’t think they’ll have any trouble finding you.”
“But our home phone number is unlisted….”
“I’ll bet you thought your bank account number was private, too.”
“Oh.” I looked over at the Volvo.
“You okay to drive?” he asked. “I’ll take you home if you’d like.”
I shook my head. “No, thanks. I’ll make it.”
“Sure,” he said, and sauntered off toward his sedan.
As I drove home I thought of the other information I had gathered on Hocus. The murder of the animal shelter officer had generated a hue and cry for their arrests, but Hocus received less criticism over its next set of targets.
The Express received an anonymous call, a male voice saying that Hocus was going to clean up a few neighborhoods. Within a twenty-four-hour period, four houses exploded, killing twenty-one people — a total that was not finalized for several days, because it’s hard to count bodies when they’re in pieces the size of stew meat. Fifteen of them were at one address, a party cut short.
Normally this kind of terrorism would have resulted in outrage, but this time Hocus actually gained some supporters. It seemed a long list of neighbor complaints had been filed about each of the doomed houses — complaints about drug dealing, noise, and the constant stream of unsavory visitors in and out at all hours. In general, the neighbors of the victims figured that Hocus had done them a favor. If they had any objections, they were only to the occasional peripheral damage done by the explosions — broken windows, pictures falling from walls. Asked about the loss of human life, one man had shrugged and said, “Pest control.”
The police, for all their problems with the dealers, weren’t so happy with Hocus’s solution. Frank had been assigned to what became known as “the party house,” the site with the highest body count. He wasn’t in good shape when he got home from that one. Sometime after playing with Deke and Dunk, a long run on the beach, and a Macallan on the rocks, he started talking about it. “Going to take a team of forensic anthropologists to figure out how many people were in there, let alone who they were. I’d bet money we end up with half a dozen John and Jane Does. Explosives guys say it was C-4, something in the living room, where most of the people were. Some of the bodies in the outer rooms weren’t so badly damaged. There was one that reminded me—” He halted, shook his head. “Just a young girl, high school age. The others were all in their twenties.”
My curiosity had been piqued, but I didn’t question him. Frank is, on the whole, a quiet man. I get him to lose his temper now and then, but this wasn’t one of those situations. It had taken him a while to work up to talking about that day at all, and experience had taught me that what he needed in these times was a listener, not an interrogator. I set aside any impulse to hound him for information.
Later, when the paper ran a photo of the young girl — a soft, gauzy shot from her high school yearbook — I thought I knew why this girl’s death bothered him more than others. I had seen the high school graduation photo of his sister, Cassie; if you had dyed her hair blond and updated her makeup, she would have, in many ways, resembled the victim. Cassie was alive and well and married with kids; the woman at the party house might never have made much of her life, but she had been denied the opportunity to try.
While other detectives interviewed the neighbors, Frank and Pete sought the victims’ friends and fellow addicts. Fear made some of the small-time dealers a little more talkative. “Any strangers looking to make a buy this past week?” Frank and Pete would ask. “Anyone new come around here trying to score?” They were able to get help in identifying a couple of John Does who had been killed in the party house, but not much more.
I learned details of some of these interviews from dramatic presentations offered free of charge by one of the most natural mimics I know: Pete Baird. Pete loves to gather a small audience and tell stories, gesturing and taking on the parts of all the players. More than once, Rachel and I heard the day’s events replayed in this way.
The tenant of record at the party house was a man known as Early — he got his nickname for his ability to score new smoking materials before his competitors, which might have accounted for the number of people at his house on the day it exploded. Early’s pals provided a lot of material for Pete’s act. Frank served as an instant reviewer. If Pete got it wrong, Frank would grumble or silently shake his head. (“Oh, so you come up here and tell it, then,” Pete would say, an offer Frank was too smart to take.) If it was fairly accurate, Frank would smile or laugh. A good way to relieve some of the day’s tensions.
After studying the rubble that had once been Early’s home, the county’s bomb experts were able to determine that the plastic explosives used to demolish the house had probably been packed into a television set. That knowledge, and a discussion Frank had with a space cowboy by the name of Fawkes, led to the first real break in the case.
I recalled Pete’s portrayal of that interview:
“So picture this guy. Tall, pale dude, but he hunches his shoulders. Has long, stringy brown hair, parts it in the middle. Pointy beard with a mustard stain in it.” That Pete is clean shaven, short, olive-skinned, and bald made no impact on our ability to visualize Fawkes.
“Skinny guy,” Pete went on. “Wearin’ a black T-shirt and jeans that smell like he’s got toadstools growin’ in his underwear.”
Frank shook his head.
“You couldn’t smell that guy? You must have a cold,” Pete said. “Irene, reach over an’ feel his forehead. Running a fever?… No? Hmm. Well, okay, so the jeans don’t smell that bad. Bad, but not that bad.”
Frank didn’t object. The play proceeded. When Pete delivered Frank’s lines, his back was straight, his voice low. When he became Fawkes he rocked a little as he spoke, curling imaginary hair along a pair of fingers, gazing off into space. He began with Fawkes.
“ ‘It’s weird, man, I don’t know about all those other people who were at Early’s party, that’s bad. But Early, whoa — I think it was Early’s karma, because of the TV set he stole from my relatives.’
“ ‘What relatives?’ Frank asks him.
“ ‘Well, you know, Early, like, uh, stole it. Early was always stealing stuff. He ripped me off, man. Stole my backpack.’
“ ‘Who’d he steal it from?’ ”
A look of consternation. “ ‘From me, dude.’ ”
Frank laughed. Pete grinned and went on.
“Frank stays calm. ‘No, I meant the TV. You said he stole it from relatives of yours?’
“ ‘Maybe. I dunno.’
“ ‘Why don’t you tell me what you do know,’ Frank says.
“ ‘Oh. Well, this guy. He drives a gray van. Musta been a cheap store — only had one of them magnet signs on it. He stops at Early’s neighbor’s house, and opens up the van. In the neighbor’s driveway. The neighbor comes out, asks what’s happening. Guy says he’s got a TV to deliver. The neighbor says, “I didn’t order no TV,” so the delivery guy asks, can he come inside and make a phone call to his boss. Neighbor says okay. The dumb-ass driver leaves the van open. And while the dude is in there calling his boss, Early sneaks over and rips off this big ol’ TV that’s sittin’ in the back of the van.’ ”
Pete straightened his back again to do Frank’s part. “ ‘What did the deliveryman do when he got back?’ ”
Slouching again. “ ‘That was weird. He just looks in there, smiles, and drives off.’
“ ‘You get a look at the name of the appliance store?’
“ ‘Yeah, �
��cause it’s my name, man. I mean, not my whole name, just my last name. First name was different.’ ”
Puzzled. “ ‘Fawkes?’ ”
“ ‘Yeah, only he was Guy Fawkes. I mean, not him, the place. Guy Fawkes TV — hey, you think it’s a relative of mine? Maybe they would give me a job. What do you think?’ ”
I looked over at Frank. He was smiling.
The description of the van matched up with one that had been spotted near one of the other exploding houses. On that street, a member of the local neighborhood watch had seen a gray van pull up. The driver, a young, clean-cut man, left the van open as he walked around the corner, glancing between a clipboard and house numbers as if looking for an address. As she watched, her troublemaking neighbor had come out of his house and stolen a television out of the van. When the young driver came back some time later, she came out to tell him what had happened.
“Would you please call the police?” he asked politely, but drove away while she was making the call.
The police communications computer kept a record of the call, but with no appliance store making a complaint, the matter didn’t rate much attention. Frank went back to the neighbor; her description of the driver matched Fawkes’s. “Would you like to know the license plate number?” she asked.
He told her he would.
The plate turned out to be stolen off a pickup truck, not a match with a gray van.
Frank called every magnetic sign maker in the county, without luck. On a hunch he called the pickup truck owner, asked if he knew where the plate had been stolen.
“Sure,” the man said. “In the El Dorado Shopping Center, in Orange. I was in picking up some signs for a big construction job. Parked in an alley while I loaded them. Young man in there helped me carry them. Took four or five trips. He was the one who noticed it was missing. I had just washed the truck that morning, and I know the plate was on then. That sign place was my first stop, so I know it happened there.”
The description of the young man who helped him did not match that of the deliveryman. Still, Frank drove across the county line and down to Orange to talk to the sign maker. As it turned out, he immediately remembered Guy Fawkes TV. The kid at the counter who took the order hadn’t studied much history, but his boss, an Englishman, had nearly refused to make the sign. Guy Fawkes, after all, had tried to blow up the British Parliament in 1605.
The young man at the counter had protested that this must be mere coincidence; the order had been placed by a polite man who paid cash in advance. The man had even helped one of the other customers carry several armloads of signs out to his truck.
At Frank’s request, the sign maker went through his files. He had a phone number for Guy Fawkes Appliances, one his shop had called when the order was ready. The number was traced to an address down on Bay Shore Drive in Las Piernas, not a part of town you would have figured for housing terrorist gangs. The phone was still connected. The owner of the house and the name the phone was actually listed under were the same: Richard Lang.
Lang hadn’t lived in Las Piernas very long. He’d paid cash for the house, which had been for sale by owner. He’d told the previous owner that the cash had come from an insurance settlement he’d received from a car accident. Nobody had questioned that story.
The neighbors claimed that Lang had a live-in girlfriend and a frequent male guest who matched the description of the deliveryman. When, after several days of surveillance, the woman never showed, Frank’s boss started pushing for an arrest. Frank wanted to wait, but Carlson didn’t want to risk losing a murder suspect. Lang had no criminal record. Carlson figured he would break under pressure and give them the information they needed to arrest anyone else.
Armed with warrants, police searched the house. They found books on explosives and minute traces of C-4 in the van. The two men, Richard Lang and Jeffrey Colson, were arrested without resistance. Like Lang, Colson had no prior arrests. Both had served in the military, though, and had met while in the marines. Lang had worked with explosives during his military career. In lineups Lang was identified by the counterman at the sign shop and Colson by the neighbors he had encountered at two of the sites.
Frank wasn’t satisfied. “If we had found the computer equipment,” he told me, “I’d be feeling better. But at least we have part of the group in custody. Maybe the lieutenant’s right. Maybe they’ll talk.”
But Carlson had underestimated the ability of the two suspects to take the first sentence of the Miranda warning to heart. Lang and Colson had not been willing to talk about their friends. Lang had simply said, “Hocus will take care of me.” Although they had made no phone call, a lawyer had appeared. Lawyer or no, bail had not been granted.
When Mark Baker’s story appeared, Frank started voicing other misgivings about the arrests. He began to wonder if Lang was a sacrificial lamb. “Maybe the information is coming to Mark from Hocus itself. Lang and Colson don’t strike me as leaders. What if they drove out to Orange not to make it tougher to find them, but easier? Maybe they knew the sign maker was British. Knew he’d be someone who’d remember ‘Guy Fawkes Appliances.’ ”
“Maybe,” I agreed, “but the sign maker could be a coincidence. There are lots of people who know about Guy Fawkes who aren’t British.”
“Coincidence?” he asked.
“Okay, maybe not. But I’m not sure Hocus is Mark’s source. Maybe it’s someone in your department. Maybe someone who would like to make you the sacrificial lamb.”
I could tell by his face that he had already considered this possibility; the thought obviously depressed him. As if he couldn’t accept contemplating that kind of betrayal, he said, “Hocus would prefer the publicity. Makes more sense to assume Mark has been contacted by them.”
We were soon too busy arguing about other things to spend much time on whose theory was superior. The biggest argument started after a phone call from his sister, Cassie, who lives in Bakersfield. She called to say that Frank had really been on her mind lately, and she just wondered if he was all right.
“He could use some cheering up,” I said. “He’ll be sorry he missed your call.” I told her about the case and his problems in the office. “This has been tough on him from the moment he went out to the crime scene,” I told her. “Fifteen victims at one house. It was pretty grim.”
“Yes, we heard about that up here,” Cassie said.
“In fact, when they showed the photo of the young girl who died, I was hoping Frank didn’t have the case. She reminded me of Diana. Didn’t look exactly like her, of course, but—”
“Diana?” I asked. “Who’s Diana?”
There was a long silence, then she said, “You’d better ask Frank.”
“Cassie!”
“Ask Frank,” she said. “I’m sorry, Irene. I’ve got to go.”
She hung up.
I waited until after dinner that night. I didn’t rush him. He played with Deke and Dunk, worked in his garden. He washed up and came into the kitchen, where I was scrubbing a pan. He put his arms around me and pulled me back against him, nuzzled my ear.
“Who’s Diana?” I asked.
I felt the brief tension in him before he relaxed a little and said, “Roman goddess of the hunt. Are you and Jack talking about mythology again?”
“No,” I said, turning around to face him. “Not that Diana. The Diana who looks like the girl who died at the party house.”
“Shit.” His arms dropped away, and he took a step back. He wouldn’t look at me.
“Who is she?” I asked again.
“Cassie. Cassie told you, right?”
“Never mind who told me.”
“It had to be Cassie. My mother never would have told you.”
“Probably not. Your mother doesn’t like me—”
“That’s not true.”
“Not the point, anyway.”
“No,” he said. He sighed. “Christ. Everything at once.”
“Is this another old girlfriend?”
He hesitated, finally looked right at me. He shook his head. “No. Can you give me a minute? I need to make a couple of calls.”
“A couple of calls? Jesus, Frank….”
“Please.”
Desperate. Under other circumstances I might have been moved by it, responded to him more gently. I was fresh out of gentle. “Go ahead, make your damned calls. But I’m not letting go of this, Frank.”
He went into the bedroom to use the phone. That he sought privacy from me only irritated me all the more. I sat in the living room, in the corner of the couch, arms folded. Deke, Dunk, and Cody steered clear of me. I let the dogs out at their request, and Cody disappeared into the guest room. I couldn’t blame them. I probably looked like I wanted to kick somebody.
When Frank finally came out of the bedroom, he was holding what I at first took to be a scrap of paper but then realized was a photograph. He held it out to me. More curious than furious, I uncrossed my arms and took it from him.
It was a color snapshot of an attractive teenage girl with honey-colored hair, standing next to a camera-shy younger boy. Nothing about the girl was shy. She was wearing an orange miniskirt with a wide, white belt, white go-go boots, and a lime green sleeveless turtleneck. If that hadn’t been enough to place the photo in the late sixties, her pale lipstick, eyes lined doe style, heavy mascara, and ankh necklace would have helped.
I had seen lots of photographs of the boy — it was Frank. And despite a certain resemblance, the girl clearly wasn’t Cassie, who’s not only dark haired, but younger than Frank. This blond girl was older by several years.
“A cousin?” I guessed.
He shook his head, took a deep breath, then looked right at me as he said, “My sister.”
“Sister? You have another sister?”
“Had. She died.”
Questions are a specialty of mine, and I had lots of them, but I couldn’t seem to get a single one out. Maybe it was sort of a circuit overload, like when everyone tries to call after an earthquake. Zillions of questions trying to be first in line. Shock pushing them all to the back. I sat there gaping at him.
