Crucifax (47 page)

The thin figures in the shadows seemed to sense a moment of weakness in the boy and rushed forward, arms outstretched to seize the axe, but Kevin began to swing it wildly, blindly, and J.R. lifted his arms protectively, stumbled back, and fell as fearful, agonizing screams echoed through the darkness. Eyes closed, J.R. heard the axe fall again and again, meeting flesh and bone, heard the scrambling, limping footsteps of the people who had held him earlier, and then—

—just the sound of Kevin's manic cries and the heavy clank of the axe against the floor, the wall, the grimy pipes.

J.R. opened his eyes slowly and lifted the flashlight.

He was alone with Kevin, who was still wildly swinging the axe. A clump of rags was heaped at Kevin's feet, and what appeared to be a dirty sheet was attached to the axe head, fluttering with each swing. The animals that had been hanging from him a moment before were gone, leaving behind only torn clothing.

J.R. called Kevin's name, stumbling to his feet, pleading with the boy to stop.

"He's gone, Kevin, he's gone now…."

Kevin suddenly dropped the axe and moved away from it as if it were a deadly snake, tripping, falling back onto the floor, crawling backward, and finally collapsing in a weak, sobbing heap.

"Where did he go?" he blubbered. "He's just—just—just
gone!
Where the fuck did he
go?
"

J.R. knelt beside the boy, flashing his light over the rags on the floor.

Mace's clothes. No blood, no sign of Mace, just clothes.

Kevin leaned on J.R. and cried.

Somewhere deep in the sewer, low, throaty groans and babbling voices mingled with the flowing rush of waste.

J.R. held the boy for a long time, finally realizing that he was crying, too.

"Come on, Kevin," he whispered after a while. "Let's get out of here…."

PART VI

Crucifax Aftermath

Thirty

October 20

By Thursday afternoon, the storm was reduced to a damp gray shadow that covered the Valley. The rain became a light drizzle, and the wind died to a whisper until it was gone entirely.

The power had come back on sometime during the early morning hours; traffic was once again flowing at a relatively normal pace, although the streets were a mess. Ventura Boulevard was littered with debris; boxes were scattered over sidewalks, and gutters were strewn with soggy clumps of newspaper, splintered wooden slats, wind-tossed banners and posters, and unidentifiable clots of garbage. Toppled trash cans rolled about on sidewalks. Storefront windows were dappled with filth.

All day long, the attention of the entire country had been focused on the burned building at the corner of Ventura and Whitley. Local news teams as well as network crews had flocked to the building in their vans and station wagons not long after midnight, set up their cameras as close as the police would let them, and clamored to get footage of the corpses being carried out of the smoking building, one after another.

By seven-thirty that morning, eighty-seven bodies had been taken out, with many more left inside. Local television stations preempted their regular morning programming to cover the story; it wasn't until later that morning however, that they began to make any sense of it all.

By the time fire trucks had arrived late the night before, some people had already left with the teenagers they'd managed to coax out of the building. Those remaining were too hysterical to explain anything to the authorities, and most of them were taken away in ambulances to be treated for what at first appeared to be serious injuries. The ambulance attendants soon realized, however, that the blood that covered these people was not their own.

By eight a.m., word of what had actually happened began to reach the media. The first person to talk was Will Brubaker. He and his wife were rushed by reporters outside the hospital after being released; Brubaker had received eight stitches on his left hand where he'd cut himself on the stair railing on his way out of the building. His wife had been treated for smoke inhalation. The police had already asked them countless questions, but the police were not yet talking to the press, so the Brubakers' answers had not been passed on. Brubaker took advantage of the opportunity, and, with one arm around his wife, holding her close, both of them looking haggard and bereaved, he explained slowly and emotionally that the corpses in the abandoned health club were those of teenagers and that they had been coerced into committing suicide by a man named Mace. When asked why he and his wife had been there, Brubaker replied, "We got a phone call from a man named Haskell. Said he was a counselor at my son's high school. I don't know how, but he
knew
what was going to happen. He knew about it but waited until the very last minute to tell anyone. And I hope, for his sake, that he's got some damned good reasons."

Within the hour, the tragedy was being compared to the Jonestown mass suicide in Guyana; the press dubbed it the Valley Massacre and immediately began to call on "experts" to speculate on the possible reasons why so many teenagers would take their lives all at once.

Throughout the valley, parents who did not know where their teenagers were waited fearfully for a phone call, agonizing over the possible fates of their sons and daughters.

The final death toll was one hundred and sixty-three.

It would be days before all the bodies were positively identified.

Over a week before the last funeral was held.

Months before the story faded from the public eye.

But the scars left behind would never heal….

Mr. Booth paced the length of his office, walking fast, as if late for an appointment. He'd smoked two cigarettes down to the filter in the few minutes J.R. had been seated before his desk.

"You've avoided the press so far?" he asked, his voice breathy, tense.

"Yes."

"Said nothing?"

"Nothing." J.R. looked at his watch; it was a few minutes to ten. His shoulders and neck burned with pain, his head throbbed, and he was buzzing from all the coffee he'd been drinking for the past several hours.

"Any idea what you will say once they catch up to you?" Booth asked, blowing smoke.

J.R. sighed and slumped down in the chair. The previous night had been the longest J.R. had spent since Sheila died. After climbing out of the sewer with Kevin, they found themselves in an alley off Ventura. They spent a few moments collecting themselves; J.R. lifted his face to the rain and drank in the fresh, cold air. With his arm around Kevin, J.R. led him to the edge of the boulevard and, to their right, saw the orange glow of the fire through the narrow gaps between the boards over the health club's windows. He knew immediately what would happen within the next hour; first the fire trucks would come, then ambulances, the police, and, worst of all, the reporters. It would be spread over the news like butter on toast; they would tack some catchy name on the whole thing, hound the families of the dead teenagers, and go through half a dozen versions of what had happened before getting to the truth. If they ever got to it at all.

He led Kevin through the motionless line of cars on Ventura and behind the building to the parking lot. People were stumbling out of the building, clutching their chests, crying, racked with coughs. Smoke was billowing out of the door behind them. Cars were starting, doors were slamming.

Jeff, Lily, and Erin were not in the parking lot. They were on the other side of the bushes that ran along Whitley. When Lily called J.R. over, he found Jeff and Erin sitting on the curb, their feet in a flooded gutter, embracing and crying. He got them to his car and drove them to Erin's apartment. After lighting some candles, he was relieved to find that no one was badly hurt; he was the worst, with cuts and scratches on his back and legs, but they were easily taken care of.

He put Erin to bed; Jeff sat with her awhile, wanting to be left alone. Kevin plopped onto the sofa when he arrived and remained there for a long time, silent and dazed. He found a pack of Erin's cigarettes on the end table and lit up.

"So, what do we do now?" Lily asked J.R. in the kitchen as he poured himself some vodka.

"I don't know. Wait, I guess."

"Shouldn't we have, like, stayed there awhile?"

"Why? If the police want to, they can talk to us later. That place is probably a carnival sideshow by now."

He found a portable radio, and sure enough, the story had already broken.

He spent the night in the apartment, sitting up with Lily and Kevin, comforting Erin and Jeff through frequent attacks of tears and quaking sobs. After a few drinks, they calmed down and eventually slept.

J.R. could not sleep. Neither could the others. They talked their way through the nightmare again and again, trying to understand exactly what had happened and why.

"He was just… gone all of a sudden," Kevin whispered. "One second there, the next…"

After the lights came on at two-thirty, J.R. switched from vodka to coffee. He didn't want to sleep; he was afraid he would dream.

He sat in front of the television from two-thirty on while the others slept and the rain clawed at the windows. The story unfolded slowly; the all-night movies were interrupted again and again, and there weren't as many used car commercials as usual. At a little after eight, he saw Will Brubaker on the screen, arm around his wife, talking about him, about J.R.

"Holy Christ," J.R. growled, sitting up on the sofa. He leaned over and woke Kevin, who was asleep at the other end. "Do me a favor and wake Lily. Keep an eye on the others, and don't answer the phone or the door. I've gotta leave for a while."

He drove to his apartment to shower and change his clothes. As he briskly dried himself in his steamy bathroom the phone rang, and he almost didn't answer it, certain it would be a reporter. But it occured to him that something might be wrong over at the Carrs'; it might be Lily or Kevin.

"Mr. Haskell?" an officious-sounding woman asked. "I'm calling for Faye Beddoe."

"Faye? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. She just wanted me to give you a message. She's fine. A little stubborn this morning, but fine. She's been insisting that I call you. I told her—"

"What
message?
"
he snapped.

The woman sniffed. "The note reads, 'Say as little as possible. Talking isn't worth it.' She said you'd know what it means."

He nodded silently to himself. "What's she doing?"

"She's been watching the television all morning. There was a big fire over at—"

"Tell her I'll be in to see her later. And thank her for me." He hung up, dressed, and drove to the school, sneaking by the horde of reporters out in the hall.

"Well?" Booth asked again. "Any ideas?"

"I'm going to say as little as possible," J.R. replied.

"And what will that include?"

"It depends on what they ask me."

Booth started pacing again. "You saw Brubaker on television this morning?"

"That's why I'm here."

"You will not bring the school into this." It wasn't a question or request, but an order. "As of today…" He went to the window behind his desk and stared out at the murky day. "As of today, you are no longer employed here."

J.R. took a deep breath and sighed. "I expected that."

"Please don't think I enjoy this. But I did warn you." He turned. "Remember?"

"I remember."

"I wish you would've listened to me."

"Well," J.R. said sarcastically, raising his voice a bit, "you'll have to forgive me for not putting the school's image above the lives of—"

"I wasn't talking about the school's image, Haskell, I was talking about the limitations of your job."

"Limitations of my…" J.R. shot to his feet and leaned over the desk, palms flat on its top. "You didn't see what I saw last night. If you had, you'd—"

"I didn't because it did not happen on this campus. Our jobs end, Mr. Haskell, at the borders of this campus. They go no further."

J.R. studied the man's face, looking for some sign that he did not mean what he'd just said. Booth's eyes were surrounded by tiny, deep wrinkles. His fleshy cheeks sagged and would be jowls before long. His mouth drew downward at the ends, and speckles of perspiration glistened on his upper lip. His stern gaze did not waver; he meant what he said. J.R. slowly lowered himself into the chair again.

"How can you be that cold?" he asked quietly.

Booth stabbed his cigarette into the ashtray on his desk, lit another, then turned to the window again, silent for a while.

"Don't damn me for my walls, Haskell," he finally said. "You'll have them, too, one day. You know, I started out like you. I used to teach math in a little junior high in Arizona. I was like a born-again Christian, on fire for education, eager to teach all those young minds." His last words were bitter, dark with disillusionment. "I made a point to get to know each of my students, find out about their interests, their problems, and I tried so hard—
so hard
—to help them, protect them, keep them happy. I got married, had a son, and we moved to California. As my boy grew up, I lost some of my enthusiasm for my work. Everyone seemed so ungrateful—the parents, the kids…. It seemed that every time one of them stubbed a toe, I was blamed or the school was blamed. It got worse when I became a principal. Then, when he was fifteen, my son developed a drinking problem. Well, I
noticed
it when he was fifteen; he
developed
it before that. He'd been filling his thermos with bourbon every morning, taking it to school with him. We didn't even notice until he dropped the bottle one day. Well. I was shocked. My son—my fifteen-year-old son—an
alcoholic!
It was his school's fault; they weren't watching him closely enough. It was Madison Avenue's fault; they were glorifying booze. Later, it was the fault of the treatment centers and therapists I sent him to, because they didn't help him. They all seemed so cold and uncaring, like they didn't give a damn. And still later—nearly two years after he got a license, drove his brand-new car into an abutment, and opened his skull on the windshield—later I realized the blame belonged on no one's doorstep but mine. Those people weren't cold and uncaring; they were just doing their jobs, protecting themselves from people like me who wanted to blame them for my failures. A little too late to realize all that then, of course. And to this day, I still don't know where we went wrong, but…" He shrugged.