Devil's Playground (8 page)

“No. They knew he wouldn’t do nothing.”

Sam turned to the window and exhaled loudly, fighting back tears.

“Can I see them?” Lupe asked.

“Not yet. Vince Gorman took them over to the hospital. Dr. Klingler will have to do an autopsy.”

“Is that necessary?” She sobbed into her handkerchief. “Does he have to do that?”

Sam returned to her side and knelt once again. “I’m afraid so. They died in custody and the law requires it. I’m sorry.”

“When can I see them?”

“After Dr. Klingler finishes his exam, Vince will take them over to the funeral home. You can see them there.”

Lupe stared past her, out the window. Her pain was palpable and seemed to thicken the air, making it difficult for Sam to breathe.

Sam could only imagine what movies played in the broken woman’s mind. Remembrances of Juan and Carlos as rambunctious boys, or muscular young men. Perhaps the time they stole one of Lanny Mills’ horses and rode it through town and into the movie theater. Or perhaps the day Juan graduated from high school, the first person in the history of their family to do so. Sam remembered how handsome Juan had looked in his cap and gown and how Lupe’s face had beamed with pride.

Her face didn’t beam now. There was no joy in her eyes or her pale, tear-streaked face.

Sam gripped her hand. “I’ll take you home and talk to Maria.”

“I’m OK,” Lupe said. “I’ll tell her.”

“No. You can’t drive. I’ll take you.”

Lupe didn’t argue.

*

After telling Maria what had happened, Sam left the two women with their private sorrow and drove to Millie’s. She sipped coffee while Charlie ate. He had just finished a healthy plate of bacon, eggs, and biscuits when Lisa McFarland took a seat in the booth next to Sam. Millie placed a cold Dr. Pepper and two slices of toast, dry, Lisa’s usual, in front of her.

“What happened with the Rodriguez brothers?” Lisa nibbled the toast she had smeared with Millie’s homemade apple butter.

“Ralph Klingler says it looks like Juan strangled Carlos’, then hung himself,” Charlie said. “He said he didn’t think Juan’s neck was broken or anything like that. Just hung there and died. No struggle, no nothing.”

Lisa dropped her toast on the plate. “How does someone do that?”

“Beats me,” Charlie said.

“Did you or anyone from your office talk with Garrett yesterday or this morning?” Sam asked.

Lisa shook her head. “Not that I know. Why?”

“He knew details about Connie’s accident, but I don’t know how.”

“Maybe Mark Levy told him.”

“I called him,” Sam said. “He said no.”

“Oooh, maybe he has supernatural powers like he says,” Lisa said, waving her hands over the table as if conducting a séance.

“That’s probably it,” Sam laughed.

“It’s a strange situation all around,” Charlie said. “But, not that strange.”

“You know what bugs me?” Sam said. Charlie and Lisa looked at her. “The kids. Why’d they wander away from school and meet up with Garrett in the first place?”

“Kids don’t make sense sometimes,” Charlie said.

“I suppose,” Sam said. “But, everyone, their teachers, their parents, said it wasn’t like them to do that. And they didn’t leave the school grounds together. Witnesses saw each of them walking alone. Yet, they ended up on the same corner at the same time.”

“Yeah,” Charlie nodded.

“And they got into Garrett’s car willingly. They weren’t forced or anything like that.”

“That’s Paul Ruiz’s story anyway. And he was the only witness,” Lisa added.

Sam nodded. “And he was a block away. And he was drinking as usual. And he didn’t think much of it until he heard the kids were missing. But, I believe he saw what happened. Even drunk, he would be able to tell the difference between kids climbing in a car and a kidnapping.”

“What’s your point?” Charlie asked, eying Sam over his coffee cup.

“With all the news stories and the programs we have at school, why would they get in a stranger’s car? It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Kids do it all the time,” Lisa said. “Seems like it’s on the news every night.”

“But, not here,” Sam said.

“But, they did,” Charlie sighed.

“Do you think they knew Garrett?” Lisa asked.

Sam shook her head. “We asked their parents and teachers. They all said no. That it wasn’t possible.”

“I guess we’ll never know for sure,” Charlie said.

Sam drained her coffee cup, then nudged Lisa. “Let me out. I’m going over to the hospital and see if Ralph Klingler has any news.”

Lisa stood so Sam could slide out of the booth.

“Want to go with me?” Sam asked.

“I’d rather have a root canal than visit the morgue,” Lisa said.

After Thelma Billups finished typing four letters and filing three dozen reports, she sat behind her desk and attempted to sort out the morning's events. Her thoughts turned to Lupe Rodriguez and Maria and Juan and Carlos. How many times had she baby-sat them during their stays in Cell #2, which she called “The Rodriguez Suite.” It seemed to her that they were permanent fixtures. Had it really been five months since the boys were last here? She had missed them. Missed refereeing their card games, missed bringing their food from Red’s, either ribs or cheeseburgers, sometimes both, and missed their constant laughter. Tears gathered in her eyes, crawled to the corner, and slid down her cheeks.

She wiped her eyes with a tissue, then gathered the stack of letters from her “out box,” slipped a rubber band around them, and dropped them in her purse. Glancing at her watch, she decided she had just enough time to walk to the post office, mail the letters, pick up today’s mail, grab a muffin and coffee at Starbucks, and get back before Sheriff Walker returned from breakfast. She snagged her jacket from the coat rack by the door, but as she pushed open the door, a sharp pain in her left temple jolted her.

She leaned against the doorjamb and pressed her right thumb into the web of her left hand, an acupressure trick for migraines she learned from her neurologist. The pain subsided somewhat. She returned to her desk and sat down, hoping the headache would pass. Again, she pressed her thumb into the pressure point of her hand, no effect.

She had not suffered a migraine in at least two years. Why now? Maybe the stress of the trial, which had doubled her usually hectic work schedule, or the cold weather or the strain of preparing for Christmas. Probably Juan and Carlos’ death. Whatever the reason, she didn’t have time to deal with it right now.

She removed a pill bottle from her purse, shook a Vicodin into her hand, and swallowed it with a sip of water from the bottle she kept on her desk. She would call the doctor later, she promised herself.

She closed her eyes and massaged her temples.

When she opened her eyes, a swirl of colors assaulted her. The office exploded with deep reds, brilliant yellows, and greens and oranges and blues and hues she had never seen before. Everywhere she looked were colors within colors, swirling, blending to create new tones. Streaks of crimson lightning arched across the room before entwining into a rotating ball, so brilliant it hurt her eyes.

Yet, she could not look away.

At first, she sensed no fear, but rather confusion, bewilderment, even fascination. The fiery ball gyrated around the room before settling over and melting into the evidence room door. Somewhere inside, apprehension arose, telling her to back away, run out the door. But, the crimson door held her, drew her toward it.

Using her key, she twisted open its lock and entered the windowless room. She flipped on the bare ceiling bulb and the room burst into color. Six-foot high metal shelves along the wall to her left held three rows of cardboard boxes, which now emitted more hues than the sixty-four-color Crayola box she had gotten for her tenth birthday.

One box, which glowed a deep blood red, captured her and she seemed to float toward it. She lifted its lid, removed a sealed plastic evidence bag, and dropped it into her purse. Replacing the lid, she squared the box with its neighbors, and left the room, locking the door once again.

She stepped outside into a world of dazzling colors and headed for the post office. People, people she knew but could not remember how she knew them or who they were, greeted her as they passed. She could only nod, unable to form a coherent response.

When she reached the post office, now a bright canary yellow, she did not go inside, but rather skirted the building to the rear parking lot. The asphalt shimmered like a silver lake. Bolts of black and gold lightning rippled across its surface.

Near the back door, a large cobalt blue air conditioner compressor squatted silently against the rear of the yellow building. She retrieved the plastic bag from her purse and turned it over in her hands, inspecting it, marveling at its bright crimson glow. She slid it between the compressor and the wall, making sure it was not easily visible to anyone who might walk by.

As she returned to the front of the building, the world faded to its original colors--gray sky, black asphalt street, red brick post office. She stopped in mid-stride, looked around, up and down the street, then at the entrance to the building. How did she get here? She didn’t remember the half block walk from her office. Had she already been inside the post office? She fumbled through her purse until she found the bundle of letters. 

A surge of dread gripped her. This is what had happened to her mother when she entered her sixties as Thelma had two years earlier. Forgetting, getting lost, repeating tasks she had already completed, until she slowly forgot who she was, who Thelma was. Was this how it began? Was she to suffer her mother’s fate? Who would care for her?

She attempted to push her fears into the corner of her mind, but was only marginally successful.

She hurried up the steps and into the post office. After stamping and mailing the letters, she removed the mail from the department’s mailbox, then headed toward Starbucks. By the time she returned to her office and finished her muffin and coffee, her headache had disappeared.

*

Sam sat on a stool in the corner of the autopsy room as Dr. Ralph Klingler finished the post-mortem exam of Juan Rodriguez. The room was cold so she wore her leather jacket, zipped to her neck. Ralph, apparently accustomed to the chill, wore short-sleeved surgical scrubs and thin latex gloves.

The only light came from a ceiling lamp over his head, which cast a circle of illumination over Juan’s partially dissected body and shadows everywhere else. Thankfully, her sense of smell dulled with each passing minute. At least she could no longer taste the morgue’s formalin infused air. No longer had to consciously suppress the nausea that wound its fingers around her gut.

She had been in this room perhaps a dozen times before, yet never got used to it. The chill, the smell, the bodies, the dim lighting gave it a crypt-like quality. Death seemed to reside in every corner, to hide in each shadow.

She watched him work, fascinated by his skill as much as she was amazed that anyone could do this for a living. Ralph was a small man with a thin, angular face. His glasses were so thick that they magnified and distorted his pale blue eyes, lifting them from his face where they floated as if unattached. Short dark hair surrounded his bald pate, which sprouted sparse black fuzz. His narrow shoulders slumped forward, as his delicate hands probed Juan’s liver, which now resided in a shallow white plastic basin.

Carlos’ body, which had been examined earlier, occupied a stretcher near the far wall. A flimsy white sheet draped over his lifeless form. The charred remains of John and Connie Beeson, zipped inside two plastic bags, lay on another stretcher.

“So, what’s the story, Ralph?”

“As I suspected, Juan crushed Carlos’ trachea, then hung himself. Looks like Carlos put up a fight. His knuckles and Juan’s face were bruised and battered. Juan sustained a fractured nose and lost a couple of teeth, but no other injuries. No broken neck, fractured larynx, anything like that. Died of asphyxiation. No drugs. Blood alcohol level was 0.09, which means he was fairly well lubricated when he was locked up three hours earlier, but other than maybe impairing his judgment, it didn’t play a roll in his death.”

Sam shook her head. “How does someone hang themselves like that?”

“Most people, who try hanging as a way out, die from asphyxiation, not from a broken neck. You have to fall a few feet to create enough force to snap your neck. Tipping over a chair or, as Juan did, stepping off a bunk, won’t usually do it. Typically, in self-hangings, the victims repent when they discover they’re not dead and it ain’t like the movies. They excoriate their neck and hands, even rip out finger nails, trying to escape the noose or climb the rope to loosen it. Anything to survive.”

“But, not Juan.”

“Nothing. Looks like he simply hung there and died.” He shook his head. “Strange to say the least.”

“And Connie Beeson?”

“Not pretty. She was decapitated and died instantly. John also died instantly from massive head and chest injuries. Both bodies were burned beyond recognition.”

“The driver?”

“As expected, blood alcohol was 0.22 and he had a hefty dose of amphetamines on board.”

Alcohol. Speed. Like Garrett said. “When did you get the blood reports back? About the alcohol and drugs?” Sam asked.

“About an hour ago.”

An hour. Yet Garrett knew hours ago. Lucky guess?

“As you know, that’s a common combination among truckers,” Ralph continued. “This guy’s levels of both were pretty high. How he was driving is beyond me.”

“He apparently wasn’t driving very well. Who was he?”

“James McElroy. Lived in Van Nuys. I called his wife. Seems he was driving on a suspended license. Two DUI convictions in the past year.”

“And this clown was hauling ass with a ton of gasoline. Any idea why he crossed a hundred yards of desert to head the wrong way down the freeway?”

“Maybe he passed out or got confused. Maybe road rage. Who knows?”

“Those two kids that he barely missed felt he was after them. Or somebody anyway.”