Rage (4 page)

When
I brought up the abduction, he seemed confused about why he’d participated,
more stunned than horrified. Part of that was denial, but I suspected his low
intellect was also a factor. When you comb through the histories of seriously
violent kids, you often find head injuries. I wondered about the crash that had
killed his parents but had spared him obvious damage.

His
Wechsler Intelligence scores were no shock: Full Score I.Q. of 79, with severe
deficits in verbal reasoning, language formation, factual knowledge, and
mathematical logic.

Tom
Laskin wanted to know if he’d been functioning as an adult when he killed
Kristal Malley. Even if Rand was thirty-five years old, that might’ve been a
relevant question.

The
T.A.T. and the Rorschach were pretty much useless: He was too depressed and
intellectually impoverished to produce meaningful responses to the cards. His
Peabody I.Q. score was no higher than the more verbally influenced Wechsler.
His Draw-a-Person was a tiny, limbless, stick figure with two strands of hair
and no mouth. My request to free-draw elicited a blank stare. When I suggested
he draw himself and Troy he resisted by feigning sleep.

“Just
draw anything, then.”

He
lay there, breathing through his mouth. His acne had grown even worse.
Suggesting a dermatologic consult would have elicited smirks from the jail
staff.

“Rand?”

“Hnnh.”

“Draw
something.”

“Can’t.”

“Why
not?”

His
mouth twisted as if his teeth hurt. “Can’t.”

“Sit
up and do it, anyway.” My hard tone made him blink. He stared at me but
couldn’t hold it past a few seconds. Pitiful attention span. Maybe part of that
was sensory deprivation due to being locked up, but my guess was he’d always had
trouble concentrating.

I
handed him the pencil and the paper and the drawing board. He sat there for a
while, finally put the board in his lap, gripped the pencil. The point froze on
the paper.

“Draw,”
I said.

His
hand began circling lazily, floating above the paper. Finally making contact,
as he created flabby, barely visible, concentric ellipses. The page began to
fill. Darker ellipses. His eyes shut as he scrawled. For two weeks he’d done
that a lot— blinding himself to his hellish reality.

Today,
his pencil hand moved faster. The ellipses grew more angular. Flatter, darker.
Sharpening to jagged, spearlike shapes.

He
kept going, tongue tip snaking between his lips. The paper became a storm of
black. His free hand fisted and gathered the hem of his jail shirt as his
drawing hand moved faster. The pencil dug in and the page puckered. Ripped. He
slashed downward. Circled faster. Digging in harder, as the paper shredded. The
pencil went through to the drawing board, hit the glossy, fiberboard surface
and slid out from his hand.

Landing
on the floor of the cell.

He
moved quickly, retrieved it. Exhaled. Held the yellow nub in a grubby, moist
palm. “Sorry.”

The
paper was confetti. The pencil’s graphite tip had broken off, leaving behind
splintered wood. Sharp little spikes.

I
took the pencil. Put it in my pocket.

* * *

After
my final visit, walking to the subterranean parking lot, I heard someone call
my name and turned to see a heavy woman in a flowered dress leaning on an
aluminum cane. The dirty-milk sky matched her complexion. I’d awakened to sunny
blue Beverly Glen firmament, but cheer had eluded the grimy corner of East L.A.
dominated by the jail.

She
took a few steps toward me and the cane clunked on pavement. “You’re the
psychologist, right? I’m Rand’s gram.”

I
walked to her, held out my hand.

“Margaret
Sieff,” she said, in a smoker’s voice. Her free arm remained at her side. The
dress was a scratchy-looking cotton print, relenting at the seams. Camellias
and lilies and delphiniums and greenery sprawled across an aqua background. Her
hair was white, short, curly, thinning so severely that patches of pink scalp
shone through. Blue eyes took me in. Small, sharp, searching eyes. Nothing like
her grandson’s.

“You
been here all week but I never heard from you. You don’ figger to talk to me?”

“I
plan to when I’m finished evaluating Rand.”

“Evaluatin’.”
The word seemed to distress her. “What you figger you can do for him?”

“I’ve
been asked by Judge Laskin to— ”

“I
know all that,” she said. “You’re supposed to say was he a kid or an aldult.
Ain’t that cristo clear? What
I’m
askin’ is what can you
do
for
him?”

“What’s
crystal clear, Mrs. Sieff?”

“The
boy’s dumb. Screwy.” She pinged her waxy forehead with an index finger. “Din’t
talk till he was four, still don’t talk so good.”

“You’re
saying Rand’s— ”

“I’m
saying Randolph ain’t never gonna be no
aldult.
”

Which
was as good a diagnosis as the jargon in my notes.

Behind
her, rising above both of us, the concrete grid of the jail was the world’s
largest window shade. “You coming or going, ma’am?”

“My
appointment’s not for a coupla hours. With the buses from the Valley it’s hard
to figger, so I get here early. ’Cause if I’m late, those bastards don’ lemme
in at all.”

“How
about a cup of coffee?”

“You
payin’?”

“I
am.”

“Then,
fine.”

J
ails spread a very specific commercial rash, a
trickle-down of cheap lawyers, bail-bond outfits, translation services,
fast-food joints. I knew of a hamburger stand nearby but the walk through the
parking lot was too much for Margaret Sieff’s stiff legs. She waited by the
entrance as I pulled up in my car. When I got out to open her door, she said,
“Fancy-dancy caddy. Must be nice being rich.”

My
Seville’s a ’79, with a rebuilt engine. At that time it was well into its third
vinyl roof, and a second paint job was already losing the battle with corrosive
air. I took her cane and braced her elbow as she struggled to get in. When she
finally settled, she said, “How much they payin’ you to evaluate?”

I
said, “That’s not your concern, ma’am.”

That
made her smile.

* * *

I
drove to the burger joint, set her up at an outdoor table, went inside, and
waited in line behind a motorcycle cop who’d outgrown his tailored shirt, an
A.D.A. who looked fifteen, and a pair of scruffy, mustachioed guys with faded
gang tattoos. Those two paid with coins and it took awhile for the kid behind
the counter to do the math. When I finally reached the front, I ordered two
cardboard-flavored coffees.

When
I returned to Margaret Sieff, she said, “I’m hungry.” I went back in and got
her a cheeseburger.

She
snatched the food from me, ate ravenously, made token attempts at daintiness—
quick dabs of paper napkin on mottled chin— before returning to her spirited
attack. “That hit the spot,” she said, scraping ketchup onto a finger and
licking it off. “I tell you, sometimes I could eat five a those.”

“What
do you want to tell me about Rand?”

“Other
than him being a dummy?”

“Must’ve
been hard raising him.”

“Everything’s
hard,” she said. “Raising his mama was hard.”

“Your
daughter had problems.”

“Tricia
was a dummy, just like him. So was that fool she went and married. It was
his
fault they got killed. All those speeding tickets
and
his drinking.
So they give him a truck.” She laughed. “Idjits.
That’s
who they give a
truck to.”

I said,
“Tricia had trouble in school.”

Her
glare said she was starting to doubt my intelligence. “That’s what I said,
ain’t it?”

“What
kind of trouble?”

She
sighed. “When she even bothered to go to school, she hated reading, hated
‘rithmetic, hated everything. We were in Arizona back then and mostly she snuck
away and ran around the desert with bad influences.”

“Where
in Arizona?”

Instead
of answering, she said, “It was hot as hell. My husband’s big idea, he was
gonna grow cactuses because he heard you could make big money growing cactuses
and selling ’em to tourists. ‘Be easy, Margie, no water, just keep ’em in pots
till they’re big enough.’ Yeah, and make sure the dog don’t eat ’em and die
from spikes in the guts, then you have to set up a stand on the highway and
breathe all that heat and dust and hope some tourist’ll bother to stop.”

She
gave her empty cup another glance. “I sat at that stand day after day, watching
people speed right by me. People going somewhere.”

She
pouted. “Guess what? Even cactus need water.”

She
held out her cup. I got her a refill.

“So
Tricia grew up in Arizona,” I said.

“And
Nevada and Oklahoma and before that we lived in Waco, Texas, and before that
southern Indiana. So what? This ain’t about where we lived. It’s about Randolph
and the bad thing he did.” She pressed forward against the table, bosom
settling on grease-spotted blue plastic.

“Okay,”
I said, “let’s talk about that.”

Her
lips folded inward, tugging her nose downward. Her blue eyes had darkened to
granite pebbles. “I told him don’t be hanging with that little monster. Now,
all our lives is turned to shit.”

“Troy
Turner.”

“Mister,
I don’t even want to hear that name. Sinful monster, I knew he’d get Randolph
in trouble.” She finished the refill, squeezed the cup and folded it over,
placed her hand over the misshapen wad. Her mouth trembled. “Didn’t think it
would be trouble like this.”

“What
scared you about Troy?”

“Me?
I weren’t scareda that little shit. I was
worried.
For Randolph. ’Cause
he’s stupid, does whatever you tell him.”

“Is
Troy stupid?”

“He’s
evil. You wanna do somethin’ useful, sir? Tell the judge that without bad
influence Randolph never woulda— never
coulda
done anything like this.
And that’s all I’m gonna say about it ’cause Randolph’s lawyer said you weren’t
necessarily on our side.”

“I’m
on no one’s side, Mrs. Sieff. The judge appointed me so that I could— ”

“The
judge is
against
us, we were some rich nigger it would be different,”
she snapped. “And from where I’m sittin’, what you’re doin’s a waste of time
and money. ’Cause Randolph don’t have a chance, he’s gonna get sent somewhere.
Could be an aldult jail or could be someplace with little monsters.”

She
shrugged. Her eyes were wet and she swiped them angrily. “Same difference. He
ain’t gettin’ out for a long, long time and my life’s turned to shit.”

“Do
you think he should be released?”

“Why
not?”

“He
murdered a two-year-old girl.”

“The
monster
did it,” she said. “Randolph was just too stupid not to get outta there.”

Her
grandson had told me otherwise.

“You
want blame,” she said, “there’s plenty to go around. What kinda mother is that,
leaving a baby all alone? They should be puttin’
her
on trial, too.”

I
fought to remain expressionless. Must’ve failed, because she held out a palm.
“Hey, I ain’t sayin’ it was
all
her fault. I’m sayin’ everything should
be . . . considered. ’Cause everything had to be movin’ together
for it to happen, know what I mean? Like all the astrology signs being in
place. Like all the pieces in the puzzle fittin’ together.”

“Lots
of things played a role,” I said.

“Zactly.
First off, she leaves her baby alone. Second, the baby goes and wanders off.
Third, Randolph goes with that monster to the mall even though I told him not
to. Fourth, my legs were hurtin’, so I lay down to sleep it off and Randolph
sneaked off. See what I mean? It’s like a . . . like a movie.
Starring the devil, with us being the people the devil’s workin’ against. Like
no matter what we do, everything goes to hell.”

She
struggled upright, stood bracing herself with her cane. “Take me back, okay? I
get over there too late, those bastards gonna love lockin’ me out.”

I
drove Margaret Sieff back to the jail, went home, and
picked up messages. Rand Duchay’s P.D., a man named Lauritz Montez, had left
two.

He didn’t
bother with small talk. “You’re finished with my client, so can we finally
talk?”

“Feel
free to state any relevant facts, Mr. Montez.”

“Only
one fact, Doctor, but it’s the crucial one. Randy’s obviously impaired. No way
you couldn’t have found that. What’s the extent of it?”

No
one called the kid Randy.