Shame (25 page)

For Dana, there was a long moment of blessed relief. She offered up a prayer of thanks, but it was interrupted. The door flew open.

“I lied,” he said.

C
ALEB ALL BUT
sprinted the four blocks over to University Avenue. This time he could do something other than just run away.

The open service station was just what Caleb was looking for. He ran up to the cashier’s booth. Sitting in the cinder-block fort was an old black man smoking a cigarette behind thick, yellowed Plexiglas. The cashier studied Caleb’s hurried approach with a resigned expression that said he had seen it all and wasn’t keen on the reruns.

“Do you sell gas cans?” Caleb asked.

The cashier took a long drag of his cigarette, did a little mental cataloging, then exhaled his answer. “Eight ninety-nine,” he said, his words coming out of a tinny microphone. “Plus tax.”

Caleb reached for his wallet, pulled out a twenty, and put it in the slot. The money disappeared.

“You gonna want a gallon of gas?”

“Yes,” said Caleb, offering the expected answer without any hesitation, though until that moment he hadn’t even thought about getting gas. The can was to be his prop for getting a ride, his explanation for walking the streets at night.

“You want unleaded or premium?”

“Unleaded.”

“Pump three.” The cashier rang up the transactions, put the change in the plastic slot drawer, and pushed the drawer toward Caleb. “Can will be outside the door.”

Caleb grabbed his change, and then ran around to the back of the booth and picked up the gas can. He quickly pumped the gas, then took up a spot under a streetlight on University. Thumb cocked, he waited on a ride. It had been over twenty years since he’d last hitchhiked. When the first few cars passed him by, Caleb started worrying. He looked at his watch, and then considered calling a cab. It was almost eleven thirty. The sorority was about ten miles away, and he needed to get there by midnight.

The killer won’t make his move before then, Caleb told himself, convinced himself.

Another car drove by. Caleb found himself unable to just stand around waiting for a ride. He began to pace, but that made him feel like a caged animal in a too-small enclosure. He started walking east, and then, between lulls in passing cars, began jogging. The killer wasn’t going to beat him to the sorority. If necessary, he’d run the whole ten miles there.

The traffic on University was Saturday-night steady. A few drivers slowed, looked Caleb over, but then continued on their way. What are they seeing? Caleb wondered. Maybe they sensed something wasn’t quite right. He tried to give the appearance of being a harmless, out-of-luck motorist, but his act made him self-conscious. So did the reflection he kept glimpsing in storefronts. He didn’t know the stranger with the blond hair.

Turn, thumb, and then run. Caleb’s routine took him at least a mile along University. He had this sense of being on a Cinderella schedule, and that at midnight his whole world could change. At the sound of another approaching car he turned and stuck out his thumb. Again, no luck. But he didn’t start running right away. Another car was coming, but as soon as he got a better look at it, he didn’t solicit the driver with his thumb.

The police officer might or might not have seen him hitchhiking. Caleb turned his back on the patrol car and started walking. Don’t stop, he thought. No need to be curious or helpful. His head filled with mental messages, all aimed at the police officer: I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. He walked with measured steps and a posture that tried to exude confidence that said everything was under control and his car was nearby. He could feel eyes on his back, the cop eyeballing him with X-ray vision.

The cruiser slowed up as it came alongside him. The officer made eye contact, inquired as to how Caleb was doing with a backward nod of his head. Caleb nodded in return to show that all was well. The cop drove on.

The short encounter almost brought Caleb to his knees. He stood for a minute, getting control of his weakened legs, then stuck out a trembling thumb to a passing car. If he was so afraid of a cop, how was he going to face up to a killer?

A red Camaro interrupted his self-doubts, pulling over to the side of the road. Caleb ran up to the car. As he reached for the door handle, the Camaro patched out on the pavement, leaving behind a skid mark, fumes, and taunting laughter that hung in the air even longer than the exhaust.

Caleb shook his fist at the retreating car. “Fuck you!” he screamed. “Fuck you!”

He offered his curse to the world. He was tired of being its punching bag, but the world didn’t seem to notice his challenge. Around him all was dark and quiet. He looked at his watch. Almost eleven forty-five. He couldn’t let his opportunity slip away, couldn’t let his time—and maybe the sorority’s—run out.

Caleb wished he were more clever. Someone more clever wouldn’t be in his position. He would have found a way to get free without almost committing hara-kiri and figured out a better plan than hitchhiking in the middle of the night. He would have hotwired a car or cajoled a ride out of someone. His father had managed more escapes than Houdini, had never lost his
cool even when the police were closing in on all sides. His father would have done something audacious.

Like step out and stop traffic, then use his silver tongue to get a ride.

Caleb took a tentative step out into the street but then stepped back. He didn’t have to be like his father. There were other ways of doing things.

Another car approached. Caleb’s expression all but willed the car to stop. Whether it was his look or just luck, the Toyota pulled over to the curb. Caleb ran to it, opened the door, and jumped inside.

“Thanks.”

The driver was Latino, around twenty-five, with a goatee. He was wearing black, baggy clothing. Over the blare of the radio, he asked, “Run out of gas, man?”

“My girlfriend did,” shouted Caleb. “She took my car and forgot to look at the gas gauge, and now she expects me to bail her out.”

The lie came easily to him, emerged without any thought.

“Sounds like my girlfriend, man. Anything goes wrong with her car and it’s like, ‘You’re the guy. You take care of it.’”

Caleb nodded. He didn’t try to compete over the loud Latin pop on the radio.

“So, where’s your car, man?”

“Out near State.”

The driver weighed the location and opted for continuing along his straight line. “I better drop you off on College, then.”

“Thanks,” said Caleb, then tried to remember his East County geography. The drop-off spot would be a mile or two from the sorority. He looked at his watch again.

“Want to make five bucks?” Caleb shouted.

“Doing what?”

“Driving me to Montezuma. My girlfriend was sort of spooked about having to wait outside for me.”

The driver shrugged his shoulders a little, then his head started bobbing in agreement. “Spooky times, man. No problem. You just hired yourself Antonio’s Taxi Service.”

Caleb wished Antonio had the lead foot of most cabbies, but the driver was content to go the speed limit. As loud as the music was, the station breaks were even louder. The disc jockey’s staccato and voluble Spanish made it sound as if he were having an apoplectic seizure. Caleb looked out his window. The ethnic mix that lived in the neighborhoods surrounding University was revealed in its restaurants. Polyglot signs advertised everything from taquerías to dim sum to Ethiopian take-out. Somehow immigrants kept fitting in. That’s all I ever wanted to do, Caleb thought, just fit in.

As they drew closer to San Diego State, Caleb found his heart racing. Pounding. Sweat dripped off him, soaking Lola’s sweatshirt. His wound stung, the perspiration finding its way into the cut. Caleb patted the sweatshirt, feeling to make sure the gauze strips were still in place. They were, but his hand still came away sticky and red. He looked down and saw a dark patch in the front of the sweatshirt. He was lucky the sweatshirt was navy blue. It masked the blood, especially at night. To the casual eye it looked like sweat.

“Make a right here,” Caleb shouted, “and then drop me off anywhere.”

He pulled out his wallet and then wiped his hand on his pants. It wouldn’t do to hand Antonio a bloodied five-dollar bill.

Antonio didn’t immediately pull over. He turned his head right and left, trying to catch sight of a woman waiting by a car.

“Where’s your lady, man?”

Caleb didn’t say anything, just craned his head as if he expected to see his waiting girlfriend. Montezuma was a mixture of apartment buildings, residences, and sorority and fraternity houses. Cars lined the streets. Caleb pointed out a VW Jetta that was parked farther away from the curb than the other cars.

“That’s my car,” he said.

“So where’s your
chica
?” asked Antonio.

Caleb motioned with his chin. “She’s got a friend who lives over at that apartment,” he said.

He handed Antonio the money and hopped out of the car. Caleb offered a wave and started walking toward the apartment he had pointed out. Behind him, he heard the Toyota make a U-turn and then drive off.

Caleb reversed his steps and started walking up Montezuma. He knew by the street numbers that the Kappa Omega sorority was several blocks away, apparently at the end of fraternity and sorority row. As he covered the distance, Caleb tried to think like the killer. Around him, the complexion of the neighborhood changed. Shrubs became hiding places; opened windows were invitations for him to visit. The role of killer, he found, was all too easy to assume.

He took up his first position from half a block away, hid behind a eucalyptus tree while scouting the area. The sorority house wasn’t as large as he expected, was just a converted two-story townhouse that had undergone several additions. The house was situated in the middle of an oversized lot. On one side of it was an apartment house and on the other a home that by all signs was rented out for student housing.

Caleb left the shelter of the tree and made his way forward along a pathway of trodden ice plants. As he neared the house, he noticed the street was darker than it should have been. Looking up, he saw that the street lamp wasn’t working.

And neither were the two spotlights used to illuminate the Kappa Omega sign.

He’s already here, Caleb thought. Maybe I’m too late.

But part of his mind was still thinking like the killer’s. The lights would have been sabotaged the day before or earlier in the week. That’s how my father would have done it, Caleb thought. And that’s how I would have done it.

Bending low on his haunches, Caleb surveyed the area around him. He scanned the cars parked on the street. None was fogged up, and he could see nothing that made him believe any were currently occupied. Maybe his enemy had yet to make his appearance.

Caleb studied the front of the sorority house. The setting looked very familiar to him, and then he realized that Brandy Wein must have been photographed very near to where he was standing. Dead and cooling and naked, she’d been used as a prop by the killer.

He heard a scream and jumped up, but then realized it was only a burst of loud laughter coming from inside the sorority.

The unexpected laughter offered him hope. He could do something to help himself, and help others, this time.

From where he was standing, Caleb could see four bedroom windows. There were lights on in two of them. But Caleb was sure the killer wouldn’t try to gain entry through the front of the house. Even with the diminished lighting, the street was too well traveled, and the front too visible. He’d try to gain access through the back.

Caleb crossed the street and walked across the white, decorative rocks that took up most of the front landscaping of the sorority. Though he tried to walk quietly, the stones crunched under his feet. As he passed the side of the house, a motion detector tripped on. He ran to the back, out of the light’s range, and waited to see if an alarm was raised. None was.

He knelt behind some lawn furniture. There wasn’t much to the backyard: a barbecue area, redwood decking, a struggling vegetable garden, and some haphazard shrubbery. There was no foliage near the house, no way anyone could lurk without being easily seen. Above the patio’s sliding glass doors was another motion detector. Stickers were affixed to windows warning intruders of the house’s alarm system. Caleb wondered whether all the strategies and devices had succeeded in keeping out the uninvited.

The backyard allowed him a better vantage point to observe what was going on inside. Two rooms offered the glow of television sets; in another he could hear a stereo; one woman was sitting at her desk reading.

With the two additions, there were nine or ten bedrooms to the house. Caleb studied the layout and tried to figure out how an intruder could get inside. With so many occupants, it was likely that security was often compromised by opened windows or propped doors, but he hadn’t seen any of those, and this wasn’t an opportunistic killer. This was someone who planned his murders.

Caleb scanned for skylights. None. And no attic window either.