The Road Out of Hell (32 page)

Endless interviews followed. One blended into another for Sanford. Uncle Stewart had drilled a cover story into him. Mostly a patchwork of denials—no, no, nothing ever went on out there except maybe that Mexican who tried to kill Uncle Stewart and of course Uncle Stewart should have reported it, but (he ran the sequence one more time) he was scared and the man was dead and it was clear self-defense and any remains that might be around were certainly from him and nobody else.

He knew it would never be enough to keep the authorities at bay, but it would take some of the wind out of their sails until they learned that they had had a child killer living among them. Then they would go insane. It would be like a dozen Uncle Stewarts all having one of those monster fits at the same time. He did not know why he was still fighting to avoid the inevitable. Raw survival instinct, perhaps. They would beat him until he was dead or wished that he was.
Just don’t beg,
he reminded himself.
It only makes them worse.

Sanford was held without charges at Juvenile Hall in the nearby town of Whittier for the first two days while authorities checked out his bogus story. They quickly realized that he was feeding them a rehearsed routine, not behavior that tended to endear an arrestee to the authorities. Because of his young age and small size, they nevertheless guaranteed his safety by holding him in isolation at the prison ward of County Hospital while the investigation went on. He spent those first two days in a hybrid prison cell/hospital room, forcing himself to return to a mental state where he could deal with the powerful events coming toward him. Rousing himself in that way was almost a physical pain, like trying to force his brain to think of complicated solutions when he was exhausted. Once he had shaken himself into a reasonably alert state, the added consciousness did nothing to lighten his twin burdens of guilt and shame. He grasped even more of his situation. The dread increased.

However, the clarity was finally enough to allow him to see that he was maintaining his ridiculous story for nothing. His goal was to stop Uncle Stewart from killing any more children, but right behind that was the goal of stopping Grandma Louise and even Grandpa George. As for himself, his part was all over and his life had no place else to go, but his freedom and his power came from reminding himself of that. He was a pot that needed to boil over.

The sodden pace of jailhouse life turned frantic as soon as he began pouring out the truth of his story to a sympathetic jailer. Within minutes, he found himself starting from the beginning again with the warden of the prison. Within hours, he was starting from the beginning again for an assemblage of the district attorney and a group of law-enforcement representatives in uniforms and suits.

That same afternoon, the police cordoned off the Northcotts’ Wineville chicken ranch and began to sift the reported grave sites. The evidence there was all in small pieces, but before long there was such an accumulation that police interest in the case became an urgent force all over the region. Every impossible thing young Sanford Clark had told them was turning out to be true as they checked them out, one by one.

Sanford felt an overall shift in the attitudes of the officers and jailers around him. It baffled him, but any one of those hard-timers who weren’t being allowed to get to him could have told him: the respect rises because you are bad, but the contempt also rises when you stray so far outside of accepted behavior. The natural-born criminal prefers that sort of respect. Sanford shriveled under the coldness of it.

He was allowed to read in his cell, however, and there was a choice of books. He embraced the chance to pass the time by reading. It went a long way toward filling the intolerable silence. Any other comfort that came to him in those circumstances rose up out of routine: the daily routine of meals, exercise, and lights out, or the intellectual routine of reading to deliver himself from the present moment. His identity was intolerable to him and his surroundings amounted to misery itself, but routine was a neutral source of comfort, no matter what new nightmare came with any given day. The reading kept him occupied well enough for the jailhouse voices to fade into a background babble. He began with Hemingway’s
The Sun Also Rises,
which struck him as being very good and not at all like Uncle Stewart’s description of it.

He was interrupted when he heard an adult male voice use his name. His attention immediately snapped to it. The man sounded like he was right out in the hall, talking to the guard. “Clark, Sanford. Fifteen years old,” the voice said. “That’s not a problem. I’ll sign in.”

Sanford heard the jailer mutter something. The guy seemed to have learned how to talk without projecting his voice enough to be overheard. He probably developed the skill to help fight jailhouse gossip, Sanford guessed, but it made learning anything about his own situation impossible from that route. There was no more need to eavesdrop, anyway. The bolt on his door turned, and it opened to admit a nicely dressed man whose friendly expression was a complete contrast to everything else about Sanford’s life at that moment. The man stepped into the room and held out his hand with the cool smile of a professional who was there to do business. Sanford stood up from his bunk and took his hand even before the man spoke. The handshake was firm and seemed to show that the man was not trying to get away from Sanford, but it was also not rough.

“Good man,” the man immediately said. “Manners. I like to see that. It shows me a lot. My name is Loyal C. Kelley. I work for the district attorney’s office, when they need me. I will call you Sanford, while you will call me Mr. Kelley.” He took on a humorous tone and added, “There’s no offense in it; you’re fifteen. The district attorney is allowing me to help. His name is Earl Redwine, but of course you will call him Mr. Redwine, and there’s no offense in that either.” He smiled and waited.

Sanford stood in confused silence. He immediately employed the trick of putting his eyes on the floor. No fast movement. He silently struggled to figure out what flavor of doom this man represented.

“Mind if I sit down?” Mr. Kelley asked him, as if the cell was Sanford’s own place.

“No,” Sanford replied. His voice felt small and weak to him. Tiny.

Mr. Kelley pulled over the room’s single stool and sat down next to Sanford’s bed.

Sanford felt a rush of dizziness and nausea flush through him. The only time in years he had been with a man that close to his bed was when Uncle Stewart arrived to force him through his latest round of torments and humiliations. Uncle Stewart had warned him about other prisoners, but never said anything about the authorities. Was it all right to trust a man who wore a suit? He had seen Uncle Stewart in a suit plenty of times.
Or were the jailhouse rapes starting?

“Hey there, Sanford?” Mr. Kelley’s voice was soft and sounded concerned. Sanford turned to look at his face and was struck by what appeared to be compassion. It seemed as though it had to be a mistake, since he did not doubt that compassion could never come to him from someone who
knew.
“You with me?” Mr. Kelley asked.

“Yeah. Yes. I am.” He glanced around at his room/cell and rapidly nodded. “Yes.”

“All right, here’s the thing.” Mr. Kelley took a breath. Sanford was taken again by the gentleness in his voice. Other than his sister, nobody had spoken to him that way in years. “You sure made an impression on the detectives.” When he saw that Sanford did not react, he tried a direct question. “How many of them interviewed you, anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Well, a lot. Maybe ten.”

“There you go. See, the reason they were impressed is that you dropped that phony story that Northcott wanted you to tell and told them the flat-out truth, no matter how hard it was to say it. Everything they’ve checked about your story so far hits the nail smack on the head. It’s hard to impress these guys, Sanford. I’m one of them, I suppose. I know that after my years in this field, it’s pretty hard to impress me.” He paused, silently asking for a response.

Sanford kept his eyes down and remained face-neutral. The situation felt too dangerous for him to even attempt to throw up his mask. If this guy saw through him, it would only make things worse. Nevertheless, he could not repress his habitual response of risking a little dry humor, just a hint of it so that he could recognize himself. “Thank you, but compared to my uncle, people would be impressed with a sick chicken.”

‘“Sick chicken.’ I like that. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll tell that one over a drink with the boys after work.” Sanford almost smiled for a second but did not. The joke wasn’t that funny—was the guy trying to soften him up? He kept his eyes to the floor. “Sanford, I’m going to be on this case from now on. Ordinarily, we might not meet this early in an investigation; but after the other officers spoke to me, I thought I should come down and meet you. Size things up before they put you out with the rest of the juvenile population.”

Sanford started and jumped to his feet in alarm. “What, already?”

“Yeah. Isn’t that good news? Most kids can’t stand being in isolation.”

Sanford immediately shrunk back down at that. “Yeah. Well, I know. But still….”

“Still what?”

Sanford thought he heard Kelley’s tone of voice pick up, but he had no way to predict what the man’s concerns might actually be. “Still, I just—If you could somehow—” Sanford stopped. His shoulders sagged. He had no idea what words to use.

“You know that nobody can hear us, right? If you want to tell me what’s on your mind.”

Sanford ran through his list of skills. What do you do to avoid setting somebody off? You make sure they’re not mad at you or anything you’ve done. How do you do that? Start by apologizing. Let them know that if you did something wrong, you’ll try to fix it.
Doesn’t work here.
Well, then, at least let them know that you don’t want to fight and you are offering no resistance. “I’m just sorry. I mean that I’m sorry I have to mention this.”

“What? Oops. Well, that did it. You got me interested. Too late now. Better just spit it all right out.”

Sanford sighed. His level of experience with personal humiliation did nothing to make it easier to endure. When he spoke, his voice came out as a dry whisper. “Maybe you could let me stay in here for a while. …”

“Seems kind of gloomy in here to me.”

“Yeah, but out there—I mean, I’ve heard about that iron ring. The Oregon Boot. If you let them put it on me, I can’t run from the big guys. They’ll start the bleeding again.”

Mr. Kelley’s expression darkened. “Bleeding?”

Sanford lowered his head and turned around to show Mr. Kelley the back of his hospital pajamas. The seat of his pants was spotted with blood.

“What’s that from, Sanford? Did something happen to you here?”

“Not here. But I know what they do, Mr. Kelley. If they’re going to wind up killing me, please don’t let them do it like that.”

“Like what? Are you talking about sodomy?”

“Uncle Stewart would beat me until I let him. Sometimes if I did something wrong, he punished me by using pieces of wood. Some had splinters.”

“Mother of God. Is that blood from what he did to you? When did he do that?”

“For the last two years, couple times a week. I can’t seem to get healed up.”

Mr. Kelley leaned out of the room. “Sergeant, I want you to get a doctor down here right away. This boy is injured and I want him treated. I also want to know why nobody picked up on it yet. Ask them who’s minding the store around here!”

“Yes, sir!” came the disembodied voice in the hallway.

He turned back into the room. “Son, this is … I’ve never come across anything like this before, but we are going to deal with it one step at a time. Right now, I am going to see to it that you get medical attention down there. And while we wait for the doctor, let me make a couple of things clear real quick. First of all, nobody in this county uses the Oregon Boot on anybody, let alone on a kid. That sort of thing is from the past. Secondly, the things you talk about might go on in a large prison, but this is a prison ward inside of a regular county hospital.
My
county. I have informers in here; and if anybody gets involved in that, I’ll have him shipped to a maximum security institution where they really know how to host a prison yard. In fact, if anybody ever makes that kind of threat to you, I want you to make a phone call to my office. If you don’t have a nickel, you just tell the operator it’s for me and to put you through collect.”

He took out a business card and handed it to him. He smiled and winked. “They’ll never charge me for it.”

Sanford took the card but still could not meet his gaze. “Maybe those detectives tricked you about me. I’m not trying to play any tricks on you.”

“Thanks. Meaning what?”

“You said you talked to the officers. But you act like you don’t know. I’m not trying to pretend….” He let out a deep sigh and shook his head.

“No, it’s generally the guilty people who do that. Now, listen: there are a lot of things I can’t discuss with you yet, but I think I’ve already got a clear enough picture about your guilt or the lack of it. If the man who held control over you for two years is not a dyed-in-the-wool human monstrosity, then there never will be such a thing.”