The Road Out of Hell (34 page)

“It wouldn’t do any good anyway.”

“I see. You are positive of that?”

“Yes.”

“What made you come to that conclusion?”

“Well, you decided to kill them, and I couldn’t do anything else.”

“I see. And that’s all there was to it?”

“Yes.”

“When I decided on anything, it was done; is that the idea?”

“Yes.”

“Now, I believe you said yesterday you had a key to those places around the ranch,” Uncle Stewart said, referring to Sanford’s testimony the day before. “Why didn’t you turn the boys loose?”

“You would take the key away with you every time you went anywhere.”

“You said yesterday, every time—all the time you were on the ranch, you had it in your possession.”

“I had it all the time I was there, but you had it when the boys were there.”

“You said all the time you were there.”

“I didn’t have the key when the boys were there.”

Stymied, Uncle Stewart tried a new tack. “Were you afraid, at any time after these vile murders are alleged to have been committed, that I was going to kill you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were. Why didn’t you run away?”

“I thought you would do it quicker than usual.”

“So you never planned on taking a chance on running away or staying?”

“I had been [planning] on running away, but I was afraid to do it.”

Sanford allowed his mask to answer the simple questions posed by Uncle Stewart while he hid behind it and marveled at the sight. Uncle Stewart had made a mission out of duping people, but he was losing his hold for the first time in his life. The fear of death showed in his eyes. It made no difference whether anybody else saw it or not, Sanford knew the infallible Uncle Stewart so perfectly well. The version before him was quickly losing its gloss. He was like a complicated machine with sand poured into its workings.

“After this older Winslow boy was killed, and he was taken in the grave and partly covered up, was anything else done before the smaller one was brought out?”

“Yes, sir. The blood that he had made was scratched over.”

“Who did that?”

“I did.”

“Did any person tell you to?”

“What is that?”

“Did any person tell you to?”

“Yes, you did.”

“I did. Do you know where this, whatever you said, kind of a strainer or something that was used to etherize these boys, do you know where that is, if it is on the ranch now?”

Uncle Stewart was definitely slipping. He never switched from one topic to another until he got what he wanted from you. He was always like that in every conversation, no matter the topic. He had to be the one to get you. For him to jump topics like that was a dead giveaway that his seemingly invulnerable demonic strength was failing him. If the mask had not been covering Sanford’s feelings so well, he could have whooped and hollered like a boy winning a fight with a long-time bully. Instead, he kept his face smooth and his answer simple: “I don’t know where it is.”

“What was done with it, do you know?”

Sanford heard again the beginnings of desperation. He was so familiar and attuned to it that he would never miss it. Uncle Stewart was so shaken that he needed to repeat a pointless question, just to give himself a couple more seconds to think. Sanford was happy to answer a second time. “I don’t know what was done with it.”

Hoping to catch Sanford off-guard, Uncle Stewart did a quick changeup on him that included a melodramatic spin toward the witness stand. “Did you ever commit that act of sodomy on any boys that came there on the ranch?”

Sanford made no reaction at all except to reply calmly: “No, sir, I did not.”

“Sure of that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did your grandfather ever commit that on you?”

“Upon who?”

“On you.”

“No, sir.”

“You are positive of that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Uncle Stewart turned to Judge Freeman. “That is all. I am through with the witness.”

With that, Uncle Stewart’s part in Sanford’s life was at an end. His grand attempt to control Sanford and his testimony in the presence of the authorities had landed like guano on a statue. Sanford remained on the stand while Assistant D.A. Kelley stepped forward to the judge and asked to do something that he called “redirect,” which the judge allowed. Kelley turned to Sanford with a reassuring smile and asked a few questions to clear up some minor details.

And then that was it. The trial was over for him. The judge’s deputy stepped forward, opened the gate to the witness stand, allowed Sanford to step down, and escorted him from the courtroom. He felt no temptation to speak or make eye contact with Uncle Stewart, and he kept his back to him while he left the courtroom. He would never be in his presence again.

Gordon Stewart Northcott came up against the same level of determination when he called his niece Jessie Clark as a witness. She smiled politely in all directions and gave testimony that completely supported Sanford’s story with words equally damning for her uncle. She did it in a clear-eyed fashion, without getting rattled by his courtroom attacks.

Later, Mr. Kelley made it a point to visit Sanford in the hospital ward and fill him in on the testimony that he had not been permitted to watch, re-enacting the scene for him. Sanford was overjoyed on Jessie’s behalf and danced around the room for a few seconds, clapping his hands in glee before he caught himself and stopped. He stood with an embarrassed grin. The sensation of victory was something he remembered from a long time ago, but only in the form of small victories for a boy at play. The mental image of his sister, not merely alive and well but quietly killing that monster by speaking the truth straight at him—why, that was a victory fit for a grown man. He felt it charge his blood with a quiet sense of strength.

It was over soon afterward. Uncle Stewart dragged the trial out for a while longer after Sanford’s testimony, but the tricks of deception that had been his trademark for so long continued to fail him, one by one. Finally the inevitable guilty verdict was delivered. Once it was relayed to Sanford, he understood the consolation that was involved in seeing justice meted out where it was badly needed, but he felt nothing else for it. Gordon Stewart Northcott would have been certain to note that the very first Academy Awards for excellence in film were being held in Los Angeles that year. He also knew that he would not be attending any premieres.

When the citizens of southern California learned that there had been a child-killing monster living among them, a mob of angry men stormed the jail, demanding to have him released to them. They were driven back at gunpoint.

Sanford’s battered immune system made slow progress against the persistent flu symptoms that had followed him from the ranch. They were no doubt aggravated by the draining effect of his recurrent nightmares. While the verdict determined Uncle Stewart’s fate, nothing was over for Sanford. The foul dreams grew so ferocious that he could no longer stand to sleep at night at all. The small amount of rest that he managed to get was by way of short naps during the daytime. He was too sick to be put into the work routine at the hospital’s prison ward, so the staff tolerated his need for this switch in sleeping hours. Or perhaps they made the exception because the newspapers had seen to it that everyone knew what Sanford had been through, whether they were allowed to talk about it around him or not.

On Monday, the eleventh of February, Mr. Kelley came to tell him that Uncle Stewart had been sentenced to death by hanging, and that he was already en route to San Quentin prison under heavy guard. Sanford knew that relief was the appropriate response, but he still found it hard to feel much. He slept no better that night.

Four days later, Mr. Kelley told Sanford that he had secured an entirely unique settlement to Sanford’s legal situation by having him signed into the nearby Whittier Boys School, where an experimental program for delinquent youths was under way. Mr. Kelley assured him that the place was unique because of its compassionate mission of genuine rehabilitation. The grounds surrounding the place looked like a college campus, with cathedral-like buildings of brick and stone amid a host of residential cottages and classroom buildings.

The Whittier Boys School’s program was so tightly focused on rehabilitation that the process began during the initial intake routine. Sanford was taken to an attractively decorated reception room with furnishings that indicated the prevailing level of refinement. The intake staff spoke to him in the respectful tone they might use with a new arrival at a private boys’ academy. It was explained to him that from that moment on, he was not to speak of his crime to anyone. No one there would speak of their crimes to him. Every boy in that place occupied a place that he carved out for himself according to clearly defined behavior. It did not matter to the staff why a boy was there. There were definite rules of behavior that would be enforced with Sanford, as they were for everyone else.

When he heard this, Sanford turned to Mr. Kelley with gratitude. He knew that the man had singlehandedly determined Sanford’s experience of this entire murder case and its aftermath. He had even succeeded in delivering Sanford to a place where his well-being would truly be the main concern.

The clerk had a few routine questions: name, age, weight. “Nationality?” he asked. Sanford looked up at Mr. Kelley and grinned at the clerk.

“Irish,” Sanford replied. He was not, but Mr. Kelley was. He would give his nationality as “Irish” for the rest of his life.

Sanford spent a few days in a private cottage for personal evaluation, before being assigned to a permanent cabin and introduced to his mates there. He did not have to go through the communicable-disease quarantine, because he had come directly from the prison hospital, but he was given a personal tour and individually counseled about how to go about life there while he was in that cottage. Part of the mission was to orient him; part of it was to guarantee that he was ready for the company that he would be keeping. It was a privilege to be in this program, and Sanford was grateful. He had expected to be thrown into a prison, where he would languish as the sex toy of whatever psychopath ran the cellblock. Anything better than that was a gift. This, however, was more than he could have dreamed.

Mr. Kelley’s kindness and tolerance were wonderful things, and there were even brief, occasional moments when Sanford could accept what they meant about him as a person. But those moments always disappeared like scared birds. The rest of the time, he felt the weight. It was not as bad as it had been, but there was still far too much for his frame to carry. The weight was always there to pull him down into a quicksand of dreadful images and sensations of foulness and doom.

His temporary job while in the receiving cottage was down in the laundry. All the boys started out there, because it was an easy place for the staff to supervise them. His counselors at the cottage made sure to emphasize that he must not be tempted to run away just because the place had no bars and no wire fences. Escapees who got caught faced transfer to a real prison. Because there was nothing outside the gate but more misery for him, Sanford had no reason to run. Any future that he might have depended on first succeeding in the program here. He was fifteen and still the size of a thirteen-year-old. He had not stepped into a schoolroom for two years. In truth, Sanford’s largely ceremonial sentencing on minor charges was specifically designed to be just enough to keep him as a ward of the state until he reached adulthood.

The experience became undeniably real a few weeks later, when the evaluations were finished and he was cleared to join one of the boys’ cabins. He was given a single room and allowed to decorate it however he liked. Each boy there was handled with personal dignity and allowed privacy each day, under the supervision of a married couple who lived in the cottage and served as the counselors there. There was a half day of school and a half day of work for each boy, and they were encouraged to sample a number of the trades taught there. All classes were in employable skills, with the goal of sending the boys back out into the world qualified to stand on their feet and determined to do it.

Once Sanford was settled into his new home, he tried to say goodbye to Mr. Kelley while wearing the mask, but he must not have kept it up as well as he thought. Kelley took him aside where no one could hear them and sat facing him. “All right, young man, I believe I’m leaving you in good hands here.”

“Yes, sir. I know you are.”

Kelley lowered his voice. “Last chance for you to tell me about whatever it is I’m seeing there in your eyes, partner. You just nervous about the new place? Is that it?”

Sanford considered trying to cover up, but Kelley would know and he would look like a liar to someone who had been a true friend. He wondered where to begin at trying to put any of his thoughts into words. “I guess … I guess I don’t understand why you fought for me like you did. I mean, all this time.”

“You wonder why I’m so damn concerned, do you?”

“No!” Sanford blurted out so quickly that Mr. Kelley laughed. “I mean, I know you saved me from going to a real prison. You must have talked to a lot of people for me, and I’m so glad for that. I just have to wonder why it mattered so much to you.”