Crucifax Read online

  During the following weeks, J.R. read reports in the newspaper of violence at Sheila's high school: students attacking one another as well as faculty members. One boy was killed in a fight. A girl killed herself, and after that, a boy—a very popular boy who had been involved in school politics—slashed his wrists. Two others followed. The night J.R. read a headline that shouted outbreak of teen suicides in el cerrito, he decided it was time to do something about his family's problem. He would get them into counseling if he had to drag them, and he would do it that weekend.

  That same night he was awakened again by another hysterical phone call from his mother.

  "She's leaving!" Marjorie shouted. "She's taking her things and leaving with those people, that woman, and Leonard won't do anything, but you can talk to her, she'll listen to you, so will you come, please come!"

  When he arrived, he found Sheila carrying an armload of clothes across the yard toward a large black car parked at the curb. He called her name, but she ignored him, tossing the clothes into the back seat and heading back into the house.

  "Wait!" he shouted, grabbing her arm. She wore a white sleeveless top, and as he held her arm he saw in the yellowish glow from the porch light the needle marks that bruised her inner elbow. "Jesus," he muttered, "what have you been doing to yourself?" She jerked away from him. "Just wait a second and talk with me!"

  "No. You're just like them. You don't want to talk with me, you want to talk to me." She stormed through the door and into her room.

  J.R. found his father in the living room rocking gently in his chair, staring out of the window.

  "Where's Mom?" J.R. asked.

  "In the bathroom crying."

  "Well, aren't you going to do something? Talk to her? Anything?"

  Without looking at his son, Leonard said, "In the Old Testament, God told Abraham to take his son Isaac into the land of Moriah and up on a hill, where he was to kill Isaac. Sacrifice him. Abraham loved his son, but he loved his God more, so he did as he was told. As he held the knife over his son, ready to put it through his heart, the Angel of the Lord held his hand and said he didn't need to kill Isaac. It was only a test of his faith, his devotion." Meeting J.R.'s eyes, he said, "God is testing us now. It's in His hands. His will be done."

  Furious, J.R. followed Sheila back out to the car. She tossed her last load into the back seat and started to get in.

  "Wait, Sheila, don't do this!" he pleaded. "You can come live with me if you want, I've just got that tiny apartment, but if it'll—"

  "Yeah, then how would I have to live, huh? Your way instead of theirs? Big difference." She slammed the door.

  "Sheila, please! Where are you going?"

  She opened the window a crack and said, "Someplace better than this."

  The window on the driver's side slid down smoothly, and a woman with bushy black hair, pale skin, and dark eye makeup smiled out at him.

  "You lose, big brother," she said as she drove away. J.R. was sure it was just reflected moonlight, but her eyes had shimmered in that last moment before she was out of sight.

  J.R. rushed into the house, angered by the woman's cockiness, and called the police, since his parents wouldn't.

  "Is she a minor, Mr. Haskell?" the officer asked.

  "She's seventeen."

  "And she just left tonight, huh? Well, apparently she wasn't taken against her will. You don't know where she went?"

  "No."

  "Well, if you haven't heard from her in twenty-four hours, give us a call. But as far as I can tell, there's not much we can do."

  Three days later, Sheila was found hanging in the closet of a cheap motel room just outside of El Cerrito. She had taken her own life and left a note that read simply, "I'm going to someplace better."

  Nine days after Sheila's death, a restaurant that had been abandoned for nearly five years, the Old Red Barn, had caught fire. The building had been in very poor condition, and no one was surprised by the news of the fire. All had been shocked, however, by what was found inside the building.

  The restaurant had been designed to look like an old barn with a high ceiling and rafters. Most of the rafters collapsed during the fire. Tied to the rafters were twenty-two ropes. Each rope ended in a noose, and each noose was wrapped around the neck of a dead teenager.

  It was later determined that the teenagers had been dead at least two hours before one of the ropes had snapped and the corpse of a sixteen-year-old boy from Richmond had fallen on lighted candles that had been burning in the building, starting the fire.

  The following week was filled with funerals, long processions of slow-moving cars with headlights shining, flags flown at half-mast, and a fruitless attempt to understand why twenty-two teenagers had ended their lives.

  J.R. recognized many of the dead as former friends of Sheila's, and when he heard that several teenagers claimed that their friends had been involved with a couple named John and Dara, he became suspicious. They claimed the couple had encouraged the students to take drugs and engage in promiscuous sex, and they had spoken of suicide as if it were some kind of elevation of the spirit to a higher plane. They believed John and Dara were responsible for the deaths. J.R. had considered speaking up, supporting them, telling of Sheila's association with John and Dara, but when he saw the reaction they got, he decided there was already enough misery in his life.

  While going through their dead children's belongings, some of the parents found rock lyrics written down in notebooks, letters, even on napkins—lyrics that made explicit references to sex, drugs, and violence. The parents organized and began fighting for the censorship of such rock records, claiming the lyrics had confused and desensitized their children, leading them to suicide. When the teenagers protested the group's ideas, the parents fought back with a very parental response: "It's for your own good."

  The suicides made national news, were analyzed and reanalyzed by television and radio psychologists, written about in magazines and psychology journals, and preached about in churches.

  All J.R. knew was that he'd lost his little sister. If she hadn't killed herself in that dingy motel room, she probably would have joined her friends in the Old Red Barn and, as morbid as the notion was, he was rather glad that she'd avoided being a part of the whole big media sideshow. Her death might have been prevented—as, he was sure, the other twenty-two might have—had her problems been dealt with in a more supportive and loving fashion by her family. He wasn't blaming his parents; he knew he could have done more, too.

  The loss of his sister had not been brought about by rock lyrics, not even by drugs or a man and woman named John and Dara. It had been brought about by ignorance.

  J.R. turned away from the dark thoughts of his sister and tried to feel confident about facing those kids on Tuesday and the days to come. His eyes locked on one of the fat dark clouds in the sky as he stared out the window. Its puffy underside glowed with reflected neon. He frowned and stepped toward the window, watching the cloud slowly ooze across the sky. He hadn't been paying much attention, but he could have sworn that, just a moment ago, the cloud had been holding perfectly still, like a painted cloud on a stage backdrop.

  It was moving now, though, along with the others, moving at the speed of pouring honey.

  J.R. took a few steps back, leaned on the counter, and took another drink of beer, frowning out the window, but not sure why.

  His small apartment suddenly seemed rather cold….

  Six

  Mrs. DiPesto was already hurrying down the walk in front of her house on Whitley Drive as the squad car parked at the curb. Officer Bill Grady saw her first as he got out from behind the wheel and shut the door.

  She was plowing toward them, her hips wider than the narrow path, her large, sagging breasts dancing beneath her green terrycloth robe. Curls of gray hair stuck out from beneath the black spider-weblike net she wore on her head, and one liver-spotted hand was pressed just below her throat.

  "What took you so long?" she panted
. She wore big, round, thick-lensed glasses that had slid down her nose. "He coulda come back and raped me in the time it took you guys to get here!"

  "We got here as fast as we could, ma'am," Grady said, lifting a calming palm and giving her a reassuring smile. His partner, Harvey Towne, stepped up beside him.

  Grady was fifty-three years old, a tall, barrel-chested man with thick hair the color of desert sand. He planned to retire next year; he'd had enough, thank you very much. The last of his four daughters had graduated from college. All four of them had pretty much paid their own way through school, leaving Grady and his wife Marge a good-sized nest egg. They hoped to use that to find a place in Monterey.

  "You are Clara DiPesto, aren't you?" Grady asked.

  "Of course I am." She smelled of stale cigarette smoke and gin.

  Towne flipped open his notepad and held his pencil, ready to write.

  "You say you have a burglar, ma'am?" Towne asked, his voice mechanical and emotionless.

  Sounds like one of those clowns on Dragnet, Grady thought, wanting to chuckle. Towne was a rookie and had been assigned to him a little over a week ago.

  "Had," Mrs. DiPesto snapped. "He's long gone by now. I caught him on my back porch trying to break in."

  "Can you give us a description?" Grady asked.

  "Well…"

  "Try."

  "Umm, let's seeee, he was young," she said, closing her eyes to remember. "A kid, maybe sixteen. Had long hair, of course, dark brown, maybe, but it was hard to tell. And he was wearing one of those T-shirts—it was black—with the sleeves cut off? Torn off, more, like it," she added, opening her eyes. "I don't understand why they do that. It looks so sloppy."

  Grady patted Towne's arm with the back of his hand and said, "I'll go take a look around."

  He went to the car, got his long black flashlight, then walked between Mrs. DiPesto's house and her neighbor's to the alley that ran behind them. He shone the light first to the right, toward Ventura Boulevard, then to the left, and decided to go that way.

  Grady was in no mood for someone like Mrs. DiPesto tonight and he figured Towne could use the practice. Rookies were always shocked to find that most of the people they dealt with were Mrs. DiPestos, and not rapists and serial killers like on television.

  To Grady's left were the back fences of the houses along Whitley; to his right was a tall Cyclone fence crawling with vines and shrubbery and lined with garbage cans.

  The alley itself was quiet, but there were sounds in the distance: cars, music, shouting, a barking dog, a siren. Above the trees on the other side of the fence, Grady could see the glow from the lights of Studio City. The thick, balmy air seemed to pour into his lungs when he inhaled.

  Something clanged behind him.

  Grady spun around.

  His flashlight beam caught the jittering movement of a garbage can lid that had fallen to the pavement.

  Probably just a cat, he thought, but he headed back that way just in case. He doubted he would find the guy, but he wanted to give Towne enough time to finish up with Mrs. DiPesto.

  He started toward Ventura, shining his light between garbage cans and behind trash bins where flies buzzed hungrily. As he neared the boulevard the alley brightened, and he flicked off the flashlight.

  A cat dived from a fence and crouched before him, then darted by him with a low, throaty meeeoowww.

  Tapping the long flashlight against his thigh, Grady stopped and looked around him. The kid was probably in another neighborhood by now, trying to hit another house. Or maybe he was on the boulevard, lost in the waves of other teenagers prowling the sidewalks like stray cats in a wrecking yard. With one more glance toward Ventura, Grady passed between two houses, got back on Whitley, and headed for Mrs. DiPesto's.

  Then he stopped.

  He craned his head around and looked over his shoulder.

  At the end of the street to the right was the corner of a large building. It used to be the Studio City Fitness Center. Before that, it had been a nightclub for a decade or so. When that had closed four years ago, some Arab had bought it and turned it into a health club. A "deluxe health club," the ads had said. He'd bought the lot next to it and expanded the building, put in a huge underground swimming pool and racquetball court—the whole nine yards— then launched an expensive ad campaign to convince everyone that they weren't really in shape unless they were paying an arm and a leg to exercise at his club.

  The place had attracted a lot of movie and television people from the nearby studios, as well as a lot of yuppies who wanted to watch the stars sweat and maybe even find a hard body to curl up with that night.

  A year and a half after the grand opening, "faulty wiring" (according to the papers) had gutted the place with fire.

  Instead of rebuilding, the Arab let the place sit. Eventually, for sale signs showed up on the walls of the building, their red and blue letters seeming bright next to the yawning, blackened windows.

  A few months later, some of the local teenagers had adopted the abandoned building as a meeting place where they went to listen to those damned noise boxes they carried, take drugs, and fuck like rabbits. Grady was one of the three cops who had busted them one night after a series of complaints from nearby residents. They'd had quite a setup: cushions and blankets spread over the bottom of the empty pool, iceboxes for beer and wine, a complete stock of hard liquor—everything a bunch of horny teenagers could want. When Grady and the other uniforms had gone in, the large rooms downstairs where the kids had set up house reeked of marijuana, and the floor was littered with cigarette butts and used condoms.

  After the teenagers had been kicked out, the building had been boarded up and locked more securely than before. Since then there had been no problem.

  Until, perhaps, now.

  Something caught Grady's eye. It might have been the reflection of a passing car's headlights, but he thought he saw a flicker of light through a space in one of the boarded side windows of the empty building.

  Grady turned and headed in that direction again.

  There it was again; it looked as if a light were being passed back and forth on the other side of the window.

  Grady picked up his pace.

  It made sense; the kid got caught trying to break into a house, so naturally he'd want a place to hide. Grady couldn't figure out how he'd gotten in, though. The building was locked like a safe, as far as he knew.

  Grady approached the window quietly and leaned toward it, cupping a hand to his face as he peered between the boards.

  He could make out a fire-ravaged wall with a large chunk missing. A soft yellow glow, like candlelight, flickered in the darkness, shimmering over the wall, shifting back and forth, as if someone were walking around inside with a candle.

  "Gotcha," he breathed, walking around to the front of the building.

  The glare of neon and fluorescent lights and the bright headlights of the cars on the boulevard made Grady squint. What used to be the glass double doors of the entrance was now a wall of boards and locked chains. No one had gone through here. He kept walking, passing the front windows, all of which were still secure.

  He turned right at the faded, crooked sign that read parking below a painted arrow and walked along the side of the building to the parking lot in back. His shoes crunched on gravel and broken glass as he switched the flashlight on again.

  There were no windows on this side of the building for Grady to check, so he hurried along the wall and rounded the corner. Shattered beer bottles and empty six-pack cartons were strewn over the parking lot; there was a pile of cigarette butts where someone had emptied a car's ashtray. Apparently the kids used the lot for partying. There had been no complaints, though, so Grady figured they were keeping a lid on it.

  He went to the rear entrance. It was still firmly boarded. He pounded the heel of his palm against the boards once just to be certain. They thumped solidly, and Grady heard a quick shuffling inside the building. He hurried to the nearest window
and peered between the boards.

  This window looked into a different room than the last, but the golden shimmer of light was still dancing on the walls. He heard the shuffling again, and the glow became brighter, as if it were drawing nearer the window.

  In an instant, the room became dark. It was more than just dark; it suddenly seemed to be gone.

  Grady lifted the flashlight and shone the beam between the boards, nearly dropping it when he saw a wide, glistening, golden eye gazing back at him.

  "Okay," Grady barked, stepping away from the window and unsnapping the flap of his holster, "come on out of there slowly, and let's see some I.D. This is the police."

  He waited, his hand resting lightly on his holstered gun.

  Someone inside laughed at him. It was a quiet, dry laugh, like the sound of a small animal slowly being crushed.

  Grady swept the beam back and forth over the wall until it landed on a half-open door. It was the employee entrance. The boards that had been nailed across the doorway were lying on the pavement, broken and splintered. As he approached the door he saw that the steel eyelet through which a padlock had been fastened had been torn from the door and lay on the ground beside the broken lock.

  "Jesus," he muttered, carefully pulling the door open. The door hung loose from the top hinge and scraped against the pavement as it moved.

  The doorway opened on a dark corridor with a door on each side. Grady took one step and froze when he heard a voice whisper softly in the darkness.

  Two people? he thought, taking his gun from the holster and holding it cautiously at his side.

  "One more time," he said loudly. "Come out slowly and identify yourself. I've drawn my gun."

  Another low chuckle.

  Yellow light flickered beyond the doorway to his right.

  Grady moved forward, lifted his gun, and sidled into the room, bits of rubble making crackling sounds beneath his shoes.

  Across the room, a lighted candle in a small holder stood on a wooden crate.