Behold the Child (5 page)

Kenzie shrugged. "That doesn't matter, Jack. Now just walk through this with me, okay? We get word off the street that our boy Ortega has suddenly started kidnapping children. We don't know why, so we assume it's because he was abused and he's getting off on doing the abusing now."

"That was logical, knowing these freaks."

"Sure. But when I track Oso and his buddy down and pop them, there's only the
one
kid. And she is still alive. Not one mutilated corpse, not a single trace of any of the others."

"And?"

"Maybe that's because he never kept them for very long."

Talbot frowned. "You're thinking that's because he just passed them along to some cult back here in the San Fernando Valley?"

"Cult, group, person. Whoever."

"Kenzie, give me a break," Talbot said. He sighed theatrically, wearily. "Somebody writes Latin phrases in human shit on the walls and hacks up little kids, you got to figure he's on the wrong side of the God business, okay? It was a cult."

Kenzie decided to butter him up a bit. He nodded. "You're probably right. Makes sense to approach it that way."

"Damn straight," Talbot said. He seemed somewhat mollified. Kenzie let him bask in it for a while, and then winked.

"But it also makes sense to check into my theory and see if you can find some way to connect the dots."

"You win, Sam," Talbot said. "I'll look into it, okay?" He started fussing with his file folders, as if to signal that the interview was over. Kenzie sat quietly. Talbot looked up, frustrated. "Sam, I give you my word. I'll look into it."

Kenzie got up and turned to leave. He paused in the doorway. "If there's any way I can get back on duty, I'd like to work on this one with you. Would you have any problem with that?"

Talbot considered. Finally he just shrugged. "You can pull it off," he said, "then be my guest."

Kenzie smiled brightly. "Talbot?"

"Uh oh. No. No way, Sam."

"Oh, come on. What would it hurt?"

"Sam, Kramer would have my sorry ass, you know that."

"Just run me one copy, Jack."

Talbot got to his feet. He indicated the huge pile of folders on his metal desk. Then he said: "Fuck off, Kenzie. Let me put it to you this way, I am officially telling you to keep your hands off my case. I am officially refusing to let you have a copy of the murder book on those kids."

Kenzie sagged. "I understand, Jack. Sorry I asked."

Talbot tapped the third file from the top. "This one, for example, which Popeye Kasper did from scratch as a reference summary for everybody looking into this thing, like those FBI assholes, is only thirty-odd pages long, plus some black-and-white photos reduced to thumbnail size. You are not to touch this folder, or use my cheap little fax machine to copy it."

Kramer nodded soberly. "Okay."

"And especially not right now when I'm on my way to take a shit and expect to be gone for maybe ten minutes. Do we understand each other, here? Are you receiving me, Detective?"

"Loud and clear."

"Good. Now get out of my way."

Kenzie was done in five. He paused by administration to file a request for full reinstatement. Then he drove to an overpriced Seattle coffee store and sat alone at a back table, reading the contents of the file.

On Memorial Day, Marco Hernandez, aged eight, ran into a cluster of trees in the public park at Whitsett and Moorpark in Studio City, wearing a striped tee shirt and blue-jean shorts. He never came back. Six days later, Consuelo Alonzo of Van Nuys, a pert little girl in a yellow dress and a ribbon in her hair, vanished while wandering through the toy section of a K-Mart store with her mother. She was five years old. Margaret Williams, six, from the school parking lot. Bobby Jackson, eight, from a playground. Tommy Jacobson, eight, from his own front yard. Different parts of the Valley, different ages and races and times of day. No discernable pattern, no demands for ransom; not one child ever heard from again.

Until now.

Kenzie looked around self-consciously, but no one was close enough to see what he was reading. He looked like any harried businessman going over some boring sales reports while stealing a coffee break.

The crime scene and autopsy photographs were ghastly. Kenzie had rarely seen such butchery. There were also photographs of the various designs and letters scrawled on the walls in human excrement, but they made no sense. One of his questions was answered immediately. The DNA tests done on the tissue samples and pieces of excrement had shown them to be from several different people, probably the children themselves. Kenzie squinted, because the photographs had been reduced in size, but was able to make out what appeared to be a figure eight on its side and a few capital letters from the English alphabet. Something tickled his brain, but Kenzie couldn't bring the instinct into focus.

He hid the folder under the front seat of his car and drove home, whistling along with the radio. For the first time in months, he felt happy; glad to be sober and ready to go back to work. Laura's black Ford wagon was in the driveway; she was already home from her doctor's appointment. Kenzie locked his car and trotted up the steps, still whistling.

"Laura?"

He found her in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet with the lid down. She was frowning in concentration, as if painting her toenails were the most important task ever assigned a human being. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her makeup had run, giving her a smeared raccoon visage. Kenzie felt his stomach scar throb and writhe. He knelt down next to the bowl.

"Honey, what's wrong?"

Laura poked her tongue out to one side, like a small child who is unconcerned about how she may appear to others. "I'm busy right now," she said.

Kenzie touched her leg with his fingertips. The human contact broke down her walls. Laura's eyes brimmed and spilled over and she trembled and shook.

"Laura, what is it? Are you sick?"

"He said I can't," she whispered. "Not now, not ever."

"Can't
what?
"

And then it hit him. Laura had been dropping hints for weeks, hoping he'd pick up the thread and run with it.
The Andersons are expecting
, she'd say.
And they're as old as we are. Can you believe that?

"We can't have children." He said it calmly, as a statement of fact, and was surprised to find a parallel sadness growing deep inside. "It's too late?"

"Oh, Sam, it's not just that we waited so long. It was the abortion I had when you got shot. Somebody fouled up somehow, and now I can't have a child. I wasn't even sure I wanted to, but now that I don't even have a choice, it
hurts!
"

She melted into his arms and he rocked her. After a time, Sam Kenzie cried a few tears of his own. Out of sympathy for Laura, for his own lost opportunities, even for the lonely old man he was certain to become.

The house had been painted, and quite recently; it was now gray with white trim. Someone had pulled the weeds and replaced them with strips of grass straight from Home Depot. Lines of dirt still separated one new planting from the next. A few perennials dotted the flowerbed and a FOR RENT sign stood next to the dented mailbox. Kenzie pulled his car to the curb, next to the trashcans. The neighborhood was still, yet in his mind the windshield exploded and the whole nightmare started all over again, with Oso's voice chanting:
I can' stand the pain, ese
and then
I poke death, man
.

Sam Kenzie closed his eyes and willed his breathing to slow. Now that he was actually here again, he found the anxiety almost overwhelming. He resisted the urge to take out his gun. He got his flashlight, stepped out, stood by the car and looked around the neighborhood. A light was on in the house across the alley. A small boy with large brown eyes peered at him through a bedroom window until someone yanked the child away and closed the blinds.

Kenzie approached the house. His footsteps crunched through the gravel and scooted along the newly planted grass. When he got to the foot of the steps and stood where he had first decided to enter the house, his nerve deserted him. He had to fight the urge to run away. After a long moment, he ran the beam through the window and looked around. His breath fogged the brand new pane of glass.

As he'd expected, the inside had been cleaned up, painted and then painted again. The carpets were cheap, but new. Kenzie debated picking the lock, but elected to walk around to the back yard instead. Somewhere to the south a dog began to bark and growl. Another joined in, then another, all in syncopated rhythm.

Kenzie wasn't even sure what he was looking for. He knew the house would be different, now, and that the San Bernardino police would have picked it clean of evidence. He just needed to be here, just in case they had missed something. He wandered through the back yard, playing the beam of light around, until he was satisfied that virtually everything that could have been of use to him had already been sold, straightened up, painted over or removed. He had an absurd urge to break in to the house and stand right where he'd been shot, as if that would cure something; perhaps make him feel a little less afraid
I can't stand the pain, ese,
but he decided to leave well enough alone and started back towards the car.

A large dog snarled and ran into a chain link fence, less than fifteen feet away, and Kenzie jumped. He dropped the flashlight in alarm and reached for his automatic. But the sounds told him the animal was on a choke chain and on the other side of both a wooden slat and chain link barrier. His body trembled from adrenaline. Kenzie sighed and reached down for the flashlight, which had fallen on the cement near the crawlspace beneath the home.

His skin crawled and the short hairs at the back of his neck came to attention. He reached into his pocket for the small, disposable flash camera. Scratched into one tiny cement square was a small figure eight, resting on its side; just like the one he'd seen, scrawled in human excrement, in those police photographs from the crime scene in Van Nuys.

"Is this a Mobius strip?" They were sitting in Laura's home office. She had reading glasses perched on the end of her nose as she studied the enlarged image on her computer screen. She had scanned and magnified it.

"A Mobius strip? Sure, you could say that. It is also called Ourabouris, or the snake that eats its tail. This is recognized the world over as a sign signifying eternity."

"So it has spiritual significance?"

"In some cultures, certainly it does," Laura said. She went online, typed a command into her computer and the design popped up. She pointed. "See? Here it is in Aztec mythology. But this is also a sign used in various kinds of advanced mathematics, also in science. Hell, even some Buddhist worshipers form their beads that way. I'm afraid this is not the direct clue you seem to have been hoping for."

Kenzie nodded. He had expected as much. He kissed her cheek. "Thanks anyway, honey," he said.

"What's this all about, Sam?"

Kenzie kept his voice casual. "Oh, it's nothing, really. Some kids who vandalized a Beemer they stole left it sprayed on the window. I was hoping the sign meant something we could trace back to them, that's all."

Laura shrugged. "Maybe it is some kind of new gang thing."

"Maybe."

Laura smiled up at him, her eyes seductive. "Feel like fooling around tonight?"

Kenzie didn't, but forced a grin. "Sure thing."

"By the way, did you see the mail?" She handed him three letters. The look on her face said she was pleased. "You got two out three, honey. And someone sent an offer all on their own. That's pretty damned good."

"Oh. That's nice."

"You don't seem very happy."

"I guess I'd better look them over. Are we going out?"

"We've got meat loaf left over. Should I heat it up?"

"Okay."

The first offer was from National City, California. The salary and benefits were decent, but Laura had already written "no" in the margins. She had done some research online and found that the local housing prices were out of reach. Kenzie felt relieved. He grinned when he saw that the second offer was from his hometown of Twin Forks, Nevada. It was signed by a Sheriff Harris, who was retiring, and a rancher who was a member of the city council, one Klaus Wachner. And incredibly, Wachner was offering to contribute a three-bedroom home he owned on the outskirts of Twin Forks, free of charge, providing Kenzie promised to pay for utilities. His letter was akin to a Valentine; Wachner had read about their home town boy, the great Detective Kenzie, and his fine work with the LAPD. He said they simply had to have him in town, serving the fine citizens of Twin Forks,
blah blah blah.

A ticket home, where he was still apparently a hero? And free housing, decent money along with the title of Sheriff? Not bad. Not bad at all.

Too bad Kenzie had absolutely no intention of retiring.

"You've got to be fucking kidding."

Captain Kramer was clearly frustrated, and perhaps feeling a bit guilty. He threw the Los Angeles magazine down on the desk and jabbed a nicotine-stained finger at the photograph of Kenzie gracing its front cover. The garish log-line read: COWBOY COP CRACKS CHILD CASE, KILLER OR HERO?

"Have you seen this?"

Kenzie shrugged, went for a cheap laugh. "I've looked better."

"Sam, this isn't funny," Kramer said. "And it has just enough truth in it to have pissed off every politician in town. The chief isn't happy. The article makes the department look like a bunch of circus clowns, and you the next Dirty Harry. It's a PR disaster."

"I'm sorry, boss. I didn't call them back or cooperate in any way. I don't know where they got their information."

"It's a little late to apologize." The statement was heavily weighted, and Kramer did not meet his eyes.