Blind Justice (9 page)

. . . AND HOWIE WAS just five years old. Disney World was a blueprint then. Orlando still had a small-town feel. Fred Patino had taken a job with a big lumber and building outfit because along with Mickey Mouse would come boom times.

Janet Patino was pregnant and about to give birth to Lindsay, their third child.

“Third child?” I interrupted.

“I was number three,” said Lindsay, “after Howie and my other brother, Mike.”

“I didn’t know you had another brother.”

“He died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I only learned about it later on, of course. I had to piece it together bit by bit. Most of it I finally got from Mom after years of her not wanting to talk about it. The pain was just too great. Mike was three years old when I was born.”

Howie doted on both of them—Mike and baby Lindsay. This was finally something Howie was good at, being a big brother. If other kids made fun of him for being a little slower than they were, he could always go home and have his two little siblings to play with. Mike was like a puppy, and Lindsay gurgled and smiled at him. It was unconditional love.

Howie always had a vivid imagination. Sometimes too vivid. He woke the family up more than once with visions of boogeymen under the bed, slipping out in the darkness to get Mike, who slept in the same room. Howie was never afraid for himself. He always thought it was some malevolent creature trying to take his little brother away.

He also used his imagination to make up elaborate games to play. At five, Howie’s worldly experiences were limited to television’s boundaries. Howie liked cartoons about action heroes. He would lead Mike around the yard, searching out bad guys and removing them with extreme prejudice, just like the heroes on the shows he watched.

Mike was a good soldier, always ready to do what his captain told him. Howie made up a code name for their invasion force—Lightning. It sounded fearsome.

Howie eventually began to lay plans for expanding the reach of their missions. Next door to them lived an old man—Howie’s parents called him “retired.” Howie thought that meant he was extra tired and so he must sleep a lot. In Howie’s imagination, that made him vulnerable to bad guys.

One day he led Mike through a loose board in the fence and took a look around the old man’s yard.

It was an eerie and wonderful place, full of potted palms and ferns and other plants that made it seem like a jungle. A place where lots of bad guys might hide. Howie made sure he and Mike each had sticks—or rather, high-powered rifles that never ran out of ammo.

The first few times Howie led Mike on an expedition into the yard, they didn’t stay long. Mom would be sure to find out, and it was a little scary in this unfamiliar terrain. But each time they returned, they stayed just a little bit longer.

And then one day they stayed too long.

They were on the far side of the old man’s yard when Howie heard his mother’s voice. It had a sense of panic and urgency. She was calling out for both of them as if they were missing. Trouble was ahead. “Come on!” Howie ordered, and he took off running. He was sure Mike was right on his heels.

Howie ripped his tee shirt slipping back through the fence. His mother was right on top of him, a little angry now, telling Howie he shouldn’t have been over there and asking where Mike was.

Howie pointed to the fence, expecting Mike to come through any second.

He didn’t.

“Mike!” Janet Patino screamed.

That’s when Howie’s body filled with a fear and dread he had never known—and would never forget.

His mother ran out of their yard, heading for the old man’s house. Howie poked his head back through the fence, yelling for Mike. He was lost, and it was Howie’s fault. He knew it. He just had to find Mike and bring him back.

Howie called out “Lightning! Lightning!”

Mike didn’t answer the call.

The old man’s yard was on a slope. Howie slid on his pants downward toward a fence. He could hear his mother yelling Mike’s name, getting closer and closer. He saw her charge into the backyard through the old man’s gate.

Howie hit the fence the same time his mother did on the other side. He heard her scream.

Then he saw Mike. He was floating, facedown, in the swimming pool.

“They tried to revive him,” Lindsay said. “But he was gone. The old man, I think his name was Harrington, almost died because of it. He had left the pool gate open. My parents never blamed him, but apparently one day he just up and drove away. The house was sold later, and no one ever found him.”

“That’s awful,” I said, shaking my head.

“My parents dealt with it as best they could, I guess. I was never aware that there was any great tragedy that marked them for life, but I didn’t have anything to compare it with. When I finally heard the story, I guess I was around twelve or thirteen. That’s when Howie told me he’d talked to Mike.”

“Talked to him?”

“Sort of . . .”

The nightmares started coming a week after Mike’s death. Howie would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming and breathless. Janet and Fred did everything they could to comfort Howie. They would leave a light on in the hallway at night. They even let him sleep for a time on a mat in their room. The nightmares would settle down for awhile, but then another would hit, just as frightening.

Finally, when Howie was seven, his parents took him in for counseling. Howie was given the usual battery of tests, the standard therapies, even medication. Nothing brought relief.

Once, when Howie was around thirteen, the family went on a camping trip. It was then, sitting by a lake with fishing poles in hand, that Howie first told Lindsay he thought the devil was after him. He said it matter-of-factly, but it scared the daylights out of Lindsay.

Howie also told her that he had been trying to bring Mike back from the dead. That scared Lindsay even more. Howie said he would sometimes get up at night, stand in the middle of his room, and try to use a spell to bring up Mike’s ghost. He even tried wiggling his nose like that funny witch on the TV show.

Howie made Lindsay swear not to ever tell anyone because the devil might come after her too, and he didn’t want that.

The Patinos moved to California and settled in Agoura, where Fred had landed a great job. Lindsay knew her parents had made the move partly for Howie, hoping that moving as far away from the tragic scene as possible would wipe the slate clean.

For a few years, it seemed to work. Howie’s nightmares became less frequent. He still had them, and on occasion he woke up screaming, but all in all it was better than before.

Then one night he came into Lindsay’s room and woke her up.

“Lindsay,” he whispered, “I talked to him.”

“Who?”

“Mike.”

Rubbing her eyes, Lindsay sat up in bed as Howie told her the story. He’d been over at his friend Barry’s house. Barry’s mom had an old Ouija Board. Howie told Lindsay about this magical board. You could ask it questions, and it would answer them. It would spell out messages from the spirit world. It could contact the dead.

Lindsay was frightened yet fascinated. Howie was almost crazy with joy. “I asked if I could talk to my brother Mike. The board said yes!”

“How did it say yes?”

“You and another guy put your fingers on this slider thing that moves.”

“It moves?”

“Yeah. The spirits move it.”

“That’s freaky.”

“But it told me I could talk to Mike. So I did. I told Mike I was sorry I let him drown.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then the board said okay.”

Lindsay shook her head. She had, within the last four years, come to look upon Howie as a younger brother. “How do you know this board thing is real?”

“I just do. I wasn’t trying to move the slider. Neither was Barry.”

“How do you know?”

“At first I thought Barry might be trying to fool me. I kept asking him if he was moving it, and he kept saying no. Finally, I thought of a trick. I asked the board a question that only Mike would know the answer to.”

“What happened?”

“It spelled something out.”

“What?”

“
Lightning.”

“Now that,” I said, “really would be freaky. But those things have been proven to be phony.”

“Have they?” Lindsay asked, as if she already knew the answer.

I shook my head. “They have to be,” I said, but I didn’t sound sure.

“There’s more.”

Barry’s mother, Sonia, was into spiritism. It was a little secret in that family. The people in the neighborhood considered her a little eccentric, but that was it. She managed to function without causing any commotion—until the crack-up. A few years after the incident with the Ouija Board, Sonia was picked up on the 101 Freeway, walking naked and drunk along the shoulder of the highway and screaming at people as they drove by. She was, Lindsay heard, placed in a hospital. She never saw her again.

Before that, however, Sonia told Howie she could help him contact Mike.

Lindsay never heard all the details of the encounter. All she knew was that Howie, without telling their parents, went with Barry and his mother to a room in an old hotel, where they met with several other people for a séance.

For a week after that, Howie walked around the house like a ghost himself. His eyes were blank, like they were staring into a fog. Janet and Fred Patino thought he might be on drugs. They decided to take him to a doctor. That’s when Howie ran away from home.

“He took off,” Lindsay explained, “hitchhiking. It took us a month to find him the first time. The second time he was gone for half a year.”

“What was he doing all that time?”

“We never knew for sure. But he was changed. It was like a permanent shroud was placed over him, and he was resigned to the fact that it would never be removed. I only saw a glimmer of hope out of him two times.”

She paused, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply.

Howie was working a construction site in Hinton when he first met Rae Richards. She was serving cocktails in a bar about twenty minutes north, a popular truck stop and biker hangout. When Howie told Lindsay about it, he was glowing like a kid at Christmas. He described Rae as “the woman of his dreams” and a very spiritual person. It was clear he saw her not just as a girlfriend, but as a means of deliverance.

Lindsay and her parents were cautious, and then caution grew to concern when Howie hesitated about introducing her to the family. It was a hesitation that lasted for months. At one point Fred considered forcing his way into the situation, but Janet dissuaded him. Howie seemed happy and was working steadily. Maybe they shouldn’t rock the boat.

The boat stayed steady all the way up to the point where Howie announced he and Rae were getting married.

Everything after that was a blur of activity, with Howie rushing headlong into marriage. The family did finally meet Rae, and she had a certain plucky charm about her. But something rubbed Lindsay the wrong way from the start.

“I just didn’t trust her,” Lindsay explained. “And she knew I didn’t trust her. It was the way she looked at me. It was the first time in my Christian life when I felt a sense of evil.”

“You just felt it?”

“Sensed it. But I couldn’t put my finger on anything. I knew if I tried to stop the whole thing, Howie would be crushed. I guess I just decided to close my eyes and hope for the best. Big mistake.”

I nodded as she looked at the floor. “You said there was another time Howie seemed happy.”

“Yes, when Brian was born.”

It was almost a year to the day after the wedding when Brian Patino—nine pounds, twelve ounces—was born. It was the biggest day of Howie’s life, even bigger than when he got married. Here was another person—a living, breathing human being—that Howie had helped bring into the world. It proved once and for all that Howie was not a loser, that he could do something fine and lasting. He told Lindsay it was also a way to make up for Mike. A life for a life.

It wasn’t long before Howie’s joy reverted to the deep-seated sorrow that had been his before. He wouldn’t talk much about it, not even to Lindsay, but it was clear that the marriage wasn’t a happy one. Rae was the one calling the shots in the marriage, and she was the one making the decisions about Brian and just what would be done with him. Howie talked to Lindsay about it but never pressed his complaining for fear of Rae’s wrath.

At one point Lindsay asked if Howie wanted another child. He said something curious in response: “That’s not possible.” Lindsay never got an explanation for that.

“That’s pretty much how things remained,” Lindsay said, “until Rae’s death.”

I pondered this for a moment, then said, “I never knew Howie had all this going on inside.”

Lindsay nodded.

“But doesn’t it explain the devil part?” I asked. “I mean, all that guilt and suffering. Wouldn’t that result in his imagination coming up with all this?”

“I don’t believe that,” Lindsay said. “People can open doors to demonic influence. It can be something as little as trying to cast a witch’s spell in your bedroom, or it can be a big door, like trying to communicate with the dead.”

“Doors? What’s that all about?”

“I’m saying there are things that people can do to open themselves up for oppression.”

My head had developed a righteous ache. I wasn’t buying any of this. It was too strange. Lindsay believed it and was calm and rational about it. But that wasn’t enough.

“I want to have Howie examined,” I said.

“By whom?”

“A doctor. A psychotherapist.”

“He’s been through that before.”

“I know. But I want to focus in on the night of Rae’s murder. I want to see if we can get into Howie’s head, bring back the past, and get a grip on what really happened. Is that all right with you?”