Hocus (29 page)

“That night, I had dinner with the Harrimans. My own dad kicked a long time ago — I don’t even remember him, but I’m supposed to look like him — my stepfather used to refer to him as my mom’s ‘Latin lover.’ Called me her little taco.”

“Your stepfather sounds like a real gem.”

“Ah, nothing worse than schoolkids could dish out. And he wasn’t much smarter than a schoolkid. He was the Parker — that marriage didn’t last too long. So anyway, with the Harrimans that night — this is the first time I’ve ever been to a Father’s Day dinner. It was kind of a late supper, on account of everything else that was going on.

“The Harrimans get a call just as dinner is ending, somebody wanting to talk to Brian — one of his pals from work, I think. Frank says he’s going to turn in for the night, which I understood — he was just completely wrung out by then. But Brian gets off the phone and asks me to stick around. What the hell, it’s Father’s Day, right?”

She looked down at the river again, then back at me. “We go out on the porch, on that swing. Brian is sitting there, and I’m thinking, This is what Frank will look like in thirty years. And Brian says, ‘Every rookie needs a break, and I’m going to give you one. I know who killed those men, and I’d swear to God I saw his van today.’ He goes on to tell me that there’s a scumbag named Chris Powell, not worth the spit it takes to say his name, and that the pictures the little boys drew remind him of this guy.

“Then he tells me that one of his friends just called to say they’re looking for a brown van — and that has absolutely convinced him that the killer is Powell. He tells me he watched the van for a while, drove past it a couple of times, but he thinks Powell abandoned it. He tells me not to be a hero or anything — just to go up and see if the van is still where he saw it earlier. If it is, radio for backup — I’ll make a good impression on my bosses just by finding it.

“I ask him why doesn’t he just report it? He tells me that there’s been a lot of bad blood between him and this guy, and it would be better if someone else called it in. Besides, it’s out of Bakersfield’s jurisdiction, but within CHP’s. He tells me to come right up here. I mean, exactly here.”

“Did he say how he knew Powell?”

“The story he gave me was that Powell was a dealer, but he was slippery. Brian couldn’t figure it, because Powell didn’t strike him as being very bright. He arrested him a couple of times — even got rough with him once. Brian said the guy resisted, but Powell ended up in the emergency room and Brian got in trouble over it. He told me he still kept an eye on Powell after that, but he didn’t dare hassle him too openly.”

We heard a car pull into the turnout and she stopped talking. We were too far down the slope to see the turnout itself. After a moment the car left.

“Probably just letting traffic pass,” she said.

“Did Brian tell you Powell would be dead when you got here?”

“No. He wasn’t even sure that the van would still be here. At least, that’s how he talked it up to me. Brian told me to see if I could switch with the guy who was scheduled to patrol this stretch. That was the easy part. I started out at six in the morning. I tried to keep a straight face when they briefed us on the van before the watch. The truth is, I figured this guy was going to be long gone, but I wanted to make Brian happy — you know, please the boyfriend’s dad.

“So I head up to the spot he mentioned, and lo and behold, here’s the van. I call it in. The dispatcher starts doing handsprings, because the Ryan-Neukirk case was big news — I mean,
everybody
wanted a piece of this son of a bitch — and the CHP has found the guy’s van.”

“And quickly,” I said. “The CHP must have looked like the most efficient law enforcement agency in Kern County.”

“Yeah, the whole office was pretty proud.” She said it quietly, as it she were anything but proud.

“What made you go looking for Powell himself? Weren’t you afraid?”

“Hell, no. Well, maybe a little. At first, I had my weapon out, and I wasn’t going to approach the van until I had backup, but gradually, I felt less worried — pretty certain that he had just left it here. But then something caught my eye — up in the sky, above the river. Vultures. Turkey vultures. This canyon is full of them in the summer. At first, I just figured they’d found some dead livestock or something. Some of them had already come on down for a closer look — I hear this nasty squawking sound coming from them. I peer over the edge of the slope, and I can see them fighting over some piece of meat. I got my binoculars out, and I could just make out what they were competing for — Powell’s body. Made me sick. I couldn’t reach him, though. I just had to sit and wait for help to arrive. Even the rangers had to rig up special equipment to pull him out of there — what was left of him.”

“Did Brian ever talk to you about it again?”

“No. And I never told Frank how I happened to find the van. He was so wrapped up in those kids, I didn’t see much of him in those first few months anyway.”

“You think Brian killed Powell?”

She hesitated, then said, “No. I know it might look that way, but I don’t. Did you know Brian?”

“No, I’m sorry to say. No, I didn’t.”

“It just wasn’t something he would do. I don’t think he was sorry to see Powell go. Good riddance. But Brian wouldn’t kill someone in cold blood.”

I reached into my purse again.

“I don’t need any more tissues,” she said. “I’m okay now.”

I handed her the folded fax.

She took it warily and opened it.

“I haven’t even shown that to Bea,” I said as she began to read. “So I guess I don’t have to tell you that this is absolutely confidential.”

She nodded. “ ‘Father’s Day’?” she read aloud.

“Yes. I think Bret Neukirk wrote it.”

When she had finished she looked as though she might cry again after all.

“I can’t believe it!”

“There’s nothing to believe,” I said, “except that Brian wasn’t the one responsible for what happened on Father’s Day. But I think he had a friend who was.”

“Don’t you understand? Brian fits the description of this man!”

“Physically, yes. But Brian Harriman would never be involved in drug dealing.”

“He did hate dealers with a passion,” she said, then frowned. “Or said he did. What if that was all for show?”

So Cecilia didn’t know about Diana. If this woman — whose new phone number was on Bea’s autodialer — wasn’t privy to the family secret, Frank’s older sister surely was well hidden. As much as I disliked the notion of helping them continue to hide her, I owed Frank my silence on the subject for now. “It wasn’t for show.”

“How the hell can you be so sure?” she asked.

“You said you never met him.”

“No, but Frank talks about him.”

“Frank hero-worships him,” she said.

“I don’t know if I’d go that far. Look — I can’t say anything that will convince you. Convince yourself. Think about Brian — you knew him for what, about ten years?”

She thought a moment. “Eight. Eight years.”

“Would he have worked with Chris Powell? Would he encourage someone like Powell to take two ten-year-old boys and their fathers to a basement prison?”

“No, but…” She looked back at the fax, then simply said, “No.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

She looked puzzled, then said, “If you want me to chauffeur you all over Kern County—”

“No, I was thinking of asking Bea to extend an invitation to a dinner party to you.” I explained the situation.

“Greg Bradshaw, Nat Cook, Gus Matthews,” she said. “Those were his closest friends all right. There were a few others in that age range, though, and Brian was well liked. You’re smart to check at the county library.”

My God. A compliment. “I could use your help tonight,” I said. “I need someone who has worked around here, who knows these men better than I do, who’s observant. You might be able to pick up on something that will go right past me or Cassidy.”

“Okay, sure. I’ll be there.”

We got in the car and headed back to Bakersfield. We didn’t talk much, but this time the silence was companionable. As she pulled into the parking lot of the Beale Library, she said, “Why are you so sure about Brian?”

“Are you having doubts again?”

“No, not really. But you never met him. How can you know what he would or wouldn’t do?”

“I know his son,” I said. “And while I’ve found the man can be remarkably mule-headed, I’ve never seen any cruelty in Frank. If Frank had been raised by a drug dealer or a murderer, he still might have somehow managed to be a decent fellow. But if he had been raised by a man who knowingly made the call that sent Frank walking into that basement? Forced his own son to be the first one on the scene?” I shook my head. “If Brian Harriman had been a father that coldblooded, Frank wouldn’t have grown up to be the man I know.”

Cecilia sighed. “You’re right.”

I got out of the car and was almost to the sidewalk when she honked and made me jump half out of my skin.

I turned around and glared at her.

She laughed and drove off.

M
ANY OF
B
AKERSFIELD’S
public buildings were constructed after the summer of 1952, when two severe earthquakes struck within a month of each other, changing the look of the town, making it seem younger than it is. Although the older buildings haven’t all disappeared from Bakersfield, the city apparently got used to the idea of changing its look every so often, for Truxtun Avenue is a mix of architectural styles that range over a hundred years — by California standards, a respectable length of time.

On Truxtun at Q Street, next to the Kern Island Canal, the Beale Memorial Library is one of the more contemporary structures in the civic center area: a library of light and open spaces.

The local history collection for Kern County is housed in one corner of the building, enclosed in a room of its own. The materials there are noncirculating; a reference librarian is there to help, but she’s also stationed near the door, not far from a sign-in sheet.

The room has slightly different hours from those of the rest of the library and had just opened for the day, so I was the first one to sign in. I entered my name and wrote only “Las Piernas” under the address heading. For “area of interest,” I put “Bakersfield history” and left it at that.

The librarian gave me a smile as I walked back into the section of the stacks that housed information on the city of Bakersfield. I saw a couple of other people walk in, a middle-aged woman in a floral-print dress and an elderly man who was hunched over, walking with the help of a cane. Each browsed in other rows.

The section I was in covered a wide range of subjects, including stagecoach lines, railroads, ranching, mining, and oil. High school yearbooks and local magazines were on these shelves. Someday, I decided, I’d come back and look up Frank’s senior picture. That thought led to another temptation, to look up Diana’s high school photos. The lady in the floral dress turned down my aisle and seemed to be waiting for me to move along. It served to remind me that there was no time now for high school yearbooks.

The city annuals were lined up together. I discovered the one I was looking for and pulled it out. I took it to one of the round wooden tables that are lined up in front of the librarian’s desk and began to look through it.

The woman patron left. But her perfume seemed to linger. After a moment I realized that I hadn’t smelled any perfume in the aisle. The heavy scent was coming from the table behind me. It was the elderly gentleman; he has apparently doused himself in some sort of after-shave. I turned to look at him; he was bent over the book, his face close to the page, humming to himself as he read — no particular tune, just humming. I turned away and tried to concentrate on the task at hand.

I pulled out a pen and my notebook from my purse and opened the annual; I soon found the section I was looking for. It was two pages long. One page was devoted to the chief of police, half taken up with his portrait and half with a message from him; the latter was pretty standard rah-rah fare. On the page opposite were the ubiquitous K-9 unit photo, crime lab photo, and patrol car (with door decal in the foreground) photo. You could see similar photos in city PR publications just about everywhere; if the city had been working with a bigger budget that year, no doubt it would have included photos of a mounted police unit riding palominos in a parade and a couple of schoolkids smiling up at a public safety puppet show. They had, of course, sprung for the equally ubiquitous put-everyone-in-their-dress-blues-and-line-them-upon-the-front-steps police department photo.

It was this last that I was most interested in.

The good news was that the photo was in color and the men were all standing with their hats off — tucked into their arms military style, but off. The bad news was that the photo was taken from too great a distance — I’d have trouble getting a very close look at any of them.

“Pardon me,” a low, gravelly voice said. I turned to see the old man standing beside me, leaning on his cane. “Perhaps you could make use of this.” He reached into one pocket of his too large suit coat and pulled out a large red handkerchief. He wheezed a little laugh and said, “Oh no, ho! Not that.” He sniffed and reached again and this time produced a magnifier. He set it on the table next to me. “At my age, it’s impossible to get by without one,” he rasped, chuckling and putting away the handkerchief.

“Thank you,” I said, “I’ll only need it for a moment.”

“As long as you like, honey. As long as you like.”

He picked up his book and cane and shuffled back toward the stacks. That, I thought, was what I liked about people out here — their courtesy and friendliness.

Using the old man’s magnifier, I went to work looking over the group photo. I could not resist going to Frank’s photo first. Standing at the end of a row, young and smiling, but not so very different from the Frank I knew now. His posture was no longer so ramrod straight, and over the years his eyes had come to reflect more wisdom, if not cynicism. But the photo made me feel his absence more acutely, and I quickly moved to scan the other faces.