If Angels Fall (37 page)

Sydowski felt his gut tighten and popped a Tums.

Shook was born in Dallas and drifted to Canada after
he was under suspicion for assaulting a four-year-old boy near La Grange,
Texas. In Canada, he achieved a staggering record of assault on children. In
one instance, he claimed to be a relative and lured a seven-year-old boy and his
five-year-old sister from their parents at a large park near Montreal. Shook
kept the children captive for five days in a suburban motel room, where he tied
them to the room’s beds, donned a hood, and repeatedly assaulted them. He took
pictures of the children and kept a journal detailing how he satisfied his
fantasies before abandoning them alive.

Shook was arrested two years later in Toronto after
three university students caught him molesting a five-year-old boy in a
secluded wooded area. Shook had abducted the boy from his inattentive
grandfather hours earlier off the Toronto subway. In court, Shook detailed his
attacks on scores of children over the years. His actions were born out of his
own misery. He said he was sexually abused when he was a nine-year-old altar
boy by his parish priest. Shook was ten when his father died. His mother
remarried and he was beaten by his stepfather. Shook grew up envying and
loathing “normal” children. He would never overcome his need to exact a toll,
“inflict damage” on them. After earning parole three years ago, he vanished.

A wolf among the lambs.

Sydowski sat down and reread the entire file.

Trauma as a child. Religious overtones. Need to
re-offend. Fantasy fulfillment. A pattern of crime that fit with the Donner-Becker-Nunn
cases. Shook was lighting up the FBI profile like a Christmas tree. Sydowski
reached for his phone and punched the number for Turgeon’s cell. They would
bring the task force up to speed on Shook at the eight-thirty meeting.

“Turgeon.”

“It’s Walt, Linda.”

“You’re up early.”

“Get down here to 450 as soon as possible. We’ve got
Shook’s file.”

“Is it him, Walt?”

“It’s him, Linda, and guess who his hero is?”

“I couldn’t begin.”

“The Zodiac.”

At dawn,
a
white van squeaked to a stop at Gabrielle Nunn’s home and four sober-faced
members of the San Francisco Police Department’s IDENT detail got out. Dressed
in dark coveralls, they talked softly, yawning, finishing off coffee, and
tossing their cups into the truck. A second van arrived with six more officers.
They went to homes on either side of the Nunn’s, waking owners, showing them
search warrants. Yellow plastic tape was stretched the length of seven houses,
sealing front and backyards with the message: POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS. The
Nunn home was the middle house. Before the day’s end, every inch in the
sectioned-off area would be sifted, searched, and prodded for anything
connected to the case.

It was no ordinary Sunday morning here. Something had
been defiled in the inner Sunset, where less than twenty-four hours earlier
Gabrielle had skipped off to Joannie Tyson’s birthday party, radiant in her new
dress.

Her neighbors knew the nightmare.

They had seen the news crews, gasped for reporters,
watched TV, and read the papers. This morning, they stared from their doors and
windows, shaking their heads, hushing their children, drawing their curtains.
“I hope they find her. Her poor parents.” Something had been violated,
something terrifying had left its mark, now manifest in yellow police
tape—America’s flag of tragedy and death.

Ngen Poovong knew death intimately. But you couldn’t
tell by looking at the shy eleven-year-old, standing at the tape with the usual
cluster of gawkers and children. The horrors of Ngen’s life were not evident in
his face, his T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. His secrets never left his home,
which was two doors down from Gabrielle’s. Ngen did not know Gabrielle and Ryan
well. He had difficulty making friends, his English was so poor. His family had
been in San Francisco a short time. He watched the men in coveralls. Police.
Never talk to police. He knew what the excitement was all about, but he was
frightened. He glanced over his shoulder to this house and saw Psoong watching
him from the window.

Do not tell them what you know.

Ngen said nothing. Just as he had done last night when
police came to their door, followed by the TV people. He remembered Psoong
peeking through the curtains, then turning to Ngen and his older sister, Min.
“Something is wrong,” Psoong told them in their own tongue. “Police are going
to every door.”

Ngen and Min had not seen him this worried since the
black days when they were crammed on the boat, drifting hopelessly in the South
China Sea. “They are going to every house taking notes. They will be here soon.”

“Maybe they know?” Min said, pulling Ngen close.

“We must make no mistakes. Remember the rules.”

The rules were simple: Listen to everything. Watch
everything. Know everything. Say nothing. You are ignorant. Trust no one.
Without the rules there was no survival. And Psoong Li, and Min and Ngen
Poovong were survivors.

Their families had met on a smuggler’s trawler,
crammed with one hundred other people who paid 1,000 U.S. dollars a person for
safe passage from Laos to Manila. Four days out, pirates attacked. Ngen’s
father and mother were killed. So were Psoong’s parents. Min was raped. Psoong
was stabbed, but survived. Ngen wanted to jump to the sharks. Min became mute
and stared at the sea. Psoong comforted the survivors, organizing the rationing
of the little fresh water and rice that were left. He was especially kind to
Min and Ngen, urging them to be strong to honor the memory of their families,
to believe in their rescue. Psoong, Min, and Ngen became friends, forming a
small family, and Psoong shared the secret that his father had wisely sent his
savings to Psoong’s uncle in California, who had written that the best
candidates for immigration to the United States were families with relatives
living there. Psoong had a plan.

He proposed that Min act as his wife and Ngen as their
son. Psoong was thirty-one, Min was twenty. With no documentation on their
ages, they would lie to make it work. Afterward, they could go their separate
ways, if they chose, but for now it was a matter of survival. Min stared at the
sea and agreed. There was no other choice.

“Good,” Psoong said. “No one will ever learn the truth
if we follow our rules.” Failure would mean deportation and death.

“Remember the rules,” Psoong whispered to Min and Ngen
three days later when a Hawaii-bound Swedish freighter picked them up. After
eleven months in a refugee camp, an American official granted them life when he
stamped his approval on their applications to enter the United States.

In San Francisco, they lived in the basement of
Psoong’s uncle’s house for several months, maintaining their secret, remaining
family. Then they bought an old two-story house in the Sunset with Psoong’s
father’s savings and the money they earned as office cleaners. They lived
quietly in fear—fear that intensified when police came to them last night.

Remember the rules. We cannot go back. No one must
know.

The two detectives were not in uniform, flashed their
badges and Psoong let them in. They did not stay long after Psoong explained in
faltering English that they knew nothing about the missing American girl. When
the detectives left, Psoong thought that was the end of it and managed a smile.
His relief vanished less than an hour later when one of the officers returned
with an Asian woman. She was fluent in five Asian languages, including theirs.

She was a pretty, young university language professor
from Berkeley who could not be fooled. Right off she explained how the police
were not the slightest bit interested in them, only their help, which they
could give confidentially. After listening to her warm, friendly assurances,
Ngen immediately wanted to tell her what he had seen.

The woman asked if they remembered seeing anything odd
in the last month or so. Psoong and Min shook their heads. The woman showed
them a picture of Gabrielle. Yes, Ngen knew her and talked to her once or
twice. She was a friendly little girl who loved her dog.

“How do you know she loved her dog?” the detective
said.

The professor translated.

Ngen shot a look at Psoong. Remember the rules. The professor
caught the communication and placed herself on the couch between Psoong and
Ngen, showing Ngen an enhanced picture of Gabrielle’s kidnapper. For a
microsecond, recognition flickered in his eyes.

“Have you seen anything like this man around here before?”

Ngen swallowed and shook his head.

The professor knew the truth. “Are you certain?” Her
pretty eyes held him prisoner. She would not let him look at Psoong.

“No,” Ngen lied.

The woman asked Min and Psoong a few more questions,
then cards were left and requests made for calls if anything was remembered.
This was a very serious case. A little girl’s life was in danger. Ngen noticed
how the tall detective searched his eyes for something.

Now, watching the police scrutinizing Gabrielle’s
yard, Ngen struggled to understand what was happening. More than twenty
officers in white coveralls, with radios crackling, were investigating the
neighborhood. The enormity of Gabrielle’s disappearance hit Ngen. He could no
longer stand it. He hurried home and pleaded with Min to allow him to tell the
police what he had seen. What if the kidnapper had stolen him? Wouldn’t Min and
Psoong want help? This was the United States, people helped people here. Min
called Psoong, who was at work. He came home, worry etched in his face.

“I, too, have thought about the matter. It is true
that I could not bear another tragedy, if this abductor were to take Ngen. We
must help police catch him. But first we need assurances.”

Psoong called the number on the professor’s card and
she arrived with two new officers—Sydowski, a big man with gold in his mouth
and his associate, a dark-haired young woman, Turgeon. Min made tea. The
professor assured them the police were only interested in the kidnapping of the
little girl who lived two doors away.

“The little girl’s dog did not run away a month ago,”
Ngen began.

“What happened?” Sydowski asked as Turgeon made notes.

The professor translated.

“A man took the dog in the night.”

How did Ngen know?

“I saw him from my bedroom windows,” the professor repeated.

Sydowski asked to see Ngen’s upstairs bedroom. They
saw the small telescope on Ngen’s nightstand at the window. They remained calm.
The bedroom’s large corner windows overlooked the Nunn’s backyard. Sydowski
could see two IDENT people kneeling in the dog’s kennel.

“Tell the officers everything,” the professor said.

Ngen loved to look at the stars and moon. They were
his hope when they were adrift at sea, and now his communion with his dead
mother and father. The night the man came there was a three-quarter moon. It
was about two A.M. because he had set his alarm to see the best view. All was
tranquil in the neighborhood. Ngen could hear the Nunns’ air conditioner
humming. He was studying the moon when he saw a man walking down the back
alley. He focused his telescope on him. He looked like the man in the police
picture. He unwrapped some meat and fed it to the dog, then walked away with
the dog to his truck, which was parked down the alley, and drove away.

Sydowski and Turgeon absorbed Ngen’s account.

“Did he get a license plate?”

The professor translated and the boy said something at
length, reaching for the star journal he kept, flipping through the pages.

He kept a journal? Sydowski couldn’t believe it.

At school they taught you to take license numbers if
you ever saw anything bad. But he didn’t get the entire plate.

“The first three characters, B75,” the professor
translated.

“Was it a California plate?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of truck was it?”

Ngen didn’t know trucks.

“If we showed him pictures?” Turgeon asked, while
taking notes.