Light Before Day (46 page)

I couldn't make out Caroline's words, but her voice sounded calm and controlled.

"Not a chance," Roger replied.

Caroline spoke again. Roger frowned. Terrance was hunched over at the waist, his eyes wide and moist. If Roger Vasquez was their ringleader and Ben Clamp was their muscle, then the pretty boy in front of me was their hand-wringer and well of raw emotion.

"Fine," Roger said. Then he clicked off the phone.

"What does she want?" Terrance asked.

"She wants to talk," Roger said. "To you and me, and him." He jerked his chin toward me.

"You wouldn't give her our location," I said.

"I believe Terrance told you to shut up," Roger said.

The three of us started across the vineyard. The withering grapevines clung to their metal poles with what looked like desperation. The villa at the top of the hill had a fiat slate roof and a series of slender columns down the front porch. It looked like a palace for a Roman senator who had long since departed. The slender stone columns along the front porch were cracked and weathered, and their vines had outgrown their ornamental boundaries. The thick interlocking branches of the Monterey pines that surrounded the villa formed a kind of perimeter wall that also shielded a squat smaller outbuilding with a rounded roof and a single barred window.

"Got a thing for Ben, huh, Terrance?" I asked.

Terrance just looked at me, his face anxious and pouty. I could have sung him a sad song about what happened to skinny pretty boys who got involved with towering hulks of muscle that reminded them of the guys who used to make fun of them in high school, but I was too busy wondering where they were taking me and what I could hope for from Caroline.

We moved up the villas front steps. Across the sea of trees that surrounded the vineyard below, I glimpsed green, rounded hills blurred by a low and fast-moving fog. It was impossible to see where the property ended, but I figured it was vast.

The walls inside were eggshell white, the texture of the plaster visible. The floors were concrete. Floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded a central courtyard with a large dry fountain crowned by a reproduction of Donatello's
David.
The statue's head had been cut off. A window in the far wall revealed a dark hallway that danced sporadically with a television's flicker. I figured the boys were being entertained while their abusers were tormented and slaughtered by the men who had taken them into their care.

I
thought of the young man I had known as Everett and how coolly he had tightened his silver bicycle chain around Martin Cale's throat. His behavior made more sense if he had been exposed to the type of violent retribution I had seen visited on Cameron Davis. But so far I had not encountered a single boy. They were being shielded from the events that were unfolding on other parts of the property.

Terrance Davidson sat me down in a large wooden chair that bore a frightening resemblance to the torture devices I had seen out in the clearing. He raised two wooden boxes that hung from the end of the chair, placed them over my wrists, and slid wooden pins through them. There were instruments of confinement even in the main house that told me that Joseph Spinotta or the men they abducted were sometimes brought here. I thought of all the markings Joseph Spinotta had made on the walls in the bathroom of his prison cell. His captors had kept him alive for a long time, and I wanted to know why.

Roger Vasquez moved to the massive fireplace, lifted a phone off the floor, and placed it on the fireplace's empty mantel. He pressed Speaker-phone and dialed a number. Terrance stepped back against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. His hysteria had turned into fury, but it was directed at his comrade, who took a seat in a chair angled toward mine. I figured that Terrance blamed Roger for Ben's current predicament.

The rings stopped. "Adam?" It was Caroline's voice. The sound of it brought tears to my eyes, made real the horror I just had witnessed outdoors. She said my name again.

"Answer her," Roger Vasquez ordered.

"I'm here."

She was silent. Then, "Are you okay?"

"I'm in one piece," I said.

"East or west?" she asked me. I remembered our moment at the Stop 'N' Go in Wasco when we had studied the map. But Roger Vasquez stiffened.

"East or west, Adam?"

"If he gives you our location, I will kill him and then you'll have no reason to come here,"

Roger said.

"West," I said fast.

Terrance shot forward. "Did you hear what he fucking said?"

"Hey!" Caroline shouted. "Yeah, that's it, pretty boy. You keep your fucking mouth shut.

Your boyfriend here's been crying for you—and he's only got seven fingers left!"

Terrance's growl turned into a shriek. He spun around, gripping the back of his head with both hands. Roger rolled his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

I waited for the two of them to collect themselves.

"What did Joseph Spinotta want to do out here?" I asked.

Terrance answered. "Joseph said he was going to rescue boys from meth homes and make new lives for them. He said he was going to create a family for them."

I had assumed that this had been Spinotta's cover story. But it had actually been his real mission, even if his obscene motivations lay close to the surface. "Was he lying?" I asked.

Roger Vasquez said, "We all knew what he was really going to do to the boys once he had them."

"So you took him prisoner," I said. "You held him down in that cellar. You held him for a long time. Why did you keep Spinotta alive for so long?"

A man's gasping breaths came through the speakerphone on the mantle. Caroline was

holding the phone down to Ben Clamp's mouth so we could hear his fear.

"He had to show us how to use the technology," Terrance Davidson spat out.

"The technology," I repeated. I waited for one of them to elaborate. Then I saw it. "You're saying Spinotta never wanted to create a child porn ring. That was all you guys."

Roger bolted up. "How dare you—"

Terrance shot forward and placed a hand on Roger's shoulder to quiet him. "The boys have no memory of what's done to them. None! We've made sure of that! We take them out of hell and we give them a chance at a new life."

"You use them," I said. "You rape them on camera and use it as bait for men like Cameron Davis."

"We don't touch them," Roger said through clenched teeth. "We leave that to men like you."

Terrance's mouth snapped shut. Rogers denial brought an icy glare from his comrade.

"So the whole thing," I said, "it's just a giant trap. It's just an excuse for you to kill your customers." Neither man answered. "How many men like Cameron Davis have you killed?"

Caroline broke the silence. "I heard a question, gentlemen. One of you better fucking answer it."

"Five," Terrance answered.

"How many customers are there?"

"Twenty," he said. "And growing."

The image of Cameron Davis dangling by his ankles as he bled to death was still fresh in my mind. But I had also seen one of the movies that men like Cameron Davis enjoyed. I had seen the helpless victim laid out, in a production designed and choreographed by men who felt their own innocence had been taken from them. The abused were catering to the abusers. For a few terrifying seconds, I saw their logic, felt the hot pulse of rage that had fed their madness over the past three years.

Roger Vasquez was trembling with rage. Terrance Davidson still seemed panicked over the fact that Caroline had his lover in custody. I needed to calm them if I was going to get any more answers out of them. "Where was Billy Hatfill in all of this?" I asked.

"You didn't ask him before you killed him?" Roger demanded. Terrance looked fearfully at the phone on the mantel. "Joseph needed guys like us to bring him the boys he wanted. Billy handpicked us for the job. But we were supposed to keep track of everything Joseph did. Take pictures. That kind of thing."

"You were supposed to set Spinotta up?" I asked.

Terrance gave a sidelong look at Roger and continued. "Billy knew his days were numbered.

He wanted an insurance policy, especially if Broadband Access Media was a success. He wanted our help to make sure Spinotta didn't get rid of him. But then Spinotta told us about his plan. To come out here. To
save
boys. Broadband Access Media was just a front to get money for this place. So Billy came up with a plan that made everyone happy. We convinced Joseph to let us come with him and help. And before we left, we convinced him to sign everything over to Billy."

A young boy's peal of laughter rang from somewhere deep within the house. This place was not the perverse sexual playground that I had imagined. The boys had no memory of the sexual abuse they suffered. They had not been present for the murder I had witnessed earlier. Whatever panic and dislocation they felt from being ripped from their families, they were not destined to grow up to be Everett, furiously sexual, murderously violent. Yet the young man I knew as Everett had lived here as well. He had been sent to live with Billy at the age of sixteen, and I couldn't figure out why.

'What's supposed to happen to these boys when they grow up?" I asked.

It was Roger Vasquez who answered. "We set up accounts for them," he said with evident pride. "With the money we steal from our customers."

Behind Roger, Terrance Davidson had gone white, his blazing eyes fixed on my face. The topic of the young boys' fate had rattled him. "They're allowed to leave at a time of their own choosing," Roger went on. 'We won't force them. When the time comes, they can reenter the world as new men."

His answer baffled me. Terrance took a step forward, his jaw quivering.

'What about Everett?" I asked.

Now it was Roger's turn to go white.

"Jim Clark," I said.

Roger got to his feet, glaring at me as if I had grown another head. Terrance shot forward and pulled the pistol from the supply belt on Roger's hip. The breath went out of me. I braced myself for a gunshot, even though I wasn't sure how I had earned it.

But it was Roger who was staring at the barrel of his own pistol. "I'm sorry, Roger," Terrance Davidson whispered. "We couldn't do it."

"What the hell's going on?"
Caroline demanded.

"It's all right!" I shouted. A pleading look had risen in Terrance Davidson's eyes, even as he aimed the pistol at Roger's face.

"Everett was a problem." Terrance sighed. His eyes were boring into Roger's as he spoke.

"He'd been abused so bad before he came here. He was a bad influence on the other boys. We had to get rid of him."

"Right, asshole," Roger said, "but you weren't supposed—"

"Ben and I sent him to live with Billy," Terrance said quickly. He wasn't addressing me. He was explaining himself to Roger Vasquez. "Billy said he could handle him."

"You fucking idiots," Roger whispered.

"We couldn't do it, Roger!" Terrance cried. "We couldn't kill him just because you fucked him!"

Roger lunged at the pistol. Then the pistol went off.

I heard Caroline screaming my name. I called out to her to show I was alive.

Roger Vasquez lay on his back across the Oriental rug. The bullet had torn through his right shoulder, and his lips were trying to form words. Terrance stood over him, panting.

A strange knocking echoed through the house. I twisted in my seat. The sound was coming from across the courtyard. A small shadow blocked out the television's blue flicker. It was a young boy, slapping his hand against the glass. I couldn't tell which one he was. He had obviously been terrified by the gunshot and wanted to know what was going on.

Roger Vasquez took rasping breaths through clenched teeth. By sleeping with Everett, he had set into motion the chain of events that had brought me to their compound and led to the bleeding wound now darkening the carpet. If Corey had not seen Everett come off his uncle's yacht, had not recognized the young man as one of the boys he had abducted, I would never have met the two men in front of me.

Terrance Davidson regained his composure and stepped toward Roger's prone body. "You're a liar, Roger," he whispered. "You're a liar and a hypocrite. Just like Joseph. You said we could break the cycle."

Terrance shot Roger through the forehead.

"Terrance?" The young man didn't respond to the sound of my voice. He backed away from Roger Vasquez's body. His grip on the pistol remained tight, but his eyes were stunned with shock. Terrance Davidson made for a more unpredictable captor than Roger Vasquez and I wasn't relieved that he was now in charge.

There was still one question I needed an answer to. I had left LA to discover the identity of Corey's killer.

"Terrance!" This time it was Caroline who called out to the man. "Terrance, let's assess the situation here, all right?" Terrance turned to face the phone on the mantel as if it were a human being. "You want to be reunited with your friend Ben here?" Caroline asked him.

"Yes," Terrance said in a trembling voice.

"Okay, then," she responded. "Let's talk. There's one of you now, Terrance. I'm sorry. But that's not our fault. Now let's—"

A shrill series of beeps filled the room. Terrance twisted around. The sound was coming from Roger's supply belt, from the large pager I had noticed earlier. The sequence and the volume reminded me of a sound I had heard a night earlier: Caroline's perimeter alarm.

"You bitch!" Terrance roared. "You lying bitch! You knew where we were this whole time!" I heard Caroline's voice protesting, but Terrance’s shouting drowned out her words. "He told you, didn't he? Ben gave you our location! You fucking tortured it out of him!"

I knew it couldn't be true. If Ben had given Caroline our location, she would have been here by now.

I felt the truth moving in from the edges of my vision. I felt four years' worth of strange meetings, secret deals, and abductions coalesce into a single act that explained the past week of my life in a way that nothing else I had learned ever could.

As Terrance screamed invectives at Caroline and waved the pistol, I fought to keep my breathing even and my mind clear, pulling facts from the timeline in my head and placing them side by side. Four years earlier, Joseph Spinotta had asked Corey to set him up with a man named Reynaldo Reyez. Corey had tried to locate Reynaldo only to discover that he was dead. Corey had impersonated Reynaldo and abducted young boys for Joseph Spinotta.