Blue Heaven Part 14

"Nothing?" Monica asked, already knowing the answer by his demeanor.

Swann shook his head and put the phone down on the table. "Some rancher. I didn't get his name. First, he wanted you, to tell you he hopes your kids get found real soon. But what he was really calling about, he said, was that one of the volunteer search crews knocked down part of his fence and some cows got out. He's wondering who will pay for the damage, and you heard what I advised him."

"Mmmmm."

"Jesus," Swann said. "You'd think with all that's going on that he'd wait a little bit before b.i.t.c.hing about a fence."

Monica blankly agreed, but her mind was elsewhere. Why, she wondered, did Swann feel the need to screen calls? If there really were kidnappers, wouldn't it be best if they thought the police weren't quite so involved? Like his answering her telephone for her?

But then she realized what was likely happening. Swann, or the sheriff, or the volunteers, really didn't believe it was a kidnapping. They a.s.sumed the worst had happened. Swann was there to deflect the initial blow, to get the news and deliver it to her gently because he knew her.

Monica Taylor tried to close her eyes and sleep right there, but she couldn't. She thought, Some rancher? There weren't many of them around in the area anymore. She wondered if it was possible ...

ANNIE HAD WATCHED Jess Rawlins place the call and had listened to everything he said. No doubt, Jess thought, she had seen his face flush red.

"You lied,"

she said.

"Yes, I did."

"Why?"

"Because," Jess said, rubbing his eyes with his left hand, "Swann answered the telephone."

"He's at our house?"

"Answered the phone."

"So now do you believe us?" she asked, challenging him.

I don't know what to believe, he thought but didn't say. "I've got to think about it."

"Is my mother all right?" William asked. "I don't know. I didn't talk with her."

Annie turned away to William, her expression hopeful. "We can't talk to her yet, William. That would get us all in trouble."

In trouble, Jess thought, a kid's term. As if she would be grounded or something.

"I know," William mumbled, rolling his eyes.

Jess hadn't moved. He was trying to think, trying to put things together. Swann could be what he claimed to be: a volunteer with big-city police experience helping out a bereaved mother and an inept sheriff (although the ex-policeman hadn't said as much). Swann could have an entirely different take on what Annie claimed had happened in his house. Maybe he had been looking out for their safety by talking to people he knew before he called the sheriff, and Annie misinterpreted his conversation. Maybe Jess was buying into a child's haunted delusion when he should be the adult, thinking clearly, notifying the authorities so the whole county could breathe a collective sigh of relief. Not to mention their mother. He was glad he hadn't given his name.

And, he thought, if a murder had been committed, given the atmosphere of the last two days, wouldn't it be possible that the sheriff would keep a lid on it? If for no other reason than not to further panic a jittery community? Or, even more likely, Annie and William had thought they had seen something they really hadn't, and their active imaginations had taken over.

He wasn't sure what to do. If the children in his kitchen were his own, what would he do?

"You two go down the hall and get cleaned up," he said, finally. "There are towels in the hall closet. In the back bedroom are some boxes of old clothes, from when my son lived here. There might even be some shoes that fit, Annie. I'm going to cook you some dinner while you clean up, and then we'll figure out what our next move is."

He spoke with authority, and was almost surprised when both children nodded and went down the hallway.

There were always steaks in the freezer, and he pulled a package down to thaw in the microwave. He knew he had eggs. He had not made pancakes for over ten years, but he hadn't forgotten how.

He heard the shower turn on, then a brief argument over who went first. Annie won, as he thought she might.

JESS WASHED and dried the dishes after dinner, still amazed how much the children had eaten and how much they had liked it. During the meal, he had found himself simply watching them at the table, enjoying the way they dug into their food with unabashed enthusiasm. At one point, William had looked up, and said, "Mister, you sure can cook."

"Too bad that's the only thing I can cook," he had said, smiling.

William shrugged and went back to eating.

Now, as he put the plates into the drying rack, Jess said, "You kids must have been starving." When no response came, he turned and found them both asleep in their chairs. Annie was slumped forward on the table, her head in her arms. William was splayed out as if shot, his hands limp at his sides, his head tilted back, his mouth open.

Jess carried them one by one into a spare bedroom. Years ago, it had been his son's room. How small the kids were, he thought, how frail. But he'd forgotten how heavy a deeply sleeping child could be. Calves, which weighed twice as much, were easier to lift and carry. The bedding had probably not been changed for years, but he doubted it would matter much to them. He hadn't exactly been expecting company, after all. Jess put Annie's head near the headboard, William's head near the footboard, and pulled blankets over them both. He knew they would be more comfortable with their new clothes off, but it wasn't something he wanted to do.

Leaning against the doorjamb, he looked at them while they slept. It had been a long time since there had been children in the house. They brought a fresh smell with them, something else he had forgotten.

What in the h.e.l.l was he doing? he asked himself.

Sat.u.r.day, 7:45 P.M.

VILLATORO SAT on one of his two lumpy beds and ate his dinner from a sack between his knees. Two McDonald's hamburgers, fries, and the second of a six-pack of beer he had picked up at a convenience store. He ate voraciously, wishing he had ordered more since it was late and he had skipped lunch, wishing he had gone into a real sit-down restaurant instead of driving the streets of Kootenai Bay, trying to decide what looked good and eventually giving up. The prospect of eating alone had daunted him, so he drove until he found the McDonald's north of town and went through the drive-through. French fries and beer didn't go down well together, and he knew he would suffer for it later.

Beyond the sliding gla.s.s door of the room he could hear teenagers out on the sandy sh.o.r.e of the lake, laughing and sometimes singing snippets of songs. He wondered if they knew how good they had it here. He doubted it, though. Kids always wanted out, no matter where they were. A freight train rattled through town to the south, shaking the walls.

The television was on with the news out of Spokane, Washington. The disappearance of the Taylor children led the broadcast, but the anchor and the in-the-field reporters knew nothing more than Villatoro did simply from being in the bank and in the sheriff's department that day. He leaned forward, though, when an attractive blond reporter interviewed Sheriff Ed Carey. Carey looked sincere and deeply concerned, and said he was doing everything he could to locate the children: following every lead, pursuing every angle.

"I've heard it said that you've a.s.sembled what amounts to a Dream Team to help locate the missing Taylor children," the reporter said, and thrust her microphone at the sheriff.

Villatoro noticed a hint of a smile on the sheriff's mouth, a whisper of relief, as if this was the only good news he could convey.

"That's right," he said. "We're blessed in our community to have plenty of retired police officers who have worked situations like this before. They have years of experience, and they've volunteered their services to the department and the community."

"That's great," the reporter said, beaming.

Carey nodded. "They're working tirelessly, without compensation. We've greatly expanded the scope of our investigation with the service of these men, and we're proceeding in the most professional way possible."

The reporter threw it back to the anchor, who closed the story by saying: "The volunteers are reportedly retired police officers from the Los Angeles Police Department...."

Villatoro paused, a hamburger poised in the air. He wondered how many ex-cops had volunteered to form the task force. And besides Newkirk, who were the others?

AFTER CHECKING his watch and a.s.suming she was still awake, he called his wife, Donna. She picked up quickly, and he visualized her in bed, under the covers with her knees propped up and a book open. He apologized for not calling the night before, and she told him how his mother was driving her crazy.

"Where are you again?" she asked. "Ohio? Iowa?"

"Idaho," he said gently. "Almost in Canada."

"Isn't that where potatoes come from?"

"I think so, yes. But not this far north. Here there are mountains and lakes. It's very beautiful, and very ...isolated."

"Would I like it?"

"For a while, I think. There's not much shopping and not many places to eat."

He told her about the missing children, and she said she thought she'd seen something on the news about it. But it could have been other missing children, she said. It was such a common story these days, she said. So many missing children it was hard to keep up with them.

Donna was Anglo. In the last ten years she had put on a great deal of weight and was constantly fighting to slim down. Villatoro had told her, repeatedly, truthfully, that it didn't matter to him. His mother had made the situation worse, though, when she announced at breakfast two weeks before that she was making them a new comforter for their bed. "I decided it will be a light one," his Salvadoran mother had said, "because big people create their own heat." Donna had been mortified, and had been depressed ever since.

"Have you heard from Carrie?" he asked, inadvertently glancing at the framed photo he had brought of their family. Their daughter, their beautiful, dark, loving daughter, was going to college, majoring in cinematography. Her departure had left a hole in the house that Donna and his mother couldn't fill.

"An e-mail," Donna said. "She needs money for some kind of film club."

"Then send it to her," he said automatically.

He listened while Donna replayed her day: breakfast with Mama, grocery shopping, fighting with the dry cleaners. The city had turned off the water for two hours that afternoon while repairing the street.

He realized, too late, that she had asked him a question while his mind was elsewhere.

"What?"

"I asked you when you thought you'd be back."

"I don't know," he said. "A few more days. I have a feeling I'm getting close. It's more than a feeling, in fact."

"You've said that before." She sighed.

"This time, though ..."

"This obsession, it's not healthy."

It was more than an obsession. They had had this discussion many times before.

"Why is this so important to you?" she asked. "You need to find out what it's like to be retired. You haven't even tried yet."

"I'm not ready."

"I talked to the Chows down the street," she said. Arcadia was 50 percent Asian. "Mr. Chow retired a month ago and they just bought a big RV. They're going to tour the country. They're like a couple of kids, they're so excited."

"Is that what you think we should do?"

Hesitation. "No, not really."

He faked a laugh, hoping to defuse the topic. He had explained it before to her. She had said she understood. But if she did, it didn't stop her from bringing it up again.

For eight years since the robbery, he had lived with the case. It was the only open murder investigation within the department, and it had been his responsibility. Retirement didn't change that. Villatoro had always taken his responsibilities seriously, even if no one else seemed to take theirs with the same pa.s.sion. He took good police work seriously, and considered it a calling, like the priesthood. He knew most of his fellow officers didn't think that way, and he never could understand that. They would have been just as happy and content working as building inspectors or within the city's recreation department.

He had been shocked when his chief agreed to turn over the investigation to the LAPD and a.s.signed Villatoro a peripheral liaison role in it. The officers he dealt with from L.A. were much more interested in going to Santa Anita and betting the horses than they were in solving the murder of the guard. The L.A. detectives treated their very few days in Arcadia like holidays from their offices, with long lunches, story-telling, and very few questions for him. This bothered Villatoro on two counts. One was that despite the convictions of the racetrack employees, the men who murdered the guard had never been caught. The detectives didn't seem very concerned about that. They were used to messy, unfinished cases. To them it was about putting in their time, filing a few reports to grow the file, winning a couple of races at the track. The other thing that consistently bothered Villatoro-in fact, it ate at him like a cancer-was that these men were the vanguard of a sprawling, dirty, indefinable city that continued to grow, continued to reach farther out, overwhelming small communities like Arcadia and sucking them in until what remained had no resemblance to what there once was. He saw his fellow officers and neighbors change to adapt, lowering their standards, letting their responsibility to the community and each other slip away into the maw of the beast. Arcadia was no longer the small, sun-baked city it had once been. Now, it was just another colony.

Villatoro was a proud man, despite his humble nature. He noticed how the L.A. cops shot glances at one another when he spoke, was stung when they disregarded his suggestions about following up on the marked bills. One of the detectives, after being told about the second bill traced back to Idaho, said, "Do you have any idea what my caseload is like? Get f.u.c.king real, man."

Villatoro reflected on what he'd said to his wife, and decided he'd been wrong. It wasn't that he wasn't ready to retire. He was. But the single unsolved murder was like a hot coal in his belly. It burned. He had told Donna this.

There was the widow of the slain guard, and her children. No one-not the prosecutors, not the judges, not the L.A. detectives-had met the widow, as Villatoro had. She deserved justice, and only he could deliver it.

He told his wife good night and that he loved her.

HE SAT BACK on his bed with the television on but the volume turned down, and thought of his last visit to Santa Anita Racetrack.

He had done it yearly, ever since the robbery, long after the L.A. detectives stopped going to Arcadia pretending to investigate. He chose days when no races were held, when the old, stately place was still and silent. The last time he had been there was the week before, on an unseasonably hot day, ninety-four degrees in April.

Parking his car in the huge, empty lot, he had walked across the hot asphalt with beads of sweat forming on his upper lip. The stadium was blue and ma.s.sive; heat shimmered and distorted the palm trees and the hills that framed the track. He had loved the place, the feel of it, ever since he took his daughter there for equestrian events during the summer of 1989. It had the look and feel of lost elegance, of a fifties Los Angeles that was bursting with energy, pride, and money. A gentler, more civilized, more humane time, when the issues were water and wider highways and Arcadia had been a sleepy, tree-lined village, like Kootenai Bay was now.

He had found an open gate, as he did each visit. The maintenance men never seemed to lock it, as if he were meant to enter. Walking through Seabiscuit Court on a red concrete path, across manicured lawns with empty tents and tables for guests, he glanced at the statue of the horse, the bronzes of famous jockeys, the monument to George Woolf. The grounds were more of a garden than a racetrack, which was something else he liked. It soothed him. Birds chirped in flowering trees, making the lawns in front of the stadium seem tropical.

The escalator was not turned on, so he climbed the steps, and was sweating hard when he reached the top. He walked though the Front-Runner Restaurant, with its white linen tablecloths and silver place settings, to the Turf Club. From there, he could see everything. The oval track was laid out in front of him, the infield so green it burned his eyes. But the track was eerily empty, not a single employee or horse to be seen.

He turned in the entranceway, and once again ran through the events of that day in May, eight years earlier.

The cash had been counted by a dozen employees in the administrative offices, directly below the stands, in a windowless office. Two armored bank cars idled outside the office, on a service road that was gated on both sides and manned by armed guards. When the cash was counted and accounts reconciled, it was banded and placed in heavy canvas bags, with each bag holding $900,000 to $1 million in cash as well as computer-generated bank deposit slips. There were fourteen bags in all. On a signal, the office doors were opened by the guards, and bonded staff from the bank cars entered to pick up the bags of cash, which were secured with steel cable and clasp locks. On that day, eight bags were placed in the first armored car and six in the second. The driver of the second armored car was a young father of two children named Steve Nichols.

As always, the armored cars waited until the last race of the day commenced. They timed it that way so the cars could slip away from the facility before the races were completed and thousands of customers left for their cars. Plus, for public relations reasons, the owners of the track didn't like the idea of vehicles filled with betting losses leaving at the same time as the patrons.

When the roar went up from the packed house, guards manually opened the front gate, and the armored cars rumbled away, taking an employee-only road obscured from the fans by banks of trees. They emerged at the far end of the parking lot, where heat waves now almost entirely obscured a sign for PURRFECT AUTO SERVICE.

Villatoro walked to the south end of the stadium and looked over the railing, so he could see Huntington Drive. He visualized the two armored cars, unnoticed by thousands of cheering customers who were watching the final race, proceed east. Past Holy Angels School, past Salter Stadium.

On that day, the vehicles stopped for the red light at Huntington and Santa Anita Boulevard. From there, they planned to turn left and drive a short distance to the on-ramp to I-210, and west toward L.A. and the bank. But at that intersection, something happened.

A man walking his dog along Huntington witnessed it from a quarter of a mile away. He testified later that he could see thick rolls of yellow-brown smoke pour out of the shooting ports of the armored cars, followed by the scene of armed guards throwing open the rear doors onto the street. The police investigation said that canisters of tear gas hidden within the bags of cash were triggered by remote control. The guards rolled in agony on the pavement, the gas now so thick in the air that the witness couldn't see much else. What he heard, though, was the sound of engines roaring, squealing tires, and a moment later, the sharp crack of gunshots. The speculation was that the robbers had been parked in the lot of the H.N.& Francis C. Berger Foundation building on the other side of the intersection, and that two cars (of unknown description) converged on the armored vehicles. The robbers were armed and probably wore gas masks, or they couldn't have entered the smoking vehicles to remove the cash bags or kill Steve Nichols, the driver of the second car.

The only witness to the crime, the dog walker, had turned his back to run and couldn't see the cars tear away, or say whether they escaped west to L.A. or east to San Bernadino on the freeway.

No vehicles were ever recovered that could be tied to the robbery, since no reliable description of the cars was ever made.

Because of the placement of the tear gas bombs, the counting room staff was immediately isolated and questioned. The police determined that several of the employees were involved, and a witness came forth to name names. Despite protestations of innocence by the counting room employees, three people were convicted and imprisoned. The head cashier, a woman named Anita, dubbed by the evening newscasts as "Anita of Santa Anita," was sentenced first.

Villatoro met Steve Nichols's widow six months after the robbery. She was young, pretty, with a toddler, and eight months pregnant at the time. Nichols had worked two jobs to be able to afford the small home in Tustin. His death had brought her a little life insurance money, but that would soon be gone. So would the house. She had pleaded with Villatoro to help her, and he could do nothing. As he left the house that day and skirted the FOR SALE sign in the yard, he had made another promise to himself. He would find the man who had killed her husband.

But no one ever came forth with the names of the men in the two cars who had taken the money, killed Steve Nichols, and escaped. Those imprisoned either refused, or, as Villatoro now suspected, did not know the ident.i.ties of those men. And no one had come forward to shed any light on who they were.

DESPITE THE HOUR, Villatoro pulled the telephone to the edge of the nightstand. Even though it was the weekend, he called his former partner, Celeste, and left a message on her cell phone.

"Celeste, I'm sorry about the time and the day, but will you please go into the office on Sunday and pull all of the Santa Anita files? I need you to go through them to see if you can find the name Newkirk." He spelled it out. "I don't know his first name, although I suspect he was a police officer with the LAPD. It may be in our formal reports, or it may be written on a piece of scratch paper, or in the margin on something. I don't know for sure. I wish I could remember. But the name is familiar, somehow."

He paused. "If you find it, call me immediately. And whether you reach me or not, cross-reference that name to everything in the case. The investigation, the trial, the after-trial. Anything and everything. I realize what I'm asking you for is beyond what I should, now that I've retired. You don't have to help me, and there are no hard feelings if you don't. But I don't know where else to turn, and I want to solve this. I know you do, too."

He paused again. "Thank you, Celeste."