Rick Mofina - If Angels Fall

The scene inside the house was chilling. Nothing couldhave prepared Sydowski for it as he suited up with Rust to go in.

“Never seen anything like this,” an FBI agent mumbledto them as they entered. Huge surveillance photos of the children wereplastered on the living room walls, which bled with quotations from theScriptures. A claw of colored wires sprouted from the kitchen wall where thephone had been. It was a violent testament to the menace, thought Sydowski,deducing how Keller must have smashed it when Zach called for help. Thesolitary rocking chair before the TV underscored Keller’s insanity. Rust wentto the worktable and thumbed through Keller’s journals, reading the criteria heused to select the children: angel names, ages matching his dead kids at thetime of their drownings. How he sought them through birth notices, traced theirfamilies through public records, studied, and stalked them. IDENT detectiveswere going through his computer.

Sydowski took the stairs to the basement room.

As he stepped off the last step to Keller’s basement,Sydowski was assaulted by the stench of excrement, urine, and garbage, andpulled up his surgical mask. The children were gone, yet he braced himself forwhatever awaited him in the room. Two FBI IDENT experts were working there,breathing through gas masks. They nodded to Sydowski as he entered, watchinghim take in the scene, the knee-deep garbage of half-eaten fast food andwrappers, the soiled mattresses, the rats, the barred, papered window, and thebloodstained baseball bat.

“It’s not human blood, Walt,” one of the IDENT guyssaid, his voice muffled from under his mask.

Sydowski nodded, blinking quickly. It was Golden GatePark all over again — the rain, Tanita Marie Donner in the garbage bag, thestink, the maggots, flies, the gaping slash across her doll’s neck, nearlydecapitating her. Her snow-white skin, her tiny body on the slab, her beautifuleyes imploring him, beseeching him, reaching into him. All these fucking yearson the job. All the fucking stiffs. It was supposed to get easier. Why wasn’tit getting easier? Were three more child corpses waiting for him somewhere? Wasthat the way it was going to play out? His stomach was seething, his heartburnerupting. Give us a break here. We’re so close to this guy. Sydowski grittedhis teeth. So close.

He returned upstairs to confer with Rust in the livingroom. A funeral atmosphere permeated the house. Everyone was working quietly,cataloging evidence, bagging and hauling it into a van which would deliver itto a plane waiting to fly it to the state forensic lab in Sacramento. Fewinvestigators spoke, those who did, used low, respectful tones. Rust was stillstudying Keller’s maps and binders, amidst the clutter. “”Are we too late,Walt?”

“I don’t know, today is the anniversary. Seems he’sgeared up to it. You going to look downstairs, where he kept them?”

“Right after we talk to Bill, here.”

Bill Wright, the FBI’s IDENT team leader, sighed,removing his gas mask, his reddened face damp with perspiration. “Well, we candefinitely put all three children in this house based on the stuff we’ve foundso far. Clothing. Hair. But the kids are gone. We’ve got nothing outside,nothing inside. We’ve gone through the attic, X-rayed the floorboards, walls.The last call made from this address was the one Zach Reed made to The SanFrancisco Star newsroom. The bills for the past three months show little.No receipts in his trash. We’re going to take the plumbing apart in case he flushedanything. But our guy’s fled, likely with the kids. I’d say last night, judgingfrom the oil and coolant stains in the driveway. We’ll keep the house for aslong as we need it to gather evidence for whatever comes up.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

Sydowski pulled Rust aside. “Keller lost his kids,late in the day, right?”

“Late afternoon, evening. The file put it between fourand nine.”

Sydowski checked his watch. “Gives us a couple ofhours, maybe.”

“Maybe.”

***

Outside, the air was electric with rumors that thepolice had found bodies. Reed was with the parents of Danny Becker andGabrielle Nunn, who also rushed to Wintergreen, jostled through the pressgauntlet, and converged on the police command center as TV news helicoptercircled overhead. Uniformed police had taken the parents aside to a secure areanear the bus to await some official word. Their perspective allowed them to seethe bagged evidence being removed from the house. Nancy Nunn sniffled,sharpening her focus on one clear bag. Gooseflesh rose on her trembling skin asshe recognized the flower print dress she had made for her daughter.

Paul Nunn caught his wife and struggled to quell herchoking sobs, his own voice cracking. “Is somebody going to tell us what thehell is going on here!”

Reed saw Ann arrive and hurried to her, plucking herfrom reporters, pulling her to the sanctuary for the parents as the chopperspounded above. Ann wept. The agent who brought her left, to get some answers.

“Tom, is he dead?”

Reed tried to get his wife to focus on him. “Ann! Wedon’t know anything. No one is telling us a word.” He hugged her.

“Something is happening,” Gabrielle’s father said,“because this morning we found Jackson — Gabrielle’s dog — scratching at ourback door, looking pretty frightened.”

“Why the hell is it taking so long to tell ussomething?” Nathan Becker demanded. “Officer, please get us someone! We deserveto know what is going on. What have they found?”

The uniformed cop nodded, turned away and spoke intohis radio.

Reed held Ann. He was numb with helplessness. Fear.What was he going to do if they started carrying out bodies? His son. His onlychild. Only yesterday, Zach had locked his arms around him, enthralled with thehope his mom and dad were going to move back to their house.

Daddy, you have to come and get me!

Sydowski emerged and ushered the parents away from thechaos and toward the relative tranquility of the bus.

“All we can determine is that Keller fled with thechildren.”

“Where?”

“We’re trying to determine that right now.”

“What about Half Moon Bay?”

“We’ve got people there.”

“When did Keller leave?”

“We think sometime in the night.” Sydowski then raisedhis hand. “We have nothing to show they’ve been harmed, outside of being heldin a foul, scary environment.”

“But the clothes?” Nancy asked.

“He’s likely changed their appearances, to make itdifficult to find them.”

Phones were ringing inside the bus.

What were they doing to find Keller, Paul Nunn wantedto know.

“We suspect he is going to put to sea, somewhere alongthe California coast. The Coast Guard is on full alert. We’ve got everyavailable search plane — ”

“Inspector?” an officer with his hand covering a phoneinterrupted. “Sir, it’s the Ranger Station at Point Reyes.”

George Hay sat at the counter of Art’s Diner in Inverness, eating a clubhouse sandwich.The front page of The San Francisco Star was folded precisely beside hisplate and he read while he chewed.

He was engrossed in the multiple kidnapping case. Itwas fantastic. Has to be a ball-breaker for the people on it, he figured,reaching for a French fry. All that glory. Sure. And all that career-bustingpolitical bullshit, too. He took a hit of coffee. Admit it though, you miss theaction, he told himself. Cases like that gave you a helluva rush. Yeah, hemissed it, like he missed not being in pain.

Damn, he winced, putting his cup down to massage hisleg.

Two years back, a carjacker’s bullet had shattered hisright thigh, leaving him with a partial pension, a bastard’s attitude, and apermanent limp after fifteen years with the San Jose Police Department. Asuccession of rent-a-cop security jobs and lost weekends sunk his marriage. Tohell with it. Allana was not the stand-by-your-man type; she was thekick-you-in-the-teeth type. George still had trouble believing that rightbefore she walked out on him he was actually contemplating knocking off anarmored car for her, thinking the money would keep them together. He shook hishead. That was when a buddy got him work as a U.S. Park Ranger in Point Reyes,the national seashore park, just north of San Francisco.