Jonathan Nasaw - The Boys from Santa Cruz

“Please don’t shoot me,” she’d begged him, in a shaky, old lady’s voice.

“I won’t,” Asmador had told her-and to her great misfortune he was as good as his word.

“That went well, don’t you think,” Pender observed drily, as he and Skip left the motel. Gerald Mesker had chased them out of the apartment before Pender had a chance to ask them about their son’s mental history.

“At least they can still move back into their house,” Skip pointed out. “Because where Charlie’s going, they don’t charge for room, board, or psychiatric care.”

“Assuming he lets himself be taken alive.”

Skip shrugged. “Either way, he won’t have to pay any rent,” he said. “So what do you want to do next, track down this Dr. Hillovi?”

“We need to bring Klug up to speed first,” said Pender, who was well aware that by not informing the Santa Cruz detective earlier about the change of suspects, he had probably violated Steve McDougal’s prohibition against stepping on local toes. Still, if Charles Mesker had been at his parents’ house, and Pender had made the pop himself, to the greater glory of the Bureau, not only would he not have been reprimanded, he’d have been a hero. In the FBI, as elsewhere, Pender understood, you pays your money and you takes your chances.

With the aid of his handy cell phone, Pender tracked down Klug to a bar on the municipal wharf. Skip drove the Buick all the way to the end of the wharf, angle-parked in a handicapped zone, and hung his blue placard from the rearview mirror.

Klug was outside the bar, leaning against the board fence surrounding the noisy, noisome sea lion corral, wearing a Popeye Doyle porkpie hat with the brim turned up, and smoking one of his Camel straights. Pender introduced Skip, half-shouting over the grumbling and baying of the sea lions, and mispronouncing the name as Ep-steen.

“That’s Epstein, rhymes with fine. ” Skip gave them the short-form correction; the long form included a speech about how you didn’t say Albert Einsteen or Gertrude Steen or drink a steen of beer.

The homicide detective stuck out his hand. “Lloyd Klug, rhymes with bug, mug, drug, and hug. ” He’d obviously had a few drinks but sobered up fast when Pender handed him the small, framed snapshot of Charles Mesker-the grown-up, not the Boy Scout-which he’d pocketed on his way out of the Meskers’ apartment.

“Let me get this straight,” said Klug, when Pender had finished telling him about their new suspect. “This guy Mesker is going around killing people named in Sweet’s journal because Sweet told him to?”

“You got it,” said Pender. “I suspect we’ll have a more detailed answer after we track down his psychiatrist, but we wanted to bring you up to date first.”

Klug’s eyes narrowed. “And am I?” He took a last lung-charring drag off the Camel, then flicked it over the side of the pier.

“Are you what?”

“Up to date. Because I’ve got the distinct feeling you’re holding out on me.”

“Hey, what I got, you got.” Pender was the picture of injured innocence. He sounded so sincere that even Skip might have believed him, if he hadn’t already known about the list of potential victims in Luke’s journal. Skip also noticed that during the course of the conversation, Pender had gradually adopted an unobtrusive version of Klug’s Philadelphia accent.

After the meeting with Klug, Pender used the magic cell phone to track down Dr. Fredu Hillovi, Charles Mesker’s staff psychiatrist at Meadows Road, to the regional burn center at Valley Medical in San Jose, where he was still a patient. To Pender’s surprise, when he spoke with the night charge nurse to find out when he and his colleague could interview Dr. Hillovi, she asked him how soon they could get there.

“You mean, like tonight?” Pender’s plans had been tending more toward a few drinks, a motel room, and beddy-bye.

“Yes, tonight. As soon as possible, in fact. He’s having a terrible time, pain-wise, and doesn’t want to be left alone. Meanwhile I’m short-staffed beyond belief, so you’d be doing us both a favor.”

“In that case, keep a light in the window,” said Pender. “We’re on our way.”

When Lorraine Neely had failed to pick up her four-year-old daughter at her mother’s house by 4:30 Saturday afternoon, as arranged, her mother had tried calling the library but reached the answering machine. By six o’clock she’d been worried enough to call her husband and ask him to stop by the library on his way home from work. Irv Neely, who owned the hardware store on John Marshall Avenue, thought it was a waste of time, but he’d rapped on the locked library door anyway.

When no one responded, he’d turned to leave, and spied a bloody shoe print on the cement walk to his left, just outside the exit door, pointing away from the building. Stooping, he’d seen a second, lighter print a little farther on, and the faint trace of a third. He’d immediately called 911 from the pay phone on the cantilevered fieldstone wall to the right of the library entrance.

Officer William Baer, responding for the Marshall City Police Department, had agreed with Irv that the waffle-soled shoe prints might have resulted from someone stepping in blood, but he’d also thought they could have been left by wood stain, paint, or sealant. So rather than break in, he’d asked the dispatcher to notify the head librarian, who’d arrived with a key fifteen minutes later. Officer Baer had asked the other two to wait outside and entered the hushed, dimly lighted building alone.

The trail of waffle-soled prints, right shoe only, had led backward into the room, growing more distinct as it skirted past the crumpled body of the first victim and continued on around behind the checkout desk. The young officer, recognizing that the first victim did not appear to have lost enough blood to supply all those prints, had circled the enclosure apprehensively, his right hand resting on the butt of his holstered weapon for reassurance, and had discovered the second victim lying facedown behind the desk.

Although the body’d had that rag doll look that came with multiple broken bones, most of the blood, which had fanned out in a pool around her head, was later determined to have come from a broken nose, one of her lesser injuries. Following procedure, Officer Baer had secured the premises by herding Irv Neely and the head librarian away from the entrance before he called in the double homicide.

The hamsterlike county medical examiner, Dr. Flemm, had arrived half an hour later, his mustache quivering busily. “Everybody got their photos?” he’d asked briskly, donning his dust-free, latex-free rubber gloves and stooping beside the first victim. After checking for morbidity and lividity, and taking a rectal temperature to establish the time of death, he’d rolled the victim onto her back. “Oh, I know her,” he’d said, as if he were pleasantly surprised. Then, over his shoulder to the homicide detective, as more flashbulbs glared: “Heart shot-looks like about a thirty-eight.”

“And how long would you say she’s been dead?”

“Around three hours.”

“Yeah, that fits.” The library closed at four on Saturdays, and the other victim’s analog wristwatch, having been stomped to death along with its owner, still read 4:17.

After changing gloves, Dr. Flemm had taken his time examining the second woman, kneeling beside her behind the checkout desk and running his plump hands up and down her body, feeling for broken bones. Her rib cage he’d seemed to find particularly fascinating. In twenty years, he’d never encountered a torso so thoroughly crushed, he’d told the detective, with the possible exception of an artichoke grower in Castroville who’d been run over by his own thresher.