J. Gonzalez - They

Vince shook his head. “No. Not at all. Except for my dad yelling at my mom and me in the last year we were in California and throwing things around… nothing out of the ordinary.” Vince shrugged. “I just always chalked that up to whatever stress he might have been going through. A young guy with a wife and a kid and a demanding career. You know?”

Mike nodded. “To make a long story short, Frank attended rituals between the ages of three and five, rituals he remembers you being in attendance at as well. Frank stayed with the group until Child Services Authorities took him out of the house in 1973. He spent the rest of his youth in various foster homes and his Aunt Diane’s until he left home at sixteen to move to Hollywood. You know the rest.”

“What’s the purpose of your investigation, though?” Vince asked. “You’re connecting all these dots, gathering information… for what? You plan on writing some kind of tell-all book or something?”

“I have a trusted friend,” Mike began. “A lawyer who used to work for my friend John’s law firm. His name is William Grecko. I’ll get to John’s story shortly, because what happened to him factors into everything we’re telling you. Needless to say, Bill knows I’m researching something that is big. I haven’t given him details for his own protection. He has a vast network of connections with law enforcement at various levels; state and federal, including FBI and CIA, as well as prosecutors across the country. We almost have enough to take to him now. Your mother’s murder has changed things.”

“How?”

“It’s added an element in our investigation that requires further work,” Mike answered. “Finding you was important. If we can gather enough circumstantial evidence based on your memories and whatever physical evidence your mother may have preserved, such as old diaries or photos from those years—”

Vince shook his head. “I don’t remember any old photos from our years in California.”

“She might have kept them hidden from you.”

Vince shrugged. “Maybe.” It was possible, but Vince didn’t believe his mother would have held on to mementoes from her so-called “life as a sinner.” “Do you think this friend of yours, this William Grecko, has the connections to launch a formal investigation?”

“He not only has the connections, he can pull the right strings and do it discreetly,” Mike said. “I have confidence that within hours of turning over everything we’ve uncovered to Billy, key members of The Children of the Night will be in federal custody and this case will be blown wide open in the media.”

“You have media connections too?”

“Frank does. We plan to turn the same information over to his contacts at the LA and New York Times, as well as CNN.”

“Before or after you turn it over to Billy?”

“Simultaneously.”

Vince took a sip of his iced tea, looking up as Frank walked back into the realm of conversation and slid back into his seat. He looked better; his face was less flushed, more alert.

Mike looked up at Frank. “Did you two have anything in mind for this evening?”

Vince didn’t know this evening was in the equation. He figured on going home and learning more about his forgotten past from Frank. Mike’s question suddenly put the older man into the equation, too. Vince shrugged. “Actually, I just thought Frank and I were going to hang out at my place. Are you interested in joining us?”

“If I may,” Mike said. “There’s still more you need to know, and I’d like to see for myself just how safe you and Frank are.”

“We’re safe,” Frank said softly.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Mike said.

FOR THE FIRST time in his life Vince Walters wished he owned a gun.

He lay in the king-sized bed he used to share with Laura, staring at the ceiling. Mike Peterson was sleeping in the guest-room down the hall in the sofa bed; Frank Black was parked downstairs on the sofa. Frank and Mike were armed. That made Vince feel a little better, but he felt naked without a gun himself, even though he’d never fired one in his life.

The three men had gone back to the house and over iced coffee and bagels they’d talked until one in the morning. Most of the talk revolved around the cult and some more personal history on the mysterious disappearance of Jesse Black.

Vince didn’t think Frank would be so privy to hearing about his father’s untimely demise, but the man had apparently heard it a dozen times. He’d also most likely been able to distance himself emotionally from his father, since he’d never known the man while growing up. It would be as if Vince were to ever hear his own natural father had died of cancer.

It had been a nice evening outside, with a breeze cooling down the heat of the day. Despite that, Mike and Frank insisted that all the windows and drapes be closed. Vince had complied and turned on the air conditioner. Then they retreated to the den, which was at the rear of the house. Vince brought the pitcher of iced coffee in the den and set it on the bar counter for refills where they’d spent the rest of the evening talking.

As it turned out there wasn’t much more to the story of Jesse Black. He’d turned up in San Francisco in early 1968 and managed to track Gladys down to a house on Haight and Ashbury where she was living with several cult members. He’d demanded to see his baby, not knowing the newborn girl’s fate. Gladys told him she’d given the child up for adoption and Jesse had flown into a rage. He’d been restrained by several cult members, who’d forced him into a car and driven him to an undisclosed location. Mike believed it was a location in the Santa Cruz Mountains where cult rituals were common, and where the cult maintained a compound. Whatever the destination the result was the same; while Jesse never told Mike what he’d witnessed, it was evident he was exposed to something terrible. He’d fled in a severe mental state, was picked up by the San Francisco police three days later for vagrancy and when he was released, he disappeared.

He’d severed all ties with his family, his friends back in Los Angeles, his job.

He became one of the anonymous space-cases that wandered Golden Gate Park, sleeping in cardboard boxes, muttering to themselves.

Mike and John Llama had grown concerned when they hadn’t heard from their friend in a few weeks, and tried to track Jesse down. His family in El Paso joined in the effort. Then, almost as suddenly as he disappeared, Jesse reappeared in his hometown.

He showed up suddenly at the home of his parents, on El Paso’s east side, disheveled, wearing a dirty pair of jeans, a tattered shirt, a pair of brown oxfords tied together with duct tape, and a tweed jacket. He hadn’t shaved. He hadn’t bathed. The only thing recognizable about him was his eyes, which his mother recognized immediately. Upon seeing the haunted eyes of her son the woman broke down sobbing and embraced the decrepit man standing on her front porch.

His mother’s sister, Mary, came to the house upon receiving a phone call from Vivian, Jesse’s mother. When she saw her nephew in such a despicable state seated at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of Albondigas soup, his mother clutching his arm and weeping, Mary called an ambulance. Jesse was taken to El Paso County General Hospital and placed under psychiatric observation at the request of his parents. He was transferred to a mental hospital in Las Cruces, New Mexico two weeks later where he spent the next four months. The official diagnosis was a complete nervous and mental breakdown.

Jesse’s family tried to find out what happened to Gladys and Frank, but the court system prevented them from doing much regarding gaining custody of the boy. Gladys contacted Vivian and assured her that she and the boy were fine. It was through Vivian that Mike and John first heard about the adoption of Jesse’s daughter. John was able to visit Jesse in El Paso at the hospital and came away concerned, confused and frightened. John later told Mike that looking at Jesse’s face, into those eyes, was like looking into the bottomless pit of a fear born of hell.