"BEHOLD THE CHILD"
By Harry Shannon
Published by Harry Shannon at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Harry Shannon
Discover other titles by Harry Shannon at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/harryshannon
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"Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw."
Alexander Pope 1688-1744
1.
"Please, man, let me go!"
The terrified girl with the runny nose could have been any age between twenty and forty. Her name was Pearl, or so she claimed. She was skeletal; with badly pocked skin and stringy brown hair. Pearl wore a man's blue work shirt, filthy jeans and tennis shoes with no socks. She kept scratching at the scabs on her arms. Years of junk and physical abuse had rendered her features generic, although at some point she might have been pretty.
"Is that Oso's house?" Kenzie drawled, softly. "The blue one yonder, with an old Ford up on blocks in the front yard?"
Pearl nodded her head furiously, her breath steaming in the cold air. She tried to shrink down in the passenger seat and disappear. Her voice was thick with fear. "If he comes out and sees I brought you here he'll fucking kill me, mister, no shit he will just flat fucking blow us both away."
As if on cue, the front door opened and an impossibly large, busily tattooed Hispanic man in stained boxers wandered out onto the front porch. He stood there in the yellow light, scratching his balls and watching the sunset. Between the patterns of snakes, gargoyles and prison gang insignia lay a random series of dark, rectangular burn scars. He had a quart of malt liquor in his left hand and a 357 Magnum in his right. Detective Sam Kenzie felt his heart thump and his gut tighten in anticipation.
"That's him, right Pearl? That's the man with the scars, that sold you the speed, the one you said was holding a little girl hostage. That's Manuel Ortega, also known as Oso?"
Pearl had her face so far down it looked like she was kissing her ass goodbye. She was whimpering into her cupped palms. Kenzie grabbed her greasy hair and yanked her head back against the seat.
"I need you to look," he said. "And tell me if that's Ortega."
Incongruously, Pearl began to rock and whispered the Lord's Prayer at breakneck speed. Then she nodded. Said: "That's him. And there's one other biker in there with him, a prick called Gato." Kenzie reached across and unlocked her side of the car. He pushed her head back down.
"Ease on out of here and stay low," he said, not unkindly. "I do believe this old boy is likely to throw down on me."
"You're fucking crazy, mister."
Kenzie smiled. "That's probably true, Pearl. But if I shoot him it just means you won't have to testify at a trial."
"I already told you I couldn't do that," Pearl wailed. "I'd be good as dead."
Detective Sam Kenzie watched the scarred, tattooed Ortega pace the porch and drink beer. He looked down at Pearl, twisted her hair again. "Listen to me," he said. "If we need you, you're going to be in rehab in Pomona, just like we agreed. You're anywhere else, I'll find you and make you sorry. Now get."
Pearl slipped out of the car, sank to all fours and crab-walked backwards into some brush. Sam Kenzie watched her ease behind a row of overflowing trash cans and then beat feet down the alley like a track star. He felt his adrenaline kicking in. He slipped his Glock 9 out into his palm, popped the safety and reached for the radio. He paused for a minute; thinking things over, playing out various scenarios in his mind. How many others in the house? Had to be guns all over the fucking place, the prick was running a crank lab.
The rap sheet on Manuel "Oso" Ortega, also known as The Bear, was longer than the Florida recount. It stated that he had been badly abused by his crack-addicted, prostitute mother and her customers. She had burned him with a hot iron when he misbehaved. So now Oso was psychotic, drug addicted, armed and dangerous. He was also wanted in three states besides California, on charges ranging from assault and battery to grand theft auto; drug trafficking to homicide.
And he had started kidnapping children; this latest a young girl, apparently for sexual purposes.
Kenzie knew he was acting like a cowboy, but the capture of Ortega or a righteous shoot-- not to mention the rescue of one of the kidnapped children--would be quite a feather in his cap. He also knew he had an obligation to call for back-up. After all, he was out of his jurisdiction and operating without a partner or even a proper warrant.
But the car in the driveway, a battered Chevy truck with flames painted on the side, had broken tail lights; an old excuse for probable cause. Also, a man known to Kenzie to be on parole was both drinking and packing a fire arm. A witness had now identified Oso and indicated that he had sold her some drugs, not to mention that a kidnapping would be Ortega's third and final felony strike under California law.
Yeah, and your wife is pregnant…
Kenzie sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. He listened to the crickets sorrowing in the weeds and examined the peculiar truth that fatherhood scared him more than a pitched gun battle. His world was a sick and violent place.
Oso's mother burned him with a hot iron when he misbehaved…
Sam Kenzie also wanted to believe Laura's pregnancy was an accident, but he didn't. He didn't want the mere existence of a fetus to have changed his attitude towards his career and his life…But it had. What was that sound?
"Fuck!"
The squeal of tires: Bright headlights lit up the car before Kenzie could react and duck out of sight. He had a very brief glimpse of a much older man with a thin face whose eyes went wide at the sight of him. Kenzie had lost the precious advantage of surprise.
At that same moment Manuel Ortega grinned and started down off the porch towards the vehicle approaching the driveway; now revealed to be a Nissan without plates. But the startled man driving the car honked three times. He gunned the engine and roared away. Ortega, reacting to what was obviously a pre-arranged signal, dropped the quart of beer. He moved back towards the dilapidated blue house, gun up and eyes searching the street. Time began to slow down. Ortega's mouth narrowed and his face registered rage.
Kenzie yanked open the driver's door and rolled out into the street just as a shot splintered the windshield. The sound followed a split-second later; a thumping boom that started dogs barking all over the crime-infested neighborhood. Kenzie felt the lining in his jacket tear and he swore as the sharp gravel sandpapered the skin from his palms. He considered clambering back into the vehicle to use the radio, but a second shot flattened the front left tire, missing him by less than a foot. He rolled, rolled again.
BLAAAAAM! Oso was down on one knee, trying to track Kenzie under the car and then flat on the dying grass, squinting and squeezing off another round. Kenzie used the engine block for cover, threw his long body over the hood and let fly. Shells flew into the air and tinkled to the ground all around him. Oso watched divots travel up his lawn and decided discretion was the better part of valor. He zigzagged back onto the porch, shrieking something in Spanish to whoever was inside. The situation was becoming seriously messy.
"The hell is going on?" Somebody was coming down the alley. He saw Kenzie with the gun and ducked back into the encroaching darkness. Kenzie managed to free one hand and dragged out his shield, waved it in the air.
"Call 911, asshole!"
Bitter laughter: "Call 'em yourself, pig!"
Oso on the porch, Oso in the doorway: Kenzie fired again, and the porch light exploded into fragments. Once more time and blood spurted from Oso's forearm just as the door slammed shut. Got you, motherfucker…
Now, what?
Kenzie wiped sweat from his brow and weighed his shitty options. He heard a siren somewhere to the west; saw the flashing, twirling lights of a black-and-white as it ripped through rush hour traffic. He jumped back into the car and used the radio to introduce himself and explain the situation. To their credit, the San Bernardino cops didn't demand much of an explanation beyond a clear Sit-Rep and his exact location. Kenzie swallowed bile, then lied and told them he was at the foot of the front porch.
Kenzie stared firing at the house and then sprinted away from the safe cover of his car. The kid, I've got to get the kid away from them. He ran across the yellowing lawn and threw himself flat at the foot of the steps. His heart was hammering, now. Kenzie realized that he had never been so afraid in his entire life. He thought: God damn, Laura as he huddled there in the dark and changed clips, you made me hesitate.
A squad car raged down the street. It slammed into a pot hole in the asphalt and bounced, then shrieked itself sideways to block the driveway. Now the air stank of cordite, trash and burning rubber. The two cops placed themselves behind the black-and-white and threw down on the weathered blue house. One looked a little past veteran; the other was a rookie with a huge nose and wide, panicked brown eyes. The partners searched the yard and the porch, found Kenzie's position and the older one shouted: "Stay down!"
'Fuck that!" Kenzie bellowed. "Cover me."
He took a deep breath, gathered his legs and scrambled up the front steps on his elbows and knees. The front door was still open a few inches. Time expanded and then contracted again, everything slowed to a crawl. Kenzie saw a ratty green sofa and chair, a fat joint burning uselessly in an overflowing ashtray; magazines in piles next to an incongruously new wide-screen television set with surround-sound speakers. He crawled, moving a little closer; the 9 mm Glock clenched in his sweaty hands, then peered through the foot of the door into the hallway.
Motorcycle boots, fat legs in blue jeans. Kenzie fired even as his eyes traveled up the body to take in the long beard, wild "tweaker" eyes and pierced brows. The legs exploded into gore and bare bones. The biker wailed and went down. Another shot blew his jaw away. then he went silent. The shotgun he'd been holding fell uselessly to the wooden floor. Hey, Gato, nice to meet you.
Bear, from down the hall, probably in one of the back bedrooms: "Gato? Ese, are you okay, man?"
Kenzie went into the living room, gun up and searching every corner; heart in his throat and pulse throbbing painfully. He eyed the body, kicked the shotgun away and shifted to the left of the hall just as Oso fired two shots at the front of the house. Part of the door disappeared, and the living room was bathed in an eerie, shifting light as the cop cars arrived from all angles and focused their floods.
"Manuel Ortega? This is Detective Sam Kenzie, LAPD. Let's cool it for a minute and talk things over."
After a long pause, Oso answered, which Kenzie knew to be a good sign. He was panting, breathing heavily; high as a weather balloon on meth. "Talk what over, man? I ain't going back inside, ese, I promise you that."
"So let's talk."
"Talk about what, cop? Huh?"
"Hey, who cares," Kenzie said. He forced his voice to stay casual. "First, about how I'm getting too old for this shit. I'm nearly fifty, Oso. Don't make me chase you, okay?"
"Fuck you."
"Okay, how about it's not too late to help yourself, here."
"The fuck you mean? Huh? Help myself how, cop? I can't take it any more, man. I can't stand the pain."
"What pain, Oso?"
"The pain. I can't stand it, man. And no more of this I poke death bullshit, either! You know what I mean?"
Kenzie didn't, but played along. "Yeah. Sure. The I poke death thing."
He willed himself to stay calm, sound confident. He edged closer to the doorway. "I know something you can do about it," he said.
"Yeah, right. And what's that, ese?"
"You can let the kid go," Kenzie said. "That would sure make you look good. Then you get a bad-ass lawyer and you never know, right?"
"What kid you talking about?" Oso taunted. "You see some kids around here, or something? Huh?" But his response had taken a few seconds too long. Oso was thinking it over.
"Oso?"
"What kids, cop? Huh? Fuck off, man. I can't stand the pain."
He had the girl right there in the room with him. Kenzie just knew that somehow. He had always trusted his instincts.
And he also knew that Oso had just decided to kill her.
"Cop?"
Kenzie took a deep breath. He slid around the corner, gun up and at the ready, and started inching down the hall. The deep voice had come from the right and towards the back of the house. The junkie had said there were only two men inside. Kenzie knew he had to take his chances, or the little girl was dead. He approached the first bedroom, risked a peek. No one there.
"Come here," Oso growled softly. Someone whimpered; someone with a very high and fragile voice. They were in the back bedroom. A floorboard squeaked beneath his foot and Kenzie winced.
"Cop? You out there?"
"I'm coming in now," Kenzie said. "Let's not shoot each other, okay?"
He spun around the corner and stepped into the bedroom, the 9 mm cocked and ready. His hands were shaking, but he still managed to draw a bead on Oso's perspiring forehead. The huge man held a girl in a death grip, despite his wounded arm. She was a horrified, small-boned teen with her hair in a pony tail. She seemed astonishingly tall. The 357 was aimed right at the back of her skull. Time swirled into a black hole as the two men stared, unblinkingly, into each other's eyes. Oh, shit, oh shit…
Kenzie finally registered that the girl was standing on a chair. Oso was using her body as a shield. She wore a white blouse with cut-off blue jeans, and her thin legs were trembling. She reminded him of his sister.
Kenzie took a long moment, then said: "Oso, I think we have us a difficult situation, here."
Oso was wild-eyed, amped, soaring on methamphetamines and nearly psychotic. His jailhouse tattoos pulsed with blood and twitched from adrenaline. He cackled and held the girl closer, his snarling face next to hers so that Kenzie couldn't shoot. "Fucking difficult? No shit! Give me your fucking gun."
Sweat burned in Sam Kenzie's left eye. He blinked it away without once closing his right. "You know I can't do that," he said.
"I poke death, man. Now give me your fucking gun, or I do the girl!"
Kenzie didn't move. "And then I shoot you," he said. "What good is that?"
"I don't even fucking care, cop!"
The girl who looked like his sister Jenny whimpered and Kenzie forced a smile. "Take it easy, honey," he said. "I think we can still work something out."
Kenzie felt his vision telescope. He fixated on the smallest of details; the miniscule distance between Oso's head and the girl's face, the tremble in Oso's hairy trigger finger, the cars arriving outside to surround the house. He sniffed and took in the odor of some kind of gas. The crystal meth lab! Suddenly Kenzie realized Oso only wanted to stall until the inevitable spark from gunfire would immolate them all. He was running out of time.
Oso's eyes widened slightly, as if he were reading Kenzie's mind. "Don't even think about it asshole. I'll kill her first." Talking made his head move half an inch further away from his captive's.
Kenzie took the shot. He stole a deep breath, released it part way and squeezed the trigger; unfortunately just a split second after someone outside tried to use the bullhorn. The resulting screech caused Oso to turn slightly towards the window. The 9 mm slug neatly removed his left eye, his wide nose and part of his sinus cavity. A fine mist of crimson and grey sailed high in the air behind him. Then the bullet ricocheted out of Oso's skull and traveled down into the trembling neck of the young girl, who looked startled and mildly upset, as though someone else had rudely passed gas in an elevator. A crimson fount shot out of her carotid artery. She immediately went pale and began to sink to the floor.
Kenzie cried: "No!"
Meanwhile, what was left of Oso's mind finally directed his fat, hairy finger to pull the trigger of the 357 Magnum. Kenzie, horrified by the death of the girl, had already fired once more, hitting Oso in the chest. Then he managed to cover his balls in a useless defensive maneuver before the hollow-point bullet went right through his splayed fingers, tore the thin webbing of skin between two of them and viciously penetrated his lower intestines. There it spun, end over end, creating tremendous internal injury and releasing fecal matter into his bloodstream. What was left of Oso dropped like a sack of bricks.
Sam Kenzie fell to his knees, then sideways onto the floor. He felt thirsty and hot and his groin felt like it was on fire. He heard the cops storming the house, someone screaming for an ambulance, and he wondered if they would be too late to save him. Suddenly he was cold and shivering and the pain was unbearable. He watched the young girl bleed out onto a cheap, coffee-stained throw rug.
2.
Sam Kenzie dreams: He is a boy again, back in Twin Forks, suffering the blistering heat of the Nevada desert; walking aimlessly in search of water. He tries to force open a cactus to get a drink, but has no knife. The angry green needles puncture his hands. He shades his little eyes and looks around.
There is a shack of some kind, an inner tube on a rope that hangs from a weathered barn door. He sees some pale, badly deformed children playing nearby. They are taunting an aroused scorpion with a sharp, wooden stick. They pause to watch Kenzie and then laugh at him, shouting cruel-sounding words he cannot quite comprehend. One has the haunted face of his sister Jenny, who died in childhood. He wants to speak to her…But just then a sandstorm kicks up, stinging his eyes.
Kenzie walks away from the sullen children until they are swallowed up by the dust. He discovers some large rocks, then a cool cave. He goes down deep in the earth, trying to hide himself from the wind and dirt. He is desperate to escape from his agony, but before too long it finds him again. I can't stand the pain, ese! Kenzie tries to scream, but discovers that he has no face and can not make a sound.
Someone speaks. An old black man in a bleached pine rocking chair is trying to tell him something important. Young Sam Kenzie does his best to listen…
That's when he woke up.
The world was a white blur. As his eyes came into focus, Kenzie realized he was in a hospital bed. The pain was incredible, but somehow he had survived. He wiggled his fingers and toes and discovered that he wasn't paralyzed, searched and found the expected IV needle in his arm.
His balls.
He tried to move his hands low enough to explore his genitalia, but one was fastened to a board with the IV and the other buckled to the metal frame of the bed. Kenzie gasped in horror. They didn't want him to touch himself down there. The bullet had struck him low, and torn up his guts. He remembered that much. Jesus, he had lost his cock and balls.
"Hello?"
No one answered.
He had to know.
Kenzie struggled to free the hand they had fastened to the bed. He tried clenching the muscles in his pelvis, but everything seemed fuzzy and moved in slow motion. He felt a sharp pain in the groin area, but logic told him that this might just be a catheter inserted into his penis. It didn't prove anything.
"Nurse? Hello?"
He found the nurses call button with his trembling fingers and pushed, then pushed again.
Darkness began to overtake him.
Suddenly Kenzie felt terrified of going under. He was panicked that he might die while he was sleeping; never get to explain what had happened in Oso's house, why he'd had to take that shot, to clarify what had gone so horribly wrong. The world seemed to slide into thin, colored slats that moved further away. He was sinking fast; heart thudding, breathing rapid and shallow. Footsteps entered the room, someone spoke, but it was too late. He was unconscious.
Someone said something, and Kenzie woke up. It seemed he'd slept only a matter of a few minutes, but the itch on his face told him he badly needed a shave. At least a few days had gone by.
"How long?"
It sounded like the voice of a man with the harsh, raspy voice of a chronic smoker. For a long moment Kenzie didn't realize that it was his own voice, that he'd spoken his thoughts.
"Honey?"
A woman's voice. Laura was in the room with him. Kenzie tried to speak again, but the effort exhausted him. The room began to spin, and he was abruptly terrified that he would vomit; that then his belly wound would pop open and his stinking guts spill out. The pain increased. He remembered the blood spurting from the girl's neck and the bullet striking his stomach. Kenzie, half delirious, wailed his darkest thoughts. He said: "Damn it, you and the baby made me hesitate."
"What?"
"I hesitated, Laura. I lost my fucking edge."
"Oh, Sam, forgive me…"
And then he wanted to tell Laura that he was sorry, that he didn't really mean what he'd just said, but by then it was already too late. The 'pain train' was back. Agony tore through his insides and stole all reason. I can't stand the pain any more ese, I can't stand the pain…Moments, hours, days flew by. Kenzie moaned and grunted and writhed on the bed, generally drugged out of his mind. The world had no sharp edges, everything was blurred and distorted. He had a surgery, and then got cut another time or two; maybe too many operations to count.
In fact, Kenzie, at first humiliated, almost got used to watching his own shit flow into a plastic bag.
Almost.
One morning something felt different. Perhaps his medications had been changed, or it was merely that enough time had gone by for the healing to begin in earnest, but the world seemed almost back to normal. Kenzie found he was able to crack a joke and to smile. More time passed; sunny and then cloudy days. Several cops he knew came to visit, and quietly congratulate him on having "blown the assholes away." No one mentioned the dead girl, and Kenzie was grateful for that.
And finally the plastic bag of excrement was missing. Kenzie could see the furniture, the flowers, and the trees outside the hospital window even more clearly than before; the thin veil of cellophane, probably created by the pain medication, was finally gone.
"Honey?"
Sam Kenzie turned his head and saw Laura. She had dark circles under her eyes, and she had lost a great deal of weight, but Kenzie figured he didn't look so good himself. He thought his wife was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
"Hi."
Laura began to cry. "You're going to be okay," she gasped. "The surgeon says you're going to be fine."
"I know. He told me."
"How do you feel now, Sam?"
He searched himself. "Weak," he said. "Really weak." And then he looked more closely at Laura, at how thin she was, and something deep inside began to shrivel and die. He struggled to speak again. "What's bothering you, honey?"
"I don't know how to say it, Sam."
A chill ran down his spine. What, was she having an affair too? IAD was going to put him up on charges, what the hell was she so upset about?
"For Chrissakes," he sighed, "just say it."
"I'm not…carrying, any more."
"The baby?"
Her eyes told him before she shook her head. "I realized that you were right, Sam," she whispered. "This just wasn't a good time for us to have a child. I…took care of it, honey."
"You what?"
"The baby. It's gone."
Kenzie searched himself, for he was uncertain how he should respond. What he discovered in his mending guts was an odd mixture of shock and relief. He looked up at Laura and was surprised to find tears running down her cheeks. He made his features more severe and covered up as rapidly as possible.
"Oh, Laura, I didn't mean you had to do that…I was blaming myself, not you."
"Hush," she said. "You rest, now."
She touched a finger to his lips. Kenzie smelled her hand cream, and a bit of lush perfume. His groin stirred. He smiled. All of his senses seemed to be returning to normal, at long last.
He fell asleep again.
3.
"Internal Affairs was all over you about this damned mess, Sam. Like ugly on a herd of apes."
Kenzie nodded. He knew that this was the part where he was supposed to express his gratitude. So he did. "Captain Kramer, I want you to know that I appreciate everything you've done on my behalf."
"The Hispanic community was up in arms about Oso and the girl getting wasted. It wasn't easy to convince them that this was a righteous shoot."
"It was, Cap. He was going to kill her."
Kramer slapped a file down on his desk. Storm clouds gathered on his reddened, alcoholic features. He leaned down like Zeus. "But you went in there alone, without a warrant, and for Christ's sake you were on somebody else's turf, Sam! Parker Center is pissed off. They want me to give them your head."
"Then maybe you should consider doing that."
"You're damn right!"
Kramer was the theatrical sort. After a long, drawn-out pause he relented a bit and straightened up. He reached into his back pocket, produced a rolled up newspaper. He opened it with a flourish, pointed. "I particularly love this part. 'Kenzie, a cowboy cop from the tiny town of Twin Forks, Nevada, brings a wild-west attitude to his job with the LAPD.' That's just great. Wild west, my sagging ass."
Kenzie cleared his throat. "I'm sorry."
"You should be," Kramer seethed. "The only thing that saved you is all the positive publicity you got for getting yourself shot while in the process of fucking up. What the hell am I supposed to do with you, Sam?"
Kenzie remained silent, face expressionless and eyes mild. He looked down at his still-healing belly. In truth, he had no answer to that question. Part of him, he realized, hoped he'd have the decision taken away; get early retirement and a pension. The other part of him was petrified by the idea of leaving the job. Even though he'd just been shot.
"Sam?"
Kenzie winced. His stomach clenched involuntarily every time he thought of his wound, the surgeries, that omnipresent bag of feces beside the bed. It hit him that it had been a very long time since Kramer had spoken. He looked up.
"I'm sorry, Cap," he said. "I guess I'm still a little weak. What did you say?"
Kramer shook his head sadly. "I asked what the hell I should do with you."
Kenzie shrugged. "I'm a team player, Cap. Whatever you think is best."
Kramer chewed his lower lip absently. Kenzie studied the broken veins in his nose and the bloodshot eyes. At one time Captain Judd Kramer had been one of the finest men the LAPD had to offer. A few errors in judgment and a couple of political mistakes had reduced him to an overweight bureaucrat; just waiting for a diagnosis of cirrhosis and a ticket to a liver transplant.
Kramer sighed heavily. "Maybe you ought to take it easy for a while, Sam. I didn't want to do this, but I think you'd better a ride a desk for the next few months. Get a little therapy, okay?" He opened his desk drawer and removed something small. He handed Kenzie a business card. "Call this shrink, a Dr. Sidney Greenburg."
Kenzie felt queasy. "You're kidding, right?"
Kramer shook his head. "I am most certainly not kidding, Sam. And all this comes down from God, okay? Right from Assistant Chief Daniels. He says you take it easy and shuffle auto-theft reports, maybe get yourself some psychotherapy, and then we can review your situation again in a few months."
"When the publicity dies down?"
Kramer shrugged. "You think whatever you want."
"Thanks, Cap," Kenzie said. He stood up and put out his right hand. "I know you really went to bat for me on this one."
Captain Kramer took his hand. "You nearly blew yourself right out of a career, Sam. Listen, I know you're a hot dog, always chomping at the bit to be out there on the street. I realize that this desk thing is going to be hell on you. But everybody needs a break now and then, and believe me, this will be for the best. Just grin and bear it, okay?"
Sam Kenzie nodded and turned to go. He worked hard to hide that he was not at all upset. In fact, he felt relieved. But fuck that shrink business. No way.
4.
"Do you really love your wife, Detective Kenzie?"
Kenzie squirmed on the uncomfortably soft couch and manufactured an exasperated sigh. "Of course I fucking love her. Don't be ridiculous."
Dr. Greenburg was an almost absurdly mild-looking man who reminded Kenzie of a younger Woody Allen. His thinning hair was in disarray, and his thick glasses caused his eyes to mushroom. A small rectangle of sunlight reflected directly off Greenburg's balding pate; it looked like a doorway to another world.
"You fucking love her?" Greenburg rolled the word around on his tongue, almost tasted it. "I wonder why you would choose to phrase it that way."
Kenzie felt his palms moisten. This nerd Greenburg scared him a little. That fact, in turn, made him angry. "Look, I came in here to waste time and money because my boss asked me to. He thought it might help my…flashbacks. So far, all you've done is act like some caricature of a therapist."
Dr. Greenburg pursed his lips like a woman applying lipstick. He nodded "Point taken," he said. "You are being direct with me, and I can appreciate that. So let us cut to the chase, as they say."
Kenzie leaned back on the couch cushions. It felt like falling into cotton candy. "Yeah. Please get to the point, okay? I'm not here to play games."
"I asked about your love for your wife for one particular reason, Detective Kenzie. You have admitted to occasional affairs, as well as a fondness for strip bars and lap dancers. I was simply trying to explore your reasoning and justifications for such…extracurricular behavior."
"What, because I love my wife I can't touch any other pussy, is that it?"
"That," Greenburg said with a touch of sarcasm, "is what is generally meant by the term 'till death do you part.'" Kenzie noticed that the psychiatrist's cheeks had gone a bit pink.
Kenzie sat up. "I was under the impression therapists were not supposed to render moral judgments. Did I miss something somewhere?"
Greenburg blushed more deeply. "Frankly, it is difficult for me to not have some sympathy for your wife, under the circumstances. You have indicated that she wishes to have children and that she had an abortion for your sake. One would think…"
Kenzie sighed. "Okay, Greenburg, look. Whatever you may think of me, I do love Laura deeply and I would never want to hurt her in any way. Cops have stressful lives, as you well know. Sometimes I blow off a little steam, that's all. But Laura has never known about it, and she never will."
Greenburg started to respond and Kenzie could read the thought: How can you be sure? But Greenburg held himself in check. He merely shrugged. "Was your father unfaithful, Sam?"
For some reason the use of his first name made Kenzie relax. He nodded absently. "I guess that probably figures, huh?"
"At the risk of sounding like 'a caricature of a therapist,' what was your childhood like, Sam? Where did you grow up?"
"In Twin Forks, Nevada," Kenzie said. "And it was okay, I guess. My aunts and uncles all lived together on a small ranch. They had a tough time making it."
Greenburg wrote something down on his notepad and Kenzie cringed a bit. "What about your mother and father?"
"I'd rather not talk about that."
"Why not?"
"Let's not go there, okay"
Greenburg made another note. He leaned back in his chair. "I was just wondering if your avoidance of starting a family might have something to do with your own experiences as a child."
Kenzie found himself half way to his feet before he could halt or disguise the intensity of his reaction. He blushed and sat down. "Touché," he muttered. "A hit, a palpable hit."
"Shakespeare?" Greenburg said, one eyebrow arched. "I thought you were something of a cowboy."
"Good teachers. In high school, and a year or two of college. We moved to California when I was a teenager." Kenzie leaned back into the annoying cushions. After a long moment, said: "We were rednecks. My father used to beat the shit out of me and my mother was a drunk. Are you satisfied, now?"
Greenburg seemed only mildly interested, although he did make another note. "Do you have any siblings, Sam?"
Kenzie said nothing. Greenburg scribbled a bit more then looked up with an arched eyebrow. "Sam?"
Kenzie was surprised to find his voice small and weak. "A sister, Jenny."
"And where does your sister live?"
"She doesn't."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Jenny is dead."
Suddenly the clock on the wall seemed to tick forward more slowly and with greater volume. Greenburg could have, perhaps should have spoken but he did not. He waited, masterfully increasing the pressure until Kenzie felt his emotions rising like sewage in a tank; choking off his breathing and moistening his eyes. He felt himself drift through a wrinkle in time.
"Jenny was always skinny," Kenzie said softly. "My aunt used to say she could turn sideways and stick out her tongue and she'd look like a zipper. We we're pretty close for brother and sister, maybe because we had to be to survive. Went swimming together down at the creek, swung out over it in an old used tire Grandpa hooked up to a piece of rope, stuff like that, you know?"
Greenburg remained silent.
"I reckon I was maybe ten, so Jenny would have been eleven then. It was just before we moved from Twin Forks to California. A half-breed name of Red came by, offering to break horses. We had two we couldn't handle, so my uncle hired the man. Red, he was a big, pony-tailed bastard who walked bow-legged. Had a happy smile, like a kid at Disneyland, but he was pure evil."
Kenzie looked up at Greenburg with a worried frown. "I've never talked about this before," he said. "I don't like how it feels."
"No," Greenburg said. His eyes were kind. "Go on. I think it will help you to talk this out, Sam."
"She told me she was afraid of Red," Kenzie said. "But I didn't believe her." A clumsy, stiff moment passed. What Kenzie thought he saw in Greenburg's placid eyes forced him to look down and away. The flesh around his lips turned white. "That's bullshit, I guess," he said. His voice was thick with emotion, now. "I believed her. But I was afraid of Red, too. Afraid to back her up with the grownups for fear he'd whip me. I had nightmares about him."
Greenburg interrupted only to prompt him. "What happened in those dreams?"
"I'd be somewhere, stark naked and trying to cover myself. I'd see Red laughing at me like he knew what a coward I was, but also like he…wanted me. And in that dream I'd know something had happened to Jenny, something bad…"
"Sam?"
Greenburg's voice startled Kenzie into realizing he'd been silent again. He tried to meet the therapist's eyes, to defiantly stare him down and stop the flood of repressed emotion. He failed.
"Sam, what happened to Jenny?"
Kenzie looked down. "My sister hung herself in the barn," he said. His voice broke on the last word. "She left a note. Turns out old Red had held her down and had his way with her more than a few times, and she didn't think she could tell anybody."
"But you think she tried to tell you?"
"Yes."
Greenberg leaned forward with sympathy in his eyes. "Sam, you were just a ten year old boy. What were you supposed to do? She should have told an adult."
"No," Kenzie sighed, "she was probably right not to bother. Dad would have blamed her, and Mom would have figured out a way to make it something to get drunk over."
"What happened next, Sam?"
"My uncle Buck, he was a mean bastard. I suspect he took care of it."
Greenburg cleared his throat nervously. "Excuse me?"
Kenzie looked up again, and his eyes were cold. "We didn't call cops in my family," he said. "Maybe that's why I decided to become one, who knows."
Dr. Greenburg was perspiring. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "Uh, what happened?"
Kenzie smiled thinly. "Red just up and disappeared, that's what. My guess is he's buried near Twin Forks, where the family used to plant dead livestock. Stinks up there anyway, you know? They probably beat the bastard senseless, then tossed him in the ground and covered him up while he was still breathing. Would have been the righteous thing to do."
Greenburg looked uncomfortable. Kenzie grinned. "Don't worry Doc," he said. "You don't have to report anything. Everyone involved has been dead for years, and besides, it was in another state. It's all over and done."
"Not if you have still not forgiven yourself, Sam."
"Maybe I shouldn't let myself off the hook," Kenzie said. "Maybe it's best I go on owing Jenny something for letting her down."
Greenburg sat back. "I have a fantasy I'd like to share with you," he said. Kenzie was annoyed by the psychobabble in the phrase, but Greenburg failed to notice. "I think the incident with your sister may have contributed to both of your problems, your ambivalence toward women and the reluctance to have a child."
"I don't follow," Kenzie said. He was starting to feel irritated at having been so skillfully exposed.
"First, you divide women into Whores and Madonna's," Greenburg mused. "That's classic. And yet you seem to have a strong and otherwise healthy relationship with your wife. Your love for your sister was probably the basis for that."
"I think it's just that Laura understands me."
"Fair enough, and I suspect she does, but now answer me this," Greenburg said. "Are you--perhaps unconsciously--loving a child by not bringing him or her into this world to suffer?
"I don't know. Maybe."
"Doesn't that strike you as a bit perverse?"
Kenzie smiled slowly. "There are endless perversions of love in this world, Doctor Greenburg. No one knows that better than a cop and a psychiatrist."
For some reason Greenburg started pedaling backwards. He coughed into his fist and tried to regain control of the conversation. "So your childhood was…miserable."
"In a word, yes."
"And you feel the death of your sister is why you became a peace officer?"
Kenzie got to his feet. He had already composed himself; his eyes were bright and his expression guarded. "Could be," he said. "Maybe yes, maybe no. But I do know one thing for sure."
Greenburg rose as well. Kenzie offered his hand, and Greenburg shook it from reflex. "I have done what my boss asked me to do," Kenzie said. "And this is the last conversation you'll ever have with me, unless we run into each other in a restaurant. Have a good day, Dr. Greenburg."
"Detective Kenzie? Sam? I really think we should meet again to discuss the impact of…"
Kenzie shook his head. "Thanks anyway," he said. "This is not for me. Just be sure to put down that I'm cured."
5.
Kenzie wore a new suit to the funeral of the murdered girl's father.
The distraught man's wife had come home from her night job cleaning offices for a large media conglomerate to discover her husband hanging from a belt in the shower stall. He had apparently been very determined, for his legs were touching the floor. That meant he had strangled slowly and probably had to bounce a few times before he finally succeeded in crushing his windpipe.
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
Laura's face now carried a perpetual frown, and she had become as protective as a mother hen. For some unaccountable reason, that pissed Kenzie off something fierce. He took to drinking a bit too much and far too often. Laura's response was to withdraw even further into her depression.
The day before the funeral, Kenzie tried on every suit he owned, but suddenly they all seemed out-of-date or threadbare and worn. He started throwing them all on the floor and kicking them into a pile. Laura, with the wisdom of the female, understood his mood. She had stayed out of the room until he was over his rage, and then suggested a visit to a men's shop. Kenzie dropped entirely too much money on a suit made in some obscure corner of Italy and a pair of shoes that pinched the shit out of his feet. The collar choked his neck, and all the way down the jammed, malodorous 101 Freeway he kept flashing on the father, wheezing as he strangled. How badly would you want to have to die to go through a thing like that?
As they neared Griffith Park, some kid in a green Ford Mustang fastback cut in front of them. He was greasy-haired, shirtless and probably half stoned. His baseball cap was turned backwards, a trend Kenzie found infuriating for reasons he could never quite explain. The kid flipped him off after their bumpers tapped. Kenzie felt his face turn purple with rage. He was instantly consumed by a vivid fantasy: He would pepper the trunk with 9 mm shells, roll up alongside the little prick to blow the top of his head off. Then he'd plant a "throw-down" 22 automatic and claim the kid had pulled it on him. The scenario made him smile. Meanwhile, Laura slowly released a pent-up breath and wiped her brow.
The cemetery was large, verdant and colorful. Tall lawn sprinklers were hissing mist over the flat, white gravestones. They drove down the circular driveway and located the chapel. They timed it to arrive late and stayed in the back of the crowd to avoid attracting attention. Kenzie had expected members of the media to be in attendance, but the people there were all Latino and he saw no cameras. He and Laura stood out like white grains of rice in a bowl full of wheat cereal.
The service was quiet and primarily in Spanish. Kenzie understood very little of what was said, but didn't really care. An impossibly young-looking minister named Ernesto Alvarez spoke for a few moments and performed some calming rituals. Kenzie knew that many Hispanics were Catholic, and that Catholics considered suicide to be a mortal sin. But Alvarez appeared not to judge or condemn the dead man. Kenzie was pleased the family had been spared that much. As the service came to a close, several people saw Kenzie and Laura. They began to whisper among themselves, as if debating what to do. Kenzie felt his face grow hot. Laura tugged at his arm, but he found himself unable to look away.
After a long moment, the young minister excused himself and walked across the moist grass to where Kenzie and his wife were standing. Close up, Alvarez was a mild-looking young man, balding prematurely, and his brown suit was shiny at the elbows and knees.
"Good day," he said. "You knew Senor Ruiz?"
Kenzie swallowed. "Not really. I hope I haven't created a disruption," he managed. "I just wanted to pay my respects."
Alvarez squinted in the sunshine. "You are that policeman," he said, finally, in a voice without rancor. "The one who accidentally shot his poor little Carmelita."
Kenzie nodded. "Yes."
"My husband feels terrible about what happened," Laura interjected gently. "He still doesn't sleep well at night."
Having Laura explain his weakness to a stranger made Kenzie cringe. He tried to gather his thoughts. "Look, I wanted to…I don't know. To be here. Maybe because I was still in the hospital when the girl was buried." He forced himself to say her name aloud. "Carmelita."
Alvarez nodded. "I can understand that, but I must tell you that the family has mixed feelings about your being here. They do not wish to be impolite, but…"
"We'll leave right now," Kenzie said. "I understand."
"Thank you," Alvarez said. "God be with you."
"And with you," Kenzie replied.
They turned their backs and crossed the wet grass again. Their shoes made tiny sucking sounds. As they walked towards the cars in the parking lot, a shard of reflected sunlight glanced off a tinted windshield and momentarily blinded Kenzie. He was stunned to feel his eyes tear up and his shoulders begin to shake. Laura gripped his forearm and helped him remain upright.
"Sam, this was not your fault," she said. "None of it."
Kenzie did not answer. His mind was elsewhere. He was debating if he should have taken that shot, or waited a second longer. But then who would have lived and who would still have died? He pondered twists of fate and destiny, thought about the very fabric of the known universe. Spiritual matters had never concerned him before, but now he felt consumed by a hunger to know the unknowable: How one child could be driven mad by torture while another is raised in a loving home; a third aborted and still another consigned to an early grave by the split-second decision of an exhausted police officer.
But no answers came. All he did was grow angrier at God and His relentlessly violent universe.
Not that it did him any good.
6.
Kenzie was drunk.
Months had gone by and the boredom was becoming relentless. Shuffling papers had done little to improve his disposition. He missed being out on the streets and in the thick of it. So he found himself hanging around O'Halloran's, even at lunchtime, listening to end-of-shift anecdotes with a lustful heart. He also started smoking again.
Patrick O'Halloran had worked Homicide. He'd put in his twenty years before dropping nine large to take over a small pool hall near the station. Now it was a cop bar, and a good one; by far the most popular in the area. Kenzie was seated alone in a corner booth, his weary ass squeaking on the red plastic; ash tray overflowing and third beer just pissed out, when Kelly Robbins strolled in. She had some cub with her, probably a morgue guy at the newspaper.
"Hey, Paddy."
O'Halloran looked up, eyed her taunting breasts, then nodded curtly and returned to wiping down the wooden bar. He didn't care much for reporters. Kelly had cut her hair short and put on a few pounds. The effect was not flattering. She caught Sam Kenzie's eye and he winked. He saw a quick flicker run behind her eyeballs, probably the night of that LA Tribune Christmas party, four or five years ago, when he'd banged her silly in the broom closet. He'd never called her after that. She took the arm of the geeky, freckled kid, who was maybe half her age, and tugged him a bit closer. Her features melted into a cool smile.
"Hey, Kenzie. They keeping you busy these days?"
"Hello, Kelly," Kenzie drawled. "I think you know better than that." You look like shit, he thought, and you know what? You weren't that good a lay, either.
Kelly and her geek sat at the bar and started talking. Kenzie pulled out his cell phone and checked for messages. Just two bored cops following up on warrants and an ancient Chinese man named Ting, who had been calling on a daily basis to see if LAPD had finally found his stolen bicycle. Kenzie started to dial home, but stopped and closed the cell phone instead. He realized, one more time, that he had nothing new to say.
He looked up and noticed the bartender following Kelly's conversation. He focused and decided he'd had enough beer. Kelly was entertaining the kid with horror stories.
"It all started with some spooky phone calls to the neighbors, kiddy shit like panting and heavy breathing. So a couple of calls are traced back to the same block, but nothing much comes of it. But then it hits the fan."
The men were hooked. Kelly sat forward. "This poor rookie goes in to check out the complaint," she said, "and the house in Van Nuys he goes to just stinks. This was last weekend, so it was fucking hot, you know? Nobody answers the bell, but the side gate is open. He goes back there. The back yard was a mess, man. Dead and dying pets everywhere, some of them looked tortured, real creepy shit."
"I read about this," the kid said. "It was Peterson's story."
Kelly nodded. "He broke it. It was like a Satanist lived there or something. So the rook figures he's got enough with animal cruelty, neighbor complaints and an open gate to start peeking in windows and trying the locks. He makes the rounds."
Kenzie walked the scene in his imagination. His pulse began to race with the old, familiar excitement. He lit a cigarette and leaned forward. He tried to be quiet. He wanted to hear the rest.
The kid cracked. "What was it he saw again?"
Kelly let a dramatic pause hang in the air like smog. Then she made her eyes bulge out like a teen telling campfire stories. "He saw body parts, the chopped-up legs and arms and trunks and heads of little children. Some really sick stuff."
O'Halloran nodded. "And the fucking perp, he wrote on the walls."
The kid swallowed. "In human shit."
"Among other things." Kelly grinned wickedly, her overly made-up eyes prancing. "Something in Latin, and Peterson told me what it was. The cops held it back so they'd be able to weed out all the crazies who call up to confess."
"What was it?" The kid asked, although his stricken face said he wasn't sure he really wanted to know.
Kelly fumbled the ball. "I don't remember," she said. "Probably shouldn't tell you anyway, right?"
O'Halloran shrugged, his thick eyebrows mating like caterpillars. "Right. Best forget you ever heard it."
Kenzie pondered, then decided to have one last beer. Kelly finished hers, belched in a dainty fashion and got up to go to the ladies room. Almost as an afterthought, she said: "I think it translates to something like 'I revoke death,' according to Peterson. But he's always fucking something up." She went into the john and slammed the door. The kid stayed at the bar, twirling his coaster with one finger.
Kenzie felt a chill sink deep into his bones. He flashed on Oso, eyes rolling like a maddened beast, crying: "I can't stand the pain, ese." He stood up, dropped some money on the table and forced himself to sound casual.
"Paddy, just out of curiosity, who was it caught that case?"
7.
"Pretty thin, Kenzie." Jack Talbot was a large, dyspeptic man with a broken nose and deep-set, porcine eyes. He clasped hands across his ample belly and leaned back. The hinges of his chair complained. "We run a link all the way from San Bernardino, where Ortega dies, to Van Nuys? Even if we do that, we don't have any evidence suggesting these two knew each other. Hell, we don't even know who the other clown is, for Chrissakes."
"Jack, hear me out. Oso was tweaked out of his mind, but he was also fed up about something. He kept saying he couldn't stand the pain, and one other thing."
"What?"
Kenzie lowered his voice, so the cops near the water cooler wouldn't overhear. "He said 'no more of this I poke death' shit."
It took a moment to register, and then Talbot sat up and plopped his elbows down, rattling the metal desk. He looked pissed. "Who the hell told you about that?"
Kenzie shrugged. "That doesn't matter, Jack. Now just walk through this with me, okay? We get word off the street that our boy Ortega has suddenly started kidnapping children. We don't know why, so we assume it's because he was abused and he's getting off on doing the abusing now."
"That was logical, knowing these freaks."
"Sure. But when I track Oso and his buddy down and pop them, there's only the one kid. And she is still alive. Not one mutilated corpse, not a single trace of any of the others."
"And?"
"Maybe that's because he never kept them for very long."
Talbot frowned. "You're thinking that's because he just passed them along to some cult back here in the San Fernando Valley?"
"Cult, group, person. Whoever."
"Kenzie, give me a break," Talbot said. He sighed theatrically, wearily. "Somebody writes Latin phrases in human shit on the walls and hacks up little kids, you got to figure he's on the wrong side of the God business, okay? It was a cult."
Kenzie decided to butter him up a bit. He nodded. "You're probably right. Makes sense to approach it that way."
"Damn straight," Talbot said. He seemed somewhat mollified. Kenzie let him bask in it for a while, and then winked.
"But it also makes sense to check into my theory and see if you can find some way to connect the dots."
"You win, Sam," Talbot said. "I'll look into it, okay?" He started fussing with his file folders, as if to signal that the interview was over. Kenzie sat quietly. Talbot looked up, frustrated. "Sam, I give you my word. I'll look into it."
Kenzie got up and turned to leave. He paused in the doorway. "If there's any way I can get back on duty, I'd like to work on this one with you. Would you have any problem with that?"
Talbot considered. Finally he just shrugged. "You can pull it off," he said, "then be my guest."
Kenzie smiled brightly. "Talbot?"
"Uh oh. No. No way, Sam."
"Oh, come on. What would it hurt?"
"Sam, Kramer would have my sorry ass, you know that."
"Just run me one copy, Jack."
Talbot got to his feet. He indicated the huge pile of folders on his metal desk. Then he said: "Fuck off, Kenzie. Let me put it to you this way, I am officially telling you to keep your hands off my case. I am officially refusing to let you have a copy of the murder book on those kids."
Kenzie sagged. "I understand, Jack. Sorry I asked."
Talbot tapped the third file from the top. "This one, for example, which Popeye Kasper did from scratch as a reference summary for everybody looking into this thing, like those FBI assholes, is only thirty-odd pages long, plus some black-and-white photos reduced to thumbnail size. You are not to touch this folder, or use my cheap little fax machine to copy it."
Kramer nodded soberly. "Okay."
"And especially not right now when I'm on my way to take a shit and expect to be gone for maybe ten minutes. Do we understand each other, here? Are you receiving me, Detective?"
"Loud and clear."
"Good. Now get out of my way."
Kenzie was done in five. He paused by administration to file a request for full reinstatement. Then he drove to an overpriced Seattle coffee store and sat alone at a back table, reading the contents of the file.
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