country road called Schemerhorn Lane. I didn’t make the turn because there was no way I could follow him and not get spotted, so I pulled over on the shoulder and waited five minutes. I knew there was a good chance that I lost him, but I had nothing better to do, so after my break I went down Schemerhorn.
The road was lined with swampland and heavy brush with an occasional farm but otherwise it was pretty much uninhabited. I was the only one on the road, and after about four miles or so I started to think about turning back. Before I stopped, I came upon a homemade wooden street sign at the end of a dirt road called Toachung Road. I remembered toachung from my karate days as the Korean word for sacred training area.
I slowed down as I passed it and all I could see was a long dirt road that eventually wound through the brush. I didn’t want to chance driving down it, so I drove ahead and parked the Eldorado on the side of the road in a dirt area behind some trees. I set off on foot toward Toachung Road.
I stayed to the side of the road so that if I needed to I could dive into the brush for some cover. I was on the road for a full twenty minutes when I came upon a clearing and what looked like a training camp of some sort. There was a log cabin, a pavilion with free weights and weight machines, and a corrugated steel building with a single pipe chimney emitting smoke. To get in the steel building, you had to enter an area that was covered with stones and gravel and surrounded by a ten-foot-high fence. The stone area was set up with a large statue of the Buddha, maybe six feet high and four feet around. Surrounding the statue were heavy stone benches. The whole area was circular with a locked door at one end that was the entrance to the steel building. It was about thirty feet in diameter, and there were several other Asian-themed stone figures of dragons and tigers.
When I looked closer, I could see that Mitchell and Harter’s pit bull was asleep on the gravel just in front of the Buddha statue. Abadon’s SUV was parked just outside the fence, and after a few minutes he came out in a sweatshirt and shorts and headed over to the weight-training pavilion. I watched him lift for a few minutes and decided to head out before I got caught trespassing. The place had an eerie feel to it and I wanted to get out.
So, Abadon and the karate guys were training buddies, maybe close training buddies? What the hell would a self-proclaimed Christian be doing with friends like these guys? Who knows, but maybe they were into the whole Christian thing too. The place gave me the creeps, as did this bizarre friendship. I was walking out of the place, feeling a bit uneasy, and I noticed a half-pungent, half-sweet odor in the air.
It added to the creepy feel of the place.
At AJ’s, the brain trust was discussing several topics at once.
“Ripken was so upset, they canceled the game,” Rocco said.
“They canceled the game because his wife was having sex with Kevin Costner?” TC said.
“Were they humping on the mound?” Jerry Number Two asked.
“It was on her mound anyway,” Jerry Number One said.
“Maybe it was in the batter’s box,” TC said.
“Costner was clearly in the batter’s box and Ripken was on deck,” Jerry Number Two said.
“You know Marilyn Monroe had six toes on each foot,” TC said.
“What does that have to do with Ripken’s wife?” Rocco said.
“She had six toes too?” Jerry Number One asked.
“I don’t know, but you could see the extra toes in that scene where she’s standing on the subway grate,” TC said.
“Who was looking at her toes?” Jerry Number One said.
“Certainly not DiMaggio. He was pissed because you could see right through to her mound,” Rocco said.
“Hey-grass on the infield. Play ball!” TC said.
“That’s what Kevin Costner always said,” Jerry Number Two said.
“You know one of the Bond girls used to be a guy,” Rocco said.
“Huh?” TC couldn’t keep up. “A transmitter?”
“Yep,” Rocco said.
“How many toes?” Jerry Number One asked.
“I bet you didn’t see her mound in that movie,” TC said.
“I would cancel a game over that,” Jerry Number One said. “I’d refuse to even get in the batter’s box.”
“You screwball,” Rocco said.
Kelley was in his usual spot, turned away from the Foursome. ESPN Classic was showing that old home-run derby show and Hank Aaron was up against Moose Skowron.
“Hey, who’s on the mound?” I said.
“Please…,” Kelley said.
AJ slid a Schlitz to me and a Coors Light in front of Kelley.
“Any news about Howard?” I asked.
“No, they don’t have anything new.”
“I think it might have something to do with that prison overdose. Dr. Pacquoa said that around the same time that the inmates died, a graduate intern abruptly stopped coming to the prison.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Rudy knows a guy who did some psychiatric consultation in the prison during that time and I went to talk to him. He’s a Filipino doc and he told me about some things.”
“Oh really?”
“Maybe you could suggest to Morris and his bunch that they should look in to that?”
“Maybe you should go screw that Bond girl-what are you, nuts?”
“Hey-I’m just trying to help.”
“That’s the problem. Once again you’re out of your league and in over your head. They have no interest in proving Howard is innocent; they’re interested in finding him as fast as they can. Until kids stop showing up dead, the cops and the general public don’t find Howard a terribly sympathetic character,” Kelley said.
Clearly, Kell wasn’t in the best of moods and I didn’t feel like getting scolded, so I shut up for a while. I went back to drinking my beer and AJ flipped the TV to Channel 13 for the news. The local stations were milking the hell out of the murder story with nightly updates even when they had very little new information.
“New developments in the Crawford Slayer case,” the pretty rubberized female anchor said, starting the news. “Toxicology reports indicate that victims Connie Carter and Alison Mann both had traces of illicit drugs in their system. The State Laboratory did not recognize any of the drug’s metabolites and they did not fit any of the usual drug categories.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I said.
“It usually means that the subjects were using a designer drug like ecstasy, except it’s a new version or some sort of derivative,” Kelley said.
“Hmmm…”
“What ‘Hmmm’?”
“Well, what do you think that does to the case?”
“The fact that a high-school kid was getting high? I don’t think it does anything. High-school kids being high, when did that become news?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
I decided that I had gotten my recommended daily dose of Schlitz and started to head out. On my way to the door, I couldn’t help but hear the Foursome looking for some sort of resolution to Cal Ripken’s problems with Kevin Costner.
“That’s why he played in all those games,” Rocco said.
“Because his wife was doing the guy from The Untouchables?” TC said.
“Apparently, he wasn’t untouchable in real life,” Jerry Number Two said.
23
Al, the long-eared alarm clock, went off at just after five on Sunday morning. In between the steady stream of WOOFs there was the familiar thwack sound.
“Good morning, Billy,” I said as I stood on my front stoop. It dawned on me that it had been a couple of days
