The Boys from Santa Cruz

headline in the morning edition of the San Jose Mercury News on April 18. DEATH TOLL COULD REACH 20 was the subhead. Pender had to put on his half-moon reading glasses to make out the text, which had been further reduced in size by the faxing process.

Somewhere between two and three o’clock on the afternoon of the seventeenth, exact time still to be determined, there’d been an explosion in a private mental hospital known as Meadows Road, presumably in the basement boiler room, presumably caused by natural gas. It felt as if the entire building had been lifted off its foundations, reported one survivor. The subsequent fire had greatly complicated efforts to evacuate the confused mental patients, according to the chief of the Bonny Doon Volunteer Fire Department. Not long afterward (exact time again to be determined), the three-story building had suffered a “catastrophic structural failure.”

On the following day, The Mercury News again headlined the story. The number of injured had risen to thirty-seven, seventeen dead bodies had been identified, and a third category had been added: eleven persons “missing or unaccounted for.” At the end of the article, in smaller type (reduced to ant tracks on the fax), the newspaper printed the lists of casualties and m.o.u.f.’s for the first time.

Pender squinted over the small print long enough to realize the names were not in alphabetical order, then put the pages down, took off his half-moon reading glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He could feel a headache coming on-probably those damn drugstore glasses. One of these days, he told himself, he’d have to break down and visit an optometrist, get some real eyeglasses. The only thing holding him back was sheer vanity, not over his looks (that train left the station when he began losing his hair at the age of nineteen) but over his eyesight. Having boasted about his twenty-twenty vision too often to too many colleagues over the years, he knew he’d be eating mucho crow the day he showed up at the office wearing specs.

Back to work, this time bending over the fax with the magnifying glass, skimming down, down…And there it was, toward the bottom of the list of persons missing or unaccounted for: “Sweet, Luke Jr., 25, Santa Cruz.”

But missing ain’t dead, thought Pender. He skimmed past the text of the next day’s article to check out the appended, updated casualty list. Whoops: “Sweet, Luke Jr.” was now one of four names listed as missing, presumed dead.

Presumed-there was that word again. But why the change? Pender asked himself. How had four bodies gone from being unaccounted for to being presumed dead after only two days? It couldn’t have been through DNA identification-at that time, a one-week window was the best-case scenario for industry-standard RFLP testing, and then only if the samples were of good quality and high molecular weight. If they’d had to use the newer PCR technique to amplify the smaller or more damaged samples, the identification would have taken even longer.

So maybe they’d identified all four bodies through dental records, Pender told himself. Or maybe the Santa Cruz authorities had just assumed that no one could have survived an explosion of that magnitude. But Pender’s gut told him that someone had, and in the absence of high-molecular-weight evidence to the contrary, Pender always followed his gut.

6

The sun is low over the ocean when the old man’s surprisingly robust old heart finally ceases to beat. Asmador (he used to have another name, a human name he can no longer remember) presses his ear against Brobauer’s chest to be sure he’s dead, then gathers up his things and hides behind an elephantine live oak at the edge of the clearing to wait for the vultures.

And wait, and wait. The problem is that the corpse is too fresh, the process of putrefaction not advanced enough to attract the attention even of a Cathartes aura, which is able to detect the presence of a single molecule of cadaverine within a ten-mile radius. However, leaving the body to ripen into carrion on this hillside overnight is not an option. Vultures rarely scavenge after dark, and he hasn’t gone to all this trouble just to feed some mangy coyotes.

But the wind begins to shift as the sun sinks lower, swinging around to the south and carrying with it the faint, sickly sweet scent of decay. Asmador’s low forehead furrows, his nostrils twitch, and his unhandsome face takes on an expression of sheer animal cunning. Legs bowed, arms swinging, he snuffles along through the woods, bent double with his nose nearly to the ground, until he’s traced the odor to its source: a dead opossum hidden in a tangled thicket.

Its lips are drawn back in a snarl, revealing worn and yellowed fangs; its pelt writhes with oat-colored maggots. Asmador picks up the reeking carcass by the tail and carries it back to the clearing, lays it atop the dead lawyer’s chest. Retreating behind the live oak again, he sniffs his fingers-there’s something about the smell of carrion that he finds calming.

The sky is on fire to the west, and the sun has flattened itself against the vast, blue-gray horizon like a crimson-yoked egg sizzling on a griddle when the first turkey vulture comes swooping in low over the hillside. Its wings are raised in a shallow, dihedral V, and its body tilts unevenly from one side to the other. It lands clumsily, its powerful black wings beating backward, and takes a compensating hop, looking for all the world like a gymnast trying to stick the landing at the end of a vault.

Instead of rushing in, the vulture circles the funereal offering unhurriedly, with a mincing, high-stepping gait, its red head cocked suspiciously to the side. Then the arrival of a second vulture galvanizes the first one into action. Interposing itself between rival and prize, hissing and grunting angrily, it spreads its wings to make itself appear larger as it backs slowly toward its intended supper.

That’s right, thinks Asmador, peering out from behind the tree, his cheek pressed against the rough, elephant-hide bark-you chase dat dirty baldhead out of de town.

7

There were advantages and disadvantages to living in a National Historical Park. Nights were quiet, and the view from the raised back porch of the lockkeeper’s cabin was a knockout-the flat, silvery-smooth ribbon of the C amp; O Canal at the bottom of the hill, the swampy Potomac winding through the midground, the verdant Virginia countryside on the horizon. On the other hand, Pender’s lease required that all new exterior renovations be period, the period being the 1850s, and if you needed to borrow a cup of sugar, forget it: there were no neighbors within a mile of Tinsman’s Lock in any direction.

The term cabin was actually a misnomer. Chez Pender was sprawling and ramshackle, jerry-built by the lock’s first keeper on a wooded hillside overlooking the canal. It had six tiny, low- ceilinged bedrooms lining either side of a corridor off the living room; the living room itself featured a peaked roof and grandfathered non-period sliding glass doors leading out to the back porch. Due to the severe slope of the terrain, the front entrance of the house was at ground level, while the porch was raised on stilts.

Only one bedroom had been habitable when Pender first moved in. On a forced leave of absence from the Bureau-which is to say, while he was drying out after his divorce-he had restored the others one at a time, refloored the living room, replaced the plumbing, rewired the house, propped up the sagging porch, and in his remaining spare time had rebuilt the engine of his vintage Barracuda. Amazing what a man can accomplish with no job and no booze.

After nuking a Hungry-Man Salisbury steak dinner and pouring himself a Thirsty-Man tumblerful of Jim Beam on the rocks, Pender set up a TV tray in the living room, intending to watch the Orioles game while he ate. Instead he found himself thinking about Little Luke. A flat-out, textbook psychopath, the Mountain Project shrink had labeled him-no wonder he’d ended up in a mental hospital. But had the boy ever been convicted of any murders? Or even been tried? Pender decided to ask Thom Davies to search the CJIS records first thing in the morning.

He also made up his mind to get in touch with the Santa Cruz coroner to find out whether Luke Sweet, Jr., was maybe dead, really dead, or really, really dead. And while he was at it, he decided to contact the homicide detectives investigating the Harris double murder to let them know it might not be a stranger killing after all.

Looking up at the television, Pender realized that although the Orioles game was in the third inning, he hadn’t seen a single play. Nor did he recall eating, although he must have, because the plastic tray had been cleaned out,