“Look, you don’t have to talk to me about this.”
“Yeah, I do. Frank is — Frank is — just one of the best friends I’ve ever had, that’s all. I — I just can’t talk to anyone else the way I can with Frank. Not anybody. He’s never been anything but good to me. And I know that even if he’s released unharmed, this is going to hurt him… it’s going to hurt him so bad….” She couldn’t talk for a while.
She blew her nose and said, “Shit, I never cry.”
She drew a deep breath and went on. “Father’s Day. It was Father’s Day. Bea called, saying that she was worried about Frank, because she had word from one of Brian’s friends — I don’t remember who — telling her that Frank had found these kids in the basement and all. Brian’s not back from a fishing trip, and she’s worried about Frank, ’cause whoever called her said he was a mess.”
She paused, took another tissue out of the pack. “Well, I go down to the hospital where they’ve got these kids, because everybody at the scene tells me that Frank went with them to the ER. He went with them all right. He didn’t leave those kids for a minute. Unless Frank was with them, they were freaked out. They were giving the doctors fits. The docs wanted to sedate them, but naturally, Bakersfield PD was trying to get some kind of description of the killer out of them before the docs knocked them out.”
“You were there when they were questioning the boys?”
She shook her head. “No, I had to stay in the waiting room. I heard about it from Frank, later. But while I’m sitting there, Brian gets there, and he has to wait in the waiting room, too. We’ve met, but this is the first time we have a chance to talk, to get to know each other. Frank finally comes out, and apologizes to us for the wait. He’s a wreck, but he’s also excited, because the kids have drawn pictures of the killer. Pretty good ones, too, considering their age. Between that and a lot of gesturing and nodding by the boys, they’ve got something to go on.
“That night, I had dinner with the Harrimans. My own dad kicked a long time ago — I don’t even remember him, but I’m supposed to look like him — my stepfather used to refer to him as my mom’s ‘Latin lover.’ Called me her little taco.”
“Your stepfather sounds like a real gem.”
“Ah, nothing worse than schoolkids could dish out. And he wasn’t much smarter than a schoolkid. He was the Parker — that marriage didn’t last too long. So anyway, with the Harrimans that night — this is the first time I’ve ever been to a Father’s Day dinner. It was kind of a late supper, on account of everything else that was going on.
“The Harrimans get a call just as dinner is ending, somebody wanting to talk to Brian — one of his pals from work, I think. Frank says he’s going to turn in for the night, which I understood — he was just completely wrung out by then. But Brian gets off the phone and asks me to stick around. What the hell, it’s Father’s Day, right?”
She looked down at the river again, then back at me. “We go out on the porch, on that swing. Brian is sitting there, and I’m thinking, This is what Frank will look like in thirty years. And Brian says, ‘Every rookie needs a break, and I’m going to give you one. I know who killed those men, and I’d swear to God I saw his van today.’ He goes on to tell me that there’s a scumbag named Chris Powell, not worth the spit it takes to say his name, and that the pictures the little boys drew remind him of this guy.
“Then he tells me that one of his friends just called to say they’re looking for a brown van — and that has absolutely convinced him that the killer is Powell. He tells me he watched the van for a while, drove past it a couple of times, but he thinks Powell abandoned it. He tells me not to be a hero or anything — just to go up and see if the van is still where he saw it earlier. If it is, radio for backup — I’ll make a good impression on my bosses just by finding it.
“I ask him why doesn’t he just report it? He tells me that there’s been a lot of bad blood between him and this guy, and it would be better if someone else called it in. Besides, it’s out of Bakersfield’s jurisdiction, but within CHP’s. He tells me to come right up here. I mean, exactly here.”
“Did he say how he knew Powell?”
“The story he gave me was that Powell was a dealer, but he was slippery. Brian couldn’t figure it, because Powell didn’t strike him as being very bright. He arrested him a couple of times — even got rough with him once. Brian said the guy resisted, but Powell ended up in the emergency room and Brian got in trouble over it. He told me he still kept an eye on Powell after that, but he didn’t dare hassle him too openly.”
We heard a car pull into the turnout and she stopped talking. We were too far down the slope to see the turnout itself. After a moment the car left.
“Probably just letting traffic pass,” she said.
“Did Brian tell you Powell would be dead when you got here?”
“No. He wasn’t even sure that the van would still be here. At least, that’s how he talked it up to me. Brian told me to see if I could switch with the guy who was scheduled to patrol this stretch. That was the easy part. I started out at six in the morning. I tried to keep a straight face when they briefed us on the van before the watch. The truth is, I figured this guy was going to be long gone, but I wanted to make Brian happy — you know, please the boyfriend’s dad.
“So I head up to the spot he mentioned, and lo and behold, here’s the van. I call it in. The dispatcher starts doing handsprings, because the Ryan-Neukirk case was big news — I mean,
“And quickly,” I said. “The CHP must have looked like the most efficient law enforcement agency in Kern County.”
“Yeah, the whole office was pretty proud.” She said it quietly, as it she were anything but proud.
“What made you go looking for Powell himself? Weren’t you afraid?”
“Hell, no. Well, maybe a little. At first, I had my weapon out, and I wasn’t going to approach the van until I had backup, but gradually, I felt less worried — pretty certain that he had just left it here. But then something caught my eye — up in the sky, above the river. Vultures. Turkey vultures. This canyon is full of them in the summer. At first, I just figured they’d found some dead livestock or something. Some of them had already come on down for a closer look — I hear this nasty squawking sound coming from them. I peer over the edge of the slope, and I can see them fighting over some piece of meat. I got my binoculars out, and I could just make out what they were competing for — Powell’s body. Made me sick. I couldn’t reach him, though. I just had to sit and wait for help to arrive. Even the rangers had to rig up special equipment to pull him out of there — what was left of him.”
