“Lucero’s coach knew about you two?”
“We screwed up,” he said. “The coach keeps this condo near the school. Supposedly rents it out, but it’s still full of his stuff, and nobody’s been renting it since I’ve known about it. Lucero mowed the lawn for him, cleaned the windows, kept it up, you know. He had a key, and sometimes we’d meet up there, pretend it was ours.” His voice cracked. “It was stupid fantasy bullshit.”
“Doesn’t sound stupid to me.”
“What’s with you, man?” the boy said. “I mean, like anyone else in this town would laugh at that, call me a faggot.”
“Well, this place isn’t always as nice as it looks,” Ben said.
Neil nodded. The tide flowed in, the froth snagging the tops of the rocks, the waves crumbling the base of the cliff point at Corona Del Mar.
“So he found you guys?” Ben asked. “The coach? He walked in on you or something?”
“Yeah, like nine at night. On Monday. We weren’t doing anything, just sitting on the carpet together, drinking a couple beers left in the fridge, but he knew.” The kid laughed bitterly. “Lucero would have told him anyway. Lucero was too honest. He was scared of the coach.”
“He had a few things to be scared of, right? He was illegal, didn’t want to be kicked off the team, kicked out of school, didn’t want to be sent back, didn’t want his parents to know he was gay and had a boyfriend.”
Neil shrugged. “He talked about the coach like, I don’t know, like he was his father. Like it freaked him out to disappoint him. Like it was a really big deal.”
“This condo,” Ben said. “Where is it?”
“Over on El Ranchero. Fourteen seventy-six.”
The surfers were coming in now, the waves crashing high up on the beach, eating away at the cliffs. Soon the beach would be gone, submerged until morning.
“You ever think about doing it?” Neil said. “Suicide?” He was pressing the point of a barb against the meat of his thumb.
Ben had once, a long time ago.
“Why are you so sure it’s suicide?”
“I’ve thought about it myself,” Neil said, his finger pressing the barb harder.
“Stop that.”
The kid ignored him. “I tried with a razor once, but I couldn’t make my hand do it.” He lifted his thumb and looked at it. It was bloodless, though there was a little pink point in the center. “I decided I wasn’t going to let them kill me. That’s what it’s like, you know, like they want to kill you. I’m not letting them have that.” He was quiet a moment, and the sound of the waves rushed up the bluff. “Lucero wasn’t like that, though. He wanted to make everyone happy. I told him it was impossible. Someone has to be the enemy and you have to hate them back.”
“What happened after you left the apartment?” Ben said. “After the coach caught you?”
“I ran off,” Neil said. “Through the greenbelt behind the house. I was freaked. My dad would kill me if he knew.”
“What about Lucero?”
“Him and the coach were arguing when I left,” he said. “I could hear their voices.”
“Where’d you go?”
He hesitated and lit another cigarette.
“There’s this, like, old building in the hills behind the orange groves near the camp,” he said. “Lucero said it used to be a cowboy camp or something.”
Loma Canyon. It was another camp, like the one up in Bommer Canyon he and Emma had ridden past the other day. There were a half dozen or more of them dotting the hillsides surrounding town.
“We used to meet up there,” he said. “I thought he’d come find me afterward.”
“Did you see him again?”
Neil put the back of his hand to his eyes, cigarette smoke curling around his face.
“No,” he said. “After a while, I went over to the camp and waited in the field, thought I’d catch him before he went home, but he never showed.” He took a drag. “I went back up to the cowboy camp and there was some other dude there. I was already late to get home, so I ran back.”
“There was someone at the camp?”
“Yeah,” Neil said.
“What’d he look like?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t go in. I thought it was one of the ranch’s security dudes. You know, one of those guys who patrol with their salt-pellet guns? I didn’t feel like being shot in the ass with one of those, so I got out of there.”
“If Lucero did kill himself,” Ben said, “you know where he got the gun?”
“No,” Neil said. “You going to arrest me?”
Ben looked at him, trying to weigh the advantages of arrest against letting him go.
Second to the last to see the dead boy alive. Possible motive. Arrest the kid, shit hits the fan. He wanted to keep this quiet for now. Besides, he believed Neil’s story.
“Not today,” Ben said.
“I swear I’m telling you the truth.”
“If I need to talk to you again,” Ben said, “where do I find you?”
“The lake, sixth period. I’m not into hammering and drilling in shop. I like to hang out with the ducks.”
Ben nodded. “You got anyone to talk to?”
“Who am I going to talk to about this?”
“Your mother,” Ben said, though he already knew the answer. “Your father.”
The kid laughed. “Jesus,” he said. “I’m going to walk through my front door all smiles and full of bullshit about chemistry class. Then I’m going to lock myself in my room.”
Ben pulled a card from his wallet and handed it to the kid. “You call me if you need to talk,” he said. “Don’t do anything stupid. Call.”
—
AFTER HE DROPPED Neil back at the school and made sure the kid walked through the front doors, he called Natasha.
“Got an ID on the kid,” he said. “Write this down.”
“Hold on,” Natasha said. There was the muffled sound of the phone being fumbled from hand to hand. “Starting at the clavicle,” she said to someone.
“Teaching a class?” he said.
“Lost one to the toilets already,” she said. “Go ahead.”
“Lucero Vega.”
“No.” The phone was muffled for a moment. “Right here.” The high-pitched zing of the saw. “Sorry. Vega? Anyone claiming it?”
“Not yet,” he said. “But don’t let it leave the morgue. I don’t want him sent off to the med school.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “But I don’t make the rules around here.”
On the drive out to Loma Canyon, he put in a call to Daniela Marsh, the reporter at the newspaper.
“Are you calling,” she said, “so you can have the pleasure of hanging up on me again?”
“Helen Galloway at the high school is expecting a call from you.” The police generally didn’t release the names of the deceased before next of kin were notified, particularly when the deceased were minors, but Ben wanted this out, wanted to see what it would shake up. “You say you heard it from me, though, and I’ll deny it. And I’ll never tip you again.”
“Never tipped me before.”
“First and last time for everything.”
“Why are you telling me?”