It wasn’t a basement, really; more of a crawl space. A rusted combination lock was clasped to a hook on the wall. Weak light filtered through a painted-over window, beetle carapaces flittered in the wind funneling down the stairs. An old mattress leaned against the stairwell, and on the wall next to it strange symbols were scratched into the plaster, gibberish mostly, etchings with indecipherable patterns, a few vowels and consonants. The kid had created his own language, to talk with himself. Six years in a hole. Jesus. The killer’s father had locked him down there soon after the mother overdosed, according to the report. Social Services was alerted after the father had taken the boy to the doctor for severe diarrhea. Vitamin D deficiency, anemia, rickets, and softened bones. Still, it took nearly nine months after the first report to Social Services to get the boy out of here.
Ben crouched under the stairwell and turned off the flashlight and sat there in the dark, listening, letting his eyes adjust to the lightless place. The cement smelled of mold, a fecund rotting in the corners of the room, and the murky gray light was like being submerged in muddied water. He tried to imagine what it was like for the child, huddled down here in the dark with the insects, while the rest of the world went on above. Ben had felt alone most of his life, pushed out onto the edge of normal existence, but this was a different kind of alone. What did this kind of powerlessness do to you? Lucero—and the others—hadn’t been locked up; they could leave. But why didn’t you? That was the question. That was always the question. Why didn’t you? That question made you hate yourself. But this, being locked down here: There was no choice, no blame to level at yourself. The blame was put outside you—onto the world outside. Almost nine months after the doctor’s visit. Nine goddamned months before Social Services and the police got him out.
A shadow flashed in the window.
Outside, he found an elderly woman next door, watering a rosebush. It had been her passing legs that disturbed the weak light seeping through the window.
“Are you going to buy that place?” she said, when she saw him emerge from the basement. “Tear it down?”
“No,” he said. Water from the hose was trickling a path past his toes. Her yard was lush with flowers, vines climbing a trellis. “Police business.” He showed her his badge.
She looked closely at him. “I already told them I never knew about the boy,” she said.
“You knew the people who lived here?”
“They were neighbors,” she said. “But I didn’t know them.”
Ben looked at the window and measured the distance in his mind. Ten feet, maybe twelve, to the spigot on the woman’s hose. How was it possible? Six years in a hole and no one knew? She seemed to guess what he was thinking.
“We heard things occasionally,” she said. “My husband and me. But those people never bothered us.” She sprayed a fuchsia basket dangling from the trellis. “They really should tear it down.”
—
“GOT TIME FOR an early dinner?” Rachel asked when he answered the Motorola in the cruiser later that afternoon. He’d been out in the barn, combing down Tin Man, filing the muck and horseshit from his hooves, when he ran out to answer it. He scraped clean his boots, dashed his neck with the Old Spice he kept in his desk drawer, and hit the road.
He indulged a fantasy on the drive over—the wedding china lifted out of the storage boxes, candlelight, Rachel slipped into the charcoal dress she liked to wear out to dinner. When he got there, she was wearing faded jeans and a V-neck with a wet stain on the belly. She wasn’t wearing makeup—nothing that had ever bothered him, but the few times he’d crashed a date of hers she was painted up, some of the makeup fancy stuff he’d bought from Nordstrom’s.
“Do me a favor,” Rachel said, nodding at his boots, “and leave those outside.”
He slipped them off, suddenly aware that he stank of horse sweat.
“I’ve got lasagna in the oven,” she said, turning her back and going into the kitchen.
Lasagna: the meal of crisis. They had lasagna after her father died. They had lasagna after Emma broke her leg. They had lasagna the night she told him she wanted out.
“Where’s Em?” he said, watching her pull the pan from the oven.
“Upstairs,” she said.
“Mind if I go up?”
“Yes, I do mind,” she said. “You and I need to talk.”
Shit, she’s marrying the computer guy. Wants more money. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
“I’m not too crazy about the smoke and mirrors,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”
“You know me, Ben,” she said, holding her hot-mitted hands out to him. “I wouldn’t waste your time, especially now. Just sit, please.”
He did as he was told and took in the apartment—the painting of Catalina they had purchased together after taking a whale-watching cruise to Avalon, a photo of Emma in her softball uniform, a photo of her as a toddler kicking up wet sand at Laguna Beach. It was too hot in the apartment, made broiling by the oven, and he stood to open the two front windows, jostling loose the wooden rods Rachel had jammed between the aluminum frames.
“Close those,” she said.
“He won’t be out until dark,” Ben said.
“I don’t care,” she said. “He’s terrifying and he’s out there somewhere.”
He shut the window and replaced the rod. She carried the pan of lasagna to the table and served him a hunk of it. It was watery, but he kept his mouth shut. She hadn’t dished out any for herself, so he grabbed her plate and filled it.
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” she said. “You look tired.”
“You, too.”
They watched each other, and for a moment he thought she was going to take his hand, but then she cut into the lasagna and that was that.
“Look, Ben,” she said. “You and I were stupid kids once. Remember that day on the floor at my parents’ house?”
He smiled. It had been their first time. “I still think about it sometimes.”
Her cheeks flushed. “What was I, sixteen?”
“Yes, you were.”
“You were seventeen, just turned. I was in love with you,” she said, glancing at him, a softness in her eyes he couldn’t ignore. At that moment, he wanted her. Right now, in a way he hadn’t in a very long time.
“That was one of the best days of my life,” he said.
She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re not going to like this.”
“Then don’t do it,” he said. “We can give it another shot, Rach. I’ll give you more attention, I’ll work hard—”
She touched his wrist. “No,” she said quietly. “This is about Emma, Ben. About Emma and this boy. I came home from school the other day and walked in on them.”
“What?” he said. “Sex?”
“No,” she said. “Well, not then, but Emma told me some things when I started asking questions.”
“Sex?”
“Lower your voice.”
“Answer my question.”
“Yes,” Rachel said. “Yes, she’s had sex. She told me. It was difficult for her to say it.”
“What the hell, Rachel,” he said. “You spending too much time with your boyfriend to be a mother?”
“Don’t do that, Ben,” she said, pointing at him. “You need to calm down.”
It sickened him, the thought of someone—this stoner—touching his daughter.
“She’s barely fourteen,” Ben said. “He’s three years older. He took advantage of her.”
“It doesn’t sound like that’s the case.”
“Who cares what it sounds like? She’s too young to make that decision. He zeroed in on the up-and-coming high schooler and took advantage of her.”
“She says they’re in love.”
“Love?” he practically shouted. “What does she know about love?”
“What did you and I know about it?” Rachel said.