Ben just looked at him.
“You think I’m a monster,” Wakeland said. It was not a question, not a plea for understanding. He said it disdainfully, a declaration of Ben’s na?veté. “I’ve changed. I have a family now. Family changes things.”
“Sure,” Ben said. “A personal enlightenment.”
“I never did anything to Lucero,” Wakeland said. “Understand? What you think I did…” He shook his head. “After Tucker, I almost lost my job. I started drinking heavily. I started hating myself. There was something ugly in me.” He tapped his hand against his chest. “I started seeing a therapist. I met Diane. My life changed.”
“But you couldn’t help yourself with Lucero—”
“I loved Lucero like a son,” Wakeland said, strength back in his voice.
“You treat your son like the other boys? Like Tucker, like me?”
“I loved him too much to bring him into that ugliness,” Wakeland said, his fingers pressing against his temples now. “I did everything I could to keep him from that.”
Wakeland stood suddenly and went into the kitchen, dropping cubes into two glasses.
What did that mean? He loved Lucero enough not to hurt him? What did it mean for Ben? He had been hated? He had been nothing? Ben had convinced himself, many years ago, that some part of Wakeland had loved him. That’s what had made it bearable—that it hadn’t simply been some sort of violence.
“I did everything I could to keep him from that.” The interrogator in Ben couldn’t believe he hadn’t hit on that immediately. How could he miss that everything I could?
“No, you haven’t changed,” Ben said, shaking his head.
Wakeland had taught him to look past people’s flaws, to see around the ugliness in them. Shaking down drug dealers in L.A., Ben could see past the murderous bravado, the threat in the language and the gun, to find the child raised by the junkie mother, the child who witnessed his father’s murder. It made him a good cop; he knew when to arrest a kid and when to ride him home to his family. With Wakeland, Ben had found the father he needed, buried in the predator. Wakeland recognized that need and fed it, while the boy pretended that what happened to his body didn’t matter. Ben hadn’t known how to measure one pain against the alleviation of another. He didn’t know that his gratitude could have limits.
“I think you did everything you could not to hurt Lucero,” Ben said, “but you still couldn’t help yourself.”
It took a few moments, but Wakeland returned to the room with two glasses of vodka, his face bleached and drawn. He clinked a sweating glass on the coffee table for Ben and then fell into his chair and gulped down half the tumbler.
“You know the greatest joy in my life?” Wakeland said. “Watching my son in bed while he’s sleeping.” He took another gulp. “I do it often, sneaking up after he’s fallen asleep, sitting in the chair in the corner. I’ve never once had that feeling with him. The feeling I had with you. Never. I know what I’d do to a man who touched him. I can imagine exactly what I’d do to such a man.”
Wakeland lifted the drink to his lips, his hand shaking.
“I often think that if I can stay there, in my son’s room, if I can just keep that feeling about him, the other feelings will go away, forever.”
“But they don’t.”
“I remember you as a boy,” Wakeland said. “Probably better than you do yourself. I can see the boy’s body in yours right now. There are shadows of it, hints.” He ran his fingers across his own neck. “The ring of your clavicle, the bony shoulders, the length of your torso.” He was silent for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I still have the feeling toward the boy you were.”
It took everything in Ben’s power to not reach for the drink. He had to remind himself that he was not that boy, not anymore.
“And Lucero?” Ben said now. “You had those feeling toward him.”
“You try to be good,” Wakeland said. “You tell God you’ll be good, ask him to help you…”
“But you can’t stop the feeling.”
“It won’t go away,” Wakeland said. “The feeling. It won’t leave me alone.” He put the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I never wanted to hurt him,” he said. “I didn’t like that boy Neil. His dyed hair, his pierced ears. He was a bad student, no ambition. Lucero had nothing, but he wanted out of that shack and he knew he had to work harder than anyone else to get out. He was tougher than any Santa Elena kid I’ve ever coached. That kid Neil wasn’t good enough for Lucero.”
“Tell me what happened, or I can easily make this a murder investigation.”
Wakeland leaned back in the chair. “Yes, I threatened to tell Esperanza about Lucero and Neil,” Wakeland said. “He told me he didn’t care—said go ahead. I didn’t expect that from him. He was such a good boy, never argued.” He hesitated, took a deep breath. “The address. I was letting them use the address to this place, to go to school. I told him I wouldn’t let him use it anymore.”
“There’s more than one way to kill someone,” Ben said.
“I thought he’d come back,” Wakeland said, pounding the arm of the chair once. “I didn’t think he’d do this. I loved him. I loved all of you boys.”
“That’s not love.”
“I know things about you nobody knows, Benjamin. I know who you truly are, and I never judged you. Other people would, but not me. We all need that—a place not to be judged.”
Wakeland stood, picked up the drink on the coffee table, and brought it over to Ben. He held the drink in front of Ben, the ice clinking against the glass.
“I was a child,” Ben said.
“You were a teenager, a young man,” Wakeland said.
“I hated myself and you knew it.”
“You were so sad,” Wakeland said, nodding. “Your stepfather wanted your mother but not you. I practically raised you.”
Wakeland smiled at Ben, and Ben felt almost like the child again. The child running his hands along the man’s back, kneading out the knots in the muscles; the child who closed his eyes and let the man do things to him; the child who couldn’t say no and had to kill himself by drowning in a tiny picture hanging on a bedroom wall.
“Lucero could have been killed by the serial,” Wakeland said. “I have a family, kids now. You don’t want to hurt them; they haven’t done anything. Everything with us is in the past. If you arrested me, it would all get dragged up; I’d have no reason not to tell it all. Think of everything you’d have to explain. How would you explain, a veteran detective like you, not doing anything all these years?”
The wind gusted outside, rattling the window frames.