Monster

Chapter 22

Haas returned looking no happier, but resigned.

"It happened at night," he said, "but no one found out till the morning. I was the second to know. Ted Alarcon called me-he was one of Scott's field supervisors. Scott and Ted were supposed to drive up early to Fresno, take a look at some equipment. Scott was going to pick up Ted, and when he didn't, Ted called the house. No answer, so he drove over, went in."

"The door was open?" I said.

"No one locked their doors. Ted figured Scott had overslept, maybe he should go upstairs and knock on the bedroom door. That shows you the kind of guy Scott was-a Mexican supervisor felt comfortable going upstairs. But on the way, Ted passed through the kitchen and saw it. Her." He licked his lips. "After that, God only knows how he had the strength to go upstairs."

"The papers said he followed the bloody sneaker prints."

"Ted was a gutsy guy, Vietnam vet, saw combat."

"Any idea where I can locate him?"

"Forest Lawn," he said. "He died a couple years later. Cancer." He patted his sternum. "Fifty years old. He smoked, but nothing will convince me the shock didn't break down his health."

He sat up straighter, as if affirming his own robustness.

I said, "So Ted went upstairs, saw the rest of it, and called you."

"I was still in bed, the sun had just come up. The phone rings and someone's breathing hard, gasping, sounding crazy, I can't make head nor tail out of it, Marvelle's saying, 'What's going on?' Finally, I recognize Ted's voice, but he's still not making any sense, I hear 'Mr. Scott! Miss Terri!' " He shook his head. "I just knew something bad had happened. When I got there, Ted was on the front porch with a big pool of vomit in front of him. He was a dark-skinned fellow, but that morning he was white as a sheet. He had blood on his jeans and shoes, at first I thought he 'd done something crazy. Then he started throwing up some more, managed to stand up, just about collapsed. I had to catch him. All the while he's crying and pointing back at the house."

Putting his knees together, Haas hunched and sank lower on the couch. "I took my gun out and went in. I didn't want to mess anything up, so I was careful where I stepped. The light was on in the kitchen. I saw Noreen Peake sitting on a chair- I mean you couldn't really tell it was her, but I knew. Maybe it was the way she was dressed-" His hand waved stiffly. "Ted's boot prints were in the blood-he wore Westerns-but so were others. Sneakers. I still didn't know if anyone was up there, so I moved really quietly. The lights were on wherever he'd-like he was showing off what he'd done. Scott and Terri were next to each other-hugging each other. I ran across the hall… found the little girl…"

He emitted a low-pitched noise, like poorly oiled gears grinding. "The FBI interviewed me, wrote it up for their research. Get your bosses at LAPD to find you a copy."

I nodded. "What led you to Peake's shack?"

"The damn blood, it was obvious. The trail had thinned but it ran down the back stairs and out the back door. Specks and spots but you could still see bits of sneaker prints. It kept going maybe twenty yards on the pathway; then it died completely. At that point, I didn't know I was looking for Peake, only that I should head back to the shack. The sneakers were right inside Peake's door. Clerk over at the five-and-dime said Peake had tried to shoplift 'em a few weeks before and when she caught him, he mumbled and paid something and she let him keep the damn things."

Haas glared. "That was the trouble. Everyone was too nice to him. He stumbled around town looking dumb and spooky; we didn't have any real crime in Treadway, didn't recognize him for what he was. It was a peaceful place, that's why a part-timer like me could be the law. Mostly what I did was help people fix stuff, check on shut-ins, make sure someone didn't get in his car when he was blind drunk. More of a damn social worker. But Peake… he was always strange. We were all too damn trusting."

His hands were working furiously. Time to give him some breathing room. I said, "When Treadway closed down, what happened to all the town records?"

"Boxed and shipped up to Bakersfield. But forget about finding anything there. We're talking maps, plot plans, and not much of it, at that. Sounds to me like you're digging a dry hole, Doctor. Why don't you go back to L.A. and tell your bosses to forget all this psychological stuff. Peake's locked up, that's the main thing."

He looked at his wrist. No watch. He got up and found it on one of the bookshelves, put it on, checked the dial.

I said, "I appreciate your spending the time. Just a few more things. The article I read said you found Peake sleeping."

"Like a-" His mouth trembled. "I was going to say like a baby. Christ-yeah, he was asleep. Lying on his back, hands folded over his chest, snoring, face all smeared with blood. At first I thought he'd been killed too, but when I looked closer I could see it was just stains, and that made me jam the cuffs on him."

He wiped sweat from his cheeks. "That place. I'd seen it from the outside but never been inside before. A sty- smelled worse than a dog run. What little stuff Peake owned was all jumbled and thrown around. Spoiled food, armies of bugs, empty bottles of booze, cans of spray paint, glue tubes, porno magazines he must've gotten somewhere else, 'cause that garbage wasn't sold in Treadway. No one recalls Peake traveling, but he must've. For the dope, too. He had all kinds of pills-speed, downers, phenobarbitol. The prescription pharmacist was over in Tehachapi, and they had no record of any prescriptions. So it must have been street stuff. Scum like Peake can get any sort of thing."

"Was he stoned that night?"

"Had to be. Even after I cuffed him and screamed in his face, stuck my gun right under his nose, I could barely rouse him. He kept fading in and out, got this real dumb smile on his face, and then he'd close his eyes and be in Never-Never Land again. It was all I could do not to shoot him right there. Because of what he did-what I found in his shack." He turned away. "On his hot plate. He'd taken the knife with him, the one he used on the little girl, grabbed that baby boy out of the crib, and-"

He sprang up again. "Hell, no, I won't go there. Took me too damn long to erase those pictures from my head. Goodbye, Doctor-don't say another word, just good-bye."

He hurried to the door, held it open. I thanked him for his time again.

"Yeah, sure."

"Just one more thing," I said. "Who inherited Scott and Terri's estate?"

"Bunch of relatives all over the state. Her folks were from Modesto, and Scott still had family up in San Francisco, on his mother's side. The lawyer in charge said there were two dozen or so heirs, but no one was fighting. None of them gave a damn about inheriting, they were all broken up about how the money came to them."

"Do you remember the lawyer's name?"

"No. Why the hell would it matter?"

"I'm sure it doesn't," I said. "And Scott's mother was already deceased."

"Years before. Heart condition. Why?"

"Just being thorough."

"Well, you're sure being that." He started to close the door.

I said, "Mr. Haas, is there anyone else around here who might be willing to talk to me?"

"What?" he said, furiously. "This wasn't enough?"

"As long as I'm up here, I might as well cover all bases- you were a lawman, you know what it's like."

"No, I don't. And I don't want to. Forget it. There's no one from the old days. Fairway's for old city folk looking for peace and quiet. I'm the only Treadway hick in the place. Which is why they stuck me out with the trailers." His laugh was cold.

I said, "Any idea where Derrick Crimmins-"

"The Crimminses are as gone as anyone else. After Carson Senior and his wife got their money out of the land, they moved to Florida. I heard they bought a boat, did all this sailing, but that's all I know. If they're alive, they'd be old. At least he would."

"His wife was younger?"

"She was a second wife."

"What was her name?"

"I don't remember," he answered too quickly. His voice had hardened and he had closed the door till only a five-inch crack remained. The half-face I saw was grim. "Cliff Crimmins is also gone. Motorcycle accident in Vegas-it made the papers. He was into that motocross stuff, stunt driving, parachuting, surfing, anything with speed and danger. Both of them were like that. Spoiled kids, always had to be the center of attention. Carson bought them all the toys they wanted."

The door closed.

I'd raised someone else's stress level. Some psychologist.

No end to justify the means, either.

Had he reacted with special vehemence when the topic was the second Mrs. Crimmins, or had I already primed his emotional pump so that anything I said raised his blood pressure?

Walking back to the car, I decided upon the former: how likely would he be to forget the name of one of the richest women in town? So something about Mrs. Crimmins bothered him… but big deal. Maybe he'd hated her. Or loved her. Or lusted for her without satisfaction.

No reason to think it related to anything I was after.

I didn't even know what I was after.

Dry hole.

It was still before noon, and I felt useless. Haas claimed no Treadway residents were around, and maybe he was telling the truth. But I felt unsettled-something about his demeanor-why had he agreed to see me, started off amiable, then turned?

Probably just horror flashbacks.

Still, as long as I was up here… I'd already exhausted the major news sources on the Ardullo murders, but small towns had local papers, and Treadway's might've covered the carnage in detail. The records had all been shipped to Bakers-field. Not much of it, Haas claimed. But city libraries appreciated the value of old news.

As I reached the Seville, a baby blue security sedan nosed through the trailer park. Different guard at the wheel, also young and mustachioed. Maybe that was the Bunker Protection image.

He cruised alongside me, stopped the way the first man had.

Staring. No surprise. He'd been told about me.

I said, "Have a nice day."

"You too, sir."

On my way out, I tripled the speed limit.

Back at the Grapevine gas station, I made a few calls and learned that the main reference library for Kern County was Beale Memorial, in Bakersfield.

Another forty-five minutes of driving. I found Beale easily enough, a ten-year-old, modernistic, sand-colored structure in a nice part of town, backed by a two-hundred-vehicle parking lot. Inside was a fresh-smelling atrium and the feel of efficiency. I told the smiling librarian at the reference desk what I was after and she directed me to the Jack Maguire Local History Room, where another pleasant woman checked a computer database and said, "We've got twenty years of something called the Treadway Intelligencer. Hard copy, not microfiche."

"Could I see it, please?"

"All of it?"

"Unless that's a problem."

"Let me check."

She disappeared behind a door and emerged five minutes later pushing a dolly bearing two medium-sized cardboard boxes.

"You're in luck," she said. "It was a weekly, and a small one, so this is twenty years. You can't take it out of the room, but we're open till six. Happy reading."

No raised eyebrows, no intrusive questions. God bless librarians. I wheeled the dolly to a table.

A small one, indeed. The Intelligencer was a seven-page green sheet and the second carton was half empty. Copies, beginning with January 1962, were bound by the dozen and bagged in plastic. The publisher and editor-in-chief was someone named Orton Hatzler, the managing editor Wanda Hatzler. I copied down both names and started to read.

Wide-spaced text and a few photos with surprisingly good clarity. Weather reports on the front page, because even in California weather mattered to farmers. High school dances, bumper crops, science projects, 4-H Club, scouting expeditions, gleeful descriptions of the Kern County Fair ("Once again, Lars Carlson has shown himself to be the peach-pie-eating champion of all time!"). Page two was much the same, and three was reserved for wire-service snips abstracting the international events of the day and for editorials. Orton Hatzler had been a strong hawk on Vietnam.

Butch Ardullo's name cropped up frequently, mostly in stories related to his leadership in the farm organization. A photo of him and his wife at a Fresno charity ball showed a big man with a bulldog face and a gray crew cut hovering over a willowy, refined-looking, dark-haired woman. Luck-of-the-draw genetics had favored Scott with his father's build and his mother's facial features.

Scott had inherited athletic skills, as well. The first time I found his name was under one of those football-hero group shots-players selected for the Kern County all-star game kneeling and beaming in front of a goalpost. Scott had played halfback forTehachapi High, acquitted himself honorably.

No pictures of Terri Ardullo, which made sense. She wasn't aTreadway native, had grown up in Modesto.

Carson Crimmins's name showed up regularly, too. The other rich man in town. From what I could make out, Crimmins had started out as Butch Ardullo's ally in the fight for the family farm, but had switched course by the early seventies, expressing his frustration with low walnut prices and the rising cost of doing business, and advertising his willingness to sell "to the highest serious bidder."

No pictures of him. No comments from Butch Ardullo. The Intelligencer avoided taking sides.

March 1969. An entire issue devoted to Katherine Stethson Ardullo's funeral. References to a "lingering illness," and to the hiking death, years before, of the oldest son, Henry Junior. The article was augmented by old family snapshots and pictures of Butch and Scott at graveside, heads hung low.

August 10, 1974. Orton Hatzler mourned Nixon's resignation.

The following December, a hard frost damaged both the Ardullo and the Crimmins crops. Butch Ardullo said, "You've got to be philosophical, ride out the bad times with the good." No comment from Carson Crimmins.

March 1975. The death of Butch Ardullo. Two extra pages in a memorial issue. This time, Scott stood alone in the cemetery. Carson Crimmins said, "We had our differences, but he was a man's man."

June 1976. Announcement of Crimmins's marriage to "the former Sybil Noonan, of Los Angeles. As we all know, Miss Noonan, a thespian who has acted under the name Cheryl Norman, met Mr. C. on a cruise to the Bahamas. The nuptials took place at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. Maid of honor was the bride's sister, Charity Hernandez, and cc-best men were Mr. C.'s sons, Carson Jr. and Derrick. The newlyweds are honeymooning in the Cayman Islands."

Two photos. Finally a look at Carson Crimmins. Black tie. In the first shot, he and his new wife cut a five-tiered cake. He looked to be around sixty, tall, stooped, bald, with a too-small face completely overpowered by a beak of a nose. The nose bore down upon a fleshless upper lip. A pencil mustache added movie-villain overtones. Tiny, dark eyes glanced somewhere to the left-away from the bride. His smile was painful. A wary owl in a tuxedo.

The second Mrs. Crimmins-she who'd narrowed Jacob Haas's eyes and hardened his voice-was in her late thirties, short, with full arms and a lush body packed into a tight silk sheath of a sleeveless wedding dress. What looked to be a deep tan. Spiky tiara perched upon a pile of platinum hair. Lots of teeth, lipstick, and eye shadow, a generous offering of cleavage. No ambivalence in her thousand-watt smile. Maybe it was true love, or perhaps the rock on her finger had something to do with it.

The second picture showed the Crimmins boys flanking the newlyweds. On the left was Carson Junior, around seventeen. Haas had said Derrick was younger, but that was hard to tell. Both boys were thin, rangy, with prominent noses and a touch of their father's avian look. Better-looking than their father-stronger chins, broader shoulders. The same thin lips. Carson Junior was already his father's height, Derrick slightly taller. Junior's hair was wild, blond, curly, Derrick's dark and straight, hanging past his shoulders. Neither boy seemed to share the joy of the day. Both projected that immovable sullenness unique to teenagers and mug-shot criminals.

April 1978. The front-page story was a visit to Treadway by representatives of a company called Leisure Time Development. Carson Crimmins's invitation. Scott Ardullo said, "It's a free country. People can sell what's theirs. But they can also show some guts and hold fast to the farming tradition." No follow-up progress reports.

July 1978. The wedding of Scott Ardullo and Theresa Mclntyre. The bridal gown, a "flowing affair complete with 10-foot train and hand embroidery, including Belgian lace and freshwater pearls, was imported from San Francisco." No cleavage here; Theresa Ardullo had favored long sleeves and full cover.

I moved on to the next batch of papers.

A half-year after the developers' visit, there was still no mention of land sales or negotiation, offers from other companies.

Crimmins's overtures rejected because Scott Ardullo had refused to sell out and no one wanted to deal for half a loaf?

If so, Crimmins wasn't commenting on the record. In July 1978, he and Sybil took a cruise to the Bahamas. Snapshots of her on deck, doing justice to a flowered bikini, a tall, iced drink in one hand. The text said she'd "entertained the other guests with lilting renditions of show tunes and Broadway classics."

Nothing of interest till January 5, 1980, when I came across an account of "The Farm League New Year's Ball and Fund-raiser" at the Silver Saddle Lodge in Fresno.

Mostly pictures of people I didn't recognize. Till the bottom of page four.

Scott Ardullo dancing, but not with his wife.

In his arms was Sybil Crimmins, white-blond hair long and flowing over bare tan shoulders. Her gown was black and strapless; her breasts were barely tucked into its skimpy bodice as they pressed against Scott's starched white chest. Her fingers were laced with his and her big diamond ring sparkled between his digits. He looked down at her, she gazed up at him. Something different in his eyes-at odds with the solid-young-businessman image-too much heat and light, a hint of stupidity.

Dopey surrender.

Maybe it was too many drinks, or the novelty of holding someone who wasn't your wife, feeling her warm breath against your face. Or maybe a big party had offered the two of them the chance to flaunt something they'd been savoring in dark, musky rooms.

It could be why Jacob Haas had tightened up when talking about Sybil Crimmins. Scott, a boy he'd long admired, straying with a platinum-haired strumpet from L.A.?

As I stared at the picture, it seemed to give off waves of heat. Worth well more than a thousand words. I was surprised the Intelligencer had published it.

I found an editorial three weeks later that might've explained that:

After much soul-searching, as well as witnessing, firsthand, the triumphs and the travails of those noble enough-and some would say sufficiently quixotically inclined-to brave the elements of Nature as well as the much more malignant Forces of Big Government, this newspaper must weigh in on the side of rationality and self-preservation.

It s all fine and well for those born with silver spoons in their mouths to pronounce righteously about abstract ideals such as the Sanctity of the Family Farm. But to the bulk of the populace, those hardy but bowed men entrusted with the day-to-day, backbreaking labor that keeps the ground fertile, the branches laden, and the trucks loaded with Bounty, the story is quite another one.

Joe Average in Treadway-and, we 'd venture to wager, any agricultural community-toils day after day for fixed wages, with no promise of security or profit, or long-term investment. In most cases, his meager plot of backyard and his domicile are all he owns, and sometimes even that is tethered to some Financial Institution. Joe Average would love to plan for the Future, but he's usually too overwhelmed by the Present. So when Good Fortune smiles in the form of rising land values, offering said Mr. Average the chance of Real Gain, he cannot be condemned for seizing the opportunity to afford his family the same safety and comfort that the more fortunate regard as their birthright.

Sometimes good sense and the rights of individuals must prevail.

At our last Kiwanis luncheon, Mr. Carson Crimmins said it best: "Progress is like a jet plane. Fly with it or stand on the runway and you risk getting blown away."

Those of more fortunate lineage but less vision would do well to realize this.

Times change, and change they must. The history of this great country is based upon Free Will, Private Property, and Self-reliance.

Those who resist the voice of the future may find themselves in that Godless state known as Stagnation.

Times change. Brave and smart men change along with them.

Humbly, O. Hatzler

Scott Ardullo, fallen out of editorial good graces. Still, wouldn't the picture have embarrassed Carson Crimmins as well?

I read through subsequent issues, waiting for Scott's written response to the editorial. Nothing. Either he hadn't bothered, or the Intelligencer had refused to print his letter.

Five weeks later, Orton and Wanda Hatzler's names were gone from the paper's masthead. In their place, in ornate, curlicued typescript:

Sybil Crimmins PUBLISHER, EDITOR AND CHIEF WRITER

A pink sheet now, and cut back to three pages, flimsy as a supermarket mailer. No more wire-photo material. In its place, gushing movie reviews that seemed copied from press releases, barely literate accounts of local events, and amateurishly drawn cartoons with no apparent point. The too-large signature: " Derrick C."

Three barely filled pages, even twenty months later, when the headline screamed:

SLAUGHTER AT THE ARDULLO RANCH! RATCATCHER PEEKE ARRESTED!

by Sybil Noonan Crimmins Publisher, Editor and Chief Writer

Treadways darkest hour has arrived, or so it seemed when Sheriff Jacob Haas was called by Best Buy Produce Supervisor Teodoro "Ted" Alar con to the ranch and found a horrible massacre of unbelievable proportion. Their in the house, Sheriff Jacob Haas found several dead bodies, namely the ranch cook, Miss Noreen Peeke who was subjected to unbelievable and unhumane treatment at the hand of a dark fiend. Upstairs, were the other bodies, the ranch owner Scott Ardullo who got the place from his dad, Butch Ardullo, Scott's wife Terri and their daughter little Brittany who was around five years old. It was all horrible. But no sign of one other member of the family. The baby-Justin. All of us remember how Terri had such a hard labor with him and it would've been great for him to be okay.

But the terror continued. Sheriff Haas followed the blood and walked all the way to the back of the house where Noreen Peeke's son Ardith was living at the time and their he found Justin. Good taste says we won't go into detail but let's just say whoever did that to a tiny little infant is a fiend of unbelievable satan-like proportion. We are sick over this.

Ardith Peeke was drunk and stoned on all sorts of drugs. He was the ratcatcher on the ranch, going after all sorts of rodents and other pests, as well. So he probably had all sorts of weapons and poisons but we don't know yet what he used on those poor people.

Its really terrible and unbelievable, that something like this could happen in a small, peaceful place like ours but that seems to be the way the world is going, look at the Manson Family and how they attacked people who thought they were safe because they had money and lived behind gates. And the music of today, no one sings about love and romance, it s all nasty stuff and getting worse.

So the message, I guess is, trust in God, only He can protectyou.

Sheriff Haas called in the FBI and the Bakersfield police to consult on this because its way out of what he usually deals with. He told me he was in Korea but never saw anything like this.

My sources tell me Ardith Peeke has always been weird. Sometimes people tried to help him-I know my sons Cliff and Derrick sure did, trying to get him involved in some athletic activities and whatnot, theater projects, you name it. Anything to bring him out of his shell, because they figured he was lonely. But he wouldn 't hear of it. He just stayed by himself snorting paint and glue and whatnot. My sources tell me he was too into himself to relate to other people, some sort of severe mental illness.

Why did he suddenly do such a terrible thing?

Will we ever know?

Everyone loved theArdullos, they were here so long, working hard even when it wasn 't sure that would help because crop prices were so low. But working hard because that's what they believed in, they were salt of the earth people, they just loved to work.

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN HERE-IN TREADWAY!?

IN AMERICA!!!!???

But that's what happens when the mind goes I guess.

I wish I had the answers but I'm only a journalist not an oracle.

I wish God worked in ways that we could understand- why should babies and children suffer like that? What makes a guy just go crazy like that?

Questions, questions, question.

When I get some answers, I'II keep you posted.

S.N.C.

She never did.

Last edition of the Intelligencer.