Rage

CHAPTER 4

Social Services had evaluated the boys’ families before settling them in the housing project. It took a subpoena but I got the records.

Troy Turner Jr. lived with his mother, a twenty-eight-year-old alcoholic and cocaine addict named Jane Hannabee. She’d been in and out of rehab for most of her adult life and had spent two years, as a teenager, at the state mental hospital in Camarillo. Her diagnoses ranged from mood disorder, depressed type, to personality disorder, narcissistic-borderline type, to schizoaffective disorder. Meaning no one really understood her. During her attempts at treatment, Troy had been sent to her parents in San Diego. Troy ’s grandfather, a retired army sergeant, found the boy’s wild ways intolerable. He’d been dead for seven years, his wife for six.

A habitual felon and addict named Troy Wayne Turner was the boy’s alleged father. Jane Hannabee claimed that at age fifteen, she’d shared a rock and a one-night stand with the thirty-nine-year-old in a San Fernando motel. Turner had recently turned to bank robbery to support his habit, and after his tryst with Hannabee was caught fleeing from a Bank of America in Covina. Sentenced to ten years at San Quentin, he succumbed three years later to liver disease, never meeting, or acknowledging, his son.

Shortly after her boy’s arrest, Jane Hannabee had left 415 City for parts unknown.

Rand Duchay’s parents were long-distance truckers who’d perished on the Grapevine in a thirty-vehicle winter pile-up. Six months old at the time of the crash, Rand had been riding in the truck, swaddled in a storage compartment behind the front seat. He had survived without obvious injury, lived all his life with his grandparents, Elmer and Margaret Sieff, uneducated people who’d failed at farming and a number of small businesses. Elmer died when Rand was four and Margaret, afflicted with diabetes and circulatory problems, moved to the project when her money ran out. The way the social workers saw it, she’d done her best.

As far as I could tell, neither boy had spent much time in school and no one had noticed.

I put in my request to visit the prisoners and the A.D.A.s assigned to the case requested a prior meeting. So did the boy’s deputy public defenders. I didn’t need priming by either side and refused. When all the lawyers protested I had Judge Laskin run interference. A day later, I was authorized to enter the jail.

I’d been to the county jail before, was used to the grayness, the wait, the gates, the forms. The squinty scrutiny by reflexively suspicious deputy sheriffs as I stood in the sally port. I knew the High Power ward, too, had visited a patient there, years ago. Another kid who’d teetered over the edge. As I walked down the corridor with a deputy escort, moans and giggles sprayed from distant cells and the air filled with the battling stenches of excreta and disinfectant. The world might change but this place didn’t.

Psych evaluations had been ordered alphabetically: Randolph Duchay, first. He was curled up on a cot in his cell, facing front but sleeping. I motioned to the deputy to hold back and took a few seconds to observe.

Big for his age, but in the cold, unadorned, custard yellow space, he looked insignificant.

The furnishings were a sink, a chair, a lidless toilet, a shelf for personal items that was bare. Weeks behind bars had left him sallow, with sooty half-moons under his eyes and chapped lips and a slack face ravaged by furious acne. His hair had been clipped short. Even from a distance I could see the scourge of pimples stretching up into his scalp.

I motioned that I was ready and the deputy unlocked the cell. As the door clicked behind me, the boy looked up. Dull brown eyes barely took the time to focus before closing.

The deputy said, “I pass through every quarter hour. You need me sooner, holler.”

I thanked him, put my briefcase down, sat in the chair. When he left, I said, “Hello, Rand. I’m Dr. Delaware.”

“H’lo.” Hoarse, phlegmy voice, barely above a whisper. He coughed. Blinked several times. Remained prone.

“Got a cold?” I said.

Head shake.

“How are they treating you?”

No response, then he half sat, remaining slumped so low that his trunk nearly paralleled the cot. Big torso, disproportionately short legs. His ears were low-set, flaring on top, folded over in an odd way. Stubby fingers. Webbed neck. A mouth that never fully closed. His front teeth were small and ragged. The overall picture: “soft signs”- suggestions of abnormality that didn’t qualify for any formal syndrome.

“I’m a psychologist, Rand. Know what that is?”

“Kinda doctor.”

“Right. Know what kind?”

“Hnnh.”

“Psychologists don’t give shots or examine your body.”

He flinched. Like any other inmate he’d been subjected to the full course of physical scrutiny.

I said, “I deal with how you’re feeling emotionally.”

His eyes floated upward. I touched my forehead. “What’s in your mind.”

“Like a shrink.”

“You know about shrinks.”

“Crazy nuts.”

“Shrinks are for crazy nuts.”

“Hnnh.”

“Who told you that, Rand?”

“Gram.”

“Your grandmother.”

“Hnnh.”

“What else did she say about shrinks?”

“If I didn’t do right she’d send me.”

“To a shrink.”

“Hnnh.”

“What does ‘do right’ mean?”

“Bein’ good.”

“How long ago did your grandmother tell you that?”

He thought about that, seemed to be really working at figuring it out. Gave up and stared at his knees.

“Was it after you were in jail or before?”

“Before.”

“Was your grandmother angry at you when she said it?”

“Kinda.”

“What made her angry?”

His grainy skin reddened. “Stuff.”

“Stuff,” I said.

No answer.

“Has Gram been to see you, here?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Yeah.”

“How often does she come?”

“Sometimes.”

“She have anything else to say?”

Silence.

“Nothing?” I said.

“She brang me to eat.”

“What’s she bring you?”

“Oreos,” he said. “She’s mad.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I ruined it.”

“Ruined what?”

“Everything.”

“How’d you do that?”

His eyes fluttered. The lids dropped. “My sin.”

“Your sin.”

“Killing that baby.” He lay back down, flung an arm over his eyes.

“You feel bad about that,” I said.

No answer.

“Killing the baby,” I prompted.

He rolled away from me, faced the wall.

“How do you feel about what happened to the baby, Rand?”

Several seconds passed.

“ Rand?”

“He laughed.”

“Who laughed?”

“ Troy.”

“ Troy laughed.”

“Hnnh.”

“When?”

“When he hit her.”

“ Troy laughed when he hit Kristal.”

Silence.

“Did Troy do anything else to Kristal?”

He was inert for nearly a minute, then rolled back toward me. His eyelids lifted halfway. Licked his lips.

“This is tough to talk about,” I said.

Small nod.

“What else did Troy do to the baby?”

Sitting up with the stiff, labored movements of an old man, he encircled his own neck with his hands and pantomimed choking. More than mime; his eyes widened, his face turned scarlet, his tongue thrust forward.

I said, “ Troy choked the baby.”

His knuckles whitened as he squeezed harder.

“That’s enough, Rand.”

He began to rock as his fingers dug into his flesh. I got up, pried his hands loose. Strong kid; it took some doing. He gasped, made a retching sound, flopped back down. I stood by his side until his breathing slowed. He drew his knees up toward his chest. Pressure marks splotched his neck.

I made a note to request suicide watch. “Don’t do that again, Rand.”

“Sorry.”

“You feel bad about what happened to the baby.”

No response.

“You watched Troy choke and hit the baby and thinking about it makes you feel really bad.”

Someone’s radio spat a hip-hop number. Footsteps from afar sounded but no one approached.

I said, “You feel bad about watching Troy.”

He mumbled.

“What’s that, Rand?”

His lips moved soundlessly.

“What, Rand?”

The deputy who’d escorted me strolled by, scanned the cell, and moved on. Fifteen minutes hadn’t passed. The staff was taking special care.

“ Rand?”

He said, “I hit her, too.”

For the next week, I saw him every day for two hourly sessions, once in the morning, once in the afternoon. Instead of opening up, he regressed, refusing to divulge anything more about the murder. Much of my time was devoted to formal testing. The clinical interview was a challenge. Some days he remained resolutely mute; the most I could hope for were passive, monosyllabic answers to yes-no questions.

When I brought up the abduction, he seemed confused about why he’d participated, more stunned than horrified. Part of that was denial, but I suspected his low intellect was also a factor. When you comb through the histories of seriously violent kids, you often find head injuries. I wondered about the crash that had killed his parents but had spared him obvious damage.

His Wechsler Intelligence scores were no shock: Full Score I.Q. of 79, with severe deficits in verbal reasoning, language formation, factual knowledge, and mathematical logic.

Tom Laskin wanted to know if he’d been functioning as an adult when he killed Kristal Malley. Even if Rand was thirty-five years old, that might’ve been a relevant question.

The T.A.T. and the Rorschach were pretty much useless: He was too depressed and intellectually impoverished to produce meaningful responses to the cards. His Peabody I.Q. score was no higher than the more verbally influenced Wechsler. His Draw-a-Person was a tiny, limbless, stick figure with two strands of hair and no mouth. My request to free-draw elicited a blank stare. When I suggested he draw himself and Troy he resisted by feigning sleep.

“Just draw anything, then.”

He lay there, breathing through his mouth. His acne had grown even worse. Suggesting a dermatologic consult would have elicited smirks from the jail staff.

“ Rand?”

“Hnnh.”

“Draw something.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

His mouth twisted as if his teeth hurt. “Can’t.”

“Sit up and do it, anyway.” My hard tone made him blink. He stared at me but couldn’t hold it past a few seconds. Pitiful attention span. Maybe part of that was sensory deprivation due to being locked up, but my guess was he’d always had trouble concentrating.

I handed him the pencil and the paper and the drawing board. He sat there for a while, finally put the board in his lap, gripped the pencil. The point froze on the paper.

“Draw,” I said.

His hand began circling lazily, floating above the paper. Finally making contact, as he created flabby, barely visible, concentric ellipses. The page began to fill. Darker ellipses. His eyes shut as he scrawled. For two weeks he’d done that a lot- blinding himself to his hellish reality.

Today, his pencil hand moved faster. The ellipses grew more angular. Flatter, darker. Sharpening to jagged, spearlike shapes.

He kept going, tongue tip snaking between his lips. The paper became a storm of black. His free hand fisted and gathered the hem of his jail shirt as his drawing hand moved faster. The pencil dug in and the page puckered. Ripped. He slashed downward. Circled faster. Digging in harder, as the paper shredded. The pencil went through to the drawing board, hit the glossy, fiberboard surface and slid out from his hand.

Landing on the floor of the cell.

He moved quickly, retrieved it. Exhaled. Held the yellow nub in a grubby, moist palm. “Sorry.”

The paper was confetti. The pencil’s graphite tip had broken off, leaving behind splintered wood. Sharp little spikes.

I took the pencil. Put it in my pocket.

After my final visit, walking to the subterranean parking lot, I heard someone call my name and turned to see a heavy woman in a flowered dress leaning on an aluminum cane. The dirty-milk sky matched her complexion. I’d awakened to sunny blue Beverly Glen firmament, but cheer had eluded the grimy corner of East L.A. dominated by the jail.

She took a few steps toward me and the cane clunked on pavement. “You’re the psychologist, right? I’m Rand ’s gram.”

I walked to her, held out my hand.

“Margaret Sieff,” she said, in a smoker’s voice. Her free arm remained at her side. The dress was a scratchy-looking cotton print, relenting at the seams. Camellias and lilies and delphiniums and greenery sprawled across an aqua background. Her hair was white, short, curly, thinning so severely that patches of pink scalp shone through. Blue eyes took me in. Small, sharp, searching eyes. Nothing like her grandson’s.

“You been here all week but I never heard from you. You don’ figger to talk to me?”

“I plan to when I’m finished evaluating Rand.”

“Evaluatin’.” The word seemed to distress her. “What you figger you can do for him?”

“I’ve been asked by Judge Laskin to- ”

“I know all that,” she said. “You’re supposed to say was he a kid or an aldult. Ain’t that cristo clear? What I’m askin’ is what can you do for him?”

“What’s crystal clear, Mrs. Sieff?”

“The boy’s dumb. Screwy.” She pinged her waxy forehead with an index finger. “Din’t talk till he was four, still don’t talk so good.”

“You’re saying Rand ’s- ”

“I’m saying Randolph ain’t never gonna be no aldult.”

Which was as good a diagnosis as the jargon in my notes.

Behind her, rising above both of us, the concrete grid of the jail was the world’s largest window shade. “You coming or going, ma’am?”

“My appointment’s not for a coupla hours. With the buses from the Valley it’s hard to figger, so I get here early. ’Cause if I’m late, those bastards don’ lemme in at all.”

“How about a cup of coffee?”

“You payin’?”

“I am.”

“Then, fine.”