The Boys from Santa Cruz

5

“Oh, gawd,” said Steven P. McDougal, the head of the FBI’s Liaison Support Unit.

“What?” Pender was dressed for spring in a green-and-yellow madras sport jacket over a short-sleeved cotton-poly pink dress shirt that had been white until he’d laundered it with a pair of red socks a few months ago; his too-short, too-wide necktie might have been hand-painted by Jackson Pollock on a bad peyote trip.

“It looks like the Easter Bunny threw up on you.”

“That’s a good one, chief. Not new, but good.” Pender and McDougal went back a long way together. They’d shared an apartment as recruits, and after graduation they’d both been posted to the Arkansas field office in Little Rock, where during their rookie year, Pender had taken a bullet meant for McDougal. True, it was only in the buttocks, but a grateful McDougal had saved Pender’s job at least twice in the intervening decades, and he still ran interference between Pender and the Bureau-cracy on a regular basis.

Of course, even with Steve McDougal running interference, there was a price to be paid for individualism in the buttoned-down, black-Florsheimed world of the FBI. Pender would never make AD, SAC, or even ASAC, and after twenty-three years on the job, he had gone as high on the GS pay scale as a special agent could go. But he doubted he’d have been any happier in management, or that any bump in salary could possibly equal the satisfaction that came with getting serial killers off the street. And besides, Pender sometimes argued, when you were as bald and homely as he was, having people make fun of your clothes was something of an improvement.

Their minimum daily banter requirement fulfilled, McDougal leaned back in his desk chair and laced his hands behind his head. He was in shirtsleeves; the diagonal silver stripes of his navy blue necktie matched his thick, brush-cut hair to perfection. “What’s up?”

“I think we’ve got a live one out in California. Kid from Santa Cruz-”

McDougal groaned.

“-name of Luke Sweet, Junior. Luke Senior was the perp in that snuff porn case in Marshall County, back in ’85. You loaned me out to Izzo in Organized Crime for the stakeout, remember?”

“Refresh me.”

“There were two filmed, or I guess I should say videotaped murders, but they dug up three female bodies altogether. Luke, Jr.-Little Luke, we called him-was implicated in one of the snuff films. He also strangled his girlfriend and threw her body over a cliff, nearly killed another boy, and according to the records Thom Davies pulled for me today, he was also a suspect in the murder of an Indian pot dealer in Stockton. But his grandparents managed to pull some strings, got him declared non compos, and committed him to a private mental hospital. Place called Meadows Road. Which burned down last month, allegedly with him in it.”

“Whose allegedly is that-yours or the locals’?”

“Mine,” replied Pender, unapologetically. “My gut tells me there’s a good chance it was Little Luke who torched it, and an even better one that he survived the fire.”

“Does your gut have any…What’s that word? Oh yes: evidence?”

“A week after the fire, somebody killed both of Little Luke’s grandparents. Overkilled them and scattered the pieces. And when I talked to the forensic pathologist who identified Sweet’s remains, she admitted they had no body-the ID was based on a process of elimination.”

“And our jurisdiction?” McDougal said dubiously. “Last time I checked, this was still the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“So was the original case, the snuff video. And we were called in to consult by both the Marshall County and Humboldt County sheriff’s departments.”

“That’s a tad thin, don’t you think?”

“Steve, please, don’t go all Bureau on me now. I have one of my bad feelings about this one. I think this kid’s alive, I think he’s out for revenge, and I think more people are going to die unless we catch him soon. The way I see it, either we pursue this aggressively before he kills again or we sit around with our thumbs up our asses as per usual, waiting for the next corpse to turn up.”

McDougal said nothing; neither did he break off eye contact. “Put me in, coach,” pleaded Pender. “This is what I do, this is what Liaison Support is for.”

His boss sighed, shook his head like a mark who’d just made his choice as to which shell the pea was under, and wasn’t at all sure he’d gotten it right. “I’ll give you a provisional okay. Here are the provisions. First of all, what with the manpower drain from Oklahoma City, the Bureau is seriously understaffed. So I want this handled expeditiously. I’ll give you two, three days, then I want you back at your desk. Secondly, it’s only May and our budget’s already shot to shit, so you’re going to have to fly coach, rent a compact car, and stay at a Motel Six or the equivalent. And third, you are not to step on any toes, local or Bureau.”

“Three days, on the cheap, no toes,” said Pender, who was already halfway out the door. “I read you five by five, and I guarantee you, you will not regret this.”

He closed McDougal’s door behind him. Pool beckoned him over to her command station/front desk.

“I hear and obey,” muttered Pender, veering toward her. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Here, this is for you.” She handed him a small gray rectangular object with a plastic faceplate, telescoping antenna, and rounded corners.

“What is it, a new pager?”

“No, it’s a cell phone.”

“Kind of small, isn’t it?”

“That’s how they’re making them nowadays. I’ve put my number on speed-dial and set the ring tone for ‘Moon River,’ if that’s all right with you.”

“Peachy.”

“And here, this device is to charge the battery, and this one is for charging it when you’re in your car. So from now on, no excuses, no road trip disappearances. You can reach us twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and we can reach you.”

“Oh, swell,” said Pender.