The Boys from Santa Cruz

5

Charles Mesker’s parents lived on the second floor of a converted motel in a blighted neighborhood only a few blocks from the Boardwalk. Suspicious looking characters loitered under shattered streetlights; a strung-out looking hooker tottered on high heels toward the Buick as it pulled up to the curb, then turned away without explanation.

Skip rang the bell and announced himself as Special Agent Pender, FBI, while the real Pender went around behind the building to make sure Charles didn’t try to sneak out the back way, over one of the second-story balconies. After a minute or two, he rejoined Skip in the entrance lobby, which had the thinnest, drabbest, unhappiest-looking carpet either of them had ever seen. They took the stairs up to the second floor, where Gerald Mesker, white-haired and professorial-looking in a shawl-necked cardigan, met them at the door and asked to see their credentials.

Pender tinned him, introducing Skip as his colleague, Mr. Epstein. Mesker, who’d taught mathematics at UC Santa Cruz from its founding in 1965 to his retirement a few years earlier, ushered them into a low-ceilinged studio apartment and seated them in cheap matching side chairs with low arms and scratchy upholstery. His wife, Helwidge, a round-faced, apple-cheeked Santa’s wife in loose-bottomed granny jeans and a high-necked blouse buttoned to her chin, served them coffee in delicate blue willow china cups and saucers that looked sadly out of place in the sparsely furnished room.

“When did you last see your son Charles?” asked Pender, after some minimal small talk.

“We visited Charlie three weeks before he died,” said Gerald Mesker, seated next to his wife on the convertible sofa that doubled as their marital bed.

“It’s hard to say whether he recognized us or not,” Helwidge Mesker confided in a hoarse whisper. “But I prefer to think he did, and that he knew we still loved him and cared for him.”

“I’m sure he did,” said Pender, taking out his pocket notebook and well-gnawed pencil stub. “By the way, who was his psychiatrist?”

“Dr. Hillovi,” said the professor. “Fredu Hillovi.”

“Do you happen to know how I can get in touch with him?”

Mesker shook his head. “I don’t even know if he survived the fire-I’d read he was badly burned.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Pender’s homely mug was radiant with sympathy as he glanced around the dismal little room. There were two framed photographs of son Charles on the sofa side table. One was of a teenager in a Boy Scout uniform; he had an archer’s bow in one hand and was holding up a blue ribbon in the other. The other was a candid snapshot of a hulking, middle-aged man with a low forehead and a thousand-yard stare. “It must have been quite a strain, financially, keeping Charles in a private facility.”

“Any parent would have done the same,” the professor replied. “We tried caring for him at home, but…” He glanced over at his wife, who shook her head almost imperceptibly. “Let’s just say it didn’t work out. And if you’ve ever seen the facilities the state of California provides, Agent Pender, you’d understand why we made the choices we did.” Choices, he went on to explain, that included heavily mortgaging their home, then renting it out, furnished, to help pay the bills from Meadows Road.

“But you must understand, we don’t regret any of the sacrifices we made for Charlie,” Helwidge added, in a barely audible voice. “In a way, it’s a comfort, knowing that we did everything we could for him. And now that Charlie is finally at peace…” Overcome with emotion, she slumped sideways against her husband, took his hand, and pressed it movingly against her cheek.

“What Helwidge was going to say is, she and I will be moving back into our house on the first of June,” Gerald concluded brusquely. “And now it’s getting rather late, so if you don’t mind, can we please get this over with as quickly as possible?”

“Of course,” said Pender, setting down his cup and saucer. “Could I speak to you alone?”

“I don’t think-”

“Please.”

Gerald took his wife’s cup and saucer from her and returned them to the tray along with his own. He patted her knee and started to rise, but she seized his hand again and would not relinquish it. “No, I want to hear,” she told Pender. “Whatever you have to say to my husband, you can say in front of me.”

Pender leaned forward. “There is every reason to believe that your son was not killed at Meadows Road,” he said gently. “We have some very convincing evidence that he escaped with another inmate after the fire. We believe he’s still at large, but highly delusional, and I’m sorry to say, very dangerous.” He gave it a moment to sink in before adding, “So if Charles should happen to show up here, I beg you, for your own safety as well as his and everybody else’s, please call 911.”

Helwidge turned to her husband. “What does he mean, Gerry? Is he saying that Charlie’s…alive? He’s alive?”

Judging by the strained, distracted smile Gerald gave his wife, the irony of their situation had not escaped him. “Apparently,” he said, patting his wife’s hand.

“I’m so…happy,” Helwidge managed to say, the color blanching from her cheeks. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she toppled sideways off the sofa onto the shag-carpeted floor before her husband could catch her.