Victims

CHAPTER
38

Fifty minutes to Camarillo, courtesy Milo’s leaden foot.

The same exit off the 101, the same winding road through old, dense trees.

The same feeling of arriving at a strange place, untested, unsure, ready to be surprised.

What had once been an open field of wildflowers was planted with lemon trees, hundreds of them arranged in rows, the ground cleared of stray fruit. The logo of a citrus collective graced several signs on the borders of the grove. The sky was a perfect, improbable, crayon blue.

Milo sped past the grove. I peered through each row, looking for errant human presence.

Just a tractor, unmanned, at the far end. The next sign appeared half a mile later, lettered in aqua and topped by a rendering of three intense-looking gulls. SEABIRD ESTATES A Planned Community

A few yards up, shoulder-high blue gates were hinged to cream-colored stucco posts. Superficially reassuring but a whole different level of security from V-State’s twenty-foot blood-red barrier.

Keeping them out was different from keeping them in.

A guard inside a tiny booth was texting. Milo tooted his horn. The guard looked over but his fingers kept working. He slid a window open. Milo’s badge pretzeled the guard’s lips. “We didn’t call in no problem.”

“No, you didn’t. Can we come in, please?”

The guard pondered that. Resuming texting, he stabbed at a button on a built-in console, missed the first time, got it right on the second. The gates swung open.

The main street was Sea Bird Lane. It snaked up a slope that picked up as it climbed. Condos appeared on both sides of the road. Landscaping consisted of predictably placed date palms, red-leaf plum trees, beds of low-maintenance succulents that clung to each curve like green cashmere.

Every building was styled identically: neo-Spanish, cream like the gateposts, red composite roofs trying to pass themselves off as genuine tile.

Superficial resemblance to the old V-State buildings. No bars on these windows. No foot traffic to speak of. During the hospital’s tenure, staff and low-risk patients had strolled freely, creating an easy energy. Strangely enough, SeaBird Estates felt more custodial.

Milo drove fifty yards in with a light foot before I spotted an original structure: the mammoth reception hall where I’d been oriented. A sign staked near the entry read Sea Horse Club House. As we continued to explore, other hospital structures appeared. Sea Breeze Card Room. Sea Foam: A Meeting Place. Former wards and treatment centers and who-knew-what coexisting with new construction. Transplanted smoothly, a wonder of cosmetic surgery.

Finally, a few people showed themselves: white-haired couples, strolling, casually dressed, tan, relaxed. I was wondering if they had any idea of their neighborhood’s origins when a red-haired man in a blue poly blazer one size too large, baggy khakis, and ripple-soled shoes stepped into the middle of the road and blocked our progress.

Milo braked. Blazer examined us, then came around to the driver’s side. “Rudy Borchard, head of security. What can I do for you?”

“Milo Sturgis, LAPD. Please to meet you, Rudy.”

Mutual badge-flashes. Borchard’s was significantly larger than Milo’s, a gold-plated star that evoked the OK Corral. Probably larger than anything Earp had worn because why offer a generous target?

“So,” said Borchard. Tentative, as if he’d only memorized the script this far. He placed a protective finger on the knot of his clip-on tie. His hair was too long in places, too short in others, dyed the color of overcooked pumpkin. A one-week mustache was a sprinkle of cayenne on a puffy upper lip. “L.A. police, huh? This ain’t L.A.”

“Neither is it Kansas,” said Milo.

Borchard’s eyes tilted in confusion. He puffed his chest to compensate. “We didn’t call in any problem.”

“We know, but-”

“It’s like this,” Borchard cut in. “Residents’ privacy is real important. I’m talking affluent senior retirees, they want to feel private and safe.”

“Safety’s our goal, too, Rudy. That’s why we’re inquiring about a suspect who might be in the area.”

“A suspect? Here? I don’t think so, guys.”

“Hope you’re right.”

“ In the area or just close to the area?”

“Could go either way.”

“Naw, I don’t think so,” said Borchard. “No one gets in here without my say-so.”

Our easy entry put the lie to that. Milo said, “That’s excellent, but we’d still like to have a look.”

Borchard said, “Who’s this suspect?”

Milo showed him the drawing of Huggler.

Borchard said, “Nope, not here, never been here.”

Milo kept the drawing in Borchard’s face. Borchard stepped back. “I’m telling you nope. Looks like your basic lowlife. Wouldn’t last two seconds, here. Do me a favor and put that away, okay? I don’t want some resident getting their undies all scrunched.”

“Keep it, Rudy. Should you want to post it, that would be fine.”

Borchard took the drawing, folded, slipped it into his pocket. “What exactly this lowlife do?”

“Killed a bunch of people.”

The red dots atop Borchard’s lip bounced as he chewed air. “You kidding? No way I’m posting that picture. The residents hear killed, someone’ll have a heart attack for sure.”

“Rudy,” said Milo, “if Grant Huggler gets in here, it’s gonna be a lot worse than a heart attack.”

“Trust me, he won’t.”

“You guys keep it that tight?”

“Tighter than a virgin’s-real tight, trust me on that.”

“How many ways are there to get in here?”

“You just saw it.”

“The front gate is all?”

“Basically.”

“Basically but not completely?”

“There’s a service entry around the back,” said Borchard, hooking a thumb eastward. “But that’s just deliveries and it’s locked twenty-four seven and it’s monitored by c-circuit and we know exactly who ingresses and egresses.”

“What comes in that way?”

“Deliveries. Large-scale. Small-scale come through the front, every parcel is checked out before it’s delivered.”

“Checked out how?”

“The residents give us authorization to sign for UPS and FedEx and we verify addresses and hand-deliver. That way no one gets bothered, it’s all part of the service.”

A honk from behind made us turn. Elderly couple in a white Mercedes itching to proceed. The woman was stoic but the man’s mouth worked.

“You better move over,” said Borchard.

Milo pulled to the curb and we got out. The Mercedes passed and Borchard favored the occupants with a wide wave. They ignored him, tooled to the next street, turned left. Sea Cloud Road.

Rudy Borchard said, “Have a nice day, guys.”

Milo said, “What constitutes large-scale deliveries?”

“You know, bulk stuff. We’re like a town, supplies for the clubhouse and the restaurants-we got two, the formal and the informal-come in all the time. We got nearly eight hundred residents.”

I said, “The clubhouse is back there. So there’s a way for the trucks to approach it from the back and drive straight to the loading dock.”

“ ’Zactly,” said Borchard. “We can’t have semis rumbling through, messing up the pavement, creating a ruckus.”

“Where does the service road connect from?”

“Cuts through the middle.”

“Of what?”

“The rest of the property.”

“There’s a section that’s not developed?”

“ ’Zactly. Phase Two.”

“When’s it going to be developed?”

Borchard shrugged.

Milo said, “How do you get to the service road without driving through here?”

“You probably took Lewis off the freeway, right? Next time, get off one exit before, then you travel a few streets and go on some farm roads. But trust me, no one’s gonna get in that way. And even if they did-and they didn’t-there’d be nowhere to hide. Plus the residents have panic buttons in their condos and they can pay extra for portable ones to carry around. We got no problems here. Never.”

Milo said, “So the delivery road cuts through the back and ends up at a loading dock.”

“Not one dock, a bunch, and there’s always people around. Trust me, your lowlife wouldn’t last a minute. What even makes you think he’s anywhere near here?”

“Because he used to live here?”

“In Camarillo? It’s a big place.”

“Not the city, Rudy. Here.”

“Huh? Oh. He was one of those.”

“One of who?”

“A nutter. From when this was a nuthouse.”

I said, “Do the residents know about that?”

Borchard smiled. “It’s not on the brochure but sure, some of them would have to. But no one gives two rats. Because that was a long time ago and now everything’s normal and safe. Why would a nutter come back to where he was locked up, anyway? That’s not logical. Psychologically speaking.”

Milo suppressed a smile. “Maybe so, Rudy. How many guys on your security staff?”

“Five. Including me. It’s enough, trust me. Nothing happens here. The whole nut thing’s a joke to us. Like when something gets dug up.”

“Dug up?”

“When they’re doing landscaping,” said Borchard. “Someone’s turning the dirt for plants, whatever, something pops up.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, no, don’t go thinking criminal. I’m talking spoons, forks, cups. With the hospital brand on it, this big VS. One time some buckles and a strap got dug up, probably from one of those straitjackets.”

“What do you do with all that when you find it?”

“I don’t find it, the landscaping crew does. They give it to me and I throw it out, what do you think? It’s junk.” Borchard checked his watch. “Your maniac ain’t here but if he shows up I’ll take care of it.”

Unbuttoning the oversized jacket, he gave us a view of a holstered Glock.

“Nice piece,” said Milo.

“And I know how to use it.”

“You were in the military?”

Borchard flushed. “I go to the range. Have a nice day, guys.”

Milo said, “How about showing us that service road?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Just so we can tell the boss we’ve been careful.”

“Bosses,” said Borchard. “Yeah, I hear that. Fine, I’ll show you, but it’s clear on the other end, you don’t wanna walk.”

“So we’ll drive.”

Borchard eyed the unmarked. “I’m not getting in the back of that, looks bad to the residents, you know?”

“I promise not to cuff you, Rudy.”

“I like your jokes. Not.” He touched the spot beneath his jacket where the gun was positioned. “You really need to be doing this?”

“We drove all the way from L.A.”

“So go get a fish taco in town and say you looked.”

Milo smiled.

“Okay, okay, hold on.” A man with a cane was approaching and Borchard hurried to intercept him. Borchard smiled and talked. The man walked away, midsentence, muttering. Borchard shot us an I-told-you-so look, disappeared around a leafy turn, and emerged several minutes later driving a canvas-topped golf cart.

“Hop in for the E Ride.”

Milo sat next to him, I took the rear bench. The plastic seat was aqua blue patterned with green herons.

“Guys, I’m only doing this cop-to-cop, trust me your nutter didn’t stow away in some eighteen-wheeler. Everything comes from recognized vendors, we log every ingress and egress. Now, if the tunnels were still open, I might consider you have a point, but they’re not so you don’t.”

“What tunnels?”

“Ha, knew I’d get you with that,” said Borchard, chuckling. “I’m messing with you, trust me, it’s nothing.”

“No tunnels.”

“Not anymore and they’re all filled with concrete.”

“None, but they’re filled.”

“You know what I mean, you can’t go in ’em.”

Milo looked back at me. I shook my head.

Borchard said, “What it was, back in the day there were these underground passages between some of the hospital buildings. For moving supplies, I guess.” He laughed harder. “Or maybe they ran the nutters down there for exercise, punishment, whatever. Anyway, when the developers bought the property the county made them fill them all with concrete because of earthquakes. You want to see?”

“Why not?” said Milo, casually.

“Giving you the full tour, gonna be a surcharge.” Laughing and flooring the cart’s accelerator, Borchard swung a quick U-turn and headed up the road at five mph. Moments later, he stopped at a side street that led to a clump of condos. Sea Wave Road. Motioning us out, he squatted, parted some bushes. Inlaid in the dirt was a metal disk around six feet in diameter. Painted brown, unmarked, like an oversized manhole cover with two metal eyelets.

“Watch, this is cool.” Looping a finger around one of the eyelets, Borchard tried to lift. The lid didn’t budge. He strained. “Must be stuck or something.”

“Want some help?” said Milo.

“No, no, no.” Borchard used two hands, turned scarlet. The lid lifted an inch and Borchard let go and some sort of pneumatic mechanism kicked in. The lid rose until it was perpendicular with the ground.

Underneath was a circle of concrete. Borchard stood on top of it, jumped like a kid on a trampoline. “Solid, all the way through. Rebar and concrete, extra-strong to handle the big one.”

“How many openings like this are there, Rudy?”

“Who knows? Most of them are buried over, they run under the condos. It’s only when they’re in landscaped areas that we find them. I’ve seen four of those and trust me, they’re all solid, like this one.” He jumped twice more. “Nutter skulking through a tunnel would be a good movie. Unfortunately, this is reality, guys. You really don’t want to bother seeing the back fence, do you?”

Milo shrugged. “What can I tell you, Rudy?”

“Knew you’d say that.”

We put-putted along Sea Bird Lane, switched to Sea Star Drive, reached the rear of the development. The service road was a single lane of asphalt that passed through a high chain-link gate. A closed-circuit camera was bolted to the right-hand post. Through the links a slice of blue sky and brown field and mauve mountains was visible but the broad view afforded only sky above twenty-plus feet of ficus hedge. The trees had been densely planted on both sides of the fence, creating an impenetrable wall of green.

I strained to catch a lateral glimpse but Borchard swung the cart away and drove along the development’s south rim, parallel to the hedge. The road continued for several minutes before branching to a three-tine fork.

“Okay? Satisfied?”

Milo said, “Where do these roads go?”

“They’re not roads, they’re driveways. That one’s to the clubhouse, that’s to the recreation center-basically for towels from the linen service-and that one goes to La Mer, which is the formal, open for dinner only, and also to Cafe Seabird, which is right next door and does three meals a day and also has a tearoom for snacks-what the hell, I’ll show you.”

Three loading docks, all of them bolted shut. Not a truck in sight. Despite Borchard’s boast of observers everywhere, no workers.

“Quiet day,” said Milo.

“It’s always quiet,” said Borchard, as if he regretted the fact. Reversing the car, he headed back toward the front. As we passed the chain-link gate, Milo said, “Stop for a sec,” and hopped out and peered through.

He came back stoic.

“What’d you see?” said Borchard. “Empty land, right? No nutters in sight. Can I go on?”

“You keep the disks from that CC camera?”

“Knew you’d ask that. The disk erases itself every twenty-four and we recycle. ’Cause there’s never nothing on it. Now I’m taking you back, I already got too many curious residents wanting to know what’s up.”

I said, “What are you going to tell them?”

“That you guys are from the county. Making sure we’re earthquake-safe. Which we are. Totally.”

Back at the unmarked, Milo asked Borchard for detailed directions to the undeveloped land.

“Just what I told you.”

“How about if we don’t want to get back on the freeway?”

Borchard scratched his head. “I guess you could, as you get out of here, turn left, then left again. But it’s way longer, you’re making a big square. Then you have to drive a ways till you see an artichoke field. At least now it’s artichokes, sometimes they plant it with something else-when it’s onions, trust me you’ll smell it. You get to the artichokes, you still keep going and then you’ll see a whole bunch of nothing, like you just saw through the back gate.”

He scraped a tooth with a fingernail. “That’s how you’ll know you’re there. It’s a whole lot more nothing than anywhere else around here.”