A Dark Mind (35 page)

Lizzy clicked shut her cell phone. “That was Jimmy,” she said. “The FBI talked to the Becks about a year ago. They searched the property and found nothing to tie them to the Lovebird Killer, but
he’s agreed to take another look. They’re scouring the grounds in Lincoln now. The trees are infested with the beetles, but nobody appears to be home and they won’t be able to get inside the house until they have a warrant.”

“You have to look at this,” Hayley said. “I found a listing for Beck’s Limousine Service. Could Jennifer have written Beck’s Limousine instead of Best?”

“I’ll talk to Jimmy about that,” Lizzy said. “Have you learned anything about the Becks’ adopted son? Do we know where he is or what he’s doing?”

“Robert Beck, who lived with quite a few families before he was adopted by the Becks, was eleven or twelve when he was taken in by the Hargroves. The Hargroves were the last foster family to take Robert in before he went to live with the Becks. I can’t find much information on Robert Beck, but when I searched the name “Hargrove” I learned that the Hargroves had taken in three boys and they all attended the same school. A boy named Robert was listed as a student of Maria Trumble. His age is consistent with Robert Beck’s age at the time. In a blog written by a teacher of that same name, she wrote a post about a boy in her class who once had extreme discipline problems. He’d been passed from foster home to foster home, but she believes he was finally adopted. She doesn’t mention a name, although he was only in her class for one year, which is consistent with my records of Robert Hargrove being at Twin Rivers Unified School District, where she still teaches. I have her home address if you need it.”

Fifteen minutes later, Lizzy was in her car, headed for Maria Trumble’s house on Cottage Way in Sacramento. The traffic was heavy for a Saturday morning. Lizzy counted to ten, trying to keep her mind off Jared and what he must be going through.

What if something happened to him?

She couldn’t think that way. She couldn’t live without him.

One. Two. Three…
She counted all the way to Maria Trumble’s house.

Cottage Way was a quiet street in Sacramento. The house was surrounded by colorful flower beds and a nicely manicured lawn. Lizzy parked at the curb and headed for the front door. There was a gray Prius in the driveway. It was early, but the only thing on Lizzy’s mind as she pushed the doorbell was finding Jared.

Before she could hit the doorbell again, a gray-haired woman peeked through the living room curtain, then opened the front door a few inches, leaving the chain in place. “It’s Saturday and it’s early. Do I know you?”

“I’m Lizzy Gardner. I’m a private investigator and I need to talk to you. It’s an emergency; otherwise I would never have bothered you like this.”

“I don’t see how—”

“I read something you wrote on the Internet,” Lizzy blurted. “It was about a child you once had in your class…I believe his name was Robert.”

The woman stiffened. “I taught Robert twenty years ago,” she said. “I don’t see how anything I could possibly tell you about that boy could help you.”

“Please. I’m begging you to let me in so we can talk. I have a friend who is in immediate danger, and you might be the only person who can help me find him.”

The woman sighed. She shut the door, and Lizzy could hear her unfastening the latch before she opened the door again and gestured for Lizzy to come inside.

Sacramento

Saturday, June 9, 2012

After Lizzy had left the house, Stacey headed off, too.

Hayley couldn’t stop thinking about John Robinson. She was convinced they needed to learn more about him: first, John Robinson’s landlord happened to live in the same house where bodies were once stuffed with pine sawyer beetles.
Coincidence?

Second, somebody was determined to mess with Lizzy, and the only person who made sense was John Robinson. Maybe he
was
the man pretending to be Eli Simpson and he’d found out that Lizzy was helping the real Eli Simpson investigate the disappearance of his sister.

Third, if John Robinson was capable of impersonating other people and making Eli’s sister disappear, then maybe, just maybe, he was fucked up enough to go after Lizzy, too.

Hayley finished reading the police reports in the Eli Simpson/John Robinson file and handed it to Jessica to read. According to Eli Simpson, John Robinson’s neighbor Claire Schultz had seen everything, and she knew exactly what had happened to his sister five years ago.

It took some doing, but Hayley convinced Jessica to drive her to Claire’s house. She refused to sit there and twiddle her thumbs.

Hayley knocked on Claire Schultz’s door while Jessica looked down the street toward John Robinson’s house. Lizzy had told them about the beetles’ connection to the Lovebird Killer, which made Hayley wonder if John Robinson’s ties to the Becks could mean he was doing more than just screwing with people’s minds. Before she could say as much to Jessica, an elderly woman opened
the door. She reminded Jessica of an apple doll: deep-set eyes, a sizable nose, and a slit for a mouth set within a maze of deep facial creases and wrinkles. The woman was short. A thick colorful scarf around her neck emphasized a hunched back. “I don’t need any more Girl Scout cookies. Go away.”

“We’re not selling cookies,” Hayley told her. “We need to talk to you about your neighbor down the street, John Robinson.”

The woman’s face turned ashen. She tried to shut the door, but Hayley jammed her foot inside to stop the woman from closing the door all the way. “There are two people in grave danger. You might be able to help.”

“Please,” Jessica added.

“If you don’t leave this minute, I’m calling the police.”

“You know something,” Hayley said. “Why won’t you help?”

“Sometimes it is best if we mind our own business,” the woman said. “Now leave me alone.”

Jessica touched Hayley’s arm. “Come on, Hayley. She doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“God, that’s what I hate about you,” Hayley said, her face red and angrier than Jessica had ever seen her look.

“Jared might die,” Hayley went on. “He could be dead already for all we know, but you don’t even care. If you did care, you wouldn’t take no for an answer. This woman knows something and yet she’s going to die knowing because she’s afraid of some maniac down the road. The real killers are the people who say nothing.”

“That’s enough, Hayley. She doesn’t have to talk to you or anybody else. It’s her right as a citizen of the United States. Leave her alone.” Jessica turned to leave. She’d had enough.

“I’ll talk to
her
,” the woman said, pointing to Jessica.

Jessica turned to face the elderly woman. Sure enough, she opened the door wider, allowing Hayley to step inside. Then she waited for Jessica to enter, too.

Sacramento

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Maria Trumble pulled her robe tight around her waist before she took a seat on the couch facing the chair where Lizzy sat, and said, “In all my years of teaching, I’ve never met a more disturbed child.”

“How so? Loud and obnoxious?”

“Quite the opposite. Robert was quiet—too quiet. In the beginning I thought he was shy, but it didn’t take long to recognize that not only was he smart, he could also be very social. As soon as it was time for recess, his dull murky eyes would come alive, except on the days I was scheduled for yard duty. That’s when Robert would sit quietly on a bench and read.”

“That doesn’t sound social to me.”

“No, it doesn’t, does it?”

Lizzy had no idea where the woman was headed with this story, but she knew she had to be patient if she wanted to keep her talking. What if the Becks’ adopted son was somehow connected to the Lovebird Killer? What if he
was
the Lovebird Killer? It was a long shot, but it was the only lead they had. The problem was nobody knew what had become of Robert Beck. Where was he now? Jimmy and his men were in Lincoln, waiting for a warrant so they could get inside the Becks’ house. She kept glancing at her cell phone, praying he would call and tell her he’d found Jared.

“Whenever I was on playground duty,” Mrs. Trumble said, “Robert was on his best behavior because he knew that I was watching him.”

“But on the other days? The days you weren’t on duty?”

“On those days, all bets were off. On those days something always happened. A child would ‘fall’ off the bars and break an arm or a leg. Fire alarms would go off or a dead animal would be found in one of the bathrooms.” She shook her head. “Never failed.”

“And you think Robert was responsible?”

“I
know
Robert was responsible.”

“How could you know for sure?”

“Because he told me.”

“He would push a child off the bars or start the fire alarm and then tell you what he did?”

She nodded. “And then, as I’m sure was all part of his devilish plan, I would report him to the school principal. He would be called in to the office, too, and that’s when Robert put on the charm. All it took were clever words and an innocent look to convince the principal that I had it out for him. Sometimes he would blame another innocent child, but either way, the end result was the same: he would walk out of the principal’s office with a smirk.”

“On a few occasions you walked Robert home from school, is that right?”

She nodded. “I knew Mrs. Hargrove personally. She had fostered two other boys, and she was a lovely person and a wonderful mother.”

“And so you wanted to tell her what was going on?”

“Absolutely. I wanted to warn her. She needed to know. I was afraid for her.”

“Afraid that Robert would hurt her?”

“Afraid he would kill her.”

“He was only eleven years old at the time,” Lizzy said, surprised by the woman’s serious tone.

“Yes, he was only a boy, but he had a dark mind. The boy was delusional. On a few occasions I walked Robert home and had a talk with Mrs. Hargrove. She told me that all three of her boys had spent time with a therapist. She said Robert was diagnosed as having an uncommon psychiatric condition known as delusional disorder. He would make up stories in his head. For example, he was convinced that he was popular and well liked, while the truth was most children his age were afraid of him.”

“What causes delusional disorder?”

“Many things, including a traumatic childhood, but they believe Robert’s disorder occurred after his mother disappeared and he was sent to one foster home after another.”

“Was he given medication?”

She shrugged. “I believe so, but I never saw an improvement.”

“Did you go to the police?”

She shook her head. “I certainly thought about it. He wrote a paper once, describing in detail how he planned to kill Mrs. Hargrove. After he killed her, he planned to kill his teacher, too.”

“A past teacher from another school?” Lizzy asked.

“No, he included little drawings in the margins. He wanted to kill me. I saw it in his eyes. I saw it every day.”

“But nobody would listen to you even though you had proof?”

“I don’t know how he did it, but somehow Robert got ahold of the paper he’d given me. It disappeared from my desk drawer that I kept locked at all times. It wasn’t until a concerned friend came in one weekend and set up cameras that I was able to catch Robert defecating on the top of my desk.”

“That’s horrible.”

“That was nothing. I wasn’t sure if that would be enough proof, so I kept the camera rolling for two weeks. That was no child; he was a demon. He poked other kids with sharpened pencils. He left dead lizards and frogs inside the other children’s desks. He convinced little girls to touch him improperly and they would allow him to touch them, too. To this day, I don’t have a clue as to what he said to get them to follow his orders, since there was no audio on the tapes, but that was the last straw.”

“But his classmates never told on him?”

She shook her head. “Never. Not one. But the videos did the trick. I finally had the proof I needed, and he was escorted away from my classroom and the school.”

“Did you ever hear from him again?”

“No.”

“Do you recognize the names Karen and Todd Beck?”

She shook her head again.

Lizzy couldn’t hide her disappointment. She’d come here in hopes that this woman could tell her where Robert Beck was now. “Karen and Todd Beck were the people who took Robert in next. In fact, they adopted Robert.”

Mrs. Trumble continued to shake her head, saddened. Saddened for Robert or saddened for the couple who took him in, Lizzy wasn’t sure.

“They were embalmers,” Lizzy went on, “and they pleaded guilty to stuffing two corpses with dead pine sawyer beetles.”

The woman shut her eyes. Tears slid down both sides of her face.

“What is it?” Lizzy asked.

“It was him all along.”

“Who?”

“Every year for the past ten years, two dead beetles arrive at my house—either by mail or left on my doorstep. I always wondered if it was him.”

I carried it too far, that’s for sure.

—Jeffrey Dahmer

Sacramento

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Hayley glanced at her phone. They had been at the woman’s house for thirty minutes and she had told them absolutely nothing. They didn’t have time for this. She bolted to her feet and said, “We need to go, Jessica. People’s lives are in danger and we’re getting nowhere.”

“Well, why did you have us come here in the first place?” Jessica asked.

“Jimmy was at the house in Lincoln, and Lizzy was talking to the teacher in hopes of finding out what happened to Robert Beck. We had to do something. Come on. Let’s go.”

As Jessica glanced at Claire Schultz, she reached over and patted the top of the woman’s hand. “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be OK.”

“Nothing is going to be OK,” Hayley cut in, clearly frustrated. “John Robinson might have killed Eli Simpson’s sister, but we’ll never know for sure unless people like her stand up to these criminals and tell the truth.”