Presumed Guilty (29 page)

Vic Lu’s studio was a large cement tilt-up, a commercial building somewhere in Chatsworth. To Dallas, it might as well have been Pluto — foreign, cold, and forbidding.

This couldn’t be happening to her. Bernie couldn’t be this bad. But he had brought her here by force and stood by quietly as Derek the driver held her down on a hard chair.

Vic Lu, wearing a blood-red Hawaiian shirt, paced in front of her.
“How much you think you know?” he barked at Dallas.
Dallas said nothing.
“I’m asking you something, dear.” Lu stopped, bent over, and looked her in the face.
“I know you’re dirty,” Dallas said. “And so is Bernie.” It hurt her to say it.
“Hey, it’s a loophole,” Lu said, standing upright again. “A way to get our friend Bernie what he needs. Money is the mother’s milk of politics, they say. What are you all upset by this for? This kind of thing goes on all the time, all over the place. We’re not bad people.”
Dallas looked at the councilman. “Bernie, how can you let yourself be used by this man?”
Bernie spoke to Vic Lu. “She’s a romantic. She sees things in black and white and thinks God is going to come down and set everything right.”
Lu shook his head. “That’s called
deus ex machina
. It’s not dramatically satisfying.”
“We have to think this through carefully,” Bernie said. “She had a wire, which means the police are in on this. I can pull a few strings and find out what’s going on. Someone’s obviously targeted me and the Gentri Land connection. Dallas, you’ll save everyone a lot of pain if you tell me who it is.”
She had no doubt there would be pain involved if she didn’t talk. These were desperate men, a pornographer and a politician in bed together. Such a pairing could never produce anything but paranoia.
She’d seen it before. In the face of Chad McKenzie when he used to beat her. Part of the game for him was getting her to wilt in shame and fear, which she had. This was the same game. She would not play it.
Bernie sighed. “Not talking? Now we have a real situation on our hands.”
“No sweat,” Lu said. “You ever see
Wag the Dog
?”
“The movie?” Bernie said.
“Yeah, with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. That is one of the greatest movies of all time.” Lu became animated, like he’d had too many shots of espresso. “It’s a movie about taking real crisis situations and spinning them into a story that will sell a presidential campaign. Dustin plays the producer, and things keep going wrong, like planes crashing and crazy murderers getting loose, and he keeps saying, ‘This is nothing. This is producing. I can take care of this.’ That’s all that’s happening here, Bernie. This is what I do. I make up fantasies. I write, produce, and direct stories that people feed on. That’s what we’re going to do right now.”
He paused, put his two index fingers to his temples, and closed his eyes.
“Bernie,” Dallas said, “don’t do this.”
“It’s too late, Dallas. I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Quiet, please,” Lu said, still concentrating. Then he opened his eyes, excited. “Got it! You two went for a nice ride, heading for a nice dinner. But Mrs. H got a headache driving through the canyon. So you brought her back home, only she never made it inside. You went home, Bernie. You are sound asleep. Tomorrow, she’ll be reported missing. Naturally, the cops think you might be behind this, but she’ll be spotted in Barstow. I’ll get another supporting player for that.”
“Then what?” Bernie said.
“Leave that to me.”
“I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
A little-boy disappointment descended on Lu. “I’m just getting to the best part!”
“Forget it. Just take care of it. I don’t want to know.”
Bernie walked toward the door where Derek was now standing guard.
“So that’s it?” Dallas called after him.
He did not answer. Derek opened the door, let Bernie through, then closed the door, staying inside.
Insurance.
When Dallas turned back around, Vic Lu was on his cell phone. She heard him say, “Right now,” and then he clicked off.
“It won’t be long,” he said to Dallas. “You’re gonna love the ending.”

Jared waited in his truck outside the dark apartment building, hoping he’d see Tiana or Jamaal go in or out.
Half an hour. An hour. No Tiana.

Then he saw a woman he thought he recognized. How? It came to him. When he’d first come to this place, she was the one who gave him a suspicious glare. The one-woman Neighborhood Watch. Tonight she was with another, younger woman. They were talking, illuminated by the bright lights on the front walk.

The two women didn’t pay him any mind until he was nearly within reach.
“Excuse me,” he said.
They looked at him, the older woman examining him closely.
“Remember me?”
The woman looked at him like she did, but shook her head. “No, I don’t.”
“I’m a friend of Tiana Williams.”
She narrowed her eyes, then slowly nodded. “I remember now. What’re you doing around here?”
“I’m looking for her. And Jamaal.”
The other woman joined in the glare. It was obvious they didn’t trust him.
“I know all about Rafe,” he said. “I helped them get away from him.”
“He’s dead,” the younger woman said.
“Dead? How — ”
“And maybe they don’t want to be found,” the first woman said.
“Do you know where they are?”
“I wouldn’t tell you if I did. I don’t know what you might do to them. Can’t you just leave them alone? They been through enough.”
“Then can you get a message to them? Please. I know you don’t know who I am. My name is Jared. That’s all you have to say. I’ll give you my phone number and you can have her call me.”
The woman gave him another hard look, only this time it had a dose of understanding in it. “You got a notion about the two of you, I mean the three of you?”
“Maybe. Maybe that’s a crazy, stupid thing to have. The only thing I know for sure now is I want to see her again and just talk things through.”
After a long pause, the woman said, “All right, young man. Wait here.” She quickly added, “But if you go on and hurt that girl you’re gonna have to deal with me, you understand?”

“. . . think ill of me,” Vic Lu was saying, still pacing and ranting. “I mean, come on. If it weren’t for people like you and your exhusband, we — ”

Lu shrugged. “Hey, who am I to get involved in your personal affairs, huh?”
“Holding me prisoner is pretty personal.”
“You’re not listening!” He stomped his foot, a petulant child. “I’ve got a point. Nobody gives me credit for a point, or for making art! I write my films, lady. Did you know that? I got nominated for an Eros Award last year. Does that matter? Why am I talking to you?”
He gave a wave to Derek, as if it was time for him to take over.
In two minutes he bound Dallas to the chair. She prayed. She asked God to consume Vic Lu and Derek with fire. Why not? It was a prayer for protection, and God would work out the details.
The moment she was secured, the door to the studio opened.
Chad McKenzie came in.
“I believe you two know each other,” Lu said.
Chad smiled. “Hey, babe, how are you?”
She glared at Vic Lu. “Him? How low have you sunk?”
“You hear that?” Chad said. “I used to get that all the time.”
Lu pointed at Chad. “Shut up.” Chad did as he was told. Then Lu looked at Derek. “Better tape her mouth,” he said.

“You know,” I said, “I think I’ve discovered that the Bible is reading me.”
“What are you talking about, man?”
“You really want to know?”
“I got nothing else goin’ on.”
I sat up. Ernesto dropped off his bunk and sat on mine. We had reached a point of mutual tolerance and even, on occasion, conversation. It usually happened like this, in the twilight time between chow and lights-out. Ernesto sometimes got downright chatty then.
“It’s like this,” I said. “I used to read the Bible just to get something out of it for me, like for my sermons or to back up something I was going to say in a book.”
“Yeah.”
“But the Bible is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword.”
“What’s that mean?” He looked interested. But I must say he was a true example of a captive audience.
“It means it reads me. It cuts me up. But I have to let it.”
“You sound a little out there, man, you want to know the truth.”
“Yeah, it sounds a little nuts. But God is doing the cutting, see, inside me. He’s cutting out all the stuff I don’t need, that I used to let get in the way. Now I’ve got plenty of time to let God do his work.”
Ernesto was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “My grandmother used to try to get me to go to Mass. I couldn’t take it. I got bored. Guess I had some of that attention thing.”
“Deficit disorder.”
“You gringos are great with the labels. But I always thought when I was in church that there was something going on, something I couldn’t see, but it was there. It was floating around. Think that was God?”
“Definitely. But then I’d go one step further and say there’s a way to know all about that presence. And it’s in this book.”
Ernesto took the Bible from me and looked at it. “I never got into it. Lots of stuff I couldn’t understand when I tried.”
“We can talk about it if you want.”
“You gonna try to convert me?”
“No. If that happens, it’ll be because of the Word and the Spirit. But I’m thinking maybe there’s a reason you and I were put in the same cell together.”
“Yeah, so I can keep you from getting stabbed in the back. You are so white.”
“Maybe I can return the favor.”
“If I get bored, and I tell you to stop, you stop, got it?”
“Deal.”
I took the Bible back and in that moment asked God what I should start with. The beginning. It didn’t take a bright bulb to catch on to that.
So I started with, “In the beginning God . . .”
And for two straight hours Ernesto was not bored. He did not ask me to stop, and I felt for the first time in years that my preaching was anointed by God. Right there in a prison cell.

Dallas lay in the backseat of the car where Chad had thrown her like a sack of laundry. The duct tape across her mouth chafed. Plastic restraints, pulled tight, held her wrists and ankles fast.

The night was black and she had no idea what direction they were going. She had a vague idea they’d hopped on the 118 Freeway, but she couldn’t be sure.

About ten minutes into the ride, Chad lit a cigarette. Dallas could smell the smoke. She tried not to breathe deeply. She didn’t want to cough against the tape. But he rolled the windows up, like he intended to torture her with the smell.

Then he started talking.
“Dallas, you have to know that I never wanted it to work out this way. I loved you. You think that’s funny, but I really did. You think when I hit you I didn’t love you? It was because I couldn’t stand the thought of you walking out on me, that’s why I did it. You know what I did the night you left me? I mean, the night I figured out you were gone for good? I could have come after you, but I didn’t. I released you, like a butterfly. I bet you didn’t know that. Instead, I went down to the beach and beat up a couple of guys, just because I needed to get it out of me, you know? That’s something you never understood, that I had to get it out of me. If you really loved me you would have understood that. But you never did, so now it has to end this way. Man, this is hard for me. I mean, we had a lot of good times, didn’t we?”
Dallas couldn’t help answering him in her mind.
Good times? Perverse
,
ugly . . .
“Just want you to know that we could have worked something out if you hadn’t been so, I don’t know, self-righteous. Pretty slick move, I must say, going on TV and telling about the photos and naming me right there in front of the whole world. You know that was bad for business? I couldn’t even give ’em away. I tell you, you were a lot more fun back in the old days, back before you hooked up with that preacher and got all saved.”
Save me now . . .

“I also want you to know you’re not going to suffer. It’s not going to hurt. I wouldn’t do that to you. You believe that, don’t you? I’ll use the amyl nitrate on you, the way Rafe used it on Jared. You don’t know about that, do you? They had your son marked from the start.”

“When this Rafe dude found out who Jared was, he decided to get in on things. Lu hired him.”
Rafe? Why would he care about Jared? And what were the chances of his random orbit intersecting with Chad’s? And Vic Lu’s? When had this universe she was trying to make sense of become so small?
Chad’s voice dropped an octave. “Then that Rafe tried to strongarm me. Big mistake. I’ll tell you something,
he
felt it. When I did him, he felt it real bad.”
He drove in semisilence for a time, humming softly, a rock medley. She recognized a couple of the tunes, then realized they were songs she had liked when they were together. Rolling Stones. Pink Floyd.
And then one tune that came to her in a flood of disgusting memories.
Meat Loaf, “Bat Out of Hell.”
She remembered what they did to that song.
He was purposely taunting her.
It may have been two hours, maybe three, before the car finally pulled to a stop. Chad came around the side, opened the door, and yanked her out, pulling her by the plastic restraints. They cut into her skin.
She saw a darkened house. She smelled wet scrub and dirt and figured they were somewhere in the desert. She could not see lights anywhere else but in the sky. The night was alive with stars.
Chad put an arm around her neck and made her shuffle to the door. He unlocked it and pulled her inside, then flicked on a lamp with a yellowed lampshade. The soft orange light made only a slight dent in the darkness.
Dallas could see it was a small house, ranch style. Chad pushed her down on an old sofa. Musty, like it was from 1950.
“You believe they actually use this place?” Chad said, looking around. “They made a porno Western here. But some of the rooms are like little studios.”
He appeared to be looking around for something.
And then found it.
From a table he took a large hunting knife, so large it looked like a small sword.
“After the amyl, you won’t feel this, Dallas. And the good part is you’ll get to be out in your God’s creation. You’ll just be lizard food, of course, but if it makes you feel any better, that’s where you’ll be.”
Dallas looked at the knife and at Chad holding it, smiling. She had no doubt he was going to do it. He wanted her to suffer right now. He wanted her scared.
But she noticed, amazingly, that her heart was not beating wildly, nor was her breathing — through her nose — labored.
She was calm.
One thought raced into her mind, a confirmation of the sovereignty of God. He was ultimately in control, despite what men might do in rebellion to him. Evil men like Chad McKenzie and Vic Lu and, sadly, Bernie Halstrom, could not escape. Even if they killed her, God was ruler over all.
She would die now, but she was not afraid.
Chad was studying her face.
She looked right back at him, talking to him with her eyes.
Do this and you will be punished, and deep down you know it, you know it right now, don’t you?
Suddenly, anger seemed to engulf him. He cursed at her.
You are the dead one, Chad. You are the dupe.
“You make me sick,” he spat.
You know it, you’ve always known it, and you’re dead. Don’t do this. In killing me you’ll be killing yourself.
“Shut up.”
His frenzy was almost comical. She hadn’t said a word, couldn’t through the tape. Yet he had heard everything.
He held up the knife and looked at the blade. “Maybe the amyl’s a bad idea. Maybe you’d rather have the experience without drugs.”
He brought the point of the knife down slowly, like he was drawing a picture in the air. With a slight flourish he stopped with the point just in front of her face.
“I can start anywhere I want.” He examined her face like a butcher considering where to make the first cut.
You are the dead one, Chad.
“You want it done quickly, Dallas? Are you ready to meet your God?”
God, watch over my family always. Protect and keep them.
“If you want a chance to call God a liar, I might be able to let you go — ”
Preserve Ron, bring justice, protect Jared and Cara, comfort them.
“ — or I can just get started right now.”
Let them live and know that I am with you.
“So if you want to curse God, just nod your head, Dallas.”
She looked him in the eye, held the look, peering into his dark pupils. They were empty caves with no flicker of light inside.
He took a handful of her hair and snapped her head back. She couldn’t see his eyes now, or the knife. She only smelled his breath, beer and cigarettes. He held her like that for a full minute.
Then she felt the tip of the blade on her throat. He poked her without breaking skin.
“You are so stupid,” he whispered. “It’s better for you to die.”
Something creaked. A floorboard.
Chad released her head and whipped around to his right.
Dallas followed his look, saw a shadowy form ten feet away. A full second of time froze in the room, then came the flash of a muzzle and crack of a gunshot, and Chad fell backward. The knife fell out of his hand as he grasped his chest, already seeping red.
The form didn’t move from the shadows.
Chad gurgled and thrashed. Blood smeared the floor as he struggled like a felled deer, his legs jerking outward to find traction.
Dallas expected the shadow to move forward and finish her too.
But it waited. Chad’s movements slowed into an agonizing spasm of death. He turned his head toward Dallas, eyes terrified, as if he saw something horrible behind her head. His lips quivered as he opened his mouth in a long, excruciating, and silent scream.
And then he moved no more. His dead eyes stayed open, horror filled.
The shadow figure came into the light.