Devil House(32)

Jesse cries out, just as Gene did when his moment came. Your mind is telling you that more noise will attract the attention of the neighbors, though in reality you’re the only one on your floor of the building at the moment; everybody else is still at school, or work, or out getting an early dinner. But Jesse, unlike Gene, does not scream in shock: his brief speech, at high pitch, is hastily calculated to save his own skin. “Please, Miss Crane,” he cries, his eyes shut tight, his hands crossed in front of his face. He’s lying on his side, his face on the floor in a still-forming pool of his friend’s sticky blood; his legs, supported by Gene’s torso, are in the air, his ankles crossed. He’s getting louder; his cries settle into an incantatory, desolate rhythm. “Please, Miss Crane, please, no. No. No! Please, Miss Crane. Please, no.”

You stab him thirty-seven times in total. The third strike, the one that enters his throat from the left side, is the fatal one, but you succeed in puncturing his lung during the ensuing overkill. There is blood on your hair, in your mouth, all over your face. On the floor of the kitchen, the oysters, some still in their shells, sit in pools of it.

You stand over the bodies of Jesse Jenkins and Gene Cupp until you feel certain neither of them is moving, and then you sit down in the still-gathering pool next to them, trying to think.





6.


CALIFORNIA’S IN BETTER SHAPE than a lot of places when it comes to labor laws, but protections don’t generally extend to part-timers like the line help at Taco Bell. At the San Luis Obispo location, Angie Gessler, the shop’s general manager, writes out the weekly schedule like a failing student filling in bubbles on a Scantron, making everything look tidy without much thought about what the markings might otherwise mean. Few of his workers complain, because most of them don’t expect to be around much longer. Angie’d been one of them, too, a few years ago, but then corporate promoted him before he got around to thinking about what else he might do with his life once he finished his BS at Cal Poly, and now here he is.

Within a generation nobody will be calling boys “Angie” anymore. Even now, people sometimes sound a little surprised, on the phone, to learn that the man speaking is the Angie they were calling for. It happens today: Gessler’s alone in the restaurant, wondering where Gene is. Gene was scheduled for the opening shift. Gene being late for an opening shift is nothing new, but it’s twelve-thirty now, and the lunch crowd is getting thick. Gene’s dad even called to see where he was, and hung up as soon as he got an answer; the interruption just increased the tension. It’s all too much to handle, especially for someone whose days on site are usually spent in a tiny office at the back of the building, filling out the schedule and monitoring the walk-up window. When, from the order window, he hears the office phone ringing, he’s immediately aggravated. You can’t call in an hour past the start of your shift, he thinks. It doesn’t work like that.

“Be right with you,” he tells the next customer at the window before dashing down the thin corridor alongside the grill to his office. When he gets to the phone, he assumes a managerial stance—it’s like an actor putting on his face. This is how you get the promotions, he knows. Days like these.

“Taco Bell,” he says cheerfully into the phone, “how can I help you?”

“This is Detective Haeny with the San Luis Obispo Police Department,” says a voice on the other end, sounding for all the world like he’s reading from a script. “Do you have an employee named Gene Cupp there?”

“Well, normally, yes,” says Angie Gessler, “but he hasn’t turned up today.”

There’s a pause. “Am I speaking with the manager?”

Gessler laughs. “Yes, and also the cook and front window man as of right now,” he says. “If Gene comes in I’ll be back to just being the manager.”

Another pause. “If he does turn up, would you please call me at this number?”

Haeny gives Gessler his direct line. “Sure,” Gessler says. “Is he in some kind of trouble? His father already called once.”

“He called us, too,” says Detective Haeny. “At this point that’s all I can tell you. Do give me a call if you hear from Gene, all right?”

“Sure thing,” says Angie Gessler, trying to picture what a kid like Gene Cupp’s father would actually look like, and then trying to imagine him as the sort of father who’d call the police because he was worried about his son’s whereabouts.



* * *



RONNIE CUPP, as you have always suspected but could not confirm, is not that sort of father at all. The reason Ronnie called the cops about an hour ago is that his son’s blue Torino is still missing from the driveway, and he needs it for the beer run. His biker friends will be turning up again sometime later this afternoon; it’ll take two runs to bring enough home if he ends up having to use the trunk bag on his Harley instead of the trunk of the car.

His assumption on seeing the empty driveway is that Gene is in the holding tank again. Gene has not yet learned to avoid the radar. Records show no sign of his having been booked last night, of course, but Officer Quinn, Detective Haeny’s partner, is new to the job, and eager to do everything according to procedure. Twin miracles of youth and naivete, usually unsought-for graces in this job, allow him to lead Ronnie through the process of filling out a missing persons report over the phone.