Chapter 11
Morning certainly hadn’t been lying when she had said it felt as if an era had passed, and it wasn’t fair. She was dealing with a loss of innocence right now. A mind-set that she felt she would never regain. It also left her chilled inside. She glanced at Geir. “I guess I just learned my lesson.” She watched his gaze narrow.
He shrugged. “I’m sure being in business and stiffed for a bill is not an uncommon prospect. I’m more concerned about your safety.”
“I can understand that,” she said quietly. “I’m more than a little disturbed that people have come into my house other than to stay. It’s hard to know who would do this or why.”
“It’s possibly because of us,” he admitted. “It’s too early to tell. But we came here hunting a man, the one you know as Poppy. And a friend of ours was seen leaving Texas with him. His name was Mouse.”
She stared at him in surprise. “That’s why you’re here?”
He nodded. “Mason knows us and vouched for us because we were in the same naval unit with him. When we needed a place to stay that was close enough and that would allow us anonymity, he suggested your place.”
She nodded. “I’ve had others, his friends, come here and stay too, plus men who worked for Levi.” She frowned. “Or maybe it was for Legendary Security.”
Geir grinned. “Yes, Levi is a good friend of ours too.”
“Nice that you have friends in high places.”
“They’ve been very helpful and have assisted us in tracking down these men.”
“And why would you track them down? What have they done?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, leaned against a doorjamb and stared at her.
She stared back calmly. “You might not want to tell me, but, if there’s any chance this involves me or my place, then I need to know.”
He glanced around the room. “I don’t think it has anything to do with this couple or anyone else staying here …” His voice trailed off, then he added, “But …”
“There was only Ken and the couple here,” she said. “And Ken is gone now.”
His gaze zipped back toward her. “Ken. Do you know anything about him?”
“I don’t get people to fill out an occupation survey when I let them in,” she said in exasperation. “People come to San Diego for a lot of reasons. It’s not up to me to sort out why.”
“Did he ever move around the house, go into any of the spaces he wasn’t welcome in?”
She frowned. “No more than you did,” she snapped. “He came up to the studio once, but that was it.”
“Your studio, right.” He grinned. “Do I get to see the other paintings?”
Now it was her turn to shove her hands in her pockets. She shrugged. “Maybe. I do need to get up there and finish working.”
“How many have you done?”
Irritated and not sure how to get the conversation back on track, she said, “Three. And I’ll tell you what. I’ll show you my paintings, but I want the full story out of you.”
“Then how about we take a cup of coffee to your studio, and I’ll explain it. I definitely want to make sure our conversation is private, so nobody can overhear us.”
She went into the kitchen, put on yet another pot and, when it was done dripping, poured two large mugs. “Let’s go.”
It took them a few seconds to reach her studio. On the way he said, “What do you want to do about the room?”
She tossed him a look. “What do you want me to do? It’s not like I can call the police and say the visitors absconded without payment.”
“Can’t you?”
She frowned, then shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“I meant, what do you want to do about your father’s rooms?”
She winced. “I’ll have to straighten everything. But after my gallery meeting.”
“It’s still in the hall closet. I haven’t touched it,” she said. She gave him her coffee cup to hold as she pulled out her keys and unlocked the studio.
He nodded and waited.
Finally she had the door open and pushed it wide, turned on the light and said, “I need a filtration system of some kind.” She walked across the room and opened up the double French doors. When she turned back, he still stood in the doorway, his gaze searching the room. “What are you looking for?”
“Any sign your intruder came in here.”
She stared at him in shock. “I found my studio unlocked, but why would he have come in here?”
“Would anybody willfully try to hurt you?”
She shook her head. “No, of course not. I don’t have any enemies.” Yet she could feel her stomach knotting and her heart sinking. “But, if I did, and they destroyed my paintings … I’d be in deep trouble because the gallery owner will be pissed at me, never take me at my word again,” she said, walking over, taking a cup of coffee from him. “Plus, I’d be devastated if something happened to these paintings.”
“So do I get to see them?”
She said, “Come over here, and stand in front of the easel. I’ll put them on one at a time.”
He nodded, standing in front of the empty easel, sipping his coffee.
“Close your eyes.”
He did.
Making sure he wasn’t cheating, she put up the first one. “This is the one you saw but wasn’t quite finished.”
He opened his eyes, studied it and smiled. “It’s still as spectacular as when I first saw it. You’re very talented.”
She snorted. “Hardly. What I am is pleased.” Pleased he appeared to be sincere. “Then I tried to repeat that same odd light effect. Close your eyes and I’ll show you the second one.”
She removed the blossom picture and replaced it with the foggy cityscape. When it was in place, she said, “Okay, now take a look.” Instead of looking at the picture, she watched his face. As he opened his eyes and comprehended what was in front of him, his face lit up. “Wow, that’s fantastic.”
He took a couple steps closer, so he could look at it more in depth. “It’s breathtaking.”
“Thank you. I’m happy to hear that. It’s very unusual for me,” she said a little nervously. “And I’m unsure of exactly what I’m doing.”
“Sure, it’s something new. It’s something different, but that certainly doesn’t make it wrong. Did you say you had three of them?”
“Well, the other one is even odder. It’s an abstract. I don’t generally do abstract,” she said with a half laugh.
“I’d like to see it.”
She nodded and removed the cityscape and put it back on the floor, turned to look at him and said, “Close your eyes.”
He chuckled but again closed his eyes obligingly.
She picked up the big red abstract and put it in place, then stepped back, taking another look herself. Would he see the faces or would he see something completely different? “Okay, open your eyes.”
She watched as he opened his eyes and stared at the painting. Instead of a cry, a Wow, or How wonderful, he was silent. Nervous, she clutched at her coffee cup, looking at him instead of the painting.
He leaned closer. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Maybe that’s good? It’s still got the weird lighting thing going on, but I did it more as an outlet for the stress and emotion I was dealing with at the time.”
“Sounds like being stressed is a good thing for you then.”
She realized he thought it was decent. “Do you think it’s okay?” She hated that she needed reassurance but was aware she was still so far away from being confident that she did need it.
“It’s more than okay,” he said quietly. “It’s got a depth to it that, the longer I stare at it, the more I see. But the faces in there”—he continued to stare at it—“they kind of sneak into the back of your head and stay there.”
At that, she chuckled. “I didn’t even see it at first. Nancy pointed out the faces to me.”
He turned to look at her and said in amazement, “Are you telling me that you didn’t plan that?”
She shook her head. “No, I so didn’t.”
“Wow. Okay. Well, you need to keep painting. That’s where your talent lies, and there’s so much more to you than what you’ve had a chance to explore.”
“I think that’s true with any artist. Once you explore new avenues, you learn more, can do more. I’ve dabbled in painting, but I stuck to nice. I stuck to pretty. I didn’t allow anything with depth to come out.”
“Any idea why it’s coming out this time?”
“Frustration, fear, insecurity, questioning my life, my future.” She laughed at her words, then turned to watch him walking around the easel to study her other paintings. “Mostly I think it was tension. Uncertainty.”
“Well, whatever was bothering you led you to create a masterpiece, converting that angst into something very special.”
“I think a lot of people paint to get rid of their emotions. It’s hard to say if this is something I can do on an ongoing basis though. If the gallery owner wants more than one showing like this, I’m not sure I have it in me.”
“You have it in you. But what you have to do is let go of the outcome of what it is you’ll produce.”
That startled a laugh out of her. “That’s very insightful.”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “No, not really. I used to play the guitar when I was young, before I went into the navy. I often thought I should be a musician and write songs. But I haven’t gone back to that in a long time. At the time though, I used to sit back, close my eyes and just let my fingers play whatever they wanted to play. And what came out was often completely different from what I would have expected. And sometimes way nicer.”
“I think that’s true for every art form. It’s a matter of trusting and letting go.” She motioned to the door. “Shall we?”
He nodded. “What do you want to do about the room with the couple?”
“I should check my cell phone and the answering machine for the business landline to see if they left a message. Maybe this isn’t something negative. Maybe they got called away suddenly.”
“But the room is in rough shape.”
“I know.” She sighed. “But was that them, or was that like you said, the intruder from my father’s room?” Locking the door behind her, she turned toward him. “Did you check your room, make sure it’s okay?”
He shook his head. “But we can do that now.” He led the way downstairs to his room, unlocked the door and stepped inside. As they walked in, he stopped. “Wow. Son of a bitch.” His bedding had been dumped upside down too.
She gasped. “Has somebody gone through all the rooms? What were they looking for?”
“I hate to say it, but I suspect it’s the mouse.”
He walked to Jager’s adjoining room, opened the door and stepped in, flicking on the lights. “Same thing.”
She raced in behind him. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
“Good thing we don’t keep anything here that’s important.”
“Do you think he was after anything else?”
“Doesn’t matter if he was or not. We don’t keep IDs or laptops or anything like that behind. Those are always with us.”
She bit her bottom lip, sighed. “You know I hate to ask because I enjoyed your visit, but, if your arrival brought this on, will your leaving take it away? And, if so, when are you leaving?” Her words were abrupt as she stared at the mess.
“It’s possible the two are related. But it’s not guaranteed.”
She shook her head. “And how much of this has got something to do with Poppy?”
“Unfortunately too much. That’s who we need to find.”
She turned and walked out of the two rooms. She wasn’t sure if she should say anything to him or not. But obviously he knew something was bothering her.
He gently gripped her shoulders. “It’ll be okay.”
She nodded. “I know it will, but I should let you know Poppy had a hideaway. At least that’s what we called it.”
“Where and what was it?”
She handed him a note with the name and address of the school on it. She shook her head. “I never attended school there, but at Rutler Elementary School, behind it, there’s an equipment room where they stored all the soccer balls, mats and stuff for gym classes. Poppy used to spend a lot of time in there.” She stared up at him. “That school isn’t exactly the best in the city. In fact, it was probably the worst. It’s an alternative school, so kids who don’t fit into the regular system have a place to go.”
“And what was Poppy’s connection to it?”
“He used to run programs on Saturdays and sometimes after-school activities for the kids. Sports programs to get them outside, to give them an outlet for all their anger,” she said in a mocking voice. “It was run by the community, and Poppy volunteered at this school and others around his teaching schedule.”
“And you suspect that much more was going on?”
“Honestly I was blind to it back then because of my age. I certainly didn’t say anything to anybody because one of the things you learn in that lifestyle is how people who tell get in trouble. But lots of kids knew.”
Geir stared at her for a moment.
“Was that helpful?”
He grinned, reached across and gave her a quick kiss on the lips. “Absolutely.” Excitement surged through him as he headed down the second-floor hallway to the nearest set of stairs with a wave to Morning. “That’s exactly what we were looking for, a hideaway. Someplace Poppy went to, preferably that not too many people knew about or used.” He pulled out his phone and called Jager. “Where are you? We need to check out a new place.”
“I’m walking up to the front door. Want to come down, and we’ll head off?”
Geir was already running. He burst out the front door, saw Jager at the curb, waved and raced to the Jeep, that Jager already had running. Once inside, Geir said, “Morning said there was special place Poppy always went. A sports storage area behind the school.”
“Midlands High School? Where he teaches at?”
Geir shook his head. “No, Rutler Elementary is an older one that’s been shut down.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket where she’d written down the address for him. “This is it.” He punched it into the GPS. They watched as it came up on the screen.
“It’s only ten minutes away.” Jager turned the wheel and pulled the vehicle onto the street, heading off in the direction the GPS directed. “Are you thinking maybe he’s still using this hiding place?”
“If he isn’t using it still, maybe it has information from when he did use it,” Geir said. “As we well know, men have habits and patterns, and they don’t like to give up favorite places.”
“Particularly if they are full of good memories,” Jager said. “What I don’t understand is how he’s gotten away with it for so long.”
“And why nobody has turned him in.”
“Exactly. Sure, these kids are high-risk, but somebody should have been offended by it all.”
“Unless he recognized kids who were confused about their own sexuality, choosing those kids over others.”
“That tells us how young they were. In Mouse’s case, didn’t Minx say he was like twelve or fourteen?”
“But is that when it started?” Geir asked.
“No way to know,” Jager said.
“Poppy didn’t show up at school again today,” Geir said.
“But the school is not worried, I bet. Chances are he does this off and on. He uses every last sick day he has available and any other holidays he can. Now, with us on his tail, he’ll be extra careful.”
“I don’t doubt it. Chances are very good this guy has come to this point many times. He didn’t survive all these decades without being very good at what he does.”
They pulled into the school parking lot, seeing the ruts and weeds coming through the pavement. The school was a very small building. “So, if it’s no longer a school, what happened?”
“It was shut down.” Geir looked at the information on his phone. “It was deemed too small, with expenses too large to fix it when they needed a new larger one. But, typical of a school board, they haven’t sold off the property yet.”
A gate blocked them from getting onto the grounds outside of the parking lot. They hopped out and walked the fence all the way around. “There has to be a way in.”
And there was. They found a back gate. And it wasn’t locked. They opened it, entered and closed it behind them, walking a well-traveled path between two small fields. As an elementary school, it had a fenced-in playground and a very small playing field. But the grass was overgrown pretty much everywhere. Although there was an exterior path around both fields, it didn’t appear to be recently traveled.
Geir looked around. “Looks like more traffic from this direction.”
“Makes sense, so the kids don’t have to walk around to the front.”
They approached the broken-down building quietly, walked around it first, inspecting the double front doors with wire-screen-reinforced double-paned glass windows inset into the top half of each door. The fact these windows had not been broken into surprised them because there were no bars on the windows here. Yet the school building itself had bars on all the doors and its windows.
“That says a lot about the students, doesn’t it?”
“More about the state of the neighborhood probably.”
They kept walking until they came to a small door in the back. It was a steel exterior door. that looked like a maintenance door.
Jager tried the handle, but, of course, it was locked.
Geir pulled out his tool kit he kept in his back pocket. It took him a little longer than he expected, but he finally had the lock popped. They both stepped to the side, and Jager pulled open the door, with Geir jumping in low, his gaze sweeping the area. “All clear,” he called out.
Jager stepped up behind him, and they closed the door. Instantly darkness fell. “Do you think they still have power?”
“I doubt it, but who knows?” Geir hit the switch, and, sure enough, light filled the room.
“I guess they have to for safety reasons for the parking lot area, if nothing else,” Jager said.
They stared at a small storeroom, maybe ten foot by twelve, shelves on the side that contained a couple of flattened balls and pieces of garbage left behind. Two black mats were on the floor, but they were torn and ragged from use and the years. A bigger stack of them was against one of the walls.
Geir and Jager walked the small area, studying the contents. “Not a whole lot here,” Geir said, disappointment in his voice. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but he sure as hell had hoped they’d find something.
“I wish we had luminol spray,” Jager said. “We should see all kinds of bodily fluids.”
“A part of me is glad we don’t,” Geir said, spinning to look at Jager.
Jager stared at the mats stacked against a wall. He pulled one off the stack so the next one was showing, and, sure enough, it appeared to be covered in something.
Geir didn’t even want to think about what. Particularly if he was thinking of a pedophile having used this space for his criminal activities.
“Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t have luminol,” Jager said. He shook his head. “Never thought to bring anything like that.”
“I know. If we had a reason to bring in the cops, that’s a different story. They could do a full search. But we have to find some strong evidence in order for them to even bother coming to this location.”
“In that case, let’s turn this place upside down and see what’s here.”
And that’s what they did. They took a good hour, moving shelves, looking at and underneath everything, inspecting the walls for writing, and, just as they were about to give up, they found it in the far corner.
Geir sat on the mats, having pulled them en masse out to the center of the room, and there on the wall were scribblings. Hidden by the stack of mats, barely legible by the cracked paint, was a young boy’s lament, crying out as to what he’d suffered at the hands of, and, yes, there was the name, Poppy. And beside the name Poppy was the man’s real name. Reginald Henderson.
Geir and Jager turned to look at each other. Geir stepped back, pulled out his phone and took several photos. “I wonder if anybody’ll take this seriously.”
“It’s hard to say. Let’s keep looking.”
Again they searched through the mats. They went gently because they weren’t sure what fluids were still there after all these years. They lifted each one up and carefully examined both sides.
Between the last two mats was a small black book. Geir pulled it out and then whistled. “It’s somebody’s journal. Looks like a kid’s handwriting.”
The handwriting was childish, sometimes legible, sometimes not. There was moisture damage on it. But inside was more of what was on the wall: how Poppy had sexually abused them, how Poppy had promised them treats and alcohol and drugs in exchange for sex, and how some of the kids, this journal-writer in particular, had given Poppy whatever he wanted because he had thought Poppy cared.
By the time he’d finished reading it, Geir’s heart was breaking. He shook his head and handed it to Jager. “We need to keep this safe. I doubt there are fingerprints after all this time, but it’s definitely a play-by-play of everything he went through with Poppy.”
“Do you think it was left here on purpose?”
Geir stared at the floor. “It blended in well. What’s the chance it was lost more than anything?”
Jager opened it up. “There is a name here and a year.”
“I noticed. I’m hoping, if we take that to the police, somebody will follow up on it.”
“We need to know who we can take it to,” Jager said. “We don’t want this to get in the wrong hands.”
Geir pulled out his phone and called Mason. Grateful when he answered, Geir said, “Glad I caught you. We need a cop here we can trust. Do you know one?”
“I think so,” Mason said readily enough. “What did you find?”
Geir explained about the little book and the writing on the corner of the wall.
Mason’s voice was sad when he said, “Unfortunately that activity is prevalent in our society. Let me look up the number for Detective Nelson.” A moment later he came back and read off a number.
“I don’t have a pencil, can you text that to me?”
“Will do. Give him a call and tell him what you found and where you found it.”
“We have to come up with a cover story as to why we’re here,” Geir said with amusement in his voice. “It’s hardly legal.”
“Well, the door was probably unlocked, after all these years of kids busting into it, so I doubt that’s an issue,” Mason said, his tone neutral. “And, if you explain what you’d heard about your friend Mouse and this Poppy guy, then it doesn’t take too much to understand how you found the room.”
“Right.” Geir stared around the room. “There’s such an empty sadness here.”
“Think about what those boys went through,” Mason said quietly. “Chances are, whoever wrote that journal either is leading a very rough life of drugs and alcohol dependency or committed suicide or could even be living on the streets with no future because of this.”
“Well, let’s hope we can at least find him. Maybe the cops can get him some justice.”
“How many do you think there are?” Mason asked. “If ever there was a cause I’d like to stamp out, it would be pedophiles.”
“Considering what we’ve learned so far, I imagine he was careful with his victims. I think he knew exactly how to groom these young boys to be what he wanted. Like the journal says at one point, he gave Poppy anything he wanted because he got back love and affection and drugs,” Geir said. “But once they’re into that kind of a dependency trap, it’s almost impossible to get out of it.”
“Keep me posted. I want to know what you know,” Mason said.
“Will do.” Geir hung up and waited until the text came through. It was there almost instantly. He hit Dial and walked outside, wanting to put some distance between himself and what they’d found. When a man’s voice answered the phone, he said, “My name is Geir Pavla. Mason told me to contact you with something we found. It’s a little sensitive, and we’re not exactly sure what to do with it.”
“Do you want to talk over the phone, or do you want to meet in person?” the man asked. “I know Mason well. If he told you to call me, then I want to meet with you.”
Geir smiled. “How about a coffee shop?”
“Where are you?”
Geir gave him the address of the school and heard the detective sigh.
“That school was one of the most run-down, troubled schools in the area. It was constantly being broken into. It was set on fire twice. It was a common drug hangout. People hated that place.”
“We have a journal from somebody who was here. It’s pretty rough.”