“I never know what she’s up to. That’s the problem with the Internet—some pervert could be grooming my daughter right now, and I’d be the last to know.”
“It’s not like that, Indi. They’re just a bunch of kids playing games. By the way, I saw Amanda in Café Rossini last Saturday, having breakfast with your ex-husband. I swear that guy’s got it in for me, Indi.”
“No, he hasn’t. Bob’s pulled strings to keep you out of jail more than once.”
“Only because you asked him. Anyway, like I was saying, Amanda and I chatted for a bit, and she told me about their role-playing game, Ripper. Did you know that in one of the murders, the killer shoved a bat—”
“Yes, Matheus, I do know,” Indiana interrupted. “But that’s just what I mean—do you really think it’s healthy for Amanda to be obsessed with gruesome things like that? Most girls her age have crushes on movie stars.”
Matheus Pereira lived in an unauthorized extension on the flat roof of the Holistic Clinic, and in practice he also acted as the building supervisor. This ramshackle shed that he called his studio got exceptionally good light for painting and for growing marijuana—which was purely for his personal use and that of his friends.
In the late 1990s, after passing through various hands, the building had been sold to a Chinese businessman with a good eye for an investment, who had the idea of turning it into one of the health and wellness centers flourishing all over California. He had the exterior painted and hung up a sign that read HOLISTIC CLINIC to distinguish it from the fishmongers in Chinatown. The people to whom he rented the units on the second and third floors, all practitioners of the healing arts and sciences, did the rest of the work. A yoga studio and an art gallery occupied the two ground-floor units. The former also offered popular tantric dance classes, while the latter—inexplicably called the Hairy Caterpillar—mounted exhibitions of work by local artists. On Friday and Saturday nights, musicians and arty types thronged the gallery, sipping complimentary acrid wine from paper cups. Anyone looking for illicit drugs could buy them at the Hairy Caterpillar at bargain prices right under the noses of the police, who tolerated low-level trafficking as long as it was done discreetly. The two top floors of the Holistic Clinic were subdivided into small consulting suites that comprised a waiting room barely big enough for a school desk and a couple of chairs, and a treatment room. Access to the treatment rooms was somewhat restricted by the fact there was no elevator in the building—a major drawback to some patients, but one that had the advantage of discouraging the seriously ill, who were unlikely to get much benefit from alternative medicine.
Matheus Pereira had lived in the building for thirty years, successfully resisting every attempt by the previous owners to evict him. The Chinese businessman didn’t even try—it suited him to have someone in the building outside office hours, so he appointed Matheus building supervisor, giving him master keys to the units and paying him a notional salary to lock up at night, turn out the lights, and act as a contact for tenants in case of emergency or if any repairs were needed.
Matheus exhibited his paintings—inspired by German Expressionism—at the Hairy Caterpillar from time to time, though they never sold. A few of his canvases also hung in the lobby, and though the anguished, misshapen figures painted in thick angry brushstrokes clashed not only with the Holistic Clinic’s last vestiges of art deco but with its new ethos of promoting physical and emotional well-being in its clients, no one dared suggest taking them down for fear of offending the artist.
“This is all down to your ex-husband, Indi,” Matheus said as he was leaving. “Where else do you think Amanda gets her morbid fascination with crime?”
“Bob’s as worried about Amanda’s new obsession as I am.”
“It could be worse, she could be taking drugs—”
“Look who’s talking!” Indiana laughed.
“Exactly! I’m an expert.”
“If you want, I can give you a ten-minute massage tomorrow between clients,” Indiana offered.
“You’ve been giving me free massages for years now, so I’ve decided—I want you to have one of my canvases!”
“No, no, Matheus!” said Indiana, managing to disguise the rising panic in her voice. “I couldn’t possibly accept. I’m sure one day your paintings will be very valuable.”
At 10:00 p.m., Blake Jackson finished the novel he’d been reading and went into the kitchen to fix himself some oatmeal porridge—something that brought back childhood memories and consoled him when he felt overwhelmed by the stupidity of the human race. Some novels left him feeling this way. Wednesday evenings were usually reserved for squash games, but his squash partner was on vacation this week. Blake sat down with his bowl of oatmeal, inhaling the delicate aroma of honey and cinnamon, and dialed Amanda’s cell phone number. He wasn’t worried about waking her, knowing that at this hour she would be reading. Since Indiana’s bedroom was some distance from the kitchen, there was no chance that she would overhear, but still Blake Jackson found himself whispering. It was best his daughter didn’t know what he and his granddaughter were up to.
“Amanda? It’s Kabel.”
“I recognized the voice. So, what’s the story?”
“It’s about Ed Staton. Making the most of the unseasonably warm weather—it was seventy degrees today, it felt like summer—”
“Get to the point, Kabel, I don’t have all night to chat about global warming.”
“ . . . I went for a beer with your dad and discovered a few things I thought might interest you.”
“What things?”
“The juvenile detention center where Staton worked before he moved to San Francisco was a place called Boys’ Camp, smack in the middle of the Arizona desert. He worked there for a couple years until he got canned in 2010 in a scandal involving the death of a fifteen-year-old kid. And it wasn’t the first time, Amanda—three boys have died at the facility in the past eight years, but it’s still open. Every time, the judge has simply suspended its license temporarily for the duration of the investigation.”
“Cause of death?”
“A military-style regime enforced by people who were either stupid or sadistic. A catalog of neglect, abuse, and torture. These boys were beaten, forced to exercise until they passed out, deprived of food and sleep. The boy who died in 2010 had contracted pneumonia; he was running a temperature and had collapsed more than once, and still they forced him to go on a run with the other inmates in the blazing, sweltering Arizona heat. When he collapsed, they kicked him while he was on the ground. He spent two weeks in the hospital before he died. Afterward, they discovered he had a couple of quarts of pus in his lungs.”
“And Ed Staton was one of these sadists,” concluded Amanda.
“He had a long record at Boys’ Camp. His name crops up in a number of complaints made against the facility, alleging abuse of inmates, but it wasn’t until 2010 that they fired him. Seems nobody gave a damn what happened to those poor boys. It’s like that Charles Dickens novel—”
“Oliver Twist. Come on, Kabel, cut to the chase.”
“So, anyway, they tried to hush up Staton’s dismissal, but they couldn’t—the boy’s death stirred up a hornet’s nest. But even with his reputation, Staton still managed to get a job at Golden Hills Elementary School in San Francisco. Doesn’t that seem weird to you? I mean, they must have been aware of his record.”
“Maybe he had the right connections.”
“No one took the trouble to look into his background. The principal at Golden Hills liked the guy because he knew how to enforce discipline, but a number of students and teachers I talked to said he was a bully, one of those candy-asses who grovel