Hocus (13 page)

He just grinned.

“Take a right on Truxtun,” I told him. “There are some lettered streets after that — A, B, C, and so on. But when you get to H, the next street is Eye — E-y-e.”

“I like that,” he said. “Somebody had a sense of humor right from the start.”

“Turn left on Eye. The paper’s at Eye and Seventeenth Street.”

Built in the 1920s, 1707 Eye Street is a handsome brick edifice. Tall, elaborate columns with composite capitals adorn the front of the building; a turret graces the upper right corner, a balcony the other.

“ ‘Bakersfield, Californian.
Established 1866,’ ” Cassidy read aloud.

“Bakersfield was a town of cowboys, miners, and railroad workers then,” I said.

“So what’s changed?”

I smiled. “Oil, for one thing. The business of agriculture, for another. You ought to give the place a chance, Cassidy.”

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Don’t mean to offend,” he said.

We stepped out of the car. I looked at my watch. One twenty-five. “You made good time. We’ve got five minutes to spare.”

He shrugged, as if to say this was to be expected. “When did you work here?” he asked.

“Right after college,” I said. “I interned at the
Express,
but my first full-time, paying job on a newspaper was here at the
Californian.”

“Do me a favor,” he said. “Don’t let your friend know I’m with the police.”

Whatever feelings of goodwill I might have been building toward Cassidy were demolished with that request. “Forget it. Brandon is doing me a big favor by letting me into the building. I don’t work for this paper now, remember? He’s an old friend or I’d be locked out. I’m not lying to him. You’ll have to wait downstairs for me.”

I rang the night bell before Cassidy could say more, and a young security guard immediately let us in through the polished brass doors, which were locked on weekends, then went back to his desk to answer a phone. I saw a balding man of medium height waiting just inside the entry. He grinned as we walked in and extended a hand.

“Irene! God, it’s great to see you again!”

“Good to see you, too, Brandon,” I said, shaking hands.

He looked back at Cassidy. “Are you the fellow who called to set this up?”

“No, I’m afraid not,” Cassidy replied. “I’m just Ms. Kelly’s ride.”

Brandon laughed. “What is this, Irene? You have all the men at the
Express
ready to satisfy your every whim?”

“If only you knew what a disgusting thought that is, Brandon,” I said. “No, this is Detective Thomas Cassidy of the Las Piernas Police Department.”

I saw Cassidy look up at the room’s high ceiling. Fairly certain he wasn’t suddenly interested in the patterns on the painted wood beams, I felt smug satisfaction at seeing his armor crack.

“Police?” Brandon was saying. “I’m sorry, but I can’t—”

“Detective Cassidy will be waiting right here.”

Cassidy, damn him, just smiled.

“Oh, well—”

“Mr. North,” Cassidy said in confiding tones, too soft for the security guard to overhear, “I wonder if I might ask you a few questions before you take the ungrateful Ms. Kelly on back to the library?”

Brandon seemed totally confused.

“Cassidy,” I warned, my irritation growing.

“I’m out of my jurisdiction, of course,” he said. “I could drive on over to the Bakersfield Police Department, which my own department has already contacted. I used my cell phone and spoke to someone there on the drive up here — Ms. Kelly was asleep, so she’s unaware that we’ve obtained their full cooperation.”

“Cassidy,” I tried again.

“They’d probably be happy to send someone over to question you, Mr. North,” he continued, “but then you’d have at least three people connected to law enforcement agencies walking around in your newspaper offices. Might attract attention.”

“Three?” Brandon asked.

“Ms. Kelly’s husband works with me.”

“Husband?” Brandon looked at me in surprise.

“You married a cop?”

Hearing Brandon’s exclamation, the security guard looked our way.

“Yes,” I said. “Look, Brandon, let’s step outside for a minute, okay?”

Five minutes later a sheen of perspiration had broken out on Brandon’s forehead.

“God, what a mess! Irene, if you had told me what was going on here, I would have understood. You must be worried sick.” He paused, then said, “Oh, Jesus — you’re saying I talked to a kidnapper!”

“Can you describe the voice of the man who called you on the phone?” Cassidy asked.

“A young man. I don’t know why I say that, but — he just sounded young.” He started pacing. He glanced at Cassidy, then said, “No accent. I mean, none that I could hear. Seemed well educated.”

“When did he call?” Cassidy asked.

“Yesterday. Just before I went home. About three-thirty. Said he was an intern working with Irene, that she had asked him to call. Told me she needed to look through the old files — something on microfilm — wondered would I help her out. I said, ‘Sure, tell me what it is and I’ll make a copy and fax it to her.’ He said she wanted to see me personally and she’d be up in Bakersfield today anyway. If I’d meet her at one-thirty, she’d look it up and then we could go out for a cup of coffee afterward. He got my fax number and said he’d send a list of the things she needed to see.” He turned to me. “Why do you think he told you to come to the paper, Irene?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t had a lot of time to think about it. I suppose I might have written a story that will have something to do with this. Some similar case, maybe. I was on the crime beat when I worked here.”

“Did he send the list?” Cassidy asked.

“Yes, a fax was waiting for me when I came in.”

“Recall anything else about him?”

“Oh, yeah. He was very friendly. He sounded polite. He said Irene had told him all about me and my family. That’s why I didn’t even question his connection to her. He knew I was married. Knew I had five kids. Even knew their names—” He grew pale. “My God! You don’t think he’d harm my family?”

“I don’t think that’s likely at all, but here,” Cassidy said, pulling out his cellular phone. “Why don’t you check on them? Go ahead, call them.”

Brandon looked at him with gratitude and quickly punched in a series of numbers. He bit his lower lip while the call went through, then said, “Honey? Oh, thank God. Thank God. Listen, something’s come up. I can’t talk about it right now, but
please
take the kids and go over to my dad’s house, okay?” He paused. “No, right now, okay? Yeah, I’m fine. This is urgent…. Yes. On a cellular phone…. No — listen, just do this for me, okay? Right now…. No, Dad’sfine. I’m fine, too. Just go, okay?… Yes…. Thankyou…. Yes. I love you, too. Bye.”

He looked like he was ready to cry.

“Use it again,” Cassidy offered. “Let your dad know he’s about to have a passel of kids over there.”

“Thank you,” Brandon said. He dialed again. “Dad? I need your help…. No, not money. Just listen, okay? I’m worried about Louise and the kids. They’re coming over to your place…. Yes, I know what A1 broke the last time he was there. I’ll pay for anything they break, Dad. Listen. Please…. Oh, for crying out loud!”

He looked up at Cassidy. “He hung up!”

Cassidy took the phone and pressed the redial button.

“Mr. North? Good afternoon, sir. This is Detective Thomas Cassidy of the Las Piernas Police Department. We have reason to believe that there is a possibility — just a slim possibility — that your grandchildren may be in danger. I’m on an unsecured line here, so I can’t go into details, but we asked your son to think of someone who could defend his wife and children until police protection could be arranged. He named you, sir. Your son will probably be calling you to let you know more about all of this, but I wanted to make sure you were up to the job…. Well, sir, he seems to believe you are capable, but I would hate to see an elderly gentleman placed in a position of…. Well, I’m sure you do know how to use a shotgun…. Why, no, that’s not very old at all. But you also need to be willing, sir. Sometimes people are not as kind to their kin as you’d expect them to be…. Well, no wonder he’s so certain of your help, then. As I said, he’ll probably be calling, so I won’t tie up the line. Thank you, sir…. Good day to you, too, sir — and please be very careful with that gun around the children, now…. Yes, that’s a wise precaution. Good-bye.”

He hung up, pressed redial one more time, and handed the phone back to Brandon, who was now looking at him like he was Moses come to take him to the Promised Land. I had known for some minutes that Cassidy was going to get into the library at the
Californian.
Now I was wondering if Brandon would remember to include me.

We went back into the building and headed up to the third floor. At first I thought Brandon was taking us into the newsroom, but he saw my confusion and said, “The library moved since you worked here. It’s right next to the newsroom now.” We entered a long, narrow room. Painted white and filled with sunlight from the large windows along one wall, it was a more pleasant research environment than our windowless tomb at the
Express.
A long row of putty-colored file cabinets — or, rather, pairs of file cabinets placed back to back — took up most of the room. Newspapers and long, gray metal boxes were stacked on top of the cabinets. Brandon walked to his desk, which was at the far end of the library.

“Let’s see, now. Where did I put that fax?” He began shuffling through a pile of papers.

An interior set of windows ran along part of the wall that partitioned the library from the newsroom. I looked through them, wondering if I would see any familiar faces on the other side. But it was Saturday afternoon, and there wasn’t much activity. The few reporters who were in the room were busy at their desks, not interested in looking at the library. I didn’t recognize any of them.

“Feeling nostalgic?” I heard a voice drawl behind me.

“No,” I lied, and kept staring through the glass. A moment later Cassidy walked away. I was glad. He had managed to stick to me like a burr on a foxtail, and I was tired of it. I didn’t want him intruding on this particular ground. We all have our sacred places, and I couldn’t help it if this part of Bakersfield was one of mine. I had learned to be a reporter at this paper. My college instructors might have taught me how to close my hands around the tools of the trade, but this was where I really learned to use them. I paid my dues here, in this city, in this newsroom. Both had changed, but that didn’t matter. Looking through that window, I saw the newsroom not as it was, but as it had been not so long ago.

When I first came to Bakersfield, manual typewriters were giving way to electrics, and a few hotshots had portable computers — although what passed for a portable computer then was a far cry from the notebook computers of today. A newsroom sounded different then. It was a noisy place, filled with the clatter of typewriters and the grinding rasp of carriage returns; the
chunk-chunk-chunk
of the Teletype; bells — real bells, ringing bells on everything — typewriters, Teletypes, and even telephones. Voices.

I thought of a young rookie cop I used to meet for breakfast at a nearby coffee shop at the end of our night shifts.

“I found it!” Brandon said. Then, noticing where I was standing, he asked, “You want to go into the newsroom, for old times’ sake?”

“No, thanks, Brandon. Not with a cop in tow.” I said it to irritate Cassidy, but it was really for old times’ sake that I refused to enter that changed world, with its muted keyboards and paperless monitors and silent wire services.

Brandon handed the fax to me. Cassidy moved closer, read over my shoulder.

Beneath a phony version of the
Express
’s letterhead, a fax purporting to be from me to Brandon listed four dates, all from one year.

June 18

June 19

September 23

October 26

“Mean anything to you, Irene?” Cassidy asked.

“Not offhand. But these aren’t my stories. This was the year after I left the paper.”

“Let’s pull the microfilm,” Brandon said.

We followed him out into the hallway and entered to a nearby room, where there were microfilm storage cabinets, each with a padlocked locking bar down the front.

“Why do you lock them up?” Cassidy asked.

“This collection contains every issue of the paper since 1866, except for one missing year. That one walked out of here one day before we started locking the cabinets.”

He used a key to unlock one padlock and pulled two boxes from a file. He locked the cabinet again, and we followed him back into the library. He motioned for me to take a seat at the microfilm reader and handed me the June spool. I began loading it onto the reader.

“What’s in these files?” Cassidy asked, gesturing to the cabinets.

“Clippings from the more recent years,” Brandon said. “Filed by subject.”

“You don’t have them on computer?”

“Not yet. By the end of the year, reporters will be able to retrieve files that way.”

As they talked, I used the fast-forward control on the reader, stopping here and there to scan dates, until I finally came to June 18. I had bypassed the front page and had to back up on the slower speed.

“A Monday,” I said, wondering how much of the paper I would need to read before something jumped out at me. For a panicked moment I wondered if there was any point at all in being in Bakersfield that afternoon. Perhaps this was a wild-goose chase, perhaps Hocus had only wanted me to leave the house, to be out of town for a number of hours….

But then the first page rolled slowly into view, and I knew I was looking at the story I was supposed to see. I knew it from the moment I saw the photograph beneath the headline:

FATHER’S DAY TRAGEDY:

TWO BAKERSFIELD MEN SLAIN WHILE SONS WATCH

It was the kind of photograph every photojournalist dreams of taking. Two women, their faces tearstained, mouths contorted in grief, arms outstretched, crouched slightly as they hurried toward two young boys. The boys’ faces were scraped and bruised but without expression, their eyes empty — too empty for their nine or ten years. One boy cradled his right arm, which was in a splint, as he leaned his head on a uniformed policeman’s shoulder. The other boy held on to the policeman with both arms. The policeman knelt on one knee, his arms around the boys, looking up at the women with anguished eyes.