The Vanishing (27 page)

He had a son, a mentally ill and hideously deformed teenager whose existence had never been revealed, who didn’t even have a birth certificate and who’d been locked up in a secret room for his entire life. He had a wife, too, whom he’d kept imprisoned within her bedroom. She was near death, starved and dehydrated, and authorities were not sure she would live, let alone be able to tell them anything about what had happened on the estate.

Carrie had a nightmare that night that Lew Haskell had purchased her, buying her from the Department of Social Services, who apparently held title to her life. She was a mail-order bride, and in the middle of that hellish barn, with hundreds of dirty women having their breasts pumped for milk, he put a ring on her finger and shackles on her wrists and bent her over, taking her hard from behind. She stood up straight, sobbing from the pain and humiliation, and with a sickening squelch, a baby flopped out from between her legs and landed on the ground. It had a horn like a rhino, claws like a lobster, cloven hooves like a goat and a snout like a pig. ‘‘Mama!’’ it screamed at her in the voice of a crow.

She spent Sunday inside. Alone. Most of it in bed.

On Monday she went to work early, carrying with her a copy of the
San Francisco Chronicle
so she could read it at her desk. Even after taking up half of Sunday’s front page, Lew Haskell was still the main story in today’s paper, and a photo of him looking completely deranged anchored the two related articles surrounding it. Photos of the wife and child had not been released to the press, but she called Dave Washington, her source at the police department, and he said that she could come over and see them. Sanchez okayed it, and she went over to the PD, where Dave had three folders spread out on a large table in an unused conference room. He opened the first one, which was stacked several inches high with photos. ‘‘These are the women who were being held captive,’’ he said.

Carrie looked at the top photo. The Hispanic woman staring into the camera was standing against a white wall and dressed in what looked like a hospital gown, but her face was blank, her eyes dead, as though she were still on her hands and knees, hooked up to the pump in Lew’s industrialized barn.

Carrie closed the folder, not wanting to see any more of the pictures, more disturbed by the image than she would have thought.

‘‘This,’’ Dave said, moving on to the next one, ‘‘is the wife.’’

Carrie sorted through the photos slowly, shocked anew by the appalling condition in which Lew had left his spouse. For evidence, she had been photographed exactly as they had found her, tied with rough hemp to a brass bed in her bedroom, an all-white chamber that resembled Ann-Margret’s in
Tommy.
Her cheeks were cadaverously sunken, her ribs and collarbone visibly protruding and giving her a skeletal appearance. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open, lips thin and white and covered with scabs. Subsequent photos showed close-ups of the bruises and abrasions on various parts of her body, as well as protuberant joints and bones that offered further proof of her lethal malnourishment.

Carrie put the pictures away, unable to endure more.

‘‘And the son,’’ Dave said, flipping open the cover of the final folder.

The boy had the face of a lizard.

Carrie sucked in her breath, the fear rising within her. Lew’s son had brownish scaly skin, bugeyes, two nostril slits instead of a nose, and a lipless mouth that wrapped much too far around the sides of his elongated head.

But that was not all. He had been naked when they’d found him, so that was the way he’d been photographed, and she could see a band of catlike fur ringing his midsection, as well as a short pointed tail protruding from just above his buttocks. His erect penis was scraped raw and bloody, as though it had been rubbed against a cheese grater. He looked almost demonic, and though that was a terrible thing to think, it was the conclusion to which anyone looking at the photo would have come.

She thought of Juan and the Rhino Boy and that unknown kid in the photograph at the art gallery. A horrible suspicion entered her mind. Thanking Dave for letting her view the pictures, she returned to the office, where she told Sanchez that she was going to see Rosalia. She didn’t need to stop by the Oliveras’ apartment as part of her job—in fact, she had half a dozen more urgent cases waiting on her desk right at this moment— but there was something she had to know for herself.

‘‘Why don’t you take a few personal days,’’ Sanchez suggested. ‘‘I’ll make sure your cases are covered.’’

‘‘That’s okay,’’ she told him.

‘‘You’ve been through a lot. A few days off might—’’

‘‘I’m fine,’’ she said.

After calling first to make sure Rosalia was home, she drove to the Oliveras’ place. As always, Juan was hiding in the shadows of the bedroom, and as always, Carrie was glad. She declined Rosalia’s offer to sit down on the ratty couch and instead showed the other woman the newspaper she had brought with her. ‘‘This man,’’ she said, pointing to the photo of Lew Haskell. ‘‘Is he Juan’s father?’’

Rosalia turned away, obviously upset. She moved across the room, not speaking until she was standing next to the wall, facing away from Carrie and the newspaper. ‘‘No,’’ she said.

‘‘Take another look.’’

‘‘No!’’ It was practically a shout.

‘‘Rosalia,’’ Carrie said gently. She walked over to the other woman, acutely aware of Juan’s eyes watching her from the bedroom. ‘‘This man is in jail now. He cannot harm you.’’ She laid a light hand on Rosalia’s shoulder. ‘‘Be honest now. Tell me: Is this Juan’s father?’’

‘‘Sí,’’
Rosalia said, agitated. ‘‘That is him.’’ She still wouldn’t look at either Carrie or the newspaper, and when Carrie moved around in front of her, she saw that Rosalia was crying.

Carrie comforted her, putting down the newspaper and putting her arms around Rosalia, but her mind was racing. Lew had not only fathered that deformed child he had hidden away in his mansion, but he had also impregnated Rosalia and had probably paid for sessions with Holly and gotten
her
pregnant. As well as whoever was the mother of that boy in the photograph and God knew how many others.

Carrie refused to think about that.

Rosalia was aware of none of this, though she deserved to know all. The trouble was, Carrie didn’t know where to start. She led Rosalia to the couch, sitting next to her, and after Rosalia stopped crying, Carrie explained as straightforwardly as possible how Lew had been holding immigrant women captive and how he had imprisoned his wife and son within their house. His son, she said delicately, had a face that looked like a lizard’s.

‘‘Juan es not only one?’’ Rosalia asked, wiping her eyes.

Carrie shook her head.

This was not her responsibility. The best thing she could do was go to someone in authority and tell them the whole story.

She did not want to violate Rosalia’s privacy and confidence, but Holly and her son were dead, and the photo of the boy who looked like a possum was on public display in an art gallery. John Mees was the photographer’s name, she remembered. She’d intended to track him down but hadn’t gotten around to it.

When she returned to the office, she called Dave at the PD and told him all she knew, leaving out Rosalia and Juan. He seemed decidedly underwhelmed but promised to pass on the information to the officers involved in the case. She then went into Sanchez’s office, closed the door and told her supervisor
everything.
He listened patiently, then calmly advised her to take a few days off. She had plenty of vacation and sick days.

‘‘You don’t understand,’’ she said. ‘‘This guy has not only imprisoned immigrant women in a crazy attempt to farm organic human milk, he’s also fathered these . . . children. And the police don’t seem to care about that.’’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘‘Maybe that’s not illegal, but not paying child support is, and since that’s our department, I think we should get involved. This guy’s a monster.’’

‘‘This
guy
,’’ Sanchez said evenly, ‘‘is rich. And powerful. So forgive me if I don’t leap to prejudgment and assume he’s guilty until proven innocent. What’s more, it would be unethical, not to mention against department policy, for you to divulge privileged information about one of your clients.’’

She met his eyes. ‘‘You don’t believe me? You think I’m lying?’’

He looked away. ‘‘That’s not the point.’’

‘‘It
is
the point!’’ She slammed her hand on his desk so hard it hurt. ‘‘It’s exactly the point!’’

‘‘Let’s stop right here before we both say something we might regret. I’m not going to put you on leave at this point, but my suggestion is for you to give yourself a couple of days and think things through.’’ He stood. ‘‘Now please leave my office. This conversation is over.’’

Carrie walked out feeling frustrated. She didn’t know what to do with the knowledge she had, but it seemed to her that she had to do
something.
The tabloids would jump at the information, but she didn’t want to go to them. Besides causing her problems at work and possibly getting her fired, it wouldn’t be fair to Rosalia or Juan or any of the other children.

She sat down at her desk, nodded politely at the sympathetic comments of her coworkers, turned on her computer and tried to work.

And then the phone rang.

Nineteen

James Marshall called for another glass. He was already drunk, but he wanted to be drunker. The bartender, a squat ugly man with the personality of a rattlesnake, slammed the whiskey on the bar next to him, scowling, and held out his hand for payment. Marshall flipped two coins at the man, making sure one fell on the ground so the bastard would have to scramble around in the dirt to pick it up.

The truth was, those coins were pretty damn close to his last—which was one of the reasons he wanted to stay liquored up. When he’d come to California believing— no,
knowing
—that he would discover gold, he had assumed that he would get rich from it, that he’d been granted this special knowledge in order to benefit. But he was like Moses, leading people to the promised land yet unable to enter it himself. Marshall smiled bitterly. Wouldn’t Morgan James and Emily Smith and all of those religious lunatics appreciate the irony of that!

What
had
happened to Emily Smith’s family? he wondered.

Sutter had not profited from the discovery of gold either. It had taken a monumental number of bad decisions on both their parts to be so completely excluded from enjoying the wealth that was now flowing to every opportunist and ne’er-do-well who made his way West, yet that was exactly what had occurred. Sutter, as always, had plans and schemes on which he was working, attempts he was going to make to claim what he saw as his rightful due, but Marshall had all but given up the idea of making a fortune in gold.

In fact, now, he wasn’t sure he
wanted
any gold.

Not after what he’d heard.

One story had come to him through the fort. A trio of greenhorns from back East had made their way to Coloma and had set off to live in one of the camps, bartering their animals and supplies for positions, filled with the cocky certainty that in a month they would be rolling in money and able to buy whatever they wanted. A week later, two of the men were dead and the lone survivor had a tale to tell that no one believed.

Marshall wouldn’t have believed it either—if he had not experienced what he had.

The broken man who returned to the fort was dirty, bloody and barefoot, his clothes little more than tattered rags hanging from his bony frame. He was sobbing and incoherent. It was two days before he was able to tell anyone what had happened, and even when he did, everyone thought that his mind had been addled by whatever experience had befallen him and his comrades.

Everyone except Marshall.

The man’s name was Jake, and he said that two days out, they’d been attacked in the night by creatures neither beast nor man. The three of them had been sleeping under the stars near the Sacramento River when they’d been awakened by the sound of something big crashing through the underbrush. ‘‘Bear!’’ one of them whispered, but it was the last thing he ever said because he was set upon by creatures that seemed shiny and slimy in the moonlight, creatures a head or two taller than a man, with tails and horns and claws unlike anything Jake had ever seen.

Jake had taken off through the trees, stumbling over roots and branches, his arms scraped by thorns as he ran away from the slaughter. Behind him, his other partner, also trying to flee, was caught. His screams rent the night.

Jake reached the river, splashed into it, was carried downstream, and spent the next several days and nights lost and wandering, in constant fear, trying to find his way back to the fort or a camp or someplace where there were people. Shortly before he reached the fort, in the middle of the day, he ran across one of the creatures. It was sleeping in a hollow, curled up, looking more like a giant snake than anything else. But it must have heard Jake or smelled him, because it woke up, stood to its full height and stared at him.

It was not snakelike at all. Its skin was slimy and white, like a worm’s, but there were arms and legs, strange horns and protrusions of bone, a forked tail like a devil’s, and patches of filthy hair all over. The head was huge, the face like something out of a nightmare.

He was terrified. But what seemed odd was that the creature appeared to be frightened as well. It kept looking behind and to the sides of him, as though searching for others. He had been doing the same, but when it became clear that it was only the creature and himself, that no one or nothing else was around, he began to back up slowly.

That was when the creature attacked. It didn’t try to kill him as the others had his companions. Instead it tried to . . . mate with him. It became clear almost instantly that the creature was female, and despite its size and horrifying appearance, its touch was gentle, almost womanly.