Twelve
June 13, 1976
2:00P.M.
Dear Aurora Grace,
There is something bad inside Gabriel. It’s like lava in a volcano. If you don’t see it or feel it, it can’t hurt you, so it doesn’t seem real.
But it is real. This bad thing is always there, bubbling closer and closer to the surface, until finally, it explodes out of him, destroying everything it touches. You know you can’t stop it, not any more than you would be able to stop real lava in its tracks. So all you can do is stay as quiet as possible and pray with everything you have that it doesn’t touch you too.
I never saw Gabriel kill Papa Pete. I only heard the shots from outside. By the time I walked in through the front door, he was already dead. “I didn’t mean to,” Gabriel said, and I believed him. I believed him because I hadn’t seen him fire the gun. I hadn’t seen his eyes as he pulled the trigger. I hadn’t seen the veins popped out on his forehead or that smile on his face that isn’t really a smile at all, just skin stretching. I hadn’t seen the lava.
Through all these months of meeting Gabriel the way I did and liking him and loving him and not loving him and disliking him and even hating him a little, I had no reason to truly fear him, even when he was holding a gun to my head. And that was because I had never seen the lava. Not until today.
We showed up at Ed Hart’s house at about 1:00P.M. It’s a small house. No bigger than mine. I asked Gabriel if he was sure it was the right house because it didn’t look like a place where a rich Hollywood guy would live, especially not someone who was friends with people like David Soul.
Gabriel said, “He is rich. He’s just not showy.”
Gabriel said he knew Ed Hart well when he was little. As it turns out, Gabriel’s real dad is a hotshot entertainment lawyer who used to take him to movie and TV sets a lot. He stopped doing that a long time ago, when he left Gabriel’s mom for a dancer on theSonny and Cher Comedy Hourand never saw the family again. Gabriel hates him, of course, and that’s why he never spoke about him to me before. But back when he was in elementary school, Gabriel used to worship his dad, and he and Ed were pals. He met him on the set of some cop show, and while his dad yapped away with his TV producer client, Ed showed Gabriel prop guns, fake handcuffs, even a phony bomb. They got together a few times after that, and Ed told him that when he was old enough, Gabriel could apprentice for him. Become a property master himself.
“He’ll be glad to see me,” Gabriel said. “He was like a second father.” But when he answered the door, Ed didn’t seem to have any idea who we were.
Ed Hart was balding and kind of short. He was wearingbaggy, Wrangler-type jeans and a green Lacoste sports shirt that stretched tight across his belly. His eyes were wide and bright and his cheeks were very red, as though he’d once gotten so embarrassed that his face froze like that. He had a sweet, confused smile that reminded me a little of Jenny. Even though Ed was old enough to be a dad or maybe even a grandfather, there was something almost babyish about him—something that made it hard to look him in the eye for very long. “Can I help you kids with anything?” he said.
I will never understand why he opened the door all the way.
June 15, 1976
4:00A.M.
From theInland Empire Eagle
WEST COVINA, June 14—Police are investigating the apparent murder of property master Edward Royland Hart, 61, after his body was found this morning in his home at 655 Mercer Lane, bound at the wrists and feet and riddled with more than a dozen bullet wounds.
The body was discovered by Mr. Hart’s housekeeper, Margaret Ingram, who immediately called police. “This is tragic,” Mrs. Ingram said. “Mr. Hart was such a nice man. He had no enemies. I never even heard him raise his voice to anyone.”
Though Mr. Hart’s wallet and watch had been taken, along with assorted movie and TV memorabilia, police sources say that the crime appeared to be unusually violent for a simple robbery. “There seemed to be an element of overkill,” said LieutenantBarrett Grange of the L.A.P.D. County Sheriff’s Department, whose detectives are assisting West Covina police. “Even if the assailant was a complete stranger, the violence visited on Mr. Hart was unusually excessive for a simple robbery.” Mr. Hart was shot in both legs, the groin, abdomen, and face, all apparently while bound and gagged.
Mr. Hart was divorced, with no children. Said Lieutenant Grange, “Anyone with any knowledge as to what person or persons may have committed this crime is encouraged to contact the law enforcement team at the tipline, listed below.”
Dear Aurora Grace,
Newspapers are strange. They tell you about things after they happen, but when you read them, you feel as though they’re happening right in front of you. This article is a good example. Ed Hart will never be alive again, and yet when you read that article you want to help. You want to save him. Don’t you? I want to save him.
I wanted to save him when it was happening but I was too scared. I couldn’t move and couldn’t speak and I hated myself for that. As we drove away from his house, I wished with all my heart that I’d been brave enough to stop Gabriel. To change things. But now I’m not sure. Now, I’m thinking that maybe it was meant to be. That Gabriel and I were steered by the Hand of Fate down that quiet street and up Ed Hart’s driveway and into his house to give him exactly what he deserved. Does that sound crazy? Does it sound like I’ve been reading the Bible too much?
I was supposed to throw this newspaper out, but I rippedout that clipping when Gabriel wasn’t looking. I stole a tube of glue from Ed Hart’s house and that’s what I used to stick it to the page. When you are old enough, I want you to read the article, but I want you first to read what I am about to write here, so you know and understand the whole story.
After it was done, Gabriel wanted me to help him take Ed Hart into the backyard. He’d found a shovel in his garage, and his idea was to bury him there. When I said I couldn’t do that, Gabriel had the idea of pouring gasoline on him and burning him. But then he worried about the fire spreading and hurting innocent people, and so he came up with putting Ed into his own car. We would wrap Ed in one of his own sheets and put him in the trunk of his car. And then we would drive it to a wrecking yard and make sure the car got crushed, with Ed Hart in it. Gabriel had seen that in a movie once, he said. It would be easy.
Gabriel said, “Don’t you see? He’ll be gone. No one will find him. We won’t have to think of him ever again.”
I thought it was a terrible idea. I doubted we would be able to carry Ed together. And even if we could, we didn’t know the area. How were we supposed to find a wrecking yard? Look it up in the Yellow Pages? Ask the neighbors? I wanted to say all that, but I was crying so hard I couldn’t talk.
I couldn’t even stand. I was on the floor of Ed Hart’s house, curled up into a ball with the stiff shag rug pressing into the side of my face, that copper and smoke smell all around me again, seeping into my skin just the way it had with Papa Pete. Gabriel was standing over me, pleading with me to stand up, all the while talking about throwing Ed intothe back of a car like he’d seen in some stupid Charles Bronson movie and I wanted to shut the door on all of it, on him, on this nightmare I seemed to have found my way into.
Finally, I was able to get one word out. I pointed to Ed on the floor, tied up with pairs of his own socks, and I said it. “Why?”
