The Boys from Santa Cruz Read Online Free Page A

we got away with—and you can’t…fucking…touch us!
    So the discovery that the unspeakable pair had had an accomplice buoyed the agents’ spirits a little. Izzo jotted down the time on the VCR counter—fourteen minutes into the tape—and made a note to have somebody blow up and tweak the frames in question. Then they settled back to watch the rest of the horror show, which ended shortly after the victim’s death, with Luke Sweet delivering a chilling throwaway line—“You like apples? Well, how do you like them apples?”—as he climbed off the corpse.
    The screen went dark. Over the hum of the air-conditioning, they heard the hackle-raising sound of a baying hound—the state police had brought in a cadaver-sniffing dog to search the property. “You look like you could use a drink,” Pender told Izzo, thirstily eyeing the nearly full bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the counter separating the living room from the kitchen area.
    “Didn’t anybody tell you FBI agents aren’t supposed to drink alcohol, especially on the job?” Izzo asked him.
    “Yeah, I think I heard something like that once,” said Pender as he rinsed out two water glasses. “Ice?”
    “Sure.”
    Pender was about to open the refrigerator door when one of the photographs affixed to it by magnet caught his eye. It was the former Unsub, standing in front of the trailer with his arm around a teenage boy. The boy was sporting a Mohawk hairdo and an adolescent scowl, and wearing a red 49ers jersey with the number 16 across the front. Pender took it down and turned it over—across the back of the snapshot, someone had written “Big Luke, Little Luke, Father’s Day,” with a felt-tipped pen.
    “Oh jeez,” he said, wincing.
    “Beg pardon?” called Izzo.
    “That ‘accomplice’ we were looking for, the one with the camera? It’s Sweet’s son. Little Luke. Looks like he’s around fourteen, fifteen years old.”
    Izzo winced. “Man oh Manischewitz,” he groaned. “Just when you think it can’t get any sicker.”
4
    Not only had it been four years since I’d last been to Santa Cruz, but back then I’d been getting around on a bicycle. I didn’t exactly get lost, but I must have made a wrong turn, because I found myself driving past the Boardwalk.
    I pulled over to watch the people hanging out on the steps near the carousel, thinking I might see some of my old friends. I didn’t, but I did see quite a few kids around my age, clusters of them laughing and acting goony, couples making out or strolling with their arms around each other’s waists. Some of the white kids were punked out like me. Part of me despised them, but another part of me could imagine a different world, where if you were alone and there was a group of kids your age and style, you could just hook up with them. Of course, if they’d known I had all that dope and money, it would have been
them
trying to hook up with
me
.
    It was around ten o’clock when I rang my grandparents’ bell. Fred was already in his bathrobe and pajamas. Tall man, severe, always looked like he’d just finished shaving. I could tell by the look on his face that he knew what had happened.
    “It’s him,” he called up the stairs to my grandmother. He didn’t say hello, but he didn’t slam the door in my face, either. A few seconds later Evelyn came bustling down the stairs in her nightgown and threw her arms around me. I was taller than she was, now. Itwas the first anybody had touched me since Teddy knocked me down this morning. For some reason I burst into tears. I didn’t even know I had any tears in me.
    I slept in my old bed in my old room that night. Clean sheets, cool ocean breeze, a long hot shower, salve for my burns, then one of Teddy’s pain pills, and I was in dreamland. My dreams weren’t as gory as you’d have expected, though. I didn’t relive the events of the morning or anything like that. Instead, I dreamed that I’d driven Teddy’s car someplace, only now I