Most newspapers referred to him as the Route 99 Killer—an anonymous somebody who’d been traveling up and down the highway for the last year, grabbing kids out of rest stops while their parents were distracted—but a couple of tabloids, noticing that he only took boys, had given him a new name.
“The Angel of Death,” Carlotta said. “Like the one in Egypt, who killed the firstborn sons? And I told my father, ‘Hey, I’m not a boy, what do I have to worry about?’ but he said, ‘What if the guy makes a mistake? You think once he gets you in his car and sees you’re a girl, he’s just going to let you go?’”
Which explained why Se?or Diaz wanted me riding along with his daughter: he figured with someone to keep her company, she’d be less likely to get bored and go for a stroll along the roadside. Plus, of the two of us, I was definitely the more butch-looking, so if the worst happened, chances were the Angel would take me.
Se?or Diaz sounds like a great humanitarian.
Eh, you know. Parents. I couldn’t really bring myself to be offended. Anyway, this is going to sound twisted, but it was kind of exciting, thinking about the danger. I mean that’s one reason people believe in the bogeyman, right? It makes the dark more entertaining.
And it’s not like I thought we were ever actually going to run into the guy. If I had any doubts on that score, they disappeared the minute my aunt and uncle said OK to Se?or Diaz’s offer. I had to figure if there was any real risk, they’d have made me take the bus.
Instead, first day of school, my aunt got me up extra early so I’d be ready when Carlotta’s mom came by. That was the only time I had second thoughts, when my bedroom door banged open at five a.m. Half an hour later I was in the car, and by quarter to six Carlotta and I were in front of the school, eating candy cigarettes with a handful of other early birds.
Around six-fifteen the school librarian showed up. She let us into the building and had us come upstairs to the library until classes started. Then after final bell, we went back up there and killed time until Felipe came with his pickup.
Did the school library have Nancy Drew?
A full set. The Hardy Boys and the Bobbsey Twins, too. Carlotta was nuts about the Bobbsey Twins, which I never got—she really was a strange girl in a lot of ways.
What about your classes? What were those like?
Boring.
Did you make any other friends?
Not really. I tried to find a bad crowd to fall in with, but Carlotta with her sugar Pall Malls was the closest thing to a real j.d. that the place had to offer. Most of the other kids, I don’t want to say they were dumb hicks, but they were dumb hicks. So I stuck with Carlotta, and we made our own fun.
And did this fun include amateur detective work?
Not deliberately. You’re talking about the janitor, right? Me getting wise to him, that was mostly an accident.
What happened?
The school was only running at about sixty percent capacity, so to save money, an entire wing of the building had been closed down. The closed wing was officially off-limits, but of course that was just an invitation for students to try and break in; Carlotta and I had already talked about getting a crowbar from the gas station so we could go exploring.
Then one afternoon I was on my way to the bathroom when I saw the janitor open up one of the connecting doors that led into the closed wing. He went inside and pulled the door shut behind him, but I didn’t hear him relock it. It seemed like a golden opportunity; I almost ran back to the library to get Carlotta, but then I thought about it a little more and realized that it was maybe more than one kind of opportunity.
See, one thing I was definitely missing in Siesta Corta was dope. And it was making me crazy, because I was in the middle of goddamned farm country, and I knew people had to be growing it. But nobody would tell me who. Carlotta was no help; the only controlled substance that ever passed her lips was communion wine, and not much of that. I had higher hopes for Felipe, but when it came to drugs he turned out to be even more straitlaced than his sister. The one time I tried to raise the subject with him he just gave me the evil eye.