“That reminds me,” I said. “Was anyone in our group carrying an ax up there?”
“Yes,” Ben said. “There was one in the camping gear the police brought.”
“Oh.”
“You seem disappointed,” Frank said.
“I hadn’t seen anyone use it,” I said. “If it wasn’t in our group’s gear, that would argue for an accomplice — someone who brought the ax to Parrish.”
“Who would help a man like Parrish?” J.C. asked.
“His lawyer,” Ben said.
“His lawyer was injured,” Frank said.
“Unable to drive?” Ben countered.
Frank shook his head. “No, he could walk if he needed to. But Phil had nothing to gain and everything to lose if his client escaped.”
“Did Parrish call anyone while he was in custody?” I asked.
“No,” Frank said. “If we’re right about this, though, he didn’t need to make calls. He provided the destination for the group, so his partner — or partners — would know where he was going. And the date of departure was well publicized.”
“Don’t serial killers usually work alone?” J.C. asked.
“Usually, but not always,” Frank said. “The Hillside Strangler — Kenneth Bianchi — and his cousin, Angelo Buono, tortured and killed together. In Houston, Dean Allen Coryll killed at least twenty-seven young men with the help of two friends — they knowingly brought his victims to him.”
“Killers don’t have to be loners,” Ben agreed. “And apparently some women are excited by the idea of being with a killer. There’s even a matchmaking Web site now where women can ‘meet’ the prison inmate of their dreams.”
“But that’s different, isn’t it?” I said. “A woman who marries her prison pen pal after he’s caught isn’t necessarily in the same league as someone who’d help him torture and murder his victims.”
“No,” Frank said, “but there are plenty of examples of couples who’ve worked together before capture. Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka teamed up for torture, rape and murder — the first time, she helped him rape and kill her own sister. In Nebraska, Caril Fugate went along with her boyfriend for a monthlong killing spree that started with her parents and her two-year-old sister.”
“Charles Starkweather, right?” Ben said. “They made a movie about them.”
“Yes. There are others. Coleman and West, the Gallegos, the Neelleys—”
“Why do they do it?” I asked.
“The age-old question, right? Sexual obsession, greed, power — you name it. Sometimes these women are dominated by violent male partners, other times, they clearly participate willingly. It’s not just women — in addition to husband-and-wife teams, there are male partnerships, groups, and families that are serial killers.”
There was silence around the table, then Ben said, “We’re back to the question J.C. asked. Who would help a man like Nick Parrish?”
They threw out suggestions: debating the possibility of Phil Newly again; wondering if Parrish had a contact who also had an airplane or a helicopter; arguing over whether he was more likely to have a girlfriend or a boyfriend; speculating over the likelihood of a relative who was his Angelo Buono.
While this went on, I studied the small-scale topo map.
“We don’t have enough information to know who his partner is,” I said, which earned me a you’re-no-fun-at-all look from every single one of them. “Maybe the FBI guys can help out with their profilers. I don’t know. But I think I do know where his partner met Nick Parrish that day — it was at that other road.”
They focused their attention on the map.
“Yes,” Frank said. “It wasn’t a good route to get to the ranger station, but he wouldn’t have wanted to go anywhere near there once his partner had disabled the helicopters.”
“And it’s a downhill hike from the meadow,” J.C. said. “The airstrip would be the most convenient way out, but he probably expected that law enforcement might be using it by the time he hiked to it.”
“Right,” Ben said, sighing. “I wish we had come up with this sooner. The mud would have been perfect for casting any footprints or tire marks on the road and near the helicopters.”
J.C. shook his head. “If they didn’t take any casts at the time, they’re probably gone. Summer months are the busiest for Helitack. Our helicopters are primarily used for firefighting. There have been all kinds of people around there.”
They decided to call the lead investigator on the team that was coordinating the mountain cases. I went out to get some fresh air in the backyard, where Bingle was engaging in playful antics with Deke and Dunk.
Ben joined me after a while. Bingle checked in with him, then went back to the other dogs. “I think Bingle misses them,” he said. “Do you want to let them run on the beach together?”
I hesitated. I knew Ben could manage in lots of environments, but he hadn’t conquered walking in soft, deep sand with a prosthesis yet. His prosthetist had told him that many amputees found walking on a soft beach difficult. Ben was still working on it.
“Yes, I miss walking on the beach,” he said, reading my thoughts. “I miss lots of things. But the list is getting shorter, and the items that stay on the list, well, I’ll learn to live without them. But there’s no reason Bingle should have to forego his pleasures because of me.”
Frank stepped out as he was saying this, and hearing it, said, “Tell you what — if you don’t mind a public struggle to the boardwalk, we’ll get you over to it. It’s not far from the stairs at the end of the street, and it runs parallel to the water until you get to the pier. You and Irene can stroll along there while J.C. and I herd these four-legged hooligans.”
He thought about it for a moment, but apparently the desire to be closer to the water won out over potential embarrassment, because he agreed to the plan.
He went down the long set of stairs from the cliffs to the sand on his own. From there, the four of us put our arms across one another’s shoulders, in a line, so that no one person was left out — or singled out. J.C. started singing some silly camping song that made us laugh, so most people probably thought we were well into an evening party. Between Frank and J.C., Ben was able to get to the boardwalk without a fall.
Bingle kept running back and forth between us and the other dogs, but if Deke and Dunk followed him at high speed toward Ben, he herded them away from his new handler. “He won’t allow other dogs to bump into me,” Ben explained. “A service I sometimes miss when he’s not around. But I’m learning to keep my balance a little better these days.”
“How’s the Spanish coming along?”
“I’m getting better at the dog commands,” he said. “The rest still needs lots of work.”
“Why did David train Bingle in Spanish?”
“Two reasons. Bingle was originally owned by an old man who spoke only Spanish, and David had learned Spanish after we did some earthquake recovery work in South America. We’d been frustrated by the language barrier, and he thought it would be useful to be able to speak it for cases here in Southern California, too. Anyway, this old man loved the dog, but he was having trouble keeping up with Bingle. He told David that ‘Bocazo’ — that was his name for Bingle — deserved someone who was more energetic for a partner.”
“Bocazo?” I laughed. “That’s Spanish for ‘big mouth.’ ”
Ben smiled. “He established his rep early on, I guess.”
“So what was the second reason?”
“It wasn’t something people expected. I mean, here’s this Anglo college professor speaking Spanish. When he was doing search and rescue work or cadaver searches, it often won them over. They would be in these horrible situations — waiting for him to search a building that had collapsed in an earthquake in South America, for example — and even though Spanish has many dialects, they understood what he was saying to the dog, and so it took one level of anxiousness away. The two of them made great ambassadors for the rest of us.”