Authors: Christopher Conlon
She was a tomboy, and not particularly pretty. Her face was square, blockish; her most typical expression was a scowl, and when she smiled an auxiliary chin would appear. She was not fat, but she was heavily built, with muscular arms and breasts preternaturally developed for a sixth-grader. Girls didn’t like her because she was loud, rude; boys found her unnerving. And yet later I would see that, when she was in a peaceful, reflective mood, her face relaxed and happy, she would have moments of startling beauty: the hard angles would dissolve, her icy blue eyes soften, and her blonde, nearly silver hair, invariably tangled and rat’s-nested, would bounce and glisten. This was a Lucy few would ever see. I myself saw her hardly at all, yet my memory of those few occasions remains as vivid as any memories I have. I found her mesmerizing to look at, a rough, blowsy, hard-edged angel.
That first morning, however, the encounter was limited to my backing away from the bus door as this hurricane of a girl came rushing up to it, backpack slung carelessly over her shoulder. “New?” she said, glancing at me in the moment it took for the door to slide open. I nodded. “Good luck—you’ll need it,” she said, turning away and mounting the first step. Over her shoulder she added, “This place is a fuckin’ dump!”
As homicidal maniacs go, the Riverbed Killer was a small-timer. He claimed only three victims, of whom Lucy Sparrow was the last. His entire spree lasted a mere two weeks, not even long enough for the community to begin to panic—by the time the bodies began to be discovered he was already dead, shot down in a police chase outside Santa Barbara. This was only days after Lucy’s body was found, what was found of it, in the dry riverbed off the freeway: strewn about in pieces, like the other two. Compared to the Gacys and Dahmers of the world, the Riverbed Killer’s case contains nothing especially memorable. And yet today, on the more comprehensive websites devoted to serial murderers (and I cannot help but wonder what sort of people create these sites), there he is. There are his victims. Trista Sanchez, Tina Blake, and Lucy, who looks much as I remember her, although I’ve not seen even a photo of her in thirty years. In fact, she looks exactly the same, except that it seems impossible she could have been so young—or that I could. The picture is in black and white, no doubt scanned from an old newspaper story or yearbook. Lucy Sparrow.
And there are pictures of the investigation, as well, old news shots of local police and Santa Barbara County detectives standing in the riverbed, sorting through debris. There are no photos, thank God, of the actual crime scenes. It’s strange for me to realize that such photographs must exist today, buried in the ancient, disused files of law enforcement agencies and news organizations in central California. Somewhere, if one only knew where, one could go to an old file cabinet, open it, and draw forth a sheaf of papers which would include images of what was left of Lucy Sparrow when they found her. For that, if anything, turns out to be the Riverbed Killer’s sole distinguishing point: the sheer brutality of his methods. The basement he had outfitted with ball-and-chain, lockable metal staples set into concrete walls, a bed with leather restraining devices such as one finds in mental asylums, a Spanish Inquisition-style “rack.” And his tools: sledgehammers, knives, sharpened screwdrivers, a band saw, a high-powered electric drill with a huge assortment of drill bits. There was a specially-constructed drain in the middle of the floor. All this he had purchased or built himself. The drill appeared to be his favorite instrument of all. Each victim’s skull contained dozens of sharply-defined, cleanly-made holes which investigators somehow knew were drilled—some of them, at least—while the victims were alive. I don’t know how anyone can determine such facts. I tell myself I don’t believe them. But I do.
At that age, friendships among girls are mercurial, fast-fading; today’s best friends for life are tomorrow’s bitterest arch-enemies. This is the age when the worst female qualities—and they
are
female qualities: bitchiness, backstabbing, rumor-mongering—come to the fore, with no counterbalancing sense of empathy or pity. If it’s true that hell is other people, then surely one division of that hell can be found among the girls of any typical middle school.
Lucy Sparrow was a denizen of such a hell, though I did not see that clearly then. With her smelly clothes, bellowing voice, and boyish ways, she was a perfect target for the girls I quickly identified as the important ones, the “in” crowd: Susie Shaw, Michelle Price, Melissa Deaver, pretty little ego machines who painted their nails at recess and talked about their hair and shoes and argued over who was hotter, Shaun Cassidy or Andy Gibb. I had known such girls at my earlier school, in Stockton, and feared them. I knew my shyness, my virtual terror of human interaction would cause them to create new nick-names for me, as indeed it did: “Miss Stuck-up,” of course, but also—within just a few days of my arrival—“Bitchy Britches,” and, most memorably, in reference to my physique, “Concentration Camp.”
Lucy had it worse. From the very first day, sitting in Mrs. Peterson’s homeroom, I heard whisperings.
“Lezzie’s here today.”
“Yeah, Dyke-o-rama’s back.”
“Michelle, you really should kiss her. She likes
you
best.”
“Eww!
You
kiss her.”
Lucy could hardly have failed to hear these remarks—she was only two seats in front of these girls—but her head remained angled over the book she was reading, her hair tumbling over her face so that I could not read her expression. Since I knew she lived across the street from my house, I naturally felt that we might be friends.
We had all our classes together, but Lucy and I did not speak until lunchtime. I had yet to say a word that day other than a few murmured “hellos,” and was sitting on the grass looking absently at a group of boys running up and down the field when a loud
thwack
startled me into looking to my right, where the tetherball pole stood. Few seventh-graders used it, I would learn; tetherball was considered kids’ stuff, for the elementary schoolers who took their lunch an hour before us. But there was Lucy, slamming away at the ball with her closed fist. She would hit it, watch it with hawklike intensity as it swung around on its rope, and then smash it again, grunting. I watched her for what seemed quite a long time, the ball angling into the air, swooping and dropping, Lucy’s fist punching at it. She never missed, and she hit hard. Like a boy, I thought.
“Hi,” she said finally, glancing at me, sweat glistening on her forehead. She kept on watching and striking, watching and striking. “Wanna try?”
I swallowed nervously, but managed to stand up and approach her. The ball glided toward my head.
“Go on, hit it, hit it!” she cried.
I swung at it with the heel of my palm, connected rather feebly. It swung lethargically back toward her.
“Look, like this,” she said, showing me her clenched fist. “
Wham!
”
As she said it, she sent the ball hurling back around in fast circles again, and I found myself ducking away from it. This made Lucy laugh, the first time I’d heard her do so. It was a big, raucous sound, far larger than one would imagine for someone her size. “Don’t be chicken,” she said. “C’mon, try!”
I stepped back toward the ball, closed my fist, and swung, missing it completely, which, surprisingly, didn’t make her laugh again: in fact, it silenced her. On its next revolution, Lucy grabbed the ball and held it, looking at me.
“Look, c’mere, I’ll show you.” I hesitated. “
C’mere
,” she insisted, and I moved toward her. “Hit it with the side of your fist, like this.” She illustrated. “You’ve gotta keep your eye on the ball. You missed because you looked away. Here, see?” To my surprise, she reached down, grabbed my hand. “Make a fist. Right. Now hit it like this.” She pressed the side of my fist against the ball. “Okay? Now, look. Step back. I’ll swing it at you, just gentle. See if you can hit it like I showed you.” I was afraid she would sock it again, but no, she lofted it softly around the pole so that it arrived, smoothly and slowly, near my raised fist. I swung, connected imperfectly, and the ball spun off in the other direction. “Not bad,” she said, catching it. “Here, try again. Now watch it, keep your eye on it.”
For the next several minutes I swung my arm at the ball, gradually getting better at it, while she and I talked—or rather, she asked questions and I answered them. How did I like the school? How did I like Mrs. Peterson? Mr. Thorndyke? And what was my name, anyway?
“Fran,” I said, preparing to swing. “Fran Carpenter. It’s really Frances, but people call me Fran.”
“Fran. Hm. Girlie name. Oh, well. I’m Lucy.”
And with that we were friends. On some level Lucy frightened me, her aggressiveness and insistence, but on the other hand, she seemed to be taking an interest in me, something no one at my other schools had ever done. I knew that I was spending time with a misfit, that the important girls were probably watching right now, already branding me a loser—hanging around with Lucy Sparrow, playing a little kid’s game!—as indeed they were, and did. But it didn’t matter. Swatting away at that silly tetherball, I abruptly found myself feeling, for a few moments at least, quite happy.
When the bell rang ending the lunch period, Lucy took the ball for a few final swats. Scowling, she said, “This one’s for Susie
Shaw
,”
slamming the ball as she uttered the last name; it swung around, then she grabbed it again and said, “This one’s for Michelle
Price
,”
and the thing whirled around once more; finally, “This one’s for Melissa
Deaver
!”
The ball spun crazily around the pole as, giggling wildly, best pals already sharing a secret, we ran off to class.
It turned out that we were both newcomers, aliens to the undistinguished town of Quiet, California. Lucy and her mother had only arrived in November, four months earlier. Their home, as I had seen it from across Kendale Road, was a wreck; cans, trash, and car parts were spread across the yard (“Most of it’s the landlord’s,” Lucy would say, “but we get blamed for it”). The lawn itself, what there was of it, was patchy and brown, dead. As for the house itself, its paint was cracked and chipped everywhere; one front window was held together by strips of masking tape. “My mom rents it,” Lucy told me that first afternoon. “She’s a waitress.” She pointed vaguely. “That’s where she is now.” What a contrast it was to my aunt and uncle’s house, which was much larger and beautifully maintained, with a pristine lawn kept up by a team of weekly maintenance men.
“The neighbors hate us,” Lucy would say later. “Mr. Silva called my mom a pig to her face. I was there. But she can’t
afford
any better.”
She invited me to her house after school that first day, and I felt as nearly salacious thrill at the idea of stepping into such an abode of ill repute, so different from my own home, my own obsessively organized life. “C’mon over,” she had said. “I get bored as shit.” Aunt Louise had acquiesced when I arrived home, nodding in her dour way, saying only, “Keep out of trouble,” before returning her attention to her TV game show and Marlboro cigarettes. (I never quite knew why she watched the shows; she never seemed to take any pleasure in them, never smiling, never laughing. Yet she never missed them, especially
Match Game
and
Family Feud
.)
I found my heart beating fast as I rang Lucy’s doorbell.
“Hi,” she said, opening the door and grinning. “Welcome to Dumpland!”
A friend,
I thought.
My friend!
Inside the house was a shambles too. Dirty clothes lay everywhere, soiled dishes, old magazines and newspapers; there was an open box of tampons on the kitchen table in the midst of dozens of spilled cigarettes and empty Coors beer cans. A broken chair lay forlornly in the corner, one leg snapped in half. The living room carpet, what there was of it, had once been blue, but it was covered now with brown and yellow and orange stains. To my sense of order there was something shocking about the scene, as if I were looking at someone naked: Dirty people lived here, it seemed to me,
filthy
people. I was obscurely thrilled.
“Who takes care of you when your mom’s not home, Lucy?” I asked as we treaded through a dark hallway toward her bedroom.
“Takes care of me? Nobody takes
care
of me,” she said. “I take care of myself.”
Though I had gone through many difficulties, particularly when my parents forced me to travel to this little town hundreds of miles from where I’d grown up in order to live with Frank and Louise (
Why? What did I do? What did I do?
), I had never, then or now, come home to an empty house: first my mother, then Louise had always been there, with the sound of the TV or their voices on the telephone—something,
at least, to ensure that I wasn’t coming home to loneliness, silence, death.
There’s no one home,
I thought to myself in horror, studying Lucy.
There’s no one home here, no one at all.
“We can go to my house, Lucy,” I said. “My aunt’s there.”
She scowled. “Why? That’s a stupid idea.”
Her bedroom was exactly like the rest of the house. Her clothes covered the floor to such a complete degree that the carpet couldn’t be seen at all; her bed was unmade; there were stuffed animals in tumbledown confusion on every shelf and window sill. A few magazines were scattered on the floor, some of them open and gaping. There was an old record player in one corner and collapsing heaps of 45s next to it. Such a contrast to my own room, the bed made to nearly military standards of perfection, clothes washed, ironed, and hung in the closet, bookshelf with its titles alphabetized and well-dusted, schoolbooks stacked by size on the desk, pencils sharpened to a fine point and waiting in a jar. And still, I knew, still I was not good enough.