“And if it’s drugs, it hardly matters, does it?”

“Unless he was dealing, sir. That could be a reason for his murder.”

“He wasn’t dealing.”

“He was using. I already found a small stash in his socks. It could be he has a brick in there, that he broke off a little for personal use.”

Golding said nothing, a tormented and torn man.

Decker said, “What was Ernesto’s birthday?”

An easy question that even Golding could answer. He gave it to him, albeit reluctantly. After fiddling with the right/left of the dial, the lock finally popped. No drugs, no firearms, no letters, no family report, but lots of incriminating pictures that filled the entire space. Not pornography, but obscene. Men in striped prison garb, all of them dead. About twenty black-and-white snapshots and all of them in perfect focus, with each man holding a different death mask. Some had open mouths, others had open eyes, but they all wore the skeletal face of starvation.

Golding stared in horror. “These are repulsive…disgusting. Get them out of my sight!”

“I want to take them—”

“Take them! Get them out of here!”

Decker hid them from Golding’s view. “These are original photographs. Any idea where Ernesto might have picked these up?”

“No!” Golding whispered in abject dread. “No! How would I know?” His eyes began to leak tears. “Please just take them and get out of here!”

“I’m sorry to intrude—”

“Please, just go!”

“Mr. Golding, are you sure that you still want us to delve into your father’s past?”

“Yes.” Slowly, Golding focused his eyes on Decker’s face. “Yes, I want your wife to look into my father’s past. I want to know about it. I need to know about it. But that doesn’t mean it has to be shoved in my face.”

24

Usually, she took a combination of freeways and canyons to go “over the hill.” But today, since she wasn’t stopping at her parents’ house, it was pure speed until she hit the Robertson Boulevard exit on the 10 East, heading north though the haunts of her childhood.