Hood studied the page-one photograph of the Draper home after the fire-blackened and skeletal, nearly roofless, windows and doors blasted out by the firefighters’ hoses.
A follow-up story the next day identified the four victims, and the survivor, Coleman Draper, fifteen. His friend, Israel Castro, was on the property at the time of the fire, and was unhurt.
The boys were friends and sophomores at Campo High. They had been sleeping in the barn with the family dogs, something that they had done several times in the past, especially on cold nights. The Union-Tribune said the temperature in Jacumba that night got down to thirty-seven degrees.
There was a picture of young Coleman sitting on a blue sleeping bag on a bed of hay in the Draper barn with two Jack Russell terriers and two Labrador retrievers nearby. He looked to Hood much like the Coleman Draper he’d had breakfast with just a few short days ago-slender-faced, serious, a curl of white hair on his forehead. In the picture he had a blank look on his face; and though he was looking at the camera, his eyes seemed to be focused on something else.
Two days later a county fire department spokesman said that the cause of the fire was a faulty propane coupling on a hot water heater located in the hallway.
“The gas leaks into the home and if the people are asleep they might not awaken to the smell,” he said. “When the accumulated gas hits a pilot flame or any kind of spark, it explodes. Even static electricity can ignite a gas-filled room.”
Hood saw that one month later there was a Union-Tribune article about the friends Coleman Draper and Israel Castro. It pictured the two boys outside the barn, dogs present again.
The article said that five years ago the Draper family had taken in then-ten-year-old Israel Castro after his father was murdered by suspected drug cartel gunmen. Three years after that, Israel had left the Draper home and moved in with relatives living across the border fence dividing Jacumba of the United States from Jacume of Mexico.
Now, in what the writer called a reversal of fortune, fifteen-year-old Coleman was going to move in with Israel’s extended family in Jacume. It would be temporary. He would finish his education at Campo High. It was an example of good international relations.
And, as far as Hood could determine, it was the last time Coleman Draper was mentioned in the Union-Tribune.
A decade later, Israel Castro’s name appeared twice more, both in connection with water-rights issues and his businesses, East County Tile amp; Stone, and Castro Commercial Management.
Hood looked out the narrow window of his prison room and saw the morning sun reflected on the razor wire of the eastern cell block. The storm had passed and the high desert was damp, clear and cold.
He wondered how Coleman had gotten along in Jacume, if Coleman had been allowed to bring his dogs, if Draper and Israel Castro were still friends.
And he wondered what the San Diego County Health and Human Services case worker had thought of young Coleman running off to live with a friend in a smuggler’s hive like Jacume.
But most of all Hood wondered if the fire investigators could explain why the propane coupler had leaked abundantly on February 4, but apparently not before.
Three hours later he was sitting across a desk from Teresa Acuna, head of the Child Welfare Services in National City. She had handled the Coleman Draper family-to-family living arrangement back in 1995.
“We had grant money to seed that program,” she said. She was black-haired and heavyset, early forties. “There had been some success in Ohio. The idea was to make it easier for the families of children who were friends to become foster caregivers. We wanted continuity, familiarity, cohesion. In Coleman’s case, this was complicated by the fact that Israel Castro’s extended family was living in Mexico. We’d never tried anything like that before, so we opened talks with the Baja Norte Bureau of Social Services. At first they said it would be impossible. Then they said it wouldn’t be a problem. That kind of wavering is not as unusual as it sounds, in a place where graft, corruption and dishonesty abound.”
“Jacume.”
“Jacumba. East County. North Baja. The entire border, really. It’s a paradise of iniquity out there.”
“Baja Norte Social Services changed its mind?”
“Yes. With no explanation. The Castro family was influential and I assumed that they were behind it. When I say family, I mean it loosely. I personally traveled to Jacume to see the home that Coleman had been invited into. It was neat and clean and large and had a free and open feeling to it. Although there were only an aunt and an uncle of Israel’s present that day, I knew from my Jacumba sources that the home was actually shared by three married couples and usually filled with children-cousins, friends, friends of friends. There were frequent guests. The uncle was a landowner in the Santo Tomas Valley. He grew grapes and owned a large winery. He had government connections in Mexico City. There was a taint of prison in that line of the Castros-not the uncle, but the uncle’s uncle. This was not talked about.”
“Why did you let the boy into this paradise of iniquity?”
“A good question. I wrestled with it. The good was that he would be with the family of his friend. He would be in a stable environment, and he would have at least some sense of continuity to his life. He would be on the other side of the same city he’d grown up in, as it were. The downside was obvious. What swayed me finally was Coleman himself. He was an exceptionally likable boy-intelligent and well mannered and calm. He seemed emotionally strong and capable, even though he was stunned by the sudden death of his family. I believed that he would have a good life with his friends in Jacume. I believed in him.”
Teresa Acuna sat back and folded her hands in her lap. “I interviewed Coleman when he turned sixteen, and again when he turned seventeen, and once more before his eighteenth birthday. He seemed happy. His grades were good and his citizenship was good. He played baseball. He had a group of friends.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
She tapped her keyboard, waited and tapped again. “That last interview was November of ’98. He was getting ready to move up to L.A. He said he was tired of Jacume. He wanted to be a car mechanic. I told him that good, honest car mechanics were hard to find, and that he could do well at that. He said he wasn’t sure about the honest part, but he was a joker.”
Hood told her that he was doing a background check on Coleman because he was a person of interest in an ongoing investigation. He said he was sorry that he couldn’t tell her more but gave her a card with his cell and landline numbers.
“If he contacts you, I’d like this conversation kept confidential.”
“I understand. You will want to talk to Lloyd Sallis. He investigated the fire. We had different views.”
“I have an appointment with him in half an hour.”
Fire Department investigator Lloyd Sallis had retired and now lived in San Diego. He was a large man with thick gray hair and a deeply lined face. His home was dark and the couches were slouching and he apologized to Hood for his housekeeping. He was a widower, he said, and didn’t mind a little dust.
He offered Hood a bourbon then told him to sit outside on the patio. He came back with a plastic grocery bag and two drinks and sat across from Hood. The sun was warm in the early afternoon. The backyard trees bristled with hummingbird feeders, and the birds sped from feeder to feeder, squabbled over territory, vanished into the sky like bullets, then hummed back into the yard to start it all over again. A calico cat nosed the plastic bag, then jumped into Sallis’s lap.