“This boy,” said Dr. Pogue, “sounds perfect.”
“He’s extremely clever,” said Dr. Seth. “Nice, religious little fellow to boot. But perfection’s a bit overreaching. We don’t want to pressure the lad.”
“Yes, yes, of course, Dr. Lattimore.” In Pogue’s top desk drawer was a freshly signed Lattimore check. Full tuition for an entire year, with money left over for gymnasium refurbishment. “Clever is good. Religious is good… Um, are we talking Catholic?”
Isaac arrived at the Burton campus, on Third near McCadden, just a brief walk from the Lattimore mansion, freshly barbered and wearing his best church clothes. A school psychologist ran him through a battery of tests and pronounced him “off the scale.”
An appointment was made for Irma and Isaiah Gomez and the boy to meet Dr. Melvyn Pogue; Pogue’s assistant; Ralph Gottfried, the chairman of the faculty committee; and Mona Hornsby, the chief administrator. Smiling people, white-pink, invariably large. They spoke rapidly and, when his parents seemed confused, Isaac translated.
A week later, he’d transferred to Burton, as a seventh grader. In addition, he received individual “enrichment”- mostly reading by himself in Melvyn Pogue’s book-lined office.
His brothers, happy and recalcitrant in public school, thought the whole deal was weird- the Burton uniform with its silly blue, pleated pants, white shirt, powder-blue jacket, and striped tie; taking the bus to work with Mama, hanging with Anglos all day. Playing sports they’d never heard of- field hockey, water polo, squash- and one they knew about but believed unattainable- tennis.
When they asked Isaac about it, he said, “It’s okay,” but he was careful not to display too much emotion. No reason to make them feel deprived.
In reality, it was better than okay, it was fabulous. For the first time in his life, he felt as if his mind was being allowed to go where it wanted. Despite the fact that most of the other Burton students regarded him as a little dark-skinned curiosity and he was often left alone.
He loved being alone. The leather-and-paper smell of Melvyn Pogue’s office was imbedded in his consciousness, as fragrant as mother’s milk. He read- chewed up books- took notes that no one read, stayed in school well past dismissal time. Waiting, with a bag full of books, for Irma to come by to pick him up, and the two of them embarked on the long bus journey back to the Union District.
Sometimes Mama asked him what he was learning. Usually, she dozed on the bus as Isaac read. He was learning about wondrous, strange things, other worlds- other universes. At age eleven, he saw the world as infinite.
By the time he was twelve, he’d made a few casual friends- kids who invited him to their glorious homes, though he was unable to reciprocate. His apartment was clean but small, and the Union District was grimy, urban, a high-crime neighborhood. Even without asking, he knew that no way would Burton parents allow their progeny that far east of Van Ness.
He accustomed himself to a double life: Burton’s beaux-arts buildings and emerald playing fields by day, by night the burp of gunfire and screams and static-scratchy salsa outside the window of the closet-sized bedroom he shared with his brothers.
At night, he thought a lot about the differences among people. Rich and poor, light and dark. Crime, why people did bad things. Was there a fairness to life? Did God take a personal interest in everyone’s life?
Sometimes, he wondered about his mother. Was hers a double life, too? Maybe one day they’d talk about it.
By age fourteen, he smiled and spoke like a Burton student and had zipped through Burton’s high school math curriculum, all of sophomore biology, and two years of advanced placement history. Four years of high school were compressed to two. At fifteen, he graduated with full honors and was accepted as a “special circumstances” student at the University of Southern California.
It was in college that he decided to become a doctor, and he earned a 4.0 as a bio major with a minor in math. USC wanted to hold on to him, and by the time he graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, at barely nineteen, he’d been accepted to the Keck School of Medicine.
His parents celebrated, but Isaac wasn’t sure.
Four more years of lectures with no respite in between. Everything had moved so fast. Deep down, he knew he wasn’t mature enough for the responsibility of tending to other human beings.
He requested and received a deferral, needing a break- something leisurely, less structured.
For Isaac that meant a Ph.D. in epidemiology and biostatistics. By age twenty-one, he’d fulfilled all his course requirements, earned a master’s degree, and began work on his doctoral dissertation.
“Discriminating and Predictive Patterns of Solved and Unsolved Homicides in Los Angeles Between 1991 and 2001.”
As he sat and composed his hypothesis, hunched in a remote corner of the Doheny Library subbasement, memories of gunshots and screams and salsa filled his head.
Though care had been taken by the university to shield its boy-wonder from publicity, news of Isaac’s triumphs reached the desk of City Councilman Gilbert Reyes, who promptly issued a press release in which he took credit for everything the young man had accomplished.
Upon the strong advice of his faculty adviser, Isaac attended a luncheon where he sat next to Reyes; shook the hands of big, loud people; contradicted nothing the councilman said.
Photo opportunities were Reyes’s meat; pictures appeared in the Spanish language mailings his campaign distributed prior to the next election. Isaac, looking like a shell-shocked Boy Scout, was labeled “El Prodigio.”
The experience left him vaguely unsettled, but when the time came to request access to LAPD files for his research, Isaac knew who to call. Within two days, he had an authorized long-term visitors’ badge, a jerry-built “internship,” guaranteed access to inactive homicide files- and anything else he came across in the basement archives. His desk would be at Hollywood Division, because Gilbert Reyes was a serious buddy of Deputy Chief Randy Diaz, the new Hollywood Division overboss.
Isaac showed up at Hollywood bright and early on an April Monday and met with an unpleasant police captain named Schoelkopf, who looked like Stalin.
Schoelkopf regarded Isaac as if he were a suspect, didn’t even pretend to pay attention as Isaac rattled off his hypotheses, nor did he listen as Isaac offered profound thanks for the desk. Instead, his eyes focused on a distant place and he chewed his big black mustache as if it was lunch. When Isaac stopped talking, a cold smile stretched the facial pelt.
“Yeah, fine,” said the captain. “Ask for Connor. She’ll take real good care of you.”
CHAPTER 5
It was nothing Petra would have ever noticed. Even if it had stared her in the face.
Isaac’s neatly typed sheet lay flat on her desk. He sat in the metal chair by the side of her desk. Drummed his fingers. Stopped. Pretended to be nonchalant.
She read the heading again. Boldface.
June 28 Homicides: An Embedded Pattern?
Like the title of a term paper. And why not? Isaac was just twenty-two. What did he know about anything other than school?
Below the title, a list of six homicides, all on June 28, on or near midnight.
Six in six years; her initial reaction was big deal. For the past decade, L.A.’s annual homicide rate had fluctuated between 180 and 600, with the last few years settling in at around 250. That averaged out to a killing every day and a half. Meaning, some days there was nastiness, others nothing at all. When you considered summer heat, June 28 would most likely be one of the high-ticket dates.
She said all that to Isaac. He shot out his answer so quickly she knew he’d been expecting the objection.
“It’s not just the quantity, Detective Connor. It’s the quality.”