An Answer as Murky as the Pool

It is past midnight and I can’t sleep, for thinking about the boy. So here I am in my backyard, walking the perimeter of my pool with a tape measure. Thirty-five feet long, 9 feet deep. Just like the swimming pool that claimed the life of Paolo Ayala.

I gaze into its murky water at the human form on the deep end’s bottom. It is fuzzy, but definitely a body--that of my fiance, who has agreed to come by and lie still in the cold, dark water to help me figure out what’s puzzling so many of us: How the body of a missing child could go unnoticed in a pool for two days?

It is a measure of my own frustration, this crude experiment to explain a scenario both maddeningly simple and bafflingly complex.

A little boy who cannot swim disappears at a backyard pool party. The last time any of the party guests saw him he was sitting in the water in his swimming trunks. Police arrive. They spend two days searching the neighborhood with dogs and helicopters. Then the housekeeper spots the body in the pool, where it had been all along.

How it happened is not the question. Drowning is the leading cause of death among young children in California. Why we didn’t figure it out sooner is what’s puzzling.

I think back a few weekends ago, to our own impromptu pool party, my daughters and half a dozen of their friends, thrashing around in our swimming pool. When it ended, someone was missing a scrunchie, those cloth-covered elastic bands that wrap around a ponytail.

We peered into the pool, but no one could see it, so my daughter and her friends dived into the water to scour the bottom from end-to-end. A few minutes later, they climbed out, holding the soggy scrunchie aloft.

If a trio of 10-year-olds can find a twist of elastic on the bottom of a cloudy pool, how could everyone miss the body of a 7-year-old?

I suppose it is a relief, in a way, to know that no crazy pervert snatched Paolo from the yard of the Holmby Hills mansion, that he didn’t wander away and into the hands of someone who would strangle or torture or murder him.

Better that he simply slipped beneath the water’s surface and drowned, without even enough of a struggle to disrupt the birthday party or attract the attention of anyone.

Or is it? We are freed of the frightening fantasy of stranger abduction but left to reconcile the bewildering reality that a little boy vanished in the midst of a party and no one noticed. And once people realized he was gone, they ignored the obvious for too long, and instead chased phantom boogeymen.

In the three days since Paolo’s body was found, it’s been the obsession of the talk show crowd.

With all those adults attending the party, how could no one be watching that child?

If you’ve ever been to a child’s birthday party, you know the answer to that question. The kids play; the grown-ups socialize.

Why didn’t he know how to swim? He was 7 years old. My kids took lessons when they were 3.

Not everyone has a pool, or belongs to the Y or a country club. Paolo had never been to a big pool party. For families like his, swimming lessons are a luxury.

Why didn’t his parents stay at the party, to keep an eye on him?

You’re a maintenance man, your wife works as a baby-sitter. Your English isn’t good. You live with your three kids in a one-bedroom apartment. How intimidating is the thought of spending two hours hobnobbing with rich people with whom you have nothing in common. So you drop your child off at the party, figuring the hosts are smart enough, at least, to make sure the kids are supervised.

And my question: What compelled police to start searching hither and yon before anyone dived into the pool to check out the most logical place his body might be?

We’ve heard all the theories, explanations, excuses. We know hindsight is 20/20. “Dozens of people ... looked in the pool and came to the same conclusion,” said a police commander, trying to explain how a search missed the obvious. Blame an “optical illusion” that can obscure a body in the chalky water of an aging pool.

But it still seems like common sense to me that when a little boy disappears, the last place he was seen was in the swimming pool and you realize that he didn’t know how to swim, you’re inclined to do more than just eyeball the pool. Anything less is a sloppy investigation.

They talked of “checking” the pool, but not “sweeping” the pool. But this is not rocket science; it didn’t require complicated equipment. Why didn’t anybody strip down to their skivvies and simply dive in to scour the bottom?

Instead, police were primed to believe that something sinister had occurred: The edge around the yard was unfenced. A police dog on Wilshire picked up the boy’s scent. All kinds of elaborate theories were considered in lieu of the most logical explanation. I guess stranger danger is easier to accept than suburban fallibility.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference” if they’d found the body that day, a police spokesman said. “No one should feel guilty. There is nothing anyone could have done.” Tell that to Paolo’s parents, who spent two days in unimaginable hell, not knowing if their son was alive or dead.

Police say parents should take a lesson from this, to watch children in the pool more carefully. That is good advice, certainly. Every pool should have a fence, every party a lifeguard, every child who can’t swim a safety vest.

But I hope police take a lesson as well, and not just the platitude they’ve offered up about not relying on what you think you see. Sometimes the most logical answer is the right one.

And in this case, the simplest explanation--that a little boy drowned and no one noticed--might be the hardest to bear.

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Columnist Sandy Banks’ e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com