Rachael's Return

by Janet Rebhan

  Nancy smiled at Mary Anne. “Good luck,” she said. “You’ll be safe here.”

  “Thanks for all you’ve done,” Mary Anne said. “I don’t know what to say.” She sat the car seat down, and the two women embraced.

  As she drove away, Nancy felt satisfied she had done all that could be expected of her. As she turned down Box Canyon Road, she said a prayer under her breath for Mary Anne and Rachael, that each would be surrounded by light and love and peace.

  While visiting her in the hospital, the police had informed Mary Anne they would give her an escort when she was ready to return to her apartment for her things. So a week after she had settled into the shelter with her new baby, she rode with the manager of the shelter to the Topanga Community Police Station located only a few miles from the apartment she had shared with Vito on Roscoe Boulevard.

  She had to wait almost an hour before a patrol car was available to take her. The baby was getting fussy, and Mary Anne found herself wishing she had left her at the shelter with one of the many women who had volunteered to watch her. Instead, she brought Rachael along, thinking it wouldn’t take much time to pick up what few personal items she had left, toss them in the trunk of her car, and be done. The watch commander at the police station told her she wouldn’t have had to wait if she had called first and arranged it in advance, so Mary Anne didn’t feel she had the right to be upset. But she was stuck now, and it was getting late. The manager of the shelter had not had access to the car to drop her off until 6:00 p.m. Now it was almost 7:30.

  Mary Anne limped back to the row of chairs against the wall opposite the watch commander’s desk. It still hurt to walk. She was grateful the car seat was light as she placed it in one of the chairs and sat down beside it. She reached in the diaper bag and pulled out a bottle of formula, which she fed to Rachael. It was 8:00 p.m. when the officers arrived to escort her to the apartment. Profuse apologies ensued, and again she was told she should have made an appointment. She only smiled.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I really appreciate your help. It shouldn’t take me long.”

  Vito was preparing to leave when he noticed the patrol car round the corner of Winnetka and head down Roscoe Boulevard. He stamped his cigarette out on the sidewalk and hid behind the trunk of a large pepper tree growing in the parkway across the street from his apartment building. When he saw Mary Anne get out of the back of the patrol car, he felt the adrenaline scorch through his chest, and his heart began to beat quick and heavy. He wanted to hit her and hold her at the same time as he watched her shuffle down the sidewalk, her right arm looped through the handle of a baby carrier. She wore a loose cotton dress with flip-flops and grasped the strap of a large bag over her free shoulder. Her blonde hair appeared fresh and clean, and it blew softly across her face in the light evening breeze.

  The officers—one male and one female—followed her through the front gates of the brightly lit apartment complex and disappeared around the corner. Twenty minutes later, the male officer returned to the patrol car and waited inside. Vito saw Mary Anne’s car drive around the side of the apartment building through the alley and stop. The female officer got out and returned to the patrol car. Mary Anne drove past the officers, and they followed her down the street.

  Vito started his bike and pulled into the traffic a few cars behind the black and white, keeping his distance. From what he could see, the officers seemed unconcerned, even animated, and not as guarded as he would have expected. He silently hoped they had given up looking for him, but he would play it safe and hang far behind just the same.

  Ragna Sweeney walked into her kitchen right after Pat Sajak and Vanna White finished their post-game-show banter and waved goodbye to the television audience. As she proceeded to rinse her husband’s empty beer glass in the sink, she glanced out her window—which she was in the habit of doing—to scan the apartment building across the alley. She duly noted all curtains were drawn and blinds were closed. It was a quiet evening. It had been quiet since the night that young pregnant woman had been taken away by ambulance. Mary Anne Maynard, age twenty-one, the papers had stated. Ragna could have sworn she was still in her teens. She had been relieved to learn the young woman and her baby had survived, but she was not very pleased to see her own name misspelled in print. “Ragnes Swinney heard what she thought was the backfire of an automobile at around 7:30 p.m.” Ragnes? Really? That her name was Nordic was no excuse. She had spelled it out for them. It was, after all, quite the common name in Sweden. She knew the Irish surname threw people off, but still. The world was full of people with mixed-heritage monikers; women in particular because they so often took their husband’s surnames as their own. She noted with particular interest that Vito Gamboa of Italian Portuguese descent was spelled perfectly in spite of his mixed-heritage moniker. Yet the most interesting thing she noted: Vito Gamboa was still at large. And it was while she was having this very thought that she averted her eyes from the side of the apartment building to the front lawn and across the street, where she noticed a man in a motorcycle helmet standing by the wide base of a large pepper tree. The bright light from the nearby street lamp enabled her to see the huge roots from the tree that buckled and cracked the concrete sidewalk. The man tossed a cigarette into a large crevasse at the highest point of the buckle and then moved behind the tree as a patrol car turned down the street and stopped in front of the neighboring apartment building. She saw a young woman get out of the patrol car with a baby in tow, escorted by both officers. The male officer returned to his patrol car after about twenty minutes. Later still, she would note that the baby was with Mary Anne Maynard, safely belted into a car seat in the back of her late model Mitsubishi Mirage as she pulled around the side of the building into the alley just beneath Ragna’s kitchen window. The passenger door opened to let the female officer out, and the interior dome light illuminated the tiny flailing arms and legs of the baby, covered in pink, inside her infant carrier in the center of the back seat. The car was even close enough for Ragna to hear the baby cry out softly just before the female officer told Mary Anne that they would follow her as far as Plummer Street. And when Mary Anne pulled out into the street, Ragna saw and heard the motorcycle that followed right behind the patrol car that followed right behind Mary Anne.

  Mary Anne took some paper grocery bags and threw her smaller belongings into them. She tossed her clothes into a clean plastic trash bag. The female officer held the baby while the male officer guarded the front door. When she was ready, the female officer helped her carry her things to the parking lot in the back and load them into the trunk of her car. Mary Anne installed Rachael’s car seat carrier in the center of the back seat of her car, facing backwards the way Nancy had shown her. The female officer climbed into the car and rode with her until she was safely out of the parking area.

  “We’ll follow you as far as Plummer Street. As long as we don’t notice anything suspicious, we’ll let you go on from there by yourself,” the officer said as she got out of the car. “Once you get out to Box Canyon Road, you’re really not in our jurisdiction anymore anyway.” The officer closed the door. She seemed anxious to return to her partner.

  “Thank you,” Mary Anne said through the open window. She looked in the rearview mirror but could only see the back of Rachael’s car seat. She could hear the baby cooing softly though, apparently content and happy. She then looked left and entered the traffic flowing west on Roscoe Boulevard. As she passed the patrol car, she noticed a man wearing a helmet and black leather jacket mount a motorcycle on the other side of the street, but she thought nothing of it.

  When she reached the intersection of Plummer Street and Topanga Canyon Boulevard, the patrol car continued down Topanga traveling north, and Mary Anne moved into the left-hand turn lane and waited for the signal to change. The sun had already set, and darkness pervaded, pierced only by the lone streetlight at the intersection. Once she turned down Plummer, she stared ahead into a long dark void without streetlights. She
turned her headlights on high beam and glanced into the rearview mirror. No cars were behind her except for a lone far-off headlight. Still, she thought nothing of it. She would take it slow, she told herself; there was no hurry, and she knew the road had many twists and turns. By the time Plummer turned into Valley Circle, she noticed the headlight directly behind her. She slowed down even more, thinking the motorcycle wanted to pass her. But the motorcycle slowed down too.

  “Have it your way,” she said. “I was just trying to be polite.” She passed by a brightly lit area with a steakhouse and a gas station; then the dark void reappeared, and the road grew more circuitous. She glanced again in her rearview mirror and noticed the headlight so close it lit up the entire inside of her car. For the first time, she became frightened.

  “Please just pass me, why don’t you,” she said. She could feel her chest pounding. She noticed the headlight going around her and breathed a sigh of relief. Jerk. It was not exactly the kind of road to take chances on, driving so close. Now she found herself wishing she had asked the officers to follow her all the way home. If she had insisted, they may have complied. As the motorcycle pulled up beside her to pass, she kept her eyes on the road. She had just passed the fork, where she veered right, and it turned into Box Canyon Road. She thought it strange the biker was going the same direction as she was this far out. She sensed the biker hovering beside her and slowed down to force him to pass her, but he hovered still, and Mary Anne felt a coldness grip the back of her neck. She clenched the steering wheel and glanced to her left. In the darkness, the driver accelerated abruptly and sped past her.

  “Thank God,” she said. She continued down a straight stretch of road but began to brake heavily when she saw a headlight coming directly at her on her side of the road. Her tires screeched to a halt just in front of the motorcycle. He had stopped in the middle of the road and was now facing her directly. She hurried to put the car in reverse and go around him, but he jumped off his bike and lurched toward her door. She screamed and locked the door. The baby began to cry. The man tried and failed to open her door before moving quickly to the other side. Mary Anne pulled the emergency brake on and unbuckled her seat belt so she could reach over and lock the passenger door as well, just before the man tried to open it. As she did so, the man removed his helmet and pressed his face up against the window glass. Mary Anne sucked her breath. “Oh God,” she exclaimed when she recognized Vito’s angry scowl. Immediately, she turned, took the emergency brake off, and accelerated, swerving to miss the motorcycle in front of her. She sped as fast as her old car could take her up the hill. She knew there was only one more turn now, a left on Bryant that led to the shelter, but how far up, she couldn’t remember. She hoped she hadn’t passed it. She checked her mirror; he was on her bumper again already. She kept glancing to the left, looking for the road that led to the shelter, but she failed to recall the ninety-degree turn that came just before that road. As Vito revved his engine behind her and the baby cried from the back seat, Mary Anne Maynard plunged ahead, directly into the side of the rock embankment just beyond the yellow sign that read SLOW, SHARP TURN AHEAD.

  Vito heard a loud crash and the car engine racing wildly. He braked hard, turned his bike sideways against the asphalt, and rammed into the back of the wreckage. He felt his helmet hit the pavement on impact and bounce hard before he came to a complete stop. When the engine noise subsided, he heard only the chirping of crickets and the distant hum of freeway traffic beyond the Santa Susana Pass. His left leg was pinned beneath his bike. He struggled to pull himself out from under the wreckage and hobbled slowly over broken glass that crunched beneath his feet toward the front of Mary Anne’s car. It was smashed against the side of the rock bluff. Mary Anne’s body lay limp behind the air bag, her nose bloodied, her head and neck contorted. He heard a sound from the back seat: first a whimper, then a full-out wail, as the baby grew frantic from the impact. He hesitated, grabbed a silver cross pendant covered in pavé diamonds from Mary Anne’s neck—one he had purchased for her when they had first met—and jerked it loose, placing it in his pocket. He was not one to waste his hard-earned money. He would keep it for another, more deserving woman.

  “Did you really think you could get away with it?” he said. “Stupid woman!” He looked around, grabbed her purse, and tore open her wallet. He took out a five-dollar bill. “Shit! Where’s the money?” He threw the wallet against the seat and turned toward the baby dressed from head to toe in the color pink. He opened the back door.

  “Well, aren’t you the pretty one?” he said. He reached toward the car seat just as the headlights of another car rounded the corner from the other side of the bluff. He heard the brakes squeal to a halt. He got out, closed the back door and hobbled quickly over to his bike. As the woman got out of her white BMW sedan and started to cross the road, Vito used his good right leg to jumpstart his motorcycle and tore off down Box Canyon Road into the depths of the still, black night.

  CHAPTER 5

  Caroline Martin sat perfectly still in her car, eastbound on the Simi Valley Freeway. Flashing red lights ahead of her told her she wasn’t very far away from the crash site, and she hoped she would be getting around it soon. This was her first day driving since her surgery, and already she was tiring from using her lower abdominal muscles to lift her right foot back and forth from the accelerator to the brake in the stop-and-go traffic. She was returning from a visit with her divorced friend, Jena, who lived in Moorpark, and she was grateful Jake was out of town on business for a few days in San Francisco. Otherwise, he would be worried about her. Instead, he had called her on her cell phone at around 8:30 p.m. when she first came to a halt on the freeway. He told her he was heading out to dinner with his associates and would call her again at home around ten o’clock when he was back in his hotel room.

  She had been sitting in traffic for half an hour. She noticed most of the vehicles ahead of her moving off to the right-hand lanes and turned on her blinker to get into the slow lane. When she had moved ahead a little more, she saw the police directing traffic off the freeway at the next exit.

  “Take Kuehner Drive to Santa Susana Pass Road. That’ll put you back out on Topanga Canyon Boulevard,” the officer told her as she drove by him, her window rolled down. “Then you can either get back on the freeway there or take Topanga to your destination.”

  “What happened?” Caroline asked.

  “Oil tanker overturned. It’ll be closed off for some time.”

  Caroline knew her way around better than most people, since she had spent her teen years hanging out with friends who lived in Chatsworth. And now, her current house was situated in the hills just beyond the intersection of Roscoe and Valley Circle Boulevard. She would take Santa Susana Pass to Box Canyon Road and take the back way home, bypassing all the traffic on Topanga.

  She followed the other traffic down Kuehner Drive, turning left onto Santa Susana Pass. When she came to Box Canyon Road, she made a right while the rest of the traffic kept going straight down the pass toward Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

  Although unusually dark outside with no visible moon and few streetlights, Caroline still knew every curve in the road. As a teenager, she and her friends had sometimes partied in the rocky hills behind the Chatsworth Reservoir. The area, also known as the Devil’s Canyon, had been made infamous in the late ’60s by the Manson family and to this day served as a kind of proving ground for adolescents. It had also made the news when claims of toxic runoff from a nearby rocket-testing facility made locals fearful their drinking water could be contaminated with a substance known to damage the thyroid. She thought it sad that such a naturally beautiful area had been saddled with such negativity.

  She turned on her stereo and pressed the button on her steering wheel to roll her window down a couple of inches and let in some fresh air. As she passed Bryant Drive on the right, she braked in anticipation of the abrupt right turn ahead that took her around the large bluff in the road. She hugged the curve, slowly
negotiating the sharp corner until she came out of it on the other side. She first noticed the debris on the asphalt straight ahead. Her headlights illuminated pieces of broken glass and jagged metal. Then she saw the older-model sedan smashed against the side of the cliff, an unexpected outgrowth. A figure dressed in black ran away from the car. Caroline braked quickly and pulled over onto the shoulder of the road, getting out of her car just as the man started his motorcycle and sped down the canyon in the opposite direction. She immediately dialed 9-1-1 on her cell phone and ran over toward the wreckage.

  “There’s been an accident on Box Canyon Road in Chatsworth. I believe it’s the four hundred block, right near Bryant Drive.” She walked up to the car and looked inside. “Hello . . . can you hear me? Hello?” Her call disconnected.

  She looked down at the female driver, reached through the broken window, and took her pulse at the wrist. She couldn’t feel anything, so she tried her neck. The woman’s nose was bloodied and her eyes were only halfway open. Caroline felt no pulse in her neck either. She shuddered; the woman looked familiar. She returned to her car, took a flare out of her trunk, and ran to place it in the middle of the street on the side of the bluff leading up to the site of the accident. She became winded almost immediately and stopped to catch her breath. Again, she dialed 9-1-1 on her cell phone, but she couldn’t get any reception. She walked farther down the street but still received no dial tone. The night air was crisp, and a cold breeze blew through the canyon. Caroline returned to her car to retrieve her sweater from the back seat. When she walked back toward the wreckage, she noticed the baby for the first time. She didn’t cry but squirmed and grunted softly, waving her fists in the air.