California Girl

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “Those are song lyrics,” said Nick. “He was up in Los Angeles eight days ago, making a demonstration tape.”

  Lobdell lowered the letter. “You know him?”

  “Postcard in her college book.”

  “Here’s one: ‘The outline of your back is still fresh upon my hand and all the colors of your heartbreak stain the floor. I misjudged your beauty and the contour of your love like a wave that never made it quite to shore.’”

  Nick saw a fist hit the back of a pale woman. Saw her dark curls shiver and shake. And red-black blood on the packinghouse floorboards.

  “A demonstration tape for what?” asked Lobdell. “This guy wants to be the next Ringo or something?”

  “Read another one.”

  “Like this stuff, huh? ‘High heels clickin’ down the avenue, sweet new baby off to try the old soft-shoe.’ What, she’s gonna be a dancer?”

  “Then what happens?”

  “‘But the neon fades with sunrise and your face looks like the dead, you should be at home new baby in your very own bed. Come back baby to your very own bed.’ Hubba-hubba. See, Nicky, she stays out too late dancing. Makes her look old and ugly.”

  Dancing with other guys, thought Nick.

  “Here,” said Lobdell. He looked around the room like an unimpressed buyer. Dropped the letters onto a yellow and black serape on the guest bed. “I never understand this fancy stuff. I only read for facts.”

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nick read them over. Didn’t find anything else that reminded him of Janelle’s body in the packinghouse. But that one…

  He read it again. All about this guy who lets his lover go then changes his mind. Then it’s too late and he goes nuts with regret. Ends up “talking to the shadows on the walls.”

  He went back to the kitchen and called the Blue Beat record store again. Craig told him sure he knew Jesse Black. Local guy, great songwriter. Great singer. All of twenty years old, if that. Janelle Vonn hung out with him some. The girls really dig him.

  Nick looked across the living room to the framed pictures next to the kiss-your-ass-goodbye poster. Described them over the phone.

  “Yeah,” said Craig. “That’s him. Shiny brown hair and kind of pale-looking. Strong jaw. If I remember right, Janelle carried around a camera. Shot some of his gigs at the Sandpiper, stuff like that.”

  Craig told him that Jesse had left Laguna to live in Los Angeles a few months ago. Going to make it in the music business. Didn’t know how to get ahold of him, though you’d figure he’d come back after what happened. Might look at Big Red in Bluebird Canyon, a crash pad for the music scene, Craig said. Probably no phones up there. Or try Jesse’s mom and dad. Local family, up on Temple Hills. In the phone book, probably. If not, the dad was a music teacher at UCI.

  “You any relation to the reporter Becker? Andy?”

  “We’re brothers.”

  “He came by here about ten minutes ago, asking about Janelle.”

  Nick thanked him again, went into the bedroom. More music posters and a James Bond Thunderball poster, too. More plants. More makeshift, thumbtacked curtains. A dresser with bottles of perfume on top, made the room smell feminine. Nick felt odd being in a young woman’s room. Unmade bed. Dirty clothes in an open hamper. Like he should have permission from her. Didn’t seem right he got to see her stuff and she never would again.

  The bedsheets had galloping horses on them.

  There was a collection of Troll dolls in a basket in one corner.

  And hundreds of Beatle cards in a Thom McAn shoe box.

  A girl, thought Nick. Just a girl.

  NICK HOVERED and watched the ID men as they photographed and dusted for prints. Wished he could just pitch in and do it himself. Missed his days on the ID Bureau, the way it was all physical, the stuff that ended up convicting in court. He especially liked the dusting, liked the fingerprint brushes and the vials of powder, the way you chose a color that would contrast best with the surface. Liked the names of the powders. Dragon’s Blood and Midnight Black and Ice White. Liked the way you’d brush the dust on something that looked clean and come up with a fat thumb or a big piece of a finger. Like his dad pulling a big fish out of a little stream.

  Lobdell thought Nick was wasting their time. They weren’t going to find the answers in this cottage. What, he said, she made dinner for two guys, then went to Tustin with them so they could saw off her head? Lobdell told Nick it’s always sex with pretty girls like Janelle. The guy wasn’t getting any. Or the guy was getting too much, couldn’t keep her happy. Or the guy just ripped off a piece for himself and the rest of it was to cover his tracks. Head and everything. If you can figure out the guys in her life, you figure out everything, said Lobdell. And don’t forget the Wolfman. You get a nutcase in the works, anything can happen. But it was Nick’s case. Nick was going to swim hard or sink fast. Nick wished Lucky would shut the fuck up.

  Nick watched the guys writing out the tag numbers and dates, taping them next to everything they were going to print: wine and water glasses, silverware, tabletop, doorknobs, light switches, you name it.

  The hard work was comparing the lifts to the cards at headquarters. Thank God for good criminalists. They’d start with guys who had a record of similar crimes. You could go blind and crazy doing that, trying to see if a whorl was a match or a bust, trying to see if you had a good identifying bifurcation or just a blood bridge. Could take hours. Days even, if you had enough suspects. Not that they’d have a lot of prints of guys who did stuff like this.

  There was talk of this big computer up in Sacramento getting all the prints together and comparing prints automatically someday. Just plug in your lift and a second later your bad guy came out. Nick figured he’d believe that when he saw it. Next they’ll say they can ID a guy from one drop of blood.

  BACK AT HEADQUARTERS he called the National Crime Information Center in Washington, D.C., and was passed along to Special Agent Alan Creasen. Creasen took down the particulars surrounding the murder of Janelle Vonn and coded them for entry into the new NCIC computer.

  “Beheaded with a pruning saw?”

  “Correct.”

  “Post or ante?”

  “Post, we think. The autopsy is later today.”

  “I’ll need that information. And the rape analysis, too. Detective Becker, this might take a while. We’re only a year old. The computer here is hot, slow, and temperamental.”

  Nick called the Gleason/Marx Agency of Hollywood. They were a modeling agency and had found work for Janelle three times. Once in a magazine car stereo ad. Once in a newspaper shampoo ad. And once for the Playboy cover that had gotten her uncrowned as Miss Tustin. Janelle’s net on the Playboy shot was six hundred because she was one of several models used on that month’s cover in a spread called “California Girls.” Nick remembered seeing it then and thinking Janelle was the most beautiful. But she ended up paying a high price for such a low wage when they took her crown away because of it.

  NICK FOUND Lenny Vonn that afternoon. Same house out in Modjeska Canyon. Brother Casey and father Karl were there, too, the three of them sitting in the garage drinking beers while Lenny cleaned out the carb on his yellow and orange Panhead. Casey had a Hessians vest on. His hair was almost to his shoulders and matted. Full beard, dark sunglasses even in the cool shade of the garage.

  The three of them stopped talking and watched Nick come up the driveway.

  “Vonns,” he said.

  “Beat it, pissface,” said Lenny. “Private property.”

  Casey shifted the cooler he was sitting on so Nick could only see the back of his filthy vest and filthy hair. Under the influence of God knows what, thought Nick. Probably holding. Probably carrying, too.

  Nick now pointedly regretted that Lucky had a meeting with Kevin’s principal this afternoon. Lucky couldn’t very well miss it with the boy having been suspended. But Nick knew he should have waited to come here. He hadn’t figured on a hive of Vonns, either, and that was stupid of him.r />
  “’Lo,” said Karl. “We already talked to Andy about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Nick. “I thought she was a sweet girl.”

  “Get out of here, you fascist pig,” said Lenny. “I’m not kidding.”

  Nick sighed and looked at Karl. “Talk some sense into your stupid son, will you? I’m in charge of Janelle’s case. If anybody’s going to get this guy, it’s going to be me.”

  “Like that makes you a—”

  “Shuttup, son,” said Karl. “Let him talk.”

  “Just a few questions,” said Nick.

  For the next half hour Nick held his pen in his right hand and his notebook in the left. Kept them both low so the meat of his right forearm never left the handle of his .45 ACP, snugged against his hip under the tweed sport coat. Hardly wrote a note. Hardly took his eyes off Casey’s back. Casey turned a second and just stared at him, eyes hidden behind the dark glasses.

  Nick found out that Janelle had lived in the old Tustin house until she was fifteen, then moved in with “friends.” Nobody could come up with a full name for any one “friend,” but it might have been a family named Lawson or Langton off of Seventeenth Street. Karl was pretty sure Langton. Nick wondered if it was the Langtons from Tustin High School. Howard a coach and the daughters about Janelle’s age.

  Nick found out that after he’d arrested Lenny and Casey, Janelle had started drinking more and taking more pills. When that Tustin Times story came out about the arrests, the names were all changed but some people still figured out who was who. Tustin was small enough for that. Janelle had to give statements and that was hard. She got really sad and withdrawn. When the charges against Lenny and Casey got knocked down to one assault for Casey and possession of illegal substances for Lenny, Janelle got almost suicidal. Then, David and the Drive-In Church congregation got her some doctors and gave her a place to live and some money and cleaned her up and got her back in school. Grades went up and one of the Chamber of Commerce guys saw her after class one day when he was picking up his daughter and thought Janelle should enter for Miss Tustin because she would be exceptionally beautiful if she was cleaned up and dressed right. And she’d come through a living hell with her mom and the rat poison and those brothers of hers. And if she was Miss Tustin, she’d get a good college scholarship and some cash and lots of opportunity, and the Vonns weren’t exactly rolling in it. He talked her into it and sponsored her.

  Janelle liked being Miss Tustin. Thought it was kind of funny, but harmless. Enjoyed people. Enjoyed the attention. No pills or booze. Made a run down to Baja with three truckloads of clothes from the Drive-In Church, gave them to people poorer than she ever was. Got her picture taken a lot. Tustin people thought she looked like the old SunBlesst girl, so they did up a poster of her with oranges, an old-fashioned kind of picture that made her look really pretty and made it seem like Tustin still had orange groves.

  But all that only lasted two or three months. Then she got on the cover of Playboy. Wore almost as much clothing as she did for the SunBlesst girl poster, but the Tustin City Council demanded a new queen. She split Tustin for Laguna and started UCI same month. Didn’t talk to any of them after that. Didn’t want to see a Tustin face or hear a Tustin name. Felt like that part of her was dead. Said she wouldn’t go back to that town if you gave her a million dollars.

  But she did, thought Nick. One last time.

  It was mostly Karl and Lenny who talked. Casey just sat there on the cooler with his back to Nick. Getting more and more tense the more he heard, Nick could see. Shoulders moving in. Head hunching down a little. Hands in front of him. Moving now. Nick eased his hand under his coat and popped the holster snap. Casey caught the sound. Big dirty head turning Nick’s way.

  “Just to keep things fun and fast, I’m going to need alibis from you, Lenny, and you, Casey. What were you two princes doing two nights ago? Tuesday.”

  “We got drunk and watched TV,” said Lenny. “Right here. Right, bro?”

  “Right.”

  “What shows?” asked Nick.

  “Fuckin’ Mod Squad,” said Lenny.

  “It Takes a Thief,” said Casey.

  “Fuckin’ Twilight Zone,” said Lenny.

  “Then Alfred Hitchcock and we fell asleep,” said Casey. He didn’t turn but his hands were still moving in front of him. Like they were doing something small.

  “Now get off my property,” said Lenny. “You got what you need.”

  “You know Red and Ho?”

  Casey turned. Blank stares. Like three empty glasses on a shelf.

  “You should probably go, Nick,” said Karl. “They were here. I was, too. The kitchen faucet was dripping bad and I’m a fair plumber. The Twilight Zone was the one where the world ends and the guy’s in the library with all those books and he breaks his glasses.”

  “That’s a good one,” said Nick.

  “Yes, it is,” said Karl Vonn.

  Nick heard something click and saw Casey’s shoulders move.

  He took two steps forward, held one foot over the Hessians emblem on the back of Casey’s vest. Pushed hard. The cooler tipped up and Casey went over and rolled onto his back. He lay there for a moment, looking up the barrel of Nick’s gun. Sunglasses still on. Roller in one hand with the paper already in it, a bag of tobacco in the other. Yellow-brown flakes and strings spilled onto his stomach.

  He aimed the roller at Nick, pulled a trigger.

  “Someday,” he said.

  “Never,” said Nick.

  “Lunatic pig,” said Lenny.

  THAT EVENING Nick watched part of the autopsy. It was performed by Dr. Warren Gershon at the Meak Brothers Funeral Home in Santa Ana because the Coroner’s Department had no autopsy room. Certain county funeral homes allowed the autopsies to be performed on-site, no charge. But Nick knew they pressured the next of kin to have the embalming and funeral arrangements done there, too. Wives and husbands crazy with grief. Made some good money that way. Meak Brothers was located downwind of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant and Nick went from the smell of deep-fried thighs to formaldehyde as he walked in the embalming room door.

  Nick watched the doctor and his assistants make the big Y incision with the scalpel. Cut the ribs with loppers and pull apart the cage. Tijuana Brass playing quiet on a radio, a perky little number Nick would detest for the rest of his life. The crack of bones loud above the music.

  Watched them cut out her organs. Cut out her heart. Examine and weigh and record.

  Tutu and a guitar.

  He noted Janelle Vonn’s head, partially wrapped in a white towel and placed faceup in a plastic cooler of dry ice. Skin blue-white. Vapor wafting over the top, then down to the floor like horror-movie fog.

  They got scrapings from under three fingernails and the right thumbnail.

  When Gershon was done with that Nick asked them to amputate the thumbs and three fingers that had had flesh and blood under the nails. Bag and label them separately. Freeze them for evidence.

  “That’s very unusual,” said the doctor.

  Nick left the room without excusing himself and drove to Angel’s Lawn cemetery to be near Clay. Shivered and heard the traffic blasting by on I-5 while he thought about his brother.

  Then to Sharon’s place in Orange.

  SHE LET him in and they talked awhile in the near dark. His eyes burned as he felt the awful collapse of his will. His will to ignore. His will to put aside. His will to call it a job and leave it at the office. He just couldn’t make himself do it. Maybe homicide wasn’t his thing, he said.

  It would pass, she said.

  Nick said he’d be all right. Don’t worry. Said this is what homicide detail was about.

  Sharon understood all of this. Her dad a cop and her ex a cop and she took Nick into her room and talked to him and held him and did the things that made him forget and feel better.

  When he was finished, he left for Millie’s bar.

  Two doubles and two bowls of pretzels later he w
as ready to go home.

  “DAD’S HOME! Dad’s home!”

  “Be quiet, kids. QUIET!”

  Nick could hear their voices on the other side of the door. Katy unlocked the deadbolt from inside and Nick fell into the deafening family he loved with such frustration.

  “WILLIE SLUGGED ME IN THE STOMACH!” screamed Katherine.

  “SHE BIT MY LEG!” Willie screamed back.

  Steven racked his plastic Thompson submachine gun with spring-loaded noisemaker, then lowered the barrel into his family with a gleeful smile. Pure Clay, thought Nick.

  Klat-a-klat-a-klat-a-klat-a-klat-a-klat!

  Katy hugged Nick and smiled hugely. She was large and beautiful and Nick felt the crack in his heart get bigger. Sometimes pictured it going across his whole heart at once, breaking it in two. Did his own heart even count after what Janelle had gone through?

  “My hero,” she said.

  “MY HERO!”

  “MY HERO!”

  Klat-a-klat-a-klat-a-klat-a-klat!

  “I love you guys,” Nick said quietly. He touched them one at a time. Katy on the arm and Willie on the head and Katherine on the cheek. Perfect precious parts. All in place.

  Except for Steven, who saw his father’s hand coming toward him. Stevie let the old man eat some hot lead from the Thompson and ran yelling down the hall.

  12

  ANDY SAT IN the Journal newsroom and looked out the darkened windows. Seven o’clock, Thursday, one day after seeing Janelle Vonn in the SunBlesst packinghouse. The lights of Costa Mesa twinkled in the cool breezy night outside.

  The presses downstairs were silent for now. The AP and UPI teletype machines were quiet while the night editor dozed in his office. The city desk guys were off in the cafeteria shooting the bull. Associate publisher Jonas Dessinger was long gone, execs on the fifth floor long gone, too.

  Andy took another big gulp of cool coffee, wondered why he wasn’t hungry. Hadn’t really slept since late Tuesday night. Heard about the Boom Boom Bungalow stabbing and didn’t put that story to bed until three in the morning. Guy was an elementary schoolteacher from Bakersfield. Eleven stab wounds. Looked horrible, the way the skin swelled up to close the slits. No way the Journal would print stuff like that. Perp still at large. Then Wednesday and Janelle. Twenty-six straight hours. And still counting, because Andy’s source at the County had a hot tip for him but she wouldn’t give it to him over the phone.