California Girl

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “Reverend,” said Hambly, “I’d be happy with information on just about anybody in your congregation. You have a lot of friends. I just want you to share once in a while. That’s all. We don’t have to meet. You never have to see me again. You just call me at a number I’ll give you before I leave, and you say it’s Judas. You just say, hello, Hambly, this is Judas. I thought of that code name just for you.”

  “You are repugnant to me in every way possible,” said David.

  “Back at you, Rev. I take it we have a deal. You want these?”

  “Leave them on the sofa.”

  “Tell me about your father and Stoltz,” said Hambly.

  “Tell you what?”

  “When they met. How they met. Are they faithful to their wives? What do they talk about at those long dinners? Are they really behind Nixon or isn’t he tough enough on Communism for them? What do they really think of him? And Pat? What do they think of her? Mainly, what in hell’s this National Volunteer Police? We don’t think it’s anything like a traditional volunteer service, where you get to dress up in a cute uniform and help out the local cops.”

  “I can’t do this right here, right now.”

  “I understand, David. I really do. Here. Call me when you’re ready to talk.”

  He handed David an FBI card with a handwritten number on the back.

  “Stoltz and Marie happy?”

  “I really don’t know,” said David.

  “You’ve been their family minister for almost three years now. I use the word ‘family’ loosely, since they don’t have children.”

  “We don’t have those kinds of discussions.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  Hambly set the photographs on the sofa. Swung down the briefcase lid and snapped it shut.

  “Well?” he asked. “Anything else?”

  “No.”

  They stood and Hambly offered his hand.

  “Get out of my house,” said David.

  “Have a far-out and groovy afternoon, Rev.”

  WHEN HAMBLY had gone David called the FBI number on the card. A businesslike male voice answered, “Good afternoon, Federal Bureau of Investigation,” so he hung up.

  He slid to his knees and rested his forehead on the beige carpet. Arms around his middle. Prayed as hard as he’d ever prayed that news of his dinner with Janelle Vonn and what had happened after would never come out. Not to mention pictures.

  My God, my God, my God.

  His stomach ached and his heart ached and his head ached. He remembered something from an old San Anselmo’s class called “The Art of Prayer,” where Dr. Rable showed them how during a prayer a rhetorical pause can be escalated to a potent dramatic caesura. You had to do it at the right time and have the courage to allow your listeners—or yourself—to go “from restless to receptive.” So he just knelt there, head on the carpet and body revolting with worry, praying with silence. Not a word. Not a thought.

  Waiting for an answer.

  Waiting for a sign.

  Waiting for a miracle.

  Waiting.

  David had tried this prayer of silence before. But as soon as the silence became ripe, Satan always came barreling into it, demanding to know if God really intervened in the affairs of men in the first place. Where was the proof? And if He didn’t, then why spend a lifetime asking Him to? And Satan would remind David that God had not yet conclusively answered a single prayer of his. Not one that David could separate from mere coincidence. Not one that David could prove was an act of God. Satan said he knew plenty of ministers who were actually spoken to by God. It happened all the time. Maybe, said Lucifer, David was in the wrong calling.

  So David held the silence as long as he could. Invited God into it. But it was the harpy voice of the devil that screeched into his mind in a whirlwind of dust and skidding boots like something from a cartoon. Less than a minute of peace was all David got.

  And no answer.

  A while later David dialed Nick but hung up again, realizing he couldn’t explain his situation without being revealed as a huge liar. And worse. The worship program he’d stupidly left at Janelle’s was now the least of David’s worries.

  He thought of calling Andy and wondered what he’d say.

  Ditto Mom and Dad.

  Finally called Howard Langton and told him what had happened, to expect Hambly to come his way.

  Langton, a high school civics teacher and football coach, was his usual bullish self, saying the bureau could kiss his ass before he’d rat on his friends. Though he had no desire to have it known that he’d dined without his wife at the home of a former student on the night of her murder.

  BY FIVE that afternoon David finally had to get out of the house. He drove to Angel’s Lawn and stood next to Clay’s grave. He tried to do this once a week. Tried to pray for Clay’s soul but couldn’t concentrate.

  So he drove the freeways. Got some motion. Steered and tried to pray and watched the exit signs blip past. Made him feel like he was progressing. Moving through time and space in a certain and purposeful way.

  Then to Max and Monika’s like he often did. Just to see them and share a few words. He loved them. And pitied them, too, because they’d overcome a lot in their lives but couldn’t overcome Clay. David had prayed on that a million times but sometimes even God couldn’t heal a broken heart. Clay showed up in David’s dreams all the time. Just like he had always been—brash and funny and confident. Like he didn’t care he’d been killed outside a village few people in his own country could even name.

  David parked in the driveway beside a black Lincoln four-door. Two men in dark suits by the Lincoln eyed him hard. David nodded and started up the walk and saw Dick Nixon coming from the house. Frown on his face, lips pursed. Gray suit and fresh haircut. Wing tips heavy on the concrete. Another Secret Service guy behind him.

  Great, thought David. Like Hambly had conjured the meeting. Given him his first chance at betrayal.

  Nixon smiled when he saw David, shook his hand. They made small talk there in the driveway for a minute. Nixon was interested in how the church was growing. He had that undistractable intensity that drew people, made them believe he was involved and concerned. Their man.

  “Good luck in November, sir,” said David.

  Nixon nodded solemnly. “I hope for the best. But I do wish I could see more eye-to-eye with the JBS, David. I know your father and Roger Stoltz are disappointed. I am, too.”

  “They’ll support you.”

  “It isn’t that.”

  David saw something dark pass across the former vice president’s face. Dick had always seemed actively haunted.

  “Good night, sir.”

  “Regards to Barbara and the children.”

  “And ours back to Pat.”

  It was only six but Max appeared inebriated. Held a huge tumbler half full of gin and ice as evidence. Shot up from his blue recliner with a smile and his free hand extended. The old living room. So many memories. Cronkite and the body count for today: seventeen.

  Monika smiled when she saw him come in. The same polite replica that had replaced her true smile the moment she’d heard about Clay. David leaned over, hugged her, and kissed her cheek. The bones in her back seemed large.

  “Did you see Dick?” she asked.

  “Said hi in the driveway.”

  “He’s going to win but he won’t forget us,” she said. “He’s from Orange County. From good people. And he’ll be a huge improvement over Johnson.”

  David pulled up a dining room chair, sat between them.

  Max told David all about his workday at RoMar Industries today. How Marie Stoltz nominally ran the operation but needed Max to get things accomplished. Shipped eight thousand barrels last week, lost a flatcar halfway across Texas, nobody hurt but four hundred thousand gallons of Orange Sunshine wasted on tumbleweeds and armadillos, be the shiniest armadillos God ever saw.

  “Drink, son?”

  “No thanks, Dad.”
/>   “Time for a refill.”

  Max steered to the kitchen. Monika held David’s hand, looking from him to the TV and back again. But mostly at the TV.

  “How have you been, Mom?”

  She patted his hand. “Just so busy. You know.”

  He really didn’t know. Her children were grown and she didn’t work. Max was gone forty hours a week at RoMar. She had no hobbies. And few interests except for the Birch Society meetings and publications.

  Max lowered back into his chair, drink raised for balance.

  “I’m working a few hours a week at the bookstore,” she said.

  The American Opinion Bookstore, David knew. Official JBS propaganda outlet. Books on Communist takeovers and how the United Nations was a waste of time and money, how the Russians wanted America to fall. Until a couple of years ago the clerks would grouse about the tax when they rang up a sale. Because the California sales tax went to Governor Pat Brown, a Democrat. The clerks liked to say, If it’s brown, flush it. David actually believed a lot of what the JBS said. Just didn’t like the way they thought they were right and everybody else was stupid.

  “Four hours, actually,” she said. “But you know, son. One thing leads to another. Not enough hours in the day. You?”

  David told them about Barbara’s youth league and Matthew’s language skills, Rachel’s brave toddling, and Wendy’s supernal calm as an older sister. For a few minutes he was able to appreciate his wife and children from a distance, in the telling of their virtues. And to forget Hambly and his pictures and the colossal stupidity of what he had done.

  He drove away slowly, lost in thought. Prayed to get through this. Realized that you could drive across the entire continent never seeing farther than the beams of your headlights. Wondered if there might be a sermon in that metaphor.

  Faith as your headlight.

  THAT NIGHT in bed David lay trembling in Barbara’s arms and told her what had happened with Special Agent Hambly. The breath caught in her throat when he said that Hambly had code-named him Judas. She used an oath that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  She made ferocious but tender love to him. She seemed to almost inhabit him at times like this. To feel what he was feeling.

  After, she drew a warm bath and led him to it. She lit candles in the darkened bathroom. With her knees on a folded towel she leaned over the tub to work the shampoo into a lather, scrub the sponge up and down his back. And later to cup the handfuls of fresh water over his head.

  “It may be time to settle on a partner,” she said.

  “I want you to take over if anything happens.”

  “No, David. We would lose the congregation. Properly prepared, they’ll follow another man. But they won’t stay with a woman.”

  “I feel like giving up.”

  “Of course you do,” she said. “But in the morning you won’t. You’re a fighter and a warrior and a man of God. You have power in your heart. I’ve seen you down and you always get back up. Always.”

  He felt the water running down his head. Heard the splash of it around him. Smelled the soap and conditioner and melting candle wax.

  “I’ve narrowed down the candidates to two,” said Barbara. “Either would be fine. Edmond has age and intelligence. Whitbrend has youth and ambition. They would both bring modest congregations. They’re both amenable to the base agreement and incentive scale and escalators. They’re both keenly aware that the way the congregation is growing, the sky is the limit, and that television will take us there. Literally. Look, David, here we are hardly moved into the new chapel and it’s time to think about a larger one. The television ministry that you are so afraid of? It must happen, David. It will take your congregation from a thousand to millions. Millions. You are a very powerful and charismatic minister, Reverend Becker. You have a responsibility to provide for your worshipers like you do for your family. As an employer would for his workers.”

  “I know.”

  She wiggled one of his earlobes. “And you should benefit from your hard work like anyone else. God in heaven certainly does.”

  “I don’t presume to understand Him.”

  “No. You’re right. I won’t, either.”

  He sighed. Listened to the music of water hitting water.

  “Call the younger one tomorrow morning,” he said quietly. “Whitbrend. He had an interesting look in his eye.”

  18

  JANELLE VONN’S PALE BLUE Volkswagen Beetle sat in the shade of the impound yard. Hood up, engine compartment open, a layer of windblown dust on the windows. Nick and Lucky Lobdell looked down on it in the brisk fall morning.

  It was Monday, October 14, thirteen days after the murder of Janelle Vonn. Nick could feel his case was cooling off. His evidence wasn’t adding up. The clues still out there had scurried under rocks and were going to be harder and harder to find.

  He was losing his momentum in this case and he knew it. Made his guts feel jerky and his head feel crowded.

  And all of this after he was sure he’d caught the break he needed. When Red turned out to be the Reverend David and Ho turned out to be Janelle’s benefactor Howard Langton. An absolute gift from heaven, delivered by his own brother, Andy.

  But even that had dribbled off into uselessness. The date—David and Barbara, Howard and Linda, Janelle and whatever guy she might choose—had been canceled. No one knew why. The evening itself would have been nothing unusual. They had had dinner dates before.

  So Nick couldn’t escape the sinking feeling in his guts. First-case jinx? Maybe he wasn’t ready for his own case? Maybe he was too careful?

  Maybe he didn’t have the experience to connect things or ask the right questions. Maybe he didn’t have the stamina it took to miss your wife and kids and not sleep well and go over the same bits of evidence over and over and over. He thought of Sharon and his whole soul groaned. Because he missed her, too, and because he wished he’d never touched her.

  And maybe it was just him, but Nick thought the captain was humoring him at the homicide detail wrap on Friday. And the assistant sheriff was subtly dismissing his efforts at the Crime Against Persons roll call on Thursday.

  “What exactly are we doing?” asked Lobdell.

  “I wanted to see this car again.”

  Lobdell ran his finger across a back window. Left a dark streak in the dust.

  “Your case,” said Lobdell.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Nick stood by the driver’s-side door and read again the responding officer’s report on a suspicious vehicle. Filed five days after the murder. Lemon Heights Sporting Goods owner made the call, said the car had been in the lot out front since the night in question. Hadn’t moved. He had seen it come across the lot that night, late, maybe nine. Cute little Beetle. Shiny under the lights. Went to the far side of the parking lot where there weren’t any cars. The owner looked out a few minutes later and saw the car still there and this girl standing beside a white Caddy talking to the driver. Got in the Caddy about ten minutes after nine and the car drove off.

  Lemon Heights Sporting Goods was in a shopping center less than two hundred yards from the SunBlesst packinghouse.

  The Beetle was only one year old. Nine thousand miles according to the impound report. No dents that Nick could see. Good tread on the tires. He checked the tread grooves for the odd bit of gravel or dirt that might be revealing. Found nothing.

  Lobdell shook his head and sighed. “I gotta call Shirley.”

  Nick sat on the passenger side and looked at the fingerprint dust on the dash, door handles and window cranks, the shifter, hand brake, and steering wheel. The silver powder showed up best on the black plastic. All the prints had been processed. All were Janelle’s.

  Nick got down on his knees with a magnifier and tweezers and went over the floor mats. ID had done it once but he wanted to do it again. Hair. Fiber. Small gravel. The bright red point of what looked like a liquidambar or maple leaf. October, he thought, right color for the ti
me of year. He didn’t collect, he just looked. Then the passenger’s side and the back. Nothing unusual.

  He sat in the front passenger seat. The glove compartment had a pair of sunglasses, a small pump bottle of Orange Sunshine air freshener, and a clear plastic makeup bag. Inside the bag Nick found base and blush, three lipsticks. Two brushes, two eyeliner pencils, and mascara.

  He sprayed the air freshener toward the open door and whiffed. The smell was faint and familiar. Sprayed some on his fingertips and rubbed it with his thumb. Not strong, really. Just a hint of orange blossom. Sprayed and rubbed again. No, not like those late winter mornings when all of Tustin used to smell that way. Paradise would be like that. Nick had always thought if he could bottle that smell he could make a million. His mother used to say so. He and Clay had tried it one day, mashing up the blossoms and adding water. By the next morning, through some alchemical magic that bewildered them, the solution retained no smell whatsoever. But here in sixty-eight, thought Nick, somebody had finally captured a little of that smell.

  He saw that Janelle had replaced her Blaupunkt radio with a Craig eight-track tape player/radio combination. Pretty nice one. Eighty, a hundred bucks installed. There was a shoe box of tapes on the passenger-side floor. Nick looked at the titles and set it down.

  The side map pouches had more eight-tracks. A pencil and two pens. Two books of matches—Five Crowns from her job a year ago, and one from Bob’s Big Boy. No maps.

  The ashtray contained an alligator roach clip with a decorative thong of leather and three beads attached. The tray itself had a light dusting of ash.

  Nick got out and lifted the front trunk door. Neat and practically empty. A spare tire, jumper cables, and a first-aid kit. The engine compartment was clean, no leaks or bad hoses that he could see. Nick looked at the tiny little motor. Air-cooled and practically powerless. A guy at his high school put radiator coolant in the oil reservoir, blew his engine. You could get a new VW for under two grand and they went forever on a tank of gas. But gas was cheap and there was no way to argue with V-8 power.