California Girl

by T. Jefferson Parker

  We also believe it possible that JANELLE has admitted her connection to us to LEARY and BLACK, and that any information she supplies is possibly misleading or false. Calls made to and from her phone and taped by JANELLE are likewise suspect.

  EVERY EFFORT HAS BEEN MADE TO CORROBORATE JANELLE/LEARY INFORMATION WITH TWO (2) OTHER SOURCES.

  Nick scanned the pages that followed.

  There were encounters with Leary, as described by Janelle to del Gado and Gant. He had joints in his pocket but no acid. I’ve never seen him carry the acid around. He’s got a safe in his bedroom for it. He watches over it like it’s gold. Which to him and some of his friends it is.

  Phone conversations—Hello, Janelle dear. How do you like the sunshine today?

  Groov-y!

  Remember, Janelle, we are all God’s flesh.

  Descriptions of Leary’s home—and lots of books of poetry, Ginsberg and Corso and Olson and…

  Be-ins. Happenings. Experiences. Parties and more parties.

  Photographs, too, of Leary and Janelle and others on the beach in tai chi poses, Leary and Janelle smoking marijuana in a Laguna alleyway, Leary and two younger men outside a store called Mystic Arts World on Coast Highway.

  Nick got another cup of coffee. Conjured up some of the hallucinogenic images from the day before. Most of them he couldn’t remember. And the ones that he could remember had lost their power to dazzle or delight or disturb.

  The next file was shorter:

  RONNIE JOE FOWLER, 28, is one of the later members of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.

  The Brotherhood, as it is commonly called, encourages the use of LSD to induce mystical states. In the articles of incorporation of this alleged church, they say they’re going to “bring to the world a greater awareness of God through the teachings of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Ramakrishna, Babaji, Paramahansa Yogananda, Mahatma Gandhi,” etc. To support their “religion” they opened a drug-paraphernalia store on Coast Highway in Laguna Beach called the Mystic Arts World.

  However, in order to purchase land for the church, the Brotherhood has established international networks for smuggling illicit drugs into this country for sale. They are especially expert in the smuggling of hashish from Afghanistan. It is far more powerful than marijuana and reaps greater profits in the illegal marketplace.

  FOWLER’s role in the Brotherhood narcotics smuggling network is mainly in distribution of so-called Orange Sunshine lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). It is alleged to be stronger and “purer” than the laboratory-produced LSD made by Sandoz Laboratories of Switzerland. This dangerous hallucinogenic substance is believed to be manufactured in a secret Northern California drug lab. ANY IN FORMATION RELATING TO THE EXISTENCE AND POSSIBLE LOCATION OF THIS LAB IS A HIGH PRIORITY OF NARCOTICS LAW ENFORCEMENT NATIONWIDE.

  FOWLER is neither a gullible hippie nor a mystical shaman. He is a hardened criminal with ties to the Hell’s Angels and Hessian motorcycle gangs. JANELLE VONN’s brothers LENNY and CASEY are known Hessian members and convicted drug offenders. FOWLER has priors for assault with a deadly weapon (a knife) and grand theft. He was acquitted on forcible and statutory rape charges last year in Eugene, Oregon. He is known to have an engaging and outwardly friendly personality. He preys on females.

  The file photographs showed a bull-necked man with lank black hair and a thick mustache. Balding on the top. Long sideburns and a hard jaw.

  Nick sat back and wondered again if Lenny and Casey might have murdered their sister. She’d humiliated them semipublicly three years ago, with the drugs and sex testimony. Helped convict them. But their alibis held unless you figured Karl to lie for them.

  No. The Vonn brothers had survived all that. Gone back to their rat holes. It seemed a far stretch.

  He read through the last two files. Price Herald was “a flamboyant Laguna Beach antique dealer known to be supplying drugs of all kinds to the homosexual underground in Laguna Beach and Hollywood.” Two years ago Herald had been convicted of “crimes against nature.” Not one of the public bathroom fairies, Nick saw, but a prosperous businessman who’d taken in a seventeen-year-old runaway. Later the boy had ratted out Herald in trade for a reduced marijuana charge. According to del Gado’s narcotics detail, Herald was using the runaways to peddle dope and collect money.

  Janelle had met him through a photographer who had shot her for Orange County Illustrated magazine when she was Miss Tustin.

  According to JANELLE, HERALD claimed he was “going to turn on every queer in Southern California and make some dough while I’m at it.” JANELLE has attended Herald’s lavish and bizarre parties thrown in his Bluebird Canyon home. We consider HERALD an important drug culture figure, due to his influence in the large homosexual population in Southern California.

  In his photograph, Herald looked overweight and affronted. He wore his hair in a ponytail and a paisley satin smoking jacket over a ruffled shirt. The Pirate Queen look, thought Nick.

  The last file was on Cory Bonnett. A sheet of paper stapled to the cover said that Bonnett had last been seen outside his home in Laguna Beach on October 3. The day after Janelle’s body had been discovered, thought Nick.

  No outstanding warrants but approach with extreme caution.

  He opened and read:

  BONNETT is a 22-year-old former water polo star at Santa Ana High School, where he was voted all-conference in 1964. He has adult convictions for assault and drunk in public. Mexican authorities in Michoacán believe he is responsible for the murders of two marijuana growers in that state. They were both shot execution style and their throats were cut. BONNETT is rumored to be in collusion with corrupt law enforcement officials in Tijuana and Ensenada, Mexico. According to JANELLE, BONNETT has referred to these murders but not stated his part in them to her.

  BONNETT’s juvenile record was sealed when he was eighteen, at the request of his parents. Offenses as a minor include arson, assault, receiving stolen property, and grand theft auto (see attached juvenile court transcripts). When sixteen, BONNETT beat his mother and father so badly that both were hospitalized.

  BONNETT and his friends from Santa Ana High School have been trafficking marijuana and heroin across the border since 1965, according to witnesses, informants, and recordings. BONNETT is considered the source of up to one-quarter of the marijuana brought into the county from Mexico, and up to three-quarters of the heroin. BONNETT owns and flies a Cessna airplane between the United States and Mexico. The airplane is kept at Orange County Airport.

  BONNETT owns Neck Deep Leather in Laguna Beach. They sell clothing and accessories made in Laguna Beach and Tijuana. We believe that BONNETT funnels drug profits through the shop, giving the money the appearance of legitimacy.

  He is 6'4" tall and weighs 245 lbs. His Stanford-Binet IQ is 126. He is known to carry a gun in his waistband and a white-handled Mexican switchblade knife in his left front pant pocket. Although he lives in Laguna Beach, BONNETT is contemptuous of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love and disdainful of “hippie” culture in general. He dislikes homosexuals. BONNETT appears to be motivated by money and by a taste for danger and violence. According to witnesses and informants, BONNETT does not use the contraband drugs he smuggles into this country.

  Due to BONNETT’s violent nature, JANELLE and other OCSD informants are discouraged from initiating contact or being alone with him. JANELLE is aware of this man’s behavior but shows no fear of him. JANELLE has joked about BONNETT being “like a cool older brother” and that he “watches out for me.” We have learned from JANELLE that she and BONNETT have a sexual relationship. They have traveled to Mexico together once and BONNETT has been to the yellow cottage several times.

  DEPUTIES SHOULD CONSIDER BONNETT ARMED AND DANGEROUS AT ALL TIMES. According to several witnesses, including JANELLE, BONNETT has made numerous death threats against law enforcement, Brotherhood of Eternal Love members, and homosexuals. OCSD undercover narcotics deputy TROY GANT, who has established a relationship with BONNETT, believes that BONN
ETT is the most dangerous man in the county.

  APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION.

  An IQ of 126, thought Nick. A cool older brother. Cut the growers’ throats? Cut Janelle’s? He remembered the initials CB from the scribbled numbers by her telephone—the guy who’d told him to kiss his ass on the phone. And Bonnett hadn’t been seen since the day after her body was discovered.

  Nick flipped through the juvenile court transcripts and looked at the photographs of Cory Bonnett. Good face. Big features, something offhand and hopeful in his expression. Chipped teeth, sun-bleached eyebrows, and a crooked nose. Blond wavy hair to his shoulders. The hippie affectation made him look more like a deranged Round Table knight than a love child. He has been to the yellow cottage. Nick didn’t like the idea of tracking down a criminal with the same IQ as his own.

  And he knew that none of these drug world contacts was the Sears, Roebuck customer who bought the Trim-Quick.

  Though any of them could have bought or stolen one there or anywhere else.

  And any of them could have been the one who raped and murdered Janelle and carried her into the SunBlesst packinghouse on his back.

  He thought of large, violent Bonnett and Janelle flying down to Mexico. Being together in her little yellow cottage by the ocean.

  He has been to the yellow cottage.

  The yellow cottage, thought Nick. Not her yellow cottage. The.

  An idea came to him. He went to Captain Frank del Gado’s office. The captain was at his desk reading the Journal.

  “Becker. What gives?”

  “Did we rent Janelle Vonn’s cottage for her?”

  “More or less.”

  “And we had a wiretap on the phone?” asked Nick.

  “Sure. Court order. She knew. So.”

  “Was the cottage miked for surveillance?”

  “Yeah. So,” said del Gado.

  “I want to hear the tapes.”

  “We got hundreds of hours.”

  “Good.”

  Del Gado dropped the paper and looked at Nick. “I’ll have the dupes on your desk by end of day.”

  Harloff came in a minute later, said he talked to Special Agent Hambly over at the bureau. FBI was interested in Janelle’s friends Tim Leary and Roger Stoltz. Leary was high on President Johnson’s new COINTELPRO New Left list. Stoltz was on Johnson’s new COINTELPRO white hate list. Hambly wasn’t working her murder at all.

  A Fed working two counterintelligence programs, thought Nick. Glad we got to her place first.

  “What’s the Stoltz-Janelle connection?” asked Harloff.

  “He helped her get straightened out after the molestations. Off the drugs.”

  “Then these Laguna guys got her back on them.”

  NICK SPENT an hour watching the ID fingerprint examiners trying to match the partial fingerprint from the packinghouse lock to those of Leary, Fowler, Herald, and Bonnett. The print was only big enough to contain one, maybe two, comparison points. California courts would accept ten points and nothing less.

  But two good comparison points was a start. You couldn’t bring them to court, but you could eliminate.

  Nick looked at the lock print with his magnifying glass. A nice bifurcation. Clear and unambiguous. Almost certainly a thumb. The criminalists had done a good job on the lift.

  Leary was a bust. He had the wrong basic pattern: a loop instead of a whorl. Leary the loop, thought Nick. It figured.

  The ID examiner pointed out that Fowler’s booking deputy had used a little too much ink. Some of the spaces were muddy and confused. Nick wondered why they’d let something like that pass. On Fowler’s thumb, Nick couldn’t really tell if he was looking at a ridge ending or a bifurcation or an ink bridge. It looked like a bifurcation more than an ink bridge. The pore pattern was totally obliterated.

  Price Herald was a bust, too. A whorl, but a much tighter pattern than the lock print.

  The examiner showed Nick that Bonnett had a similar bifurcation on his right thumb whorls, but Nick remembered that Bonnett was left-handed. His left thumb, on the hand he’d logically use to pull off a lock, contained not a bi- but a trifurcation. Still, they had found a comparison point. The distribution of sweat pores was similar but most examiners wouldn’t bring the pore patterns into court.

  So Bonnett, maybe. But he hadn’t been seen since the day after Nick had stood in the SunBlesst packinghouse and looked down through the slanting sunlight at Janelle Vonn. Maybe the Laguna cops could give a hand finding him.

  Nick had already eliminated the Talon Security guards, Terry Neemal, Jonas Dessinger—who’d been printed on a DUI arrest ten years ago, and brothers Casey and Lenny Vonn.

  Jesse Black had never been fingerprinted but his alibi was good.

  The trouble was, Janelle’s killer may never have even touched that lock. Nick had no solid connection between the print and what happened that night. Someone could have pulled open that lock hours earlier. Days earlier. Someone with reasons unrelated to Janelle Vonn.

  Nick sighed and sat back. Tapped the magnifying glass on the palm of one hand. Thought they should put all the prints on a big computer someday and let it match them up.

  Two weeks into my first case, Nick thought. And no suspect.

  20

  “TWO WEEKS AND no suspect in the Vonn murder,” said sleek Jonas Dessinger. He touched his forehead. “That’s Thursday’s lead story, all editions. And I want to know why our illustrious Sheriff’s Department is holding the Wolfman Neemal but won’t charge him in the murder.”

  “You got it,” said Teresa Dessinger. “Yours, Andy.”

  Andy nodded. “I’m interviewing Janelle’s sister tonight. Lynette. If it goes well, I’ll have that for Thursday, too. She told me on the phone she had some letters from Janelle.”

  Letters she should have given to Nick when he interviewed her, thought Andy. He felt slightly guilty about keeping them a secret from Nick until he read them.

  “Ask her how she feels about two weeks and no suspects,” said Jonas. “And I also want a tough editorial on whether or not a homicide detail rookie is the right man to be heading up this case. Laud the O.C. Sheriff’s Department all you want, but isolate the dick and put the floodlights on him. All editions.”

  “Wrongheaded,” said Andy. “I won’t touch it.”

  Jonas chuckled and snugged his silk suit coat. Then sat back. “Actually, Andy—you have to touch it. You’re going to write it and you’re going to sign it. It will mean something, coming from the Journal’s best crime reporter.”

  “And the dick’s brother.”

  “Exactly.”

  You prick, Andy thought, but held his tongue. Jonas had been even more abrasive than usual since early last week, when Nick and Lobdell had written Janelle’s age in black ink on the associate publisher’s forehead. When Nick told him, Andy had laughed with grand satisfaction. Then seriously cussed out Nick for complicating his job. Nick had seemed more worried about it than he was. Around Jonas, Andy had played deaf and dumb.

  “Jone,” said Teresa. “Maybe Andy could write both but leave the editorial unsigned? No reason to set brother against brother like that. Nick gives Andy extra info. He’s valuable to us.”

  Jonas eyed his cousin with contempt. Then turned his gaze to Andy. Same gray eyes as Teresa, Andy thought. How could one pair be so brightly beautiful and the other so brutally stupid? He glanced at the associate publisher’s forehead, then away. Wasn’t there still some sign of abrasion, and the dark outline of 19? Almost biblical. Could ask David about it.

  “I’ve made my decision, Teresa,” said Jonas. He fiddled with a gold cuff link. “Andy’s writing both and signing both and that’s final. Now, onto ‘Nation,’ then the local editions…”

  Andy sank down in his chair a little. Listened to Jonas and the editors and reporters argue whether to lead the “Nation” page with Buzz’s upcoming space walk or Cong artillery pounding Saigon. Watched Teresa take notes and make comments, puzzled that such a smart
and organized woman could also be sexually qualmless and practically insatiable. Since they had worked the Oaxacan grass into the routine, their nightly sessions had gone from an hour to two, sometimes three hours. They were going through rubbers and ice cream at an astonishing pace. He was constantly sore and occasionally exhausted. He had begun to wonder if he was satisfying her. And she had said something yesterday evening on the phone to Chas Birdwell that was still bothering him. Something about “Seven Seas time.” Seven Seas was a salad dressing. But the Seven Seas was also a motel in Newport not far from the Journal building. Andy pondered this as Teresa carried the vote for Cong artillery.

  The Newport Beach edition decided to lead locally with a review of the opening of the French farce Let’s Get a Divorce at South Coast Repertory theater.

  Chas read his proposed lead:

  “The South Coast Repertory production of Let’s Get a Divorce opened yesterday, and though brightly performed, it can’t compare with such diversions as playing poker or fighting with your wife.”

  “Hmmm,” said Jonas.

  “Change ‘wife’ to ‘spouse,’” said Teresa. “More than half our readers are female.”

  “Do it,” said Jonas. “Huntington Beach? What do you have?”

  The Huntington Beach reporter read:

  “You can move the oil derricks out of the small town but you can’t move the oil, too.”