California Girl

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Lobdell straddled the bolted chair and huffed down into it. Pulled a pen and a notebook out of his coat pocket. Clicked the ballpoint with a meaty thumb, looked at Neemal with open disgust, and started writing.

  David watched the pen wiggle above the notepad, heard the rapid scratch of point on paper.

  Nick stood. David saw the darkness in his eyes, the bags under them. Nick glanced at him, then circled the table.

  “Do you understand what it means to sign a confession?” asked Nick.

  “I’m sane and I do,” said Neemal.

  “The confession is going to say that you murdered Janelle Vonn in the packinghouse on October first of this year. It says you will cooperate with us by giving us details and information.”

  David couldn’t let this moment go unprotested, either. “But if he’s willing to sign a confession right now, then what’s the hurry? Why can’t you get the details and information first?”

  “That’s not how it works, Rev,” said Lobdell. “With all respect, you got your church confessions, then you got your legal confessions. They’re different. Here, Nick. This is ready for Mr. Neemal to sign. He can use my pen. Then you can keep it for your grandkids or something—first murder confession you ever got, the actual pen. Terry, read this over and ask any questions you got. Then sign the bottom.”

  Neemal took a deep breath. Arranged the notepad precisely. Read slowly and with apparent concentration.

  Then he hung his head and began to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t kill her. I did what I said I did. About the…well, you remember, Nick. But I didn’t kill her.”

  “You saw the black skirt and the boots when you went back that second time, though,” said Nick.

  Neemal nodded.

  David had no idea what this “second time” was all about. Neemal had never said anything about it to him.

  “And you didn’t find the Pep Boys matches because they were already in your pocket,” said Nick.

  “That’s true.” He sniffled.

  “You used them to light the newspapers on fire before you masturbated.”

  David’s stomach dropped. What kind of a man was this? And how could Nick understand him so thoroughly?

  “Yes,” said Neemal.

  “And you tossed the matches into the fire for an extra little burst.”

  “I did do that, yes,” he said quietly.

  “Because fire helps you climax.” Nick sighed.

  David’s imagination supplied an image of the Wolfman Neemal masturbating over Janelle’s headless body as the newspapers burst into flames. An atrocious moment. David felt preyed upon by his own mind.

  Neemal nodded again. He was no longer crying. But still looking down at the table. “So I can’t sign. I thought I could. I thought about it. I wanted to.”

  “Why?” asked David.

  “For the reporters. Then I could just kind of stay here and…you know, just stay here and have people write articles about me. But if I sign that they’ll put me in the gas chamber.”

  David couldn’t formulate a meaningful reply.

  “You disappoint me, Wolfie,” said Lobdell. “I thought you might have had the presence of mind to pull off that murder. Had my money on you for a few days. I figured the crazy shit was just an act. But it isn’t.”

  Lobdell walked to the door and rapped on it. A deputy let him out.

  In the silence David watched Neemal as he stared down at the table. “Sorry, Nick. Guess I’ll only get to stay in here a while longer.”

  “Looks that way, Terry.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t confess. I…thought I could go through with it. Thought it would be best for everybody.”

  “I understand,” said Nick.

  Though David wasn’t sure at all that he did.

  “Thanks for your help, David,” said Nick.

  “I helped no one.”

  “I believed your God would forgive me,” said Neemal. “It wasn’t that, Reverend. You did your part.”

  David didn’t know what to say. This was like being trapped behind the looking glass. He couldn’t wait to get outside and into some real air. Into a faintly logical world. He smelled dinner wafting in from the mess hall, which sickened him slightly.

  “I’m hungry,” Neemal said. “I want to go back to my cell and eat and get rested up for the Register. I got an interview tomorrow at nine.”

  He stood and sighed and put his hands behind his back for Nick and the cuffs.

  TEN MINUTES later David pulled into his driveway. Spent and stupefied. The white Ford that had been behind him since the jail slid under the big sycamore by the curb. His heart fell further.

  David got out and lifted the garage door. He pulled Wendy’s new bike out of the way, and Matthew’s beloved Mickey Mouse guitar. Amazing what kids could leave in the sure path of a car.

  He pulled the station wagon in. Got out and took a deep breath as he reached for the rope to pull down the door. Looked out at the darkening sky. Saw the kitchen light on at the Cranes’ across the street. Looked at the Ford under the sycamore and knew he had to go face the music.

  Hambly sat behind the wheel. Window down. News station on. Looked at David.

  “Get in,” he said.

  David went to the passenger side and got in.

  “Five days,” said the agent.

  “I’ve been thinking about your offer.”

  “Offer? There’s nothing to think about. You give me information or I send the pictures to the newspapers, your parents, brothers, wife, and key congregational members of the Grove Drive-In Church of God. I was very clear on that.”

  David listened to the words but his mind jumped its track. He found himself understanding how people committed murder. And sympathizing with them.

  “I’m not sure what to tell you,” he said.

  “I’m sure you’ve thought about Stoltz and your father and the John Birch Society and the National Volunteer Police down south.”

  “I actually haven’t.”

  “Too busy with God?”

  “I don’t see Stoltz,” said David. “He’s in Washington, where your bosses are.”

  Hambly ignored the threat. “What about Max and his JBS chapter? Come on—I know you’ve attended meetings. I know you see him. I know you’ve heard things.”

  “My father thinks the JBS is doing good work,” said David. “Informing people about the Communist conspiracy. Some of their ideas seem a little…exaggerated. But they’ve never said one thing about shooting Negroes or whatever it is you’re suggesting.”

  “Not one thing?”

  “Never. It’s not a secret organization. They have bookstores and phone numbers you can call for information. They give away little red, white, and blue plastic pens with the number on them. They’re dentists and engineers and lawyers and schoolteachers and—”

  “I heard Dick Nixon was in town. Come by the old house last Saturday?”

  David stared out the windshield. Saw Peg Crane at her kitchen window, looking out. Always there. Like she was washing dishes, but she was more like a DEW system for the block.

  “Yes,” said David. “We talked very briefly.”

  “Finally,” said Hambly, as if hugely relieved.

  David was aware of Hambly taking out a notebook and pen but he kept looking at Peg Crane. “He asked about my church. He said he was sorry he couldn’t see eye-to-eye with Dad and Stoltz.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Whatever you want it to mean.”

  “Go on.”

  “I said I thought they’d support him in November.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Hambly.

  “It was just polite small talk.”

  “Talking votes to a presidential candidate is small?”

  “It was just my opinion,” David said.

  “Was your father sorry, too, not seeing eye-to-eye with his old Yorba Linda buddy?”

  “He didn’t say, either way,” sa
id David.

  “Dick not quite aggressive enough for him? Won’t destroy villages to save them? Not willing to drop the bomb on Moscow if they keep sending guns to the North Vietnamese?”

  “Who cares what my father thinks of Richard Nixon?”

  “Like I said before,” said Hambly, “I care. I’m the one who cares.”

  “That’s all I’m going to say.”

  David swung open the door, stepped out under the sycamore, and slammed it. Peg Crane hadn’t moved. He sighed and looked back at the special agent.

  Hambly grinned. “Have you talked to that Marxist Washburn out at UCI? Figured out how many kids he’s registered into the American Communist Party?”

  “I have not.”

  “Call anytime, Jude.”

  David leaned in the open window. “I will. I’ll call you next time. Until then, stay off my block. We have children and elderly people here. I don’t want them in the presence of evil.”

  “Evil,” said Hambly. “Reverend, you crack me up. Hey, did you know your buddy Langton was questioned by the Laguna cops today? They wondered what he knew about the Boom Boom Bungalow killing.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “They’ve got a witness who saw a guy running from the victim’s room. Got into a car and sped away. Witness got the plates—for Howard’s cute little Triumph convertible. Witness took his sweet time coming forward because he wasn’t supposed to be boom-booming that night. But there it is.”

  “That’s not possible,” said David. “Howard’s wife will vouch for him.”

  “Vouch or lie?”

  David straightened, looked down at the grass. Breathed deeply. “Lie. But—”

  He couldn’t continue. Thought of his Father in heaven but couldn’t continue.

  “But what, Rev?”

  “Nothing. Nothing.”

  David looked into the car. Hambly eyed him with the binary detachment of a rattlesnake. To strike or not to strike.

  “My guess,” said Hambly, “is the cops will smell something wrong unless Howard and his wife are both really talented liars. If they shake and break them, they’ll put Howard in a lineup and see what the witness says. If the witness picks Howard, he’ll have to use you as his alibi. This is a murder rap we’re talking about. This is serious. Maybe you should be lining up your ducks, too.”

  “What ducks?”

  “If Howard tries to use you as an alibi, deny everything he says. Barbara would have to hang tough when she lies about being with you that night. But I’ll bet she’s tougher and cooler than you are.”

  “Quite a bit,” he said quietly.

  “And she does know about all this, right?”

  “Yes,” he said, more quietly. He’d known it would end in disaster. All of it. Everything. Just a matter of when. The rest of his life blank and empty like that old marquee in front of the Grove Drive-In Theater.

  “Janelle’s not around to corroborate Howard’s tale,” said Hambly. “And I’m not going to. I really don’t want to show those pictures. I’ll just stay out of it.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “You’re no good to me if you lose your family, your congregation, and everything you’ve worked for. And you’re a nice guy.”

  “You’re beyond evil.”

  “Think about it, Judas. And imagine the alternative.”

  26

  IT TOOK NICK ALMOST one hour to make the evening drive from Santa Ana to Los Angeles. Damned traffic. But nice to be driving the Red Rocket, which was usually for Katy and the kids. The 428 cc would really go if you stood on it. Too bad there were so many cars on the road right now, but on the way home he’d fly.

  He used the time to wonder about Neemal and the odd kinks in some men’s minds. Which was one of the reasons why Nick had wanted homicide detail. To understand the kinks. But why do that? To understand himself? Maybe. He had a theory that everyone had kinks. Different kinds. Different amounts. He turned on the news and watched the smog-stained peak of the Disneyland Matterhorn go by. A little red bobsled zoomed out of the mountain and back in.

  The FBI “Road School” was held at the sheriff’s station downtown. Nick had heard about it from some friends in the Southern California chapter of the International Association for Identification. The FBI had this agent named Doug Teteni who could show you how to learn more from a murder scene. They said Teteni could make sense of things that didn’t make sense at first. Teteni was especially good at what the FBI called “stranger murders”—where men would kill people unknown to them, wait, then kill again. Teteni had worked on the infamous Gein case in Wisconsin, where the guy had made clothing and adorned furniture with the skin of his victims.

  Nick sat in the back with a couple of guys he had met at the academy. Teteni was slender and neat, with rimless glasses and a crisp white shirt. He looked like a professor, Nick thought.

  Teteni began talking about a New York City psychiatrist named Dr. James Brussel, with whom Teteni had worked. It was Dr. Brussel who was asked by the New York police in 1957 to help solve the Mad Bomber case. Nick remembered that. He’d been a freshman at Long Beach State when the arrest was made. The Mad Bomber had detonated thirty bombs in New York City since 1942. His targets had included Radio City Music Hall and Grand Central Station. He had sent angry, revealing letters to various newspapers. Dr. Brussel was given crime scene photographs and copies of the letters and asked to describe the bomber for the police. Doug Teteni read the last few words of the description Brussel had given:

  “Look for a heavy man. Middle-aged. Foreign-born. Roman Catholic. Single. Lives with a brother or sister. When you find him, chances are he’ll be wearing a double-breasted suit. Buttoned.”

  Teteni went on to say that when police arrested George Metesky for the bombings, he was heavy, single, middle-aged, foreign-born, Roman Catholic, and lived with not one sister but two. When Metesky was allowed to put on his jacket for the trip to the station, he put on a double-breasted suit coat and buttoned it.

  A respectful murmur rose in the room. Nick was stunned and mystified by the details Brussel had come up with. Seemed like magic or witchcraft. He wondered for a second if he was in the wrong profession altogether. He would never have been able to do what Brussel did.

  Teteni went on to say that, because of the letters, the Mad Bomber case had actually been fairly simple. Metesky had revealed a lot about himself in the letters he wrote. The buttoning of the coat was a small extrapolation Brussel had made based on the neatness and craft with which Metesky had constructed and concealed the bombs.

  But Brussel would never have known so much about the suspect if he had not used inductive reasoning. Brussel and Teteni were encouraging homicide investigators across the nation to “observe the singularities of a crime” and draw “larger conclusions about the nature and motive of the criminal.” To understand who might be responsible for a crime, Teteni said, you had to “read the murderer’s book.” Teteni said that in order to catch certain killers, “detectives should learn to think like them.”

  Nick got the uneasy and thrilling feeling that he was just now beginning to comprehend something very important.

  We need to learn to think like criminals, said Teteni, because of the “changing nature” of murder in America. He said that traditionally, people were killed by people who knew them and lived close by. Now, said Teteni, with society becoming more mobile, opportunities were arising for a new kind of killer. This was the “stranger killer,” who preyed upon unknown victims, often for sexual reasons. Teteni predicted that in the decades to come, greater mobility and less stability in the United States would create rising homicide rates and falling solution rates. That greater mobility and less stability, though often considered to be the mark of a free and prosperous society, would also lead to a weakening of traditions that kept our society in balance.

  Nick thought of Ronnie Joe Fowler. Mobile. Sex attack in Oregon. Maybe one here? But his alibi was good. He’d been where he said
he was on Tuesday, October first. Out on Woodland in Laguna Canyon. Dodge City. Not the SunBlesst packinghouse in Tustin.

  Still, Nick agreed with Teteni. The changes that were coming. Nick had never quite connected his gut feeling that his country was slipping somehow, with the mobility that Teteni talked about. But Nick had felt strongly for the last year or so that things were unraveling and would not be reraveled. Destroying to save. Mutual Assured Destruction. PCP to LSD. Kill the pigs. Burn down the village, your mind, your city, the world. He’d talked with David and Andy about these things not long ago. David was hopeful that meaningful, relevant Christian ministries such as his own would help maintain a balance. Andy thought the changes were good and America needed them. Nick didn’t know what to think.

  Next, Teteni talked about “singularity,” in the sense that anything unique or unusual about a crime scene could be used to suggest what kind of person had committed the act. For instance, he said, a murder victim whose face was left covered by the killer with her own jacket was killed by someone with an active sense of right and wrong. He covers because he is ashamed of what he’s done. Or a rapist who attacks suddenly from behind, with deadly force, is probably inexperienced and uncomfortable around women. He can’t persuade her to go off with him to a safer place. The investigators will find him to be reclusive and physically unattractive. Teteni said that the more unique and unusual things were found in a crime scene, the better chances they had of solving the crime.

  Nick tried to figure Janelle Vonn’s head being cut off. A way to emphasize a need for silence? What could she know that would warrant murder and mutilation? Was it for something she had said, or even thought? How did this relate to the fact that she was raped? Could she have been the victim of one of these new “stranger killers” who was not even in California anymore?

  Last, Teteni then talked about sexual fantasy, control over helpless individuals and perpetrators who did not experience remorse. Perps who had once wanted to be policemen. Perps who took “mementos.” Perps who went back to the crime scene. Perps who made him think that he was in the presence of evil, though that word was imprecise and out of fashion at the bureau now.