by P. J. Zander
ANGELES CREST
P. J. ZANDER
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright 2016 P. J. Zander
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
ISBN: 978-0-9976392-0-9
Cover image by Sandratsky Dmitriy/Shutterstock.com
For Barbara Alexander
1913 – 2009
A Laguna Lady
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-EIGHT
FIFTY-NINE
SIXTY
SIXTY-ONE
SIXTY-TWO
SIXTY-THREE
SIXTY-FOUR
SIXTY-FIVE
SIXTY-SIX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ONE
As the smaller man settled into leather comfort in the back, the driver pulled onto the 210. The burly front passenger shifted his body nervously. His eyes repeatedly darted from side to front, then down. A tormented sound forced its way past clenched teeth. In a few minutes the car had left the freeway and was climbing toward the mountains.
“Don’t have to fucking do this.” The passenger didn’t look at the driver. “No goddamn reason. Doesn’t make sense.”
The man in back continued staring into the night through the side window. Whether or not he agreed with the big man, it didn’t matter.
Eyes on the road, the driver grasped the passenger’s tattooed forearm momentarily, causing him to take a slow, deep breath.
Where the road ended in a T, the driver slowed and switched off the headlights. Around the corner to the right, porch lights illuminated the front door far back from the road. The rest of the house was dark. The car came to a stop across from the house, engine idling quietly.
#
Jolene snapped the large textbook closed, restoring clarity to her brain as she rose from the sofa. Molecular biology was a closed subject for the night. The clock on the range read 11:49. She checked the deadbolt on the front door and locked the great room windows. Glancing down at her backpack provisioned with emergency items, she nodded. Although the fire no longer threatened La Crescenta, the pack stayed where she could grab it on the way out, just in case. Switching off the cottage’s exterior lanterns, she took in the view of the city lights below from her almost pitch black corner of the world. A faint glow came from the corner street lamp a hundred yards away. Before moving toward the bedroom, she turned the outside lights back on.
In bed, she unlocked the nightstand drawer and put her keys on top next to the lamp as she did every night. A cooling fifty-degree October breeze still hinting of ash came through the open windows facing the mountains. She pulled up Pandora on her iPhone and touched in Eva Cassidy’s cover of “Fields of Gold”. Within seconds she drifted off into a peaceful sleep, one of those nights without the two-thousand degree tidal wave of flames sweeping down the south slopes of the San Gabriels in her dreams.
From somewhere deep, Jolene thought she heard something. She searched the corners of her dream, zooming in and out, but couldn’t find it. She couldn’t tell if the sound was with her in the dream or waiting for her in wakefulness. Struggling to pull herself into consciousness, she slowly surfaced from the depths of sleep. On her stomach with her face turned toward the table, she forced her eyebrows up to barely open her right eye, and squinting punched the Indiglo bar with her right hand to make out 2:55 on the LED. Letting her eyelid fall, she started to adjust her body and with effort turned onto her back, when suddenly in an instant of lucidity her brain registered an alarm—her eye had caught more than the clock. Something wasn’t right. There had been a darkness, vague shadowy forms that weren’t supposed to be there beside the bed.
She exploded out of sleep wanting to yell at whatever they were, but as in a nightmare when you can’t get the scream to come to the surface, the adrenaline rush was drowned by a paralyzing panic that choked off her sounds. Fully awake now, she opened her eyes and started reaching toward the table drawer in which rested a .22 handgun. Hands and arms pushed her torso down, and she was almost blinded by a light behind which loomed dark silhouettes. With all her strength Jolene pushed at a gloved hand covering her mouth and kicked off the blanket, lashing out and up with her powerful legs. One of the shadows groaned as she caught it on the chin, rattling teeth that bit a tongue. She tried to maneuver toward the middle of the bed to get out from under the gloved hand and the light, but other hands grabbed her hips and pulled her back to block her move. Still kicking blindly, she found only arms and shoulders as targets. There were so many hands and arms now, grabbing, pulling, holding her down.
She felt her strength going but not her will. She relaxed momentarily, catching the attackers off guard, then struck upward with her right hand open, reaching a face and dragging her nails across a nose and cheek. Another grunt and then more pressure, more weight coming downward as if they wanted to squeeze the life out of her. They were rolling her over on her stomach and pulling her hands behind her until they cuffed her wrists with plastic ties. Duct tape sealed her mouth. Ties went around her ankles. She couldn’t get enough oxygen and felt dizzy and nauseous, as if she might pass out.
#
Jolene opened her eyes. How long have I been out? Why have they done this to me? Who are they? Through the pillow case over her head she could make out dim light to her right coming through the door from the front room. She heard faint whispers, but the words were indistinguishable. She knew she was on her bed, though the mattress was crooked, propped up on pillows, hands still behind her and now aching. Her legs were spread toward the corners and tied down with lamp cords to the feet of the bed. Her torn cotton camisole top exposed most of one breast and the matching briefs were stretched taut up to her crotch. She shook uncontrollably and began sobbing.
The front door opened and closed. Moments later she heard glass breaking in the other bedroom. The front door sounds came again, then muffled voices seemed to be arguing. The few words she picked up were, “. . . get out of here” and “. . . no, you ha
ve to do it.”
Why is this happening? She wanted to scream, but the tape held firm. Oh, God. . . . Mother, help me. Rusty . . . somebody help me.
#
Rusty Banyan’s morning had started off like another routine day in Laguna with the obligatory call.
“Two Meter, up-n-at-‘em, brah.” He had struggled to crank a thousand pound eyelid open half way and check the clock’s numbers: 4:53. The voice had kept right on blasting at him over the phone. “Last night’s reports were right on. The storm is bringing a raw south swell with lefts head-high to you breaking off the Second Reef.”
“Jesus, Bondo, give me a—”
“No excuses, old man. Surf’s a-callin’.” The phone had clicked.
He lay back down and filled his lungs a few times. The caller was around half his age and could be a real pain in the ass. But, he knew he had no choice. He forced himself up, went over to the chin-up bar and hung for twenty seconds while looking out the triangle-shaped window toward the darkness that was the Pacific about five blocks away, then did a dozen pull-ups. Off the bar, he got down on the mat and tried to stretch the age out of his lower back. With the coffee going in the kitchen, he pulled on board shorts and a rash guard. He chomped a banana and let the coffee’s aroma give him hope. After one cup, he went to his quiver of boards in the converted garage and selected a ten-footer to stick in the bed of the pickup.
#
Jolene tried to focus on the time. Could it be almost morning, daylight soon? She remembered looking at her clock just before they grabbed her. That had to have been at least two or three hours earlier, she told herself. If Stephie was on time, she could be there to pick her up within an hour, two at the m—out of the corner of her eye she saw a shape entering the room and coming close to the bed. Then a cold, clammy hand slithered up the inside of her thigh. She jerked on the bed trying to shake free of the hand, but it kept sliding up between her legs where fingers paused at her briefs, then crawled up to her breast.
“What a waste,” whispered the voice between deep breaths. She heard a zipper, felt the bed move and the man start to climb over her thigh.
“What are you doing, you little degenerate?” A man’s voice coming from the doorway was controlled but didn’t hide the venom.
The first man jumped back from her.
“Do I need to remind you what’s at stake? Take care of business now or it’s your third strike. Got it?” The commanding voice retreated from the doorway. “Unbelievable.”
“Well, sorry,” the first man said softly to her. “I really am sorry.”
She was exhausted but when a hand pushed her head forward to slide something around the back of her neck, she writhed and jackknifed trying to resist. It was all she had left. This is happening. He’s going to kill me. The belt tie from her bathrobe came around her throat. Oh, God, no, no, no . . . It kept tightening and her last thought before losing consciousness was there was something familiar about the voice. . . .
#
Except for the crickets and leaves rustling in the breeze, the night was still. Under a moonless sky that would soon give way to dawn, and with the outside lights off, the biggest of the three men carried Jolene Ojibway to the sedan.
“Never shoulda come here,” he seethed, laying her down in the back.
TWO
“Hey, guys, why would an old dude want to give up a couple hours of rack time to come out here on a cold, damp morning? Must be crazy.” Bondo pointed with a hitch-hiking thumb toward the sand where the long-boarder was zipping up his wetsuit. It was just before six and the overcast and lack of light weren’t unusual at that hour.
“Well, whadda you know,” another surfer said, turning his head shoreward. “I was hoping I’d have some company out here among these punks. Mornin’, Banyan,” he yelled as the other entered the water between sets and paddled out toward the four Brooks Street surfers sitting astride their boards.
“How ya doing, Andy? These little pricks acting up?”
“Yeah, especially that one.” Andrew Huff, square-built and stout in his late 40s, chuckled and nodded his head toward a muscular teen.
“Come on, Handy,” the youngest surfer said with a shy smile.
“That right, Panda? You being disrespectful to your elders?”
“No way, Two.”
“If I hear you are, Coach Tooker’s gonna be real interested you’re out here before school.”
“Nah, you wouldn’t tell him, would you?” Danny Pendez was a linebacker and captain of a resurgent Breakers football team.
“No, kid, I wouldn’t do that,” answered the big surfer with a lopsided smile. The teenager was not among the blessed and anointed rich offspring in this city of extravagance. He was a throwback to nice boys with good manners.
“Excuse me, girls, but we gotta set coming in if you want to knock off the gossiping and ride some waves. No offense, Princess.” Bondo glanced at the only female among them.
Kristen Carlisle had some vague English royal lineage, or so it was rumored. She flipped him off. “Bondo, if I thought you knew enough about girls to insult them, I’d be offended. But, you don’t and I’m not.”
“Thanks, Krissy, you saved me the effort,” Banyan said, laughing at Bondo’s pained expression.
#
Banyan glanced at his watch and confirmed what his internal clock told him. He’d been out for over an hour, enjoying the fun, the relaxed camaraderie. Mundane worries were put on the backburner by time in the ocean. He watched the next set forming a little toward Oak Street. “This’ll do it for me, guys. Later.” After a few strokes that way, he spun the long board around, gave two powerful paddles and was off on a nice five-footer. Casual walking to the nose, quick steps back and a sweeping cutback to the right for a stall, then back to the left, finishing with feet parallel and an easy kick out.
“My God, Two. Where’d you learn that?” Bondo yelled. With his back to the ocean, Banyan acknowledged the mock admiration with a wave and started up the stairs. Bondo took off goofyfoot on his short board, slashing the wave with cut backs and maneuvering to a 360 spin on the crest. The other three in the lineup applauded and bowed on their boards.
He had just loaded the board in the bed of the Tundra when his cell phone rang. Five more rings by the time he was settled in the front seat and casually pushed the green button. Before he could say hello, a voice was in his ear.
“Rusty . . . Rusty. Jol—”
“Ray? Raylene, is that you? What is it? What’s wrong?” Banyan had seen her only once since they packed Jolene’s truck for her move down the mountain two months earlier. Lately they’d talked less frequently.
“I don’t know where she is . . . . She’s gone,” she cried softly.
“Who? Jolene? What do you mean she’s gone?”
“There . . . there was . . . someone took her. They can’t find any trace of her. Jo’s just gone.” Raylene’s words came between short breaths. “I . . . I don’t know what to do. . . .”
His heart was pounding. Ray was the one bright light in his life. Jolene was her reason for living. If anything happened to her, Raylene would be torn apart. How could he have let this happen? He was supposed to be the one who kept the hellhounds at bay.
“Ray, is anyone there with you? Anyone you know who can stay with you until I get there?”
“Jenny from across the street is here now. And two sheriff’s deputies.
“Okay. I’m on my way.”
#
He ran a red light and a couple stop signs in the four-minute drive up to his house. With three hours on the road ahead of him, he skipped the shower and took only the time to pack a few items in a duffle. There was one call to make before he left.
“Isn’t it a little early for you, Banyan? Surf must have been—”
“Yeah. Listen Ernie, have you gone through your blotter this morning? I just got a call from Ray a little while ago. She says Jolene’s been taken, I’m guessing from the house she rents.”
/> “What? Jesus. Okay, I’m scrolling through and—shit, here it is. CV Station responded to a call about two hours ago. They have a team on scene now.”
“Okay. I’m on my way and I hope to reach Wrightwood before noon. Anything you can do for Ray’s sake, I need you on this one.” Banyan struggled against the weight on his shoulders.
“You don’t have to ask. How’s she doing now?”
“She sounded . . . bad. Couldn’t tell if she was in shock. She has a friend there. Also a couple deputies, but I don’t know what help they are.”
“Let me see what I can do to make sure there’s a female deputy up there from the San Berdoo station.”
“Thanks, Ernie.”
“And, I’ll keep tabs on Crescenta Valley’s investigation. Hang in there, Banyan.” The words offered little comfort.
#
Running into several slowdowns, he finally reached Interstate 15 around Corona, and from there into the mountains, the traffic began moving. A little after noon, he drove into Wrightwood. As he turned onto Raylene’s street, he saw three sheriff’s cruisers parked out front, as well as several people talking among themselves. All eyes turned as they parted to make room for him to pull into the driveway. Ignoring them when he got out, he took the steps three at a time to the front door.
“Rusty.” Ray got up from the sofa as he came in and he went to her. “Rusty. Where’s Jo?”
THREE
Not long after Banyan arrived, the deputy sheriffs left. They had asked Raylene questions about her contact with Jolene, if her daughter had any angry boyfriends or had told her anything recently that would indicate she was in trouble. Her friend, Jenny, stayed a while longer, made some sandwiches which Ray didn’t touch, then had to get home. The only way he could comfort her was to listen when she wanted to talk, hold her when she had to cry. Raylene was exhausted but didn’t drop off to sleep until the early morning hours, a fitful, uneasy nap. Banyan stayed awake close to her, mentally punishing himself.
#
The next day he drove down to the rental house with Ray whom the Crescenta Valley Station sheriffs had asked to come once they’d concluded their investigation of the crime scene. Raylene told a young deputy sheriff who she was and he lifted the yellow tape across the driveway. A tall, trim man in a dark brown suit, light blue shirt and pale yellow tie met them at the front door.
