Angeles Crest

by P. J. Zander

  “Jeez, I don’t know, Rusty. I’d like to think she had it unlocked when she went to bed, but there’s no way of knowing.”

  “Even if she kept it locked, she could have left the keys in the lock so she could open the drawer quickly. So, either the drawer was unlocked when she slept or she woke up and just had time to unlock it. Either way, she didn’t have time to get to the gun.” With these last words, Banyan saw that Ray was fighting not to let the heartache out, determined to see this through. “Okay, Ray?”

  “Yes. Let’s keep going. Please.”

  “All right.” He remembered some of what he’d been thinking just before he tanked in October. “The windows to her bedroom were open a bit and could have provided easy, quiet entry. But they were untouched. Instead, the window in the other bedroom was broken with most of the glass on the floor, meaning something whacked it from the outside to make a way in. I don’t get it.”

  “What don’t you get?”

  He was trying not to push too hard. It had to be tough on her. “Well, if they came in through the broken window, the crash of that breaking glass most likely would have awakened her. That gives her time to grab the gun before anyone comes from the second bedroom into her room. It eliminates surprise and increases the chances that she’d have shot whoever came in.”

  She was holding on, resolute. “I kind of see where you’re going, but at this rate, we’ll only get through one file by the time Ernie cuts us off. Let me take pics of all the pages we want to review and send them to my computer.”

  Still deep into his line of thought, Banyan didn’t respond.

  “Rusty?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry. Glad you’re here to keep things on track.” He also was just plain glad she was there, with him.

  While she did the wireless work with her iPhone, he jotted down the details he wanted to check first. He didn’t know what to think about the trace of heroin that was found on the bedspread. It was too far out in left field to have anything to do with Jolene. But it was an item for his notes. In thirty more minutes, they were done.

  #

  They wrapped up with Captain Quintana, sitting in his office. Banyan said he owed him. The homicide chief agreed. He also firmed up the reporting requirements, telling Banyan to provide updates to him or his subordinates at least weekly even if he had no new leads, not to wait for one big confessional. He needed to get his men on anything new ASAP.

  “By the way, excuse my manners for not asking before; how are Marcie and the kids?”

  “I don’t deserve them, you know that.”

  “It goes without saying. How you landed her is the eighth wonder of the world. And you’re just lucky your kids got her looks and smarts.”

  Quintana smiled. “Can’t argue that.”

  “Our best to them.” Getting up to go, Banyan said, “We’ll get out of your way, now. Looks like you’ve got several full plates. Maybe next time, I’ll call ahead and we can do a proper lunch.”

  The captain stood and gave Ray a quick hug. He looked at Banyan and as they shook hands, held his arm and asked, “You really doing okay?” He could see in Banyan’s eyes that it was just below the surface—aching, raw, dangerous.

  “Yeah, Ernie. Okay.”

  For a while after his friend had walked down the corridor and out of the building with Raylene, Quintana stood in the doorway wondering which direction the case would take next.

  SIX

  In the Tundra, Banyan found himself remembering meeting a little kid a lifetime ago. A small crowd of former players, girlfriends, youngsters and folks from the local neighborhood had gathered on the sidelines to witness the mayhem of a pre-season football practice at John Muir High School in Pasadena. Among the onlookers, a tall, teen-aged Banyan had been watching his friend, Chris Reed, running plays as a senior flankerback for the Mustangs when his attention had been drawn away from the practice to a seven-year-old Chicano boy who was being used as a tackling dummy by some teenagers. Banyan had strolled over to the group, quickly intervened and faced down the bullies, flattening two of them.

  “You hurt?”

  The kid had gone to stand up his bicycle which the teens had kicked over. “Naw.” Then, looking at the grass, “Thanks.”

  “I’m Rusty,” sticking out his hand and bending down.

  “Ernie,” the boy had smiled and reached up to firmly shake the hand that engulfed his.

  #

  “Rusty?” Raylene had been quiet since they left Quintana’s office and her voice was a thousand miles away. “Rusty?” with a tap on his forearm.

  “Huh . . . what?”

  “Where were you? What were you thinking about?”

  “Just rummaging around in my brain.” He hoped he hadn’t sideswiped too many cars while adrift in his memories. He must have been on autopilot for some time and didn’t even remember getting on Laguna Canyon Road.

  Soon, they were nearing his father’s house. The enclave of Emerald Bay was one of the early exclusive residential areas on the beach side of Pacific Coast Highway in Laguna. Hillside beachfront living at its best had its roots there in the 1920s. The architectural styles were as different as the residents, all of whom shared a love for the tranquil bay and dramatic ocean vistas. Home values in Emerald Bay averaged about a million dollars more than those in the City of Laguna Beach as a whole. Properties selling for eight figures weren’t unheard of.

  Russell Banyan had started a small precision instrument company in the early 1950s that quickly gained a reputation for quality and service. When Honeywell came calling, he filled a need and business took off. Within two years, his workforce had quadrupled and he moved from Santa Ana to a larger plant in Anaheim. He also bought one of the original Emerald Bay houses just a few lots up from the beach on the south side of the development. He, his wife and young son settled into the private community and a life with sand between their toes. Built as a spacious two bedroom, two bath ranch, the senior Banyan had the home gutted and extensively renovated in early 1980s. The new house was forty-five hundred square feet on two floors, with five bedrooms, five baths, and guest quarters—a curious undertaking as by that time he had long been a widower and, aside from the occasional girlfriend and housekeeper, the only occupant.

  #

  Turning right off of Broadway onto PCH, about a mile from the Emerald Bay entrance gate, the familiar tension in his neck and jaw returned. While the house was big enough for them to have their privacy away from his father and the twenty-four-hour caregivers, it felt awkward. He didn’t care to be under the same roof, and he knew there would be no conciliatory words between them.

  “Rusty, I know you don’t want me to say it again, but it’s important for you to reach out to him. You won’t get another chance to forgive him.”

  The whole deal about staying there had been Ray’s idea. She had driven down the day before, and they’d spent the night at his place. But for years she had wanted Banyan to reconcile with his father, more than ever then as he was succumbing to stage IV metastatic prostate cancer. So, she all but insisted that they go to the Emerald Bay house. Banyan hardly had the heart to tell her no with what she was going through, but he refused to fake it with his father. Besides, the effects of dementia and the pain medications made it almost impossible to have a coherent conversation with him.

  “Ray, you know I’d do anything for you, especially now, but when my mother needed him, when she was desperate for some semblance of a caring husband, he chose contracts over compassion. Some days I’d come home from school and find her in bed with the covers pulled high. Completely exhausted and overcome by her depression. He could have taken time off, had someone else run the company, anything. But he just let it happen. She was only thirty-two when she died.”

  “It must have been excruciating for you as a young boy, but it’s for your own well-being, Rusty. You need to do this for your own good.”

  He pulled into the stone driveway and stopped. He knew Ray had heard it all before, bu
t he couldn’t help it. Looking straight ahead, he said, “I can’t forgive him for letting her just fade away and I want nothing to do with him. But here I am, still hooked to his bank account and even now, I have trouble looking at myself in the mirror. What I was able to do, though, to help others, gave me a purpose and maybe a little salvation. You helped me discover it years ago, Raylene. I owe that to you. And I can live with that, or at least I’m working on it.”

  “But don’t you see?” She had her hand on his wrist. “If that’s the case, if you can’t forgive him and yourself, no one can live with you. No one.”

  Raylene was the most important person in the world to him and they loved each other deeply. They were friends and lovers, companions and partners. But, there was always this chasm between them, this raw, angry, unyielding part of him that shadowed his days.

  He could feel her eyes on him and couldn’t raise his. “Damn me, anyway, Ray. You’re going through all this now . . . and all that happened to you as a child.” His voice trailed off and, slightly tilting his head toward her, he squeezed her hand and opened the door. When they got to the entrance, he turned to her and, taking her hands, said, “Don’t give up on me, Ray.”

  She pulled her hands free and reached up to his face and kissed him. “Never.”

  SEVEN

  Inside they were met by Chandra, the care nurse. Russell Banyan was slipping and she thought he had only a week at most.

  Raylene touched his shoulder, then went off toward the doors to the deck on the opposite side of the house. He walked across the living room adorned with Christmas garlands over the rough-hewn fireplace mantel and a perfect tree in the corner window, and down the hall to the master suite where his father lay propped up in the hospital bed with a view of the expanse of Emerald Bay and the deeper blue of the Pacific beyond. But he couldn’t see it.

  Banyan sat in the chair beside the bed, gazing at his father’s face. His eyes were fixed straight ahead, noticeably sunken, slightly glazed. His mouth was open and his breathing quite slow and shallow.

  “Dad.” He leaned forward to catch his father’s eye. “Dad.”

  “Oh, who’s that? That you, Rusty?”

  “Yes. It’s me.”

  “Is Liz ready? She’s coming to pick me up. We’re late for Rusty’s funeral. Sunrise.”

  Banyan tried to make sense of it but couldn’t. The hospice nurse had explained that as death nears, the brain is sorting through the files, organizing life events, getting ready for the journey. With an assist from the morphine drip, the message was not always making sense to those listening in on the process. Maybe his father was thinking about Banyan’s mother’s funeral, just getting the names mixed up. Or maybe he knows something I don’t, he joked to himself.

  “How do they measure it exactly in half?”

  More files management, he guessed. Staring at his father, he tried to think of any redeeming characteristics, any lasting influences on him. And, while to a large degree he had to take care of himself from the time his mother starting withdrawing, there were two things his father had done that defined much of his life.

  Though the opportunities were limited by his absences, Russell had taken little Rusty to the beach and taught him how to swim in the ocean, how to read currents and rips and feel at home in the surf. Banyan had his father’s athletic genes and was a smooth and gifted athlete. Tall and lithe, he had been taken for ten or twelve when he was seven, and was making moves on a surfboard at Thalia and Brooks streets that had caught the eyes of older surfers. While inside he craved the attention of the older beach crowd, he remained sullen and aloof. His reputation as a surfer grew when one of the early quarterly issues of The Surfer carried two photos of him showing a little of his style at Dana Point in 1961. The fame had repercussions and this led to the second thing his father did for him.

  On a routine day at Doheny, a 17-year-old cut in on the younger surfer and pushed him off his board, yelling, “Hey, big time. Bitchin’ ride.”

  Banyan retrieved his board and while the other surfer was laughing with his buddies waiting on the next set, he paddled out straight toward him, driving the nose of his board into the surfer’s knee, and sprang from his kneeling position. Surprise worked for a moment, but the older, bigger, stronger kid and his friends gave Banyan a beating. When he’d seen his son’s cut and bruised face, Russell had wasted no time in sending him to Bruce Tegner’s self-defense course in L.A. From that point on, Banyan had had no trouble understanding that fighting involved getting the upper hand early by sizing up the opponent, the direction of imminent threat and the degree of harm you needed to inflict without hesitation.

  Surfing was his lifelong passion and escape. Defending himself, being the dog in others’ fights, and using intimidation in special circumstances were what he had become good at. Plus, strong-arming was just plain useful occasionally, whether or not he was on the job. He guessed he should appreciate that his father saw to it he benefited from these gifts. For better or worse, he had to acknowledge his father’s role in who he was.

  #

  That evening, reclining on chaises on the deck and lulled by the sound of the ocean, he and Raylene took in the stillness. Christmas lights and more elaborate decorations shone throughout Emerald Bay. He was chagrined that Ray again had tried to get him to connect with his father one last time while she was so torn up inside. That was Raylene, though—caring, giving, lifting others. But try as she might, it wasn’t happening. In his mind, his father was dead and he needed to focus all his energy on uncovering what had happened to Jolene.

  “Raylene, we will find out. We will find her. I won’t stop until we do.”

  “I know. I don’t have the same need for justice as you. But I do need to know. That’s all I want now. My heart won’t be in it, but if I can help you, I will.” Her voice had strength but she was pretty close to being spent. It had been a rough day.

  “Let’s hit the rack.” He got up from the chaise and took her hand.

  #

  In bed on the second level, she asked him to hold her. She suffered in silence, but he could feel her tears on his chest. Eventually, they fell asleep listening to the surf.

  EIGHT

  “I’ll go by the mortuary on my way out the Canyon to make arrangements for cremation,” Banyan told Chandra in the morning. “If he dies while I’m away, just call them and they will handle everything. I’ll get the ashes later.” Some time ago, his father had told him that he wanted some of his ashes placed on Liz Banyan’s grave, the rest in the ocean. He hadn’t said anything at the time, but there was no way any part of his father’s remains was going to Forest Lawn. He would honor the ocean part.

  “I understand, Mr. Banyan. Don’t worry; I will take care of it,” Chandra answered matter-of-factly.

  He and Ray then drove over to Banyan’s cottage on upper Lombardy and had a couple more cups of coffee before she said she’d better get back to Wrightwood.

  “Just thinking about you driving back up into that winter chill in those snowy mountains when it’s plenty comfortable here in Laguna puts me on edge, Ray. Why not stay here for at least another day or two? Enjoy the sun; take it easy.”

  She smiled while shaking her head. “It is enticing but not now. I really want to keep busy and there’s plenty of work at the lodge during the holidays.”

  He saw her off and said he should be in La Canada by early afternoon and would check in with her then.

  After cleaning up the place and packing a few items in a duffle in case he stayed inland for a night or two, he jogged down a couple blocks to the Laguna Health Club on Glenneyre. For years, the owner had let him clear a small area in the back corner to work out on the heavy bag as long as he didn’t scare off the other clientele in the compact gym. For thirty grueling minutes he kicked and punched, the thwack of the strikes from hands and feet, and his rhythmic exhalations filling the club. Banyan hadn’t maintained even a modest level of fitness in the past few months, nothing to justify mod
erate exercise, let alone the intensity of that workout. While he needed to jumpstart the most important job he would ever take on, as he finished up he knew he would regret it. Should’ve shortened the session. He would be sore and slow as a sloth over the next week. It was not a propitious start.

  Following a stretching routine that produced little relief, he left the club and crossed PCH to the beach to finish his cool-down. He continued north along the shore toward Main Beach. Then, below the Wyland Galleries, he stripped off his sweatshirt and took a very quick, refreshing dip in the sixty-four degree Pacific. Walking past the Hotel Laguna, he drew some comfort from seeing his mentor sitting on his favorite boardwalk bench near the playground. A young woman was standing behind the bench, grinning at a child who’d run from the swings to tell her something.

  For a moment, Banyan was back in the mid-1980s, looking toward that same spot. He hadn’t seen Raylene since those few spring days when they’d met on the beach and become, in her words, big brother and little sister. She’d gone off to Northern Arizona University to earn her degree in business administration and he’d slowly begun cleaning up his act. He hadn’t responded to any of her numerous letters, so she’d given up. Almost four years had passed when he’d received a call from her. She was in Laguna and wanted to talk. He had jogged down to the sand and then strode to Main Beach. Searching the boardwalk, he’d spotted her seated on one end of the bench, and a middle-aged man seated on the other. He’d run through the sand and up the stairs, and they’d hugged each other. Then he’d looked down at the nine-month-old infant she’d been holding in one arm. At first reticent, Banyan’s broad smile had quickly returned and he’d come through with, “Well, if I were a betting man, I’d guess you’re not baby-sitting.” After kissing Ray’s forehead, he’d asked, “And, who is this little one?” That was when she’d introduced him to Jolene. The man who’d nodded and smiled along with them so many years before was the same man who at that moment raised his arm halfway in greeting.