1968
THE WIND BLEW HARD that day, the first strong Santa Ana wind of the season. October second, hot and dry. The kind of wind that got you a static shock every time you touched something that would conduct. Touch a metal doorknob, you got a little blue zap. Kiss your sweetheart, same thing, a sharp little arc cracked from lip to lip.
Nick got the possible 187 at 4:48 that afternoon and was rolling by 5:09. The delay was thanks to his partner, Al “Lucky” Lobdell, who was talking to his wife on the phone about their son. Kevin was seventeen, having troubles. Lucky’s voice had been soft and grave.
Nick drove. Lucky sat across from him in the Fairlane. Chewing gum, staring out at the wind-bent trees as if seeing them for the first time.
“Two murders in two days,” said Lobdell. “The Laguna thing had to be queers.”
“Laguna PD’s playing it pretty tight,” said Nick. The Sheriff’s Department had gotten the statewide bulletin from Laguna Beach PD that morning. Fatal stabbing at the Boom Boom Bungalow, a beachfront motel that catered to men. No suspect, no witnesses. Dead victim was Adrian Stalling, age twenty, of Bakersfield.
“A stiff at the Boom Boom,” said Lobdell. “Ours is at the old packinghouse near Tustin?”
“That’s right, Al.”
“Should have torn it down years ago. City Council tried to, but it’s just outside the city limits.”
“Yeah. It’s been empty awhile.”
“Bums and rats. Kids doing the wrong things. That was Shirley on the phone. Kevin got suspended from school today for cussing a teacher. Like he does his mom. Three days of suspension.”
“Sorry to hear that, Lucky.”
“Not as sorry as me.”
“What were you doing when you were seventeen?”
Lobdell looked at Nick, then back through the window. Lucky was a big man, barrel chest and small feet. He seemed preoccupied at times, like his back was up against a wall that Nick couldn’t see.
“I graduated early with job credits,” said Lobdell. “Joined the army.”
Nick steered off Fourth Street to Newport, then drove the service road along the railroad tracks. Still a few groves around the packinghouse. Gravel popped under the chassis and the orange leaves shifted in the wind. Silver and green and silver again. Sun bright and low in the west.
Nick thought of himself and his brothers tossing the SunBlesst packinghouse crate labels in the air on a day like this. That dark-haired beauty and her big orange raining out of the sky for days. Remembered the rumble. The crack of Lenny Vonn’s nose. The terrific pain when they clubbed his head with the tree branch. And Andy flying out of the trees to spear Lenny Vonn. Clay. All because of Clay. Be five years next month since he died. November 22. And the war getting worse and worse.
Nick parked the Ford by the railroad tracks. Tustin PD had a couple of units there, and the Sheriff’s had two more.
And Andy’s convertible Corvair Spyder. Custom rims and an ice blue paint job. White top, turbocharged. Press card taped to the inside of the windshield. Andy was a hotshot reporter now for the Journal. Won Orange County Press Club awards left and right. Had a police band radio in his car, another in his house, another on his desk at the Journal building in Costa Mesa. Said he never turned them off, which was probably true. Made half the crime scenes faster than the detectives. Middle of the night on some dismal 187 down in the bad section of Santa Ana there was Andy with his ice blue Corvair and his notebook.
Nick got his case from the trunk. Brand new. Bought his own, the kind with the lock. Organized exactly how he wanted it. Good feeling, to have the tools you need and know how to use them.
He climbed up the rotting old steps of the packinghouse. Smelled the creosote. Felt the boards giving under his feet as he walked across the platform toward the big sliding doors. Heard the metal roof shimmying in the wind. Saw the stains on the roof where the nails had rusted through. He could still see the faint image of the SunBlesst girl and her orange. Faded with age. Her face alone as big as he was.
Inside, the sunlight came through the wall slats in slanting beams. Dust rose in the shafts and a feather zigzagged lazily down. Nick heard the flapping and cooing above him. Didn’t bother to look.
It was pretty much just one huge room. Rafters high up. Big industrial light housings still hanging, dented up from kids heaving rocks at them. Bulbs long shattered. Mullioned windows along all four sides, glass busted out years ago. Some of the safety screen still twisting from the frames. A row of desks, drawers gone, along one wall. Floor covered with crate labels and old newspapers that shifted in the drafts. Little circles of rocks where the bums had lit fires. Probably burned the labels to stay warm, Nick thought.
“Some kids found her,” said one of the Tustin officers. He led Nick and Lobdell toward the far northwest corner of the building. “There was no lock on the door.”
Nick stepped over a fire ring made of concrete blocks. Reached down for a sheet of newspaper. The Santa Ana Register. May 23, 1968. Date kind of blurred on him for a second. Still saw double once in a while. Still had a little trouble with his balance. Nothing big. Damned Vonns. Damn Clay. Damned mean beautiful Clay Becker. Back when Clay died Nick thought his heart was going to explode because he couldn’t do anything about it. Not one goddamned thing.
The wind slammed into the building and the metal roof shimmied again. Paper skidded across the floor. The pigeons flapped and circled and receded back into the dark of the ceiling. Feathers floating in reeds of light.
“Old buildings always smell the same,” said Lobdell. “Always smell like old rat piss. No matter if they got rats in them or not.”
“That’s human piss.”
“You’re a piss expert?”
“I guess.”
Nick wondered if Lobdell was thick or just acted that way. Maybe it was a way to deflect things or to sneak up on them. They’d been partners two days. This was Nick’s first murder as a lead detective in the homicide detail. Lucky Lobdell had already told him that Nicky boy was going to call the shots. He was going to swim hard or sink fast. When he’d said it, Nick had seen nothing but stubborn challenge in Lobdell’s small gray eyes.
The uniforms stood in a wide semicircle. Andy was a part of it. He had his pen in his right hand and his notepad up. A camera around his neck. Stopped writing when Nick and Lobdell got there. Nick had not seen an expression like that on Andy’s face since they’d stood holding hands in the old Becker house five Novembers ago.
They were standing around a bunch of old mattresses. Half a dozen of them strewn about. Stained and flattened. Mixed in with the newspapers and crate labels and some filthy blankets.
The body lay on one of them. On her front. A powder blue turtleneck sweater and underwear. Arms out, legs together. Skin blue-white in the packinghouse gloom. Neck of the sweater empty, collapsed, black-red. Her head lay ten feet away, over on its side like someone had kicked it there. Some blood on the mattresses and floorboards. Purple-black on the old brown wood. Not as much as Nick would have thought.
Nick moved past the officers and Andy got up closer. Knelt down and looked across the dirty floorboards at the head.
“Unholy shit,” he said quietly.
“Goddamn,” said Lobdell. “It’s the beauty queen, isn’t it? The one they took her crown back?”
Nick heard him light a cigarette. Saw the match trail a wisp of smoke down the far periphery of his vision. Saw Andy on the edge of his vision, too. But he couldn’t move. Couldn’t take his eyes off the sleepy-eyed, composed, and once beautiful face.
“Janelle Vonn,” Nick whispered. “Unholy shit.”
“Maybe your brother here can write you up some better lines,” said Lobdell.
Nick finally stood. Trembled for just a second. First case and you know her.
I am Janelle Vonn and those are my brothers.
“Deputies, seal off this scene,” he said. “Set up an entry log by the sliding door. Everybody signs in. Everybody signs out. Don’t leave the door unattended. Andy, you gotta stay back and out of the way. Soon as another reporter gets here, you’ll have to leave.”
“Got it.”
NICK SKETCHED the scene into his new clean notebook. He paced off approximate measurements and made a note to get exact ones later. Vonn Crime Scene-10/02/68. He used his compass to get the orientation right. Asked the Identification Bureau deputy to start the photography, black-and-white, then color. Start with Janelle. He watched the deputy coroner place a gloved hand on the bottom of Janelle Vonn’s foot to guess body temp and help estimate time of death.
There was no lock on the door.
He was interrupted by the assistant coroner, an assistant prosecutor, chief and assistant chief of the Tustin PD, a ranking OCSD lieutenant, and a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. A crowd had formed along the tracks. Nick felt like a greeter, then a host, then a bouncer. Andy didn’t have to be told to leave.
He and Lobdell made a pass with flashlights. It was hard to see, the way the sunlight slanted through the wallboards and all the debris.
Nick watched the ID men collect. He missed this part of it, the physical gathering of evidence. Flashlights and tweezers and paper bags. They started about ten yards away from Janelle Vonn and worked closer in a big circle. Came up with an empty matchbook from a local bar called the Epicure. An empty matchbook with a plain white cover. A wadded Juicy Fruit wrapper that didn’t look old. Empty pack of Camels, six feet from the body, cellophane wrap could hold latents. A ballpoint pen that was out of ink.
About fifty inches away from Janelle’s body, underneath a section of newspaper, one of the ID men found a St. Christopher medal on a chain. A circular gold frame with an inset purple enamel bust of the saint. No stains. No rust. Looked new. Knocked off in a struggle?
Lobdell snorted, walking fast and toeing things out of the way around the ID men. Flashlight beam zigging and zagging. Nick watched him for a second. Wondered how you could spot anything moving that fast.
Then Lobdell stopped and stared down. Held his flashlight in both hands like a baseball bat. Took a slo-mo swing. Good hip rotation. Watched the ball sail out of the packinghouse. The pigeons cooed and fluttered. Nick thought if it was up to him he’d put Lobdell in Traffic or behind a desk where he could do a lousy job of less important things than murder.
“Lobdell connects. Hey, Nicky boy, I just homered. Check this.”
He was way off on his own, almost in the northeast corner. Over a hundred feet from Janelle Vonn, easy.
When Nick came up Lobdell stopped chewing his gum and aimed his flashlight beam onto a handsaw covered in blood. Right there on one of the old crate labels. A pruning saw, the kind with the blade that folds back into a wooden handle. For trees and shrubs. No blade, just the bloody handle with the wood ripped where the bolt and blade had broken away. And under it the SunBlesst girl still trying to give away that orange.
“Let’s get some pictures of this thing,” said Lobdell. “What do you think, Nicky? Look around, maybe you can find the blade.”
NICK KNELT and held his flashlight while Dale Rainor, the assistant coroner, ran a magnifying glass over Janelle Vonn. Marks on her throat, he could see them through the blood. Some hairs and fibers. Nick thought the stiff, shiny slicks on her underpants might be semen. Good, he thought: blood types. Good old ABO. Best thing they could get besides an eyewitness. When they were done with Janelle’s back side Nick put on rubber gloves and helped Rainor arrange the body bag. Helped turn her over into it. Her neck was a black stump and her arms and legs were stiff with rigor and Nick was suddenly sickened and furious.
“I’ll get him,” he said.
“What they all say,” said Lobdell, blowing smoke.
“This is personal.”
“Everything in this job’s personal for about six months.”
“INVESTIGATOR BECKER, SIR? You may want to see this.”
Nick joined the deputy in the great doorway of the packinghouse. In the blustery twilight two Tustin PD uniforms marched a man down the tracks toward their unit. The man was a tangle of hair and beard. Weird eyes. Red-faced, filthy jeans and a black T-shirt. A denim jacket lined with dirty fleece. Boots with no laces. Cuffed and struggling but no match for the big men holding each arm. His mouth a black hole in the beard. He was snarling at the officers but the wind snatched the sounds and scattered them into the air.
Nick clomped across the old wood, went down the wobbly steps. Hustled down the tracks toward the Tustin car. Could smell the guy from ten feet away. The officers pulled him to a stop when Nick got close.
“Found Wolfman here snoring out in the grove,” said Officer Huber. “Won’t give us his name. Why don’t you show him your arm, Wolfie?”
The man growled.
“Show him your arm,” said Huber. Huber tried to turn him around but the man twisted a laceless boot into the ground and resisted.
“Didn’t do it,” he mumbled.
Nick shot a look at Huber and the big man shrugged.
“You didn’t do what?” asked Nick.
“The girl in there.” Wolfman fixed Nick with his very pale tan eyes. He really did look like a wolf. The eyes held no emotion that Nick could identify.
“Did you see what happened?” Nick asked.
“I didn’t touch her.”
“Of course you didn’t. Let’s go sit in the back of that car over there. Get comfortable. Have a talk.”
“Look at this,” Huber said, twisting the man around by one arm.
Huber clamped his hand on the man’s wrist, just above the cuff. Yanked up the sleeve of the filthy fleece-lined jacket, all the way up past the elbow.
Get ready for needle tracks by the hundred, thought Nick. The hypodermic highway.
Instead, he saw a black patch of hair, thick as a dog’s, running from the man’s knuckles almost to his elbow. The whole top half of his forearm. Like a patch of Labrador retriever grafted onto a man.
Wolfman growled and snapped at Nick and Nick flinched.
Huber and Graff laughed. Nick laughed, too. That or piss his pants.
He helped the officers get Wolfman into the back of the PD cruiser. The book told him to leave the cuffs on but it didn’t seem right so he took them off. Then he shut the door and got into the front seat, passenger side. Left the door open because of the smell.
“Smoke?” asked Nick, offering a cigarette through the mesh divider.
“Okay.”
“Stick the end back through.”
Nick flipped open his Zippo with one hand, torched the Tareyton. “What’s your name?”
Wolfman sat back and took a deep lungful of smoke.
“Terry Neemal.”
“Spell that?”
Neemal did and Nick wrote it down.
“I’m Nick Becker. You going to tell me the truth, Terry? Or give me a bunch of crazy Wolfman shit?”
“Those guys started the Wolfman shit. I can’t help the arm.”
“I’ll treat you like a man if you’ll treat me like one.”
“I didn’t touch that girl.”
“See her go in?”
“No. But I saw a guy go in. It was dark so I didn’t see too good. Saw him go up the steps. After that, all I could do was hear. But not so good, because of the wind.”
“Where were you?”
“Out in the trees. I can’t sleep where it stinks.”
“When did you go in?”
“This morning. To see if anyone left anything good. I used the door because I heard them slide it open last night. Sometimes it’s got a lock on it. Then someone smashes it off. Then they put on another one. So I use a window. But one time I cut my leg climbing in and it got infected bad. I went in and looked around and there she was.”
“How come you didn’t call us?”
“None of my business. Didn’t have a dime, either.”
“Are you kidding me, Terry? A girl gets her head cut off and it’s not your business?”
Terry shrugged and looked down. Nick looked at the deep lines in the weathered face. The miles-away indifference in the pale brown eyes. Drugs, maybe. Insanity. Both. Guessed him early thirties. Close to his own age.
“But you didn’t split, either,” said Nick. “How come?”
“I thought when the cops came I’d sneak off into the trees.”
“But you were snoring, so they found you.”
Neemal nodded.
Nick thought about taking the guy downtown right now. He’d take him there later, anyhow. For sure. But he thought he could engage the man more easily now, and he seemed ready to talk. The nutcases he’d seen, they’d talk a blue streak for half an hour when they felt like it, then not say a word for six months. Or go completely batty. Or kill themselves.
“Got another smoke?”
Nick pushed another one through the mesh. “Terry, I’m going to tape-record this, if you don’t mind. It’s better for both of us.”
Neemal shrugged again and Nick wondered how much time he had.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Nick said.
“Funny.”
“Get your ID out if you got one.”
“They took it away at Atascadero. That was a long time ago.”
Nick hustled into the packinghouse, got his new case, and trotted through the wind back to Terry Neemal.
AT ONE that morning Nick was still at his desk. The wind was still howling through the county, rattling the black windowpanes of the Sheriff’s Department building. Tape recorder and a legal pad in front of him. A bag of Carl’s Jr. fast food, too, stains working into the paper. Food cold by now and barely touched.
Terry Neemal was in custody.
A padlock had been found in the grove not far from the SunBlesst packinghouse. It was a good Schlage.
Janelle Vonn’s purse had been found not far from the lock. It was a loose leather bag with fringe on the bottom and a drawstring on the top. Sold by Neck Deep Leather, Laguna Beach. What a lousy name for a store, thought Nick. Wallet with a California driver’s license and eighty-five in cash. House and car keys. A Mercury Savings & Loan checking account with a balance of just over two grand. An address and phone book. A date book. Personal items, including a diaphragm and spermicidal gel, hairbrush, lipstick, nail files, ballpoint pens, scraps of paper with phone numbers and notes scribbled on them.
In the date book box for Tuesday, the day she died, Nick had read: Red & Ho 7.
They’d found a black miniskirt and a pair of boots thrown into a far dark corner of the packinghouse.
They’d not found the saw blade.
Now Nick’s own voice came from the tape recorder and he checked his handwritten transcription. The inside of his first knuckle, middle finger, right hand, had a shiny divot in it that had started to bleed.
Chase bad guys all day, Nick thought. See a young woman with her head sawed off, interview a psycho, and you get bloody making notes.
Q: Describe him again.
A: Regular-sized guy. Hard shoes the way they sounded on the wood. A jacket maybe. Something bulky around him. It was dark and cool by then. I told you all this. I couldn’t see that good.
Q: What time did you say?
A: Midnight. I don’t got a watch but I know what time it is usually. Remember I told you that?
Q: Bulky, like a coat or a sweater?
A: Maybe bigger. Longer.
Q: Like what, a blanket or an overcoat?
A: Maybe like that. (Yawn) I’m getting tired, Nick.
Q: Just a few more questions.
A: When I was little I always thought there was ghosts in wind like that out there. You know, like the wind was so strong it would gather the ghosts up, pull them right off of things. Scared me. I’d hide under the bed. And these balls of cat hair would come rolling along the floor in the draft. Right at me. Thought they were the ghosts coming to get me.
Q: Interesting. Did you kill her, Terry?
A: Not me. I’m still telling the truth.
Q: Tell me what you did after you found her.
A: Seems like about the twentieth time you asked me that.
Q: It’s the seventh.
A: I’m really getting sleepy now.
Q: Come on, Terry. Just once more, from the time you found her. Look, if you killed her, that’s okay. I understand and you can just say so, then we can get this over with and move along to the next thing.
A: I didn’t kill her. Even if I had an opportunity I could not have been the one that killed her.
Q: And why is that?
A: Because I never hurt anybody in my life.
Q: People here say different, Terry. Your old juvenile investigator works burg-theft now. He gave me a nice little rundown of the people you hurt and fires you set and things you stole.
A: That was my family.
Q: You set your brother on fire when you were eight. He was four. He almost died.
A: I already told you that doesn’t count.
Q: I’m not seeing any logic there, Terry. But I’ll take your word for it. Okay? Now tell me what happened after you found the girl in there. You sure her head was off, or did that maybe happen later?
A: No. It was off, Nick. I wouldn’t forget something like that.
It was 3 A.M. when Nick parked along the tracks outside the SunBlesst packinghouse. Didn’t mean to slam the Fairlane door but the wind came up just as he pushed. Just about took the door handle out of his hand.
He followed his flashlight beam up the steps and across the platform. The crime scene tape slapped against the wallboards. There was a new combination lock on the door and nobody had told him the numbers. He stood in front of the SunBlesst woman’s big faded smile, listened to the crime scene tape rippling on the old wood.
Nick walked around back, picked an empty window, climbed up and over. Smell of creosote again, and pee and old fires. And the faint sweet smell of citrus, blown through the cracks by the wind.
The beam danced through the trash as Nick moved toward where the body had been. Pigeons shifting above.
He held the light steady on the blood. Still surprised there wasn’t more.
Knelt. Thought.
Janelle. Freckle-faced little girl with an orange in her hands. Tutu and a guitar. Molested by her brothers. Dope and booze by fourteen. Then Andy’s article, different names but some people figured it out. David’s church took her in. Miss Tustin till she did a Playboy magazine cover. All that a year ago but pretty quiet since. Heard she’d quit the dope and booze. Going to college, wasn’t she? Nineteen and all that behind her and her head sawed off in a filthy packinghouse.
Nick listened to the wind outside, let his light beam roam the big wooden cavern. Stood up and started out. Saw one of the floorboards by the window was busted. Reached down and yanked. Going to get this fucker. The nails shrieked in the wood and the pigeons blasted into flight, frantic wings in the dark. The board broke off in Nick’s hand. Nails still in it. Nick threw it through the window and climbed out.