NICK WALKED INTO the Tustin Union High School varsity locker room before first period. A little woozy from lack of sleep. Like he was half dreaming. Three hours of del Gado’s tapes the night before, to bed at 1 A.M. but slept lousy. Then up at five for two more hours of tapes. Hadn’t said more than two words to Katy or the kids.
Nothing solid on the tapes. Janelle and Black. Janelle and Cory. Janelle and her sister, Lynette. Janelle and a bunch of other names Nick didn’t recognize. Small talk. Party talk. Gossip. Nothing. But the sound of her voice made her seem alive and Nick kept picturing her at the Thanksgiving dinner all those years ago. And at David’s church.
Lobdell had taken the morning off to take his son to the doctor. In addition to behaving badly, Kevin was never hungry and he was losing weight. Grades falling and he was sullen and mean and tired all the time. He’d dropped out of sports last year. Too bad because he could tackle anyone alive and hit a baseball a mile. Lucky said maybe there was a medical explanation for Kevin. And said he’d talk to Price Herald, the Laguna drug dealer, if he had the time.
The morning was cool and clear and the campus stirred Nick’s memory in a good way.
The locker room hadn’t changed much since he went all-CIF for the Tillers in fifty-five and fifty-six. Smell of soap and mildew and liniment, of old drains and sweat. It was quiet now, no lockers screeching open and banging shut. No coaches bellowing over towel fights and screaming students. Just the steady drip of the old showers and the echo of the drip.
Nick confirmed that the Tiller record board had been updated. His single-game rushing and season rushing records had both fallen just last year. He was still on the board for two second places, which made him proud in a modest way.
He found the locker he used for all three of his varsity years. The padlock looked exactly like the one he’d had, a black Master. He remembered the combination-38-28-34-because a classmate had once told him those were Marilyn Monroe’s measurements. The locker room made him think of the playing field and the field made him think of the crowd and the crowd made him think of Katy. He’d played those games for the contest, but also for her. He imagined her bouncing around in the red, black, and white of the Tustin cheerleading squad. Saw her midair in an off-the-back jump, with the stadium lights beaming down and her hair flying up. Now it seemed like an old cliché. But then it was life itself.
Howard Langton, the offense coach, watched Nick approach through the safety window that separated the staff office from the lockers. Stood and swung open the door.
“Thanks for the time, Howard,” said Nick.
“You’re welcome, Nick. Come in. It’s been what, five or six years since that homecoming game?”
Langton’s hand was as strong as the rest of him looked. Like he’d been carved out of something. Compact and handsome except for a bent nose. Not much neck. Monika would have called him a no-neck monster. Buzz cut, sweat shorts, white tennis shirt with an American flag pin.
Langton had gone all-Crestview League in fifty-three and all-CIF in fifty-four, leading the team during Nick’s first varsity year. He was a QB with a slingshot arm and a love of blasting through linemen and taking the linebackers and defensive backs with him. Still on the board for QB rushing and total passing points in a season. Long Beach State turned him into a safety and he started three years. Too small for the pros.
They talked football for a few minutes. Tustin had a good team this year. Some excellent kids coming up, Howard said. Graves looked good at QB and Arnie Francis was ripping off heads as defensive end.
Nick caught the unusual parallel. Howard appeared not to.
Langton’s eyes were green. Voice smooth and low. It was hard to imagine anyone hearing Coach Langton on the sideline, thought Nick. He remembered in the huddles years ago it was tough to hear Howard call the plays. And if Howard got pissed at the blockers he’d yank off his chin strap in the huddle and ping it hard off a lineman’s helmet. About deafen you.
“So what’s up, Nick?”
Nick nodded, slipped out his notebook and pen. “Janelle. Mind?”
“No. Not at all.”
“You taught her civics, didn’t you?”
“Yes. She was a good student. A good girl.”
“And she lived with you and your family from-let me check my notes here-”
“It was December of sixty-five through March of sixty-six. I can remember her and my girls playing the Beatles and Stones on that portable hi-fi Janelle had.”
“She loved music, didn’t she?”
“Did she ever.”
Nick turned a page in his notebook. “How did it go when she lived with you?”
“Fine. Easy girl to have around. Your brother suggested we take her in. This was after the drugs and the problems with her brothers, but she still needed some guidance. She never set foot in my home under the influence. That I knew about, anyway. My two girls were seven and nine and they really liked her. Like having a big sister. Linda-that’s my wife-enjoyed her quite a bit. Janelle helped out with the girls. Never really had to ask her to.”
Nick nodded. “Janelle had what looked like a dinner date on her calendar for the night she was murdered. It said ‘Red and Ho-seven.’ I had no idea who Red and Ho were until my little brother got to talking with David. I was lucky. David confirmed you three had a dinner date for that night but Janelle broke it.”
“True.”
“Tell me about that.”
Howard considered Nick with his peaceful green eyes. “Janelle and Linda stayed in touch after Janelle left our home. I think Janelle looked up to Linda. To me, too. You know-people who managed to have a good marriage. So it was going to be Linda and me, David and Barbara, Janelle and her date. But she called that morning and said she couldn’t do it. No reason. She just apologized and said we’d have to do it some other time.”
“Who was her date going to be?”
Howard shrugged, then reached into his desk drawer. He palmed a pack of smokes and an ashtray to the desktop. “Linda didn’t say.”
Nick made a note of the shrug and the smokes. “Who took Janelle’s cancellation call?”
“Linda, at home.”
“How did she sound?”
“Fine,” said Langton. He lit a cigarette and dropped the pack and matches back into the desk drawer. “Linda had no reason to think anything was wrong.”
“Had you socialized with Janelle before?”
“Three dinners, since the time she was with us. Twice in restaurants. Once she cooked in an apartment in Newport. Spaghetti. Linda and I had never seen the Laguna place and we were looking forward to it.”
This pretty much matched what David had told him. Only one thing stuck out as odd. “I didn’t know she lived in Newport.”
“That was August of last year,” said Langton.
“Remember the address?”
“No, but Linda might. I’ll ask her and call you.”
“I’d like to call her myself,” said Nick. “Like to hear her version of things if you don’t mind.”
Langton looked down at the desktop. “Not at all,” he said quietly. “She works part-time in the mornings, so afternoons are best.”
Nick set his notebook on the desk and looked around the staff office. Crowded little room. Two gray metal desks, two wheeled chairs. Linoleum floor. A dragster calendar, a Green Bay Packers poster, a Vince Lombardi poster. Two industrial lamps in the ceiling, the kind with the mesh to protect the bulb. Glass walls on two sides so they could keep an eye on the kids.
“Funny,” said Nick. “I talked to the Pepito’s hostess. Janelle came in that night, with two guys. The description of the hostess fit you and David. I wondered if you two might have just fibbed a little. A married guy. A minister. A pretty ex-beauty queen who gets her head sawed off later the night you see her. Nobody wants a piece of that action.”
Langton’s expression was compact and aggressive. “I’m sure you asked your brother that.”
“Thought I’d ask you, too.”
“Janelle canceled us and went for dinner with some other guys. Pretty damned obvious, isn’t it?”
“Guys who looked like you and David.”
“What’s funny about that? There’s a million early-thirties white guys in Orange County who look more or less like us.”
“Just checking, Howard.”
“Ugly things,” Howard said softly. “I don’t want to be associated with her. I’ll admit that. Neither does David, I’m sure. Even though…I liked her. I really did.”
Nick sat back, looked around the office. Then at the locker room beyond the windows.
“What did you make of her and Roger Stoltz?”
Langton gave him a gloomy look. “He set her up with a place. Gave her money. Janelle said they were friends.”
“Ever see them together?”
“No,” said Langton. “She wasn’t open about that relationship. I mean, David and Barbara knew-I think they may have introduced her to Stoltz in the first place. We knew Stoltz was a financial supporter of Janelle.”
“He paid for that Newport Beach apartment.” Nick remembered the excitement in Andy’s voice a few hours ago. Five-thirty in the morning but Andy couldn’t wait another minute to call. Lynette and her gun. Janelle’s letters. Stoltz.
Howard Langton nodded but didn’t meet Nick’s eye.
“Do you know Cory Bonnett?” asked Nick.
“Bonnett? No.”
“Big guy. Long blond hair. Drugs and money, lives in Laguna.”
Langton shook his head. “Laguna’s full of guys like that.”
Nick looked out to the battered lockers. The old wall clock that still ran slow. The “Fear Ye Who Enter Here” placard that went on to boast of the Tustin Tiller defense. They called themselves the Harpies.
“This looks like a good thing you have here,” said Nick. “You play for the team, then a few years later you coach it.”
“It’s what I always wanted to do,” said Langton. “Now I’m thirty-three years old.”
Nick heard a door slam. Howard took a puff and ground out the cigarette. Stashed the ashtray and butt back in the desk drawer. Came up with a can, shot a half circle of room deodorant into the air and waved it with one hand. Not Orange Sunshine. A serviceman rolled past a dolly loaded with white towels, bundled and tied.
“Now that I think about it,” said Howard, “there’s no reason for you to call Linda.”
Nick had seen this coming. Too much Linda this and Linda that and he was pretty sure he had the reason. “Why’s that?”
Langton looked down at the desk. “Linda didn’t talk to Janelle. I did. About the dinner, I mean.”
“How come?”
“Guess, Nick.”
“Because you were hoping to go without your wife.”
“Yeah.”
“Because you wanted to be alone with Janelle.”
Langton shrugged again. “I don’t have to respond to that,” he said.
Nick picked up his notepad, drew a large question mark on the open page. Flipped the cover down and slipped it into his pocket.
“You’re not calling all the plays anymore, Howard. You’re a schoolteacher and a coach. So the next time I ask you a question, tell me the truth.”
“Sorry, Nick. It’s been difficult.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“She came nightclubbing up in Hollywood last month with me and some friends. Did the Whiskey and the Rainbow.”
“But I don’t need to talk to Linda about that.”
“I told her it was an offensive coordinator’s convention in Long Beach,” said Langton.
“What did you do that night? I’m talking about October the first. That’s the night Janelle was killed. Think about it if you have to because I want the truth the first time.”
Langton stood. “Home. All night. If you don’t believe it, call my wife.”
AT ELEVEN that morning Nick met Sharon Santos at Prentice Park in Santa Ana. It was a quiet little park down off First Street, not a place they’d see anyone they knew. They stood in front of the golden eagle cage, Sharon’s hair up in a scarf and her eyes hidden by dark glasses.
Nick told her they’d have to break it off. She said she understood but would miss him. Said don’t change your mind about this because I can’t go off and on like a faucet.
Nick wanted to thank her for everything but it seemed like a lousy thing to say. Wanted to say he was sorry but that was worse.
He tried to kiss her goodbye but she turned away and walked back toward her car.
JUST BEFORE lunch Nick stopped off at Representative Roger Stoltz’s office in Tustin. It was less than a mile from the SunBlesst orange packinghouse. Nick knew from yesterday’s paper that the congressman was in Washington. But Nick wanted his business card to be in Stoltz’s secretary’s hand when she called him on the phone to say that homicide detective Nick Becker had come to see him.
“May I tell him what this is about?” she asked.
“Janelle Vonn,” said Nick.
“Oh. Would you like to make an appointment? He’ll be in this office Friday afternoon, day after tomorrow.”
“Let’s do that.”
She swung open an appointment calendar, ran her pencil to the eighteenth.
Nick’s eyes went straight to the box for Tuesday, October first. Couldn’t make out the writing.
“How’s four o’clock, Mr. Becker?”
NICK SAT with Terry Neemal while the former Wolfman ate his lunch. Green bean gravy and red gelatin caught in the big mustache. Neemal avoided looking at Nick for a long time. Then he fixed Nick with tan blankness.
“What if I did it?”
Nick shrugged.
“What if I confessed?”
“Well, then you could either ask for a trial or waive your right,” said Nick. “If you waived the judge would sentence you. You’d probably get life. Maybe they’d commit you again. Talk to me, Terry.”
“Would I be a big story?”
“For the trial or sentencing, yeah. Then everybody would forget about you.”
“Seems reasonable.”
“You don’t confess for attention, Terry.”
“Who said anything about that?”
“You did. Between the lines.”
Neemal turned his face back to the tray and didn’t look up again for a long minute or two. “Your brother says God will forgive me if I just ask.”
“Forgive you for what?”
“Whatever I’ve done,” said Neemal. “Anything.”
“That’s a good deal for you, then, Terry.”
“He’s a fucked-up guy.”
“David or God?”
Neemal laughed. Tan eyes and teeth gleaming like a wet savanna, thought Nick.
“Your brother.”
“Oh yeah?”
Neemal nodded. “He’s close to God because he prays all the time. But you have to prove to me that that’s good. You get too close to some things, it’s bad. Fire. God.”
“Maybe being far away is worse.”
“God used to talk to me a lot,” said Neemal. “Directly to me. I knew His voice. Told me to do things. Told me to walk across Arizona and I did. On the highways, I mean. Not the desert. That’s a shitty way to live, God telling you what to do all the time. You’re better off far away. Where you can have your own thoughts. Your brother listens to God too much. Got to stand on your own two feet.”
“Maybe there’s some truth to that.”
“I masturbated on her. Whatever you found on her, that was mine.”
Nick said nothing for a beat. He lit two smokes, handed one to Neemal.
“Tell me about that,” said Nick.
“I just did.”
Nick studied him. “It pisses me off when you hold out on me.”
Neemal nodded without looking at Nick. He explained that his sexual desires overwhelmed him. Hadn’t happened since he was young. Had to do with the fires he set. Hoped Nick would forgive him for not bringing it up right away.
Nick listened. Remembered the half-burned pile of newspaper in the slanting packinghouse light. The smell of it. “You want to get something off your conscience?”
“I’m going to hold for right now.”
“We’re not playing blackjack. What happened to the saw blade?”
“No idea. I’m good for now. I’m done talking for now, Nick. Let me finish this Jell-O in privacy, will you?”
“Terry.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you dick with me I can’t help you.”
“I understand.”
“You’d better.”
BACK AT HIS DESK Nick returned a call from Laguna Beach PD detective Don Rae. Rae said they still hadn’t seen Bonnett, and one of his snitches was telling him Bonnett had split for Ensenada, down in Baja. Bonnett had a place down there. Rae had a friend on the Ensenada PD who was going to check it out. But another snitch said Bonnett was still around, looking to “punish” whoever killed his friend Janelle. Rae told Nick to be careful with Bonnett-the gun, the knife, and the temper.
“Big guy,” said Rae. “Just be careful.”
“Is his Cessna at Orange County?”
“No. And no flight plan filed, either.”
Nick thanked him and hung up. Wondered if he could handle a twenty-two-year-old six-foot-four-inch 245-pound ex-athlete bent on shooting, stabbing, or kicking the shit out of him. Nick had eight more years of wear and tear. He was four inches shorter. Got dizzy sometimes from the Vonns and that stupid rumble, what, fourteen years ago? And he was only twenty pounds over his high school playing weight of 175, which still left him fifty pounds short if it came to a fight. Some of it was flab, too, with the booze and lousy food and long hours. At least he’d pretty much quit the smokes. Getting old stank. And it still pissed him off that Bonnett’s IQ was the same as his own. Like Bonnett had stolen it or something. Dumb to think that way, he knew. It didn’t make sense.
Nick took a few minutes to compare Howard Langton’s fingerprints with the partial print on the packinghouse lock. Langton’s ten-set was on file with the California Department of Justice, along with those of every credentialed schoolteacher in the state.
Nothing close enough to work with. Nick examined all ten prints but nothing popped.
He called Linda Langton. Said he was just making sure he had the facts right, checking some things that Howard had told him about the night Janelle was murdered. He lobbed her a few easy ones, then got to the only one that mattered.
She told him that her husband had been home all night. Why wouldn’t he be? They had dinner and watched TV. Jerry Lewis and Red Skelton. Later a James Garner movie.
Her voice sounded hostile but she offered nothing at all about a canceled dinner date with Janelle Vonn.
Lobdell called a minute later, said he’d stopped off in Laguna to talk to Price Herald. Herald said he was at home with friends the night Janelle got it. The friends said the same thing. Scared but telling the truth, said Lobdell. All of them more worried about the Boom Boom Bungalow murder. Lobdell doubted that the sour old queen had raped, murdered, and mutilated a nineteen-year-old girl.
So did Nick. “How’s Kevin?”
“The doctor said he looked fine. Took some blood. On the way home I pulled the car over. Came down real hard on Kevin. I told him I didn’t want him moping and sleeping all day on the weekends and looking at me like I’m dog puke. Cussing out his teachers and his mom. I told him if he doesn’t shape up he’s out of my house the day he turns eighteen. Get a job. Or he can do what I did. Join the service.”
“There’s a war going on.”
“He knows that. I’m trying to get him to straighten up and fly right. Trying to motivate him. Shirley started crying, then telling me I was being completely unreasonable. Telling me I just make things worse.”
Nick thought about that scene. Glad he missed it.
“Nick, enjoy those kids of yours while they’re young. They hit thirteen and everything changes. They don’t love you anymore. Don’t even like you. Makes you wonder where they went. You miss them and they’re right there in front of you.”