“SO YESTERDAY, Shirley’s doing the laundry and guess what she finds in Kevin’s pants?” asked Lobdell. “In a little ball of chewing gum foil?”
“Uppers,” said Nick.
“How did you know?”
“From his lipping off to his teachers and mom,” said Nick. “And sleeping all weekend. You know, jacked up on the pills all week, then crashing. It came to me this morning when I was thinking about him and my third cup of coffee kicked in.”
Lucky fixed Nick with a look but said nothing while Nick turned off Laguna Canyon Road onto Stan Oaks. They were headed to Cory Bonnett’s for a knock-and-talk. Bonnett looked good but not good enough for a search warrant. Nick figured their chances of catching him at home were small.
“I feel like a dumbass,” said Lobdell. “Here I am a cop, I’m supposed to know these things. The signs.”
“Nobody figures their seventeen-year-old is taking pills.”
Lucky sighed. “Shirley was upset. More than upset. Kevin made it worse, said he had no idea what the pills were, no idea how they got into his pants. I grounded him completely, for starters. I told Shirley I know a guy in narcotics detail-you know, Gant-who could come over and give Kevin a good shaking up. Really tell him what that shit can do to you. Kevin won’t listen to me or his mom, so I figure maybe a young guy like Gant can scare him straight. But Shirley says if I call the cops on my own son she’ll leave me and take Kevin with her. She’s serious. She really means it. I wasn’t going to have him arrested. That’s not what I meant at all.”
Nick steered up the steep, winding road.
“Gets worse,” said Lobdell. “Last night we sat Kevin down and asked him what was the reason for the pills. I mean, why was he taking that shit? And he says it’s because he hates us, his mom and me. Can’t wait to get out of the house. Hates the rules and the boredom and the homework and the chores and the teachers and me telling him what to do. Wants to be free. Says he’s packing up the second he turns eighteen, going to goddamned Humboldt or some such thing. You know what they got there-rain and dope. Plenty of both. Know what I said?”
“I have an idea.”
“I said fine, son. Do it. A young man should be free. I’ll wish you all the luck in the world. I’ll help you get a used car. They got a decent state college up there. I can send you off with my blessing and a little folding money. And Shirley-”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yeah. She hit the roof. Thinks I’m trying to kick him out. She’s yelling at me and I’m yelling at Kevin again and Kevin’s yelling at her and you know? That was the worst day of my life. I feel worse now than I did after hell week at the academy or that motorcycle wreck or the kidney stones back in sixty-four. I feel like I married a woman I don’t even know and had a kid I don’t even like.”
“I wish I had some advice.”
“That’s the last thing I need. I just wanted to hear myself complain. But Nick?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for giving some thought to my son.”
Nick glanced across at his partner. “You’re welcome.”
“And look at that damned house.”
Nick stopped in the middle of the driveway. The big house loomed on the hillside above them. Redwood and smoked-glass windows and river rock. Like something you’d see in the Colorado mountains, thought Nick. Two stories high, three chimneys, and what looked like a pool house off to one side.
“That’s another thing that pisses me off about these drug people,” said Lobdell, “is all the money they make off of kids like Kevin. Look at the size of that thing. The guy’s twenty-two years old.”
Nick drove slowly up the steep drive. There was another home a hundred yards off to the left and down. And one below it, almost out of view around the hillside. Besides that, just coastal scrub and prickly pear.
Bonnett’s rock, wood, and glass castle dominated the hill. Above the roofline Nick saw only sky and a redtail hawk gliding on a thermal. Felt the temperature creep up as they climbed. Up closer Nick saw a big garage with all three of the doors open. Two vehicles inside. A blue and white pickup truck in the driveway.
Then a swimming pool. A weight-lifting bench loaded with a heavy barbell beside the clean blue water. A row of four green chaise longues. A pool house behind.
They parked and followed a walkway past the pool. It curved through a small stand of yellowing cottonwoods and brought them to a redwood stairway that led up to a deck and the big double front doors. Peepholes in both doors but no windows. Windows on either side of the doors but the blinds were drawn tight.
Nick rang the buzzer and waited. Lobdell knocked.
They followed the deck around the house. The windows all had blinds and the blinds were drawn. The north wall of the house was dark with stain. Moss between the slats. But on the sunny exposures the redwood had turned silver-gray in the sun. Lizards stuck to the warm boards of the west wall. Nick looked out to the blue Pacific wedged between the brown canyon hills. Smelled the sage and eucalyptus and just a hint of ocean blowing into the canyon from the sea.
They walked down to the pool house. The sliding glass door of the house was open. Curtains wafted in and out in the canyon breeze. Nick rapped on the glass with his knuckles, said “O.C. sheriff’s deputies.”
The voice came at him close and strong. “Beat it.”
“We’re here to see Cory,” said Nick. Hand to his auto. Hammer of the gun caught on the lining of his sport coat. Nudged it away with his fingers.
“Ain’t here so beat it.”
Suddenly the curtains shot to the side. Big man right in front of Nick. Lobdell’s arm came from behind him,.45 leading the way. Nick jumped back and drew cleanly.
Guy in the window put his hands up. Eyes big. Shaking his head. “I don’t have a gun,” he said.
“Step outside,” said Nick. “Now.” His heart pounded and his hands had gone cold.
“Don’t shoot, man. I don’t have a gun.”
“Step outside,” said Nick. “Keep your hands where I can see them. Good. Easy. You can do it.”
Nick moved back and the man stepped from the pool house. Nick’s age-thirty or so. He was big, naked except for a swimsuit. Skin dark. Long black hair and a sharp little beard like a musketeer. Hands out but not up. A look on his face like he’d done this before and could strangle someone.
Lobdell turned him, looked him over, holstered his Colt. “Good way to get shot,” he said.
“I was asleep.”
“Middle of the day?” asked Lobdell. “Must have had a good night. What’s your name?”
“Dirk George. No outstandings, not using, not holding, not packing, not in the mood for cops.”
“I smell beer so at least you’re drinking,” said Lobdell.
“No law against that,” said Dirk.
“You house-sitting, Dirk?” asked Nick.
Dirk George looked at Nick. Still had the strangle look. “What’s it look like?”
“Answer the question,” said Nick.
“Cory’s gone, man. I don’t know where. I don’t care where. I’m staying in the pool house, watering the flowers. Keeping an eye out for the little piggies.”
Nick’s anger spiked. He looked at Lobdell, then back at Dirk. Dirk was all invitation. The let’s-fight look. You saw it in jail when you were young. Sometimes had to accept, just to make a point.
“We want to ask Cory a few questions,” Nick said.
“He isn’t here. The big house is locked up and nobody’s home.”
Something moved behind the curtains. Nick saw bare feet below the swaying fabric. Red nails. A silver ring on the left middle toe.
“Come on out, miss,” he said.
The girl hesitated, then pushed through the curtain and onto the patio. Janelle’s age, Nick guessed. Long blond hair. Beautiful suntanned skin. Blue eyes and freckles. A denim jacket with a rainbow embroidered on the pocket flap. Cutoff shorts.
Nick recognized her from Janelle’s memorial service. One of the girls who’d come with Jesse Black. Andy had told him her name. Gail.
“Hi, guys,” she said.
“See, we’re guys, not pigs,” said Nick. A flat stare at the man in the swimsuit.
She blushed and looked submissively at Dirk. Nick decided that if Dirk hurt her for what she said, he’d take it out of Dirk’s suntanned hide somehow.
“Will you come with me, please?” Nick asked her.
She looked at him with a distrusting innocence.
“You don’t have to, babe,” said Dirk.
“I saw you at Janelle’s service,” said Nick. He took a couple of steps toward the big house.
Gail hesitated, then followed.
Nick walked into the stand of cottonwoods and stopped. Gail unrolled her coat sleeves against the chill in the shade.
“I’m sorry for all of that,” he said. “I’m Nick Becker. Sheriff’s investigator.”
“I’m Gail.”
“Dirk has a bad attitude.”
“He hates the fuzz.”
“That’s up to him. We just had a few questions for Cory. Know where he is?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t tell me where he went. He asked me to stay here, keep an eye on things.”
“You, not Dirk.”
She nodded.
“Why are you hanging around with Mr. George?”
“He’s not so bad.”
“I mean, if it’s just for dope, you can always buy your own.”
“Weird statement from a cop.”
“I don’t dig guys like him and Cory with girls like you and Janelle. Cory and Dirk are creeps. Girls like Janelle and you are suckers. The creeps put up money or the dope and they get you.”
Gail said nothing. Shrugged.
“Were you and Janelle good friends?” asked Nick.
“No. We both liked Jesse. He liked her better than me. But we all got along.”
“See her that last night by any chance?”
She shook her head. “No. I went to a concert.”
“What was Cory up to that night?”
“I don’t know. Me and Cory had a thing a long time ago.”
“Couldn’t have been that long,” said Nick.
She shrugged again. Straightened her back a little. Took a deep breath and stared through him.
“Look,” he said. “We’re not here to find anybody’s stash. We’re not here to hassle Dirk or you. We wanted to talk to Cory. So can we just look around a little?”
“You can’t. That’s why Cory asked me to stay here. You have no permission to search. That’s what he told me to say.”
Nick nodded. Held her gaze for a moment. Had a feeling she wanted to help him. “Are you okay?”
“What do you mean?”
Nick waited but she didn’t offer anything.
“Creeps like Dirk can be hard on a girl,” he said.
“Anything beats home, Mr. Detective.”
“Where’s home?”
“Pacific Palisades.”
“Big dollars.”
“Plastic.”
“I grew up in Tustin,” he said. Then he took a chance. Figured it would open a door or not. “Have you tried the Orange Sunshine air freshener?”
She smiled and colored. Prettiest skin Nick ever saw.
“I sprayed myself by accident,” said Nick. “Tripped for a whole day and slept like a baby.”
“I stayed high for two days once,” she said.
“I found the bottle in Janelle’s car.”
Gail shuddered inside her coat.
“What have you heard?” asked Nick.
“Heard?”
“About Janelle.”
“Everybody says it was someone from Tustin.”
“And?”
“Something to do with her old life there. Being Miss Tustin and the magazine picture and her brothers. Her mom committed suicide with rat poison.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
Gail looked down at the walkway. Nick did, too. Two-by-sixes with alyssum and lobelia growing up through the spaces.
“I went to the Troubadour to hear Jesse play about a week before the murder. She was there. We sat together with some other people. Jesse took her home.”
Nick waited. Felt like Gail had something to say.
“You think Cory knows something about Janelle?” she asked.
“He’s dangerous,” said Nick. “She was hanging out with him. She liked the danger. See, she was helping us. Telling us things, for money. If Cory found out about that, he’d do something bad.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Keep it to yourself, Gail. I trust you.”
“The night she died, Cory and I were supposed to go see the Doors. He was going to pick me up at seven. He called me at quarter to and said he didn’t feel good, was staying home. I said I’d come over and he said no. That meant he was with someone else. He knew I knew. I figured, screw him. So I drove up to Hollywood myself and saw the band.”
“Was he with Janelle?”
Gail shrugged. “Probably. She was his new thing.”
New thing, thought Nick.
“I knew Janelle when she was little,” said Nick. “Just a girl. I need to find out who did this to her.”
“Was it really, actually, all the way cut off?”
Nick nodded. “Completely off. You going to let me have a look around here, Gail? Or shall I just come back with a warrant?”
“You can’t go in his house. It’s got alarms and everything.”
“Then how about the grounds? The pool house and the garage and the property? Whatever’s open and in plain sight?”
Gail nodded. “Yes. Okay.”
Dirk cussed her when she told him they could look around. Lobdell cuffed him to a eucalyptus tree and told him to shut up or he’d arrest him for trespassing, assault, and disturbing the peace.
Dirk looked puzzled and pleased when Gail said she’d bring around a couple of chairs and beers and keep him company.
THE POOL HOUSE had a small living room, and a short hallway with two rooms in the back. A bar with stools. A dinette. Dishes piled in the sink. Beer cans on the counters. Pretzels and canned nuts.
The fruit bowl on the little table contained two bananas, an orange, and a Smith & Wesson.357 magnum with a two-inch barrel. Nick used a tissue to pop the cylinder for a look at the serial number. Six magnum loads, six shiny primers looking at him. He balanced the gun on the fruit and wrote the numbers in his notebook.
“That’ll blow a hole in you,” said Lobdell. “There ought to be some way to keep creeps from having things like that.”
“Too many of both,” said Nick. Closed the cylinder.
They walked through the bedrooms but nothing looked unusual. Cory was big on stereos and televisions and posters from John Wayne westerns.
Back outside Lobdell smoked and Nick finished up his notes on what they’d seen in the pool house.
“The garage was open,” said Lobdell. He ground out the cigarette with his wing tip, kicked it under a cottonwood.
Nick stepped into the big garage and hit the lights. Two rows of good fluorescents flickered on. Shimmering into focus below were a white late-model Cadillac Coupe Deville and a new black Porsche 911S.
“Nice coupe,” said Lobdell.
Nick remembered what the Lemon Heights Sporting Goods owner had seen that night in the parking lot. And what Terry Neemal had seen later that same night outside the SunBlesst packinghouse.
“Maybe it met Janelle and her Beetle in the Sav-On parking lot,” said Nick. “And left with her in it.”
“I like that idea.”
It had bothered Nick that Cory Bonnett disappeared two days after the murder. Now it bothered him more.
“That’s eight thousand dollars’ worth of German sports car,” said Lobdell. “I had an uncle that marched into Auschwitz. I don’t buy anything Kraut.”
Nick walked around the vehicles. One wall had shelves with boxes on them. The other had a long workbench with two vises, a table saw, a circular saw, a jigsaw, a band saw, a grinder, and two industrial sewing machines. There were a dozen leather punches hung from the pegboard behind the bench. Knives and scissors and handsaws, too. Ten different shapes and sizes, Nick saw. Gave him a weird feeling even though they were only tools.
No Trim-Quick, but plenty of other saws and shears and knives for cutting skin.
Nick still had the funny feeling inside as he looked at a stack of catalogues for leather apparel. And the little eight-shot.22 on top of them.
…artist or craftsman…terrific pride…and that is what she insulted…
An old wooden armoire sat open along the wall beside the workbench. Nick saw the leather hanging inside. Black and brown and tan and red and blue. Scraps in boxes at the bottom. Good smell. A Winchester Model 12 leaning back in one corner behind the leather like it was trying to hide.
On the wall by the office closet was a calendar with a woman in a yellow bikini standing next to a small airplane. Beside it another calendar with a woman in a red bikini standing next to a black Porsche.
“Pretty girls, guns, and shiny machines,” said Lobdell. “Fun hobbies. What kind of plane does he have?”
“Cessna,” said Nick. “Out at Orange County Airport.”
“You wonder how a little plane like that can carry enough drugs into the country to pay for a place like this. For cars and pools.”
“He just flies down to Mexico to negotiate and buy,” said Nick. “The drugs come north later. Some in cars. Some in bigger planes. They say Bonnett doesn’t even look at what he imports. Disgusted by everything about it, except for the money.”
“These hippies, you watch,” said Lobdell. “By the time they’re my age they’ll be carrying briefcases and wearing suits like their daddies. They’ll all want to work for IBM again, drive overpriced German cars. They’ll cut their hair for the dough. Tell their kids they never used dope or wore those dumbass clothes or called us pigs. You watch.”
Lobdell lit a cigarette. Nick smelled the butane, then the tobacco. Loved those smells. Liked the happy shear of metal on metal when the Zippo opened and closed. He missed the smokes. Just once in a while now. To bribe a subject, like Neemal. Build their trust in you and relax them.
Nick used his pen to prowl through the tools and containers on the workbench. Good stuff, well cared for. Some metal dust had mounded up on the grinder housing, but no clue as to what it had come from. Something for his plane? Nick thought of Bonnett’s white-handled Mexican switchblade, wondered if he sharpened it here.
Why would a guy with leather-cutting tools use a garden pruner?
He stood before the shelves and read the white labels on the boxes: pots and pans, extra blankets, pictures, trophies, sports gear, lantern and stove, sleeping bags, tent. Max had always used stick-on labels, too.
Then something grabbed his eyes. The loose bundle of material on top of the tent box. One corner of it dangling down over the cardboard. Didn’t fit with Cory Bonnett’s garage at all. Like a fly in a glass of milk.
“I’ve been looking at that for the last thirty seconds, too,” said Lobdell. “I’ve seen it before.”
White bedsheets with little pink roses.
“The curtains in Janelle’s yellow cottage,” said Nick.
“Yep,” said Lobdell.
Nick stepped up closer, leaning in. “I swear I’m looking at a bloodstain.”
Lobdell’s big head lowered over Nick’s shoulder. Nick smelled Old Spice aftershave and cigarette smoke. “Looks like blood to me.”
Nick just stared at the sheets. And the small drop of what looked like blood. It most definitely looked like blood. For the first time since he’d left the packinghouse he believed he’d found something that truly mattered.
“This isn’t the cleanest search here, Lucky. We could lose this stuff in court if we don’t see a judge and get a warrant.”
“The sheets are in plain sight, Nick. The blood, too. We came here to question someone in connection with a murder. We got permission. The garage door was wide open so we looked around. How can Bonnett expect privacy in his garage with his door wide open and a bloody sheet in plain sight?”
“No. I want it right. Let’s get a warrant.”
Nick couldn’t take his eyes off the sheets and that little stain. Damn. It was like throwing in your line hour after hour, day after day. And you finally catch a big fish you only half believed was there.
“See?” asked Lobdell. “My luck is rubbing off on you.”
“Yeah. But I still got a problem, Lucky.”
“I think I got it, too.”
“Say these are Janelle’s sheets,” said Nick. “Say she had two sets because she liked the pattern, got them on sale. Okay. I can believe that. One for the bed and one for the windows. But what are these doing here? What, Bonnett met her in Tustin, drove her back to Laguna to her place, killed her in her own bedroom, then changed the sheets and messed up the bed? Then drove back and dumped her at the packinghouse? Then brought evidence back to his own home?”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No kidding.”
No planning and unnecessary work.
“Except bringing back the evidence,” said Nick. “I’ve been doing some reading. Heard this FBI guy up in L.A. And they got this new kind of killer out now. They’re not dumb. They’re more weird than dumb. They like doing what they do. And sometimes they’ll take stuff from their victims, stuff that isn’t worth anything. It helps them remember. Neemal likes fire. These guys like keepsakes of what they did. Maybe Bonnett’s one of those. And the sheets turned him on.”
Would he take something from her as a reminder, like you talked about?
No. But unpracticed killers surprise us by what they remove from the scene simply to keep the police from finding it.
“Or maybe,” said Lobdell, “he brought them back here to get rid of them. Panicked or forgot.”
Nick grasped for the logic in the sheets but couldn’t find it. No method to the madness. “Let’s get some paper and toss this place,” he said.
“I’ll call deputies to seal it off,” said Lobdell. “I’d hate to see Tarzan and Gidget clean this all up while we’re gone.”
IT TOOK three hours to get the search warrant and back to Bonnett’s home. Nick typed the supporting affidavit while Lobdell filled in the statutory page and dictated a “hero paragraph” that made Nick sound like a seasoned murder investigator rather than the first-time lead detective he was. Lobdell kept harping on the “training and experience” that led Nick to the “strong opinion” that felony evidence would be found in Cory Bonnett’s home. Lobdell said the secret was not to overstep the warrant once you were inside. If you had a doubt, like could you open a locked chest, or could you stick your head up into the attic, then you went back to the magistrate and got another warrant. That way, nothing got thrown out of court.
Just as Nick was ready to leave the homicide room his phone rang. It was Roger Stoltz, who said he was sorry that Nick had missed today’s four o’clock appointment. He had been looking forward to talking with Nick. Was everything okay?
Nick apologized. Felt like a school kid without his homework. Told himself it’s easy to forget appointments when evidence starts falling into your lap.
Stoltz asked him not to worry, said he was just in from D.C. a few hours ago and ready to go home.
“I’m looking forward to the weekend with Marie,” he said. “Now Nick, look. My secretary here says you wanted to talk about Janelle. Anytime. Anywhere. I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Nick, do you have a suspect?”
“Possibly.”
Silence for a moment. A very deep sigh from the other end.
“I would still like to know about the Newport Beach apartment,” said Nick.
“Anytime and anywhere.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Regards to Max and Monika. And to your brothers. We’ll see David in church Sunday.”
“We’ll be there, too,” said Nick.
By the time they got back to Cory Bonnett’s house the afternoon had gone cool. A stiff breeze rattled yellow leaves off the cottonwoods. A raven tore across the sky with a mockingbird after him.
The blue and white pickup truck was gone. Two deputies stood near the garage, two more in a unit blocking the driveway.
“Good to have the troops,” said Lobdell. “I had my hand in the cookie jar once, the guy comes home. I’m in the kitchen checking the cutlery box for a missing carving knife and he jumps me. Never heard him. Didn’t see him. I got him under control, but he could have shot me or stabbed me easy.”
Superior court judge Wes Dickinson had thrown them a loose one, good for the main house, the pool house, the garage, and both vehicles in the garage. Even the trunks of the cars. It specified not only the bloodstained sheets but “evidence of the subject’s presence at the SunBlesst packinghouse on October 1 or 2 of this year; evidence of the subject as party to or having knowledge of the murder of Janelle Vonn; evidence that the subject had prior knowledge that this murder had been planned or would or was about to happen.”
“My kinda judge,” said Lobdell.
The Porsche was locked but the Cadillac wasn’t. Nick used a flashlight and magnifying glass to examine the Coupe Deville’s floorboard carpet and the red leather seats. Plenty of sand, dirt, fiber, bits of paper. Strands of what looked like human hair. Some light like Bonnett’s and some dark like Janelle’s. Probably latents all over this interior. Good stuff, he thought, but he’d get the ID boys on it later.
He popped the trunk. Saw the lid rise in the rearview. Heard Lobdell.
“Hmmm, Nick.”
Nick jumped out, walked back to Lobdell. Looked down into the spacious trunk. A small toolbox. A set of jumpers, some car wax, and rags in a box.
And a sleeping bag. Black plastic bottom outside for moisture. Yellow-and-black-checked flannel inside. Not rolled up. Not folded. Just crammed back in the far corner of the trunk.
Nick pulled it out and set it beside the box. Spread it out a little. Found the head end, began unzipping it. Big enough for two. Stubborn zipper and a musty smell.
Debris inside. Black stuff. Flecked and fragile. Like burned paper, thought Nick. Or soot. Some dark hairs. Easy to see on the yellow flannel. Blood. Crate label for SunBlesst packinghouse, pretty brunette with the orange again. Blood on that.
A saw blade. Swivel bolt still attached to a shard of wood. Blood all over them, too.
By four-thirty they’d tossed the house, too, but hadn’t come up with much else.
By six-thirty they had a warrant for the arrest of Cory Bonnett.
By seven they’d talked to Don Rae of Laguna PD. Rae’s source had confirmed that afternoon that Cory Bonnett was at his place near Ensenada. Kind of a compound, said Rae. People around him. Gringos and Mexicans. Unfriendly people. A compound in the hills.
Rae said he’d let Nick know the second Bonnett was headed stateside.
“Janelle Vonn,” said Rae. “Incredible. No wonder he hit the road.”
Nick thanked him and hung up.
“Ensenada,” said Nick. “A little out of our jurisdiction.”
“There’s a way to bring him back here,” said Lobdell. “You just gotta have the nerve for it.”