Jonathan Kellerman - A Cold Heart

I volunteered.

A visit to Charter College, where I’d try to find a sample of Kevin Drummond’s writing.

“Thanks,” Milo said. “Good idea, you being professorial and all that.”

“I’m professorial?”

“You can be- it’s a compliment, I’ve got great respect for academia.”

Before I started out, I took care of some unfinished business: second attempt to reach Christian Bangsley, née Sludge, now CEO of Hearth and Home restaurants. It had been months since the first call. This time the young-sounding receptionist put me through. As I introduced myself, Bangsley cut me off.

“I got the first message,” he said. “Didn’t call back because I have nothing to tell you.”

“Was anyone stalking China?”

Silence.

He said, “Why, after all these years?”

“It’s still an open case. What do you know?”

“I never saw anyone bugging China.”

Tension in his voice made me persist. “But she did tell you something.”

“Shit,” he said. “Look, I’ve put all that past me. But there are assholes out there who don’t want me to.”

Recalling the Internet flames- “ex-Chinawhiteboy sells out… ends up cap-pig cancerous bigtiiime” I said, “Are you being stalked, yourself?”

“Nothing regular, but sometimes I get letters. People who claim to be fans and don’t like what I’m doing. People living in the past.”

“Have you contacted the police?”

“My lawyers say it’s not worth it. That people telling me they’re unhappy with how I’m running my life is no crime. Free country and all that. But I don’t want publicity. The only reason I’m talking to you now is my lawyers said if you tried again, I should. That if I didn’t, you’d think I was being evasive. Which I’m not. I just can’t help you. Okay?”

“I’m sorry you’re being harassed. And I promise to keep anything you tell me under wraps.”

Silence.

I said, “What happened to China went well beyond harassment.”

“I know, I know. Jesus- okay here it is: China bitched once about someone bugging her. Following her. I didn’t take it seriously because she was always paranoid about something. High-strung. The band used to joke she’d been weaned on chili peppers.”

“When did she start complaining?”

“A month or two before she disappeared. I told the cops, they blew me off, said I needed more details, it was worthless.”

“What exactly did China complain about?”

“She was convinced she was being peeped, stalked, whatever. But she never actually saw someone, couldn’t describe anyone. So maybe the cops were right. She talked about it being a feeling , but China had lots of feelings. Especially when she was high, which was most of the time. She could get paranoid over nothing, just blow up.”

“She never went to the police.”

“Right,” said Bangsley. “China and the police. The thing is, she wasn’t scared , she was pissed . Kept saying if the asshole ever showed his face, she’d break it, claw out his eyes, and shit in the sockets. That was China. Always aggression.”

“Was it real?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Was she really that fearless or was it a cover?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t. She was hard to read. Had this wall around her. Drugs were the mortar.”

Paul Brancusi had mentioned nothing about any stalker. I said, “Did China tell anyone else about being followed? The other members of the band?”

“I doubt it.”

“Why?”

He hesitated. “China and I were… closer. She was officially gay, but for a while we had a thing going on- shit, this is exactly what I didn’t want. I’m married now, expecting my second kid-”

“No one’s interested in your love life,” I said. “Just what you know about China’s stalker.”

“I don’t even know if there was a stalker. Like I told you, she never actually saw anything.”

“A feeling,” I said.

“Exactly,” said Bangsley. “China had a vivid mind. When you were with her you had to be careful to step back, put things in perspective.”

“At the time did you believe her?”

“I fluctuated. She could be convincing. One time we were up in the hills, late at night, smoking weed, doing other good stuff and suddenly she went rigid and her eyes got scary and she grabbed my shoulders- hard, it hurt. Then she stands up and says, ‘Fuck, he’s here ! I can feel him!’ Then she starts walking around in circles, like a gun turret on a tank- like she’s aiming herself at something. And she starts screaming into the darkness. ’Fuck you you asshole fuck, come out and show your fuckshit face.’ Waving her fist, crouching down like she’s ready to go karate-nuts. At that moment, I believed her- the darkness, the quiet, how certain she was, convinced me. Later, I said to myself, ‘What was that ?’ “

“What happened after she screamed?”

“Nothing. I got worried someone would hear her, tried to get her down the hill and into my car. She made me wait until she convinced herself whoever was up there was gone. We crashed at my place. The next morning she was gone. She’d eaten all the munchies in my fridge and split. A month or two later, she disappeared, and when they finally found her, I freaked out. Because the place she was buried wasn’t far from where we were sitting that night.”

“Did you tell the cops?”

“After the way they treated me?”

“China was found near the Hollywood sign.”

“Exactly,” he said. “That’s where we were. Under the sign. China loved the sign, liked the story of some actress throwing herself off. There used to be a riding ranch up there, one of those rent-a-horse deals. China told me she liked to sneak in at night, talk to the horses, smell the horseshit, just wander around. She said she got off on walking around other people’s property. Made her feel like a Manson girl. She went through this phase where she was into the Manson family, talked about writing a song dedicated to Charlie, but we told her we wouldn’t play it. Even then we had some kind of standards.”

“Enamored of serial killers.”

“No, just Manson. And she wasn’t serious about that. It was just another China thing- something came into her head, it poured right out of her mouth. Anything for attention, she loved attention. Which was Manson’s thing, right? I remember thinking how weird it was that maybe she’d been murdered by some Manson type. Ironic, you know?”

Charter College was 150 acres nestled in the northeast corner of Eagle Rock, set apart from that bedroom community’s blue-collar, mostly Latino, bedrock sensibilities by ivy-covered stucco walls and grandiose trees.

The college had been established 112 years ago, when Eagle Rock’s twelve-hundred-foot elevation and clean air had led developers to frame it “The Switzerland of the West.” Over a century later, the surrounding hills were pretty on the uncommon clear day, but chain motels were the closest Eagle Rock came to resort living.

I drove up Eagle Rock Boulevard, a broad, sun-bleached haven for garages and auto parts emporia, turned onto College Road, and entered a residential neighborhood of small, craftsman bungalows, and chunky stucco cottages. An arch emblazoned with the school’s crest fed into Emeritus Lane, a broad, spotless strip heralded by a shield-shaped flower bed spelling out the institution’s name in red and white petunias.

The campus buildings were Beaux-Arts and Monterey Colonial visions, all painted the same gray-dun and set, gemlike, in the jewel box of old-growth greenery. I’d treated a few Charter students, over the years, was familiar with the school’s basic flavor: selective, expensive, established by Congregationalists, but decidedly secular now, with a bent toward activist politics and community involvement.