T. Parker - California Girl

Nick heard the intake of breaths. Edgar Sewell continued to stare down at Bonnett.

“Mr. Bonnett, the California penal code calls what you did a crime of passion. We know that passion can destroy just as surely as it can create. This is a crime of jealousy and fury and waste the likes of which I hope never to hear about in my courtroom again. You will be eligible for parole in fifteen years should you demonstrate such fitness to the Board of Prison Terms. Use that time, Mr. Bonnett, to reflect on the irrevocable damage and horror in what you have done, and upon the great potential you stole from young Janelle Vonn. Use that time to find your God and your soul and see if they can help you find a way back to your humanity again. Mr. Bonnett, you have acted with what the law calls an abandoned and malignant heart. With what remains of your life see if there is anything you can do through which you can earn forgiveness and not just punishment. If not, Mr. Bonnett, we’ll see you in fifty-seven years. Some of us will. I’ll be dead and you’ll be eighty-one years old, which is even older than I am now.”

Nick took the stairs down to the first story. Heard the reporters storming out behind him. Saw Sharon marching toward the DA’s office with an armful of files held to her chest.

He stepped out into the hot September afternoon. White thunderheads towered in the southeast. Up over Yuma, thought Nick. The rain will chase all the doves south. Thought of standing by a Yuma cotton field with his mom and dad and David and Clay and Andy, shotguns ready. And the way Max could spot those birds so far away. Just dots in the sky coming toward them. The boys shaking with excitement and trying to find their safeties and Max chuckling while he swung and dropped a pair that landed right on the railroad tracks. Monika a good shot, too, but her heart wasn’t really in it. David didn’t like the killing. Clay the best shot of the four boys and didn’t mind the killing at all. Andy involved but somehow outside himself, too, watching like he always did, like he’d be tested on it someday.

In Nick’s mind the railroad tracks in Yuma became the railroad tracks running by the SunBlesst orange packinghouse. He knew they always would. Knew the packinghouse would connect to everything that would ever happen to him. As it had since he was sixteen.

He’d closed his first case.

Cost eight men their lives but he’d done it.

Caused immeasurable waves of sorrow and loss but he’d done it.

Cost him his own life but he’d done it.

For Janelle and for himself.

HERE AND NOW

“LISTEN TO ME, NICK. Everything we thought about Janelle Vonn was wrong.”

“Explain yourself,” I said.

Andy cocked his head to the side a little. Leaned closer to me. Vietnam had wrecked his hearing. A bomb in a tunnel, Cu Chi province. Enough earth between the bomb and Andy that he didn’t get any frag, but the pressure blew his eardrums. Got bad hearing and a Purple Heart for it.

“I don’t think Bonnett killed her, Nick.”

So there it was. Thirty-six years. Fast as an eye blink back to Janelle.

“You’ll have a hard time proving that to me,” I said. “That was a good case, Andy. We nailed it. The jury deliberated, what, two hours? We might have worked around the arrest a little, but that’s it.”

“I’m not talking about the arrest.”

I heard the pigeons cooing and saw the sunshine coming through the slats of the packinghouse. Felt the hot Santa Ana wind blowing in the orange trees outside. Saw Andy standing there with his camera and the terrible thing that lay between us. Clear as the day it happened.

Andy shook his head and looked at me with some irritation. “Maybe we should take a drive, Nick. Kind of hard for me to hear with those waves crashing out there.”

The young couple at the next table were looking over at us. Probably never heard of Janelle Vonn. Just these two old farts with menus at arm’s length talking about the past. Sixty-two and sixty-six. One hard-of-hearing, the other still sometimes got light-headed from a rumble in an orange grove fifty-something years ago.

We took Andy’s convertible. He put the top down, so I knew the bit about the waves was BS. He didn’t want anyone hearing this. Andy can’t sit still anyhow. Always eager about the next thing. Sixty-two years old and still strong and skinny. Was always wound tight but he came back from Nam with this weird energy he can’t turn off. Went there to understand what happened to Clay, to bring something of Clay back to us. Made him more like Clay. Faster than before. A little reckless. A little mean. He’s a big-time writer now. Makes a ton. Lives in Laguna on the beach. Novels and screenplays and articles in magazines that smell like cologne. Been married to Lynette for thirty-something years now. Six kids.

“I was in Washington last week doing some interviews with Homeland Security,” he said. “Stoltz was having a party so he invited me. I’m no fan of Stoltz and I don’t like Georgetown parties, but Lynette does like parties, so I figure what the hell? Plus, Stoltz is one of the reps on the Homeland oversight committee, so I figure maybe I’ll learn something interesting. It’s a boring Georgetown party. Not even Lynette can find anyone fun to talk to. Then I get to talking with this lady. A little younger than me. Sixty-ish. Turns out she’s Stoltz’s secretary from way back in sixty-eight. I remember her-Martha. She’s worked for him for thirty-six years. She started out as his Washington office receptionist.”

I had a hazy memory of having talked to someone named Martha in Stoltz’s Washington office back in October of sixty-eight.

Andy steered through the cute San Clemente streets. Picked up I-5 heading south and gunned it. His fancy new German car has one of those transmissions right on the steering wheel. Screams through the gears and you never even take your hands off it.

“So Martha and I are talking and she says-this comes right out of nowhere, Nick-she says that she wrote the telegram to me on the Janelle murder story. Now, I always thought it was an odd telegram. Kind of formal and stiff, and you know how Roger is, he’s a pol. He can always say the right thing. She said she thought about that telegram a lot because she was so young at the time, and she’d known when she wrote it that it didn’t sound right. Didn’t sound like a man who had just had a friend murdered. She said that over the years she wrote more than a few telegrams for Roger. Common for busy congressional reps. The routine stuff, like condolences, congratulations, birthdays, whatever. The pols all know that an official Washington, D.C., telegram makes people outside the beltway feel important. Makes them think their elected officials are paying attention. But this was the first one she’d ever been asked to write. She was twenty-four. Said she worked on it for over an hour but knew it came out stilted and wrong. So, after thirty-six years Martha apologized to me for a poorly written telegram.”

Andy zoomed south past the nuclear plant at San Onofre. He still had a shortwave radio mounted in the car to track the law enforcement chatter. Hadn’t turned it on.

“Okay, Andy,” I said. “Martha wrote you a telegram because Stoltz didn’t have time to do it himself.”

Andy looked at me, then back at the road. “She was so unhappy with it she actually called him to get some help with it. Laughed when she told me that. Stoltz was home in California by then. This is two days after the murder, right? Well, Marie answered and said Roger was sleeping. He was exhausted. He’d flown between LAX and Dulles three times in three days. Being a representative was the hardest work Roger had ever done. Made running a business look easy. Marie said the telegram was okay. Send it. If Roger was ever unhappy about it, she’d take the blame.”