T. Parker - California Girl

“Okay.”

“Nick, I thought about that off and on for the next five days. I’m trying to do my Homeland interviews but my mind keeps wandering back to what Martha said. Why does a congressman fly across the country three times in three days? Why not just stay put one place or the other? So I called a friend with United Airlines security. He can’t go back that far with records. So I talk to some people in the Congressional Travel Office, since they pay work-related travel. They tell me Stoltz was in Washington, D.C., the day Janelle was killed.”

“We know that.”

Andy gunned it. Campgrounds and railroad tracks flashing by at a hundred miles per hour.

“But he was in California that night.”

“I’m listening now.”

“I checked the House of Representatives Detailed Statement of Disbursements for July through December of sixty-eight. On October first Stoltz attended the House Committee meeting, like his Tustin secretary said he did. What she didn’t say is that Stoltz flew home on a noon flight that put him back in California at four P.M. Why not? Because she had no idea. Martha didn’t, either. She told us way back then that Roger was in Washington that day. She still thinks he was. He flew out. It’s right there in the disbursement log. Public record.”

I nodded. “Okay, so Stoltz wanted to wow you with a personal message from the nation’s capital when he was really in California taking a nap. He fibbed. So what?”

“It puts everything in a new light, Nick. Stoltz and Janelle. Everything he bought her. She being pregnant. The scratches I saw on his hand later that week. The fact that Roger Stoltz and Cory Bonnett both drove white late-model Caddies. Damn, Nick-he’d bought a Trim-Quick two days before someone cut off her head with one. Now I find out he was right here in California that night.”

I remembered what Bonnett had said to me that day down in Baja. While he lay in anguish on the floor with his knee shot out and the switchblade palmed in one hand.

Followed her to Tustin.

Why?

Worried.

Followed her but didn’t kill her?

Yeah.

Just looking out for her, like a big brother?

“Andy,” I said. “None of that dents the case against Bonnett.”

“This might.”

Andy reached across me, pulled a wadded-up plastic supermarket bag out of his glove compartment. Got it open and dangled a clear plastic bag with a black and yellow disposable razor and a couple of balled tissues in it. Smiled.

“Goddammit, Andy.”

“Remember the flesh underneath Janelle’s nails?”

“Type A. Same as Bonnett’s.”

Andy looked at me again. Hooked those blue eyes into me. “Nick, forty percent of the population has type A. That was big forensic news in sixty-eight. Today it’s a joke because we can type the DNA. Right, Mr. Former Homicide Detective and FBI Man?”

I put it together.

“You took a leak in Stoltz’s Georgetown bathroom and stole a razor. To type against the flesh under Janelle’s nails.”

Andy shook his head. “Worse. I wasn’t thinking fast enough in Georgetown. So I stole a whole trash can off his curb in Tustin at five-thirty yesterday morning. Trash day. Stunk up my Yukon but I got what I wanted.”

“Goddamn, Andy.”

“Roger will be damned if I’m right about this. You know how it is the last time you shave with a disposable? You have no reason to rinse it out very well. You’re not using it again. You’re tossing it. There’s gunk in there, Nick. Could see it with my own two eyes. And I found some pink disposables, too, so I don’t think this was Marie’s.”

We pulled off at a vista point and watched people throw bread to the seagulls. Cooler and windy out there on the point with the Pacific surging blue below and the gulls crying and diving for the food. I started to get a feeling like I had that day in the Chula Vista hospital thirty-six years ago. When I knew I was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it. The feeling that something’s already happened and you’re just there to see it through.

What if I’d gotten the wrong guy?

“So you’re asking me to get it reopened,” I said.

“I’m giving you first crack at it. If you don’t want to, I understand. But it would be a good thing, Nick, if you put the wrong guy away but managed to get him back out. And also a good thing if you nailed the man who really did it.”

“Thirty-six years later.”

“I know you took her fingers, Nick. Gershon told me the day after the autopsy. I know the Sheriff’s keeps that kind of stuff frozen for murder cases. I did an article once on the ‘felony freezer’ and all the oddities you guys kept in there. I didn’t write about the fingers. Anyway, I can petition the county for them and the sample scrapings. If they say no to me, I’ll hire a defense lawyer for Bonnett and he’ll get his hands on that stuff. Either way, I can hire a private lab to cook the DNA and compare it to what’s between those razor blades. If Janelle’s fingernail flesh comes up Bonnett, fine. I was wrong. But if it matches the razor, I’ll have a helluva story on my hands. Young cop. First case. Girl he knew. Wrong guy in prison for thirty-six years and counting. Congressman with a young girl’s blood on his soul while he takes care of Homeland Security. Old cop finally gets his man. I admit I could never stand Roger Stoltz. But I couldn’t make up a better story if I wanted to, Nick.”

Andy dropped me off back at the Fisherman’s.

“I’ll think about this,” I said.

“I bet you will, brother. Love to Katy and all.”

“Back to Lynette and yours.”

I couldn’t pass up the obvious question. “Andy, have you told Lynette?”

“Yeah. She said you’d get it reopened.”

“Why did she think that?”

“She said you’d do the right thing.”

But I didn’t think about it long. I thought about it for a lot less time than I spent on the witness stand perjuring myself in nineteen sixty-eight.

I WAS on good enough terms with the new sheriff to get the fingers and scrapings out of one of the felony freezers. Homicide evidence is kept permanently for occasions exactly like this one. It took some paperwork that few people would ever see. An after-hours thing. Finally boiled down to just me and a deputy and the freezer. I hadn’t walked those halls for thirty years and they made me think of Sharon and that day I went on the acid trip and Lucky Lobdell. Lenny, Casey, and Ethan Vonn. Janelle. All of it came blowing back like it was driven by high wind.

I arranged the thumbs and fingers and scrapings on the light table. They had all turned black with age. Strange to choose from among them like they were jewels to be set. I took off one glove to touch one of Janelle Vonn’s fingers with my own. Just to actually touch her skin with my skin. Nothing I had seen as a homicide detective or later, as an FBI special agent working on VICAP or behavioral science, stilled my soul like those black thumbs and fingers. My heart was in my throat and there were tears in my eyes.

Using tweezers, I chose one finger with a shred of what I knew to be human flesh still lodged under the nail. And one separately bagged piece of frozen skin.

I packaged my two samples. Got the Trim-Quick and blade out of Property, too. What memories those brought back.

I arranged the cold things in my cooler for the trip down to Regentech Laboratories in San Diego. I know the director there, Cristin Russim. She testified for the bureau a few times and she’s the best forensic DNA scientist I know. Even better, I knew I could trust her to keep this one quiet. Which was why I paid for the job myself. Didn’t want the Sheriff’s Department involved yet. They’d retest it, anyway, if I found what I thought I’d find. I told Cristin absolutely nothing about the case. Just dropped off the black finger and flesh and used tissues and the disposable razor and asked her to tell me who was who.