A Thousand Steps

58

Two weeks later, Matt sits in the Laguna Beach Police Department for the eighth time this summer. First was for his and his mother’s filing of the missing-person report for Jasmine, that distant lifetime ago. Most recently is now, yet another detailed statement regarding the events at the Vortex of Purity.

This room has become a sort of comfort to him. There are sometimes coffee and donuts. Since that night at the Vortex his mind tends to wander on its own, like a young dog off-leash, and this drab, familiar room allows for it.

Today is his third Vortex statement, and like the ones previous, it’s being filmed because Matt is a minor and the film can be used in court without him being present.

They need to talk to him again because some important things have happened since the arrest of Mahajad Om — real name, Zeke Andrujic — in North Hollywood.

Things such as Marlon Sungaard’s suicide by hanging in the Orange County Jail.

And Neldra Sungaard’s sudden laying of blame on her departed husband.

Matt’s got on his best new-used short-sleeved madras plaid from Fade in the Shade, hand-washed and ironed by his mom, as she deftly balanced herself on one crutch.

“Take it from the top, Matt,” says Furlong.

Also present are Detective McAdam, Officer Darnell, a stenographer, and DA Mike Saffalo, who will personally try Zeke Andrujic for the murder of Bonnie Stratmeyer and the kidnappings of Bonnie and Jasmine Anthony.

“The camera and tape recorder are on,” Furlong says.

It takes Matt just under an hour to retell what happened from the time he and his father arrived at the Feast of the Spirit, and the arrival of the cops and the ambulance. He recalls most of it with a dreamlike detachment, but some parts — hearing Jazz’s voice, seeing her alive and imprisoned, feeling his father’s blood on his hands, killing the disciple under the oak tree — he relives with terrible clarity and strong emotion.

He finishes, aware of the quiet in the room, the traffic out on Forest and Third, the smell of the donut on the napkin in front of him.

“How’s your father healing up?” asks Furlong.

Matt synopsizes: Bruce’s remaining kidney is working well, and the leg wound is draining. The soft tissue of his knee is detached but operable. He can have knee surgery soon.

“And Jasmine?”

Matt takes his time before he speaks. The question is complicated, and the answer changes daily.

“Better. At first, I thought she was holding back some things until she wanted to talk about them. But now I think they’re coming back on their own. The memories, I mean. She has a lot of mental strength.”

“It’s unbelievable to all of us, what Andrujic and the Sungaards put her through,” says Darnell.

“We’ll be seeing her again later this afternoon,” says Furlong. “Not here. At home, where she’ll feel safe and comfortable.”

Matt considers beefy Furlong. “I don’t know if she’ll ever feel safe again. Don’t make her remember things she doesn’t want to.”

He tells them that the Anthony family home is now Third Street again. Same drafty clapboard beach house, he thinks, same GTE building for a view, same grumbling pipes and touchy electricity. His dad gave it to Julie in return for her place in Dodge City, when he leaves the hospital. Matt doubts his father will stay in Laguna for long.

“You don’t have to go out to Dodge,” Matt says with a small smile at Furlong.

He knows how much Furlong hates the place, and his smile’s a dig on Furlong’s continuing inability to ensnare Johnny Grail, or even make decent narcotics busts out in Dodge. Mostly, Furlong just gets lies and misdirection there — firecrackers and tomatoes thrown at him and his men, the feral boys trying to sell them more dried dog turds, and vandalizing Moby Cop and the LBPD radio cars.

But, as adversarial as Furlong and Matt have been, Furlong has still not arrested Matt for his transgressions with LSD and dragon balls on behalf of Johnny Grail. Or fleeing this very cop house and disappearing. Or reckless endangerment for Matt’s perilous double back in the Westfalia against Festival of Arts traffic, and his terrifying of pedestrians in crosswalks. All of which was well witnessed and reported to LBPD.

But that crazy chase — the Westfalia versus Moby Cop — had been necessary, Matt thinks. More than necessary, critical. It had led him to his connections, to Windy Rise, to the Little Wings trapped in the prickly pear, to the Vortex, and to Jazz.

Just as importantly, Furlong has not again pressured Matt into a setup of Grail or anyone else in the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. But Matt believes it’s coming. Just a matter of time.

“Matt,” says McAdam. “Tell me again why you think Zeke Andrujic would allow you to search his home.”

“A bluff. Hoping we’d find an empty house and give up.”

“His whole life is a bluff,” says Darnell.

They ask again about Andrujic’s disciples, who said nothing that night that Matt had heard, except good night to the cooks.

The cops are interested in the idea that Om had trained and rehearsed such violence with them, which will establish conspiracy and give the surviving disciples — the Laguna cops have questioned two others — ample reason to turn state’s evidence against their boss.

All Matt can say is that the silent disciples seemed to anticipate events, moving into, out of, and throughout the big house, using the elevator to mask their movement.

As did Andrujic’s two assistants, Matt says. Whom, Chief Norman Hein told the Register last week, had been cooperating with the police. They’d known about Bonnie and Jasmine — and others, going back five years — all along.

“What exactly did Bayott Benir say to you that night?” Saffalo asks.

“Just that they all were leaving — the Sungaards and Danielle.”

“I’d leave too,” says the DA. “If I knew your sister was being held prisoner two hundred feet away and a hundred feet up.”

Matt nods, picturing the bell tower lit at night. He hears the drone of the generators that drowned out her calls for help. Sees Jazz in her crimson gown — Om’s color of purity, because he was pure and he wanted Jazz to be pure, too — dragging her iron ball and chain across the belfry floor.

Matt has heard a lot from Darnell over the last two weeks, some of it astonishing. Most of it part of Neldra Sungaard’s plea deal: Andrujic was a small-time criminal drifter and con artist, and later a self-taught spiritualist who had modest success with the Garden of Earthly Delights, a meditation center / health food store / social space in the hills north of L.A. He was smart and ugly, a glutton and a sexual opportunist, but he had charm. Neldra told them that Andrujic had a “physical and spiritual craving” for the beautiful, pilgriming teenaged girls and boys who showed up weekly at his Garden of Earthly Delights. And he assumed that thousands of men throughout the world shared that craving. He sensed the money to be made if he could cultivate a “pure product” and offer it to refined and wealthy customers in a way that everyone would profit — even the pure young people who would be his merchandise. According to Neldra, when she and Andrujic met at a party in the Hollywood Hills one hot September night, they recognized one another as kindred spirits. A partnership began. Neldra was impressed by Andrujic’s grasp of how to market popular culture. American youth and beauty for anyone in the world who could afford it, said Darnell. Barbie and Ken dolls for old men, Matt thinks. He remembers Gauguin’s natives in the Pageant tableau, Laurel hopeful but Rose suspicious of corrupt invaders. Her eyes wary because she knows...

“Still with us, Matt?” asks Furlong.

“Yes, sir.”

“Not daydreaming of Dr. Hamilton’s Youth Leadership Center, are you?”

Matt shakes his head, never surprised by Furlong’s eagerness to induce fear. Two weeks ago he had panicked Matt into running away. But now, Matt thinks, things are different. Now if Furlong threatens him, he’ll just put out his wrists for the cuffs. Get a public defender, tell the truth, and hold on tight.

“What did you sense the relationship was, between the Sungaards and Danielle Huber?” asks Darnell.

“Hard to tell. That day in Mrs. Sungaard’s place, they just seemed like friends sharing a house.”

“And later, arriving at the Vortex that afternoon with Bayott and the Sungaards?” she asks.

Matt pictures Danielle Huber following the Sungaards toward the front porch of Mahajad’s home, smiling and joking with Bayott.

“She seemed happy,” says Matt. “Like she was looking forward to something. Her clothes were pretty and her hair was good and she had makeup on. You know how people behave when they’re eager to please. Like that.”

“And again, what color was her dress?”

“Still orange,” says Matt.

“And still important,” says McAdam. “The colors mean rank to Andrujic’s followers. First, street clothes, then white, yellow, orange, and crimson. Lowest to highest. Danielle Huber was on the same path of destruction as your sister and Bonnie Stratmeyer. Oh, not a path to destruction — to purity.”

This rings true to Matt in a way that makes his heart ache. Bonnie from high school, kind-faced and happy. The first dead person he’d ever seen.

“Last interview, you made it sound like Bonnie’s death was an accident,” says Matt.

“Caused by Andrujic,” says Darnell. “The Vortex wanted its girls and boys to be physically strong and beautiful. So, weights, swimming, yoga, vegetarian diet. Neldra says Bonnie overdosed on their so-called ‘purity nectar’ during one of Om’s exercise routines. They’d use the gym and the pool at night, keeping the other followers away so they wouldn’t see. Bonnie, drugged up, dove into that shallow lap pool, hit her head on the bottom and knocked herself out — probably all by accident. Which tracks with the autopsy — the syringe marks between her toes, the drugs, the head blow, the fresh water in her lungs. Neldra says Andrujic decided to let Bonnie drown. Two of the disciples took her body to Thalia in one of the green Vortex vans we were looking so hard for. Carried her down the stairs and laid her out on the rocks.”

As almost witnessed by Myron Kandell, Matt thinks. His tired mind’s eye goes to Bonnie’s pale cold body on the beach.

“Have you found out what’s in purity nectar?” he asks.

“The FBI is still analyzing,” says McAdam. “Mostly it’s synthesized opiates and barbiturates, mixed with a heavy dose of LSD. Designed to keep you calm, comfortable, hallucinating out of your mind, and craving more. God only knows how much it must have disoriented Bonnie to make her dive into a shallow pool like that. Or what ‘purity nectar’ did to the other girls and boys we’ll probably never see again.”

“How many have there been?” asks Matt. He already knows last week’s figure, courtesy of Darnell.

The cops all look at each other. Matt knows that they can’t tell him everything. But he also thinks they owe him, considering how poorly they’ve handled things — from their initial disbelief that he really saw Jazz kidnapped that night in the fog, to their non-help in his difficult quest to search every home in the city, to their refusal to take the Little Wings seriously. Hadn’t he cracked this case while living by his wits for a week while they did their best to run him down and throw him in juvie? Matt knows he’s a star witness. Right up there with Jasmine.

“I think we can share this information after all he’s done,” says Darnell.

A beat, loaded but not long.

“Eight young people sold in four years,” says McAdam. There’s emotion in his voice. “Four girls, four boys. None from Laguna. Runaways from across the country, so we didn’t see a pattern. Silence from you on this, Matt.”

Matt considers. “I keep secrets,” he says. “Just ask Sergeant Furlong.”

Chuckles, even from Sergeant Bill himself.

For another half hour they pepper Matt with questions about that night, and beyond. They want to know more about the thermals over Windy Rise, the prevailing onshore winds and the occasional offshore Santa Ana winds, and how many paper airplanes Jazz launched through the bell tower slots. They seem impressed that Matt was able to estimate the varying Little Wing flight lines based on wind, but to Matt it was obvious. As a fisherman and occasional surfer, he’d been keeping an eye on the wind for years. There was some element of faith at work in his calculations, too. And desperation.

Furlong asks again about Sungaard and the twelve fish surfboards recovered from the Hessian murder house up in Huntington Beach. Matt has never told them anything about surfboards or Hessians, and he’s not going to tell them now. Somewhat amusingly to Matt, the surfboards were never meant to be sold as such. Sungaard’s “revolution” in surfboard design was just diversional fantasy. They were hollow and stuffed with canned, distilled hash oil from Afghanistan, worth ten thousand dollars per board. The cops discovered the oil when a young off-duty officer took one of the irresistibly beautiful boards out of the property room and went to Brooks Street beach to surf. He dropped into a nice five-foot wall and his foot went through the deck. Furlong suspects Johnny Grail and BEL involvement through Mystic Arts World, and he listens closely to Matt’s calm evasions, making notes.

As before, the LBPD is especially interested in Bayott Benir and his comrades — definitely not Interpol — who haven’t been seen since the night at the Vortex. Matt has little to tell them.

But he’s heard that Danielle Huber does.