California Girl

25

DAVID FOLLOWED NICK and Lobdell into the interview room. He’d never been in one before. He assumed the big mirror was really a window from the back. Like Whitbrend’s chapel. And that it was wired for sound and maybe video, again like the chapel. A green metal table and four chairs were bolted to the floor. The tabletop was marked with scratches and what looked like cigarette burns. A black plastic ashtray. Bright light overhead. David wondered how many sins had been confessed in here. How many tears had fallen. How many hearts had finally cracked.

“I’m going to stand in that corner,” said Nick. “Lucky’s got the opposite. We might butt in. If things get hot, that’s part of the deal. Stay cool. I’m taking off his cuffs. If he gets too close to you in a way I don’t like, I’m going to move him away.”

“Usually the less you say the more you get,” said Lobdell.

David stood there awkwardly, unsure what to do. He watched Nick go to his corner, open a briefcase, and bring out a manila folder. Nick arranged three large black-and-white photographs from the packinghouse on the table. Two of Janelle’s body. One close-up of Janelle’s face. All visible from wherever you sat or stood.

David stared down at them. Astonishing. Indescribable. He’d never seen anything like them before. It wasn’t the death. It was the evil. The cruelty and obscenity. His throat tightened and his stomach dropped.

Then Nick set out three of the old SunBlesst orange crate labels with the girl who looked like Janelle. Also visible from anywhere in the room. He remembered them flying all around Tustin in the Santa Ana winds one fall. Where had he gotten those old things?

Then three childhood pictures of Janelle. Janelle sitting on a tree stump. Janelle holding a guitar. Petting a cat on a porch.

Then David watched Nick go again to his corner and come back with a child’s stick horse. Happy little pony with a red felt tongue sticking out. Nick considered his tableau, then set the horse down diagonally amid the pictures.

“The horse was named Bobby,” said Nick. “Used to be Janelle’s. I’m trying to pry open Neemal’s heart any way I can.”

“You never know what’ll set them off,” said Lobdell.

“I’ve never seen pictures like these,” said David. He felt light-headed and nauseous. “They’re the most hideous things I’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe you should sit down, David,” said Nick.

“Where?”

“Put your back to the mirror,” said Nick.

“Yes. Of course.”

David worked his way into the unyielding metal chair. Took a deep breath against the sudden throbbing in his head. He folded his hands on his lap. Fixed his eyes on the doorknob across the room, well above the plain of horror and innocence laid out on the table in front of him.

Neemal seemed dwarflike in his baggy orange jumpsuit. The hair on his shaven head and face had grown back enough to cast shadows. The big mustache drooped. His tawny tan eyes settled on David as Nick took off the handcuffs. Neemal smiled at him. David saw the black mark on his hand and arm. Like a tract of burned land, he thought.

Rubbing one wrist, Neemal looked down and saw the photographs and labels and the stick horse. Stopped rubbing. Walked around the table, studying the pictures.

When he went behind David, David saw Nick ease in his direction. Heard the movement of Lobdell in the corner behind him.

Nick clicked on a tape recorder and spoke quickly. “This is Investigator Nick Becker and Sergeant Al Lobdell, and the jail chaplain, the Reverend David Becker. The suspect is Terry Neemal, who requested this interview and the presence of the Reverend David Becker. It’s Thursday, October seventeenth, nineteen sixty-eight.”

David turned to see Lobdell leaning back in the corner, arms crossed and necktie crooked and his gut snugged into a wrinkled white shirt.

Neemal got back to where he started. “I don’t understand the horse.”

“Its name is Bobby,” said Nick. “It was Janelle’s.”

Neemal nodded, looking down at David. “God forgives this?”

David had no idea whether God forgave this or not. Why should He?

“Yes,” said David, trusting in his God to lead him now.

“A person who does this can still go to heaven?” asked Neemal.

David felt his soul reverse and crawl back over itself. “Yes.”

“How?” asked Neemal.

Dear Father, speak through me now.

“It is in His power,” said David.

“But what would the person have to do?”

God help me.

“Ask forgiveness. Lead a life of good acts from this moment forward. Be generous and honest and always help the people around you.”

God will accept those puny acts for what these pictures show?

Neemal stared at David for a long moment. Something new registered on his face but David wasn’t sure what. Connivance? Subterfuge?

“I did it,” said Neemal.

David felt himself vanish. Because Terry Neemal’s soul was in the hands of God, but his body was now owned by the People of California.

“Did what?” asked Nick, glancing hard at his brother.

“What you see in these pictures,” said Neemal.

“Which is what?” asked Nick.

“I killed her and chopped her head off. See?” Neemal nodded at the picture in front of him.

“Janelle Vonn was her name. You killed Janelle Vonn and chopped her head off?”

“Absolutely.”

Neemal started around the table again. Staring at the pictures. Stopped for a moment in front of each of the packinghouse shots. He had his blackened arm up, chin resting on his fist, elbow cradled in his other hand. When he went behind David again, Nick drifted toward them. Lobdell stepped forward, adjusted the tape recorder, stepped back.

“Terry,” said Nick. “Of your own free will, you’re saying you killed Janelle Vonn and chopped her head off?”

“Positively.”

“How did you do that?”

Neemal rounded David and stopped in front of the picture of Janelle’s face. He looked down at David. “I don’t remember.”

“You remember that you killed her but you don’t remember how you did it?” asked Nick.

“Precisely.”

“Tell me about that night, Terry,” said Nick. “I want to know all about it.”

Neemal continued to stare down at David. Tan eyes, the big fan of mustache, his face beveled into light and shadow. “Can I trust you?”

“Yes, Terry, but I-”

“And trust your God? Because the God that got inside my head for all those years was a real bad guy. Made me walk to Arizona.”

“Yes, you can trust Him but He-”

“I don’t remember very much. Just that she was wearing a blue sweater. And boots and a short black skirt. I don’t know what she was doing there. I was looking for something I lost. We talked.”

David looked to Nick, who nodded tightly.

David’s voice was hardly more than a whisper. “What did you say to her?”

“I don’t remember very much. She had a very sweet voice.”

“Sit down now, Terry,” said Nick. “Take the seat across from David. “How about a cigarette and a cup of coffee?”

Neemal shuffled over, cuffs and sneakers flapping quietly on the floor. He slid into the metal chair opposite David. Nick took the seat to David’s left. Lobdell stayed in his corner out of sight.

David kept his eyes on Terry Neemal’s face. The images just below his line of sight wavered up into his awareness like bodies in a lake. Beyond them waited the tan eyes. A flame flickered into David’s view and smoke rose from Neemal’s cigarette.

“I was already in when she got there,” said Neemal. “That night. Inside the packinghouse. Looking for some matches I lost.”

“How did you lose matches in the packinghouse?” asked Nick.

“I lit a fire inside a few days before. I got cold. I left the matches there.”

David saw that Neemal was now staring at the coal of his cigarette.

“A book of paper matches, Terry?” asked Nick. “Or a box of wooden ones?”

“Paper.”

“Plain, or some design or company name on the cover?” asked Nick.

David saw Neemal’s brow furrow. Big thought lines across his forehead. He looked at the coal again, then brought the cigarette to his mouth and drew. “Pep Boys. Manny, Moe, and Jack.”

Lobdell cleared his throat. Nick glanced back at his partner.

“Did you locate them again in the packinghouse, Terry?” asked David.

Neemal shook his head. “No. I did not. But I will say…that was when the girl came in.”

“Janelle?” asked David.

“Janelle Vonn,” said Neemal. “Vonn.”

“Then what happened?” asked David.

“She said, ‘Hello, how are you?’ I said I was fine and what a lovely evening it was. After that, I remember nothing.”

“If you don’t remember killing her, maybe you didn’t,” said David.

“Maybe you’re just making up a bunch of shit and wasting our time,” said Lobdell. Lobdell came around to the right of David. Stood behind the last open chair.

“Oh, I definitely did it,” said Neemal.

“Did you chop off her head before or after she was dead?” asked Nick.

“She was still alive.”

“What color was the handle of the machete you used to chop off her head?” asked Nick.

“Black.”

“How come you tossed the machete outside?” asked Lobdell.

“Well, obviously,” said Neemal, stubbing out his cigarette, “so you wouldn’t find it.”

“But we did. Where did you get it?” asked Nick. “The machete?”

“Sav-On.”

“Terry,” said Lobdell. “Are you ready to sign a confession?”

Neemal looked at David again. Took a deep breath. “Yes. I am.”

“I’ll write one up,” said Lobdell. “You can read it and sign it and it will prove what Nick’s other brother wrote about us in the paper this morning was shit.”

“I didn’t agree with that article,” said Neemal. “I think Nick is an excellent detective.”

“See?” said Lobdell, smiling. “Just ask Wolfman.”

David felt half disgusted and half mystified by the proceedings. Man’s law was not his area. But he felt obligated to speak. “Is he competent to sign a confession?” he asked.

No one answered.

Lobdell straddled the bolted chair and huffed down into it. Pulled a pen and a notebook out of his coat pocket. Clicked the ballpoint with a meaty thumb, looked at Neemal with open disgust, and started writing.

David watched the pen wiggle above the notepad, heard the rapid scratch of point on paper.

Nick stood. David saw the darkness in his eyes, the bags under them. Nick glanced at him, then circled the table.

“Do you understand what it means to sign a confession?” asked Nick.

“I’m sane and I do,” said Neemal.

“The confession is going to say that you murdered Janelle Vonn in the packinghouse on October first of this year. It says you will cooperate with us by giving us details and information.”

David couldn’t let this moment go unprotested, either. “But if he’s willing to sign a confession right now, then what’s the hurry? Why can’t you get the details and information first?”

“That’s not how it works, Rev,” said Lobdell. “With all respect, you got your church confessions, then you got your legal confessions. They’re different. Here, Nick. This is ready for Mr. Neemal to sign. He can use my pen. Then you can keep it for your grandkids or something-first murder confession you ever got, the actual pen. Terry, read this over and ask any questions you got. Then sign the bottom.”

Neemal took a deep breath. Arranged the notepad precisely. Read slowly and with apparent concentration.

Then he hung his head and began to cry.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t kill her. I did what I said I did. About the…well, you remember, Nick. But I didn’t kill her.”

“You saw the black skirt and the boots when you went back that second time, though,” said Nick.

Neemal nodded.

David had no idea what this “second time” was all about. Neemal had never said anything about it to him.

“And you didn’t find the Pep Boys matches because they were already in your pocket,” said Nick.

“That’s true.” He sniffled.

“You used them to light the newspapers on fire before you masturbated.”

David’s stomach dropped. What kind of a man was this? And how could Nick understand him so thoroughly?

“Yes,” said Neemal.

“And you tossed the matches into the fire for an extra little burst.”

“I did do that, yes,” he said quietly.

“Because fire helps you climax.” Nick sighed.

David’s imagination supplied an image of the Wolfman Neemal masturbating over Janelle’s headless body as the newspapers burst into flames. An atrocious moment. David felt preyed upon by his own mind.

Neemal nodded again. He was no longer crying. But still looking down at the table. “So I can’t sign. I thought I could. I thought about it. I wanted to.”

“Why?” asked David.

“For the reporters. Then I could just kind of stay here and…you know, just stay here and have people write articles about me. But if I sign that they’ll put me in the gas chamber.”

David couldn’t formulate a meaningful reply.

“You disappoint me, Wolfie,” said Lobdell. “I thought you might have had the presence of mind to pull off that murder. Had my money on you for a few days. I figured the crazy shit was just an act. But it isn’t.”

Lobdell walked to the door and rapped on it. A deputy let him out.

In the silence David watched Neemal as he stared down at the table. “Sorry, Nick. Guess I’ll only get to stay in here a while longer.”

“Looks that way, Terry.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t confess. I…thought I could go through with it. Thought it would be best for everybody.”

“I understand,” said Nick.

Though David wasn’t sure at all that he did.

“Thanks for your help, David,” said Nick.

“I helped no one.”

“I believed your God would forgive me,” said Neemal. “It wasn’t that, Reverend. You did your part.”

David didn’t know what to say. This was like being trapped behind the looking glass. He couldn’t wait to get outside and into some real air. Into a faintly logical world. He smelled dinner wafting in from the mess hall, which sickened him slightly.

“I’m hungry,” Neemal said. “I want to go back to my cell and eat and get rested up for the Register. I got an interview tomorrow at nine.”

He stood and sighed and put his hands behind his back for Nick and the cuffs.

TEN MINUTES later David pulled into his driveway. Spent and stupefied. The white Ford that had been behind him since the jail slid under the big sycamore by the curb. His heart fell further.

David got out and lifted the garage door. He pulled Wendy’s new bike out of the way, and Matthew’s beloved Mickey Mouse guitar. Amazing what kids could leave in the sure path of a car.

He pulled the station wagon in. Got out and took a deep breath as he reached for the rope to pull down the door. Looked out at the darkening sky. Saw the kitchen light on at the Cranes’ across the street. Looked at the Ford under the sycamore and knew he had to go face the music.

Hambly sat behind the wheel. Window down. News station on. Looked at David.

“Get in,” he said.

David went to the passenger side and got in.

“Five days,” said the agent.

“I’ve been thinking about your offer.”

“Offer? There’s nothing to think about. You give me information or I send the pictures to the newspapers, your parents, brothers, wife, and key congregational members of the Grove Drive-In Church of God. I was very clear on that.”

David listened to the words but his mind jumped its track. He found himself understanding how people committed murder. And sympathizing with them.

“I’m not sure what to tell you,” he said.

“I’m sure you’ve thought about Stoltz and your father and the John Birch Society and the National Volunteer Police down south.”

“I actually haven’t.”

“Too busy with God?”

“I don’t see Stoltz,” said David. “He’s in Washington, where your bosses are.”

Hambly ignored the threat. “What about Max and his JBS chapter? Come on-I know you’ve attended meetings. I know you see him. I know you’ve heard things.”

“My father thinks the JBS is doing good work,” said David. “Informing people about the Communist conspiracy. Some of their ideas seem a little…exaggerated. But they’ve never said one thing about shooting Negroes or whatever it is you’re suggesting.”

“Not one thing?”

“Never. It’s not a secret organization. They have bookstores and phone numbers you can call for information. They give away little red, white, and blue plastic pens with the number on them. They’re dentists and engineers and lawyers and schoolteachers and-”

“I heard Dick Nixon was in town. Come by the old house last Saturday?”

David stared out the windshield. Saw Peg Crane at her kitchen window, looking out. Always there. Like she was washing dishes, but she was more like a DEW system for the block.

“Yes,” said David. “We talked very briefly.”

“Finally,” said Hambly, as if hugely relieved.

David was aware of Hambly taking out a notebook and pen but he kept looking at Peg Crane. “He asked about my church. He said he was sorry he couldn’t see eye-to-eye with Dad and Stoltz.”

“Meaning what?”

“Whatever you want it to mean.”

“Go on.”

“I said I thought they’d support him in November.”

“How do you know that?” asked Hambly.

“It was just polite small talk.”

“Talking votes to a presidential candidate is small?”

“It was just my opinion,” David said.

“Was your father sorry, too, not seeing eye-to-eye with his old Yorba Linda buddy?”

“He didn’t say, either way,” said David.

“Dick not quite aggressive enough for him? Won’t destroy villages to save them? Not willing to drop the bomb on Moscow if they keep sending guns to the North Vietnamese?”

“Who cares what my father thinks of Richard Nixon?”

“Like I said before,” said Hambly, “I care. I’m the one who cares.”

“That’s all I’m going to say.”

David swung open the door, stepped out under the sycamore, and slammed it. Peg Crane hadn’t moved. He sighed and looked back at the special agent.

Hambly grinned. “Have you talked to that Marxist Washburn out at UCI? Figured out how many kids he’s registered into the American Communist Party?”

“I have not.”

“Call anytime, Jude.”

David leaned in the open window. “I will. I’ll call you next time. Until then, stay off my block. We have children and elderly people here. I don’t want them in the presence of evil.”

“Evil,” said Hambly. “Reverend, you crack me up. Hey, did you know your buddy Langton was questioned by the Laguna cops today? They wondered what he knew about the Boom Boom Bungalow killing.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“They’ve got a witness who saw a guy running from the victim’s room. Got into a car and sped away. Witness got the plates-for Howard’s cute little Triumph convertible. Witness took his sweet time coming forward because he wasn’t supposed to be boom-booming that night. But there it is.”

“That’s not possible,” said David. “Howard’s wife will vouch for him.”

“Vouch or lie?”

David straightened, looked down at the grass. Breathed deeply. “Lie. But-”

He couldn’t continue. Thought of his Father in heaven but couldn’t continue.

“But what, Rev?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

David looked into the car. Hambly eyed him with the binary detachment of a rattlesnake. To strike or not to strike.

“My guess,” said Hambly, “is the cops will smell something wrong unless Howard and his wife are both really talented liars. If they shake and break them, they’ll put Howard in a lineup and see what the witness says. If the witness picks Howard, he’ll have to use you as his alibi. This is a murder rap we’re talking about. This is serious. Maybe you should be lining up your ducks, too.”

“What ducks?”

“If Howard tries to use you as an alibi, deny everything he says. Barbara would have to hang tough when she lies about being with you that night. But I’ll bet she’s tougher and cooler than you are.”

“Quite a bit,” he said quietly.

“And she does know about all this, right?”

“Yes,” he said, more quietly. He’d known it would end in disaster. All of it. Everything. Just a matter of when. The rest of his life blank and empty like that old marquee in front of the Grove Drive-In Theater.

“Janelle’s not around to corroborate Howard’s tale,” said Hambly. “And I’m not going to. I really don’t want to show those pictures. I’ll just stay out of it.”

“Why would you do that?”

“You’re no good to me if you lose your family, your congregation, and everything you’ve worked for. And you’re a nice guy.”

“You’re beyond evil.”

“Think about it, Judas. And imagine the alternative.”