In 1992, at the time of the reunion, Jello was eighteen, and Rebecca was twenty. To them, the statue was probably a joke—and one that was especially laugh or cringe-worthy if you were tripping, as Jello often was: “Dude, I looked up and Bob looked evil. . . . His eyes were dripping blood, and I thought he was gonna kill me. . . . Then I went in and ordered eighteen double-deckers. . . . When I couldn’t pay, they called the cops.” On the other hand, strip away whatever reaction the kids might have had to the place, and you are left with one thing only: both of them needed a father in their lives, and not just any father, but one who would be kind. Their mother accompanied Jello and Rebecca to the reunion. We don’t know exactly what the boy thought while sitting there with a father he barely remembered. We do know that he was a pissed-off individual, beyond the usual anger that teenagers harbor and nourish; it was who he was. Given that he was well versed in the literary and poetic rants of his time—Henry Rollins, Kurt Cobain, his friends who poured out their own feelings in lyrics and art and inky glyphs of truth on their own skin—he might have sat there in his Mohawk and leather and chains, cagey behind it all for he was a player, and thought, “You motherfucker, why have you forsaken me? Do you have any idea what my life is like?” And although he did not say those words, his father knew them—although not all of the details, not every episode of abuse and childhood alcoholism, and early encounters with heroin—and it’s a fact that he also knew his son’s heart and had read his body language right away; he had already been briefed by relatives that his son was a chip off the old block—handsome (a younger twin, really) and charming and funny, and pretending that everything was fine. He made small talk and spoke of his love of rockets, to which the son immediately responded, in a most positive fashion, as boys generally would.
And nor did the daughter say exactly what was on her mind for such moments are fraught—especially for daughters and fathers, so much is riding on them, so unfamiliar is each party with being face to face with so much hurt and betrayal. Yet there they were, in a round booth no less, whose very nature broke down barriers because it was not a square, and she may have hidden behind a menu anyway (for they were large), and she may have made her own kind of chitchat (she remembers only a few details of the encounter), telling her father about boyfriends, accomplishments, plans for her life, possibly holding back tears, pretending like her brother that everything was fine, talking over her brother or at the same time as each hoped and vied perhaps for a crumb of attention from the man they feared might vanish again, and as the attempts at connection were essayed, missed, sort of made, throughout it all, the three of them—father, daughter, son—had a moment that would connect them for the rest of time. And when the heaping platters of tender goodness arrived, the reunited trio ate happily and heartily, although the girl soon lost her appetite, tightening up inside and suddenly vanishing inside of herself.
Other families had gathered around the booths, partaking of Big Boys under the bright lights. At some point, plans were made— “I want you to come see me in the desert,” Father said, or words to that effect. “We’ll build rockets. You’ll meet my friends the ravens,” and then he laughed and spun out some information about the beautiful and brilliant birds, like everything you would want to know and then some, such as information about their wing span and their ability to remember people and places, and how they knew how to make and use tools, and it was clear that they were among his associates. “The desert is an amazing place,” he told his kids. “Really, you gotta check it out.” Or words to that effect.
The waitress in her cheerleader uniform stopped by and said the dessert specials, and then Father might have told the kids, “Go ahead, get the banana boat! You won’t break the bank! Seriously!” and then he flashed a wad of bills, not to impress his children but to show that the meal was not an undue burden for him, for it had been mentioned—or he feared that it was common knowledge inside his family—that he was only working odd jobs and living off a small government check from his disability and that meant he was a pauper, and he did not want to alarm his children. And so they ordered gobs of ice cream and Father did too, for he craved sweets as a result of various drugs that were coursing through his system, and then the waitress delivered the treats, the exclamation point at the end of the sentence, the thing that would seal the deal for all of time, and later, after the coming together of the long-separated threesome, the children would talk about it a lot, but on that very day, when the son had rejoined amigo Chris Smallwood, in whose mother’s garage he was then living, the first thing he said was, “Oh my God, dude, I just met my father.”
“Hey, dude,” Chris replied. “At least you have one.”
As it happened, there was another boy, about eight years old, who dined at Bob’s Big Boy every month with his family, always looking forward to the adventure—it was a big outing—always ordering a vanilla malt to go with his double-decker and fries, and while it cannot be said for certain, chances are good that he may have been sitting with his mother and father and sisters and brothers at a booth close to Donald Kueck, perhaps even adjacent to, on the day that the Mojave pilgrim treated his son and daughter and ex-wife to a meal. This was Bruce Chase. Now grown up, the slight hint of a smile crosses the lieutenant’s face as he recalls his family’s weekly outings to the place whose menu offered “tender goodness”—a subject that happened to come up during one of many conversations we had on the patio of a harborside restaurant in LA during the years I was working on this book. For a quick moment, he was back at Bob’s, far away from the sheriff’s department and the never-ending battles with liars and gangsters and hard-core killers, a young boy again, behind the wraparound shades. And then the conversation returned to other matters, such as the manhunt and the twists and turns on life’s road and how it is that some people end up on the side where all the trouble is and how some of them make it worse. “There is such a thing as evil,” Chase tells me. “And I believe that in the murder of Deputy Sorensen, it was everywhere.”
SHERIFF’S STATION, LAKE LOS ANGELES
Shane, come back.
—Little boy, Shane
THERE COMES A TIME DURING THE COURSE OF A STORY, IF YOU work on it long enough, that information you hadn’t expected comes your way. You might have wanted something along the same lines, and possibly had even tried in various ways to get it, whatever “it” was, yet try as you might, it is not to be had, and that’s all there is to it. And then one day, things fall into place or you say something that makes someone think of the thing you had been wanting to know for years, only they didn’t know you wanted to know it, and there you are, at one more fork in the road.
For some time while working on my book, I had wanted to visit Steve Sorensen’s house—not just drive down the unpaved and remote road in Lake Los Angeles and stop for brief moments of reconnaissance, as I had done at various times since I began working on this story years ago, but go inside and see where he lived and worked, walk in his footsteps, get a feel for that part of the Antelope Valley. After all, Donald Kueck had lived nearby, and I wondered if there was any sense of that just from looking south toward Avenue T. All I knew so far was that the house was a sprawling Bonanza-style compound fronted by a barrier of oleander hedge and hurricane fencing, with pine and juniper trees in the front yard. Not so different from other desert hideaways, but behind the brush there was much to be learned. I had considered venturing up the driveway and knocking on the door, but that’s something I rarely do in my work, unless I’ve been invited or as a last resort. As it turned out, thanks to a mutual friend, I finally received an invitation from the woman who had recently bought his house—unsellable and vacant since shortly after Steve was killed. “A lot of things are just like they were when Steve lived here,” she said when we spoke, and instantly I was out the door and heading north from LA into the desert, then east on the 138, aka the Pearblossom Highway, the one that David Hockney made famous in his desert collage, the two-lane that is known among some l
ocals as Tweaker Highway.
I looked north as I headed past the ruins of the old commune at Llano, and wondered if anyone or anything might be hunkered behind the remaining walls, hiding from the high desert winds and perhaps preparing to stay for awhile. I knew that beyond that was Kueck’s place, and I wondered if anyone had moved in, maybe a homeless crew that was drifting from one encampment to the next, or a squatter who had donned the old size 11 Nikes I had seen there on one of my trips and then decided to stay awhile. Slowing down for a few moments, I spotted a couple of dogs making for the ruins, heads down, panting, crossing the highway shoulder as the gusts riffled their coats, made nervous by the passing big rigs, wary like all desert outcasts, moving away from civilization and into safety. In my rearview mirror they vanished, and then I approached a popular pit stop, the Country Mart in Pearblossom, where Kueck bought his propane, a classic Mojave store that stocks tat mags, sleds in the winter, motocross goggles, and all manner of packaged jerky. I thought about stopping in to purchase an egg salad sandwich (the best ones ever made), but I needed to get to Steve’s house, lest the current resident change her mind and cancel my visit. You never know. People get nervous, wonder about letting a stranger into their homes, whether or not what you write will be fair. So I cruised along, skipping food and refreshment, remembering a ringtone I had once heard inside the Country Mart while waiting in line at the cash register. It was “I Drink Alone” by George Thorogood, and a guy in a mullet answered his phone as the lyric “Me and my buddy Weiser” trailed off into the store chatter. It was the best ringtone I have ever heard and one that you would never hear at the lower elevations—a surprise moment of grace and humor that echoed my desert beat and the lives of many who lived there.
Kristie Holaday heard my car as I turned into the dirt driveway, and opened up the gate. I drove in and parked behind a man who was off-loading bales of hay from a pickup for horses in a nearby corral. To my left I immediately spotted a playground in the front yard—a swing set, a slide, and jungle gym—under a towering floodlight that could cast an intense and frightening glow in the dead of night. Months before my visit, I had heard on the grapevine that Steve had readied his front yard for the arrival of his adopted son, setting up the equipment well before the day when the boy could use it. I also knew that as resident deputy, Steve was based in his house, dispatching himself from his own office and protecting it accordingly. But he was also a security freak and increasingly so, since locals in Lake Los Angeles had threatened his life after he tried to shake up the status quo by siding with Hispanic shop owners in their licensing dispute with the county. The front-yard floodlight looked like something from a penitentiary, an odd indicator in a field of child’s play that something was amiss. Yet the rest of the yard told a different story, which Kristie had noticed as well when she bought the house in 2004, a year after Steve had been killed. She had been living in Tujunga, a rugged part of Los Angeles but still part of it nonetheless, on the city side of the San Gabriel Mountains. She had been running a rescue center for feral black cats, taking them in for spaying and then releasing them back into the wild. But she yearned for more space, and when her parents left Los Angeles and returned to their native Kansas, she felt a new kind of freedom and found herself longing for horses, which she had had at other times in her life. Every weekend, she would meet with a real estate agent in the Antelope Valley, hoping to find the right place. “The first time I saw all those Joshua trees,” she says, “it reminded me of being on the moon.” Yet still, she was intrigued and wanted to answer the call, but after looking at houses all over the valley, hadn’t found one that she wanted to live in. Just as she was ready to start exploring other areas, the agent reluctantly suggested a big house zoned for equestrian use on an unpaved road in Lake Los Angeles. She was having trouble selling it, she said, and then in general terms explained why. She also explained what Kristie might like about the property—its size (six acres), its house (2,500 square feet with three bedrooms and three bathrooms), its views (wide-open space on all three sides). So Kristie thought she’d take a look; by then, she was mesmerized by that part of the desert—“living here is like being in love with a bad boy,” she tells me—and when she saw the property for the first time, with its corrals and scenery, she knew it was a good match. “It was animal-friendly,” she says, as we walk the grounds, “and I felt free.” It was a feeling that superseded her initial trepidation about living in a house whose owner had been murdered, even though the incident had happened elsewhere.
All around her was wide-open desert land, dotted by creosote and the occasional Joshua tree, running all the way to a vertical expanse of buttes to the east, where the ancients had carried out their ceremonies and sheltered. At the time of her first visit, there were ten dogs living on the property. Christine and her son had moved out shortly after Steve’s death, and a family friend was looking after the animals. These were dogs Steve had rescued, finding them during his rounds and taking them in. There was also a goat Steve had saved after a domestic violence call. “When Steve got there, the goat was tied to a tree,” Kristie tells me. “He was in bad shape. They were gonna roast him.” Four of Steve’s dogs are still residents on the day of my visit: Bandy (short for Bandit), a beagle/basset mix who takes off whenever someone is using tools; Dottie, a little Aussie who had been abused; Delta, a shepherd chow mix Steve had found lying in an arroyo; and Lucy, a Queensland Heeler, a desert stray who hopped into Steve’s SUV while he was parked near an abandoned meth lab. Bandy and Dottie follow us around the yard, as Kristie points to the cherry, apple, and peach trees Steve had planted, just starting to bear fruit now, in late spring; an old wood-burning stove Steve had placed under an olive tree in the front yard, one of those pieces of desert flotsam and jetsam that make for found art when displayed respectfully and in beauty; a hand-painted sign that said “free weeds—pick your own,” and even a few dead trees that had been there for who knows how long. “Steve wouldn’t cut them down,” Kristie says. “He left them where the birds could land.”
Steve and his wife had lived here for a little over two and a half years, buying the large, ranch-style house for $80,000—a desert mansion purchased for a song. From the moment they moved in, Steve had been adding on, remodeling it for Christine up until the time he was killed, installing new cabinets in the kitchen, repainting each wall of the spacious home, shoring up the two fireplaces, finishing everything except for the final touches on an electrified fence, the last security measure in a house whose twenty-seven points of entry he had wired with an intricate alarm system. To this day, Steve’s handwritten list of the alarm setup is taped to the pantry door. His handwriting hadn’t changed at all since the days when he penned love letters to his high school girlfriend; as a member of possibly the last generation for which legibility was prized, he still had that quaint characteristic known as “good penmanship.” The alarm list includes “number 08 Matt’s Bed window”—a reference to his son’s bedroom. The elaborate alarm system had little to do with Kristie’s interest in the house. When she began to get serious about purchasing the house, Kristie was asked to fill out a security questionnaire. “I didn’t mind,” she tells me. It was common knowledge around Lake Los Angeles that after Steve’s death, Christine Sorensen had been getting threats and was careful about whom she might be letting into her life by way of a real estate deal. After Kristie was cleared, she and Christine met at the house to discuss her offer. Because of the improvements, the house was worth much more than what the Sorensens had paid for it, although, because of its history, it was still inexpensive, even by the desert’s standards. “I told Christine I wanted to start an animal rescue,” Kristie says, “and she was happy that I would keep the house the same way.”
It takes time to get used to living alone in a remote area, no matter how much you think you’re prepared for it, especially if you are not a hermit, and even if it seems that all of your life, this is where you were headed. But Kristie settled in easily with the
four-legged outcasts that came with her new home in the desert, soothed and nurtured by their presence. Once in a blue moon menacing local characters ranged by—meth freaks, drifters, grim pilgrims of one sort or another—and Kristie was thankful to have the dogs as guardians. She quickly added to the ark, taking in cats and parrots, rehabbing a baby owl that had tumbled from its nest, and soon rescued horses joined the family. Her dream of using the corrals that Steve had built was coming to fruition. “These mustangs needed me,” she says, pointing to the animals, each with its own story of abuse and neglect. “I know what it’s like to hurt.”
We continued to walk the grounds, and my heart soared as all manner of doors began to open. “Do you want to see Steve’s studio?” she asked, stopping outside a weathered wooden portal and trying to open it. “Yes,” I replied, and watched her jimmy the knob, understanding that the story was now writing itself, and thanking whatever spirits were guiding me. “It’s locked,” she said. “Or broken. I haven’t opened it since I moved in.” As she went to find the key, I realized that the unexplored studio was like the list of alarm point entries—one of those things having to do with Steve that Kristie could not bring herself to alter; as for why, often such things are not apparent until some time later, if at all, and when the moment of contact does arrive, no words can explain the rite. A few moments later, Kristie returned with a ring of keys, followed by Dottie and Bandi. “These dogs have saved me from being bitten by snakes,” she said. “Sometimes there’s a Mojave green coiled out here. They bark, and I know something is up.” After a few tries, one of the more rusted out keys worked, and in we went, to Steve’s world. It was a two-room studio, made of stone, an original part of the structure. The first room was a workspace, with nicely constructed shelves topped with cans of paint thinner and wall paint. Each can was labeled, and hardly any had dripped, although you could tell that they had been opened and used. It was the kind of workroom found in many an American home, and it reminded me of a particularly crowded workroom, a few miles away, in a neighborhood that was more heavily trafficked. Along these suburban routes, the men could generally be found at their respective hobby areas, usually on weekends, laboring on one project or another, retrieving drill bits of varying sizes from carefully maintained lockers, revving up power saws, checking the readings on a level. The particular workroom I was thinking of was labeled “asshole’s garage”; the self-deprecating and large sign had been placed on the guy’s garage door, probably by his wife, and whenever he opened it up, there it was, and there was the guy, fixing one thing or another, making something better, and judging by the way his house was in a state of constant renovation, with nicely done embellishments at that, the guy was hardly an asshole—although perhaps difficult to deal with after he had polished off a six-pack on a hot summer day while putting the final touches on a new tool shed. Did Christine Sorensen chide her husband for maintaining a geeked-out workspace? Why did she leave it in place after Steve’s death? Most everything else was taken, Kristie explained. Yet here was a part of his legacy—Steve the guy who puttered around and made stuff. Steve the builder. Steve the Cave Man, after all, not unlike the ancients who once lived in the mountains to the east, themselves decorating their dwellings with glyphs and symbols whose meanings we do not really know.
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