by P. J. Zander
FORTY-EIGHT
That evening, Chris Reed called.
“Jesus, Chris, why didn’t you call sooner?”
“Happy New Year to you, too. I didn’t want to break up your time with Raylene. That is the most important thing for you right now, for your information. In fact, I am calling a day or two early as it is.”
Banyan took his friend’s sarcasm to heart, but responded quickly. “Okay. You’re right. Now, what do you have to tell me?”
“Before that, I apologize for interrupting. Please pass that on to Ray.”
“No need to apologize. She’s gone back to Wrightwood. I wasn’t the best vacation partner the past couple days.”
“Oh, great. Sorry it didn’t go better.” Banyan heard him clear his throat. “Well, I got a good look all around. There was nothing that stood out. The place is immaculate, clean, completely remodeled—”
“But, what did you see?”
“That’s just it. And it became clear in the master bedroom. The whole house has huge leather and wood furniture, very manly artworks, lotsa browns, blacks and tans. One vase with fresh flowers from the garden, and a holiday poinsettia, and I’d put money on the housekeeper handling both of those.”
“What was it about the master?” Come on, thought Banyan.
“Well, again beautifully furnished in heavy wood and leather. Walk-in closet had everything—suits, shirts, ties, shoes—arranged neatly. No, precisely. All men’s clothing. It wasn’t so much that it was definitely a man’s house because there were no feminine touches. It’s what I didn’t see. There was nothing personal. No photos, not one of his brother or mother, no mementos, no memories, at least not visible during my walkthrough. Like Dwyer resides there, and I assume he has for some time, but he has absolutely no attachment to it. Nothing that would cause him to say, ‘I’m home,’ when he drives in the driveway. Like a hotel, a transition between a buried past and no future. Cold as ice.”
“A two-million-dollar shelter for a nowhere man, huh, Chris?”
“No shit. This guy’s got it all . . . and nothing.”
For a moment, neither spoke.
“Well, is that it? Nothing of particular—”
“Swear to God, Rusty, you sitting down?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sitting down. Why?”
“Within minutes of getting in, I go into his office and find something of . . . well, it blew me away.”
“Okay, I’m still sitting here. What the heck is it?”
“You know what MapQuest is? Web mapping service. You just go in—”
“Honestly, I don’t need any more hype, Chris.”
“Street by street directions on how to get from San Marino to Laguna Beach, specifically to upper Lombardy Lane.”
Banyan was silent.
“You still there?”
“Run that by me again.”
“A road map to your house was sitting on his printer.”
Banyan was quiet, again, for a few moments. “Fuck me.”
This time, Chris, didn’t say anything, waiting.
“Anything else?”
“Yes.” He heard Reed breathe deeply before continuing. “Jesus, Rusty. This is crazy and goddamn scary as shit. Under the map was a phone pic of a framed photograph. I’ve seen it in your house, recognized the frame—the one of you, Ray and Jolene standing at a turnout up Angeles Crest Highway.”
The hair follicles at the back of his neck bristled. His heart raced; pain stabbed his forehead like an ice pick. Mouth agape, he stared out the front window at Lombardy Lane, but nothing registered. He took deep breaths and tried to focus on what he had just heard.
“Hey, compadre, you okay?”
Banyan turned away from the window and sat on the sofa. “I need to contemplate it for a while.”
“Seriously, Rusty, this guy could be a very bad actor. Not usually one to give you advice, but before you do anything, think about it. Maybe think about what you really want to do right now, then stow it somewhere. Let it sit for a time, at least a day or two. Take it slow. Then, watch your ass.”
“You know me. Always cautious.” He concentrated on slowing his speech. “Thanks for the insider view, Chris, and for the guidance. It’ll stick with me. And, you know, I’m going to get you down here for a real flake-out vacation one of these days.
After they’d hung up, Banyan lay down on the sofa, head pounding, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
FORTY-NINE
Raylene returned to Wrightwood just before the roads closed again due to the heavy rains that were bringing down literally tons of mud from the mountain sides scorched by the conflagration a few months before. Her usual plan for the beginning of the year was to sort, clean and give-away—a fresh start on the next twelve months. Each January also had been a time for reflection as that was the month in which her mother had died at the age of forty-nine. At least Mary Spruce Ojibway had lived long enough to know her grandchild, Jolene.
Yet, increasingly Raylene had felt down as a new year began—another year gone forever. Perhaps it was the passage of time as she aged, becoming more aware of mortality and of things that might have been. As sanguine as she had been all her life, she had grown to understand that there was an inherent sadness to living, kind of always running in the background no matter the high points one was lucky enough to experience.
But the moment she walked in her door when she returned to the mountain village, that January was far worse. Ray was almost beside herself with sorrow. Completely overcome, she couldn’t pick up a broom or stack newspapers in the recycle can. In Jo’s room she sat on her daughter’s bed and wept. She thought about calling Rusty, with whom she had just spent a week, but she felt incapable of speaking coherently right then.
The doorbell rang. At first it didn’t register. After a pause, two more rings penetrated and she got up. She went into the bathroom and dabbed her eyes with a lukewarm washcloth, then patted them dry with a towel. Then came another, insistent ring. Taking several deep breaths, she went to the door and looked through the peephole.
#
It wasn’t just that Sean Lowry was at her door that caused her jaw to drop. It was how he looked.
“Sean, what is it? What’s happened?”
“Hey, Ms. O. I . . . I haven’t been doing too well lately. Things—”
“Come in, come in, Sean. It’s too cold out there.” She couldn’t see his car parked out in front, and just as she closed the door, she caught sight of a bike leaning against the rock steps up to the deck.
Sean stepped into the living room and looked around wide-eyed. Ray could tell he was thinking about something, maybe about old times when he and Jo were playmates many years ago. He hadn’t actually been in the house in three or four years, but she ran into him around town fairly often. She hadn’t seen him for a few weeks, though, and he looked awful. Always clean shaven, he had a week’s growth. His normally neat hair was disheveled and he smelled as if he hadn’t taken a shower in a while. He seemed distant.
“Here, sit down. How about some coffee or tea?”
“No . . . yeah, coffee would be nice.” He was still gazing at the walls, ceiling, furniture.
While the coffee was brewing, she turned on the gas fireplace then sat down on the sofa opposite him. “Tell me, Sean. Are you doing okay? Has something happened?”
His eyes had a hollow, faraway look, as if he were lost. “Nothing’s really happened . . . well, not recently that is. I’m, uh . . . I’m confused. I might be in a little trouble, Ms. O.”
He had on a well-used Filson Mackinaw, plenty warm for fall and spring, but not right then. He hadn’t taken his hands out of the jacket pockets since she met him at the door.
“What do you mean, Sean? What kind of trouble?” She went into the kitchen to get the coffee.
Looking down at the floor, he said, “I feel so bad, really bad about Jolene, what happened to her.”
She was walking back into the living room and stopped when he uttered the
words, almost spilling the coffee. When he reached to take the cup from her, she noticed he had trouble taking his right hand out of the pocket.
“Do you mean you know what happened? You know about Jo?”
He put down the cup and returned his hand to the pocket. Staring into the fire, he continued to speak as if her words hadn’t registered. “Things just don’t turn out the way you plan. After she left, I knew she was out of my life. I did understand that. It just took a while for it to sink in. But, I kept thinking and thinking about it, and one day it’s like a plan just came to me in an instant. Everything kind of cleared up. I knew what I had to do right then.”
She could hardly make sense of what he was saying and was astonished. “Sean, I . . . I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Did you hurt Jolene? Did you take her? Jesus. What did you do, Sean?”
“The plan was to make things right. Because nothing was right. I needed to even things out. One second I didn’t know what that meant, to make things right. The next second, it was like a neon sign flashing in my brain. I had to act fa—”
“Stop it, Sean. Listen to me. Just stop it. You’re not making sense. I don’t understand. Just tell me what happened. What you did.” Raylene took a step forward, reached over and shook his arm to break him free of the haze that seemed to cloud his brain. His hand came out of the pocket and in it was a small caliber automatic pistol.
“Oh, my God, Sean. Why do you have that gun? You’re scaring me. Why did you bring it into my house?” She had stepped back when the gun appeared. Then, she moved forward again. “You have to put it down now, Sean. Put it on the table.”
He avoided her advance and stood up, hitting the table with his knee and spilling the coffee. “I’m sorry for making a mess, Ms. O.” He paused, again taking in the living room, a bewildered expression on his face. “I just wanted to tell you I had to act fast once the idea came to me. Now, I’m not sure it was the right thing to do.”
“Give me the gun, Sean. Don’t hold it in your hand like that.”
He moved toward the door, gun hanging at his side. “Don’t be scared. I would never hurt you. You’ve always been like a . . . you were nice to me.” He opened the door and stepped out. “The gun isn’t for you.”
“Sean, you need help. Wait here. With me. I’ll . . . I’ll call somebody who can help. Please.”
He stumbled down the steps in the below-freezing temperatures to his bicycle, wool jacket unbuttoned, no gloves. “And I’d never hurt Jolene.”
“Sean. Sean.” She watched in desperation as he got on his bike and rode off through the snow. It was four-twenty in the afternoon.
Ray ran to the phone and called the sheriffs, reporting the incident and telling them not to harm Sean, to be gentle with him.
FIFTY
While the going wasn’t easy, Sean was able to push on through the snow. He had studded winter tires on his bike which he had been using as his main means of getting around Wrightwood for almost three weeks. Heading toward his favorite bike trail, he again went over the plan, still surprised at how it had formed in his mind so quickly the month before.
Out at the turnaround point of the bike trail, Sean thought about how difficult it had been to stay alone when his parents decided to retire and move northwest to the more temperate climate of Los Osos. He thought about his sister, ten years his senior, who used to watch out for him when he was a youngster, but had struck out on her own and now made Great Falls, Virginia, her home with her family. She and her husband had grabbed the ring on the government contractor carousel. He thought how he’d been on his own, essentially by himself since his nineteenth year.
He thought maybe Kyle Hemphill wasn’t a bad guy after all. Not the bad guy. He thought about Jolene and how much their childhood together had meant. It had truly been an idyllic life growing up in the mountains. And he understood how she had to get on with her life. She was always so smart and ambitious. He thought about Raylene and how afraid she had looked when she saw the gun. He felt ashamed. But, no more. He was cold and shivering when he pulled the automatic out of the pocket with his numb hand and put it to his numb head.
#
The sheriffs first checked his apartment where his roommate, Kevin Kleam, said he hadn’t seen him since that morning when he left for work. He told them Sean had been “kind of messed up” since Jolene Ojibway had gone off to college. He was moody and had mumbled things about Kyle Hemphill for months. In December, Sean had told Kleam his car didn’t run and he didn’t have money to fix it. The sheriff’s deputies found the silver Geo parked beside the apartment under a snow-covered tarp. It had noticeable damage to the front bumper and headlights. There were black paint scrapes on the broken plastic and dented metal.
By seven that evening, they followed up on tips and drove an ATV out to the turnaround point of the bike trail. Sean Lowry lay dead in the snow, gun by his hand, the cavity side of his head sticking to a pool of congealing blood.
FIFTY-ONE
The news about Sean spread through Wrightwood within an hour of the discovery of his body by the sheriffs. Shock, disbelief and sadness enveloped the village like snow flurries. It was the second unimaginably dreadful event to rock the forty-five hundred villagers in three months, the first being the disappearance of Jolene Ojibway from her La Crescenta rental home. Community leaders hurriedly began planning an open-house at the community center the next morning for any residents who wanted to talk about the tragedy or just be together during that dark hour. Thereafter, volunteers would staff the center twenty-four hours a day, providing coffee to those who needed an ear even in the middle of the night. Depending on the interest, they would organize a more formal counseling program by the following week at either Serrano High or Pinion Mesa Middle School over in Phelan.
#
At eight o’clock that evening, Raylene phoned Banyan.
“Are you kidding me? Sean? I just can’t believe it. And he came to talk to you before he did it?”
“Yes, it was very tense. And strange. He wasn’t the same Sean I knew.”
“God, how horrible for you, Ray. What did he tell you?”
She inhaled deeply and let her breath out slowly. She really wasn’t sure what he’d said. “It was very confusing. At first I thought he was saying things about Jolene, almost like he knew something about what’s happened to her. So, I started pushing him for information about what he did to her.”
“How did he react?”
“As if he hadn’t heard me. He was in a daze. He just kept saying how things hadn’t worked out the way he’d planned. I guess he was simply saying how sorry he was that anything had happened to Jo.”
“He killed himself because something he had nothing to do with happened to her? I’m not following you.”
She sighed and didn’t say anything.
“Jesus, what’s wrong with me? You’ve been through something terrible. Is there anything I can do?”
“Right now, just listen. I want to tell you the rest of it.” She paused, and then said, “He had a gun.”
“What the hell? Did he point it at you?”
“No. No. He said it wasn’t for me. That he’d never hurt me, or Jolene. But, he said something about he wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing. And, at the time I didn’t know what that was.”
“What do you mean?”
“The sheriffs found his car covered up at his apartment. It had a damaged front end and scrapes of black paint. He hadn’t driven the car in about three weeks or so, since about the time that Kyle Hemphill was run down on his black motorcycle on Angeles Crest.”
“They think Sean could be the one?”
“They’re sending over an investigator to take a statement from me on what he said. It sure looks like he killed him, and then wasn’t sure why. So, it was like he was leaving a verbal suicide note with me. A confession, however confusing it was. So far they haven’t found anything in writing.”
“Oh, Ray. I’m sorry I’m not there. I’ll be b
ack in Pasadena soon. Can I do something for you?
“No. Just do as you planned and I’ll see you in the next couple days.”
The doorbell gave her a start. She said goodbye to him and went to let the investigator in.
FIFTY-TWO
It had been four days since Raylene had left Laguna, and since Sean Lowry had shot himself. After her call the night she’d returned to Wrightwood, Banyan had booked the same sixth floor room at the Marriott for two weeks. Pasadena was starting to quiet down as crowds of avid college football fans departed following the Bowl Championship Series game in the Rose Bowl. He spent the next few days in his beach town.
Between four loads of laundry and house cleaning in and out, he again checked in with Bondo. His surfing companion was well along the healing path and was discharged from the hospital the day before Banyan drove to Pasadena.
“Absolutely not, Rusty. I hate it and don’t want it in my house,” Sheila protested, looking at the new security panel inside the entry area.
“I know, it’s horrible to have this after all the years of not worrying about your safety, but I’m not risking any more harm coming to my few close friends. So, you’re stuck with your new security system.”
Sheila’s eyes softened. “Okay, I’ll admit that my reaction is more a matter of principle. Thank you. But I still hate it.”
Banyan returned her hug and they both smiled.
Later that afternoon, he assisted her with getting Bondo home and back to the life he’d almost lost.
He did not drop in on Lieutenant Caldwell to follow up on their phone conversation as he had planned before he received Chris’s call, and advice. Until I dig a little deeper, just taking it slow.
Andy Huff volunteered to keep an eye on his house if he liked. At first Banyan was unreceptive. He couldn’t face even the remote possibility of endangering Andy.