by P. J. Zander
“I didn’t kill her. But I will not let anybody bring me down, ruin my name. Do you understand, Mr. Banyan? No matter who or how special. And I did think highly of Jolene.”
“Goddamn funny way of showing it. Ruin your name? Incest with your kids, making your son kill your husband. Kidnap Jolene. You’re one nasty piece of work.” He shook his head. “She had no idea who Nathan was with when she heard him and somebody getting it on. It just happened to be you, Mom. And you didn’t want her to ruin your good name? Jesus Christ.”
“You make it sound so degraded, so depraved. It wasn’t like that.”
“Really? Well, whatever you call it, you must have had your boys do something with Jolene because she heard you. What did they do? What did Nathan mean, ‘She’s here’?”
“Actually, neither one of them killed her. It was a two-strike parolee who worked as a manager for one of our apartments.”
She said it so simply, so matter-of-fact. It was the cold, hard truth that he dreaded, never wanted to hear. He’d kept it way down in a dark corner with his life’s deepest wounds that had never fully healed. As long as he didn’t think it, as long as he didn’t go near that corner, it wasn’t true and Jo was alive. But he knew at any moment Jo and the others could come to the surface, and he would have to face them. He should have struck back, done or said something, but the adrenaline hanging on from the fighting was gone. Susan’s words had sucked the air out of his lungs. He felt disoriented, almost dizzy, and grappled with his confused thoughts. It took all of his will power to stay away from the darkness.
The car sound became more pronounced, and somewhere in his brain it registered and brought him back. To his left he could see headlights rounding the last curve a quarter mile away, headed toward the turnout. Then he recalled Susan had said it was that bum he’d seen on the news who had killed Jolene. “And, by the fact he had his head caved in, he must’ve become a liability.”
“Martin had to make sure there weren’t any weak links. And now, though certainly not weak, you are the last of those links. There is something about you that really appeals to me, Mr. Banyan, or shall I call you Rusty, at this point. That is your nickname, isn’t it? The same physical toughness that my sons have, though Martin also has confidence, like you. Neither of them has something else I can see. You are a compassionate man, maybe even capable of love.”
Her rambling was getting to him, and her use of the present tense for her murdered boys was bizarre. As she started moving slowly toward him, he realized she’d laid the flashlight on the ice shining in his direction, and saw that she had a gun in her left hand at her side and one in her right hand pointed at his chest. She must have picked up one of her kids’. He could only hope the driver saw that something was amiss and would be ballsy enough to pull in. Otherwise, he was dead.
“I know what you’re thinking, but it just isn’t going to unfold like that. That person is coming upon a terrible tragedy, Mr. Banyan, one in which he will participate if he stops. You were enraged enough to follow us up here because you thought Nathan and Martin had something to do with Jolene’s death. You shot both my sons, then turned the gun on the driver when he showed up. I was able to find Nathan’s gun and kill you with it. That puts to rest this tragic story of a missing young woman and the man who felt responsible for her unfortunate demise.”
Had she just come up with this scheme on the fly? He had to give her credit. She might be delusional, mad as a hatter, or simply a sociopathic bitch, but she was as sharp as they came. He would need to act to save himself and maybe the guy driving. If he comes into the turnout, she’ll have to shift her attention toward him, if only for a couple seconds. She was getting closer, perhaps twenty feet away. About thirty years ago, he might have risked covering that distance before she could turn and get off an accurate shot. Now, that was nowhere near enough time for him to get to her. And, there was no cover to run to, no weapon to pick up. But, he had the .38. If he could crouch down, get under the cuff of his jeans one-handed and grab it as soon as the car arrived, when she wasn’t fully concentrating on him, he might have a chance. She’d get the shot off, but he could only hope she wasn’t on target. He didn’t want any part of a round from Nathan’s 9 millimeter.
The good news about the cold was that his left arm had all but stopped bleeding and was numb. It still hurt a lot, but less than before. The bad news was that the arm couldn’t function. It would definitely slow him down in the plan he just hatched.
“You didn’t tell me what Nathan meant. Is she buried here? Where is Jolene, for Christ’s sake?”
Susan Rossmoor didn’t answer.
The car had slowed and was crossing the center line and northbound lane to pull in.
FIFTY-NINE
The not-knowing had become too much. She tried his cell number but got that not-in-service message. So Raylene had grabbed her down jacket and driven around the corner to The Yodeler. The restaurant had closed at ten o’clock, but the owner generously had left the bar open for a number of patrons who needed to talk. For many of the residents, the tragedies were still raw. She went in for another cup of coffee, greeted a few familiar faces, and even though her entrance had a momentary quieting effect, she found that just being around others was an improvement over the solitude of her house.
But after less than fifteen minutes of banter, she’d decided she couldn’t just sit, not while Rusty was somewhere in the mountains below in the middle of who knows what. She had to do something.
Outside, she buckled up in the Outback and drove southwest on Angeles Crest out of Wrightwood. A little ways down, she came to the steel Road-Closed gate across the highway. Having grown up in the area, she knew the routine of keeping stupid people from taking unnecessary chances until the road crews could get in to plow the highway. Stupid or not, she also knew how to drive her small car around the barrier.
Yesterday’s storm had dumped over a foot of snow. The traction was mushy, but she let gravity pull the car downhill, using the gears to maintain control. She tried to keep it at thirty-five miles per hour, and that was dancing on the edge of a death wish under the conditions. Occasionally the all-wheel drive was able to perform as advertised. Around the tight curves, it was pretty much slip-slide and hope for the best.
Raylene had no idea how far down he might be. But there would be a point at which the cars would run out of road. The plow trucks probably had a good portion of the upper half, maybe fifteen miles or so, cleared. Tomorrow, what remained unplowed up to the town would be finished. If they drove to that point she could be coming upon them within twenty minutes. If they’d pulled off somewhere lower, she’d just have to deal with it.
#
There was no sign of either car where she left the deep snow and went onto icy patches. Stopping, she walked over to the edge of the road and could see no tire tracks in the snow berm. If they’d kept driving, they would have been up that far unless one or the other of them had lost control and gone off the road farther down. Although just as dangerous or more so, driving on the ice was a pleasure after using the Subaru as a plow. The all-wheel control was a big plus and she pushed the speedometer up to forty. One more slowdown where she carefully maneuvered the car up on the berm and around the lower road gate, and she was off again.
#
Ten minutes later as she rounded a curve to the right, she saw a narrow beam of light less than a mile down the road. It had to be them. By the size of the beam, it was a flashlight but with only a momentary view and at that distance, she could see no other details. It was then she thought of her .228 caliber pistol that she routinely put in the glove compartment when she drove at night or anytime she was on the long mountain roads. But, not this time. She cursed at herself as she eased around the last curve approaching the turnout.
Raylene slowed to get a picture of who was where and what was happening, or had happened. In front of her was a silver Mercedes sedan, to the right of which stood Susan Rossmoor, unmistakably. She was near enough t
o see Rossmoor had a gun in her right hand pointed away from her. She swore again about the .228. Someone was lying on the ice in the direction in which she aimed the gun. And, a few feet away from the downed person was Rusty. She’s going to shoot Rusty. Her heart raced even faster as she crossed the oncoming lane and turned off the highway. Rossmoor was perhaps forty-five to fifty feet straight ahead. Then, Raylene noticed the blood on Rusty’s arm and more blood around the person on the ice. No. Jesus, no.
#
When the car came off the highway, Banyan recognized it. The only person he could think would be driving was Raylene, although he couldn’t tell because of the glare of the high beams. Rossmoor was beginning to focus on the car when at about fifteen miles per hour, Raylene suddenly gunned the engine, sending the Outback’s tires spinning until they picked up traction. With a quizzical expression on her face, Rossmoor pivoted to aim at the windshield and that’s when Banyan reached for the pistol. He scratched and tore at the cuff and as his hand closed around the grip, she saw him out of the corner of her eye and fired twice, pulling her aim off the car slightly. The bullets smashed high in the center of the glass, hitting the rear view mirror. Raylene flinched toward the door and in doing so sent the car into a skid to the right. Rossmoor was turning to fire on Banyan when the car’s right front quarter struck her legs and torso, sending her down and across the ice toward the berm. The Subaru stopped as he ran to the passenger window. To his look of concern Raylene mouthed, I’m ok. Then he ran to Rossmoor with the Ruger pointed at her chest.
She was lying on her side moaning, her legs motionless, rigid in what resembled a hurdler’s position. But she still had a gun in her gloveless left hand which she started to raise without looking up at him. He stepped on her forearm and kicked the automatic away from her hand.
“Where’s Jolene, goddamnit?”
Rossmoor gave a sinister smile and turned her head side to side.
He stared at her, then relaxed his foot holding her arm and tapped the gun with his shoe back toward her hand so it touched her fingers. He aimed the Ruger at her face.
“Go on, pick it up. Grab it.” He began applying pressure to the trigger. “Shoot me. Finish your tragic story.”
Raylene had come up next to Banyan and looked down on the injured woman, then at him.
“Rusty, no,” she pleaded. “You can’t do it. It’s not right. It’s not you.” Just as she reached to push his right hand up, he pulled the trigger. Ray reflexively jerked her head away from the deafening blast. He kept staring down at Rossmoor.
“No,” yelled Ray. She looked down at the still woman. Rossmoor was breathing. He had aimed just above her head. He put his right arm on her shoulder.
“Rusty. God, you scared me.” Then she looked at his left arm and put her arm around his waist. “Your arm. Are you all right? What happened here?”
His eyes welled up. He couldn’t speak and had to take several breaths. “Raylene . . . Ray, they killed Jolene. They killed her. Maybe right here.”
She sank against him and quietly let the tears flow down her cheeks. He realized she had known. Jolene was her daughter, was part of her, and she had felt it from that horrible, agonizing day in October.
He turned so that he could hold her close to him against the frozen night.
“Ray . . . I should have—”
She shook her head against his chest.
From below they heard the sound of a vehicle racing up the highway and turned to see the flashing lights.
SIXTY
“Right . . . right . . . steady . . . hold,” the crew chief Jimmy Avila directed the chopper pilot over the indentation in the snow. Sheriff’s Deputy Brent Greer was in the rescue harness forty-five feet beneath the big, twin-engine Sikorsky H-3 Sea King, which hovered below the tops of what was left of several tall evergreens, its rotor blades whipping around dangerously close to the burned branches. With another ninety feet to go, Greer was being lowered with a gurney to a small, steep clearing where his fellow paramedic, Izaak Horne, had unhooked two minutes earlier. The entire crew was still on watch, and was glad to return to the site to finish the job they’d started a little over five hours before.
#
The first deputy sheriff from Crescenta Valley Station had reached the turnout around one-twenty in the morning, minutes after Raylene had smashed into Susan Rossmoor. He had called immediately for the rescue helicopter after he stepped out of his car and surveyed the chaotic scene on the ice: one deceased white male, battered face and gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen, the thickening blood pooled on the ice under him; one white female with severe trauma to her torso and legs; and a blood trail leading up to and over the snow berm and rail. Sitting in a Subaru Outback had been one white male with a gunshot wound to his upper left arm and one Native American woman with a few superficial lacerations on her face. The deputy had wrapped a gauze bandage around Banyan’s arm and put it in a sling, given antiseptic pads to Raylene to place over the small cuts, and handed them each a cup of coffee from a thermos. In answer to his questions, Banyan had explained the chase from the time of his calling Nathan three hours earlier to Ray’s saving his life. He had doubted Nathan was still alive.
When Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Air-5 rescue helicopter arrived on the scene, the crew chief and pilots determined it was too risky to hover over the treacherous area into which Nathan had jumped and would resume the rescue/recovery at first light. Before leaving in Air-5, Banyan told the deputy who arrived first to make sure they informed Homicide Captain Quintana about the whole episode.
After the quick work of Greer and Horne, Air-5 lifted off for the brief flight to the trauma center at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena with Susan Rossmoor belted down to the gurney, IV in her vein and oxygen mask strapped to her face. The two paramedic deputies had stabilized her pelvis and legs. Raylene and Banyan rode in the seats on the port side just aft of her. She held his right hand in both of hers and leaned against his shoulder, eyes staring blankly. Deputy Horne came back to check on Banyan and the dressing on his left arm.
“How’re you holding up, sir?”
Banyan opened his eyes and tilted his head forward from the headrest to look at the paramedic. The throbbing pain was nothing compared to the weight on his conscience that paraded freely through his whole being. “Doing okay,” he muttered just to avoid more awkwardness. The guy had no idea.
“Ma’am, how ‘bout you?” Jesus, did he have to ask her, he thought.
She seemed distant, adrift in utter devastation from the loss of her Jolene. Banyan knew there was no relief in confirming what she had known and felt deep down for all this time. It was wrenching. And to find out that the monster lying five feet away was behind it all was unthinkable, so unsuspected and so cruel. Ray’s world was out of equilibrium and Banyan noticed that the unfamiliar motion of the helicopter was making her dizzy.
“Say, Deputy Horne, we’ve both had kind of a rough night, so I’d appreciate it if you’d give us a little . . . space.”
Horne had caught the look in Banyan’s eyes, nodded and moved up front toward his rescue crewmate monitoring Susan Rossmoor’s vitals.
#
In the frigid morning air, the helicopter had returned and lowered the two paramedics into the steep, snowbound terrain. Up on the turnout, the CV Station investigating officers, Lieutenant Howard Zeno and Detective Frank Marchessa, roamed the frozen area bundled up against the deep chill and wrapped up in their own world of piecing together the evidence. Also there was Captain Kenneth Turner, boss of the station. After the months of unanswered questions and dead ends in the disappearance of Jolene Ojibway, under suspicious circumstances that had rocked the community and had taken place not two miles up the road from the Sheriff’s station, Captain Turner was desperate for some good news. The call that awakened him early that morning shone some light on this dark episode and actually made him smile. From what the watch commander said the case had blown wide open up the Crest a
nd one of the suspects was still alive. When he heard Susan Rossmoor’s name, he was almost at a loss for words—one of the pillars of the community in which he had lived and worked as a cop for over thirty years. “I’ll be damned,” he said aloud. In the frozen parking area off the highway, he peeked over the rail at the paramedics far below, a little tickle in his stomach preventing him from leaning farther.
#
Barely visible in the deep snow from Turner’s viewpoint, leaning against a charred big cone spruce was the upper half of Nathan’s body with one hand pointing skyward as if to trace his fall from the edge of the cliff into eternity. His head was turned to one side and his open eyes seemingly stared through a lifetime at a snow-covered outcrop within a stone’s throw.
Horne reported through his headset to Captain Turner that Nathan was indeed deceased. He was studying the last expression on the dead man’s face. “Almost like he’s looking at something that makes him happy.”
“What’s that?” Greer, the older of the two, asked.
“The guy. Looks like he’s happy with what he sees, whatever that is. Kinda like he came down here after something and found it.”
Greer carefully made his way toward the body. “Oh, gotcha,” he said, observing what could be taken for a smile on Nathan’s face.
“That big ol’ guy we took to Huntington Memorial said he jumped. Like it was a planned thing. Wonder what makes a guy decide to bail, check out when he’s so young?” Horne’s question wasn’t necessarily directed at his partner, but he answered anyway.
“Don’t know,” Greer said, peering at Nathan’s face. “Maybe sometimes things just get the best of you. Weigh you down and drag you under, and won’t let go. I mean, Jesus, look at what happened up there. Mother shoots ‘em both. That’s some strange family get together.” He shook his head and sighed deeply. “Come on, Zak. We’ve got a lotta work to do to get this guy over to the gurney.”