“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.
59
That afternoon after his paper route, Matt and Laurel Kalina walk south along Main Beach. It’s a perfect day, a spangled ocean and a tan beach under blue sky. Three times already, people Matt barely knows, or doesn’t know at all, have run up and congratulated him. They’re all wide-eyed with astonishment, surprise and relief: It’s unbelievable, man, unbelievable.
But right now, Laurel is another story. Matt has taken her hand twice since starting down the beach from the lifeguard tower, and Laurel has retracted it both times. She is subdued. She’s been hard to get a hold of the last few days, busy with her writing and the Pageant and friends.
“Matt,” she says, stopping and squinting up at him, then taking a deep breath. “I need freedom. Freedom to grow as a person and meet new people and to write. It’s the most important thing in my life. To be a writer. I’ve started a novel that takes place in France during the grape harvest in Bordeaux. My professor is very positive but I know it’s not very good. Yet. I have a chance to go there in late August, to France.”
“You mean break up?”
“I mean to continue, as friends.”
Matt feels as if the iron ball that hobbled Jasmine has been dropped from the sky and landed on his head.
“Okay.”
“I knew you would understand and approve.”
“I don’t either of those, but it’s up to you, Laurel.”
“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Is there some other way?”
“You mean and stay together?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
They pass Thalia without a word. Matt thinks of Bonnie but more of himself. He’s just been dumped by the first girl he’s ever cared about. The first girl he’s admired and liked and wanted to kiss and probably even loved. He looks at Laurel, sees a tear from under her sunglasses spreading down her cheek.
“I know you’ve changed, Matt. Inside and outside and it’s good. You’ll change again. So will I.”
“We can change together,” Matt says, having absolutely no idea if that’s true. Julie and Bruce didn’t. Two of his friends, their parents were divorcing.
“Then there’s Sara,” says Laurel, with a flash of pained hostility in her eyes.
Matt shrugs. “I don’t think that was going anywhere.”
“I’ve thought this through a thousand times,” she says. “I talked to Rose and Mom and Dad and my professor. I prayed and prayed and cried. Matt, I’m very sure this is what I need to do. And I’m sorrier than I can describe. If I were writing this scene it would be the saddest scene of all time. That’s how it feels to me.”
“Me too.”
Another gut-wrenching silence, this one all the way to Cress Street. Matt feels suddenly chilled, as if the breeze has changed from west to north but he knows it hasn’t.
“Friends, Matt?”
“Yes, good.”
“Do you mean that?”
“I really don’t know. I’ll try.”
“I love you.”
He feels the storm inside, the pressure in his ears, and the sting in his eyes. The painful lump in his throat. But he’s got enough pride to tamp it all down. And enough anger to state the obvious.
“That doesn’t add up, Laurel. All the stuff we did. Together and happy to be with each other. Now this.”
“There are different kinds of love, Matt. Give it time. Please.”
They stop and Laurel kisses him on the cheek. More tears as she reaches into her beaded macramé bag and hands Matt a thick, rolled-up tube of typing paper with a yellow ribbon around it.