Free California Girl by T. Jefferson Parker Page A

publisher talked for a while about writing and papers and marriage and self-control but Andy hardly heard a word of it. He sat in Overholt’s office, nodding occasionally.
    Then he went back to his desk and wrote the Vonn brothers arrest story.
    It came fast and he put in a lot. It wasn’t really straight reporting. Not really an editorial or think piece, either. Just a story about a family and it was true. He got Karl’s cold black stare, and Alma’s saying she’d die when she couldn’t count her dead loved ones on two hands anymore, and Janelle’s guitar and Lenny’s shining flame orange and red chopped Harley Panhead. And the notion that these poor people had come halfway across the country to find a better life and had instead found ugliness, misery, ruined innocence, and death. That we owed them respect for trying. That they had borne a specific burden so that we would not have to bear it. This last idea was something Andy had talked about with David. Wasn’t sure how to write it but felt it very strongly in his heart. Andy changed all the names and places and some smaller things so nobody would know who it was about. Wrote it the best he could.
    He knew Overholt would kill the story. But he dropped his two carbon copies into the publisher’s in-box anyhow. Put the original in his briefcase.
    Three years ago today that Alma Vonn had killed herself, Andy thought.
    This one is for you.
     
    MEREDITH BURST into the Tustin Times office a little after noon, her makeup running and her eyes swimming with tears. She fell into Andy’s arms and hugged him harder than she’d ever hugged him in her life.
    He couldn’t get her to stop crying. He guided her outside and they stood by a sycamore tree, leaves mostly gone, branches forking into a pale blue sky. A dry wind chattered the big dead leaves across the sidewalk. He tried to hold her close but she pushed him away.
    “I’m not going to see you again,” she said. “It’s over, Andy. I can’t live like this anymore.”
    Her face was a mask of defeat and hopelessness.
    “I understand.”
    “Why aren’t you crying?”
    “I’m trying to be strong, Meredith. I still love you. I want you to know I’ll always love you.”
    She sobbed and hugged herself and looked up at him with the most abject sadness that Andy had ever seen.
    “You don’t know, do you?” she asked.
    “I know that I love you. I do, but I think it would be better if—”
    “They shot John Kennedy.”
     
    MAX BECKER brought his three available sons home that evening. David came with Barbara. Nick came alone. So did Andy, walking into the hushed kitchen and wondering why they had been called here. Max had been abrupt on the phone.
    Andy noted the paleness of Monika. Her eyes were red and she couldn’t look at him.
    They came together in a loose circle in the old kitchen, the TV droning on from the den, speculation about the president and one Lee Harvey Oswald and a murdered officer Tippett.
    Max asked them to hold hands. His voice trembled.
    “Sons and daughter,” he said. “This is the darkest day of our lives. Your brother Clay has been killed in Vietnam. I’m uncertain of the specifics. David, say a prayer.”

10
    1968
    THE WIND BLEW HARD that day, the first strong Santa Ana wind of the season. October second, hot and dry. The kind of wind that got you a static shock every time you touched something that would conduct. Touch a metal doorknob, you got a little blue zap. Kiss your sweetheart, same thing, a sharp little arc cracked from lip to lip.
    Nick got the possible 187 at 4:48 that afternoon and was rolling by 5:09. The delay was thanks to his partner, Al “Lucky” Lobdell, who was talking to his wife on the phone about their son. Kevin was seventeen, having troubles. Lucky’s voice had been soft and grave.
    Nick drove. Lucky sat across from him in the Fairlane. Chewing gum, staring out at the wind-bent trees as if seeing them for the first time.
    “Two murders in two days,”