“Where did you do your time?”
“I lucked out. I was assigned to Mountain Home, which was the first mobile Conservation Camp. Inmates take a two-week training course the same as civilians and then they put us on a crew working the fire lines, mostly in Tulare and Kern counties. Santa Ana winds were bad back then. Bad every year since, now that I think about it. We chopped brush sometimes eight hours at a stretch. Forty-five pounds of gear you’re carrying and you’re up against flames forty and fifty feet high. Hard work. Exhausting. On the plus side, you’re housed in semi-trailer rigs. No locked doors and no barbed wire. Good food. Spare time, you play pool or go out and shoot hoops. Sometimes you forget you’re in prison.”
“How long were you incarcerated?”
“I was sentenced to five years, but ended up serving less. This place belongs to my brother-in-law, Jim. Otherwise I’d be unemployed. His last name is Brand, which is how he came up with Better Brand Auto Repair. How’d you know where to find me?”
“My friend Ruth Wolinsky has her car serviced here.”
“She’s nice.”
“Yes, she is,” I said. “What did they charge you with?”
“Accessory after the fact, obstruction of justice, kidnapping, lying to the police, plus anything else they could throw into the mix. Oh, aiding and abetting, which they take very seriously.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t hit you with felony murder. I thought if you participated in a kidnapping that resulted in death, you were on the hook the same way Fritz was.”
“Technically, yes. But the DA seemed more interested in Fritz than the rest of us. He was the one who pulled the gun and forced her into the truck. There was definitely some wheeling-dealing going on in the background and I confess I didn’t inquire too closely, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth and all that stuff. I was willing to cop to most of it anyway. I mean, we all lied to the police. We alibied each other and destroyed evidence. But here’s the truth. I never thought she’d die. Farthest thing from my mind. Austin was an asshole, but I didn’t think he’d go that far.”
“What happened that night?”
“Oh, man. Most of the time, I block it. It’s been ten years and I still carry images I don’t like. You want to ask questions, I’ll tell you what I can.”
“I understand there was a party. Where did that take place?”
“Austin’s parents had a cabin off the pass. Originally, we went up there to celebrate the end of the school year. Good fun that turned ugly in the end, but that’s what alcohol and dope will do. Austin and Sloan started butting heads. He said she insulted him and she owed him an apology.”
“What did she say that set him off?”
“You know about the cheating scandal?”
“Sure. You and Poppy acquired a copy of an academic proficiency test and Sloan was accused of sending an anonymous note to the school administrators, telling what you’d done. Austin accused her of snitching and persuaded her classmates to shun her.”
“It got worse. The night she died, she accused him of writing the note, which made total sense once she said it. Of course, Austin went ballistic on her and demanded a retraction. He thought all he had to do was apply the screws and she’d cave. He took her up the mountain so she’d know he meant business.”
“So this was after the party?”
“Right. When most of the kids were gone.”
“How many of you were left?”
“The four of us and her.”
“Meaning you, Fritz, Austin, and Bayard Montgomery.”
He nodded. “Bayard was supposed to give her a ride home, but then the situation got complicated. Austin was ordering everyone around. We were giving him static, but not doing much else. At one point, she took off and Austin sent me and Bayard and Fritz after her.
“Thing was, she was still in her bathing suit with a shirt over it. She’d borrowed shoes from Austin’s dad and she was clumping down the road. She was pissed off by then and she wanted to get the hell out of there. We thought she’d gone to get dressed and didn’t even realize she’d disappeared until Bayard went looking for her. Anyway, she left her clothes and her purse at the cabin when she took off. We forgot all about that until later when we realized we better get rid of her stuff.”
“Because by then you’d decided to claim you’d dropped her off on State Street alive when you knew she was dead.”
“More or less.”
“Not ‘more or less.’ You knew she was dead and you were covering your butts. I’m not trying to be nasty. I’m stating the obvious.”
“Okay, sure. I admit it. Fritz made a bad mistake, but it was really all on Austin. This was damage control. We had to protect ourselves.”
He was showing the first hint of defensiveness. I’d assumed he was being straight, reporting as truthfully as he could, but I realized he was editing as he went along.
I shook my head. “Sorry. I interrupted you. Once she took off, how’d you manage to get her back to the cabin?”
“We went after her in the truck. There was only the one road to the highway and she’d made pretty good progress. She was a jock and she was in great shape.”
“She returned voluntarily?”
“Not really. I was driving, so Bayard was the one who got out to talk to her. He tried to be reasonable, but she wasn’t buying it. We knew Austin was furious and things would only get worse if we showed up without her.”
“What was Fritz doing all this time?”
“We made him ride in the truck bed, so he was following the conversation. He could see Bayard wasn’t having any luck. Meanwhile, he had a gun that belonged to Austin’s dad, so he hopped down and started yelling. He pointed it right at her and told her to get in, which she did.”
“That was gutsy of him.”
“That’s where the kidnapping charge originated. He scared the shit out of me. Fritz was a twerp and for him to step in like that was out of character. Anyway, she did what he told her. He put her in the front seat between him and me. This time Bayard rode in the truck bed and we took off.”
“Did she put up a fight?”
“Not with the gun in her ribs.”
“So you guys take her back to the cabin and then what?”
“It was clear she wasn’t going to back down, so that’s when we took her up to Yellowweed.”
“That’s on Figueroa Mountain, as I remember it,” I said.
Troy nodded. “Fritz and Bayard and Austin walked her up this steep trail to the campsite. Austin started hammering away at her, trying to make her say she was wrong and she was sorry. Later, Bayard said what he felt so bad about was not coming to her defense. We could have made a difference if we’d tried.”