“She’ll fall apart with me in jail,” said Stoltz.

“She’ll live to be a hundred trying to help you. Leave the bathroom door open, Roger.”

I WAITED until we were in my car to cuff him to the clothes hanger in back. Went back in and explained things to Marie. Made sure the hired man would be there that night in case Marie had a hard time of it.

“Drive past the packinghouse,” said Roger.

“They tore it down thirty years ago.”

“Really.”

“They put a street in and named it Packers Circle.”

Roger pursed his lips. “I never had the…courage to go back there. Drive over, anyway, would you?”

“Sure.”

I parked on Packers Circle. We looked at the stores. Nice young families buying things. Not a trace of what had been there before or what had happened. Maybe that’s good. Let people get on with life.

We sat there for a long time. Didn’t say one word.

39

THREE DAYS LATER I was guest of honor at the Sheriff’s Department press conference. They wanted someone accountable and no longer with the department. I was perfect.

Cory Bonnett and a public defender sat stage right at a table behind the podium. District Attorney Rick Doss and I sat stage left. A big county seal on the wall behind us and a roomful of reporters and cameras and tape recorders in front.

Sheriff Walt Wallen took the mike. Tall and slow-moving, wears glasses to read. Was a senior at Garden Grove High School when we brought Bonnett across the border in the trunk of his own car.

Wallen played it like the pro he is. Said we got fooled by a cold-blooded killer. Nobody’s perfect, not even us. Put a little sympathy into his voice. All that wasted time for Mr. Bonnett. County had worked up a voluntary onetime $75,000 restitution to help Mr. Bonnett get back on his feet. Wouldn’t go higher because the County wasn’t at fault.

Bonnett himself looked healthy and dazed. Was always a big man but plenty of prison food and endless hours on the iron pile had made him heavy with muscle. Blond hair long again. A Vandyke like the young men are wearing now. A blue aloha shirt with surfboards printed on it. Arms thick and freckled and dusted with hair that shone gold in the light. Eyes small and blue. Same IQ as me, I thought. One hundred twenty-six. Wondered why that always bothered me. Bonnett was fifty-eight. Twenty-two when we took him down for a crime he didn’t commit.

When the sheriff was done the DA said a few words.

Then Bonnett limped to the podium and bent the mike up to his height.

“I told you thirty-six years ago I didn’t do it and nobody would believe me.”

His voice shook. A murder trial and conviction and thirty-four years in the big house, but a press conference was making him nervous.

“My lawyer wouldn’t let me get up there and say so. The cops had all this evidence that somebody put in my garage in Laguna. You ruined a big part of my life. It’s great to be getting out. But thanks for nothing. Fuck off and die.”

The reporters exploded with questions but Bonnett made the back door in a stiff-legged trot. Blond hair trailing and aloha shirt rippling surfboards through the air. A deputy let him out.

When I got to the podium for questions it was a mud bath. The Stoltz story had been broken the day before but details of the frame were few. So the reporters wanted to know if I’d planted evidence. I said no. Then they went to inexperience, job stress, and a gung-ho first-year detective’s mistakes. I said maybe. They kept wanting to know if I’d ever doubted Bonnett’s guilt. I said no. How I’d felt when I learned I was wrong. I said surprised. How I felt about taking away thirty-six years of a man’s life. I said all the evidence we had pointed directly at him and the jury deliberated for one hour and fifty-two minutes. They wanted to know if my family’s friendship with Stoltz gave him an advantage. I said no, what gave Stoltz an advantage was fury, desperation, and luck. I gave a full law enforcement performance. I didn’t apologize. I’d bleed over this the rest of my life but wasn’t going to share it with anybody. Except for Katy. Maybe my brothers. You know-save the worst for the people you care about most.

AFTER THE PRESS conference I went down to David’s chapel in Laguna. He was up on a ladder washing the windows. It’s a converted house on Woodland, out in the canyon. Dodge City. Where Bonnett and Leary and Fowler and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love were experiencing all their psychedelic fun back in nineteen sixty-eight. Janelle, too. The neighborhood is still funky and genuine. Surfboards leaning on fences. Unfinished oil paintings on easels in the shade. Little plastic swimming pools so the kids can beat the heat.

“Doesn’t look like a safe place for an old man,” I said.

“The Lord will knock me off when He wants to.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“Press conference go well?” David asked.

“Not bad.”

We sat in the cool of the chapel. Side by side in folding chairs.

The Canyon Chapel of God isn’t anything like the Grove used to be. Just a gutted three-bedroom canyon cottage. Good windows. Kitchen still there because refreshments are important. Bathroom in back. The rest just one open room. Shiny ash floors. No pews. There are stacks of folding chairs against the rear wall, and when you come in to worship you take one. Put it back when the service is over. Nothing fancy for the preacher. A podium like at the news conference. Instead of a county seal there’s a clear acrylic cross on the wall behind that lights up sky blue when you turn it on.

“Good you let Bonnett go,” said David. “Interesting that Andy’s dislike of Stoltz led him to the truth. Maybe I could build a sermon around that idea.”

“He’s going to write a book about it.”

“Be a fat one,” said David.

“He’s got more energy than a two-peckered goat.”

“You’re in a house of God, Nick.”

“Sorry, David. How are you?”

“Fine. Fine. Thanks for asking.”

Within a year of David’s coming-out confession sermon in October of sixty-eight he sold the Grove Drive-In Chapel of God. Darren Whitbrend and a consortium of investors forked over almost a million five. David sold the land, the buildings, the name, everything. Took his family around the world. They lived in Jerusalem for a year. Dar es Salaam a year. Quito, Ecuador, until Barbara had a seizure and they came back to San Francisco for surgery. Brain tumor the size of a golf ball but benign. Doing fine.

David bought a building in Newport and started a new church but it never caught on. Struggled for a few years. Most of the congregation was Laguna gays so David sold the Newport site and bought this cottage here in the canyon. Had a hundred in his congregation before you knew it. Then the eighties and over half of them died of AIDS. Fifty-three. Church helped pay for treatment and hospice and lawyers and burials. Close to bankrupted it. David doing funerals for guys he knew. Two in a week once. Called me that week and said he wasn’t sure if he could preach anymore.

Things turned around and now he’s up to almost two hundred. Barbara stuck with him. She travels a lot without him. They’ve always had an understanding though I’m not sure exactly how it works. Their kids are grown and fine. Whitbrend’s doing okay for himself over at the Grove from what I hear. Haven’t set foot in there since David left. Turned out Adrian Stalling was stabbed to death by a jealous lover that night at the Boom Boom Bungalow. The killer looked enough like Howard Langton you could mistake him in a lineup. The witness took two weeks to come forward because he was afraid. Trying to keep the same secret David and Howard were trying to keep.

David got the disease, too. They say it’s under control but he’s been losing weight the last few months. Ears look bigger. Makes me worry.