Chapter 21
Twenty miles North of L.A., everything empties.
I'd stopped at home long enough to pick up and scan the articles I'd photocopied at the library, gulp down some coffee, and get back on the freeway. The 405 took me to the 101 and finally Interstate 5, this time headed north. The last fast-food signs had been five miles back and I shared the freeway with flatbeds hauling hay, long-distance movers, the odd car, a few Winnebagos lumbering in the slow lane.
I had a heavy foot, speeding past brown, rumpled-blanket mountains, groves of scrub oak and pine and California pepper trees, the occasional grazing horse. The heat hadn't let up, but the sky was awash with pretty clouds-lavender-gray swirls, satin-shiny, as if an old wedding dress had been draped over the world.
The clippings had given me three possible contacts: Teo-doro Alarcon, the ranch superintendent who'd found the bodies; Sheriff Jacob Haas; and the only other person to comment on Ardis Peake's strange behavior without protection of anonymity, a kid named Derrick Crimmins. No listings on Alarcon or Crimmins, but a Jacob B. Haas had an address at Fairway Ranch. I called his number and a hearty male voice on a machine told me Jake and Marvelle were unavailable, but feel free to leave a message. I said I'd be in town on LAPD business and would appreciate it if Sheriff Haas could spare me some time.
The highway forked, the truck route sprouting to the right and draining the traffic from three lanes. Radar surveillance warnings were all around, but the eternity of open road before me was too seductive and I kept the Seville at 85, zipping past Saugus and Castaic, the western ridge of Angeles Crest National Forest, the Tejon Pass, then the Kern County border.
Shortly after eleven, I exited at Grapevine and bought some gas. My freeway map showed me how to get to Fairway Ranch, but I confirmed directions with the sleepy-looking attendant.
"That's for old people," he said. He was around nineteen, crew-cut, tan, and pimpled, with four earrings in his left lobe.
"Visiting Grandma," I said.
He looked up and down the Seville. "It's pretty nice there. Rich people, mostly. They play a lot of golf." The minitruck with the huge wheels and the Radiohead bumper sticker parked near the garbage cans was probably his. Freshly waxed. His eyes narrowed as he continued to stare at the Seville. I try to keep the car in good shape, but it's a '79 and there are limits.
"Used to be another town around here," I said.
His stare was dull.
"Treadway," I said. "Farms, ranches, peaches, and walnut groves."
"Oh, yeah?" Profound indifference. "Cool car."
I thanked him and left, taking a narrow northeastern road toward the Tehachapi Mountains. The range was gorgeous- high and sharp, peaks of varying height laid against one another masterfully, more perfectly arranged than any artist's composition could ever be. The lower hills were dun, the upper ridges the precise ash-gray of the Beatty brothers' dead faces. Some of the more distant crests had faded to a misty purple. Wintry colors even at this time of year, but the heat was more intense than in L.A., burning through the clouds as if they were tissue paper.
The road rose sharply. This was subalpine terrain. I couldn't imagine it as farmland. Then ten miles in, a sign reading FAIRWAY RANCH: A PLANNED COMMUNITY directed me down a left-hand pass that cut sharply through walls of granite. Another sign-STEEP GRADE: REDUCE SPEED-came too late; I was already hurtling down a roller-coaster chute.
A good two miles of chute. At the bottom was flat green patchwork centered by a diamond-bright aquamarine lake. The lake was amorphous-too perfectly shapeless, it shouted man-made. Two golf courses hugged the water, one on each side, fringed by lime-colored trees with feathery tops- California peppers. Red-topped houses were grouped in premeditated plots. Spanish tile on cream stucco, interspersed with trapezoids of green. The entire layout-maybe five miles wide-was outlined in white, as if drawn by a child too fearful to go outside the lines.
As I got closer I saw that the white was waist-high beam-and-post fencing. An exact duplicate of the "planned community" sign appeared a hundred yards later, over a smaller plaque that said Bunker Protection patrolled the premises.
No gates, just a flat, clean road into the development. Fifteen MPH speed limit and warnings to watch for slow-moving golf carts. I obliged and crawled past stretches of perfect rye grass. Lots more pepper trees, shaggy and undulating, sub-planted with beds of multicolored impatiens.
A thousand feet in, another dozen signs on a stout, dark tree trunk that might have been walnut offered a crash course in the layout of Fairway Ranch.
Balmoral Golf Course to the north, White Oak to the south, Reflection Lake straight ahead. The Pinnacle Recreation Center and Spa to the north, Walnut Grove Fitness Center to the south. In the center, Piccadilly Arcade.
Other arrows pointed to what I assumed were six different housing subdivisions: Chatham, Cotswold, Sussex, Essex, Yorkshire, Jersey.
The mountains were two or three miles away but seemed to be closer. Sparkling color and knife-edge detail said the air was pure.
Beyond the tree post was a small single cube of a building. The rounded edges and blatant texture of pseudo-adobe. More Spanish tile.
Letting the Seville idle, I looked around. Acres of grass and scores more California peppers, a few clumps of peach trees with curling leaves. A handful of larger trunks with bark that matched the color and texture of the signpost and had to be walnuts. No fruit or blossoms. Dead branches and truncated tops.
Imagining the stink of fertilizer, the grind of machinery, pickers moving through sun-dappled rows, I thought of Henry Ardullo's resolve never to sell out.
In the distance I could see assortments of houses-sugar cubes with red tile roofs. Not a hint of half-timber, brick, slate, or wood shingle.
Sussex, Essex… English monikers, Southwest architecture. In California, escape from logic was sometimes construed as freedom.
I heard an engine start. A pale blue Ford sedan with black-wall tires was parked next to the cube. Now it drove forward very slowly and stopped right next to me. Understated shield logo on the driver's door. Crossed rifles above "BP, Inc. A Security Corporation." No cherry on top, no conspicuous display of firearms.
At the wheel was a mustachioed young man wearing a pale blue uniform and mirrored shades.
"Morning, sir." Tight smile.
"Morning, Officer. I'm here to visit Jacob Haas on Charing Cross Road."
"Charing Cross," he said, stretching it out so he could appraise me. "That's all the way over in Jersey."
I resisted the temptation to say, "Atlantic City or Newark?"
"Thanks."
He cleared his throat. "New around here?"
"First time," I said.
"Relative of Mr. Haas?"
"Acquaintance. He used to be the sheriff. Back when it was Treadway."
He hesitated a moment before saying, "Sure." The same dullness I'd seen on the gas jockey's face. Treadway meant nothing to him, either. He knew nothing of the area's history. How many people did? I looked past him at the peach and walnut trees, now just woody memorials. Nothing else from the ranching days remained. Certainly not a hint of the blood-bath at the Ardullo ranch. If Jacob Haas wasn't in, or if he refused to see me, I'd wasted my time. Even if he talked, what could I hope to learn?
The security guard's car phone buzzed and he picked up, nodded, told me, "Jersey's way at the end-go straight through to the lake, turn right. You'll see a sign pointing to the White Oak golf course. Just keep on and it'll be there."
I drove away, watched him through my rearview mirror as he performed a three-point turn and headed toward Balmoral.