Chapter 24: Turning the Tables

Oceano, California

April 6, 1998

It was 3:30 AM on this Monday morning when the intercom box in Jake and Laura’s bedroom began to chirp out an alarm, waking the couple from a sound sleep. At the same time, the same alarm sounded in Elsa’s bedroom in the guest house and in Meghan’s bedroom on the other side of the main house.

Jake’s eyes opened and he sat up immediately in bed, a little jolt of adrenaline flooding into him, making his heart pound in his chest. Laura was a little slower coming to grips with the sudden noise.

“What is that, sweetie?” she asked groggily. “What’s going on?”

“It’s the motion detector alarm,” he said. “Something just triggered it.”

“The motion detector? Where?”

“I don’t know,” he said, pulling back the covers and putting his feet on the floor. He was naked because he and Laura had had sex after they had put Caydee to bed. “I need to go check the monitors.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said, extricating herself from the covers as well.

“Okay,” Jake said. “Close the window and engage the security lock first.”

A look of alarm appeared on her face. “Do you think it’s that serious?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I think we need to assume the worst until we can get a look, don’t you?”

“I guess so,” she said, the nervous look increasing a bit.

Jake grabbed his red robe from a hook on the doorway. He had not been in the habit of wearing a robe inside the house until Meghan had moved in last week and the possibility of encountering her in the halls or the kitchen in the middle of the night became a thing. He pulled it closed and then tied it securely. By this point, Laura had shut the window and latched it. She pulled on her own robe—hers was white and fuzzy and well broken in—and they went to the bedroom door.

Meghan was in the main hallway. She was wearing a long t-shirt with Cal Poly’s logo on it. It was obvious that she had no bra on beneath. Her hair was mussed and tangled and her eyes were sleepy. Her legs were bare and quite attractive, but Jake only glanced at them for a moment.

“What’s going on, Jake?” she asked. “Why is the intercom going off like that?”

“It’s the proximity alarm,” he told her. “Something just triggered it.”

“Like someone trying to break in?” she asked, alarm appearing on her face as well.

“I don’t know,” Jake said. “I’m going to check the monitors now. Is your window closed?”

“No,” she said. “I love to listen to the ocean when I’m sleeping.”

“Go close it,” he told her. “And latch it.”

“Do you really think that...”

“Just go do it, Meghan,” he told her. “We assume the worst until we know what’s going on.”

Meghan had been briefed on what the worst was: that some fanatical fan, or Intemperance hater, or just plain lunatic was trying to get to the Kingsleys to do violence. The house had been designed and constructed with this scenario in mind. Once all the doors and windows were latched and secured, it would take even a persistent intruder the better part of thirty minutes to gain entry; and that was only if the intruder was equipped with an axe, a sledgehammer, or cutting tools.

Meghan trotted back down the hall toward the guest bedroom that had been turned over to her. Jake and Laura opened the door to the office and stepped inside. The monitors were all operating in night vision mode. On one of them—the one that showed the view of the access road as it approached the gate to the property—was something that did not belong. It was a VW microbus straight out of the 1960s. It was moving slowly forward, its headlights out. Two vague human silhouettes could be seen in the driver and front passenger seats. The view was good enough that Jake could plainly see the front license plate number. That was good. The system continuously recorded all the video taken in a twelve-hour loop.

“Who is it?” Laura asked.

“No idea,” Jake said, watching. “I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that VW around town though. It’s red and has a bunch of bumper stickers on the back.”

“Yeah,” Laura said, nodding. “I’ve seen it too. Some hippie looking couple drives around in it.”

“They’re locals then,” Jake said.

“Maybe they just got lost?” Laura suggested. “Made a wrong turn onto our road?”

Jake shook his head. “People who make wrong turns onto the road don’t creep along with their headlights out,” he said. “They’re here for some purpose.”

“Should we call the sheriff’s department?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said. “Let’s see what they do.”

“Maybe they just want to buy some pot from us,” Laura suggested.

Jake chuckled a bit and continued to look at the monitors. He checked all the others and saw that there was nothing unusual going on. At least this was not an organized, multi-factional attack on the compound. He looked back at the approach view. The microbus slowly passed the hidden camera station and continued on. The camera automatically panned to follow it. Sure enough, the entire back of the bus was plastered with bumper stickers, most of which were of the radical environmental variety.

The phone rang on the desk. Jake looked at the caller ID and saw it was Elsa’s number. She had her own bank of monitors in her quarters and was undoubtedly watching the same thing that Jake was. He picked up the phone.

“Hey, Elsa,” he greeted.

“Are you watching this, Jake?” she asked.

“I am,” he confirmed. “Not sure what to make of it yet.”

“I have seen that vehicle around town on many occasions,” Elsa said. “Their bumper stickers suggest they are members of the environmentalist movement as well as the animal rights movement.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “Laura and I have both seen it as well. A hippie looking couple in their late forties, early fifties.”

“That is correct,” she said. “Have you contacted the sheriff’s department yet?”

“Not yet,” Jake said. “I want to see what they do.”

“I suppose that is appropriate,” Elsa said doubtfully.

“Are you locked down over there?” Jake asked her.

“Indeed I am,” she said.

“That’s good,” he said. “Stay on the line with me. I’ll put you on speaker.”

“Very good,” she said.

He pushed the button for speakerphone and then hung up the handset. On the monitor, the vehicle finally came to a halt. It was just a few feet before the point where the gate camera would have picked them up and triggered the security lights. Interesting.

“They have some insider information,” Jake said.

“Who are they?” asked Meghan, who was now standing next to Laura immediately behind Jake.

“Some hippies that live in SLO,” Laura said. “We’re not sure what they’re doing here, but they’re the only ones.”

“I’ve seen that van around town for years,” Meghan said. “The people that drive it hang out near the campus a lot and sometimes hand out pamphlets to the students.”

“What kind of pamphlets?” asked Elsa’s voice from the speaker.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I never took one from them. I avoid pamphlet people as a matter of course.”

“A wise philosophy,” Jake said. “Anyway, they knew exactly where to stop before the gate camera picked them up. I’m thinking they don’t know about the approach camera though.”

“It would seem they don’t,” Elsa agreed.

The doors opened on the microbus. Two figures got out. They were shades of green and white on the night vision view but they were plainly the hippie couple that everyone had seen around town. The male had a full beard and long hair tied back in a ponytail. The female was short, skinny, and her long hair was unkempt and flowing around her shoulders. They met at the front of the van and held a short conversation with each other. There was then a flare of white that momentarily overwhelmed the camera. When it cleared, Jake saw that the male had turned on a flashlight. He was shining it back and forth in the direction of the gate and the intercom box that sat before it.

“This is very suspicious behavior, Jake,” Elsa commented.

“Isn’t it?” Jake replied.

“Should we call the cops now?” asked Meghan.

“Not just yet,” Jake said. “They are barely on our property and still on the good side of the fence. Let’s see what they do.”

They continued to watch. The man left the flashlight on and the two of them walked over to the sliding door on the right side of the vehicle. The female opened it up and the male shined the flashlight inside. He then tucked the light between his arm and his chest and reached inside. He pulled out what appeared to be a frame of some sort that had been constructed out of PVC pipe. It was rectangular in shape, about four feet wide by six feet tall. He carried it over and set it down about four feet in front of the microbus, the legs sitting on the pavement of the access road. Once it was in place, he walked back to the sliding door and pulled out another object constructed from PVC pipe. This one looked like the goalpost on an American football field. The center bar was about three feet tall. The crossbar was maybe two and a half feet. The uprights were another three feet. Attached to the very top of both uprights was some kind of loose, dangling thing.

“What the hell is this shit?” Jake asked.

“It looks like a big slingshot,” Laura said.

“A slingshot?” asked Meghan, as if she had never heard of such a thing.

“Yeah,” Laura said. “My brother used to have one when we were kids. He was pretty good with it. Could put a hole in a soda can from twenty feet, easy.”

“That’s a big fuckin’ slingshot if that’s what it is,” Jake observed.

“I really don’t like the looks of this, Jake,” Elsa said.

“This is very odd behavior,” Jake had to agree.

The man carried the goalpost over to the frame he had just set down. He put the center bar into a receptacle on the top of the frame. It seated neatly. They could see that the goalpost was now angled backward at about twenty degrees or so. The suspicion that this was a slingshot began to grow. This suspicion was reinforced when the man went back to the sliding door, reached inside, and pulled out a large plastic garbage bag, which he then dragged over and parked next to the base of the frame.

“This is getting creepier by the second,” Meghan said.

“Yes it is,” Laura agreed.

The couple had another conversation and then the man shined the flashlight down at the base of the frame. The woman then sat down on the base, putting her skinny butt on the lowest of the front cross supports and then sliding backwards, so she was entirely inside the frame and grasping the vertical bars with her arms.

“What is she doing?” Meghan asked.

“Stabilizing it,” Jake said. “She’s using her weight to keep it from tipping or moving when he slings whatever he is going to sling with it.”

“They are going to launch something over the fence, Jake,” Elsa said with alarm. “What if it is Molotov cocktails?”

“That would be a bit antisocial,” Jake said, “but it wouldn’t hurt us. No way they can reach the house from there. It’s almost a quarter mile and uphill. And the trees and the grass are wet from the rain we had the other day.”

“But still...” Elsa started.

“He’s reaching in the bag,” Laura said.

And, sure enough, the man was reaching in the bag. He pulled something out. It was vaguely egg shaped, light in color, about the size of two fists clenched together. He reached up and grabbed the dangling device mounted between the two uprights. There was a piece of canvas or similar material there and he put the white object inside of it. He then stepped backwards, pulling on the canvas as he went. The material attached to the uprights proved to be large, elastic rubber bands or perhaps industrial bungee cords. It really was a slingshot. He stretched it out perhaps five feet, straining against the pull, and then let fly. The white object shot out of the canvas and rapidly flew out of the camera view. Jake looked at the screen that showed the view from the camera mounted just at the house end of the access road. The white object appeared in that view, traveling in a ballistic arc. It did not trigger the motion detector, which in turn would have activated the security lights, since the motion detectors were programed to disregard small flying objects to keep them from being constantly triggered by the sea birds and the crows that hung out on the cliff. The white object landed on the access road about thirty feet beyond the gate. It bounced twice and then rolled to a stop. It did not ignite, explode, or do anything else but lay there.

The man and the woman were now clearly laughing. They high-fived each other. The man then reached into the bag and pulled out another white, oval-shaped object. He seated it in the sling of the slingshot and fired it off as well. It landed a little shorter than the first one, but remained in the roadway. He then reached in the bag and pulled out yet another.

“All right,” Jake said. “I’ve seen enough of this shit. I’m calling the cops now.”

“Thank you,” Elsa said gratefully.

“I’ll have to hang up on you, Elsa,” he said.

“That’s okay,” she said. “Call me back when they are on the way.”

“Will do,” Jake said. He disconnected Elsa and then picked up the handset and put it to his ear. He pushed one of the buttons on the phone. It was preprogrammed with the number for the sheriff’s department dispatch center. The phone was answered on the third ring by a pleasant female voice.

“San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s department,” she said. “How can I help you?”

“Hi,” Jake said. “I’m Jake Kingsley and I live here at 13227 Pacific Coast Highway outside Oceano.”

“Okay,” the dispatcher said. “I have your address on my screen, Mr. Kingsley. Do you need the sheriff’s department to respond out to you?”

“Yes, I do,” Jake said. “You see, I’ve got these two people who pulled up to my gate in a VW microbus. They then assembled a large slingshot and are using it to launch unknown objects over my gate and onto my property.”

“Unknown objects?” the dispatcher asked. “What exactly are they?”

“I don’t know what they are,” Jake said patiently. “That is why I used the word ‘unknown’. They are small, whitish things that are egg shaped to some degree. When they land on the road they do not explode or burn or anything else, but these people have a large lawn and garden bag full of such objects and seem to have every intention of launching them all.”

“I ... see,” the dispatcher said. “Are they attempting to enter your property?”

“They are already on my property,” Jake said, “but they have so far made no attempt to go past the gate.”

“They are still there right now?”

“I am looking at them through the security camera,” Jake said. “They seem to have no idea that they are being watched. They are currently launching these objects at the rate of about one every ten or fifteen seconds.”

“How very odd,” the dispatcher said.

“I thought so,” Jake agreed. “Are you gonna send me some cops?”

“I’m getting them en route right now,” she said. “Can you give me a description of the people? Of their vehicle?”

Jake started with the vehicle. As soon as she heard the description and the license plate number, she knew who he was talking about.

“We have had some encounters with these folks before,” she said.

“I have no doubt about that,” Jake said. He then went on to describe them anyway. He could hear her fingers clattering away on a keyboard as he gave the description.

“I have three units en route to you, Mr. Kingsley,” she said. “The first two are coming from Pismo Beach. They should be there in less than ten minutes.”

“Thank you,” Jake said.

“Do you need me to stay on the line with you until they get there?” she asked.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” he said. “Tell them I will turn on the gate lighting once they arrive.”

“Very well,” she said. “Give us a call back if anything changes.”

Jake promised he would do that and then hung up. He then dialed Elsa back and returned her to the speaker phone. “Cops are on the way,” he told her. “Should be here in ten minutes or so.”

It actually took only eight minutes. The couple continued to launch whatever they were launching. The man was now turning the slingshot left and right between shots, scattering the objects on both sides of the access road now. There was quite the collection of them lying about by the time Jake and everyone else saw the flaring of headlights coming up the road from the direction of the highway. The two hippies saw it too. They stopped what they were doing and looked in the direction of the lights. They held a frantic, unheard conversation as the lights grew brighter and two marked patrol units suddenly appeared, catching them and their vehicle in a cone of light. As soon as they were lit up, Jake flipped some switches on the control panel and activated the gate lights and the lights along the access road to the driveway. The hippies looked at this for a moment and then went back to looking at the two sheriff’s vehicles, which had now stopped, side by side, and were blocking the road completely.

“I hope these two don’t do anything stupid,” Jake said, watching as the doors to the patrol cars opened. “The last fuckin’ thing we need is to have the cops blow somebody away on our road.”

“Yeah, that would kind of suck,” Meghan opined.

The uniformed deputies stood behind their car doors, their hands resting on their butts of their pistols, their flashlights in their non-gun hands. There was no audio, but it did not take a psychic to figure out what they were saying to the hippies. “Walk your asses over here real slow and keep those hands where we can see them.”

The hippies walked their asses over real slow. They kept their hands where the deputies could see them. When they got just in front of the patrol vehicles, they stopped. They then turned around and faced back toward their microbus. One of the deputies stepped out from behind the car door and approached. Jake recognized him. It was Steve Cartwright, a young deputy in his late twenties and one of the regular attendees of Jake’s informal guitar performances (and drinking sessions) at the Pine Cove, the San Luis Obispo cop bar. Steve walked up to the male hippie first. The male put his hands behind his head and Steve grasped his fingers with his right hand and pulled him backward a bit, so he was off-balance. He then used his left hand to pat the male hippie down. Once he was done with this, he did the same for the female hippie. Once satisfied that they weren’t packing, he walked up to the microbus and shined his flashlight inside.

Once the microbus and the hippies were cleared, the other deputy stepped out from behind the car door. Jake recognized this one as well—again, from her frequent visits to the Pine Cove on the nights he performed. It was Sarah Brooke, a tall, athletic cop in her thirties. She was divorced, ran marathons for fun, played in a local basketball club, and had hinted to Laura (who often accompanied her husband to the bar when he went) that she had always wanted to try the girl-on-girl thing just to see what it was like. Laura had never acknowledged that she was picking up on the innuendo Sarah was throwing down.

The two cops stood and talked to the duo for a few minutes, no doubt asking them just what they thought they were doing. The couple handed over identification cards and Sarah went back to her patrol car to run them. A few minutes later, the hippies were stuffed into the back of the patrol cars, the female in Sarah’s car, the male in Steve’s. About this time, another patrol car arrived on the scene and parked behind Sarah and Steve. This deputy got out and Jake recognized him as well. It was Sergeant Stivick, who had been the supervisor on the night the deputies had showed up to make sure Jake and Laura were not harboring a teenage transexual from Venezuela. Stivick was also a regular attendee of the Jake Kingsley show at the Pine Cove.

After holding a brief discussion with Steve and Sarah, Stivick went to the slingshot and examined it with his flashlight for a few minutes. He then looked in the bag that the objects the duo had been launching were stored in. The bag was now almost empty. Jake saw the sergeant shaking his head as he looked in there. He made no move to put his hand in or touch any of the objects. He then began to walk to the gate. A minute later, he was standing next to the intercom box. He pushed the button.

Jake opened the link. “Hey, sarge,” he said. “Thanks for showing up so fast.”

“No problem, Jake,” Stivick said. “Can I come up to the house?”

“Yeah,” Jake said, pushing a button on the panel. “Gate’s opening now.”

The gate swung open and Stivick stepped through, making the trip up to the house on foot. He weaved carefully between the little white egg-looking things the hippies had been launching and then climbed up the hill. It took him the better part of five minutes to make it to the front door. Jake and Laura both took the opportunity to lose their robes and throw on some sweat pants and shirts for the meeting. They still reeked of sex, particularly Jake’s face, which had spent a considerable amount of time between Laura’s legs earlier, but they figured Stivick would be unoffended.

“Come on in, Bob,” Jake told the sergeant when he opened the front door for him. Since the last visit Stivick had made to the house, he and Jake had graduated to first-name basis with each other.

“Thanks,” Stivick said, turning off his flashlight and then holstering it in a pocket on the left side of his uniform pants. He looked over at Laura, who was standing behind Jake, and gave her a smile. “Good to see you again, Laura. Sorry it has to be for something like this.”

“Good to see you too, Bob,” she told him. “Thanks for coming out so fast.”

“It’s what we do,” he said. His eyes then turned to Meghan, who was behind Laura, still wearing her long t-shirt sans bra. He looked her up and down appreciably, particularly her bare legs and her jiggling breasts.

“Oh, Bob, this is Meghan,” Jake introduced. “She’s our nanny.”

“Hello, Meghan,” Stivick said flirtatiously. “I’m Bob Stivick. I’m one of the night shift supervisors for the coastal district.”

“Nice to meet you,” Meghan said shyly.

Stivick reluctantly took his eyes off of her and turned back to Jake. “Did your little girl sleep through all the commotion?” he asked.

“Are you kidding?” Jake asked. “A freakin’ bomb wouldn’t wake Caydee up if she doesn’t want to wake up. Some of the best advice we were given was to not make any attempt to be quiet around her when she’s sleeping. It pays off.”

“Hmmm,” Stivick said thoughtfully. “My wife and I weren’t given that advice. Now we have a couple of pre-teens who wake up whenever a mouse farts.”

“That’s a bummer,” Jake said lightly. “But it is good to have some anecdotal evidence to support the hypothesis.”

“Uh ... right,” Stivick said slowly. “Anyway, we got Phil and Dana in custody, as I’m sure you saw on the camera. Not sure what we should charge them with though.”

“What are those things they were slingshotting all over the property?” Jake asked.

“Dirty diapers,” Stivick said.

Jake’s eyes widened. “Dirty diapers?”

The sergeant nodded. “Dirty disposable diapers, to be exact.”

“I see,” Jake said. “And why are these hippies using a slingshot to shoot dirty disposable diapers over our fence at three-thirty in the fucking morning? What did we ever do to them?”

“You use disposable diapers for your baby,” Stivick said simply. “Do you remember that interview you gave a few months back where the reporter asked you if you used cloth diapers to help protect the environment?”

“Yes,” Jake said. “And I said, ‘fuck the environment’. I was kind of joking about that. I honestly didn’t think that reporter would actually print that statement. And it was quite out of context.”

“Well, Phil and Dana took it very seriously when they read that,” Stivick said. “They decided to teach you and Laura a lesson.”

“By doing the very thing that they are protesting?” asked Laura incredulously. “They’re mad about disposable diapers messing up the environment so they litter our property with disposable diapers to show their anger? That makes no sense at all.”

Stivick shrugged. “These people are not rocket scientists,” he said. “In their minds, they were asking how you liked it. And they also were not planning on getting caught. They knew you had a camera and a motion detector on the gate, but they were quite surprised to find that you had them on the approach to the gate as well.”

“Where did they even get the diapers?” Jake asked. “They don’t have a baby, do they?”

“They got them from the dumpster behind the KinderCare in SLO,” Stivick said. “At least that’s what they told Cartwright and Brooke. They said it took them almost a month to gather that many. And I’m here to tell you, those things are rank. I almost puked when I looked in the bag.”

“Disgusting,” Laura said.

“That’s where I used to work,” Meghan added. “And come to think of it, I did see that van hanging around the area the last few weeks I was there.”

“You should smell the inside of that van,” Stivick said.

“No thank you,” Meghan said with a wince of disgust. “Cleaning a baby’s booty is one thing. Dealing with month old diapers is something else entirely.”

“You got that right, hon,” Stivick said. “In any case, this is far from a first offense for Phil and Dana. They’ve been arrested for egging SLO city hall, for breaking into the chicken farm outside of Paso Robles so they could free the chickens, and are routinely caught vandalizing the fence at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. They have a particular hatred for the nuclear plant.”

“Are they married, or what?” asked Laura.

“Not really,” Stivick said. “California is not a common law state. They belong together though.”

“What happens now?” asked Jake. “Are they under arrest?”

“Well, that kind of depends on how you want to play this,” Stivick said. “There are several things we can charge them with, all misdemeanors, but, since they are misdemeanors that occurred in the presence of Cartwright and Brooke, we can charge them and you won’t have to make a citizen’s arrest and go through all the bullshit that entails. The question is, do you want us to arrest them and charge them?”

“What would you charge them with?” Jake asked.

“Trespassing would be the first thing,” Stivick said. “You have signs at the property line stating that this is private property and that trespassing is forbidden. They disregarded those signs and acted in a manner that implies they intended to trespass. As for the diapers themselves, we could probably get the DA to agree that malicious mischief is applicable. I’m not sure that vandalism would actually hold up here. And then there’s always illegal dumping. Shooting soiled diapers over a fence onto private property that is not a designated waste management site certainly meets the elements of illegal dumping.”

“I see,” Jake said. “And what kind of punishment would they receive for this act?”

Stivick shrugged. “They would definitely get hit with a hefty fine,” he said. “They would likely be ordered to pay restitution to you for whatever it costs to clean up the mess. And, with their priors, if you get the right judge and he or she is in a particularly bad mood on the day of sentencing, they might even get thirty days or so—although they would undoubtedly be allowed to serve it on the weekends only, and would probably get at least half of the time off as long as they weren’t total assholes inside the jail.”

“Hmm,” Jake said thoughtfully. “Hardly seems worth the time and effort.”

“I don’t know,” Stivick said. “It might teach them a lesson. And a fine will certainly hit them where they live. They both receive disability payments from social security as their primary means of income.”

“What kind of disability?” Jake asked. “They looked pretty fuckin’ healthy when they were slinging dirty diapers around with an oversized slingshot.”

Stivick shrugged again. “Who knows?”

“I don’t want to send people on a disability pension to jail,” Laura said.

“Yeah, me either,” Jake said. “When the reporters get wind of that, imagine how they would twist it. It’s just like when that bible thumper’s kid put acid in my hot tub. They would just make it seem like a harmless prank that I overreacted to.”

“Acid in your hot tub?” Stivick asked. He had not heard that story. “You mean ... like the burning acid, not the tripping acid?”

“The burning acid,” Jake confirmed. “He snuck in our back yard and poured five gallons of it into the hot tub. The amount you’re supposed to use is about half a cup. I caught him doing it and he wanted to fight. He was a big kid, six foot plus, football player. I punched him a few times before I even realized it was a kid. The media had a field day with it.”

“Wow,” Stivick said. “The diapers don’t quite rise to the level of acid in the tub—you could make an argument for attempted murder or at least attempted mayhem for that—but I get where you’re coming from. Phil and Dana aren’t exactly beloved around SLO county, but you’re more fun to sling innuendo about.”