Best American Crime Writing 2006 - Mark Bowden [151]
DEANNE STILLMAN’s latest book is Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and Mojave (William Morrow). It was named as a “Best Book 2001” by the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and Hunter Thompson called it “a strange and brilliant story by an important American writer.” She is writing Horse Latitudes: Last Stand for the Wild Horse in the American West (Houghton Mifflin). Thanks to Mark Lamonica for help on this piece.
Coda
This story was originally much longer, taking me down another strange trail on my desert beat and into one big empty scream. But this time I had a map, an escort, and a pit bull. “Go down V Avenue,” said the map. “Just before the pavement ends there is a small fenced in area with some gas lines in it. Take a right-hand turn. Then go 0.9 miles and take a left where a house used to be. Go 2.3 miles, take a right hand turn, then go 0.45 miles and turn left—you might notice some Christmas tinsel in the sage brush. In another 3.5 miles take a right at the intersection. At this point if you look into the mountains, you should be lined up with a road going towards them…”
It was as if I had dropped through some freeway sinkhole in Los Angeles and ended up in its sad and lonely heart—an hour from the Warner lot, just beyond the San Gabriel Mountains, where Donald Kueck had watched the stars, studied search-and-seizure law, and talked to animals. This was a berg called Llano, once home to a utopian community where Aldous Huxley lived. Like most utopian communities, Llano vanished. Today, packs of stray dogs are drawn to its crumbling stone ruins and hard-core desert eccentrics eke out a living in its shadows. Llano was part of Steve Sorensen’s turf and he knew it well. In fact, in the year prior to his murder, he had driven past Donald Kueck’s property at least twenty times, on his way to the squatter’s to try to evict him. Considering their violent confrontation nine years earlier, I have often wondered what each man was thinking as they came into each other’s orbit. Perhaps Sorensen thought he should finish the job. Or perhaps he was on a personal tactical alert, knowing he was within range of someone who had tried to get him fired. And what about Kueck, increasingly paranoid in his last months? He would have heard the big SUV rumbling across the desert dirt, might have even had the deputy in his rifle sight. Or perhaps it was nothing like that at all; perhaps Kueck was too baked to hear anything but the voices in his head and maybe, when Sorensen turned down Kueck’s driveway on that August day, he had no idea that he was about to confront a guy he had subdued at gunpoint a long time ago. When he saw the Dart and ran the plates and the dispatcher identified the owner of the car, did he then recognize the name? If he did, he wasn’t saying, and anyway, the dispatcher garbled “Kueck” (it’s pronounced “cook”). But the stage was set: two men who loved the desert, one with a future, and one with memories only, were about to finish their dance. Maybe that’s when it all came back—just before Kueck opened up with the assault rifle—“Oh Christ,” Sorensen might have thought as his knees buckled, “it’s that lawsuit nut!” Or maybe he said it out loud; his mic was keyed and the dispatcher heard the gunshots—although my sources tell me no words were broadcast.
Three years after it happened, there are some images I can’t forget. One is a photo sent to me by Don’s sister Lynne. It’s a breakfast table for jackrabbits, outside Don’s trailer. Long ago and a few miles away, jackrabbits were nearly clubbed to extinction, lest they raid settlers’ crops.