by Pat Muir
Watson’s face paled. He put his hand on a porch post to steady himself. “Let’s go inside so I can sit down,” he said after a lengthy pause. We entered immediately into the living room, where he sat down on an old stained sofa, and he motioned me to an equally shabby easy chair.
“Again, who did you see taking the fishing rods?” I asked,
“It was the black man from the opposite side.”
“What time and what day was that?”
“It was about six in the morning on Tuesday…just enough light to see what was going on.”
“Can you describe him for me, please?”
“He was tall and strongly built, youngish, I would say twenty-five to thirty, darkish skin, unlike his wife or girlfriend. She was a light-colored African American…very good looking, too. I didn’t see her fishing.”
I recorded what he was saying on my pocket digital recorder. “You would be able to identify them if we had a lineup?”
“Yes. I could.”
“What can you tell me about the men in the site opposite the missing man’s tent?”
“I saw the bigger guy fishing steadily. I saw the other guy just once when he arrived.”
“What did they look like?”
Watson gave me rough descriptions of the two men similar to that given by Mrs. Brown. “Can you tell me anything about their car?” I asked.
“Not really. It was black, maybe a little older than the one on the opposite side.”
Watson led me to a storage shed at the back of his house. I restrained him from handling the stolen items. I put on latex gloves and loaded the sleeping bag, pillow, cot, and fishing gear into evidence bags. I left him my business card in case he thought of anything that might be useful to the investigation. I instructed him to go the nearest sheriff substation to get his fingerprints taken. I told Watson we would be in touch with him, but his demeanor indicated he hoped that would never happen.
I returned to the office, where I placed the bags in evidence. Back at my desk, a priority mail package awaited me. It had come from the Bangor Nursing Home and contained a cover letter, a doctor’s statement, and thirteen letters written by Flynn to his mother. The cover letter stated that Mrs. Flynn had been eligible for benefits from the Veteran’s Administration (VA) due to the death of her husband in combat. The letter also said all letters more than six months old had been shredded. The doctor’s letter, written on a Bangor address letterhead, stated Mrs. Flynn to be in an advanced state of dementia, unable to dress, bathe, or feed herself. I could see why Art would not feel obliged to visit his mother in her vegetative state. Clearly, Art Flynn had not disappeared to avoid paying nursing costs for his mother, since the VA paid them.
I began to read the letters, all thirteen of them, written every two weeks over the prior six months, the last one dated September 5. Flynn had written to his mother as though she were able to understand them…clearly impossible. Each letter, computer typed, comprised two sides of a single page. The first side would talk about his work, his real estate or mobile home listings, his sales, and the people with whom he interacted. He talked about them in a very positive way. One letter mentioned how well Sam Laurel treated his agents and how he trusted and respected him. Rarely did I find anything negative said about any of his clients. He would admit to only one of them being difficult. The other side of the letter was concerned with his wife, Marge, and the little girl, Sally. He mentioned how sad he was that Marge had left him and had taken his little girl with her. He expressed himself in a way that seemed distant from Marge and close to Sally. He had apparently been able to visit Sally at Larry Swift’s home up to the time of the divorce, which was finalized on May 13. He would tell how he had picked up Sally to go for her oncology treatment and how she had clung to him throughout each session. Not clear was whether Marge Holmes was also present. The letters, though sad, conveyed a sense of acceptance.
Art’s grief at the terms of the divorce, particularly not being able to visit Sally, was paramount. He seemed less concerned that the court had awarded Marge alimony of twelve hundred dollars per month than with not having visitation rights to Sally. He expressed how unfair the award was, given the man Marge was living with, Larry Swift, was wealthy and lived in an exclusive part of town. How he missed his little girl. How sweet she was. What pain she was going through and what grief he had from not being allowed to help her any more. He said he would have been happy to pay child support for Sally if he had been given visitation rights. But he understood the court’s decision to grant full custody to Sally’s biological mother, Marge. The only bright side, Flynn noted, was he would no longer have to pay Sally’s medical bills.
That nursing supervisor had been right. The letters told the reader a great deal about Art Flynn. His own words portrayed him as a decent, positive person, not one to commit suicide or duck his responsibilities. I felt convinced Art had been murdered or hijacked, since he had no real reason to disappear. If he’d wanted to, he would have cleaned out his bank account.
I then discussed the case with Thompson. I pointed out that Bill Dollar, who’d been in a nearby site, had been seen taking the fishing rods out of Flynn’s tent, but that had been a day after the missing man had left—or at least when his car had been gone. Thompson told me to contact the Sonoma County sheriff’s office and determine who should take the lead in the questioning of Bill Dollar and his girlfriend.
I phoned that office and talked to the head homicide detective, a woman called Angie Haigh. Angie seemed pleased to be talking to a fellow female detective, and we soon got onto a first-name basis. I gave her a detailed discussion of the entire case, interrupted by her many questions. The issue was that Bill Dollar had committed a petty theft in Sonoma County, and he may have been involved in Flynn’s disappearance. Angie said that since Dollar lived in Carson, much closer to San Diego than Santa Rosa, it would be helpful if we continued the case as a missing person investigation. ‘If you find Flynn’s missing car or convincing evidence he has been murdered in our county, let me know, and we will take over the investigation,” she remarked in parting.
After the phone conversation, Thompson called me back to his office on an urgent matter. He explained there had been the shooting death of a Chinese student studying at San Marcos State University. “The community is in an uproar about it,” he said. “The State Department is involved and wants the matter resolved as quickly as possible to avoid a diplomatic row, since the student was the son of a party bigwig.” He added as an afterthought, “I think you are putting too much effort into this missing man. Stealing those fishing rods is a matter of petty theft and likely unrelated to Flynn’s disappearance. Avoiding paying alimony to his ex-wife is sufficient motivation for him to leave. At any rate, drop what you’re doing and help Steve on this Chinese student case.”
CHAPTER 8
Steve Hall was junior to me; indeed, I’d mentored him when he’d first joined our homicide detail. Getting this case was a plum assignment for him, and I felt jealous. I did as Thompson asked by spending all weekend interviewing students and administrative staff at the university. The case did not take long to solve. A weapon was found with fingerprints that matched a fellow Chinese student, and Steve quickly made the arrest. The case made both national and local news. The San Diego Union newspaper reported Steve as the detective in charge, and I was disappointed not to find my name there also in such an important case. However, Steve made a point of thanking me effusively me for my assistance. I told him he would likely have a chance to reciprocate, and that did occur later.
Two days following the Chinese student murder, a major break in the Flynn case came in the form of a phone call from the sheriff substation in Compton, a city in Los Angeles County.
“That 2005 Camry car you reported missing has been found in our city. It’s been stripped and is on concrete blocks. Do you need it for evidence, or do you just want us to send you a photograph so you can notify the owner?”
“We need it for
evidence,” I almost barked into the phone. “Please guard it. I will have our crew come up today to haul it away.”
“Will do,” said the officer. “Saves us the trouble of getting it moved to the junkyard… Let us know when you expect to arrive so I can notify the guard deputy.”
Excited at this break, I called our evidence detail to get a hold of flatbed truck and additional staff to retrieve the abandoned car. I asked technicians from the forensics department to come with me. By one o’clock, the team had been assembled, and I notified the Compton sheriff. I drove my detective car ahead of the truck, encountering heavy traffic as usual on Highway 405 before turning north on Highway 710 to Compton. Compton is a depressing place once you’re off the main streets. It is a poor community, its poverty evidenced by boarded-up buildings, graffiti on walls and fences, iron bars on housing windows, and unkempt streets on which dilapidated cars are parked.
We arrived at the car location, an abandoned industrial building with similar abandoned buildings as neighbors. The car, or rather its shell, lay in a semi-fenced parking lot off the street. It would have been found only by a law enforcement patrol of the area. We identified ourselves to the officer guarding the shell, who already knew we would be hauling it away for examination in San Diego County. Flynn’s Camry lay in a sorry state on concrete blocks—no wheels, no engine, no transmission, no wiring harness, no floor mats, no front seats, and no radio. It was very dirty and covered in oily handprints. The forensics photographer started taking pictures of the vehicle and surroundings.
The guarding deputy, an older black man, introduced himself as Jake Foster. “I’m glad you’re here to take this pile of junk off our hands. You’re in luck it wasn’t torched.”
“When was it found?” I asked.
“A patrol car found it here six o’clock this morning.”
“Do you know how long it’s been here?”
“No. The first deputy rounded up some of the cracker heads smoking weed nearby and asked them what they knew. Of course they knew nothing.”
“Have you looked inside the building?” I asked, pointing to it.
“Yes,” Jake replied, “The place has been used for shooting up. It is strewn with hypodermic needles and trash. Some homeless people are living there. They know nothing about this car. I didn’t expect them to.”
We looked in the open trunk of the car and saw a reddish-brown stain on the carpet. Danny took out a cotton swab, moistened it with water, and dabbed it on the stain. “I’m using the Hemastix test,” he said as he touched the swab against a reagent strip from his kit. The strip turned from yellow to a blueish green. “That stain contains blood,” he announced, looking at me.
I was quite dismayed by Danny’s finding. I had this picture of Flynn in my mind: a kindly man, one willing to help his neighbors, professional in dealing with his clients and co-workers, one disappointed in love but moving on nevertheless, a man who did not deserve to die. I clung to the notion the blood might be from another person. We would need Flynn’s DNA to find out.
Jake, watching over his shoulder, asked, “Who does the car belong to?”
“A missing man,” I told him.
“This is not a good place to go missing,” said Jake.
“Has anyone canvassed the area to find when the car arrived here?”
“Not to my knowledge. But Detective, I will be happy to go with you to knock on a few doors of the neighborhood while your team works here.”
I thanked Jake and said a walkabout would be helpful. We walked three hundred yards and then turned a corner onto a street populated by a mixture of vacant lots and rundown houses. We chatted as we went. Jake, an army veteran, said he was fifty-eight and planned to retire next year.
“This is a tough neighborhood,” he added. “I grew up here, so I should know. Going into the army was the best thing that happened to me. Otherwise, I would be like many of the kids I grew up with—incarcerated, drug addicted, or working at menial jobs with such long commutes to work they could never spend time with their wives, girlfriends, or their kids. You might meet some of them when we knock on doors.”
I knocked on the door of the first house since the doorbell did not work. Nobody came to the door. “They know we’re here,” said Jake. “They are too scared to speak to a man in uniform.” We knocked on several more doors. One Afro-American woman came to the door and told us that she knew nothing before we even got to ask her about the car shell. At another home, another black woman came to the door with two small children in tow. They clung to her tightly. “Look, ma’am,” she said, “I don’t go down that street, and I won’t let my kids go there either. It’s not safe. We all know that, so we know nothing. Even if we knew something, we would still know nothing.”
I knocked on the doors of a few more houses with similar, negative results. I then saw two men peering over the fence one hundred yards from where we stood. “We don’t have enough muscle here,” said Jake, wheeling abruptly and turning me around at the same time. He grasped my arm to retrace our path at a slightly faster pace. I was irritated at being impelled to move, but I was glad Jake felt my security was important to him.
“I’ll have to ask your sergeant if he could canvas the area properly,” I said. “I really do need to know when this car arrived here since I want to track this missing man.”
“I think you’ll have to get your own team to do that,” said Jake. We’re too busy in this town to solve your San Diego problems. You can ask him, of course.” He paused before adding, “The car may have been abandoned elsewhere before it arrived here, an easy place for dismantling.”
It was an acute observation, and I thanked him. “I hope you’ll come up this way again,” he remarked. “Let me know if you do; it would be nice to see you.”
Gracious! He’s making a pass at me. No thanks. Celibacy and singlehood are fine with me, but it’s nice to know a man still finds me attractive.
When we returned, the Camry shell had been winched onto the flatbed trailer and tied down. I thanked Jake for his help and left my business card with him in case he was able to determine when the car had arrived at that location. I also called the area detective at the Compton sheriff’s station to see if he had informants who might know when the Camry had arrived in that city.
“A little money might help,” said the detective.
“I’m sure we can spring some for reliable info,” I told him.
I noticed our CID address had changed to Cop St. when I drove to work the next day. It suited my mood; I was making real progress in finding out what had happened to Flynn. I called Mary Smith and told her an evidence team would be over that day, and I asked her to let us in so we did not have to force entry. Mary immediately grasped the significance of the evidence team. “Oh my God,” she said, “is Art hurt? Have you found him?”
One does not give information out on the progress of an investigation, so I merely replied we had not yet found Flynn.
That afternoon, I parked my car in the driveway of Flynn’s mobile home. As I got out, I saw the ginger cat on the windowsill of the rear bedroom of the neighboring home. It stared at me, malevolently, I thought, as though to say, “You shouldn’t have brushed me off.” I heard Mr. Smith cough wheezily, and as if on cue, the cat jumped off the windowsill. Danny and his forensic team parked on the other side of the road. The neighbor with the sour face came out to remonstrate against Danny’s parked vehicle. Danny ignored him. Mary Smith saw me and came out to open the door for us. I showed her my search warrant as a formality and told her to return to her home while we searched Flynn’s unit.
“I moved the cat, its litter box, and supplies into my home,” she said. “It made it simpler to take care of Ginger. I hope you don’t mind.”
“That’s a sensible thing for you to do. I need your key to Flynn’s home, and you cannot enter it again, since we need to seal it for evidence. I will also need your fingerprints since you have frequented the home.”
As Mary produc
ed the key, I asked, “Has your husband or any neighbor been in Mr. Flynn’s home since he left?”
“No. This is the only key, and I’ve been the only one in Art’s house.”
The forensics team and I entered the Flynn mobile home. “My, this place is immaculate for a bachelor,” said Danny. I explained to him that Flynn had paid his neighbor to clean his home thoroughly and told him why. “She did a great job,” he commented, “but made my task harder.” I told Danny we knew Flynn had arrived safely at the Russian River camp. “You should get someone to check for bloodstains at the site,” he said.
Danny’s team went around the home, taking fingerprints and gathering objects that Flynn might have been handled, clothes from the chest of drawers, and toiletries from the bathroom. At my direction, they went through Flynn’s files and took all personal papers, including his birth and marriage certificates, his divorce papers, and the titles to his car and mobile home. They gathered his car and life insurance policies and his trust documents and bagged all his mail. I told them to take his two-drawer filing cabinet so that I could look over his business transactions later. Maybe we could discern a disgruntled seller or buyer in the documents. They finished by hauling Flynn’s tower computer away and sealing the two entrances to the mobile home. I then had Danny come over to the Smith residence and take Mary’s fingerprints before he and his evidence team left. I remained to question Mary.
“Let me ask you again if Art had any enemies?” I asked her.
“I really can’t think of anybody,” she replied. Larry Swift, Marge, and Bert Swanson may have had their reasons for disliking Art or treating him poorly, but that doesn’t rise to the category of enemies. Why do you ask? Do you know or suspect if anything has happened to Art?” A note of alarm came into her voice.
