Breaking Blue

by Timothy Egan

  The words between them were barbed—small informational exchanges sent as a form of reconnaissance, but received like a lance. Tony slept on the first floor, Betty on the third. But of course he didn’t sleep; the heat alone was enough to keep him awake. He wanted to strip himself of the bark of pride, tell Betty what a mess he was, and what she meant to him. But when he tried to explain himself, it all came out like clumps of gravy. He felt stubborn and inarticulate, the curse of the physical man, trapped in the code of manhood handed down by his father. Men stood for action over contemplation, aggression over mediation, work over family. Afterward, he thought of what he should have said, and it seemed so simple. Watching his family slip away, he knew he was failing, but still he could not act. There was no manual for such repair.

  On the river, he passed ospreys diving for river rats, and fishermen with sunburned backs and slack lines. Irrigation sprinklers spit water over rusty hay fields. With the boat engine at low idle, he coursed with the flush of the river, his thoughts trailing along with him. He was trying to find a way to get at Ralstin. The discovery that Clyde had killed a boy and then left the police department under cryptic circumstances had refired Bamonte’s outrage. The kid was unarmed. He posed no threat to the officers. He was scared. He ran, like any fifteen year old, and Ralstin knocked him dead. It was legal, of course, and all justified, because the shooter wore a badge. In Bamonte’s mind, Clyde Ralstin had killed at least two people, then sailed through more than half a century of life without answering for his crimes. Worse, Bamonte believed Ralstin had killed for excitement—a hunter of animals who shot humans with the same disregard, firing on one person before he could see him, shooting the other one in the back. It was all turkey shoot. After twenty-three years as a cop, Bamonte knew why some people, otherwise rational, hated policemen. There were just enough Ralstins in uniform to make every other officer pay for it.

  All this talk about the benevolent judge of Lapwai and the helping neighbor of Saint Ignatius made the sheriff sick with cynicism. But with every character tidbit brought forth by Bamonte, Ralstin’s position also hardened, and his supporters closed ranks around him. Bamonte was on a self-serving and irresponsible crusade, they charged—a sentiment echoed by top brass in the Spokane Police Department.

  “Don’t you have anything better to do?” one officer in Spokane asked Bamonte. And, of course, he did. Summer was the worst time to be a rural sheriff—everybody was outside, riding boats, or RVs, or souped-up vans, or dirt bikes, doing the same awful things they did indoors, except in public view. His shift sometimes lasted as long as daylight.

  In Saint Ignatius, the friends of Clyde Ralstin repeated what Phil Grainey had said: Clyde was too frail to spend an afternoon with an interrogator, and had nothing to say anyway. When pressed by the sheriff, Grainey finally issued a challenge to Bamonte: “Put up or shut up.” He said, “If you got enough to prosecute him, charge him. If you don’t, drop the case.”

  Bamonte knew he did not have enough. Not yet. Nor did he feel he had much time left to come up with something. The sheriff could hear the clock; not a statutory timer but the slowing tick of life. He did not want Ralstin to die before the full story caught up with him.

  One hope, a slim one, was the Spokane River. As Bamonte was constantly reminded, he lacked physical evidence. All he had, the critics said, were overripe consciences, memories stained by the years. Bamonte thought if he could find the gun, it would corroborate the best evidence from his strongest living witness. Dan Mangan had pointed to the rock walls in a pool between tiers of Spokane Falls and said his partner had tossed the gun there to cover for Clyde. If Mangan was telling the truth, the gun might still be under the river. But even if the sheriff found the gun, Mangan was fast deteriorating, his blood slowing through his hardened veins. He could barely talk. The case would fall apart if either of Bamonte’s two best sources, Pearl Keogh and Dan Mangan, died before he finished the investigation.

  THROUGHOUT THE SUMMER, Bamonte had kept the Conniff family informed of developments. After going a lifetime without hearing the slightest word from the authorities about who might have killed their father, feeling snubbed and ignored, the Conniffs now had been privy to one astonishing break after another. They encouraged Bamonte, inspired him during his low points. George Conniff in particular was full of ideas, some of which conveyed the outrage he carried on behalf of his father. But when Bamonte shared with the Conniffs his thought about searching for the gun, George was less than enthusiastic. “It’s a longshot,” he said. “Your chances of finding something are a hundred to one.”

  In the early part of the summer, Conniff was not sure exactly what drove Bamonte. Did he want revenge against the old cops and the old ways? Glory? A political plum for his next election campaign? But as he came to know him, talking late nights with the sheriff, and he saw the investigation go from a glamour hunt to a political liability, he was convinced that Bamonte wanted nothing more than justice for the death of the marshal. Sometimes, the way the sheriff spoke about it sounded a little spooky. “I’m the voice of the dead, I’m all they have,” he told Conniff.

  The Spokane Police Department did not seem any more receptive to Bamonte’s latest idea than they had been to his previous requests. But the sheriff never gave up hope that somebody in uniform would do the right thing. He asked the department to provide him with a few officers to help search the river, two blocks from their headquarters.

  “You can’t be serious,” an assistant to the chief said over the phone.

  “Look, you’ve got—what?—two hundred and fifty officers sitting within a stone’s throw of the river. Just let me borrow a few men for an hour or so,” Bamonte said.

  If the drought kept up, the Spokane River would continue to shrink, presenting a rare opportunity to sift through the secrets that had been buried underwater, Bamonte explained. “It could be years before the river conditions are ever just right again.”

  Usually, the river ran at better than ten thousand cubic feet of water per second; by early August, it was a tenth of that force. But Spokane police refused to provide any assistance, in manpower or equipment. Not even a police metal detector was offered. A vital piece of evidence in a first-degree murder investigation might be at the bottom of a river in the middle of the Spokane Police Department’s jurisdiction. Why no cooperation? Bamonte asked. Back-channel, department officials explained that they had more urgent things to do than pursue a case that could tarnish the institution.

  Bamonte then contacted the Washington Water Power Company, whose dams pinch the river for most of its length, and asked for assistance. It also expressed astonishment.

  “The water’s getting so low,” Bamonte said. “Isn’t there any time when I can just get out and walk on the riverbed?”

  The company was planning to remodel its big Monroe Street Dam, below the site where Mangan said the gun had been dropped, and needed to do some survey work at low-water point before the project could proceed. Sometime in August, it planned to draw the water down to a trickle.

  “You’ll let me know?”

  The company said it would take his offer under consideration. There were some legal problems. And it did not want to appear at odds with the Spokane police.

  A more direct way to close the investigation—equally farfetched, but the only other choice—would be to force a confession from Ralstin. Maybe the old man, so near death, could be shamed into telling his secret. The Conniffs offered to write Ralstin a letter, an appeal to his heart. Bamonte did not think Clyde would soften; still, the letter was worth a try.

  On August 8, the Conniffs composed their note, carefully considering each word, trying to keep their anger off the page. Like Bamonte, they believed that Clyde Ralstin had killed their father in 1935—shot him for butter, and then put the last bullet inside him to make sure the marshal would not live to tell what he’d seen. But venom would not serve their purpose. The letter, mailed to Saint Ignatius on the same day it was written, read as
follows:

  Mr. Ralstin:

  We are the son and two daughters of George Conniff. As you know, we have been concerned for many years about the exact circumstances of our father’s tragic death.

  When we learned in March of this year about your possible involvement in this event, we were both saddened and relieved. We were saddened because it brought up again the most painful experience of our lives. We were relieved because we finally had a chance to learn how our father was murdered.

  After some conversations with Pend Oreille Sheriff Tony Bamonte, we wanted very much to get to the truth of this matter.

  We have received letters from Attorney Philip Grainey and Physician Clancy Cone. Please be assured we can sympathize with your medical condition and are sensitive to what a trial could do to your health. We have thought about our actions very carefully and have prayed about this matter at length.

  Mr. Ralstin, words cannot convey the deep sense of loss we have felt over the years because of the death of our father. He meant the world to us and to our mother. His murder robbed her of a devoted husband. Theirs was one of the happiest of marriages.

  Our six children and nine grandchildren have been deprived of a wonderful man who was gunned down in the prime of his life. Our father’s death has hung over us for many years and has been a source of continuing pain.

  Our primary concern is to find the truth and to achieve some kind of justice for what happened. We are not vindictive people, but we have suffered a great deal over our father’s death. We appeal to your sense of humanity to tell us what really happened. We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

  Sincerely,

  George Conniff, Olive Pearce and Mary Pearce

  A week passed, and they heard nothing. When another week went by with no response, the Conniffs knew they would never hear from him. Instead, they received a letter from Grainey, explaining that his client had nothing to say. If Ralstin were truly innocent, as he and his supporters claimed, surely he would have the decency to explain, the Conniffs reasoned. It was no mystery to them that Ralstin did not send so much as a word. A killer hides. A killer denies. A killer does not explain his actions.

  Every week, Bamonte called the Washington Water Power Company.

  “Just checking to see how that river’s doing,” he would say. “See what your schedule is.”

  In the third week of August, the company was ready to stop down the flow so that there was a window of time, no more than a few hours, when no water would come through the valley.

  “I’ll take it,” Bamonte said.

  Without aid from Spokane police, the sheriff needed somebody with searching expertise. He called the Treasure Hunters Club, a group whose members are well acquainted with metal detectors, and asked if they could help him look for a gun. Several members volunteered. He then contacted the Conniffs, advising them not to get their hopes up.

  Word also spread to a local television station, which broadcast news of the sheriff’s plan. In the hamlets of the Pend Oreille, in Spokane, in police departments throughout the inland Northwest, people said, “There he goes again.” Some of Bamonte’s political opponents saw the river search as their gain. The sight of the sheriff slopping around in the mud, looking for a gun from 1935, while kids whacked out on PCP raced up the backroads of the Pend Oreille, was political dynamite.

  THE SKY WAS DARK with thunderheads on the afternoon of August 21; the collision of stale, suffocating air with cooler, westerly breezes produced a gnashing of electricity. At home, Tony was full of turbulence. Betty was gone, lazing away the last days of summer at a cabin. She had asked her husband if he wanted to join her. He shrugged—work. “I’ve got to see this through,” he said.

  “But that doesn’t mean you can’t take a day off.”

  “I will.”

  “When?”

  The next morning, it rained, a dawn of warm drizzle. A few hours into daylight Bamonte met his team at the Post Street Bridge, above the river in the heart of Spokane. He had with him the Treasure Hunters, an odd party of informally deputized assistants who usually spent their free days searching for silver dollars and quarters on beaches. Their metal detectors were charged and ready to go. A few bystanders had gathered. And an older man—he looked to be in his eighties—seemed to be spying, watching the sheriff’s every move through binoculars. He moved around on a cliff atop the river. The Conniffs arrived, taking up a position above the river.

  The Post Street Bridge, built in 1917, is 340 feet long, and spans the midsection of the falls. Mangan had been very specific in pointing out where the gun had been dropped by his partner. He said they stood at the north end of the bridge, above a point where the water crashed into the high, hard-edged cliffs of basalt, and let the weapon fall to its grave. Now, the riverbed was naked, drained of water. Without the cover of the swift Spokane, the channel looked ugly, embarrassed to show itself. A chocolate water line was plastered against the rock banks. Thick, greased pilings ran across the mud and stone bottom. The floor was littered with wires and cables and metal rods and garbage cans and batteries and cement blocks. Fat river rats, a type of marmot, dragged pieces of scrap onto the shore.

  In the short time since white men had driven out the Indians, another sweep of history had passed through this channel. Ghosts of defeated people and surging salmon runs, relics of industries that hitched their future to the brute force of the river—all the shouts and grunts of ancient vitality had drained through the chasm. A few fragments of animal bone, preserved in layered silt, might still be found, evidence of Colonel Wright’s crime of 1858, when he slaughtered the horses upriver. It took all day to kill the eight hundred horses; some had to be lassoed, dragged out, shot twice in the head. After killing the animals, Wright had said to Garry, chief of the Spokanes, “You have been badly whipped. You must come to me with your arms, your women and children, and everything you have, and lay them at my feet. If you do this, I will dictate the terms upon which I will grant you the peace.” A second, perhaps more lethal blow to Garry’s band came forty-two years later, when Washington Water Power began work on its first big hydroelectric dam, a few feet from the place where Bamonte now stood. That dam blocked the returning chinook salmon, which had been the source of native prosperity for thousands of years. Very few clues remained from those great runs, unless one believed, as the natives did, that the salmon were gods, temporarily inhabiting the skins of fish as a way to return inland from the sea. If so, the salmon were all around. Downstream, on rock faces hidden behind wire fences to keep vandals out, the earlier inhabitants had left a few paintings—drawings of the sun, lizards, small buffalo.

  As if to mark the change from one band of people living around the falls to another, an enormous fire had engulfed the new town of Spokane Falls in 1889, burning virtually the entire downtown area, thirty-two blocks, to the ground. The fire broke out exactly one hundred years earlier than Bamonte’s search, in August. It started in a cafe kitchen, spread to the wood-frame buildings lining the river, and then swallowed the city. Firemen arrived, tapped into the hydrants, but nothing came through their hoses. The water system failed completely, and with it went the city. To those broken members of Spokane Garry’s band living without salmon in shacks downriver, the fire must have seemed like fitting revenge on the people who had established their will over this land by slaughtering horses and destroying salmon runs.

  What mattered to the river now was whatever the Washington Water Power Company commanded. David Thompson, the first white man to see the Spokane, had called it “one of the wildest and least navigable streams in the world,” but it was now tame and well-mannered. The power company’s founders had purchased Post Falls—once the summer gathering site of a band of the Coeur d’Alene led by Chief Seltice—in order to provide power for the mines in the mountains of northern Idaho. In drawing down that dam, twenty-eight miles upriver from Spokane Falls, they dried up the riverbed that Bamonte wanted to search, an area that had nev
er been disturbed. Most of the riverbed except the place Mangan had pointed to had been stirred up in the 1970s, when the utility was doing extensive repair work on the Monroe Street power station, a few feet downstream from Post Street.

  Down the banks of the river the sheriff went. He walked out among the mud-tarred rocks, under a drizzle, to a place not far from shore, in what would have been a pool of frenzied water at least ten feet deep, directly behind the big dam. Some of the rocks were polished; others were caked with sticky clay and mud. Bamonte believed Mangan was telling the truth, because the place he had pointed to was so precise, an odd spot to bury a gun. Why not throw it in the middle of the river? But he doubted if they would find anything; he prepared himself for another round of ridicule and scorn from the police department up on the bank, and from his constituents. Bamonte tracked a site line from the bridge to the river bottom, and then began kicking over rocks at the place where the weapon was most likely to be.

  “Found something!” came a shout from one of the treasure hunters. He pulled a sawed-off shotgun, lightly rusted, no more than a few years old, from the river.

  “Set it aside,” Bamonte said. “We’ll turn it over to SPD.”

  From atop the bridge, George Conniff watched, shaking his head. Bamonte was obsessed, clambering over the rocks.

  Five minutes into the search, Bamonte spotted an irregular-looking shank of mud wedged tightly against the rocks.

  “What’s this?” he said, calling a few people over. “Look.…” He stooped down, ran his fingers through the goo. It was hard. He picked it up and let the water drain away; it was heavy. Outer layers of mud fell off, but the core did not break. In the misty light, it revealed itself as cinnamon-colored, a precious fossil in the shape of an L. Bamonte lifted it up, a handful of rust and silt, and wondered if what he held had been clutched by Clyde Ralstin on the night of September 14, 1935.