by Jeramy Gates
Henry went back to work with the deputies. They began by unbolting the seat, then cautiously removing the seat belt and the center console. After working very carefully for the better part of an hour, they finally lifted the entire bucket seat out of the car with the remains intact, and placed it all on a tarp beside the vehicle. As they moved the body, something fell through the seat and hit the floorboards with a metallic ping. A few seconds later, Henry used his flashlight to investigate the noise. He retrieved a small object, which he held up in his tweezers for us to examine. It was a mushroomed bullet.
“He was shot?” said Diekmann.
“That would explain the broken rib,” Henry said. “I can’t say it’s the cause of death, but I’ll take some measurements at the lab and see if I can put together a scenario.”
Diekmann crossed his arms. “Speculate,” he said.
Henry pinched his chin. “Okay… the bullet struck the rib approximately two inches from the sternum. Based on the location, the wound was very close to the heart, if not a direct hit. I believe it was a jacketed slug, meaning it probably would have passed through the body entirely if it hadn’t struck the rib. However, the bullet struck the upper edge of the rib, not the center, and therefore probably still had velocity after impact.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that after hitting the rib, the bullet mushroomed out like a hollow point and continued moving through soft tissue. Even if the bullet missed the heart, the victim probably suffered massive hemorrhaging and catastrophic organ damage. If he wasn’t killed immediately, I doubt he would have survived more than a few minutes. That’s a quick and dirty assessment, of course. I may reach a different conclusion back at the morgue.”
“I understand. Thanks, Henry.”
“One more thing: He wasn’t shot it in the car. The body was moved here later.”
“Are you sure?”
“Almost one hundred percent. Notice the trajectory of the wound. Someone would have had to hold the weapon directly in front of him.”
“Not easy in a car this size,” I said.
“Exactly.”
Henry stored the bullet in an evidence bag and returned to examine the body and the car’s interior for more clues. The sheriff turned to face Joe and me.
“Okay, detectives. Now it’s your turn to speculate.”
We glanced at each other. “Well, they were obviously killed together,” Joe said. “The question is how this victim ended up in the lake while Becky ended up in the dairy.”
“The killer pushed the car into the lake to hide it,” I said. “Becky should have been in there, too. I think this John Doe was killed first, and Becky ran down the hill to the dairy, trying to get away. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Agreed,” said Joe. “The killer chased after Becky and caught her in the dairy, but he was interrupted before he could finish the job. So he dumped her in the vat. Depending on the timing of everything, he may have come back up here afterwards to hide the car.”
“Assuming the altercation started here, and also assuming that there was just one killer.”
Diekmann considered that, and nodded his head. “Let’s go with your theory for now. Until we have some lab results, I can’t think of any better explanation for what happened here. I want you two to find out how Becky and the second victim were connected. We’ll go from there.”
“So we’re still on the case?” Joe said.
“Of course you are.” Diekmann pulled off his baseball cap and ran a hand through his mussed-up hair. “I want you two to finish this. You’ve already accomplished more in one day than my department has in the last five years. This second body may be the break that blows this case wide open. I’d hate for someone else to get credit for that. Take what you’ve got and run with it.”
Until that point, I’d had a growing concern that Diekmann might reopen the case and take it away from us, or even call in the FBI With the discovery of the second body, he had every right to do that, and all of our work would have been for nothing. Not knowing Diekmann as well as Joe, I had no idea how he might react to the situation.
My thoughts immediately turned to the foreclosure notice in the kitchen drawer back home. I still hadn’t found a way to tell Joe about it. I’d been telling myself that if we could just close this case, I might not have to. In my mind, I had built up this fantasy where everything just fell into place for us. Unfortunately, the real world rarely works out the way it does in daydreams. When Diekmann said we were still on the case, I sighed with relief.
“You okay?” the sheriff said.
“Of course,” I said, forcing a smile. “Just thinking about where to go from here.”
At that moment, Henry interrupted us with a shout. “I think we have an I.D., Sheriff!” He hurried over to us, holding up a wallet. Diekmann accepted it, and carefully unfolded it. The leather was intact, but immediately began to tear.
“Looks like he was a reporter,” he said, displaying a laminated press badge for the Chronicle. The letters were blurred and hard to read. If they had been any smaller, we never would have known what that card said. Diekmann turned the wallet sideways and pulled out a driver’s license. The plastic was brittle and the edge chipped the moment he touched it. Enough ink remained that he could just barely make out the name:
“Randall Rosen,” Diekmann said. “Looks like a San Francisco address. We might be able to pull more off the magnetic strip, if it’s still any good.” He handed the card off to one of the deputies. “If nothing else, he should be on file at the Chronicle.”
At that moment, one of the deputies finally managed to get the trunk open. He stood back with a perplexed look on his face and said, “Sheriff, take a look at this.”
We joined him at the back of the car and stared into the trunk. I was half-afraid it might be another body. It wasn’t. It was a well-rusted pickaxe and a shovel. The handles of both were almost completely rotten. I frowned.
“Why would a seventeen year old girl have a pickaxe and shovel in her trunk?”
“Maybe she moonlighted as a gold miner,” said Joe.
“Very funny. Does this mean you’re going to pursue that lifelong dream as a standup comedian?”
“I have a theory,” he said. “Becky killed John Doe and brought him up here to bury him.”
“Joe, if Becky killed John Doe, then who killed Becky?”
“The other miner,” Joe said with a mischievous grin. “She jumped his claim!”
I took a deep breath. “Is it time to talk to a doctor about your A.D.D. problem?”
He winked at me.
“We’ll keep these for evidence, just in case,” said the sheriff. “Henry, do you need anything else?”
“No, sheriff, you can take the car now.”
“Where is the storage warehouse?” I said. “We might need this car later.”
“We don’t have a warehouse,” Diekmann said. “It’s going to the impound yard.”
“But the weather!” I said. “What if it rains, or freezes? Evidence could be destroyed.”
“It has been underwater for five years,” Diekmann said. “Whatever was going to happen to it already has.”
“This isn’t the FBI,” Joe reminded me. “The sheriff can’t afford to rent a warehouse every time we take a car into evidence.” He saw my glare and added, “But maybe we could cover it with a tarp?”
“Of course,” the sheriff said quickly. “Absolutely. We wouldn’t want any evidence getting… washed off.” He waved at the tow truck driver. “Okay, take her out of here!” He turned to face us.
“I’ll be heading back to the department. I have a stack of forms the size of Mount Shasta on my desk. I’ll be there all afternoon if you need me.”
“We’ll call you when we have another break in the case,” Joe said.
I just smiled. I wished I shared Joe’s confidence. I felt like the discovery of that car was just dumb luck. That wasn’t true, though. The real reason was Joe�
��s tenacity. The man is as stubborn as a mule. He had proven that not just by swimming around in that freezing cold reservoir, but by coming back a second time, in the rain, late at night. Not that I really needed any proof of Joe’s dogged nature. It takes a certain kind of person to make a living doing undercover work. If Joe had been a person to give up easily, he never would have succeeded.
He also would have been a lot easier to live with.
Joe and I went home after that. He called the San Francisco Chronicle and explained our situation to a Human Resources manager.
“We have an appointment in the morning,” he said as he hung up. “In the meanwhile, why don’t we track down Becky’s mom?”
“That’s just what I was thinking,” I said. “I’d like to know what was going on in Becky’s life at the time of her death. Her mother might know our second victim, too. If we can establish a relationship between Becky and this reporter, we can kill two birds with one stone.”
Diekmann’s file showed Becky Sweet’s address on Fitch Mountain Road in the nearby town of Healdsburg. Her mother’s name was Kendra, and a quick internet search confirmed that she still lived there. After I had a quick restroom break, we headed north.
I suppose the brief drive may have been a good time to bring up the foreclosure notice, but for some reason, I didn’t. I suppose I was making excuses. The last thing I wanted was to get in another fight with Joe. I still hadn’t told him about the check from Grandma either, and it was too complicated to explain on the short drive. Better saved for later, when we had more time…
“That’s Fitch Mountain,” Joe said as we pulled off the highway. He nodded towards a steep, round-domed peak in the distance. “Kendra Sweet’s house is behind that mountain.”
I took off my sunglasses and stared. “It looks like a volcano.”
“About three million years ago. It’s extinct.”
“Are you sure?”
Joe smiled. “You never know.”
As we drove through Healdsburg, Joe explained that when he was young, the area had been a small farming community. Over the years, as the wine industry grew, big corporations and wealthy investors bought up much of the land to plant vineyards. It wasn’t long before Healdsburg became a popular tourist destination. Inevitably, prices skyrocketed, forcing locals to move out.
“Now the place is overcrowded, overpriced, and full of antique-hunting yuppies,” he said.
“Aren’t we yuppies?”
“Not on the money we make.”
“Good point.”
As we headed towards Fitch Mountain, the street became narrow and winding. The road began to climb, and the redwoods closed in around us. Through the trees, I caught glimpses of the Russian River twisting through the valley to the north.
I quickly realized that because of the steep terrain, most of the houses on Fitch Mountain had been built on stilts. There were very few parking areas. I saw narrow pullouts that ran lengthwise along the road, and parking stalls on stilts alongside the cottages. I imagined parking our Suburban on one of them, with its three tons of weight resting on those narrow posts, and a shiver crawled up my spine.
“How can this be safe?” I mumbled.
Joe pulled into one of the pullouts along the street. Because the pullout was so small, he parked with the nose of the Suburban stretching out across the broken pavement. I didn’t say anything because Joe’s parking job was at least as good as the others in the vicinity.
Kendra Sweet’s address was just across the street. As we crossed the road, I had to stop and stare at the bizarre structures built up and down the mountainside. The scene looked like the cover of a fantasy novel.
“How can people live in houses built on stilts like this?” I said. “One good earthquake and they’ll all be in the river.”
“If the mountain doesn’t come down on top of them first.”
“The mountain! You mean the volcano?”
“Welcome to NorCal,” Joe said, laughing. “Good news, it looks like she’s home.”
We stepped onto a small redwood porch in front of the house, and Joe knocked on the door. He stood back, leaning slightly on his cane. There was a sign hanging from the roof that read: “Massage & Aromatherapy”
We heard movement inside, and a woman in her fifties answered the door. The smell of patchouli and incense washed over us. She had gray hair and wore a dress made of hemp. She wore no makeup, but on her fingers were a dozen rings, mostly silver, and she wore several necklaces and thongs with pendants made of crystals, pentacles, and other pagan symbols. She was also barefoot.
“Can I help you?”
“We’re Joe and Tanja Shepherd,” I said. “We work for the sheriff’s department.”
She glanced back and forth between us. “I don’t understand. Is there a problem?”
“Mrs. Sweet, we’d like to ask you a few questions about your daughter. We’ve found new evidence in the case…”
Kendra covered her mouth. “You found the killer?” she said with a slight tremor in her voice.
“Not yet,” said Joe. “But we will. Can we come in?”
“Of course.” She stood aside, ushering us through the doorway. As we stepped into the tiny two room cottage, I immediately noticed that the place was clean and well organized; far tidier than I would have expected based on the exterior. It was also very small. There was a kitchen to the right, a bedroom to the left, and ahead of us, a pair of French doors opened out onto a deck overlooking the river. Next to the doors, I saw a folded massage table.
“Please, have a seat,” she said, gesturing towards the loveseat in the middle of the room. “Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said.
Joe and I settled onto the couch while Kendra started the water. A minute later, she joined us. She placed the teapot and cups on the coffee table, and took one of the chairs from the kitchen and placed it across from us. She barely had enough room for the loveseat and the single chair in the same small living room.
We went through the motions of selecting our tea from a small basket filled with a variety of organic tea bags. I went with zesty lemon. Kendra chose cinnamon sage. Joe declined.
“Mrs. Sweet,” I began. “We have some questions about Becky.”
“Call me Kendra.”
“Kendra, can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt your daughter?”
“No, absolutely not,” she said. “I’ve been through this a hundred times with the police. Becky didn’t have any enemies.”
“What about Jimmy Pishard?” said Joe.
“Jimmy? Oh, he wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Of course. We spent an entire summer with him. We went camping, canoeing, rock climbing. He used to spend the night here three or four times a week, when they were dating.”
“He slept with your daughter?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Of course. My daughter was a mature young woman. She used birth control. It’s natural for children to explore their sexuality. You’d be surprised how many people don’t understand that.”
“So you believe that a teenager is ready for a sexual relationship?” I said.
“Absolutely. If they’re old enough to drive, to have a job, or to be drafted, they’re old enough to enjoy life’s pleasures as well, don’t you think?”
“About Jimmy,” Joe said. “Did you know that he was the primary suspect in your daughter’s death?”
“I suppose so. I mean, the police kept asking me about him over and over again. I told them they were barking up the wrong tree, but you know how police can be. No offense.”
“None taken,” I said, glancing at Joe. “Kendra, do you know someone named Randall Rosen?”
She stared into her tea. “No… no, I don’t think so. Should I?”
“It appears that on the night of her murder, your daughter wasn’t alone. Randall’s body was found nearby. He was killed that night, too.”
“It’s hard to say,” said Joe. “Right now, we’re just trying to find out what connection he had to your daughter.”
“I don’t know… was he a student?”
“No,” I said. “He was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you. I wish I could. Unless…”
“What is it?”
“I suppose I should start at the beginning. Becky was very young when her father died. She was very impressionable. I decided it was best to keep from her the fact that it was a suicide. Unfortunately, when she got older and eventually learned the truth, she refused to believe it. I take responsibility for that. I was trying to protect her, you must understand that.”
“What happened?”
“During her senior year, Becky became obsessed with proving her father’s death was a murder. She told me that she remembered him, and that he never would have done that. I tried to explain to her that sometimes people just can’t cope; that sometimes they feel they can’t go on anymore. She was adamant that her father would not have killed himself.”
“Did your husband have emotional problems?” I said.
“Oh, no, not at all. He was actually a very happy individual. He loved us very much. The truth is that his suicide came as quite a shock to me. I suppose they always do.”
I leaned forward, touching her hand. “Did your daughter have any reason for this belief? When she spoke about it, did she have any evidence?”
“She said he had promised to take her to Disneyland for her birthday, and that he would never have made that promise if he didn’t plan to keep it.”
“That’s not really evidence,” I said.
“Of course not. I tried to explain that to her, but the more I tried to convince her, the more she dug her heels in. She started talking to people he worked with, even his old high school friends. It’s possible that she had gone to this Randall person for help. I don’t know where else that she would have met him. Although, she did have a journalism class at school. Since he was a reporter, perhaps she met him that way.”
