A Death in California

by Barthel, Joan;

  “What’s your name?” Sergeant Smith asked.

  “Taylor,” the caller said.

  “Well, do you live at that address?”

  “No, I live at another address.”

  “Well, give me the other address,” Sergeant Smith said. He was a little leery of the whole thing, besides—who knows?—maybe this guy was trying to sucker a policeman into an ambush or something.

  Taylor said he lived on the Drive.

  “Give me the phone number there,” Sergeant Smith said.

  Taylor refused. “Are you going to send a plain unit or not?” he demanded.

  “I don’t have a plain unit,” Sergeant Smith said.

  Taylor got mad. “Well, if I have to go through all this, forget it,” he said. “I’ll call the FBI.” He slammed down the phone.

  Sergeant Smith felt sure it was a crank call. Still, he radioed the patrol car in the neighborhood and asked the officer driving, William Clyde Stien, to check around those premises for anything out of order, any vehicles that possibly looked suspicious.

  Taylor called the house. He said the Beverly Hills police didn’t believe him and wouldn’t come because he wasn’t a property owner. “I’m going to call the police in Porterville now,” he told Hope. “I’ll call you back.”

  “We can’t just sit around here and wait,” Van declared. He picked up the telephone and called Information. “I want the number for the Beverly Hills police,” he said. Hope watched him silently, her head splitting open. This is it, she thought. This is it.

  Then Van was almost shouting into the telephone. “A murder, a murder—that’s what I said, a murder!”

  By the time Van called, Sergeant Smith had checked the family name in his cross-directory, and he decided to pay attention. The sergeant had told Taylor the truth—he really didn’t have a plain unit—but when Officer Stien came back to the station to report nothing suspicious, Sergeant Smith told him to change clothes and go back, taking another officer with him, Phil DeMond.

  Officers Stien and DeMond changed out of uniform and drove the short distance to Honey and Van’s. Stien placed both men’s I.D. cards on the clipboard he was carrying, walked up to the door, and rang the bell. DeMond waited a little way down the driveway, looking around. The front light over the door was on, and he could see all around the front of the house, the driveway, and sidewalk. Nothing seemed suspicious; nothing seemed odd. DeMond saw a man at the window, looking at them from behind the drapery. Then a woman opened the door a few inches, leaving the chain on. Stien showed her his I.D., but Honey refused to let him in; he looked suspicious to her. Van came to the door then, looked closely at the I.D. on the clipboard, and unfastened the chain.

  As Officer Stien walked into the foyer, his partner right behind him, Hope rushed forward.

  “If you are not the police, if you are them, please shoot me!” she cried. “I’m the one the contract is on, not my parents!”

  She had a gun. Hope later said she was pointing it at the floor. In his report DeMond said she was “waving it above her head.” Stien said “she was kind of pointing it away, not really right at us, but she had a good grip on the gun and she looked like she could use it very easily if she wanted to.”

  “I want to see sufficient identification,” Hope demanded, so Stien showed her the cards again. Van took the gun from her, unloaded five rounds of ammunition, and set it on the table. He remained standing near the table. Hope and Honey and Officer Stien sat down. Officer DeMond stayed near the door.

  “I think you ought to interview my daughter about this crime or whatever it might be, or murder or whatever it might be, that has taken place up at our ranch,” Van said.

  Officer Stien adjusted the clipboard on his lap and took out a ballpoint pen.

  “Okay, what happened there? Start with a few facts about the ranch. What’s the name of the ranch?”

  Honey frowned. “We don’t want any publicity,” she said. “We don’t want the name of the ranch or our names in the newspapers or anything.”

  “Well, you called us up here,” Stien reminded her.

  Van explained the partnership arrangement with the three other families. He was describing the ranch location when Hope broke in.

  “Let me talk, let me tell them the story.”

  Once Hope started talking, she couldn’t stop. She had been wanting to talk to the police for three days, and her story came pouring out: an intruder in the night; the screaming for Bill and the running through the dark house; the talk of a contract on her and Bill and the children; the blood, the vomit, the terror in the bedroom; the question of brushing her teeth. Mostly the officers just listened, because DeMond noticed that when they interrupted to ask her a question, she tended to start all over again, from the beginning, and later DeMond reported that he never learned whether or not she had actually brushed her teeth.

  Honey thought Hope sounded hysterical and erratic, and even Hope knew she was repeating herself, but she felt she had to: they didn’t seem to believe her. They seemed to be humoring her, just sitting there, so she talked more and more. DeMond remembered her talking about her divorce, about Tom Masters, about being taped and tied, about rubber gloves, and the killer being paid thirty-six hundred dollars for the job—although DeMond said he never did find out whether that meant thirty-six hundred dollars for all of them, or thirty-six hundred dollars apiece. She talked about a photographer named Taylor who appeared at the ranch in a white Lincoln on Sunday and rescued her and brought her home, and how terrified she was at home, and how she was afraid to call the police and how she wanted to give Bill a good burial and she wanted him cremated because that’s what he always wanted.

  The officers could tell she had been drinking, and she was extremely nervous, and as time went on, and her story went on—“rambled on,” DeMond reported—they became more and more doubtful. When she was telling them about her wrists being taped, she was gesturing and pointing and waving her arms around. “She went into this whole thing about tape,” DeMond said, so when Hope was saying to him, “See? See?” and holding up her wrists, DeMond didn’t argue. He was standing by the door, five or six feet away, and although he didn’t see any tape marks, “I just agreed with her that there was tape,” he said. “I didn’t even know there was any crime. She was telling us a story that was getting lengthy and she was going back and forth. She’d go into real exact details on certain aspects of the conversation, and then she wouldn’t answer simple questions we’d ask her, to put in our report if we were going to write one.”

  When the officers asked her to describe the intruder, DeMond reported, “She waved toward me and said, ‘He’s about your height and he’s about your weight, maybe a little heavier, maybe a little thinner.’” Stien reported that Hope had described the intruder as “possibly white or maybe Mexican, probably about six feet, one hundred eighty pounds, a pretty big, good-sized guy, long stringy hair about shoulder length, and he possibly had a mustache or a small goatee or something.” DeMond thought she said “a beard, or whiskers.”

  The phone rang, and Van answered. “It’s for you,” he told Officer Stien. It was Sgt. Billy Ray Smith, calling Stien at the house because he had just had a call from a policeman up north in Porterville, in Tulare County, Sergeant Coley. Sergeant Coley called the Beverly Hills police because, at 9:40, the Porterville police had a call from a man who said he was calling from Beverly Hills, from a pay phone near his home. He gave his address and his phone number. He said that his stepdaughter, whose name was Hope Masters, had just told him of a terrible thing that had happened at their ranch in Springville, that there was a dead body there. When Sergeant Coley and another Porterville officer on the line had asked for more details and for directions, the man had given them directions and told them the combination to the lock on the gate and then had begun to shout at them. “Let’s stop all the bullshit and quit asking me questions and get somebody up there and uncover the body and get something done!” Then the man hung up.
/>   So Sergeant Coley in Porterville had called down to Sergeant Smith in Beverly Hills, and Sergeant Smith called Officer Stien.

  “What’s going on there?” Smith asked Stien.

  “I’m not sure,” Stien said. “There is possibly a dead body at a house on a ranch in Tulare County.”

  Sergeant Smith told Stien to stay there, that he would call him back. Stien sat down and picked up his clipboard. Hope kept talking. She had been talking about whiskers, and when the officers pressed that point—how long were the whiskers? A couple days old, or like hippie-type?—DeMond said she went into great detail: it was a mustache just like her husband’s, or possibly it could have been a goatee. “She just went on and on about the whiskers,” DeMond said wearily, and even after two hours, Stien said, “I just felt it was a big story.”

  Then the phone rang again.

  Jim Webb was so scared he was not even shaking. He was just sitting like a stone on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the floor. The children were all in the living room, and Jim Webb wanted to be by himself. It was so unbelievable he could hardly think, hardly speak. When his wife saw him come in from outdoors with a very strange, chalky-white look on his face and go straight into the bathroom, she had followed him in. “You saw something,” Teresa said. Jim didn’t answer.

  Around nine o’clock, just about the time Taylor was calling the Beverly Hills police from the men’s room at the hotel, Jim Webb had taken a flashlight and gone outside, down the stretch of dirt road between the two houses, past the orange grove, making his way through the deep blackness, around to the back door of the main house. He had put on a pair of gloves, slipped a pair of socks over his shoes, unlocked the door, and gone in.

  Jim Webb never could explain to the police exactly why he had entered. “I don’t know why I went in. I don’t know why I went in. I just felt something was wrong and I had to check it out. I just, you know, I don’t—sometimes you feel like you got to do things, and I just felt like I had to go. I just did. Everything inside told me no, but something told me yeah, so I went over. If there was something wrong, I didn’t want to get involved in it. I didn’t want to leave any fingerprints, I know that.”

  That was why he’d gone over to the main house twice before, earlier in the day, because he thought something might be wrong. All day Sunday, all day Monday, and all day Tuesday the Vega had been parked over there, though he hadn’t seen any people. The first time he went over, on Tuesday afternoon, he just knocked on the door, then left. The second time he’d looked in the windows; it wasn’t very late, but the winter dusk came early in the mountains, and he’d used his flashlight, shining it into some of the windows. Through the window of the corner bedroom, the one nearest his house, he’d seen beds messed up, blankets all jumbled, but nothing wrong. Then, standing at the back door, looking through the storage room into the kitchen beyond, he’d shone his flashlight across the kitchen floor and seen a long white strip, a white powdery trail of something like Ajax, leading all the way across the kitchen floor into the hallway beyond, the hall that led to the back bedroom. Jim was surprised at the white stuff on the floor, because Teresa was such a good housekeeper. The very last thing she did, when she went over to clean the place after the city people had been up for the weekend, was to wash the kitchen floor, and she always put down a nice new coat of wax. Jim knew she did because he often helped her clean; he knew some of the owners could be pretty fussy, especially Hope Masters’s mother. All the owners expected a lot for the $150 a month they paid the Webbs; although the Webbs also got a rent-free house with utilities paid, Jim had to take care of the grounds around the house, irrigate the orange trees, mow the lawn and cut wood, look after half a dozen horses, and do repair work around the place—all sorts of odd jobs, all sorts of things the owners wanted done.

  After his second trip over, Jim Webb had called down to Los Angeles and had heard from Hope’s mother about “a terrible tragedy at the ranch.” He talked with other people on the phone, including Hope’s stepfather, who told him that the police had been notified and that Jim must not go into the house. He had also talked with another of the owners, Nick Doughty.

  Then he made his third trip, wearing gloves, and socks over his shoes. “I expected maybe to find somebody hurt,” he told the police, “or maybe somebody just completely freaked out or something like that, but as far as what I found, no, I didn’t expect that, because if I would have expected that, I never would have went in there.”

  Except for a light in the storage room, the house had been dark. Jim had turned on the kitchen light and walked through the kitchen, through the living room, shining his flashlight all around, into the two bedrooms on the east side of the house. One bedroom was neat, the beds made; in the other bedroom, the room he’d seen through the window, the beds were messed up, covers pulled back, but he saw nothing else. He walked back through the living room, shining his light onto the sofa. He saw that the sofa had a cover thrown over it, white, maybe a sheet or a bedspread. He walked past the dinette into the front bedroom on the west side, where everything was in good shape, nothing wrong in that closet or in the bathroom next door. Then he was standing in the small hallway between the dinette and the back bedroom, the last bedroom, the only bedroom he hadn’t yet checked. The door was closed. As he walked toward that door, he stepped on a loose floorboard, and he heard a loud creak.

  He pushed the door open and shone his light around on the beds, which were neatly made. He swung the beam around the room and brought it down along the floor. He saw the long bundle there, on the floor near his feet, something all wrapped up. It looked like a mummy.

  He may or may not have closed the door. He may or may not have turned off the kitchen light. He may or may not have locked the back door to the house as he got out fast, around the orange grove, across the forty yards or so to his own house where he went right into the bathroom and sat for a good half hour or more, before he went out and called the Porterville police and then went into the bedroom, got down his own gun, loaded it, and lay it right out where he could get to it if he had to.

  The Porterville station logged his call at 9:44 P.M., four minutes after the call from the man who said he was talking from a pay phone in Beverly Hills. In minutes the resident deputy in Springville, Doyle Hoppert, was on his way. Lieutenant Joe Teller was the second man to reach the ranch entrance road, followed by Sergeant Coley and Detective Jack Flores. Lieutenant Teller decided they would leave their cars parked down below and walk up the ranch road to the house, looking for possible tracks.

  The four men climbed the muddy driveway in the blackness, their flashlights making sweeping arcs in their path. There was no moon. In the cold rain, the house seemed to lurk ominously beyond the drenched lawn, shrouded and mostly dark, although Teller thought he saw a dim light from a side window. They followed the light around the side of the house, to the back door. The door was locked. Deputy Hoppert hurried back to the driveway, around the orange grove, to get a key from Jim Webb.

  Inside the storage room, they stood for just a moment, then separated. Detective Flores crossed the kitchen, heading for the rear wing. Lieutenant Teller walked into the living room; as he beamed his light around, he saw a plate of dried-up cheese and crackers on a table. As he headed for the front bedroom, he passed the bathroom and noticed four or five used towels on the floor. Then he heard someone calling him. He turned quickly and walked through the living room, through the kitchen into the back hall. Jack Flores was standing at the doorway of the back bedroom. He was shining his flashlight at the long, wrapped bundle on the floor.

  The body was lying face down on a white mattress pad, wrapped completely in a yellow bedspread, approximately three feet inside the northeast bedroom, with the head pointed south.

  Officer Doyle Hoppert made out the official report, doing his best to fill in all the spaces. Under PREMISES he wrote: “Large single frame residence in rural area.” Under OFFENSE: “(V) was shot in the top of the head (middle and slig
htly toward the back of head) with unknown caliber and make of gun.” Under EXTENT OF INJURIES: “Death.” He had to leave blank the spaces for VICTIM’S NAME: LAST, FIRST, MIDDLE, OCCUPATION, and ADDRESSES, RESIDENCE AND BUSINESS, though he made a stab at DATE OF BIRTH and wrote “Approximately 25.” Under MOTIVE: “Unknown.”

  The officers at the scene called back to their station. Captain Farris and Lieutenant Barnes, reached at their homes, headed over to the ranch, along with men from the crime lab. Then Sergeant Coley called back down to Beverly Hills, which is why Sgt. Billy Ray Smith called Officer Stien again.

  Officers Stien and DeMond asked Hope where her car was. She said it was still at the ranch. They said they were taking her down to the station.

  “What about Taylor?” Honey asked. “Please get a prowl car and start looking for Taylor. He must still be in the area. Maybe he’s still at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

  “Will I need anything?” Hope asked the policemen. “Should I take my bag?” They said she wouldn’t need anything, then one of them added that she should bring a sweater. She put a pack of cigarettes into the pocket of her jeans.

  “Please, please start looking for Taylor,” Honey was saying. “You should have policemen looking for him at the airport. He said he would like to leave the country. Please, please put up police blockades at all the roads out of town.”

  A chilly rain was falling as Hope got into the police car, in the back seat. As they drove the short distance to the station, Hope thrust her hands over the back of the seat, dangling them between the two men in front. “Did you ever see hands swollen like this?” she asked. They said yes. “Do you think the swelling will go away?” They said yes.