by Todd Borg
When I got to the fence, I sat on a nearby boulder and rested, ruing my oversight of not bringing a half dozen bottles of water.
The view behind me was grand. The valley was spectacular with its golden hills and stands of Black oak and winding road and the American River in the distance, still full of rushing ice water that originated from Lake Aloha up at 8400 feet on the east side of Tahoe’s Crystal Range.
The view in front of me was ominous. The fence was made of wire so heavy it would be difficult to cut with a bolt cutter. The wire had been spray-painted camo. I guessed the fence at ten feet tall. The top had curving loops of razor wire like what you see around prisons and military installations. On the inside of the fence was a dirt road that paralleled the fence. It didn’t take much creativity to imagine guys wearing camo, patrolling in camo Blazers, with the camo assault rifles they’d purchased from Thomas Watson strapped across their chests.
Stein had said that Halstead’s land was a quarter section, which means a square, one half mile on a side.
There was a large ring of high hills that were warped and bent like a bicycle rim that had been run over by a truck. The hilly rim was topped by the fence, which looked like a great wobbly camo necklace a half-mile in diameter, much of which was visible from my vantage point on its east edge. At the center of the necklace were two depressions in the landscape, one maybe three hundred feet below me, the other only a hundred. The depressions were connected by a valley that flowed out of sight toward the south. In each depression were groupings of oak trees, a natural result of water drainage.
After a bit of study, I realized that there were several buildings in each depression, carefully tucked under the shady cover of the trees. Although the fence and dirt road would be easily visible from aircraft and even from satellites, the buildings and associated vehicles would be largely out of sight. The dreaded big-brother government would not easily detect the activities of this particular group of disgruntled citizens.
Spot made a sudden puff through his jowls. He stared through the fence toward one of the groups of buildings. He wagged his tail.
I didn’t know what he saw, but I grabbed him and pushed down on the back of his neck.
“Down, Spot!” I whispered. “Lie down.”
He eased down, still wagging, staring intently.
I tried to follow his look. At first, there was nothing. Then I saw movement a bit to the side. A man was walking as if on patrol. He held something long, no doubt a rifle. More intimidating was the dog to his side. Even from a long distance it looked like a Bouvier des Flandres, a French/Flemish dog in the 80 – 110-pound range. The Bouvier was bred for herding, but it has become prized for its superior guarding characteristics. Although Bouviers don’t look as serious as German Shepherds and Doberman Pinschers, they are formidable animals. If it was trained as a guard dog, it would be at least as dangerous as any militia man with his mere guns. Even if the dog wasn’t trained, its natural protective instincts would still make it very difficult to get past.
I wondered how David Halstead’s boys came and went from the compound. Although I couldn’t see the road from where I sat, it appeared that the logical access would be the valley to the south. It would make sense to put the drive down in that valley, under the trees. There would be a guarded gate where the drive came to the perimeter fence. I probably couldn’t talk my way past an armed guard, and I certainly couldn’t get over a razor-wire-topped fence. Or could I?
The more germane question was whether there was any point in trying something that might get me killed.
There was no doubt in my mind that the Red Blood Patriots were the center of much of what had happened. And I was beginning to think that the compound in front of me was as likely a candidate for Anna’s prison as anywhere.
Nick the Knife had been involved with the Red Blood Patriots and Davy Halstead was watching Anna before he died. I didn’t know the identity of the man who Nick had dropped off the Dreamscape, but because no one had reported anybody missing, he was probably a loner without family. And his association with Nick suggested that he too might be a member of the Patriots.
The person who took Anna could be anyone, but the evidence – all circumstantial – suggested that her kidnapper may well be a Patriot, someone who learned of Anna’s potential inheritance from Davy or Nick or Thomas Watson or even Nick’s helper in the hijacking. When he realized that all but Davy were no longer a threat, he may have staged a coup, killed Davy and taken Anna.
I had no indication of where Anna was being held or even if she were alive. It was likely that her kidnapper forced her to talk and reveal whatever she knew. It was equally likely that once he realized that she possessed nothing valuable, he would kill her.
Nothing felt right. It was like a big, deadly real-world version of the Sunday crossword puzzle on the subject of murder, where I still had nothing but inscrutable clues and hadn’t yet figured out a single word.
THIRTY-THREE
The heat of the lowering, searing, afternoon sun drove me up from my boulder. The guard and his dog had disappeared, so I walked along the outside of the fence toward a distant oak which would have shade. Spot followed, slowed by the heat. When we reached the tree, Spot immediately walked over to its shadow and lay down. He rolled onto his side, and his big tongue flopped onto the grassy dirt.
I sat on the ground next to him and wiped my forearm across my forehead where sweat ran into my eyes. We were both dehydrated and needed water, but even more, we needed a break in the shade. While we rested, I pondered what I might learn from Davy Halstead’s crew. It was immediately obvious that, should I approach his followers directly, the answer was nothing. There were lots of militias, and each had a different focus, but they all shared a strong disaffection with government. This hostility universally drove them to acquire weapons, and whether those acquisitions were legal or not, they would not abide anyone from outside of their group making inquiries about their activities.
The only thing that made sense was to walk away. I could try to convince the county sheriff or Agent Ramos that Anna’s kidnapping warranted a search of the Patriot’s compound. But it would be futile. Without evidence, there was no probable cause, which meant no judge would issue a warrant.
If Anna were alive, she could be held anywhere. But the most likely place that I knew of where she could be held out of sight and hearing of others would be somewhere within the fenced tract of land before me.
No matter how I presented myself to them, I would still be an outsider trying to get info about their members and their activities. No way would they have any reaction other than a strong and possibly violent mistrust of me. Which left only one other approach.
I had to go in unobserved. Back-country trespass.
I momentarily entertained the notion of a secret tunnel into the compound that I could breach from underground. Not likely. Nor could I safely hire a helicopter to drop me in from the air. Exciting in the movies, but not realistic for the real world. I’d already ruled out going in past the guards at the front gate. Even if they had a regular delivery vehicle where I could stow away under the cargo, it would probably take weeks of surveillance to figure out how to plan it. That left going over or under or through the fence.
It didn’t look electrified, although maybe it was monitored by hidden surveillance cameras. I could climb it, but getting over the razor wire would be difficult. The jagged wire looked sharp enough to slice through any tarp or blanket that I might try to drape over the top. And the wire was designed to be non-rigid. It would sag and snare in a nasty way. I could bring up a bolt cutter, but I would probably find that the wire was hardened. I’d seen bolt cutters that had managed only a few cuts before hardened wire had dulled them into uselessness. I could bring up a shovel and dig a tunnel, although the fence was set into the ground. Perhaps there was even a concrete curtain under the fence. I kicked at the dirt, pulled out my pocketknife and stuck the blade into the dry hard dirt. The blade went in le
ss than two inches before it would go no farther. The sun-baked ground appeared harder than asphalt.
I looked up at the oak above me, wondering if there might be a tree somewhere that overhung the fence, allowing me to drop in. The answer was found in one of the oak’s branches that had grown toward the fence and had been sawed off. I assumed that they had trimmed all of the trees near the fence.
The sun lowered close to the distant hills, although its heater setting was still set on broil. I realized that I needed to start down the mountain.
“C’mon, Spot, let’s go,” I said. Spot didn’t move.
I started to walk away. I looked back after I’d gone ten yards. Spot had lifted his head. “C’mon, boy. I’m leaving. It’s all downhill from here.”
He pushed himself to his feet. Yawned. Lowered his head as if it were too heavy to hold up. Started walking. Watching him come out from the shade under the oak, I had an idea.
The oak had been trimmed so it didn’t overhang the fence. But it was still fairly close to it. If I could drop the oak and control its direction, it might land on the fence, crushing it and making it easy for someone to do a balance-beam walk up its inclined trunk, scramble through its branches, and jump down on the other side of the fence. The trick would be cutting the oak by hand because the noise of a chain saw would bring attention. Another trick would be controlling its fall. Unlike straight pine and fir, which can be directed by the shape and size of the hinging wedge one cuts into the tree before the final cut, oaks often grow with their center of gravity substantially out to one side of the trunk. No amount of careful hinging can change the way such an oak will fall. Off-center trees can only be directed with a hydraulic claw arm on a truck, or by cables tied to other trees. I had no such luxury.
I went back to the tree and walked a circle around it, judging its center of gravity. The branches were uneven in size and length. The trunk had a slight S-curve. And there was some old scarring on the trunk that would weaken one side. Even so, I thought it might be possible to direct its fall onto the fence. Of course, first I had to cut it. By hand. The tree was two feet in diameter. Cutting oak is closer to cutting rock than cutting soft pine or fir.
As Spot and I hiked back down the mountain, I put the concept out of my mind as unreasonable at best and unworkable at worst.
I backed the Jeep out of its hiding place, drove to Placerville, parked on the main street of what locals call Old Hangtown and pulled out my phone.
THIRTY-FOUR
Sometimes when you aren’t concentrating on a subject, it comes to you unbidden.
My unbidden subject was Thomas Watson’s comment when I talked to him in jail.
“I didn’t do it,” he’d said in reference to Grace’s murder.
Those of us in law enforcement hear it all the time. The line is a cliché, the first thing out of the mouths of every crook from shoplifters all the way up to burglars, robbers, and murderers. Even idiot white-collar criminals say it when they lose the discipline to obey their lawyers and keep their mouths shut. I’d heard it so often that, like all cops, I had an encyclopedic sense of the line’s every nuance.
And since Watson had said it in the jail cell, it kept coming back to me when I was working on something else.
The reason for Watson’s words making such frequent visits to my subconscious when I didn’t expect it was obvious. Unlike all the other times I’d heard the line, this time I believed it.
I couldn’t say exactly why. Something about his tone, his inflection. Some kind of pain in his voice. Some sense that he telegraphed veracity in the other things he’d said, and so maybe there was some truth to this statement as well.
So I thought about it. A woman is killed. She has your skin under her fingernails. They make a positive identification of your DNA. If you know you didn’t do it, then consider the possible explanations.
I called Joe Breeze at the SFPD expecting his voicemail at 7:30 p.m.
He answered.
“Working late, Inspector?” I said.
“Just getting warmed up. You already forget about the dedication of SFPD professionals? But then you, private sector poster boy, probably have a glass of cabernet in your hand as we speak.”
“Right. Hey, I’m tracking a militia group, and I have a question for you.”
“Something about the journal I filched for you?” he said.
“Kind of. I need the name of the lab and technician who worked with the DNA under Grace Sun’s fingernails.”
“I should quit my job and be your secretary,” Breeze said. He didn’t sound happy.
“I could take you on as an unpaid intern.”
“My pay being proximity to the famous investigator and the opportunity to observe greatness up close,” Breeze said. “Couldn’t put a price on that.” Breeze didn’t say it like it was a joke.
“Yeah. Anyway, all it takes is you pull open a file drawer. If I remember correctly, it’s left of your desk. The gray file cabinet, not the brown one. Second drawer from the bottom.”
I heard heavy breathing.
“Send you your favorite Havana smokes if it makes you feel better,” I said.
“I quit that cigar shit last year. Now I’m the picture of health. Smoke-free, two hundred five pounds on a five-eight frame, and growing.”
I couldn’t tell how much of Joe’s anger was about me pushing the limits of favors or about the struggle of weight gain and a job that mostly involved sitting at a desk and doing paperwork. I heard the noise of a file drawer slamming shut. Papers flipping.
I said, “Then all I can offer for reward is that the information you give me may help prevent an innocent man from getting the big sleep.”
“Yeah those wrongful executions are expensive. Lucky for the state that you and your white horse are saving them money. Here it is. For some reason, we farmed it out. Must be our own lab was too busy. The lab that did the work was called Evidence Inquiries, Inc. There’s a signature on one of these report forms, but I can’t read it. You got a pen?”
“Yeah.”
Breeze read off a phone number, gave me the date and ID number off of the report.
“Thanks, I really appreciate it.”
“Right,” he said and hung up.
I looked over to the back seat where Spot lay prostrate, his tongue out panting, still trying to blow off excess heat. “Okay, largeness, time we found some supper.”
He didn’t respond.
I went west on the freeway to the Bel Air supermarket in Cameron Park where I got a deli sandwich, a quart of milk and a ten-pound bag of dog food for Spot. It wouldn’t last more than 24 hours, but I expected to be back home before then. We ate out back where I found another faucet. Then we drove down to the valley floor, found one of the lower rent chain motels where they let you bring in a dog for an extra fee.
“We allow small dogs only,” the woman at the check-in counter said, a stern look on her face.
I nodded solemnly. “Right. He’s got a big personality, though,” I said.
“Isn’t that the way it always is!” she exclaimed. “The littlest guys, they always think they’re the star attraction of the circus.”
“You know it,” I said.
Once I figured out where my room was, I drove around and brought Spot in the end door of the building.
“Be quiet and act small,” I said as I let him in. He took off running down the long hallway.
“Spot! Come!”
He ignored me. A door opened about 30 yards down. A woman backed out, pulling a stroller behind her. She swiveled the stroller our way and shut her door. The toddler saw Spot racing toward them, raised both arms, waved and shrieked with excitement. The mother screamed.
Spot did an about-face and raced back toward me. I had my key card in the door slot. The light turned green, and I pushed in the door.
“Sorry,” I called out to the woman as we disappeared into the room, hoping we were far enough down that she couldn’t tell which room we were in.
A minute later I heard the squeak of wheels go past my door. A little kid was shouting.
“Mommy, I wanna big doggy. Mommy, I wanna a BIG doggy. Mommy!”
“Quiet!” she shouted back.
The next morning I dialed the number Breeze had given me.
“Evidence Inquiries.” A young voice, male, pitched up high like a choir boy.
“Detective Owen McKenna calling in regard to a report you did for the SFPD three years ago. The ID number on the report is eight, seven, B, R, I, M as in Boy, Robert, Ida, Mary. I need to speak to the technician who worked on it.”
“And the name on the report?”
“There is an illegible signature, nothing more.”
“Okay. Hold on and I’ll transfer you to the Eight-Seven group.”
I waited until a woman answered, “Sharon Wilsonette.” Older voice. Not-so-high-pitched.
I repeated myself.
“Let me look that up.” She made little humming sounds while I waited. Sounded like a Sondheim tune. “Here it is. Jonathon James was the lead technician on that.”
“May I speak to him?”
“I’m sorry, he’s since left the company.”
“Do you have forwarding contact information?”
“Now, Mr. McKenna, as a law enforcement person, you know that companies are not allowed to give out personal information on their employees.”
“Right. But you are allowed to have a friendly chat with an old friend of Jonathon’s.”
“Old friend?”
“You work a murder case together, you forge a special bond,” I said. “Grace Sun was the victim’s name. It was one tiny good thing that came from that investigation, getting to know Jonathon well.”
“If you knew him well, you’d know he hated the name Jonathon and that he went by JJ.”
“Of course. JJ and I talked about that very thing over beers one night.”
“If you knew him well, you’d know he never drank alcohol.”
