The Phantom Photographer: Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 3 (Murder in Marin Mysteries)

by Martin Brown

  Through Walt, Michael met a woman who had a passion for nature photography. Coincidentally, like Juliette, she was an elementary school teacher. But Joanne Hill taught science to fifth and sixth graders. Joanne was not blessed with the sexual allure of Juliette; she didn’t have her dramatic cheek bones, clear green eyes, radiant hair, or a patrician’s profile. In a pair of blue jeans, at play on a Saturday at the nearby Marin City swap meet, she looked more like the healthy Petaluma farm girl that she truly was. She wasn’t particularly attractive or unattractive. She might have simply been described as plain, or perhaps wholesome. But she was blessed with a pleasant smile and a kind manner, which diminished her less than perfect physical attributes.

  Clearly, Joanne was bright and a much-needed partner for a twenty-eight year old man, who had become in his own view, entirely too accustomed to sex as a solo act.

  Michael enjoyed the touch of her body next to his, but was always aware that his mother’s betrayal of her husband and her sons made it nearly impossible for him to feel completely trusting in any relationship. Still, he worked hard to set aside his fears. At some point, he imagined himself being part of a couple, and perhaps Joanne could be that other half.

  Often they met after Joanne had finished her work day at Old Mill School. On one surprisingly warm mid-October afternoon, they thought their best bet to catch a breath of cool air in a place where no one owned an air conditioner, was to spend the balance of their day inside a grove of towering redwoods in Old Mill Park.

  For a time, they lay together atop one of the massive old picnic tables that sat in a three-sided square all at right angles to each other. The tabletops were broad enough to accommodate Michael’s ever-widening frame. Joanne, less than half of her boyfriend’s body size, nestled in the crook of his arm.

  It was quiet there and Michael was at peace lying beneath these towering giants. The two watched what they called “fairies dancing” as bits of dust falling from the tops of the redwoods caught the late afternoon sun. It was similar to the same wonderful effect he saw hiking Mill Valley on the day he fell in love with this special place.

  “Should we go up to your place and turn on the game?” Joanne asked.

  Michael looked at his watch and said, “It’s just a couple of minutes past five. We’ve got a little more time, I think the game starts around five-thirty. They must be doing pregame coverage right now. And I don’t think you’re going to really enjoy game three anyway, considering how my A’s have whipped up on your Giants,” he teased.

  “We’ll see about that, smarty pants,” Joanne said, as they both sat up and she lightly punched his arm.

  Together, they watched two boys, probably six or seven years old, climb to the top of what was a ridiculously high slide rising above an old cracked concrete pad. The lead child came sliding down quickly with the dry heat of the day making the slide extra fast.

  The second child was just about to follow when, while sitting at the top of the slide, the entire structure appeared to jump and then shook violently.

  “Mommy!” the boy screamed, as he gripped the bar at the top while his joy suddenly turned into panic.

  Joanne watched as the empty swings nearby began to dance wildly. Someone yelled, “Earthquake!” The terrified mother at the bottom of the slide reached out her arms and shouted, “Slide down.” And then just as quickly shouted, “No! Hold on!”

  It didn’t seem to matter at this point what his mother said. The boy was so completely gripped by fear that he held on to the bar at the slide’s top and decided that no matter what happened he would not let go.

  In an earthquake, everything seems to happen at once. And every second seems to last an eternity. The normal stress reaction of all creatures toward fight or flight is frustrated because neither course of action presents a safer solution. Staying in place can be the wrong thing to do. A decision to run might be the last bad choice you will ever make. As the slide bucked, seemingly intent on throwing the little boy off, his fierce determination held steadfast. That precarious, ridiculous slide was now his only lifeboat.

  The noise was indescribable, as if the entire world was shaking at the exact same moment. The forces of nature were apparently in conspiracy to hurl every creature off the surface of the planet. Michael, acting on instinct alone, leapt off the massive picnic table and ran to the bottom of the slide’s steps. Holding tightly, feeling his heart pounding, he gripped both sides of the rails and went quickly to the top. With his feet six steps from the slide’s top, he slipped his arm around the waist of the little boy and held on to the top rail, praying for a safe outcome. He looked out at the cars parked along Throckmorton just forty feet away and they too shook with all the other once inanimate objects.

  I’m holding on, he told himself. At worst, I might get a broken leg or arm, but this little guy is not going to get a broken neck.

  The shaking stopped as abruptly as it began, and with it, the deafening and frightful noise ended as well.

  The little boy’s mother, by now in tears, watched as Michael asked the little boy, “What would you like to do? Let me carry you down the steps with me or slide down?”

  “Slide!” the boy said with a nervous giggle.

  He did, landing in his mother’s arms, who lifted him up and squeezed him to the point that he said, “Mama, let go; I can’t breathe.”

  She rushed over to Mark as he came down the slide’s steps and said, “Thank you so much.”

  “I was happy to be there for him. This little guy of yours is one tough hombre.”

  Joanne rushed over, reached up and kissed Michael on the cheek, and whispered, “I’m very proud of you.”.

  Michael and Joanne walked up the heavily wooded path to his intimate “nest,” as he often described it. He was relieved to see that, with the exception of little things, like a basket of cooking utensils that had fallen off a kitchen counter and spilled all over the floor, everything was like he had left it just a couple of hours before.

  A moment after putting the utensil basket back in its place, a sudden aftershock rattled both of them.

  “That felt like the Jolly Green Giant giving the house a swift kick,” Joanne exclaimed, adding quickly, “I think we’ve had enough excitement for one day.”

  None of the homes near them, and none along their walk up Hazel appeared to have sustained any noticeable damage. The power was out and the late afternoon shadows began to move toward a warm, mid-October twilight, as Joanne and Michael wondered just how serious a hit the Bay Area had taken.

  They didn’t have many candles, but they had enough to light Michael’s snug little home. By chance, he had seen Mrs. Fitzsimmons earlier that day watering her garden, while mentioning that she would be gone for an overnight visit to an old friend down near Santa Cruz, so Michael knew they would not see her for a day or more. He was not sure how long the power would be off, but he would have liked to know if she had a transistor radio, so he might hear some news about the quake.

  “Maybe it was just a whole lot of shaking without much damage,” Joanne suggested.

  “I hope so. I’m glad I wasn’t at Candlestick for the game. I’ve been there some nights when I thought the wind was going to blow that old dump down. People in the third deck must have shit themselves when that place started jumping.”

  “I can’t imagine anything that catastrophic happened.”

  “I guess you’re right. Still, I wish I could hear some news.”

  Standing in the kitchen looking in a cabinet, Joanne found a bottle of red wine. While looking in the refrigerator, she found some salad and sliced meats. “Might as well have a picnic,” she suggested. “Looks like we’re in for the night.”

  Michael awoke shortly before six. He could tell instantly that the power had come back on because the red numbers on the oversized digital clock that sat atop his bed stand were flashing 12:01 to indicate the time needed to be reset.

  His mouth was dry and his head was a little sore, the product of polish
ing off more than his share of the bottle of wine Joanne had found. She slept quietly next to him. He used the bathroom, drank some water to clear the dryness from his mouth, and then went out to his deck to breathe a little fresh air.

  It was another lovely day; one he hoped would be cooler than the day before. The world seemed calm, with everything in its proper place. But then, like a lightning bolt, it struck him; beyond this small piece of the Bay Area, he still had no idea what the extent of the damage might be. So he rushed in and turned on his favorite television station, KGO, San Francisco’s ABC affiliate, and to his satisfaction there was Anna Chavez, the newsgirl of his dreams. Although her voice still had that wonderful melodic quality, she looked beleaguered by what he quickly learned had been an all-night vigil.

  The news wasn’t good. An estimated four thousand injured, possibly hundreds dead. The site of the worst casualty toll was likely the Cypress Street Viaduct of the Nimitz Freeway, a double-decked stretch of highway that carried drivers along the eastern edge of the bay from north of Berkley to San Jose. The same stretch of road Mrs. Fitzsimmons’ late husband had helped to engineer and build so many years ago.

  The Bay Bridge had suffered a catastrophic failure of a fifty-foot section of the upper deck roadway of its eastern span connecting Yerba Buena Island with Oakland.

  The bridge incident had taken only one life, but rescuers at the scene of the freeway collapse reported that there were an undetermined number of cars that had been crushed on the lower deck, with the likely deaths of all drivers and passengers.

  A fire in the Marina section of San Francisco, started by the collapse of an entire building, was extinguished with the help of hundreds of volunteers, who supported a fire hose that extended several city blocks out to a fireboat in the bay. Broken water mains in the area had led to the failure of water pressure. The huge fire was briefly reminiscent of the type of fires that leveled most of San Francisco in 1906, but it appeared that this time the city had fared far better in the face of a far less catastrophic quake.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed in his cramped bedroom, Michael turned to see Joanne sitting up, watching in amazement. There were pictures of Geary Street in Union Square, the center of the city’s popular tourist district, covered with shattered glass from the huge windows in the old I. Magnin department store. Amazingly, it caused no serious injuries. Nearby, in the city’s Mission District, six people were not so lucky when they were struck and killed by the single collapse of an old brick wall.

  But, for all the damage and chaos the event had caused, two things were already clear, the highway and bridge death toll could have been far higher if it had been just past five o’clock on a normal rush hour afternoon, as opposed to a day when the two local baseball teams were about to meet in the third game of the World Series. That early game start, to accommodate the time change to the East Coast, saved countless lives of those who left work early to get to wherever they were watching the game. Also of great fortune, the quake hit thirty minutes before the first batter was scheduled to come to the plate, meaning only half of the stadium’s upper deck was filled. Minus cracks in its foundation, it withstood the incident, but at full capacity, it might have been a very different outcome.

  Thankfully, for several days after the quake, the news continued to improve. The expected death toll kept lowering, along with the number of people who suffered anything more than minor injuries.

  Then, on Friday afternoon, nearly seventy-two hours after the disaster, Walt came into the camera shop looking as though he had just seen a ghost. It had been a bad week for the shop. People were distracted by the endless news reports and every retailer in the area, with the notable exception of those selling earthquake preparedness items, suffered accordingly.

  “What’s wrong, Walt?” Michael asked.

  “Fuck, I can’t believe it. I didn’t even know he was missing.”

  “Who? What?”

  “Fancher, Herb junior. They just recovered his car from the lower deck of the Nimitz. Fuck, I can’t believe it. Poor guy.”

  In stunned silence, Michael, for a time, just stared at Walt. Finally, he uttered an elongated “Fuuuck,” which hung in the air, while Walt assumed Michael shared in his shock over the loss of one of Mill Valley’s better-known citizens.

  “I guess the poor bastard never knew what hit him. They say some of the cars they’ve recovered from that lower deck looked like they had been placed in one of those car crushers. I guess that’s what happens when tons of concrete fall down on top of you,” Walt said, with a far off look, and then added, “Wow. I’ll bet Suzette is devastated.”

  “Juliette too,” Michael added.

  “Here today, gone tomorrow,” Walt said wistfully.

  Michael, grieving the loss of his biggest single score, clenched both fists tightly in great disappointment, which Walt took to be his own distress over his shocking news.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  In the end, the death toll from the 6.9 magnitude temblor was sixty-three. Forty-two of those deaths occurred on the lower deck of the Nimitz Freeway, a blessing, considering that on any normal Tuesday afternoon in October, a collapse in that same location might have taken the lives of possibly hundreds of rush hour commuters, if traffic was, as often occurred, at a near standstill.

  Small consolation to Michael, who, after just six payments of a thousand dollars apiece knew that the remaining fifty-four thousand dollars would go unpaid. He toyed briefly with the thought of going back to Juliette and offering reduced terms for his continued silence, but he could not bring himself to do that.

  “FUCK,” Michael shouted off of his deck in the middle of Monday afternoon, November 6, after returning home from his monthly trip to the Novato post office. Just as he knew would happen, he found all of his monthly payments waiting for him, save one, Fancher’s, who he suspected would be happy to know that he had cheated Michael of nearly all his anticipated reward.

  While wondering if he should get back to the work of extortion, his new Motorola flip phone began to vibrate. The small display on phone’s cover simply read, “MOM.” She rarely called more than once a month, and having just called a week before, he was curious as to what the problem might be.

  “Mom?” he said cautiously. As usual, the connection back in the deep woods of Mill Valley was not good, but he was quite certain she was crying.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That bastard, Fred! That’s what’s wrong.”

  The first drops of rain from a forecasted storm that had been described Sunday on the local news as the, “first significant rainfall of the season,” began to fall onto his deck, adding immeasurably to Michael’s sense that dark clouds were gathering.

  “Would you believe that he’s been having an affair with some girl who is closer to your age than mine?”

  “Wow, I can’t imagine that,” Michael snorted into the phone, as he envisioned Fred’s monthly payment now taking flight as well. In truth, he could care less about his mother’s emotional turmoil.

  There was a part of Michael that wanted to push the “END” button on the phone’s tiny keypad, but he could not bring himself to do that when she was obviously in such great distress.

  Still, he wondered, where was she when he needed her so badly? When his father’s life had been turned upside down and he was the only shoulder his father could find to cry on?

  Barbara planned to move her things out of the house in the coming weeks. In the meantime, she had divided the house into separate warring camps.

  Michael ended the call as soon as he could. He walked into his kitchen and tossed his flip phone onto the counter. The phone’s two-inch antenna broke off as it landed, adding one more item to what was already a disappointing day..

  Of course, he could have tried other ways to see if his photos of Fancher or Fred still had any value. He could approach Nora, and see if her husband knew about her relationship with Fred, but while others might have thought every one of Michael�
�s extortion attempts despicable, Michael imagined himself an avenging angel striking at the unfaithful; those who had no concern for the collateral damage caused by their selfish, thoughtless, and lustful desires.

  He was particularly disappointed to see Fred slip off the hook he had angled so perfectly to catch him upon. But he knew better than most that there were many more Freds in the endless nooks, hills, and canyons of Mill Valley. Just listening to Walt’s daily dose of gossip was a constant reminder of the potential scandals awaiting him. With his monthly income reduced so suddenly by more than half, what better warning could he have that circumstances in his business could change quickly? Secrets worth paying for one day could lose their value the next.

  With all the people hunting skills he had acquired, going back into the business of catching the right people at the wrong time, was made all the easier by the warm and open embrace of the good people of Mill Valley. By now, he was a welcome and familiar sight, always with a camera slung over his shoulder, a person whose presence you would hardly notice. The ideal status for a man who most coveted opportunities to hide in plain sight.

  Walt, unintentionally but ever helpful to Michael’s schemes, arranged for his young protégé to have a photo exhibit of what he called, “The Faces and Places of Mill Valley, California.” The exhibit opened with a wine and cheese reception, which was surprisingly well attended, given that it was a wet night in December at the start of the holiday season.