Not Death, But Love (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  He held the rod out over the lake and turned it over to see the back of the reel. He switched off the drag so he could strip line from the reel without the gears clattering loudly in the still evening, and got 30 feet of line beyond the tip of the rod, dropping into the water. Now all he had to do was make the cast of his life.

  It’s just like shooting a free throw, he told himself. In front of ten thousand screaming people in a gym. You tune out everything and fall back on habits. Habits you’ve formed in thousands of hours of practice. You’ve made the shot over and over again in practice, and you’re going to make it now. I’ve probably made as many casts with a fly rod as I’ve taken free throws. It’s a habit. Lean on the habit, and don’t think about it.

  Two people pressed against each other, one unwillingly, can’t help but make noise as they move. Gordon was more or less able to follow their progress by sound. As they approached the corner, Anna cried out:

  “Gordon! He’s crazy. Don’t try anything or you’ll get us killed.”

  Then he saw movement at the corner and raised the rod, bringing the fly line behind him in a back cast.

  Paris and Anna came around the corner, and in the dim light from the interior of the house, this is what Gordon processed in a nanosecond:

  Paris was standing behind her, his left arm around her neck, and the gun in his right hand, wrapped around her torso, pointing toward Gordon. From Gordon’s perspective, Paris’s head was just to the right of Anna’s and almost touching it. The only small target he presented was a face, about nine inches wide and a foot high.

  Just another cast. Nothing you haven’t done thousands of times before.

  And with that, Gordon drove the rod and the line forward.

  A fly line shooting forward after an effective back cast is moving at a higher speed than a Major League fastball, and doing so with a terrific amount of power behind it. Ask any angler who’s been unlucky enough to step in front of one, and he’ll say the shock and pain are unlike anything else he has ever experienced. Gordon was counting on that.

  When Paris saw Gordon’s arm moving forward, he fired, but the line was speeding toward him so fast that as he pulled the trigger, the fly at the end of the line slammed into his cheek just below his left eye, then ricocheted to the side, with the hook going all the way through his left ear lobe.

  There was no conscious decision on Paris’s part to drop the gun; it was an involuntary response to the pain and shock that brought him to his knees, screaming in agony and taking Anna down with him. Gordon, barely aware of the searing pain at the left edge of his torso just below his bottom rib, threw the rod on the deck and started for Paris.

  For a man of his age, Paris reacted surprisingly quickly. Pushing Anna down hard, he looked for the gun, saw it, and leaned forward to get it.

  Before concentrating on basketball, Gordon had played one year of junior varsity football and still remembered the techniques of tackling. Paris had just put his hand on the gun when Gordon was ten feet away. Gordon lowered his left shoulder, aimed it at Paris’s right shoulder, and drove through Anna to deliver a punishing hit. Both men screamed at the impact — Paris from the shock, and Gordon from the pain that seared through him from the gunshot wound. Paris dropped back hard, banging the back of his head on the deck and letting the gun fall on the other side of Anna.

  With Paris unarmed, Gordon — younger, bigger, and stronger despite his wound — held all the cards. He pinned Paris down, both of them gasping for air.

  “You could have taken my eye out,” Paris whimpered, the fight gone out of him. “And I think you broke my collarbone. What are you trying to do — kill me?”

  Gordon shook his head in disbelief.

  “And that hook in my ear hurts like hell. Can you at least take that out?”

  “It has a barb in it,” Gordon said, hating himself only a little for being glad about it. “It’ll have to wait until you get to a doctor.”

  Anna began to push herself up from the deck, but stopped part way through the move to grab her side and yelp in pain.

  “What in God’s name is going on here?” she almost shouted. “I think you broke my rib with your knee. Did you have to come on so hard? And what the fuck went flying past my head so fast I could feel the wind from it? You’re all crazy!”

  Then she looked down and saw the dark stain on Gordon’s shirt under his left arm.

  “Oh my God, Gordon. He hit you. You’re bleeding. Oh my God. Are you all right? It looks bad. I can still move. Is there anything I can do?”

  Gordon looked down at Paris, then back at Anna. Holding Paris to the deck with his left hand, he reached into his pocket, took out the folding knife, and deliberately handed it to her.

  “Shut up and untie your mother,” he said.

  Closure

  “That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and you think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”

  —DICKENS, Great Expectations

  Interlude 1: Thursday November 14, 1996

  (From the Forest Clarion)

  Ronald Paris, scion of the family that developed The Peninsulas in the 1970s, was killed Wednesday morning in an attack at Forest County Jail, two days after pleading no contest to manslaughter in connection with last summer’s death of Charlotte London, longtime English teacher at President Arthur High School. Paris was 56.

  Sheriff Gene Ballou, narrowly re-elected to a fourth term last week, said little, as usual, claiming the incident was “under investigation.”

  Other sources close to the incident provided The Clarion with additional details, however. Although there was disagreement on some facts, the general picture they painted was as follows:

  Most of the 18 inmates in custody were let out into the exercise yard for the regularly scheduled 10 a.m. outdoor period. Eight of them started a basketball game, and the others watched or walked around the perimeter of the yard.

  Paris was walking behind the basketball backboard when another inmate, Norman Defoe, 29, suddenly lunged at him, shouting, “You killed Miss London!” and stabbed Paris in the throat with a crude, sharp instrument, apparently made inside the jail.

  A melee ensued, and additional deputies had to be called in from the courthouse to restore order. By the time the exercise area was secured, Paris had lost a significant amount of blood. He was treated by paramedics and rushed to Forest Memorial Hospital by ambulance, but was pronounced dead upon arrival.

  Defoe was arraigned on a murder charge Wednesday afternoon, and Judge Louis Fletcher appointed a public defender to represent him.

  According to sheriff’s records, Defoe had a history of arrests, mostly on charges of minor drug possession, but had not been implicated in a violent incident until yesterday. At the time of the attack, he was serving a 60-day sentence for marijuana possession and probation violation.

  He always had a copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse in his possession, according to sources, and was jokingly referred to by deputies as “the jailhouse poet.” School records show he took Miss London’s Honors English course at President Arthur High in 1985, receiving a grade of B-plus.

  Paris’s unexpected death brought to an end the highest-profile criminal case in this county in nearly two decades. Miss London, who retired from teaching in June 1995, had begun working on a family history when she was found dead after a fire at her East Peninsula house the night of June 17.

  Her death was initially listed as accidental, but when medical evidence indicated she had been killed before the fire broke out, both the sheriff’s office and this newspaper began to investigate the matter further.

  In the course of researching the family history, Miss London was looking into the approval of The Peninsulas in Janu
ary 1971. Her father and brother were partners, along with the Paris family, in that enterprise. It appeared she had come across information suggesting that the deciding vote in favor of the project, cast by then-county supervisor Bart Sturges, had been improperly influenced, and that her father’s death in a vehicle accident just before the vote had not been accidental.

  Authorities believe that Ronald Paris was involved in both matters, and that he had killed Miss London in the heat of an argument in order to stop her research, then set the fire at her house to make her death appear accidental.

  Paris maintained total silence on the matter. He was originally charged with second-degree murder, and his plea to a considerably lesser charge on Monday has been criticized in the community, given the degree of premeditation that appeared to have been involved. (See editorial, page 8)

  District Attorney Cy Southworth said that while there was no doubt of Paris’s guilt, the case would have been hard to prove to a jury, and that it was better to hold him accountable through a lesser plea than to risk acquittal.

  Paris’s life had crumbled since the arrest. His wife of 31 years, Christine, filed for divorce, and his father, Roger, experienced a sharp decline in health following his son’s arrest. He died September 19 at the age of 83.

  The prosecutor’s office had also been reserving the right to proceed to trial against Paris on multiple charges of kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon. Those charges stemmed from a June 25 incident in which Paris invaded the home of The Clarion’s editor and held her, her daughter, and a summer intern hostage at gunpoint. The intern, after being grazed by a gunshot, was able to disarm Paris and restrain him until sheriff’s deputies arrived.

  Interlude 2: Monday February 24, 1997

  (From the San Francisco Chronicle)

  The Forest Clarion, a weekly paper with a circulation of 2,800 in Northeastern California, yesterday received the California Newspaper Editors Assn. (CNEA) award for public service in 1996.

  The paper was cited for its investigation into the suspicious death of a retired high school English teacher, resulting in the arrest of a prominent local businessman, who was holding the newspaper’s editor hostage at gunpoint before being subdued. He subsequently pleaded no contest to manslaughter in the teacher’s death.

  That investigation also turned up evidence of a bribe paid by the businessman to then-County Supervisor Bart Sturges in 1971. The statute of limitations for prosecution had expired, but Sturges, now the state senator representing the area, subsequently announced he would retire from politics when his senate term expires next year under the state’s term-limits law. He also dissolved the committee he had formed in anticipation of running for California Insurance Commissioner in 1998.

  The Clarion is the smallest-circulation newspaper ever to win the CNEA’s public service award, which is widely regarded as California’s most prestigious journalism honor.

  Other awards presented yesterday by the CNEA included …

  Epilogue: Friday April 18, 1997

  THE MAN AT THE TABLE at the front of the room set down the laminated sheet of paper he had been reading aloud and looked around.

  “Are there any visitors from outside the Arthur/Año Nuevo area?” he said.

  Two men sitting against the wall at the back of the room exchanged glances. The one with the beard spoke first.

  “Peter, alcoholic, San Francisco.”

  “Gordon, Al-Anon, San Francisco,” said the other.

  The man at the head of the table welcomed them, and the dozen or so people in the room applauded. After two brief announcements, the man looked at Peter and Gordon again.

  “It is a tradition of the Friday noon meeting to have a member qualify for 15 minutes, sharing his or her experience, strength and hope as a starting point for group discussion on alcoholism and sobriety. As the regular members of this group have heard each others’ stories to the point of depressing familiarity,” a few chuckles, “we typically ask a visitor, if there is one, to qualify. Peter, from San Francisco, would you be willing to start our meeting today?”

  Peter looked at Gordon, shrugged, walked to the head table, and sat next to the secretary — the man who was running the meeting.

  “My name is Peter, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Peter,” said a dozen voices in unison.

  “My sobriety date is June 26, 1996; my home group is Presidio Men in Sobriety; and I have a sponsor who has a sponsor. I mention those three things because I’ve come to believe they’re critical elements in my recovery.

  “And because of where we are, I should probably say that it was up here that I had my last drunk, not quite a year ago. I’d been trying not to drink on my own for nearly three months. I wasn’t court-ordered, I was girlfriend-ordered.” Laughter. “Then, on the Saturday night before my last blowout, I said what the hell and had one glass of wine. That was it. Just one. I didn’t have any more that night, and I didn’t drink at all on Sunday and Monday. And in the back of my mind, I was starting to think, OK, I can handle this now.

  “On Tuesday night, I was having dinner with my best friend — at Ike’s, actually — and something came up. He asked me to be there for him a bit later in a situation that might turn a bit sticky. After he left, the waitress asked if she could get me anything else. Without any thought or hesitation whatsoever, I told her to bring me a double scotch and add it to the check. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I now know that I was utterly defenseless against the first drink. I figured I’d just have the one, but when I knocked it down, I still had some time to kill, so I moved to the bar and ordered another. And another. Before I even realized what I was doing, I’d had six doubles in an hour.

  “Now I’d like to be able to tell you that I hit bottom when I got thrown out of Ike’s Lakeside by a female bartender.” Laughter. “But that wasn’t my bottom. Nor was it when the woman who came to pick me up arrived a few minutes later and found me sitting on a bench outside Ike’s, reeking of alcohol and barely able to sit, let alone stand. No man ever wants a woman to see him like that, but she did. No, my bottom was the next morning when I came to and found that the friend I was supposed to show up for had been in grave danger and could have been killed because I wasn’t there to help. Talk about pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization! I didn’t drink for the next three days, and back in San Francisco, I went to my first meeting and have been in the program ever since.

  “Last month, I made a Ninth Step amends to that friend. It was probably a tougher amends than the ones to my five ex-wives are going to be,” Laughter, “even though he reacted like a gentleman. But in looking at how I’d let down my friend, I was forced to consider how I had put other people at peril, as well. You see, I’m a doctor, a surgeon, and for years, I was strictly an after-hours drinker. But the past few years, I was starting to take a beer or a glass of wine with lunch. And I’d tell myself, ‘It’s all right. You’re only doing minor surgery this afternoon … ’ ”

  Everyone in the room cracked up — except Gordon.

  IT WAS AN EARLY SPRING DAY in the mountains. That meant that the peaks surrounding Año Nuevo Reservoir still had snow on their top thousand feet; that the sun was shining brightly, though obscured from time to time by the occasional scudding cloud; and that the temperature was in the high 50s and relatively warm in the sunshine —except when the wind kicked up. The wind, cold and cutting, was a reminder that winter had not yet entirely loosened its grip.

  Gordon and Peter remained in the church were the meeting had been held for nearly 15 minutes, while everyone came up to Peter, complimented him on his talk, shared, in some instances, a drinking story, and urged him to keep coming back. It was just before 1:30 when Gordon turned the Cherokee onto Union Street. They drove 150 feet down the street before coming to a stop at the end of a long line of cars.

  “There may be a bigger turnout than we thought,” said Peter.

  “So can I ask you something while we wait?”

  �
��You can always ask.”

  “At the meeting today, when you talked about only drinking before minor surgery, why did everybody laugh?”

  Peter thought for a moment.

  “It probably has something to do with the alcoholic mind. I’m guessing that almost everybody in that room has rationalized their drinking with lame excuses that don’t even begin to make sense. So when I said that, they recognized an element of their own past behavior. That’s probably what they were laughing at.”

  Gordon looked at his watch. They had moved one car length in three minutes.

  “It’s after 1:30,” he said. “They wanted me there by 1:40, even though it doesn’t start until two.”

  “Go, then,” said Peter. “I’ll park this thing and meet you there.”

  Gordon jumped out and moved toward the sidewalk. As Peter reached the driver’s door, he stopped, picked something up from the floor, and called out, holding it above his head.

  “Gordon! Don’t forget the book.”

  “Thanks,” said Gordon, snatching it from Peter’s hand and jogging back to the sidewalk.

  Gordon trudged down the sidewalk toward President Arthur High School. As he got closer, he saw that the road had been barricaded at the block where the school began, and that the parking lot next to Gary A. Bowman Gymnasium was full. He walked past the right side of the main building into a courtyard filled with folding chairs, all facing a podium. The building behind it had a large piece of canvas over its facade. Hundreds of people were milling around, talking loudly.

  “Gordon!”

  It was Jack Henry, the young basketball player, walking toward him. They shook hands.

  “I wasn’t going to stick around for this,” Jack said, “but then I saw that you were one of the speakers. That’s so cool.”

  “I’d rather be shooting two free throws in a hostile gym with the game on the line. Public speaking scares me to death.”