EQMM, September-October 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Do you know of an argument between Harris and Randall the day before the Fayina sailed?"

  "Yeah, I remember Norm mentioning it. He didn't know what it'd been about and later wondered if Randall had discovered about Harris stealing from us."

  "Do you know where Harris is living today?"

  Snively laughed. “I couldn't have told you where he was living a week after we got rid of him, Sheriff. Last I heard, though, Kauffman still lived in Oldport. Vance Ramsey, I don't have a clue about. He was just a kid. He might've ended up anywhere during forty years of growing older."

  Chamberlain rose to leave. Snively escorted him out to the driveway. They talked as they walked about how the wrecked boat looked, but Chamberlain's mind focused on the darkness outside. A lit-up cargo ship was going down the strait, and he could see lights on boats farther away.

  "May I level with you in confidence?” asked Snively as they reached Chamberlain's Pontiac.

  "Of course,” said Chamberlain, knowing that this pledge would be a lie if Snively's confidential information affected the investigation.

  "I'm having some difficulty right now because of the economy. I made a lot of money in real estate and housing during the last decade, but after the market went south . . . Well, my plane and my boat and my condo at Aspen are all for sale. I don't expect any quick takers."

  "I understand,” said Chamberlain, wondering what it had to do with the case.

  "Do you think the insurance company is gonna want back the money they paid us for Randall's death? I don't remember if it had an exemption for murder in the policy. It wouldn't be a problem for Curtis. He's still flush. But for Norm and me . . . Well, I sure hope they don't want that hundred grand back."

  Chamberlain checked into a Port Townsend motel for the night. He phoned home to tell Chloe he wouldn't be back until the next morning, then the office to tell the night dispatcher.

  "Did Bill hold the news conference?” he asked her, referring to his undersheriff.

  "Yes. The local newspaper and a correspondent from the Astoria paper showed up."

  "Nobody else?"

  "Nary a one. Bill was powerfully disappointed that no TV reporters came. Said he'd combed his hair."

  "All that work for nothing, huh? . . . Say, when Bill comes in tomorrow morning, have him get started locating some people.” He read from his notebook: “Paul Kauffman, Vance Ramsey, and Wilford Harris. He might have to go through NCIC or Google them."

  The small media turnout delighted Chamberlain. It meant more time to investigate without public scrutiny. And he'd played fair with the press, notifying all news media that covered Adams County that there'd be an announcement about a criminal investigation.

  That night, after a fast-food dinner, he sat in a chair facing the room's big window, watching the ship lights reflected on the water while thinking about the investigation. He wanted fiercely to solve this case. Someone getting away with two murders for forty years angered him. Whatever those kids Melissa Fenwick and Randall had been doing, they didn't deserve to be murdered.

  But who was the third person aboard? The boat had been too small for anyone to have hidden from the other two. It must have been a last-minute presence, or they would have mentioned it to someone. Indeed, having it known would have been to their advantage because it would appear that they weren't doing anything improper.

  He fell asleep in the chair, and dreamed about skeletons taking a rotted old cabin cruiser out onto the Pacific to look at whales.

  * * * *

  Chamberlain left early the next morning, drove down U.S. 101 to Oldport, and reached his office before noon. Listening to the radio all the way down, he knew that the story still hadn't broken. It probably wouldn't until either the Daily Astorian or the Adams County Examiner put it on a Web site.

  As soon as Chamberlain sat behind his desk, Undersheriff Bill Wheatland walked into his office. Wheatland, a lanky middle-aged man with a ready smile, carried his notebook with him, opened.

  "You made good time,” he said.

  "I wanted to get here before paparazzi surrounded the place."

  "The biggest Adams County story in years does seem to have fallen kinda flat, doesn't it? Anyway, about those names. Paul Kauffman is retired, lives in Coos Bay, and I got his phone number and street address. Vance Ramsey I tracked down through his mother, who's still alive and well and still living here. Vance, however, lives in Liberty, Missouri. I got his phone number. Now that fellow Harris was interesting."

  "I'll bet you tracked him through NCIC,” guessed Chamberlain.

  "Partly. He was arrested for burglary in Los Angeles in nineteen seventy-four, got out of San Quentin in nineteen seventy-six, got arrested in Los Angeles again in nineteen seventy-eight but wasn't prosecuted for lack of evidence. Since then, just traffic infractions. I found him through Google; he's listed on a Web site for Gary's Auto Body Shop in San Diego. Then I consulted the phone company for his phone number and street address."

  Chamberlain mulled over the information.

  "First,” he said, “I want to talk to Hank Axtell. Then I'll question Kauffman and Ramsey by phone. After that, I'll fly down to San Diego to talk face-to-face with Harris."

  "Fly down? You must be pretty sure he's your man."

  "I don't know that. But he quarreled with Randall the day before someone killed Randall, and from what I've heard so far he's got no alibi for the time of the murder. I want to see his face while I'm questioning him."

  As soon as Wheatland left the office, Chamberlain tried to phone Axtell. He didn't reach the former sheriff, only his house-sitting grandson, who said Axtell was fishing somewhere in the Wallowas until Monday.

  Next he called Kauffman.

  "I can't tell you anything more than I told Axtell forty years ago,” said the former KRLS employee. “I was at home with my wife until about ten before eleven that day, and then spent the rest of the day at work. Sheriff Axtell confirmed it with my wife and a neighbor."

  Ramsey, reached by phone at his house in Missouri, also had an alibi. He'd been having breakfast with others in the boarding house where he lived in 1969.

  Neither of them could tell Chamberlain anything he didn't already know.

  * * * *

  TV news shows broadcast the story before Chamberlain left Oldport. A few used it as the sign-off story, but most gave it greater prominence. Chamberlain discovered in San Diego that every cop there already knew about the gruesome discovery. By the time Officer Monica Royce took him to the house of Wilford Harris, Harris too probably had heard, and Chamberlain lost the element of surprise.

  The man opening the door at their knock just before dinnertime had wary-looking olive eyes and gray-streaked red hair. Some teeth were missing. His abnormally long arms were muscular and tattooed. He wore only a T-shirt with his faded bluejeans and sports shoes. Harris's jaw fell when Chamberlain introduced himself as the sheriff of Adams County and it took a half-minute before he recovered enough to invite them inside.

  They sat in the cramped living room, TV on mute and Mrs. Harris leaning against the kitchen doorjamb with her arms folded while she listened. Wilford Harris offered them a beer, and then a cigarette, both declined, before he shook out a cigarette for himself and lit it.

  "Never in my wildest dreams did I think anybody would come down here to talk to me about it,” he said. “I told Laura when we heard it on the Today show that I knew about that boat, that I'd been working for that guy when he and his partner's wife disappeared, all of us thinking they'd gone down in a storm. I told her. At first she didn't believe me, did you, Laura?"

  "Nope."

  "But I never thought anybody would come down to talk to me. I mean, I just worked for them. Had nothing to do with the boat. He built it himself using blueprints he bought from someone."

  "Where were you that day?” asked Chamberlain.

  "Beaches near Oldport, but not as far away as Tangle Beach. I had the day off. I went shell hunting."

  "Sh
ell hunting?"

  "I used to hunt for seashells and driftwood. I know, I know, but I wasn't a strict observer of the law, and a young fellow could supplement his salary a bit by selling them to gift shops in Portland."

  "Can anybody verify what you were doing?"

  Harris smiled, the missing teeth apparent. “It wasn't something I sought witnesses to, Sheriff. No, nobody can verify it. I had no alibi. But I certainly didn't have anything to do with those murders, if that's what you're thinking. I didn't even know they'd been murdered until the Today show."

  "I have a reason for wondering."

  "My criminal record.” Harris noticed Chamberlain glance at his wife. “It's okay, she knows. Two years in San Quentin. There were also some things that probably don't appear on my record, such as an employer who fired me because he believed I'd been embezzling money, right after I arrived in L.A. But I did a burglary in nineteen eighty-three, and almost got caught. I mean, I came really, really close to going back to Q. It scared me straight. I've never done another real crime since then."

  Chamberlain wondered what Harris didn't include under the definition of “real crime,” but that was San Diego's problem, not his.

  "In any case,” Harris was saying, “I never committed a crime of violence. Whoever killed those two people certainly did that. I felt real sorry for Melissa Fenwick when she was lost . . . or when we all thought she'd been lost at sea. She was a nice girl, very pretty. A flirt, and her husband hated that, but she was young and had her whole future ahead of her. I feel even worse about it now that I know she was murdered."

  "Actually, Mr. Harris, my reason for wondering is that witnesses remember you had an argument with Randall the day before he and Mrs. Fenwick went out."

  Harris looked puzzled for a moment, then recognition spread over his face.

  "Right, I remember,” he said. “He chewed me out for messing up the repair of a video camera. I talked back when I shouldn't have—he was right: I'd messed it up—because he was such a pompous jerk about it. He could've pointed it out, even rebuked me, without throwing a temper tantrum and acting like I'd done it as a deliberate act of sabotage. But we never got along."

  "Did he know you were stealing from the company?"

  Harris surprised Chamberlain by smiling broadly. “Are you kidding?” he said. “If he'd known that, he wouldn't have just fired me like Larson; he'd have gone to the cops to have me arrested."

  "Sounds like a motive to me."

  "I would never have killed him, let alone Melissa Fenwick. No, Sheriff, he didn't know I was stealing. None of them knew until Larson found out, and the only reason he did was because they ran an inventory after Randall's disappearance. Their bank insisted. Randall was a technical guy, mostly; Larson was the money guy. Besides, that boat was too small for somebody to hide on it."

  "You mean Randall wouldn't have sailed with you on board?"

  Harris laughed. “No way, José."

  Chamberlain wished now that he'd phoned Harris rather than flown down. Not worth the trip.

  "Who do you think was the third person on board?” he asked Harris.

  "Darned if I know. I've been wondering about that myself ever since this morning. Who would Archie Randall have let aboard with him and Melissa? And who would then shoot them both dead? It just about had to have been her husband, but I wouldn't rule out either of those partners, either. Especially Larson. You may think I got it in for him because he fired me, but that was forty years ago and I was stealing, so I don't blame him for it. I've always wondered why he didn't call the cops on me. So I'm kinda grateful to him because he didn't. But I tell you true, he had a temper and he's the only one I could picture killing somebody. I'd have a hard time thinking it of Norm Fenwick or even Marvin Snively."

  * * * *

  Chamberlain arrived in Oldport late Saturday to find himself a much sought-after man. Reporters from most of the news media in the western third of the state, and more than two dozen from outside Oregon, were in town because of the Tangle Beach discovery, every single one of them waiting for his return.

  For almost two hours he answered questions—often the same questions, recast in different words, that had been asked two, three, or four times before—and tried to sound forthcoming without actually revealing anything. His duplicity fooled nobody, and the facts he gave them they'd already acquired from Deputy Hennessey and the motel manager while they waited for his return from San Diego. And why had he been in San Diego? they asked. “Sheriffing business,” was all he would say.

  "Are you investigating the murders at all?” asked one.

  "We are. But it's as cold a case as you're likely to find anywhere. The crime scene—that is, the boat—has been washed over and has rotted beneath the sand for forty years, which doesn't leave a whole lot of physical evidence. Everybody I've talked to thought that the two victims were on that boat alone, yet obviously somebody else came aboard. We don't have the gun. Any tracks were washed away decades ago. Almost nobody went near that isolated place before nineteen ninety-seven, but if anyone did and noticed anything odd, they didn't report it at the time and by now have probably either forgotten it or died. Yes, we're investigating, but if you plan to remain here until we solve this case, I suggest you file a change of address form with the post office."

  Most reporters left before Monday morning.

  * * * *

  Chamberlain drove out to see Hank Axtell on Monday afternoon.

  Axtell lived a mile east of town in a house on a large parcel that also held his woodworking shop. It was close to the forest, and had the dark green, cool, misty appearance that seems ubiquitous among rural houses along the central Oregon coast. Chamberlain parked in the dirt driveway in front of the shop, next to Axtell's blue Dodge Ram. The “young fellow” who'd been sheriff when the Fayina disappeared lumbered out of the shop, smiling as he gave Chamberlain a quick wave, a fat man with a wide, ruddy, moustachioed face and thick eyeglasses beneath what remained of his gray hair.

  "I can't tell you more than what you've already learned,” Axtell said after they'd finished the preliminaries, leaning against the Ram. “I didn't conduct much of an investigation."

  "Because you assumed the storm had sunk it."

  "Everybody did, including the Coast Guard and Norm Fenwick and Randall's family. Some of the family came up from L.A."

  "I'd assumed Randall was an Oregonian."

  Axtell shook his head. “The others were, but Archie Randall was a product of Hollywood. His daddy had been a movie technician. That's what led Randall to his interest in video machines. That was really early for videotaping, y'know."

  "And nobody suspected anything?"

  "Right. I just went through the motions, Chuck. Asked people the why and when of the trip, asked about the seaworthiness of the boat—not that I myself understood that sort of thing—and why those two had gone out and nobody else."

  "And so far as you knew, nobody else had gone out."

  "As far as I knew. A fellow down at the marina talked with Randall just before he got aboard the boat. Clay Berg, the marina manager, but he's been dead for . . . oh, ten, twelve years, maybe longer. Anyway, as I recall, he talked with Randall until Melissa Fenwick showed up. She climbed on board, then Randall said goodbye to Clay and climbed aboard. Clay went into his shed—I forget how long now, five or ten minutes, maybe—and when he came out the Fayina was gone. It'd been empty before Melissa Fenwick climbed aboard, so obviously whoever else got aboard did it during that short period of time while Clay was in the shed."

  Chamberlain thought about it. “So at some point,” he said, “the man or woman who climbed aboard argued with the others, and killed them. Maybe with a gun he or she brought aboard, or maybe Randall had one aboard to shoot sharks or gulls or something. And then the killer piloted the boat to Tangle Beach and grounded it. The storm came in, turned the sand to quicksand, and it began the process of sinking down into the beach. And the killer . . . What? Had a vehicle waiting? Coul
d he have planned this in such detail?"

  "I doubt it,” said Axtell. “Tangle Beach is half a mile from a trail, which leads to a road, which in three miles joins the highway. But the beach is just eighteen miles from Oldport. A man or woman could hike that distance overnight, easy. Especially a healthy young man like Norm Fenwick."

  "You think it was Fenwick?"

  Axtell shrugged his rounded shoulders. “Who else? A man took his wife—his wife of less than a year—out on a boat to quote watch whales unquote. Who had a better motive?"

  "But he was at work that day."

  "Yeah, I remember. But who says the boat didn't come back and he wasn't waiting at the marina for them, alone. He could've killed them at that time, piloted the boat up to Tangle Beach, and then come back to Oldport, nobody the wiser."

  Chamberlain had assumed that the killer left on the boat Friday morning with his victims, not that the boat had returned and gone out again. Axtell was good. But that didn't make him right. His scenario was too complicated. And the killer would still have to walk back to town.

  "Besides,” continued Axtell, “the only other people who didn't have alibis for that morning were Marvin Snively and one of the workers. Neither of them had a motive like Fenwick's."

  "What about Curtis Larson? He also had no alibi."

  "Yeah, he did. His girlfriend told me she talked with him on the phone that afternoon. He was at his house. No cell phones back then, even for tech-savvy entrepreneurs like Curtis Larson."

  "Well, now, that's not what he told me,” said Chamberlain. “Larson claimed that he had no alibi."

  Axtell stared at him silently for a long time before he said, “Maybe he didn't want you bothering her for some reason. After all, forty years, he doesn't really need an alibi."

  "How much bother to her would I have been?"

  Axtell thought for a moment, then nodded. “You're right,” he said. “It's suspicious."

  * * * *

  Chamberlain found Karen Taylor's house Tuesday in the West Hills of Portland, not far from her ex-husband's and only a tiny bit smaller, with a Porsche in the driveway and a gray cat on the front porch.