by Rex Bolt
They were in the apartment now. “She pretty?”
“Not in the traditional sense, but yes.”
“Chris there’s been stuff on the news.”
Christian realized he hadn’t turned on the computer or watched any TV all day.
“Early this morning, a dog walker in Santa Rosa, in back of the JC,” Joyce said, “they ran into a dead body. A kind of nature area back there, with a trail.”
Watching him closely as she spoke.
“They always have to notify next-of-kin and so forth,” she said, “But it moved pretty quickly, and by two o’clock they announced it was Donny Shelhorne.”
“Holy Toledo.”
“He essentially had his head beaten in, it sounds like. He was wearing jogging gear.”
“Why’d they kill him?” Christian said.
“They didn’t say.”
“They killed him there, or they did it somewhere else and dumped him there?”
“They didn’t say that either.”
“Who was it, the Sheriff, or Santa Rosa PD? . . . Or do the state colleges have their own police working something like that?”
“I’m pretty sure it was the Sheriff making the announcements.”
“What, why are you looking at me like that?” he said.
“Because I’m not sure how, but I think . . . just maybe . . . you had something to do with it,” she said. "Did you?"
“Babe, c'mon! . . . Don’t get me wrong, I've got no problem with this happening to that prick . . . But you have to be out of your fucking mind to say to something like that!”
Joyce slid off his jacket, and she was going after his shirt, popping a couple of buttons. Christian let it happen. When they were engaged, she asked if he had ever done it with the doctor’s secretary. He didn’t answer, and that seemed to ratchet up the intensity level, so when she asked him a second time, he didn’t answer then either.
10 - Summit Drive
Joyce had to leave early in the morning even though it was Saturday, because they had a Walk-a-Thon at school. She had pressed up against him all night, and it felt like he barely slept, though when they got up and had coffee she said he had called out a few times.
“What was I saying?”
“Hard to tell,” she said. “You were being pretty defiant though, whatever it was.”
“How’s your new boyfriend? The wine guy.”
“He’s good. I haven’t seen him in a few days.”
“Better take care of that then. I see you starting to get sidetracked.”
“Chris . . . ”
“Yeah?”
“Let me know what I can do to help you, okay? If there's anything at all to what might have happened? Please?”
“You are thinking irrationally, believe me.” He kissed her forehead. “But if I need anything otherwise, you got it.”
+++
Christian bought all the morning papers and drove to Mill Valley. He didn’t feel like dealing with Mount Tam today, so he took a long walk in town, up onto Summit Drive where you circled around and caught views of the city and the East Bay. There were sets of connecting steps alongside people’s houses that brought you back down to the plaza.
He sat in Starbucks for a while before he opened the papers.
The Chronicle ran a basic story, and the Marin County Independent Eagle focused on the local angle.
The Press Examiner had the most extensive coverage of the scene:
Former San Rafael Area Prep Baseball Star Donny Shelhorne Found Dead On RCJC Campus
by Gerald Leoni
March 3rd, 2017–The body of former Terra Linda Pratt Valley High School student Donald E. Shelhorne was discovered early yesterday morning on a dirt trail in a remote part of the RC Junior College campus. Foul play is suspected, according to authorities.
Shelhorne, 23, was a partner in a start-up culinary business in Santa Rosa. He had been an all-league Marin County pitcher at Pratt and went on to play at Ripperton University in San Diego, graduating last spring.
According to Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Matt Flynn, there were signs of blunt trauma to the head.
Shelhorne was wearing running attire, authorities said. A company official confirmed that Shelhorne frequently ran following work.
The body was discovered at approximately 7:20 am by a dog-walker in a wooded area known as The Bramble, which extends along the northeastern edge of the campus.
Shelhorne was a Marin County native and attended Pratt Valley High School from 2008-2012. He was arrested in early 2012 and charged with manslaughter following the alcohol-related death of 16-year-old Meghan Britta at a southside Terra Linda party.
Shelhorne eventually pled no-contest to a lesser charge and was given a year’s probation and community service, according to Marin County court documents.
No suspects have been named in the case.
Christian closed the papers and put them in the Starbucks newspaper bin. Pretty straightforward. He knew they always held back information, but his gut feeling was they didn't have a whole lot.
In any case, what good was it to waste time worrying about it?
He opened a notebook and began a revised list. The original read:
1 Ray
2 DS
3 'Chip'
4 Simmons
5 Ike’s guy
6 guy at video store
7 football driver
8 Maierhaffer situation
9 soccer guy
10 Eric Mossman’s person
The revised list was:
1 Ray
2 ✓
3 'Chip'
4 Birgitte problem
5 Ike’s guy
6 Simmons
7 Eric Mossman’s
He decided he better tighten things up a bit, prioritize. You could always expand the list if things worked out and there was time.
“Chip” Reggio had bilked his brother Floyd out of seventy-three thousand dollars, when Floyd lived in Las Vegas.
Birgitte was a vivacious woman in her fifties whose husband screwed around on her right and left. The guy, Maierhaffer, was Christian’s tennis partner.
Ike was his best friend growing up. He lived in San Mateo and had a neighbor from hell.
Thad Simmons raped Christian’s sister Bonnie in 1992. They were working after hours in the same office. Bonnie pressed charges but nothing ever happened.
Eric Mossman was a kid from the neighborhood who got killed by a drunk driver. The guy did a little time, not much.
Plus Ray.
It felt good to have a better handle on it, though the whole thing was overwhelming when you laid it out.
Chris was thinking something else too . . . that you wouldn’t exactly write it down as an addendum to the list . . . but Stepped-Up Womanizing was an inevitable byproduct of all of this, wasn’t it?
Who was he kidding to pretend otherwise?
People could call him a male chauvinist pig and politically incorrect, and an ass, and they’d be right.
But then again, let them have X months to live, and see how they handle it.
And forget the living part—the performance window was going to be even shorter.
So you went for it at this point, you just did.
“Not our best day?” A girl smiling at him from the next table, an iPad in front of her. He noticed purple streaks in the hair, bib overalls, Converse tennis shoes.
“Why, I’m giving it away?” he said.
“I used to get bent out of shape too. Then I decided: what’s the worst that can happen? It’s not worth it.”
“And you’d take that same approach if you had a terminal disease or something?” he said.
“Oh, absolutely. Even more so . . . See, equanimity is an essential Buddhist virtue. It means calm and balanced, even in the midst of difficulty.”
“That’s the opposite of me then.”
“Me too.” She laughed. “I started meditating. That helps.”
“Would you want to see a movie tonight?” he said.
A moment.
“I can’t, I’m busy tonight,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Tomorrow night I could though.”
“Oh. You want me to pick you up, or what?”
“I’ll meet you,” she said.
+++
He went to the car to check his messages. He hated the phone, and frequently left it in the glove compartment. There were three.
First was Joyce, give me a call.
Second was Ray. He sounded like he may have been drinking, and Christian couldn’t understand much.
Third was Bethany. Just the missed call, no message.
“It’s me, Chris,” he said. He was parked under the redwoods on Throckmorton near the Mill Valley library.
“I’m glad you called,” Bethany said. “And thank you again for dinner last night. This is slightly awkward, but would you have any have interest in going to a Warriors game tomorrow night? Someone gave us two tickets in the office, and Dr. Steiner can’t use them. They’re playing Miami.”
Fuck.
“Tomorrow night’s not going to work out, unfortunately. I’d love to, but I can’t.”
“Oh, that’s fine then. I knew you liked sports, so I just thought I’d ask.”
“What are you doing tonight?”
“Actually I’m getting ready to go out.”
“Where you going?”
“Just out. Anyway . . . ”
“Have fun,” he said.
+++
The library helped a little. One thing he picked up was Thad Simmons might be living in Pocatello, Idaho. Nothing on Eric Mossman’s guy. He did a quick skim on Chip Reggio, and apparently old Chip had picked up and moved from Vegas to Manhattan Beach. If he could afford it there, that meant he was probably still bilking guys.
11 – Bazooka
Christian stopped in at the Booker Lounge on Pierce when he got back to the city. Not nearly the action of Weatherby’s around the corner, but the food was better. He had the house burger and fries, the whole works apparently organic and grass-fed, and a pint of dark stout.
The guy two stools away looked familiar, but he couldn’t place him. Then he realized it was Rich Tomlinson, who was a beat reporter for the Examiner when Christian was working at the Chronicle. Both papers pretty much fell apart ten years ago. He assumed Tomlinson had taken a buy-out just like he had.
“Rich, that you?”
“Hey! Chrissy! Good to see you man, how you been?”
“Pretty good Rich. You latch on anywhere?”
“Buddy of mine has a PR firm in Burlingame. He handles a few of the Silicon Valley big wig accounts. He throws me some hours.”
“Good . . . not the same though, is it?”
“Nah, not at all. There’s nothing matches the excitement in that newsroom when a good story was breaking . . . What can you do? You doing anything?”
“I went back and got a Master’s, and taught high school for a while. Last few years I’ve been teaching a journalism class at College of Marin, in the fall.”
“And you’re okay?”
“Yeah, between the buy-out, a little real estate I got, whatever, I’m staying alive.”
Rich ordered another round, and Christian moved to the stool in between them.
“Rich, let me ask you a question though. How would you kill someone? What would be the best way?”
Rich laughed. “Why, you researching the topic out of curiosity, or you have something in mind?”
“Every now and then,” Christian said, “I conjure up a couple guys who would be satisfying to take care of. Over a beer, obviously, not literally.”
“That’s for sure. With myself, there’s more than a couple of those dudes around. The other day, some decked-out jerk on a bicycle comes riding up, slaps my fender and gives me the finger. All I’m doing is stopped at a stop sign on Irving Street . . . If I had a bazooka at that moment, I swear I would have chased that guy down and shot it off up his ass.”
“What about hitting them with a baseball bat, is that a clean way?”
“Yeah, that might be one of them. You wouldn’t want to leave the bat, or part of it, behind of course. I’d probably alcohol the bat first, wear gloves, long sleeves all that stuff. If there was a struggle and the guy scratched you or something, you wouldn’t want your DNA under his fingernails.”
Christian was running the JC up in Santa Rosa back through his head.
“Of course a nice way to handle it,” Rich was saying, “would be to cause some type of accident. No direct contact.”
“How would you go about that?”
“I don’t know, force the guy off a cliff on Highway One on the way to Stinson Beach, something like that? You’d have to pick your spots. There’s also medical accidents, medications and such . . . All I know is, I worked my share of crime stories and it took a little bit for Homicide to look hard at an accident situation. Sometimes it did come to that, of course, but your odds are better.”
“Gentleman, pardon me for interrupting y’alls entertaining conversation.”
It was Booker himself, who’d been tending the bar tonight. A big black guy with a shaved head, everything neat, a pressed white sport coat, huge hands full of rings. He kept order in the establishment: you want to use your cell phone, you go outside; you come in with a hat, you take it off.
“What you both doing,” he said, “is dancing around the concept. You want to hit someone, you go get a gun they can’t trace and then you shoot him in the side of the head with it.”
“Hard to argue with that,” Rich said.
“Any way they could trace the bullets on you though?” Christian said.
“Chrissy, my man,” Booker said, smiling. “You really thinking this through, aren’t you? Now you got me curious about that. Something to find out.”
+++
There was a complex south of Market called The Rialto that played off-beat, artsy films which didn’t make it into the mainstream theaters. Christian picked the one titled “A Graceful Exit”, not knowing anything about it.
The girl from Starbucks, Allison was her name, showed up on time at six on Sunday, but she had a friend with her, Monica.
“Good choice,” said Allison. “This got really good reviews.”
It was a documentary about a dance troupe in Egypt that was able to perform freely now, after the overthrow of Mubarak. Christian didn’t think the liberated dancing was much better or that different than the restricted dancing, but the dancers were so joyous that you couldn’t help root for them. Naturally, it ended with a performance in New York.
“What did you think?” Christian said.
“I cried,” Monica said.
“I did too,” Allison said. “I can relate.”
“Wait a second,” Christian said. “You relate to them, how?”
“I’m an artist too. A musician actually. Depending on the circumstances, it can be very inhibiting.”
He was thinking about the Warriors game he was missing with Bethany.
“You’re full of shit, you know that?” he said. “Anyway, I’m starving. Let’s eat somewhere.”
There was an Indian place he remembered in the Tenderloin, a run-down hole in the wall, but cheap and authentic. He knew they’d be vegans, so he made sure to order himself the meatiest dish he could.
“This is really tasty,” Monica said. “We have some of these in Berkeley, but this place is even better.”
“You guys roommates, old friends, in a relationship, what?” Christian said.
“Yes, roommates,” Allison said. “Two white girls in the flatlands. We live like a half block up from San Pablo Avenue.”
“We have a male roommate though too,” Monica said. “He’s black, and most people know him in the neighborhood, so that helps a lot. Henry.”
“Oh,” Christian said, trying to figure it out, but deciding it wasn’t worth it.
“And you?
” Allison said.
“No particular excitement. That’s why you ran into me in Mill Valley, I like to hike by myself on Mount Tam.”
“Is that what you had just done?”
“Not yesterday actually.”
“That’s what I mean, I could tell right away you were struggling with something. You still are.”
“I am, but I feel better now that I ate. Let’s get out of here.”
Christian walked them down to the bottom of Powell to get the BART train back to Berkeley.
“Well, it was fun,” he said. “Thanks for meeting me.”
Monica announced that actually she was going to Jill and Tabitha’s party in the Mission. “You want to come, Al? You too Chris, it might be weird, but they don’t care.”
“No, what I’ll do then,” Allison said, “is hang out with Chris a little longer.” Looking at Christian. “If that’s all right. I feel like you’re a tour guide.”
He said fine with him, he didn't mind.
“Monica gay?” he asked, when she’d left.
“Not really. She’s into women, but she appreciates men too.”
“Well, there’s a couple options,” he said. “We can go up to Nob Hill, get a coffee somewhere, take the Cable Car back down. The other would be the longer effort, here to Chestnut Street. I could buy you a drink and then my car’s near there so I’d drive you back to Berkeley. You don't want to be taking BART too late.”
“I like Plan B,” she said. She had put on a woolen hat that covered the tops of her ears, with straps that hung loose. She looked cute.
“Okay then. I enjoy pointing stuff out. If it gets over the top, tell me to shut up.”
A couple miles into it, when they got to Polk Street, she said, “This makes me realize I don’t walk nearly enough. We need those positive ions.”
They took Broadway to Fillmore, and then down the steep hill with the classic view of the bridge, everything sparkly across the bay tonight.
Sunday night at Weatherby's, it was a little quieter but not much. They sat at a corner table and had lemon drops. When Shep came over, Christian introduced him to Allison and gave him the not-what-you-think look, though he could feel it maybe happening, you never knew.
As they were walking to his place he said, “I’m trying to picture the set-up. Pardon me being out-of-line, but the liquor's got me curious . . . You guys fuck your roommate Henry, or it’s nothing like that?”
