“Are we late?” Sam asked, glancing at his watch.
“Nope, five minutes early. Hey, maybe we should invite this Johnny-on-the-spot Deputy to transfer to the FBI.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, “He could make our morning coffee.”
Deputy Springer stood up out of his patrol car as Monica negotiated a U-turn and parked behind him. The deputy was a heavily muscled 5’11” with a blond crew cut and blue eyes. After introductions were made they moved over into the shade of a tree bordering the church’s front walk so the two agents could fill the Sheriff’s man in on what they wanted to see.
Handing a manila folder to Sam, the Deputy said, “Here are the copies of files you requested.”
Sam took the folder and tucked it under his arm. “Thank you”, he said, “I think we’d like to do a little sight-seeing before we get to these.”
“So why do you need me?” Springer inquired sincerely
Sam took the lead. “Well, according to this confession left behind by the suspect we may eventually be chasing crimes over a multi-state area. That is what puts it in the FBI’s jurisdiction as an overall investigation. But if the things this guy wrote about what happened in this town in 1964 and 65 are true, then it’s all pretty localized and what we discover, if anything, is likely to stay in the jurisdiction of the county.”
Monica finished for him, “We don’t want to jump on toes and dig around in what might be your cold case and then just come and dump it all on you guys later.”
Deputy Springer nodded in understanding. “But I’m a Patrol Deputy. If there’s something out here to investigate it will all go to Detective division anyway. I’m just here because the Sheriff doesn’t want to pull his detectives off their open cases.
Sam put a hand on Springer’s shoulder. “Look at it as an opportunity, John”, he encouraged, “if any cold cases get reopened as a result of your work, you might get to stay on it and see it through.”
Springer seemed to warm to the idea of a break in his routine. Nodding, he said, “Ok, where do you want to go first?”
Seven minutes later they were all getting out of the agency car on a dirt road on the east outskirts of town, looking for a trailhead. Sam noticed the young deputy stealing an appraising glance at Monica as she kicked off her pumps and changed into some flat shoes she had retrieved from the trunk. She had worn black pumps to work today but she always kept something more comfortable around just in case flatter shoes were needed, and now they were.
He couldn’t blame the kid for sneaking a look. Monica Sterling, eight years with the federal agency, was a true professional but she would have needed a refrigerator carton to hide that alluring figure. She wore a black dress that ended mid-calve, with a wide belt holding it against her slim midsection and an open collar that revealed just enough of her neck and upper chest to show off a necklace, had she chosen to wear one. On evenings out she did, but for work she displayed no jewelry whatsoever. It was her personal policy. It wasn’t often that a Field Agent assigned to the Stockton office found their self in any action to speak of, but if and when it happened she didn’t want to look like a television version of herself. Her auburn hair was kept shorter than shoulder length with a simple cut and her eyes were the kind of blue that made you feel she was staring through your head at something on the wall behind you.
Monica held a Police Science degree from Berkeley College and came to the FBI 9 years ago from her job as a patrol officer for Stockton PD. Following her training at Quantico, Virginia, her request to be sent to the Stockton office was granted because she was still looking after her wheel-chair bound and ailing mother. Her mom passed away two years later, but Stockton was home to Mon so she had not considered requesting another assignment
As she dropped the trunk lid, Sam pointed to a break in the shrubbery near the roadway. “Based on the narrative left by Everman the trailhead he used couldn’t have been too far from that last paved residential street and those houses right down there.” He pointed and added, “In fact, if I understand the account correctly, that old grey house on the right would have been where the Clays lived.”
“The Clays mentioned in those reports I brought to you?” Springer asked. Up to this point the Deputy had seen himself as an errand boy and had not taken time to read the reports. He was going by the label on the filing tab.
“Everman was terrorized by a family of brothers who, according to him at least, were no good ruffian types who rode around town in a 56 Chevy doing pretty much anything they liked.” Monica answered him. “The car was red and white, and Everman and his sister dubbed it the Christmas Car, and as a private joke referred to the brothers and their friends as the Christmas Club.”
“If his story has any truth to it,” added Sam, “what we are out here looking to find today is the spot where he killed them all.”
CHAPTER 2
The three of them made their way, single file, through dense undergrowth, following what appeared to be more of a deer trail than one used by people. If this was the trail referred to by Everman, it was largely deserted now, as was evidenced by the frequency with which Sam, in the lead, had to pull branches aside.
They wound through a grove of elm, maple, juniper, pinion pine and other trees Sam couldn’t immediately name in his mind. An avid hiker, he loved his weekend trips to Yosemite when he was able to get away. He had recently decided on a personal goal of learning to identify the flora indigenous to central California. At any other time he would have loved being out here, but doing it in his suit and street shoes did not make for a pleasant trek in the wild.
Monica, on the other hand, pursued martial arts, not only for the maintenance of her level of proficiency for her job, but also as a personal hobby. When she suited down for a workout Sam teasingly called her Monica Norris. She loved the gym and the mats, but playing Sacagawea was not her thing.
Being early spring, the snow melt from higher elevations had kept the river running high. They reached the rushing waters sooner than they had expected to when going by the things Cole Everman had written, and they saw no beach area and no easy access across. After brief deliberation, they decided to double back to the car and see where the dirt road would take them.
Monica drove again and Deputy Springer resumed his position in the rear seat. Sam opened the file the Deputy had supplied and began to browse through it. The folder contained two reports Sam had specifically asked for.
He flipped to the second one first, as it was the thinnest. It was the report from June 7th, 1965; the account of the vicious attack on Steve Hines in the alley behind Jake’s Auto Supply.
No evidence was ever logged in from the scene itself. Deputies had gone there and looked around, but there wasn’t much to see and nothing to collect. All of the information in the report was the very sketchy interview with Steve, who remembered virtually nothing, and the assessment by the attending doctor.
Steve had sustained some serious bodily injury, the most serious wound being the one on his head. The report indicated that the doctor considered Steve very fortunate to have survived and recovered from such a serious blow. What jumped out at Sam though, was this statement in the report. “Bruising on the patient’s arm, legs and torso appeared to be caused by the same instrument, the marks being long and approximately one and one half inches in width. The nature of the injuries would indicate the weapon was a metal bar of some sort, like a tire iron.”
Sam thought back to some of the closing statements of Everman’s journal. “The tire iron was stashed in the alley and available for the right moment.” Everman could not have known what the exact weapon was unless he was either an eye witness or the attacker. So this report confirmed that part of his written confession.
Before Sam could flip back to the larger report Monica stepped on the brakes making him look up. Driving around a sharp curve near the top of the hill she had come up suddenly behind a rusted wreck of an old car. It sat on wheels only, no rubber tires present. All of the windows we
re broken out, a shredded corner of the ceiling liner hung down to the top of the frames and springs that used to be seats, and exterior paint was almost non-existent.
There was no rear plate and the rear bumper was disconnected on one side and hanging to the ground. Neither Sam nor Monica were experts in recognizing make and model of old cars, but Springer was. From the rear seat they heard his awed whisper. “That’s a 1956 Chevy 210.”
Sam and Monica looked at one another. “Unbelievable” she declared.
The three got out of the car and walked around the remains of the vehicle. Springer muttered, “It’s almost like finding dinosaur bones” and the two Agents could not disagree.
“How is it possible” asked Sam, incredulous, “that this car could sit up here for the last forty eight years and no one see it?”
Monica thought for a minute. “Well, we don’t know that no one has seen it. But who would ever come up here? Kids playing around maybe? An occasional hiker? Although it’s not exactly the kind of area tourists would gravitate to. I don’t know, Sam. It might just be possible that no one has been up here who would be likely to put two and two together. Remember what Everman wrote about searchers probably concentrating on the state highways since the Christmas Club had been mobile? He may have hit it right on the head. I’ll bet all searches for them, all BOLs issued, would have been sent to all points of the compass, but no one ever thought to look for them on a dirt road just a couple of miles outside of town.”
As they spoke, Deputy Springer had wandered a little way off to look at a pile of scrap iron that was strewn about at the bottom of the hill. Suddenly he called out to them, “Agents!” They turned their attention to him as he motioned for them to join him where he stood.
Sam and Monica flanked the Deputy on either side and looked down the hill and off into the valley hundreds of feet below their position. For a full minute all they could do was stare, until Monica broke the silence.
“Unbelievable!”
CHAPTER 3
As far as they could see, scattered over the slope of the valley below them and extending to the forest at the far side, was what only could have been the fallen trestle. All wood had long since rotted away, but the rusty, twisted iron of the structure had lain on this valley floor for all of these years, and standing where they were, looking down at it, Sam could almost hear the screams of the terrorized young men being all but drowned out by screeching metal, popping rivets, and the crashing of the great iron monster as it found the valley floor and slid down hill until just dirt, shrubbery and the occasional rock outcropping brought it to rest.
“Unbelievable”, Monica repeated, “It’s just like Everman described, and here it is, after almost half a century!”
Sam turned to Springer. “Well, Deputy, it looks as though this really is your find after all.”
The young officer raised a questioning face to Sam’s gaze.
“You are literally the one who first looked down and saw this.” He swept his arm in a wide arc over the valley below. “And you now need to contact your boss and ask him for a team of investigators. I don’t know if there is still any evidence of human remains under all that iron down there, but Cole Everman’s confession links to what we have seen here, justifying further investigation. Like I said to you down by the church, this is now a reopened cold case, and it’s yours.”
As they drove back down the hill Sam resumed his perusal of the folder. The other case file was the report of the apparent murder of Hershel Clay, father of the missing young men. He had been found in his bed, two days dead after he failed to show up for work at the store. A single round had been fired through a pillow and into his head, from a .32 caliber revolver which had then been left by the shooter on the night stand next to the bed. There were no fingerprints on the weapon and it had never been traced to any registered owner. It had been assumed that the gun belonged to Clay or one of the boys otherwise the shooter probably would not have left it behind. But Everman indicated he took it from an old man named Mazurkiewicz, and so far the written confession was batting a thousand.
As they passed the old Clay residence a man in coveralls and a straw gardening hat was mowing the lawn. “Shall we stop and talk to him?” Springer asked from the rear seat.
“Nah”, Monica shrugged, “He probably bought the place long after it all happened; might have even been other owners in between. Just in case he doesn’t know about the crime, why ruin it for him?”
Sam nodded in agreement. “He’s obviously fixing the place up into a nice little home. We have all the information we’re going to get, right here in this file and Cole Everman’s statements.
They said goodbye to Deputy Springer back at his patrol car, and having offered to help in any way they could, hit the highway toward Stockton.
On the way they evaluated what they had. They had confirmed that Everman had known what he was talking about in reference to the Steve Hines attack, the fallen trestle and the secret location of what he called the Christmas Club and their car. It would be up to the Sheriff’s Department investigators to check into the Mazurkiewicz death; in any case, that and all of what they had discovered today was under local jurisdiction.
“So what do we bring away from this?” asked Monica
“What we bring away,” Sam answered, “is that we have reliable information handed to us from the grave, so to speak, of the perpetrator himself. And since all of this turns out to be true and accurate, we are then safe in assuming that his final invitation is worth our time and efforts to accept.”
It had been a long day. Monica flashed him a questioning look. “Invitation?”
Sam opened the file she had dropped on his desk almost five and a half hours ago. Skipping to the end, he read, “Go ahead. Follow my trail if you can.” “So”, he waited until she turned to look at him, “we will follow his trail.”
Monica turned back to watch the road. “And a dark trail it is likely to be.”
It was 4:15 PM when they arrived back at the Field Office and were greeted by Special Agent in charge, Harold Muncey. They sat down with fresh cups of coffee to give him a brief rundown of their findings outside of Trinidad. Sam finished with the obvious conclusion. Everything here fell under local jurisdiction. “Having said that,” he went on, “Everman offered this very cryptic hint at the end of his confession that there is more…”
Muncey silenced him with a raised palm. “More than a hint, Sam.” He reached forward onto his desk and picked up a small stack of printouts there. As Sam took them Mon leaned closer to him from her chair to get a better look. They were emails from Bossier City PD and it looked like there was a lot of narrative to read in them, based on what she could see of the top page.
Agent Muncey sat back and folded his hands in his lap. “Everman kept a virtual diary of his…adventures. California, Louisiana, Colorado, Virginia. He has a tale to tell from each of those states, and that makes the entire case FBI jurisdiction. I spoke extensively with each of those state offices today while waiting for the results of your trip to Trinidad. Each of them agreed that they will make their resources available to you in your continued investigation.”
Sam looked at Monica and she had the same confused expression that he was certain he had on his face. “Our investigation?”
“Yes.” Muncey sat forward placing his forearms on his desktop, hands still folded. “Things are quiet here right now. Agents Williams and Saunders can handle this office for a while. You two caught this case. Since Everman’s trail evidently began here, it is agreed that you two should stay on it and follow up on whatever you can find in these four states to corroborate his claims found on that laptop. So get some rest and be ready to head out tomorrow. You have the use of the department’s car at least in California. When you’re finished, if and when you are ready to take the next step, you can fly and rent or hire your ground transportation as you travel.”
Agents Runyan and Sterling ordered Asian food delivered to the office and spen
t the next several hours going back over the information from Louisiana and making their travel plans. Finally, exchanging yawns, they went to their separate homes to pack and sleep, agreeing to meet back at the office at 0700 hours ready to go. Next stop, Quincy.
The Memoirs of Cole Everman, 1966 – 69, Quincy, California
Dear Reader,
If you are one of the initial finders of this manuscript from my laptop, then you have probably already read my account of our months in Trinidad, California and the Christmas Club. I left that portion open by design so that whoever first booted up my computer would see it, leaving very little to chance. Now that you have found this file, I assure you that you are continuing at the right spot to follow the progression of my secret career of choice.
When my parents and I left Trinidad I was overjoyed to leave the Clays behind, along with all that they represented. I felt as though I had been set free. I didn’t want to run anymore; at least, not from someone trying to squash me like a bug; and I just wanted to get along with the people around me without conflict and as much as possible, stay to myself.
At the time we moved there was not a fixed plan in my mind. As I said earlier, the seed was planted, but the intent lay dormant until awakened by both circumstance and opportunity.
A fact about me heretofore left unsaid. The architectural style of most Methodist churches in which my father pastored included a bell tower and a spire with a cross on top. The bells were usually at the base of that spire behind louvered windows and mounted just above the church attic itself. So when I needed to have my own space, in each place we lived it was a simple matter for me to get into the church on weekdays, find my way up to the bell tower, place some planks across the mounting beams for the bell, and make it my special little hiding place. I would take up some books, comic books also, usually a flashlight, and sometimes my BB gun.
The Everman Journal Page 10
