The Everman Journal

by Clark E Tanner

  “Kim, did you get an address or phone number for Eileen?” asked Sam

  “Yes sir.” She answered “She never left town. In fact, she never left the house. Mrs. Eileen Brandenberg lives at 913 Mossback Road. According to old records, that’s where she lived with her father and brothers.”

  Velma glanced at a clock on her desk. It was 5:37pm. What do you say I take you two to dinner, then in the morning we’ll go see what’s at the bottom of that river? There’s no point contacting Eileen until we have something to tell her.”

  Sam and Monica nodded their agreement. Thanking Kim for her diligence they disconnected the call and followed Velma to the parking lot.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sam awoke the next day, June 1st, to see a hint of a glow through the closed hotel room curtains. The sun was barely peeking over the hills to the east. Through half-closed eyes he read the clock on the nightstand. 5:38am glowed in large red numbers.

  He rolled out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom and spent about fifteen minutes in a hot shower. The room’s bed was comfortable and he had slept well. Now the hot water was relaxing his muscles after yesterday’s long ride in the car. By the time he was finished and had a pot of coffee brewing he was feeling refreshed and ready to meet the day.

  The coffee was as terrible as hotel room coffee always is. There were no surprises there. It was 6:10 when he heard Monica moving around next door. He tapped on the wall to let her know he was up. A few seconds later his cell beeped.

  “Hey, early bird.” Mon’s voice said, “Have you eaten anything yet?”

  He smiled. “Now, would I go without you?”

  She yawned. “Sorry about that.”

  “Didn’t you sleep well?” He asked

  “Actually, I did.” She said, “I’m just slow waking. I’m actually up and getting ready to meet the Quincy-ites out at the river.”

  Sam said, “Whoa, girl. Let’s not forget the part about eating. I’m hungry and the only thing the room coffee did for me was to whet my appetite.”

  “Ok,” she said. I’m hungry too. I’ll be ready in about 20 minutes. Can you wait that long before eating the wallpaper?”

  Sam looked around him at the walls. “Actually, there is no wallpaper in here. It’s wood paneling. And I swore off wood paneling years ago, so I’ll wait.”

  Twenty two minutes later Mon was at Sam’s door, dressed appropriately for the higher altitude and ready for some hiking. She wore a blue plaid flannel shirt tucked into blue jeans, all topped with a jeans jacket with cotton lining. Sam looked down at a brand new pair of hiking boots and smiled. “You’re ready for roughing it.”

  Monica laughed, because with the exception of Sam’s shirt being a blend of reds, they were coincidentally dressed almost exactly alike. “The locals are going to think we’re twins.” She said

  They went to a café named “Morning Thunder” near the lodge and were glad they did. Monica had Raspberry cobbler, over which she mentioned more than once that she was sort of on vacation and didn’t have to eat healthy if she didn’t want to. Sam ordered what had to be the world’s largest pancake. There was a stack of three on his plate. It was what he requested, but that was before he knew they covered the surface of the plate. Topped with strawberry jam they were hot and fluffy and delicious. They both followed breakfast with a cup of fresh coffee and wondered aloud if the mountain air had anything to do with their voracious hunger, and agreed that they didn’t care what the reason was, they were happy.

  A call on Sam’s cell during breakfast was a confirmation from Velma that she had contacted two guys who volunteered as search and rescue for the county and they had happily agreed to meet at the river at 0800 hrs. They left the restaurant at 7:35 and headed down the canyon to meet Velma and her team.

  After everyone had made their way down the steep, winding trail to the river’s edge, they discovered they would have to wade through the shallows to the other side in order to access the pool described in Everman’s file. Taking off their shoes and socks and rolling up pant legs, Velma and the two agents braved the cold water and crossed over in bare feet.

  Sitting on rocks above the pool they put their socks and shoes back on. They would have to remove them before going back but for the time being they all needed the warmth.

  The two young Search and Rescue volunteers suited up with their equipment and entered the water. While they made their way to the depths of the pool Velma shared with the agents.

  “As soon as I heard Eileen’s married name yesterday afternoon I realized who she was. I’ve only met Eileen Brandenberg one time, but the name rang a bell and I remembered meeting her during the Sheriff’s last election campaign. With both, her maiden name and married name and also her home address it didn’t take me long this morning to find the old report in storage over at the courthouse.

  “Just like it says in the Everman file, she returned home from her visit with her aunt that year to an empty house. When she finally became alarmed and called the Department, since she had been home for three days with no contact from her father or brothers a search was begun immediately. All of the usual measures were taken. I don’t have to go down the list with you. But even with statewide feelers being put out none of them were ever heard from again. The missing persons case was filed away unsolved and there are probably only a handful of people in this town any longer that even remember the Dornan men or their disappearance.”

  The divers popped to the surface and climbed out onto the rocks. They both immediately took off their wet suits and began drying with towels to get their body warmth back. Their names were Roger and Mike. Roger gave the report.

  “Well, there’s a car down there. We went down about 30 feet before we could see it, even with our lights. The pool is generally conical in shape. The bottom is almost pointed, like an ice cream cone. When the vehicle entered the water it either went in backwards or turned as it sank, because the rear end of the car is sitting at the bottom and the front end is pointing upward.”

  Monica jumped in. “Anything in the car?”

  “No Ma’am,” he responded and Mon caught Sam grinning out the corner of her eye at the term ‘Ma’am’. “The windshield is broken inward and driver’s side back seat window. So if anything was in the passenger compartment, well, after all this time…”

  “What about the trunk?” asked the Undersheriff.

  “Because of the narrow space the back end of the car is wedged into, we couldn’t get to the trunk.” Roger shrugged. “Now if we were to go back down there with the proper tools we might be able to take out the rear seat and get to the trunk that way.”

  Sam shook his head. “We’ll have to be careful how we go about collecting evidence at this point. If we aren’t careful the river could take it away unless we control the process. Did you get a license number?”

  It was Mike’s turn to speak. “Yes sir. I just wrote it down on our clipboard before I forgot.”

  He handed the board to Velma and she radioed Dispatch with instructions to contact DMV and have them go through their archived records.

  By the time they made it back to Velma’s office it was mid-morning. She brewed a pot of coffee to warm them all and they sipped as she made phone calls to organize a dive team qualified to collect whatever evidence might be found in the trunk. Because of the location, raising the vehicle would be major cost and effort, and since having the vehicle itself on dry ground would render very little, if any, hard evidence, they all agreed it wasn’t worth attempting.

  On the other hand, if there were bodies in the trunk after all these years, it was imperative that as much as possible be recovered and brought back up for autopsy and burial.

  By the time she was off the phone and they had finished their coffee the clerk from DMV had called back with results. The vehicle tags had indeed been registered to Richard Dornan, same address in East Quincy. The registration had expired in February of 1970 and had never been renewed.

  “Well,” Velma sigh
ed as she hit a button to end the call, “it might be a while before we know what’s in the trunk. But I think we have enough to go talk to Eileen now.”

  With Velma driving her marked county vehicle, Sam and Mon climbed in with her and she took them all out to Mossback Road.

  As they stopped in front of a small but neat home facing a street that had at some point over the years been paved, Sam and Monica noted silently that there were at least half a dozen homes clustered in the small neighborhood. Everman would not have been able to get away with what he had done if there had been this many neighbors in 1969.

  A woman was in the front yard of the residence wearing black slacks, a white cotton t-shirt under a heavy wool sweater and gardening gloves. She had been digging in the dirt with a hand trough, under a shrub near her front door when she heard the car pull into the driveway. Now she stood facing them as they approached her, hands dangling at her sides and a frown furrowing her brow.

  “You’ve found them.” was all she said in greeting.

  Eileen invited the three officers into her living room and encouraged them to be comfortable. They sat in an uneven circle around the room now, Sam and Monica at opposite ends of the sofa, Velma in a small wicker rocking chair, and Eileen perched on a hassock in front of an old overstuffed chair, looking pensively from the agents, to Velma and back.

  Sam imagined her looking fifteen years old and he could see what Cole Everman’s attraction must have been. At sixty, she was still a beautiful woman. She had maintained a slim figure and it was apparent she was a person who liked the out of doors. Her skin was tanned and weathered, but not in a way to diminish her soft beauty. He also now knew exactly what Everman had meant by the term “Elizabeth Taylor eyes”.

  They told her about Ricky’s car and the ongoing investigation at the river. Eileen was incredulous. “All these years.” She shook her head, staring at the top of a coffee table in the center of the room. “Of all the places I imagined they could be…waiting…wondering if one day I would get a phone call from Ricky or Frank…”

  Her eyes filled with tears but nothing ran down her face. She blinked quickly and dabbed with the back of a still gloved hand, then she looked at her hands as though surprised she was wearing the gloves and took them off. Dropping them on the coffee table, she looked around at her visitors and with her tone changing to anger she continued. “Cole Everman did that to them? Oh, my God! It’s unbelievable!” She buried her face in her hands momentarily then dropped her hands back to her lap. “I never thought…never made any connection. I never even saw him again. Someone must have told me he went into the military because for some reason that’s the memory I have, but not because we had any contact at all. He was just out of my life and I don’t think I’ve given him a moment’s thought in over forty years.”

  Sam sat forward to the sofa’s edge. “Mrs. Brandenberg, can we ask a few personal questions just for the sake of clearing some things up?”

  She nodded and gave him her direct attention.

  “In Everman’s confession he indicates that he thought either your father or your brothers were abusing you…”

  Eileen shook her head violently and sat up straighter on the hassock. “Absolutely not!” she insisted. “Why would he have thought that?” As she asked, her expression changed to one of disgust.

  Monica spoke now, softly to calm Eileen down a bit. “Eileen, he saw that you were pregnant and since you had dropped out of school he assumed things. I’m sorry that’s all the explanation we have, but it’s all he wrote.”

  Eileen heaved a long sigh and her shoulders relaxed. She opened her hands and examined her palms for a moment then explained. “Cole never new anything more than that because it was never Cole Everman’s damned business.” She said calmly. “The reason I stopped seeing Cole was because I could tell that he was growing very attached to me and I could not let it go farther. I was secretly dating a guy who was four years older than I was. He wasn’t even in High School any more. I got pregnant, so I didn’t go back to school when the new year started, and Bill and I got married just before he shipped out to Viet Nam. He…died there…in December of 1969. Even though I was barely sixteen, since I was married and a military dependent, I received his benefits and raised our son here, alone. I never married again. So for all these years it has been me and my son, Carl, who lives in Portola with his wife and three children, and Cole Everman murdered my family for nothing.”

  The anger was back in her voice and her hands clenched to fists, then opened again, and she just sat, head down, saying no more.

  Giving Eileen assurances that they would contact her as soon as they had any news from the divers, Velma and the two agents expressed their sympathies and left her sitting alone in her living room.

  As they opened the doors to Velma’s patrol car Monica looked at the Undersheriff and Sam over the top of the vehicle. “I’m really wishing right now that Cole Everman wasn’t dead. Because I’d kind of like to shoot the son-of-a-bitch.”

  CHAPTER 6

  By mid-afternoon Velma had been contacted by the recovery team. They were enroute to the county morgue with what had been retrieved from the trunk of the car in the river.

  “There wasn’t much to get”, the team leader told her. “But it amounts to three skeletons; that much is evident at a glance. After all this time just the natural bacteria and constant movement of water caused by the waterfall has sloughed away all soft tissue. We did recover scraps of material that must have been clothing, and as you might expect, buttons, buckles, rotten belts and shoes, some pocket contents, oh, and a wedding band.”

  Velma had her office phone on speaker now, so Sam and Mon could listen in. At the mention of the wedding band Sam’s eyebrows went up. Monica read into it immediately. “The father never took his wedding band off even though his wife had been dead for fifteen years.”

  Velma asked the man on the phone, “Were you able to make any observations at all…for instance, the skulls?”

  After a moment of silence the team leader’s voice came back. “Are we looking for bullet holes?”

  Even though he couldn’t see her, Velma nodded her head as she answered, “Yes”.

  “Yes ma’am. In one there were two very small holes in the forehead, almost on top of one another. Clean and round. Looks like either .22 or .32 caliber. Nothing larger than that. Then, in another, the largest of the three, there is a similar hole at the base of the skull in back. That’s all I was able to see at the scene. Does that help any?”

  Velma exchanged a knowing look with Sam and Monica. “Yes, it does. Thank you very much. I’ll check in on the pathologist later. Thank you.”

  He said his goodbyes and they disconnected.

  From where she was sitting on the corner of her desk, Velma raised and dropped her hands. “Well, I think we have our questions answered, don’t you?” They both nodded agreement. “I’ll drop in on Eileen after dinner and tell her what we’ve found. I’m sure it won’t be a problem releasing the remains for a decent burial. Case closed here?”

  Sam stood from his chair and Monica followed suit. “Yes, I guess anything left to be done is all yours, Velma. We’re slowly putting together the jigsaw puzzle that is Cole Everman.”

  Monica added, “And we need to continue down this trail, if only so we might be able to bring closure to other people like Eileen Brandenberg. So far, everything Everman has written has been accurate. If the trend continues, we have some cases to look into in three other states before we’re finished.”

  Using the argument that darkness comes early in the canyon and they had a long ride ahead of them, Velma talked the agents into staying one more night. In the morning she met them back at Morning Thunder for breakfast then saw them off as they headed back down toward Oroville and eventually, Stockton.

  Sam drove this time. As he negotiated the turns on the highway that followed the Feather River, he said, “Very nice and hospitable folks in that town, huh?’ Monica agreed.

&n
bsp; “Nice cooperation between the various departments there also. Kind of family-like; y’know?”

  Monica nodded and said, “Uh- huh.”

  After a moment Sam went on. “You gotta feel badly for Eileen though. I mean, her life was basically truncated by the actions of a crazy…”

  “What do you mean by ‘truncated’?” Mon asked.

  “Well, I mean, she never married again. Just stayed single and raised her boy there all by herself.”

  “A choice.”

  “Well, yeah, a choice made after everyone in her life was snatched away from her.”

  Monica turned in her seat to look at Sam more squarely. “Sam, she could have married again if she wanted to. There was nothing saying she had to live the way she has. She made a choice.”

  Sam glanced her way quickly but the curves in the road demanded his attention. “Hey, Mon, can I ask you a personal question?”

  Her eyebrow went up for a moment then she said, “Oh, now wait a minute. Does your question have any link to the discussion we’re having about Eileen Brandenberg?”

  Sam shrugged and tilted his head a little “Well, it’s just that over the few years we’ve known one another and worked closely with each other, I’ve never known of you to date anyone seriously, and…”

  She held up a hand, palm toward him. “Whoa Hoss. Be careful now. You aren’t getting ready to ask me out are you?”

  Sam looked shocked. “Oh! No! Hey, Mon, we’re partners; right?”

  “Yes, we’re partners…”

  “And all I’m doing is expressing concern for you as a partner and a friend. You might even consider it a sexless question. Just a curiosity question between ‘buds’. We could even pretend you’re a guy if you want. I’ll word it that way. Hey, bud, you ever gonna get married or what?”

  He glanced at her once more, grinning and she sat with mouth hanging open in an effort to hide her own growing smile.