Breaking Blue

by Timothy Egan

  “You sure?” Frail and feeble—it didn’t sound like Clyde.

  “His attorney, Grainey, makes him out like he’s just going to fall over any minute,” the sheriff said.

  “Not the Clyde Ralstin I know.”

  Hendrick told about a few dustups Ralstin had been involved with since he turned eighty. “He is not a man to be trifled with, no matter his age,” said the Lapwai police chief. “He came back to town a few years ago, riding a bus here from Montana for a funeral. Buddy of his. So on the bus, he got in a fight.”

  “Ralstin did?”

  “Yes. Clyde. Didn’t start it without just cause, though. Couple of guys were drinking. Making a ruckus. Causing a scene on the bus, from what I hear. Clyde gets up and goes after ’em. One of the guys was forty years old—and Clyde knocked him out. The other fellow, a twenty-five-year-old, he wouldn’t have any part of him after he seen what he did to his friend.”

  “How do you know about this?”

  “Clyde told me. Heard from somebody else, too. He banged his knee up during the fight—but that was nothing compared to what Clyde did to the other guy.”

  That was more like it, Bamonte thought—the Ralstin who had smashed his son-in-law’s head into the sidewalk, the cop who took on all comers in the police gym, the master of Mother’s Kitchen.

  “Got himself in another fight, just a few years ago,” Hendrick continued.

  “When he was what—eighty-four, eighty-five years old?”

  “Yeah. Must’ve been. This time, he’s in Spokane, driving around, doing I don’t know what. So he bumps somebody’s fender, by accident, and the guy gets real hot. He chases after Clyde, catches up with him. The guy reaches inside Ralstin’s car and grabs his wife. Then he starts calling Clyde a son of a bitch. That was all it took. Clyde nailed him right there.”

  “He tell you that story, too?”

  “Yes, he did. He said, ‘You know, I must be losing my punch.’ I said, ‘Why’s that, Clyde?’ He says, ‘I hit him three or four times and I couldn’t put him down.’ ”

  TALKING TO a Lake County sheriff’s deputy in Montana, Bamonte was wondering what Ralstin had been up to since his visit to Saint Ignatius. The deputy said Ralstin had been traveling. Just after Bamonte’s visit, he went to southern California to see his son, who was in the navy, stationed in San Diego.

  “I thought he was too sick to get around?”

  “No, sir.”

  Another source—anonymous, a onetime friend of Clyde’s, he said—told Bamonte that Ralstin had been back in Lapwai, visiting relatives. It appeared to the sheriff that he was taking care of loose ends, rushing to see family members before he died or was arrested, whichever came first.

  The picture of a peripatetic octogenarian, making peace and shoring up old stories, did not match the image presented in a letter Bamonte had just received from Phil Grainey. It was addressed to the sheriff and Thomas Metzger, the Pend Oreille prosecutor. The letter read:

  As you know, I represent Clyde Ralstin of St. Ignatius, Montana.

  In my previous conferences with Sheriff Bamonte, I have expressed my very strong concern that Mr. Ralstin, because of his advanced age and deteriorating health, would be unable to withstand the ordeal of being charged with the 1935 murder of George Conniff. Since my last conversation with Sheriff Bamonte, I have obtained a medical report from Mr. Ralstin’s physician, Dr. Clancy Cone, which I am enclosing herewith. The letter speaks for itself but clearly gives strong support for my concern.

  Mr. Ralstin has a history of internal bleeding and significant heart disease together with a number of other physical problems which place him at high risk. The process alone, and the resulting stress of being faced with criminal charges, would place him in serious jeopardy and perhaps even lead to his death, regardless of its outcome.

  I have discussed in detail with Mr. Ralstin the accusations set forth in the newspaper articles and the additional information supplied to me by Sheriff Bamonte. Mr. Ralstin absolutely denies any involvement in a burglary ring and the slaying of George Conniff. He says that he is innocent and I am convinced that he will maintain his innocence to the end.

  I certainly sympathize with the family of Mr. Conniff and recognize their desire to receive some form of retribution for the loss of their father. If the evidence was sufficient to lead a jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Ralstin was involved, then no one could fault them for wanting to press for a jury verdict. However, in this instance, there is clearly insufficient evidence to lead to a conviction and more importantly the accused would probably not live to the end of a trial. Since a verdict of any sort is unlikely, the only result would be the loss of Mr. Ralstin’s life and the destruction of his family.

  Hopefully, some sense of humanity and compassion will prevail over the desire to close this case, and Mr. Ralstin and his wife will be allowed to live out their few remaining years in peace.

  Very truly yours,

  French, Mercer & Grainey

  Attorneys-at-Law

  Philip J. Grainey

  Enclosed was a two-page medical summary from Dr. Clancy L. Cone of Missoula. Dr. Cone explained that Ralstin suffered from heart disease, which the doctor treated by a valvularplasty procedure. Ralstin’s memory was diminished and his speech slurred after the valvularplasty. His arteries were narrowing. He had a peptic ulcer, gout, anemia, and occasional internal bleeding. Dr. Cone ended his letter with this conclusion:

  I see Mr. Ralstin’s health status at this point as very fragile, in part because of his advanced age, although he has been a remarkable physical specimen. In addition the problems of two causes for intestinal hemorrhage and a known tight narrowing of the coronary artery which may set the stage for symptoms of angina or conceivably heart damage. I feel it very risky for him to be subjected to a prolonged episode of emotional stress, fatigue, interruption in his current life routine to the point that I doubt seriously that Clyde could be put through a lengthy trial without the high risk of medical complications.

  * * *

  TOM METZGER, the prosecutor, ran into Bamonte in Newport and asked him what he was working on. The sheriff rattled off a few drunk-driving cases and a robbery and told of an investigation into the latest cult to discover the far reaches of the Pend Oreille.

  “Anything else?”

  Bamonte looked to the ground. “Still chasing a few loose ends on Conniff.”

  “Conniff? Jeez, Tony. When are you going to give it up?”

  “Got a few things left to check. You haven’t been much help, Tom.”

  “Just where the hell do you think you’re going with this thing?”

  “Till the end. Till there’s nothing left to check. I’m running out of time, too.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He’s going to die. Ralstin is.”

  “So what do you think I’m going to do—drag some old codger back here and then put him away for life?”

  “It’s not my job to determine punishment, Tom. I started this, and I intend to see it through, with or without your help.”

  SICK AND BEDRIDDEN, Sarah Schultz had sent her son to fetch the sheriff. She was ninety-one years old and had known Clyde Ralstin since the 1920s, when they were neighbors in the Nez Percé country of Idaho, which her father had homesteaded. She never liked Clyde. The man seemed to run over people, Indians and whites alike. She had been following Bamonte’s case in the Spokane papers. When the name Ralstin first appeared, it touched in her memory a forgotten episode from a nearly forgotten decade.

  The summer air settled in the Spokane Valley, gathering smog, and made life uncomfortable for anyone stuck indoors without air-conditioning. Mrs. Schultz lived by herself in a two-story house in the city. She moved to Spokane in the early 1930s, after losing everything—the family farm, her life savings—in the Depression. She seemed very weak, a woman with little control over anything in her life. Before another day passed, she wanted to make sure that Sheriff Bamonte was aware of something
about the man he was pursuing.

  “He’s killed before, you know,” she said.

  “I did not know. Tell me, please.”

  “ ’Long about the same time. In the 1930s, I’m sure.”

  “What happened?”

  “He shot and killed a boy. The son of a friend of mine. I’m not sure how old, but he was just a kid. And then, Ralstin got away with it.”

  “Why? I don’t follow.”

  “Well, he was a policeman. Killed the boy in the line of duty, or so he said. Ralstin used to brag about it, from what I heard.”

  “Do you know the boy’s name?”

  “Roger … Roger … something. His mother was Mrs. Clifford. Docia Clifford. But the boy’s last name was different, because she had remarried.”

  “And the year—you don’t remember what year?”

  “No. In the 1930s, some time then.”

  “Here in Spokane?”

  “Yes. In Hillyard.”

  “I’ll find a record of it.”

  “They had this hearing, afterward. Some kind of inquest. I sat through it with Mrs. Clifford, and it was a total sham. They covered up what Ralstin had done, and protected him. That’s what it was all about. My friend lost her son, who was a fine boy, a good student who had never done anything wrong. Her other son went on to become a judge, so you can imagine how Roger might have turned out. And Ralstin, he … he … he got away with it.”

  Bamonte stood, jolted by the tip, anxious to dash out the door. “I can’t thank you enough, Mrs. Schultz.”

  “Is this helpful?”

  “In a big way.”

  “Can I tell you something else?”

  “Certainly.”

  “It’s just my opinion. This other thing I told, that really happened.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Clyde Ralstin wasn’t a policeman. He was a criminal who put on a uniform.”

  THE STORY of Ralstin shooting a kid, if true, fit the image Bamonte had been trying to flesh out—not the frail former judge trying to live the last days of his life in peace. Bamonte felt that he understood a few things about killers. Usually, somebody who could kill another human craves excitement, a blood lust of sorts. Often, the killer is weak and insecure, looking for power or assurance in desperate acts. To snuff a life satisfied both needs. Little things became standoffs, to be settled only by one man in absolute triumph, the other on the ground, crushed.

  Bamonte asked his friend Bill Morlin, the reporter for the Spokesman-Review, to search his newspaper morgue for the killing. Morlin, as intrigued as Bamonte about the true character of Clyde Ralstin, found nothing in the paper’s files, under Ralstin, about a shooting. Nothing under homicides. He went to the coroner’s office, asking about inquests from the 1930s. Bingo—something came up on an Officer Ralstin. They gave him the date. He went back to the paper and discovered a packet of pastry-flaked yellow clips that the librarian said had been taken from an envelope marked “Police—Shootings By” and put under a general crime category.

  Among the clips was a story from April 4, 1937, inside the paper, wedged between a piece on “Midget Dancers United by Cupid” and an account of firebombing and rioting in Nelson, British Columbia. The article was headlined BOY OF 15 SHOT TO DEATH IN FLIGHT FROM POLICEMAN. The six-paragraph story told of Roger Irvine, age fifteen, a student at John Rogers High School in the Hillyard section of Spokane, who was killed by a bullet which pierced his heart from behind. The boy was joyriding, along with two companions, in a 1937 Plymouth coupe they had stolen. The patrolmen were in pursuit when Irvine, the driver, slammed on the brakes, which caused the police car to smash into it. The boys then fled and were fired on as they tried to run away from the officers.

  “The bullet that ended young Irvine’s life was fired by Prowl Car Officer Clyde Ralstin,” the story said.

  In the same file, Morlin found several follow-up pieces and a copy of Ralstin’s resignation. He showed these to Bamonte. The second story, dated April 5, 1937, not only confirmed what the old woman had said but elaborated on it:

  Irvine, described as a bright and orderly student, who enrolled at the Rogers school from Kellogg, Idaho, the first of this year, was shot as he and his two companions jumped from the stolen car and ran down an embankment. The course of the bullet, which entered the lower part of the youth’s back and ranged upward near his neck, showed Officer Ralstin had shot low in an effort to hit the boy’s leg, Prosecutor Ralph E. Foley said at an informal coroner’s hearing.

  The youth evidently stumbled while running down the embankment, Prosecutor Foley said, and received the bullet in a most vital part of his body.

  This account assured Bamonte of several things. First, despite the official fuzziness from the Spokane Police Department, and the void of formal records on him, Ralstin worked for the department. Second, he had been demoted from detective—as he was in the last stories Bamonte had seen on him, from 1935—to prowl car officer, as he was called in 1937. Third, and most important, he shot the kid in the back. Joyriding was hardly a capital crime, and the fleeing boys were not exactly threatening the officers’ lives. The kid had stolen a car, smashed it up, and then ran away when chased by policemen. For that, he was shot in the back. A marksman like Ralstin, the best shooter in the department, a man who could split a duck’s beak from fifty yards, would not aim for the legs and hit the spine. He shot to kill.

  In recounting the boy’s short life, the paper wrote:

  Roger had never been in trouble before. He possessed many awards of honor certificates from public schools to show excellence in scholastics. Active in virtually all athletics, he captained the Logan grade school baseball team in Spokane and had turned out for track at John Rogers High School. Teachers acclaimed him as always a gentleman. At Kellogg high school the youth starred in football and showed all-American promise.

  While in Kellogg, he lived with his brother and sister-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Irvine, saved the money he made while attending school and visited his mother regularly.

  “Roger was at all times a gentleman, studied and worked hard,” said his mother, Mrs. Docia Clifford. “I have been assured of this again and again by his teachers, his pastor and his friends. He and I were the closest of pals and he always brought his problems to me.

  “I hold no malice toward that Officer Ralstin. He has my sympathy. It might have been his boy. I do not feel that Roger was a criminal and I know that those who knew him do not believe so.

  “My trust in God makes me believe that whatever is done is done for the best. I am not able to feel just now that Roger’s death is for the best, but I know that later I will realize that. As I see it now, it was just a mistake, not a sin, but a mistake. Roger was not a criminal, and I know that he took that car just for a thrill.”

  A third story, dated April 6, 1937, told of a coroner’s probe and mentioned deep in the story that “police said there is little likelihood of charges being brought against Officer Ralstin, whose duty it is, they explained, to stop any escaping felons.” Later that night, a six-member coroner’s jury followed the prosecutor’s recommendation and absolved Ralstin. The killing was justified, they said, because “Roger Irvine was fleeing from justice after the commission of a felony, to wit: the unlawful taking of an automobile.”

  Included in the packet was a letter of resignation from Ralstin, dated three months after he killed the boy. The notice, and a small newspaper clip, did not say precisely why he left the police force, but referred to a dispute when Ralstin failed to show up for work. No mention was made of previous suspensions or demotions, just a hint of the contentious nature of a man who seldom did anything without a fight.

  “Upon acceptance of my resignation, you are hereby authorized and directed to disregard my notice of appeal from that certain order of suspension dated June 7th, 1937, and signed by Commissioner A. B. Colburn,” Ralstin wrote. “It is understood that with the acceptance of my resignation that the records of the Civil Service Commission and t
he Spokane Police Department will show that I resigned as a member of the Spokane Police Department.”

  In the accompanying newspaper story—a three-paragraph notice—Ralstin was asked about the resignation. “I asked for a six-month leave of absence because I had a chance to get a better job—one I always wanted,” Ralstin was quoted as saying. “When my request was denied, there was nothing else to do but resign.”

  FROM THAT DAY in July 1937 on, there was no mention of Ralstin in any story in the paper’s morgue. In the file marked “Police—Shootings By,” no stories appeared for more than thirty years. Then, a clip from the late 1960s carried an account of a shooting by a young patrolman who fired on an armed robber as he was fleeing a department-store holdup in downtown Spokane. The robber, hit with a single shot between his eyes, was left in a vegetative state afterward, severely brain-damaged by the wound. An inquest found that the shooting was justified.

  Of course, Bamonte recognized the story instantly. The patrolman was Bamonte himself.

  22.

  The River

  ALONE ON the Pend Oreille River, Bamonte guided his boat downstream, following the slow current, no particular direction in mind. It was a Saturday morning in late July; the sky was smeared to a faded yellow from forest fire smoke and lazy air. Another drought, perhaps the worst in twenty years, made people cranky and less tolerant, a behavior pattern the sheriff could chart along with the high temperature readings. Soon as it got hot, and the winds disappeared, the men of the Pend Oreille lapsed into their mean streak, draining six-packs every few hours, bashing their wives, smashing up cars. The sheriff had his hands full chasing calls in the distant corners of the county.

  And it was not much better at home, at the end of those summer days when the light held to the sky till nearly ten p.m. Bamonte was trying to reconcile with his wife, a trial return.

  “Just move back, and see what happens,” he had asked Betty. “We don’t have to do anything. No conditions. We’ll be like … roommates, if you want.”