“He talked about Norm all the time,” said Thelma. “I think Norm was in that restaurant down the road almost as often as Earl. He’d park in back so nobody’d know he was there. A lot of good that did.”
“Did Earl ever mention any names?” said Henry. “People that Norm might have talked about?”
“I’m sure he did, but it’s been thirteen or fourteen years since Norm disappeared. Come to think of it, Earl did mention a couple young guys who came in the restaurant a year or two ago. He said they were askin’ about Norm.”
“That was probably my friend Larry and me,” said Henry.
“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,” said Thelma. “My memory isn’t what it used to be. Have you talked to Martha Bettis?”
“That’s where we’re going next,” said Austin.
“She helps out at the library on Mondays and Fridays. What’s today—Thursday?”
“Yes, it is,” said Henry.
“Then she should be home. Do you know where she lives?”
“I do,” said Austin.
Martha Bettis’s heart skipped a beat when she turned from watering her zinnias and saw Tom Austin’s patrol car roll up the driveway. A petite woman in her late seventies, she wore blue tennis shoes, shorts, a light-colored blouse, and a straw hat. “Hello, Martha,” said Austin, closing the driver’s door behind him. “How ya been?”
“You startled me, Tom. For a second I thought—”
“I know, Martha. I’d like you to meet Hank Glance.”
Henry walked over and shook Martha’s hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Bettis. Your zinnias are beautiful. I especially like the orange ones.”
“Thank you,” said Martha, reaching down to turn off the faucet. “My, they’re hiring them young these days.”
“Hank just graduated from Chico State,” said Austin. “He came out number one on the warden’s list.”
“That’s wonderful. Why don’t you two come inside and I’ll pour you a glass of iced tea.”
As they entered the house, Glance and Austin heard a voice coming from the large birdcage hanging at the corner of Martha Bettis’s shaded front porch. “The captain’s an asshole. The captain’s an asshole.”
“I see you still have your parrot,” said Austin, laughing.
“Oscar can be embarrassing at times. Norman taught him to say that twenty years ago.”
“Is Oscar an African grey?” said Henry. “They’re supposed to be incredibly smart.”
“He’s too smart for his own good,” said Martha. “I usually put him in the back room when I know company’s coming.”
Entering the small, carpeted living room, Henry examined several framed photographs of the man Martha Bettis identified as her husband. An 8 by 10, black-and-white photo hanging near the doorway showed a young and slender Norman Bettis standing on the deck of a battleship with a row of shipmates. Sitting on the hearth was an enlarged black-and-white photo of Martha and Norman on their wedding day. “And I took this one in 1924, the year Norman was hired by Fish and Game,” said Martha, handing Henry a glass of iced tea. “He only wore that Stetson when the captain was around.”
“The captain Oscar mentioned?” said Henry.
“No, that captain came along twenty years later,” said Martha, smiling. “Please sit down and make yourselves comfortable. What can I do for you gentlemen?”
“Martha, Henry and I would like to ask you a few questions about Norm and his disappearance.” Martha began to tear up. Mindful of her feelings, Tom and Henry waited until she regained her composure.
“Why the renewed interest?” said Martha, rubbing her eyes. “It’s been years since those detectives came to the house.”
“Hank and I have been kicking over a few rocks lately, and we think we may have something to go on.” Glance and Austin spent the next half hour questioning Martha about her husband’s disappearance on Thursday, December 13, 1956.
“I was asked those same questions every day for a week,” said Martha. “Norm never talked about people he’d had run-ins with because he didn’t want to worry me.”
“You mentioned Norm’s office a few minutes ago,” said Henry.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Martha. “Those detectives went through his desk with a fine-toothed comb and couldn’t find anything.”
“What about a diary?” said Austin. “The department always provided us with those hardbound Daily Reminders.”
“I’m so glad you brought that up,” said Martha. “I was cleaning out the backyard shed the other day and found a cardboard box under the work bench. It was filled with those green diaries you’re talking about.”
“You mean the detectives didn’t go through Norm’s diaries?” said Henry.
“They couldn’t find ’em, so I figured Norm must have thrown them away. He was such a neatnik. Everything had to be in its place. If something was lyin’ around, Norman would throw it out.”
“He wouldn’t have thrown away his current diary,” said Austin.
“No, his 1956 diary is probably still in his patrol car. Wherever that is.”
“Would you mind if we looked through the ones you found?” said Henry.
“Not at all. Take the whole box.”
Anne was reading on the front porch swing when Henry arrived at the Sharp residence at 6:00. “Hi, Anne,” said Henry, carrying a box of apples across the sidewalk and up the narrow cement walkway.
“I’m so happy to see you, Henry. Where did you get those beautiful apples?”
“I drove up to Paradise to meet with the captain the other day and saw this little stand on the side of the road. These are the best apples I’ve ever eaten. Even better than the ones we used to buy in Oak Glen down south.”
“My parents will love you for it,” said Anne. “Come over here and sit down on the swing with me.”
Sycamores, bigleaf maples, and a giant valley oak shaded half of the Sharp family’s one-acre backyard. The other half contained a variety of mature fruit trees and scattered residuals from June Sharp’s once-thriving vegetable garden. “Henry, would you like to walk out and pick a couple tomatoes with me?” said June, a forty-four-year-old version of Anne with shorter hair and strikingly attractive in her own right.
“I’d love to,” said Henry. “I’m surprised you still have tomatoes in September.”
“A few tomatoes and some butternut squash,” said June. “About this time every year, the deer come across the road from the park and glean what’s left of the garden.”
“I see that.”
“We don’t mind sharing with the deer, as long as they leave Dave’s fruit trees alone.”
“Those trees look pretty healthy to me. Looks like peach, nectarine, cherry, and . . . is that an apricot?”
“You seem to know your fruit trees, Henry.”
“My parents have a small farm in Temecula.”
“Anne told me that. You’re the subject of a lot of her conversations.”
“I hope that’s a good thing. I think the world of your daughter.”
“Mom,” shouted Monica, Anne’s youngest sister, “Dad wants to know if he should start the barbeque.”
“She feels the same way about you, Henry.”
“Mom!”
“I heard you, Monica. Tell your father to go ahead. The chicken is in the refrigerator. I’ll be there in a minute.”
While June and Anne prepared the salad, Dave Sharp, a tall, thin man in his late forties, peppered Henry with questions about everything from Henry’s ultimate career goals to fishing. An avid fly fisherman, Dave owned a drift boat, a skiff, and two canoes. He used the drift boat on the Sacramento River while maintaining the skiff and both canoes at the family’s Lake Almanor cabin. “People like Almanor for its trout fishing,” said Dave, “but I’ve caught some nice smallmouth bass in
that lake.”
“I haven’t had the opportunity to get up to Almanor yet,” said Henry, “but I’ve heard a lot about it.”
“Do you like to fish, Henry? I bet being a game warden, you know where most of the good fishing spots are. I remember one time I was about to release a nice steelhead over on the Sacramento River, downstream from Scotty’s Landing. I was hangin’ over the gunnel of my drift boat, when I looked up and saw that old game warden who used to be around here. He was hidin’ in the bushes above the riverbank, watching me with binoculars.”
“Wha’d ya do?” said Henry, laughing.
“I waved to him.”
“How did he react?”
“I must have embarrassed him, because he ducked out of sight and I never saw him again.”
“I think I know who you’re talking about. He retired seven or eight years ago. Tom Austin is the current Chico district warden. He’s a great guy and a good friend of mine.”
When the dinner dishes had been washed and put away, Henry and Anne took a stroll across the road to Bidwell Park. Coming to a bench on the shore of Big Chico Creek, Henry asked Anne if she’d like to sit and watch the sun go down.
“This looks like a great spot,” said Anne.
“Anne, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”
“What’s that, Henry?”
“Have you thought about where you’d like to teach after you get your credential?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I was wondering if you’d thought about Gridley. It’s a wonderful little town, and they have a good school system. I’ve done some research.”
“Gridley is thirty miles from Chico,” said Anne, a coy smile on her face. “That would require a lot of driving.”
“Well, not if you—”
“Henry, what is it you’re trying to say?”
“If you lived in Gridley, you wouldn’t have to drive so far.”
“By any chance, is this a marriage proposal?”
“Yes!” said Henry, pulling a tiny box from his pocket. “I know this isn’t the biggest diamond you’ve ever seen, but—”
“It’s beautiful, Henry. I accept!”
Henry and Anne had both been blessed with an extra helping of common sense. Before walking back to Anne’s house and telling her parents the news, they sat on the park bench for the next hour and discussed plans for what was to be a lengthy engagement. Since Anne was still almost two years away from earning her teaching credential, they decided that she would continue to live at home until the big day came.
TWENTY-THREE
Warden Henry Glance’s first full year on the job went by quickly. Between deer season, waterfowl season, pheasant season, trout season, salmon season, out-of-district assignments, and required training, he found little time to conduct a murder investigation. Glance did, however, set aside certain evenings every month for reading the thirty-one years of daily diaries Martha Bettis had given him. Beginning with the journal from 1924, the year Bettis was hired, Henry examined page after page, searching for clues to Norman Bettis’s disappearance.
On the evening of April 26, 1970, Henry arrived home from an out-of-district assignment working the high lakes northeast of Stirling City. After showering and calling Anne, he sat down at his desk, turned on the reading lamp, and opened Norman Bettis’s 1938 diary. Glance continued to read into the early morning hours, progressing through November and December of that year. That’s when he noticed that Bettis’s normally vague, unintelligible notes had become increasingly astute and easier to understand. According to Warden Bettis, federal wildlife agents had been conducting an undercover market-hunting investigation in and around the rice fields and wetlands of Butte, Glenn, and Colusa counties. He had been meeting weekly with the federal agents, keeping them abreast of the local gossip.
On Wednesday, December 14, 1938, Bettis wrote that he had received an anonymous telephone call. The caller said a Gridley resident named Dud Bogar was selling wild ducks to a turkey farm somewhere near Lincoln, California. Bettis indicated in his writings that he was familiar with Bogar and had suspected him of being a duck poacher since the first time he’d encountered him, in the early 1930s.
On Thursday, December 15, 1938, Bettis provided the information he’d learned about Dud Bogar to Federal Agent Walt Fletcher. On Thursday, December 22, 1938—three days before Christmas—Bettis wrote that he and Martha were coming out of King’s Market in Gridley when he saw Dud Bogar talking to the Butler Farms delivery-truck driver. When Bogar spotted Bettis watching him, he abruptly ended the conversation and walked away.
After reading until almost daylight, Henry slept until 10:00 a.m. and awoke with a renewed confidence that he would eventually solve the mystery of Norman Bettis’s disappearance. Later that day, April 27, 1970, he drove to the Butte County Sheriff’s Office in Oroville. “See where the sign above the door says RECORDS?” said the sheriff’s-office receptionist, pointing down the hallway. “Walk through that door and ask to speak with Lois Reed.”
Henry introduced himself to Reed, who was working at the information counter when he entered the room. A gracious, middle-aged woman with short, dark hair, Lois had begun working for the sheriff’s office just out of high school. During her twenty-five-year career in the records department, she had developed close working relationships with national, state, and local enforcement agencies throughout the United States.
“I have the serial number of a .30-30 rifle that was logged into the Sacramento Fish and Game office by Warden Norman Bettis in 1956,” said Henry. “Any information you could come up with about this rifle and its original owner could prove helpful to the investigation I’m working on.”
“Isn’t Norm Bettis the warden who disappeared?” said Lois, continuing to thumb through a stack of files. “I remember all the commotion in the sheriff’s office when that investigation was going on. Newspaper and television reporters were in here every day, asking for the latest scoop.”
“Yes,” said Henry. “Bettis’s warden position has been left open all these years. Since I’m the warden who finally took his place, I feel compelled to find some answers to his disappearance.”
“I see,” said Lois, staring at the fledgling wildlife officer in his crisp new uniform. “And you’re going to crack the case that every detective in Northern California couldn’t?”
“I’m just trying to tie up a few loose ends,” said Henry. “Ya never know where they might lead.”
“Are you having any success?”
“A little.”
“I remember Norm Bettis coming in here about once a week. The first words out of his mouth were, ‘Is the coffee hot?’ He and the previous sheriff were fishing buddies.”
“Interesting.”
“By the way, over in Archives, we have a file cabinet full of information about that investigation. Any time you want to go through it, let me know. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can do with this serial number you gave me. Where can I reach you?”
“Today’s actually my day off, so you’ll be able to reach me at home. I should be there for the rest of the day.”
After meeting with Lois at the sheriff’s office, Henry sat on his shaded front porch and slogged through ten more years of Norm Bettis’s diaries. Bettis had become considerably less productive during most of the 1940s, with few items of interest to write about.
“Here’s something,” said Henry, coming to the page labeled November 14, 1948:
Today I caught Dud Bogar’s kid and two others in Jeb Riddle’s packing shed with an overlimit of pheasants. Hollis is as big as his old man, and, from the looks of it, just as dumb.
Dud Bogar was mentioned in Bettis’s diaries for the last time on December 12, 1954:
I read in this morning’s paper that Ardis “Dud” Bogar passed away.
The phone on Henry Glance’s kitchen wall rang a
t 2:00 p.m. “Hello,” said Henry.
“Is this Warden Glance?”
“Yes, it is.”
“This is Lois at the Butte County Sheriff’s Office.”
“Yes, Lois. Thank you for getting back to me. Were you able to come up with anything?”
“The rifle was reported stolen in 1957, by its owner, Tucker Clement Stillwell.”
“Really?” said Henry.
“If Mr. Stillwell is still living, he’s ninety-two years old. His date of birth is July 13, 1877. The only address given for him is General Delivery, Kingfisher, Oklahoma.”
“That’s strange.”
“Why is it strange?”
“Norm Bettis logged the rifle into our Sacramento office in 1956. It stayed there until it was sold at auction in 1966. Why would it be reported stolen in 1957?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. The record shows that the rifle was a special edition, lever-action Winchester with special engraving. That’s all I could come up with.”
“It gives me a place to start,” said Henry. “Thanks so much for the help.”
“Any time. Drop in and see me if you want to look at the investigation files over in Archives.”
Henry telephoned the Kingfisher, Oklahoma, post office. He learned that Stillwell was a familiar name in Kingfisher. The postmaster refused to tell Henry anything else over the phone. After hanging up, Henry telephoned the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation and asked to speak with the game warden whose patrol district covered Kingfisher. “That would be Luke Haskins in Blaine,” said the dispatcher. “If you give me your number, I’ll have Warden Haskins call you.”
Tuesday morning at 6:00, Henry’s phone rang. Normally, he would have been up and around, but it was his day off and he had stayed up reading Bettis’s diaries until after midnight. “Good morning, Beverly,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“Uh, this isn’t Beverly,” came a male voice on the other end of the line. “This is Warden Luke Haskins in Oklahoma. Is this Warden Hank Glance?”
“Yes,” said Henry, now wide awake. “If anyone calls at this hour, it’s usually the sheriff’s graveyard-shift dispatcher.”
The Case of the Missing Game Warden Page 18