After Mom shut off the radio, the house felt creepy. Why were the police talking about Jay? Had he done something wrong? I expected a reaction from Mom, but the silence held fast until the grandfather clock struck a new hour. The bong of the chime echoed all around. I leaned forward, peering around the corner. She sat motionless; her eyes were wide and fixed on the radio. “Mom?” I softly called out.
Mom was a worrier, no doubt, but this time there was something in her attitude that I’d never seen before. Maybe it was the quiet, or perhaps the fright in her eyes, but it scared me.
Lately, I had been making every effort to be included in the adult realm. In light of the unfolding events, I was content to revert back to the role of a naïve child. I nestled deeper into the cushions.
Each Saturday morning there was a prelude to the shows. “Looking for a magical morning place to be? Step inside the magical world of ABC.” Fantastic Voyage came on, luring me to the doorway of escape, which I gladly stepped through.
The show was only half over before Mom’s panicking voice tugged me from Cartoonville and plopped me back into reality. She was arguing on the telephone with Sandy Tennant; her husband, Bill, was Sharon and Roman’s manager. “It will only take Bill five minutes to drive over there. Please. Jay’s name came up in the news report, and no one has heard from Sharon since yesterday.” There was a long pause. Her tone changed. “He plays tennis every day, dammit! I’m only asking for fifteen minutes of his time.” A hushed spell. Then her voice slightly softened. “Will you have him call me as soon as he gets there?”
At noon, Bill Tennant called with the unbelievable news. Mom grasped the phone to her chest as if it were her last link to Sharon.
“My baby’s dead.” The confusing words rattled in my mind. Murder was not part of my vocabulary. In my experience, death came only to people who were sick or old. How could Sharon be dead?
While Debbie went to get a neighbor, I hugged Mom. “It’s okay. Please stop crying. Let’s go sit on the couch.”
She refused to budge. She refused to let go of the phone. With a fisted hand, she pounded her leg as if to punish herself. “It can’t be true. . . . Oh, God, let her be okay,” she cried.
My stomach hitched as the first teardrop ran down my cheek. In a moment’s time, my life crashed to a halt, yet the familiar music from George of the Jungle sang out from the television. If Sharon really was dead, how could the cartoon play as if everything was fine?
Trailing Debbie, our neighbor, Joan, rushed through the door. “Girls, help me get your mama to the bedroom,” she said.
The familiar comfort of my parents’ room now seemed dark with the fear of the unknown. The sunshine of the day blocked by the shades that Mom never had a chance to open. Joan sat next to Mom on the bed. “Doris, what happened to Sharon?”
Mom’s hands masked her eyes. “I don’t know. . . . God help me, this can’t be happening.” Then she calmed, listening to something we couldn’t hear. Seconds passed. She bolted from the pillow. “I need to go to her, she needs me.”
“No, no, just lay down until we can figure this all out,” Joan said, as she gently pushed her back.
Although Mom’s head rested, she had not been subdued. “Where’s your father?” Joan asked me.
While Joan tried to reach Dad by phone, Mom curled up with her arms locked around a pillow. My mom, my pillar of strength, was crumbling, slipping away from me. I wrapped my arms around her and held on while my eyes snapped shut, willing away the present, praying for the past, and wondering if I would ever see Sharon again. From the other room I heard Joan; “This is an emergency. I think there’s been a death in the family.”
My father, Lt. Col. Paul James (P.J.) Tate of the United States Army Intelligence Division, was stationed at the Fort Baker Military Base in San Francisco. The Los Angeles Police had reached him an hour before Joan made the call.
P.J. August 9, 1969 2:00 P.M.
I didn’t believe a nickel on the ground until it was in my palm. Getting to Sharon’s house was my priority. A coroner’s wagon passed as I made a left onto Cielo. My hands ached from my iron grip on the steering wheel. I stretched my equally aching jaw. This had to be a case of mistaken identity. Reasonably, Sharon could have spent the night at a friend’s, as was her bias when Roman was out of town. I had every right to expect to find her sitting in the living room, teary-eyed and scared, but alive.
At least two dozen police cars and as many news vehicles clogged the road to Sharon’s gate, forcing me to walk up the once familiar cul-de-sac, now alien with their traffic. Along came the whoop of a siren. A cop tried to clear a path. “Go on home, folks. There’s nothing to see here.”
“Save your breath,” I muttered. This crowd isn’t going anywhere until their curiosity is satisfied. I passed face after face, the old, the young, a couple holding hands, a child on his father’s shoulders, eyes shaded, straining on tiptoes, expectantly waiting. Why are we so eager to view tragedy? Pulling a cigar from my pocket, I pondered the question with the strike of a match. Drawing on the sweet tobacco, I decided it makes us feel more alive.
I stopped near Sharon’s gate, bracing myself, yet angling toward delusive faith.
The men at Fort Baker thought I was oblivious to the chitchat around the base. They called me Ice Cube. I prefer being called venerable, though theirs is not a bad analogy. The ice cube is an ever-evolving substance. As individual as a snowflake. For better or worse, everything it contacts is affected—and vice versa. Exposed to shock, one can shatter—and that’s just what happened with the LAPD’s earlier phone call. “Could you tell me where you were last night?” the faceless Lt. Bob Helder asked me.
“No. My activities are classified.”
“Well, can someone vouch to your whereabouts?” Helder pressed.
“I’ll bring a note from the principal. You can expect my arrival at thirteen hundred.” I slammed the phone to its cradle.
Life plays funny tricks; I was so livid at the detective’s accusations that I rode that wave to avoid the undertow of Sharon’s fate.
A gate sealed the news teams from Sharon’s property. With cameras and microphones jammed against the fence, they shouted questions at the police on the opposite side. My call for an officer’s attention melted in with the other voices. Screw it; I pressed the gate control button that caused it to swing away from the frenzy. I pushed with the best of them to the front, until an officer intervened. I held my identification inches from the cop’s face until he stood down. A reporter pawed at my shoulder, then shoved a microphone into kissing range. “What’s your connection to the murders, sir?”
I swatted the mic away. “If you don’t let go of me, son, I’ll give you a connection you won’t soon forget.”
Out of the media’s earshot, I turned the tables on the pubescent officer, firing out questions. Army policy: Throw them off guard, get the upper hand.
“Whoa there, sir, you really need to talk with the detective in charge. Just hold tight for a minute.”
The second the rookie turned his back, I proceeded up the driveway. The scene stimulated wartime memories. Men combed the hillsides, bushes, even the rooftop of the house. Helicopters intermittently circled overhead. From the opposite side of the canyon, the curious spied like enemy troops.
Mixed between the police cruisers, I saw Jay Sebring’s Porsche and three cars I didn’t recognize, a Firebird, a Camaro, and a Rambler. The sedan was closer; I peered through the open door. A bloody sheet was slung over the driver’s side. I inventoried Sharon’s friends, wondering whose car it was, and more important, whose body had been under that sheet?
“Mr. Tate?”
I turned toward the voice.
“We spoke earlier. I’m Lt. Bob Helder. Like I said on the phone, we’ve already gotten the positive identification on your daughter’s body. There’s really no need for you to be here.”
“Nothing’s positive here until I’ve seen her.”
Helder buried his hands in h
is pockets. “The coroner has removed all but one of the bodies, and the one remaining isn’t your daughter’s.”
I looked up. “Bodies?”
Helder nodded. “Five. Bill Tennant made the identifications.” He reached into his jacket pocket to pull out a pad of paper and reading glasses. “He identified your daughter, Jay Sebring, Abigail (Gibbie) Folger, and Woo, Woy—”
“That’s pronounced Voytek, spelled with a W.”
“Right, Woytek Frykowski. Uh, we have one unidentified male we found in that car. Any idea who owns it?”
Struggling for composure, I dared not speak. I just shook my head. Three wars had made violent death an intimate enemy for which I’d never shed a tear. Those lives were lost for a reason, and when I made a death notification, I reassured a father that his son died for a cause, always assuming the speech provided comfort. What could Helder tell me? My fingertip blotted the unfamiliar moisture from my eyes. I moved away from him to hide my weakness.
“Mr. Tate, hold on,” Helder called.
I couldn’t remember how long it had been since anyone addressed me as mister, instead of Colonel or sir. A sinking feeling of drastic change squeezed my heart, clumped in my stomach. Clearly out of my element, I went to familiar territory, an image of a briefing officer apprising me of a mission. Colonel, your role in this operation will be that of the father. Of necessity, you’ll handle this differently than usual. Play it with dignity. No threats, no speeches. The only thing you may find particularly onerous is going home and explaining all this to your wife and daughters.
Helder said, “We have everything in hand. The best thing you can do for everyone concerned is to go home to your family.”
I looked around. “About the only thing your men seem to have in hand is their hands all over the evidence. I’ll give you this, your guys sure as shit know how to muck up a crime scene.”
“I assure you we have our top—”
“What you’ve got is one guy leaning on a car that hasn’t been fingerprinted—with his briefcase on the trunk just for good measure. You’ve thrown household sheets over the bodies and the evidence with those bodies—I happen to recognize that sheet there as one my wife bought—and the guy over there’s opening that bedroom window. Why? A little warm, is he? Now, I’d like to go into my daughter’s house before your top men manage to fuck up the entire scene.”
“I’m not going to let you do that. I will call you the second I have any information.”
As though Helder hadn’t spoken, I continued to the end of the driveway and a small gate that opened to the front yard. Next to the gate was a wishing well—if only they worked. I placed the cigar between my teeth, giving my unsteady jaw something to grasp, then stepped onto the flagstone walk that curved to the front door. Ten feet ahead, a mass of blood darkened the sidewalk. Helder caught up. “You’re not going in there, Mr. Tate.”
I shaded my eyes from the relentless August sun, and looked toward the open front door. In the entry hall, two men wrestled a body duffel onto a gurney. “Is that Sharon?”
“No. I told you, she’s already gone.”
“Who is it?”
“Mr. Sebring.”
“I want to see him.”
“No—”
“God dammit, he was like a son to me.”
“Then believe me, you don’t want to see him like this.”
One of the men closed the front door. Below the windowpane, in smeared red letters, was the word PIG. I looked away, but it was impossible to escape the implications of violence; blood was all over the porch, the grass, even the bushes. What kind of madness lay within the walls of that house?
Like toppling dominoes, the muscles tightened throughout my body. For hours, my emotions had been in constant flux, from speculation and sadness to the rage that now seared my stomach. I wiped at the corners of my mouth, swallowing hard to keep the bile down. “Tell me what happened in there.”
“I don’t have any information at this time. I’ll be in touch tomorrow,” Helder dodged.
He had the smarts of a cockroach if he thought he could out-tangle me. “Why don’t we cut through the bullshit, Lieutenant. I’ve done enough investigations to know that everyone is a suspect to you, including myself. That in mind, I’m waiving all rights and giving you my formal statement: I did not kill my daughter. I do not know who killed her. I do not know her social activities over the past week because I have not spoken with her since the first day of this month. I can tell you this, I plan to use every means available to hunt down her killer, and I will not rest until he is behind bars—or dead. Now, you can keep me from going in that house, but I am not leaving until you tell me what in the hell happened last night.”
Helder pinched the bridge of his nose as if slapped with a headache. “Okay,” he relented, “but over there.” He pointed at the distant lawn table and chairs.
The detective took the lead across the lawn, tracing the hedges that bordered the front of the house. Though denied physical entry, the large French windows provided inside access.
The living room looked as if a tornado had redecorated it in order to erase memories of placid evenings by the fire. Blood splashes stained the walls, furniture, and carpet. In the center of the room, a rope hung from ceiling beam to floor. Laughter escaped through the window—just another day on the job for those boys.
In the bedroom that Gibbie and Woytek shared, two officers picked through their belongings; another snapped photos of their findings. From muffled voices slipping through the open window, one word came through clearly: drugs.
Helder nodded toward the same window that held my attention. “What do you know about Folger and Frykowski?”
“Not much. He’s a friend of Roman’s from Poland, and she’s part of the coffee family. They were staying with Sharon until Roman came home. Why are they talking about drugs in there?”
Helder cleared his throat. “We found a number of narcotics on the premises: cocaine, marijuana, and various capsules.”
Guilt twisted around my spine. Two weeks ago, Sharon had complained about the couple’s penchant for entertaining at all hours. With the imminent birth of the baby, she needed a quiet setting. Adding further stress, she was uncomfortable with Woytek’s friends, suspecting some of them were drug dealers. I told her to kick them out, but she didn’t want to hurt their feelings. Had Sharon been right in her suspicion? I’d witnessed the blame game so often that I should have been able to swipe it away. But I volleyed the first pitch anyway; if I’d taken control of the situation and tossed Frykowski on his ass, Sharon would be alive.
Spread across the grass lay two white though bloodied sheets, marking the space and time of what had transpired. “Where did they find Sharon?” I asked.
“The living room,” Helder said, as he pulled chairs from the table.
We sat between the pool and an outside door that opened into the master bedroom. Inside, the room was sparsely furnished. Nightstands stood on either side of the bed. A television and armoire were against the opposite wall.
Detectives ransacked the armoire drawers that held Sharon’s possessions, bagging some for evidence, carelessly casting aside others that were insignificant to them; reminding me that this is no longer her home. It’s her crime scene. An officer reached atop the armoire to pull down a bassinet. High above his head, he lost his grip. The tiny bed toppled, spilling baby toys from within.
I rose from the chair, intent on delivering a jawbreaker to that cop. Then Helder veered my attention. “We have a suspect in custody.”
I eased back down. “Who?”
“William Garretson, the teenager living in the guesthouse. Can you tell me anything about him?”
When Sharon and Roman rented the house from Rudolph Altobelli, Altobelli hired Garretson to look after the estate. I had met him only once. “What’s his connection?”
Helder explained the morning events that led to his arrest.
When Sharon’s housekeeper, Winnie Chapman, arr
ived for work, she noticed slack phone wires draped over the gate. Preoccupied with the downed wires, she hurried through the back kitchen door and directly to the telephone. The receiver was silent.
In fact, the entire house was oddly still; so much so, that a slight movement under the table startled her. She peered below to find Sharon’s Yorkshire terrier cowering under a chair. In an unusual act, the puppy recoiled when she reached to pet her.
From the kitchen, Winnie stepped into the dining room. “Mrs. Polanski? Hello. Anybody here?” Instinctively, she paused. The atmosphere felt wrong. There were subtle changes. A screen missing from the open window, flowers splayed on the floor, the drone of flies.
Beyond the dining room archway was the entrance hall. The open front door creaked as the wind gently pushed at it. When she reached to close it, her focus pulled to something written on the lower outside panel, then to splotches on the ground. Before it occurred to her that it was blood, she took another step, following the red trail into the living room.
She stopped.
Frozen, her mind tried to catch up with what her eyes already knew; she was surrounded by death.
She ran from the house, her screams echoing over the canyon walls as she escaped to a neighbor’s house to call the police.
Later, while searching the grounds, officers found Garretson asleep in the guesthouse. He denied any knowledge of the murders. It was inconceivable that he could be innocent. How could he have slept through the slaughter of five people? Based on that suspicion, they arrested him.
When Helder finished, I took a beat to absorb it all. It didn’t add up. One kid against five? No way. On the other hand, it was unlikely that Garretson didn’t know something.
I went through the scene again. There were a lot of cars on the driveway, but one was missing. “Did you all take Sharon’s car away for evidence?”
Helder looked confused. “Which car?”
Restless Souls Page 2