“Bullshit. Then he’d be here instead of you.”
“My partner knows, too. Killing me won’t buy you anything.”
“Buy some time,” she said.
“Not nearly enough. You can’t outrun the law, Marie, and you can’t hide from it. Be smart: put the gun down; give yourself up.”
“Like hell I will.” She wiped the back of her free hand over her mouth, smearing her lipstick. Her face glistened with moisture, not all of it from the rain. “How’d you find out what we done?”
“I’m a detective. I get paid to find things out.”
Silence for a few beats. Then, “It was Floyd’s idea, not mine. I didn’t want to do it, kidnapping’s a fucking capital crime, but he swore we wasn’t gonna hurt the girl and I made sure we didn’t. And Jesus, all that money. A quarter of a million dollars…”
“What was Fentress’ part in it?”
“He told Floyd about the Holloway bitch and then pointed her out. He didn’t want any part of the rest of it. Didn’t deserve half as much as he was supposed to get, not after he went and got himself arrested and thrown in prison, the stupid bastard. That really screwed things up.”
Nervousness was making her talkative. That and the false perception that I knew more than I did. I kept watching the gun, her finger now sliding back and forth across the curve of the trigger.
“How did it screw things up?”
“Floyd, that asshole, he said we couldn’t risk spending any of the money right away … worried Holloway might call in the FBI. Only supposed to wait for a few months, but then Fentress went all stupid on us. A few months, okay, but not a year and a half or more. I kept saying, ‘Let me have my share like we agreed on,’ but Floyd wouldn’t do it; he said we had to wait until Ray got out.”
“To make sure he didn’t talk.”
“Yeah. Floyd promised him his share’d be waiting. Made me go up to that goddamn prison twice to reassure him. I had to do what he told me even after we had a fight and busted up. He had the money stashed someplace and he wouldn’t tell me where.”
“Why did you meet Fentress in the city last week?”
“Floyd made me do that, too. Keep him reassured. Let him know when and where we’d make the split.”
“At Mears’ cabin. Only Fentress wasn’t sure he was going to get his cut, so he brought a gun along with him.”
Another finger swipe across her mouth. “No,” she said. “He never had no gun.”
“So you’re the one who brought it. And used it.”
She was silent again for a little time. The rain was coming down harder now; I could hear it beating on the roof. Then, “It wasn’t me killed him and Floyd and the dog.”
“No? Then who did?”
Headshake.
I said, “But you were there that night.”
“Yeah, I was there, but I swear I didn’t know he was gonna kill them. We were just supposed to grab the money and leave ’em tied up. That was the plan, only he…”
A kind of wincing tic lifted one corner of her mouth, half-closed the eye above it. She did not like thinking about that night. No, she hadn’t committed the killings. Even as hard-boiled as she was, I doubted she was capable of that kind of cold-blooded slaughter; it had a man’s stamp on it. Even now, under pressure and despite her threats to shoot me, the way she held the automatic implied she’d have a hard time pulling the trigger.
“Who?” I asked again. “Who’s your accomplice?”
Headshake.
“Who, Marie?”
Another sound rose over that of the rain on the roof, the whine and growl of a car coming up the access lane. She cocked her head. “You’re about to find out,” she said, and in that second her stance shifted slightly and her gaze slid away from me toward the door.
My reaction was pure instinct, without thought or hesitation. I charged her, twisting my body sideways, my chin pulled down against my chest, right arm extended. The unexpectedness of it caught her completely off guard. I was already on her, driving into her with my shoulder, grabbing for the gun when it bucked in her hand with a noise like a baby thunderclap. The trigger pull was reflexive and without aim; the slug missed me high and by at least a couple of feet.
Force of impact drove her backward, yelling, staggering both of us. I groped a hold on the automatic, tore it out of her grasp in the same instant she went over backward across the flimsy table, her weight collapsing it. She was in the wrong position to break her fall; she hit the floor on her upper back, her head slamming hard off the boards. The cry choked off on impact, became a kind of grunting gurgle.
I’d managed to check my momentum by throwing an arm up just before I collided with the inside wall. But I was still off balance when I heard the door thwack open and the wind come whistling in.
“Marie! What the hell—”
I steadied myself against the wall, swinging my head around. He was standing in the doorway, filling it as I had earlier, and for two or three frozen seconds we stared at each other with a kind of mutual astonishment because he knew me and I knew him.
George Orcutt, the man I’d interviewed at Rio Verdi Propane.
15
I was the first to move. I shoved off the wall, reversing my grip on the automatic’s squared barrel so that I could wrap my fingers around the handle. But Orcutt did not want any part of me or the gun. He must have thought I’d shot Marie Seldon, still lying motionless atop the crushed remains of the table; he took one quick look at her, another at me, and then turned tail and bolted.
“Orcutt! Stop or take a bullet!”
It might as well have been a whisper as a shout. Either he didn’t believe me or he was caught in the grip of panic; he didn’t break stride, just kept running with his head down. The footing on the driveway was bad; his feet slid in the mud, throwing him into a stagger as he lurched around the side of the Ford. I was out through the door by then, into the slashing rain. He was no more than twenty feet ahead of me. A warning shot might have pulled him up short, but I was not about to risk firing out here in the open even though there was nobody else in sight. I had no authority for that kind of action.
I yelled at him again to stop, making another empty threat to fire, and again he ignored me. He lunged between the Ford and his wheels, a four-door black pickup. I cut over so that I was facing toward him as he tried to yank open the driver’s door. But the rain had made the handle slick and the ground a quagmire; he slipped and slid again, lost his grip, and nearly fell.
He threw a look in my direction. I made a menacing gesture with the automatic, still advancing, to keep him from another attempt to get into the pickup. His eyes were as big as cocktail onions, his mouth twisted and his vulpine features fear squeezed. Like so many murderers, he was a coward when he was on the other end of a firearm. Once more he neither attacked nor stood his ground but gave in to his panic and fled.
I chased him down to Old Wood Road. The downpour was heavy enough to make the going slow, as if we were both running in that kind of retarded motion you have in dreams, and I had to keep wiping the rain blur out of my eyes to hold him in sight. Orcutt stumbled into the middle of the deserted road, his head swiveling from side to side, then around for another look in my direction. He had nowhere to go, the damned fool, but the panic drove him ahead just the same, at an angle to the left and onto the far verge.
Tall grass and a tangle of blackberry vines separated a pair of homes on the high riverbank, one on a small lot, the other twice as large, with a side yard of pines and shrubbery. Orcutt fought his way around and through the thorn-ridden blackberries—I could see the vines ripping at his coat and pants—and then broke free into the side yard.
I shoved the gun into my coat pocket, panted my way across the road. At first I couldn’t see him, but when I moved farther over toward the larger home there he was, clambering down an outside staircase toward the river. The risers were rain slick; toward the bottom he lost his footing and skidded down the last few steps on his a
ss.
When he was up and running, onto a thin strip of rocky beach, I lost sight of him again. The river, what I could see of it, was a chocolate-brown swirl, its surface pocked with raindrops and spotted with debris. If he tried to cross it, or stumbled and fell into it, he’d drown like the proverbial rat.
The hell with him. No way was I going to chase after him down there. If he didn’t end up in the river, he wouldn’t get far on foot, wouldn’t get far even if he owned or stole another vehicle. I turned back across the road, slogged up the access lane. By the time I reached the black pickup I was soaked to the skin. And wouldn’t you know that was when the rain began to let up into nothing more than a light mist.
Orcutt had left his keys in the ignition. I confiscated them. Another Saturday night special and a box of cartridges were stuffed inside the console compartment; I confiscated them, too. Either he was a gun collector or he had a ready source of outlaw weaponry. Hell, maybe both.
There were two suitcases and a duffel bag on the backseat. I left them where they were without touching them, made sure all the doors were locked. A car went past on the road just then, a woman driving and a toddler in the seat beside her; she didn’t slow or glance in my direction. When they were out of sight, I turned and reentered the cottage.
Marie Seldon was still lying in a supine sprawl atop the table wreckage, her limbs twitching a little, her eyes open and rolled up with most of the whites showing, a bubble of foamy spit at one corner of her mouth. All the signs of a concussion, possibly a skull fracture.
I did not want to risk moving her, but I couldn’t just leave her there like that; I was afraid she might have convulsions, maybe even swallow her tongue. I found a pillow and a blanket in the bedroom, gently eased her over on her side, and propped her head up. Before I covered her I felt the pockets of her windbreaker; her keys were in one of them and I slipped them out. Then I called 911, asked the operator to send an EMT unit.
After that I went outside again to lock the Ford Focus. Where was the money? I wondered. Among all the belongings she’d stuffed into the back? In that duffel bag in Orcutt’s pickup? Or had they divvied it up out of lack of complete trust in each other and there was some in each of the vehicles? Right in front of me in any case; they would not have been getting ready to travel without it. I would’ve liked to search for it, but it was not within the scope of my job to do so. Too bad. I’d never seen a quarter of a million in cash and surely would never have another opportunity.
Back inside, leaving the door open, I checked on Marie Seldon again. Semiconscious now, moaning, still twitching; she was not going to give me any more trouble before the EMT unit arrived. I used a none too clean towel from the bathroom to dry off, hunted up a plastic bag in the kitchen, and deposited the Saturday night special and box of cartridges inside. Then I dragged a chair over in front of the open doorway, where I could sit and watch the yellow car and the pickup and the road beyond, and put in a call to the county sheriff’s department in Santa Rosa.
My luck was still holding. This time Lieutenant Heidegger was in.
16
They caught George Orcutt that same night, just outside Ukiah in a stolen car. He tried to outrun the Highway Patrol and ended up in a ditch with minor injuries. He hadn’t managed to find himself another firearm and so he’d been taken into custody with a whimper, not a bang.
Marie Seldon suffered a traumatic head injury but no serious damage to what little brain she had. Once she was hospitalized and the initial symptoms treated, she was lucid again—or as lucid as she would ever be.
The two of them fell all over themselves blaming each other for the murders of Ray Fentress and Floyd Mears.
* * *
Criminals as a breed are remarkably stupid. Nearly all of them—white-collar, blue-collar, no-collar—fall into the mentally challenged category. The only exceptions are the morally bereft mega-rich, who seem able to misappropriate millions if not billions with casual impunity.
This bunch, to a man and woman, were a classic example. Even though they’d managed initially to pull off a successful caper, it had been doomed to fall apart sooner or later through multiple acts of stupidity. The original crime, kidnapping, and the subsequent one, homicide, are two of the most simpleminded of all felonies; the risk of getting caught is sky-high in both cases and the penalties among the most severe.
Boiled down to essentials, the abduction of Melanie Joy Holloway and its bloody, greed-fueled aftermath happened this way: Ray Fentress, while working on the Holloway estate, overheard the girl talking to a friend about one of her periodic solo gambling trips to the Graton Casino. For some reason he mentioned this in conversation with his new buddy, Floyd Mears, during the last of their joint hunting trips. Later Mears and Marie Seldon commingled half a dozen functioning brain cells and came up with the kidnapping scheme. Fentress was brought into it late. At first he balked at the idea, but the lure of twenty-five thousand dollars for doing nothing more than finding out when Melanie Joy was to make her next solo trip and then pointing her out at the casino was too much for him to resist. The convincer was Mears’ assurance that the girl would not be harmed before or after her father ponied up the quarter-mil ransom. Keeping that promise and not spending any of the money were the only smart decisions any of the connivers had made.
From the casino Mears and Seldon followed Melanie to the motel where she was staying, abducted her late-night with their faces masked, took her to Mears’ isolated property in the hills, and held her there blindfolded and drugged under Seldon’s guard. Vernon Holloway agreed to the ransom demand, believing Mears’ telephone threats to kill his daughter if he failed to follow instructions to the letter. After pulling the cash together, he drove to a midnight rendezvous on a backcountry road in West Marin and delivered it to a masked Mears, who subsequently released the girl. Holloway continued to keep everything under wraps, for his own sake as well as that of his severely traumatized daughter, and saw to it she did likewise by orchestrating the dramatic change in her lifestyle.
An attack of conscience during the planning stages of the snatch was the cause of Fentress’ heavy drinking. The night of Melanie’s abduction was the night he’d had his run-in with the San Francisco cops, his panic reaction the result of too much alcohol after leaving the Graton Casino and fear that the kidnapping scheme had gone awry and his part in it had been discovered. To ensure that he kept his mouth shut, Mears got word to him that the ransom had been paid and the girl released unharmed, and that Fentress’ share would be waiting when he’d served his time.
Any of a score of things could have and should have blown up the whole crazy scheme while it was going down. During the eighteen months Fentress was at Mule Creek, too, Mears continuing to risk growing and selling marijuana while sitting on a quarter-of-a-million-dollar stash, for one. Pretty amazing, when you looked at it objectively, that the unraveling hadn’t begun until Mears incurred Seldon’s hatred by refusing her her share of the ransom and then beating her up.
Being the type of woman who needed a man, she hooked up with Orcutt and then blabbed to him about the kidnapping and the ransom money. Why settle for a half share when they could have it all? Orcutt’s idea, so she claimed. So once again half a dozen brain cells conjoined in a witless plan, this one to hijack the $250,000 when the time came for the split.
I believed Seldon’s version of what had gone down at Mears’ cabin that night. She arranged for Fentress to pick her up in Monte Rio; that was why he’d written down her address and “7:00 Mon.” (He must have later memorized them or I would not have found the paper in his coat pocket). Orcutt, meanwhile, drove up there in his pickup and hid it in the trees near the access lane, guzzling scotch while he waited to nerve up to what lay ahead. When Seldon and Fentress showed, he followed them on foot, armed with the Saturday night special and wearing thin rubber gloves. He circled around through the trees to approach the cabin from the side away from where the dog was chained, then eased up to the front windo
w. A couple of quick looks inside told him when Mears produced the satchel full of ransom money and emptied it onto the table. Then Orcutt had busted in and held Mears and Fentress at gunpoint.
Seldon knew where Mears kept his .45; she fetched it, turned it over to Orcutt, then gathered up the money. Her story was that Orcutt ordered her to wait outside; more likely she’d made a quick exit on her own so she wouldn’t have to watch the wet work. Orcutt claimed Mears tried to jump him and he acted in self-defense, but I figured that was bullcrap. He shot Mears in cold blood with the Saturday night special, switched guns or fired the automatic left-handed and killed a terrified Fentress. Then he went outside and blew away the Doberman so he could get inside the shed.
In the cabin again, he created the rest of the illusion of a marijuana deal gone bad. He planted some of the dope on Fentress, put the Saturday night special into Fentress’ dead hand and his own hand over it, and fired a few wild shots. And did the same with Mears and the .45. Pretty weak stage setting, all things considered, but it had held up because there seemed to be no other plausible reason for the carnage.
Afterward Seldon and Orcutt went to his apartment, where according to her he finished off the bottle of scotch. That explained his nervous hangover when I interviewed him at Rio Verdi Propane the next day.
As for the ransom money, Seldon and Orcutt had in fact split it up that night, even though their plan was to run off together. Half of it turned up in her Ford, the other half in the duffel bag in his pickup. There was not much doubt in my mind that if they’d managed to get away with the cash, some dark night one of them would have ended up dead and the entire boodle in the greedy clutches of the other.
Some pack of pea-brained thieves and murderers. Some towering monument to stupidity.
* * *
You’d think Vernon Holloway would have been happy that his daughter’s kidnappers were identified and punished and to have the entire $250,000 returned to him. But from all indications he wasn’t. He continued to make a concerted effort to keep the lid screwed down tight on the abduction, but of course it leaked out anyway. There was something of a media swarm, during which I was outed as the principal catalyst, so Holloway was well aware of the extent of my involvement. I neither expected nor received an expression of gratitude from him; I never heard from him at all, or from anybody connected with him.
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