Edited for Death

by Michele Drier

  Clarice knocks a couple of times on the doorframe, comes in and drops heavily into a chair. “Well, I just sent a 15 inch story to the local basket. I left a lot out and I only have a couple of quotes from Jim—uuh, Sheriff Dodson—but it covers most of what we know now.”

  “Thanks, Clar. I know it’s harder to write short than long. Tomorrow we can get enough for a long obit and an overview on Sunday. Phil emailed me; he wants the stories for the Times.”

  I’m amused as I watch Clarice’s eyes round with surprise and pleasure. Her pale skin gives her away with a flush of deep pink rising up her neck.

  “Wow! That’s cool, Amy! Why didn’t you tell me? Do you think I’ll get to keep a byline?”

  “I’ll ask Phil to make sure you get a ‘Special to the Times’ line when I send the story over. This is a good addition to your clips. Not that I’m ever expecting you to look for another job or leave!” I laugh at Clarice’s stricken expression; she looks as though she’s been caught taking a sip of someone else’s drink.

  “That’s a joke. Neither of us expects you to make a career out of the cops beat at the Monroe Press. Of course I expect you to go on to a major metro; personally, I’ll be sad but when you thank me after your first Pulitzer, that will make up for it.”

  As I’m logging off, I see another email from Phil pop up.

  “Ben did know Stewart. Stewart did the background historical research for the catalog of the current show at the gallery. The Calverts are a Gold-rush family and both Stewart and his father were big California history buffs. I’ll keep digging; see if I can track down the original sources he used. Let you know soonest.”

  Professionally, I’m pleased; personally I was hoping for something a little more, well, personal.

  I tell Clarice as we’re walking out. I also tell her that I’m going to Marshalltown too.

  “Don’t trust me?” she says. “Think I’m just gonna hang out with the Sheriff?” The words are joshy but her tone is tense.

  “Hey, this isn’t about you! This is about me. I still get the adrenaline rush, you know.”

  She looks a little abashed and nods. “Yeah, we can do a tag team,” she admits.

  “If you stick with the sheriff and the Medical Examiner, I’ll head over to the hotel,” I say, pulling out my car keys. “With any luck, the guy who found him will still be there. I definitely want to talk to Royce, some of the staff, maybe even that contractor, what’s his name?”

  “Harmony. Burt Harmony. Why talk to him, he must have been inside the hotel, working.”

  “Yeah, but the big dumpsters the crew is using for all the stuff are in that alley, what’s the name, Mine Run? Maybe he or one of his crew saw something. It’s worth a question.”

  I believe that lots of things are worth a question. This belief has netted a story on a man who had a wooden outhouse collection in his backyard, has tracked down a paint trail on the freeway—which hit national TV to my surprise—and produced a total flop on why skunks were roadkill only in the spring. Turned out they were all willing to die for love.

  It is still too hot when I get home. I strip off my clothes and head for the pool wrapped in a towel. Swimming for exercise, I wear a suit; occasionally I skinny-dip. With the heat and stress of the day, I just need to float. I roll on my back and close my eyes. By tipping my head back slightly, I can submerge my ears and shut out the world, concentrating on nothingness.

  My eyes fly open when I bump into the side of the pool. Mac’s looking down at me, about to bark.

  Cooler now, I climb out, throw on some clothes and head for the kitchen.

  As I eat a scoop of cold chicken salad, I flip on CNN. God, I’ve turned into a news junkie.

  At 9:30 it’s full dark and I can face walking Mac. I’m always a tad nervous walking him after dark. I live in an upscale neighborhood but there were two home burglaries last year. Two teenagers broke in “to see if we could do it.” They’re both in juvie but it left me and the neighbors jittery.

  Tonight is just an ordinary night. Mac does his usual bark-and-lunge with the two miniature Schnauzers a block over and, when they bark back, hides behind me. Three teens are practicing skateboard moves in a driveway, sprinklers are running and the blue of television screens is visible.

  I open my front door to a ringing phone and catch it just as the answering machine starts.

  “Hello, hello, don’t hang up,” I’m trying to grab Mac and unsnap his leash, now wound around my legs.

  “It sounds like I’ve called at a bad time.” Phil sounds wryly amused.

  “No, not at all. Mac and I were just coming in and he wanted to race me to the phone. I don’t know why he does that; when I give it to him he doesn’t have anything to say, anyway.”

  “Well, I’m glad you got there first, because I really wanted to talk to you, not to him.” The amusement is clear in Phil’s voice now and I’m obscurely pleased that my corny humor pleases him.

  “I realized that my last email was pretty business-like and I wanted to ask you if you have any plans for the weekend,” Phil’s voice is a little softer.

  “I don’t know, not really, I was thinking about…” I can’t get my thoughts together fast enough to coherently answer, so I try again. “Huh, I was trying to say that I’d thought about going up to the foothills, the Marshalltown area, and just kind of looking around. Clarice and I are going up tomorrow for the day, but it’s primarily to work on Stewart Calvert’s murder story.”

  “Do you know he was killed, then?” Phil asks.

  “No, no, I’ve just jumped to a conclusion,” I grimace, glad he can’t see my face. “We have no information one way or another. I doubt we’ll get much from the Sheriff tomorrow, either. It’s just, I don’t know, kind of weird or karmic or way, way too coincidental for my taste.”

  “Would you like some company this weekend?” Phil asks. “I’m free and a summer get-away in the mountains with an attractive woman and a hint of murder is kind of hard to pass up.”

  “I’d love the company.” Now I’d like to see his face. “Not only the company, but the chance to talk through some of my questions, suspicions, maybe assumptions or leapt-to conclusions with someone in the business.” Now I’m mixing business with pleasure.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Are you and Jim Dodson getting together today?” I’m trying to keep the tone casual and conversational as Clarice and I leave the valley floor just after 7 in the morning. “With Stewart, it’s pretty clear that this involves the hotel.” I’m checking the rearview mirror for possible CHP.

  She pulls her sunglasses down to cover her eyes from the early morning sun, not a sight she sees often. “Well, I told you before that I thought the hotel was spooky. We still haven’t answered the question of how Baldwin got into the bar to get killed.”

  “You’re right. Between Baldwin and Stewart, the suspects are trimmed down to people who know their way around the hotel. Maybe they have keys to everything, but they certainly have access to other stuff.”

  “I’m working up a theory,” Clarice says, going into the teaching mode she uses on other reporters. “We don’t believe that Baldwin had keys to the bar, and it doesn’t sound like Royce left it unlocked. What if somebody who got a key, opened the door. Baldwin woke up and thought he’d found gold when the bar door was opened. He headed in, thinking he’d grab some free booze, but whoever opened the door was doing something they didn’t want Baldwin to see. So out comes the blunt object.”

  I’m nodding while I’m driving. I take every chance I can to take my baby through her paces on the two-lane roads that snake up into the Mother Lode. The string of towns are still pearls on the necklace of Highway 49—the road that links the golden sites.

  Fifteen miles east of Monroe, we begin the climb into the Sierra Nevada foothills. Just getting out of the flatlands feels lighter, as though the air in the valley is heavier with the heat. It’s going to be a hot day again even in the mountains, but cooler than Monroe. A
s we climb higher, the moisture trapped in the valley’s air evaporates and leaves a drier, crisper taste with each breath.

  “Are you going to spring your unlocked door theory on Dodson if you get together?” I ask.

  Clarice hesitates. “Well, I hope we can get some time to have a coffee together,” her forehead wrinkles. “I don’t know how the day’s gonna shake out. A lot depends on the amount of media showing up. If it’s pack journalism, or a TV cluster fuck, I don’t think anybody’s gonna have time to use the bathroom, let alone get away for a coffee.”

  Covering a big event is a mixed blessing. Print journalists tend to get pushed away, stepped on and run over by the TV reporters with their microphones, camera people, tripods, cables, TV trucks with huge antennas and assorted other equipment. From our perspective, a big event is best handled by setting up a briefing area and scheduling press times. I know Sheriff Dodson is media-savvy but has a limited budget; I figure at least he’ll pull together a portable rostrum on a folding table in the courthouse lobby.

  The courthouse dates from 1875. When Marshalltown was settling in to become the county seat, the town built a Victorian structure on a slight hill with a set of attractive planter-lined steps leading up to the entry. Combine this with it anchoring Marshalltown’s main street—which still has raised wooden sidewalks and brick buildings from the end of the Gold Rush—and it makes great visuals for the TV stations in Sacramento and the Bay Area.

  “It’s a little hard to really guess how much media is going to be there,” I say. “The Calverts have had a big impact but Stewart was probably best-known in the Bay Area. There’s certainly going to be interest from the California history buff contingent, but if the ME determines that it’s homicide, a lot more people will be intrigued.”

  “I think there’re going to be a lot of flatlanders,” Clarice says. “Think about it. It’s the middle of summer, this is a vacation area, it’s a slow news day, there aren’t any wildfires...what assignment editors are going to pass up some pretty pictures from the mountains on such a nice day?”

  I concede Clarice’s point. I’ve had a lot of days with nothing to anchor the front page; days that happened more regularly in the summer. A possibly suspicious death of a member of a prominent California family will be enough of a magnet to attract a media contingent.

  I bear right as the highway forks for the Marshalltown entrance. Even if I didn’t know the area well, I can’t miss the turn because five large vans, with 15-foot tall satellite feed antennas and dishes on their roofs, line the upper reaches of the street.

  “OK, then,” Clarice breathes out an explosion of air, “A TV cluster fuck it is. Let’s see if Dodson has managed to get a media briefing area set up.”

  I smile to myself. When the wind is up, Clarice can smell the adrenaline from the competition and her news senses slam into high gear. Whatever is in the works between Clarice and Jim Dodson on a personal level, this is professional and the blonde is not about to stand to the side and let anyone else steal her story.

  I find a spot at the back in a small lot usually reserved for potential jurors. We hear a low hum of from the front of the building. It may just be a swarm of bees on other warm summer days, but today there’s an underlying urgency, a tension, in the noise that makes it clear this is a very different swarm.

  Coming around to the steps, I see my supposition is right. An eight-foot folding table, covered with a white cloth commandeered from the hotel. Four straight-back chairs arranged behind the table, two already filled by a deputy and a woman in hospital scrubs.

  “It looks like we aren’t any too early,” Clarice says, checking her watch. “Let’s see what’s going on.”

  She strolls up to the table where a small stack of paper sits in front of a deputy whom Clarice doesn’t seem to know.

  “I’m Clarice Stamms from the Monroe Press,” she says, reaching out to pick up one of the papers.

  “Oh, hi,” he says as he scans the crowd. “I’m Grant Loble. Sheriff Dodson said you’d be here. I’m the temporary spokesman for the department. The Sheriff kinda rotates the duty if we need somebody to hand out information or to keep people in line a little. I got the duty last night when it looked like we’d have a crowd this morning—and we sure do. Here’s a press release the Sheriff wrote this morning. We’re actually gonna do a briefing that’s supposed to start at 8:30. I think the Sheriff chose the time so the TVs could get a spot in on the 9 a.m. station breaks.” He’s nervous, impressed with his duty and the chance to talk to the media. Maybe Clarice can use his chattiness for more info later. Dodson may be media-savvy, it’s clear from Loble’s babble that he’s not.

  Clarice takes the sheet of paper, smiles at the deputy, turns back to join me and groans.

  “Oh, God, this is going to be a long morning. We’re at the mercy of the 9 a.m. station breaks in the Bay Area.”

  “Let’s just get through this. We’ll have some time with the Sheriff, the hotel staff, Royce and everybody when the pack goes home,” I say, moving over to the side of the steps and finding a shady spot on the stone balustrade to wait.

  In less than 10 minutes, Jim Dodson comes out the courthouse doors trailed by another deputy. This morning the Sheriff is dressed in a dark gray suit, a pale blue shirt and a deep blue silk tie. I smile. Dodson hasn’t lost his knack for dealing with the media. If they expect a small town, rough-edged lawman, they’ll be sorely disappointed with Jim Dodson.

  When he spots us a little back in the crowd of cameras and microphones, he nods and turns to say something to his trailing deputy who wheels around and heads back through the courthouse doors.

  “Good morning, everyone,” Dodson says, his voice pitched just loud enough to be heard over the swarm’s sound. “We have a couple of technical details with the sound system, but we’ll get started shortly. I have a five minute release to read—you’ll all get copies—and then a short question period. Dr. Jessup,” he gestures to the scrub-clad woman, “will give you the preliminary coroner’s report.”

  A hand taps my shoulder and I whip my head around to see the deputy behind me.

  “Excuse me, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says quietly. “Sheriff Dodson told me to ask you and Clarice Stamms to meet him in his office at 10:30 this morning. He was going to call your cell, but when he saw you he figured this was a sure way to let you know.”

  “Tell the Sheriff thanks, we’ll be there.” I give a smile, a nod and a finger wave to Dodson behind the makeshift podium. Message received. A slight screech from the podium mic is the sign that the press conference on the death of Stewart Calvert is beginning.

  “Thank you all for coming this morning,” Dodson says. “We are disturbed at the death of one of our leading citizens, and I’m sure you’re all wanting to find out what happened.

  “Yesterday morning at 10:14 a call was logged into our 911 system. A body had been discovered in the alley behind the Marshalltown Hotel. The alley actually is named Mine Run Way and is a one-way street several blocks long leading up to what used to be the mouth of one of this area’s deep mines. Pack trains used the alley for ore and gear going back and forth.

  “Today the alley is used by locals as a short cut between streets and for deliveries to the hotel. On any given day, probably not more than four or five cars use Mine Run. . One block up Placer from Main Street is one of the most used municipal parking lots, so Placer also sees a tremendous tourist traffic, both vehicle and foot.

  “The 911 call about the body was placed by a tourist, a man from San Carlos who had stopped in Marshalltown for a late breakfast on the way to a Yosemite vacation. He parked his car in the lot and was heading down to the hotel’s restaurant. It was getting warm and he thought that there might be a back way into the restaurant off of Mine Run, so he turned into the alley. He noticed what looked like a pile of clothes, or possibly a person sleeping, about 20 feet up the alley. As he got closer, he realized that there was blood splattered and that the body was lying ‘rea
lly funny...his legs didn’t look right’.

  “We had responders at the scene in less than five minutes. By 11 a.m. we determined that the body was that of Stewart Calvert, the cousin of the hotel’s owner, Royce Calvert, and the nephew of the late Sen. Robert Calvert. It looked as though he had fallen from one of the attic garret windows on the fourth floor.”

  At that point a gabble of voices tried to interrupt.

  “Are you sure he fell? Couldn’t he have been hit by a car?”

  “Where’s the guy who found him?”

  “Did he fall?”

  “Do you have a cause of death?”

  “Was he pushed?”

  “Who else was around?”

  Dodson holds up his hand and stands there until the noise subsides.

  “We know he fell. Dr. Jessup will give you the preliminary report in a minute. The person who found him has continued with his family to Yosemite. We’ve called in the state crime scene investigation team from Sacramento because we don’t know yet why he fell. The hotel’s attics are still off-limits because the team hasn’t completed all the investigation

  “Now I’ll turn this over to Dr. Jessup,” he says. He’s read us the press release poker-faced with a dead-pan delivery.

  The woman in the blue scrubs stands and takes the microphone.

  “Good morning, I’m Dr. Emily Jessup. I’m the Madison County Medical Examiner. Stewart Calvert died as the result of trauma suffered when he fell approximately 53 feet from a window of the Marshalltown Hotel. He had multiple broken bones, a massive frontal skull fracture, collapsed lungs and fatal internal injuries. His heart was badly bruised, his spleen was ruptured. Many of the injuries were severe enough to have caused death alone; together, it was almost instantaneous. He lost consciousness immediately and was dead within two minutes. I don’t have an exact time of death, but he had been dead for approximately 90 minutes when he was found.” Her recital would make a medical professor proud.