The Victim at Vultee Arch

by Charles Williamson

  “I don’t believe it. It can’t be Bridger,” Chad said. The computer image did not show the ex-professional wrestler we expected. It showed a broad shouldered young man with copper hair leading Quentin Thatcher to his death. Art Johnson’s older son was involved in the murder.

  “Art must be involved. He knew Henry Griffin from his security duty at the retreat center. He set this up,” I said.

  Chad said nothing. Sheriff Taylor agreed. He wanted Bridger in custody immediately and Art and Gordon brought in for questioning. The sheriff said that he would get a warrant to search Art’s house and office. He hoped we’d find a money trail that would connect the deputy to the crime.

  Sheriff Taylor phoned the Cottonwood police chief and asked for assistance with the arrest of Bridger Johnson. Cottonwood would supply six officers to surround the property in case Art and his sons tried to bolt when we got there. I knew that Art would be armed, but I didn’t expect a shoot-out with his sons in the house. Art was well liked in Cottonwood. The sheriff insisted that no one else in Cottonwood be informed of the arrest until it was time to meet at Art’s house at 11:00.

  I called Margaret as we drove to Cottonwood to tell her that I now would be very late. She shouldn’t wait up for me. Even though she didn’t know Art Johnson, she was saddened to learn that he might have involved his teenage sons in a homicide. I’d known other law enforcement officers who’d gone bad, even committed murder, but I’d never known one who encouraged his teenage son to commit a capital crime.

  Chad was quiet on the drive to Cottonwood. He was probably reviewing his personal relationship with Art, searching for a clue that he should have picked up on. Art was not the person he thought he knew.

  There was only a tiny sliver of moon about to set over Mingus Mountain as we crossed the Verde River and entered Cottonwood. We drove to the police headquarters to coordinate the arrest with the local officers. Sheriff Taylor arrived a few minutes later with the arrest and search warrants. We drove to Art’s modest house in a neighborhood of one-acre desert lots, only half of which had never been built on. There were no streetlights on Art’s block, and only a few houses showed any lights at 11:15. We parked half a block away, and the local police in their black protective gear surrounded the house.

  Sheriff Taylor, Chad, and I walked to the front door of the darkened house and rang the bell at about 11:20. There was no answer. We pounded on the door and identified ourselves without a response. Chad retrieved the battering ram from my Explorer, and we forced the door. The front door crashed open at the first hit, but it slammed against something on the floor and only opened a few feet. We put our shoulders against it and pushed the door open. My flashlight revealed a sticky pool of blood that had smeared the floor below the door as we forced it open.

  I flipped on the hall light and stepped into the house. The body of Bridger Johnson had been blocking the door. He was face down with a large exit wound on the back of his head. On the tile floor next to him was his dead brother Gordon, also shot in the head. We entered the house, guns drawn, and searched the small one-story structure. It had been ransacked with the contents of every drawer and closet dumped on the floor. On the floor in Gordon’s room, Chad found size 10 ½ boots of the exact type as those that left the footprint at the Sinaguan ruin.

  When Chad opened the door from the kitchen to the garage, he found the body of Art Johnson lying next to his vehicle. There were two bullet holes in his chest and one in his forehead.

  In Art’s closet, we found a rifle identical to the one recovered from Reggie’s house. It made me suspect that Art took the shot at me and then switched the weapon he’d used for Reggie’s personal rifle when he helped Henry Griffin kill the snake man. With Reggie gone, there was no one who could tie Art to the Mojave rattlesnake. Reggie’s only role might have been to provide the snake. I asked the Cottonwood police to check the rifle from Art’s house for Reggie’s fingerprints.

  The Cottonwood police canvassed the neighborhood waking every sleeping person on the semi rural block. I didn’t have any evidence to back up my claim that Griffin was involved, but I pushed the Cottonwood officers to distribute the photo of Henry Griffin as widely as possible. Several people on Art’s Block remembered a white sedan had been left on the street that afternoon bur was now gone. However, we had nothing specific to connect it to the crime except that no one on the block was visited by anyone driving a similar vehicle. No one recognized Griffin’s photo. No one had heard gunshots.

  Once the crime scene technician got there from Prescott, we came up with a theory of the crime. Someone had broken a rear window, searched the house, and waited inside for the Johnsons to return. When Art got off work at 5:00, he’d driven his car into the garage as usual. The murderer had waited until he heard the garage door closing. When the door to the kitchen opened, he fired the first shot. Art had no chance to even reach for his own sidearm before being hit by the ambush. The killer finished him off with a shot to the forehead and another to the heart. Then the murderer had placed a kitchen chair near the front door and waited to kill Art’s sons when they came into the house after their football practice.

  The investigation and search went on for hours. Since a brother officer and his sons had also been murdered, the whole Arizona law enforcement community was mobilized to find their killer. Copies of Henry Griffin’s photos were sent everywhere in the state by fax. Of course, we made no mention of our suspicions that Art himself was a criminal. That might come out during a coroner’s inquest or a criminal trial, but it wouldn’t help with our search. The murder of a Yavapai County deputy and his family was the strongest possible motivation for other law enforcement officers in the state.

  PHOENIX, ARIZONA:

  Henry Griffin was exhausted but relieved that his foolproof plan had gone as expected. The motel was a dump, but at least the sheets were clean. He was certain he’d sleep soundly after a good day’s work. He put out the Do Not Disturb sign and showered before going to bed.

  His final thoughts before dropping off to sleep involved self-congratulations regarding the successful completion of this phase of his relocation project. The only people who could possibly tie him to the murders in Arizona were dead themselves.

  It had been astonishingly easy because he was smart enough to have figured it all out in advance. Most people were too stupid to get away with bold actions because they had no foresight. Henry had known that the one place in the world where people would be the least on guard was when they were entering the familiar space of their own homes. His only disappointment was that he hadn’t been able to find where they hid the $100,000. He’d hoped to send the cash by Federal Express to his hotel in Bali. The extra money would have been nice, but it wasn’t that important.

  He was certain that there was no evidence to connect him to the deputy and his sons. He’d pulled off Interstate 17 at an appropriately named Bloody Basin Road and driven about ten miles into the rugged countryside before burying the clothing, gloves, and pistol in a dry wash. He had not seen a light anywhere on the horizon from that remote spot, so there was no chance he was observed. If the artifacts were ever discovered, he’d be on the other side of the world by then. Henry was confident that the bodies wouldn’t even be discovered until tomorrow morning when Art missed work and the boys didn’t show up for school. He’d already be on his way to San Diego and in Mexico by tomorrow night.

  Henry had decided on a new name for his new life. He was now Harold Blair, and he’d used the new name for the first time when he registered at this Motel 6. He thought about the exotic teenage beauties of Bangladesh as his eyes closed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  The call came at 12:30. An amateur astronomer called the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department to report something suspicious. The astronomer had driven to a remote area between Black Canyon City and Cordes Junction to photograph Saturn for a magazine layout. He’d gone to the Agua Fria National Monument just off Bloody Basin Road because of the complete absen
ce of manmade lights in that part of the state. Saturn was perfectly positioned that night for the best possible shots of its rings. Before he’d taken his first photo, a white sedan drove into a dry wash about a hundred feet below his position.

  A man parked the car, leaving the lights pointed at the sandy soil of the dry creek. When he got out, he was carrying a small camping shovel and a broom. After digging a hole, the man stripped off all of his clothes, even his underwear, and dumped them with his shoes into the hole. He’d covered the hole with sand and used the broom to smooth the sand and to erase his tracks. He’d dressed in fresh clothes while standing next to his car before he drove off. This occurred about 9:30, but the astronomer had finished his photos of Saturn and called the department when he returned to his home in Chandler.

  We’d had a very lucky break. Yavapai County deputies met the witness who guided them directly to the clothes. By 3:30, the deputies had recovered not just clothing, but a Walther P99, a weapon that fires the same nine-millimeter rounds used to kill Art and his sons. The jeans’ pocket held seven spent cartridges. The find should provide irrefutable proof of Henry Griffin’s involvement in the murders. Modern DNA techniques were very likely to connect the unwashed clothing to the person who wore it. The clothing probably had traces of blood from the victims as well as Griffin’s DNA. When combined with motive and opportunity, it was all that we’d need to send the fugitive investment banker to the lethal injection chamber at Florence. First we had to catch him.

  That night while most of the six and three-quarter million Arizona residents were sleeping, the most intensive manhunt in state history was being conducted. Every white sedan on every major highway in the state was stopped. Every border patrol agent, every policeman, and every member of the Arizona Highway Patrol who was awake that night was looking for Henry Griffin in a white sedan. Three unrelated fugitives were apprehended that night because they were unlucky in their choice of vehicles, but there was no sign of Henry Griffin.

  The sheriff, Chad, and I went to the Cottonwood Police Headquarters to monitor the hunt. The Phoenix Police dispatchers were in charge of communications for the search, and they were making regular reports to the Cottonwood DP. The real problems would occur at dawn when the morning commute began. The over four million residents of Phoenix would simply overwhelm law enforcement with the number of white sedans on the roads. As the nation’s hottest city, white was a favorite car color in Phoenix, and we had no idea of the make or model of the vehicle Griffin was driving.

  “He may not look remarkable, but I think people will remember his accent,” the sheriff said about 4:30 that morning. “He has that sissy sounding English accent that gets on everyone’s nerves.”

  “You’re familiar with his voice?” I asked.

  “I talked to him on the phone once. He called me and demanded Dr. Thatcher’s documents the day after we discovered the murder. He had a very pretentious sounding voice,” Sheriff Taylor commented.

  “He could have a disguise, and he’s lived here long enough to fake an accent,” I replied. The sheriff’s comments reminded me that he had talked with Henry Griffin by phone at least one other time, but he chose not to mention that now. I wasn’t sure that I could get over the feeling that the sheriff had caved in to the pressure of a lawsuit. If we’d pursued Griffin aggressively from the start, the murders of Reggie Neely and the Johnsons might have been avoided. If I were going to second guess everything the sheriff said from now on, it would be better for me to quit. Private detective work still seemed like an alternative.

  “He’s had enough time to get to Nogales by now,” Chad commented. It was strange to hear us discussing the case since things had moved out of our control with the murders here in Yavapai County being the focus of the whole state’s attention. The Coconino County Sheriff’s Department was participating in the search, but Griffin was not likely to still be in our part of the state. The matter was mostly out of our hands.

  “Everyone on the border had his photo, plus the Mexican police will send him back to us if they find him. They’re no more fond of cop killers than we are,” Sheriff Taylor said.

  I didn’t agree with the sheriff’s estimation of the Mexican police. With enough cash, some of the cops across the border would be willing to look the other way and let Griffin move on. “Our best bet is getting a lot of TV coverage in the hopes someone has seen him,” I said.

  “The Phoenix police chief is personally calling the station’s news managers this morning. He wants that photo on every morning news show in Arizona. It was too late to get it printed in the Arizona Republic, but with any luck, we’ll get him,” Sheriff Taylor said. He was trying to convince himself. He realized how difficult it was to find a fugitive who has an eight-hour head start.

  “What do you want to do about Art? Maybe Art was dirty, but we don’t know that for sure. Bridger was always a wild kid. Art didn’t necessarily know he was involved with Quentin Thatcher’s murder,” Chad said.

  “At this point, I don’t see any advantage in speculating that Art might have been connected to the murder. It won’t help us catch Griffin, and maybe it will never come out. That’ll be up to the lawyers when the trial starts.” The sheriff was telling us both to keep quiet about our speculations unless we were under oath.

  I agreed with him. There was no reason to tarnish the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department by claiming it had harbored a murderer for hire. I still felt uncomfortable with the sheriff. That phone call to Griffin’s office bothered me. Did the sheriff have some other reason for not wanting a link between Henry Griffin and Art Johnson?

  I decided to ask him point blank and resolve the matter. “Sheriff, when I was in New York, I discovered you home number on Griffin’s secret phone line, one that didn’t go through the bank’s system.”

  The sheriff nodded. “I call him to warn him that another attempt to kill one of our officers would result in every officer in the county working on investigating the bank in spite of the lawsuit. It was right after someone took that shot at you.”

  We stayed there all night following the progress of the search or rather the lack of it. At 6:00, I called Margaret to let her know that I was OK.

  “I turned on the TV and Griffin’s photo was on Channel 3,” Margaret said. “They’ve found a better photograph than the one from the Times. It looks like he’ll be easy to identify. Mike, I’m sorry you got to Cottonwood too late to prevent more deaths. Call me when you get home. I love you.”

  We turned on a TV in the Chief’s office. A senior investment banker wanted for the murder of a deputy and his two teenage sons was the biggest local story of the morning, and I felt a surge of optimism. We’d been lucky to find the bodies of Art and his sons within a few hours of their murder. We’d also been fortunate that we’d already linked Bridger to Quentin Thatcher and indirectly to Henry Griffin even before we went to the house in Cottonwood. Without that connection, we wouldn’t have begun the manhunt for Griffin immediately. Finding the weapon and clothing gave us the proof we’d need for a conviction, but it was publicity that would help us catch him.

  We were lucky that a young woman named Delores Hernandez was the night duty clerk at the Motel 6 on I-17 in north Phoenix. Just before she went off duty at 6:30, Delores had turned on Channel 3 and seen the photo of a man she’d checked in the night before. She was certain when the station mentioned that he was from England. That was what she remembered most, his fancy accent. She called the police and within fifteen minutes the Phoenix swat team was evacuating the other guests from the motel.

  The Cottonwood police chief received a call from the Phoenix dispatchers at 6:45, but only a few minutes later we could see the action on Channel 3. Their traffic helicopter had followed the swat team from downtown. They showed an aerial view of the guests being evacuated from the motel. The evacuation went on for ten minutes as sleepy guests were escorted out of danger.

  We saw the swat team enter the only guestroom that hadn’t been evacuated.
Two minutes later, they came out with a handcuffed man. His dirty blond hair was in disarray and a modest-sized potbelly protruded over his white boxer shorts. He was not an impressive or important looking man in his skivvies. The swat team stuffed him into a police car and drove off with the Channel 3 helicopter following them along I-17. Henry Griffin was in custody.

  “I’m glad he’s in custody; the local police have solid evidence for murders here in Cottonwood. Those will undoubtedly be the first charges filed. Mike, I’d like to keep you on the Quentin Thatcher case as a backup prosecution. You haven’t proven Griffin’s involvement enough for trial yet,” the sheriff said.

  There was no pat on the back for identifying our suspect in time to catch him before he left the country. No pat on the back for the recording that proved Bridger Johnson was with Dr. Thatcher on his final hike. I knew Quentin Thatcher’s murder was solved, but the case wasn’t proven yet.

  “Yes sir,” I replied. I would need to track the payment between Bridger Johnson or his father and Henry Griffin. There should be a large amount of cash somewhere in Art’s possession or Bridger’s, and Henry Griffin must have gotten the cash somewhere. There was still work to do before the Sedona office returned to its normal slow routine. I was glad I had an answer from the sheriff about his call to Griffin, but I was still thinking being a private detective might be more interesting.

  PHOENIX:

  Sir Henry was dazed and groggy as he sat in the police van. He couldn’t figure out how they’d caught him. At least they would have no physical evidence to tie him to the murders in Cottonwood. There was no possible way of finding the gun and his clothing buried in that remote spot in the desert. There were no living witnesses to any of his cleanup operations.

  He was very glad that he’d sent that retainer to the most famous criminal defense lawyer on the West Coast. He had plenty of money to fight the charges, and he knew that was what it took to win in an American criminal court. Of course, if they let him out on bail, he’d be gone in no time. He was really too smart not to get out of this mess one-way or the other.