by Jack Lynch
Not far from there a Hungarian nobleman, Count Agoston Haraszthy, planted the experimental vineyards of the Buena Vista winery, and from that beginning was to grow the entire California wine industry.
Max banked east and we flew over the Sebastiani winery, but scanning the ground below we didn’t see the sort of things in combination that Maribeth had said would be there, so Max flew farther north, past Boyes Hot Springs and the Hanna Boys Center, to the vineyards of the Valley of the Moon winery, but most of these were on bare, baked flatland, with no nearby woodland, no sloping hills. We continued north, over the vineyards and fields near Kenwood then flew over Sugarloaf Ridge State Park and past Hood Mountain. Whenever we spotted old ranch buildings scattered in pockets here and there we would fly in low for a closer look, but nothing seemed promising.
We continued on to Mark West Springs, studying the carpet of land below, then Max flew the plane up Porter Creek in the direction of the town of Calistoga, known for its hot mud baths, and on over a ridge into Napa County.
And then Max sat straight up in his seat and said, “Son of a bitch.”
“What’s wrong?” I was afraid he might have heard a bad note in the engine.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Max said, putting the small plane into a tight bank-and-turn until we were headed back almost due south. “You want to find some open space with wooded hills rising to the west? You want old outbuildings? An old frame home with a nearby vineyard? I’m going to give them to you, pal. There’s nothing wrong at all. We’ll be there in a matter of minutes.”
“You’re pretty sure of this?”
“Dead certain, if you’ll excuse the pun. And about a quarter mile away from all that is another building. It’s a museum now, called the House of Happy Walls.”
“That rings a bell,” said Harvey. “But too faintly to tell me where we’re headed.”
Max had a tight smile on his face now. Not a smile of happiness, but one of grim satisfaction, of certainty, and true to his word a few minutes later we were circling a two-story stone building on a ridge of Sonoma Mountain overlooking the Valley of the Moon.
“That’s the House of Happy Walls,” Max told us. “This is Jack London State Park.”
A parking lot stretched west of the building, out to the blacktop road that snaked on down to the town of Glen Ellen.
“But it doesn’t look like what we’re supposed to be looking for,” Harvey complained.
“Come with me,” said Max, climbing once more and buzzing west, over another parking lot and then a collection of old buildings. “There’s the farm London ran,” Max said. “That old white cottage is where he lived and wrote, waiting for them to finish building the Wolf House.”
Harvey put one hand on Max’s shoulder.
“Max, circle around. Over that field north of the cottage.”
Max put the plane into a shallow bank. An old dirt road meandered from the London home toward a couple of old silos in the distance, then curved around to a ridge off to the west. Harvey was interested in a patch of ground near the turn in the road, in a small hollow just below some other old farm ruins.
“There,” Harvey said. “That patch of vivid green.”
“What about it?” Max asked.
“It could well be,” Harvey said quietly. He cleared his throat. “If this is the place your lady psychic wanted us to find, Mr. Bragg, that patch could be showing what we in the trade call a green halo effect. It could be decomposition. Nutrients, various things seeping into the ground and fertilizing the immediate area.”
The little anthropologist leaned back in his seat, his eyes staring off into the empty sky ahead. “I think it’s time we call the sheriff,” he said. “Unless somebody has buried some dead cattle down there, I think we’ve found what the lady was afraid we’d find.”
FIVE
They unearthed the first body at a little after three o’clock that same afternoon. It was a woman in her late twenties whose handbag had been buried beside her under 18 inches of soil. Identification in the handbag indicated the victim was a twenty-eight-year-old nurse from San Francisco named Michelle Sykes. She had been employed at San Francisco General Hospital. A wallet inside the handbag held nearly $40 in currency. The woman had been shot once in the head at close range. The body was fully clothed in slacks, blouse and Nike running shoes. Harvey Draper estimated she had been in the ground between two and three weeks.
They were removing the Sykes woman’s remains when the hand of a second body was discovered. After a lot of careful earth removal, it was seen that the second victim was a man, also fully clothed, in slacks and sports jacket, green polo shirt and Rockport shoes. He had a wedding band on his left ring finger and in his hip pocket was a wallet containing $74. Contents of the wallet identified the victim as John Clarke, forty-two, a certified public accountant from Redwood City, south of San Francisco. The wallet also contained color photos of a diminutive, dark-haired woman hugging two young girls. The girls appeared to be about six years old and could have been non-identical twins. In a flapped, concealed section of the wallet a condom was found by a sheriff’s detective named Thurber. Harvey noted a single entry wound, what he called the “in-shoot,” at the rear of Clarke’s skull. In this instance somebody apparently had modified the lead slug of the bullet so that it would create a more destructive path as it moved through the victim’s head. At the point of “out-shoot” most of Clarke’s forehead was missing. Before Clarke’s body had been removed the sweating team of four sheriff’s deputies who were carefully raking and removing earth by hand from the area discovered two additional bodies.
After Harvey had spotted his suspected green halo effect, Max had flown us up to the county airport northwest of Santa Rosa. Harvey had worked with Detective Smith before, so he called to report what we’d found. It being Sunday, Smith had been at home. He didn’t remain there. He told whoever had phoned from the office to have a deputy pick up Harvey and myself at the airport. Max flew on back to Sausalito, promising to return when we were through doing whatever had to be done. Max wasn’t interested in watching a sweating team of deputies and coroner’s people dig up a bunch of bodies. I wasn’t, either, but I had helped start all this.
On the ride over to Glen Ellen the deputy driver told us that Smith had telephoned the ranger office in the House of Happy Walls at Jack London State Park. The supervising ranger, a man named Pat Davenport, had told the sergeant that he knew of no animals that had been buried recently on park grounds.
By the time we arrived at the park it had been cleared of visitors. Other deputies were there ahead of us, along with two detectives from the Violent Crimes Unit. One of them was the detective named Thurber, a husky, middle-aged man with steel gray hair. The other was the woman who had come by Smith’s office while I was there the day before. Her name was Rachel Goodwin. Smith had checked with the county coroner, who told the sergeant that if any bodies were found he would be more than happy to have Harvey act as lead pathologist. After the first body was found a deputy district attorney also was dispatched to the scene, a routine procedure at homicide investigations.
The state park embraced more than half of the 1,400-acre ranch and farm that London acquired after his stories had begun selling. Before I’d moved to Northern California I hadn’t known much about Jack London. When growing up I’d only been aware that he had written some grand adventure stories with settings in the far north. I had since learned that in his day London was one of the world’s most prolific and popular writers. He had turned out some fifty books, along with hundreds of short stories and dozens of articles. He also was a firebrand orator and an avowed Socialist. His strong affinity for the underdog in society came through in his stories, and that probably had accounted for London’s worldwide popularity. It was a role a lot of people could identify with.
But writing occupied only the early hours of Jack London’s workday. The rest of his time was devoted to growing fruit and grain and vegetable crops. He also raised horses,
pigs and other animals with an aim to developing quality breeding stock. He wanted to demonstrate innovative agricultural practices that could be shared with farmers everywhere.
Another of London’s dreams was to build Wolf House, a sprawling mansion of thick stone walls and redwood logs with interior redwood paneling. It was completed in the summer of 1913. London had put about $80,000 into the structure, pre–World War I dollars, and was about to move in when the new home was destroyed by fire in the middle of the night. Some people said the fire was deliberately set.
It was a mystery never solved, at least not publicly. London died three years later at the age of 40 and was buried on a knoll not far from the ruins of his dream home, his Wolf House.
The burial site that Harvey had spotted from the air was more than a half mile from the Wolf House ruins, and a couple hundred yards north of the frame cottage where London wrote and lived. It was in a slight depression beneath a hill where London had built an experimental pig pen. From the unpaved road nearby the plot of ground appeared to be just another overgrown patch of wild grass and thistles. It might have gone undiscovered forever, but right then it was receiving a lot of attention.
Detective Rachel Goodwin had drawn a detailed diagram of the area, somebody else was taking still photos and another deputy, equipped with a portable television camera, was recording the scene on tape. Detective Ted Thurber was making notes from the drivers licenses and other ID found on the victims’ bodies. I mostly tried to stay out of everybody’s way. Because I had arrived on the scene with Harvey I was more or less taken for granted by the others, but I stayed out on the road.
Forty minutes after the first body was found, a news van from a Santa Rosa television station showed up at the park entrance and Ranger Davenport, on horseback, came loping down the road to tell Thurber about it. He swung down out of the saddle, then listened for a minute to a message coming from a handheld radio he carried.
“We’ve got TV people backing up at the main gate,” he told Thurber. “You don’t want them down here, do you?”
“God no,” Thurber said, staring up the road. “Tell you what. Let them in as far as the cottage. They can see us working from there. We’ll have a deputy establish a command post by the big oak tree. Tell them we’ll release whatever information we can from there.”
Davenport gave a nod, swung into the saddle and started back up the road. Thurber turned toward the team of people working in the burial patch. “Rachel? Got a job for you.”
Detective Goodwin came out to the road. She was wearing a pair of green slacks and a leather buckskin jacket over a tan blouse.
“I don’t want the victims’ names going out on the radio,” Thurber told her, handing her a sheet of notepaper. “The news-people will be monitoring us on their scanners by now. How about going over to the headquarters building and phoning Smitty. Report the names so people can start working on them.”
The woman gave a little nod.
“Mind if I tag along?” I asked.
Goodwin paused and Thurber squinted at me. “I’d like to get in touch with the woman who put us on to all of this,” I told them. “To find out if she recognizes any of the names. She’s a good head. She won’t blab them to anybody.”
“Is that the supposed psychic woman?” Thurber asked. He was thinking it over, studying me, ready to say no.
“This man was in the office yesterday,” the woman detective told her partner, with a nod toward me. “He gave us the first hint of all this. Smitty said he came well recommended from somebody down in Marin.”
Thurber shrugged. “Okay, but be sure to tell the woman to keep it to herself. And don’t say anything to the media people gathering up there.”
Detective Goodwin and I started hiking back toward the cottage. “Thanks for the good word,” I told her.
She slipped out of the buckskin jacket, squinting across at the lowering sun, and now I could see the revolver with a six-inch barrel she wore in a belt holster near her right hip.
“I just told him the truth,” she said. “If I thought you were just another asshole I wouldn’t have said anything.”
We passed a trail that climbed through a grove of trees to our left, away from the road. I checked a map I’d gotten and suggested we take the side trail. “It goes to the north end of the parking lot. Probably we can avoid the newsies that way.”
“Good idea,” she agreed, falling into step behind me. “God, they can be pesky.”
“Especially on a slow news day like Sunday. I know. I used to be one of them.”
“You did? If I’d known that I wouldn’t have put in the good word with Thurber.”
“It was a long time ago. And indirectly it’s why the psychic lady phoned me to tell me about the mess back there.”
Up in the parking area a half dozen television news vans were now nosed into the curb by the picnic area, along with a couple of other cars with press placards in the windshields. We skirted them and walked back down out of the lot and across the entrance road to the east parking lot that extended to the House of Happy Walls, the home Jack London’s wife had built following his death. Now it was a museum that reflected the writer’s life through photos and newspaper stories and editorial rejection slips and objects he’d collected and tools he’d worked with.
“What do you think of the woman psychic?” Goodwin asked.
“I think she’s a fine lady, from the conversations I’ve had with her.”
“No, I mean the psychic part. Do you think she’s on the level?”
“I’m a little more willing to believe it today than I might have been yesterday. She’s the one who told us what to look for.”
“Sure. But maybe being psychic didn’t have anything to do with it.” She gave me a look and a little smile to go along with it.
“Aha,” I said. “Beneath that soft, feminine shell dwells the soul of a cop.”
It was a mistake. Goodwin took another couple of steps then paused. We were outside the museum entrance. “That’s not some sort of gender statement, is it?”
I winced. “No, and I guess it wasn’t much of a joke, either. But that’s what I intended.”
She stared at me a moment, then nodded. “I hope so. I get about all the gender remarks I need back at the office.”
I watched her trudge on up to the entrance, then followed her into the building.
After Detective Goodwin had phoned Smith and relayed the ID information on the victims, I put in a call to Maribeth. When I told her they were recovering bodies, I could sense her ambivalent mood. She’d been vindicated, but she was frightened of the implications for herself. The names and occupations of the bodies recovered so far didn’t mean a thing to her. I asked her to put her niece on the line.
When Bobbie picked up the receiver I asked if Maribeth had told her about the bodies they were finding.
“Yes. It sounds grim.”
“It is grim. And now I’m a little concerned about the effect all this is going to have on your aunt after she’s had time to think about it. I remember the state she was in when we first talked years ago. She might have convinced herself in the years since that it was her friend back east who was responsible for her depression, but you never know.”
Bobbie made a thoughtful little sound. She had a good mind. “I had planned to go out and do a little shopping,” she said quietly, as if her aunt were nearby. “Maybe I’ll stick around here instead.”
“Good girl.”
Detective Goodwin had been standing close by, making no attempt to conceal the fact she was listening to the conversation. I guess she thought that anything I did about all this business was a part of her business as well. We were walking back through the east parking lot when she cleared her throat. It was the first non-cop gesture she’d made in the time I’d been around her.
“Did I miss something back there?” she asked.
“About the phone conversation?”
“Yes.”
“I was talki
ng to Maribeth, the psychic, then to her niece, who’s in town to hold Maribeth’s hand for a few days. Did the sergeant fill you in on Maribeth’s story, of what she sensed?”
“Just that she said she saw these bodies buried. He didn’t even mention that until he came into the office after Doc Draper’s call today. Then he told me all about it, since I was going to be working it.”
“How come he assigned you? It didn’t seem to me you and the sergeant were on the best of terms. Not yesterday anyhow.”
She glanced at me briefly, then looked back at the ground. It was only then I noticed that when she wasn’t being super cop, she had a bit of a round-shouldered slouch to her when she walked, as if she were carrying a little dejection around inside herself.
“It was just my day in the barrel,” she told me. “We rotate standby, to catch whatever comes in. Ordinarily I would have been the only detective assigned up here, but Smitty apparently took your lady’s story seriously. So he sent Thurber too. Chances are the whole squad will end up working it if it gets to be as bad as your Maribeth says.”
We walked in silence, across the road from the entrance gate and on up to the west parking lot.
“Anyway,” I continued, “the other part of what Maribeth senses, she says, is that because of the bodies, her own life is in danger. That’s all she can make of it. She can’t come up with any reason for it, but it has her badly shaken up.”
“I guess it’d shake me up, if I felt that way.”
“There’s more. Before she got in touch with me yesterday morning I had only talked with her once before, years ago, over the phone. I was working on the Chronicle. She called up to tell us she was going to take her own life. She thought we might want a photo of her going off the Golden Gate Bridge.”
Goodwin stopped in her tracks and stared up at me with a little frown.
“I think I helped talk her out of it,” I continued. “At least I got her to trust me enough to give me her phone number. Then I had somebody from Suicide Prevention call her. It all seemed to have worked.”