California Tumbles into the Sea

By Rick Russell

A war correspondent returns home to a murder mystery, an ex-fiancee and small town America. "...There are insights about How soldiers deal with war and the return from war that should be required reading for all who deal with Warriors & Veterans. The cultural accuracy and social content of the Vietnam War Era setting in a small town is superb." Peggy Jentoft, Amazon Review.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sangraal Inc.
• Release date: Sep 18, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452368801

Rick Russell

I'm a book seller who has been at it all his adult life. Along the way I have been a book, magazine, ezine and newspaper editor and writer. I have purposely avoided the publishing establishment, because I have known many of them, and their incompetence and ignorance of literature as an art form is frightening. I write because it is a part of understanding what I have made my profession and i have done it for forty years now.

Book preview

Part One - Search

Chapter One

I hadn't worked at all in the couple weeks since I arrived in San Francisco. Almost five years in Southeast Asia had left me pretty well fixed, at least for the time being. I didn't even have a phone in my single room occupancy studio apt, and I didn't really want one. I' d read twenty-six books since touching down in Millbrae, sampled fifteen of the best restaurants from the wharf down through Chinatown, and was recovering nicely, thank you.

I had picked up a job stringing for a small wire service out of Saigon in seventy, and it lead to series of other jobs, most of which involved reporting from places while being shot at. The last year I had been attached to a group of green berets, which lead to being shot at in three different sovereign nations, reporting said incidents to the Capitol News Service and ending with a fairly lucrative freelance series in the Confidential News and World Report. Both of who I was in hiding from because I really had had more than enough of the fascinating continent of Asia. So I wasn't exactly thrilled when Larry Harmon, the west coast editor of Confidential knocked on my door.

You ready to do something again? Larry said.

No.

Then he looked at me in a rather strange way, I say strange because it was not at all normal for him, it had an intensity to it that was totally foreign to the affable, my buddy, tell me everything persona that he carefully cultivated. The last time I had seen that look was in Bangkok, and within two days I was up to my ass in mud, blood and mosquitoes.

I was about to do irreparable harm to my budding career as a freelance journalist by forcibly ejecting the west coast editor of a major publication from my room when he asked a simple, straightforward, gut wrenching question.

You know Tori Raselli?

Tori, now there was a name to conger up all sorts of memories I didn't need. Six years flowing by is one hell of a lot of water and all of it underneath a bridge with that name attached to it. High school sweetheart, a year of long distance romance while she finished high school and enrolled to be with me. Three more years then another long distance romance while I grew-up on a New York local rag, at the end of which I decided I didn't need the marriage we'd been planning since the junior prom.

Tori, authoress of wet dreams in every major hotel from Manila to Calcutta, I knew her too well, and it must have showed on my face because Larry handed me a manila envelope, without the slightest explanation or pitch.

If you're interested drop by tomorrow afternoon. Then he just turned around and headed for the elevator.

I sat down on the bed and opened the envelope to a handwritten note from Gwen.

It's hard to explain my relationship with Gwen. We'd talked on the phone, written each other for the last five years. She is my researcher, sometimes my conscience, and my friend. I can't describe her because we've never met. And yet she knows me, and I know her, about as well as any two people could know one another. I supposed this was why I held the envelope in my hands.

Okay, Nicky boy this is all yours.

This whole thing stinks, from the inside out. I told Harold here and he said he'd send this to Larry the day you were supposed to land. Right, you want some time off. Bullshit my friend. I've caught you drunk too many times not to know this a bill that you are long overdue on. Pack and take the Night Owl up to Annandale. Don't think about it, and read this on the train.

Gwen

Well, I didn't pack, but I did read and it was guilt on paper. Tori's bio since my Dear Tori, which Gwen knew the exact date for, covered the first five pages. Gwen wrote without adjectives, simple declarative facts, in simple declarative sentences. In a nutshell, my little missive was not the only bombshell that summer. Her parents were both killed on a bloody little stretch of 101 between Gilroy and Salinas, leaving her with a fourteen year old brother and an English degree without a teaching certificate to make ends meet in a little agricultural town twenty minutes from downtown nowhere. Her parents left a bit, and an insurance settlement helped, but she still had to take a job as a waitress to make it.

I barely remembered the brother, and what boyfriend has any affection for his girl's kid brother? A geeky, gap toothed kid with annoying mannerisms was about all I could come up with.

Tori got him through high school with honors, and had the family home up for sale to guarantee him college when Annandale's crime of the century intervened.

Sheila Ann Coulter, a sixteen year old, was found cut to pieces in the local lover's lane, Tori's brother, Ted, ended up the prime suspect, being the last person seen with her and the boyfriend of her older sister. When Sheila's blood was found in the car Tori and Ted shared, and her blood on a knife buried in the garden, well, the family house and every other cent Tori could scare up went for a defense against a murder charge in a trial that made the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe look like Lionel.

Tori was still in Annandale. She took an apartment, and an extra shift. Apparently she was spending every cent she could get to appeal her brother's conviction.

After reading the five pages I lay back on the bed and tried to remember Annandale, a place I'd spent the last decade doing my level best to forget.

The place was named after a whipstitch town in Minnesota, which was apparently named after some Swede named Annan something or other. Half the town was my stock. Scandinavian, tall, blond, the other half was Italian, dark, short, and in the case of, at least one raven haired and blue-eyed girl, beautiful.

It sat in the wine country, a valley in the Coast Mountains between Napa and the Lakes. Isolated a bit, a small town that lived on wine. My great grandparents had turned the family farm into a vineyard, and my parents sold out to Ernest and Julio while I was wading through the Mekong delta looking for a story. I'd made it clear that I wasn't a vintner and because I was an only child born late in my parent's life, they bought a condo in San Diego.

It was a small town with all of the advantages and disadvantages of one. I knew everyone; I even knew that Sheila was the daughter of Evan Coulter of Coulter Realty. My high school graduated eighteen in the summer of 1965, I was number two.

It never snowed, and a lot of the rain common to the area slipped over it on a heat bubble. The hills on either side were vineyards or cherry orchards and by twelve we all had learned that too many pinot noir grapes or rainier cherries would get you out of school the next day, with a single prayer to the porcelain god.

A pleasant place, almost detached from the world. A place for anyone without ambition to enjoyably transverse the abyss between life and death without a single serious thought. Could I face the prospect of going back? Worse, could I face the girl I left there?

The rest was typical Gwen. When the war was winding down, I was sending names and hometowns back to her. In my mailbox, when I got to it, was every word in every hometown paper, Xeroxed pages of every yearbook page that contained any mention of anyone whose name I sent. All annotated in her clean printing. Things like geek, nerd, or I hope this one comes back, introduction?

I had what I was sure was every news clipping on the murder and subsequent trial, as well as a concise summation of the trial itself. A lot of it was underlined with a marginal note. A lot of the marginal notes were simply BS, with emphasis added through underlining, four lines being emphatic BS.

It was about ten in the evening when I finished. I caught the cable car over to the wharf and begged my way into a late supper at Alioto's. I sat in the lounge after a supper that started with half a cracked crab and ended up with a hanger steak, sipping Armagnac and gazing out toward Oakland across the bay.

I hadn't really made any plans beyond a long lazy summer of drifting. Almost six years of making obituaries interesting while doing some really serious ducking had ripped the covering off of my nerves and calloused my feelings. Was I even up to the emotional impact of Annandale? Or for that matter seeing Tori again?

I was going to pick up my new Bronco the next morning. Picked it out the second day I was in town. The dealer had a connection with a custom shop, and I had double air shocks, a light bar, a hitch, a winch and a stereo that would do credit to the term philharmonic all being put in. The plan had been to drift down to Santa Cruz and pick up a board and some diving equipment, along with camping essentials and make a slow lazy trip down through Mexico, playing Miles Davis, Chuck Mangione, the Moody Blues and Cream all the way. Now, it seemed Guadalajara wouldn't do at all. It was May; I'd be just in time to catch the first blooming of the oleander in Annandale.

Next morning I packed and checked out of my studio apt in the tenderloin, caught the cable to the Market Street trolley to the Van Ness bus and showed at the Ford dealership just as the salesmen were filing in to the sales meeting. I caught Terry, my salesman and we finished up the business on the Bronco, which pleased him no end. I barely made it three blocks to the gas station as evidenced by the fact that two twenty-gallon tanks took thirty-nine point seven gallons to fill.

I drove down to the storage locker I'd rented in Burlingame and packed the Bronco with what I thought I might need, though the locker really held art of one type or another. Then I headed back up to the city, paid an obscene fee to park and walked in to invite Larry Harmon to lunch.

We settled business quickly. Signed the contract for the story and I put a call into Gwen.

So you're in, Nicky. Good, this kid was treated like a passenger on the Wabash Cannonball. Can't prove he didn't do it, but I know damn well nobody proved he did. So, what'd you need?

A furnished apartment in Mendocino, a copy of the trial transcript, a list of people, address and phone, who testified at the trial, and a case of valium to get up the nerve to talk to Tori again.

How long?

I'm taking Larry to TJ's for buffalo stew and a beer, then when you give me the go ahead, I'm outta here.

Take an hour, maybe a second beer.

Love you.

And you're as full of shit as a Christmas turkey.

Larry was back at lunch. All affability, the good buddy, I guess the pressure was on in the apple. They wanted this story. Why? I hadn't a clue, at least not then. I thought maybe Gwen was playing a game, but that wasn't the half of it.

When we got back in Larry gave me a cubicle and I called Gwen.

"Ok bucko, write. When you get to Mendocino on highway One, the second street is Grove. Bear right and continue to Kalte: Kay- AY-eL-Tee-EE, turn left to 2017. Talk to Mrs. Henderson in apartment 101, if it's after midnight get a room and go tomorrow. The transcript was sent to your address there, 107. The list will go off tomorrow.

"As to the rest, what you did to this girl hasn't left you in six years. She was a friend, maybe not a lover, maybe not your soul mate, but a friend. And you acted like a total shit. And don't even think about defending yourself.

She's needed you for six years and she needs you now more then ever. What do you macho types say? Semper Fi? Oh, sorry, wrong fucking branch. Well we are humans and we Fi all over the place. Get your ass up there with some Semper," and quit acting like you're the party with problems.

Nuff said?

Plenty, thanks love.

I got to Mendocino a little before five.

The apartment was a one-bedroom with an unobstructed view of the ocean from the living room and the bedroom. The furniture was pretty standard J. C. Penny's with a pullout couch and a couple armchairs that almost matched, a Formica dinette, full size bed and a nightstand that was probably an antique and didn't look it. The amazing part was the phone, installed and apparently in the name of the magazine. I have never figured out how Gwen does things like this, but she always seems to have a way. I once thought, whimsically, that she was the illegitimate child of every bureaucrat in Southeast Asia, now I had to add American CEOs.

Once I lugged everything in, two trips, I travel light, I drove down to the main drag and had an inch thick Salmon fillet for dinner. On the way back I stopped at Ralph's for coffee, a mug, a case of local Merlot and half a dozen wine glasses.

Back in the apartment, I opened a bottle, poured a glass and moved the telephone over to the dinette. I almost added the international code for my message number at the magazine. Gwen had recorded one message on the system.

Warning, warning Will Robinson, Tori's landlady is your old English teacher.

I pulled out the envelope and spread it out on the table. Through sips of the dry red liquid I tried to piece together something that made sense, but none of it really came together.

Ted was dating Sheila's sister Donna, they had a spat and Sheila was the go-between. Ted and Sheila were placed in the drug store at three-thirty in the afternoon, no one remembers if they left together. Sheila was killed about six hours later, but no one could place her or Ted anywhere after the drug store. The back seat of the Ford Ted and Tori used had a blood stain that matched Sheila's blood that went unexplained, and the apparent murder weapon, a hunting knife that was sold at the local sporting goods store and as common as pants in Annandale was found buried in the garden of the Raselli house.

In other words, there was no real motive and both means and opportunity in common with every other male in town. The bloodstain made less sense. If he had cut her up in the car it would have been awash in blood, impossible to clean or hide. If he didn't, how did the stain get there? In the front seat maybe, but after the job done on her, it wouldn't be a little stain; he would have been covered in blood. And in a town with a couple dozen irrigation ponds, filled with frogs every spring, with bottoms full of rusting frog stickers lost by boys for about the last century, why bury the knife at home?

Either something was missing or the county attorney was a silver-tongued devil to pull a conviction out of it all. I was spinning when I went into bed, fortified with the entire bottle. Too many questions, loose ends, nothing to grab onto, if the Merlot hadn't put me to sleep, I wouldn't have slept.

I woke up at five. I'm an early riser, but usually need heavy infusions of caffeine to realize it. It wasn't until six that a sort of truth found its way through the morning fog. I pulled my fourth mug out of the percolator that came with the rental and called Gwen.

"You're not leveling with me here, my love. Yes, it was a job that would do credit to the Southern Pacific, and so what? I could see some local rag with a kid out of J school a year or so doing something with it, but Confidential? The story makes no sense, but I'll make sense of it before I'm done. What really makes no sense is why Harold only news of National importance fucking Reilly wants to pay me to do a story that belongs in the Sonoma Clarion-Examiner."

The smile on Gwen's face was audible as she sat there silent and Harold Reilly answered.

Because, hot shot, they just allowed states to re-institute the death penalty. This has some head up their asses conservatives trying to go back on sentences over the last few years and apply the death penalty. I need to find a prime candidate and prove him innocent. And that's National fucking news from Harold fucking Reilly. Gwen came up with this kid and you as the best shot. So why don't you get off your ‘I'm battle fatigued’ ass and earn what I'm paying you.

Gwen chuckled with the click of Harold's phone.

Like the apartment?

Let's see, a view of the ocean, a fireplace, off the beaten track, me with an old girlfriend. You're sadistic Gwen.

You should see my whip collection. Anything strike you as being needed, or is this just a social call?

Right now I need the girl, what can you find me on Sheila?

That's a bitch. Sixteen, you'll know more in ten minutes in Annandale, but I'll see what I can find. Going in today?

After this cuppa.

Keep in touch.

Chapter Two

I thought I'd wait until the San Andreas tumbled most of California into the Pacific before I made it back to Annandale. Driving over the hill amongst the coast redwoods on a road I took every summer weekend through high school evoked some strange emotions. You couldn't call it déjà vu, but it was similar. It wasn't familiar, but it was. I had worked so hard to blot it out that it was new, and yet it wasn't. Coming down the grade into town, I had to concentrate to keep the Bronco straight. My hands were shaking.

I pulled into Rosie's, the town diner, and parked. It was only seven-thirty and I was early if I wanted to catch anyone but a truck driver, and late if I wanted to catch a farm worker.

The girl who served me looked familiar, but nametags never caught on at Rosie's. I ordered ham steak and eggs, two over easy with home fries and sourdough toast. I noticed the three waitresses where getting together in a conference, twice Rosie a six foot two aging bruiser who made the unfortunate decision to name his business after the hooker he married in San Francisco in thirty-nine and who left in forty-two joined the confab.

My breakfast arrived with all four of them. One I knew without a doubt. Josephine Ericson was a tall, big, athletic blonde who had joined our summer surfing pilgrimages to the coast throughout my high school years. She was as daring and accomplished a surfer as any of us. If I recall correctly, she was the first to successfully hang ten. We called her Joey.

They were all tongue tied, dying to ask, but saying zilch, So, I took the initiative.

I looked directly at Joey and said, Been a long time Joey, still hanging ten up in Crescent?

Nicky?

"Good lord, I recognize all of you, it's been so long you don't recognize me? Hell, Rosie, the night Tommy Kellog and I broke into the Masson yard and were drunk and sick all at once on green champagne, who fed us enough coffee and cleaned up the men's room so we could make it home?

Hey, is coming home that big a deal?

It was Joey who finally answered.

Are you here for Tori?

I've been out of the country, found out what happened Tuesday afternoon and it's Thursday morning. Hell yes, I'm here for Tori.

She gets in at ten.

Well, that's the first subject. I want to get to work on this. I have a major publisher in New York paying the bills and I want Tori working with me. Can she get some time off?

All three girls offered to cover and Rosie agreed. Then he sat down across from me.

"You'd better be damn careful boy. Half this town wants Teddy strung up, and a few of the worst are spreading rumors that Tori and Teddy had a relationship that wasn't quite wholesome, if you catch the drift.

"Cal is still the police chief and he's dead certain Teddy's guilty, I really can't say why. And that Neanderthal Gunnerson is still the deputy, so tread lightly or you'll find yourself on the wrong end of that lead loaded nightstick he's so fond of.

"Told Tori to get out of town must be a hundred times, even offered her a few bucks to set up somewhere else, but she's not having any. Best thing you could do is just get her out of here.

Breakfast's on me.

I finished and sat for a while with my coffee. Then I took a hundred out of my wallet and called Joey over.

Split this with the other girls for the extra work. I'll probably be in tomorrow and I'll want to sit down and hear all you can tell me. About nine-thirty?

She nodded agreement and I was left to the dregs in the cup, at Rosie's the coffee was always a little chewy toward the bottom of the cup.

Tori's apartment was actually a guesthouse that the Avery's had made out of a garage when their younger son was in college so he would have a private place over the summer. Loretta (Mrs.) Avery was my high school English teacher; in Annandale there was only one, so we had four years of history.

I parked in front and started to cross the lawn towards the guesthouse when a voice from the past snapped me, involuntarily, to attention.

Nicholas, get in here.

Mrs. Avery was standing at the front door and looked pretty much as I last saw her. A tall, slender blond from the Anderson farm whose two sons still lived up on the hill and grew rainier cherries for the world. Her voice hadn't lost its whiplash quality, though I did suspect a touch of Lady Clarol kept her hair sunshine gold.

Don't dawdle boy, I have to be in class in half an hour.

She sat me down in a chair in the living room that felt strangely like a desk that had recently become just a tad too small.

So Nicholas, you took your time getting here. Most gave up on you, we got your stories and everybody figured you were too much of a big shot to come back here, but I knew better always could tell which of you would come home. How long have you been back?

A couple weeks. But I didn't find out about the mess here until day before yesterday.

I've been kind of expecting you for a week or so. Chronicle had a nice little write-up on you going home. Are you working? Or is this on your own hook?

Both. I'd be here working or not, I lied. "Confidential Report is paying the bills."

Know much?

Just the package the researcher at the magazine put together. From what I gathered Ted was railroaded a bit, that's the angle the magazine took anyway. Was he?

Well you know Calvin Ames, Nicholas, the most pig-headed, stubborn man in California. He got it into his head somehow that Theodore was guilty and that was that. He didn't even look at anyone else, or any piece of evidence that didn't fit.

Are there pieces to this that don't fit?

"Start with the girl. Sheila was a mess. Three quarters of the men in town under thirty got into her pants at one time or another. She certainly never had a halo, that one. But her being murdered gave her one, from the town chippie to sweet little, innocent high school girl. Theodore was practically the only boy in town who didn't get a piece of her. He was a shy kid, like the sister, Donna, treated Sheila