Chapter 1
California’s Central Valley had its own unique charm—hundreds of thousands of acres of open agriculture, cereal grains, hay, cotton, tomatoes, vegetables, citrus, tree fruits, nuts, table grapes, and wine grapes. Complimenting these were marshlands alive with waterfowl and rice paddies stretching to the horizon.
Two-lane roads, paved and unpaved, crisscrossed at semi-regular intervals, creating a mosaic of varying greens and browns. Two big rivers, the San Joaquin, and the Sacramento, combined with all their tributaries to subdivide the farmlands, too. Between the river’s flows and the ubiquitous irrigation canals and waterways, the sweet smell of fresh, or close to it, water perfumed the fields. In the dense heat of the day, the fragrance was intoxicating.
About every ten or fifteen miles, small towns dotted the landscape. Hardscrabble and coarse, small cafes, mom and pop grocery stores, grain silos, taco trucks, heavy equipment sales yards and, of course, a wide selection of dive saloons populated them. Along the San Joaquin and the Sacramento rivers, smallish, and being kind, ‘river resorts’ and bait shops littered the banks where it intersected with the valley’s whistle stop communities. The hamlets of Luck, Silverton, Calpine, Davison, and Peyona were the glue that held this agricultural region together.
In the stillness of the night, ‘the valley’ exuded a peaceful and serene ambiance, with the scent of the earth mingling with the subtle musk of marshlands. But on this night, late in December 1978, beneath the veneer of tranquility, all was not was not what it seemed.
* * *
A deep, shrouding fog concealed crumbling fragments of asphalt and gravel that slipped from the old highway downhill into the wet marsh grasses. An unsettling quiet and a chill of melancholy coated the inky wetlands. His mind wandering from the drudgery of another crash report, California Highway Patrol Sergeant William Taft sang to himself the single line of Dean Martin’s, Baby Its Cold Outside that he could remember. His thoughts drifted to Christmas morning—three short days to finish his shopping, tinsel and cinnamon, and his tiny daughter’s laughter.
Reviewing his troop’s crash reports under the yellowish glow of a tiny dash-lamp, he was deep in concentration when he heard the first shot. Alert, he listened through his open window. A second and third report followed in rapid succession.
Coffee out the window, but like most cops, he left it down as he’d been trained. Cops wanted to hear the whispers, the pleas, the shouts that sometimes carried on the cold night air—the desperate cries that only reached those who listened. Taft pushed his cruiser into the muddied dampness. In the last thirty minutes, he’d only seen a single car on the highway, a sheriff’s cruiser moving north. He cut the median to complete a U-turn and merged onto a desolate Highway 21, also northbound.
Accelerating, Taft’s mind raced, recounting in his head the number of shots he’d heard: One, two and three; was there a fourth? It was too late, too dark, and those were shots from a pistol, not duck hunters working the adjoining sloughs.
Was that just another shot? He thought.
The Sergeant pulled the mic to his mouth.
“Dispatch, 8S35.”
“Dispatch, go ahead,” came the reply.
“8S35 investigating shots fired near the Rio Leone overpass at 21.”
“Shots fired, Rio Leone at 21. Unit to fill?”
The prowler’s lights burrowed into the restless tule fog. It seemed to hold its breath, the only movement, the occasional ghostly tendril that shifted and reformed in the headlights’ glare. One moment, Taft squinted through a thick curtain of mist, the next, a ghostly sliver of landscape would peek through, then vanish again as quickly.
Taft turned down the Motorola radio and its intermittent patrol chatter. Those shots had to be from a pistol, he thought. Twelve years on the job had honed the sergeant’s instincts, and intuitively he knew there was no good reason for a handgun to bark in the dead of night, not in this isolated patch of fog-bound nowhere.
In seconds, a nebulous amber bloom winked ahead. The patrol car was strategically stopped at a blocking angle on the right side of the roadway, common in many car stops. The forward shining reds were activated, as was the rear amber. The twin spotlights out in front of the cruiser disappeared in the dark. Whatever vehicle had been pulled over by the deputies was nowhere in sight.
Intuition and experience kicked in. Taft picked up the mic.
“Dispatch, 8S35, 11-96, Highway 21, Northbound, about a half mile north of Rio Leone overpass. Push my fill code 3.” His request of the dispatcher to respond his backup ‘lights and siren’ was ominous.
Taft had no knowledge of the deputies making a car stop in his sector. Unless a dispatcher flipped a switch, CHP and the Sheriff’s Office were on partitioned frequencies. They simply couldn’t hear each other’s radio traffic.
Nothing about this felt right. Taft slowed, looking, smelling, listening, trying to take it all in. Unbuckling his seat belt, he pulled onto the shoulder of the highway, behind the green and white Delano County Sheriff’s Office cruiser. Both of its front doors wide open.
“Dispatch 8S35, I’ve got an S/O cruiser... UTL any occupants,” he added.
Slapping the mic onto the dash, the Sergeant popped his driver’s door and shoved it with his heavy boot. He grabbed his Kel-Lite and stepped out onto the lonely ribbon of asphalt. His senses jacked, Taft lit up the roadway, the rear of the S/O cruiser and off to the sides as far as he could see. Nothing clued him into the situation. Without looking, he reached down and plucked his baton from the carrier on his driver’s side door and slipped it into the ring on his Sam Browne gun belt. Taft glanced left, right, and over his shoulder, then stepped into the darkness.
The Highway Patrol had trained Sergeant Taft well, at least as well as all his trooper counterparts, and he was an excellent student of the profession. The one thing that they could not teach was experience, but Bill felt his twelve years ‘on the job’ qualified him as having been there and done that. On this night, Taft found out he was mistaken.
With his Smith and Wesson .357 in his right hand, his Kel-Lite in his left, Taft sliced through the fog and lit up the rear deck of the squad car. A quick left and right swing, but still he had no idea what he was walking into. As he stepped to the side and moved toward the driver’s open door, he illuminated the interior of the squad car. The rear or ‘perp seat’ revealed nothing. His first glance up front was another matter.
Normally when cops bail out of the front seat to make a vehicle stop, they leave it quickly, effortlessly, with nothing likely upset in their cruiser. In that first split second, Taft noted the dented metal clipboard, partially open, and paperwork haphazardly poured across the console and onto the passenger seat. The passenger door was open.
He bent at the waist and leaned into the driver’s compartment, his brain fogging with stimuli. The microphone was not in its normal resting spot on the dash latch, but lying on the hard rubber front floor mat. That was unusual, but the fact that the shotgun appeared to have been partially pulled from the locking rack, canted at a steep angle, was startling.
As was the blood.
The passenger seat was slick with it, the floorboards bathed in the sanguine fluids. A more focused look and Taft saw smears of blood on the locking rack, the solenoid release button, and the lower half of the of the shotgun.
At first glance, looking through the interior, out the wide-open passenger door, the Sergeant noted footprints in the wet ice plant on the roadway’s edge. As if all this wasn’t enough, it was still not what stopped him in his tracks.
It took Taft a split second to comprehend what he was seeing.
“Dispatch 8S35, respond an ambulance, code 3. Officer down.”
He uncoiled from his uncomfortable crouch in the driver’s compartment of the Sheriff’s cruiser. Just beyond the passenger door, he locked on the yellow stripe on a pair of uniform pants. The balance of the deputy’s body was just out of his view on the downslope of the ice plant.
As he came to his feet, he swept his flashlight, his mind calculating the possibilities obscured by the darkness and the fog. For the briefest moment, he thought of his daughter—laughing, sitting cross-legged in front of the Christmas tree. Then—seeing no one else, Taft cautiously moved past the right rear of the vehicle, just in front of his own patrol vehicle. As he rounded the rear of the sheriff’s cruiser, his light caught a prostrate body lying on his back, headfirst down the steep slope from the roadway.
Ashen faced, the sheriff’s deputy stared dully into the misty night sky. At least one shot had torn away part of the deputy’s jaw, bathing his upper body in blood. His tactical boot at the edge of the roadway, the rest of his body uncomfortably embedded in the ice plant.
Taft breathed into his shoulder mic, “Dispatch, hurry... “He dropped to his knees next to the deputy, just about his age, about the same time on the job. In fact, not seventy-two hours prior, the two of them, their patrol cars sixty-nine’d under an overpass, had shared a thermos of coffee and family stories. They discussed school and church and how their kids were growing too fast. Taft, shared the details of a surprise birthday party he was planning for his wife.
But now, when he felt for his friend’s carotid pulse, there was nothing.
Taft noted a single bullet hole in the deputy’s torso. Unfortunately, it had found its mark in the gap between the Kevlar vest panels along the right side of his rib cage. Blood was pooling at his left arm and right hip as well.
The ice plant cradling his head was stained with the jets of arterial blood that had minutes before been the deputy’s life spring. The sheer volume of blood created an iron-rich scent that hit Taft like a punch in the face.
He knew the trooper was dead, but had no time to process it. There was another deputy still out there, one who might still be alive.
Taft heard the first faint wail of oncoming sirens. He wished they were closer, but that was a wish that just wasn’t meant to be. Not only did he know that another deputy was unaccounted for, he was acutely aware of his own risk.
He swept the steep embankment and the passenger side of the deputy’s vehicle with his Kel-Lite and at first saw nothing. He crouched low, pushing his .357 ahead of him. Taft inched along past the patrol car’s open door and to the front right of the vehicle. He continued sweeping his light, hoping for... well, it was chilling that for what; he wasn’t sure.
He lit up the roadway as far forward as he could see in the fog. Nothing. He moved a few steps down the embankment and made a deeper sweep of the ice plant. To the right, then the left. As he started to widen the Kel-Lite’s sweep, there, just outside of the cruiser’s headlights, and about sixty feet ahead, was what he’d most feared.
It was difficult on the steep embankment covered in deep, wet ice plant, but Sergeant Taft rushed as best he could toward the uniformed deputy laying by the pavement.
He was more than startled to note the lawman was handcuffed, his hands behind his back, his legs akimbo. The deputy’s battered uniform hat lay half-submerged in a murky pool of rainwater, fifteen feet off the roadway edge. His left-handed holster was ominously empty and that in and of itself sent a chill through Taft.
He knelt for the second time in less than a minute, at an officer’s side along that nightmarish roadway. His Kel-Lite illuminated gruesome wounds that were almost more than he could bear. Multiple rounds to the back of the head had disfigured the victim.
Taft was conflicted. His common sense and deep-seated training screamed officer safety, and yet his limbic system seemed to take charge. On his knees, his hands to his side, Taft looked skyward, not seeing and not feeling. It seemed that he sat there, on his lower legs, for minutes. There was a very long, deep sigh, and a moan that only Taft could hear.
As the sirens closed in, he regained his focus. His handset crackled with radio traffic. Cops from across the county were all en route, lights flashing and sirens blaring.
“Dispatch, contact the Sheriff’s Office. They’re going to need Evidence and Homicide out here.”
Dispatch answered, “Copy 8S35. Will notify them.”
On the steep embankment, he pulled himself into a lop-sided standing position. Only then did he note that this deputy was a bit older than the other; it was hard to tell though. The wounds were so severe he was surprised he still recognized his fellow lawman. The bloody toupee, splattered across the wet jade slope, had confused him. Taft thought it bizarre that his first impression was: I never knew he wore a toupee?
Chapter 2
Sacramento Metropolitan Airport was Vince Driftwood’s usual outbound hub, less than fifteen miles from his home. It was ideal for those short three- or four-day fishing getaways. This morning, he was en route LAX to catch a shuttle, then a ferry to Catalina for a long weekend fly-fishing with his old friend and guide Ty Richmond. The two of them had shared a skiff many times off the coast of Avalon, fishing for bonita and yellowtail. Always, on the fly. They’d also done time in all of Catalina’s finer beach bars, restaurants and dives. While not Vince’s preferred destination, Catalina fit the bill for short weekends—relatively close to home and doing what he loved best.
Being single, Driftwood’s newly acquired detective grade pay was a generous reward for a quiet man. Not living large, he spent his money on top-end fly fishing experiences, and often, his small group of very close friends.
He was 31, intense and brooding. An even six feet and compactly muscled, he moved with a boxer’s easy grace. In general, women viewed Driftwood as attractive but somewhat distant.
At Christmas, he wanted to share his largesse with Sugar, Elizabeth (or ‘Lisbeth as he knew her), and the kids, Avery and Caroline. He knew that he could afford to spend on the Flood family, but he was also sensitive to the fact that Sugarcane couldn’t match him dollar for dollar. Driftwood spent time and energy on thoughtful, meaningful ways to show his love for his second family, never wanting to overshadow his best friend.
Killing time at LAX was mind numbing to Driftwood, and in the late 70s, it was a pretty barren landscape. The smell of cigarettes, the monotonous, artificial hum of fluorescent lights and the long, sterile shadows across acres of linoleum floor were routine for him. He was going fishing, and he was just happy to be there.
Driftwood was as comfortable as you could be in the hard plastic chairs in garish pastels that filled the boarding area. With his feet propped up on his gear, he leafed through the dog-eared fishing catalogs he’d brought along, just in case he’d overlooked a crucial piece of equipment that might become his next “must-have.” He even poured through a Monkey Wards Christmas catalog promotion, hoping he’d come up with something for his partner’s kids that they’d like.
When the public address system at Terminal 4 called his flight, Vince knew it’d be a quick hop aboard one of Golden West Airlines de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otters. He liked to fly, and he enjoyed the quick trip on the capable turboprops that serviced Catalina.
Driftwood gathered his gear and headed for the boarding gate.
The flight was less than half an hour from door to door. After arriving at the hotel and dropping off his gear, Vince headed to The Marlin Club, just a block and a half off the main pier. The classic Catalina dive bar and Avalon’s oldest fit Driftwood to a tee.
Within seconds of saddling up to the first barstool inside the front door, a can of Olympia slid down the plank into Driftwood’s big paw. ‘It’s The Water’ was Olympia Beer’s slogan, and that first slug confirmed it in Vince’s mind. “Thanks Toad, good to see you again.”
Toad gave him a quick nod and a wink. “Ty said you’d be in. On me, pardner.” Driftwood appreciated the gesture, and the barkeep knew he’d reciprocate with a more than generous tip.
The day was unseasonably warm for Catalina, a pleasant break from the valley fog. Vince was in fine form, and three or four beers in, he’d taken on an even more optimistic glow of good cheer. He knew that in the morning he’d take a water taxi out of the harbor and pull up to Ty’s skiff, Miss Millie, less than a quarter mile off Avalon. He also knew that within minutes of the handshakes and backslaps, he’d be paying out fly line, looking for that first Bonita strike. It was a very good day indeed.
“Toad, can you do me a favor buddy?” Vince didn’t wait for an answer. “Another Oly por favor and the phone too, if you don’t mind?”
Toad didn’t and within a couple of minutes, Driftwood took a pull from a fresh brew and dialed Sugarcane’s number. It rang three times.
Lisbeth picked up the phone, her voice bright and welcoming. “Hey Vince! How are you? Where are you?”
Vince felt a small smile tug at his lips. “Hey Lisbeth. All’s good. I’m in Catalina again. I actually wanted to—”
“Hey! Before you say anything,” Lisbeth interrupted, her tone shifting slightly, “some woman from the department came by the house today looking for Sugar. Mentioned you too. A Grace Kiddo. She seemed... intense.”
Vince’s expression hardened at the mention of the name.
“Grace Kiddo? Yeah, she’s an Internal Affairs sergeant. A real climber.”
“Uh oh,” Lisbeth said, her voice anxious.
“Nah, don’t worry about her.”
Lisbeth’s voice dropped to a more serious tone. “Are you sure? I don’t know, Vince, there was something about her that gave me the creeps. She was nosing around—for something.”
“Look, she’s only interested in Sugar because he’s my partner,” Vince reassured her, though he felt a twinge of concern himself. “I know what this is about. Trust me, I’ve got it under control.”
