One Through the Heart (33 page)

The skull and the clothing were together. That was another mistake. He could have lost the clothing anywhere, absolutely anywhere. Dropped them on a street corner, dropped them in a garbage, donated the clothes to Salvation Army or left them on a bus station bench and no one would have been the wiser. The skull he should have broken into pieces, but maybe there was a reason he did it this way, Raveneau thought, leaving the plastic bag he carried the skull and clothes in as well. Maybe he wanted them together and maybe that was driven by anger.

Raveneau waited hours for a photographer. He asked the Chief Medical Examiner to drive down, and he was at the site until mid afternoon.

But now he was with la Rosa across the table from Matt Baylor in an interview room. They had brought Baylor up the fire escape to the Fifth Floor and Baylor didn’t complain about climbing the stairs in manacles. He was in an upbeat mood. Maybe he thought he was being offered a deal because his Uncle Hugh ‘had nailed one of the guys who set the fires last night and the cops didn’t want to be going after a hero officer’s nephew.’

Baylor might have believed that but Raveneau didn’t think so. Still, neither Raveneau nor la Rosa did anything to alter his mood yet. They talked up the risk Hugh took to confront Lindsley alone and liked the idea of Baylor feeling that he was basking in Hugh’s halo. The media ran the story that way: career officer lured to a late night meeting kills the fourth arsonist in a shoot out. Inside the Homicide Detail was a different view but if they were correct Hugh did it the right way. He contaminated the scene in a way that would make it difficult to solve.

La Rosa set up her laptop and Baylor asked, ‘What’s up with the laptop?’

Raveneau answered for her. ‘We’ve got some photos to show you.’

‘You’re wondering if I’ve ever seen the guy that Hugh wasted?’

‘If you have we’d be interested, but this is different. We’re going to come around to your side of the table. We’ve got this set up as a slide show. We’re not really high enough up in the brass to do PowerPoint and there’s no intro music, so we’re going to be right into the opening shots right away. I’m guessing you’ll recognize where they were taken and I should tell you they were all taken today.’

‘What is this about?’

‘You’re going to have to tell us that. You’re the man with the answers.’

The first photo could have been from someone’s vacation somewhere looking down a dirt road with the oak and bay branches overhanging it and out toward a foggy vista.

‘I took that,’ Raveneau said. ‘Do you recognize the road?’

‘No.’

‘It runs out to the secret prison.’

‘Why are you fucking with me?’

La Rosa was wondering the same thing.

‘I’m not really. I’m just slowly getting into a good mood. You probably haven’t ever seen me in a good mood, so it seems strange.’

La Rosa gave him another look and he nodded and moved to the second photo. This showed the dirt pad leveled and the foundation construction, pier rebar poking up, twisted form wood of the retaining wall.

Baylor frowned. He looked down at the photo again and he looked up he said, ‘OK.’

‘OK, what?’

‘I recognize this. It’s where I dumped those loads.’

‘That’s right, and we were out there with dogs today. I’ve got a question as we get to these next photos.’

Baylor didn’t respond. He just watched the screen and waited for the next one and that was the deer trail leading down off the back of the site. The fourth showed the skull and clothes.

‘My question is why didn’t you bury it deep or at least lose the clothes? The dogs might still have found it, but I doubt it.’

Now there was a long silence as Baylor stared at the screen and Raveneau and la Rosa sat quiet. They could only imagine what must be tumbling through his head. Raveneau was banking on the fight Baylor had with his uncle.

‘He wanted me to lose them.’

There we go.

‘Who did?’

Another long silence. It was hard for him and then his anger returned and he spit out the words, ‘Uncle Fucking Hugh, and I don’t know why I did it for him. Because he said he’d deal with some other problems I had going, I guess. It was weird and I felt strange doing it but he said not to worry about it, that it didn’t matter. He said it was old news and over with. Those were his exact words.’

‘Did he ever say whose skull it was?’

‘He told me where it was in the bomb shelter and it was pretty obvious it was hers. He said he didn’t kill her and he didn’t find out about the skull until later. I got it out the day I went down there the first time. He said I owed him and that’s when he said it was old news and over with and didn’t matter anymore. It was just something that needed to be done so he didn’t get questioned about what kind of job he did on an investigation.’ Baylor looked at Raveneau. ‘Hugh didn’t trust you. He’s retiring at the end of the year and he didn’t want some asshole asking questions about the case.’

‘Asking him or asking someone else?’

‘I don’t really know, but, yeah, maybe he didn’t want you finding it and then talking to other people.’

‘He told you where to find it. Did he say he had been in the shelter and seen it?’

‘I don’t think he ever went down there. Someone else told him it was there. Something like that, and I don’t know if you know but Hugh was getting paid by the professor. He was getting ten grand a month as a consultant when the professor was writing his book. That was after his divorce and it went on for years. He didn’t want to fuck that up.’

‘He told you that?’

Baylor nodded and this was a thing about Baylor he’d learned. You couldn’t really know with him. Raveneau doubted Hugh did anything more than tell his nephew that he worked as a consultant for Lash on a book and probably told him how much he made. For years he had wanted his nephew to like and respect him.

‘He was getting the money in cash and he told me it saved him.’

‘When did he tell you that?’

‘We were drinking at the house one night. It’s all fucked up, I know, but that’s what happened. So if I testify or whatever, what do I get? One thing I want is out of jail right now.’

‘How did you get back in?’

‘Hugh backed out of the bail deal.’

But even then there wasn’t enough to take on Hugh Neilley. Hugh wouldn’t say a word. He’d lawyer-up, and the one who told him about a skull and some clothes in a bomb shelter, the one ‘hanging around the professor’s house’, as Baylor put it, Raveneau guessed was Lindsley. Hugh could answer that if they could get him to talk.

They held off interviewing Hugh. They waited on DNA confirmation on the skull and then re-interviewed Albert Lash. Raveneau told Lash, ‘Ann Coryell’s skull was recovered from the bomb shelter. We believe Brandon Lindsley killed her and if you can help prove that we’ll clear you. We’ll put out a statement and hold a press conference and tell the world how you got framed.’

Lash looked suspicious but interested. Not a bad place to start. He answered quickly and the voice software worked well. ‘What do you need?’

‘It’s complicated because Lindsley made an effort to frame you. He told Inspector Neilley in 2006 that you had killed her and her skull was in the bomb shelter. He told Neilley about the shelter and how to access it. Similar to how he tried to frame you with the knife and surgical saw. We’re going to need Neilley to cooperate, and to get some leverage on him we want you on tape saying you were paying Hugh Neilley ten grand a month in cash as a consultant.’

‘What does that do for you?’

‘Hugh Neilley had his nephew remove and try to dispose of the skull and some clothes of Ann’s before calling nine one one.’

‘Have to think.’

That took another four days and then he gave them the videotaped statement they needed. Raveneau started off by telling Hugh he would need a lawyer, but that they were going to give him some information first.

‘I’m not going answer any questions.’

‘We don’t expect you to and may not need you to. We have Ann Coryell’s skull and a statement from Matt Baylor about what you asked him to do. He also told us about the ten grand payment you got each month from Lash. We took that to Lash and he gave us a statement. We’ll play that for you now.’

They did that, and Hugh folded his arms over his chest and said, ‘He’s lying.’

‘We get it, Hugh. We understand you didn’t want to stop that ten grand a month from coming in. You needed the money.’

‘I earned that money.’

‘You were still getting it years after the book came out. Lash got sick. He didn’t write anymore. What did you do to earn the money in 2010?’

‘We were working on new stuff.’

‘Were you? Like what? We need to know who told you about the skull and how you verified it was there.’

Two days later through his attorney Hugh relented and admitted to having been told by Brandon Lindsley about the presence of a lone skull with clothes neatly folded next to it. He was told the location of the bomb shelter and that there were two partial skeletons in there as well. He claimed he didn’t believe Lindsley, so he never checked. But Hugh would have checked. He checked and then weighed having Lash arrested versus collecting ten grand in cash a month, and maybe that’s why the consulting fee got paid up until Lash was moved into assisted living.

‘We’re going to charge you with her murder,’ Raveneau told Lash and knew as he did they would never really learn what happened on the cot in the bomb shelter to Ann before she was taken out and killed. ‘Lindsley helped you move her up on Mount Tamalpais. Was she too weak to walk or resist? Did you shoot her there or was it Lindsley who shot her and cut her head off? Was that to make it harder to identify her? You knew animals would deal with the rest. We’ll name Lindsley as your accomplice and we know he tried to frame you later. Who shot her? Who killed her?’

‘He – did.’ Lash exhaled two more words. ‘Sitting Bull.’

Raveneau couldn’t make any sense of that, at least not then and Lash wouldn’t say another word. Raveneau knew some considered Sitting Bull the last true Indian, but it was a couple more days before he figured it out and did that by reading accounts of Sitting Bull’s death. That was in the weeks before the Wounded Knee massacre when Sitting Bull was vilified as the one leading the Indian ‘Messiah Craze.’ Raveneau read excerpts from the
New York Times
and other newspapers that described Sitting Bull as a venal and evil man shot down in a failed arrest. He was struck by two rifle balls and there were conflicting reports on the first shot. The second shot struck him in the head, but Raveneau knew it was the first that Lindsley and Lash had focused on. That bullet struck Sitting Bull on the left side in the ribs and may have passed through his heart and with it came the end of a way of being and of a people.

He saw Lash only once more and Lash kept his eyes closed and wouldn’t acknowledge Raveneau’s presence in the room. He died five days later before charges were brought. Raveneau knew from the doctors that Lash was going and could have asked a favor of the District Attorney to get Lash charged before he died, but he didn’t. He did make sure the media knew the truth though, and Lash didn’t get the obituary the press had ready. They wrote another and that one noted that Albert Lash was charged posthumously for the murder of Ann Coryell.

She was owed that. Lash and Lindsley escaped any penalty for taking her life, but her death was answered, the truth not lost. She of all would understand that.