Zigzag (3 page)

I expected cold semidarkness; what I got was humidity and a blaze of light that made me blink and squint. Both light and humidity came from a series of high-wattage LED hooded reflectors hanging in rows over three-quarters of the interior. Beneath them, on shelves, were dozens of green plants in various stages of growth. The shed had no windows, but ducting ran from an exhaust fan into a hole cut in the back wall. There was a small dehumidifier, and gardening tools, paper bags, and a loose scattering of plastic containers on a workbench. The containers were empty except for a greenish-gray residue. More of the same substance, a mixture of dried, shredded leaves, stems, seeds, and flower buds, was sprinkled over the bench top.

Indoor pot farm.

So now I knew what Floyd Mears did for a living. Not that I cared much in principle; marijuana growing and selling is already legal in some states and others would soon follow, California included. Everybody to his vice, as long as no innocent parties get hurt in the process. Except that innocent parties do get hurt sometimes, and not only humans. That Doberman outside. Guard dog, probably. Blown away by somebody who wanted access to cured weed ready for smoking and/or sale. The containers strewn over the bench, another that had fallen to the floor, indicated a quick search and grab.

A bad feeling had begun to work in me. There was no sign of either Mears or his visitor in here. The cabin, then? I backed out of the shed, shut the door, crossed back over there.

The first thing I did was stretch up on the spongy ground under the window and look through a narrow aperture between the curtain halves. All I could see was a small section of the front room. Table, one chair toppled on its side, and another upright at a skewed angle as if it had been violently shoved backward. The only other things I could make out were a woodstove and a small stack of cordwood.

I did not want to go inside. But the bad feeling was even stronger now, and there are some things you simply can't avoid doing. If the cabin was empty, then all right, I could drive away from here without any further involvement and with a clear conscience. The murder of the dog and running of a small-scale marijuana farm were misdemeanors and none of my business as such.

If
the cabin was empty.

But it wasn't.

The door was unlocked, so access was no problem. I rapped on it again, waited, then shoved it open wide and leaned in without entering. I could see more of the room then. Part of a larder and a makeshift kitchen with a kerosene stove, an open doorway into what was probably a bedroom—and a dead man sprawled across the threshold.

He lay twisted on his right side, his face turned toward me. A welter of dried blood shone darkly across the fronts of an open leather jacket and white shirt. Shot like the Doberman. How many times I couldn't tell. Not self-inflicted, even though there was a gun, what looked to be a Saturday night special, loosely clenched in one outflung hand.

That should have been enough for me to keep from entering, but it wasn't. One man dead, two vehicles parked in the yard—that didn't add up the way it should. I went on in.

Murder, all right.

Two victims, not just one.

The second dead man was in a seated posture on the floor, propped against the wall on the far side of the room, his legs spread out in an inverted V. Blood all over him, too, and streaked down the rough-hewn boards above him. Shot while backing up and the force of impact had slammed him into the wall. On the planking beside the body was a large-caliber automatic on an aluminum frame. I couldn't tell how many times he had been hit, either, but it was plain enough that they'd both cut loose with several rounds each; bullet holes pocked the walls at both ends of the room.

I'm no stranger to crime scenes, God knows, but a double homicide like this was something new and ugly in my experience. And the way I'd walked into it gave it an even more nightmarish quality. Drive up to the Russian River on a routine job, get a name I'd never heard before as a possible accident witness, come out here and stumble onto a shed full of marijuana and a dog and two strangers shot to death. One of those crazy zigzags that leave you feeling unlucky and faintly disoriented.

I stood motionless for several seconds, sucking deep lungfuls of cold air, automatically taking in details. The corpse on the floor between the two rooms: forty or so, short red hair, fireplug build, dressed in the once-white shirt and corduroy jacket and a pair of slacks. The one sitting against the wall: a few years older, thickset, beard-stubbled jowls, bald except for thin comb-over strands of straggly brown hair, wearing Levi's and a plaid lumberman's shirt. Mears? The room was cold and damp—no fire in the woodstove in a long while; the all too familiar stench of sudden violent death was faint, and from the appearance of the bodies, rigor had come and gone. The shootings must have taken place sometime last night.

Marijuana deal gone bad, the way it looked—the kind of thing that happens all too often these days, though it usually involves large and street-valuable amounts of weed. Both men armed, an argument of some kind, out came the guns like a couple of trigger-happy cowboys drawing on each other in a western B movie, and they'd blazed away until they were both down for the count. That kind of stupid scenario.

A little funny that such a thing would happen here, considering the kind of small growing operation I'd seen in the shed. Not that it mattered as far as I was concerned. The local law's headache, not mine.

I backed out of there, opened my cell phone on the way to the car. The fact that I was able to get a clear signal in a place surrounded by dense forest was a relief.

 

4

Crime scene investigation, whether big city, suburban, or rural, pretty much follows the same established pattern. Slow, methodical, meticulous routine. I'd been through it so many times, as investigating officer and witness both, I could write a full-length, dully repetitive book about my experiences. When you're in the position I was in here, it's a tedious and seemingly interminable process made even worse by the fact that I was dealing with strangers in unfamiliar, somewhat isolated territory.

The routine is unpleasant no matter which side you're on, but easier if you're part of the crew because you're busy all the while. For a material witness it's static and numbing. Sit and wait, answer questions from the first responders, sit and wait, answer questions from the second wave and men in charge, sit and wait some more. The only good part was that no suspicion was directed at me once I showed my ID and explained the job that had brought me to Rio Verdi and then to Floyd Mears' property. For most of the three-plus hours I was required to remain on the scene I was shunted out of the way and left alone.

Cell phone reception was pretty good here; I called Tamara, who was still at the agency, to tell her what had gone down today, then Kerry at Bates and Carpenter and Emily at home to let them know I'd be late and not to wait dinner. All I said to them was that I'd gotten unavoidably hung up; they did not need to know the unpleasant details. After that I sat in the car and vegetated. Jake Runyon has a knack for shutting himself down at times like this, sort of like a computer put into sleep mode, but I've never been able to master that ability. My thoughts tend to run riot while I'm on a protracted wait, skipping from one subject to another indiscriminately, so that I end up feeling antsy and disgruntled. Patience has never been one of my long suits even at the best of times.

The officer in charge, a county sheriff's department lieutenant named Heidegger, came around and finally told me I was free to leave. He'd been brusquely efficient in his questioning earlier, but now he just seemed solemn and tired. He was about fifty, thick bodied, square shouldered—a career law officer who'd evidently dealt with as much if not more violence than I had and almost but not quite become inured to it.

“Regular shooting gallery in there,” he said. “We counted nine rounds fired, four hits and five misses.”

“Gunslingers,” I said.

“Yeah. One of the dead guys is Floyd Mears. I guess you figured that. The other, according to the wallet we found on him, is Ray Fentress,
F-e-n-t-r-e-s-s,
address in your city. Name mean anything to you?”

“Ray Fentress. No.”

“And you'd never seen him before?”

“Never saw either of them before.”

“Reason I asked is that I called in for a computer check on the name and he's an ex-con, less than a week out of Mule Creek after doing eighteen months on an assault conviction.” Mule Creek was a minimum-security prison in Ione, up in the foothills east of Sacramento. “What I can't figure is why he'd come all the way up here to buy dope from a small-timer like Mears.”

“Some past tie between them, maybe.”

“Sure, but why come armed? Why deal with a man, even one you knew personally, if you thought you needed self-protection?”

“Self-protection might not be the reason.”

“Robbery?”

“Could be, if there was a lot of cannabis and money at stake.”

“But there wasn't,” Heidegger said. “Not that we've been able to find. Just a small amount of weed in one of Fentress' pockets, couldn't be worth more than a few hundred dollars at street prices, and a stash in Mears' bedroom worth about the same. And less than seventy-five dollars cash total on the two of them, their vehicles, and the premises.”

“Well, the get-together last night could've been to set up a deal for later, and for some reason it went prematurely sour.”

“That's a possibility.”

“I can think of another explanation,” I said. “Third party involved. Somebody who shot both men and then the dog for however much dope was stored in the shed.”

“Yeah, that occurred to me, too,” Heidegger said. “But there doesn't seem to be much doubt that Mears and Fentress blew each other away, and unless we find out Mears' cottage industry was a lot bigger than what's in that shed, there wouldn't have been enough weed or cash to make anybody in his right mind commit homicide.”

“Then who shot the Doberman? And why? And when?”

“Fentress, so he could get into the shed to get the dope we found on him. Mears came home and caught him, Fentress threw down on him, they went into the cabin to talk things over—”

“—and Mears pulled his piece and the shooting started. Makes sense, I guess.”

“As much as any other explanation,” Heidegger said. “I'll tell you, I hate complicated crimes. I sure hope this one turns out to be just what it looks like.” He sighed heavily. “None of your worry in any case. I'll need a written statement from you, but we can do that by fax. Unless your accident investigation brings you back up to the county in the near future.”

“Doesn't look as though it will, now.”

And finally I was out of there for the long drive home.

*   *   *

I faxed my statement to the Sonoma County sheriff's department the following day, and that should have been the end of my involvement. But it wasn't. The world is a sometimes strange and perverse place, as we all know from experience, and my profession occasionally fraught with the kind of unforeseen twists that had led me to Floyd Mears in the first place.

It was nearly three days before I found this out. Little enough happened during those sixty-some hours. I wrote and delivered the deposition, then wrote and delivered my report to our client, the attorney representing Arthur Clements, in which I provided a brief explanation of how I'd learned of the now-dead third witness to the Rio Verdi accident and what had transpired afterward. All that remained of that case would be delivery of subpoenas to George Orcutt and Earline Blunt once the trial date was set, should the attorney decide to utilize us for the task. Probably not, though; independent process servers come cheaper than a small but upscale private agency.

There were no new developments in the double homicide. Tamara followed the news stories on the Internet and gave me capsule summaries; I have a long-standing aversion to daily doses of current events in the media, crime news in particular, and so actively avoid reading both newspapers and online news sites. There was additional proof, though not conclusive proof, that Floyd Mears and Ray Fentress had shot each other during an argument over money or marijuana or both: the Saturday night special in Fentress' hand had done for both Mears and the Doberman, the .45 by Mears' body had taken out Fentress, and nitrate tests confirmed that both men had discharged firearms. Lieutenant Heidegger hadn't yet ruled out the possibility of a third party as either shooter or thief; however, the investigation was ongoing.

As for criminal records, Mears had none of any kind and the assault conviction that had landed Fentress in Mule Creek for eighteen months was his only offense and had nothing to do with drugs. He'd been spotted speeding on Mission Street not far from his Excelsior District home, for some reason tried to outrun the police cruiser and sideswiped two parked cars, and then stupidly resisted arrest by assaulting one of the officers and breaking his arm in the ensuing struggle. Fentress' blood alcohol level was 0.28, well over the legal limit. As a first-time offender he might have been given a lighter or even a suspended sentence at his trial, but he'd had the misfortune to draw an inexperienced public defender and a hard-nosed judge. Fentress' refusal to provide a satisfactory explanation for his panicked behavior also mitigated against leniency.

How Fentress and Mears had come in contact was a mystery. Nothing had turned up to indicate they'd known each other prior to that night, or linking them in any other way. Fentress' wife had no idea and in fact vehemently denied that her husband was in any way involved with marijuana. Based on his photograph, nobody in the Russian River area owned up to having seen him before. A couple of Rio Verdi residents admitted to having heard rumors that Mears grew and sold pot to a carefully selected group of local customers. Who those customers were they couldn't or wouldn't say.