The Daughters Of Alta Mira (Quill Gordon Mystery Book 4) Read online

  “It sounds like a tough case to prove in court,” Gordon said.

  “Hard, but not impossible,” Elizabeth replied. “And made harder by the fact that the sheriff is walking on eggshells.”

  “High profile family, politically sensitive?”

  “That, certainly, but there’s also the whole question of how the sheriff came to be sheriff.”

  Gordon raised his eyebrows.

  “Why don’t you tell the story, Sandy,” Elizabeth said. “You were there when it happened.”

  Sandy shook her head and took a sip of tea.

  “No one expected it,” she said. “That’s for sure. We had a sheriff named Bill McNutt — everybody called him Wild Bill. He was elected five times, and nobody even bothered running against him anymore. He was telling everybody he was going to die with his boots on, and that’s exactly what happened. One day this past January, he had an appointment to meet with the Highway Patrol commander. His secretary went into the office to let Wild Bill know his three o’clock appointment was here and found him asleep in his chair, with his boots up on the desk. Only when she went to wake him up, it didn’t happen, on account of he was dead. Heart attack while taking a nap. He was only 61.

  “Well, the County Board of Stupidvisors, as we like to call them, was too cheap to pay for a special election, so they decided to pick the successor themselves and asked for applications. Most people figured Howard Honig would get it; he’s been around for years and knows everyone in the community, which seemed to be the main standard. Plus, he has some cop smarts, but isn’t smart enough overall to be too threatening. Just right for the job, a lot of people would say.

  “Now there are nine of us in local law enforcement — women, that is — and we decided it was about time a woman got considered for the job. Problem is, most of us have been doing it less than five years. The only plausible candidate was Chris Huntley. She’s been a detective in Sacramento and had training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, which probably made her more qualified on paper than Howard. But she just moved here two years ago, which meant that politically she had no chance.

  “Even so, we wanted to make the gesture. We talked her into running, and we leaned on the two women on the Board of Supervisors to support her. By the time it came up for a vote the first week of March, an elaborate little charade had been worked out. Doris Smythe, one of the female supervisors, was going to nominate Chris, and Irene Paxton, the other woman supervisor, would second the nomination. The board would vote 3-2 against her, but the women could at least say they tried. Then one of the men would nominate Howard and they’d make him sheriff on a unanimous vote.

  “Well, they outsmarted themselves. Doris and Irene felt compelled to give big speeches about how qualified Chris was for the job, and one of the other supervisors, who’s a good friend of Howard’s, Wesley Morgan, felt he had to speak up on Howard’s behalf. He talked about how great Howard was for so long that Boyd Winnett, one of the other supervisors got confused. Boyd’s 84 and probably has early-stage Alzheimer’s. Wesley’s speech had Boyd probably thinking they’d already rejected Chris and were about to vote for Howard. When they call the roll, they do it in alphabetical order, so Boyd came last, breaking a 2-2 tie on the motion to make Chris the sheriff. He voted yes, thinking he was voting for Howard, and it was total bedlam. The clerk announced that Chris was the sheriff and it was too late to change the vote.

  “And that, my friends, is how our little backwoods cow county ended up with the first female sheriff in California.”

  Gordon set his beer on the table, shaking his head.

  “And I thought San Francisco politics was crazy,” he said.

  LATER, AS THEY WERE EATING, Gordon asked why he hadn’t seen anything in this week’s local newspaper about either of the crimes. Elizabeth answered.

  “The Plateau Courier is a very conservative little paper, and I don’t mean that only in terms of politics. It’s afraid of offending anyone and afraid of ruffling feathers. One of the other English instructors teaches a journalism class, and he says he uses the Courier as an example of what not to do.

  “Because the two missing women are legally adults, they’ve been handled as standing missing-persons stories. Reported briefly in the crime log, which runs on page 7. As far as the paper’s concerned, it’s no big deal, even though everybody in town’s talking about it. The parents of one of the students even put up flyers around town, though they’re almost all gone now.”

  “Would that do any good?” Gordon asked.

  “Probably not. I mean, if you live here, you can’t go anywhere without running into ten people you know. But if you’re a worried and desperate parent, I suppose you’ll try anything. I hope that never happens to me. But back to the Courier: They’re not going to stick their necks out and make it a big story until a body turns up or a whole lot more women go missing.

  “The rape, on the other hand, hasn’t been officially reported. Alicia went to the sheriff after school on Tuesday, and Chris interviewed her personally. She has a lot of notes, but is calling it an investigation in progress. She hasn’t yet written a report that will go into the stack where the press can see it. When the report does get out, it’ll be very interesting to see how the Courier reports it. The case is a hot potato.

  “Because it involves the football team?”

  “Not just the team. The one rapist she identified is Kyle Burnett. Name ring a bell?”

  “There’s a Burnett’s Farm Supply on the south side of town,” Sam said.

  “Bingo. Full-page ad every week, and, so I’m told, they pay on time. Some weeks that ad is the difference between the paper’s making and losing money. And old man Burnett is big in the Chamber of Commerce and gives to political campaigns. He isn’t someone most people in town would want to cross.”

  “So a lot of people around here would be happy if the rape story just went away?”

  “That isn’t how they put it, but yeah.”

  “One thing I don’t understand,” Sam said, “is how you know about all this if the sheriff is keeping it under wraps.”

  “I can answer that one,” Sandy said. “One of the things about having a woman sheriff is that she understands some things that the men in this county just didn’t get before. For instance, Plateau County had never had a rape-victim support program, which is pretty much standard in any place that calls itself civilized. One of the first things Chris did was set one up. There was no budget for it, so it had to be done with volunteers. Elizabeth and I are the co-chairs of the committee.”

  “And Alicia,” Elizabeth said, “was our first case. When she came in and told her story on Tuesday, Chris called us right away. We talked to Alicia for an hour that night, and we talked to her parents the next night. They’re good people, Gordon. They’ve raised three good kids, and they’ve both worked five times harder than the Burnetts and DeShaynes of this town, who make their money off other people’s labor and bloviate about how the problem with this country is that people don’t want to work any more.”

  “You’re getting excited,” Gordon murmured.

  “I can’t help it. Alicia’s a wonderful young woman, utterly without guile. She can’t believe what happened to her; she can’t believe that her friends would let it happen; and she’s starting to believe that the people who did it aren’t going to suffer any consequences.”

  “I hate to say it, but she might be right about the last part,” Gordon said. “My father is a judge, and he always says that the toughest criminal case to prove is a rape charge where the rapist and victim know each other. It’s hard for a jury not to have some doubt.”

  “Well,” Sandy said, “I know Chris is going to do everything she can to get to the bottom of it, which is more than Howard Honig would have done. But, as I keep telling Elizabeth, it’s an uphill fight.”

  “Is there any chance,” Gordon said, “that the rape and the missing women are connected in some way?”

  Elizabeth and Sandy looked at e
ach other. Elizabeth spoke first.

  “I never thought of it, but there could be. It does almost seem like it’s open season on women in this town.”

  Sandy shook her head. “Anything’s possible, but I don’t think so. Two completely different MO’s. If I were heading the investigation, I wouldn’t even try to connect the two without some more evidence.”

  The check arrived 12 minutes before kickoff. Gordon offered to get the meal since Elizabeth had picked up the drinks, but she declined on feminist grounds. From four different wallets, the party put enough cash on the tray to cover the dinner and a generous tip.

  “One other question,” said Sam, as they were rising to leave. “If the rape report hasn’t gone public, how did Bob know about it?”

  “Bob knows everything that’s happening in this town,” Sandy said. “Don’t ask me how, but if somebody has a secret on Monday, Bob knows about it by Tuesday. Ask when you get him alone. I’d like to know the answer myself.”

  “And while you’re watching the game,” Elizabeth added, “Keep an eye on Number 12, Kyle Burnett. When he throws a beautiful touchdown pass and the crowd is on its feet, cheering for him, try not to think too hard about what he did to Alicia. It might spoil the game for you.”

  ALTA MIRA HIGH SCHOOL sits at the southeastern corner of town, a few blocks off Chaparral Boulevard. Edgar Hammond Field, where the Eagles play football, is on the southern part of the campus, where the school boundary and the city limit are the same. The home bleachers, which can accommodate up to 1,500 people for a big game, sit on the west side of the field, and the visiting team’s bleachers — half as high and a third as wide — face west, looking into the setting sun early in the season. Beyond the southern goalpost and the track, a six-foot chain-link fence with a windscreen of trees separates the football field from a cattle pasture.

  It was exactly seven o’clock when Gordon decided the parking was getting worse and grabbed a spot in on the street two blocks away. At 7:05, he handed a ten-dollar bill to two female students in parkas and wool caps, sitting at a table with a cash box by the entrance gate. He received three dollars change and two tickets, and followed Sam through the gate. The Indian Summer warmth of the day was gone, and Gordon and Sam could see their breath when they exhaled. As they stepped through, they heard a roar from the stadium, and when it subsided, the voice of Howard Honig over the public address system:

  “That was Danny Jacobs returning the opening kickoff for Alta Mira, from the eight yard line to the — call it the 34. Number 55 (pause) Ronnie Smathers, made the tackle for Black Mesa. First and ten, Eagles.”

  The football field was encircled by a track, a quarter-mile long, with running lanes. They passed along a heavily traveled area between the track and the bleachers, and when Gordon saw they were just on the far side of the press box, he started up the nearest flight of stairs to the press box door. Several plays had elapsed, but the home crowd was quiet, indicating that the team wasn’t up to much. As they stepped into the press box, they could see Howard sitting at a long counter that spanned the open window, bisected by a post. He was directly to the left of the post, holding a wireless microphone against his chest and talking to the two spotters to his left. At his right were the two scoreboard operators, and to their right was Bob, leaning into a microphone, keeping up a running commentary. At Bob’s right was a young man, possibly a community college student, covering the game for the Plateau Courier.

  Howard brought the microphone to his mouth, pushing a button to turn it on. “Raul Tavarez back to punt for Alta Mira. Deep to return for Black Mesa is number 25 …” he leaned toward the spotters, one of whom said something, “… Matthew Dixon. Tavarez’ kick is up, and it’s a low line drive angling toward the right sideline. Dixon can’t get it, and it goes out of bounds at, let’s see, looks like the Black Mesa 31, and the Scorpions will start from there.”

  He switched off the mic, turned, and extended a hand to Gordon and Sam.

  “Glad you could make it tonight. Hope you weren’t counting on much company from Bob, though. He has to keep going all night.” Indeed, Bob was squeezing in a 30-second commercial for a local burger shack as the new offense and defense trotted onto the field. When he finished, he turned, waved to Gordon and Sam, then swiveled back to his microphone and resumed speaking.

  It was slightly warmer in the press box than in the bleachers, but Gordon was glad he was wearing a good parka. The interior of the press box was unfinished wood, with the wiring for the lights, sound system, and scoreboard encased in piping attached to the walls. There was no restroom facility; that need was met for the entire stadium by a half-dozen porta-potties situated well behind the north goalpost. A table with chips, dips, and nuts lined the back wall of the press box, and one of the scoreboard operators and one of the spotters were finishing off burgers purchased from the snack shack by the gate.

  For most of the first quarter, Gordon paid little attention to the game and soaked in the atmosphere, instead. There were scarcely 200 people in the visitors’ bleachers — apparently the team wasn’t good enough to justify a 120-mile round trip. The home bleachers were 80 percent full, and for many of the adults, the game was clearly a social occasion. On the visitors’ side of the field, to the left of the bleachers, were two soccer nets, with a gaggle of kids, mostly under ten, kicking a ball around. Some day in the future, Gordon thought, soccer, not football, will be the main attraction on this field. He turned his attention to the cheerleaders, telling himself he was just trying to understand Alicia’s situation. They wore green and gold dresses, hems 15 inches above the knee, and on their arms were strapped coverings, designed to mimic eagles’ wings. When the cheerleaders flapped their arms, the imagery was impressive. They stood in two rows, front and back; those in the back row were positioned exactly between the two in front of them so that they were all visible to the crowd at all times.

  The scene didn’t look right to Gordon, and it took him a minute to figure it out. He began counting the cheerleaders and confirmed his impression.

  “Something’s out of kilter,” he said to Sam in a low voice. “There should be 16 cheerleaders — eight in each row — but there are only 15, eight in front and seven in the back.”

  After a moment, Sam replied, “You think Alicia’s missing?”

  “Could you blame her if she is?”

  BY THE END OF THE FIRST QUARTER, Gordon was focusing more intently on the game and less on the surroundings. Black Mesa scored first, temporarily quieting the home crowd, but at the end of the quarter, Alta Mira scored on a short slant pass, where the receiver outran the defenders 40 yards for a touchdown, and the score stood at 7-7. Aside from that play, Alta Mira seemed tentative and inconsistent. Burnett, the quarterback, was throwing tight, precise passes, but a throw that should have gone for a touchdown was dropped, and a 20-yard toss was called back for an illegal formation. Alta Mira also had a running back, Harry Hooper, who was gaining yards consistently, and who always seemed to fall forward when tackled. Gordon found himself taking a liking to Hooper, based solely on his grit and determination.

  The home team remained erratic in the second quarter. Burnett threw a beautiful 40-yard spiral to a receiver running down the right sideline, a step and a half ahead of a defender, for one score. But on another possession, a throw to receiver Cody Jarrett bounced off Jarrett’s hands, going straight to a defender, who ran it back for a Black Mesa touchdown. Another drive stalled when a Burnett touchdown pass to Jarrett was called back because of a holding penalty. It was 14-14 at the half.

  Bob, after doing a quick recap of the game so far, got a ten-minute break as an announcer at the station read a newscast and a large number of commercials. Howard turned the microphone over to Principal Duane Raymond, who called the halftime show.

  “Team’s sluggish tonight,” Bob said, after turning the broadcast over to the station. “Should be ahead by two touchdowns now. We’re better than this.”

  “Maybe they’re rattled abo
ut something,” Gordon said softly.

  Bob blinked, then shrugged. “Have you met everybody else here?”

  “I think so,” Sam said.

  “But you probably didn’t get their real names. On the scoreboard, we have Rudy ‘Red Nose’ Hoffman, and ‘Bogart.’ Bogart’s real name is Paul Humphrey.” They nodded and smiled. “Our spotters tonight are Joe ‘Apple,’ real name McIntosh, and ‘Jed Clampett.’ His real name is Buddy Hepson. Get it? Buddy Hepson – Buddy Ebsen? Played Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies.”

  Gordon smiled in spite of himself, as Bob introduced him as Flyboy and Sam as Akers and Pains.

  “So do you have a nickname for Howard Honig?”

  Sam looked around to be sure Honig was still gone.

  “I call him Sergeant Friday,” he said, “when he can’t hear. Otherwise I call him Howard. You don’t mess with Howard.”

  In the second half, Alta Mira pulled away. Burnett got into a groove, completing nearly every pass he threw. Two of them went to Jarrett for touchdowns, and another put Alta Mira on the two-yard line, from which Hooper dragged two defenders into the end zone.

  Midway through the third quarter, Jed Clampett realized he should have visited the porta-potties at halftime. Gordon agreed to sub for him while he was gone, which, with the long walk, turned out to be 15 minutes. Gordon sat next to Honig, with a visiting team roster in front of him, and began identifying the key players on each play. With his keen eyes and athletic sense he was good at it, and Honig appreciated being told, for instance, that not only had Jordan made the tackle for Black Mesa, but had done so with one arm. In the short time, the two men developed a slight rapport, and when ‘Clampett’ returned, Gordon gave up the seat reluctantly.

  As the game ended just before 9:30, the crowd was on its feet cheering the team, and Bob was passionately wrapping up the game.

  “The final 20 seconds are ticking down. No need to run another play. Alta Mira wins the game, 35-14, to finish the regular season at 9-1. Next week, we’ll be hosting a playoff game right here at Edgar Hammond Field, and if you can’t make it in person, we’ll be broadcasting live on Radio KNEP. We now send you back to our studios for Music Til Midnight with Rick Patterson. For Alta Mira football, I’m Mountain Bob, and thank you for listening tonight.”