Prime Witness

Chapter One

This place has the undiscerning smell of death about it. Horseflies and other buzzing things are thick in the noonday sun along the Putah Creek. I would have been here an hour sooner, but for the chaos out on the county highway, drivers rubbernecking, tourists getting a little extra on their trek from the Sonoma Valley.

We are perhaps five miles below the dam where the river is choked to a trickling creek among boulders and gravel the size of golf balls. The budding heat of the day rises off the rocks.

There are people here I recognize but cannot name, cops I have seen in the sheriff’s office in Davenport in the last few weeks. Some of these are tripping through weeds and brush up to their armpits, what police call the strip method for searching terrain, three cops walking at arm’s length combing an area in quadrants for anything unusual.

Across the creek, in the distance I can see soaring cliffs carved in the black lava rock by the river before it was tamed at the dam. Running up to these bluffs is a tangle of trees, oaks and a few tall poplars, their branches nipping at the promontories.

But the object of my interest is on this side of the creek, behind the yellow band of police tape wrapped around a group of small trees. Inside of this there is a single moving figure, hunched and low, scanning the ground. In a navy-blue police jumper with bright white lettering high on the back, the initials “DOJ.” It is a woman, short, a little stodgy, one of the criminologists from the State Department of Justice.

I walk from my car and move toward the taped area, stepping on strands of a broken barbed wire fence, stretched to the ground from rickety and rotting split rail posts. A small trashed metal “No Trespassing” sign is on the ground, rusted nearly beyond recognition, like perhaps it has been in the dirt and mud for a dozen years.

I circle, maintaining a good distance from the center of the search, until I have an opening, a clear line of sight through the trees and underbrush. There in a depression on the ground I see them lying on their backs, their arms stretched as if in crucifixion, faces to the blazing sun, two bleached and naked bodies, their midsections streaked in congealed blood, the color of rusted metal.

The flies and insects are thicker here, and the stench of death strong in the midday air.

The body closest to me, a male, has tightly clenched fists. Tied firmly with cord, these have turned the black-blue of death. The victim’s limbs are stretched to near dislocation at the joints, pulled taut by what appears to be a plastic-coated cord, similar to that used in the earlier murders. Metal tent stakes have been used for this purpose, driven deeply into the ground so that only a small portion of the L-shaped tip remains above the surface. There is some blood, not much, congealed on the lower abdomen. From this I assume that as in the earlier murders there is a fifth stake, driven hard, transfixing the victim to the ground. If true to form, this is the cause of death.

I had read the reports of the earlier killings. This one, it seems, always takes his victims in tandem, a man and woman together, staked out in the same fashion. In each case, college students. The cops and their shrinks who study such things tell me there is ritual to this, a signature they have now linked to at least two other double murders, one in the southern part of the state, Orange County, and the other in Oregon.

My gaze is fixed on the two victims stretched out before me on the ground, ten yards away. More than feeling the revulsion this causes, I am struck by the indisputable fact that this time the killer has departed from his pattern. The woman a bit overweight, what the coroner will in his medical euphemism call “well nourished.” There is an undeniable mane, disheveled and unkempt gray, atop the man’s head. This time the killer has not taken the young, the college students, that before have been his only quarry.

My guess is the man is in his sixties. Considering the agony of death, it is difficult to tell. As for the woman, while her body reveals the wrinkles and sags of age, I can posit no guess. I cannot see her face. It seems this is another of the killer’s trademarks. As I survey this sorry scene, I marvel at the quirks of fate that have conspired to put me here.

Even as a kid, Mario Feretti was a crazy son of a bitch, one of those people whose life was a candle burning from both ends. Increasingly, in the last week, I am wishing I had declined his request when he came asking. Now, with the third set of victims not yet cold on the ground, my regret is growing deeper with each passing moment.

Mario came to me three weeks ago with his tale of woe. At forty-three, he was a candidate for a triple bypass. He was married with three kids in grade school. Two members of the County Board of Supervisors now wanted to ease him from his position as the elected district attorney of Davenport County. These were people for whom opportunity knew no bounds, no sense of propriety. For my part, saying no to Mario was not in the cards. When he came to my office, he was still the kid I remembered from sand-lot ball and summer raft trips on the river. Mario had deep-set wild eyes, two large olives floating on egg whites and a countenance that seemed, even with its impending medical problems, still filled with hell. When he asked me to take a temporary assignment as special county prosecutor-just to fill in, a few months, no more, until he was out of the hospital, back on his feet-I could not say no. I now live with the consequences.

I turn away from the bodies on the ground.

Thirty feet away there’s a man, a face like weathered leather, the most prominent features of which are a slender arching nose and forehead furrowed deep as crevasses. He is spry and slight of build. It is this man who has called me here.

Soaking wet, Claude Dusalt weighs perhaps 140 pounds. Of Basque ancestry, the son of a migrant sheep herder, Claude chased wandering lambs through these hills for his father as a child. For the last thirty years he has trudged the same ground for the county of Davenport, the sheriff’s chief of detectives.

As I watch, he speaks in hushed tones to a cadre of cops, a small group now gleaning their instructions for the widening investigation. One of Claude’s assistants is dispensing a few things to this gathering, little Baggies and some clear plastic vials. These cops who are not schooled in processing the scene will gather the common elements found in the surrounding area, seed pods and other plant materials that might attach to clothing, soil samples and humus from the ground. If they are lucky, they might later find a match to these elements on a suspect’s clothing.

Claude sees me, but makes no move in my direction, nodding instead to acknowledge my presence. A study in animation, he is busy again, this time ushering one of his cops with a video camera toward the yellow taped area and the bodies.

With his hands Claude is motioning for specific camera angles, closeups, I think, of the bodies, articles of clothing laid out in a neat pattern by the head of each victim, pants and shirt folded as if freshly laundered, like some doting mother might lay them out for a child. Then the bizarre. Over the woman’s head the killer has stretched her panties, waistband down around her chin and neck, obscuring her face. Through the leg holes and under the crotch-band which is stretched tight over the crown of her head, he has threaded her brassiere, each cup protruding through a separate leg hole, like some grotesque set of mouse ears.

I stand there frozen in time, thinking back to how I got into this, to my visit ten days ago with Mario in the hospital. His breathing was labored. “You won’t have to prosecute,” he assured me. “Just hold their hands during the investigation. Bless the warrants, any searches. I’ve talked to the judges,” he said. “They’re all on board.”

He told me that he was on the mend. According to Mario he would be back in the office in ninety days, plenty of time to prep for a trial if it came to that.

I wondered whose pipe Mario had been smoking. He looked like death heated in a microwave. Only three days out from under the surgeon’s knife, a triple bypass that had drawn every ounce of animation from his body left him pale, a gray-green ghost against the white hospital sheets.

A thin, clear plastic tube framed his face and tousled hair, like the earplugs from a Walkman, but in this case these carried only the muted sound of forced oxygen emitted from little twin nipples, one seated firmly under each nostril. Through this I watched as a procession of bloody little bubbles inched their way from his body to the bottle, like some fluid hourglass reminding me that my time there, with him, was limited.

We talked for a brief moment about the murders, the ongoing investigation. His breathing turned hard, Mario was shaking his head, as much as conditions would allow. “Sick,” he said. He was reaching for the nurse’s call button. “Sick.”

I thought for a moment he was talking about himself, then I realized he was not. Mario Feretti was describing the thing I am now appointed to pursue-what the newspapers around this state are now calling “The Putah Creek Killer.”

“The shrinks will have fun with the profile on that.” The voice jerks me from my reverie. It comes from behind me, here, near the creek.

I turn. It is Denny Henderson, Dusalt’s number two. He is looking at the bodies stretched out on the ground. Henderson is sandy-haired, hapless and overweight. He wears a white polo shirt stretched like a drum over his paunch on which I can see the shadowed stains of some ancient meal, what the whip-end of a strand of spaghetti leaves when inhaled. His face is pock-marked, a victim of early acne.

“Denny. How are you?” I ask.

He shakes my hand. We are on a first-name basis now that I am on the side of the angels. It’s not always been like this. In Davenport, where I have, over the years, occasionally crossed the river to defend a client, Denny Henderson has always kept his distance.

“Any leads?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Just like the others.” He fixes his gaze on the two bodies. “Man doesn’t make many mistakes,” he says.

The police photographer is now shooting the metal stake holding down the male victim’s clenched right fist. He takes two of these, one up close with a small ruler in the shot for detail and another further back for perspective. He follows this routine on each of the stakes.

“Sooner or later the guy’s gotta fuck up,” says Henderson. There is frustration in his tone, and his words have the ring of wishful thinking.

Dusalt sees us together and motions Henderson over, some details he wants taken care of. I think perhaps he doesn’t want Denny talking to me too long. In his own way Henderson is Claude’s “gofer,” though he doesn’t seem to mind this role.

Dispatching Henderson in the other direction, Claude is now making his way toward me.

“Mr. Madriani,” he says. “I thought you should be here. I hope it’s not too much of an inconvenience.”

“No,” I say. “I’m glad you called.” We put a face on it, the usual pleasantries, like what could be better than hovering over death on the ground on a bright Sunday.

He shakes my hand. In this he is formal and stiff. He is one of those skinny men of wiry sinew. Claude has the kind of thin, worried expression that makes you believe his chief maladies might be ulcers or hemorrhoids.

“Because you are new, I thought it best that you be kept informed.”

“I appreciate it,” I tell him.

He has been called here from a picnic with his family. He is not happy with this, but he says his family understands. If this is true they are more accepting than my own.

“Do we know who they are yet?” I ask. I am motioning toward the two bodies.

“No identities yet,” he says. “We’ll check their clothing for ID’s after we have all the photos.” The cops are not disturbing anything, not until they have precise drawings and photographs chronicling the location of every item around the bodies.

“Kids walking along the creek found them this morning,” he tells me.

He points toward two teenagers, one of them being questioned and the other twenty feet away, leaning against the trunk of a patrol car. The one being questioned is flushed with excitement, the other is a little green around the jowls. Investigators will keep these two apart until they are finished with their interrogation, this to ensure independent statements, stories that can later be checked against each other.

“They were quail hunting,” says Claude, “trespassing on private property. Rushed a little more than they bargained for.”

I look toward the bodies. “The MO,” I say. “Like the others?”

Claude makes a face, something from the Old World, a lot of wrinkles and a screwed-up mouth, then nods. “Pretty much,” he says, ignoring the obvious, that these two on the ground are no college students.

It is the third set of murders in less than two weeks for this rural county where big news is usually the column listing the drunk driving arrests on Monday after a heavy weekend.

“We’re trying to get the cast of a tire track. Out there off the gravel road. A single vehicle parked behind some brush,” he says. “It’s a long shot,” he concedes, “could have been made by the killer last night. Could have been made by a family on a picnic last week.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Also we got a partial shoe print inside the tape.”

My interest is piqued a little with this.

“Looks like a running shoe, pretty small,” he says. “We think it probably belongs to one of the kids. They got scared.”

“Understandable,” I say.

“They left little tracks like chicken scratchings all over the place.”

Over by the patrol car an evidence tech is taking a cast of one of the kid’s shoes to compare it to the partial on the ground inside the tape.

There’s commotion in the brush beyond the tape, across the shallow creek, a dozen reserve deputies, part of the local search and rescue team. They have drawn the poison oak duty. One of them crosses the creek, moving toward Claude.

“Lieutenant, you should take a look at this.” The cop is mud to the ankles of his heavy boots. He’s wearing the togs of search and rescue, an orange jumpsuit with belts and metal rings for every occasion. In his hand he has a plastic bag. Claude takes this in his open palm and examines it. A small, twisted piece of metal. It appears to be broken off from something larger. Dusalt makes a face.

“What is it?” he says.

“Part of a foot-cam,” says the cop.

Claude shrugs, like this means nothing to him.

“Used in climbing ropes. I think you’d better come across the creek and look for yourself,” he says.

Claude moves away from me now, shouldering me out, talking to the officer. Their voices drop and I cannot hear this.

Ignoring me, the two men start toward the creek. Unsure whether I should follow, I walk behind them, a little tentative. Claude turns to look at me. From the pained expression I wonder if he’s going to chew my ass for following, too many footprints messing up the scene.

Then he says: “Forgot my boots.” There’s a stupid grin on his face. Claude has driven here, like me, in the family sedan. His field clothing and boots are locked in a patrol unit back at the county yard. He looks down at his white training shoes, $120 Nike Airs, then shrugs a little. With that he is mud halfway to his knees, following the other cop across the creek. I look down at my $200 Boston loafers, what was handy in the closet when the call came in, and I think to myself, “He who waits also serves.” Curiosity has its limits. I am stranded high and dry on this side of the creek, left to contemplate my circumstances.

What had begun as a case of care-taking for a friend is now a burden that monopolizes every aspect of my life. My wife is furious-ready I think perhaps to leave me-my child neglected, my private practice in Capital City twenty miles away is a shambles, all because this favor for a friend now consumes every waking hour. Two days ago came the crushing blow, a phone call at three in the morning, a voice I did not recognize, a nurse at Good Shepherd’s Hospital. Mario Feretti was dead. The judges of Davenport County now have me strapped and secured for the duration.

I watch as Claude and the other cop move through heavy brush to the base of a large tree. I can no longer hear what they’re saying. But the big cop is pointing up, into the tree. I look, but I can see nothing. Several of the search and rescue guys are moving around. For the first time I notice there’s an evidence tech there with them. Like the reluctant bride, they are helping this guy with something, a heavy belt around his waist. There’s a little argument now, from the technician. “I don’t get paid enough. . ” he says. His voice trails off. They are cinching this belt down between his legs now. Claude is busy, holding the guy’s evidence bag and talking to him like a Dutch uncle.

One of the search and rescue guys reaches out with one hand, and as he moves I notice it, gossamer in the bright midday sun, floating down like a spider’s web, a sheer strand of rope descending from the trees above. They are clipping this thing to the belt around the technician’s waist.

Three of the bigger rescue guys take hold of the rope and begin pulling hard. The technician is off the ground, the little evidence bag dangling at his feet. The three guys pulling on the rope start singing, a slow mournful chant:

“Haul, haul away, we’re bound for better we-a-ther. . ”

Before they can finish the first verse they’re all laughing.

“Go slow,” says the tech. “Take it easy.” The man sounds like some kid about to be pushed off the high dive.

“Hang on tight,” says Claude. Another chorus of giggles. The technician is now twenty feet off the ground and rising fast. In three seconds he disappears through a canopy of leaves, like the space shuttle through a deck of clouds. From my angle across the creek I can still see him. And for the first time I can understand why he was not anxious for this duty. The man is now fifty feet off the ground, suspended only by a thin rope.

Claude has the palm of one hand shading his eyes like a visor. But he’s lost sight of the guy. Seconds later he’s tripping through the creek toward me and a better line of sight.

He’s laughing when he gets to me. At the scene of a gruesome double murder it is the kind of jocularity that only men who deal in pain on a regular basis could understand. I feel like an outsider. My sympathies are with the poor evidence tech who is now dangling a good seventy feet off the ground.

Then I see it, above his head in a direct line, a small wooden platform laid in the crotch at the intersection of two large branches. But for the rope going to this thing, it is masked perfectly in the trees.

Claude has now made his way back across the creek. He is trying to shake mud and water from his shoes with each soggy step.

I’m looking up at the technician. “What is it?” I say.

“Probably bird watchers,” says Claude. “The rope looks like it’s been there for awhile. Some of those people are crazy,” he says, “goofier than the birds they chase. But we’ll check it out.”

The evidence tech has made it to the platform. Holding the rope with one hand for dear life, he tries to maneuver himself up onto this perch with the other. This doesn’t work. Only as a last resort does he release the other hand from the rope, lunging for the platform. He bounces off the wood out into thin air, suspended only from the harness at his waist. He flips upside down. He’s clutching frantically at the rope again, finally righting himself.

Claude is chuckling to himself. “Good move,” he says. “You have a positive talent for clinging to high places. You should go far in the world.” There’s laughter across the river. This is not having a good effect on the man in the trees.

Words echo down: “You come up here and do it.”

“You’re doing fine,” says Claude. He’s laughing to himself again.

On the second try, the guy makes it onto the platform, belly down like a beached whale. He’s motionless now, lying there on the edge. I think he’s either resting, or else he’s paralyzed by vertigo.

“What do you see?” says Claude.

There’s heavy breathing from above, some muffled words, then the clear message: “Some fucking asshole in muddy tennis shoes.” The man hasn’t entirely lost his sense of humor. Still, he hasn’t moved an inch since arriving on the platform. He’s clinging to it like a treed cat. I am thinking maybe they will have to go up and get him down. Given the sorry sense of humor, I am wondering if maybe they might not prefer to shoot him out of the tree.

“Tell us what you see,” says Claude. “Let’s process it and get down.”

Several seconds pass, with nothing. But the man is now moving around a bit on the platform. He’s gotten to his knees, though he still clings to the rope with one hand.

“Find anything?” says Claude. “Tell us what you see.” He’s getting impatient now. Several seconds pass with silence, then the words filter back from the trees.

“Blood,” says the tech. “There’s blood up here.”

I look at Claude Dusalt. He is no longer smiling.