The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 46

The lawyer shakes his head. “You picked the wrong county for this,” he tells me. “This is Yupville with some hard edges, and we like to keep those elements under control. What I’m saying is that your north coast yuppies really frown on guns. It’s gonna cost your dad a bundle to spring you.”

“But you do think they’ll set bail?”

“Oh, yeah. Unless Judge Upshaw had a real bad night. I mean, it’s your first offense. Your friends came to bat for you – had to get ’em up in the middle of the night, but I rounded up some testimonials. And let’s face it, your personal situation works for you. Someone abducted my kids? I’d probably be strapped, too. Question is – why didn’t you do it legal?”

I just shake my head.

“The only loose cannon is that gun. You bought it in a park, from an illegal immigrant?” He narrows his eyes and winces. “Who knows?”

At ten-fifteen, I’m arraigned.

“Your Honor, I think that the state would be safe if Mr. Callahan were to be released on his own recognizance.”

“Our notions of security differ, Mr. Doncaster. As Mr. Juarez” – he indicates the assistant district attorney – “has pointed out, Mr. Callahan has no ties to the community. No job, no local contacts. As such, there’s an implicit risk of flight.”

“But this would be a first offence. Otherwise, Mr. Callahan is an upstanding citizen. And Your Honor must take into account his recent suffering. Counseling about the proper channels for his understandable grief and anger might be an appropriate response-”

“Before you get carried away, Mr. Doncaster, I’m told your client’s gun may be linked to a murder in San Diego County.”

“What was the date of this alleged crime?”

The judge peers through his glasses. “Last Tuesday, August third.”

Doncaster confers with me. “I was in… I think I was in Las Vegas. Maybe New Orleans.”

“My client was not in San Diego County at that time, Your Honor.”

“We’ll take that up in court, Counselor. Bail is set at one hundred thousand dollars.”

“But, Your Honor-”

“Next case.”

It’s an hour and a half before the business with the bail bondsman is concluded, almost noon before my wallet and cell phone and pocket change are restored to me and I’m standing outside the Santa Rosa courthouse, more or less a free man. My rental car was towed to an impoundment lot in Guerneville, which is thirty miles south of Gualala. For a moment, I’m paralyzed with indecision. Should I take a taxi to the car? Rent a new car here in Santa Rosa?

First, although I don’t want to, I call my parents to thank my dad, and let them know I’m okay. I’m relieved when I get the answering machine.

Instead of heading straight to the coast, I go to the information counter in the courthouse, where a friendly woman directs me to the county clerk’s office. Ten minutes later, I’m sitting at a computer looking at a plat that covers the area of coastline I’m interested in. The property belonging to Sequoia Solutions comprises five hundred twenty-one acres, with almost a mile of coastal frontage. One big rhomboid and several smaller ones show the location of the house and its outbuildings. I note that they’re set quite a ways back from the ocean.

The huge parcel belonging to the Sea Ranch lies directly to the north of Mertz’s place. To its south sit several slivers of land extending from the highway to the sea, belonging to various individuals.

I ask the clerk if there’s a store in town that sells outdoor equipment. She directs me to one in a mall on the outskirts of town and, when I ask her to, calls me a taxi.

I ask the driver to wait while I shop. Eight minutes later, I’m out of the store with hiking boots, socks, a backpack, a Patagonia fleece jacket, and a large Maglite flashlight. The big flashlight is heavy. But I don’t have the gun anymore, and as a beat cop in D.C. once pointed out to me, there’s a reason cops favor Maglites. They’re better than billy clubs.

Then I ask the driver where I can rent a car. Twenty minutes later, I drive away from Santa Rosa Executive Rentals in a silver BMW.

It’s only seventy miles from Santa Rosa to Gualala, but the road is full of twists and turns – and speed zones. It takes me more than two hours, even though I’m speeding the whole way. I planned to go back to the Breakers and get my suitcase, and especially my laptop, but I head straight for the Sea Ranch rental office.

The blonde at the desk doesn’t seem to read my impatience. When I’m ready to take an available oceanfront condo on the southern fringe of the Sea Ranch property, she wants to show me all the other alternatives.

“No, really, the Housel Hut, that’s perfect.”

“It’s three hundred twenty-nine dollars a night, minimum two-night stay. Actually,” she says, tapping a few keys, “it’s booked on Monday, so I could only really manage-”

“Two nights is all the time I have. That’s perfect.”

I put it on my Visa. She gives me maps of the compound, passes to various facilities, a tag for my car, a schedule of events, and finally, the keys.

It’s five-twenty by the time I park behind the condo. I go inside only for a minute, long enough to grab the two bottles of water from the complimentary basket, along with the two wrapped biscotti. I put the water, the cookies, my wallet, the Maglite, my cell phone, and my fleece jacket in the backpack. At the last minute, I rummage through the kitchen drawers, and find a stash of Ziploc bags. I put the cell phone inside one, my wallet in another. I add a kitchen knife.

And then I head for the beach that abuts the land belonging to Luc Mertz. On my way, I pass a silver-haired couple, as fit-looking as nineteen-year-olds. The woman has a beautiful smile. They wave and stride on.

It’s a wild landscape. For centuries, the surf has thrashed against the stone, leaving an archipelago of pinnacles, their shapes determined by the hardness of the varying striations of rock. They look like minarets or the cupolas of Russian churches, sculpted by the water. Standing among them is the occasional monolithic boulder and a scatter of rounded rocks, like giant bowling balls. The water thrashes wildly amidst all this. Near shore, mats of kelp strands roll in the surf. Which is thunderous. When the waves hit the rocks head-on, the impact is amazing, sending up geysers of spray fifty feet or more into the air.

The high-tide line is clear, marked by a dark irregular line of seaweed, driftwood, and other detritus abandoned by the receding water. Looking inland, beyond the tide mark and all the way to the bluffs, it’s clear that the rocks closer to shore were not always beyond the reach of the water. The dramatic formations continue two hundred yards or more up into the hillside, where they end in a craggy cliff-face, above which glows the bright green of rolling meadowland.

And then I glimpse it, running straight down through the meadowland – the glint of razor wire that identifies the property line between Sea Ranch and Mystère. The tide is low and I’m careful as I approach to stay out of view of Mertz’s surveillance cameras. As I suspected, the fence continues down into the rocky area, but stops a few feet short of the high-tide mark.

Like the residents of most states, Californians are constitutionally entitled to walk the beaches, the land between the high tide and low tide being deemed a public resource. The only problem is access. We did a piece about the public-private rift not long ago when activists organized a beach-in in Malibu. Advocates of greater public access transported hundreds of beachgoers by motorboat; the masses occupied the sand in front of the houses of the rich and famous for the few hours between the tides.

I have to admit that when I saw “beach” on the plat for Sea Ranch, I was thinking of sand, not rock. I’m wearing khaki pants and I picked out the fleece jacket for its beige color, wanting to minimize my visibility. Wrong choice. There’s not much sand here. Just rock, and where the rock is wet, it’s almost black.

There are two ways to go. One is to wait for night and try to creep into Mystère. But I’d have to do it here, through the rocks, and the landscape is so rugged that would be almost impossible. The moon might help if the sky clears, but right now, the cloud cover is thick and low.

The other choice is to go out into the water and try to climb from rock to rock until I’m far enough beyond the reach of the cameras. Such CCTV cameras normally don’t have much depth of field. Then I’d traverse until it seemed safe to head in toward the shore. Of course, Mertz might have some kind of surveillance on the beachfront, but I doubt it. No one could possibly get a boat or even a kayak through these rocks without getting smashed by the surf. Almost certainly Mertz would have a security system protecting the house.

My watch reads six thirty-five. When does it get dark? Eight thirty? At best, I’ve got a couple of hours of light left.

I can’t climb in the area close to shore because I’ll be visible to the cameras. This means I have to get out past the surf break, which is wildly irregular, given all the rocks. The other problem is that the rock formations are not contiguous.

I see that almost inevitably, I’m going to get wet. The water is cold, very cold. I test it with my hand and try to guess. Fifty? Maybe fifty-five. Cold enough that after thirty seconds of immersion, my hand is numb. So cold that I should have a wet suit. Climbing shoes. Gloves. Picks and ropes.

I try to plan a route from rock to rock that will take me out beyond the surf. I pull the hood on, tighten the closure, shove my pants into my socks, put my head down, and go.

At first it’s challenging, but not too bad. My boots are clumsy but the rocks are so craggy that I don’t have any trouble finding footholds. At a certain point, I can’t avoid the sea spray and I get a little wet. But then I come to a spot where there’s no way to avoid going into the water without retracing my steps and losing maybe half an hour.

There’s nothing for it. I don’t have any choice: I go in up to my hips, holding the backpack to my chest. It’s a clumsy process, thrashing through the cold water. The tug of the riptide means that I almost have to walk sideways, crabbing my way toward the rock.

By the time I’m on the rocks again, my legs are numb. The air temperature can’t be more than sixty and there’s a wind, so being out of the water doesn’t provide much relief. I keep going, and the exertion helps me warm up.

As the sun goes down and the temperature drops, the cold is only going to get worse. I’m going to have to be very careful not to fall in.

I did a good bit of rock climbing, back before the boys were born. I liked the energy, precision, and focus it required. Most of all, I liked to test myself – to parcel out the risk in what amounted to controlled doses.

In a way, it was the opposite of what I did at work. Working in a war zone, you do everything you can to minimize the risk, but it’s not something that you can control. The danger comes at you from the outside and it doesn’t come in doses.

Rock climbing is the opposite: You choose where to put your hand or foot. You alone know if you’re strong enough or flexible enough to make a move. You might still get unlucky, get some bad rock, but for the most part you operate inside your own capability and fear. I liked that.

This is different. For one thing, I never climbed wet rock. For another I’m not really climbing to a summit. I’m climbing up and down only enough to traverse a lot of rugged terrain. And unlike recreational climbing, I’m in a hurry, with no option of bailing out because of cramp or fatigue. And instead of the velvety rubber of climbing shoes that can grab a tiny bump or crevice with conviction, I’m wearing hiking boots that require huge gouges or ridges as footholds. I’d take the boots off – and I may still have to do this – but my feet would be in shreds within minutes. And they’re cold. I can’t actually feel them anymore.

Still, I’m getting there. Before I left the Sea Ranch beach, I picked out the tallest pair of rock formations within the boundaries of Mystère. It’s a little hard to be sure, but it seems to me – by sighting toward the two spires – that I’ve traversed far enough inside the fence line to turn back toward shore.

I stop for a moment on a rock that offers a good high perch and look ahead, trying to pick out a route through the surf line. The surf break is far from clean and linear, as it is on a beach. Because of the rock formations and the topography of the bottom, it’s chaotic and broad. Where the surf really boils against the pillars and boulders, I can’t go into the water. I’m going to need rock, contiguous rock.

I’m slowly making my way through the surf break when it happens: a little jump from one rock to the next – an easy jump. But the rock is wet and I land wrong and my ankle turns and the next thing I know, I’m in the water.

To say it takes my breath away doesn’t begin to describe it. Not only does the cold water squeeze out the air from my lungs – the lungs themselves don’t work at all. The moment I fell happened to be in the lull, just before the wave breaks and crashes. That was a piece of luck, and at first I think it’s going to be all right, I’ll be able to climb out.

And I start to, but before I make it to a good place to hang on, a wave crashes down on me. It seems to happen in slow motion, the way the surf tears me free, tumbles me over. The sound is deafening.

I try to grab onto a rock, scrabbling my fingernails for purchase, wedging my foot against the boulder’s base. I’ve got it, until the water begins to recede. There’s a tremendous sucking sound, a clatter and rush of gravel, and my grip on the rock is torn away. A second later, I’m slammed against rock.

Now, for the first time, things begin to feel seriously out of control. I still can’t breathe, and I think I may have slashed my left calf. I felt something – not pain, exactly, because I’m too cold for that. A burning sensation in my leg.

I know that if I don’t get out of the water now, right now, before another wave tags me, I’m not going to make it.

Something propels me. The thought of Sean and Kevin and what awaits them? Yes. The thought of my broken body in the surf? That, too. We’re hardwired to produce an extra boost of energy to escape danger, so it must be a massive jolt of adrenaline that powers me out of the sea. Whatever it is, I climb the rock face like Spiderman, high enough to reach an outcrop I can wrap my arms and legs around. The wave hits and it sucks at my legs, but I don’t think a bomb could have dislodged me.

I’m in bad shape as I close in on the shoreline. The light is fading, it’s getting colder, my ankle and my calf hurt, and I’m shivering uncontrollably. The backpack is heavy. I consider tossing the Maglite – I’m sure the salt water ruined the batteries – but I don’t want to take the time. I move forward slowly, from behind one rock to the next, looking for the red eyes of surveillance cameras. Or any sign of motion. I see nothing. And then, at last, I’m back on dry land.

I find a sheltered spot and drink some of the water in my backpack. I take my boots off, dump the seawater out of them, squeeze out the wool socks. My ankle is the size of a small grapefruit. I put it all back on, lacing up the boot as tight as I can for support. I take a quick look at the gash on my calf. It gapes open like a mouth, the air against the pinkish flesh stings, but it doesn’t look so bad. The salt water was probably good for it.

I take off my fleece, my sweater, my T-shirt. Wring them out, put them back on. I still can’t stop shaking.

The kitchen knife is gone – it must have come out of the pack when I was in the water. The flashlight doesn’t work, but I decide to keep it anyway, the only weapon I have now. I take a look at the cell phone, but no: there’s water inside the Ziploc bag. It’s toast too.

I feel like I need a forklift to get to my feet, but I manage to push myself up. It’s twilight – the sun is already down. I have to find the site of the performance.

Amidst the rocks, and in the dusk, I can’t get a sight line on the two rock spires I’d picked out before. I was sure that these would provide the setting for tomorrow’s performance, but as I stumble around in the warren of rock formations – wasn’t I just here? – doubt suffuses me. Maybe I should just go for the house, after all.

And then I find it.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but the theater takes my breath away.

A flattened gravel stage is defined by huge concrete urns overflowing with flowers, greenery swagged between them. In this spectacular location, facing the stage and beyond it the sea, a tiny amphitheater has been fashioned. Set back from the stage only a few feet, three semicircles of polished granite are stepped back into the natural rise of the land.

The little theater is so beautiful as to make its terrible purpose even more chilling. To the right of the stage a latticed screen, draped with vines and flowers, conceals several padlocked chests – and, under a large canvas tarp, an enormous basket.

I’d like to look around some more. I’d like to reconnoiter – for the path that leads to the theater, for instance – but I’ve already abandoned the idea of waylaying the party on the way to prepare for the morning’s entertainment. I know, from reading about the trick, that Boudreaux may well have an assistant, maybe two. I’d be outnumbered, and except for the Maglite, unarmed.

My only chance is isolation and surprise. And with the light almost gone, there’s no time to do anything but ascend one of the spires before full dark. They are quite tall, more than sixty feet high, I’d guess. They’re not identical – they’re natural rock formations – but similar. The distance between them is a little more than a hundred yards. Thick at the base, the rock towers taper irregularly toward the tops, which even now are hidden in mist.

Ordinarily, the formation wouldn’t present a challenge, even to a climber of modest ability, but I’m so tired that the climb proves very difficult. The darkness makes it more so. Above me, the moon scuds along beneath thick clouds, providing a watery and inconsistent light that’s not much help.

Half a dozen times, one foot slips and my muscles are so fatigued that recovering is not easy. About halfway up, I come very close to my physical limit and almost… almost let go. That scares me and I halt my ascent for a few minutes, despite the encroaching darkness. I proceed slowly, resting every few feet. Finally, I find what I knew must be there: a wooden platform.

I pull myself onto it and collapse.

No more than four-feet square, the platform might as well be a palace as far as I’m concerned. It is such a relief not to have to maintain a grip and support my weight. After a few minutes of rest, I dig my remaining water bottle out of the backpack and drink half of its contents.

There’s really not much light, but my eyes long ago adjusted to the darkness. I can see that two cables cross to the opposite spire. But there is no platform on the opposite side – at least I can’t see one in the dark. I practically weep with thanks that I picked the right tower to climb. I never would have made it down this one and up the other.

One cable extends from beneath my platform, the other some four feet above me. The one beneath me is attached by a kind of flywheel-and-winch contraption. The one above has several levers and gears and some kind of bulky power source bolted into the rock.

Dangling several feet down from the cable beneath my platform, hanging into the chasm between the spires, are several dark loops. Suspended from the cable above me is a contraption that seems to have a wide “mouth” consisting of triangular metal teeth, like a giant version of the constricting jaw into which you insert drill bits.

It takes me a few minutes to figure out how it all must work. The magician throws the rope (letting it fall back down the first few times, just for effect) until it catches one of the dangling loops – which must be covered with Velcro or something like it. At that point, a hidden assistant up here – or maybe the mechanism works through radio signals – brings the device on the second cable into play, guiding it into position and lowering it until it bites the loose end of the rope. The mechanism is then withdrawn vertically and winched tight until the rope is held taut.

At first I think – with horror at the risk of it – that Sean or Kevin, whichever has the job of climbing the rope, must walk on the cable to the safety of the platform. But no. A loop of rope, like a rappeling loop, waits hooked to a brass fitting on the cable above me. Anyone climbing the vertical rope can slip a leg into the loop and pull himself over to the platform.

I sit down on the platform. There’s no way to know if the mechanism requires an assistant – or simply works by remote control. I’ll just have to wait.

I’m still wet and the effect of evaporation makes me even colder. I concentrate on conserving warmth. It seems impossible that I might fall asleep, but just in case, I set the alarm on my watch for five A.M. I hunch my knees to my chest, tighten my hood, lock my arms across my chest, jam my hands under my arms, and settle down to wait.