CHAPTER 39

I was taken to San Quentin by two sheriff’s deputies in a sheriff’s car, shackled at the ankles, handcuffed, wearing the orange pullover jail jumpsuit. We went down Highway 101 to the turnoff to the Richmond Bridge, then off at the last exit toward San Quentin. I had driven past this exit countless times. We went through a village of small houses, the bay on our left, came to the gates where armed guards waited. The sheriff’s car was logged in, the deputies showed their IDs and the papers regarding me and we drove into the prison. The ancient stone walls towered above us and I thought, here I am, about to be locked away and Earl Winslow is having his morning coffee and, no doubt, a croissant from the Rustic Bakery in Larkspur, and somebody is adding hot coffee to his cup. I was processed much the same way I had been processed at the San Rafael jail, stripped naked, every part of my body examined, sent in to shower, was given a new orange jumpsuit and re-shackled. I was led by San Quentin guards to the holding cell where I found a single iron bunk fixed to the wall, and a seatless toilet.

I spent two days in that lockup before the guards took me to the bus that would take me to High Desert. There were six other inmates making the same trip. The bus was small, space in the back for a dozen seated people, a heavy wire wall that separated the cargo space from the driver with a door in it and a heavy padlock. We were ushered in from the back, seated, then a shackle was placed between our handcuffs and the frame of the seat we were sitting in. Nothing was left to chance. The driver waited, his door open, smoking, and then a guard got into the passenger seat. He was a heavy-set man, buzz cut, wearing a holster and a radio belt. He turned to look at us.

“You guys ready?” he asked.

There was a general mumbled assent.

“Gonna be a long trip,” he said. “I assume everybody took a leak before you got in. No stops. Six hours. You eat when you get there.” He turned to face the windshield. “Let’s go,” he said to the driver, and we pulled out of the San Quentin prison yard, went through the village, turned onto the Richmond bridge and were over the water of the bay within minutes.

Last look at the bay for a long time, I thought. Nobody was talking. Because there were only six of us, each prisoner had an aisle seat. By the time we got to Vacaville an hour later, the guy across from me leaned over and said, “What they got you for?”

I said nothing. I was not in the mood for small talk with someone who was going off to prison. Of course, I was going off to prison. I was going off to prison in a grotty prison bus and Earl Winslow no doubt had a new Mercedes. He would find another attractive wife and the hole in his driveway had, no doubt, already been filled. I had failed to strike quickly. I had taken my eye off the prey, and he had escaped. Shortly after Vacaville we turned off onto northbound I-505, the freeway that would connect with I-5 and take us north to Red Bluff. I knew this journey, had taken it myself not that long ago.

We were passing through the rice fields west of Colusa when one of the prisoners near the rear exit began to moan. He tried to clutch at his stomach with his hands, but the shackle kept him from doing so. He slumped, head on his chest and the guy sitting opposite him shouted at the guard in the front seat.

“This guy’s sick,” he called out. The guard didn’t respond.

Now the prisoner was sagging into the aisle and he vomited, a rush of stuff that was red, as if he were vomiting blood. No telling what he had eaten that morning, but if it was the same food I had been given, there was nothing that should have shown up red.

“He’s really sick!” the other prisoner shouted. The guard turned, saw what had happened and said something to the driver. The bus pulled over to the shoulder and the guard unlocked the door, crouched and came through.

At that point what I did was not thought out. It was purely reflex, and when I thought about it later I linked it to the quick stab of the egret’s beak. As he passed me I reached out with my free hand and grabbed his weapon, wresting it from the holster. It came free and the guard whirled, but I had the pistol pointed at his gut.

“Unlock me,” I said.

“You’re fucked if I do,” he said.

“No,” I said. “You’re fucked if you don’t. I’ve killed four people. I don’t want to kill you but I won’t hesitate. And your life isn’t worth some shitbag like me taking a hike. You unlock me and I leave this bus and you keep on living.”

The others in the bus were shouting.

“Shoot the fucker,” someone shouted. “Get his keys.”

“Unlock me,” I said. “I go and the rest stay where they are.”

He fumbled with the knot of keys attached to his belt. He unlocked the shackle that held me to the seat.

“Now the rest,” I said, pointing at the shackles on my ankles. He bent, unlocked the rings around my ankles and the chain slipped off. He unlocked the handcuffs and they fell to the floor. The driver was on his phone to someone and I went through the opening to the front seat, grabbed the phone, opened the passenger door and threw the phone into the field. “When I get out,” I said. “You drive. Don’t look back. Leave me here.”

He said nothing, I slid out the door and the bus started forward. I ran to the fence that separated the freeway from the frontage road that ran parallel to the rice fields. I was over it quickly, and turned to watch the bus growing smaller.

A pickup truck came toward me and I stepped into the middle of the frontage road, waving my arms. The truck slowed, came to a stop as the driver peered at me. What was a man in an orange jumpsuit doing on this farm road?

I went to the passenger side, lifted the guard’s pistol and yelled at the farmer as I jerked open the passenger door. “Don’t move a muscle!”

I slid into the seat. “Drive,” I said.

He didn’t move, and I shouted at him,” Drive the motherfucking truck,” He put it in gear and we moved slowly off.

“Turn here,” I said, pointing at a dirt road that led between two rice fields.

I told him to stop, get out of the truck, and I forced him to take his clothes off. He stood there, nearly naked, overweight, his skin pale except his neck and wrists where the sun had browned him. I pulled on his trousers and shirt, laced his boots on.

“I won’t take your truck far,” I said. “You’ll get it back.”

“You escaped from jail,” he said.

“In a manner of speaking.”

”What did you do?”

“It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. But I have unfinished business to attend to.”

I climbed into the truck, started it, and backed out of the dirt road onto the frontage road, leaving the farmer standing in his shorts and socks on the dirt road. There was an egret behind him, tall, a white brush stroke against the green of the rice. It was, I thought, a good omen. There would be police coming soon. I took the first turn toward Colusa, drove, looking for the entrance to a ranch. It was midday. With any luck the men would be out tending whatever they tended in these flat fields of rice and straw. But there would be women and cars.

At the first ranch turnoff I drove in, turned off the engine, got out of the truck and went toward the house. A woman wearing a plaid apron came to the door.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

”Yes,” I said. I took the pistol out from the voluminous pants pocket.

”Oh!” She said. It was a small exclamation, as if I had showed her something valuable, like a jewel or a necklace. “Oh!” she said again, not moving.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said “Are you alone?”

She shook her head.

“Children?”

“They’re at school. Only Maria.”

I gestured with the pistol and she retreated into the house. I followed and there was Maria, a stocky Hispanic woman who looked at me and the pistol and said, “Por favor. No me mates. Yo tengo hijos.”

”No,” I said. “Nobody gets hurt if you do what I say. And nobody gets touched. I want a car. I want to use your car and I want to leave that truck here.”

“It belongs to Bill Jackson,” the woman said.

“He’s OK. I left him up the road. What I want is your car. And I’m going to tie the two of you up so that you can’t call the sheriff. I need a head start.”

“My husband will be here shortly.”

“I doubt it. I think you’ll be here by yourselves for several hours. And by then I will be somewhere else.”

I was strangely calm, as if this had all been planned, and I was carrying out a scheme that had been thought out.

“Sit,” I said, motioning to the wall behind them. “I need something to tie you up with.” I wanted something soft, something that would not scar their wrists and ankles. I had enough of handcuffs and shackles.

“Where do you keep your sheets?”

She motioned toward a closet at the edge of the room. I opened it, took out a sheet and tore it into strips. I bound their wrists tightly, then bound their ankles. The Hispanic woman was quiet, as if she had been through some ordeal that was not that different from what was happening now.

“Where is the car?” I asked.

“In the shed. The keys are on the kitchen counter.”

Within minutes I was driving east on the two-lane highway toward 99. It was not the road someone would choose to flee on, but 99 led south toward Davis and eventually onto I-80 and the Bay Area. With any luck I would have an hour’s head start and that would get me into the horrendous traffic on the freeway leading into the Bay area, and it would be almost impossible for the highway patrol to single out a car. It would be four lanes wide, clogged bumper to bumper with the evening traffic and I could lose myself in that confusion.

At Vallejo I took the turnoff to Highway 37, across the top of the bay. It was two lanes and chancy but if I made it all the way to Marin I could abandon the car. And find another way to do what I now knew I had to do.

There were egrets in the marshes on both sides of Highway 37. An extraordinary number of them. It was a good sign. When I turned off onto 101, I pulled into the parking lot of Rickys Restaurant. I would commandeer another car here. I waited, watching the bar exit from the car and eventually a man came out, fumbling with his keys, He unlocked a black Lexus and I stepped out and confronted him.

”Jesus Christ!” he said. “You’re stealing my fucking car!”

“You’re lucky,” I said, “That’s all I want. Just your fucking expensive car. You can go back inside and tell them a grubby man in overalls waved a gun at you and a sheriff’s deputy will show up and you can have another drink. Give me the fucking keys!”

He did.

I drove south on 101 until I came to the first San Rafael exit. I drove up Mission Avenue, took the Miracle Mile out to Fairfax and abandoned the car in the parking lot in the middle of the town. Eventually the stolen car would be linked to the carjack and when they found it in Fairfax, they would think I had come back to my house, but that wasn’t my plan. When Fuller found out what was happening, and I was sure he would, he would know where I was headed. I wanted him there.

By now it was early evening. I hiked up the hill to my house. It had been searched, that much I could see. Drawers were still open, the closet had been emptied, and my kitchen cupboards had been cleared out, everything stacked on the counter and the floor. Fuller had been there, searching for my Glock. I went to the garage, and found the same mess, tools scattered, boxes emptied, the cupboards cleared out. The birdhouses had their tops pulled off. Nice hiding place for a gun. My bicycle was still leaning against the garage.

The ride down the hill was what I knew. I nodded to a man who was walking his dog, and when I came to the bottom of the hill, there was a Fairfax police cruiser, and I came to a complete stop, waved to him and he waved back. Middle aged man on a bike, wearing overalls. Typically Fairfax. Have a good day. It took twenty minutes to pedal to Ross.

It was later now, dusk settling in. I pedaled up Lagunitas, turned off on Carmel and came to Winslow’s closed gate. With any luck he would be at home at this time of day and this was where I would find him.

There would be motion sensor lights and cameras and probably hired guns. I leaned the bike into the bushes next door to his house and began to separate the branches of the bushes. If I struggled, I could worm my way into their front garden.

It took ten minutes of pushing and laboring before I emerged on the inside of the bushes. My cheeks were scratched and my hands and fingers were raw. The neighbor’s garden was landscaped, lawn running down toward a grove of willows at the back, but I turned toward the wall that separated their house from Winslow’s. There was a stuccoed wall between this neighbor and Winslow, but it was not a high wall. It was the kind of wall that Frost wrote about. Good fences make good neighbors. It was easy to go up over the wall into Winslow’s property.

I could see the house clearly now, a huge shingled lodge with a greenhouse solarium attached to the back, a swimming pool below the house, the garage with its living quarters above it, an estate that was worthy of a man who was rich. I could see no video cameras pointing at his neighbor’s house. No need for that, his neighbor wasn’t likely to do him harm.

I crossed the neatly cut lawn and came to the door of the solarium. It had an aluminum door with a catch that was negligible and I was able to open it with little noise.

Once inside, I listened carefully. Music came from someplace. It would be suppertime. Supper. A word that came from my childhood. My parents came from the Midwest and dinner was at noon, a cooked meal, but supper came in the evening, much like the English tea, leftovers from the noon meal, salads and cold chicken or cuts of cold meat.

But it wasn’t likely that Winslow was connected with that regimen.

I listened carefully for any other voices. The music came from a room just off the solarium, meaning that I would not have to enter any of the front rooms. I found him in his study. He was at a desk that was mahagony, a top that had an inlaid blotter of felt and he turned when I said, “Winslow.”

“Who are you?”

“Your worst nightmare.”

Then he recognized me. “Oh shit, you’re the crazy man who forced me into the ocean at gun point.”

“That’s right. It’s me again.”

“You’re supposed to be in prison.”

“Change of plans. “

“Do you want money? Is that what you want?”

“No, I’m here to remind you of something you did three years ago.” He swiveled in his chair and he could see the pistol leveled at him.

“I have no idea what you want me to do,” he said. He seemed collected, as if he could talk his way out of this.

”No. I don’t suppose you do. It was three years ago. You came around a corner on the highway to Inverness and you clipped another car, and you sent it pinwheeling into To-males Bay.”

“You’ve got the wrong person.”

“You said that the last time you saw me. And just like that time, I have the right person. There’s no point in denying what you did. The car you clipped was occupied by my daughter. She died, drowned in that water. And you simply drove on.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“No, I’m not fucking mistaken. You know I’m not mistaken. And I want you to admit what you did or I will put a bullet in your brain.”

He placed his hands on the arms of his chair.

“You want me to admit to something that I never did?”

His voice was level. I knew that he was this kind of man. I knew that he was used to talking his way out of difficult positions, lying, weaseling, using his charm. But I also knew that he was the worm at my feet, ignorant of what he was doing, confident that he could somehow work his way out of this predicament, and when I struck, he would suddenly realize that he was the intended victim.

“You drove around a curve, clipped a car, it pinwheeled into the water. That’s what the man who witnessed it said. A black Ford Expedition. And you drove on and the next day you had your car repaired and you gave a fake name and a fake address. Is it coming back to you, asshole?”

He looked at me, and I realized that he was calculating how much this would cost him.

“You want me to pay for your daughter’s accident?”

“No, I want you to admit that you killed her and drove away, and tried to hide the fact that you are an unscrupulous son of a bitch who thinks he can buy his way out of anything. Even the death of a young woman.”

“What do you want of me?”

“I want you to admit that you did that careless act and tried to cover it up and then I will kill you.”

Now he was visibly agitated.

“There’s no reason to kill me. Yes, I clipped another car. I had no idea that I had done more than casual damage. You can’t be serious!”

”Admit it,” I said

Now I heard the other noises, cars arriving. Fuller was here. It had to be Fuller. He was the one who would know that I would be either in Winslow’s house or trying to get into Winslow’s house.

“The cavalry has arrived,” I said.

“There are two men on this floor. They are at the front of the house, not twenty steps from here. If you shoot me, they will come running and you will be a dead man.”

“You know anything about birds?” I could hear voices now, at the front door. But they had no idea that I was in the study with Winslow.

“Not much. Why?”

“There’s a bird that is a stalker. It moves silently and when it finds the thing it wants to eat, it remains motionless until the thing is right where it wants it and then it strikes. Right now I have you right where I want you. I should have done this in the first place. I want to hear the words, ‘Yes, I did it. I killed your daughter. I was careless and I killed her.’ Those words. Nothing else.”

“I can pay you a substantial amount of money. Enough to last the rest of your life. More money than you have ever dreamed.”

“You know that I will go back to prison. You contacted Detective Fuller. You put the finger on me. You know what happened. You know they sent me to prison. And somehow here I am. Right now you’re trying to buy time, to keep me at bay until they come back here to tell you that I am on the loose again. So no more bullshit. Say the words.”

The voices were louder and I thought I recognized Fuller’s voice.

I crossed to where Winslow sat and pressed the barrel of the guard’s gun against his temple. “If they come through that door, I will pull the trigger. Call out to them, tell them to stay where they are.”

He hesitated and I tapped him sharply on the skull with the barrel, applying it again to his skin.

“Back here,” he called loudly “I’m in the study. And he’s here with me and he has a gun, so don’t come in. He has a gun to my head and he says if you open the door he will shoot.”

Fuller’s voice was suddenly loud just outside the door.

“You know who this is,” he said. “I have three deputies with me and there are two of Winslow’s bodyguards. We’re all armed. If anything happens to him, you’re a dead man.”

“That’s what Winslow said,” I replied. “Right now the son of a bitch is trying to buy his way out of this. He thinks a cash settlement will make everything OK. How fucking dumb is he?”

“If you want to get out of this alive, put the gun down, put your hands on top of your head and come to the door. Tell me when you are at the door. I will open the door and if your hands are on top of your head, you will remain alive. If they are not, then we will open fire. Is that clear?”

“I assume you’re not clutching an old man’s walker, Detective.”

“You don’t need to die,” Fuller said. “This is another threat to a man’s life and you know how that works. If he isn’t hurt, then all you have to face is another threat charge and the escape from the prison bus. Your fucking lawyer will make another deal. Don’t do anything foolish.”

Winslow was shaking at this point, and his breath was coming in gasps.

Fuller’s voice again.

“There’s no need for this to end badly.”

No, it would end appropriately. I pointed the gun at Winslow’s waist and said, “I need a hundred dollars.”

He reached for his wallet.

“Put it on the desk,” I said. He placed his wallet on the green blotter.

“Now the hundred.”

He unfolded the wallet and took out five one hundred dollar bills.

“No, just a hundred.”

He picked up one of the bills and held it out. I took it in my left hand, made my hand into a fist with the bill clutched in it.

“Fuller,” I called out. “The clothes I’m wearing belong to a farmer near Colusa. I hijacked his truck. There’s a hundred dollar bill in my left hand to pay for his clothes and his boots. You got that?”

“We can give his clothes to him.”

“No, that won’t work. You give him the hundred, OK?”

“OK. Now come to the door.”

“Say the words,” I said to Winslow.

I had the gun to his head again.

“The words?”

“Yes, say those words.”

“I caused the accident.”

“No, say the words. I killed your daughter.”

His voice shook as he said, “Please don’t shoot.”

“Say the words.”

“I killed your daughter.”

I thought of the tall egret that stood behind the farmer in the rice field near Colusa. I could see it clearly, and I knew that it would find a crawdad in the water at the edge of the field and it would strike. lts beak would puncture the shell and it would raise its beak, toss the creature into the air and catch it so that it could swallow it whole. Then I pulled the trigger. The noise was deafening in that room and before it died the door burst open and they began to fire. I could feel the beak puncture his chest, go straight into his heart. I imagined that I was upside down in a car with water rushing in. Then it was still again.