LEAVING HIS HORSE BEHIND, the killer set off on foot along the railroad tracks that curled along the edge of San Diego Bay. The inclement weather made it impossible to see a hand stretched out in front of his face. But in his meticulous preparation, knowing that he would not be able to utilize a lantern or any other form of light no matter what the weather, he had counted and then recounted the number of footsteps along the tracks to reach his destination. Only with that number in his head did he feel safe venturing through the rain and dark on a night like this.
The tracks led him out of the built-up area and into a no man’s land of mudflats and sagebrush on the southern fringe of San Diego. Soon the din of the Stingaree saloons gave way to other sounds—the clatter of raindrops smacking his hat and the crunch of his boots in the gravel between the ties. No longer buffered by trees or buildings, the wind grew fearsome, the rain nearly horizontal. Even with a good coat, the weather quickly soaked him to the bone. Shivering from the wet and cold, he thought about turning back, attempting this on another night. But it might be months before everything aligned just right again, all but the weather that is. So he steeled himself and pushed on to Chollas Creek, churning with vicious, muddy runoff from the mesas and canyons above town. Somehow he managed to keep his balance on the slippery wooden ties of the trestle that carried him across the raging watercourse.
Just beyond the wooden bridge, a structure loomed in the darkness—the Golden State Meat Packing Company. San Diego’s only modern stockyard and slaughterhouse, and one of the largest manufactories on America’s western coast. The brainchild of James G. Ingraham, or “Yankee Jim” as they called him in the old days, before he had much cash or clout, when he was no more than a lowly butcher rather than the proprietor of three haciendas and a collective herd of more than ten thousand head of cattle.
Yankee Jim’s entrepreneurial ambitions had grown in proportion to San Diego’s real-estate boom. In days gone by, he had simply raised the cattle before herding them into town for someone else to slaughter. With the arrival of the train three years prior, it became more timely and economical to drive the cattle to a new railhead near his haciendas and ship them into town.
That initial interface with mechanization had set the gears grinding inside Ingraham’s head and proved the spark for a plan whereby he could make even bigger profits by slaughtering the animals and packing their meat. As a result, Yankee Jim had transformed into the main purveyor of beef and assorted products to most of the eateries, hotels, and butcher shops in San Diego, as well as commercial steamships and Kendall’s railroad, the gold mines in Ensenada and Julian, visiting naval vessels and the permanent Army garrison. Ingraham put more food into local mouths than everyone else combined.
Livestock holding pens ringed the slaughterhouse, a massive wooden structure suspended on pilings so that effluent produced by the plant went straight into the bay. On any other night, the cattle would break into ceaseless bleating if a person appeared out of the dark. But cowed by the storm, they huddled in silence as the killer slipped between the slaughterhouse and their corrals. The night watchman, lodged in a wooden shack beside the main entrance, was equally oblivious. Between the rain and darkness—and the drowsiness that overcame the watchman around this time on any given night—the guard had no clue that someone approached. The killer easily slipped around the guardhouse undetected, made his way about a hundred yards further down the tracks to another entrance at the south end of the slaughterhouse.
Sliding back a heavy wooden door, the killer stepped inside the massive structure. About two hundred yards long and about fifty yards wide, it housed what Ingraham liked to call his “disassembly line.” Based on the cutting-edge packinghouses of Chicago and Cincinnati, the line featured a series of workstations where stock was efficiently transformed from live animal into dressed meat. A narrow-gauge track with miniature flatcars moved the product from station to station. Further mechanizing the process, each station boasted a hoist and heavy steel shackle hooks to raise and lower the carcasses. The slaughterhouse was a marvel of modern engineering as well as a tribute to Ingraham’s vision and genius. But it would also prove his end.
Yankee Jim Ingraham listened to the rain beat a steady rhythm against the metal roof of the Golden State Meat Packing Company. But he didn’t let it interrupt his task of examining the books, figuring out more ways to slash costs and increase profit.
The storm had set him in a foul mood. Given its isolated location along the bay, about a mile south of the Pacific Coast Steamship wharf, the plant would likely be cut off from the rest of San Diego for days. They couldn’t drive in more cattle, and they wouldn't be able to ship any product. Rather than having his workers standing around doing nothing—and accruing wages—Yankee Jim had furloughed almost his entire staff for the duration of the maelstrom. While he bemoaned what would surely be two or three days of lost production (and profit), at least he wouldn’t have to pay anyone other than the watchmen.
Most men would have taken the opportunity to socialize, if not at the bars and brothels below Market, then perhaps the Cuyamaca Club and other respectable uptown establishments. But Ingraham, a loner by choice, always preferred his own company to that of others. A somewhat pious fellow, he had no discernable lust for the vices that plague so many other men. He was known to take a drink on occasion, but was certainly no drunkard. A widower for many a year, Ingraham now and again bedded some of the Indian women in his employ, but had never actually paid for carnal pleasure. His only genuine interest, now that his children were all grown, would seem to be the accumulation of even more wealth and power. And that’s exactly how he had chosen to pass the storm—ensconced at his desk, poring over the books, ciphering ways to achieve even greater margins.
Figuring it downright impossible to reach his own north county home while the storm raged, Yankee Jim had booked a room at Horton House for the next three nights. That’s where he would retire tonight once he finished perusing the company ledgers in his cabin-like office perched on stilts above the factory floor. From his desk, he could gaze down the entire length of the disassembly line, keeping tabs on the workers and marveling at his capitalistic brilliance.
Around nine o’clock, Yankee Jim closed the last of the ledgers and was just about to lock them in the office safe when he noticed someone loitering at one of the workstations on the factory floor. The place where sides of beef were seared with the Golden State brand before loading onto wagons or railcars. The fellow appeared to be stirring the hearth back to life with a branding iron, tiny sparks lofting through the factory’s dim interior.
Stepping onto the balcony outside his office, Yankee Jim shouted down at the squatting figure. “Hey, bub!”
The person did not respond, did not look around, refused to acknowledge him in any way. Instead, he kept at the hearth, poking and prodding the coals, the tip of the branding iron glowing orange.
“You!” Ingraham called in a scratchy voice that went with his lanky frame. The tone of someone used to giving orders rather than taking them. More irritated than angry. And not the least bit alarmed. In his lair, the unidentified figure did not pose a threat.
Again, the person continued to stare at the fire, stirring the coals again.
Frustrated at the lack of response, Yankee Jim decided to confront the man. He briefly flirted with the idea of retrieving his sidearm from a holster slung over his office chair. But the situation didn’t seem to call for firepower. Just some bum trying to avoid the storm, that’s what he figured.
Ingraham made his way downstairs and across the factory floor. Nearing the hearth, he yelled, “Answer me, you cocksucker!” and clamped a hand on the man’s shoulder.
Still clutching the branding iron, the intruder whirled around from his squatting position.
Yankee Jim recognized him at once. “What are you doing here?” he asked, baffled by the man’s presence.
The intruder responded by stabbing Ingraham in the chest with the branding iron, a thrust so quick that Yankee Jim didn’t have a chance to fend off the strike. The rod burned a “GS” through his gabardine waistcoat and the white linen shirt beneath. Reacting rather than thinking, Ingraham grabbed the business end of the iron and recoiled in pain as the scalding metal took the skin off his hands. He stumbled backward, away from the hearth, but too late to avoid another thrust. This time the hot iron struck the right side of his face, between his nose and thick sideburns. A third blow seared into his groin. Ingraham doubled over in pain, clutching at the crotch of his dark cassimere trousers.
As a coup de grâce, the intruder landed a powerful blow to the skull with the side of the branding iron. Ingraham crumpled to the slaughterhouse floor, still conscious but unable to muster any resistance. As the smell of burnt flesh rose through the building, Yankee Jim found himself curled in a ball on the brick floor, moaning from the pain of his multiple wounds, unable to strike back or defend himself.
Working with methodical haste, the intruder secured Ingraham’s wrists with a pair of handcuffs. He reached up for a metal meat shank and hooked it onto the chain connecting the cuffs. Using the workstation crank, he hoisted Yankee Jim about three feet off the ground and moved a miniature flatcar into position beneath his feet. He lowered Ingraham onto the flatcar and rolled him about halfway down the slaughterhouse floor to the evisceration station.
The evisceration station served two distinct functions. Removal of any vital organs (i.e. brains, kidneys, hearts, intestines) that could be used as food products, and the reduction of the leftover animal fat into wax-like tallow. The rendering process was actually quite simple, perfected a thousand years or more before, and largely unchanged since medieval times: Dump raw animal fat into a cauldron and simmer for several days prior to straining and cooling. With the advent of electricity, tallow had lost much of its market in the United States. But animal-fat candles remained far more common in Mexico than Edison’s remarkable bulbs. And that’s where Yankee Jim shipped the bulk of the tallow produced at this plant.
Another hook, another hoist, and Ingraham’s expensive black leather shoes were dangling above a vat of gelatinous bovine. This particular batch of tallow had been boiled, simmered, and strained just before the rains came. It had been left to cool in anticipation of cutting, crating, and shipping early the following week, by which time the storm would have passed and normal trading activities resumed. Fast to burn and slow to harden, its current consistency resembled quicksand. And it stank to high heaven. Not as pungent as pig fat, mind you, yet vile enough to wake the dead.
As Yankee Jim started to come around, he realized his predicament and began to twist and turn, trying to break free. To no avail, of course. The contraption holding him aloft could withstand the mass and muscle of a thousand-pound steer. No amount of struggle would set a human free.
“Why are you doing this?” Yankee Jim pleaded, looking his attacker in the eyes.
“Moosa Canyon,” was the curt response.
That was enough to push Ingraham over the edge into total panic. “You’re crazy!” he shouted.
“That may well be,” the intruder said philosophically.
“Put me down!” Yankee Jim demanded. “Put me down now and we’ll forget this whole thing.” And when the attacker didn’t respond, he tried something very uncharacteristic—humility. “I didn’t mean to kill those folks. Didn’t mean to harm ‘em in any way.”
“Wrong answer.” With a crank of the wheel, the intruder lowered Ingraham’s feet closer to the tallow.
“I didn’t! Swear to God. I didn’t mean to hurt ‘em! They shot first! It was self-defense!”
“Wrong again.” The intruder lowered him another notch, not quite touching the noxious yellow brew, but near enough for Ingraham to feel its lingering heat. “I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.”
Yankee Jim stared back in silence, thoroughly mystified as to why this man was doing this to him, what stake he had in events so long ago, or what connection to the people Ingraham had so grievously harmed.
The intruder lowered him another notch. “I’m waiting.”
For the first time, Ingraham seemed to grasp the fact that he might actually die. “Stop!”
“We shot first! We killed ’em in cold blood!”
“The whole truth!”
“I shot the woman myself. But I didn’t kill her kids. My men did. That’s the Bible truth!”
Thinking he might now survive the ordeal, Yankee Jim exuded a deep sigh of relief. But his relief melted into an even deeper panic when his assailant cranked the handle again and his shoes cracked the tallow’s thin upper crust.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Ingraham cried out. “You can’t do this!
Without any hesitation, the man lowered him another notch, up to the knees this time. The fat still warm, yet not hot enough to scald him instantly.
Yankee Jim tried raising his legs from the yellow muck. But the effort proved useless, the energy wasted, the machine simply too efficient to overcome whatever strength he could still muster. And Ingraham knew it. “Help!” he screamed, trying to rouse the night watchman. “Help me!” But the rain beating on the metal roof, the wind whipping against the packinghouse walls, easily overwhelmed his petition.
The man lowered him further, to his waist this time, his body now half submerged in the cauldron. Yankee Jim began to whimper, tears forming in his eyes. “You have what you came for! Let me go!”
“And meet the same fate as the poor sods you shot? I think not, Mr. Ingraham.”
“I won’t! I won’t come after you! I swear! I won’t say a word. To anyone!”
Another notch and Ingraham sank up to his chin, gasping for air as the molten fat constricted his chest. “God’s sake, please!” he spat out. “I’ll stand trial! I’ll do my time!”
He wouldn’t, of course. Not in a million years. Not with his kind of wealth and power. Like the first time around—when he and his men were implicated in the Moosa Canyon massacre—Yankee Jim would find a way to weasel out. Even if you could get him in a courtroom, he would refute this confession. Or claim that torture had been used to extract it. They wouldn’t get past the initial hearing. The case would get tossed. The man would go free.
Almost as if he could see the plan taking shape in Ingraham’s mind, the attacker turned the wheel again, and Yankee Jim’s mouth and nose disappeared beneath the surface. He could no longer scream, no longer beg for mercy. What could still be seen of his face began to turn a gruesome shade of purple as the tallow clogged his throat and lungs. Moments later his thrashing stopped. And the second reckoning was over.