Redwood Tomb

Crime Fiction by Linda Boroff

The four occupants fall silent as the 1978 Buick Electra Park Avenue crests the top of Empire Grade and begins to wind down the narrow blacktop road, nearly invisible in the night fog.

 “Pick it out, willya?” says the man beside the driver. In response, Royal throws the car into neutral, takes his hands off the wheel and crosses his arms. He removes his black-booted foot from the gas pedal and rests it against the dashboard. The car instantly surges forward like a horse with the bit in its teeth. 

“You was soundin’ like you was wantin’ to drive, Don,” Royal says as the car accelerates toward a stand of young oaks bisected by the road. 

“Shit, you crazy bastard!” Don lunges for the wheel, but his glancing touch only causes the car to veer and careen, throwing the two women in the back up against each other and eliciting sharp screams. Royal winks at Don and resumes the wheel with exaggerated cool, throwing the car into second and turning calmly into the skid as trees flash past.

The women yelp and whimper, shielding their faces. Lauren, the one with long dark hair, covers her eyes with her arms. When she dares peek out, the car is again traveling smoothly down the steep grade. The blonde-haired woman beside her now focuses in silence on the back of Royal’s neck, her lips pursed and eyes narrow. 

“Oh my God,” Lauren gasps. 

“Just watch it the hell,’ says Don to Royal, trying to reclaim his hegemony with this loser.

But Royal only laughs, scowling. “Just you open that pie hole one more time, Don.”

Don glares straight ahead, consumed with rage. Royal half-turns to the two women. “And that goes for you too. I’m the one drivin’, you got that clear?” As Don’s mouth opens, Royal raises his voice. “And you don’t none of you know shit.”

Don exhales noisily. Headlights loom, but the cars narrowly clear one another. “Fuck you very much,” mutters Royal at the other driver.       

“Are we getting close yet?” Lauren ventures after what feels to her like a long time. 

“Shut up,” says Don. “We get there when we get there.” Royal gives a short, contemptuous huff.

“Just be patient, honey,” says Kathi. Lauren turns to her, and Kathi smiles apologetically. Royal’s testy that way, the smile seems to say. Don’t take it personal. Lauren tries to smile back at Kathi.

Women are so much more understanding, Lauren thinks. We really are the superior sex. We know how to be nice to each other even when we’re nervous. To show simple human kindness.

Kathi’s very short blonde hair is cut in playfully ragged wisps. Even in the dark, her eyes look bright blue. Those must be contacts, Lauren thinks. She wonders vaguely if Kathi’s daring hairstyle would look good on her, then dismisses the thought. No, she was a classic brunette through and through. She had tried all that when she was younger, dyeing her hair, and the roots kept growing out and looking cheap. She just didn’t have the persistence to be a proper bottle blonde. Anyway, inch for inch she is prettier than Kathi; her breasts fuller, and her face more sophisticated, more classic, everyone says as much. Just because Kathi has those plump cheeks, people assume she’s still a teenager, but she’s at most three or four years younger than Lauren. Tops.

 “This’ll all be over in a few minutes honey,” Kathi says. Royal turns and glares at her. “… And you’ll be on your way home,” Kathi continues, staring back defiantly at Royal, who turns away with an exasperated head shake.

The hair falling over his collar is blond, thick and wavy, enough hair for a woman, Lauren thinks; two women, in fact. Royal’s hairline is low for his age—forties—which makes him look like an animal, albeit a kind of handsome one. But a low forehead is a sign of bestiality. Lauren has heard that alcoholics don’t lose their hair because the booze suppresses their male hormones. So anytime you see a mature man with the hairline of a ten-year-old boy, that man is most likely an alkie.

Lauren cups her hands to her temples and tries to look out the window into the night, but here in the deep woods, there is nothing to see, not even the lights of a cabin. No street lamps either. Santa Cruz might be one of the world’s most beautiful places by day, but now, amid thick redwoods and fog, beauty did not exist. Nothing existed.

“You remember that movie The Lost Boys?” Don says, and nobody answers. “Well this here place reminds me of that movie. Pure Santa Cruz.” 

“This place is nothing like that movie,” says Lauren. “That movie was mostly on the beach. And the boardwalk.”

“The hell,” says Don. 

“Are you getting senile or something?”

“Will you two morons shut the fuck up?” Royal snarls. Kathi turns to Lauren and puts a finger to her lips in mute appeal. Silence again crushes the car like an iron weight. “Pardon my French, you two ladies,” Royal finally says.

“I guess it’s somewhere around here,” Kathi ventures. 

“You guess?” Royal bridles again.

“I can’t see nothin’ in this dark.”

“Well ain’t that just peachykeen,’ says Royal. “Our guests here are expecting a quarter million’s worth of blow, and you ‘guess’ the house is ‘somewhere around here.’”

“I done everything just like you told me,” says Kathi, and Royal reaches around and smacks her face so hard that she grunts. He slams on the brakes, and Kathi begins to sob softly.

“Now wait just a fucking minute, man,” says Don. “I think this is maybe where Lauren and me get out.”

“No, there it is, the house,” Kathi says through her tears. “Thank God.”

“You sure?” says Royal. “Or I got some knuckles for you.”

“That’s the place.”

“S’more like it.” Royal pulls the car off the road, and sure enough, Lauren sees a lighted house through the trees. But a deep ravine separates it from the road. Were they going to have to descend all the way down to the bottom and cross the river in the dark and then climb back up the other side to get to that damn house? That sounded crazy. How she yearned to be in that lighted house right now, warm and cozy, with a drink in her hand and some lines on the table. A nice, strong whisky and ginger ale would be perfect. 

“How do we get across the ravine?” Lauren says. 

Royal looks straight at her. “You don’t,” he says, “until me and Kathi search you. And then I will show you the way. There’s a bridge. But you can’t cross it till we search you.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” says Lauren. “Here. Look at me. You can see I’m not carrying anything. Not even my purse, just like you said.” Royal scans her closely. She wears only a white tank top with no bra and tight yellow pants. There’s no way she could fit a playing card into those pants, let alone a gun or a wire or anything else, not even underwear.

“Them’s the rules,” he says. “Climb on out. Kathi’ll search you, okay?”

“It’s just a formality, honey,’ says Kathi.

“You wait here,’ Royal says to Don, who is looking deep into the dark ahead and not moving.

“Don’t you get no ideas neither,” says Royal. “We don’t show up with the money, we’re dead. We trusted you with this and don’t you try to bail on us now. We gotta bring you in one at a time, and all searched, so we’ll be right back.” Kathi is patting Lauren’s body gently with her hands, running them up and down Lauren’s curves. Watching her, Don feels a little aroused, nervous as he is. Those two would be quite an interesting pair, except for the fact that he never wanted to see Kathi or that crazy-ass Royal again. This is the last piece of business he will ever conduct with those two batshits. 

Don lights a cigarette and watches the moon play hide and seek through fast-scudding clouds; stars prick the dense black sky. He tries not to dwell on what he would do to Royal if given half a chance. 

TWO

“Stanislaus County Superior Court… etcetera,” Denny reads from the legal-size manila folder in his lap, “denies appellant’s motion for modification of the penalty and imposes a judgment of death. Appeal is automatic.” He looks up at Fanchon like a little kid who has found a dollar. “Did you hear that, baby? Appeal is automatic, and Ken’s letting me handle it.”

But Fanchon does not respond. Is this intentional, he wonders, or is she merely preoccupied? Feeling a little foolish now, he bends once again to the file and pretends to read for a few moments, but he is really listening to Fanchon make the salad. He steals a glance to see her shaving the cucumber’s deep green, warty skin in long, sinuous strips.

Off in some parallel salad-creation cosmos, she wipes her forehead with the back of her hand, then seizes a red onion the size of a softball, peels its purple parchment, and slices it deftly into concentric rings, which she frisbees into the monkeypod bowl. They land on a glistening bed of ruffled emerald lettuce. When she shakes the vinegar, the sudden, sharp smell makes Denny’s mouth water. And it waters too at her spandex-clad ass tilted up as she leans on one leg, bending her knees a little at the counter because she is nearly six feet tall.

Denny lifts his wine goblet, so large and thin that he has to cup it breastlike from the bottom to raise it to his lips: Oh, this is too good; his cup truly runneth over: Saturday night off, just him and Fanchon alone together, the baby with his parents. He should simply bask in the moment.

Still, he can’t leave it alone. “Did you hear me? About the death penalty?” 

“Stop reading right now.” Fanchon tosses the salad with two giant, square-tined wooden forks. “Can you just stop for a little while?” Her tone is playful, but irritation lurks beneath. 

Instantly, he feels like a rebellious little boy. Why did she marry an assistant D.A. if she was so squeamish about crime? “You act like I committed the damn murder,” he grumbles. To conduct a truly juicy capital murder trial had been his sustaining fantasy, his holy grail. What other reason for all those nights battling the waves of sleep lapping seductively at his splintery little craft, tossing on the vast, shoreless ocean of law school.

“You just seem as if,” Fanchon searches for words, shaking one of the forks like a ruler at a student, “I don’t know, you’re beginning to sound as if all these people exist only to populate your trial. As if they weren’t even real people, just… names in a file. Or a cast of characters, yes, in your very own play.”

He swallows his wine, still deep in recalling his student self, lonely and scared shitless, swilling bitter vending machine coffee, memorizing each self-inflated professor’s favorite aphorism as if it were scripture. Enduring the patronizing sneers and veiled threats and rumors; wriggling like an insect on a pin under the merciless fluorescent classroom lights. Now he feels more like a cat who has laid its hard-hunted rat at the feet of an adored mistress only to be greeted by a scream and the broom.

“Somebody has to deliver justice; it’s the least they deserve, these victims. Even if they were dope dealers.”

“Well that’s better. At least you aren’t seeing this case totally as a career builder.”

“Not totally. Just monumentally.”

“Or I should say, you’ve learned the right formulaic response to placate me.”

“Big ouch.”

Fanchon tilts her head the better to admire the salad she has constructed: how can something so simple and cheap be so utterly gorgeous? The lettuce—brilliant shades of green that don’t even have names—sparkles in its bath of thin, savory oil. The sliced tomatoes, speckled with coarse grated pepper, jut vermillion from their leafy nests. And here came the croutons thundering, dark with rich garlic, real, jagged-edged bombers, not those little prefab porous cubes in a plastic bag.

Would he even notice this joyous riot of a salad, this synthesis of nature and art—or would he merely shovel it in, oblivious, while he went on about his bloody murder and scumbag defendants and witnesses rotten with secrets; his colleagues conniving in backstage machinations. Fanchon shudders. The sun is slipping down toward the deck, but she had better put up the table umbrella or they would be baked alive.

“Admit it,” Denny says at the worst possible moment, “Murder is fascinating.”

“If you read one more gruesome sentence, though, you can eat dinner alone.”
            “Okay okay.” He tops off his glass of wine. “A great pinot,” he says to flatter her, because he really can’t tell the difference.

She whips her head around grinning, and her dark blonde curls bounce like a little girl’s. “It took me half an hour to pick that out.”

“Time well spent.” But he is thinking, good save. And the baked potatoes smell incredible. So he reads on alone, his internal sea once again balmy and blue, letting the pinot carry him back into the moment.

“I’m sorry, Denny,” she intrudes suddenly, contrite. His slightly downcast expression reminds her of one of her students struggling with long division. The shock of brown hair falling over his forehead is boyish too, and his gray eyes are softened now from the keen, cynical glance he has recently affected—perhaps to compensate for being the youngest assistant DA working felonies? “But you prosecutors,” she continues, searching for words, “you get so… desensitized. You don’t even realize how all that ghastly stuff affects regular people. It may be fascinating, but it’s nothing to read out loud before a nice romantic dinner sans Her Diapered Majesty. And we haven’t had a night off in so long.”

The setting sun suddenly sneaks below the kitchen blinds and shoots a molten golden arrow right into Denny’s eyes. Blinded, he reaches for her, and she permits him a promising grope before dancing out of his arms and then playfully yielding again to his imploring hands. 

“At least listen to this part then,” Denny dares, emboldened by the wine and by the affectionate weight of Fanchon now in his lap, curled around him in her half serpent, half ingenue way. 

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Fanchon says. “Okay, just make it quick.” Denny gives her his mischievous cat/canary stare and reaches behind her and opens the manila folder. 

“Thank you for humoring me. This is a big event in my life, a trial like this. In our lives.” Fanchon sighs with good-humored resignation and reaches for her wine goblet as Denny shuffles the papers in the file. 

“This is one of the perps testifying, we charged her with accessory and she caved; that was major. ‘Royal,’” he reads, “‘first he made us dig a couple of shallow holes to bury them in. That was the day before. He lured the two of them there to pick up the $250,000 worth of cocaine. He told them that this was where they was to take delivery, in a house nearby.

“’I went along for Lauren. See, Royal told them they had to be searched before they went in the cabin to get their coke. Then after I searched her, Lauren leaned up against a tree, and he shot her in the back of the head. Then he turned quick around and Don was standing by the car, and Royal did the same thing but in his chest. But Don did not die at first, and so Royal shot him a second time, in the head that time, and then he did die.

“‘And then Royal, he cut off their heads and arms and all that and put the torsos, that’s what he called them, in the holes I had dug. And then we had some quicklime that Royal’s friends, these two girls he knew, had bought.’” 

Denny stops reading. “Got that?” he says. “Remember that, Fanchon: quicklime.”

“Okay. I shall remember quicklime,” Fanchon says, cuddling compliantly.

Denny reads again: “‘… because Royal he said that dissolves bodies fast. So we put the quicklime on them and then we covered the graves with dirt and brush and leaves. The rest of the body parts, we put into plastic bags, and Royal got rid of all that shit in dumpsters. And the gun too. I never did know what he did with that.’”

Denny stops reading and lights a cigarette, an infrequent indulgence these days. Fanchon suppresses her urge to admonish him. “On February 20,” Denny reads, slowly and distinctly, leaking smoke, “a mushroom hunter off Empire Grade discovered fragments of a female skull. They belonged to a missing woman named Lauren Graven.”

“How horrible. Now I won’t sleep tonight.”

“You won’t anyway,” Denny grins. “The mushroom hunters brought the fragments to the sheriff’s office—I know, he should not have moved them, chain of evidence, but there was plenty of other evidence, believe me. The sheriffs went back to the site and they pieced the other fragments together. One skull had a hole the size of a .44- or .45-caliber slug. The next day they found more bone fragments, some hair, a shovel, a kitchen or steak knife, and a green garbage bag.”

“How do you like your steak. You like peppercorns?” 

“You really have to ask me that?” 

“Medium rare, is that right?” 

Denny nods. “Humor me,” he says. “They found another naked torso the next day. And here is the grand denouement. Here’s the fascinating part. Each body had a white, clay-like substance clinging to it.”

“What was it?”

“Can’t you guess? No. We couldn’t either, at first. Anyway, Don Macalister’s skull, the second skull, they found in the same area on March 18. And there was a .45-caliber hole in the skull, no surprises there. They surmised from neck wounds that the heads and hands had been removed post mortem with a slicing or chopping instrument, perhaps a hatchet, machete, or cleaver. They confirmed the identity of the victims through dental records. Killer had missed a few molars when he pulled ‘em.”

 Denny reads quickly now. “Defendant’s involvement became known when Kathi Kent, fearing for her life and the safety of her family, disclosed her participation to her brother-in-law, a parole officer, who arranged for her to meet with an FBI agent and local law enforcement officials.

“Kathi Kent claimed to have acted under the domination of defendant and to have feared him. She testified about her relationship with him and about various drug-related criminal activities they had participated in prior to the murders.”

“Okay, but aside from all the legalese,” Fanchon says, “what about the white substance?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Fanchon looks at him blinking expectantly. Slowly, with relish, Denny returns to the file. “The evidence, insofar as it relates to the murder counts, blah blah blah…. okay. Royal’s two teenybopper accomplices waiting in that cabin came out after the shots and joined them at the murder site. They were ordered to take the clothing off the bodies and place the clothing in one of the garbage bags. As they were doing so, Royal Cooney tried to use a hacksaw to cut off Macalister’s head, but the blade broke.” Fanchon closes her eyes.

“I’ll spare you that. Anyway, here comes the good part.” Denny looks up and grins. “See, the perp had sent these two Rhodes scholars waiting in the cabin to buy quicklime that would dissolve the bodies, but what they brought back instead was regular oyster shell lime they had bought at some garden shop. That was the white substance we found all over the bodies. So nothing dissolved, all the evidence was preserved, and we now get to send Royal Cooney’s worthless ass to the gurney. Tell me that’s not sweet.”

“Oh my God,” Fanchon blinks. “You guys caught a big break there.”

“Did we not.”

She embraces him. “So tell me, what possible defense could there be in a case like this?”

“Oh they pulled out a whole bag of tricks at trial, all right,” Denny says, “but they kept getting buried in that damned oyster shell lime.”

“Tell me some of the tricks.”

“Happy to.” Denny takes a deep drink of wine. Finally, at long last, she is hooked.

THREE 

Sunday afternoon. A brilliant blue sky beams down on the legendary curving, sensuous and lethal Highway 17 through the Santa Cruz mountains, illuminating the wooded hills and the luxury homes protruding from them. Denny navigates the road easily in a new BMW. Fanchon sits beside him. In the back in a child’s car seat upholstered with dancing ducklings on a sky-blue background sleeps Elllie, about eighteen months old. The atmosphere is tense; the temperature drops even further as Fanchon sighs.  

“Why does your father always pick on me when we visit?” Fanchon’s false-eyelashed brown eyes are barely holding back tears. 

Denny stretches and silently curses; he had seen this coming. “Why? Because he doesn’t know any other way to relate to people. Because he’s a raving asshole. Because he spent his life in East Bumfuck, California, with a wife who won’t stop drinking. Because his only son was lousy at football. Choose your reason.”

Fanchon shakes her head. “You know what he said to me at dinner? He said to put a pillow under my ass.”

“I heard him.”

“Can’t you stand up to him? Just once?”

”Wouldn’t do any good. Never did, never will.”

”And by the way, your mom’s dainty little teacup was full of whisky.”.

Denny laughs. “Mom’s a genius at hiding booze. No matter how we searched the house, she’d be half in the bag by the time we got home from school.     

“It’s a miracle you got out of there unscathed.” 

“Oh I’m plenty ‘scathed.’ I was the only guy in my graduating class who even went on to college.” 

”Where’d the other guys go?”

“Bakersfield. Vietnam. Prison. Usually in that order. We were the real ‘American Graffiti.’ Saturday nights, we kids’d get all liquored up and head down some two-lane in the Kettleman Hills at about 3 a.m., thereby demonstrating the physics of the head-on.” Fanchon shudders. Denny’s gray-blue blue eyes scan the landscape with relish, years  away.

“When I was sixteen, a buddy and I actually rolled his dad’s Corvair.”

“I never heard this story.” Fanchon puts her chin in her hand and flutters her false lashes.

”           “Me and Tim had just killed a couple of six packs and a fifth of rotgut bourbon. Tim took a curve over the Kern river at about 90, and those back wheels folded in just like Ralph Nader said they would.” Hands spread, Denny twists his wrists to show the wheels folding.

“Oh my God!”

“The first roll, I saw cracks appear in slow motion in the windshield, and Tim pulled me under the dashboard. Second roll, that rear-mounted engine surged forward into the passenger compartment.”

“Just like Ralph Nader said it would,” finished Fanchon. “How many times did it roll?”

“At least five. Tim and I ended up crammed into a space about the size of a cereal

box.”

“Oh my God!”

“Cops refused to believe we were actually the guys in the car.”

“How badly were you hurt?”

“Chipped a tooth. Tim broke his wrist.”

Fanchon sits back in her seat and rubs her temples. “God really does protect fools and drunkards.”

“’God’ doesn’t protect anybody. God doesn’t exist.” 

Ellie fusses, and Fanchon turns in her seat to hand her a teething toy.

“What were the odds against you and I even crossing paths?” she muses, “with me growing up in L.A. and you out in the boonies?”

“You can thank Berkeley. But life is all unlikely coincidences. Where we go, who we meet. How we end up.” Denny grins. “It’s a miracle to be born at all when you think about it. Most potential human beings just get washed out of the sheets. Or flushed down the shower drain.”

Franchon laughs. “O-kay.”
“Well think about it.” 

“I’ll put it on my list.”

They pull into the driveway of a 70s style home with a redwood sundeck and a view of the Santa Cruz Yacht Harbor. Blue and white boats bob on the small, tame waves, the sun reflecting knifelike from their polished wooden decks. Denny leans into the back seat and unlatches Ellie from the car seat. She resembles him more than she does Fanchon, with her blue eyes and tousled, caramel-colored hair. They empty the car of the items that his parents had given them: leftovers from lunch stored in Depression glass containers, mementos of Denny’s grandmother, who had died a few months ago. Ellie, flopped asleep in Denny’s arms, drools on his neck. 

They open the front door and Denny surveys toys, books and baby clothes scattered in the living room. Crumbled cookies are pressed into the playpen’s vinyl floor. The sink is full of crusted dishes. Why, broods Denny, did I expect anything different? His eyes narrow, and he realizes that Fanchon has been watching him apprehensively, building her defense. 

“Sorry for the mess. I didn’t have time to straighten up before we left.”

“I didn’t say a word.“    

”Guess what? It’s hard keeping a house white-glove clean with a toddler,”

Denny, tight-lipped, gathers up toys, clothes and used diapers. Fanchon continues into the kitchen with Ellie. He hears her brushing old food off the high chair.

From the living room liquor cabinet, Denny takes out a wine bottle and a corkscrew. He enters the kitchen and Fanchon cheers at the sight of the wine, a little too loudly. She plunks Ellie into the high chair and sets out two wine glasses on the kitchen table. When Denny goes into the bathroom, she checks around and then swigs from the half empty bottle she had saved from dinner last night. 

Denny reenters with a manila folder and sits at the table. 

“I thought you were leaving work behind this weekend. Is this the same case?” 

Denny has opened the folder and is reading, preoccupied. He answers her without looking up.
            “Some drug dealer name of Nick Swanson got beat up and robbed of his stash near the Boardwalk a couple weeks ago. Ken thinks he might narc for us. He really got the shit kicked out of him. Cracked cheekbone, bruises all over. That beating just might drive him to the side of law enforcement.”

Fanchon quickly inserts the bottle opener and uncorks the second bottle, which Denny obligingly takes for the first. The real first bottle was emptied and buried in the trash while he was out of the room. “Half our crimes come out of the Boardwalk,” Denny says.

“Amusement parks are always kind of sleazy.”  

“Beach Flats, that whole Boardwalk area, has a kind of penny-ante brutality about it. People move here to start over, but there’s always someone lying in wait to find their weak spot and take ‘em down. That’s when they fall into our waiting embrace. 

 “Crime pays… your salary.” Fanchon giggles at her joke.

“Well put!” He gets up and embraces her as she reaches for the bottle. She sets out the leftovers from his parents’ lunch. His mother’s Georgia background shows in the ham hocks and lima beans; the cornbread was made from scratch in a cast iron skillet. His mother, drunk, had dropped the heavy skillet and burned her hand picking it up as it spun across the floor. 

After lunch, Fanchon scrubs the kitchen and living room spotless and changes Ellie’s diaper before putting her into the playpen. Denny’s father Paul believed strongly that Ellie should be toilet trained by now, and he had brought up the waste of buying diapers for a big girl like her. Eighteen months is time enough. Fanchon had turned bright red and Augustine, Denny’s mother, had taken a deep sip of her “tea.” He was starting up with Fanchon again. Why couldn’t he just be happy with his granddaughter and leave Fanchon alone? He was jealous of Denny, getting under his skin at every opportunity.

Fanchon had arched her brows and looked down on Paul, stubby, gray-headed, and muscular—a former football star. “Do you know any babies who don’t eventually get toilet trained, Paul?”

“Well I was embarrassed buying diapers.” He gestures at a huge pack of disposables they had bought for Denny and Fanchon. “The lady in the pharmacy thought she was three years old and why was she still in diapers?”

“She’s not three, she’s half that and you should have told that nosy bitch to kiss your ass, Paul.” Fanchon had smiled sweetly and Denny gritted his teeth. Why did those two hate each other so much? Paul couldn’t resist baiting Fanchon. Maybe because she was Jewish. Paul had never met a Jew in his life, but he had somehow accumulated a set of prejudices that would have charmed Hitler. 

Denny looks up from his file to see Fanchon asleep, or passed out was probably a better term for it. She was sprawled on the sofa, a bottle on the floor beside her. Was that yet another bottle? They had drunk two with dinner. Denny rises and pulls Ellie out of the playpen and balances her in his lap as he reads the Swanson file. But the baby fusses and treads all over his groin, and he puts the file down.

“Okay, young lady. Bed time.”

“No!”

“Mommy’s asleep.” He gestures at Fanchon.

“No!”  

“I’ll read you Goodnight Moon.” Ellie considers this, lips pursed. 

“Petew Wabbit.”

“You’re a tough negotiator. Okay. Peter Rabbit.” Laughing, Denny carries Ellie into her bedroom. He steals a glance at Fanchon, who has not moved a muscle in hours.

Denny enters the kitchen and surveys a few dirty dishes that Fanchon had missed. He starts loading them into the dishwasher and reaches under the sink for the soap. Behind the garbage pail he discovers three hidden empty wine bottles and an empty pint of scotch.

“Son of a bitch!” he says loudly. He starts up the dishwasher and carries the clinking bottles into the living room and lines them up on the coffee table. 

“Uh, Fanch…”

“Slee-ping…” She twitches slightly. He sits on the coffee table.

“Sure. Just explain these dead soldiers. Then you can go back to sleep.” 

Fanchon sits up on her elbows and surveys the bottles. Denny doesn’t bother to watch her.

“Oops. Busted. So what?”

He feels anger rising. “Hey, you want a drink, take a fucking drink. But don’t hide bottles or water the booze or any of that shit. It didn’t work for mom, and it won’t work for you.” 

“Don’t prosecute me, okay?”

“All I want is honesty.” 

Fanchon turns her head away. “How square of you.” Denny looks at her, so beautiful when tousled like that, and ponders.

“Are you really that unhappy here?”

At this, Fanchon sits up and runs her hands through her lush brunette hair. In fact, she is a gorgeous drunk, Denny decides. But she won’t always be. He thinks of his mother’s wrinkles and grog blossoms. Fanchon buries her face in her hands.

“It’s just… Your life is so exciting and meaningful.”   

“Oh sure. I’m discovering that new DA’s get all the shoplifters and weenie waggers.  Very meaningful.”

“I’m so bored.”

“I got you that writing gig for the paper.” 

“Covering the senior citizens art guild? Thanks a heap.”

“So? It’s a start.”

“Denny, I worked as a secretary to put you through law school and the bar exam twice.    “Thanks for reminding me.” 

“Now I want to write my novel.” Denny’s eyes turn to the pile of papers beside the fireplace. They had not been touched in a week.

“By swilling wine and watching reruns of The Love Boat?” A thought occurs to him.

”Do you ever drink and drive with Ellie in the car?”

Fanchon draws herself up with offended dignity.

“Of course not! How could you even think that?”

“Because everybody lies to me. Especially alkies and addicts.”

“I’d never.”

“Look,” Denny says, “I’m not judging you. It’s the nature of the beast. My boss drives drunk. Half the people in the office have liquor on their breath after morning break. Ray piles up county cars, and they bury the repair costs in the budget. I’m just saying, if I ever find out that you drove with Ellie after you’d been drinking, we’re done.”

“Oh fuck off!” Fanchon turns her sinuous back on him and curls up on the couch. She kicks a pillow off and it knocks over two of the bottles.

“C’mon baby, get into bed.” Denny lifts Fanchon’s tall, lithe body and carries her into the bedroom. He lays her gently on the bed. She rouses and tries to cuddle him, but he has no patience left for lovemaking right now. Her tainted breath dampens his cheek. He strips down to his shorts and gets into bed beside her just as the phone rings. He gropes for it quickly.

“Hallo,” he says in his office voice and listens. “Yeah? No shit!” He sits upright and swings his legs over the side of the bed. “On my way.” Denny hangs up the phone, rises and starts throwing on fresh clothes. Fanchon opens one eye. He can tell from the way she sits up that with him gone now, she has hope of getting another drink from wherever she has hidden her bottle.  

“That was Ken. Some guy in Boulder Creek just committed suicide by cop. They need a DA to document it was a good shoot, chain of evidence, all that.” Denny puts on a tie. There was a good chance that the press would be there. The public would think he was the kind of guy who wakes up dressed for work at 1:20 a.m.

“This is the first time Ken’s trusted me with a case like this,” Denny can’t resist saying.

“Don’t wake up Ellie,” Fanchon pouts. She turns over and pretends to go back to sleep.  Denny drives up Highway 9 through the ghostly redwoods and oaks above the San Lorenzo River. Anybody who says the woods weren’t full of spirits at night was talking out of his ass.

He passes through Felton, and the road narrows and the curves tighten as he reaches Ben Lomond. He puts on the brights and follows the road. To his right, the San Lorenzo River is as serene as if a life had not just ended with the fiery discharge of a rifle. Far up ahead, Denny sees a faint white glow as he approaches Boulder Creek. It grows brighter the closer he gets, like a beacon, summoning him in his most professional incarnation. He turns right off Highway 9 onto a twisting one-way unpaved road that leads gently up the side of a small hill. He imagines seeing the spirits of the dead playing hide-and-seek among the trees. Was he hallucinating? How many bodies were actually buried in these woods?  Far more than were found. Only the spirits knew.

Suddenly the forest gives way to a clearing, and he bursts out to a blaze of cop car lights flashing red and blue and a set of floodlights illuminating a cabin whose screen door lolls askew above a dilapidated front stoop. Half torn flowered curtains hang from a cracked front window. Boy, this place was classic Santa Cruz Appalachia.

An ambulance and a coroner’s limo are parked adjacent to a circle of sheriffs, almost blocking his way. What used to be a front yard is now overgrown with gray-brown, mostly dead bushes, and the remains of an attempted garden. Denny knocks a bush over as he pulls the car in and parks. Dammit, he thinks; he should have taken Fanchon’s car. He probably had a couple of nice scratches on the fender now. One of the watching sheriffs meets Denny’s eyes and shrugs. Denny starts to smile but recalls in time why he is here. He feels so young and out of place; it has to show. And now he’s gone and scratched up his fancy new car.

He makes his way through the throng to the body everyone has encircled, as if in some sacred ritual. The coroner is wearing shoe covers and a face mask, but the five sheriffs shuffle around like they are in a bar, most of them with their arms crossed over ample bellies. Being careful not to disturb anything, Denny makes his way to the center of the circle, where the prone body of a thirtyish, bearded man lies in a position that living people never assume. A large dog, probably mastiff and Rottweiler, is running about in a state of extreme desperation, kicking up dust and dirt, checking the corpse, whining and howling, trying to make friends with the sheriffs, who uncross their arms to rub his ears occasionally.

A sheriff shouts out, “DA’s here,” although everybody is already watching Denny, who pushes his way up to the body and squats down for a look. He has never been this close to a freshly killed corpse before, and he hopes that his horror doesn’t show. He half turns away, his stomach churning.

“Somebody want to brief me?” He says over his shoulder to nobody in particular.

A sheriff detaches himself and walks up. Denny rises and nods, tightly focused.

“Tom McArdle,” says the sheriff. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

Denny extends his hand. “Denny Anders.”

“Yeah, the new guy. I’ve heard of you.” Denny quickly wonders what he has heard? Probably that he is a little snotnose overpaid novice who files vandalism charges on people for spitting their gum on the sidewalk. 

They shake hands, one hard pump.

McArdle’s arms cross again, reflexively, as if he doesn’t know what else to do with unused arms. “I’m the one shot the guy.” He pushes out his belly. “He pointed that at us.” Tom indicates a poorly maintained 30.06 lying carelessly beside the body. “He came out on the veranda carrying it when we pulled up. We tried to get him to drop it.” He shakes his head and swallows hard. “Wadn’t loaded.” His voice goes hoarse and wobbles just a little.

“A suicide,” Denny says, as if that were necessary. 

“We know the guy. Knew him I should say. Ron Ireland. Vietnam vet. Marine. Left a foot over there. His wife and son live in town. He’s been holing out here for the last couple weeks shootin’ up his stash. We saw some meth in plain view. Didn’t touch anything. Fruit of the poisoned tree and all that.”

Denny shakes his head. “We aren’t gonna be charging this guy,’ he says, unnecessarily, and feels like a dope. “Did he have a record?”

“’Course he did,” says McArdle, as if to a kindergartner. “He’s been on a downhill slide for a long time. We got him for selling weed to a narc a couple months ago but Bohrer just dismissed it.”

“Divorced, I assume.” McArdle nods.

“Who isn’t?”

“I’m not,” says Denny and adds “yet” for the grunting laugh it evinces from the eavesdropping sheriffs, rocking on their heels.

“They been off and on, him and Sharon. I went to school with her at Santa Cruz High. Sharon Kline. She was a cheerleader and Ron, he was the football captain, no shit. They were the prom king and queen too, the whole nine yards.”

“Wow,” was all Denny could think of to say.

“You just never know. It was the war. I still remember his sendoff party. His son’s twelve years old, comes out here and visits him weekends. I should use the past tense. Sharon said Ron couldn’t see the kid anymore unless he cleaned up and stopped dealing. That wasn’t gonna happen.”

As Denny stands talking, the dog gallops up and pushes its wet muzzle demandingly into his hand. Denny pats its head, and it tries to jump up on him, tail thwacking. His muddy paws leave prints on Denny’s monogrammed shirt. It had been a congratulatory gift from Fanchon when he passed the Bar. Why didn’t he just grab a T-shirt or something?  

“This his dog?” Yet another unnecessary question. The sheriffs obligingly nod and rock on their heels some more.

“If you wanna take him home with you…” McArdle says hopefully. “I got three pit bulls myself.” The other sheriffs nod as if they all had a yard full of pitbulls.

“Can’t,” Denny says. “I got a toddler.” He examines the sheer heft of the dog. Probably shed like hell too. It belonged in a Neanderthal hunting party.

“We’ll get the humane society out here, pick ‘im up,” says another sheriff. “They’ll probably put him down unless Sharon takes him for the boy. Everybody nods, knowing that wasn’t going to happen.

“Did you call her yet?” asks a sheriff of Tom McArdle, who shakes his head.

“Figure I’ll leave that to the DA. The DA,” he reminds Denny, meaning his boss, Ken. His voice breaks. “Sharon called us tonight to do a welfare check; thought he might have OD’ed cause he wasn’t answering his phone. So me and Becker drove out to take a look. He opened his front door holding the piece, like I said.”

“Drunk as a lord,” says another sheriff, walking up. “Shuffled back and forth, ranting about every little thing: Sharon, his commanding officer, tourists in Santa Cruz, you name it. Probably had a head fulla whites. There’s an empty bottle of rye on the kitchen table too.” 

“We let him go on for about fifteen minutes,” says McArdle. “Anyway, he suddenly stopped yelling, took position, and pointed the gun at Becker here. I shot him. We didn’t know it wasn’t loaded.”

“How would you?” Asks Denny. He felt like patting McArdle comfortingly on the back, but that would be inappropriate, like congratulating him.

“Fuckin’ shit,” says McArdle and coughs to hide his sob. “Fuckin’ shit.” Denny pats his shoulder anyway and McArdle shrugs off his hand.

“You did all you could.” 

“Did I?”

McArdle walks off by himself. The coroner, a withered man in his sixties with keen, wrinkled eyes above his mask walks up to Denny. “He took two in the head,” he tells Denny. Never knew what hit him. McArdle’s the best shot on the force.” This coroner had worked all of the serial killings—the beheadings, the dismemberings… this death must be just quotidian to him.

The dog keeps running around the site, stopping to sniff at and try to rouse his dead master. He has decided that Denny is his best hope and paws at Denny’s legs. A car pulls up and a man even younger than Denny gets out, scans the scene, spots Denny and comes over.

“Steve Benetz,” he says, extending his hand. He is friendly by nature. “Santa Cruz Sentinel.” Benetz looks like the kind of guy who never misses an opportunity or drops the ball but automatically forgives those who do.

“How ya doin’?” Denny says.

“Been better. Suicide by cop is what they’re saying.”

“Looks like. We’ll give you a statement tomorrow first thing.” 

“Thanks. I’m officially covering the crime beat now, so you’ll see my ugly mug a lot. Welcome to the DA’s office, by the way. There were a lot of applicants for that job. With all the murders and the tabloids, every ambitious sonofabitch with a law degree was lining up to work in the “Murder Capital of the World.”

“I must have been the most ambitious sonofabitch,” Denny says. 

“Well congrats,” says Steve Benetz. “I was a cub reporter when all the serial killings started here.”

“Baptism under fire, huh?”

“The former DA died suddenly of a heart attack, no surprise. I guess you know all that. Ken was chief assistant, so he moved up to acting DA. And then he ran for office, won in a landslide. First Asian DA in California. He’s Korean you know. He had just turned thirty-two.”

“Jesus. And then to get all those murders dumped in his lap.”

“Unbelievable. We were digging up bodies every week — at the University, at the beach, out in the woods. Kemper used to visit his shrink with heads in his trunk. Shrink always gave him a clean bill. When that guy John Frasier murdered the Ohta family, Ken said he it really got to him, seeing those Asian kids’ bodies bleeding in the swimming pool. No wonder he drinks, huh?” Denny says nothing, processing this. Benetz raises his camera, points it at Denny and gestures him closer to the body. “Mind if I take a few shots?”

Before Denny can answer a sheriff steps up. “Put the camera away, kid. We took all the shots of the scene we need already. But we haven’t even told the family yet.” Steve looks at Denny. “His son don’t need to see that on the front page. Nor do we. We’ll get you a stock photo of the guy in his Marine Corps uniform tomorrow.”

“Sure,” says Benetz, disappointed.

The coroner finishes his work on the body, shoots about forty more pictures from assorted angles, gathering the flash bulbs carefully. He rises and signals to the med techs that it’s okay to move the body. 

They come forward from the ambulance with their wheeled gurney, cover the body with white plastic sheeting and lift it.

“Ho!” Says one of them as they place him on the gurney. Denny sees the guy’s head protrude from the sheeting and bend backwards bonelessly off the gurney as it jounces. Blood is drooling from a small entrance wound in the forehead; brains protrude from the large blowout in the back.

“Get his head under the sheet,” says one of the techs angrily. The other gloved tech picks up the head gently and tilts it to one side so it fits on the gurney.

“Guy must be six-four,” he says. The eyes of the corpse are half lidded and the mouth open, revealing gappy teeth above a ragged beard. Football captain, thinks Denny. He sees the prosthetic foot protruding from the gurney as they wheel it toward the coroner’s limo. 

“Uh uh uh,’ says the coroner. “Take him in the ambulance. I got a funeral coming up tomorrow. I can’t clean all that matter off the carpeting.”

“Well whad you bring the fucking limo for anyway then?” mutters one sheriff to another. He looks at Denny. “He should have come in his own rig.” With difficulty, the coroner hoists a case containing his equipment. None of the sheriffs moves to help. The sheriffs make for their cars after pulling yellow tape around the murder scene.  Denny is the last to leave. He walks around the now dark yard and feels the presence of all the creatures who had ever lived and died here for millions of years. Zombies? The forest spirits arrived to claim the latest member of their horde. 

“I’m sorry,” Denny says aloud to the empty yard and enters his car, shuddering.

He speeds on Highway 9, not giving a shit if he hits a tree, but the spirits escort him through the twisting road, and he could swear that trees moved aside to make room for the BMW screeching into the thin, pebbly shoulder around every turn. They didn’t want him. Yet.

Denny pulls quietly into the garage. At the door leading into the kitchen he drops his clothes and enters the house nude. He washes his hands at the kitchen sink, fighting back the urge to look for hidden empty bottles. He grabs a black body bag from a drawer and stuffs his clothes into it and washes his hands again. He walks into the hallway and grabs a towel from the linen closet. Fanchon stirs. Sure enough, there’s a scent of fresh wine in the bedroom air.

“Mmmm… how’d it go?”

“All bad. Shitty.”

“Sorry, baby. Come Get some sleep. It’s past 5.”

“I almost brought us a dog home. The size of a small lion.”

“All we need.”

“I’m gonna jump in the shower. Don’t touch any of the clothes I took off, okay?  They’re in a body bag in the garage. I don’t even want them in our washing machine. I’ll drop them off at the laundry tomorrow.”

“Got it.”

Denny gets into the shower, as hot as he can stand it. He has more dirt on him than he realized. Suddenly the shower door opens and Fanchon enters. She puts her arms around him and kisses him hard on the lips. Then she drops to her knees and embraces his legs.

“I love you so much, baby,” she says. Her long hair is plastered to her perfect breasts. He pulls her to her feet, and they make love in the shower.

Afterwards, Denny lies beside her in bed. She falls asleep immediately, smelling now of Dove soap, clean and pure, the way she was meant to be. He stares at the ceiling, eyes wide open. After a few moments he rises and walks into the living room, sits on the sofa, and stifles his sobs.

(Exerpt from “Redwood Tomb” Upcoming novel and screenplay:

An ambitious young Assistant District Attorney chasing a career-making serial killer case deep in the Santa Cruz redwoods falls into an affair with a local artist—unaware that his secret lover is about to become the killer’s next target.)

---

Bio: Linda Boroff grew up in Minneapolis and Santa Monica, graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in English. She has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and won a number of competitions and fellowships. Her novella, A Season of Turbulence, has been selected for inclusion in Eclectica Magazine’s 30-year anthology. Currently, Linda lives near Santa Cruz, California with her family.

Website: www.lindaboroffauthor.com

Published short stories: https://lindaboroffauthor.com/the-writing-life/

Amazon Page: https://www.amazon.com/Linda-Boroff/e/B00NWE6J3I

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/linda.boroff.1

X: https://x.com/lindaborauthor

Linda has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes in fiction. She has had four novels and two novellas published and has written one produced feature film.

Linda’s dystopian sci-fi medical thriller, The Deer War, about a future prion pandemic was published in August 2026. You can listen to it for free on Kindle Audio. Her Young Adult wartime novel, The Dressmaker’s Daughter, was published in 2022. Linda’s supernatural suspense novella, The Remnant, came out in 2024. Her novella. A Season of Turbulence was published in The Conium Review and in Eclectica.

Linda is currently working on adapting a high-octane medical action novel called Scalpel’s Cut into a mini series. Scalpel’s Cut is the first of a trilogy of medical thrillers authored by a noted hand surgeon.

She is also currently developing a legal mini series based on the notorious 1969 stalking of Berkeley student Tanya Tarasoff, which galvanized a landmark Supreme Court ruling that the duty to warn and protect a potential victim from the threat of a patient takes precedence over the tradition of doctor-patient confidentiality.

Linda wrote the feature film Fashion Victim, about serial killer Andrew Cunanan’s murder spree culminating in the assassination of designer Gianni Versace.

L.A. Times review of Fashion Victim by critic Kevin Thomas

“…written by Linda Boroff and directed by Ben Waller, is a straightforward, well-paced, resourcefully made account of Andrew Cunanan’s 1997 serial killing spree that culminated with his fatal shooting of Gianni Versace. Low-budget but accurate and well constructed insight into a modern mystery.”

Linda collaborated with producer Don Murphy (Transformers, Natural Born Killers) in adapting the biopic Fast Fade about the tragic film noir blonde bombshell Barbara Payton. The script was ranked in the top 7% by Coverfly and has won a number of awards.

Cover Photo by NightCafe Studio

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