Ragged Point: Death on the Rocks

I used one of the face towels to wipe down anything that I thought Linda or I might have touched. I keep that one and used it to open doors, turn off lights, and let myself out the back door, leaving the door unlocked (after all...Les went out and didn't come back in.) I keep telling myself to casually walk back down the path (don't run) to my car. Get in and start driving back to L.A. — safely, but not too fast, not too slow. Don't do anything to bring attention to myself. As I pass through Morro Bay I toss the terry facecloth out the window. Just another piece of litter — a cloth identical to those used in thousands of hotels across the country.

And that's where we started, it's 8:30 at night and I'm in the car following my wife back down Hwy 1 to the 101 to the 134 and back to Studio City. Oh god. I'm going to end up in jail. Keep your eye on the speed. Don't get pulled over.

— Saturday Early Morning — Studio City Home of Art and Linda Jensen

When I arrived home, it was almost 1:00 A.M. I pulled my car into the garage and much to my surprise, Linda hadn't beaten me home. When I thought about it, that was great.

I got into my usual nightware — I'm a little on the cold side at night, so I wear pajamas — and got into the bed to mess it up a little before I got back out and went into the living room to wait for Linda. I assumed that she would come home, but I had to wonder what to do if she didn't.

As I sat there considering the possibilities, Les' Bimmer pulled up into the drive and Linda got out from the passenger side and the car pulled back out as she walked to the door. I heard the key in the lock and then the door opened and she came in.

She was trying to be quiet, but when she saw me sitting there waiting, she rushed to me and hugged me tight. She kissed me with an intensity that was unusual.

"Oh, Art! I love you so much. I'm so sorry that I'm so late and I didn't even remember to call you." There was a pause.

"But aren't you supposed to be at your writers retreat?"

We stood there holding each other.

"Yeah, but I wasn't feeling well this afternoon, so I begged off and came home."

Linda looked at me with that wifely concern, "Are you OK?"

"I am now. I don't know what the problem was, but I felt sick to my stomach. But I'm much better now. And I'm so glad that you're home. Where were you, anyway? And who's BMW was that? Who dropped you off?"

"Honey, I'm too tired to get into it tonight, but the car was Les' and Barbara's and Barbara dropped me off. Can I answer the rest of your questions tomorrow morning? I'm completely bushed."

"Sure — no biggie; let's hash it out over breakfast," I agreed.

I got another kiss for that, "You know you are the light of my life, don't you honey?" she told me as she went into the bedroom to get into bed. It was a rhetorical question so I didn't answer.

We both crawled into bed and surprisingly enough, given the day we'd just had, fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.

The next morning we found ourselves awake far too early, considering how late we had gotten to bed. But since we were up we went to the kitchen to fix up our morning java and make a typical 'Saturday Breakfact'. In this case, some toast with a couple of eggs, over medium.

That finished, Linda wanted to confess to her weakness. I wasn't so sure that I wanted to hear it.

And confess she did. It came pouring out. Along with the tears, the self-recriminations, the regrets and the understanding of how Les had not been showing her respect for her understanding and capabilities — no, indeed. He had been doing a slow seduction and she had been taken in.

She was ashamed that things went as far as they did, but also felt that she had at least partially redeemed herself by saying 'no.'

I just listened patiently to her story, nodding when it seemed appropriate and being a thoughtful husband doing the Solomon thing — weighing her actions in the balance.

At the end of all of that, I finally spoke.

"Linda, I'm very happy that you decided to let me know what happened instead of trying to hide it from me. I'm less happy about the things you were doing with Les, not letting me know the details and lying to me through ommision."

At hearing the second part of my thought, Linda was looking down at the floor with tears in her eyes again.

"That said," I continued, "I'm proud of you for standing up to the pressure and telling him no and meaning it. If you HAD slept with him it would have jeopardized, no make that, it probably would have ended our marriage. So regard this as a learning experience that we've survived. That we can't lie or hide or conceal things from each other if we are going to have the kind of 'forever' marriage that I think we both want.

"So we've dodged a bullet and I believe that this is water under the bridge. I love you and want you to know that I've forgiven you. Let's use this weekend to renew our dedication and love to each other."

Linda threw herself at me and embraced me in a bear hug, kissing my face all over while telling me that she loved me and I was the finest husband in the world! Well — could I argue with that?

She finally sat back, still holding my face in her hands, and said, "Husband of mine! Why don't we return to the bedroom and let me show you just how much I love you. Let me show you how grateful I am to have such an understanding man in my life."

She went on, "In fact, husband of mine, this morning I want you to do something that I've never let you try before, but I want to show you how completely you own me, body and soul."

I looked at her.

"You mean you want me to..."

She smiled at me, "Yes. I'm a little afraid, so you'll have to be slow and gentle, but I really want to let you have it."

I stood up, "Well, why are we dilly-dallying here! Lets reconvene in the bedroom, stage left."

That was when I remembered the folded up note still sitting in my pocket from the night before.

Oh shit. Removing evidence. Tampering with a crime scene. All of those nasty little things that D.A.'s use to stack up charges to convince a defendant to plead out rather than go to trial.

"Honey? You go and get ready. I'll be right in."

That was when I retrieved the note from my coat pocket and took it into my office and fed it into my two-way grinder that turned it into REALLY small pieces that couldn't be reassembled. And added 'destruction of evidence' to the list of my potential crimes. Later, I would fetch my S&W .38 from the car and it would go, unfired, back into my gun safe in the back of my office closet.

{?}

It was almost 3:00 PM Saturday afternoon before an older couple, British tourists hiking on the trail, noticed the body bobbing up and down in the tide pool at the base of the cliff. Most of the people who were walking up and down the path where it was visible were employees who had seen the ocean and the rocks and the pools there for so many years that they didn't really pay any attention anymore. And it was slightly hidden by an outcroping of rock from the northern part of the point.

It was hours later, close to midnight, with police standing all around at the top of the cliff looking down while the local search and rescue team rappeled down to retrieve the long dead body of this unknown stranger from the water. The time in the ocean had not been kind to the body, either. Banging up and down on the shell encrusted rocks, with the added indignity of have various small fish and crabs taking little nips, had only made the bloated body left in the water for that amount of time even more disgusting. As the basket containing body was dragged up and over the edge where it could be seen up close, several of the younger less experienced Deputy Sheriffs suddenly had the urge to go off to find some bushes before they lost their last meals.

Standing there above the body the County Coroner and the head investigator for the department looked down at it.

The County Coroner was about 50 years old and was just a part time employee of the County. His real job was the head of pathology at the hospital in San Luis Obispo. Of medium height, bald on the top and sporting a grizzled beard, people always said he looked like Trapper John M.D. — not the one in the movie but the T.V. series. His co-workers suspected he cultivated the look. He'd decided in med school that pathologist's patients didn't talk back, complain or sue their last physician — hence his speciality.

"So what do you say," asked Detective Joe Mendoza, SLOSD.

"Hmmm... well it will wait until I can confirm it during the autopsy, but my first guess is that he was killed by the fall. See the indentation at the back of the skull — I imagine that it was from striking the rocks. All he had on was one of those hotel robes and his body has been pretty well beaten up while it was bouncing around in the tidal pool. But take a look at the contusions on his shins and knees. Right about where that short wall would hit it if he triped or stumbled into it. I can see him walking around in the dark, triping over the wall, and stumbling back as he tried to get up and over the cliff he goes. And," he said pointing at the bottle in the area blocked off with crime scene tape, "I wouldn't be surprised that alcohol might have played a role. But at this point I'm just guessing."

Detective Mendoza nodded his head in agreement. It wasn't all that unusual. Several times a year someone would go over the side of one of the cliffs along this rugged area of coastline. Drinking or drugs was often one of the factors.

"Anything else? Time of death or anything?"

The Coroner shrugged his shoulders, "It's going to be tough to establish from the body, because falling into the water means it cooled off much faster than it normally would. And by now, there's not enough residual heat to even make an estimate worth shit. I'll see what we find when we run the tests." Then he turned and motioned at a couple of asssistants who picked up the stretcher containing the body and started walking it towards the coroner's department van.

"OK, Doc. When do you think you'll finish your preliminary?" the Detective asked.

"Oh, I don't know. Not too much going on this week, just a couple of O.D.s. Probably by the middle of the week. Give me a call."

Mendoza just nodded and the Coroner followed the body towards the 'meat wagon.'

Joe was a dark haired man, about 6' tall with a medium build. Just looking at him you might be fooled into thinking he was slow and out of shape — something a number of perps who had tried to run discovered wasn't true. Blue eyes combined with a darkish complection had always gotten him attention from women, although he hadn't been out looking. When he was with friends, smiling and laughing, that was the 'friendly' Joe; when he was on the job and had his game face on, no one wanted to screw around with him.

Just then a slim, mid-thirtyish woman walked out of the back door of the cabin and towards the detective.

Eva Stone was the newest detective in the San Luis Obispo county Sheriff's department. She had come up from the LAPD after a messy divorce. She was on the short-list for detective in L.A. and had to take quite a pay cut to move two-thirds of the way to San Francisco just to avoid living in the same town as her ex-husband. She joked that the move kept her from shooting the bastard.

Joe looked at her as she approached. She was dressed pretty much the same way, in a general sense, as he was. Black pants, black laced shoes with rubber soles, a white long-sleeved button down shirt and a dark coat. Granted, all of the clothes had been tailored for women so they fit her, but conceptually the same image was projected. And of course, if you looked closely you could see the shoulder holster where she carried her department issued 9mm SIG under her coat.

Eva wasn't a great beauty, but she wasn't bad looking either. Short dark hair, worn close to the way a man would, no makeup, and a no-nonsense attitude. Still couldn't conceal her big tits and slightly wide ass. She had an attractive face when she smiled. She didn't smile much, though.

Joe had worked his way up the system. He got an A.A. degree in Admin of Justice and started at the bottom of the Sheriff's office — which meant doing a couple of years of duty at the County Jail, followed by more years in a cruiser doing everything from domestic abuse, theft, to writing out the damn traffic citations. He went back to school at Cal Poly and fininshed his B.A. and passed the Sargent's exam. He was promoted to Sargent and he actually took the exam for Lieutenant, but when he was offered the detective shield instead, he took it. In retrospect he realized he would have hated being a Lieutenant, spending most of the time in the office doing paperwork, managing a bunch of street cops and generally sitting on his ass.

Eva, in contrast, didn't join the LAPD until she had finished both her B.A. as well as her Law degree, something that explained her rapid promotions. She had spent the minimum length of time on the street before being made a detective in San Luis. Being a woman in a department that was overweighted with men didn't hurt either.

Joe didn't really hold it against her; for one thing, he knew in terms of sheer brainpower, she was smarter than he was. They made a good team as a result. His experience, common sense and a street cop's 'gut feel'; her intellect and probing curiousity.

Plus they got on pretty well. They hadn't slept together, but maybe that was just a question of time. Joe, hadn't been overly interested in women in general since his wife had left him.

Joe was divorced too. It was almost pandemic among cops. Wives who spent too many nights alone, wondering if their husbands were going to come home again. That led to a lot of drinking, infidelity and just plain anger. Joe's wife just finally had too much, she was pissed, and she left him. They saw each other every now and then in Paso Robles where she lived now. She was working at one of the wineries in town. They actually got along better now than they had for the last couple of years when they were married. But there was no spark there anymore.

"Well?" he asked as she walked the last few steps.

"Lester Holder is his name according to the guy at the front desk. He's from L.A. Well, Studio City to be exact. Checked in Friday evening and that was the last they heard from him."

"OK," Joe looked at Eva's face and knew there was more coming. "What?" he prodded her.

"He drove up in a car, which is missing. They called up the woman who was working the front desk last night, and she thought that he had a woman with him, but he had parked the car down by the cabin and walked up to the main lobby, so she didn't see her close enough to give a description."

"Cameras?"

Eve shrugged her shoulders, "Yes, a lot of them around the gas station and gift shop. A few outside of the main lodge to watch the parking lot there, but only a single camera aimed down at the row of cabins. And here's the kicker: it isn't working. They've meant to replace it for a while, but... just didn't get around to it."

Joe wasn't pleased, but he was hardly surprised. Murphy stikes again.

"Are we going to be able to get any fingerprints from the room, do you think?"

"Oh that's just icing on the top of the cake. The housekeeping staff cleaned the room yesterday, including using disinfectant cloths on the door handles and other surfaces. Preventing the spread of disease, don't you know. Vacuumed the place just to be sure we wouldn't get anything from the floors. They did say that nothing looked out of the ordinary this morning except that the bed hadn't been slept in."

"Great," was Joe's monotone reply.

"So what next, boss?" Eva asked with a sardonic smile. Joe just shook his head.

— Saturday — Studio City, Home of Lester & Barbara Holder

It was midmorning and there was something that I knew I had to do — I had to go see Barbara and tell her about what happened with Les. At least a sanitized version.

When she opened the door to their house, she almost pulled me in. I swear that she looked around to see if any of her neighbors had seen her. She took me into the living room where we sat together on a big dark brown sectional that took up about half the room.

"So?" she asked, "What happened? Did you get Linda out of there?"

I equivocated, "Well....yes. But..."

"But what?"

"Oh god, I don't even know how to tell you this Barbara, But Les is dead — he fell over the side of the cliff onto the rocks."

Do I have to describe the complete breakdown that she immediately had?

It took about a half-an-hour before she could even get a word out. I just sat there holding her while she wept and talked to herself. "Oh god. What will I do... I loved him so...I can't believe it... How can I go on," and the like.

Finally she composed herself enough to ask me, in that teary voice, using tissues to dry her eyes and nose, "Tell me what happened."

So I fudged it a little.

"I saw that Les had checked into a cabin — the furthest from the main lodge. I started to go to the door but I saw him standing out behind the cabin where the hot tub was. He was standing there looking out at the ocean and I came up behind him. I think it was so noisy that he didn't hear me until I started talking. I was kind of shouting over the noise, which is probably part of the reason for what followed. I think I startled him and he lurched forward and hit a low wall with his legs and just went right over the wall and landed on his face. Then he got up and turned around. When he realized it was me and that I was really angry, he started backing up a step and before I knew what was happening, he backed right off the cliff!

"I tried to see if I could get down to find him or do something, only it was pretty clear that he was dead and there was nothing I could do.

"Then, to be honest, I panicked. I went into the room to find Linda, but she was already leaving in Lester's car. I was so scared; my imagination was running wild about how the cops would charge me with murder or something, so I went back to my car and came back to L.A. I mean, I really didn't want anything to happen to Les — I was just going to tell him that Linda was my wife and I wouldn't allow him to cuckold me. I never expected him to fall off a cliff. It was an accident."

At that point I started crying into my hands and it was Barbara who held me and comforted me.

"So what do we do now?" Barbara asked, clinging to my arm with the grip of a crazed person. Her eyes were so large and open; she was panicked and literally on the brink of sanity at that moment. "I feel so bad. I sent you up there and, and, and.. Tell me what can we do? We can't let this be another one of those sordid Hollywood scandals! It would destroy the company! It would destroy Les' legacy! I can't — I won't let that happen!"

She was demanding a way out of the reality of the situation, so I laid out a narrative; a script for her, Linda and me to follow.

"Well," she said, "I guess it can't hurt and nothing is going to bring him back now. This cannot become a scandal. It was just an accident. There was no help for it!"

It was becoming the best of all lies — a lie she truly believed.

As the first step of my plan, Barbara packed up a small travel bag and went to stay with her mother for a couple of days. Alas, she had inconviently forgotten to take her call phone with her, and was therefore out of touch.

— Sunday — Late Morning, San Luis Obispo, California

Joe looked up from the table at the IHOP where his breakfast sat, half-eaten, at Eva who was standing on the other side.

"Do you ever sleep?" Eva asked, already knowing the answer.

"Did you get in touch with his wife?" Joe replied, firmly avoiding answering her question.