F is for Fugitive (5 page)

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Was this before he went to jail the first time or afterward? I thought he'd been convicted of armed robbery, but nobody's given me the story on that either.”

“Shoot. All right, let me back up a bit. This was two, three years before. I got the dates here somewhere, but
it matters not. The deal is, Fowler and a fellow named Tap Granger hooked up right around the time Fowler got out of high school. Bailey was a good-looking kid and he was smart enough, but he never got it together. You probably know the type. He was just one of those kids who seems destined to go sour. From what Lehto says, Bailey and Tap were doing a lot of drugs. They had to pay the local dope peddler, so they started bumping off gas stations. Nickel-and-dime jobs, and they're rank amateurs. Idiots. They're wearing panty hose on their heads, trying to act like big-time hoods. Of course, they got caught. Rupert Russell was the PD on that one and he did the best he could.”

“Why not a private attorney? Was Bailey indigent?”

“In essence. He didn't have the dough himself and his old man refused to pop for any legal fees.” Clemson took a drag of his cigarette.

“Had Bailey been in trouble as a juvenile?”

“Nope. His record was clean. He probably figured all he'd get was a slap on the wrist. This is armed robbery, you understand, but Tap carried the gun, so I guess Bailey thought somehow that let him off the hook. Unfortunately for him, the statute doesn't read that way. Anyway, when they offered him a deal, he turned 'em down cold, pleaded not guilty, and went to trial instead. Needless to say, the jury convicted and the judge got tough. Back then, robbery was one to ten in the state prison.”

“That was still indeterminate sentencing?”

“Yeah, that's right. Back then, they had a Bureau of
Prison Terms that would meet and set parole and actual date of release. We had a very liberal board of prison terms at that time. Hell, we had basically a much more liberal government in California. Those people who ran the board were appointed by the governor and Pat Brown Junior . . . well, skip that tale. Point is, these guys get one to ten, but they're out in two years. Everybody starts screaming and yelling because nobody was doing nine or ten years on a one-toten. Bailey only served eighteen months.”

“Up here?”

“Nuh-unh. Down at Chino, the country club of prisons. He got out in August. Came back to Floral Beach and started looking for work without much luck. Pretty soon he was back doing drugs again, only it was cocaine this time, along with grass. Uppers, downers, you name it.”

“Where was Jean all this time?”

“Central Coast High, senior year. I don't know if anybody filled you in on this girl.”

“Not at all.”

“She was illegitimate. Her mom's still around in Floral Beach. You might want to talk to her. She had a reputation as the town roundheel, the mother, this is. Jean was an only child. Cute kid, but I guess she had a lot of problems. As if the rest of us don't.” He took another drag from his cigarette.

“She worked for Royce Fowler, didn't she?”

“Right. Bailey got out of prison and she took up with him again. According to Lehto, Bailey claimed
they were just good friends. The DA maintains they were lovers and Bailey killed her in a jealous rage when he found out she'd hooked up with Tap. Fowler says not so. It had nothing to do with Granger, even though Tap got out two months before he did.”

“What about Granger? Is he still around?”

“Yeah, he operates the only gas station in Floral Beach. Owned by somebody else, but he's the manager, which is about all he can handle. He's not smart, but he seems steady enough. He was a wild one in his day, but he's mellowed out some.”

I made a note about both Tap Granger and the Timberlake woman. “I didn't mean to interrupt. You were talking about Bailey's relationship with the girl after he got out of jail.”

“Well, Bailey maintains the romance was over with. He and the girl hung out together and that was it. They were both outcasts anyway, Bailey because he'd been in prison, the Timberlake girl because her mother's such a slut. Besides which, the Timberlakes were poor. She was never going to amount to a hill of beans as long as she was stuck in Floral Beach. I don't know how much experience you've had with towns the size of Floral Beach. We're talking maybe eleven hundred people max, and most of 'em have been here since the year zip. Anyway, she and Bailey started running around together just like they did before. He says she was dallying with this other guy, involved in some affair that she was being real tight-lipped about. Claims she never would say who it was.

“The night she was killed, the two of 'em went out drinking. Hit about six bars in San Luis and two more in Pismo. Around midnight, they came back and parked down at the beach. He says it was closer to ten, but a witness puts 'em there at midnight. Anyway, she was upset. They had a bottle and a couple of joints with 'em. They had a tiff and he says he left her there and stomped off. Next thing he knows, it's morning and he's in his room at the Ocean Street. These kids are swarming all over the beach down below, doing clean-up detail as part of some local church do-good project. He's sick as a dog . . . so hung over he was pukin' his guts out. She's still down on the beach, passed out over by the stairs . . . only when the clean-up crew gets close, they can see she's dead, strangled with a belt that turns out to be his.”

“But anybody could have done it.”

“Absolutely. Of course, Bailey was favored and they might have made it stick, but De Witt had had a string of wins and he didn't want to take a chance. Lehto saw an opportunity to bargain and since Bailey'd been burned once, he went along with the deal. On the armed robbery, he was guilty, went to trial, and got himself nailed. This time he claimed he was innocent, but he didn't like the odds so when they offered him a plea of manslaughter, he took it, just like that.” Clemson snapped his fingers, the sound like the clean popping of a hollow stick.

“Could he have beaten the murder rap if he'd gone to trial?”

“Hey, who knows? Going to trial is a crapshoot. You put your money on the line every time. If you roll that seven or eleven, boy, you're feeling good. But if it comes out two, three, or twelve, you're the loser. The case generated a lot of publicity. Sentiment in town was running against him. Then you had Bailey's prior, no character witnesses to speak of. He was better off with the deal. Twenty years ago, he could've been given the death penalty, too, which is something you don't want to mess with if you can help it. Talk about rolling dice.”

“I thought if you were charged with murder, they wouldn't reduce that.”

“True, hypothetically, but that's not the way it works. It was just discretionary with the district attorney how he filed. What Lehto did was, he goes to De Witt and says, ‘Look, George, I've got evidence my guy was under the influence at the time. Evidence from your own people.' He pulls out the police report. ‘If you'll note in the record, when the officers arrested him, it states he appeared to be drowsy . . .' Blah, blah, blah. Clifford does this whole number and he can see George start to sweat. He's got his ego on the line and he doesn't want to go into court with a big hole in his case. As DA, you're expected to win ninety percent of the time, if not higher.”

“So Bailey pleaded guilty to the manslaughter and the judge maxed him out,” I said.

“Exactly. You got it, but we're only talkin' six years. Big deal. With time served and time off for good behavior,
he might have been out in half that. The whole time, Fowler's thinking he got screwed, but he doesn't understand how lucky he was. Clifford Lehto did a hell of a job for him. I'd have done the same thing myself.”

“What happens next?”

Clemson shrugged again, stubbing out his cigarette. “Depends on how Bailey wants to plead on the felony escape. What's he gonna say, ‘No, I didn't escape'? Extenuating circumstances? He can always claim some prison goon was threatening his life, but that hardly explains where he's been all this time. The irony is, he should have hired some hotshot attorney the first couple rounds. At this point, it's not going to do him much good. I'll go to bat for him, but no judge in his right mind is going to set bail for some guy who's been on the lam sixteen years.”

“What do you want from me in the meantime?”

Clemson got up and started pawing through the piles of paper on his desk. “I had my secretary pull all the clippings from the time of the murder. You might want to look at those. Lehto said he'd send down everything he's got. Police reports, list of witnesses. Talk to Bailey and see if he's got anything to add. You know the drill. Go back through the players and find me another suspect. Maybe we can develop evidence against somebody else and get Bailey off the hook. Otherwise, he's lookin' at a lot more years in the slammer unless I can persuade the judge no purpose would be served, which is what I'll try to do. He's been clean
all this time, and personally, I can't see the point of puttin' him back in, but who knows? Here.”

He unearthed an accordion file and handed it to me. I got to my feet and we shook hands again, chatting about other things as we left his office, walking toward the front. The office temp was sitting at her desk by then, trying to sustain an air of competence. She looked young and bewildered, out of her element in the world of habeas corpus, or corpuses of any kind.

“Oh yeah, one thing I almost forgot,” Clemson said when we reached the porch. “What Jean was upset about that night? She was pregnant. Six weeks. Bailey swears it wasn't his.”

 

 

 

 

 

I had about an hour to kill before I was due at the jail. I got out a city map and found the little dark square with a flag on it that marked the location of Central Coast High School. San Luis Obispo is not a large town, and the school was only six or eight blocks away. Lines painted on the main streets delineated a Path of History that I thought I might walk later in the week. I have an affection for early California history and I was curious to see the Mission and some of the old adobes as long as I was there.

When I reached the high school, I drove through the grounds, trying to imagine how it must have looked when Jean Timberlake was enrolled. Many of the buildings were clearly new: dark, smoke-gray cinder block, trimmed in cream-colored concrete, with long, clean roof lines. The gymnasium and the cafeteria were of an earlier vintage, Spanish-style architecture done in darkening stucco with red tile roofs. On the upper level, where the road curved up and around
to the right, there were modular units that had once served as classrooms and were now used for various businesses, Weight Watchers being one. The campus seemed more like a junior college than the high schools I'd seen. Rolling green hills formed a lush backdrop, giving the facility a feeling of serenity. The murder of a seventeen-year-old girl must have been deeply distressing to kids accustomed to pastoral surroundings such as these.

From what I remember of high school, our behavior was underscored by a hunger for sensation. Feelings were intense and events were played out in emotional extremes. While the fantasy of death satisfied a craving for self-drama, the reality was usually (fortunately) at some safe remove. We were absurdly young and healthy, and though we behaved recklessly, we never expected to suffer any consequence. The notion of a real death, whether by accident or intent, would have pushed us into a state of perplexity. Love affairs provided all the theater we could handle. Our sense of tragedy and our self-centeredness were so exaggerated that we weren't prepared to cope with any actual loss. Murder would have been beyond comprehension. Jean Timberlake's death probably still generated discussion among the people she knew, giving rise to a disquiet that marred the memories of youth. Bailey Fowler's sudden reappearance in the community was going to stir it all up again: uneasiness, rage, the nearly incomprehensible feelings of waste and dismay.

On impulse, I parked the car and searched out the library,
which turned out to be much like the one at Santa Teresa High. The space was airy and open, the noise level subdued. The vinyl floor tile was a mottled beige, polished to a dull gleam. The air smelled like furniture polish, construction paper, and paste. I must have eaten six jars of LePage's during my grade-school years. I had a friend who ate pencil shavings. There's a name for that now, for kids who eat inorganic oddities like gravel and clay. In my day, it just seemed like a fun thing to do and no one ever gave it a passing thought as far as I knew.

The library tables were sparsely occupied and the reference desk was being handled by a young girl with frizzy hair and a ruby drilled into the side of her nose. She had apparently been seized by a fit of self-puncturing because both ears had been pierced repeatedly from the lobe to the helix. In lieu of earrings, she was sporting the sort of items you'd find in my junk drawer at home: paper clips, screws, safety pins, shoelaces, wing nuts. She was perched on a stool with a copy of
Rolling Stone
open on her lap. Mick Jagger was on the cover, looking sixty if a day.

“Hi.”

She looked at me blankly.

“I wonder if you can give me some help. I used to be a student here and I can't find my yearbook. Do you have any copies? I'd like to take a look.”

“Under the window. First and second shelves.”

I pulled the annuals from three separate years and took them to a table on the far side of a row of freestanding
bookcases. A bell rang and the corridor began to fill with the rustling sound of students on the move. The slamming of locker doors was punctuated by the babble of voices, laughter bouncing off the walls with the harsh echo of a racquetball court. The ghostly scent of gym socks wafted in.