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  A Death in California

  Joan Barthel

  For James E. Cronin,

  my teacher,

  founder of

  The Writers Institute,

  Saint Louis University

  List of Characters

  LOS ANGELES

  Hope Masters, a Beverly Hills socialite

  Tom Masters, Hope’s estranged husband

  Bill Ashlock, advertising writer, Hope’s lover

  Fran Ashlock, Bill’s estranged wife

  Keith, Hope Masters’s oldest child, age 12

  Hope Elizabeth, Hope Masters’s daughter, age 10

  K.C., Hope Masters’s youngest child, age 3

  Honey, Hope Masters’s mother

  Van, Hope Masters’s stepfather, member of a prominent Los Angeles law firm

  Michael Abbott, young lawyer, a friend of Hope Masters

  Lionel, screenwriter, a friend of Hope Masters

  Sandi, a friend of Bill Ashlock

  Nadine, a friend of Tom Masters

  Martha Padilla, Hope Masters’s weekday maid

  Licha Mancha, Hope Masters’s weekend maid

  Reverend Kermit Castellanos, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church, Beverly Hills

  Cliff Einstein, Bill Ashlock’s boss at the advertising agency

  Helen Linley, Bill Ashlock’s secretary

  Sara Monaco, receptionist at the advertising agency

  Richard Miller, Bill Ashlock’s partner in a filmmaking company

  Ned Nelsen, Hope Masters’s defense attorney

  Tom Breslin, Hope Masters’s defense attorney and Ned Nelsen’s partner

  Gene Tinch, a private detective

  Fillmore Crank, manager of the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge in North Hollywood

  Gary LePon, assistant manager of the Sheraton–Universal Hotel in Hollywood

  Robert McRae, desk clerk at the Holiday Inn in Hollywood

  Paul Luther, agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation

  Robert Sage, agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation

  Beverly Hills police

  Billy Ray Smith

  William Clyde Stien

  Philip DeMond

  Los Angeles investigators

  Kenneth Pollock

  Paul O’Steen

  Arthur Stoyanoff

  CHICAGO

  Robert Pietrusiak, a patient at Illinois Research Hospital

  Catherine Pietrusiak, his wife

  Armond Lee, a guard at Illinois Research Hospital

  Marthe Purmal, an attorney with Legal Services

  Mort Friedman, chief prosecutor, Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office

  Robert Baucom, agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation

  Illinois State Police

  Robert Swalwell

  Sven (Gus) Ljuggren

  Williard Rowe

  Frank Waldrup

  Illinois Department of Corrections

  Ronald Tonsel

  Willis Stephans

  Ray Clark

  Ron Hepner

  Pete Lane

  TULARE COUNTY

  Jim Webb, caretaker at the ranch

  Teresa Webb, his wife

  Gerald Webb, Jim Webb’s brother, a part-time Baptist minister

  Dorothy Anderson, former housekeeper at the ranch

  Tulare County investigators

  Gene Parker

  Jim Brown

  Forrest Barnes

  Henry Babcock

  Ralph Tucker

  Jack Flores

  Vern Hensley

  Doyle Hoppert

  Donald Landers

  Michael Scott

  Joseph Teller

  Butch Coley

  Ollie Farris

  George Carter, judge, Porterville Justice Court

  Virginia Anderson, clerk, Porterville Justice Court

  William Thompson, bailiff, Porterville Justice Court

  James Heusdens, prosecutor, deputy district attorney, Tulare County

  Joseph Haley, prosecutor, deputy district attorney, Tulare County

  Jay Powell, public defender, Tulare County

  Jay Ballantyne, judge, Superior Court, Tulare County

  Leonard M. Ginsburg, judge, Superior Court, Tulare County

  OTHER PLACES

  Taylor Wright, a jewelry salesman from Benton Harbor, Michigan

  Larry Burbage, an electronics equipment salesman from Atlanta, Georgia

  Richard Crane, an engineer from the state of Washington, found murdered in a motel on Sunset Strip

  G. Daniel Walker, a man of many identities

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book has been written from the memories of many people. The core of the story, which is a weekend at a ranch in northern California, is based on Hope Masters’s remembrance of that time. Certain scenes in this story have been composed in a literary rather than a journalistic manner, using a variety of sources, including police reports and notes, court transcripts and other legal documents, tape recordings, letters, and diaries, as well as dozens of interviews, some of them conducted at that time, some recently, as I was writing this book. One person’s memory sometimes collides with another’s; but what is important about memory, it seems to me, is not its indisputability, but its texture.

  For her openness in discussing with me, not only the events of 1973 but her life and thoughts, in an unconditional, wholehearted way, I am grateful to Hope Masters. I am grateful to members of her family, especially her mother, and to her friends who, in talking with me, helped me come to know her.

  Special thanks to the people who spent many hours with me—sometimes days—talking about the case and about themselves: Detective Robert Swalwell of the Illinois State Police; Detectives James Brown and Gene Parker in Tulare County, California; former Deputy District Attorney James Heusdens; former District Attorney Jay Powell; George Carter of the Porterville Justice Court; Judge Leonard M. Ginsburg; Thomas P. Breslin and Ned R. Nelson, attorneys; and Gene Tinch, private investigator.

  My thanks to jurors Ruthe Snelling and Lois Bollinger for sharing their insights into the trial. I appreciate the friendly cooperation of Taylor Wright and Marthe Purmal and the courtesy of Tom Masters.

  For their help with research, I am grateful to Jenny Vogt and her staff in the Tulare County Clerk’s Office in Visalia, California, and to Shirley Askins at the Criminal Court, and to Kevin A. Swanson and Velda J. Poe at the Appellate Court in Fresno, California.

  For their editorial help, I thank Ellie Kossack and Deborah Lyons. I am obliged to friends whose help was sustaining: Elizabeth Pace, Linda Berman, Girlie Persad, and Zita Drake in New York, and Janine Coyle in Los Angeles. My loving thanks to Jim and Anne, who helped as only a husband and a daughter can.

  Joan Barthel

  May 1981

  PART I

  PROLOGUE

  So many pretty girls were swirling through the lobby that the desk clerk didn’t pay much attention to the man who was checking in. He didn’t notice the slight heave of relief from the tired-looking, middle-aged man when the clerk said yes, they had a single for one night, and the pool was open. The man set his briefcase down on the floor beside the desk and reached for the registration pad. “T. O. Wright, Benton Harbor, Michigan.” Under FIRM NAME: “T. O. Wright and Sons.” The clerk, Patrick Rye, wrenched his attention from the girls in the lobby back to the desk and reached for a key. “Room one-ten,” he told T. O. Wright. “First floor.”

  The man picked up his briefcase and went back out through the revolving door to his car, parked at the entrance. He drove
around the long rectangle of the Marriott to a parking space and sat at the wheel for a moment. He was exhausted from his week on the road, this long day’s driving from Cleveland through Toledo and now into Ann Arbor, and he longed for the bliss of a heated pool. Before he’d left home Monday morning, he’d made sure his brown swimming trunks were packed. Swimming was a Wright family passion—maybe it came with the territory—and swimming was the reason he wasn’t heading home to Benton Harbor this Friday evening. His sons, Taylor and Jamie, were swimming in an A.A.U. meet tomorrow in Jackson; he planned to meet them and the rest of the family there. As tired as he was, he’d passed up the Howard Johnson’s when they told him their pool was closed for repairs.

  He took out his suitcase and his briefcase, then locked the car and turned on the alarm. No use taking out the sample cases just for one night; he’d have to leave early to get to Jackson by nine. He wasn’t carrying diamonds anyway, nothing precious; T. O. Wright and Sons handled costume jewelry. Nice things, though—bracelets and chains, gold-filled brooches and pins, stone rings; he was wearing one of the rings himself. Nice jewelry, a nice business, and Room 110 was a nice room, like all the other nice, nondescript motel rooms he lived in on the road: green and gold tones, with a dark green carpet, a green and gold landscape print hanging above the bed. He turned on the light at the door, set down the briefcase and the suitcase, and sat on the edge of the bed. He glanced at his watch—a nice watch, a Seiko. Still early; time for the evening news on TV before drinks and dinner, and a swim before bed.

  Before he turned on the news, though, he picked up the phone. Taylor Ortho Wright III was forty-two years old, but he was very much one of the “Sons” in the firm and his dad would be waiting for a report. He had followed his dad into the family business, just as he’d followed the family educational tradition. Like his father and his uncle, he’d enrolled at the University of Missouri to study economics; in his freshman year, 1950, he’d pledged their fraternity, Phi Psi. The conversation with his father was long, half an hour, and when he hung up, he decided to skip the news and concentrate on drinks and dinner.

  The hostess at the door of the restaurant in the lobby, just down from the desk, smiled at him. “There’s a wait tonight,” she murmured with a sweet, sympathetic smile.

  Taylor Wright looked past her at the packed tables and nodded. “About how long?”

  Her smile became more sympathetic. “About an hour and a half. May I have your name, and wouldn’t you like to have a drink at the bar?”

  He signed his name on her list: T. O. Wright. But the bar was jammed, too. He squeezed between the barstools, got a Scotch and water, and wandered back into the lobby, down the hall toward the banquet room, following the sounds of the party.

  Near the entrance to the party room, a hatcheck girl smiled at him. She was young—eighteen, maybe twenty, he thought—black and pretty. Her smile was so glittering that, tired and hungry as he was, Taylor Wright smiled back.

  “Hi there,” she said. “Are you going to the party?”

  Taylor shook his head. “I’m not a member of that group.”

  “Oh, you’re not? What do you do?”

  He sipped his Scotch and looked at her over the rim of the glass. “I’m a salesman. I’m a jewelry salesman.”

  She hadn’t stopped smiling. “Oh, that’s nice.” She seemed about to say more, but a man came out of the banquet room and handed her the check stub for his coat. When she handed the man his coat, he handed her the stick-on WELCOME badge he’d been wearing, and she stuck it lightly up on the wall beside her. Taylor moved closer.

  “You’re a jewelry salesman,” she said, and suddenly Taylor found himself talking to her about himself, about his business. She seemed interested, but then another man came out of the party, then another, and she was busy with their coats. Taylor was just about to walk back down the lobby when she called to him. “Oh, don’t go away. Why don’t you go in to the party? They need men in there, and it’s a good party.”

  He shook his head, almost shyly. “I can’t go in. I’m not a member.”

  Her smile flashed again as she tore the WELCOME badge off the wall and stuck it on his lapel. “Now you’re a member,” she announced. “Have fun.”

  She was right; it was a good party, and Taylor felt right at home as he moved through groups of laughing people to the bar, where he set down his empty glass and asked for a Scotch. He felt more relaxed than he had all day. Still hungry, though, he picked up a plate and moved along the buffet table, which was loaded with all sorts of good things—tiny shrimp, hot meatballs in sauce, little hot pastries with a spicy meat filling.

  After another Scotch, he began to mingle. Most of the girls he talked with seemed to work for the Marriott, and he met their boss, the motel manager, John West. A man with John West, Wynn Schueller, had been in the navy with Taylor’s uncle. Small world, nice party, Taylor thought, as he had another plate of food, a couple more Scotches. It was about ten when John West announced the party was over. Some of the girls clustered around their boss. “Oh, don’t close it yet, don’t close it yet,” they squealed. John West smiled. “Okay,” he said, and everybody had one more drink.

  When the party was finally over, the restaurant had plenty of room, but Taylor wasn’t hungry. He’d had a pretty good dinner on the hors d’oeuvres, so he walked into the bar, where the party seemed to have spilled over. John West was there for a little while, and some of the same girls. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, including the bartenders. People kept calling their names, Mark and Clark. It seemed very funny that their names rhymed.

  When the woman approached him, he noticed right away that she was older than the other women in the bar—at least thirty-five, maybe forty, a little on the heavy side. But she was very nice too, very friendly. She had long, dark brown hair and she was wearing a long party dress in some pale color—light pink or light blue. In the dimness of the bar, it was hard to tell.

  “Hello,” she said, easing up onto the barstool beside him, which he hadn’t even noticed was empty. They began to talk. Taylor wasn’t looking for a woman; although a traveling salesman could hardly be called a homebody, he was certainly a family man, with a great wife and kids, and he wasn’t interested in any pickup. Still, he was lonesome, a little bored, and he enjoyed talking to her, just as he’d enjoyed talking to people at the party. You couldn’t be a good salesman without liking to talk to people, and when a man on the stool on the other side of him started talking, Taylor enjoyed that too.

  “What are you here for?” the woman asked. “I mean, what do you do?”

  “I’m in the jewelry business,” Taylor said. “I sell jewelry. My whole family sells jewelry.”

  The woman smiled. “Ah, you sell diamonds.” It didn’t sound like a question, more like a statement, and Taylor quickly corrected her.

  “No, we don’t have anything to do with diamonds. We carry costume jewelry. Chains, primarily. We sell to wholesalers. Nothing to do with diamonds.”

  “What territory do you cover?” the man next to him asked, and Taylor turned slightly to answer. “The whole Midwest,” he replied. “Our factories are in Providence, Rhode Island, but I cover the Midwest. That’s my territory.”

  “I cover the Midwest too,” the man said. He laughed, and Taylor turned in order to see him better. He was a little older than the woman, maybe forty-five, partly bald, short and heavyset, wearing glasses. “Are you a salesman too?” Taylor asked, and the man laughed again. “No, I’m a reporter,” he said. “I’m the police reporter for the Ann Arbor News.”

  Taylor had another drink and didn’t notice the man and the woman leave, but when Mark and Clark said the bar was closing, Taylor didn’t see them. Even though they’d talked a lot, mostly about Taylor’s business, he realized he hadn’t asked their names.

  Only four or five people were left in the bar, finishing their last drinks, as Taylor wandered out. Too late for a swim now. He wasn’t drunk, but he was glad his room was on
the first floor. Still, it seemed a very long way, down one long, carpeted aisle, around a corner, past an ice machine, down another hall, another corner. The walk seemed endless, as though he would never reach his room.

  But there it was, 110. He fished in his pocket for the key, found it, and placed it in the lock. Just as he was turning the key, he heard her.

  “Hello,” she said softly.

  Taylor looked back over his shoulder and saw her standing in the open doorway of the room across the hall. He thought she smiled at him.

  “Didn’t we meet in the bar?” she asked, still softly, and Taylor remembered, foggily, that they had.

  “Would you like to have another drink with us?” she asked. As he turned to answer her, he was struck from behind.

  Afterward, Taylor could not remember whether he had been hit in the hall or whether the man who’d hit him had been waiting in the doorway of Taylor’s room. But he remembered being dragged across the hall, into the room where the woman had been standing in the doorway. He heard somebody close the door. The room was dark, but the door to the bathroom was partly open; by the bathroom light he could see the outline of twin beds and a man sitting on the edge of one bed, leaning over him as he lay on the floor.

  It was not the man he had met in the bar. He recognized the man who had hit him as the man he’d talked with in the bar, the man who’d said he was a reporter. Taylor had never seen this other man, this second man, though it was a man he would never, after that night, forget.

  The man leaned over him and clutched him by the front of his shirt. His long dark hair fell across his face and almost into Taylor’s face. “Mr. Wright,” the man said in a low voice, “I guess you know you’re in trouble.”

  Taylor Wright peered up at him. His head was throbbing. “Yes, I guess I am,” he said. “I guess I better go home now.”

  The man on the bed got very angry at that. “No, you are not,” he said, jerking Taylor Wright to his feet. “Okay, Mr. Big Deal, now we are going to find out all about you.” He began tearing Taylor’s clothes off; the other man joined in. Taylor Wright said the first thing that came into his head, which was a mistake. “What are you, some kind of a queer?” he asked the man with the long hair, the man who seemed to be in charge. Taylor was hit again then, so hard that he blacked out. When he came to, he saw that he was naked except for his T-shirt and socks.