1

It was the first murder in San Tomas in more than ten years. Under the indifferent light of a heedless moon and stars, someone had savagely beaten sixteen year-old Manuel Torres, leaving his lifeless body in the same position in which he’d died; his arms raised to fend off his attacker, his shattered legs crumpled beneath him, a look of terror frozen on his face. The medical examiner determined that Torres had been beaten, kicked, bitten, and strangled. It would take days to decide which blow was the fatal one. He hadn’t been robbed. Whoever had murdered the Latino youth had been interested only in inflicting pain. Whoever it was had done his job well. And although no one claimed to have seen the vicious attack, there was no shortage of witnesses willing to point a finger at the chief suspect: the sixteen year old boy who’d fought with Torres earlier that same evening. As far as the townspeople were concerned, they had their killer. By Sunday noon, with Jimmy Litton, the town misfit and hothead, securely behind bars, the talk was only about whether he’d been justified in beating the Mexican-American, the outsider who’d escaped from the local treatment center for delinquents, and should Litton be tried as an adult. No one wondered if they had the right boy, almost no one. That’s where I came in.

I’d arrived in the small picturesque town of San Tomas, nestled high in the Santa Ynez mountains above Santa Barbara, having retreated there to tend my wounds after twenty years in the sanguinary trenches of Los Angeles’ high profile legal wars. My wounds had nearly been fatal. I’d just concluded a successful defense of a narcissistic, but not murderous Hollywood producer who had been accused of killing the beautiful young starlet who was pregnant with his child. The DA’s case was supposed to be a slam dunk, but as is usual with such things, nothing turned out as expected. Despite a dearth of help from the LAPD, who were too busy congratulating themselves on having already found their man, I was able to discover the real killer; the forgotten former boyfriend who, in a jealous rage had killed his scornful ex-lover in my client’s Beverly Hills mansion. The case, like a lot of my other ones, was worth oodles of money and a bonanza of media attention. This one carried with it an extra cost. Coming from the courtroom where I’d just received the verdict, and descending the courthouse steps amidst a rush of reporters eager to hear my triumphant reaction, I was felled by a massive coronary.

I wasn’t the first person to think that money and fame would protect me from the ordinary human frailties which catch up with everyone eventually, and with those who think they’re living a charmed life, a little sooner than eventually. Eighteen hour work days, lunches and dinners composed of equal parts of alcohol and animal fat, and an exercise schedule that consisted of extended periods of immobility interrupted by frenzied marathons of running, weight-lifting, and workouts with the heavy bag had set me up to come crashing down to earth.

The truth was that I had a single blocked artery, which was immediately replaced by some kind of plastic/elastic whatever that practically came with a guarantee. The only problem was that I still had a few more of my own arteries that didn’t have any guarantees. I could live for another fifty years if I gave up fatty foods, cigarettes, nine-tenths of my daily ration of alcohol, and, above all, cut down on stress. It was either give up my lifestyle or get used to the idea of a short life. I didn’t take the news gracefully. I felt like I’d been thrust into a world in which everyone but me had a full, healthy life ahead of them. Everyone I knew seemed to be either a youthful health freak, or else they were one and a half times my age and still eating, drinking and partying in the same way I used to. How come I was the one whose lifestyle caught up with him? My jealousy was like a dry wind, fanning the flames of my resentment to the point that I severed contact with nearly everyone who’d been important to me. When I found myself alone I knew I had to make a choice; become better adjusted or leave.

I left.

San Tomas was perfect. Since the beginning of the century the valley had been a Mecca for religious and spiritual seekers, artists, and writers, most of whom shared a similarly dull lifestyle of sobriety, physical exercise, and organic farming. The area was said to have more vegetarians per capita than anywhere outside of India. Night life, in San Tomas, save for the ubiquitous lectures, poetry readings and meditations, was nonexistent. The local townspeople - the shopkeepers, service people, and craftsmen - were a salt of the earth breed of Scandinavians, a mixture of Swedes and Norwegians, who prided themselves on their simple Lutheran ways. They serviced the Theosophists, health food faddists, artists, potters, and various new age groupies whose spas and retreats were scattered around the valley, but regarded them all as a necessary evil which honest, God-fearing citizens like themselves had to put up with, perhaps some sort of penance for the innate sinfulness buried in their collective unconscious.

The Scandinavians, enjoying as they did the status of being the largest cultural/ethnic group, were even less generous in their tolerance of the few local residents who were not part of their inbred community and whom they regarded, with some good reason, as poor white trash. The handful of descendants of depression era dustbowlers who precariously survived in the hills surrounding the town, eking out a living scratching at the rocky mountain soil, were treated about the same as sharecropping Negroes had been treated by good ‘ol boys in the pre-civil rights south. These leftover Okies managed to salvage a remnant of their pride by despising the few Mexicans who either lived alongside of them on tiny hardscrabble farms or else nested in temporary campsites farther up in the hills, from which they came down each day to look for work, buy a meager supply of groceries, and avoid the authorities who wanted to send them back to Mexico. The pecking order which characterized San Tomas society was one worthy of the finest barnyard of hens or tree full of monkeys. It wasn’t the kind of place to make a stranger feel welcome. Which was fine with me. I bought a little place far enough away from town to not have to see anyone and concentrated on becoming a misanthrope.

My few acres included a venerable grove of oaks which had stood since at least the time when the first settlers started writing descriptions of the idyllic valley. My land was rich and fecund, giving me the distinction of not having to worry about any of my neighbors confusing me with the supposed trailer trash in the hills, even though my farm was small enough that anyone who’d really farmed for a living would call my effort at farming a hobby. My first year’s crop consisted of a modest four hundred square feet planted with carrots, beans and tomatoes. This was supposed to be a lifestyle change, not suicide. After six months, I’d become leaner and fitter with the greatest threat to my longevity being the boredom which provided me with a daily reminder of why it had never occurred to me to become a farmer before.

So there I was, basically puttering in my Victory over cholesterol garden, putting up fences, repairing the roof, etc.; whatever I needed to do to distract myself from the cravings for alcohol, tobacco and filet minion. I was on the roof one Sunday morning, trying to reshingle a bare spot left over from the last strong Santa Ana wind, when Nils Larsson, San Tomas’ longtime Chief of Police turned into the inhospitably overgrown entrance to my narrow dirt driveway. Larsson was a local legend. He and I were already acquainted as a result of the intrusiveness of a few busybodies from the local historical society who had objected to me putting a gate across my driveway and barring their access to the ancient grove of oaks which was an oft visited local landmark.

It wasn’t pure meanness on my part. I would have been content to let the trees lining my driveway grow their branches far enough out to discourage anyone who didn’t drive a low-slung sports car like my BMW Z-3 and let it go at that; hopefully reducing the Sunday afternoon stream of tourists and local artists, the latter who came to the grove for inspiration and spiritual renewal, down to a trickle. But it was the Saturday night teens who really got my goat and tipped the balance in favor of a gate, one that stayed locked at all times. The little bastards came to visit the grove starting sometime after sundown and drank beer, screwed and otherwise partied until well into the morning. I not only had to put up with their noise, but there were the beer cans and condoms to clean up the next morning. Three weeks of living with that and up went the gate.

The Historical Society went to court. Chief Larsson was out the next day with a court order telling me to unlock my gate. I complied for the one day that it took me to reach the judge and get him to reverse his decision. The Historical Society hadn’t bothered to verify that the grove really was a public historical site. I had, and it wasn’t. It was my property and I could restrict access to it as much as I pleased. The Historical Society hired another lawyer and started plotting how to get even with me. If the grove wasn’t already a historical site, they planned to make it one. I countered by reminding them that I could easily chop down the old oaks before the state legislature got around to declaring them sacred. I had no intention of doing so, but I felt better scaring the living daylight out of the old fogies who thought they could push me around. They tried for another court order prohibiting me from cutting down the trees but I was ready for them this time and blocked it.

Chief Larsson provided the prevailing cooler head. He offered to send a deputy out on Friday and Saturday nights to police the grove and send any partying teenagers back home. I didn’t want a patrol car cruising down my driveway in the middle of the night so we negotiated a more favorable compromise. I could keep the gate locked at night and on the weekends the historical society could visit the grove. If I was away, the police had the key to the lock on the gate and they’d see that it was unlocked on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and locked every night. The driveway would stay overgrown. I was permitting access, not encouraging it.

In the meantime, Chief Nils Larsson and I had become more or less friends. I respected his even tempered judgment and his willingness to go out of his way to straighten things out between the cantankerous citizens of his little community. He liked my stories about the famous murder cases in which I’d been involved and the fact that I’d spent a few years as an LA beat cop and then a detective before heading off to law school and the glitz and money of big name cases. He was more interested in the investigative methods of the LAPD and the LA District Attorney’s office than in the personalities of my Hollywood clients, and we spent many nights sitting out on my porch while I spun tales and he listened. When he made comments they reflected a keen mind behind his small-town local cop demeanor. But he didn’t make too many comments. He was more of a listener than a talker. Of course whatever Nils did say, I tended to disagree with anyway. Not because he was wrong; but because that’s my way. Did I mention that I can be a pain in the ass?

I recognized Chief Larsson’s car immediately. Straightening up painfully, I tried to massage some of the kinks out of my newly discovered back muscles, while I watched the black and white cruiser churn up a small cloud of brown dust as it moved purposefully toward the house.

Nils Larsson took his time unwinding from the front seat of his car. He’d spotted me on the roof and stood waiting, looking tall and lean, with just the suggestion of a paunch beneath his no-nonsense blue cotton shirt which he wore open at the collar, the sleeves rolled in a way that meant business. He had an old fashioned silver star pinned to his chest. He was a sixty year old Swede, but he looked like he might be playing the part of a Sheriff in a western movie, with jeans and cowboy boots rounding out his outfit. All he lacked was a ten-gallon hat. I descended from the roof and walked toward him. He stared at me with flat, gray eyes, waiting until I came close enough for him to speak to me in his slow, quiet voice.

"Morning, Brian," he said, extending a sunburned, bony hand.

His grip was firm and curt. I nodded and waited.

Larsson shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. "Hot day to be fixing a roof."

Nils had something on his mind. He wasn’t usually one to hem and haw about a subject. I offered him a beer.

We sat out on my porch with a couple of Samuel Adams’- one of the two I allowed myself per day - and I waited while Nils moved in a thoughtful to and fro motion in my oak rocker.

He took a long pull on his Sam Adams. "I need a little help."

I asked him what kind of help he needed.

"We had a murder in town a couple of days ago. You probably heard. A kid from a place called the Yearling Foundation. He got in a fight with a local boy and the kid from the Foundation got beaten pretty badly. One of my patrol cars found him dead outside the fence to the place the next morning. The local boy’s a good kid. Never done anything wrong. He needs a good lawyer."

I agreed.

"The judge here in the district court assigned a public defender. Some kid from Santa Barbara, still wet behind the ears. She’s been up to see the local boy. She thinks he did it. Hell, she’s got about a dozen cases already and no time for this one up here. The kid’s gonna get the shaft unless he gets himself a better lawyer. The DA’s tough…just got promoted…an eager beaver. It’s gonna take an experienced lawyer to defend the boy." He paused and took another pull on his beer. There were beads of sweat on his nose and forehead. "I was thinking of you."

"That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy."

"I meant to defend the boy," he said, frowning.

I told him I was retired

"I know that."

"Retired means I don’t work anymore, Nils." I spoke my words as slowly and clearly as possible. After all, I reminded myself, Nils was from the hills.

"He’s a good kid."

"I thought the police were more into catching the perpetrators, Nils. How come you’re working on this boy’s defense?"

Nils face reddened a little. I couldn’t tell whether I was making him angry or embarrassing him. "He’s a local kid. The boy who got killed is a punk who’s being treated at that fancy school for delinquents that everybody thinks is so wonderful. I want the San Tomas kid to get a fair shake."

I didn’t want to get suckered into something, but I was curious. "Did the local kid do it?"

Nils looked back at me. His face looked strained. This case meant something special to him. "I don’t think so."

"What’s the Yearling Foundation?" I asked.

Nils relaxed a little. The topic was more impersonal. "You’d know about it if you were a local," he said. "It’s been here about three years. Run by Doctor Francine Stein. She used to be at UCLA. Uses all the latest scientific methods to turn around tough kids from the city. Her kids are the worst of the worst. Murderers, rapists, gang kids. There was a big fuss when she opened up the place. Nobody wanted those kind of kids in their backyard. But there’s never been any trouble until now. And the Governor and a lot of other bigwigs have been all ga-ga over the program."

"Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me. I don’t know about any scientific methods that work with gangbangers. She’s probably just sucking in a lot of government money and the politicians are trying to take credit for getting something done."

Nils just shrugged, probably writing off my opinion as another symptom of my negative personality.

"So how come one of the kids from this Foundation gets in a fight with a local kid. Don’t they keep their little hoodlums locked up?" I asked.

"A bunch of them got out last Friday night. Came to town and started hassling some local kids in the park."

"And the boy charged with the murder was one of the kids they hassled?"

"I don’t know why they singled him out but they did. It wasn’t a good choice. He’s a good kid but he’s got a temper and he’s been in a few fights himself. He beat the shit out of the Foundation kid."

"That’s self-defense."

"It would have been if that was the end of it. The problem is, both kids walked away from it. The next morning one of my men found the other kid – a Mexican-American – dead…beaten a lot worse than when he’d left the fight."

"And the boy who fought him earlier is the natural suspect."

"He was still hanging around. Said he slept in a shed over on the Krishna School property instead of going home. The dead kid was found on the school property too, next to the fence that separates the school from the Foundation."

"What did the local kid say about it?"

"His name’s Jimmy Litton. Jimmy said he’d been asleep all night in the shed. Said he didn’t see the Mexican kid again after their fight."

"And you believe him?"

Nils shrugged again. "Maybe. The DA doesn’t and he’s gonna charge him with murder."

"Murder? Sounds to me like the worst it could be is manslaughter, even if the kid admits fighting with the other boy a second time. Could even still be self-defense."

Nils gave me a look like I’d just stated the obvious – which I had – but his look told me that nobody but he and I thought so.

I looked at him skeptically. "So what’s the public defender going to plea?"

"She’s trying for manslaughter. The DA’s after murder two. I’m afraid he’ll get it. He’ll cream her in court."

"That’s the system, Nils. I take it the kid’s family’s got no money or he wouldn’t have a public defender."

"You got it."

"And you think I’ll just donate my time, right?"

"I’ve got a bit of a contingency fund in the department. We can’t afford your full fee, but maybe you could give the public defender a little help. Come up with some local angles, point out the weaknesses in the DA’s case." He looked at me almost helplessly. "Shit, I don’t know, McGowan, the kid just needs some help."

"I know I seem like a simple honest farmer, working here on my little plot of land, Nils, but I’m filthy rich. I got that way taking on clients who were even filthier and richer. Well, richer anyway. Even if I wasn’t retired, you couldn’t afford me."

His eyes flashed with anger and he leaned toward me with a stony face." OK McGowan. Sometimes I forget that underneath all that warmth, you’re an asshole."

I returned his stare. "You sure as hell seem personally involved, Nils."

His face reddened. "He’s just a local kid. The family’s kind of outcasts and nobody else in town is gonna lift a finger for him."

"So you come to the other outcast in town. The LA lawyer who the Historical Society hates, who the local teenagers hate, and who hasn’t got anything to lose by becoming involved in an unpopular defense."

Nils stone face cracked a little into a wry smile. "All that’s true. But I came to you because you’re the best lawyer I know."

"Best retired lawyer."

"Right" He shook his head sagaciously then glanced at my roof. "I forgot you’re into farming now…and home improvement." He looked at me with his gray eyes and even stare.

"That’s right, Nils. I’m a farmer now. After I shingle the roof I’m gonna watch my vegetables grow. That’s what I moved here for."

He nodded. "Good for you. I’d thought you might be getting bored."

"In San Tomas? Last week there were the Krishnamurti lectures, next week it’s the Strawberry Festival. How could I be bored? I’m afraid of becoming overexcited."

He gave me a long up and down perusal, squinting his eyes, which, I suppose, helped. "Well hell, I had to try." He started to get up.

"If this Litton kid didn’t do it, have you got any idea who did?"

Larsson looked at me squarely. No cop ever admitted he didn’t have any clues. "Nope," he said, simply.

"You’re not much of a salesman, Chief," I said.

He shrugged. "I haven’t got much to sell. Just saving a kid."

"Jesus Nils! Who do you think I am, the Salvation Army?"

He gave me that stare again. Damn! Why couldn’t he just write me off as a mean-spirited asshole the way most people did?

I couldn’t just give in. I still had some dignity to preserve. "I was planning to finish my roof, Nils. I’d hate to just leave it and get caught by an early storm. Especially if I’m leaving it to go do you a favor." I thought about telling him about my bad knee which was giving me pains like it was about to rain, but I decided that that was overdoing it.

He shook his head, then got up and walked to the end of the porch and spat lazily into the dust…Gary Cooper-like. "Lawyers," he said. He started across the driveway to the ladder. "Got an extra hammer?"

I stood and hitched up my pants. "Yup."