A Bllind Eye Read online

  A Coffeetown Press book published by Epicenter Press

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, businesses, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental. All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the property of their respective owners and are used herein for identification purposes only. The publisher does not have any control over or assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their contents.

  Cover design by Scott Book

  Interior design by Melissa Vail Coffman

  A Blind Eye

  Copyright © 2021 by George Fong

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-795-0 (Trade Paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-796-7 (eBook)

  Printed in the United States of America

  To the men and women of the

  Sacramento office of the FBI.

  Acknowledgements

  Iwould like to thank my wife, Rebecca, and to my children Kyle and Rachel. The reality of the case this story is based on is what they lived through. While I spent six months living in the valley, they were the ones that took the brunt of life’s daily burdens while I chased a ghost in the hills along side with the dozen of dedicated and hardworking men and women of law enforcement, fire authority, forestry, search and rescue, and every volunteer that came out to help find our missing tourists.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Epilogue

  “The difference between an assault and a murder

  is that a murder has one less witness.”

  — FBI Training Academy

  Chapter 1

  March 1997

  Sacramento, California

  Jack Paris

  Ifelt a shiver.

  Some say it’s the feeling you get when the ghost of the dead pass through you, but I knew what it really meant. It meant I had to face the truth.

  I stood before a floor-length mirror and looked at myself. Black suit, the one I had bought for the occasion. Rain started to fall. Water droplets pooled on broad green leaves beyond the window, spitting onto the glass, giving a kaleidoscope view of the outside world.

  My wife Emily was standing to my right. I could see her reflection over my shoulder. Genuine warmth, her smile, the kind that beamed with every good thought. She wore a silky white dress, the V of the front displaying her neckline. Her skirt fell just below her knees. It was a vision of grace and beauty.

  She looked magnificent, elegant.

  My son, Michael sat to my left, his fingers drumming against the arm of the high-back chair. He looked uncomfortable.

  I posed. “Well, what do you think?” I asked.

  He feigned a grin that couldn’t have been more forced.

  “Your Mom likes it.”

  His eyes sagged. Fingers stopped drumming. The rain started hammering at the window.

  I pressed a hand on the front of my jacket, smoothed it down to the last button. “It was her choice,” I added. I couldn’t pick out a nice suit if it were labeled, Nice Suit.

  Michael faked a smile but it quickly dissolved into a drawn tight lip and I saw his eyes glisten before they drifted toward the carpet.

  I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. His entire body buckled.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  With a slight nod, Michael took in a deep breath, cleared his throat and gave me the grown-man look. “Time to go, pops.”

  I smiled. I liked it when he called me pops. Most of the time he called me father. It always sounded so formal, distant and overly proper, like I was the stranger in the room. Pops sounded like I belonged.

  “Give me a minute,” I replied. “I’ll meet you in the hallway.”

  Michael paused uneasily, looked like he was considering whether to say something like, ‘no, I’ll wait,’ or ‘do you want some company?’ But he didn’t.

  Hesitantly, he headed for the door.

  I glanced over at Emily who was neatly folding a shirt I had tossed across a chair. Her green eyes met mine and I felt my throat tighten.

  “You two are going to make a great team,” Emily said.

  I tugged on the double Winsor knot in my tie, acting as if it needed adjusting. I was buying time.

  These past years had been difficult between me and Michael, maneuvering through a labyrinth of conflict and differences. Like walking barefoot through a field of broken glass. We didn’t see eye-to-eye on most anything, and what we did agree upon felt akin to finding fault in one’s soul. Me, being an FBI Agent, didn’t help. I enforced the law while Michael ended up breaking them. Nothing serious, more like teenage angst. But it pushed us apart. We both knew how much we loved each other, never doubting the lengths we’d go to for one another. We just couldn’t find a way to express it, get past the hurt. Under the circumstances we now faced, we were going to have to find a means to that end.

  “We’ll be fine,” I heard myself say.

  Emily nodded with a comforting assurance in her face that was undisputable.

  I turned back toward the door, hearing Michael and the others just outside, talking, low, the words indiscernible but the tone, clear. They were voi
ces of condolences. And there were tears. A soft patting of a hand on Michael’s back, I could only imagine.

  I looked back into the room and Emily was gone. The truth is, she was never there. Cancer took her. Left only to my imagination. Emily, the one that I could love no deeper, who fought to make life in a world of murderers and thieves a place of tranquil normalcy, was gone. The room suddenly felt cold and hollow.

  I stood and smoothed my suit jacket, pressed my tie against my white shirt, and tried to gather my composure. I opened the door. Everyone stopped talking, all eyes now drawn toward me. Lips razor-tight, arms and hands fighting to find comfort. There were mummers of sympathies and empty consolation, reverberating in the small space louder than a marching band down a packed hall.

  They came to Emily’s funeral, to pay their respects. To see her off. I marshalled the energy to somehow convey the depth of my gratitude for coming but every word came through shuttered breaths. Once again, I placed a hand on my son’s shoulder, and it was at that moment that I realized just how strong he really was. My daughter Justine following close behind, gently touched me and began to weep behind a cotton gloved hand.

  We walked together into the next room, to see Emily for the last time and to do the one thing—at least for me—that would forever be a lie.

  To say good-bye.

  Chapter 2

  Monday February 17, 1998 8:05 a.m.

  Yosemite National Forest

  Sunlight reflected off a snow-covered grassy mound, causing Mariposa County Sheriff’s detective Hal Bellows to shade his eyes and squint.

  Winter morning, the frozen air bristled as it thawed. I’ve never gotten use to the cold. Assigned to the FBI office in Sacramento, I’m more inclined to warmth. Hawaiian beach warmth. It was where Emily and I spent our honeymoon.

  The National Park is in Mariposa County and Mariposa is part of my field office’s territory; the Eastern District of California. If a crime occurs on federal land in the central valley, I got called.

  Today, the sky was clear blue but deceiving. I had been standing in the shade for no more than fifteen minutes but still found myself pulling my jacket collar high around my neck to stave off a chill. Early this morning, Bellows called, said I should probably join him. That’s how he always asked for me: You should join me. I knew by his tone, this wasn’t a suggestion but a warning.

  It took me a couple of hours to get into the national park with roads being closed due to the season’s heavy snowfall and roads blocked from falling boulders. By the time I made it to the crime scene, Bellows had already started his investigation.

  I didn’t want to get in his way or interrupt his concentration, so I watched him as he stood before a small clearing that fell just outside several rows of tall evergreens at the edge of a dense section of forest. The area was misted in cold damp air, giving the view as though peering through gauze. There was a dirt trail spotted with frozen pools of water, suspended pine needles, held in time. It snaked out from the tall snow-covered trees from the west, dropping out of sight toward the valley floor.

  Bellows turned his head, studied the wall of dark green and white that surrounded the clearing. He dropped down slowly on one knee, formed his left hand in the shape of a curved blade and scraped at the snow down to blue ice, discovering patches of winter grass. Bursts of cold air flowed from the east, shaving snow off strained branches, detergent-size flakes drifting slowly to the ground. He lifted his chin, stared at the terrain and what lay above. I followed his gaze; eighteen hundred feet of gray stone climbing straight up into the air, sharp vertical striations, the result from thousands of years of harsh weather and shearing ice. The wind blew freezer cold against his exposed face and yet, I could tell it had no effect on him. There was almost a symbiotic relationship between him and the land. Hell, he was part of the elements.

  I’ve known Bellows for a decade. We’ve investigated a number of death cases in the mountains and valleys within this massive track of land, the punishing climate always a constant and because murder never cares about jurisdictional territory. And one thing we have learned over the years together; if the cold didn’t kill our victims, humans did.

  The white-capped granite walls boxed us in on three sides, the fourth facing the valley, open to a sea of clear blue skies, brisk and clean. On another day, it would have been breathtaking. But today it was horribly stained. An unwanted and uninvited body of a young girl. Still, cold, and discarded like trash. It was the starkness of death, unfiltered, taken and left here most likely from the hands of one whose eyes were endlessly dark and merciless. I kept silent, staring at the expansiveness of this magnificent place, finding myself shiver—not from the cold—but from what had invaded it. It’s the reason why guys like Hal and I come to this place. Our world, wondrous and dark, tranquil and isolated. Inviting and deadly.

  Yosemite.

  Chapter 3

  Ifinally had Bellows’ attention.

  He looked at me for about five seconds before turning back to the crime scene. That was my cue to head over.

  I carefully stepped past the first layer of evidence markers, making sure I didn’t disturb anything as I made my way to his side. Together, we studied the upper ridge, both pausing to observe the distraction above our heads. A dozen news reporters perched high on the ledge, cameras affixed on tripods with lenses that resembled cannons, like an artillery barrage pointed in our direction. Bellows shook his head in disgust. Amazed how fast reporters found their way to a crime scene, doubly so when a body is found. They were human blowflies.

  Bellows peered over his right shoulder, eyes narrowing to slits. Two Park Rangers stood guard along a sagging stream of yellow evidence tape. He pointed at them with his chin like he was making me aware of their presence. Bellows never referred to them as Rangers, always called them Federal boys, like we were some special anomaly or from an alien planet. He was good with me, always being a reliable source of help in all our past investigations but I knew there was always a defined line between local agencies and us feds. It’s something you just accepted, comes with the territory.

  I continued to study the scene, stepping back to get a broader view. Gusts of wind rattled the long plastic barrier tape, like cards slapping against bicycle spokes. The area cordoned off to the small, contorted body of a young female, who lay in an exposed area of rubble and ice.

  The number of cameramen and reporters grew along the ridge, distracting me. The pages in my notebook waved in the breeze, floating ice chips melted on the paper, blurring my words. Bellows ground his teeth, turned his head and spat. He muttered a string of obscenities, before flipping the bird at the gaggle of reporters. Bellows is a large man: six-six, two and a half, if not more with a thick graying Wyatt Earp-style mustache. Not a man the cameras would want to miss. I looked away, stifling a laugh.

  Bellows jabbed a large hand at his crew standing along the edge of the crime scene and drew an imaginary line in the air. “Push out the boundary up along the road and keep the fucking press out.” It was necessary to extend the crime scene perimeter, but it would also piss off the media. His idea of a two-for-one deal.

  The winter had been unseasonably cold, the days threatening subzero temperatures as the thermometer plummeted at night, plunging deep into the negative digits. In the morning sun, the entire valley was blanketed in a thick crust of white that sparkled like sugar. I had been in and out of this valley for most of my life. I’d brought my family here on vacations, hiked the trails, and listened to the roaring power of spring melt. I always found the view nothing short of magnificent but right now I struggled to glimpse its beauty and questioned its safety.

  The frozen ground crackled under heavy boots as I made my way up a hillside, stopping as we approached the victim’s body. Bellows was to my right as we trampled a carpet of frozen pine needles and groundcover. I lowered my head and mentally calculated a checklist of what I needed to collect
as evidence. Bellows broke the silence.

  “Never get used to it, can you, Jack?”

  “I’m not sure anyone should, Hal.”

  Dead bodies shouldn’t be a part of anyone’s daily activity. The irony was, up here, body dumps were as common as bear droppings. Base-jumping idiots to seedy-clients with bad debts. Bellows was often the first one to discover them stuffed in a crevice or a cold-water creek. Even with dozens of findings, the one thing we’d never understood: how anyone could dump a child.

  He held still behind me, careful not to step into the crime scene, his thick torso casting an elongated shadow in the shape of an oversized arrow, pointing toward the victim’s body, twenty feet beyond our position.

  “I’m starting to doubt humanity,” he huffed.

  “Some people are just broken. They can’t be fixed.”

  “Fixed?” Bellows crowed. “Christ-sakes, Jack. I say, put ’em down, like a rabid animal.”

  The Rangers gathered, started to set up a privacy screen; a large white tarp held up like a ship’s sail by two aluminum poles. We made our way behind it and took a long pause. I knelt on one knee and rested my left forearm across my thigh while Bellows scanned the area like an animal looking for danger. The barrier gave me the ability to focus my attention on the victim without the distraction of the media. I held still, with a familiar sound finding its way into my head, the crispness of rustling branches disrupted by a constant buzzing noise. A droning tone, like the sound of a bow being drawn across the strings of a violin.

  Blowflies.

  They found the only patch of warm sunlight to nest. I stood, took a few steps forward, coming close enough to see every detail of the lifeless body. Bellows’ head went on a swivel, studying the crime scene and pointing at everything out of natural order before pronouncing his assessment.

  “She was killed here, in this clearing.” He motioned to his left, swept an arm over an open area in front of a wall of tall evergreens. “Just outside that row of pines, not more than fifty yards away is the main path where the tourists walk.” Bellows went quiet for a moment and I could hear his breathing becoming deep and heavy. “Everyone around with no one to see,” he said. I knew what that meant, his anger boiling inside. Bellows took every death in the park personally.