The Case of the Missing Game Warden Read online

  A Coffeetown Press book published by Epicenter Press

  Epicenter Press

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  Suite 2

  Kenmore, WA 98028

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  www.Camelpress.com

  www.Coffeetownpress.com

  www.Epicenterpress.com

  www.steventcallan.com

  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.

  Cover design by Scott Book

  Cover photo by Steven T. Callan

  Back cover photo of Glenn County Courthouse by Steven T. Callan

  Design by Melissa Vail Coffman

  The Case of the Missing Game Warden

  Copyright © 2021 by Steven T. Callan

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-306-8 (Trade Paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-307-5 (eBook)

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Kathy

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Part One

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  Part two

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  Part three

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  Part four

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgments

  My first novel, The Case of the Missing Game Warden, is the product of hard work, life experience, and persistence. It could never have come to fruition without help from these people I call my friends.

  To Phil Garrett at Epicenter Press and Jennifer McCord at Coffeetown Press, I owe my most sincere thanks for the confidence you’ve shown in my writing and for your continued support.

  Kathy Callan’s encouragement, incredible editing skills, and advice played an indispensable role in bringing The Case of the Missing Game Warden to life. I couldn’t have done it without you, sweetheart.

  Thank you to Professors Brunella Windsor and Gerardo Mireles at California State University, Chico, for their generosity in sharing their expertise in the Italian and Spanish languages.

  One of the highlights of doing research for this book was learning about the Glenn County Courthouse—built in 1894 and still in use. I’m indebted to former Glenn County Superior Court Executive Officer and current Tehama County Superior Court Executive Officer Kevin Harrigan, Glenn County Superior Court Administrative Assistant Karen Dura, Glenn County Deputy Sheriff Dan Perry, and current Glenn County Superior Court Executive Officer Sharif Elmallah for sharing their knowledge of this historic treasure.

  Kathy and I spent a glorious day at the University of California, Berkeley, libraries while I was doing research for this book. I would like to thank Monica Alarcon (Bancroft Library), James Eason (Bancroft Library), Dean Smith (Bancroft Library), Iris Donovan (Bancroft Library), Natalia Estrada (Doe Library), and Desirae Mendoza (Doe Library) for all of your help and for the gracious way we were treated.

  A special thanks to all the people who have followed my writing since 2013. Your kind words inspired me to write this book.

  Part One

  ONE

  It was late afternoon, in early December 1956, when twenty-five-year-old Blake Gastineau walked out of the two-room guesthouse on his father’s rice farm northwest of Gridley, California. Wearing faded Levi jeans, a dark-green army fatigue jacket, and PF Flyers tennis shoes, Gastineau loaded his Remington Model 11-48, semiautomatic 12-gauge shotgun and four boxes of number 4, high-base shotgun shells into the trunk of his dark-gray, 1949 Ford coupe. Elvis was belting out his latest hit, “Don’t Be Cruel,” when the former Gridley High School quarterback flipped on the radio and cruised out the long gravel driveway toward the county road. Passing under a wrought-iron archway reading GASTINEAU FARMS, Blake turned right, stomped on the gas, and roared westward toward the highway.

  Clouds from an earlier storm were breaking up over the Sutter Buttes when Gastineau reached the Sacramento Valley farm town of Gridley, turned up a side street, and pulled into the Shady Rest Trailer Park. Down at the end of the park lived two ne’er-do-wells: Hollis Bogar and Richie Stillwell. Both men performed menial tasks for Blake’s father during the growing season but “lived off the land,” as Bogar was often heard saying, during the winter months.

  “Living off the land, my ass!” local game warden Norman Bettis would respond. “Those two no-good sonsabitches are the worst duck poachers in Butte County.” Bettis had once been a hard-charging game warden, but chasing duck hunters through the tules for thirty-two years had taken its toll. Now his knees yelped with pain every time he donned his hip boots and tried to hike across a muddy rice field. Overweight and out of shape, the sixty-two-year-old veteran game warden did most of his enforcement work from the seat of his 1954 Ford sedan patrol car. If he wasn’t on patrol, you could usually find Warden Bettis drinking coffee and swapping stories with the old-timers at Pearl’s Roadside Diner out on Highway 99.

  Norm Bettis had been a warden for the California Department of Fish and Game for so long that he proudly wore Badge Number One above the pocket of his immaculate uniform shirt. A day didn’t go by without him hearing the same query from one of his elderly coffee-shop companions: “Hey, Norm, when ya gonna retire?”

  Bettis’s answer was always the same. “What would I do if I retired—sit here bullshittin’ with you guys? I can do that now and get paid for it.”

  Hollis Bogar kicked the trailer door open with his size-fifteen tennis shoe and stepped outside carrying a 12-gauge shotgun in one hand and a six-pack of Burgermeister beer in the other. “Hey, man,” he said, “did ya bring me a box a shells?”

  “Yeah, I brought one for each of you,” said Gastineau. “The trunk’s open. Throw your shotgun in back, and let me have one of those. Where’s that crazy little cousin of yours?”

  “He’s tryin’ ta find his tennis shoe. I think the dog next door drug it off the porch last night.”

  “Looks like we got lots of birds down from up north,” said Gastineau, popping open his beer. “I wanna get out there before dark and see if we can figure out where they’re gonna feed tonight.”

  “Here he comes,” said Bogar. “Richie, I see ya found your shoe.”

  “Yeah, that stupid mutt chewed it up.”

  “You can climb in back. I got shotgun.”

  “You always get shotgun.” />
  “That’s ’cause I’m way bigger than you.”

  “Uglier too,” said Stillwell. “Hey, Blake, did that contact of yours pay us for all them ducks we killed the other night?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got some dough in my pocket for you guys.”

  “Wha’d we get?” said Stillwell, removing a brass lighter from his front pocket and lighting a cigarette.

  “Same as always: five dollars for mallards, four for pintails, and three for teal, wigeons, and everything else.”

  “What about all them gadwalls we killed a couple weeks ago?” said Bogar.

  “He said the fancy restaurants won’t take gadwalls anymore. They won’t take wigeons either, if they been feedin’ on alfalfa. The restaurants in Chinatown will take whatever he brings ’em, but they won’t pay more than two bucks for anything but mallards, sprig, and cans.”

  “We ain’t shot a canvasback in two years,” said Bogar, chugging his second beer. “Baste them gadwalls in wine and a little melted butter, and those rich bastards in San Francisco won’t know the difference.”

  “You got that right,” said Stillwell. “Hey, I’ll take one a them brewskis.”

  “Not unless you give me a cigarette first,” said Bogar.

  Stillwell reached over the front seat of the parked coupe and handed Bogar a cigarette. “I’m waiting.”

  “First you gotta say the magic word.”

  “I got your magic word. Give me a beer or I’ll wrap the butt of my shotgun across the back of your giant head!”

  “You’re probably crazy enough to do that,” said Bogar, handing Stillwell a beer.

  “You’re damn right I am. Now, how am I gonna open this without a church key?”

  “Hand him the damn can opener so he’ll shut up,” said Gastineau, pulling a wad of cash and some change from his pocket and counting out $95.17. With the car still idling, Gastineau handed Bogar his cut.

  “What about me?” said Stillwell.

  “You ain’t gettin’ any,” said Bogar.

  “I’m gonna climb over this seat and take yours. You owe me for your share of the rent, anyway.”

  “Here, hand this back to him,” said Gastineau. Bogar reached over the seat and handed the money to Stillwell.

  “Ninety-five-seventeen?” said Stillwell. “How much did you get, Blake?”

  “Yeah, Blake,” said Bogar, “how much did you get?”

  “Okay, here’s the deal, and I’m not gonna explain it to you two half-wits again. The other day I delivered 101 ducks. He paid me $423. Divided four ways, that’s a hundred and five dollars and seventy-five cents apiece, but I took ten percent out of each of your cuts.”

  “How come you did that?” said Bogar.

  “Because I run the risk of getting caught driving down the highway with all those ducks in my trunk. If I get busted and thrown in jail, my old man will disinherit me and I won’t get my share of the farm when he kicks the bucket.”

  “What about that connection of yours?” said Stillwell. “What’s he get outta this?”

  “He gets whatever the big-city restaurants pay him, and that depends on how badly their rich customers want roast duck for dinner.”

  “What big cities are we talkin’ about?” said Bogar, cutting loose with a gigantic belch.

  “I know he delivers to San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento. After that, I’m not sure.”

  “How come you won’t tell us who this connection of yours is?” said Stillwell.

  “I told you guys not to ask me that,” said Gastineau, angered and visibly shaken by the question. “Jimmy’s expectin’ us at 3:30, so we better get goin’.”

  Jimmy Riddle lived with his mother and grandparents at the southeast corner of a run-down, hundred-acre almond orchard, three miles west of Gridley. At the northwest corner of the property was a corrugated metal packing shed with a cement slab floor. Since the trees were no longer productive, the shed had become a convenient place for Jeb Riddle, Jimmy’s eighty-four-year-old grandfather, to store farm equipment and old furniture his wife no longer wanted. Everything in the shed was draped in fifteen years of dust and cobwebs.

  The neglected orchard gradually became overgrown with weeds and high grass—ideal cover for the multitudes of ring-necked pheasants that lived in the area. Every November, on opening weekend of pheasant season, hunters would fire away at pheasants in the corn and grain fields surrounding Jeb Riddle’s property. Like lambs to the slaughter, those pheasants that survived the initial onslaught would set their wings and glide into Riddle’s orchard, where Jimmy Riddle and his high-school buddies were lying in wait. There was nothing illegal about ambushing pheasants, but the boys got carried away and killed considerably more than the law allowed. That went on for three seasons, until someone at school overheard Gastineau and Bogar bragging about their good fortune. Tipped off, Warden Norm Bettis showed up on a Sunday evening and caught Jimmy Riddle, Blake Gastineau, and Hollis Bogar picking and cleaning a giant pile of pheasants in Jeb Riddle’s packing shed.

  Bogar was already on probation for punching out the assistant football coach, so he spent thirty days in juvenile hall. The other two junior outlaws received a tongue lashing and six months’ probation from the juvenile-court judge in Oroville. Ralph Gastineau, Blake’s father, told Blake if he ever embarrassed him like that again, he would will the entire farm to Blake’s younger brother and Blake could spend the rest of his life digging dock weed in the fields.

  Blake Gastineau turned off the county road onto a well-traveled dirt road between two rows of almond trees. Two hundred yards farther, he turned left and followed a path leading from Jeb Riddle’s house straight to the old packing shed. “It’s about time,” said Jimmy Riddle, dressed in blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and a shiny new black leather jacket. A cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth, Riddle stood next to a lime-green, 1952 Rocket 88 Oldsmobile with a primer-gray left front fender. “I was beginnin’ ta wonder if you guys were gonna show up.”

  “These two idiots were givin’ me a hard time about their cut for the ducks we killed the other night,” said Gastineau.

  “Oh, yeah?” said Riddle, pulling a plastic comb from his back pocket and combing his shiny-black, ducktail hairdo. “How much did we get?”

  “You get the full hundred and five bucks, since you’re providing the shed and transportation.”

  “That’s good, because my boss at the body shop keeps buggin’ me about makin’ a payment on this gas guzzler he sold me.”

  “Hey, Jimmy,” said Bogar, sneaking up behind Riddle and messing his hair. “I think ya need a little more grease.”

  “If you weren’t so big, I’d teach you a lesson,” said Riddle, recombing his hair.

  “I’d like to see that,” said Bogar, climbing into the back seat.

  “Me too,” said Stillwell, attempting to slip into the front passenger seat without being noticed.

  “Nice try, Richie,” said Gastineau. “Now get in back. I need to ride up front to tell Jimmy where to go.”

  “I’ll be happy to tell Jimmy where to go,” said Stillwell.

  TWO

  Clark Mathewson was the quintessential young Republican before anyone at the University of California, Berkeley, ever thought of forming an organization by that name. Gregarious, good-looking, and exuding confidence, he majored in business, with the career goal of becoming a real-estate tycoon and making his first million before he turned thirty.

  With war raging during the early 1940s, Mathewson joined UC Berkeley’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and was eventually commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Clark would serve briefly overseas, but upon being promoted to first lieutenant, he managed to secure a cushy company commander’s post at Fort Ord, near Monterey, California, where he spent the remainder of his military career.

  At twenty-six, Mathews
on resumed his original career path and became a Bay Area real-estate broker. Within three years, he was listing and regularly selling six- and seven-figure properties. Clark made his first million on April 16, 1953, a week before his thirtieth birthday and two days before his marriage to Barbara Cleary, the beautiful daughter of a prominent San Francisco businessman. Soon after, Clark and Barbara Mathewson bought their dream home in the Berkeley Hills and assumed their position amongst the Bay Area’s post-war nouveau riche.

  At eighty-six, Valentino Vannucci still liked to drop in unannounced and check on the family business. After all, Vannucci’s had made a name for itself in San Francisco’s historic Embarcadero District, and its original owner wanted to keep it that way. “What’s going on here?” the eccentric, gray-haired old man would bellow, as he stormed through the back entrance, scaring the kitchen crew half to death and causing his son Victor considerable consternation.

  Sixty-year-old Victor Vannucci managed the day-to-day operation of the restaurant and acted as maître d’ every evening, except Monday and Tuesday. Vannucci’s was closed on Mondays, and Carlo Vannucci, Victor’s fifty-two-year-old cousin, would fill in on Tuesday evenings. Carlo also served as Vannucci’s lunch-hour maître d’.

  “Vannucci’s,” answered Carlo, one Saturday afternoon in mid-December 1955. “How may I help you?”

  “Hello, Carlo. This is Clark Mathewson.”

  “Mr. Mathewson! How nice to hear your voice.”

  “How’s business?”

  “Business is good. We always have our regulars, and this time of year the holiday-tourist crowd spills over from Fisherman’s Wharf.”

  “That’s great. I wanted to make a reservation for tonight.”

  “Of course. What time and for how many?”

  “There will be four of us, and this is a special occasion, so I’d like to order a wild-duck dinner.”

  “Un momento per favore,” said Carlo. He reached under his podium and retrieved a maroon-colored binder with VANNUCCI’S emblazoned across the front cover. Carlo opened the binder to a page reading “Clienti di Riguardo.” Seeing Clark Mathewson’s name on the list, he ran back to the kitchen and discretely asked his cousin Lorenzo, the afternoon chef, if their weekly supply of wild ducks had come in.