Authors: Timothy Egan
Tags: #General, #True Crime, #Non-Fiction, #Murder, #History
Breaking Blue (29 page)
“Clyde Ralstin. You remember him, though?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“I read about what you said in the papers, Sheriff.”
“Yes?”
“I think you got Clyde all wrong.”
“How’s that?”
“He was a skookum man, Clyde Ralstin. A skookum man.”
Bamonte wasn’t sure how to take the characterization. “Skookum” was a bit of Chinook Indian jargon: in one part of the Northwest, it meant “evil spirit”; in another part, “strong and excellent man.” Somebody could be a skookum man and possess both qualities.
Phelps remembered Clyde as large-framed like himself, good-looking, tough. Beyond that, the former police chief did not volunteer much about his former colleague.
“Do you remember the Conniff killing?” Bamonte asked.
“The marshal?”
“Yes. Shot September 14, 1935—”
“I know what you’re talking about. That’s your case. That’s the story in the papers.”
“Well? What do you know? What do you remember, Mr. Phelps?”
Phelps didn’t say a word for a few minutes, and then he looked the sheriff in the eye.
“I have a lapse in memory on that one. And that’s the truth.”
B
ACK IN
M
ETALINE
F
ALLS
, the house was empty, Betty’s drawers flung open. It was hot and stuffy upstairs, the stale air trapped inside the brick walls. Bamonte felt alone and dispirited. Without his wife, the big, fortified building was something of a prison. Bamonte had hoped she might appear, and then he would tell her that never again would he seek somebody else. They would start another quarter-century together, and this time—he had the speech rehearsed—he
would learn from his mistakes. There would be less work, fewer obsessions to keep him up all night, more time with the love of his life. She would forgive him, they would romp around on the brass bed, and then he would tell her all about the trip to Sequim, and ask for her advice. Just like old times.
He opened the windows and looked around for something to eat. Phelps had proved to be nearly useless on the killing, a big disappointment. But he left Bamonte with one intriguing tip.
“You go back and check Ralstin’s records, just take a look at them, and you might find something,” Phelps had said. “I’m not saying he wasn’t a skookum man, because he was. But there was something he was tied up in back then. I can’t remember exactly what. You take a look.”
The trouble was, Ralstin’s personnel file had disappeared, or so the Spokane Police Department had reported in April. Had it vanished with Clyde, at the same time he left the department? Or did it get thrown out in the move from the Stone Fortress to the new police headquarters across the river? Or did somebody deliberately bury it, one old friend doing a favor for another?
K
EITH
H
ENDRICK
was surprised to hear that his mentor, the pillar of Lapwai, Idaho, had hired an attorney and refused to talk with Bamonte. He had predicted that Ralstin would sit down with the sheriff and clear it all up, one cop to another. Surely, the old man had some answers.
“And his attorney says if I try to talk to him, ask him about the shooting, the stress might be enough to kill him,” Bamonte said over the phone.
“You sure?” Frail and feeble—it didn’t sound like Clyde.
“His attorney, Grainey, makes him out like he’s just going to fall over any minute,” the sheriff said.
“Not the Clyde Ralstin I know.”
Hendrick told about a few dustups Ralstin had been involved with since he turned eighty. “He is not a man to be trifled with, no matter his age,” said the Lapwai police chief. “He came back to town a few
years ago, riding a bus here from Montana for a funeral. Buddy of his. So on the bus, he got in a fight.”
“Ralstin did?”
“Yes. Clyde. Didn’t start it without just cause, though. Couple of guys were drinking. Making a ruckus. Causing a scene on the bus, from what I hear. Clyde gets up and goes after ’em. One of the guys was forty years old—and Clyde knocked him out. The other fellow, a twenty-five-year-old, he wouldn’t have any part of him after he seen what he did to his friend.”
“How do you know about this?”
“Clyde told me. Heard from somebody else, too. He banged his knee up during the fight—but that was nothing compared to what Clyde did to the other guy.”
That was more like it, Bamonte thought—the Ralstin who had smashed his son-in-law’s head into the sidewalk, the cop who took on all comers in the police gym, the master of Mother’s Kitchen.
“Got himself in another fight, just a few years ago,” Hendrick continued.
“When he was what—eighty-four, eighty-five years old?”
“Yeah. Must’ve been. This time, he’s in Spokane, driving around, doing I don’t know what. So he bumps somebody’s fender, by accident, and the guy gets real hot. He chases after Clyde, catches up with him. The guy reaches inside Ralstin’s car and grabs his wife. Then he starts calling Clyde a son of a bitch. That was all it took. Clyde nailed him right there.”
“He tell you that story, too?”
“Yes, he did. He said, ‘You know, I must be losing my punch.’ I said, ‘Why’s that, Clyde?’ He says, ‘I hit him three or four times and I couldn’t put him down.’ ”
T
ALKING TO
a Lake County sheriff’s deputy in Montana, Bamonte was wondering what Ralstin had been up to since his visit to Saint Ignatius. The deputy said Ralstin had been traveling. Just after Bamonte’s visit, he went to southern California to see his son, who was in the navy, stationed in San Diego.
“I thought he was too sick to get around?”
“No, sir.”
Another source—anonymous, a onetime friend of Clyde’s, he said—told Bamonte that Ralstin had been back in Lapwai, visiting relatives. It appeared to the sheriff that he was taking care of loose ends, rushing to see family members before he died or was arrested, whichever came first.
The picture of a peripatetic octogenarian, making peace and shoring up old stories, did not match the image presented in a letter Bamonte had just received from Phil Grainey. It was addressed to the sheriff and Thomas Metzger, the Pend Oreille prosecutor. The letter read:
As you know, I represent Clyde Ralstin of St. Ignatius, Montana.
In my previous conferences with Sheriff Bamonte, I have expressed my very strong concern that Mr. Ralstin, because of his advanced age and deteriorating health, would be unable to withstand the ordeal of being charged with the 1935 murder of George Conniff. Since my last conversation with Sheriff Bamonte, I have obtained a medical report from Mr. Ralstin’s physician, Dr. Clancy Cone, which I am enclosing herewith. The letter speaks for itself but clearly gives strong support for my concern.
Mr. Ralstin has a history of internal bleeding and significant heart disease together with a number of other physical problems which place him at high risk. The process alone, and the resulting stress of being faced with criminal charges, would place him in serious jeopardy and perhaps even lead to his death, regardless of its outcome.
I have discussed in detail with Mr. Ralstin the accusations set forth in the newspaper articles and the additional information supplied to me by Sheriff Bamonte. Mr. Ralstin absolutely denies any involvement in a burglary ring and the slaying of George Conniff. He says that he is innocent and I am convinced that he will maintain his innocence to the end.
I certainly sympathize with the family of Mr. Conniff and recognize their desire to receive some form of retribution for the
loss of their father. If the evidence was sufficient to lead a jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Ralstin was involved, then no one could fault them for wanting to press for a jury verdict. However, in this instance, there is clearly insufficient evidence to lead to a conviction and more importantly the accused would probably not live to the end of a trial. Since a verdict of any sort is unlikely, the only result would be the loss of Mr. Ralstin’s life and the destruction of his family.
Hopefully, some sense of humanity and compassion will prevail over the desire to close this case, and Mr. Ralstin and his wife will be allowed to live out their few remaining years in peace.
Very truly yours,
French, Mercer & Grainey
Attorneys-at-Law
Philip J. Grainey
Enclosed was a two-page medical summary from Dr. Clancy L. Cone of Missoula. Dr. Cone explained that Ralstin suffered from heart disease, which the doctor treated by a valvularplasty procedure. Ralstin’s memory was diminished and his speech slurred after the valvularplasty. His arteries were narrowing. He had a peptic ulcer, gout, anemia, and occasional internal bleeding. Dr. Cone ended his letter with this conclusion:
I see Mr. Ralstin’s health status at this point as very fragile, in part because of his advanced age, although he has been a remarkable physical specimen. In addition the problems of two causes for intestinal hemorrhage and a known tight narrowing of the coronary artery which may set the stage for symptoms of angina or conceivably heart damage. I feel it very risky for him to be subjected to a prolonged episode of emotional stress, fatigue, interruption in his current life routine to the point that I doubt seriously that Clyde could be put through a lengthy trial without the high risk of medical complications.
* * *
T
OM
M
ETZGER
, the prosecutor, ran into Bamonte in Newport and asked him what he was working on. The sheriff rattled off a few drunk-driving cases and a robbery and told of an investigation into the latest cult to discover the far reaches of the Pend Oreille.
“Anything else?”
Bamonte looked to the ground. “Still chasing a few loose ends on Conniff.”
“Conniff? Jeez, Tony. When are you going to give it up?”
“Got a few things left to check. You haven’t been much help, Tom.”
“Just where the hell do you think you’re going with this thing?”
“Till the end. Till there’s nothing left to check. I’m running out of time, too.”
“Why’s that?”
“He’s going to die. Ralstin is.”
“So what do you think I’m going to do—drag some old codger back here and then put him away for life?”
“It’s not my job to determine punishment, Tom. I started this, and I intend to see it through, with or without your help.”
S
ICK AND BEDRIDDEN
, Sarah Schultz had sent her son to fetch the sheriff. She was ninety-one years old and had known Clyde Ralstin since the 1920s, when they were neighbors in the Nez Percé country of Idaho, which her father had homesteaded. She never liked Clyde. The man seemed to run over people, Indians and whites alike. She had been following Bamonte’s case in the Spokane papers. When the name Ralstin first appeared, it touched in her memory a forgotten episode from a nearly forgotten decade.
The summer air settled in the Spokane Valley, gathering smog, and made life uncomfortable for anyone stuck indoors without air-conditioning. Mrs. Schultz lived by herself in a two-story house in the city. She moved to Spokane in the early 1930s, after losing everything—the family farm, her life savings—in the Depression. She seemed very weak, a woman with little control over anything in her life. Before another day passed, she wanted to make sure that
Sheriff Bamonte was aware of something about the man he was pursuing.
“He’s killed before, you know,” she said.
“I did not know. Tell me, please.”
“ ’Long about the same time. In the 1930s, I’m sure.”
“What happened?”
“He shot and killed a boy. The son of a friend of mine. I’m not sure how old, but he was just a kid. And then, Ralstin got away with it.”
“Why? I don’t follow.”
“Well, he was a policeman. Killed the boy in the line of duty, or so he said. Ralstin used to brag about it, from what I heard.”
“Do you know the boy’s name?”
“Roger … Roger … something. His mother was Mrs. Clifford. Docia Clifford. But the boy’s last name was different, because she had remarried.”
“And the year—you don’t remember what year?”
“No. In the 1930s, some time then.”
“Here in Spokane?”
“Yes. In Hillyard.”
“I’ll find a record of it.”
“They had this hearing, afterward. Some kind of inquest. I sat through it with Mrs. Clifford, and it was a total sham. They covered up what Ralstin had done, and protected him. That’s what it was all about. My friend lost her son, who was a fine boy, a good student who had never done anything wrong. Her other son went on to become a judge, so you can imagine how Roger might have turned out. And Ralstin, he … he … he got away with it.”
Bamonte stood, jolted by the tip, anxious to dash out the door. “I can’t thank you enough, Mrs. Schultz.”
“Is this helpful?”
“In a big way.”
“Can I tell you something else?”
“Certainly.”
“It’s just my opinion. This other thing I told, that really happened.”
“Go ahead.”
“Clyde Ralstin wasn’t a policeman. He was a criminal who put on a uniform.”
T
HE STORY
of Ralstin shooting a kid, if true, fit the image Bamonte had been trying to flesh out—not the frail former judge trying to live the last days of his life in peace. Bamonte felt that he understood a few things about killers. Usually, somebody who could kill another human craves excitement, a blood lust of sorts. Often, the killer is weak and insecure, looking for power or assurance in desperate acts. To snuff a life satisfied both needs. Little things became standoffs, to be settled only by one man in absolute triumph, the other on the ground, crushed.
Bamonte asked his friend Bill Morlin, the reporter for the
Spokesman-Review
, to search his newspaper morgue for the killing. Morlin, as intrigued as Bamonte about the true character of Clyde Ralstin, found nothing in the paper’s files, under Ralstin, about a shooting. Nothing under homicides. He went to the coroner’s office, asking about inquests from the 1930s. Bingo—something came up on an Officer Ralstin. They gave him the date. He went back to the paper and discovered a packet of pastry-flaked yellow clips that the librarian said had been taken from an envelope marked “Police—Shootings By” and put under a general crime category.