Empty Promises

necessarily do fatal damage; the danger occurs when they strike a bone. Then the small slugs tend to tumble and do terrible damage. Tim could still be alive but injured and trapped somewhere in the more than 200 miles between Hopland and Chinese Camp.
    All hope for Tim’s safe return vanished when the investigators learned that an amateur archaeologist searching for arrowheads near Hopland had wandered into a vineyard adjacent to Highway 101. His eyes sweeping the ground, he had spotted a patch of color that stood out against the green of the grapevines. Moving closer, he saw it was the clothing of a young man who lay sprawled face up on the ground. A halo of blood surrounded his head, and there were dark stains on his shirt. Like a cruel afterthought of his killers, the imprint of automobile tires crisscrossed the boy’s chest.
    Tim Luce had obviously been killed shortly after he and Susan accepted a ride from someone, but Susan was held captive as the vehicle in which she rode headed south and then east.
    Mendocino County sheriff’s officers who worked the scene could see that someone had methodically fired small-caliber bullets at close range into Tim Luce’s skull and then run over him, probably several times, in a heavy vehicle.
    It seemed to be a singular incident, unconnected with other homicides in California. Tim Luce’s body was discovered just after sunrise in the early morning of August 22, long before word of Susan Bartolomei’s plight reached the Mendocino authorities.
    They soon made the tragic connection, however. Patrol officers in Mendocino County came across an old car abandoned about five miles from the vineyard where the young male victim was found. Checking the plates, they learned the car was registered to Timothy Luce. The car, like so many owned by teenagers, was held together by spit, bailing wire, and luck, and something had cracked or blown or boiled over. The car wasn’t drivable when officers found it. The question that kept playing over in the investigators’ minds now was “Why?” Susan had told Howardine Mease that she and Tim Luce were hitchhiking because of car trouble. Anyone bent on robbery could have done a lot better than two teenagers. His parents were sure Tim only carried enough money to buy some used auto parts from a junkyard.
    It wasn’t long before investigators found the motive, though. Acid phosphatase tests indicated the presence of semen during Susan’s vaginal examination. She had been raped, probably several times. Two predators had given the young hitchhikers a lift. Tim would have recognized the danger they were in early on, and he probably fought to protect Susan from the men who called themselves Mike and John. Tim had become an impediment to their plans. How sad that while his father successfully prosecuted killers, Tim had become a victim of murder.
    California officers wanted to find Mike and John. Anyone who would kill so ruthlessly could be expected to do so again. State Highway Patrol Lieutenant William Endicott and Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Lieutenant Robert Andre headed the search team. They had one thing in their favor; the killers probably assumed that both Tim Luce and Susan Bartolomei were dead. And if they believed their victims were both dead, there was no reason for the killers to leave the Sonora area. The information that Susan was still alive was deliberately withheld from the media.
    Jamestown, known locally as Jimtown, was a picturesque one-block hamlet three miles from Sonora. It was a railroad town back in 1897. It was eleven o’clock in the morning when Constable Ed Chafin arrived in town, after making his customary early morning rounds. He had heard the police radio call regarding two fugitives and had checked passing cars that morning with a little more care than usual. Chafin knew which cars belonged to locals and which belonged to tourists; there weren’t that many of the latter lately.
    He spotted a green 1967 Buick parked on Jamestown’s main street in front of the hotel. It was unoccupied, and it bore Oregon plates. There was a car parked in front of it, and Chafin pulled in behind it, deliberately nudging its bumper so the Buick could not be driven away. He got out and walked around the car, studying it. Something wasn’t right. The girl who had been shot had gasped that her attackers had driven a Mercury.
    And yet …
    He had a feeling. “Sometimes when you’ve been in law enforcement long enough, that