Half Moon Bay: A Novel (Clay Edison Book 3)

I got a letter—an actual letter—from the FBI.

Regarding my Freedom of Information Act request, a search of the Central Records System maintained at FBI Headquarters had located potentially responsive records. A total of seven hundred ninety-four pages had been declassified and sent to the National Archives and Records Administration facility in College Park, MD, for further processing. If I wished to review these potentially responsive records, I should contact the archive, making reference to case…

I bushwhacked NARA’s voicemail to reach an archivist named Julie Tallich in the Special Access room. She sounded young and articulate.

And harried. Under the best of circumstances, they had a mile-long backlog, and the recent government shutdown had buried them in unfulfilled requests.

She couldn’t simply hand over the file. First someone had to sanitize it, line by line.

“Sanitize it for what? I thought it was declassified.”

“All that means is the FBI doesn’t object to the release of the information in a general sense. We still have to review it. Anything pertaining to living persons or that discloses protected operational methods has to be removed.”

“How long will that take?”

“A file of that length typically takes a couple of weeks, a month at the outside. The issue is that there’s a lot of requests ahead of yours. It could take a while before we begin.”

“I’m afraid to ask what’s ‘a while.’ ”

“At the moment, we’re three to five years out.”

“Oh man.”

“When it’s ready we’ll let you know. At that point you can either travel to College Park to view the records yourself, or we can send you hard copies. I should warn you that it’s eighty cents a page, so it can get expensive.”

I didn’t think Peter Franchette would object to shelling out a few hundred bucks, assuming he could stomach the delay.

I couldn’t. I phoned Special Agent Tracy Golden at the FBI resident agency in Oakland. She’d never responded to any of my attempts to follow up, and when I finally got her on the line she began hemming and hawing.

“I thought I emailed the listserv for you.”

“You did. I was able to meet with the original agent. He’s super sharp, super helpful. I appreciate the connect.”

“Sure thing. Glad to help.”

“You know how memories are, though. I’d still like to see the file, if possible.”

“Did you try FOIA?”

“By the time it gets to me my daughter will be able to read it.”

“How old’s your daughter?” she said.

“Eight and a half months. Do me a solid. Please.”

Tracy Golden blew out air. “You got some balls, you know that?”

Ten days later, she called to let me know that she had it, all seven hundred ninety-four pages.

I offered to drop by her office.

“Better I come to you,” she said.

That evening at the Coroner’s Bureau, I went down to the darkened lobby and unlocked the doors. Tracy Golden was in her midthirties, five-foot-one in low pumps, with a deep tan and a dishwater-colored haircut ten years too old. She fizzed with nervous energy, her credentials swinging on a neck lanyard, a turquoise-and-silver pendant playing peekaboo behind.

At her feet sat a huge, shabby cardboard box.

“No copies,” she said.

“Understood. Thanks. I’ll have it back to you as soon as I can.”

She seemed to be wavering: weighing the benefit of helping me against its potential cost, and coming up short.

Before she could change her mind, I picked up the box and gave her my best crowd-pleasing smile. “Thanks again. I owe you two.”

She scurried back to her car, continually checking over her shoulder.

—

YOU CAN TELL a lot about an organization from how it keeps its records. Who’s writing? What’s preserved? What’s not?

I’d never read an FBI case file before. You couldn’t knock them for lack of thoroughness. Every move Buddy Hopewell and Phil Shumway made—every thought that crossed their minds—became the basis for a report, in turn touching off a torrent of forms, memoranda, airtels, cablegrams. Each communication dragged along cover letters and administrative pages and daisy-chained reference copies of previous paperwork, much of it out of order, chronologically. Documents documented the issuance of other documents. When in doubt, write it down. Better too much than too little.

It was like watching a person wade through a mud lake, steadily accumulating mass, until he emerges on the other side monstrously ballooned.

In the explosion of paper I saw the hand of Assistant Special Agent in Charge Francis Ingles, the cover-your-ass mentality fear produces. I thought of Tracy Golden’s jitters, and I wondered how much the culture had evolved since the days when Buddy watched his boss reduce a man to tears over a clerical error.

A sense of self-importance came through, as well, the desire to preserve everything for posterity, while simultaneously erecting a wall of jargon to keep outsiders out. We’re the goddamn FBI. Every law enforcement agency—every group of humans—is guilty of this to some extent. We speak in code because it’s more efficient and because it infuses bureaucratic drudgery with a bit of esprit de corps.

The FBI house style was formal, heavily seasoned with acronyms and referring to the agents in third person, as though they had a camera crew on them while they worked.

On April 21, 1970, SAS MILTON W. HOPEWELL and PHILIP J. SHUMWAY established a FISUR of the residence of JANICE LITTLE, 2119 Ward St., Berkeley.

FISUR, I discovered, was physical surveillance—as opposed to MISUR (microphone surveillance) or TESUR (technical surveillance).

At 11:40 AM JANICE LITTLE was observed to leave her residence. Ms. LITTLE was approached by these agents and asked if she was Ms. LITTLE. She turned away from them and began walking west toward Shattuck Avenue. The agents accompanied her along the sidewalk and identified themselves as Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Ms. LITTLE replied ‘I know who you are, pigs’ and turned north onto Shattuck Avenue. The agents advised Ms. LITTLE that federal statute makes it a crime for anyone to willingly or knowingly make false statements to, or to conceal information material to an investigation from, agents of the United States government. Ms. LITTLE stated in a loud voice ‘Get fucked.’ Ms. LITTLE then entered the Ajna Third Eye bookstore located at 2715 Shattuck Avenue. The agents elected not to continue into the bookstore. FISUR was terminated at 11:46 AM.

I laughed, picturing Buddy typing this up about himself.

Milton.

Who’d have guessed?

More isn’t always more. Bloat made the file’s length deceptive, and once I learned to screen out redundancies, I was able to move quickly, mining snippets of useful information from within the filler.

I found the Berkeley Fire Department report, brief and thin on detail. The narrative alluded to a canvass. But there were no names given, and no follow-up, presumably because Buddy and Phil had swooped in before it could be completed. The local PD reports were likewise stunted. It amazed me to realize that there’d been a time when you could cauterize the flow of information by stealing a stack of paper.

I found Norman Franchette’s FD-302 interview form, in which he was described as displaying an aggressive demeanor. Subsequent surveillance observed him purchasing the April and May issues of Gent magazine.

I found a list of subversives the agents had questioned—thirty-one in total, all of whom reacted exactly as Janice Little had. Reports bearing Buddy’s name at the top dutifully recorded each fuck and cocksucker and asshole. Phil Shumway preferred to write that the subject had “employed profanity.”

On April 6, 1970, confidential informant T-9, of known reliability, attested that the fire at the Franchettes’ was not the work of Little or her boyfriend, Jake Rosen. They’re too smart for that the informant said. Buried in that same report was the earliest reference to Chrissy Klausen: A single line noted her Friday-night alibi.

Visiting sister for weekend, confirmed telephonically.

As far as I could see, nobody had ever spoken to Claudia or Helen Franchette.

The initial report on the kidnapping noted Peggy Franchette’s date of birth as February 9, 1969. She had straight hair, medium blond to brown, and dark-brown eyes. At the time of abduction, per her most recent pediatric exam, she weighed twenty-two pounds, four ounces, and was twenty-six-and-a-half inches tall. She had five teeth, three upper and two lower. She was last seen wearing a pale yellow dress, white socks, white shoes, and a diaper.

Paper-clipped to the corner was a small snapshot with scalloped edges.

In point of fact it didn’t add much to the written description. The color was washed out and the focus barely adequate. She wasn’t smiling. I assumed they’d chosen it because it was the most up-to-date.

Simply to see her face, however, took my breath away.

I went through the batch of Franchette family photos Peter Franchette had given me, comparing each of them with Peggy.

Family resemblances are elusive. They evolve over time and draw on our expectations. Recently, while playing with Charlotte, I’d been startled to catch a glimpse of Amy’s dad. It’s an uncanny sensation, to look down and realize you’re tickling your father-in-law.

Made to choose, I would say that Peggy Franchette favored her mother.

No copies.

Nobody said anything about no pictures.

Next time, Agent Golden, choose your words more carefully.

I took out my phone and switched to the camera.

—

MOVING ON, I came upon more photos: thick, creased black-and-whites of Codornices Park, X’d in pen at the site of the struggle between Chrissy and the two men.

I read Buddy’s report on his visit with Chrissy in the hospital, where she was being treated for multiple lacerations to the face and hands, three fractured ribs, and a fractured tibia. By and large the story she told him conformed to the one he’d told me. The white guy was older and wore jeans and a baseball cap. The black guy had an Afro. When they ran at her, she misunderstood, thinking they wanted her wallet, or to drag her into the bushes and rape her. She tried to get away, but they cornered her. She put Peggy down behind her and used her body to block the men. She didn’t want Peggy to get hurt; she needed to be able to defend herself. But that was a mistake, a horrible mistake. If she’d only held on to Peggy instead, she might’ve been able to stop the white man from picking her up and running off.

The subject cried as she spoke. After forty minutes she expressed discomfort and fatigue and a desire to rest, and Special Agent Milton W. Hopewell terminated the interview.

There was no mention of a dark sedan.

Maybe it had come up later.

I skimmed back, skimmed ahead.

Buddy and Phil had interviewed Chrissy three more times, once with the sketch artist, once as a follow-up, and the last time with a psychiatrist.

The facial composites Chrissy had helped to create were strikingly old-fashioned, almost romantic, drawn freehand in pencil and pastel.

One nondescript black guy with an Afro. One nondescript white guy in a hat.

The psychiatrist, Dr. James H. Kayman, had written his own report. He spent nine pages delving into Chrissy’s childhood. Under hypnosis, the patient had unearthed a history of molestation at the hands of her father, memories henceforth suppressed. The attack had revived the trauma; her response was to suppress that experience, as well. The more recent the memory, Kayman wrote, the more difficult its retrieval. Consider the ease with which an old scab peels away, as opposed to a fresh wound, still bleeding.

At no point did Chrissy say anything about a car.

I couldn’t see the agents failing to record such an important detail. A lost page seemed more likely. But that’s a pitfall of static data: You don’t know what you don’t know.

The one person who did bring up the car was the second eyewitness—the dog walker, named Floyd Neeley. He told Phil Shumway he’d been climbing Eunice Street when a sedan raced around the corner and tore off downhill, westbound. Navy blue or black. A Pontiac, though he wouldn’t raise his hand to that. He wasn’t able to describe the driver with any confidence. Nor had he noticed anyone else in the vehicle. He apologized. He hadn’t paid it much mind. Only in retrospect, after he got a little closer to the park and heard the lady hollering her lungs out, did it seem to mean anything.

Reading this, I wondered if Buddy had conflated parts of Neeley’s story with Chrissy’s. If so—if Chrissy had never claimed to see a car—that cast doubts on my doubts about the veracity of her story.

But there was still the problem of the fall from the platform.

In spring 1975, the case went inactive. Francis Ingles signed the form making the change in status. From then on, the paper trail began to dwindle. When Buddy and Phil got on the horn for their annual review, it was Phil who rendered the terse verdict.

No further progress.

The penultimate document was a report dated February 19, 1988, describing an interview between Phil Shumway and Janice Little, at her home in the Oakland hills.

Times had changed. You could see it in the font, ever-so-slightly modernized. According to SA Shumway, the subject was cordial and candid. Gone was the Janice Little who skulked around federal property with lighter fluid and matches; who traveled to Cuba in defiance of a State Department ban, posing for photos with Raúl Castro; who had served fourteen months in federal prison for conspiracy and money laundering.

Now she was part owner of a sandwich shop that employed ex-convicts. She stated that she had always preferred peaceful forms of resistance.

Phil, too, had changed. His writing was freer. At times he lapsed into the first person.

The impetus for their conversation was the publication of Janice Little’s autobiography, Winds of Progress. Phil had brought his copy with him, and at one point he read a passage aloud to her, which he quoted, unabridged, in the report.

“Around this time the cops really started to put the pressure on. They would hassle us for no good reason, coming to our door before dawn or calling us on the phone in the middle of the night. Jake and I talked it over, and we decided that it was for the best that we withdraw from direct action. We had to find other ways to help the movement, whether that meant writing or recruiting others to take up the reins. Leadership, I learned, means delegating. That lesson was slow to come to me, as I was the type of person who wanted to be on the front lines. But revolutions don’t happen because of one or two individuals; they happen because the majority wakes up and realizes that things must change.”

Who were the “others,” Phil wanted to know. What had they been recruited for?

Janice Little demurred. She wasn’t referring to any one person or event, just aiming to capture “the zeitgeist.”

The report intrigued me, in part for its content, but more so because it existed in the first place. Shumway had taken the time to buy Janice Little’s book and read it. If he wanted her requestioned, it would have been far more sensible to call Buddy in San Francisco and ask him to pop over the bridge.

Instead, Phil Shumway had gotten on a plane.

There was no indication that he’d told Buddy he was coming.

The final document in the file, also by Phil, was an investigative review from November of that same year. He opened with facts. Soon, however, the tone took an intensely personal turn, as Special Agent Philip J. Shumway reflected on nearly twenty years of futility.

In his opinion, they’d gotten it wrong, right from the jump. The need to identify a single perpetrator or group of perpetrators responsible for both the fire and the kidnapping had created a false set of constraints.

Buddy Hopewell had voiced a similar complaint, although not as plainly. More telling was the difference in how the agents evaluated themselves. I’d pressed Buddy about the political angle, and he’d shifted responsibility to Ingles, either to be circumspect or to insulate himself from criticism.

Phil Shumway, on the other hand, was unsparing in grading his own work.

This agent wishes to state for the record that he allowed himself to be led astray. A great deal of time was squandered that might have been spent pursuing other, better leads.

It was a quiet outburst, a career civil servant’s cri de coeur.

As for what those better leads were, I caught sight in the final paragraph.

It is the belief of this agent that the investigation to the present moment has ignored the role of Ms. Klausen and that an effort should be made to ascertain her whereabouts with all possible expedience.