The Wine Red Road

THE WINE RED ROAD

JIM PERKINS

Copyright © 2012 Jim Perkins

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-4477-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-4478-6 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 4/17/2012

CONTENTS

FORWARD

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FORWARD

This is a work of fiction.

All characters and police personnel are totally fictitious and products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person living or dead or real is strictly coincidental.

All events and incidents are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events or incidents is strictly coincidental.

The interstate highways, county roads and cities named herein generally are real. A few local road names, particularly The Wine Red Road, are fictitious. Most, though not all, of the landmark structures are real but are used strictly as location references to enhance the story. The End of the Road Diner does not exist

Any reference to businesses or companies or their products are strictly coincidental or are products of the author’s imagination.

The police dispatcher calls and officer responses are those used by the author as an officer of the California Highway Patrol from 1968 through 1976. The badge numbers used herein are fictitious and any resemblance to actual badge numbers is strictly coincidental.

Dedicated to former teachers, editors, employers and past and current friends who have encouraged me to write.

"Life on earth is hand-to-hand mortal combat . . .

between the law of love and the law of hate."

Jose Marti

CHAPTER I

A man of the cloth should not commit suicide. But my wife Cindy was dead of cancer. After 33 years of marriage my life felt empty and without purpose.

At least I never ruined my marriage by committing adultery or murder. My father, if he were still alive would counsel me to be thankful for that.

I learned my lesson about the horrific consequences of adultery when I was not quite 17 and accompanied my father to a double homicide on the Del Valle Dam Road, the Amador Valley’s infamous Wine Red Road. In fact, that incident had a lot to do with me becoming a priest.

Still, I seriously considered smacking my car head on into the speeding 18-wheeler coming the other way. I wanted to forget what I’d always preached about loving God first and then your spouse. It was far easier to harp on other people about the need to put their faith into action in times of grief than to do it myself.

I had always said, Give your pain to God. Call on your faith to sustain you during your tribulation.

Shouldn’t the same advice apply to me?

* * *

My parents owned a small weekly newspaper at the time of the Del Valle Dam Road murders. My dad kept a police scanner in the kitchen of our home, in his office at work, and in our car. A scanner was a radio device that scanned police and fire calls. By listening to one, my dad kept track of all calls to which the local firefighters and police officers responded, and decided if he wanted to drive to the scene to get a story for his newspaper.

It was a hot Friday night in August, just after 11 o’clock. The family was still up. We often stayed up late toward the end of the week because that’s when a lot of news stories occurred. My mom, dad, brother, two sisters and I were just finishing a family game of Crazy Eights at the kitchen table when we heard the call asking the California Highway Patrol to respond to a traffic accident. The accident had occurred on Interstate 580, just east of Livermore.

25-584, Oakland, 11-83, Altamont Pass, three miles east of the Vargas Road truck scales.

That’s the Oakland dispatcher telling a CHP unit, 25-584, that there’s a crash on the Altamont Pass and it’s unknown if there are injuries, dad explained to our family.

Are you going to go out on that? my mom asked.

I don’t know, dad said. He listened intently to the scanner. Let’s wait and see if it sounds serious.

A couple of minutes went by without 25-584 responding to the Oakland dispatcher.

25-584, Oakland, the scanner squawked again. Do you copy? 11-83 in the Altamont Pass, three miles east of the Vargas Road truck scales.

584 copies, Oakland, a male voice finally responded. We were out of the car. We’re rolling Code-3 from 580 and El Charro Road."

Code-3 meant with red light and siren, I knew. But I didn’t totally understand all the numbers the dispatcher had rattled off. What’s 25-584 stand for? I asked my dad.

Each CHP area office has a number and each office divides highways they patrol into beats, my dad explained. 25 is the Hayward area office number and 584 is a beat somewhere on Interstate 580 between the CHP’s Hayward office and the Alameda, San Joaquin county line.

It’s late at night and the CHP is short-handed, so 584 might be patrolling the entire Amador Valley, including Interstate 580 and 680; that’s roughly 400 square miles. On the other hand, it’s Friday night so they may have one or two other cars out here, but I’m not sure. Their swing shift ends at 10 p.m. then their graveyard shift comes on and I know they don’t have a very big graveyard shift.

So, if that unit was just patrolling Highway 680 their call sign would be 25-680 something, I surmised.

You got it, dad said.

Well, I’m going to bed, mom said.

She stood up from the table and stretched and yawned.

I’m not quite ready for bed, dad said. Maybe I will take a quick drive up on to the Altamont to see what’s going on.

Can I go too? I asked.

Sure, my dad said.

Jack. Mom protested.

He’s old enough Nancy, dad said. "Come on Brad, he said to me.

Okay, mom said. But the rest of us are going to bed.

It did not sit well with my brother Bobby and my sisters Janice and Janine that I got to stay up and go on an adventure with our father when they had to go to bed. But I was the oldest of us kids and rank did have a few privileges.

Dad and I jumped in the family van and headed up the Altamont. It was only a couple miles from our home.

Before we traveled very far, however, the CHP unit called its dispatcher to report no luck finding an accident.

Oakland, 25-584.

584, Oakland. Go ahead.

11-83 appears GOA. We’re almost to the county line and there’s no sign of anything.

Copy 584. 11-83 is GOA.

GOA means gone on arrival? I asked dad.

It does, he said. He seemed somewhat disappointed.

Guess we might as well head back home, he said.

I have to go to the bathroom, I said. Can we pull into the rest area at the top of the pass?

Sure, dad said.

We exited the eastbound lanes of 580 at the summit of the Altamont Pass, and pulled into the rest area there to use the bathroom. Several semi-trucks and eighteen wheelers were parked at the rest stop. Their refrigerator compressors shattered the stillness of the night, rattling noisily to keep their cargos of California produce cool. Their exhausted drivers dozed fitfully in stuffy padded sleeper cabs.

A couple of three-quarter ton pickup trucks towing Airstream travel trailers and bearing Iowa license plates were parked at the rest stop too. I noticed lights on in one of the trailers. After I used the bathroom my dad decided he needed to go, so I had time and opportunity to see what was happening in the lighted trailer.

Two women and two men were seated at a table playing cards. From their action with the cards, taking tricks and that sort of thing, I deduced they were playing pinochle or bridge.

I watched from a puddle of dark shadow near one of the semis as a thin, wiry-looking man with white peach fuzz on his head and bifocals perched precariously on the end of his nose, led off a round of taking tricks. A plump, matronly woman seated to the leader’s left, adjusted a shawl around her shoulders, sipped something from a flowered tea cup then followed the man’s suit. The second man, a robust, outdoors-looking type, dressed in flannel shirt and coveralls, and smoking a pipe, briefly pondered the discard pile then made his play.

The second woman, a skinny, silver-coiffed minx with sun-abused skin, placed her half-empty glass carefully on a coaster, slapped her trump card triumphantly on the outdoorsman’s card and laughed gleefully. The outdoorsman let out a bellow of rage that could be heard from the trailer’s open door clear across the highway. The outdoorsman threw his remaining cards on the table and huffed out onto the parking lot and cursed loudly.

I ducked back out of sight beside the semi. I wondered briefly why it was taking my dad so long to come out of the men’s room and thought I should probably get back into our car. Dad wouldn’t like me eavesdropping like I was. Still, I couldn’t resist.

The plump woman joined the outdoor man outside and I could hear them talking.

You okay Charlie? the woman asked.

I’m sorry I walked out like that, Charlie said. It just ticks me off the way she takes so much joy in beating me.

I know, the woman said soothingly. She put her hand on his arm and looked into his eyes.

I wish we were free to be together like we want to be, she said. It’s just . . .

I know. We’d lose too much if you divorced Don and I divorced Jeri-Lynn. If we were both younger it might not be such a financial hardship to start over again. But at our age . . .

It doesn’t matter, the woman said. We can spend as much time together as we want.

You’re right, the man said. Besides, if we were married we probably would wind up hating each other too.

I could never hate you Charlie, the woman said. You’re my soul mate. If only I had met you forty years sooner.

I love you Grace, Charlie muttered.

The couple kissed. At that point I became too embarrassed to watch any longer and scurried back to the car. My dad was just coming out of the bathroom.

Sorry I took so long, he said. I ran into Lorne Roberts in there and we got to talking.

Who’s Lorne Roberts, I asked.

He’s a retired Alameda County Sheriff’s deputy, dad explained. I knew him when I worked for the East Bay Chronicle. You were pretty young so you don’t remember him. He and his wife divorced a few years ago and he moved to Modesto. He’s just on his way to Oakland to visit his kids.

On the ride back home I pondered the dilemma of being married to one person and wanting to be with another. How did that happen? Was it because you didn’t wait long enough for the right person to come along? Did your marriage partner suddenly turn ugly after a few years so you fell out of love? Why did people live lives of quiet desperation and cheat on each other? Why did they divorce?

I wondered if my mom and dad were ever unhappy with each other the way other married couples were. I guess they had been once, at least dad had been. But why, I wondered? Fortunately, he got religion and mom forgave him. They didn’t look unhappy now.

Actually, I didn’t want to know if they were unhappy. I just wanted them to be okay.

I vowed to keep looking for a wife until I found just the right person, no matter how long it took.

Dad often said, You have plenty of time Brad, and he was right.

I had to go to college and start a career. I was a long way from marrying anyone. Still, I couldn’t help wishing I had a steady girlfriend. Most of the guys I attended school with had steady girlfriends.

I thought of Cindy Carson. I met her at a school play last year, our sophomore year. I had even walked her to class a couple of times. But nothing much had happened after that.

The problem was she was dating Derek Montrose, the junior six-foot-nine center on our basketball team. Derek was so cocky. I didn’t like him to begin with, but the fact that he was dating Cindy made me dislike him even more. My dad advised me many times to pray for my enemies, but ever since I found out Derek was dating Cindy, I found it almost impossible to pray for him.

Still daydreaming, I found myself thinking about Mr. O’Brien who had recently been executed for the murder of his wife, her lover, and a Livermore police officer.

CHAPTER II

I had always considered my dad to be a little schizophrenic and Mr. O’Brien’s execution was a case in point. Maybe I shouldn’t say schizophrenic. Maybe I should just say my dad was kind of weird.

He wasn’t weird in the usual sense - totally nutburgers or anything like that – because generally speaking, he was a pretty cool guy. He was ruggedly handsome like his Scandinavian ancestors, possessed an athletic build and had big honest blue eyes. His hands were long-fingered and he had kind of big ears and his nose was a little bit larger than it really needed to be. But receiving a bear hug from my dad was an uplifting experience since he was a fairly brawny newspaper man who usually smelled like printer’s ink and after-shave lotion. Best of all, he was kind and patient, and his wry, appreciative wit was difficult to ignore.

But dad’s job made him a little crazy sometimes. He published a weekly newspaper – which could drive anybody crazy, he said.

The human side of me wants to believe that people are basically good and worth saving, he once told me. But the journalist side of me is always highly skeptical.

Sometimes, he became so conflicted when he worked on a story, he just got, well, weird.

Like I said, dad had a soft heart. He really wanted to believe in people. He said he felt like it was his job to promote justice by revealing injustice.

"But as a journalist I constantly meet people who seem totally incorrigible