Mystery at Bear Mountain

 

I’d worked late last night…into the wee hours of this morning. Rolling over in hopes of catching a few more zzz’s, I pulled my pillow, tight, over my head to escape the husband’s morning routine. Television blaring the morning news. Shower, all too merrily, spraying away sleeps lingering shadow. Coffee maker rumbling to a finish. Dogs bouncing around, slapping tails on the floor and whining to go out.

“Hey, honey! Isn’t that Babette’s real name?,” he shouts over the blow dryer.

“What the hell is he rambling on about?,” I think. Lifting my bed head out of hiding, I hear the newscaster continue:

“Early this morning, the body of Elizabeth Leann Evans, 54, of Redding was found by firefighters inside the wreckage of her burning double wide mobile.”

“For crissake, it is her!” I growl back as my stomach tightens with fear and anxiety. She’d been my best friend through high school. We’d been tighter than pegged jeans at one point in our lives but had slowly drifted apart. She’d headed down a haphazard and random path. And I? Well…let’s just say mine was orderly and calculated.

Our friends always seemed to think of us as the polar opposites of each other. The good and the bad. The light and the dark. The beautiful and the cute. The skinny and the fat. The sure thing and the not a chance in hell. Despite our differences, we were fast friends.

Babette had a thing for drugs. Hell, for a long time, we both did. After all, it was the 60s. Nearly everyone was trying everything they could get their hands on. In my case, it was always about having fun, experimentation and the thrill of getting away with anything I tried. In Babette’s case, obsession, compulsion, fascination and a deep, undying love of getting high motivated her every move.

Drugs shaped her entire existence. She followed the stem and seed laden trail of excess from pre-pubescent sex to alcohol to pot to psychedelics to snorting coke to freebasing to meth and beyond. Babette slung dope and rolled lids into joints for spending money. She gained notoriety as the best female grower in the area.

She went into nursing to be close to the drugs. It was no mistake that she was the best in her class at giving injections. She and the needle had become friends long ago. Not so much for herself, but she was good at hitting veins so her friends always asked her to tie them off and fire them up.

Over the years, she got thinner and thinner. She always had some lame excuse when asked about it. She was too poor to buy food. She was so busy and working hard at her new job. She was selling these fantastic new vitamins that just melted the fat away. And did I want to buy some because I could stand to shed 20 or 30 pounds. Why do people with addictions always think everyone falls for their transparent excuses?

Eventually, she became the lover of one largest pot growers in the area. Chief belonged to one of the Indian tribes that grew in the canyons between here and Humboldt. He was a good and handsome man and I truly believe that he loved Babette. But in the end, she went deeper into the murky forest of dealing than he wanted to go. And that is saying a lot.

After they split up, she kept company with some really scary and unsavory people. The few times I tried to visit her at her home, I was met by armed men and had to have her, personally, come to the gate to grant me access to her property.

A string of arrests followed. Babette pleaded no contest, in November 1996, to transportation or selling of a controlled substance. She also pleaded no contest, in February 1997, to possession of a controlled substance and illegal possession of ammunition. Deputies were called to her home, at Bear Mountain, numerous times on drug related issues. Her neighbors kept reporting her for running a meth lab and drug operations.

But, as of this morning, all that was left of  Babette for the corner to identify her charred body by, was her fingertips. 

Snapping out of my reminisce, I hear the newscaster continuing:

“A fast moving blaze gutted Ms. Evans mobile home, parts of an outbuilding, seared branches on overhanging trees and blackened two pickups parked in the driveway.

The investigators won’t say how she was murdered, but they say it’s obvious she died prior to the fire. About 35 crime scene investigators spent the morning sifting through the ashes and searching for evidence at the rural home, the surrounding 60 acres of property and the nearby road.

Furthermore, they say her case is eerily similar to two other cases in the area where people were murdered and then burned in their homes. But they don't believe there's a serial murderer -- one with a penchant for burning bodies -- on the loose.”

 

SUCKERS! I think to myself as I hop out of bed and head to the bathroom to tend my  burned and blistered fingers.

The Summer of '70

Somehow we came up just shy of having much autonomy in the Summer of '69. But we'd made a pact to make up for it in the Summer of '70. This is OUR season in the sun. This is one of OUR stories.


My girlfriend, Tina, pulls up in front of my house. I yell to my mom that I'm leaving. She yells back my curfew. I pretend not to hear. This summer, Tina's driving a turquoise, '63 Comet convertible from her father's used car lot. Every summer she gets a different car. We are two seventeen year old chicks heading out on a Saturday night. As my butt hits the seat, its black vinyl spanks me with searing heat. My hand, singed by the metal door frame, wincingly pulls it closed. It's nearly 7 p.m. and still crazy hot. But we look cool. We know it.


Our long, blond, ironed-straight-parted-in-the-middle hair, blazing in the sun, flying in the wind, we hit the freeway. It just opened and it is our playground. If we take the cloverleaf on-ramps in just the right order, we can circle all of them and shoot off the fourth one headed west and for town. Our cotton, paisley dresses, rippling as we cruise, fan short, hot, Coppertoned thighs. We head downtown to the AC. The good ol' Artic Circle. The burger joint of choice along the weekend cruise. Too early for much action--only a few people are hanging out. After ordering a couple of Cokes and hopping back into the convertible, we make a quick lap around town. Too quiet yet to command our attention so we head due west toward Whiskeytown Lake.


On the radio, KRDG's blasting Grand Funk Railroad's, I'm your Captain. The song lasts most of the way to the lake. The sun, like a giant, orange, one-eyed ogre, moves lower in the sky. Our round, John Lennon sunglasses protect us from its blinding assault. Turning left off the highway, we spin toward the back side of the lake. Parking, peeling our sweaty thighs off the plastic seat, we get out of the car. We make a quick hike of getting down to our favorite, hidden spot by the water. The sun loses its fight with the rise of the mountains. The mountains grace us with the relief of their shade. Sitting on large, sun warmed rocks, we flip our leather sandals to the sand. Feet dangle in the water. Wheat Straw rolling papers are pulled out. Seeds and stems are picked out of the baggie of Mexican weed and saved for leaner times. A big fattie gets rolled.


Sitting in silence, we finish sipping the harsh smoke of the yellow bomber. The copper wire and beaded roach clip, ceremoniously affixed to the last, wee bit of paper wrapped herb, gives us a few more hits. We witness the day flashing its last, green-gold ray of death. Extinguished as completely as the joint. What now? Find a party? Go to the drags? Find some music? The drive-in? Yeah, tonight we'll go to the drive-in. The Woodstock movie's out. We were too young and lived too far away to go to the festival last year. But even out here, on the west coast, we had felt the ripples of excitement and were stoked to see the movie.


Sandals get put back on feet. Feet head for the convertible. We make the ride back to town under the shadow of the mountains while taking in the Fresh Air of Quicksilver Messenger Service. Just in time to make the show, we head for the silver screened giant. Making a snail's roll through the line to the neon lit, moth swarmed ticket booth, we pull out our $1.50 per car load and find a place to park. Once giving the metal speaker on the post a home on the Comet's partially rolled up window, we head off to the snack bar. A munchie run is the first priority. Abba Zaba's, popcorn, Junior Mints, red licorice and a couple of fruit punches later, we head back to the car. Second priority...a potty stop.


We are ready for the movie and what a movie it is! Jimi Hendrix, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and Country Joe McDonald among many, many others. The Bum Trip Centers, set up by Abbie Hoffman, are filled with victims of the "not so good, brown acid" floating around. After the movie, riding high on its excitement, we head back out to the lake. Talking all the way. We had never seen that many musicians at one event. We had never seen crowds that big, stages that big, nor towers and speakers that big. No one had. And in the nearly 100-degrees-at-midnight heat, we pull those summer dresses off over our heads and kick off our sandals...again. Skinny dipping our bodies into the cool-warm layers of water, we melt grainy, salty, dried sweat from our skin. Gliding over the glassy layer of moonlit water and bouncing off of the surrounding mountains back at us, come our cheers: "Give me an 'F'." "Give me a 'U'." Give me a 'C'." "Give me a..."





The last day of summer in the northern hemisphere, has just given way to Autumn. As we poise in the balance of the dark and light of this equinox, in Redding, our temperatures are still rising above triple digit marks. It is hard to believe that we have crossed an invisible line marking a new chapter of the year. In thinking about the last days of summer, this memory keeps rising like a blurry, heat wave covered image. Memories of spending summers with my friend, Tina. For several years, our every Saturday night started and ended this same way. It makes me feel good to remember her when she was young and happy. She is dead now and her ending was not so fun or pretty. But that is a story for a darker part of the year.