U Is for Undertow (Kinsey Millhone 21)

On the wall to my immediate right, the floor-to-ceiling shelves were lined with telephone directories for numerous California cities and towns. The shelves below were filled with additional phone books from assorted cities across the country. I circled the periphery in search of the Polk directory, the Haines, and the six decades’ worth of Santa Teresa city directories that I knew were housed nearby.

The Polk and the Haines are both crisscross directories that offer a means of discovering and cross-referencing the name, address, and occupation of any individual or business in a given area. Where the target is a business, you can also determine the number of people employed and any relevant sales figures. If, as in my case, all you have is a name, you can usually find the person’s home address. If all you have is an address, you can pick up the name of the occupant. By shifting to the city directory, you can check the list of residents against a second alphabetical listing of street addresses. The house numbers are sequential, providing the name and phone number of the resident at any particular address. While the information is redundant, each category supplies tidbits that can be pieced together to form a quick sketch.

I pulled both the Polk and the Haines for 1966 and then selected three city directories—1965, 1966, and 1967—which I carried to the table. I moved my shoulder bag to the floor and pulled up the chair. From the depths of my bag, I removed a notebook and a ballpoint pen. There was only one family named Kirkendall: Keith (CPA) and Margie (grphic dsgnr) at 625 Ramona Road. I made a note of the address and added the names and the house numbers of the neighbors on each side. In Horton Ravine, the properties range from three- to ten-acre parcels, with some larger ones as well. There are no sidewalks and the houses are set back from the road. I couldn’t picture visits back and forth between neighbors or idle gossip across a side-yard fence. I’d never seen anyone seated on the porches visible from the road. My guess was that people were more likely to get acquainted by way of church, the country club, or the numerous civic organizations around town.

While I was doing a paper search, I looked for Michael Sutton’s former address on Via Ynez. I copied the house number in my notebook and then switched over to the Polk, where I picked up the old phone number. In 1967, when Mary Claire Fitzhugh was kidnapped, her family lived on Via Dulcinea. Again, in the interest of being thorough, I found the names of the neighbors on each side. After a twenty-one-year gap, much of the information I’d gleaned would be out of date, but having the names on hand might save me a return trip. I checked the most recent telephone book and made a note of the one listing that was still good.

I replaced the various directories and went downstairs to the periodicals department. At the back desk, I asked the librarian for microfilm copies of the Santa Teresa Dispatch, covering the stretch of dates that encompassed the Mary Claire Fitzhugh kidnapping. I wanted to review the news coverage of the crime before I did anything else. Sutton had sketched in certain significant points, but his prime focus was the time frame and mine was the bigger picture, including details he might have missed.

The librarian returned with two boxed rolls of microfilm, dated July 1-31, 1967, and August 1-31, 1967. I took a seat at a nearby table, flipped on the microfilm reader, threaded the reel under the glass plate, and caught the end piece on the roller. I pressed the button and watched news pages whiz by at a rate that made me dizzy. I paused now and then to check the date line at the top of the page and when I neared the 19th of July, I slowed and began to look in earnest.

The kidnapping garnered front-page headlines for the first time on Sunday, July 23, and occupied center stage for the following ten days, though the account in each edition was much the same. It was clear the FBI had kept a tight rein on the information released to the public, which forced the reporters into endless repetitions of the same few facts. The basics were much as Sutton had related, though I picked up several details he hadn’t mentioned. Mary Claire vanished on Wednesday morning, July 19, though the crime wasn’t reported until four days later. In that interval, which included the whole of Friday and much of Saturday, the police and the FBI had stepped in and put a lock on the case, ensuring that no whisper of the crime reached the public. Events leading up to the abduction were spelled out, but there was little information from that point on.

I started taking notes, in part to distract myself from the specifics of what went down. Even in the flat who, what, where, when, and how of journalism, the story made something in my chest squeeze down. What made the sensation worse was the black-and-white photograph of Mary Claire that appeared with every article. Her gaze was so direct I felt I was looking into her soul. Her smile was sunny, her eyes shaded by pale bangs. The rest of her hair was held back on each side with a plastic barrette. The dress she wore had ruffles down the front, tiny pearl buttons, and puffed sleeves over arms plump enough to kiss. The photographer had given her a stuffed bunny to hold so the occasion might have been Easter of that year.