The Phantom Photographer: Murder in Marin Mystery - Book 3 (Murder in Marin Mysteries) (21 page)

With all the people hunting skills he had acquired, going back into the business of catching the right people at the wrong time, was made all the easier by the warm and open embrace of the good people of Mill Valley. By now, he was a welcome and familiar sight, always with a camera slung over his shoulder, a person whose presence you would hardly notice. The ideal status for a man who most coveted opportunities to hide in plain sight.
 

Walt, unintentionally but ever helpful to Michael’s schemes, arranged for his young protégé to have a photo exhibit of what he called, “The Faces and Places of Mill Valley, California.” The exhibit opened with a wine and cheese reception, which was surprisingly well attended, given that it was a wet night in December at the start of the holiday season.
 

As anxious as Michael was to return to the business of blackmail, he set his intention to be Mill Valley’s undeclared master photographer. The night of the opening, Holly Cross, then a senior at Tam High School, met Michael for the first time. Nearly twenty years later, when Michael came to meet Rob Timmons for the first time, Holly remembered still the night of that exhibit. She said little during their meeting, but once he left, she rushed into Rob’s office.

“Oh, my God, Michael Marks wants to be a community volunteer for the
Standard
; that’s wonderful.”

“Well, he sure has a wonderful portfolio,” Rob said, pleased with the offer. “Running small community newspapers, you never know who is going to walk through your door.”

Michael decided to allow himself the holiday season, concluding with New Year’s Day 1990, before getting back to the business of extortion. Once he did, victims came easier and fell faster than ever before.
 

The local orthodontist, Dr. Weber, was a good place to start. Michael had long ago observed that in his peculiar line of work, the vain were inevitably the most easily ensnared. Weber was thirty-seven and considered himself something of a rock star among orthodontists. What surprised Michael was not the affair Weber was carrying on with his twenty-nine year-old hygienist, but the relationship he was having with a patient who was the wife of a relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. Sometime after giving her the, “smile she had always wanted,” the two began a passionate affair.
 

Weber rented a home along Stinson Beach at a discounted rate for the off-season, and the two of them snuck away on weekends when her ballplayer husband left for Arizona to join his team at spring training. The photos he caught were quite artful, and completely terrifying to Weber, who panicked at the thought of her husband, who had the arms and the chest of a major leaguer, scattering his perfect smile all over the floor of his office. Not to mention the misery the doctor’s wife, who doubled as his office manager, would create for him as well.

Posing as a patient in search of a better smile, Michael struck a deal for $750 per month with no end date. As he learned in the case of both Fancher and Fred, there really was never a need for an end date. If, for example, Dr. Weber’s wife became wise to his philandering ways, or the ballplayer’s wife chose another lover, or both scenarios occurred, these secrets would lose their value. As long as they needed their secrets kept, his clients would find the means to keep paying. Whether that’s for one year or twenty.

Michael set a goal of catching two targets per year. Two months after he had reached a payment agreement with Dr. Weber, he moved on to a middle-age rock star named Alan Dickman, known to his fans as Al D. His home was nearby on Hazel Avenue, and it was easily observed from an undeveloped lot that sat just above it off Rose Avenue.
 

Walt had put him on the scent by sharing his curiosity that Al D. might have a penchant for particularly young girls. It took just a few days of following Al D. from place to place to verify that he was, indeed, involved with a girl forty years his junior. Specifically, a seventeen year-old Tam High School senior named Tory Charles.
 

Michael particularly enjoyed his pursuit of Al D., who was a popular figure in town, mostly because a few Saturday nights a year, when he wasn’t on tour, he would entertain at Mill Valley’s well known nightspot for live music, the Sweetwater Café. There he met up with other celebrated locals such as Bonnie Raitt, Carlos Santana, and Joan Baez.
 

Michael had little interest in whether Tory was Al D.’s first and only minor or one in a string of under aged women. One night, he brought to the Sweetwater his favorite photo of the two making love and sharing lines of cocaine.

After explaining he was a, “really big fan,” Michael slid a well-focused image of
 
Tory sitting nude on the lap of Al D., who was also naked. Handing him a Sharpie, Michael gushed, “I was wondering if you’d like to sign this for me. It’s my favorite photo of you with one of your fans.”

With no one close by at the moment, Al D. put on his reading glasses and was not at all pleased with what he saw. He tore the photo into four parts, and under his breath asked, “Where did you get this?”

“I told you, I’m a big fan and I follow you around. Now this girl you’re with, Tory Charles, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but she’s a seventeen year-old high school student, and in addition to photos of the two of you having sex together, I have a couple of great photos of the two of you sharing a few lines of cocaine. I mean, wow, sex with a minor and providing drugs to a minor; shit, if this stuff gets out, your only gigs for the next fifteen or twenty years will probably be up in Folsom prison.”

Al D., similar to many of Michael’s victims, turned red as a beet. After a series of threats involving bodily harm, killing his family, and so on, Michael suggested that they meet to work out the terms of a deal.
 

Al D. was a highly successful transaction. He retained Michael as a personal photographer for twelve hundred and fifty dollars per month. When Al told him that was a lot of money, Michael casually suggested Al D. look at the savings he could obtain by simply cutting back on his cocaine habit. “Best of all,” Michael added, “you’ve turned a career-ending disaster into a legitimate tax write-off.”
 

Every now and then, Michael would follow Al D. just out of prurient interest. To his surprise, just three months after dropping Tory, Al took up with another underage girl. Michael thought about ensnaring him a second time, but quickly abandoned the idea. Michael’s father, Caleb, a man well accustomed to turning away from a fight, often reminded his sons of the advice his father frequently gave him, “Quit while you’re ahead.” Al D.’s checks continued to land every month in his post office box; it was time for him to move on to other targets.
 

Michael’s life fell into a predictable pattern with certain extraordinary exceptions. There was, for example, a series of long-term girlfriends, but at some point, as was the case with Joanne Hill, a woman would reach in at a time when they shared a romantic moment and ask the question Michael refused to answer, “Don’t you think it’s time that we take this relationship to the next level?” Michael heard these seemingly innocent words as the sirens’ song warning that another relationship had reached its expiration date. He could not resist his interest in the opposite sex, but fear of his mother’s betrayal spoiled any thought of a long term commitment.

Many years later, Walt announced he was toying with the idea of selling his shop.
 

“Who would buy it?” Michael asked.

“I was hoping you would.”
 

Still a bachelor, with a long relationship with the city’s librarian, Walt shared his hope to escape the daily grind of owning a retail business and running off one day soon with his lady friend to Costa Rica.

“I can’t afford to buy this business. Where did you get the idea that I could?”

“You seem like a sport around town from what I hear. Going from one fancy restaurant to another, flashing your cash and buying people drinks.”

“That’s just money I got from a rich uncle who died and left me fifty thousand. I’ve already spent most of it.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“Believe what?”

“That you’d spend that much money.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m still the dumb kid who walked in here looking for a job.”

Of course, this was all a fabrication on Michael’s part. Working at the camera shop had continued to be his best source of information. But, actually buying a camera shop in the age of digital photography, he viewed as impractical. On the Internet, cameras and equipment were sold every day for lower prices than Walt could match and make his monthly operating costs. And, of course, profit margins for the sale of film were becoming less meaningful with each passing month.
 

Enthusiasts who swore for years that they could never allow themselves to forget the world of negatives, print paper, and developing chemicals, steadily abandoned the old techniques as the digital tsunami pushed past history out of its way.
 

There was no bright future for this old camera shop; a reality Walt, Michael thought, would be wise to finally accept. In fact, Michael was pleased and surprised to find that Milton, now well past retirement age, was still running his shop up in Novato. Just keeping the doors open selling retail cameras and supplies was an accomplishment in itself.