A Killing in Zion (14 page)

“Do as the chief says. Go downstairs and let the polygamists go,” ordered Buddy. “Keep your investigation out of the papers from here on out, and Art…” Buddy looked at me. “Don't touch it.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

When Wit left, he slammed the door even harder than Sondrup, a feat I thought impossible. Cowley continued to recline far back in his chair, seemingly unfazed, although his slow, solemn blinks revealed a man pushed to the edge by stress. Buddy motioned to me with a subtle head jerk that I should go, too. I rose from my chair, tugged my hat brim, plunged my hands in my pockets, and smiled at the two men on my way out the door. I figured they both needed to see at least one friendly face that day.

 

Ten

At the end of the workday, I caught Tom Livsey in the corridor, closing his office door on his way home.

“'Lo there, Art,” he said, locking up. “Got any plans for the holiday?”

“A big barbecue at the Oveson homestead in American Fork,” I said. “You?”

“Who knows with this darn drought? I hear they might cancel the fireworks at Liberty Park, what with everything so dried out. That won't sit well with my kids.”

“That's a shame.” I pointed to a door with
MORGUE
on the frosted glass. “Mind if I take a peek at your new tenants?”

“Make it snappy.”

“Shouldn't take more than a few minutes.”

Tom unlocked the door and I followed him into a high-ceilinged room with tall windows, operating tables, and lab sinks. He threw a switch, electrifying rows of globes overhead. Bleach fumes assaulted my eyes as we crossed octagonal tiles to a wall of morgue refrigerators, four high, six across. He pulled rubber gloves on his hands and picked the top towel off a stack. He tossed it to me and I caught it with a puzzled expression.

“Just in case.”

I held the towel near my face as Tom unfastened a lever on a morgue drawer and slid it open, like a massive filing cabinet. He peeled back the sheet, revealing lifeless LeGrand Johnston with that puckering hole in his forehead, thoroughly scrubbed and drained of blood. His flesh had turned paler and sagged more than it had last night. The wisps of white hair on his head came into focus more clearly, as did the wrinkles on his neck and torso and his prune lips. I glimpsed the other two bullet holes, at the base of his neck and in his flabby stomach. Surveying the damage, I wondered if his soul had reached a better place. I supposed I'd never know.

“Shot three times with a .32. Same caliber used on the driver.”

“Any sign of the firearm?” I asked.

“I'm afraid not. We have Volney Mason's .45 caliber sidearm, which was used to fire a shot into the wall of the church, but not the one used to shoot the victims.”

“Did the police contact the next of kin?”

“Yes, they did this morning,” said Tom. “That'd be his wife Lucinda. Her son drove her here earlier this afternoon and they identified the body.”

“What was her demeanor?”

“Weeping, but not distraught.”

“When she was here, did you happen to mention the girl at the crime scene?”

“I did.”

“And?”

Tom shook his head. “She insisted that her husband was alone, taking care of business at the church, that there wasn't a girl with him. She has arranged with a mortuary to pick up her husband's body.”

“When are you releasing it?”

“Thursday. The family is planning a Saturday funeral in Dixie City.”

“Polygville.”

“Yep. Let me ask you, Art: Has Wit had any luck figuring out who the girl is?”

“Not yet. She either can't talk or won't talk, and the polygamists refuse to identify her. It's all a part of their crazy code of silence, I guess.”

I watched Tom pull the sheet over Johnston. “Two homicides,” I told him. “You're a busy man.”

“Care to see the other fella?”

“Sure, if you don't mind.”

“Not at all.”

Once more, he pulled a lever, gripped a handle, and used his weight to pull the drawer out of the wall. This time I did the honors, folding down the white linen covering the dead man. The first thing I noticed was the dark, scrubbed-out canyon where his left eye used to be. My eyes dropped to a toothbrush mustache that I had failed to notice on Monday night when I first saw him, the kind worn by Oliver Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, and Adolf Hitler. Death had transformed his face into a waxy, insubstantial mass of flesh, with his lips forming an ugly leer.

“What about his next of kin?”

“Mason's estranged wife dropped by during the noon hour and ID'd him,” said Tom. “Apparently, he's got a mother and a sibling or two. Pace Newbold told me they live in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area and they lost contact with him years ago. The wife has no money, so it looks like the city's going to foot the bill for burial.” Tom pointed at the sheet. “Finished?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Tom pulled the sheet back up, walked the drawer closed, and fastened the lever shut.

“Did Johnston have anything else on him, other than his wallet?”

“No.” Tom's brow wrinkled while he peeled off his gloves. “Come to think of it…”

He disposed of his gloves, led me out into the corridor, and shut off the lights and locked the morgue door him. He then went into his office—he was in there about half a minute—and came out with a file folder in hand. Out of it he pulled a tattered yellow handbill with creases and a bloodstain in the corner.

“This was in his jacket pocket,” he said.

Big letters spanned the top, like an Old West “Wanted” poster.
A NEW DAWN IN HOMESTEADING!
Next line, smaller font:
170
,
000
,
000 ACRES OF PRIME LAND STILL AVAILABLE FOR SETTLERS!
My eyes dropped to a longer message in a smaller type:

Have you ever wondered what it's like to own your own homestead?
WONDER NO LONGER!
Prime homestead land is still plentiful in the western states. In these hard times, having a piece of land to call your own is the dream of millions. There is prime land for the taking. Alas, most men are unaware of how to claim that land under federal Homestead Act laws. Do
YOU
know the rules? Well, friend, keep reading, for this is your chance to
BEAT THE DEPRESSION!
The goal of the Golden Valley Improvement Association is to help you obtain the homestead of your dreams. We will work with you through every stage of your application, and our ultimate reward is to see you farming on a piece of land that you can call your own. Don't wait another day! Send us your name, contact information, and return postage. We will arrange a meeting with you to discuss making your dream of being a homesteader come true. Mail to: Golden Valley Improvement Association, Box 130, Salt Lake City.

The bottom proclaimed,
TODAY
'
S PIONEERS ARE THE SUCCESS STORIES OF TOMORROW
. I flipped it over. On the back, someone had scrawled in smudged ink:
DELPHI, RM 308
. The only Delphi I knew of was the Delphi Hotel, a flophouse on State Street that I'd visited many times as a Morals Squad detective. With eight-bucks-a-month rooms, the place was a magnet for alcoholics, dope fiends, narco dealers, prostitutes, drifters, the unemployed, and frugal gents who led their mistresses in through the back door and rented rooms by the hour. Livsey watched me, expecting me to give back the handbill. I steadied myself to ask a question I dreaded asking.

“May I take this?”

He closed the folder. “You know the rules, Art.”

“I'll be careful.”

He thought it over and nodded his approval. A subtle nod, though, which told me he had misgivings, and I'd better take it while I could.

“Thanks.”

I was halfway to the stairs when he called out, “Happy Fourth of July, Art.”

I tipped my hat. “You too, Tom.”

“Remember. Don't come to work tomorrow!”

We both got a good laugh out of that one.

*   *   *

Had I been another minute later, I'd have missed the two orderlies escorting the girl from last night's crime scene to a Chevrolet with a state seal on its door idling out front. In an act of overkill, they'd chained her in shackles, and pulled her by the elbows on a forced march to the exit. I gave chase from the stairs, dodging people, till I breathlessly caught up with the men in white and the girl between them. “Hey!” They turned, spinning the girl with them, rattling chains, eyeing me as if I were a lunatic asylum escapee. One of the men toted what appeared to be a tattered white linen bag of some sort, made bulky by all of the things stuffed into it. I guessed those were her belongings.

“Where're you fellas taking her?”

“To the State Industrial School.”

“Feller upstairs signed off.”

The timid girl in homespun stood no chance in that pit of juvenile despair, where the guards thought a good beating was exactly what every inmate needed. I'd do whatever it took to stop these men from putting the girl in the reformatory, even if it meant fighting them with my fists. I hoped it wouldn't come to that.

Right then, Buddy Hawkins crossed through the lobby, on his way somewhere, perhaps home. A spectacular coincidence.

“Art,” he said. “What's going on?”

“Buddy! Just the man I wanted to … They're taking the girl away. The girl from the crime scene.”

Buddy gave me his best
Are you nuts?
squint. “Yeah. Of course they are. What other choice do we have? She won't tell us her name or address, so we can't contact her family. Besides, she might be a witness to a homicide. In fact, for all we know, she might've … Well, you know.”

“A girl like that, dressed like an old-time schoolmarm, doesn't stand a chance in the reformatory. That place is the worst possible mix of little league psychopaths-in-training and guards who can't be bothered. Do you really want to put her in that kind of jeopardy?”

“It's either that or jail,” he said. “It doesn't matter to me.”

My next words I spoke impulsively. “She can stay at my house.”

Buddy gazed at me as if I'd lost my mind. “Have you run this by Clara?”

“Well, no. But the girl's a minor, and I happen to know that according to the law, I can take custody of her if I…”

Buddy yanked me aside, nearly giving me whiplash. “Have you taken leave of your senses, Art?”

“Look at her! She's terrified.…”

“Yeah, and she might be a murderer. Did you ever stop and think of that?”

“Surely you don't think…”

“I don't know what to think, Art. She won't even say her name!”

“Maybe she's mute.”

“Who knows? All I know is we're doing her a favor by putting her in the Industrial School.”

“Oh, you mean the same way we did Ellis Frandsen a favor?”

Buddy knew instantly who I was talking about. Ellis Frandsen was a fourteen-year-old boy who came from a troubled home and repeatedly ran away, thanks to frequent beatings inflicted on him by his father. Last year, after an especially harrowing night of his dad's savagery, Frandsen was admitted to the hospital to recover. The investigating detectives from the Youth Bureau, Oscar Saunders and Sam Alcorn, made a big public stink in the local papers about Frandsen's woeful tale in order to drum up support for a long overdue child protection bill being drafted in the state legislature. Coincidentally, a judge ordered that Frandsen be released from the hospital to the State Industrial School for an indeterminate length, until the matter of his living arrangements could be resolved. When Frandsen was well enough to be discharged, a hospital administrator drove him to the reformatory, as per the judge's orders. Poor Frandsen. Three days into his stay, he was taken out of his bunk in the dead of night to a secluded spot in the building by an unknown perpetrator—or perpetrators—tied up, gagged, tortured, and murdered. That made him the eighth person to die in the custody of the youth reformatory since it first opened. Half of those had been suicides, the rest homicides. The dead all shared the common trait of being vulnerable boys and girls—in other words, the Ellis Frandsens—too weak and terrified to defend themselves against their assailants or withstand the rigors of confinement in the institution. Days after Frandsen was found dead in the boiler room, his father climbed up on a stool, pulled a homemade noose around his neck, and stepped off. Frandsen's killer still hadn't been caught.

I was determined that this young woman standing before me in the lobby of the Public Safety Building would not become victim number nine.

Buddy glared at me. “All right, you want her? She's all yours. But you're responsible for her, Art. And if we find out she had anything to do with Johnston's murder, she goes straight into an isolated unit in Ogden. You got that?”

“Yeah. I got it.”

Buddy looked me up and down. “I hope you know what you're doing.”

He turned to the orderlies, both wondering what was going on. “Let her go,” said Buddy. “She's going with
him
.”

*   *   *

I took the girl to the office of the Anti-Polygamy Squad. I found it a friendlier setting than the interrogation rooms, which always seemed so intimidating and cold to me.

Her eyes caught my attention first. Wide-open, irises splashed with blue, pupils reflecting light. Someone unfamiliar with her might assume those eyes were full of innocence, yet I wondered what they'd seen on the night of Johnston's murder. She made no noise. Even her breathing was silent. She sat in a chair next to my desk, and her eyes stayed fixed on her shoes. Her thick lips contrasted with her leanness. Hair cascaded to her shoulders in damp waves. She carried a battered, soiled pillowcase weighted down with assorted odds and ends.

The clipboard on the table held a report by Dr. Eugene Calderwood, resident alienist at the state hospital, who happened to be making his routine jailhouse rounds at Public Safety earlier in the afternoon. I lifted it to get a better look at his mostly illegible penmanship. I could make out “Jane Doe” standing in for her name, and on the line designated “Condition,” partially decipherable cursive said, “Unknown if muteness is temp or perm.” I set the clipboard down and studied her. She avoided eye contact with me.