A Killing in Zion (37 page)

“I fooled myself into thinking that what I'd done wasn't all that bad. I mean, after all, I kept sending them money each month. I told myself they're better off without me. And then about, oh, four years ago, I heard Catherine died in a tuberculosis ward in Denver. Her parents took in Rose, let her live with them.”

“So Chisholm is their last name?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you regret it?” I asked.

He looked at me grimly. “Every single day of my life.”

“It's not too late, you know,” I said. “A girl never stops needing her father.”

“I send her grandparents money each month,” he said. “I ain't got the gumption to visit her. I'm sure she wouldn't want to have anything to do with me.”

“Where did you get the picture of her in your apartment?” I asked.

“Last year, when I put some money in the mail, I included a letter, asking for a picture,” he said. “I wasn't expecting to get one. But lo and behold, a few weeks later, it came in the mail. I cherish it. If that apartment building ever caught on fire and burned to the ground, it's the only thing I'd risk my life to save.” He paused. “Well, that and my cats.”

We passed through Fairfield, a cluster of houses and barns and trees and not much else. That meant we were coming up on Camp Floyd soon.

“It's never too late,” I said.

 

Thirty-two

Roscoe and I arrived at Camp Floyd in the late morning, sometime around half past eleven. It consisted of a cemetery and a few pre–Civil War buildings now barely standing, a crumbling mess of nailed-together lumber and broken glass. Most of the structures had deteriorated into skeletons, thanks to a lack of upkeep and scavengers who'd stripped the place of anything of worth. When I was a little kid, teenagers from my hometown of American Fork would come back from late-night outings to this place with tales of disembodied whispers, glowing apparitions, and faraway screams. I never placed much stock in those tales. Then again, I had no plans to come out to this place to see what it held in store after sunset.

Back in the late 1850s and early 1860s, Camp Floyd had been a bustling U.S. Army post with thousands of residents, mostly military personnel. They served under the command of Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, an ambitious officer sent out here in 1858 by then-president James Buchanan. In those days, war threatened to explode across the territory, pitting armed Mormon insurgents against federal troops occupying Utah. Ultimately, the conflict that everybody feared would happen never transpired, and the soldiers were eventually shipped back east, in response to the outbreak of hostilities between the North and South. Nowadays, the cemetery and few remaining buildings are the surviving remnants of that tense standoff. The cemetery they left behind served as a final resting place for scores of soldiers, most victims of diseases or natural causes. Rows of white headstones made a somber sight out here, in the middle of nowhere.

I parked in the shade of box elder trees and shut off the engine of the unmarked Ford Deluxe police sedan. It shocked Roscoe to see me unholstering my revolver. I handed him the gun, but he wouldn't take it at first.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

“Hold on to it, will you?” I asked. His perplexed expression told me he wanted an explanation. “They're kids. They're scared. If I go in there armed, I'll frighten them.”

“If you go unarmed, there's a chance one of those trigger-happy brats will fill you up with lead,” said Roscoe, still refusing to take the gun out of my hands.

“There might not even be anyone in here,” I said. “In which case, this is all for naught. I'll find out soon enough.”

Roscoe scowled as he took my gun. I got out of the Ford, closed the door, and crossed a grassy field to get to the brooding commissary building. The abandoned installation had taken on a forlorn quality over the years, and I could not escape the thought of how awful it would be to be a teenager living on these desolate grounds. That is,
if
they lived here. I knew I was taking a risk by coming out here. I understood that this might be the end of the line in my search, and if so Jared's fate would be out of my hands.

I reached the commissary, the most intact of all the remains, and hence the most likely to provide a shelter from the elements. It seemed to me to be the ideal starting point. A two-story wooden structure with doors and windows and long railings on both levels, the commissary also boasted a pair of chimneys jutting out of a sloped roof. Towering trees on all sides shaded the building. Whitewashed walls had turned grimy with age, and when I lowered my foot onto one of the steps, it groaned and I thought the ancient wood might snap under my weight. On the porch, I looked in both directions, but saw no signs of life.

“My name is Detective Arthur Oveson, Salt Lake City Police Department,” I called out loudly. “I've come unarmed. You're not in any trouble. I've come here to ask for your help. In return, I'll help you. Think of it as a bargain. I know none of you boys have had an easy go of it. You shouldn't have to live this way, hiding out in this isolated place. There's a better life waiting for you. I can take you there, if you can somehow find the guts to trust me.” I raised my hands, to show I had no intention of harming anyone. “I'm entering the commissary building right now. The only thing I ask is that you come out here and talk to me. I promise I mean you no harm.”

I opened the commissary door and stepped inside a darkened room. The windows on the first floor had all been boarded. A sign on the wall said
DINING HALL
, and it was a spacious, empty area with a counter running the length of one wall and a rectangular service window behind it opening up to a kitchen. I walked to the counter and was impressed by the shiny wooden surface. Not a speck of dust in sight. The room did not smell as musty as I expected. No, it had a lived-in feel about it. Someone had been here not long ago.

I found a doorway that opened up to a set of stairs. The passage was narrow and dark, and the stairs were rickety. I arrived at a door at the top of the stairs and nudged it open. The upstairs turned out to be much brighter than the first floor. A long corridor was lined with open doors and a tall window at either end. Signs on the doors announced who the occupants of each room had once been:
CAPTAIN
'
S OFFICE
,
TELEGRAPH ROOM
,
QUARTERMASTER
'
S OFFICE
, and
COMMISSARY STAFF QUARTERS
. I pushed open the door of the staff quarters and entered a room with four beds, each covered with bedclothes that appeared to be clean, although some were less tidy than others.

In the corner of the room, I happened upon what I guessed to be a little shrine of some sort. There were a few books—
A Little Boy Lost
by Dorothy Lathrop and
Peter and Wendy
by J. M. Barrie, two books that focused on lost boys—and several framed pictures on a small table, each showing little children standing side by side, smiling for the camera. Two of the photographs featured adults in them, but most showcased kids, the oldest of which couldn't have been more than eleven. I picked up one of the framed images, this one showing three children—a freckly-faced boy and two girls, with smiles all around.

“Freeze!”

I put the picture back and stood still. My eyes wandered to the open window, with drapes blowing, which offered a prime view of the Ford parked under the trees in the distance.

“My name is…”

“I know what your name is! You don't need to tell it again! I heard you already!”

The voice belonged to a boy in the middle of puberty: deep, yet squeaky around the edges. Low enough to sing baritone, high enough to scream like a girl.

“Reach your hands up,” he said. “Turn around.”

I turned and faced a lad with a canvas flour bag over his head that had a pair of holes cut out for the eyes. The words
LEHI ROLLER MILLS
were stenciled on the bag. That meant it came from a big mill not far from here.

Of greater concern to me was the long revolver in his hand, aimed at me.

“What's to stop me from shooting you?” he asked.

“I'm a policeman,” I said. “If you shoot me, there'll be lots of other policemen crawling all over this place by nightfall.”

“Maybe I'll shoot you and bury you out there where nobody will find you,” he said. “How does that strike you?”

“My partner is waiting outside, and he's got an itchy trigger finger. Don't give him a reason to use it, son.”

“I ain't your son!”

“That thing can go off accidentally,” I said. “If that happens, I'm dead, and you've committed a capital offense.”

“I'm a kid,” he said. “I won't get the firing squad.”

“Do you really want to put your legal expertise to the test?” I asked. “Lay the gun down. Let's talk.”

Without warning, three other boys with Lehi Roller Mills flour bags covering their heads came charging into the room, all carrying the same type of long revolvers as the first fellow on the scene. With four guns pointed at me, I can tell you right now that the old stomach started doing backflips. Any jittery fingers would have sent me off to the great glory beyond. They were as nervous as I was, staring out through those holes in the canvas. Each hand trembled, and that didn't make me feel any better about the spot I was in.

“Freeze!” shouted one.

“Hands in the air!” cried another.

The kid who arrived first on the scene shook his head. “He's doing it already! I gave the orders!”

“Oh.”

“It doesn't hurt to say it twice.”

“Keep your hands in the air!”

“I told him that!”

“Oh.”

“What are we going to do with him?”

“I say we shoot him like the mangy varmint he is!”

“We can't,” said the first one.

“Why?”

“Because he's a policeman,” the first one explained. “If we shoot him, the police will come here and get us. We might even get executed.”

“They can't do that to us. We're kids.”

“I ain't gonna chance it,” said the first one. “He says he wants to help us.”

“And you're taking his word for it?”

“What choice do we have?”

“I say we shoot him in the balls!” hollered a masked kid in the back. “I can blow 'em clean off from here.”

“I say we hear what he's got to say,” reasoned the first one. “What've we got to lose?”

One of the boys standing off to the side, near a window, tossed his gun on the floor. “They ain't loaded, no how.”

“You're not supposed to say that, Garth!” shouted the zealous one in back.

“Freeze!”

Roscoe stood behind the boys with my gun trained on them.

“Drop 'em, fellas. Now!”

One by one, the other three boys began dropping their guns on the floor. Each revolver made loud clacking noises when hitting wood. The first lad in the room removed his mask. I recognized him as the boy I glimpsed for a fraction of a second at Claudia Jeppson's house. Wavy brown shoulder-length hair. Blue eyes. Maybe thirteen. He was the assailant who'd hit me in the head and knocked me out cold. I almost said something to him about it, but I left it alone. Seeing him in the light, I then connected his face to the photographs I'd seen of a young Boyd Johnston. I knew right then that I was face-to-face with LeGrand Johnston's son.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” I asked.

“Right this way,” he said.

*   *   *

We'd all gathered around a long table in the commissary, with light spilling in through the open door. The other boys introduced themselves as Garth Christensen, a paunchy kid with tousled black hair and freckles; Franklin Boggs, a handsome boy with short brown hair, beady eyes, and a kind smile; and Chester Hammond, the tough talker from upstairs, a redhead, who turned out to be an awkward and shy young man without the mask on. Using big wooden spoons, we ate cans of beans they kept stored in the back room. The water we drank out of tin cups came from the pump out back and tasted metallic, but the boys assured me it was safe.

They were honest and open about the heist and filled Roscoe and me in on all of the details, right down to Ferron Steed supplying the guns, courtesy of Eldon Black, and showing Boyd how to drive a truck. The foursome had been hiding out here ever since the robbery, visited mostly by Claudia and Jared. One or the other of them—or both—would drop by once a week, occasionally more often, with supplies.

Boyd confirmed that Nelpha had visited here last week, which is where she was when I thought she had returned to Dixie City. He also apologized for putting the money in my basement. That wasn't his original plan, he insisted, but when he drove Nelpha back to my house and saw that nobody was home, the trunk that held the money was still in the back of the truck and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

When I told the boys about Claudia being abducted by the Kunz brothers and Ferron Steed, all four went wide-eyed and Chester began to wipe tears from his face. I informed them that Nelpha, too, was missing, which did not seem to carry quite the same weight as the news about Claudia.

“There's one other thing,” I said, spooning the last of my beans into my mouth. “Jared Weeks is on his way down to Rulon Black's compound as we speak. He's got a lot of guns, and much blood will be spilled, including probably his, if we don't do something to stop him. Problem is, I don't know where Rulon's place is located. I need someone who knows the lay of the land to help me find it. I won't put any of you in harm's way. Whoever helps me will be kept a safe distance from Rulon's. Can any of you help me find it?”

“We all know where it is,” said Franklin. “But there's only one of us that's actually been in it and knows where everything is.”