A Killing in Zion (41 page)

“What are you doing? You're hurting me!” yelled Rulon.

“Stop right now, Eldon,” I said.

Eldon gasped, maneuvering for a better position. He scooped Rulon by his armpits, raising him to his feet. With his son still using both arms to prop him up, Rulon struggled to stay standing on both feet.

“You're a vile old man,” said Eldon. “This madness ends tonight.”

“It's over, Eldon,” I said, advancing toward him. “Let a judge and jury decide his fate. Testify against him in court. You've got the power to put him behind bars, maybe even in front of a firing squad.”

“Get away from me, Oveson!” yelled Eldon, with another backward glance. “This has nothing to do with you!”

“Let's go somewhere and talk,” I said, moving a few more steps. “That's all I ask. We'll work it all out.”

“I said get away!”

Eldon dropped his father in the wheelchair and abruptly faced me. He reached his hand inside in his coat and withdrew a revolver. I opened fire. Two shots echoed across the desert. Eldon's gun slipped out of his grip and he stumbled backward, grabbing his father, launching him out of the wheelchair and down atop himself.

I hurried over to the two men. First I pocketed Eldon's handgun by glow of the flashlight, then I holstered my own firearm, reached down, and hooked my hand around Rulon's arm.

“Here, let me help you up.”

“Stay away from him,” gasped Eldon.

Rulon was lighter than I expected. As I lifted him into his wheelchair, his large black hat fell off. He was strangely silent. Had he been shot? Was he still conscious?

I said to Jared, “Give me that, please.”

Jared passed me the flashlight. I shined it on Rulon. When I saw his face, every goose bump on me stood at attention. I tried never to use the Lord's name in vain, but this one time I let an involuntary “Oh God” slip out.

Rulon's face was frozen in a permanent leer, his lips mostly gone. The gleaming whiteness of his teeth contrasted sharply with his leathery brown skin, which was flaking off in areas. His nose had turned black and pug-like, pressed in against his face. His thick eyelids were open, but housed no eyeballs to speak of. The skin on his long forehead was lighter than the rest of his face, more yellowish, and he still had a head of unruly dark, wavy hair. His ears had deteriorated into shriveled prunes.

I looked down at Eldon. Still lying on the ground, he gripped wounds on his stomach and rib cage. His breathing had grown labored and crackly. “You weren't supposed to see him.”

“How long has he been this way?” I asked.

“I found Perry Tindal's book on the desiccation methods of the Maori people most helpful,” said Eldon, gasping for breath. “I also read a lot about how the British preserved the body of Jeremy Bentham.…” His body rocked as he coughed up blood. When he caught his breath, he said, “The father of modern utilitarianism. His remains are perfectly preserved and on display at University College in London. Or so I've read.”

“Rulon's a mummy?” I asked, in shock. “Since when?”

“I was waiting for him,” said Eldon. “I used a shovel.”

“You killed him?” I asked.

“He made promises to me,” said Eldon bitterly. “I was his favorite son, you see. He told me so, over and over. The compound would go to me when he died, he told me. He had sons who were older than I was, but he banished them, in favor of me. I was to be his successor. You see, he loved my mother more than any of his other wives, and he always said I had a good head for business. Everything changed when I told him I fell in love with a girl I met at a dance. But when Rulon met her, he vowed to make her his eighth wife. He cited a revelation. Claimed God told him this was to be. Heavenly Father sent down word to banish me because my heart was evil. That's what Rulon said, anyhow. He commanded me to leave and never return. I tricked him into thinking I was going away. But I never left. I hid in the barn and…”

His words trailed off.

“That's when you hit him with the shovel,” said Jared.

“Over and over and over. I had to use these special pins that I ordered out of a medical catalog to reconstruct his head. I think I did a good job, under the circumstances. Don't you?”

“I'm not following this at all,” I said. His explanation astounded me. “How could you possibly fool all of those people—the wives, the apostles, the children—into thinking that Rulon was alive?”

“After I killed him, I invented a tale of him being attacked by an unknown assailant, probably a rival,” said Eldon. “I got away with it because nobody knew that he banished me right before I killed him. All they knew was that I was his trusted son. Nobody ever questioned my role as his main caretaker. I told people the incident left my father horribly deformed and in need of a wheelchair to get around.”

Eldon rolled over and moved into crawling position. I stood back, aiming the flashlight in front of him to show him the way. On his hands and knees, Eldon moved slowly over to the wheelchair. He scaled the apparatus, grabbing on to the armrests to help him up, and he moved in close to his mummified father, placing his head on the dead man's chest.

“You did everything in the dark,” he said, stroking the dead man's dusty coat. “That's how you consummated your marriages. That's how you conducted business with the prophet and the apostles. That's how you ruled over an empire and put fear in the hearts of men and women. The shadows gave you power. I only provided the voice.” He coughed again, and blood coated his lips and dripped down his chin. He now spoke in a near-whisper. “People fear most what they don't know. That's why they're afraid of the dark. Their imaginations run wild, and they fill the empty places with dread.”

“Tell me one thing,” said Jared. “Why did you help those boys steal your own money? Did you really want to collect the insurance on it? I mean, you've got more money than most people can imagine. What more could you possibly want?”

Eldon shook his head. “How can you be so naive? It wasn't about insurance money. Father was the next in line to be the prophet. I knew he terrified Uncle Grand. I arranged with those four boys to carry out the robbery. I sent Nelpha up to Salt Lake City to murder the prophet. We had a deal, she and I. I even gave her the gun she used. In exchange for shooting him, she'd sign a confession to the police saying she murdered Grand to protect her one true love. No judge would throw the book at an innocent child bride who was defending herself. At most, she'd probably spend a few months in the reformatory. I promised her that once she was out, I'd…” Eldon erupted in another coughing fit.

Jared finished his sentence: “You promised her you'd leave her and Boyd Johnston alone after that. Then Rulon—really you—would become the next prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Saints, meaning you'd preside over one of the richest empires in the western states. I'm sure you'd wipe out any potential foes—real or imagined—in your church while you were at it.”

“You're not as naive as I thought,” said Eldon, with a bloody grin. He caressed his father's football-like head. “Nelpha didn't hold up her end of the bargain. I knew that day you came to arrest me, Oveson. She betrayed me.”

“That's because she didn't shoot Johnston,” I said. “Someone else did it.”

I stared meaningfully at Jared. Our eyes met. He confirmed with a single, solemn nod. A crackling gasp came from Eldon. When I looked down at him, I noticed he seemed awfully still. I moved the flashlight near his face. No need to check for a pulse. He was gone.

Jared said, “Is he…”

“Yeah.”

After a long silence, Jared asked, “How did you know it was me?”

I reached into my pocket and fished out that rain-drenched speeding ticket I had found in the glove box of the Model T truck parked in Claudia's garage. I handed it to him, along with the flashlight. “I found this inside the Model T truck parked in Claudia's garage.” Says you were going sixty-eight in a forty-five-mile-per-hour zone,” I said. “You were driving a delivery truck owned by Columbia Transport out of Flagstaff. When the Utah Highway Patrol officer who wrote up that ticket saw that you were the one driving, he voided it, tore it out, and gave it to you.”

“Maybe he just didn't want to ticket an out-of-state truck,” said Jared.

“No, that's not it,” I said. “You were in the motorcycle bureau long enough to know two things. One, there's a ticket-collection agreement in place between Utah and Arizona. Two, when you rode a police Harley, you befriended a lot of highway patrolmen, including the one who voided that ticket. I'm sure if he were subpoenaed, he'd confirm what I'm saying.”

He gave me back the ticket. “That's all you've got? A speeding ticket?”

“Nope. A few other things gave you away. When you told me you sneaked into the crime scene the day after the murder, I knew you were lying. Two uniformed officers were assigned to guard the church full-time until the Homicide dicks wrapped up their investigation, and I'm sure they'd confirm my suspicions that you never showed up there on July the third. Oh, and the gun in the hedges? Nice touch, Jared. No homicide investigator in his right mind would ever assume that a detective bureau man would do something so sloppy. It worked. You threw off the bloodhounds. You were never even on Wit's long list. Too bad you didn't wipe the gun well enough before you tossed it. Some of Nelpha's prints are still on it. I'm sure you didn't intend for her to be a suspect.”

“No,” he said. “I didn't. After I shot Uncle Grand and Volney Mason, I turned around and she was gone. I had no idea where she went. I got panicky. I knew there was a chance you'd be watching the premises. So I fled, without looking for her. Had Claudia or Carl gone there with her that night, they might've done the same thing as me, but they wouldn't have been as mindful as I was about the need to clear out fast. I guess I threw a real scare into Nelpha, huh?”

“She was pretty shaken,” I said. “One other thing gave you away.”

“Yeah?”

“Yesterday, in your apartment, when I was questioning you, you knew too much,” I said. “Only two of my questions failed to get a conclusive answer out of you. The first was when I asked if Rulon was in on the heist, and of course you had no way of knowing. So you passed that one. The other was my question about who might've pulled the trigger on Johnston and Mason. You didn't even offer a theory. And after you answered all of the other questions so smoothly, I knew you were protecting either the Jeppsons or yourself.”

Jared let out a shaky sigh.

“Everything you say is right,” he said. “When we get back to Salt Lake City, I'll voluntarily surrender. I'll sign a confession.”

I shook my head. “There won't be any confessions.”

Even in the darkness, I could see that Jared looked confused. “Why?”

“You did what you did for the noblest reason of all,” I said. “To protect a frightened girl who was so tired of being abused that she was willing to consider murdering someone else to get out of it. That she couldn't bring herself to do it, but you could, doesn't make you a criminal. It makes you a man with a good heart who had no choice but to do something terrible.”

He closed his eyes and I heard a forlorn sob in the darkness. I reached up and gently patted his shoulder.

“Let's go home,” I said.

 

Thirty-six

Three weeks later, our third child, a daughter, was born.

She came into the world on the first day of August. She had a thin layer of golden brown hair. She weighed eight pounds, two ounces. And she was a kicker.

Good thing the LDS Hospital had such a big waiting room. Between Clara's sizable family and the massive Oveson clan, it looked like half of the state of Utah had invaded the place. Old and young, men and women, boys and girls had squeezed inside the area, packed in like sardines.

I sat on a hard wooden chair, sandwiched between Roscoe and Myron. Without changing his expression one iota, Myron handed me a little square box wrapped in silvery paper, topped with two bows, one pink, one blue.

“Open it.”

I tore off the paper and lifted the lid. Inside, I found two pairs of knitted baby booties. Like the bows on the package, one pair was a deep pink and the other a shade of robin's egg blue. I examined them with delight, holding them up for my various relations to see.

“Thank you, Myron,” I said. “They're beautiful.”

“Don't thank me,” he said. “Hannah made them. Obviously, she wasn't sure if you were having a boy or a girl, so she erred on the side of caution.”

“Well, I'll be sure to send her a thank-you card,” I said. “In the meantime, maybe you could let her know how happy we were to get these. They're perfect.”

Myron nodded. “I'll do that.”

When the doctor burst out of the swinging doors, he froze in shock at the sight of the huge crowd. “Is the father here?” he called out.

“Look alive,” said Roscoe, patting me on the back. “Time to meet the newest Oveson.”

“Let him through, let him through!” hollered my brother John, herding the family apart to clear a pathway to the double doors.

The doctor led me to the hospital room at the end of the hall.

“Emily Margaret Oveson,” said Clara, “I'd like to introduce you to your father.”

I bowed low and Clara placed the baby into my arms. The blanket shadowed her sleeping round face, soft and pink, with puffy eyelids and little red lips that moved every so often. The nurse slid a chair near the bed and gestured for me to take a seat. I sat down, cradling my new daughter in my arms, feeling her gentle movements. I lost track of how long I sat there, holding her, rocking slowly, whispering to her about how proud I was to be her father.

I returned the baby to Clara. She told the doctor she wanted to take the baby out for all of our relatives to see. He hesitated, but finally agreed, and a nurse assisted Clara into a wheelchair. I pushed her while she held the baby in her arms. We went through the double doors into the sea of people out in the waiting room. Clara allowed only a select few people to hold the baby. “I don't want her catching anything from anybody,” she said.