A Child's Garden of Death

by Forrest, Richard;

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  A Child’s Garden of Death

  A Lyon and Bea Wentworth Mystery

  Richard Forrest

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  FOR

  MARY BOLAN BRUMBY

  One

  “Who the hell is Sonja Henie?”

  The young police officer turned from the grave. His outstretched hand held tongs which grasped the neck of the mottled and decomposed doll. In macabre unison the others in semi-circle around the pit followed his slow movements.

  “Bag and label it before you drop the Goddamn thing,” Chief Rocco Herbert said.

  With his free hand the young officer snapped open a plastic film bag and abruptly dropped the doll inside. As the doll slid down the smooth surface a small skate crumpled into fine dust.

  “You’re breaking the Goddamn evidence,” Rocco Herbert snapped.

  “Sorry, sir,” the young officer replied as he gently rolled the top of the bag shut and sealed the opening. “But Sonja Henie?”

  “Yes, I would think so,” Lyon Wentworth said, while still staring into the excavation at their feet. He looked up at the circle of expectant faces. “The doll seems to have on ice skates and is made of a type of molded composition used during World War II when rubber was scarce and before plastics. In the forties Sonja Henie dolls were very popular with children.”

  “That might help,” Chief Herbert said. “If that is a family in there.”

  They looked back into the shallow pit. The dirt surrounding the three skeletons had been carefully removed and the final particles brushed away with extreme care. They were huddled together with jaws gaping in silent conversation. Moments before, the smallest’s arms had been clutching the remnants of the doll; but now the bones were pushed askew in a beseeching gesture.

  “The little one … it’s a girl, isn’t it?” Lyon asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rocco replied.

  Lyon Wentworth was sorry he had come. Chief Rocco Herbert’s phone call of two hours ago had at first annoyed him. He hated disruptions while working. Once the train of thought was broken, his curiosity had been piqued.

  “It’s probably an old settlers’ burial area,” he had said.

  “When they first called me I yelled cow bones,” Rocco replied. “But now that I’ve seen them, they’re not that old. Christ, Lyon! Three of them. We haven’t had anything like that in Murphysville since the last Indian raids.”

  A cool spring breeze came over the ridge top and blew a fine film of dirt across the grave. Lyon felt a chill and didn’t know if it was caused by the breeze penetrating the light jacket he’d thrown on as he left the house, or by the things before him.

  He was a tall, angular man of forty. The wind rustled a forelock of blond-browning hair, and he pushed it back with his palm in an often repeated gesture. Lyon Wentworth wore tennis sneakers without socks, denim work pants, the light jacket covering a green sport shirt. His face seemed to have a slightly troubled look, but one that could instantaneously change to a wide and warm smile.

  He turned again to the silent police chief next to him. “Any idea of how long they’ve been in there?”

  “Not yet. The medical people might come up with something, but I wanted you to see it before we moved anything.”

  “Missing persons?”

  “Nothing yet, but we haven’t much to go on. If you’re right about the doll, they’ve been in there thirty years.”

  Lyon turned back to the grave as a photographer scuttled halfway into the pit to get some angled shots. The three skeletons nestling in the bottom of the hole gaped up at them with boned grimaces as if resenting the intrusion on their rest. “One’s missing an arm,” Lyon said.

  “Over there, beyond the bulldozer,” Chief Herbert said. “It must have been outstretched or raised in some manner. The ’dozer blade caught and carried it a few feet before the operator realized what he had. That’s when he called me.”

  “Your men cleared the rest of the dirt away?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else? Weapon, shovel, anything?”

  “No. We’ve combed the area for two hundred yards in every direction, but if it’s been thirty years, I wouldn’t expect to find anything. Nothing, just the grave, three bodies, the doll, a few shreds of cloth left from their clothing; nothing else. Except, they were probably clobbered with something heavy: each skull is filled with fractures. It doesn’t take any expert pathologist to see that.”

  “And that’s all?” Lyon asked again tiredly.

  “Afraid so, Lyon,” Rocco said. “Not much to go on unless the medical and lab people turn up something, or by some miracle an old missing persons report is able to fill us in.”

  Lyon looked into the grave for the last time and turned away. “I’ve seen enough.”

  The Chief turned to the waiting officers. “All right, move it, but for God’s sake be careful.”

  They started to do his bidding and then poised in silent tableau as the sound of sirens wavered and died. Four State Police cruisers stopped on the road below them. Car doors slammed in unison as troopers started up the hill, led by a red-faced captain.

  “Christ!” Rocco said. “Here comes the cavalry.”

  Lyon noticed that activity around the grave site had ceased as the young police officers watched the approaching entourage in a guilty manner, like small boys caught in some mischievous act. Ten yards away the trooper captain, puffing slightly from the exertion of the climb up the hill, began to yell at Rocco Herbert.

  “Damn it all, Chief! You should have called as soon as it was discovered.” The captain, now at the site, continued yelling at the tall police chief. “What do you have up here? The whole Murphysville force?”

  “Just the day shift,” Rocco replied.

  The trooper captain glared into the grave. “Probably Indian graves. The boys at the lab will run it down.”

  “You’re in the confines of Murphysville, Norbert,” Rocco said.

  The red-faced captain ignored the remark and gestured toward Lyon. “Who’s the civilian?”

  “A friend of mine,” Rocco said. “Lyon Wentworth, meet my brother-in-law, Captain Norbert.”

  The captain seemed to shake hands with Lyon automatically while still glaring into the grave. “You’ve probably mucked up any evidence there was.”

  “Damn it, Norbert, we haven’t mucked up anything. I’ve been to the FBI school the same as you have,” the police chief replied angrily.

  “Of course you’re calling the state in—officially.”

  Rocco paused slightly before answering. “No, not yet. I’ll need you for the lab and pathology work, but that’s all for now.”

  “Listen, Rocco, you aren’t prepared to handle this and you know it.”

  “For the time being it’s a Murphysville matter,” Rocco said and walked away, only to be followed by the captain. Away from the group the heated but subdued argument continued while state troopers glared across the grave at the uniformed police.

  Lyon Wentworth walked down the incline of the rough-cut road the bulldozer had been slicing before its ghoulish discovery. He could hear the heavy tread of Rocco Herbert behind him and he quickened his pace. A spring zephyr touched his face as he looked through the trees at the clear sky, and he wondered if he’d have a chance to get a flight in this Sunday.

  The Chief caught up to him at the stone wall that ran along the country lane, and he placed a large hand on Lyon’s shoulder. Lyon turned to look into the taller man’s eyes.

  “I need your help, Lyon,” the Chief said.


  The bond between them had lasted for a number of years, and the large hand on Lyon’s shoulder seemed inchoately to transmit this. Although Lyon was tall, Rocco Herbert was taller by several inches. He was a large man of huge dimensions, six feet eight inches, with a solid girth of 270 pounds. His face was deeply chiseled, capable of a foreboding visage and yet also warmth and humor.

  “You’re personalizing this thing, Rocco. Let the State Police handle it.”

  “This is the biggest thing we’ve had here in years—it’s a chance for me to move out of the force.”

  Lyon smiled. “The ways of justice move in an odd manner.”

  “You want I should kid you?”

  “I want you should leave me alone. Come on, Rocco, what kind of help could I possibly be?”

  “I’m not sure. I only know that you think in strange ways, and this is going to be strange … like that business with the doll.”

  “So, now you’re offering me a puzzle?”

  “Like in the old days,” the big man replied.

  Lyon sighed. “There’s so little to go on.”

  “I know, except for the doll, and that could have belonged to anyone. An itinerant farm family up here to work the tobacco fields.…”

  “I don’t think so,” Lyon said. “Those Madam Alexander dolls are an expensive make and cost from eight to ten dollars even thirty years ago. Hardly what an itinerant worker could afford in those days.”

  “We could try a trace on the doll …”

  “I don’t think so. You know, the family could have been from out-of-state, passing through … killed by a hitch-hiker.”

  “I know,” the Chief said. He sat on the wall, his back to the road, looking up the gradually sloped hill where police formed a hive of activity at the grave site. His voice was sad. “All the informers, computers and legwork in the world won’t help on this one. How, Lyon? How in the hell do you find a murderer if you don’t know who the victims are?”

  “I don’t know, Rocco.” He sat on the stone wall next to the large police officer, and they both let their gaze wander from the grave toward the clear Connecticut afternoon sky. “I really don’t know, but that’s your job.”

  “It’s a miracle they were found, even today. This area is rural, the real boonies. Thirty years ago it must have been the ends of the earth.”

  “Why the bulldozer out here?”

  “A developer.”

  “Here, in the middle of nowhere?”

  “I thought maybe you knew about it. A group is planning to build a large condominium retirement village out here. Natural setting, homes built in the hillside, clusters, retain all the natural beauty, all that sort of thing. Thank God the ’dozer operator didn’t have a hangover and saw what in hell he was slicing through.”

  “You might have been better off if they’d left it the way it was.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

  “Don’t involve me, Rocco.”

  “I need this one, Lyon. My finale, my swan song. If this thing is handled properly, I can retire, and now that Garfland’s gone, I can run for town clerk.”

  “You’ve got your own force and a couple thousand state police you can call on.”

  “The Murphysville Police Force boasts twelve men, and that includes writing traffic tickets, school grade crossings, and trying to keep Hinkle sober.”

  “I’ve always been interested in your work, Rocco. But I’m not a professional. And besides—I’m working on a project.”

  “That child in the grave up there would be about the same age as …”

  “Come on, Rocco.”

  The large man beside Lyon looked instantly remorseful. Although his daughter, Remley, was Lyon’s goddaughter, unspoken between them was a spring day years ago.

  An instant picture transformed the country lane before him.

  A little girl, skirt billowing in the wind as she pedals furiously on her new bike as he turns and goes back into the house on the Green. Lyon stood … and the picture was gone.

  The Chiefs voice softened. “She liked your last book.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Monster on the Mantel. What’s the new one?”

  “The Cat in the Capitol. And I intend to finish it.”

  “Finish it in your spare time.”

  “That’s my livelihood you so blithely give away.”

  They were standing face to face, and a slight twist of the police officer’s lips betokened the good humor Lyon knew lurked just below the surface.

  “You’ve just never realized that it isn’t Korea anymore, Chief.”

  “For God’s sake, that was more years ago than I care to remember.”

  “Agreed.” In the slightly graying but huge police chief before him, Lyon could still see the young ranger captain of twenty years before. They had met accidentally in division headquarters. Lyon was the youngest Assistant G-2 in FECOM and Rocco Herbert a recently promoted ranger captain and company commander. In those days, from that time, Rocco and his ranger company became Lyon’s eyes and ears. They foraged behind enemy lines, acted as point company, and constantly fed information back in an orderly and complete manner. They made an excellent team, and higher command seemed to sense this strange alliance between the all-American tackle and gruff ranger officer and the almost effete Lyon, who, although commissioned as an Infantry officer, never served with a line company.

  They had operated as an effective team, as if a strange symbiotic relationship transcended each of them and allowed the sums of their parts to become a force larger than each individually.

  Rocco Herbert kicked at the stone wall. “I swear to Christ,” he said, “I’m going back to resign. Even watching rock festivals is better’n this.”

  “Retire, run a security force at some plant and get fat.”

  “Screw you,” the Chief said and kicked the wall again.

  “Every time you kick that wall you knock a rock off. Do you know the work it took to build that thing one hundred and fifty years ago?”

  They both looked down the shaded road and the wall that stretched its length for several hundred yards. “Poor bastards,” Rocco said reflectively.

  “Who? The ones who built the wall?”

  “No. The ones on the hill up there.”

  They contemplated the hill in the quiet day. Occasional distant murmurs from men working at the grave site could be heard. The road behind them ran through the bed of the valley, a small stream on the other side of the road, and the hill before them rose in a gentle slope from the wall to traprock crest. Once, years ago, cleared and utilized as dairy pasture. Now, covered with second-growth timber and spotted with glacier boulders too large to be moved to the wall site.

  The grave far up the hill several hundred yards from the road was near the ridge top, and that bothered Lyon. He began to think about that while Rocco waited patiently.

  “Something’s wrong,” Lyon said. “It doesn’t fit.”

  “What’s that?” Rocco replied, trying to hide the eager lilt to his voice.

  “I don’t think they were killed here, but were transported and buried.”

  Rocco thought a moment. “Possibly.”

  “The configuration of the hill.” Lyon lapsed into silence again. “Whose land is this? Who would use it, walk over it?”

  “It’s part of Water Company property. Just recently they sold off this side of the ridge to the condominium developer. I doubt that anyone’s been here in years except for hunters.”

  “Hunters. Yes,” Lyon said. “In the past fifty years they’re probably the only ones who have walked this land.”

  “Not picturesque enough for tourists, no trail for hikers, too wild for lovers.”

  Lyon continued looking up the hill. Except for the naked cut made by the bulldozer that had unearthed the bodies, the hillside was close to virginal. “Pheasant country,” he said.

  “An occasional deer,” the Chief replied.

  The location of the grave, th
e wild aspect of the hill—something in that combination bothered Lyon. He turned toward Chief Herbert. “Too far up the hill.”

  “What?”

  “Why would he bury them that far up the ridge when a few yards in from the road would have been adequate?”

  “He? Yeah—probably was a man. Offhand I can’t recall any women mass murderers bashing in the collective skulls of whole families. At least not since Lizzie Borden. But as far as the distance up the hill, he was probably just cautious.”

  “That’s a long way to lug three bodies for caution’s sake.”

  “Not if he didn’t want them found for thirty years—or ever.”

  “Perhaps,” Lyon mused. “Perhaps.”

  “That’s not much to go on,” Rocco said. “A five-state missing persons search, maybe something from the physical evidence. Not much, Lyon.”

  The descending sun reflected orange globes on the windshields of the line of police cruisers. A man’s deep laugh echoed across the valley from the grave site and Lyon wondered what could be humorous in that small plot, that garden of death. His car waited and he wanted to leave, to be away from this place with its shattered secret which cast a foreboding aura over the valley.

  He turned toward the expectant chief. “We’re having a few people over to the house Monday night. Why don’t you and Martha stop in?”

  “We’d like to,” the police officer replied. “Are you sure there’s no chance we can do something with that doll?”

  “I know you’ll try, Rocco, but I doubt it.”

  “Jesus, I don’t know where in hell to start.”

  “Another one like the girl in the fire.”

  “I’m afraid so, unless something unexpected turns up,” Rocco said.

  They both knew that Lyon referred to the body of the little girl discovered in the smoldering ruins of the Hartford circus fire. In 1944 the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus tent had unexpectedly caught fire in Hartford. Within four minutes the fire had raged out of control and quickly killed over a hundred people. One of the victims was a small girl who was never identified or claimed. For several years the body was kept in a local mortuary, then finally buried. Twenty-five years later the child was still unknown and unclaimed. Rocco had once learned that newly commissioned troopers were assigned to the investigation as a sort of initiation ritual. After thousands of hours of investigation there was still no clue to the identity of the girl.