Secrets of the Righteous

by H. B. Berlow

  I had to maintain my composure. Based on my experience, the younger cops believed in me and trusted me because I could keep calm and stay organized. Dave was already aware of how I could handle a situation having dealt with the late ‘Crazy’ Jake Hickey. This was not the time to vomit in the middle of the street because I had seen something so atrocious.

  I turned to Lee, speaking firmly and without a quiver in my voice.

  “Lee, I need you to get back to the station. Tell the Chief we need a couple more guys to safeguard the area, an ambulance, and Dr. Brenz. He’s at the wedding reception. Tell him we’ve got an important case but don’t say anything else. Don’t want to get anyone upset. And make it fast.”

  Lee nodded and drove off quickly.

  “What’s this all about, Baron?” Dave was a good cop and a smart man, but he had the same confused look on his face as I did on mine. It was one thing to have gangsters roaming around and corrupt politicians dipping into the till. This was something none us had ever seen. While I appreciated the chief’s belief in me, I had no idea how to begin. I looked down at the body covered with so many stab wounds. The smell of decay reminded me of France and the war. The air was thick with heat. Strangely, there weren’t any buzzards waiting for a meal. I couldn’t see a house or farmstead in any direction. The first thing to figure was how Carl Bottomley got out here.

  “He was attacked, and it was a surprise,” I blurted out.

  “A surprise out here?”

  “Just the hit to the head.” Dave was squinting his eyes like the sun was blaring in them, and his head was cocked to one side. I leaned down and pointed to the head wound. “It’s on the right-hand side, toward the back.” I stood up and pretended to be Babe Ruth and then Jimmie Foxx. “The person that hit him was right handed.”

  “Well, ok, if he got hit from the back. What if he got hit from the front?”

  “Wouldn’t you see a guy standing in front of you with a club trying to hit you?”

  “Yeah, but how do you surprise someone out here?”

  It might have been the wrong word to use but I felt the hit to the head was more sudden as opposed to a person being out in the middle of nowhere with Carl. When you’re thinking too fast the words don’t always come out right. Then again, I wasn’t really sure what I was doing or saying.

  “You surprise someone by being the kind of person you don’t expect to hit you in the head.”

  “A friend?” Dave’s questions were drawing out my thoughts, making me work on answers that didn’t previously exist.

  “Someone he trusted.”

  “So, they drive out here,” Dave continues, picking up the slack like he’s carrying a bucket in a fire brigade, “for some unknown reason. And they get out and Carl walks around aimlessly because he doesn’t think anything of this guy. Now, while his back is turned, the guy whacks him on the head, and he drops.”

  I kept looking at the body, the road, Dave, back and forth, looking for something to come out of the clouds that wasn’t just rain. I was sweating like a farmer pitching hay bales, but my thoughts were the only heavy lifting. Talking out a situation wasn’t something I was used to doing. Neither was this body before us. At the moment, there was no doctor, no ambulance, no one else who had any experience with this type of crime. It was just Dave and myself who had worked to take out a vicious gangster from Chicago and withstand the workings of corrupt politicians and businessmen.

  “Lee said he kept to himself. Who would he have trusted to come out here with?” It was the part didn’t make sense. Then again, getting bashed on the head, stabbed nearly a dozen times, and having your wiener cut off didn’t make any sense either. I had been a cop since the early 1920s and had never encountered or even read about anything like this. I realized the person who did this was probably a madman and hoped the notion might make it easier to find them.

  It must have been an hour by the time Lee drove back with Dr. Brenz, an ambulance, and a car with two other policemen. Dr. Brenz went directly over to the body and grimaced as he looked over the remains.

  “Quite a mess,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “You ever see anything like that, Doctie?” Being considerably older than me, I figured this was something he might have had tucked away in his memory. All he did was shake his head slightly before motioning to the attendants to load the corpse.

  “I’ll ride with them back to the station,” Dave said. “I can give the doc all the info he needs. Besides, the chief will probably want to see you.”

  I turned to the two patrolmen. “I need you men to visit every farmhouse within the area and ask the residents if they’ve seen Carl Bottomley recently, up to and including today.” They nodded at my command which felt odd to me. I drove back to the station with Lee. Neither one of us said a single word.

  Chapter Three

  This was one Sunday Chief Richardson was not spending quietly at home with his wife.

  “What have you got?”

  It seemed as though he thought I had solved a brutal murder in the span of an afternoon. While I appreciated his admiration for what intelligence he thought I had, I wasn’t feeling all too smart. I was torn between being frustrated at disappointing him and upset he was expecting too much from me.

  “Victim is Carl Bottomley, a mill worker. He was hit on the head, probably to knock him out, then stabbed nearly a dozen times. And then…” The words got stuck in my throat. I had never had to describe anything this brutal before and certainly not to a man in such a position of authority. The chief just looked at me blankly. His eyes blinked a few times while he stood patiently, willing to give me a few more moments before demanding I speak. “His male organs appear to have been sliced off.”

  “Interesting.” It was a little upsetting after all I had just gone through to give me such a minimal response. “Your early thoughts?”

  “He went out there with someone he knew or trusted, at least enough to drop his guard while he got smacked. Everything after that shows a lot of anger.”

  “You ever consider it was the work of a lunatic?”

  It was the first thought anyone would have about such a violent killing. It was an easy answer, almost too easy. I couldn’t disagree with the notion but the planning it took to lure someone to a remote spot and then attack them was something that went beyond an insane person. Of course, I didn’t have the training Dr. Brenz had; I figured more answers would come after a complete exam. As of now, the chief cut me loose for the remainder of the day but instructed me to follow up immediately after the autopsy. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to do from there.

  By now, my brain was starting to feel woozy on account of being overly hungry. I got Lee to drive me out to the Appleby home and found the tables and chairs had been brought in. There was nothing wrong with heading down to Daisy Mae’s but I had my heart set on Mrs. Appleby’s fried chicken.

  Sure enough, like a prayer being answered, Natalie Dixon walked out with a brown paper sack in her hand and a small box in the other. She had the accepting smile teachers give to schoolboys who had finished their lessons.

  “Mrs. Appleby told me to be on the lookout for you. There’s some fried chicken in the sack and a piece of her apple pie in the box.” She handed them to me like a priest doling out communion. I felt blessed in more than one fashion.

  “She’s always been kind to me in that way.” I held the sack and the box as though they were ancient treasures. Words escaped me once again. A huge smile overtook my face, and I prayed this would be sufficient to show my feelings, even though I wasn’t sure what they actually were.

  “Would you…?” she started but couldn’t finish any more than I could even speak.

  “Yes?” My heart filled in the blanks. Take a walk sometime? Meet for tea at the Handy’s house? Visit sometime in Emporia?

  “Perhaps you would like to go fishing. I remember this spot by the river where I used to go as a young girl. I hate to go by myself. And, well, it would certainly
bring back fond memories.”

  I certainly wasn’t going to tell her fishing absolutely bored me to tears. I didn’t tell Big Ray Vernon, and he wasn’t half as adorable as Miss Dixon. Besides, it wasn’t proper for a young lady to invite a man out on a social occasion. If I wanted to see her again, spend any time around her, I would have to accept.

  Dr. Brenz had told me he was working on the autopsy full time now, clearing the appointments he had with his living patients, myself included. This was not the kind of death that could be glossed over in a simple report. I appreciated his attention to detail. More importantly, I appreciated having the time to go on an outing with a charming young lady. In a brief time, she had taken my mind off the most ghoulish thing I had ever encountered. Considering the dreadful war, the barbed wire and the mustard gas, it was saying an awful lot.

  Mrs. McGuire, my landlady, was kind enough to make some ham sandwiches for me to bring as a kind of picnic, telling me it would be impolite to let a young lady go hungry. I noticed she was moving about slower and seemed a little unsteady on her feet. She didn’t answer me completely when I inquired as to her health, only reassuring me her sister, Miss Bannister, was coming down from Wichita, to help her out. I don’t remember my mother Mrs. Kimble much and Mrs. Witherspoon wasn’t in my life all too long. I had the kind of concern for Mrs. McGuire a son would have. I just didn’t have enough experience to know what to do about it.

  Natalie Dixon appeared quite a natural putting a worm on her hook and casting a line into the water. I was still rather awkward, and she was quite amused at my clumsiness. Getting a hook caught in my thumb was painful for me but a source of mild amusement for her. I didn’t mind too much because I realized I felt more relaxed around her than any other girl I had known.

  I laid a blanket down by the edge of the river so we could have our sandwiches without her getting soiled. The whole afternoon was making me feel gallant, like a gentleman or a knight in armor in days of castles and courts. I didn’t feel like a country boy from the farms of Kansas but I also didn’t feel like a street punk from Chicago.

  “What was it like, in the war I mean?” She asked like a teacher would, as though she were trying to learn something she could pass on to others.

  I paused for a bit before answering. The war had changed my life completely, but I tried desperately not to think of it regularly.

  “Scary, most of the time. The bullets and the shells all over the place. You couldn’t tell who was shooting at who. All the smoke felt like fire and brimstone in Hell.” I didn’t want to just leave it at the bad part. There was Baron Witherspoon who became my closest friend and showed me how I could live my life if I chose, with a little more decency and consideration. When he died, I honored him by living that way. “I really had no idea what is was all about, you know, the politicians and the governments. But the guys with you, in the trenches, running alongside you, is what you fought for. You fought for them.”

  As I figured, I didn’t catch a thing. She threw back two crappies and a small catfish. Maybe she was saving me the further embarrassment of cleaning them. We walked back to town barefoot like we didn’t have a care in the world.

  “I’d sure like to see you again, Natalie. You’re, well, just so easy to be around.”

  “Are you asking me out on a date, Officer Witherspoon?”

  I smiled. I guess I was asking her out on a date.

  Chapter Four

  I was in the records room going through every homicide for the past twenty-years. It was an unused office, practically a closet with one uncomfortable wooden chair and a table with warbling legs. It wasn’t a place you would spend a great deal of time. I didn’t think there would be as many cases as, let’s say, Chicago. But this sleepy little village less than ten miles from the Oklahoma border had a record of killings of mostly robbers and gangsters fighting each other over valuable territory, especially when liquor was illegal and every home had a still. Charles Floyd was known as Choc by the Okies; he was “Pretty Boy” to the Feds. Folks around these parts thought of him as a modern-day Robin Hood. The papers said he was a vicious killer. Everyone was bound to remember him just a little different.

  Nothing I was able to dig up pointed to anything as heinous as what we found out on a county road east of town. From all I was able to discover about Carl Bottomley, he wasn’t a drinker or a gambler and wasn’t in debt to anyone. Yet, this crime was committed with such violence and anger I was sure there had to be something about him to trigger such a harsh response.

  Providing all these details to Chief Richardson, I was calm and collected. For whatever reason he entrusted me to investigate this murder, I knew I couldn’t undermine his faith in me. I was surprised to see him showing just the slightest bit of emotion, swallowing hard or squinting at the details. This big, heavy-set man seemed resistant to just about anything. I had just discovered his weak spot.

  It sounded like Anthony Downs race track right outside the door with two thoroughbreds clambering for position along the pole. Screeching to a halt and throwing open the door was Lee Jones and his boyhood friend and fellow officer, Jay Davis. From the galloping sounds, you would have thought they had been running all over the place looking for me. Come to find out they were. Even though their uniforms were brand new, they both looked rumpled. They were probably more used to overalls and t-shirts.

  “Hey, Baron, me and Jay were talking…”

  “Yeah, we were talking about Carl Bottomley. We knew his oldest boy.”

  “I told him that.”

  “But you didn’t tell him…”

  “I was going to.”

  I felt like I was watching a couple of baggy pants comedians in a burlesque show. I whistled as loud as I could to get their attention. They stopped and turned to look at me simultaneously, both with their eyes bugging out. Either they didn’t notice they just barged into the chief’s office or were too scared to let on they knew. “One at a time,” I said with enough force to sound like the commissioner. “Jay. Go ahead.”

  “We both knew Bottomley’s oldest son. Went to school with him. His mom took him and his younger brother and just left town, up and skedaddled about ten years ago.”

  Lee felt compelled to interject. “Twelve. It was twelve years ago because we were just going into high school.”

  “Why did she leave?” It seemed an appropriate question to ask.

  “Couldn’t say,” Lee continued. “I asked my mom at the time about it. All she said was Mrs. Bottomley had to.”

  It was more than I had before but not enough to make sense. I couldn’t see Mrs. Bottomley returning to get revenge for an unspecified reason. I didn’t know the lady but this didn’t appear to be the work of a woman. On the other hand, either of the two sons might have wanted to avenge their mother if they felt she had been slighted in any way.

  “I need you two to talk to anyone who knew the Bottomleys, not just Carl but the entire family. Other school mates. Teachers who still might be at the school. We need to find out why she left town and where they are now. All of them.”

  Chief Richardson hadn’t said anything during this exchange. He was giving me enough room to show authority. He would step in when it was necessary.

  I needed to break away for a bit and get my head together. I kept seeing a bloody corpse under a sheet by the side of a road. It was so unlike the uniformed soldiers in dark and misty French forests. The sheet covering the body was yet another source of confusion, as though the killer had some kind of regret. It was an opportune time to go to the motion pictures with Natalie. She mentioned there was a showing of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and just like with fishing, I didn’t have the heart to tell her I wasn’t the world’s biggest fan of Shakespeare. When it turned out Mutiny on the Bounty was playing instead, the pout on her face was endearing but I wasn’t going to make her suffer through a man’s story about sailors on the high seas. We chose instead to just go for a walk.

  She asked me more about the war and how
I was able to get through the hard times and how difficult it was to get back to this life. Her voice was just above a whisper, soft like a feather on my ears. It was funny how, for so many years, I tried to let it all go with Dr. Brenz’s help and now she was bringing me back to it. Truth was I didn’t mind with her. Somehow I felt she could relate to me though I never knew how. What pleased me the most was how she looked at me, directly, eye to eye, never blinking or looking away in disgust, like she wanted to really see me as a person, a real human being behind the deeply etched lines in my face. It was a little scary considering I wasn’t sure who she was actually seeing.

  “It’s important to move on and it’s good you’re trying.” I don’t recall any of my teachers from Lincoln Park. The closest she sounded was how I imagined Mrs. McGuire might have sounded at Natalie’s age. “I think too many people let the past creep into their dreams and hold them hostage, not letting them move on. What good is that? You might as well die right there on the spot.”

  “I don’t know what would have happened if I had. I don’t think about it much. Heck, I hadn’t thought of it at all until you mentioned it. I suppose there are so many roads a person can go down.”

  “You need to keep walking down your road, Baron, wherever it may lead, and don’t let anyone stop you. Don’t let anything hold you back.”

  She sounded like Doctie, seeming to know something she couldn’t possibly know. But it was more than that, almost as though she could empathize in a real and personal way even though she had never been haunted by war.

  The thing which haunted me now was Carl Bottomley. Less than two weeks later Thomas Sutton was added to that nightmare.

  Chapter Five

  It was rather disturbing to consider this body was several hundred yards from where I had been fishing with Natalie. The condition of the corpse upon discovery was fresh so it wasn’t there when we were. One of the other patrol officers found Sutton covered with dead leaves and branches. It had the same markings and mutilation as Carl Bottomley. We found a heavy stone with blood stains and determined it to be the cause of the crushed skull. There were stab marks on his back and his genitals had been cut off, but he was found lying on his stomach. Since he was a larger, heavy-set man, it would have taken a certain amount of effort.