by Andrew Hunt
I looked up at the painting above the fireplace. “Did she go off to college?”
Miriam’s eyes turned to the ornate rug. “She passed on.”
Her words caught me off guard, and it took me a moment to snap out of my initial shock. “I am sorry. How did she…”
I could not say die.
Miriam opened her mouth to speak, but Parley interrupted. “Poliomyelitis. We rushed her to the hospital, but we didn’t get her there in time. The virus entered her bloodstream and…”
He watched me, as if studying my expression. I said, “I’m terribly sorry. I can’t imagine…”
“Don’t be,” said Miriam. “She lived a good life. She left us before her time, but we’ll see her again.”
I nodded. “Was she your only…”
My words tapered off, but I’d said enough to get a nod out of Parley.
“My condolences.”
“Thank you, Art,” said Parley. “That means a great deal to us. Now, what can we do for you today? Is this regarding the Pfalzgraf investigation? I was under the impression the case was closed.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s true. I just have a few minor clarification questions to ask before I close the file. Do you mind?”
“Ask anything you wish,” said Parley, with genuine warmth in his voice.
I opened a spiral notebook and licked the tip of my pencil in order to take notes. “In 1917, Dr. Pfalzgraf’s first wife, Nellie, died in a hit-and-run accident in Los Angeles. Can you tell me more about it?”
Parley eyed the chandelier above and shrugged his shoulders. “Not much to tell. They were vacationing in California, the doctor and Mrs. Pfalzgraf, and motoring home from a function in late January. It was night. It was dark. Another driver ran their touring car off the road. Nellie was thrown out of the car and then the car rolled over on top of her. The doctor survived with minor injuries, but Nellie was killed instantly.”
Miriam Tanner spoke up. “The accident affected Hans terribly. Right after it happened, Parley and I went to Los Angeles to pick him up and bring him back here. I’ve never seen a man hit so hard by the loss of a loved one. On the trip home, he kept breaking down and wailing in agony. For years and years, he’d do that—just break down and cry out of the blue. Parley and I started a sort of family tradition after the accident. We’d invite Hans and Anna to dinner every Sunday night. Anna and Elizabeth got to be quite close in that time, but I’ll never forget that Hans would suddenly start crying, for no reason that I could see. He was never the same after Nellie’s death. He blamed himself for it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, glancing at the name Sam Louis scrawled on the notepad. “Do either of you know of someone named Sam Louis?”
The Tanners shook their heads at the same time and said no quietly.
“What about Dr. Everett Wooley?”
“He was a terrible man,” said Miriam. “A murderer of innocent women and unborn babies. We knew of him. Everybody in this city who followed the newspapers or radio knew about him. The Butcher of Salt Lake, people called him. If it weren’t for Hans, that vulture would still be operating his clinic downtown.”
Parley Tanner had cooled, staring at me with uncertainty in his eyes. “What, if you don’t mind me asking, does Wooley have to do with this case?”
I said, “I’m trying to rule out any connection between the two homicides.”
“I’m sure they’re not connected,” Parley said. “I don’t see how they could be.”
“Maybe you’re right, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are a lot of strange loose ends surrounding the Pfalzgraf case,” I said. “I’m just trying to make heads or tails of it all.”
“For instance?” he asked.
“For instance, Helen Pfalzgraf was pregnant at the time of her death—but who was the father?”
“Gossip fodder for the newspapers,” he said with a dismissive wave. “Does it really matter?”
“Sure it does,” I said. “All loose ends matter. It matters that Helen went out to Los Angeles in December and auditioned to be in a First National movie and the studio offered her a contract to be a supporting player. I’ve seen the audition reel, and she’s not half bad. Other details matter, too. It matters that she was close to three men other than her husband—C. W. Alexander, Roland Lane, and the Persian prince. It matters that she had bank accounts full of money that nobody can account for. It matters that a witness overheard you talking to Hans and Helen Pfalzgraf on the afternoon before her murder about divorce proceedings—”
“That’s a lie, and I fired the stenographer who said it.” His angry twitch shifted back to the easygoing demeanor that preceded it. “These don’t sound like the sort of questions one would expect from a lawman who’s trying to close a case.”
I lowered my spiral pad, tucked my pencil behind my ear, and leaned forward so my elbows were resting on my knees. “Here’s what I’ve got so far. I think Helen Pfalzgraf wanted to leave town, probably to pursue a career in Hollywood pictures. I believe she found a few rich benefactors—a movie actor, a prince, and a mining speculator—who kept filling her bank accounts. Then, right as she was about to leave town, somebody lured her out to Pole Line Road and ran over her several times, using her own Cadillac. Why, I don’t know. I do know that before I close this case, I want to find some answers to these questions.”
“What would the answers change?” asked Miriam. “I’ll speak candidly with you, Arthur—if I may. I never cared for Helen Pfalzgraf. In fact, I disliked everything she stood for. She was selfish, money-hungry, man-starved. The only thing she cared about in the world was her own gratification. She used men and women and then tossed them aside when she got what she wanted. She had no values that I could see. No convictions. No sense of right and wrong. Forgive me for saying this, but she opened her legs for any man with a hefty bank account—”
“Miriam,” said Parley, looking sideways at her. “Please…”
“Arthur ought to know what sort of woman Helen Pfalzgraf was,” she said curtly. She looked at me. “Every day of my life, I regret that we introduced her to dear, sweet Hans. He doted on her every whim, treating her like a spoiled schoolgirl. He didn’t even treat his own daughter that way. I guess you could say I came to hate Helen. That doesn’t mean I think she deserved to die in such an ugly way, but I don’t lie awake nights wondering who killed her, and I haven’t shed a tear over her sad fate.”
I nodded and pushed my notebook and pencil into my coat pocket. “I see.”
Parley stood and gestured in the direction of the hall. “I hope that, in spite of the rather unpleasant tenor of the last few minutes of our conversation, you’ll reconsider joining us for supper, Art.”
I rose, too, at the same time as Miriam Tanner. I turned once more to admire the painting of Elizabeth above the mantel.
“She was a lovely young lady,” I said. I glanced at Miriam. “I had polio when I was a little boy. Come to think of it, I had just about everything, but polio was the worst. People who haven’t been through it have no idea of how bad it is. That makes me extra sorry for your loss.”
She held out her hand, and I clasped it in mine. This time, she squeezed back. “Thank you,” she said.
I could tell my words meant something to her.
Sixteen
It’s 182 miles from Salt Lake City to Twin Falls, Idaho. If you can somehow maintain a sixty-mile-per-hour speed limit—a decent clip for a four-cylinder sedan—you can make the drive in about three hours (that is, if you don’t stop a lot and dillydally). I packed a couple of sandwiches, some carrot sticks, and a bottle of milk for the journey, and I was on the road by 6:00 A.M. I’d called in sick the previous day, and Cannon, being in a generous mood, volunteered Sykes to cover my duties as public liaison until I returned. I did not tell him it bought me time to work on the Pfalzgraf homicide. I drove my brown Plymouth to Idaho, noticing the first signs of spring—stubs of grass, mud where snow had been days earlier, a
nd droplets of rain dabbing the windshield.
Twin Falls is southeast of Boise. The north side of town abruptly stops at the natural border of the Snake River Canyon, a deep, winding gorge that’s spectacular to look at. It’s a short drive to Shoshone Falls, a 210-foot-high roaring wall of water that sends clouds of mist in all directions. Picture postcards of the falls, sold at most stores in town, call it “the Niagara of the West.”
Thanks to a breakfast stop along the way (turns out I developed a hankering for flapjacks en route), I rolled into town past ten. The sun shone brightly on Twin Falls, and the air smelled of April arriving. The decision to come here was spur-of-the-moment. My investigation felt stagnant. What it needed was a jump-start. Meeting her parents, finding out what—if anything—they knew, struck me as a fresh starting point. Yet I second-guessed my decision as I steered off the highway and turned left at a stop sign into town. I stopped for directions at a restaurant and ordered a bottle of orange Nehi and fried cinnamon dough for the road. Five minutes later, I reached my destination. The Higginbotham family home was a white wood-frame house with an enclosed porch sandwiched between homes that looked exactly like it on Second Avenue North, off a main drag called Addison. I parked, got out of the my car, and put on a Stetson I’d purchased the day before at a Salt Lake hat shop.
I hated paying surprise visits to people I didn’t know almost as much as I hated getting them, which probably accounted for the queasiness I felt as I crossed the street and walked up the porch steps. I balled my hand into a fist and pounded on the screen a few times. That set off a dog barking inside the house. I waited for a moment and watched a convertible roadster speed past, in an awful hurry to get somewhere. The door opened, and out stepped a beefy man with a lot of curly white hair, a set of bloodshot eyes, and a face covered with white stubble. His faded plaid shirt and trousers appeared well worn. I guessed him to be in his late sixties. He was a man who had done a lot of hard living.
“Who are you?” he asked, frowning.
“I’m Salt Lake County Senior Deputy Arthur Oveson,” I said. What a mouthful. “I’m here to ask you a few questions.”
He shook his head and held up his palm. “Ah no. No. No. Someone from your office called me the day Helen was killed. Was it you? Well, whoever’n the hell it was, umma tell you the same thing I told him. I’m glad that cunt is dead. Good riddance! The world is a better place without her. Now, get the fuck off my property!”
I looked down at my patent leather shoes, dumbfounded by his words. I shook my head and took a deep breath. “What?”
“You heard me. Want me to spell it out? C … U … N … T. Cunt.” He spat the word and took great pleasure in it. “That’s what she was. She broke her ma’s heart. She left her fiancé at the altar. She never called, never wrote, not so much as a fuckin’ postcard—which is fine by me, because I couldn’t stand the sight of her nohow. Now, why don’t you get lost?”
Behind him stood a woman—a phantom in dim light. She, too, had white hair but was diminutive, with a narrow face, eyes like the bottom of hardboiled eggs, sagging jowls, and a floral dress that dipped to the middle of her shins. Her lips moved, as if she were attempting to speak, but nothing came out of her mouth. Her eyes gave off sorrow, almost more than I could take.
I stepped forward, positioning myself face-to-face with him. “I have a daughter. Her name is Sarah Jane. And there isn’t anything she could ever do or say that would make me talk about her the way you spoke about your daughter just now. You, sir, have a shriveled-up soul.”
For a second, I thought he was going to deck me. He instead slammed the door in my face. I heard him holler something inside his house, but the closed door muffled his words. On my way back to my car, I thought, So much for the long drive to Twin Falls. The car engine turned over right away when I started it, and I was about to drive away when the phantom woman waddled across the street toward me. She motioned that she wanted to talk to me, and I rolled down the window. She held up a framed photograph showing four rows of young men and women—the women in sailor tops and matching skirts, the young men in knickers and ties. COLUMBUS HIGH SCHOOL, TWIN FALLS, IDAHO, 1915. She pointed to a pretty teenager in the picture with her hair pulled back tightly and a large bow keeping it in place.
“That’s my baby,” she said. “My Helen. The day I found out she died, part of me died with her. You know what the hardest part was? Not being able to talk to Walter about it. He hated her. He still does. I never knew why. Maybe it was because Helen and I were so close. He used to take out his anger on her. He used to beat her. He used to…” She stopped, and once again her mouth moved but no words came out.
“What? He used to what?”
“I can’t say it.” Tears streamed down her face and she shook with sobs. “It wasn’t her idea.”
“What wasn’t?”
“The blackmail. She didn’t want any part of it…”
“Blackmail?”
“C. W. cooked it up. It was his idea for her to find a doctor who’d get rid of her baby, too. He told her if she was gonna be in movies, she shouldn’t have a baby. But she wanted to see it through. She planned to leave C. W. and the doctor, to raise the baby alone, without either of ’em helping her. That’s why she wanted to go to Los Angeles. She hoped the small part she landed in that picture would be her break in the movies. Her plan was to leave Salt Lake City and raise her baby in Los Angeles. She hated Clyde’s blackmail. That’s God’s honest truth.”
“I believe you. I need you to tell me more about this blackmailing—”
Across the street, the screen door of the Higginbotham house banged shut, and Walter moved out onto the porch and squinted in our direction. She glanced over her shoulder, then back at me with terror in her eyes.
He called out, “Git back here! Don’t you be talkin’ to that fuckin’ sonofabitch!”
She held the framed photograph in her hands. “I’ll always hate Walter for what he did to her. He was the one who killed her, even if he wasn’t there the night she died. The only good thing he ever did in his whole rotten life was to give me my angel.”
“Mrs. Higginbotham, I need to know about the blackmailing.”
“Get over here, woman!” he shouted. “’Fore I come over there and slap you upside your fuckin’ head!”
I said, “If I’m going to help find who did this to Helen…”
She walked backward several steps, almost stumbling, and nearly dropped that framed photograph. I wanted to lunge out of the car and whisk her away from here, to someplace safe, but I knew if I tried she’d run. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” I told her through the car window. “You don’t have to stay with him.”
“This is how it’s always going to be,” she said through a veil of tears. “His lot in life is to hurt women. Mine is to be hurt. So was hers…”
She swiveled around and strode back to her house, cradling that picture of her daughter, and when she reached the sidewalk, her husband slapped her hard in the face. “Git on inside!” he shouted into her ear.
He cocked his fist back as if about to slug her, and she instinctively guarded herself by turning her shoulder to him, but he froze, perhaps conscious of me watching. His arm fell by his side and his lips moved, but he was far enough away that I could not hear a word he said.
She obeyed him and stepped inside. He followed her, glowering at me from afar. The door slammed hard.
Seventeen
Inside the gymnasium of the recently built Theodore Roosevelt Grammar School, hundreds of schoolchildren listened in rapt attention. A row of windows above the bleachers let sunshine flood the room. An American flag hung above one of the basketball hoops.
A teacher, whose glasses were so thick I couldn’t see her eyes, introduced me, and the kids clapped and quieted. I delivered my grammar school spiel. Work hard. Do your homework. Obey your teachers. Read whenever possible.
I lifted a glass of water off the wooden stool, drank three gulps, and cleared my t
hroat. Maybe it was my gleaming gold badge, maybe it was the squad car parked out front, or maybe it was my power to arrest people—whatever it was, I impressed these kids. There wasn’t a pair of half-closed eyes in the place.
The teacher walked up to the front of the room, fingers knitted together as if praying, and gestured to me with the tilt of her head. “Please join me in giving Senior Deputy Oveson a big Theodore Roosevelt Grammar School thank-you!”
The children applauded, and one boy put his fingers in his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. I had my hands on my hips, grinning at the kids, and mouthing the words “thank you.” When the applause subsided, the teacher took two steps forward, and her eyes surveyed the audience from one side of the gym to the other. “Maybe Mr. Oveson wouldn’t mind if we asked him a few questions about his job. Does anyone have any questions for him?”
Dozens of hands shot up.
I said, “Before you ask your question, please say your name. That helps me get to know you all.”
I pointed to a freckle-faced boy with spiky red hair. He leaped to his feet in the center of the gymnasium and said, “I’m Dickie Morgan. Is that your very own patrol car parked outside? Do you get to keep it?”
“Very good question, Dickie,” I said. “Is that my patrol car? The answer is no. It belongs to the taxpayers of Salt Lake County. That’s why I always make sure to take extra special care of it. Next question?”
More hands shot up, and I called on a girl in the fourth row. She stood, and when her face came into view, my heart nearly stopped.
“Hazel Hamilton. Why didn’t you try harder?”
She had a porcelain doll’s face—white with wide eyes and curly locks over her ears.
“Why didn’t I…”
All of the children stared at me and the adults whispered to one another.
“Why…? Good question. Why…”
* * *
“Dad … Dad … Hey, Dad! Snap out of it!”
I blinked a couple of times and turned to Sarah Jane, who held up a picture of a girl in a boat on the blue sea. Behind the boat was a small island with a palm tree. She had used her shoebox full of Dixon crayons to color it.
