City of Saints

by Andrew Hunt

  “It’s not going to work, what you’re doing—”

  “You’re not making it easier for your aunt and uncle,” I said, pitching my shovel in the ground and resting my elbow on the handle. “Or yourself.”

  “Who told you could stop digging?”

  The next shot he fired jolted me, but not as badly as the others. The sound echoed through the pine forest, boomeranging back to us in a more muted form.

  “You crossed the line when you shot Lund,” I said. “They’ll hunt you down.”

  “They don’t have the foggiest idea I had anything to do with it! I got pals in the force, and they say they don’t know who did it.”

  “They never tip their hand,” I said. “You won’t know they’re closing in on you until it’s too late—”

  “Stop it!”

  “That night at Grand Central, Roscoe didn’t see your license plates, but he shot you in the hand, and you’ve got a bullet hole in your car door.”

  “I’ll get it fixed!”

  “I can help you, Floyd.”

  “I don’t need your help! Keep digging or I’ll shoot you now and dig the hole for you!”

  I spent a while digging in silence. While I did, I watched Floyd’s movements. It was hard to see him with the car’s lights blinding me, but every now and then he would aim his gun at the sky while he blew warm air at his cold hands. He was shivering and would rub his free hand up and down on the opposite arm to warm himself. He started to relax, repeatedly shifting his attention away from me: pacing, shivering, coughing. During one of these moments when he had his back turned to me, I lifted my shovel and swung it as hard as I could against his calves. The loud thud of steel on his legs sent him sideways into the car’s grille, yelling with pain.

  I bolted.

  I sprinted as fast as my legs would carry me, past the car and down the snowy road, in the direction of what I hoped would be a highway or, at the very least, a paved road. I could hear Floyd shouting behind me, although the only word I could make out was “Oveson.” Three gunshots cracked through the forest, but I didn’t look back. Running faster, I felt myself getting out of breath and became woozy, possibly from those drugs I’d ingested earlier. The white landscape formed a silent backdrop, with rolling snow hills shimmering under the moonlight. It was quiet—3:00 A.M. Christmas morning quiet; where the only sounds I could hear were snow falling, heavy breathing, and my feet crunching snow. Moving as fast as possible in the direction of the main road made the most sense to me. I could have run deeper into the woods, but I didn’t know exactly where I was or where that would take me. What if I reached a cliff and I couldn’t go any farther? What then?

  A revving engine sent my heart racing. I wheeled and spotted headlamps winding around the trees, heading in my direction. I turned and ran. A gunshot rang out, exploding snow near my feet. Another shot nailed a nearby tree, and pieces of bark hit me as I ran. The car had almost caught up with me—the headlamps bathed the whole area in light—and I leaped off the road to avoid being hit. The car was about fifteen feet to my left now, and there was no missing that left arm emerging from the window, pointing a pistol at me. The flash and crack prompted me to jump behind a tree, and the bullet hit one of its branches. I couldn’t take much more running. I was out of breath, exhausted, my legs ached, and my lungs were beginning to hurt from all the panting and the frigid air.

  The highway was in sight. Only a little bit more. You can do it, Art. My legs were about to give out. Floyd maneuvered the speeding car and positioned his gun for another shot. I sprinted out of the woods, nearly stumbling on the black-ice pavement that reflected the moon and clouds. The main road dipped downward at a steep grade. On either side of it was dense forest with towering pines everywhere. I didn’t have long to rest. The car roared out of that dirt road and skidded to a stop before reaching the gravelly shoulder. I started running again. Where was I going? Why was I running? Did I really think I could outrun an auto?

  The car backed up several feet, turned and began coming at me full speed. I ran as fast I could, but I didn’t have much left. My thoughts drifted back to that time I almost died during the influenza epidemic, when I was seventeen. That old adage about people seeing their lives flash before their very eyes prior to dying did not apply to me. The only thing that flashed before my eyes was a question: How badly is this going to hurt?

  A gunshot went off, and a bullet grazed my left bicep. At that moment, I slipped on the icy surface and landed on my stomach. The car’s engine roared with acceleration, and it must have been coming at me at fifty to sixty miles per hour. I craned my neck to see the headlamps closing in on me, and I knew if I stayed where I was, I’d suffer the same fate as Helen Pfalzgraf.

  I closed my eyes and, with what strength I could muster, thrust my arms against the road and rolled hard to my right, in the direction of the gravel shoulder. I felt the heat from the car as it roared past, and I opened my eyes and watched red taillights streak away from me. Floyd slammed on the brakes, which sent the car spinning out of control and plunging down a snowy embankment. It rolled a hundred feet and crashed into a huge tree, sending Parley Tanner facefirst through the windshield like a rag doll. I closed my eyes and turned away, but I still heard a gory burst when he hit the hood.

  I hurried to the wreckage to survey the damage. The front of the car was accordion-crushed and belching steam clouds into the cold night. An ancient Ponderosa pine had managed to rip halfway into the passenger compartment, sandwiching Floyd Samuelson’s mangled body between the dashboard and his seat back, which was now fused with the backseat. I waded through thigh-deep snow until I reached the bent running board and peered through the shattered window. Floyd wasn’t moving. I thought he was dead. I made my way over to the passenger side. The moonlight allowed me to get as much of a glimpse of Parley Tanner’s lifeless body as I wanted. I circled back to see if there was any way I could pull Floyd out of the car. When I reached the window to get a better look at him, he opened his eyes, startling me.

  “Wh-where is P-P-Parley?” he whispered.

  I thought it best to lie under the circumstances. “He went off to look for help.”

  “Oh.” Floyd smiled as blood dripped from his hair. “Good. Good idea. Maybe he’ll…” He swallowed and groaned in pain. “Maybe he’ll find someone who can h-h-help us.”

  “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll go with him. We’ll get an ambulance up here and we’ll get you guys to a hospital—”

  Floyd grew panicky. He shook his head, reached his bandaged left hand out the window, and gripped my coat sleeve. “Don’t go. Please. I don’t want to die alone. Stay with me. Please.”

  He began to weep gently, his lower lip quivering, tears streaming. “I made a real mess of things. Everything is worse because of me.”

  “It’s going to be OK,” I said. “We’ll get you to a hospital, and I’ll help you. I’ll testify on your behalf. I’ll make some telephone calls and talk to people—”

  He cut me off. “I’m gonna die, Art. I know it. It hurts. It hurts worse than anything I’ve ever felt in my life. God, it hurts.”

  He squeezed my forearm, and I moved closer to him and watched his blood mix with his tears. “Do me a favor, Art.”

  “Sure. Anything, Floyd.”

  “Make sure Bert doesn’t find out about any of this. He’s gonna wonder why I’m not home. He’s used to me coming home and playing with him. He drew me a picture the other day. You shoulda seen it, Art. He drew it with crayons. Me and him fishing.” Floyd’s eyes widened, and he trembled in that steel and glass cocoon. “I don’t want him knowing that I murdered all them people, Art.”

  “I understand. But I need you to level with me, Floyd, and tell me the names of the people you murdered. I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll say the names, and you just nod or shake your head.”

  “O-OK.”

  “Alright. Everett Wooley.”

  He nodded. “I’d do it again, if I had it to,” he said. “He
killed my sister. He didn’t just murder her. She died slow, Art. Real slow. Cryin’ out in pain. I’d do it all over again,” he repeated. “If I had to.”

  I nodded. “Helen Pfalzgraf.”

  “That was Uncle Parley,” he said. “She came over that night and made a scene. He hauled off and hit her on the head with the piece of ore, like he said. We took her out to the old Pole Line Road, to dump her body. As we was driving away, she…” He coughed up blood and gasped. “Sorry. I’m tired. I feel like going to sleep.”

  “I need more help,” I said, “and then you can go to sleep. So you took Helen down to the Pole Line Road, but she was still alive. Right?”

  He nodded. “I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bring myself to run over a woman. He pushed me out of the car. Said, ‘Here, I’ll do it.’ He took out all his anger on her, running over her, over and over again. I was shocked. I couldn’t understand it. I can’t remember how many times he hit her.” He began to weep. “P-please don’t tell Uncle Parley I told you. I don’t want him to know I told you.”

  “I promise I won’t,” I said. “What about C. W. Alexander? Did you kill him?”

  He dried his eyes with shaking fingers. “I set the whole thing up to look like a suicide. I went up to Alexander’s place in Park City, plugged the sonofabitch and looked for Uncle Parley’s let-letters. Uncle Parley told me they were legal documents. Didn’t say nothing about no love letters.”

  “I see. Seymour Considine.”

  “Drove on down to his room at the motor court on, uh, State. Same day he called Uncle Parley, asking a bunch of questions. Uncle Parley told me Considine was asking about Everett Wooley. I went down there and confronted him and I brung a knife and I…” He coughed more blood and closed his eyes. “I put his body in the tr-trunk of his car and drove him to the Salt Lake and threw him in. Ditched his car near the water and used a pay phone at Saltair to call Uncle Parley to come and pick me up.”

  His eyes still closed, his head flopped down, as if he’d just died.

  “Floyd? Floyd, you with me? It’s not time yet. I need more help, so I can make it so Bert doesn’t find out.”

  He slowly opened his eyes and looked at me.

  I nodded. “One last one. Roscoe Lund. Was that you?”

  He nodded. “Lund came out to Uncle Parley and Aunt Helen’s on Saturday morning. Somehow, he got wind that Helen used to work at Uncle Parley’s firm. When Roscoe came, only Aunt Miriam was home. He asked her a lot of questions about Helen. Quizzed her a good half hour. Before he left, he said he was coming back again and bringing you with him. Aunt Miriam got suspicious and confronted Uncle Parley. She asked him why Roscoe was asking all these questions. Uncle Parley waited till Aunt Miriam left. Called me. Told me what happened. So I drove that night over to Public Safety and waited. Little before midnight, Roscoe came out of the building, got in his car, and headed over to the market. I followed him. Watched him go inside. When he came out…”

  He turned his head away from me and spit up something. I couldn’t tell if it was blood or vomit, or maybe a mix of the two. I looked away, at the flattened snow on the white embankment where the car had driven off the road, and it amazed me that Floyd had survived this long.

  Floyd watched me with tragic eyes and a bloody, crooked grin. “Sorry I was gonna kill you, Art. I woulda, too, if I had the chance. But it woulda eaten away at me, same as the others. I ain’t a killer at heart. ’Sides, you’re the most decent man I know. I’m glad you’re alive.”

  I smiled. “I am, too.”

  His lower lip quivered, as if he were about to start crying. “If Aunt Miriam finds out about any of this, it’ll destroy her. Lady’s lost everything. Think about it.”

  “I’ll do my best to make sure she doesn’t,” I said.

  “P-promise?”

  I nodded. There was no more color left in his face. He swallowed again, and when he ran his tongue along his lips, I could tell his mouth was dry. “I’d give anything for a drink of water.”

  I leaned down and picked up a snow clump, straightened, and reached over the pointed metal and broken glass to put it in his mouth. “Try some of this. It’ll help hydrate…”

  He stared into space, mouth agape, with no more life left in his eyes. Somehow, I knew he was gone. I didn’t have to check for a pulse. Floyd Samuelson had found peace.

  I lost track of how much time I spent sitting on the demolished running board, crying in a way that I’ve never cried in my adult life. My wailing echoed through the canyon.

  At some point in the night, a truck stopped on the road at the top of the embankment, and the driver got out and came down to inspect the wreck. I told him what happened, and he offered me a ride to the nearest town so we could telephone the sheriff’s office. I accepted, and on the way I found out I was in Summit County, northeast of Salt Lake City. That placed us in the forests of the Uinta Mountains. The driver kept eyeing my blood-saturated shirtsleeve and asking if I was OK. I reassured him I was fine, even though I felt woozy and my neck still ached from being punctured with that hypodermic needle.

  We reached a roadside café around dawn, and inside I found a mahogany and glass telephone booth to make two calls. The first went out to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office to report the car crash I’d witnessed. The second was to Buddy Hawkins, at home. I apologized for waking him, and he said he was already up and eating a grapefruit. Good thing I had a pocketful of change and there wasn’t a line of people waiting to use the telephone, because our conversation lasted a good hour.

  An hour and a half after we said our good-byes, a Salt Lake police squad car picked me up from the café and drove me back to the city. I dozed off on the way home, but I slept fitfully and woke up for the final leg of the drive. Snaking through a craggy mountain canyon, the highway eventually plugged into the Salt Lake Valley, which glimmered in the morning sun. The patrolman behind the wheel delivered me to LDS Hospital for a set of stitches in my arm wound. Before leaving, I asked to see Roscoe, but a nurse on duty informed me it wasn’t visiting hours. Buddy arrived to pick me up, and he waited while I telephoned Clara from the lobby. She raced to the hospital, taking our children to her sister’s house on the way. We sat side by side on a waiting room bench, and I gave her as brief an explanation as I could about what had transpired in the past twenty-four hours. Before long, I’d have to tell the story all over again to the police. I was weary. I desperately wanted to go home, take a hot bath, and spend time with my family. Alas, it wasn’t over. Not quite yet.

  Twenty-nine

  I sat alone at a long table, surrounded by chairs on all sides. Above me, a line of dangling light globes buzzed brightly, filling the room with a stark white light that hurt my eyes. The table in front of me was marred from years of use, and I didn’t care much for the hard wooden chair under my behind. I looked around, hoping in vain to find a softer, upholstered chair, but they were all the same. A cork bulletin board to my right played home to a host of WANTED posters, and I scanned the grainy photostats of some of the grimmest-looking plug-uglies I’ve ever laid eyes on. In the center of the table, three pitchers of water stood next to a row of spotless glasses turned upside down on doilies.

  They kept me waiting a long time, the police. They’d put me in this room almost two hours earlier, according to the ticking wall clock. I squirmed in my seat. What did they have in store for me? I couldn’t even begin to venture a guess. I felt too exhausted to be nervous. I’d spent so many years being afraid, worried about what others might say or think, but seeing Floyd die in that jagged scrap heap changed me. It was as if something had snapped inside of me. For whatever reason, I wasn’t scared anymore. It felt liberating. I glanced at my jacket pocket and took solace in the imprint of the film canister I’d brought with me. I pulled it partway out of the wide pocket opening and read the label: MAE CALKINS. 3/22/29.

  My bargaining chip with Sheriff Fred Cannon.

  The door opened, and five men filed into the room: Detectives Wit Dunaw
ay and Buddy Hawkins, Police Chief Otis Ballard, District Attorney Walter Rasmussen, and Sheriff Fred Cannon. Cannon closed the door behind him, and the five men pulled out chairs on the opposite side of the table from me and took their seats almost in unison. Ballard’s long and dignified face, with lines etched deeply in places, provided a nice counterweight to Cannon’s round, bulldoggish features. This was one of the few times I’d seen Wit Dunaway not sneering. He actually smiled slightly when I made eye contact with him. DA Rasmussen, a prim, three-piece-suit bureaucrat with slicked-back brown hair and wire-rimmed spectacles, harbored gubernatorial aspirations, or so I’d heard. He opened a leather-bound notebook to a blank lined page and removed a fountain pen and glass inkwell from his briefcase and set them on the table, with all the precision of a surgeon. A moment later, a knock sounded at the door, and in walked a woman in a floral dress, her brunette hair pulled back tightly in a bun. She sat at the end of the table and prepared to take shorthand notes.

  “Mr. Oveson, we’ve a lot of ground to cover,” said Chief Ballard, in a resonant voice that commanded everyone’s attention. “I suppose you had better start from the beginning.”

  For the next two hours or so, I walked everybody in the room through the case, starting with the day Roscoe and I found Helen’s body out at the Pole Line Road. I told them all about the investigation—finding C. W. Alexander murdered in his cabin in Park City, my connection to Seymour Considine, my decision to keep pursuing leads even after finding Alexander’s body and his suicide note, and my questioning of the different suspects—and all of the men at the table watched me intently while the stenographer took rapid notes, flipping pages every few minutes, starting on a new notebook. I even backtracked through Wooley’s story and his violent death at the hands of Floyd Samuelson. My voice grew raspy. Chief Ballard poured me a glass of water; I gulped it down fast, and he refilled it. At times when I spoke about the night in the mountains with Parley and Floyd, I choked up and had to pause. Near the end of my account, my throat ached from talking so much, and Fred Cannon’s stare had turned fierce, complete with frown and quivering eyebrows.