by R. R. Irvine
Traveler interrupted. “I still don’t understand why her family left her behind here in Moroni.”
Dora stared him in the eye. “I don’t like speaking ill of the dead. Even now, after what’s happened, I wouldn’t tell you if I thought that would be the end of it. If the dead would be left in peace. But too many people around here like gossiping about fallen Saints like Claire. Even after she’s been away from us for so many years.”
She paused, patting herself on the breastbone to catch her breath. By the time she started speaking again, tears were spilling from her eyes. “Occasionally Naomi, Claire’s mother, would send me a few dollars to help pay expenses. Whatever money she could earn that her husband didn’t know about. The way that child was going through clothes, I had a hard time making ends meet. I was a widow even then, you see, with only a small pension. Of course, after a couple of months the clothes couldn’t hide Claire’s problem. She was pregnant, you see. When I found out, I tried to get help from her father. But he said she had sinned and that he wanted nothing more to do with her. He said she was lost as far as he was concerned. He forbid his wife or children to see her again.”
My God, Traveler thought. No wonder Claire had played games with him, pretending to be lost in hopes that he, that anyone, would come looking for her.
“I tried to find out who the father was,” Dora said. “Not that I would have made her marry some high school boy. But somebody should have helped pay the bills. In any case, Claire wouldn’t tell me. She said I wouldn’t believe her.”
The woman wiped her eyes on the edge of her apron. “She tried telling her father in the beginning, she’d said, when she first knew she was pregnant. But he beat her for telling lies.”
“What lies?” Traveler said.
“All I know is what she told me. That her father locked her up in the root cellar and made her memorize her sin from The Book of Mormon.”
She held up a hand before Traveler could speak. “That child used to go around the house repeating it over and over. I learned it by heart, too. ‘O the wise, and the learned, and the rich, that are puffed up in the pride of their hearts, and all those who preach false doctrines, and all those who commit whoredoms, and pervert the right way of the Lord, wo, wo, wo be unto them, said the Lord God Almighty, for they shall be thrust down to hell.’ ”
“The poor girl,” Martin said.
“What happened to the baby?” Traveler said.
“She had a boy. He was adopted. I can’t say by who. It wouldn’t be fair. Doctor Joe over in Wasatch helped me make the arrangements.”
“Where is the child now?” Martin asked.
Dora sighed deeply. “He died, poor thing, when he was only a baby.”
“She had another child,” Traveler said. “One she named after me. Did she tell you about that?”
Her eyes fixed on him, condemning him. “Claire couldn’t help herself with men. But you, Mr. Traveler, you should have known better. You should have helped her when there was still time.”
32
ON THE way back, Traveler stopped along the road to search for the missing Burma-Shave signs. All he found was empty beer cans, some of them predating aluminum, and enough cigarette butts to sin for every man, woman, and child in Moroni.
While Traveler rummaged along the gravel shoulder, Martin walked up the road to the first of the signs still standing. As he walked back toward the Jeep, he shouted out the surviving slogans one by one. “Whiskers long . . . made Samson strong . . . but Samson’s gal . . . she done . . . him wrong . . . Burma-Shave.”
“That’s great,” Traveler said. “You found them.”
Martin shook his head and slid into the passenger seat. “I remembered them from Sunday drives with your mother. I was her Samson and you were Claire’s. She had to destroy you, just as Delilah did, though all the time she was hoping you’d be strong enough to beat her at her own game.”
“Christ.” Traveler climbed in behind the wheel. “It’s more important than ever that you go back to Salt Lake and find Moroni Traveler the Third.”
“I’m not sure he exists.”
“The postmortem ought to tell us.”
Martin sighed. “Claire didn’t want to be a mother. She was looking for a father, one who wouldn’t abandon her. You.”
“She was the one who kept running away.”
“She had to keep testing your loyalty, didn’t she?”
Traveler laid a hand on Martin’s arm. “I can’t imagine anything worse than being abandoned by your father.”
“You won’t get rid of me that easily,” Martin said. “I plan on staying here with you.”
“We know Claire didn’t have the child with her here. That means the answers, if there are any, have to be in Salt Lake.”
“Drive,” Martin said.
Traveler swung out onto the highway and headed east toward Wasatch. A smoky haze obscured the mountainous plateau for miles in either direction. The closer they got to town the thicker the smoke became. By the time they were driving up Main Street, visibility was down to half a block. Breathing the hundred-degree air was like smoking one of Barney Chester’s cigars.
“We ought to pick up some of those filters you can wear over your nose.” Martin coughed to prove his point.
“If you ask me, they’re more trouble than they’re worth,” Traveler said. Even so, he U-turned and parked in front of the drugstore. The wind had picked up, he noticed, enough to add dust to the smoke.
Martin stood on the sidewalk, hands on hips, admiring Odell’s Drug Store. “Pure Utah Outback. That limestone looks like it was cut yesterday.”
Traveler was about to go inside when he noticed the building’s second story. Three identical windows ran across it. All were dirty; all had their shades drawn. The center window contained faded gold lettering: JOSIAH SUTTON, M.D.
“I’ve remembered something,” Traveler said. “Claire had a thing about doctors.”
Martin glanced at his son before shifting his gaze to the upper floor.
“We’d gone to Liberty Park once to ride the merry-go-round. She said she wanted to catch the brass ring and win a prize. Only they didn’t have a ring.”
Traveler closed his eyes and saw her hair flying out behind her like a mane. Saw her toss her head in joy. Heard her laugh.
“She said there was a ring to be grabbed just the same. That it was invisible to everyone else.”
She’d grinned and licked her lips like a child tasting cotton candy.
“We were sitting side by side. Claire had the outside horse. Each time we went around she’d grab at the invisible ring.”
Each miss made her laugh all the harder.
“Finally she was hanging by one hand and stretching so far out the attendant yelled at her. But not soon enough. Her wrist hit one of the wooden support beams. It hurt like hell, but she wouldn’t cry. Instead, she kept saying, ‘I almost had it.’ She only started crying when it swelled so badly I told her she’d have to see a doctor. She got hysterical then. Said she wouldn’t see a doctor, no matter what, that she didn’t care if she had a crooked wrist the rest of her life.”
He’d carried her to one of the benches from which nonriding mothers watched their children. “Please, Moroni, I’m begging you. No doctor. I hate them. “All the while the attendant kept wringing his hands and saying he was insured. “You’ve got to do it,” Traveler had told her, knowing from experience how intense the pain of a broken bone would be once shock had worn off. “For me if nothing else.”
“It took me half the night, pleading, threatening even, before I finally got her to an emergency room. Even then, she wouldn’t be left alone. I had to stay right with her, holding her good hand like a child the whole time she was being treated.”
“There are times when we all feel like that,” Martin said. “When we need to hold on to someone.”
“It was more than that. You would understand if you’d seen her eyes. She was terrified.”
“We
all have bogeymen from our childhood.”
Traveler stared at the gold lettering. “What would happen if you went back to Salt Lake and camped outside the State Medical Board?”
“You know better than that. We don’t have the clout to force those damned doctors to talk to us. Besides, I told you before. You’re not getting rid of me.”
Traveler’s chin sank onto his chest. “That doesn’t leave me any choice.”
Martin squinted at him. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“I’ll have to ask Willis Tanner for a favor.”
“Then God help us.”
33
MARTIN SAT at the soda fountain, drinking a chocolate phosphate under the close scrutiny of Cynthia Odell, while Traveler made his call from the phone booth at the back of Odell’s Drug Store. He dialed Willis Tanner’s private number, the one, according to Willis, that the church kept totally secure and that was good any time of the day or night.
A recorded voice asked for his access code.
At that point Traveler was supposed to punch in his social security number, but the phone had only a dial. The message was repeated once more before a live operator came on the line. Sounding surly, she asked for his number. He could hear her entering the touch-tone beeps at her end.
The line sound changed. No doubt a church computer was sorting through his life. TRAVELER, MORONI. FALLEN ANGEL.
“Is that you, Mo?” Tanner said.
“What does your computer screen say?”
Tanner laughed. “That’s you, all right. I heard you were down south.”
“In Wasatch.”
“I think Hal McConkie’s the bishop there.”
“Even you can’t be that good, Willis, not with thousands of bishops across the state.”
“Aren’t computers wonderful?”
More likely it was Church Security at work, a system run with religious fervor by ex-FBI agents.
“I need a favor,” Traveler said.
“What are friends for?”
Traveler imagined Tanner’s squint-eyed smile.
“I need access to records at the State Medical Board.”
“What would I get in return?”
Traveler didn’t hesitate. “Anything you want.”
Tanner whistled. After that, there was silence on the line.
Traveler, sweating at the thought of what price Tanner might extract, opened the door to fan air into the booth. Until now, he’d always been careful to keep their accounts even, since owing Tanner was like owing the church.
“I’ll be damned,” Tanner said.
Traveler heard something that could have been Tanner jumping for joy.
“I’m looking out at your namesake, Mo. I think I hear his trumpet sounding.”
Tanner’s office, high up in the old Hotel Utah building, looked out on the temple across the street. His floor was only one below the penthouse, the official residence of the church president. Both were well below the golden statue of the Angel Moroni.
“ ‘Before the arm of the Lord shall fall, an angel shall sound his trump,’ ” Traveler said, a Sunday school lesson remembered.
“There’s hope for you yet, Mo. Hold on, while I record your promise of payment.”
“You have my word, Willis.”
“That’s good enough for me. You know that. But . . .” In the pause that followed, there was no sound, no click, no beep, nothing to indicate a recording device. “Go ahead. We’re all set.”
Traveler took a deep breath. “Claire’s dead.”
“I heard. I’m sorry.”
“But not sorry enough for a favor without strings?”
“I’m not a free agent,” Tanner said.
“She was murdered.”
“I heard that too.”
“In the Mormon way,” Traveler added.
“You’re talking ancient history, Mo. Oaths that no longer have meaning. Now what is it you need exactly?”
“Letters were written to the State Medical Board from women here in Wasatch. I need to know what’s in them.”
“That’s a civil matter. It doesn’t come under church jurisdiction. Surely you understand that.”
“What I understand, Willis, is that nothing is beyond your jurisdiction if you so choose.”
“I don’t see how I can help you, not without something more concrete.”
“You sound like you know what’s going on here already,” Traveler said.
“You know me, Mo.”
“All right. On tape and for the record. You do this for me and I, Moroni Traveler, will owe you one. Payable on demand.”
“Give me your phone number and I’ll get back to you.”
Traveler hesitated. Martin was slumped over the fountain’s counter, looking tired and in need of rest. But if they went back to the motel, the old-fashioned switchboard offered no security whatsoever.
“How soon, Willis?”
“Let’s say an hour. There could be a lot of records to go through.”
What the hell, Traveler thought. An eavesdropper on the line might make his work easier by spreading the word and stirring up things.
He gave Tanner the number of the Sleep-Well Motel.
34
AN HOUR to the minute Tanner called back. He sounded subdued. “I’ve got the file in my hand, but I’ve been advised to keep names out of our conversation.”
“Are you alone?”
“Except for my tape recorder, which is definitely off. I want no record of this conversation.”
Martin, who was listening in as best he could without an extension, mouthed, “Don’t trust him.”
Traveler shrugged. “All right, Willis. Tell me what you’ve got.”
“Eighteen letters written over a period of twenty years. Eight of them were recent, apparently mailed together as a mass protest.”
“Am I to assume that all complaints are against Doctor Joe, Dr. Sutton?”
“I told you, Mo. No names.”
“Have you forgotten our deal? As of now, I owe you one.”
“I love having you in debt to me, Mo. But when I saw the file I almost backed out of the deal. This is very confidential information.”
“I need to know about Shirley Colton’s letter.”
“No names, remember. I’ll read you one that’s representative of the others.”
“Hers?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I’m listening.”
Tanner cleared his throat.
“Dear Sirs,
I am writing to request an investigation of Doctor X, whose conduct toward me and my family is nothing short of criminal. I have made a similar request of the sheriff here in town, as have other patients who are writing to you at the same time. Every time I visit Doctor X’s, whether for a cold or anything else, he always insists on giving me a pelvic examination. His practice is to prescribe a tranquilizer first, then make me wait in his office until the drug takes effect. He does it, he says, to quiet my nerves. I end up feeling so groggy his nurse has to help me up onto the examination table and into the stirrups. But she leaves the room when the doctor comes in. He drapes me in such a way that I can’t see what he’s doing when he dilates me. However, I recently had occasion to visit another doctor, a female specialist. Her examination convinced me that Doctor X uses his penis instead of a dilator. That makes him a rapist.”
Tanner paused for breath. “There’s more, but I can’t see how it would help you. In any case, I won’t bother reading the other letters, since they say pretty much the same thing.”
“You say these complaints go back twenty years?”
“That’s right.”
“What action has the medical board taken during that time?”
“None.”
“What the hell’s going on?”
“I asked the same question, Mo. You know doctors. They protect their own. As the letters trickled in over the years, they put it down to female hysteria. When the last eight letters
arrived together, there was some talk of an investigation. But there’s no point in pursuing that now with Doctor X dead.”
“That’s very convenient.”
“My sentiments exactly, Mo.”
35
TRAVELER AND his father were digesting lunch at the Main Street Dinette, along with the information supplied by Willis Tanner, when Sheriff Hickman arrived. Father and son nudged one another. Without a word, Traveler slid one stool to the left so Hickman could squeeze in between them.
“What’ll it be, Sheriff?” the woman behind the counter said.
“Vera, I’m surprised to see you open.”
“You know the bishop when it comes to business.” She winked good-naturedly. “Besides, I put in my time earlier at the Relief Society.”
“This is Vera,” the sheriff said. “Bishop McConkie’s wife. She makes the best apple pie in town.”
“We’ve met,” Traveler said. “Mrs. McConkie ran me out of the Co-op.”
The woman smiled.
The sheriff said, “Church business is not for outsiders. I told you that once before.”
Mrs. McConkie handed the sheriff a slice of pie. If Traveler hadn’t been looking at Hickman, he wouldn’t have caught the signal. But the woman picked it up. “If you want anything else, I’ll be in the back. Just yell.” She left them alone.
Hickman nodded and went to work on his pie, while Traveler drank coffee and wondered if the sheriff knew about the call from Willis Tanner.
“I’m the only man in town not fighting the fire,” Hickman said, pushing away his empty plate. “Ellis Nibley excepted, poor man. I would be on the line, too, if we didn’t have strangers in town.”
“Somehow I don’t think you came here to give us a fire report,” Traveler said.
Hickman smiled, but his eyes were as cold as those Traveler had seen in photographs of the sheriff’s gun-fighting ancestor. “I’ve checked with some people I know in Salt Lake. They tell me you’re a dangerous man, Traveler.”
