by Andrew Hunt
“Shot three times with a .32. Same caliber used on the driver.”
“Any sign of the firearm?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not. We have Volney Mason’s .45 caliber sidearm, which was used to fire a shot into the wall of the church, but not the one used to shoot the victims.”
“Did the police contact the next of kin?”
“Yes, they did this morning,” said Tom. “That’d be his wife Lucinda. Her son drove her here earlier this afternoon and they identified the body.”
“What was her demeanor?”
“Weeping, but not distraught.”
“When she was here, did you happen to mention the girl at the crime scene?”
“I did.”
“And?”
Tom shook his head. “She insisted that her husband was alone, taking care of business at the church, that there wasn’t a girl with him. She has arranged with a mortuary to pick up her husband’s body.”
“When are you releasing it?”
“Thursday. The family is planning a Saturday funeral in Dixie City.”
“Polygville.”
“Yep. Let me ask you, Art: Has Wit had any luck figuring out who the girl is?”
“Not yet. She either can’t talk or won’t talk, and the polygamists refuse to identify her. It’s all a part of their crazy code of silence, I guess.”
I watched Tom pull the sheet over Johnston. “Two homicides,” I told him. “You’re a busy man.”
“Care to see the other fella?”
“Sure, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
Once more, he pulled a lever, gripped a handle, and used his weight to pull the drawer out of the wall. This time I did the honors, folding down the white linen covering the dead man. The first thing I noticed was the dark, scrubbed-out canyon where his left eye used to be. My eyes dropped to a toothbrush mustache that I had failed to notice on Monday night when I first saw him, the kind worn by Oliver Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, and Adolf Hitler. Death had transformed his face into a waxy, insubstantial mass of flesh, with his lips forming an ugly leer.
“What about his next of kin?”
“Mason’s estranged wife dropped by during the noon hour and ID’d him,” said Tom. “Apparently, he’s got a mother and a sibling or two. Pace Newbold told me they live in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area and they lost contact with him years ago. The wife has no money, so it looks like the city’s going to foot the bill for burial.” Tom pointed at the sheet. “Finished?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Tom pulled the sheet back up, walked the drawer closed, and fastened the lever shut.
“Did Johnston have anything else on him, other than his wallet?”
“No.” Tom’s brow wrinkled while he peeled off his gloves. “Come to think of it…”
He disposed of his gloves, led me out into the corridor, and shut off the lights and locked the morgue door him. He then went into his office—he was in there about half a minute—and came out with a file folder in hand. Out of it he pulled a tattered yellow handbill with creases and a bloodstain in the corner.
“This was in his jacket pocket,” he said.
Big letters spanned the top, like an Old West “Wanted” poster. A NEW DAWN IN HOMESTEADING! Next line, smaller font: 170,000,000 ACRES OF PRIME LAND STILL AVAILABLE FOR SETTLERS! My eyes dropped to a longer message in a smaller type:
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to own your own homestead? WONDER NO LONGER! Prime homestead land is still plentiful in the western states. In these hard times, having a piece of land to call your own is the dream of millions. There is prime land for the taking. Alas, most men are unaware of how to claim that land under federal Homestead Act laws. Do YOU know the rules? Well, friend, keep reading, for this is your chance to BEAT THE DEPRESSION! The goal of the Golden Valley Improvement Association is to help you obtain the homestead of your dreams. We will work with you through every stage of your application, and our ultimate reward is to see you farming on a piece of land that you can call your own. Don’t wait another day! Send us your name, contact information, and return postage. We will arrange a meeting with you to discuss making your dream of being a homesteader come true. Mail to: Golden Valley Improvement Association, Box 130, Salt Lake City.
The bottom proclaimed, TODAY’S PIONEERS ARE THE SUCCESS STORIES OF TOMORROW. I flipped it over. On the back, someone had scrawled in smudged ink: DELPHI, RM 308. The only Delphi I knew of was the Delphi Hotel, a flophouse on State Street that I’d visited many times as a Morals Squad detective. With eight-bucks-a-month rooms, the place was a magnet for alcoholics, dope fiends, narco dealers, prostitutes, drifters, the unemployed, and frugal gents who led their mistresses in through the back door and rented rooms by the hour. Livsey watched me, expecting me to give back the handbill. I steadied myself to ask a question I dreaded asking.
“May I take this?”
He closed the folder. “You know the rules, Art.”
“I’ll be careful.”
He thought it over and nodded his approval. A subtle nod, though, which told me he had misgivings, and I’d better take it while I could.
“Thanks.”
I was halfway to the stairs when he called out, “Happy Fourth of July, Art.”
I tipped my hat. “You too, Tom.”
“Remember. Don’t come to work tomorrow!”
We both got a good laugh out of that one.
* * *
Had I been another minute later, I’d have missed the two orderlies escorting the girl from last night’s crime scene to a Chevrolet with a state seal on its door idling out front. In an act of overkill, they’d chained her in shackles, and pulled her by the elbows on a forced march to the exit. I gave chase from the stairs, dodging people, till I breathlessly caught up with the men in white and the girl between them. “Hey!” They turned, spinning the girl with them, rattling chains, eyeing me as if I were a lunatic asylum escapee. One of the men toted what appeared to be a tattered white linen bag of some sort, made bulky by all of the things stuffed into it. I guessed those were her belongings.
“Where’re you fellas taking her?”
“To the State Industrial School.”
“Feller upstairs signed off.”
The timid girl in homespun stood no chance in that pit of juvenile despair, where the guards thought a good beating was exactly what every inmate needed. I’d do whatever it took to stop these men from putting the girl in the reformatory, even if it meant fighting them with my fists. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Right then, Buddy Hawkins crossed through the lobby, on his way somewhere, perhaps home. A spectacular coincidence.
“Art,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Buddy! Just the man I wanted to … They’re taking the girl away. The girl from the crime scene.”
Buddy gave me his best Are you nuts? squint. “Yeah. Of course they are. What other choice do we have? She won’t tell us her name or address, so we can’t contact her family. Besides, she might be a witness to a homicide. In fact, for all we know, she might’ve … Well, you know.”
“A girl like that, dressed like an old-time schoolmarm, doesn’t stand a chance in the reformatory. That place is the worst possible mix of little league psychopaths-in-training and guards who can’t be bothered. Do you really want to put her in that kind of jeopardy?”
“It’s either that or jail,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
My next words I spoke impulsively. “She can stay at my house.”
Buddy gazed at me as if I’d lost my mind. “Have you run this by Clara?”
“Well, no. But the girl’s a minor, and I happen to know that according to the law, I can take custody of her if I…”
Buddy yanked me aside, nearly giving me whiplash. “Have you taken leave of your senses, Art?”
“Look at her! She’s terrified.…”
“Yeah, and she might be a murderer. Did you ever stop and think of
that?”
“Surely you don’t think…”
“I don’t know what to think, Art. She won’t even say her name!”
“Maybe she’s mute.”
“Who knows? All I know is we’re doing her a favor by putting her in the Industrial School.”
“Oh, you mean the same way we did Ellis Frandsen a favor?”
Buddy knew instantly who I was talking about. Ellis Frandsen was a fourteen-year-old boy who came from a troubled home and repeatedly ran away, thanks to frequent beatings inflicted on him by his father. Last year, after an especially harrowing night of his dad’s savagery, Frandsen was admitted to the hospital to recover. The investigating detectives from the Youth Bureau, Oscar Saunders and Sam Alcorn, made a big public stink in the local papers about Frandsen’s woeful tale in order to drum up support for a long overdue child protection bill being drafted in the state legislature. Coincidentally, a judge ordered that Frandsen be released from the hospital to the State Industrial School for an indeterminate length, until the matter of his living arrangements could be resolved. When Frandsen was well enough to be discharged, a hospital administrator drove him to the reformatory, as per the judge’s orders. Poor Frandsen. Three days into his stay, he was taken out of his bunk in the dead of night to a secluded spot in the building by an unknown perpetrator—or perpetrators—tied up, gagged, tortured, and murdered. That made him the eighth person to die in the custody of the youth reformatory since it first opened. Half of those had been suicides, the rest homicides. The dead all shared the common trait of being vulnerable boys and girls—in other words, the Ellis Frandsens—too weak and terrified to defend themselves against their assailants or withstand the rigors of confinement in the institution. Days after Frandsen was found dead in the boiler room, his father climbed up on a stool, pulled a homemade noose around his neck, and stepped off. Frandsen’s killer still hadn’t been caught.
I was determined that this young woman standing before me in the lobby of the Public Safety Building would not become victim number nine.
Buddy glared at me. “All right, you want her? She’s all yours. But you’re responsible for her, Art. And if we find out she had anything to do with Johnston’s murder, she goes straight into an isolated unit in Ogden. You got that?”
“Yeah. I got it.”
Buddy looked me up and down. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
He turned to the orderlies, both wondering what was going on. “Let her go,” said Buddy. “She’s going with him.”
* * *
I took the girl to the office of the Anti-Polygamy Squad. I found it a friendlier setting than the interrogation rooms, which always seemed so intimidating and cold to me.
Her eyes caught my attention first. Wide-open, irises splashed with blue, pupils reflecting light. Someone unfamiliar with her might assume those eyes were full of innocence, yet I wondered what they’d seen on the night of Johnston’s murder. She made no noise. Even her breathing was silent. She sat in a chair next to my desk, and her eyes stayed fixed on her shoes. Her thick lips contrasted with her leanness. Hair cascaded to her shoulders in damp waves. She carried a battered, soiled pillowcase weighted down with assorted odds and ends.
The clipboard on the table held a report by Dr. Eugene Calderwood, resident alienist at the state hospital, who happened to be making his routine jailhouse rounds at Public Safety earlier in the afternoon. I lifted it to get a better look at his mostly illegible penmanship. I could make out “Jane Doe” standing in for her name, and on the line designated “Condition,” partially decipherable cursive said, “Unknown if muteness is temp or perm.” I set the clipboard down and studied her. She avoided eye contact with me.
“I don’t know if you can understand me.”
No reply.
“We met last night. Remember?”
When I reached for my badge wallet, she cowered. “I’m not going to hurt you. I want to show you something.”
I placed the open wallet on the table, badge up. The shiny surface flashed gold light on her cheek.
“I’m a policeman. I want to help you.”
Her head plunged, chin to chest, hair shrouding her face. I flipped the page on the clipboard. “Physician’s Recommendation: Confinement at State Industrial School.” My eyes darted to the girl.
“You almost got put in the State Industrial School. You know what that is?”
She became as still as a statue.
“It’s a youth reformatory. It’s about the worst place on earth.”
She lifted her head. A little.
“I can help keep you out of there. But I need you to help me.”
I closed the wallet and pushed it into my pocket.
“What’s your name?”
Silence.
“Do you have a name?”
She ran her tongue over her lips. I thought she might speak for the first time. She did not.
“Did you know LeGrand Johnston?”
No reply.
“Was he a relative?”
It wasn’t my imagination: Her shakes got worse.
“A friend?”
Her eyes wandered right, left. No sign of speaking, or even attempting to.
“Can you tell me how you knew him?”
I waited a beat.
“If you tell me, maybe I can help you.”
She said nothing. I opened my top-center desk drawer, took out a pad of paper, and rummaged around until I found a sharpened wooden pencil. I placed the pad on the desk next to her, which made her inch back slightly in her seat, and I smacked the pencil atop the paper.
“Do you know how to write?”
She appeared mystified, as though I were from Mars.
I spoke louder, my voice sharp with urgency: “Are you able to write things down? Like your name? Or any words? Or can you draw a picture or something? Even a … a … a stick figure or shapes or anything? Anything at all?”
She seemed paralyzed, unable to move. I slumped back, folded my arms, and sighed in frustration. This was going nowhere.
“Didn’t anybody ever teach you how to write?”
Tears fell from her eyes, tapping the table. One … two … followed by a steady drip. I watched the top of her head. Her lips tightened and her body convulsed. I wanted to reach out and touch her hand, but I dared not. It would scare her. I used words instead. I reached for a box of disposable paper handkerchiefs, yanked out three, and handed them to her. She hesitated at first, but then she accepted my offering and used them to dab the tears and snot off her face.
“I know you’re in a dark spot right now,” I said. “I’ve been in dark spots, too. Sometimes things seem so bad, you feel like there’s no hope of any light getting in. You know what? It won’t always be this dark. The light will come back. And instead of spending all of your time thinking about everything you’ve lost, you’ll start to see all of the wondrous things around you, the things nobody can ever take away.”
I gave her time to take it all in. She stopped trembling. The tears ceased. She watched me reach for a candlestick telephone, lift the receiver, rattle the hook a few times with my thumb, and wait for the operator.
“Number, please.”
“Wasatch one-four-eight-four.”
“Please hold.” Pause. “Now connecting.” Another pause. “Sorry, that number is busy.”
I waited a few minutes and repeated the action, with the same results. I lowered the earpiece onto its cradle, pushed the telephone aside, and looked over at the girl, who kept her head dipped slightly to avoid eye contact with me.
“You’re going to come home with me,” I said. “To my house. I have a wife and two children, and we would like it very much if you could stay with us for a while. I think you’ll like it, if you give it a chance.”
Her eyes finally met mine.
Eleven
Outside, standing on the porch in front of Clara, I’d never seen her so furious.
“I’m saying you should have asked me
first, Art!”
“I tried to call you.”
“Oh, don’t hand me that balderdash about the line being busy.” Clara folded her arms above her pregnant tummy. Her toe started tapping, too. The combination folded arms/toe tap robbed me of any hope that this would end well. It meant she was genuinely sore. “I was on the telephone with my sister for all of twenty minutes, Arthur J. Oveson!”
“Look, they were going to stick her in the reformatory up in Ogden,” I said. “What was I supposed to do?”
She swatted my forearm with her hand. “You don’t know what she’s done or what she’s capable of! We’ve got children, Art! Have you forgotten?”
“If I thought she was dangerous, I wouldn’t have—”
“Listen to yourself! You act like you know anything about her! Tell me something, Sherlock Holmes, did you even notice the wedding ring on her finger? What’s the story behind that? You’re the expert. Enlighten me!”
Her comment blindsided me. I hadn’t seen the wedding ring on the girl. Nor had any of my fellow detectives. Or if they had seen it, they’d neglected to tell me. How on earth did I miss something so significant? I had not even bothered looking for one. My first impression of the girl was that she seemed so young, hardly marriage material. Why would I keep an eye out for a wedding ring? Clara could plainly see I was bewildered, based on my open mouth, searching eyes, and loss for words.
“Oh, you missed that little detail, did you?” she said.
Hinges creaked. Clara and I jerked our heads in the direction of the screen door. Hyrum stepped out onto the doormat, wearing his felt crown hat, chewing on a licorice stick while he watched us.
“Hi, sweetheart,” said Clara, turning toward him. “Is there something I can do for you?”
“I want to watch you fight,” he said.
“Oh, honey, we’re not fighting,” said Clara, with a warm smile. “We’re just having a conversation.”
“Is it about the girl in the house?” asked Hyrum.
