A Killing in Zion

by Andrew Hunt

“Of course,” he said. “You don’t even need to ask.”

  I turned to Jared. “What about you?”

  He stopped chewing and ran his tongue over his teeth. “Can’t do it, boss.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  He swallowed what was in his mouth. “I’ve got a meeting at one o’clock in the afternoon with that clerk over at the state department of revenue’s vehicle division. He’s the same fellow I spoke to yesterday when I went out there to request registration records on Model T trucks and brown Hudsons. They need twenty-four hours’ notice to rustle up those documents, and I don’t want to stand him up after he went to all that work. Besides, with Myron out of town, it makes sense to have someone in the office for at least part of the day, in case someone calls.”

  “Good point,” I said.

  “Art,” said Clara, from the arched entrance to the room. “A word, please?”

  In the hallway, Clara and I stood face-to-face, and I found her visibly shaken.

  “I don’t want you going to Dixie City.”

  I didn’t know she’d been eavesdropping. Maybe I should’ve arranged to have the meeting at Public Safety. Oh well. Too late now. Besides, I knew I’d have to tell her if I was going to leave town. It just caught me off guard, knowing she was listening in on us.

  “I have to,” I said. “I have no choice.”

  “Yes, you have a choice,” she said. “Talk to Buddy…”

  “Clara…”

  “I’m being serious. Tell him the truth. Tell him all about the girl and what happened here tonight. He knows you meant well, that you didn’t want to see the girl suffer in the reformatory.”

  “Clara, I have to try to find her,” I said. “Even if I return empty-handed, I need to be able to tell Buddy I gave it my best shot.”

  “You know nothing about Dixie City,” she said, choked up. “You’ve no idea what to expect. You’re going down there blind.”

  I leaned in close to her. “Nothing bad is going to happen to me. Trust me. I’ll be fine.”

  She looked down, fighting the tears. I curled my index finger under her chin and gently nudged her head upward. Our eyes met. She bit her lower lip.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  * * *

  The drive on U.S. 91 south snakes through desert valleys dotted with sage and juniper and mesquite trees and surrounded by stubby mountains that from a distance appeared slate gray with a hint of purple. I drove while Roscoe slept on the passenger side, his hat pulled low over his face. My only company was a two-knob radio that came installed in the Olds for an extra ten bucks when I ordered her from factory Detroit. From time to time, I’d fiddle with dial and pick up chatter or music. For five whole minutes, WGN clear-channeled its way out here from Chicago, broadcasting a dance orchestra from the White City Ballroom. The station soon crackled its way into oblivion, leaving me alone with all of those pops and hisses. The drive went on like this for hours, with nothing to do but turn the radio dial and hope for something, anything.

  Nearing St. George, at the bottom of the state, the terrain turns to red sandstone, rising high into sheer faces that instantly make you feel small. Real small. With one hand on the wheel, I picked up a folded sheet of paper on the front seat and glanced at directions from St. George to Dixie City, written in the familiar handwriting of Jared Weeks. Before we left, Jared furnished a name, Oscar Larsen, Dixie City’s justice of the peace, a non-polygamist and owner of the only boardinghouse in town. The polygamists in Dixie City all held Larsen in high regard, according to Jared, primarily because he was fair-minded, although it helped that he had founded the town back in 1911.

  Roscoe’s head dipped low, and the man snored louder than the car’s engine. I envied him. My eyes burned and grew heavy from a sleepless night. My plan: find this Larsen fellow, see if he’d rent rooms by the night, eat an early dinner, and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow was the funeral. I was dreading it. Jared’s advice to watch it from a distance made sense. Maybe we’d spot the girl among the mourners. Maybe we wouldn’t. At this point, I was feeling desperate and willing to do anything to find her. Planning these things out in my head helped ease doubts that dogged me as I turned off 91. Unfortunately, those doubts persisted—intensified, even—as I sped east on a narrow, barely paved road, forty or so miles away from Dixie City. Was I doing the right thing by defying Buddy’s orders and coming down here? Was I on a fool’s errand? How on earth would I ever find a single, solitary girl—who may have been a polygamist wife—in a town teeming with such women?

  * * *

  Oscar Larsen, a wiry man with white hair, crinkly eyes, and a Roman nose, watched us from a rocking chair on the porch of his boardinghouse. At first glance, he came across as intense and distrusting. His leathery exterior, heavily tanned, with faded work clothes torn and dirty in spots, conveyed a toughness that must be a prerequisite for surviving out here among the mesas and the junipers. I parked my car on the dirt road, in front of his two-story Victorian house, prompting Larsen to stand and amble to the porch stairs.

  “Help you fellers?” he asked, watching me lift the fence latch.

  “I’m Art Oveson,” I said, pushing open the gate. “This is Roscoe Lund. We heard you take in lodgers here.”

  “Who gave you that idea?” He folded his arms and remained stone-faced.

  “A friend of ours,” I said. “I hope he was right.”

  “Your friend got a name?”

  “Jared Weeks.”

  “Weeks, huh?” His eyes wandered searchingly. “Weeks, Weeks. Hmm. I used to know a family by that name. Most of ’em up and moved a while ago. But I am acquainted with one, a daughter, who stayed put.” His fixed his gaze back on me. “I think her name was Lillian. Yeah, that’s it. Lillian. I don’t suppose she’s any relation to that friend of yours. She dropped her maiden name when she got married. Unfortunately, she died some years ago.” He paused to ponder something. “I don’t know how this Jared feller come to know about our boardinghouse here.”

  “Christ, does it really matter?” asked Roscoe, matchstick on his lip. “We ain’t freeloaders. We come bearing greenback.”

  He scowled at Roscoe. “I don’t rent to just anybody.”

  I showed him my badge. “I’m a detective with the Salt Lake City Police Department.”

  He looked at Roscoe, who fished out his badge as well.

  Larsen nodded in acknowledgment. “Are you here to attend LeGrand Johnston’s funeral?” he asked. “It’s tomorrow, you know. But don’t expect to get in if you weren’t invited.”

  “We’re not here for that reason,” I said. I squatted, opened my leather grip bag, took out a police mug shot of the girl, stood, and showed it to him. “We’re looking for this girl. Do you know her?”

  He looked at it two seconds and returned it. “No.”

  “Have you heard about some boys who went missing in May?” I asked, returning the photo to my bag.

  “If boys went missing, I’d know about it. The town marshal, Ferron Steed, would’ve mentioned it to me.”

  “Got any ideas about who’d want to put a few slugs in LeGrand Johnston?” asked Roscoe.

  “I’m afraid I was never closely acquainted with the man.” He twisted right and spat tobacco into a porch spittoon next to the rocking chair. “Anyhow, these people aren’t keen on outsiders. They’ve got their own form of justice. It’s called blood atonement. They don’t have any reason to believe that big-city police like you fellas are going to carry it out properly, either. If someone from inside their little world did kill Johnston—and I’m not saying that’s so—then the killer has signed his own death warrant.”

  “Or her,” said Roscoe, dipping into his own pouch of Red Man.

  Larsen grinned, showing his tobacco-stained teeth. “Yep.”

  “Maybe you’d be so kind as to show us a room,” I said. “Is there a restaurant in town where we can eat?”

  “Only one. The Covered Wagon. It’s in the middle of town. You can’t
miss it.”

  “Much obliged,” I said, with a tug of my hat brim.

  “Don’t expect to find a reception committee waiting to give you the key to the city,” said Larsen. “These folks aren’t partial to outsiders. I’m one of the few non-polygamists they let live around here. That’s because I founded this town.”

  “You founded Dixie City?” I asked.

  “I’m called the town founder, but that’s something of a stretch,” he said. “There were plenty of polygamists living in these parts long before I arrived. All I did was sign the papers of incorporation in 1911, to make it officially a town.”

  Roscoe turned in the direction of a craggy butte beyond the picket fence. A tumbleweed rolled by. “Some town,” he said.

  Our host glared at Roscoe. “I’ll show you to your room.”

  Eighteen

  To get to the Covered Wagon Café, we walked along Central Avenue through Dixie City. In my hand I held a picture of the unknown mystery girl, whose disappearance from my house last night still had me baffled and shaken. I couldn’t get her off my mind, and I hoped I’d locate her in this strange place that seemed to have been frozen in time eighty years ago. A high mesa at the town’s edge, splashed with red and orange, overlooked the place like a petrified tidal wave. The walk along the wide road took us past block after block of modest wood-frame houses.

  This was where the rank-and-file fundamentalists—the “common folk,” or “the salt of the earth,” as Johnston used to like to call them—resided. By contrast, the wealthy patriarchs lived outside of town, in secluded fortresslike compounds behind high walls. This arrangement was no accident. It meant that visitors to this place were given the impression that all polygamists were simple folk.

  The streets appeared mostly deserted at first, yet soon we saw signs of life. Curtains parted in windows and dark figures gazed out. Men, women, and children watched from front yards. Teenage girls who looked as though they’d just leaped out the back of prairie schooners circa 1854, clad in ankle-length dresses with long hair pinned in buns, whispered to each another, pointed fingers, and stayed out of our way. I didn’t see any adolescent boys, but it was impossible to miss the women peeking over fences, children climbing trees to get a better view, and the elderly watching us from porches.

  We focused on the road ahead. I knew a little about the history of this place, mainly from bits I’d picked up over the past few months in our investigation. Long before Oscar Larsen signed the articles of incorporation that officially turned Dixie City into a town in 1911, the early Mormon pioneers built an outpost here in the 1850s, to facilitate Brigham Young’s plan to send families to these parts to try their hand at growing cotton. Young hoped profits from the crop would enrich the cash-strapped Church, and he cited the lucrative cotton trade in the South as an example. Alas, southern Utah’s desert terrain could not compete with the rich soil of Alabama or Georgia. The Mormons abandoned the community and it deteriorated into a ghost town. When the Church disavowed polygamy in 1890, paving the way for Utah to achieve statehood, there was talk that authorities were poised to crack down on plural marriage zealots. Rising fears of mass arrests triggered a southward exodus. Thousands of fundamentalists moved to these parts, looking to avoid jail time. Despite this trend, the more stubborn polygamists stayed put in Salt Lake City. The wealthy ones quietly began buying up land along the Utah-Arizona border, while holding on to their property in the city.

  Roscoe elbowed me, snapping me back to the present. We had crossed into the business quarter. Not much to it: a one-pump filling station, a bank (with a scowling guard standing out front), a local mercantile with a CLOSED sign in the window, Zion Auto Repair, and the Covered Wagon Café. As we passed Zion Auto Repair, a burly auto mechanic in oil-stained blue coveralls wiped his hands on a rag and watched us.

  The Covered Wagon was your typical small-town eatery. I surveyed the long, narrow room, with a lunch counter on one side, checkered-cloth-covered tables in the center, and booths against the other wall. The joint was half full, with a primarily older male clientele and a handful of female diners. Three officers of the law, with dark pants, khaki shirts, and town marshal insignias, swiveled around on their barstools to get a better look at us. The awkward weight of a dozen or so pairs of eyes fell upon us as I closed the door.

  Roscoe broke the thick silence. “There’s a booth at nine o’clock. Let’s nab it.”

  We walked over to a wall booth and slid into the maroon seats. A nervous young brunette in a blue dress with a white apron approached with eyes begging us to go away.

  “We’re closed,” she said softly.

  “Doesn’t look that way to me, sister,” said Roscoe.

  “The others were here when we closed. They’ll leave as soon as they’re done.”

  Roscoe gestured at a couple at the next table who hadn’t gotten their order. “Them too?”

  “They got here as we were closing. They’re waiting on their dinners.”

  “What time do you close?” I asked.

  “Now,” she said. “We close now.”

  I checked my wristwatch. “At quarter to six?”

  “We close at five thirty,” she said. “Sorry, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  Quick on her feet, I thought.

  “Is there another restaurant in town?” I asked.

  “There are a bunch in St. George,” she said.

  “That’s a long way to go for eats,” I said.

  “We’re closed,” she repeated.

  The town marshal, a short, stocky man with hair pomaded tightly to his head and a deep dimple on his chin, stepped up alongside her. Grinning, he lifted his trousers with curled thumbs and gave us both a going-over. A nameplate under his chest badge said FERRON W. STEED.

  “Help you boys?”

  “We’re hungry,” said Roscoe. “We want menus.”

  “I don’t know if you heard Talena,” said Steed, pointing at the waitress. “Place is closed.”

  “We don’t plan on being here long,” I said. “We’re staying at Mr. Larsen’s boardinghouse, only they, uh, weren’t expecting us for supper. We’re good for it. We’ve got money.”

  “There’s a place in St. George called the Metropolitan,” said Talena. “I hear they’ve got the best southern fried chicken in the state of Utah.”

  “We’ve been on the road all day,” I said. “If you could see your way clear to…”

  “You fellas like meat loaf?” asked Marshal Steed.

  I smiled up at him. “Who doesn’t?”

  He faced the waitress. “I’m sure Roy has some meat loaf left in the kitchen. Have him fix it up with a couple of sides. While you’re at it, bring a bottle of Heinz.”

  “And a cup of coffee,” said Roscoe. “Better yet, bring the whole pot.”

  “We don’t serve coffee,” said Talena.

  “Bottle of cold beer, then,” said Roscoe.

  “We don’t serve beer either,” she added.

  “Root beer?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “What about water?” asked Roscoe. “Or is that not available either?”

  “Two glasses of water coming right up.”

  “With ice, if you’ve got it, toots,” said Roscoe.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, heading fast to a swinging kitchen door.

  “Nothing beats Roy’s meat loaf,” said the marshal. “Mind if I pull up a chair?”

  Roscoe mumbled, “To be honest, I’d prefer you—”

  I cut him off: “Please, join us.”

  Steed lifted an unused chair from the next table, saying something out of earshot to the couple seated there. He returned to our booth, slid the chair close, and sat down, letting out a loud exhale and grunt as he made himself comfortable. “Much better. Now, where were we?”

  “Waiting for our grub,” said Roscoe.

  “I didn’t get your names,” said Steed.

  “I’m Art Oveson. This here is Roscoe Lund.”

  He sho
ok hands with me. “Good to know you.”

  We released our grips and he offered his hand to Roscoe, who waited a few seconds before capitulating.

  “What brings you two fellas to this neck of the woods?”

  “We’re vagabonds,” said Roscoe. “Bitten by the wanderlust bug, making our way across this enchanting land of ours by auto.”

  “We’re detectives,” I said, giving Roscoe the cut-it-out eye. “With the Salt Lake City Police Department.”

  “Oh? You’re a little outside your domain.”

  I set the picture of the girl on the table in front of him and he leaned forward to get a good look at her.

  “Do you know this girl?” I asked.

  “She looks familiar.”

  “What’s her name?” asked Roscoe.

  “I said she looks familiar,” Steed told Roscoe. “I didn’t say I know her.”

  “So you don’t know who she is?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you let me hold on to this picture,” he said. “I’ll ask around.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” I said. “I need it.”

  He picked up the photo, smiled tauntingly, and showed no signs of giving it up. “Does this pretty young thing have something to do with you men being here?”

  “She’s one reason,” I said. “There are others.”

  “What might those be?” asked Steed.

  “Can I get my picture back, please?” I asked, pointing to it.

  “I’d like to hold on to it,” said Steed. “In case.”

  “Give it back,” said Roscoe.

  I gave Roscoe my best let-me-do-the-talking glare, but he ignored me.

  “The young lady in that picture has gone missing,” I told Steed. “She’s a witness in a double homicide. We need to find her. And I need to have the picture to show people what she looks like, I’m afraid.”

  “Are you referring to Uncle Grand’s murder?” Steed asked, finally handing me the picture.

  “Yes.”

  “He was shot in Salt Lake City, not here,” said Steed.

  “But the girl is from around here,” said Roscoe. “We have reason to believe…”

  “Well, I can save you time,” said Steed. “We’re a town of law-abiding folk. You won’t find any murderers around here. They’re all running around up in Salt Lake City.”