A Killing in Zion

by Andrew Hunt

  “Sounds delightful.”

  “We’ve still got three and a half days,” I said. “A lot can happen in that time.”

  “I thought you said you’re suspended until Monday,” said Myron. “Doesn’t that mean you’re off the job?”

  I shrugged. “Technically. Yeah. But I’ve never read the fine print on suspensions.”

  “We could ask Buddy,” said Myron. “I’m sure he’d be tickled to clarify the rules.”

  “I’d prefer to leave him out of it.” I fished out my wallet, took out a familiar slip of paper, and handed it to Myron.

  He unfolded it and read the words HELP US.

  “I’d rather talk to the man who wrote that,” I said.

  He returned it to me. “Where did that come from?”

  “Carl Jeppson,” I said, putting it back in my wallet.

  I suddenly recalled the police file on Nelpha that Roscoe had given me. “You didn’t happen to find out anything about a rash of thefts down in Dixie City, did you?”

  “Thefts?”

  “Yeah. These would’ve been in the spring. April. May.”

  “No. Nothing about any thefts.”

  “Listen, I could use your help these next few days.”

  “My help?” Myron shook his head. “With all due respect, I’m lying low. You should, too. We’re lame ducks. We might as well start acting the part.”

  We finished our lunch, and when we got up to leave, I plunked a few coins on the table as a tip for the waitress. I could tell Myron wanted no part of this investigation any longer. In fairness to him, he’d already put countless hours of work into this squad. His willingness to drive hundreds of miles to southern Utah and northern Arizona, a long and arduous journey that he made without a single complaint, exhibited a level of commitment that was exceedingly rare in this profession, even among seasoned detectives. To call Myron dedicated would’ve been an understatement. This quiet and unassuming man had been nothing less than heroic. The news of the squad closing down seemed to hit him hard after all of the work he’d done.

  All that is simply to say that I was not about to argue with Myron’s “lame ducks” comment. He was probably right, after all. On the way out of Branning’s, I thanked him and held out my hand. He stared at it for several seconds and then shook it, and while he did, I felt a touch of sadness. I’d miss Myron Adler, the same way I would be unhappy to part ways with Jared and Roscoe. I wished my little squad had more time. That’s all I really wanted, just a little more time.

  * * *

  Half past five in the evening found me sitting on my porch swing, watching the smoke from distant fires. I knew Wit would be on time, and I no longer felt apprehensive as I watched the unmarked police sedan pulling into my driveway. Make no mistake: I had been nervous earlier. The prospect of being arrested for refusing to cooperate with Wit and Pace in their homicide investigation caused me no end of consternation. But at a certain point, I became convinced of the rightness of not cooperating. As Myron pointed out earlier over lunch at Branning’s, the polygamists ran a multimillion-dollar empire, and the only way for a David like me to go up against a Goliath like that was to stare my fears down until all that was left standing was a resolve to do the right thing.

  A pair of car doors slammed, and the homicide detectives approached me with their toughest tough-guy swaggers.

  “I think you know why we’re here, Art,” said Wit.

  “Where’s the girl?” asked Pace, looking around the front yard, as if she’d been out here a second ago planting a sapling.

  “She’s gone,” I said.

  Pace walked up the steps and sat down on the porch swing next to me. My bald head elicited a chuckle from him. “What happened, Oveson? Lose a wrestling match with a lawn mower?”

  “Something like that,” I said. “Like I was saying, the girl isn’t here.”

  “Still camping, huh?” Pace asked.

  “What can I say? She likes the outdoors.”

  “Jesus Christ, Art, are you really gonna make us do this?” asked Wit.

  “Don’t even bother,” I said, looking up at his pained face. “You’re wasting your time and mine. If you couldn’t keep all of those hardened polygamists behind bars last week, what makes you think it’s going to go any better with me?”

  Pace said, “When Buddy gets wind of this…”

  “Tell him,” I said. “Shoot, call him right now and I’ll tell him. The only thing he hasn’t done yet is fire me. If I lose this job, I’ll find another one.”

  “When did you suddenly grow some cojones?” asked Pace.

  I extended my hands outward, and Wit and Pace looked at each other with exasperation.

  “Jesus Christ, I’m not actually going to cuff you,” said Wit. “Let’s go.”

  They loaded me into the backseat and slammed the door hard, slipped into the front, and started the auto, backing out of the driveway and coasting down our steep road. They were sore at me for calling their bluff. But I maintained my defiance. A few weeks ago, if somebody had predicted the police would be swooping down on my house to arrest me for sheltering an accused murderer who also happened to be the wife of a polygamist, I would’ve laughed off such a comment as crazy beyond all words. Yet here I was, prepared to accept whatever punishment should befall me for refusing to give up Nelpha Black.

  Twenty-eight

  Pace and Wit kept me waiting over an hour in an interrogation room in the basement of Public Safety. At one point, I asked the uniformed rookie in the hallway to escort me to the restroom for some much-needed relief. Back in the brightly lit box of a room, my behind began to ache on the hard chair, and the hands on the wall clock pointed to six forty-five when the door finally opened and Wit and Pace entered. Pace closed the door behind him and the two men sat across the table from me, neither bothering to apologize for detaining me for so long. Pace was holding a stack of eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs, which he placed on the table and pushed across to me. They must have been freshly developed, because they still smelled of darkroom chemicals. He gestured for me to pick them up.

  I lifted the pictures—three in total—and started with the top one, the distinct silhouette of an airplane high in the sky, its wings and tail visible against the haze in the background. The tops of pine trees appeared in the foreground. I placed the top photo on the table and examined the second, a similar shot of the airplane, but this time with a black speck under it. A third photograph zoomed in closer to the airplane—still faraway, but slightly nearer—and the speck from the previous image turned out to be a human figure, arms and legs flailing, plummeting to the earth from hundreds, possibly thousands, of feet in the air. Not a pleasant image to behold.

  I pushed the photos back to Pace and awaited an explanation.

  “They were taken Sunday by a Civilian Conservation Corps shutterbug named Clifton Frost,” said Pace. “He was photographing a wildfire near Swains Creek in Kane County, down in southern Utah.”

  “It’s this guy’s job to go all over the place snapping pictures of all the good things the CCC is doing,” said Wit. “That way, when President Roosevelt asks Congress to give the agency more money, he can show slides of these fellas planting trees, building dams, and fighting forest fires.”

  Pace cut in: “Anyhow, Frost looks up and notices this plane flying about a thousand feet high, directly above the fire. At first he didn’t think anything of it, but then he notices it circling and bobbing and flying erratically. So he starts taking pictures of it. He happened to capture this scene of a man getting pushed out of the airplane, right over the blaze.”

  “After that, the airplane flew away, according to Frost,” said Wit.

  “Who’s the victim?” I asked.

  “The sheriff’s office down in Kanab retrieved the body and they’ve identified it as Carl Jeppson,” said Pace. “They contacted us this morning to say the body will be shipped up here for a formal autopsy. Tom Livsey will do the honors with the help of Jeppson’
s dental records.”

  My mouth fell open. I could not conceal my shock. I pictured that little note Jeppson had slipped to me on the day Roscoe and I visited his flower shop: HELP US. I suspected Jeppson had been the mastermind behind the polygamists’ incredible financial success, and I also had reason to believe that he had turned informant to assist with Harold O’Rourke’s federal investigation. I knew that he provided crucial financial help to his daughter, who had been sheltering the banished boys and runaway child brides from Dixie City. It made me forlorn, knowing the one apostle with a kind heart, and haunted by remorse, died in such a horrific fashion. This was homicide writ large, carried out by men of power, unlike the seemingly spontaneous shooting that claimed the lives of LeGrand Johnston and Volney Mason. My stunned silence, I’m sure, spoke volumes.

  “The dead man was a hell of a mess, scorched by the flames,” said Wit. “He still had his billfold on him, with his ID. The sheriff of Kane County was kind enough to courier us copies of Frost’s photographs. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that this is being treated as foul play.”

  “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” said Pace.

  “Why would the polygamists chance it like that?” I asked. “With all of those CCC firefighters in the area?”

  “This is the first summer the feds have trucked the CCC men out to combat the wildfires,” said Wit. “In past years, if some remote part of southern Utah went up in flames, they just let it burn.”

  “They probably didn’t know there were CCCers in the area,” said Pace. “With all of that smoke in the sky, I’m sure visibility was limited.”

  “We think this is all tied to the double homicide we’re investigating,” said Wit. “That’s why we need to see the girl. She was there the night of the shootings and her fingerprints are all over the murder weapon.”

  “She’s a key suspect,” said Pace. “We’d like to have her back, if that’s not too much to ask, Oveson.”

  “Like I told you earlier, she’s camping,” I said.

  Pace smacked the table with his palm, startling me. “I’m tired of your stalling, Oveson! I want some answers!”

  “Or what? You’re going to lock me up?” I snapped back. “Is it curtains for me, Pace? Huh? Is it the firing squad for old Oveson?”

  I lurched out of my chair and walked over to the door and, as expected, Pace spoke up. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Are you planning to arrest me?” I asked.

  “C’mon, Art, sit down,” said Wit. “Let’s talk some more, like civilized men.”

  “If I’m not under arrest, I’m leaving,” I said.

  Pace leaned toward Wit and spoke in a hushed tone. “Let’s arrest him. An overnighter in a cell oughta set him straight.”

  Wit tilted closer to his partner and whispered, but I could still hear him. “We’ve got nothing on him, and he knows it. That malarkey about obstructing a homicide investigation won’t stick. He can plead ignorance to her whereabouts, and no judge in his right mind is about to throw the book at a police detective for that.”

  “Tell you what, Pace,” I taunted, “when your bite finally catches up with your bark, come back and pinch me. Until then, leave me alone, because I’ve had it with you.” I gave a friendly nod to Wit. “You have a good evening, Wit.”

  “Yeah, you too, Art,” he said, sighing.

  Oddly enough, my comment made Pace laugh as he leaned back in his chair and knitted his fingers behind his head for support with elbows pointing outward. On my way out the door, I overheard him say, “Pinch me. This clown is on the radio once and he thinks he’s Sam Spade.”

  * * *

  The telephone rang in the middle of the night.

  I switched on my bedside lamp and looked at the alarm clock: 2:41 A.M. I rubbed cinders out of my eyes, kicked my legs off the bed, and pushed my feet into my slippers. The shrill ring continued, coming from outside my door, and still in a daze, I crossed my room and stepped into the hallway. I picked up the candlestick telephone and raised the receiver out of the cradle, holding it up to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “This is the operator,” said a woman’s voice. “I have a person-to-person collect call for Arthur Oveson from Mr. Orville Babcock.”

  I instantly recalled the frumpy man at the used car lot in the Dixieland outfit. I wondered for a silent second why on earth he would be calling me.

  “I’m Arthur Oveson.”

  “Will you accept the charges?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  There were a few clicks, followed by a lot of crackling and hissing.

  “Hello?” I said.

  The static continued. I stayed on the line, repeating “hello” several times. After two minutes of this, the line went dead. I gave the earpiece hook on the telephone a good shaking up and down and waited for the operator to return to the line.

  “Operator, this is Arthur Oveson at Wasatch one-four-eight-four.”

  “This is the operator. Go ahead.”

  “Yes, a man named Orville Babcock just tried to call me a minute or two ago,” I said. “Unfortunately, he didn’t ever connect, and I’m wondering if there’s any way of finding out where the phone call originated from?”

  “Sorry, sir, but we have no way of determining that.”

  “Okay,” I said, closing my burning dry eyes tightly and blinking a few times. “Thank you for your assistance.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She disconnected and I placed the earpiece in the cradle and lowered the telephone to its home on the little wooden table.

  No use in going back to bed, I thought. I’m awake now. I sauntered into the kitchen, poured milk in a saucepan, and placed it on the stove. I turned on a simmering flame, went over to the table, and sat down on one of the chairs to wait for my milk to heat up.

  The telephone rang again. I rushed over to the wall phone in the kitchen and raised the receiver to my ear. “Hello,” I said eagerly into the transmitter horn.

  “This is the operator,” said a woman’s voice, the same nasally voice as the one that had called earlier. “I have a person-to-person collect call for…”

  “Go ahead and put Mr. Babcock through,” I said. “I’m expecting his call.”

  A click sounded, and I waited for a few seconds, only to be greeted once again by the popping and a few ghostly, barely audible party lines.

  “Hello,” I said. Nothing. “Hello, this is Arthur Oveson. Who’s there?”

  The receiver emitted a sound like bacon fat crackling in the pan.

  “Hello, is this Orville Babcock?” I asked. “This is Art Oveson. Can you hear me?”

  The noise from the telephone was starting to hurt my ear, and once again, I pulled the earpiece away from me to hang it up. That’s when I heard the desperate voice bursting through the wall of static.

  “Hello! Oveson! Can you hear me now?”

  I raised the telephone again. “Babcock? Is that you?”

  His voice sounded distant, and it kept getting drowned out by the endless hissing and popping. I could make out only certain words before he’d get cut off, but then he would return again. This back and forth continued the entire time I had him on the line.

  “Oveson … you?”

  “Yeah, it’s me! You’re going to have to speak up, Babcock!”

  Static, and then: “… call … night, but I couldn’t…” Static.

  “Babcock! Please, talk louder!”

  “… because he was my first cousin!”

  “Who is your cousin?” I asked. “I didn’t hear the first part!”

  “Jeppson! He … cousin and closest friend … broken up about…”

  His voice cut out again.

  “Babcock, are you there?” I asked.

  “Can you hear me now?”

  “I can, yes,” I said. “Go ahead. You were saying that Carl Jeppson was your cousin?”

  “I never thought it’d come to this.”

&nbs
p; “I take it you’ve heard about what happened to him?”

  “Yes. His wife, Arla Gwen, told me!”

  “Where are you now?”

  “What? Speak up?”

  I yelled into the phone: “I said where are you now, Babcock?”

  “I’m…” He cut out again. A few seconds later, he came back: “… kill me if they find…” Gone again. Then back: “… don’t want to take that risk…”

  “Is there somewhere we can meet?” I asked.

  “If there’s a way you…”

  Static cut him off. Waiting for his return, my heart beat fiercely and my hands shook. I felt beads of sweat forming on my brow.

  “I can’t hear you,” I finally said. “You’re going to have to talk louder, Babcock!”

  “… the entire time, Carl was worried sick about the four banished boys! He helped … all kinds of ways, and right now they’re holed up in…”

  Babcock gone. Static back.

  “Holed up where?” I asked. “Where are they?”

  “… Floyd!” he shouted. A moment later, his voice broke through the static again: “Fairfield.”

  “Floyd Fairfield?” I asked. “Hello? Hello? Babcock, can you hear me? Hello?”

  The line went dead. Both the static and Babcock were gone.

  * * *

  I parked in front of Roscoe’s apartment. The lights in the windows glowed orange behind pulled-down roller blinds. I shut off the engine and second-guessed myself once again, wondering whether I was doing the right thing. My first instinct was not to bother Roscoe, especially at this ungodly hour. Yet I knew him to be a night owl, a man every bit as plagued by insomnia as I’d been my whole life. I entered the building and went up a flight of stairs, taking a deep breath before knocking on his door. When I finally worked up the nerve, I gave three hard raps and waited. In the dimly lit hall, I wondered if Roscoe was scoping me through the little peephole. When he finally opened the door, he had on a familiar dark blue bathrobe that I’d seen him wearing on a few other occasions when I’d come to pick him up.

  “Art,” he said. “Hold on, will ya?”

  “Sure.”

  The door slammed abruptly. I turned around and inspected the grimy walls, desperately in need of a fresh coat of paint. I stuck my hands in my pockets and whistled the theme song to Footlight Parade, still fresh in my mind. The door opened again, wider this time, and Roscoe stepped back and with a wave of his hand invited me in.