A Killing in Zion (15 page)

“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.

“Yeah,” I said. “We were fight—”

Clara glared at me.

I rephrased: “We were discussing her, yes.”

Hyrum shot me a curious look. “Who is she?”

“Sweetie, why don't you go inside?” suggested Clara. “We'll be in in a minute or two.”

“That means longer,” he said, feeding the licorice into his mouth. “More like ten minutes.”

Clara looked at me and whispered, “He's so brainy for a five-year-old.”

“Like his sister,” I whispered.

“I can hear what you're saying, Dad.”

I leaned in close to Clara. “His hearing's good, too.”

“I heard that, too.”

Clara managed a smile. “Please, wait inside, dear. I promise we won't be more than about another minute out here.”

He nodded, his jaws working away on that licorice. Reluctantly, he opened the screen door and stepped inside. He was only in there for a second or two before he poked his head out.

“Inside,” said Clara. “Please.”

The screen door banged shut. Clara faced me.

“And who's going to watch her during the days, while you're at work?” Clara held up her palm, as if to stop my reply. “Wait a second, the answer is coming to Clara the Clairvoyant. It's getting clearer and clearer. Well, what do you know? I'm going to watch her! After all, I'm not teaching in the summer, and except for a couple of hours here and there when I'll be training the substitute who'll take my place while I'm on leave, I'm at home with the children until the baby arrives. So you just assumed I would watch her! Right?”

“Yeah, more or less.”

She hit me again in the forearm. I rubbed the soreness away.

“How long is she going to be here, Art? Days? Weeks? Months?”

“Okay, you've got me,” I said bitterly. “I'll take her back. Sorry I put you through this.”

I started for the door, but Clara stepped in my path. She hesitated, but found the words.

“I know you did what you thought was right,” she said. “And I love you for it. I can never stay mad at you for long.”

She ran her fingers through my hair. “You're aided by your adorability. But I stand by my initial complaint. It was wrong for you to bring her here without asking me. We're not just husband and wife, Art. We're partners. Everything we've done up until now in our relationship has been based on love
and
mutual respect. But it doesn't work if you pull a stunt like this. Understand?”

“Yes,” I said, in a real tone of remorse. “I am sorry.”

She gestured to the door. “We'd better go back inside. Don't think for an instant this conversation is over, though. There are lots of details we have to iron out, when the kids aren't around. Obviously, she can't stay here forever. She's probably got family somewhere who're worried sick are about her.”

“I know. I agree.”

Hyrum poked his head out again. “It's been more than a minute!”

Clara laughed. “We're coming.”

*   *   *

“Would you mind saying grace, S.J.?” I asked.

“Sure,” said Sarah Jane. “May we all bow our heads?”

Heads dipped around the dinner table. I peeked to see if our guest was bowing her head. She was. I closed my eyes.

“Our beloved Father in Heaven, we're thankful to be sitting down to dinner as a family with our new friend,” said Sarah Jane. “Bless Mom for preparing this meal tonight. Please bless this food that it may nourish and strengthen our bodies, to help us to do the good we need. Bless those who are not here to share this meal that they, too, may find the nourishment they need. And bless our new friend here, that she may have the things in life she wants and needs. We say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”

“Amen.”

“Amen.”

“Amen.”

The girl didn't say “Amen.” She kept her head bowed.

“Thank you, honey,” said Clara. “Would you start passing the roast beef?”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Sarah Jane.

The food went around the table. I plunged the carving fork into the roast beef and lifted a hefty piece onto my plate. Next came the creamed baby peas and pearl onions, then steaming mashed potatoes, followed by cooked carrots. A basket reached me and I pulled a hot roll out from under the forest-green linen napkin. The girl, seated directly across the table from me, was not filling her plate. She stared at her empty plate, the same way she had cast her eyes downward in my office, without budging. For the first time, I noticed the wedding ring on her finger that Clara had mentioned earlier, a shiny silver band. Hard to believe I had missed it before. But so had other detectives, including Wit Dunaway, not to mention the police alienist, which made me feel slightly better about my own ineptitude. Clara looked at me, as if to say,
Well?
I closed the green napkin over the rolls and sent them to Hyrum, seated beside me.

I spoke across the table to the girl. “You must be hungry.”

As expected, she said nothing. She didn't even raise her head.

“How about I fix you a plate?” I said. “S.J., could you hand me her plate?”

Sarah Jane picked up the plate in front of the girl and gave it to Hyrum, who passed it to me. I began scooping food, identifying it as I went. “Some peas and pearl onions—nobody makes 'em better than Clara. Let's see, some carrots. Mashed potatoes. Gotta get you a good mountain going here.” I picked up my fork, which I hadn't used yet, and began pressing a gravy crater. “See, the idea here is you gotta make a space for the gravy.” I exchanged my table fork for the carving fork to lift roast beef onto her plate. “You may wanna stay away from the horseradish. It'll put a hem in your stocking.”

I tipped the gravy boat over the girl's plate and filled the mashed potato crater and covered the roast beef. “Voilà! Hyrum, I appoint you on a knight's errand. Would you kindly deliver this to the fair maiden across the table?”

“Dad, you're being corny.”

“Sorry. Do you mind?”

He lifted the plate with both hands, circled the table, and placed it in front of the girl, who'd raised her head enough to watch me serving her.

“As the Frenchmen say, bon appétit!” I said, raising my glass of milk in a toast.

Before I could drink it, the girl began eating, and with a vengeance. She spooned peas into her mouth, stuffed half of a roll in there, and lifted the roast beef with her fingers and bit into it. We Ovesons sat in stunned silence, watching this hungry girl cleaning her plate in record time, before any of us even touched our food. She stopped chewing, despite a full mouth, painfully aware of us staring at her.

I smiled. “Like I said, bon appétit!”

The rest of us started eating, and the hungry girl resumed filling herself. The dour expression on Clara's face as she chewed softly seemed to say,
What have you gotten us into?

*   *   *

“Jack Benny, with Frank Black and his orchestra!”

Lavish band music crackled out of the speaker of our four-legged radio console, with Sarah Jane and Hyrum hovering around the coveted ebony knobs. The girl sat on the davenport's middle cushion, cautiously observing through an outsider's eyes. Clara, seated on a floral armchair, was knitting something for the baby. Having just finished washing the dishes, I wiped my wet hands with a striped dishcloth and draped it on the back of a living room chair to dry.

“Is it on the Red Network?” asked Hyrum.

“Yes, it's the Red Network!” snapped Sarah Jane. “It's K-D-Y-L.”

“The dial has to be precise.”

“You don't know what that means,” said Sarah Jane scornfully. “You heard a grown-up say it.”