A Killing in Zion (42 page)

By the late afternoon, the crowd had cleared. Only Roscoe remained in a quiet corner of the waiting room, thumbing through a magazine. I motioned for him to come over. He tossed his magazine on the stack, got up, and ambled over.

“The proud papa,” he said. “I suppose congratulations are in order.”

Clara looked up at me with a smile that told me all I need to know. I delicately lifted Emily with both hands out of her arms and walked over to Roscoe.

“Here,” I said. I leaned toward him with Emily.

He shook his head and flashed his palms. “No. I'd better not.”

“No, seriously. Take her.”

“I'm no good at this.…”

“C'mon,” I said. “Here, hold out your arms.…”

“Shoot, Art. I don't know.…”

“You can do it.”

Roscoe raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“I insist. C'mon. You just have to support her head.”

“Yeah, okay. Let me see.…”

He moved in with his arms spread like a forklift.

“Hold them closer together,” I suggested. “Like a little cradle.”

I passed the baby into Roscoe's big arms. He stood as stiff as a barbershop pole. He kept his hand behind her head at all times. He started to look panicky, like he was about to drop her. He eyed me to make sure I wasn't leaving. “She's a cute kid.”

“I thought you'd like her,” I said.

“What're you planning on calling her?”

“Emily,” I said. “Emily, this is your uncle Roscoe.”

“Hey, kid, you're cute as a button, but I'm gonna give you back to your old man before I die of heart failure.”

Roscoe returned Emily to me and I gently handed her back to Clara. Straightening, I elbowed Roscoe and winked. “I think you're a natural at this.”

“As long as we keep it to uncle,” he said, “everything will be fine.”

“You have one of your own,” I said. “Rose.”

His smile faded as he dipped his head and sighed. “Yep.”

“It's not too late,” I said. “A girl always needs her father.”

He raised his head and his mouth formed a rueful grin, but it could not hide the pain I'm sure he felt inside.

*   *   *

The rest of the summer lives on as a series of fragments in my mind. We welcomed our newborn daughter to her home, but the place felt a little emptier without Nelpha. Not long after the incident at Rulon Black's compound, I persuaded Wit Dunaway to drop his investigation of Nelpha. I told him that Claudia Jeppson had confessed to pulling the trigger that night. Despite how much I hated lying, I knew what I was doing was for the best. Wit had no great passion to charge Nelpha with the crime. He admitted that she'd left only partial fingerprints on the gun. With no eyewitnesses, and a public that would be overwhelmingly sympathetic to Nelpha if she were ever put on trial, Wit declared the case closed. When the story broke, the press portrayed Claudia Jeppson as a heroine, a former polygamist wife who came to the defense of a helpless child bride, to prevent Nelpha from being sent back to a fate worse than death.

I thought of Nelpha often, but I faced my own challenges in the summer and fall. After Emily's birth, I spent endless weeks staying up late with her, thanks to a bout of colic and a tendency toward wakefulness on her part that made her every bit as much of a night owl as her father. I'd take her out for moonlit auto rides around the Avenues, and on certain nights, I'd park high on the hill and watch the glow from a distant wildfire.

By early August, overworked volunteer brigades had managed to contain most of the blazes, with only one or two of the most tenacious infernos still burning as of Labor Day. A few well-timed rainstorms helped. The fires of '34 had been catastrophic, scorching millions of acres across the western states. Fourteen men, ranging in age from nineteen to fifty-four, perished in the flames that summer. A memorial was later erected in Big Cottonwood Canyon to the men who died in the Fire Season of 1934. It is still there, shaded by aspen trees.

*   *   *

After the Anti-Polygamy Squad folded, Roscoe quit the police force to launch his own detective agency, Beehive Discreet Investigations. He ran it out of a little office in the Rio Grande Railroad Depot on the west side of town. To supplement his income, he worked as a railroad dick, patrolling the yard for intruders and tossing hoboes off boxcars. I put on a cheery face and wished Roscoe well, but inside I was sad to see my old friend go. Public Safety seemed like a less lively place without him.

I wound up back on the Morals Squad, under the command of laconic, sleepy-eyed Lieutenant Harman Grundvig. He launched a highly publicized crusade to drive every slot machine—or “one-armed bandit,” as he called them—out of Salt Lake City. With the press in tow, we raided downtown clubs and isolated roadhouses alike, occasionally smashing down doors with axes for a little added drama.

The shutterbugs snapped pictures as we loaded the gambling devices onto dollies and carted them out to waiting police vans. I hammed it up for show, whipping out my pistol for the cameras, wearing my hat low, playing up my Running Board Bandit credentials. But the reality was, I missed my old squad. I did not miss commanding it, or even necessarily what we did. No. It was the people I missed. Roscoe. Myron. Jared.

Myron had returned to the records division in the basement. We stayed in touch through our monthly lunches. During one particularly memorable noontime meal at the Chit Chat Luncheonette, he opened up about his own personal history, discussing his father, the retired former rabbi at the B'nai Israel Temple, and his mother, who escaped the pogroms in Russia. He showed me a picture of his wife, Hannah, and recounted what it was like to grow up Jewish in Salt Lake City. “It was pretty boring, when you get right down to it,” he said. “But after everything my people have been through, I'll take boring any old day.”

Jared, like Roscoe, resigned from the police department in the summer. He founded a new charity called Hospitality House to aid refugees of all ages fleeing polygamy. The press loved it, and his smiling mug appeared on A1 of all the local dailies. He refused to take a dime of the heist money, still packed away in a trunk down at Rulon Black's compound. Instead, he used the press as a bully pulpit to raise funds for his new undertaking. His success exceeded my highest expectations. Playing on the antagonism that most mainstream Mormons felt toward polygamy, he managed to raise enough money to renovate the house on B Street and purchase a second home next door, to make space for new arrivals. Donations poured in from concerned citizens, in Utah and across the country. Even in hard times, people sent what they could, and every little bit made a difference.

*   *   *

One day in fall, chilly and overcast, I was raking leaves in the front yard with the help of Hyrum and Sarah Jane. A car pulled up to the curb and who should get out of the passenger side but Nelpha. She looked beautiful with her hair freshly styled and a brown dress with white lace. I stuck my head in the house and called Clara, and she came outside with the baby in warm clothes and a coat. Jared had given her a ride that day, and he got out of the car to join the reunion. Hugs were exchanged all around, and we Ovesons took a break from raking to reminisce about Nelpha's time with us. Finally, she passed me a gift box and asked me to open it. I ripped the wrapping off, lifted the lid on the box, and looked down at a familiar needlepoint pillow that I once saw inside of the soiled little pillowcase that held all of her belongings. The big, block serif words on it said
GOD BLESS OUR HOME
.

“Thank you,” I said, getting choked up. “We will cherish it.”

I held out my hand to shake hers, but she did something that caught me off guard. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly. I leaned forward and kissed her on top of the head.

“We'll always be here,” I said.

She pulled back and nodded, as if I was telling her something she already knew.

Jared walked up to me and shook my hand.

“You busy on Thanksgiving, boss?” he asked. “Because I got two dozen kids just itching to cook a dinner with all the fixins for you all.”

I looked at Clara and she smiled and nodded her approval.

“We'd love to come,” I told Jared.

“Fabulous! Why don't we say, oh, about five? I've invited Myron and Hannah, and Roscoe, too. It'll be like having the old squad back.”

I grinned warmly. “Thanks, Jared.”

Nelpha climbed in the car and closed the door and Jared circled to the other side. Before he opened the door, I called out to him. “Hey, Jared. You aren't my subordinate anymore. No need to call me boss.”

He chuckled and winked. “I guess not. But, at this point, anything else just seems wrong.”

With that, he got in the car and drove away.

*   *   *

The violence that plagued that dark summer of 1934 soon faded from the public's memory.

The homicides of Carl Jeppson and Orville Babcock were eventually declared unsolved in the respective jurisdictions where they occurred, and subsequently filed away. Down in Kingman, Arizona, Sheriff Burke Colborne accepted my fabricated version of events: that a bitter rivalry had developed between Rulon Black and his son Eldon, leading to a bloody confrontation between rival factions at the Black compound. Ironically, I wasn't that far off.

The lackluster response of these investigators reflected a deeper, troubling reality of the times: Nobody wanted to touch the polygamists. I went to DAs, state attorneys, and judges, lugging around with me a box of evidence that shed light on the polygamists' criminal business enterprises. Among the documents in my possession was a notarized statement from Carl Jeppson that one of his wives gave me after I returned from my brush with death down at that deep chasm. It detailed a variety of crooked practices, including the infamous Homestead land scheme. The district attorney in Salt Lake City apologized and informed me that none of it fell within his domain. An attorney with the state of Utah declared that he did not have the time, resources, or inclination to pursue the case. Federal judges in Arizona and Utah counseled me to drop the whole thing.

“You seem like a decent fellow,” said the judge in Phoenix. “Mind if I give you some unsolicited advice, off the record and free of charge?”

“Please,” I said. “Go right ahead.”

“Go home to your family and forget about all of this.” He shrugged. “So what if some guy marries a bunch of ladies? A quarter of my state is outta work, Oveson. Men that used to own respectable businesses are now out riding the rails, looking for work. Forgive my foul mouth—I know you're a Mormon and all—but they don't give a shit about polygamists and, frankly, neither do I. Let those fools marry as many women as they want. If they break the law, the justice system will have at 'em. Take your box, go back to Salt Lake City, and count your blessings that you've still got a job.”

I followed his advice. Not because I agreed with him, but because what choice did I have? I carried my box to the depot, boarded the train bound for Salt Lake City, and found a comfortable seat in the observation car, where I watched the red-and-orange desert streak past me. When I got home, I found a spot on the highest shelf in my closet for that box, and I pushed the door closed on it.

I recalled Buddy's words.
“Don't let the polygamists become your white whale.”

And yet, my longstanding animosity toward the plural marriage racket ruled out any hope of following that advice. So it was with mixed feelings that I watched more and more local polygamists pack their belongings in the summer and fall of 1934, sell their property in town, and relocate to Dixie City. On the one hand, I wouldn't miss them. On the other, I knew they'd be impossible to bust once they retreated to that insular little community way out in the middle of nowhere.

The fundamentalists found a new prophet, Alma Covington, to head their church. He sold his house on Third Avenue and he and his many wives took up residence in Rulon Black's compound. I'm sure there was plenty of room in that grim behemoth of a dwelling for the whole lot of them, and his sizable printing press.

S
ATURDAY
, D
ECEMBER
1, 1934

We sat in the idling car, parked alongside the curb, on a hill in a suburb of Denver. As the weather reports promised, the snow was falling sideways, blanketing everything in white. I kept the radio tuned to station KOA, which broadcast Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra performing Christmas music. Up and down the block, colored Christmas lights flashed on and off in living room windows.

Roscoe sat on the passenger side of the front seat, gripping a teddy bear and a bright bouquet for dear life, as if afraid they'd be snatched out of his clutches. He was freshly shaven, and he wore a fancy suit that he'd purchased for this very occasion. On the car floor, a festive green-and-red bag with handles on it held a bunch of gift-wrapped presents. The weight of my stare must've gotten to him, because he turned his head toward me and gave me the angry eye.

“What?”

“You look handsome.”

He faced forward and took a deep breath. “I shoulda never let you talk me into this.”

“You won't regret it.”

“How do you know?”

The snow was falling harder now, covering everything in sight. I switched on the windshield wipers, and they squeaked back and forth, clearing the powder out of our way.

“A girl needs her father,” I said.

“She's probably gonna tell me to go to hell,” he said. “I wouldn't blame her if she did. My old man ditched my mom and me when I was a little kid. I never knew the prick. Shit, I don't even know what happened to him. If he ever came back, which I don't expect he'd ever do, but if he did, I'd tell him to go fuck himself.”

“She needs you,” I said. “You'll see.”