A Killing in Zion (7 page)

A sound in one of the neighboring rooms startled me.

I aimed my gun and advanced stealthily. I peered into what seemed to be a guest room, complete with a four-poster bed, a bureau topped with a crocheted ruffled doily and washbasin, and a framed photograph of LeGrand Johnston hanging on the wall. I wondered if this was where the prophet's concubines slept after auditioning to join his big family.

I turned to leave, but a muffled movement coming from the closet stopped me. I crept toward it, using my handkerchief to grab the knob. I opened it and pointed my gun inside. I reached up inside and pulled a chain. An electric globe flashed on to nothing but a row of dresses that had been spread apart, as if somebody had already searched inside of it. My heart began to slow, and I turned to leave when I spotted a pair of black shoes with shiny buckles on the closet floor below the dresses. My eyes followed the shoes to a pair of ankles, then ankles to shins. I brushed the hanging clothes aside with my arm so that a girl came into view. She couldn't have been any older than thirteen. Her calico dress must have been unbearably hot. She kept her brown hair woven into braids, her blue eyes reflected the light from above, and a dimple formed a tiny canyon in her chin.

I knelt slightly and showed her my badge.

“I'm Detective Arthur Oveson, Salt Lake City Police Department,” I said. “I'm not going to hurt you. I'm a policeman. What's your name?”

She didn't respond. When I touched her arm, she didn't pull away, didn't budge at all. She continued to stare blankly ahead. I wondered what, if anything, she'd seen. What put her in this state?

“Who is she?”

I faced Roscoe, framed by the doorway, gun drawn as he sized up the girl.

“I don't know,” I said, blowing a sigh. “I have a feeling it's going to be a long night.”

 

Five

On the sedan's driver's-side running board, I sat hunched with my elbows on my knees, savoring a breeze, even though it brought smoke from forest fires. A line of police cars and the morgue wagon were parked in front of the mansion-turned-church. Sitting out here at two
A
.
M
. was preferable to getting in the way of the homicide dicks and lab boys doing their job on the second floor. My mind still had not fully absorbed the shock of finding the bodies of Johnston and his driver. I spent a while remembering those weeks of tailing Johnston around the valley, wondering if there was something I missed that should have led me to expect tonight's awful turn of events. But nothing came to mind. My eyes burned with dryness and I wanted to be in bed at home instead of here. Roscoe had already caught a ride downtown with one of the prowlers that had left earlier. I told him I'd fill him in tomorrow. I stayed put, waiting for an update from Lieutenant Wit Dunaway of the Homicide Squad.

Eventually Wit left the crime scene with his partner, Pace Newbold, and came to see me. Pasty-skinned and chinless, Newbold was my age, thirty-three, and he harbored a passionate dislike of Mormons, probably because he'd once been one and had had a bad parting of ways with the religion. As for Wit, a man in his mid-fifties, years of hard work had elevated him to senior homicide detective. His receding dark hair capped an oval face with pinholes for eyes and a permanent scowl. Tonight he arrived in a wrinkled black suit and crooked red tie. His grim act concealed real intellect and a splendid sense of humor. He'd learned his streetwise sensibilities in Boston, where he'd been one of the ringleaders of the big police strike in '19. Tonight he seemed subdued, probably owing to the hour, although he grinned at me as he approached.

“It's the radio star,” Wit said. “I should've brought my autograph book.”

“Hello, Wit,” I said. “Pace.”

“Why are you still out here at this ungodly hour?” asked Pace. “Didn't anybody tell you the ice-cream joints are all closed?”

Verbal sparring was the last thing I wanted to do.
Leave the witticisms to the witty
, I thought. “I was shadowing Johnston.”

“I thought so,” said Wit. “I appreciate you asking the night dispatcher to contact me. This is big. In fact, I telephoned Cowley at home. Woke him up, but I figured this is important enough to disrupt his beauty sleep. Look, Art, I'm happy to keep you apprised of our investigation. But I expect the same from you. Cooperation is a two-way street, you know.”

“Sure, all right.”

“Let's start with
why
you are here so late.”

“I told you. I was tailing Johnston.”

“At this time of night?”

I nodded. “I've been at it for months now, trying to catch him engaging in some sort of illegal activity. Up till today, it's been pretty dull.”

“So you didn't see this coming?” asked Wit.

“Nope.”

“Got any idea who Johnston's wheelman was?” asked Pace.

“Volney Mason? I don't know anything about him.”

“Ain't seen him before?”

“Just driving Johnston. Roscoe suspects he was hired muscle.”

“What about the girl in there?” Wit asked.

“What about her?”

“She hasn't said a word so far,” said Pace. “She say anything to you?”

“No.”

“You haven't seen her before tonight?” asked Wit.

“No.”

“Earlier you said you saw a pickup truck leaving the scene right after you heard shots,” said Pace.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm quite sure it was a Model T truck.”

“But you're not certain.”

“The lighting was poor.”

“Didja get plates?'

“No.” Before either man could lob another question at me, I gestured to the mansion. “Anybody else in there?”

“Other than the girl and the two stiffs, no signs of life,” said Wit.

“I presume there aren't any suspects yet?” I asked.

“Only the girl,” said Pace. “We found a pillowcase on her containing what we presume are her belongings. Knitting. Fabrics. Needlepoint. Oh, and a Western Motor Coach bus ticket from St. George to Salt Lake City, dated Friday, the eighth of June. No ID on her, though.”

“Do you think there's any chance she had something to do with it?” I asked.

Wit plunged his hands into his trouser pockets and rattled coins. “She's stunned. Unless she's got Garbo's acting chops, I'm guessing she saw something, but she's too shocked to speak. She might be able to help us find who shot Johnston.
If
we can get her to talk.”

“What's going to happen to her?” I asked.

“We're taking her for questioning, then they'll stick her in the fun house,” said Pace.

The fun house—
the Utah State Industrial School, a three-story brick-and-stone building from the last century, built around a castle-like tower, pressed against the Wasatch Mountains in Ogden, a town forty miles north of Salt Lake City. The so-called “school” served as the state reformatory for young lawbreakers. From what I'd heard, survival of the fittest reigned inside of those walls.

“That won't help,” I said. “They'll make mincemeat out of her.”

As I spoke those words, a pair of patrolmen escorted the girl to a police car. Light from the nearby church lent an ethereal glow to her heart-shaped face and gingham dress, as though she were a ghost from 1847 who had suddenly materialized in the night. She made eye contact with me briefly, then dipped her head as one of the officers helped her up to the running board and into the backseat and closed the door. Wit mentioned something about going home and crawling back into bed. I wasn't listening. I was too busy watching the police car leaving, its taillights disappearing around the corner.

*   *   *

Salt Lake City's roads were mostly empty at three
A
.
M
. I slowed at L Street, where I left-turned north, climbing the steep hill to our bungalow. I steered into the driveway, cut off the engine, and got out of the car. On my way to the front door, a hypnotic scene on the eastern side of the valley grabbed my attention: the Big Cottonwood Canyon fire cast an eerie orange light on the mountains. I worried about the firefighters putting their lives on the line, battling blazes and rescuing homes like mine.

The Ovesons of L Street lived in a handsome brick bungalow with a columned porch and pretty flowerbeds that Clara took care of. Ours was a neighborhood of ancient trees that touched the sky, where children played in the street and people kept their porch light globes burning late. At three in the morning, however, the block was dark and sound asleep.

I was too anxious to sleep. There's no stimulant quite as powerful as finding a pair of dead men. In the dark silence of my house, I felt haunted by the faces of the victims. Their lifeless expressions appeared vividly each time I closed my eyes, like a couple of restless apparitions. No chance of me hitting the sack with that on my mind. A tug on a lamp chain furnished a soft glow in the living room, and I ambled over to the rolltop desk, where I retrieved a brown leather-bound scrapbook.

Entering the kitchen, I turned on the lights, sat down at the table, and leafed through the scrapbook's contents: newspaper clippings, Photostats of police reports, and an official police photograph of a man with piercing eyes, high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and a bristly mustache. I removed a picture of my father, Willard Oveson, to get a better look at it. Taken in 1908, back when he was the lead inspector in the Salt Lake City Police Department, it showed him in his prime. I smiled at my father's image before I slipped it back into the photo corners glued to the page. I missed him, and thumbing through this scrapbook was one way of getting closer to him. But I knew that if I turned too many pages, I would reach the articles and crime scene reports containing the details of his murder on a wintry night in 1914. Was I ready to go back there again? Was
now
the ideal time?

I closed my eyes and pictured my unconscious father dying in a hospital bed. That was the last time I ever saw him. I chased away the memory. Too many dead men were wandering in my head.

A pair of hands gripped my shoulders, startling me so badly I leaped out of my seat. Standing behind me in her robe and pajamas, Clara took several steps backward, wide-eyed and openmouthed, before bursting into laughter.

“Aren't you the jumpy one?”

“Sorry. You alarmed me. Coming up behind me like that.”

She flashed her pearlies, came closer, and hugged me. Her pregnant belly pressed against me as she squeezed tighter. I returned her embrace and kissed the golden finger curls on top of her head. She placed her chin on my chest and stared up at me with her hazel eyes. “I heard you come in the front door a few minutes ago. Why didn't you come to bed?”

“I'm anxious, I guess.”

“Any particular reason why?”

“Rough night.”

Her smile faded. “What happened?”

“Double homicide.”

We let go of each other and her expression turned serious. “Who…?”

“LeGrand Johnston was shot,” I said. She knew who he was. She'd heard me ranting and raving about him plenty of times. “So was his driver, Volney Mason, who also worked as Johnston's bodyguard. You'll read about it in the papers soon enough.”

“That's terrible,” she said. “I have no love for polygamists, but nobody deserves—”

“No,” I interrupted. “Nobody.”

“You poor thing,” said Clara, pouty. Her smile returned. “Hey! How about some ice cream to soothe your jangled nerves?”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

“Good! I'll dish us up some and you can tell me all about what happened tonight.”

“If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer to talk about something else.”

“Oh. Of course. Sure. I get it.”

Clara's slippers slapped tiles on her way to the icebox, where she removed two cartons, one of Keeley's nougat ice cream, the other Keeley's peach—both hand-packed at our favorite ice-cream parlor—along with a couple of bowls, a pair of dessert spoons, and an ice-cream scoop.

“Pick your poison.”

“Both.”

“Wow. It must've been a hard night.”

She let out a juvenile giggle as she scooped up ice cream, clinking metal on porcelain. While she was at it, I closed the scrapbook and nudged it aside, so it was no longer sitting right in front of me. She brought two bowls of ice cream and placed one in front of me, pulled out a chair, and sat down across the table from me. We both ate ice cream in silence for a few minutes. I finished mine sooner and scraped the bowl with my spoon—
tink, tink, tink
—so as not to miss any.

“Good news. They've hired a substitute to teach my classes this fall,” said Clara. “And Cliff told me I might be able to get my maternity leave extended into the winter. That is, if we can afford it.”

Cliff was Clifford Reynolds, the principal at East High School.

“Music to my ears,” I said. “The more time you can spend with the baby, the better.”

“I'm aiming for at least six months off,” said Clara. “I feel better, knowing the baby will be with Ruby after I go back to work.”

Ruby was Clara's older sister. She boarded children, providing day care out of her home, to make extra money.

“I will too,” I said. “You getting kicked all the time still?”

Clara laughed. “Kicked. Punched. Elbowed. Somersaults. You name it.”

I stood and took my bowl over to the ice-cream cartons for seconds. “I know it's not exactly comfortable for you,” I said. “But I'm glad to know we have such a robust little one.”

“I hope you'll be saying the same thing when you get up in the middle of the night to change diapers,” she said. “Remember your promise?”

“Yeah, I remember,” I said. “I stuck to it with the last two. I won't renege on this one.”