Arson Takes a Dare: The Third Marisa Adair Mystery Adventure (Marisa Adair Mysteries Book 3) (18 page)

The warm autumn sunshine slanted across the orderly shelves of neat merchandise and glowed on the cedar floor. The golden rays turned Larry Kenton’s thick glasses to a brief flash of white as he turned the shop sign from ‘open’ to ‘closed’. The sun briefly caught his white tufts of thin hair, highlighting the white strands against his pink scalp and forehead. The lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth seemed to signal his willingness to see humor in most situations. The frown between his eyes reflected the seriousness of the current situation. “You’re working with Berea and that detective she hired with her lottery winnings to solve my daughter’s murder. Let’s talk in the back.”

Dreamus, Tara, and Officer Landis followed his round form, homily clad in a flannel shirt and jeans, through a fall of bright plastic beads and into a large office. A rectangular table dominated the middle of the room, with a cluttered desk and two visitor chairs to one side.

Berea said her ex-husband weighed thirteen pounds when he was born,
Dreamus thought,
with most of the weight in his head. He does have a large head, but it seems to fit him. It gives him a friendly, almost cartoon-like appearance.

The lieutenant deliberately snagged the chair at the head of the table. He placed his hands on the gleaming top. “Thank you for speaking with us.”

Landis sat and crossed his legs. He propped his phone on his leg, his fingers poised above the device. “I’ll take notes.”

Tara sat at the foot of the table, her curly hair glowing golden in the sunshine. The chair was low for her short body, and she looked like a child who’d joined the grownups for a conference.

Larry slid into the chair across from Landis. “You’re here to talk about my daughter.” He propped his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. He raised his head. “My greatest mistake in life was to allow Berea to spoil Mayla. My wife gave my daughter everything she ever wanted, without discipline or control. My perspective was colored by my own childhood, which was filled with poverty, hunger, cold, and violence. I wanted Mayla to have the opposite of what I did.

“From my earliest memories, my parents’ tumultuous marriage was a whirlwind of ups and downs. The rise and pitch of their emotional whims and outbursts ruled the atmosphere of our home. Screaming followed petting, and insulting followed kissing. The two of them seemed stuck in their own pattern of marital disaster, etched in blood by a struggle for control and a stubborn refusal to submit.

“When company was in the house, my father was a different person. He was charming, with a wonderful sense of humor. People thought he was a great guy. Even as a child, though, I knew his eyes were cold and inhuman, even as he laughed and told jokes. 

“Visitors to our shack were few and far between. Chaos reigned. Many times, goaded beyond endurance, my mother grabbed my father by the scruff of his shirt collar and the seat of his pants and sent him sailing over the front porch railing of our rickety house. She outweighed him by at least one hundred and fifty pounds and she was several inches taller. My father was incensed. He wanted to be the ruler of the household. He couldn’t use words or physical power to force her to bend to his will.

“And then the magic key fell into my father’s hand. My grandmother lived with her son Willie, who was rumored to be a pedophile. She may have found evidence of his perversions and threatened him with the law. Or he was tired of her living with him. For whatever reason, Willie obtained a signed court order, committing his mother to Western State Mental Hospital in Hopkinsville, Kentucky.”

“Was your grandmother mentally ill, Mr. Kenton?” Tara asked.

Larry’s face twisted in sorrow. “No, Miss Ross. She was a person trying to survive under challenging conditions with her sick son, but she wasn’t mentally ill. In those days, women were little more than property. Male heads of households could easily have ‘unruly’ women locked up in mental institutions on little more than their word.

“Armed with the knowledge that Willie had been able to get rid of his mother by having her admitted to a mental hospital, my father Lonzo doubled down on his campaign to force my mother, Eva Katherine, to submit to his authority. He threatened to have her ‘put away’ as if she were an old pair of shoes. As my mother had seen in the case of her own mother, it was an easy matter to have a woman committed to the state mental hospital. My mother was afraid.

“The country was at war. As the fight wore on, both young and older men were drafted into military service. My father first tried to dodge the draft, but then he had a thought. He could escape the prison of the family he had created. He entered the service, and he was gone for eighteen months. It was a calmer time for us as a family.

“After my father returned from the war, he fought with my mother harder than ever. He kept telling her to ‘quit acting crazy or else’. She refused to submit to his unreasonable demands for obedience.

“Eventually, the sheriff came to our house. He took our mother with him. We asked our father where the sheriff took our mother. He replied, ‘The hospital.’ We begged to go see her, but my father said visitors would make her condition worse.

“Soon after, my father loaded all of us kids on a church bus. He took us to the home of a charlatan minister and his wife. Brother Ed and Sister Inez were foster parents for many children in the county. Our father had us dropped off like an unwanted litter of puppies at an animal shelter.”

Tara opened her mouth.

Dreamus raised a hand to stop her. He raised his brows to signal:
Let him talk.

She narrowed her eyes in annoyance, but she subsided in her chair.

“While we were in foster care, my younger brother Denis began wetting his pants. He was stressed by all of the changes in our lives. In retaliation, Sister Inez stripped him naked and pressed his bare behind on the hot stove. She screeched, ‘You will not wet your pants!’

“I screamed at her to stop. I comforted Denis as best I could. That single act of violence seemed to be a milestone for me and my siblings. It marked the beginning of brutal acts by people who had been entrusted—and paid—by the community to care for children.

“Eventually, three of us were moved to the Saint Terence Orphanage. My brothers Alvin and Denis and I were together, but we were separated from our other siblings.

“In the orphanage, I helped care for the younger kids in the nursery. I was nine years old, and the children were all less than five years old. I felt comfortable, because I had helped with younger children as long as I could remember. I wasn’t surprised to find these traumatized kids acting out in all sorts of ways, including bed wetting and thumb sucking.

“Sister Carolyn Maria ruled the nursery with a fierce and terrifying hand. If a child wet the bed, then the next morning the sister used her own form of discipline. Her eyes blazed with the fire of righteous indignation as she ran a tub of freezing cold water. Then, she stripped the offending child. The nun angrily dunked the child under the water, while the poor thing thrashed and kicked his feet. Then, she let him up for a gasp of air. Twice more under the water seemed to satisfy her, at least until the next incident.

“I wanted to save those little kids from the nun’s wrath. I started patrolling the nursery at night, when I was supposed to be asleep. Whenever I found a child with a wet or soiled bed, I did my best to save him from Sister Carolyn Maria. I cleaned and changed the child. Then, I stripped the bed. I stole clean linen from the supply room and made the bed. As the last step, I sneaked outside and buried the dirty sheets and clothing in the garbage pit.”

“I’ve heard horror stories about aberrant nuns and priests, but that woman sounds like a psychopath.” Tara’s eyes filled with tears.

“It seems impossible, but I did hear from one of my friends from the orphanage that Sister Carolyn Maria is still alive. She’d have to be about a hundred years old.” Larry’s round face hardened. “I’ve read studies which show people can delay their death.”

Officer Landis looked up from his phone, his eyes wide. “Sometimes a person will hang on to life until after an important milestone, like Christmas or a birthday. But what does that to do with the nun from hell?”

Larry’s face hardened. “I think she’s using sheer will power to delay her reckoning in front of the Lord.”

“Do you know where the nun lives now?” Dreamus asked.

“No, Lieutenant. If I saw her, I’d want her to say she’s sorry.” A dark shadow flickered across Larry’s face. “When she failed to apologize, because she’s not sorry, then I’d be tempted to dunk her head under water until she was sorry.”

“What about the person who was the head of the orphanage? Did the Director know what was going on?” Landis’ fingers flew over his phone. “His name was Father—”

“Father Limmers was in the charge of the orphanage. He and some of the nuns raped, tortured, and abused children, both boys and girls. It was rumored he had fathered babies by young female inmates, who were subsequently shipped to other facilities out of state.

“The priest also led a small band of ‘volunteers’, young men who ostensibly helped him in youth activities, but in reality participated in his crimes against children. They used the pretext of snipe hunts to get the children out in the woods. I was shocked when I found out one of those young men went on to become a teacher at Mayla’s school. I confronted him and told him I’d kill him if he didn’t quit his job at the school and give up teaching.”

Landis’ fingers flew on his phone. “What the heck is a snipe hunt?” He frowned. “Wikipedia, are you kidding me? Listen to this. ‘A snipe hunt is a type of practical joke that involves experienced people making fun of credulous newcomers by giving them an impossible or imaginary task. A snipe hunt is a specific type of wild-goose chase, where a person embarks on an impossible search. The victim is ordered to find a snipe, using a preposterous method of catching it. The methods include running around the woods carrying a bag or making strange noises, such as banging rocks together.’ What a crazy-sounding game. Who would fall for that?”

“The volunteers used the game to get their young targets out in the woods surrounding the orphanage, vulnerable and away from any possibility of help.” Larry’s laugh was bitter. “Help was always an impossible dream, but out in the woods, there was no chance in hell of rescue.”

“Mr. Kenton, did you ever tell anyone what was happening at the school?” Tara’s mouth quivered and tears glistened on her lashes.

“You have to understand it was a closed, self-contained life. School, home, the infirmary, everything we needed was all on site. Outsiders did come in to the compound, such as to deliver food. I did decide to tell a kindly grocer. I shared my plan with my older brother, Alvin, and a friend. They told me that other children had tried to tell adults. Whenever a child tried to tell someone outside the orphanage what was happening, he was told to stop saying bad things about people who serve God. And then, the child would mysteriously disappear. The other children would be told the missing kid had suffered the wrath of God for lying. Alvin and my friend made me swear a blood oath not to tell. They were terrified I’d disappear like the others.”

Tara placed a gentle hand on Larry’s swollen, shaking one.

“When I left the orphanage,” Larry continued, “my life changed for the better. I joined the Navy. Later, I was on shore leave. At a dance, I saw the woman I would marry. It was love at first sight, at least for me. It took a couple of years for me to convince her that she felt the same way. Finally Berea consented to become my wife.”

Dreamus’ face softened. “I’m sorry the system let you down, Mr. Kenton. If I’d been around back then, I’d have taken great satisfaction in arresting the lot of them and throwing them in prison. What happened to the orphanage?”

Landis looked up from his phone. “The orphanage closed years ago.”

Larry put one blunt finger under his glasses to catch a tear. “The institution is gone now, but its legacy lives on. Do you remember Joseph Wesbecker? He lost his job at Standard Gravure, a printing company in Louisville. His resentment grew toward the company. He was on medications for stress and depression. In September 1989, he opened fire with an AK-47 at Standard Gravure. He killed eight people and injured twelve others before turning the gun on himself.

“Joseph was one of us. He was a kid from Saint Terence. He was a lonely and frightened man who’d come from a traumatic place. He fell into the darkness. It’s a wonder all of us didn’t join him.”

* * * * *

Dreamus asked, “What happened to your mother, Mr. Kenton?”

“Before Mayla was born, Berea suggested we go and see Eva Katherine at the mental institution,” Larry replied. “It had been drummed so thoroughly into my head that visitors would make her worse, I didn’t think of visiting her until that moment.

“My mother had been moved to Central State Hospital in Louisville. The doctor in charge of her treatment believed she was trapped in a self-fulfilling prophesy. She was depressed by the institution. Therefore, she needed the institution.

“Berea and I walked up several flights of stairs to her room. There wasn’t an elevator. My mother recognized me when I showed her my distinctive birthmark. She seemed happy to see me. She was proud when she told me she was in charge of the hospital laundry. I started making plans to bring her home. Then, just four days after my last visit, she died on the grounds. I couldn’t believe I had gotten so close to rescuing her. She was only forty-nine years old.”