by R. R. Irvine
Traveler blinked in surprise. The Indian was usually a man of few words.
“The lost tribe of Israel is about to be found,” Charlie added, and dashed toward the stairs before Traveler could stop him.
Ten minutes later, a pair of burly policemen led Charlie away in handcuffs.
“I must follow my disciple,” Bill said. “Take care of my sandwich board.”
Without waiting for an answer, he hurried across the lobby and out through the revolving door.
Anger rose inside Traveler with a rush. He stepped into one of the phone booths and dialed his own office.
Willis Tanner answered.
“I expect Charlie Redwine to be released immediately.” Traveler’s voice was flat and cold.
“Anything you say, Mo.”
“You can release Maria Gomez while you’re at it.”
“I have to see you.”
“So you can have me arrested?”
“That was a mistake. I realize that now. There’s a better way. Meet me somewhere. That’s all I ask.”
Traveler thought that over for a moment. Willis Tanner could not be trusted when the church was involved. Still, Traveler had to gamble if he wanted information.
“All right, Willis. We’ll meet at our old hideout in one hour.”
“We were kids when we built that place.”
Exactly, Traveler thought. He still remembered every nook and cranny, every escape route. Ambushing him there would be that much more difficult.
26
THE TANNER family lived on U Street, around the corner from Traveler’s house. The backyards of both properties met for a distance of about fifty felt, most of it taken up by two rickety garages. Willis had broken his arm once trying a Superman leap, complete with dishtowel cape, from one garage roof to another. After that he and Traveler decided a lean-to was safer and scrounged two-by-fours and plywood to build a clubhouse, using garage walls as support. Their hideout had two old carpet pieces as hanging doors and could be entered from either property.
In recent years a row of fast-growing junipers had masked one backyard from the other, and Traveler had no idea whether the lean-to was still there. The chances were against it, though Willis’s widowed mother still lived in the same house. She, he remembered, had disapproved of him as much as Martin had frowned on Willis.
Traveler arrived early, intending to scout the neighborhood. But when he tried to squeeze through a narrow gap in a fence, the secret passage of twelve-year-olds, he knew it was hopeless. If Willis Tanner wanted him arrested badly enough, he could supplement the police force with an army of deacons from hundreds of LDS wards throughout the city.
He vaulted the fence, strode down the Tanners’ driveway, and knocked on the front door. When Loreta Tanner opened it she condemned Traveler with the same shake of her head she’d been using on him for thirty years. Her hair had gone from gray to white in recent years. She seemed to be shrinking, too, an impression enhanced by a faded house-dress that hung like a larger woman’s hand-me-down.
“You’ve gotten bigger,” she said. “But you haven’t changed. I can see that in your face.”
“I’m supposed to meet Willis here.”
“I never liked having you in my house, even when you were a boy. You smelled of cigarettes.”
“Could I help it if my mother smoked?”
“She’s been raised, you know. Willis showed me the printouts. One of her cousins did the baptism.”
Latter-day Saints in good standing performed baptisms for the dead on departed relatives who’d failed to see the light themselves. Without such ceremonies there was no entry to God’s exclusively Mormon heaven.
“Knowing my mother, she’d probably prefer it in purgatory.”
“That’s blasphemy.”
“The truth usually is.”
“You’ll never be raised. Willis and I will see to that.”
“Thank you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t just stand there. You’re letting the heat in. And me an old lady suffering from heat rash at that.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Traveler stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him.
The house smelled the same as he remembered, a mixture of furniture polish and simmering vegetables, which Mrs. Tanner had grown in what she called her Victory Garden, though the war was long gone. The living room also looked unchanged, a trio of overstuffed chairs from the 1940s, each with its own floor lamp, a sofa that dated from the depression, and Mrs. Tanner’s pride and joy, an upright piano on which Willis had practiced every day after school, thereby delaying many a touch-football game.
“My son called me just before you got here. He told me to go out and look in that old shed you two built next to the garage. If you weren’t there, he said, I was to leave a note telling you to wait inside the house for him.”
Her head shook, half tremor, half condemnation. “ ‘I’ll do no such thing,’ I told him. ‘I’ve got better things to do than worry about heathen gentiles. If he comes to the door, that’s another matter. But I’m not carrying notes in this heat.’ ”
She took a pair of rimless glasses from the gleaming piano top and adjusted them on her nose. “Let me get a better look at you.” Her tongue made a clucking noise. “Naming you Moroni was an abomination.”
“My mother gets full credit for that. Maybe she shouldn’t have been raised after all.”
“I think it would be best if you waited in the basement.”
Willis’s room had been in the basement, next to the furnace. The only windows were narrow and barred.
“It seems like yesterday when you two used to play down there,” she added, her voice softening at the memory. “Do you remember?”
He said that he did.
“I used to worry that you’d lead my boy astray.”
Actually, it was Willis who’d procured their first pack of cigarettes. And girlie magazines. Though where he’d gotten them Traveler couldn’t imagine, then or now.
“Thank God you couldn’t tempt him away from the church.”
“Was it Willis’s suggestion that I trap myself in the basement?”
She led him down a central hall and into the kitchen, where she stopped in front of the cellar door.
“His toys are still in the closet downstairs.” Her tone seemed to suggest that Traveler might want to take them out and play with them again. “He likes to come here and relax sometimes. That’s why I keep the room ready for him.”
When Traveler opened the basement door a draft of cool air rushed up the stairs, carrying with it the smell of earth and dusty concrete. His hand remembered the light switch. When he threw it the naked bulb was like a memory beacon. He followed it down the stairs, conscious with each step that he could be descending into a trap.
Willis’s room had never been completely finished. The ceiling was nothing more than cross-beams and subflooring. One concrete wall stopped at chest height, leaving an open crawl space through which drafts whistled constantly. That space had also provided innumerable hiding places for boyhood contraband.
The same flowered rug lay on the red cement floor. On top of it stood the chest of drawers that Traveler had helped paint bright green, and the narrow metal bed, which had shed its color almost as quickly as they applied it. The only thing new in the room, as far as he could remember, was a telephone and a nineteen-inch color TV set, both resting on a chrome stand with a VCR shelf beneath it.
Ignoring spider webs, Traveler boosted himself onto the retaining wall to check the nearest of their secret hiding places. When his fingers touched paper he carefully retrieved one of the girlie magazines Willis had shared with him. Opening its pages was like going back in time. The women who’d titillated their youth showed less skin than daytime television.
Old guilt caused Traveler to hide the magazine when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Tanner’s feet came into view first. There appeared to be no one with him.
“Did you leave the police up
stairs?”
“This is all I brought with me.” Tanner stepped into the basement carrying a videotape player. “Let me get this hooked up and we’re in business.”
He slipped the VCR onto the shelf under the TV set and began screwing cable connectors into place. Once that was done, he switched on the set. When the picture flared to life on a game show, he muted the sound and turned around to face Traveler.
“You’re not authorized to see what I’m about to show you. It could cost me my job, Mo. It might even get me excommunicated.”
Traveler searched his friend’s face for signs of treachery. All that was visible was his nervous squint. Traveler said, “You’ve been working for the church ever since college. My bet is that you’ve never done anything without authorization in all that time.”
A tick pulled at Tanner’s eye. He covered it with one hand and pointed with the other. “Let’s say you’re right. Some kinds of authorizations are never put in writing or given in front of witnesses. It’s my ass that’s going to get burned if you leak any of this.”
“When you use language like that I get nervous.” Traveler sat down on the metal bed, causing a protesting squeak of springs.
“I’m making a point. I want you to know that I’m putting myself in your hands. If we weren’t friends, you’d be in jail right now.”
“Sure.”
“Go ahead and scoff. I had the warrant and you know it.” Tanner half turned, his finger poised over the VCR’s start button. “When you see this, you’ll know I’m a man who pays his debts.”
He hit the button and cranked up the volume. The game show gave way to a long shot of a park with children at play. Some were on swings, some on teeter-totters. Still others were jumping rope. The sound of their laughter mixed with the wind hissing into a microphone. Traveler recognized the area near the tennis courts at Liberty Park, the biggest picnic and recreational area in downtown Salt Lake.
The camera began to zoom, closing in on a group of young girls skipping rope. Accompanying the zoom was a rustling, staticlike sound, as if the off-camera microphone was being clumsily redirected.
After a moment, the girl’s singsong chant became clear. “Bread and butter, sugar and spice, how many boys think I’m nice? One, two, three, four . . .”
The girl jumping made a mistake. The chanting stopped while she untangled herself and exchanged places with one of the girls who’d been twirling the rope.
“Sugar and cream, bread and butter, what is the name of my true lover? A, B, C, D . . .”
A man’s voice, one that has been electronically distorted, overrode the singing. “They’re young now, maybe even innocent. But not for long. Like all of their kind, they’re destined to become whores. ‘Woe unto them who commit whoredoms, for they shall be thrust down into hell.’ ”
Tanner punched the pause button. “I looked that up. It’s from The Book of Mormon. Two Nephi, nine: thirty-six.”
He restarted the tape. The camera moved on, focusing on first one girl and then another. “ ‘And the great and abominable church, which is the whore of all the earth, shall be cast down by devouring fire.’ ”
Again Tanner stopped the videotape. “That’s Doctrine and Covenants, Mo. The words of Joe Smith.”
He ground his teeth before jabbing the button once again. On screen the children were replaced by a montage of women’s faces. They were young and good-looking. Judging by the shakiness of the camera and telephoto distortion, they’d been videotaped at a great distance.
“And I am that devouring fire.”
Tanner froze the picture. “Do you recognize her?”
Traveler shook his head.
“Alma Tucker, the first one to be killed.”
Breathing noisily through his mouth, Tanner concentrated on manipulating buttons, easing the picture forward frame by frame. “Here’s number two. Juanita Sanchez, alias Jan Gates. Now watch closely. I’m going to let them roll for a while.”
Female faces flashed by in ever-shorter bursts. Traveler blinked. One of them looked like Claire.
“Stop the tape and rerack it.”
“Don’t worry, she’s coming up again.”
Tanner caught Claire in freeze frame.
“Notice the background,” Tanner said. “It’s your house. Your front porch.”
Traveler lurched from the bed to get a closer look at the screen. “That tape has a professional look to it. The editing is a hell of a lot better than most home movies.”
“That’s what our people say, too, though his long shots leave something to be desired. Of course, he was probably trying to hide the camera from his subjects.”
Victims, Traveler thought. The word was victims. “Claire showed up at the house yesterday. Whoever took this must have been waiting across the street.”
“Or following her.”
Traveler caught his breath. He should have thought of that. “Is there anything else I ought to know?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Tanner sighed. His shoulders slumped. When he pushed the playback button his trembling finger had a hard time hitting the mark.
The little girls were back, jumping rope. Their singsong cry rose, then faded. The narrator’s contrived voice overrode them with heavy breathing. Then he spoke. “A hundred years ago the children of London sang a different song.”
He sang, his voice an electronically exaggerated falsetto. “Jack the Ripper’s dead, and lying on his bed. He cut his throat with Sunlight Soap. Jack the Ripper’s dead.”
A rumble of distorted laughter brought gooseflesh crawling up Traveler’s spine.
“The little whores are lying. Jack’s not dead. Jack’s back.”
27
TANNER HAD tears in his eyes. “We’re two days away from celebrating the rebirth of God’s chosen people. You realize that, don’t you, Moroni? The moment when God led Brigham Young to this, our promised land. And now the Devil has sent his disciple among us to test our faith.”
“This guy is obviously crazy.”
“But who made him that way? Surely not God.”
“We’d better go back and look at that tape again. Count how many women are on it.”
Tanner shook his head. “There’s no need. The count is ten. The original Jack the Ripper killed five.”
“Maybe he intends to double the record.” Or maybe, Traveler thought, the number ten was a diversion. If you counted Pioneer Day itself, there were three days to go. Three days and three more victims would equal Jack the Ripper’s count.
“Claire’s the only other face on the tape that we’ve identified so far. If I hadn’t recognized her, we’d have no leads at all, though we are checking all known prostitutes, since they were Jack’s original targets.”
“Claire doesn’t qualify,” Traveler said. “She never does anything for money.”
“Would a maniac make that kind of distinction?”
Traveler thought that over for a moment. “I’d better warn her.” He picked up the phone. “Is this an extension?”
“My mother can’t listen in, if that’s what you mean.”
Traveler dialed a number he knew by heart, but which he had never intended to use. He let it ring a long time before giving up.
“We can’t allow this man to come to trial,” Tanner went on. “You understand that, don’t you?”
“You have to catch him first.”
Tanner shrugged his shoulders as if to say that was a forgone conclusion.
“Goddamn it, Willis. I want to know what’s going on in that Mormon mind of yours.”
“I can’t say.”
“Won’t, you mean.”
He shrugged again.
“Has something happened to Claire?” Traveler grabbed the front of Tanner’s shirt and lifted him on to tiptoe. Cloth ripped. A button popped loose and rolled on the concrete.
“The truth is, we’d like to hire you, Mo.”
“Sure. And how would you like him killed?”
“It doesn’t have to
come to that. Committing him somewhere would be acceptable, as long as we’re certain that he can’t sell his story to Hollywood.”
“What about Claire?” Traveler said.
“I didn’t have to show you the tape, you know.”
“If you wanted my help, you did.”
“I have no reason to believe that she’s come to any kind of harm. Now let go of me, damn it.”
Traveler tossed him onto the bed. “You have a suspect in mind, don’t you?”
“We have a short list. We think he’s on it.”
Traveler slapped himself on the forehead. “What a dummy. You told me that once before, missionaries like Heber Armstrong who’ve gone astray.”
“Unfortunately he isn’t the only one on our list who’s had some kind of television training.”
“What kind of proof do you have that your Jack the Ripper is a missionary?”
“Ex-missionary.” Tanner squirmed. His lips pressed together. But before he could say anything further, the pager attached to his belt beeped its alarm.
One side of his face twitched. He groaned, picked up the phone, and then turned his back so he could punch in numbers without Traveler seeing them.
“This is Tanner, sir. My verification number is 447769.” He cast a quick glance at Traveler. “That should be changed after this call.”
As Tanner listened one side of his face puckered until his squint resembled a Halloween mask. His entire body was trembling by the time he hung up.
“Liberty Park,” he said. “There’s been another killing.”
28
LIBERTY PARK is home to one of the oldest structures in Salt Lake, the Isaac Chase House, a two-story adobe built in 1852, a pioneer shrine now turned into a monument to murder. A cordon of police had the place surrounded. They, in turn, were surrounded by trees, elms and cottonwoods, sucked limp by the heat.
The park had been one of Traveler’s boyhood haunts. He‘d picnicked there, ridden the merry-go-round, and watched fireworks shows on both Independence days, the nation’s on July 4 and the Mormons’ on July 24. But now, as he and Willis Tanner pushed through the sightseers and crossed the grass toward the shrouded body, the scene looked as unreal as a backdrop at a high school play.