by Sean Lynch
Kearns struggled to make conversation, his mind suddenly blank. “Uh, you said one of your sons didn’t go into the Marines. Where is he?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. He was a coward. He ran away. It was shameful. I ain’t seen nor heard from him since, and if he showed his face now I’d shoot him faster than I’d have plugged you.”
Kearns gulped. He didn’t doubt that a bit. “Did you have any daughters?”
The old man rose to his feet and towered over Kearns, his good eye glaring.
“What about her? She send you? I don’t give a goddamned who you are, G-man! You ever speak of her again, I’ll kill you! You understand me, boy?”
Kearns took a step back and wished to hell Farrell would hurry up in the bathroom. He could see the burning hatred in the old man’s one good eye, and the mottled orb that was his other eye didn’t dilute the emotion. He was convinced the elder Slocum was insane.
“Take it easy, sir… I didn’t mean to offend you. I was only making conversation. If I said something that angered you, I’m sorry.”
The pointing finger of Slocum’s right hand darted out and struck Kearns’ chest like a rod of iron. He loomed over the deputy.
“My daughter is a slut. She’s the Whore of Babylon. I don’t allow her name to be spoken in my presence. You knew that, didn’t you? You knew that all along. That’s why you came, to remind me of Elizabeth? Ain’t that so? You government men will never leave me in peace, will you? Always prodding. Well I won’t allow it! Do you hear? I won’t stand for it!”
Kearns had no idea what the old man was rambling about, but it was obvious Slocum was becoming highly agitated. Where was Farrell?
In answer, Farrell appeared behind Slocum. He grabbed the large old man by his hair and pulled him down into the chair. He moved to face Slocum, his .38 in his fist. Pointing it at the old Marine’s face he kicked the shotgun, which had been leaning against the chair, across the room.
“Calm your ass down, old man. You’ve done enough ranting for one day.”
Kearns breathed a sigh of relief. The elder Slocum, perhaps because of his resemblance to his son, had rattled him.
“Tell me about your wife and daughter, Mister Slocum?”
At this, Slocum seemed ready to leap from the chair and strike as his dog in the yard had nearly done.
“Go ahead, asshole,” Kearns was shocked to hear Farrell say. “Go for it. You feel froggy, you leap. I’ll put a bullet in your head for trying.”
“You can’t come in here and talk to me like that,” Slocum spat vehemently. “I know my rights! Couple of government bullies, come to abuse an old man in his home. I’m a veteran! I shouldn’t be treated like this! I’m gonna call–”
“Who’re you going to call, baby-raper?”
Slocum recoiled at this. Kearns stood behind Farrell, aghast. What mad ploy was the renegade cop up to now?
“Go on,” Farrell continued, “answer the question. Who’re you going to call? Who’s going to listen to a man convicted of molesting his own daughter?”
Slocum leaped at Farrell with a speed surprising for one of his age and condition. Farrell expected this, and he sidestepped the old man, chopping his neck with his revolver butt. Slocum sprawled on his face in the rubbish of his floor.
Kearns couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. This time, the Californian had gone too far. It was one thing to pilfer a few faded documents from a hospital basement; quite another to enter a man’s home under false pretenses and physically abuse him.
Farrell holstered his revolver. He reached down and retrieved the shotgun from the floor and ejected the shells from its chamber and magazine. Scattering the rounds, he threw the shotgun into the hall. Slocum lay on the ground trying to catch his breath, which was shallow and hoarse. Kearns feared the old man might have a heart attack.
“If I was twenty years younger,” the elder Slocum sputtered, “I’d kill you with my bare hands.”
Farrell stood over him and laughed. “Be glad you aren’t. If you were, I’d dispose of you right now.”
Farrell nodded to Kearns and then to the door. Kearns was more than ready to leave. He opened the door, flooding the interior of the house with light. As the two men left Farrell turned back to Slocum, who was struggling to get up.
“Old man,” Farrell said evenly. “I’m going to catch Vernon. And when I do, I’m going to kill him.”
Farrell left the house. Kearns followed with a look of amazement and horror on his young face. As Farrell waded to the car, he drew his snub-nosed .38 and aimed it at the gutted car where the pit bull resided. This time, however, no dog appeared. Both men reached the car unscathed. Getting in, Kearns started the engine immediately.
“What in the hell was that all about?” Kearns asked angrily. “How does catching this guy Slocum involve beating his elderly father up? And where do you get off telling him you’re going to kill his son?”
Farrell ignored the barrage of questions and calmly lit one of his unfiltered cigarettes. After inhaling deeply, he turned to Kearns. “Kevin, I suggest you drive us away from this place. It isn’t going to take Old Man Slocum long to get up, load his shotgun, and make it to the porch. I don’t relish the idea of getting shot by that old coot. Do you?”
Kearns wanted to hit him. But as usual, the Californian’s logic was irrefutable. He angrily drove out of the yard.
Once on the road Farrell spoke.
“Don’t be pissed off, Kevin. I didn’t have time to explain myself back there. I’ll answer your questions before you ask them. Last night, while you slept, I read the file from the veterans’ hospital. It contains the records of his therapy sessions, his psychological profiles, and medical records.”
“Some bedtime story.”
“In those records is evidence that Vernon Slocum, as well as his two brothers and sister, were sexually abused by their father from the time they were very small.”
Kearns began to feel uneasy again. Farrell continued.
“The records of Slocum’s therapy sessions indicate he was sexually abused as a child, right up until the time he left for the Marines. Vernon was the second oldest of three boys, and had a younger sister. Elizabeth was her name. Apparently their mother died under suspicious circumstances.”
“What kind of suspicious circumstances?” Kearns’ curiosity had overtaken his anger, and he was calmer since they had put distance between the Slocum farm and themselves.
“According to the records she had a miscarriage, and died from the resulting hemorrhaging. It was suspected, but never proven, that Slocum’s wife was beaten, probably causing the miscarriage in the first place.”
“How could he get away with that?”
“Child protection laws, spousal abuse laws, and mandatory reporting laws hadn’t been enacted yet. Besides, this is a remote rural area now. Think about what it must have been like just after World War II.”
Kearns nodded. “Even if somebody suspected Emil was abusing his wife and kids nobody would have acted on it. A man was left alone to raise his family.”
“Old man Slocum didn’t get away with it forever. In the early Sixties he was arrested for sexually abusing his daughter, Elizabeth. She was thirteen years old. It had probably been going on for a long time, but it came out in school when she told a teacher. Elizabeth was put into foster care and apparently old Slocum hasn’t seen her since.”
“I doubt she’s going to show up on Father’s Day with a necktie,” Kearns said.
Farrell exhaled smoke. “I guess the state didn’t believe a man would fuck his own boys, because after he was convicted on the charges he abused his daughter he did a couple of years in Fort Dodge and returned to his farm and custody of his three sons. Shortly after, Vernon left for Vietnam. Vernon’s older brother Wade died there. The youngest son, Cole, ran away.”
“No wonder the old guy came unglued when I asked him about his daughter. He must despise her for blowing the whistle on him.”
�
�I’m sure the feeling is mutual.”
“So tell me something,” asked Kearns. “If you knew all this from the file we snatched at the veterans’ hospital, why did we need to visit the old man?”
“Did you think I was really going to the bathroom? While you were engaged in banter with the charming Emil Slocum, I was tossing his house.”
“You ransacked his house?”
“Twenty years of working property crimes, a guy picks up a few burglary techniques. Take a look.”
Farrell pulled a thick sheaf of papers from the inside pocket of his coat. Many were torn and yellowed with age. There were quite a few newspaper clippings in the pile.
“Did you find anything we can use to track Vernon?”
“I won’t know until I look the stuff over. Thanks for buying me the time to find it. It wasn’t easy in all that mess. Most of these papers were in a box under his bed.”
CHAPTER 25
“We’re going to Omaha to track down Slocum’s sister, Elizabeth,” Farrell said, in answer to Kearns’ request for a destination.
They were westbound on Highway 30 again, heading for the Missouri River and the Nebraska/Iowa border. Farrell dug under the seat for his briefcase, from which he withdrew the thick file he’d taken from the veterans’ hospital.
“While you were snoozing last night,” Farrell said, “I was doing homework.”
“Learn anything else from Slocum’s file we can use?”
“Apparently the headshrinkers found him somewhat disturbed.”
“There’s an earth-shattering diagnosis for you.”
“Yeah,” Farrell said chuckling. “Only took the doctors twenty years to come up with that one. Anyway, I was focusing on details which might lead us to his current whereabouts.”
“That’s where you got the address of Slocum’s father.”
“Right. And the information about his father’s criminal history.”
“It would appear your late night reading paid off,” Kearns said, biting his lip. “Let’s hope what we got today does as well.”
Farrell shook his head. “What I found at the Slocum’s farm is valuable, but for a different reason. I’ll get to that in a minute.”
“So you weren’t bluffing back there? About the old man molesting his own kids?”
“I wasn’t making anything up. And what I’ve read so far is beginning to form a definite pathology.”
“Pathology?”
“That’s medical lingo for how he became a monster.” Farrell sifted through more of the papers in the file. “Slocum was the second oldest child; Elizabeth the youngest. When he was seven years-old, his sister almost two, Slocum’s father beat his mother after finding out she was pregnant again. I guess beatings around the Slocum household were pretty common, but this one was particularly savage.”
“You told me about this already. Slocum’s wife died as a result.”
“What I didn’t tell you was that Vernon witnessed the incident, including seeing his father kick his pregnant mother repeatedly in the stomach. This came out in some of his therapy sessions.”
“Jesus,” Kearns said under his breath. “No wonder he turned out all screwed up.”
“It gets worse. After the death of his wife, Emil Slocum began drinking more heavily, beating the children more severely, and on or about Vernon’s tenth birthday, began molesting Vernon.”
“How could a man do that to his own son?”
“I wish I knew. Or maybe I don’t.”
“What kind of abuse are we talking about?” Kearns asked tentatively.
“You name it, old man Slocum did it. Sodomy, oral copulation, beatings, starvation, cold water dousing, isolation, electric shocks; the whole nine yards. Most of this was revealed during narcotic-assisted hypnosis sessions. Apparently a lot of this stuff Vernon buried somewhere deep in his mind.”
“Sure,” chided Kevin. “He blocked it out. It’s called repression. I learned about it in the academy. Lots of victims do it.”
“That’s right.”
“Sounds like a horror movie.” Kearns said.
“I’m sure for the Slocum children, it was.”
“How did it end?”
“Old Emil Slocum signed Vernon into the Marines as soon as the kid turned seventeen: the minimum age of enlistment. This was a year after he’d signed Wade, Vernon’s older brother, into the Corps, also on his seventeenth birthday. Soon Vernon was in Vietnam earning medals.”
“What happened to Wade?”
“He was killed in action within a month of getting in-country.”
“Vernon must have taken it pretty hard.”
Farrell rubbed his chin. “Report doesn’t really say. That time in Slocum’s life was dominated by another crisis.”
“His sister.”
“Excellent,” Farrell smiled. “You’re becoming a detective. While Vernon was deep in the jungle he received word that his sister Elizabeth, who’d just turned thirteen, was taken into foster care. Vernon’s younger brother, Cole, ran away.”
“So while Vernon is off fighting in the jungle, one brother is killed, the other runs away, his little sister is taken into protective custody, and…”
“…and his father is sent to prison,” Farrell finished. “A shining chapter in the Slocum family saga.” Farrell extracted another paper from the thick file. “Vernon was in the VA hospital from the late Sixties, after I met him in Saigon, until the fall of 1986.”
“Why so long?”
“He was probably doped up. It’s common practice to keep mental patients under constant sedation with heavy-duty narcotics; makes for a docile patient. The side-effects of these drugs are often confused with the symptoms of whatever mental disorder the patient is supposedly being treated for. Kind of a Catch-22.”
“So why was he released? Did the doctors think he was cured?”
Farrell laughed out loud. “Not likely. I can guess the answer, though it’s not in the records. President Reagan cut the funding for all the mental hospitals when he took office.”
“I remember reading about that,” Kearns said. “Everybody was worried about what was going to happen when all these crazies hit the streets. It was all over the news. Veterans’ advocacy groups and mental health professionals were up in arms about it.”
“Sure. When the money ran out, thousands of psychologically ill people, including vets, supposedly too dangerous to be out walking the streets, were simply kicked loose. They were suddenly declared cured simply because the VA’s budget had to be tightened.”
“It boggles the mind. Twenty years in a psych-ward, and one day when it’s penny-pinching time he gets turned loose.” Kearns shook his head. “Didn’t they know what they were unleashing?”
“I doubt it. His crimes in Vietnam were never put on record. The docs probably thought Slocum was just another combat burnout. No different than any other docile, doped-up patient.”
“Hell of a way to run a railroad,” Kearns said.
“Nobody ever said the Federal Government was perfect.”
“Even if we find Elizabeth in Omaha, will she know where to find Vernon?”
“Have a little faith. Apparently Elizabeth corresponded with Vernon while he was in the VA hospital, and on one occasion, in 1984, came to visit. She was in her thirties then, and according to notes of one of Vernon’s therapy sessions, working for the Catholic Diocese in Omaha somewhere. She’d started a career in counseling and was affiliated with Boys Town. That’s where we’re going now; to see if we can get a line on her that might lead us to Vernon.”
“First we go to Vernon’s father’s place. Now we go after his sister?”
“Take a look at this.” Farrell withdrew a stack of handwritten letters from inside his coat pocket. “I found these on the nightstand in old man Slocum’s bedroom.”
“When you were supposed to be taking a shit, and Emil and I were getting chummy?”
“Yep,” Farrell said smugly. “Thanks again for the diversion. These
are letters from Elizabeth to her father, some dated as recently as four months ago.”
“Is there a return address?” Kearns asked.
“Yeah. Elizabeth still lives in Omaha, on Leawood West, near 132nd Street.
“I don’t get it.” said Kearns. “Why would Elizabeth reach out to the man who molested her as a child?”
“I haven’t had much of a chance to do more than skim the letters, but it seems Elizabeth works as a counselor. In her earlier letters she mentions having a master’s degree and working with abused children.”
“That fits.”
“I agree. A lot of people who’ve been abused end up as counselors; the same reason a lot of recovering alcoholics and drug addicts end up working with people who are similarly afflicted. Anyway, it seems Elizabeth has been writing to her father for a couple of years, trying to convince him to get help. At least the letters appear to be written in that tone.”
“Wow,” said Kearns. “This Elizabeth Slocum must be a saint. If something like that happened to me, helping the person who did it would be at the bottom of my ‘to do’ list.”
“I gather Elizabeth got no response from old Emil. She ends all the letters with a plea for him to at least write her back.”
Kearns grunted. “He called her the Whore of Babylon. I’m not sure she wants to hear what he’d have to say.”
“I wouldn’t,” Farrell said.
“So that’s our plan?” Kearns said. “Find Elizabeth and see if she can lead us to Vernon?”
“You got it.”
“What if she won’t help us?”
“Her father didn’t want to help, but look at all he gave us. I’ve got a hunch Elizabeth will put us in the right direction. Sometimes when you’re tracking someone you fly by the seat of your pants. It isn’t always logical, but hunches can be as fruitful as anything else.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Kearns replied sarcastically. “I’m too green to have any investigative hunches.”
“Then look at the bright side, kid. You’re getting a wealth of experience. Think of it as on-the-job training.”
Kearns stared at the road ahead. “Omaha it is. We’ll be there by late afternoon if the weather holds out.” He paused and looked at the older cop hesitantly.