A Killing in Zion

by Andrew Hunt

  “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.”

  “You’d better not.”

  I returned to the kitchen table with my dollops of ice cream and resumed eating. Clara licked her spoon clean, dropped it in the bowl, and pushed it aside. That’s when she spied the scrapbook and knew right away what I had been doing when she touched my shoulders and gave me such a powerful start. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of it and she gave me a stern look.

  “Why do you have that out?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “No reason. I’m just looking through it.”

  She reached over and squeezed my hand in hers. “You’re tormenting yourself again.”

  I tugged my hand free of hers.

  “I’m not. I just … I miss him. That’s all.”

  “Is that really all?”

  “What other reason would I have?”

  “Last time I found you looking through that scrapbook, you said something along the lines of you’ll never be able to measure up to him. Ring any bells?”

  “What’s your point?” I asked.

  “I don’t think it’s healthy, you turning him into a legend,” she said. “It’s like you’re competing with a phantom who will always outrun you.”

  “Because I’m weak,” I said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “That isn’t what I meant and you know it,” she said angrily. “Stop putting words in my mouth. You’re the last person I think of when I hear the word weak. I mean, my goodness, Art, how many police detectives do you know who’ve had their stories broadcast on an episode of Crime Does Not Pay?”

  “That was the Hollywood version of me,” I said. “Dad would’ve been able to see right through it.”

  “Oh, Art, why do you do this to yourself?”

  “Because there was nothing brave about what I did that night to Henry Grenache,” I said. “The entire time he had that gun aimed at me, I was terrified that he was going to actually shoot me, and I wasn’t ever going to see you or the children again. The only reason I came out of that ordeal in one piece was because there happened to be a tire iron within reach. That radio show made everybody think I was some kind of hero.…”

  “But you are a hero!”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “It was just dumb luck and fast reflexes. Heroism never entered the picture at any point.”

  “There you go again! Why do you always have to tear yourself down?” she asked. “It’s a rigged contest, Art, because you’re never going to let yourself win.”

  “It’s different for you, Clara,” I said. “Your father is still alive.”

  “Don’t hand me that ‘you’ll never know, because it didn’t happen to you’ business,” she said. “That’s just your way of trying to shut me up. After all, how could I possibly know how you’re feeling when my dad is alive and well, and all I have to do is pick up the telephone and ring his house?”

  “I hope to God you never lose him the same way I lost mine, because nobody should ever have to experience what it’s like to not be able to say good-bye to someone who’s that important to you, to someone you love that much,” I said. “It’s twice as upsetting to know that he died so … in such a … well, that he died the way he did. Knowing the last thing he ever saw was his killer, and the last thing he ever felt was getting shot.”

  “Sometimes I think you wish it’d been you instead of him,” said Clara. “But you’re here, and you’re alive, and you punish yourself with this foolish notion that you’ll never be half the man he was.”

  “I guess that’s my own particular demon,” I whispered.

  Clara’s arms, folded over her chest, rose and fell gently with each breath. I sensed she felt defeated by this conversation and couldn’t take any more arguing. So she changed the subject. “Why don’t you tell me about the two men you found tonight?”

  “Aw, shoot, Clara, I told you I’d rather not.…”

  “I won’t go to bed until you do, and I won’t let you, either. Keep it short. But don’t leave out any of the important details. Go.”

  I recounted the crime scene to Clara, describing it vividly. Talking through it distracted me, made me forget about the scrapbook and my father. My vocal cords grew raw from all the talking, and I reached a point at which I was too exhausted to speak. I leaned back against the hard wood of my chair, threw my arms up into a stretch, and yawned.

  “Thanks for telling me about it,” said Clara. “Want to go to bed? You have to get up for work in a few hours.”

  “I appreciate you reminding me,” I said, coming out of my yawn. Rising from my chair, I lifted my ice-cream bowl to put it in the sink.

  “Leave it,” she said. “I’ll wash it in the morning.”

  I set it down and reached for the scrapbook.

  “Leave that, too. Sometimes I wish you’d burn it.”

  How to respond to that comment? I didn’t. Instead, I said, “We need more ice cream.”

  “I’ll pick some up tomorrow,” she said. “Good news. Keeley’s has brought back that South Seas Island coconut kind you loved so much last year.”

  Hand in hand, we headed to the bedroom, and she closed the door, let
ting darkness swallow us. Without even bothering to remove a stitch of my clothing, I belly-flopped onto the bed, my head barely touching the bottom of the pillow. Somewhere in the haze of fading into unconsciousness, Clara spoke, but I was too exhausted to acknowledge her words. “Don’t you want to change into your pajamas?” Slumber seized me at that point, carrying me into a land of dreams.

  Six

  Police Chief William Cowley kept me waiting in the anteroom of his office, on a velvet armchair, one of several facing a long desk. There, a Betty Boop–ish secretary in a floral dress typed slavishly whenever some three-piece big shot passed through the room, only to switch back to filing her nails when the coast was clear. Her desk nameplate identified her as INEZ SPOONER, and from time to time, she’d stop her emery board to blow on her nails and glance at me. Somewhere behind her desk, a radio played a forlorn tune performed by the unmistakable birdlike voice of Annette Hanshaw. I sat there, right ankle propped on left knee, reading—but not really reading—an issue of Popular Mechanics from last fall that I had pulled off a stack of magazines on an end table. The cover showed a futuristic art deco speed train racing across the countryside. On the chair next to me sat a stack of cream-colored file folders and a small box containing photographic slides that I had brought over for this morning’s meeting.

  “I recognize you,” said Inez Spooner. “You’re that Overtson fella, the one that busted the Running Board Bandit.”

  I looked up from the magazine. “Oveson.”

  “Begging your pardon?”

  I said it slowly. “O-vuh-son. No R, no T.”

  “Oh yeah, Oveson,” she said. “I remember your face from the papers. Real crackerjack, the way you nabbed him. Serves him right, stickin’ up decent people.”

  “That’s nice of you to say. Thank you.”

  “You sounded keen on the radio,” she said. “It makes your voice lower.”

  “Oh, that? That was an actor playing me.”

  Her face brightened for the first time. “Which actor?”

  “Lyle Talbot.”

  Her eyes went saucer wide. “The Lyle Talbot? From Fog Over Frisco?”

  “The same.”

  “Gee, that’s swell! Did you get his autograph, by any chance?”

  I hesitated, as if about to make a grave confession. “I forgot.”

  “Now how on earth could you forget something like that?”

  Chief Cowley’s office doors opened at the right time. I dreaded the prospect of being interrogated over my failure to obtain Lyle Talbot’s autograph. An older woman with platinum curls, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a maroon collared crepe dress poked her head out and her eyes scanned the room, stopping at me. “Mr. Oveson? We’re ready for you.”

  On my way to Cowley’s office, lugging my stack of file folders, I noticed Inez Spooner typing once more, and I had no doubt she’d stop as soon as that matron was no longer standing in the doorway. “Famous movie star and you don’t get his autograph,” she said under her breath, fingers dancing on the Underwood keys. “What a disgrace.”

  The chief’s assistant closed the doors behind me. Inside, paneled walls matched a mahogany conference table in the center of the room, surrounded by tall chairs, several presently occupied. Chief Cowley rose from his spot at the head of the table and came over to me to shake my hand. He stood at only five feet, seven inches tall, yet his formidable presence fooled you into thinking he towered over seven. He kept his hair slicked back, his eyeglasses low on his nose, and his dapper mustache neatly trimmed. He had the most prominent chin I’ve ever seen on a man, even more than President Roosevelt’s. He seized my hand with a grip that almost fractured bones, so I knew he meant business.

  “Welcome, Detective Oveson,” he said. “Please, come in and be seated. Anywhere you wish.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. I faced his assistant and handed her the box of slides. “Were you able to arrange use of the projector?”

  “Yes, it’s right over there,” she said, gesturing to a wheeled cart. “Top slide first?”

  “Yes, please,” I said. “Thank you.”

  While Cowley’s assistant went over and loaded the slides into the projector, I gravitated to the unoccupied end of the table, nearest the door, and Cowley returned to his spot. I never quite knew what to make of Cowley. He seemed competent enough, but his rise to the top spot in the force grew out of a checkered history. Sometime around the close of 1931 or opening of ’32, Mayor Bennett Cummings replaced the outgoing police chief, Otis Ballard, with his good friend Bill Cowley. Ballard retired so he could—in his own words—“take up the rod and reel full-time.” But there was more to Ballard’s departure than a desire to spend more time fishing, and everyone from the lowliest traffic cop to the highest deputy chiefs knew it. Ballard’s early retirement was tied to a scandal in the winter of ’31 that rocked the Anti-Vice Squad. It was a complicated story involving cops who accepted bribes in the form of money, liquor, and prostitutes; mass firings of a squad commander and detectives for allegedly participating in said racket; and an overzealous new mayor, Cummings, who wanted to wipe out every last vestige of corruption, even if it meant destroying the careers of a few innocent men in the process. At least three Anti-Vice detectives had been driven out of the force without any evidence linking them to illegal activities. For Cummings, their presence in the squad was sufficient reason to discharge them. Moreover, Ballard had never played any part in the scandalous behavior that had been going on for years. Yet he had been the chief of police at the time when the worst instances of corruption were occurring, and that was good enough for Cummings to accuse him behind the scenes of being “inept” and “asleep at the wheel.” Since Ballard was so popular among his men and the public at large, Cummings would never utter such statements in public. He chose instead to apply quiet pressure. It worked. Ballard was out and Cowley was in.

  Needless to say, Cowley wasn’t terribly popular in his own force. That had to do, in part, with him being an outsider. Cummings brought Cowley in from Boise, Idaho, to introduce a fresh face, someone capable of rising above the internecine conflicts that had been plaguing the force for so long, and restore the department’s tarnished image.

  My thoughts returned to the present. To Chief Cowley’s left sat Wit Dunaway, looking as grim as ever with freshly slicked-back hair to go along with his perpetually angry expression and folded arms. To Cowley’s right was my longtime friend Buddy Hawkins, captain of detectives. That made him my boss, the figure in the police bureaucracy whom I answered to directly. He was several years older than me, about thirty-nine or forty. Over time, his reddish hair had gone blond, and for a man with five kids and a police detective’s salary, he was dapper, probably the ritziest dresser I knew. I always thought he married into money, but knowing little about his wife’s background, I could never be certain. He had an angular jaw and blue eyes, and for some reason he reminded me of the motion picture actor Spencer Tracy, even though the two didn’t look much alike. He and I used to attend the same ward, which is the Mormon name for a local congregation, but when my family moved to the upper Avenues two years ago, we switched wards. Despite this, Buddy and I had stayed good friends and frequently updated each other with the latest news about our families and our church activities. Buddy also harbored ambitions I lacked. He had political savvy to spare. He played golf on Saturday afternoons with all the right men. He befriended Utahns in high places. Judges. Politicians. Newspapermen. He was going somewhere, but he was patient and methodical about it, willing to take it slowly and follow whatever opportunities opened up for him.

  The woman with curls—whom Cowley quietly introduced as Mabel—pulled out a chair and sat at the table’s midsection, opened a stenographer’s notebook, and readied her pen. I lifted a nearby pitcher of water and filled the empty glass at my side. I trembled with nervousness. Butterflies darted around in my stomach.

  Cowley broke the silence. “I was impressed with the dramatization of your capture of Henry G
renache on Crime Does Not Pay. It was a spectacular publicity coup for the department. And you were in top form.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “I was quite happy with it myself.”

  “I’m sure your family is proud, too.” Cowley gestured to the other men at the table. “As you can see, I’ve invited Captain Hawkins and Lieutenant Dunaway here so that we might discuss, in greater detail, the tragic homicide that occurred at the headquarters of the Fundamentalist Church of Saints last night, and what is to be done about it.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “As of now, the murder of LeGrand Johnston has been categorized as a joint investigation,” said Cowley. “It will require close coordination between Homicide and your squad, Arthur. I’ve spoken to Mayor Cummings this morning. He has taken a strong personal interest in this case. There is pressure being brought to bear on him from the city council for your squad to show results. A rapid solution to this case would be precisely the sort of breakthrough the mayor wishes to see.”

  Cowley swiveled his chair toward Buddy. “Do you mind continuing, Charles?”

  Buddy once told me that the only people he let call him Charles were his mother and Chief Cowley. I smirked when I heard the name spoken. Buddy cleared his throat and scanned the listeners around the table. “This is a high-profile homicide. The national press has taken a strong interest in this case already. Our operators have logged telephone calls from newspaper reporters as far away as London, Berlin, and New Delhi. Rumor has it the New York Times is putting this story on page one of tomorrow’s edition. That stands to reason. LeGrand Johnston was the head of the largest polygamist sect in the world. I’m sure you can begin to understand why a prompt resolution to this case is of the utmost importance.”

  Buddy stopped and glanced at Chief Cowley. Cowley nodded and mouthed the words “thank you.” “Arthur, you’ll be working closely with Wit here,” said Cowley. “I was hoping that you would apprise him, as well as us, of the progress your squad has made in its ongoing investigation of Johnston’s notorious cult.”

  “Yes, sir. Most certainly.” I pulled the dossier folders closer. “We—that is, the other three squad members and myself—have spent the last three months monitoring local polygamists, with the goal of building cases against them. These files are the tip of an iceberg that represents months of hard work—surveillance, research, direct cooperation with other units—and I have every reason to believe our efforts are going to pay off soon. If someone can dim the lights…”