by Andrew Hunt
Mabel went over to the twin doors and turned a wall dial. That, combined with Buddy closing the drapes, blocked much of the light out of the room. I whispered thanks and Buddy sat down next to the slide projector and switched it on, beaming an apparition on the screen that came into focus with the turn of a knob. The blob shape-shifted into an elderly white-haired man with a turkey neck and wearing a wide-brimmed black hat. His eyes and mouth open, he seemed surprised his photo was being taken. The slide showed him crossing a tree-lined road with a row of jalopies parked curbside behind him.
“Gentlemen, this is one of the victims of last night’s brutal homicide, LeGrand Johnston, the seventy-nine-year-old leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Saints,” I said. “It’s a breakaway offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His followers called him Uncle Grand and they believed he was in direct contact with God. We estimate that he had somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-two wives, but we can’t be sure. There are thousands of polygamists who make their home in the Salt Lake Valley. Some are independents, with no connection to any specific sects or offshoots. But thousands maintain ties to Uncle Grand’s cult. We’ve been operating under the assumption that if we target the heads of this sect with arrests and prison time, we’ll behead the monster—so to speak—and send the other cultists fleeing.” I paused. “Next slide, please.”
Buddy pressed a button. Click-click. Next came an image, taken through shrub branches, showing a distant black-clad figure in a wheelchair, being pushed by a tall, lean man, and surrounded by a trio of bodyguards. The camera was far enough away from the man in the wheelchair that his face was not visible, but his dark hat and overcoat stood out. Two of the brawny men escorting him looked directly toward the camera lens, with one pointing a finger as if he had just realized someone was snapping pictures from the bushes.
“We believe the man in the center of photo with the hat is Rulon Black, second-in-command of the cultists,” I said. “This photo was snapped by an ex-cultist. Unfortunately, you can’t really see him in this picture. We have no other known photographs of him from the past thirty years, so we can’t be sure of what he looks like today. Naturally, his reclusive tendencies have made him seem more sinister and given rise to plenty of rumors.”
“Give us a for instance,” said Cowley.
“I’ve spoken to a handful of men and women who’ve managed to escape the sect,” I said. “They’ve all indicated there’s a power struggle of sorts going on inside of the Fundamentalist Church of Saints. It apparently pits Rulon Black here, who supports moving the church and all of its members to a more remote location to escape the interference of authorities, against LeGrand Johnston, who prefers to remain in Salt Lake City and practice polygamy more out in the open, not in the shadows. So far, the rank-and-file members are divided, with some staying here and others moving to Dixie City, the fundamentalist settlement on the Utah-Arizona border.”
Click-click. An outdoor portrait at a one-room schoolhouse, with four rows of ten kids each, all high school students, dressed in the attire of the 1870s.
Click-click. Same as before, yet zoomed in on the back row. Grainy, out of focus, but one can make out an acne-scarred kid with bristly hair, wearing a button-up sweater over a light shirt. Alert eyes, mouth almost nonexistent, protruding ears.
I narrated: “Here’s the only known photograph we’ve been able to obtain of Rulon Black’s face. It’s his tenth-grade school photo from 1875. Next, please.”
Click-click. A gangly man, late forties, head like a bobbing oil rig, eyes wide, major overbite, seated in a chair at a rolltop desk.
“This is his son, Eldon Black,” I said. “This photograph is from about two years ago. There is some speculation that he’s the real driving force behind Rulon’s affairs. He’s cunning and nakedly ambitious. Next slide.”
Click-click. Two men in suits, standing near a wall. On the left: a tall man, thinning hair, handsome in a sleepy-eyed way, wearing bifocals perched on his bulbous nose, with deep lines etched in his face, and a crooked polka-dot bow tie below a jutting Adam’s apple. Age: early sixties. On the right: a short man, circa mid-fifties, with a receding widow’s peak, prominent cheekbones, a slight scar above his lips, and sporting tailor-made pinstripes.
“These are two very important figures in the Fundamentalist Church of Saints,” I said. “The man on the left is Alma Covington, and on the right is Carl Jeppson. Covington edits a little pro-polygamy newspaper called Truth out of his house on Third Avenue. Jeppson runs a floral shop on Second South. Both men are considered to be part of Johnston’s inner circle, although nobody can say for sure if they have any contact with Rulon Black.” I paused. “Next slide.”
Click-click. LeGrand Johnston leading five men—ages ranging from forties to sixties, all attired in dark suits—across desert flats. Behind them are dusty autos, scattered junipers, and a mesa.
“This,” I said, “is a picture of Johnston with five of his apostles, Heber Moss, Guy Hammond, Lyman Boggs, Nordell Christensen, and Amos Barton.”
“What exactly does it mean to be an apostle in this bizarre cult?” asked Cowley.
“An apostle would be an important patriarch in the church,” I said. “It means he’s got money and influence, he’s close to the prophet, he’s married to several wives, and he probably owns a decent chunk of real estate. The sheriff of Kane County took this picture in Kanab, the day the men went into town to pick up supplies. The polygamists are buying up land on the border, which they’ll use for their United Brethren scheme—”
“United what?” asked Wit Dunaway.
“United Brethren,” said Buddy. “It’s a project to build a cultist utopia down on the border of Utah and Arizona. As Art mentioned, they already run a town down there, Dixie City, on the Arizona side. It’s crawling with polygamists. They control everything—the city council, the school board, all the businesses. Even the mayor has eight wives.”
“I don’t understand why they all don’t just move down there,” said Cowley. “It’d make life a whole lot more pleasant for us. We’d be rid of them, and we could finally lick this notion of Salt Lake City being a hotbed of plural marriage.”
“With all due respect, sir, we oughtn’t to underestimate the connection that many members feel to Salt Lake City,” I said. “I’m not just talking about Johnston. A goodly number of the cultists were born and raised here. This town is the devil they know, so to speak. They don’t necessarily want to relocate to some tiny burgh out in the middle of nowhere. But if Rulon had it his way, they’d all be living in Dixie City.”
Sitting in darkness, looking at slides, it took all of my will to hold back from making derisive comments about these men. Their faces, pasty and sagging and full of malevolence, bothered me, pricking something deep inside. They stoked the flames of my animosity, in a way that no other group of people ever has. Part of me silently rejoiced that LeGrand Johnston was dead. Most modern Mormons—and by modern, I mean dedicated churchgoers of the twentieth century—viewed the polygamists with the strongest scorn imaginable. “Polygs,” we called them.
Reasons for this powerful dislike were numerous. The simplest explanation, the pat one, was that polygs made a mockery out of marriage and family. Yet in my more reflective moments, I was willing to concede that my hatred for the men in my slide show was rooted in my inability to come to terms with the lives of my ancestors. Not so long ago, my great-grandparents on both sides engaged in plural marriage, practicing the same custom as the men I now detested.
“Lights, please,” I said. Mabel switched on the lights and my eyes transitioned back to clarity in time to see everybody in the room staring at me, waiting for me to utter something insightful. “I wish I could advise you on suspects, but the truth is, I don’t have the foggiest idea who could have murdered Johnston, or why.”
“We need to strike while the iron’s hot,” interjected Cowley. “This homicide changes everything.”
“Our first move wil
l be to arrest the leaders,” said Wit. “Two-man interrogations will run all day and into the night if need be. If we squeeze these sonsabitches hard enough, they’ll rat out who plugged their prophet and cough up a lot of other dirt about their operations. I’m telling you, aggressiveness is our ally.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said. “You’ll be playing right into their hands. They’ll give us the silent treatment and squawk about religious persecution to the press. And they’ve got one of the best lawyers in the state defending them to boot. No, it seems to me you’ve got to go at it a different way.”
Wit shook his head. “What has your squad been doing since the start of April, anyhow? Playing checkers?”
“We’ve been trying to build cases,” I said, ignoring Wit’s jab. “Our goal is to see these men serve jail time.”
“What sort of cases?” pressed Cowley.
I opened the top folder and summarized the file before me. “We’ve turned up evidence that apostles have probably violated the Mann Act, the Comstock Laws, and the Lindbergh Law. All of these are federal offenses, and it’s my hope that we might be able to try these men before a federal grand jury.…”
“What about illegal cohabitation?” asked Cowley. “Surely that’s still against the law in this land?”
“The men marry one woman legally,” I said. “The rest of the wives are sealed to the husband in secret ceremonies. Each wife lives in a separate place, to avoid arrests.”
“I agree with Dunaway,” said Cowley. “Round up key figures, put ’em under the hot lights, and sweat it out of them. I bet by the end of the day you’ll squeeze out some confessions. If we play our cards right, we can use this thing to finally wipe out the fundamentalist cult in this city once and for all.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Buddy beat me to it. “This is a closed and tight-knit community we’re talking about,” he warned. “None of these people will testify in court against each other. It’s exceedingly difficult to prosecute them. They cover their tracks, and they aren’t keen to cooperate with the police.”
“I’m sure their resolve will crumble when they see the inside of our jail cells,” said Cowley confidently. He looked at Wit. “What do you need to conduct these arrests?”
“As many men as Becker can spare on short notice,” said Wit. “We can begin as soon as ten o’clock this morning. Art here can provide the names and addresses of the apostles. I’ll ask Bringhurst for quick warrants. I promise you we’ll break these men by day’s end.”
“Good. I do not want this case to drag on,” said Cowley, eyeing me, then Wit. “You two work together. Coordinate. Do whatever you have to do to find the murderer. We have two squads working on this. If there isn’t a breakthrough soon, I’m going to feel the heat from Cummings. I really don’t want that. Understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Yep,” said Wit.
Cowley stood, all smiles and good cheer. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting in city hall in five minutes and I don’t wish to be late.”
I scooped up my file folders, collected my slides from Mabel, and silently dreaded what lay ahead. As we filed out the office door, Wit glowered at me in his usual it’s-too-early-for-this deadpan style.
“Looks like we’re going to be collaborating,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, mustering as warm a grin as I could. “It certainly does.”
Seven
I passed through the open sliding door of a large gray warehouse that stood behind Public Safety. Inside, forty uniformed men—eight wide, five deep—stood at attention, with Detective Lieutenant Wit Dunaway and Captain Earl Becker standing at the head. Off to Wit’s side, a dozen or so of Wit’s plainclothes homicide dicks, including Pace Newbold, waited for orders. Outside, it was hot, but in here, the air managed to stay cool under the cover of a thirty-foot-high ceiling. Behind the men, a fleet of twenty police paddy wagons waited, each with black paint so pristine it reflected the glare from overhead spotlights, and all of those vulcanized tires still gave off a factory-fresh rubber scent. Myron Adler and Jared Weeks, in fedoras and suits, stood in sunlight beaming through a tall window. I made eye contact with Myron and mouthed the word “Roscoe.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. I tried not to show disappointment, but it was hard. I walked up to the front of the uniformed patrolmen and looked at their faces. Visors hid eyes, but their noses and mouths came in all shapes and sizes. Each man wore regulation black, with a thick belt, a diagonal shoulder strap, a crisp white shirt and black necktie, gleaming chest badge, cream-colored jodhpurs, and boots that went almost to the knees. Wit approached me and whispered, “Ready to go?” I nodded. He walked up to the front of the phalanx.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “Thank you for taking part in this operation at such short notice. We are about to conduct raids on the homes and businesses of the heads of the largest polygamist sect in the United States. I can promise you the press will be watching us. Our purpose in carrying out today’s arrests is to interrogate these men until one or more of them breaks and coughs up information that will enable us to solve last night’s double homicide. As such, we need to carry out this operation with the highest level of professionalism. There is much at stake today. Whatever your views on polygamy happen to be, that’s of no concern to me. What matters is that a series of murders has taken place inside of their tight little circle, and the perpetrator of this heinous act must be brought to justice, with no delay.” He paused and scanned their faces. “I have obtained warrants from Judge Bringhurst to conduct searches of the polygamist-owned residences and businesses. If you happen to find anything tying a particular individual to last night’s homicides, you are to report directly to me. Do I make myself clear?”
In almost perfect unison, they responded, “Yes, sir!”
“Good.” Wit walked over to Captain Becker, who handed him a clipboard. Wit skimmed the assignment roster and nodded, then returned to his place in front of the men. “Squad A will be led by myself, Squad B by Detective Newbold, Squad C by Detective Oveson, and Squad D by Detective J. Weeks.” Wit lowered the clipboard and looked out at the men. “Any questions?”
There weren’t any, a good sign. Wit handed the clipboard to Becker. “Fellas,” said Wit. “I don’t believe in luck, but I’m wishing it to you anyhow. Now, what are you standing around for? Get moving!”
The formation broke. Patrolmen scattered in all directions. Paddy wagon engines roared, and men filed out the doors to get in black-and-whites. Roscoe chose that moment to show up. His cut and bruised face was still recovering from the beating he’d taken. About the best that could be said is that it looked better than it did yesterday. Wit gave him the evil eye as he walked past. I handed Jared his warrant and patted him on the shoulder, then I reluctantly approached Roscoe to have a word with him about his lack of punctuality. He saw me coming and gave me his best what now? face.
“You’re late.”
“Can we do this some other time?” he pleaded.
“I need you here at work each day on time.”
“What can I say? It was one of those mornings.” Up closer, he appeared even more disheveled, and not merely due to his roughed-up face. Unshaven, shirt untucked. I caught a whiff of booze. He noticed me studying him. “What?”
“Like I said the other day, I can’t keep covering for you.”
“Then don’t. Cowley and Hawkins can go to hell. They can’t stand me ’cause I ain’t Mormon and I don’t play their games.”
“For crying out loud, Roscoe, all you have to do is show up on time and do your bit—”
Shaking his head in frustration, Roscoe left while I was in mid-sentence, heading off in the direction of the open entrance, only to be swallowed up by the brightness of the morning sun.
“What’s his problem?”
Myron stood by my side, watching Roscoe head out into the light.
“Wrong side of the bed,” I said.
“Too bad you have to put up
with that guy. To call him a big, dumb ape would be an insult to big, dumb apes the world over.”
Jared came over with a grim expression. “Wit’s making a big mistake, boss,” said Jared. “If you ask me, this is overkill, using all of these lawmen for just eleven arrests. This is only gonna make things worse.”
“It’s what Wit wants,” I said. “It’s his investigation now.”
Wit strolled over and gave us the something wrong? glare, the one you get when your superiors do not actually want to know if something is wrong. I smiled and shook my head and we all went our separate ways. I nabbed Roscoe outside and he rode along with me, while Myron joined Jared in Squad D, prepared to assist in the arrests. Roscoe and I ended up riding along with a pockmarked, bristly-headed young officer named Kimball. Roscoe sat in back and I took the passenger-side front seat. None of us said a word as Kimball turned out of the parking lot, part of a long police convoy dispersing to all parts of the valley.
* * *
Under smoky skies, a line of police cars and a paddy wagon slowed in front of a redbrick building near the intersection of 200 South and 200 East. SUNSHINE FLORAL said a long sign spanning the entrance and display windows. A smaller sign read GREENHOUSE IN REAR. In a corner of the front window, owner Carl Jeppson had hung a poster of the ubiquitous National Recovery Administration (NRA) blue eagle, showing the mighty New Deal thunderbird with a gear in its right talon and lightning bolts in its left. WE DO OUR PART, it said. A star-spangled sandwich board sign out front announced, ASK ABOUT OUR PATRIOTIC FOURTH OF JULY SPECIALS! Kimball killed the engine and the three of us got out of the car. On my way to the entrance, I stopped and whirled around toward the men behind me.