by Jan Burke
“I can’t speak for the police, of course. As for the paper, we already know some of the women’s names, both from our own research and from calls we’ve received from children of war workers. So I can’t promise their names won’t be printed. But my purpose in going through Mercury’s files is not to present confidential information about individual workers to the public. I’m just trying to find out why Thanatos is choosing certain people to be his victims.”
“Oh, my. I should have remembered that you already knew three women’s names when I first spoke with you. Well, I’ll talk to Quincy about that.”
“What’s the third condition?”
“Ahem, that you, ah — mention that Mercury was cooperative.”
“If Mercury is cooperative, I don’t have a problem saying so. Whether that kind of statement stays in the published version of my story is up to my editor.”
“Oh, of course. Well, let me talk to Quincy. I’ll call you back in a moment, Miss Kelly.”
ABOUT AN HOUR later, I was meeting Frank outside the museum doors. It had only taken Hobson Devoe about fifteen minutes to call me back to say we had the go-ahead from Quincy.
Devoe was a skinny twig of a man who looked like a strong breeze would snap him in half. But his eyes had an intelligence in them strong enough to overcome any frailties of his body.
“This museum means a lot to me,” he said, gesturing with a bony hand toward the models of planes and historical photographs along the walls. “It’s important to know where you’ve come from if you ever want to know where you’re going.” He paused and smiled. “Forgive me. You’re not here to see the museum. We have more pressing matters to attend to — and I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful to be included. I am looking forward to helping you. I haven’t had anything this challenging to work on in years!”
We followed him out of the museum, trying to walk as slowly as he did.
If I had seen a big piece of cheese in one corner of the offices which housed Mercury Aircraft’s Human Resources Department, I wouldn’t have been surprised. The place was a maze. Hobson Devoe took a slow but sure path through the cubicles, dividers, and desks, using a key card to open one locked door after another. I suppose it’s easier to find your way around a place after you’ve spent more than half a century there.
We ended up crowding ourselves into a small office with a computer terminal in it. Devoe put on a pair of glasses that magnified his eyes so much I could count his lashes. How the hell had he seen well enough to walk us back here, I wondered? He sat down at the keyboard, then slowly but steadily entered a series of keystrokes. He grinned up at us.
“Oh, ho! Bet you didn’t think I’d know how to use one of these contraptions, did you?”
“Mercury has records from the 1940s on the computer system?” Frank asked.
“Oh, yes. Unusual, isn’t it? Most places don’t even save those records on paper. But every employee record we’ve ever had is on our system. J.D. Anderson was quite fond of doing statistical studies on personnel.”
That statement raised an eyebrow or two, but he looked between us and said, “Oh, oh, all quite legitimate, I assure you.”
He slowly hunted and pecked a few more keys. Good grief, I thought, Thanatos is going to kill off half of Las Piernas while this old geezer learns to type. “There,” he said with satisfaction. “Now, where would you like to start?”
Frank and I had already discussed this. After some further work on the list of people who called the LPPD, our combined list now had fifteen women war workers’ names on it. But there was a much smaller group of war workers who were unmistakably linked to this case. “With the mothers of the three victims,” I said. “Could we look at Josephine Blaylock’s records?”
Devoe tapped in her name, then moved closer to the screen, its light reflecting off his lenses.
“Born January 11, 1916,” he read, as Frank and I took notes. “Hired October 5, 1942. Widowed. There’s a star here, which indicates that she lost her husband in the war. One child — we could ask about that in those days… oh goodness, don’t let me get started on that subject.”
“What else does it say about her?” I asked.
“Let’s see. She started out at our Los Angeles plant. We had the two large plants then, one here and one in L.A. We had about seven smaller satellite plants as well, in other parts of Southern California.”
“When did she come to Las Piernas?” I asked.
He moved a little closer to the screen. “Transferred to the Las Piernas plant on November 6, 1944. Worked in plating.”
We outlined Josephine Blaylock’s work history, then asked him to look up Bertha Thayer.
“Born June 3, 1918. Hired August 17, 1942.” She was a little younger than Josephine, but as he read on we learned she was, as Hobson had remembered, a war widow. Thelma was her only child. “Started in the L.A. plant,” he went on, “transferred to the Las Piernas plant on November 6, 1944. Worked in several areas, mainly in de-icer assembly, though.”
“Hold it,” Frank said, looking up from his notes. “She transferred on the same day as Josephine Blaylock?”
“Why, yes,” Hobson said.
“Let’s take a look at Gertrude Havens’ records,” I said.
Devoe was working up some speed now, and it took less time to pull up her file.
“Transferred November 6, 1944. Worked in wiring.” His snow white brows drew together. “I don’t know what to make of that November 6 business. Sometimes we would transfer groups of workers as projects ended in one plant and new ones began in the other. Let me take a closer look at their records.”
He typed a command and, indeed, peered closer at the screen. “Mr. Devoe,” I warned, “that’s probably not safe.” He was close enough to leave smudges on the monitor. That close to the screen, even if radiation wasn’t a problem, he’d get static electricity in his nose hairs.
“O-L-Y,” he said to me, then leaned back. “O-L-Y…”
“Beg pardon?”
“O-L-Y. That’s what’s listed as the reason for the transfer.”
“What does it mean?”
“I have no idea,” he said unhappily, clearly outraged that a personnel record could contain something he didn’t understand. “On Leave of… no, I can’t imagine what the Y stands for.”
“Could you tell us the names of any other workers who transferred on that same day?” Frank asked.
He scratched his head, and then tapped in another set of commands. It took the computer just a little longer to come up with matching records.
Thirty-eight names. A short list, but longer than our fifteen.
“Oh my,” he said, frowning, “I forgot to specify females. There are some men on this list. Here’s one from our San Diego plant. I’ll redo that search.”
“Could you also narrow it to those who came from the L.A. plant and who have ‘O-L-Y’ as the reason for leaving?”
He began typing in the search specifications, saying each aloud as he entered them. “And Oly,” he said as he put in the last, then pressed the command to start the search.
Oly. He said it as a word that time, reminding me of other words in my treasure trove of mythological terms.
“Olympic? Olympiad? Olympus?”
Devoe looked at me as if I had conjured a ghost.
“Olympus!” he whispered. “By God, it’s Olympus.”
He stared silently at the screen for a moment, as Frank and I exchanged glances.
“Mount Olympus, home of the gods. Was that the name of a special project?” I asked.
“Perhaps it was,” he said absently, his thoughts obviously drifting for a time. He looked up at me. “Olympus was the name of our child care center.”
The computer beeped and he looked back to the screen. “A list of twenty-five names,” he said, printing them out.
“Why would the child care center be listed as the reason for a transfer?” Frank asked.
He sighed. “That, I’m afraid, is a
very sad tale. I had quite forgotten it until Miss Kelly mentioned its name.” He looked between us. “You’re both too young, I suppose. Born in the 1950s?”
We nodded.
“Yes, well, many people your age don’t realize it, but in the years just before and during the war, there were a great many federally funded child care centers.”
“Federally funded child care?” I thought about the defeat of such proposals in the 1970s and since.
“They built them for war workers?”
“Yes, but we had some even before that, as a part of the WPA. After the U.S. entered the war, of course, the number of them grew by leaps and bounds, especially in places like Las Piernas and Los Angeles, where there were so many war-related industries.”
“So this Olympus was one of the federally funded centers?”
“No, it was our own.”
“Mercury’s?”
“Yes. The government funded centers usually closed early in the evenings. We were working three shifts, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We needed child care centers to match. We couldn’t wait for the federal government to decide it could sponsor such centers, so we sponsored our own.”
“In Los Angeles?” Frank asked.
“The Olympus Child Care Center was in Los Angeles. The one in Las Piernas was simply called the Mercury Child Care Center. They were both closed before the end of the war.”
“Why?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Old J.D. would spin in his grave if he knew I was dredging all of this up again. But I’m an old coot now, and past scaring.
“Life in Southern California was very different in those days. It was different everywhere. But you cannot imagine how much this area has changed. Los Angeles! Oh, my.” He closed his eyes, as if picturing L.A. and Las Piernas as they were then. “Aircraft companies and the people who ran them were very powerful. Everyone saw their importance to winning the war. No one wanted to stand in the way.” He sighed and opened his eyes. “It was wartime. People your age have never seen anything like it. The World War II homefront was something beyond what your generation can imagine. Everyone had a brother or a husband, a father or a son, in the military. People weren’t just patriotic. The war effort was a personal matter. And this plant and the one in Los Angeles were vital to that effort. Whatever we asked for, we got. It’s impossible for you to understand…” He paused. “Oh, forgive me. I’m rambling. You want to know about Olympus.”
He hesitated again, then began speaking in a low, confiding voice, as if he were dishing the dirt on the bride at a wedding reception. “There was a very strange and sad incident at that day care center. A little boy died. I don’t remember all of the details, but as I recall, one of the workers at the center was blamed for the boy’s death. The center was closed.”
“You don’t remember anything about the person who was blamed?” Frank asked. “Was it a man? A woman?”
“A woman, I believe. Yes. There was a big trial.” His brows drew together again. “I’m sorry, it’s so long ago. I was so busy after they closed that center, I didn’t follow all of that very closely, I’m afraid.”
“What happened to all the children who were being cared for at the Olympus Center?”
“Now, that part I remember. I handled most of that. The company offered to transfer a few of the mothers and their children down here, and to help them get settled in Las Piernas. As I recall, J.D. offered that only to the war widows, not every woman who had a child there. Most of the other women were forced to make other arrangements. But he had a soft spot for the widows. The first women he hired were Pearl Harbor widows. He got great press out of that — but I wouldn’t want to disparage his motives.”
“So these twenty-five came down here, to Las Piernas?”
“Yes. I was in charge of helping them to find housing down here, which wasn’t easy, I can tell you.”
“How did you manage that?” I asked. “I’ve always heard that housing was scarce around here then.”
“Oh, it was. Very much so. But as I said, Mercury Aircraft had a tremendous amount of power in Southern California in those days, and we got it all worked out. J.D. wasn’t above pressuring officials for favors when he needed them. And as I said, he also knew how to milk the publicity value of a good deed, and he made the most of what we were doing for these women.”
We started comparing his list to ours. We had six exact matches to the names of mothers on our list, including the mothers of the three victims:
Josephine Blaylock
Bertha Thayer
Gertrude Havens
Peggy Davis
Amanda Edgerton
Louisa Parker
Most of the others didn’t match in one of two ways. If a woman was on Devoe’s list, and not ours, her child’s (or children’s) current age would not be fifty-four. If she was on ours, but not Devoe’s, a check of the Mercury records revealed that she was not transferred with the Olympus group.
There was one exception. A woman named Maggie Robinson had transferred with the Olympus group. Her only child, Robert Robinson, would be fifty-four, but hadn’t called the police or the newspaper.
“Maybe he didn’t scare as easily as the others,” I said.
“Maybe.” Frank was concentrating on writing down social security numbers; although it would take a little time, with that information, he could probably find any of the women who were still alive. “This information is almost fifty years old. Robinson could have moved out of the area. He could have died when he was forty. There are lots of possibilities.”
I looked over his shoulder and noticed that even if they didn’t match the list, Frank noted the women’s social security numbers. “We don’t want to be too cocky about this connection through the Olympus Child Care Center,” he said. “Things could change. Maybe his next victim will be someone younger or older than fifty-four.”
WE THANKED HOBSON Devoe and let him guide us out of the building.
“You’ll have to come back and visit the museum sometime,” he said as we were leaving.
“I’d like that,” I told him. “And someday I’d like to sit down with you and Austin Woods and eavesdrop while you reminisce about Las Piernas.”
He laughed. “You’d fall asleep faster than Austin does at that old desk of his.”
“One other thing,” Frank said, “if you don’t mind my asking, is there a story behind your name?”
“Devoe?” The old man smiled mischievously. “Oh, you must mean Hobson. Well, yes. I am my parents’ youngest child. They had six girls before me. When my mother went into labor with me, my father told her he wanted a boy this time. She said he could have Hobson’s choice.”
I LOOKED OVER my notes as we walked to the car, reading off the names of the seven women who were on both lists.
“You still have some time this morning?” I asked.
Frank looked at his watch. “Not much. I want to get something set up for keeping an eye on anyone he might be after. And I’ve got an appointment with the Coast Guard about Havens’ boat. They thought they might have more information for me today.”
I flipped back to the names of people who had called into the paper or the police. “Don Edgerton, Howard Parker and Justin Davis. Those match up with the Mercury records for children’s names. Plus this Robert Robinson.”
“I’ll see what I can do to track him down.”
“I’ll go to the morgue when I get back to the paper, Frank. I want to see if I can dig up some stories about this incident at the child care center.”
“Good. I need to talk to the other three soon, though. I think we’re going to need to divide the paper’s interests from the department’s on this one. What if Pete and I talk to them, and you interview them on your own, provided they’re willing to talk to the paper?”
I considered objecting, but some intuition told me that it was more important to find out what had happened at the Olympus Child Care Center. I went along with his sugges
tion because I had a strong feeling that the key to understanding Thanatos was probably waiting for me back at the paper.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t all that was waiting for me.
19
Dear Cassandra,
Did you enjoy the Christmas present? Truly, I am sorry that I cannot continue to demonstrate my power, but there is a purpose to which I must remain faithful. You have tempted me, and I have allowed myself to be distracted — but no more! Only when Nemesis is satisfied will I pursue my own heart’s desire.
Time has softened the heads of my tormentors. There are so few left for me. They drink from the River Lethe, but justice is due all the same.
Do you feel it, Cassandra? Yes, I know you do. Our time together draws near, and you are a little afraid. Your feeble attempts to protect yourself amuse me. Cerberus will be no obstacle. One cannot escape one’s destiny. I am yours.
Icarus will be the next to die.
Your beloved,
Thanatos
“Postmarked from the airport,” I said absently to John. I was trying to force myself to calm down by studying notes he had scrawled on the dryboard near his desk. I had been standing there for several minutes, but to this day, I can’t tell you what any of them said about plans for the next edition of the Express. John cleared his throat as he finished reading the letter, and I turned to face him.
“The airport, huh?” he said. “I guess that makes sense for Icarus. Better call your sweetums and tell him to advise the folks on your list not to get on any airplanes.”
I ignored the gibe and told him I’d call Frank.
“The River Lethe,” he said, frowning. “Something to do with the dead, right?”
“Yes. The river of forgetfulness. The shades drink from it before passing into the kingdom of the dead.”
“Hades?”
“Or Tartarus, depending on who’s telling the tale. Drinking from Lethe brought a kind of oblivion, made those who drank from it forget all that they were before they died.”