The Murders at El Tovar

by Charles Williamson

  “Poor Sam. He never made it to the supposed safety of his new assignment. Do you think there’s a chance that he was correct? Jim Otto’s murder was the key that seemed to tie these six deaths together. You thought he was a target because he’d witnessed the Helga Günter murder. If Jim Otto was not the real target, where are we with the serial killer theory?”

  “You get right to the point. I still can’t prove that these women were murdered. I just saw how easily fatal accidents can happen. Most of my suspicion is based on the similar appearance of the women and on the information that they all ate dinner alone at the El Tovar dining room the night before their deaths.”

  “So where are we?” she asked.

  “Many serial killer cases have taken years to resolve,” I said. “If I could prove these deaths are connected, we could get a lot more help, maybe a whole task force. I’ve focused on the young men who live in the Colter House, but if it’s not one of them, we may need more manpower in this investigation than the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office can provide. By the way, I need for the Superintendent to make a formal request of the FBI for the assistance of a profiler. I’ve contacted an acquaintance at the FBI, and I should be hearing from one of the best profilers by Monday, but the paper request still needs to be made.”

  “We’ll do that later today,” she said. “Can I give you and your wife a lift back to the rim on the chopper? There’s room for two more.”

  “You bet. It’s a little hot down here for our tastes.”

  Amy smiled. “The thermometer where I landed indicated that it’s already 108. It will get five to ten degrees hotter by 4:00.”

  We hiked to the landing pad near Bright Angel Creek. Will and Alan had to walk back to the rim because there was not enough room in the helicopter, but at least we took their packs with us.

  The ride back to the Grand Canyon Village was spectacular but otherwise uneventful. It was pleasant to be back in the cooler temperatures at 7,000 feet, but both of us were very tired. We decided to take a nap after our showers. I was dreaming of falling from an enormous height when my cell phone woke me. I said a groggy hello. Frederich Mann of Interpol in Bonn was calling.

  “Gott in Himmel, mein Freund. It is I who should be asleep. It is still afternoon in Arizona,” he said in a mock serious tone.

  I smiled. Mann was usually so formal. I was glad that he felt he knew me well enough to kid a little. I replied, “America has slowed down a lot since you were last here. We take siestas here in Arizona, just like in Spain. What have you found about my suspects, my friend?”

  “It’s impossible to reach anyone useful in Australia on the weekend, but I learnt something interesting about Samuel Lee Gilbert. It seems Mr. Gilbert is a persona non grata in the Ukraine.”

  “Did he make an enemy on his short stay in that country or do they just not like Mormon missionaries?” I asked.

  “The story I was told by a friend who wishes to remain confidential is that young Mr. Gilbert was found in bed with the seventeen year old daughter of Kiev’s wealthiest and most corrupt businessman. He was fortunate that he was discovered by the mother, since my sources indicated that Mr. Gilbert would have disappeared permanently if the father had been the one to find them together.”

  “Do you think Sam would have been afraid of the girl’s father trying to hurt him?”

  Frederich chuckled. He explained, “I was told that the US Embassy had two armed marine guards accompany your young philanderer to the airport. The embassy personnel were afraid that the local police could be bought. They might have been willing to assist in Samuel Gilbert’s permanent disappearance.”

  I thanked the German Interpol officer for the information. It was about what I expected. He said he might have something from Australia late in the day on Sunday Arizona time.

  I updated Margaret on what I’d learned when she woke from her nap.

  “You’re on the right track,” she said. “It’s not a coincidence that these similar women all died over this short period of time. Your best lead may be checking on the other men who live on the same floor as Jim Otto’s. Sam said he saw a door close as he walked back to the room the night of the murder. Even if that person wasn’t involved in the crime, he might have seen someone else in the hall. You also should focus on everyone who saw the body of Margo Jordan. I thought your comment about seeing her body and that sight triggering the other killing was insightful. Also, you need to know more about Deputy Callison. There’s something not right with him.”

  We decided to talk about each suspect on my list. I got out the fax that I’d received from Chad Archer that morning and the floor plan of the Colter House that had the names of each resident. Concentrating on the second floor east of Jim Otto’s room, we found only two rooms with male residents on the correct side of the hall based on Sam’s account of seeing a door close. I would ask the Fred Harvey Company to set up interviews with each of those residents. There were only two familiar names. Jason Griffin McKinney, the Australian desk clerk who I’d already interviewed, was a roommate of Garland Pickney, who worked in maintenance at the Maswik Lodge and who had helped open Margo Jordan’s room.

  I had not focused much attention on either man because both had alibis for Peggy Marshall’s death. Jason was working that morning, and Garland Pickney was reportedly back in England by then. I wondered if Pickney had really left for England the morning following the death of Jim Otto.

  As we continued the discussion, Margaret sorted through the fax. Near the end of our discussion she pointed out something. The cover document, written in Chad’s sloppy handwriting, said that it was the first of nine pages. Margaret looked at me quizzically and asked, “Why are there only eight pages in this fax?”

  By checking the faint text that the fax machine adds to each document, we saw that the eighth page, of the expected nine pages, was missing.

  CHAPTER 26

  Unconsciously, I rolled up the fax and twisted it in my hands as I thought about how stupid I’d been.

  “Mike, you’re scaring me.” She didn’t like the look on my ugly face.

  I became aware that I’d twisted the eight-page fax document into two pieces of wadded paper trash. “Sorry Sweetie, I was just thinking about how stupid it was to have the document faxed to me here at the hotel. One of the suspects I interviewed that first day was Jason McKinney. I asked Chad to research all of the people that I’d interviewed, and there’s no page covering Jason in this document. He was the desk clerk on duty last night when the fax came in.”

  “He took it out for a reason,” she said.

  I agreed and called Chad Archer at the office in Sedona. He was there working on getting photos from the driver’s licenses of each suspect’s mother. Chad cheerfully explained, “I have some news about our colleague Craig Callison. Rose has a second cousin who is related by marriage to an administrative assistant at the Arlington, Texas Police Department.”

  Our administrative assistant, Rose Rios, seemed to have cousins nearly everywhere. She’d often been able to learn information that Chad and I could not get through customary police channels. When Chad had officially inquired about the reason for Craig Callison leaving the Fort Worth Police Department, he’d learned nothing interesting.

  Chad continued, “Rose’s contact in Texas has a best friend who works as a clerk in the Fort Worth Police Chief’s office.”

  “The gossip method has seldom failed us when the official channel was remained closed.”

  “It was successful this time too,” Chad said. “Rose’s contact said that Craig Callison was beneath contempt. (She actually used some Spanish phrase that Rose translated without the obscenity). Callison was believed to have been stopping undocumented Mexican nationals and shaking them down for cash. If they couldn’t come up with what he wanted, he turned them over for deportation. The department got several anonymous complaints, however they could never find anyone to testify against him. Officially Callison resigned for personal reasons, but it wa
s at the request of the Fort Worth Chief of Police.”

  I asked Chad to buy some cut flowers for Rose Monday morning as a thank you for getting the Callison information. Rose is a remarkably competent woman with a network of friends and relations all over the southwest. I had encouraged Rose to try for other more senior positions within the Sheriff’s Office, but Rose always said she was happy in her current job.

  “Thanks for your help Chad. I have a question. Did you send a page about your background check on Jason McKinney in this morning’s fax?”

  “I sure did, but it didn’t say much. I wasn’t able to get any information from Australia on the weekend, but the INS records show that Jason McKinney was issued a resident alien card in Sydney. It would allow him to work during his stay in the US. However, when he entered the country in LA he didn’t show the card. Jason reported that he was here as a tourist and would be here for less than ninety days. There’s no visa or other documentation needed for an Australian in that case. The INS didn’t seem to know if he had applied for an extension of his stay. They’re almost always granted. Australia is not considered a high-risk country for terrorists or criminals. The INS agent I spoke with told me they had more important immigration issues. He would do nothing about an Australian man who was working in a menial job three months after he should have returned home, but who actually has a valid resident alien card that he had not known he needed to present to immigration when he entered the country.”

  I thanked Chad and asked him to send any future information to the Tusayan office and have them deliver it to me at the hotel. I also asked my partner to find out all he could about a British national named Garland Pickney. Mr. Pickney had moved up on my suspect list when I found that he’d been working at the Maswik Lodge when Margo Jordan died. I wanted to make certain that he had really returned to England before Peggy Marshall’s death.

  Margaret hadn’t met Jason McKinney. He was a charming and friendly young man that I thought was a very unlikely suspect as a serial killer. He was working when two of the suspects died. Margaret asked, “What did Jason say when you interviewed him last week?”

  I got out my recording of the interviews and played it for her. I was surprised at how little I’d asked Jason. Because he was working when both Jim Otto and Peggy Marshall died, I had not really treated him as a suspect. He was just the last person to have seen Peggy Marshall alive. Margaret pointed out that Jason had specifically mentioned that his mother had abandoned him when he was ten and that he had a rocky relationship with his father. He’d also mentioned that he was at the going away party for his roommate Garland Pickney, even though he normally worked from 10:00 PM to 5:00 AM.

  I checked the work schedule for that night and found that Jason was recorded as having worked his normal shift the night Jim Otto was killed. I assumed that he’d found someone to relieve him so that he could go and say goodbye to his roommate or that he left the party at 10:00.

  Margaret commented, “Before you mangled the fax, I was thinking about Sam’s terrible fall. Did you think Will Blake tried to help?”

  “Yes, he reached out to steady him, didn’t he?”

  “We were too far away for me to tell,” she said. “Did he reach out to steady him or give him a little help over the edge? It would have taken only a gentle push with Sam off balance.”

  “I thought you were convinced that Will wasn’t a good suspect,” I said.

  “That was before Sam’s fall. Will seemed very upset, but I think his horror was a little contrived. His emotions seemed too shallow somehow. He can certainly be charming, but I just don’t know about him,” she said. Margaret could read emotions. If she thought that Will was faking his grief, she was almost certainly right.

  The room phone rang before I could respond. It was Amy Ziegler. She explained that Sam Gilbert’s father would be at the Tusayan Airport in fifteen minutes. A friend had flown him down in a corporate jet. He had asked to speak with me. I agreed to go with Amy to the airport and pick him up.

  “This may take some time,” I said after explaining my call. “Promise me that you’ll not go to eat in the dining room alone. Order something for both of us from room service. Get me something that will taste OK cold. I’ll call you if it will be after 8:00 when I get back.”

  “I have a good Jon Talton mystery I just started. I’ll wait for you in the room with the night chain on the door.”

  I took my service pistol out of my backpack and set it on the table. I knew that Margaret was an expert at using it. I had spent many hours on the practice range in LA teaching her.

  As I waited on the hotel verandah for Amy to pick me up, I thought about Sam. I hoped he had survived the fall in the Colorado, but the odds were poor. Sam was a very strong young man, but I didn’t know how good a swimmer he’d been. Unless he could get out of that encumbering backpack, he was dead for certain. No one could survive in that water through a series of rapids with that pack.

  While I waited, I mentally adjusted my suspect list. Certainly Garland Pickney needed to be on it together with Jason McKinney. They both had lived in one of the rooms where Sam thought he saw the door close as he returned to his own room on the night of Jim Otto’s murder. Pickney had been on a maintenance crew at the Maswik Lodge. With that type of work, it was probably easy to take off, commit a crime, and return to work without being noticed. Pickney had also been present when the body of Margo Jordan was discovered. I thought there was a good chance that seeing her body triggered the other crimes. Jason came from a broken home, but I didn’t have much data on either foreign national yet.

  Will Blake was also high on my list. He seemed to have had the opportunity even though he was on duty at the El Tovar dining room when Mary Jane Corliss fell from the Rim Trail at sunset. Will probably had time to push Mrs. Corliss off the trail during a break. He had a broken family life with his mother living on the opposite coast. Will had relationship commitments and sexual appetite problems. He had a rocky relationship with his father, and had gone to a boarding school from the seventh grade through college. If Jim Otto was killed during the ten minutes that Sam was out of the room, Will could easily have been faking sleep. There was no proof that Will Blake was drunk just because Jim Otto’s alcohol level was extremely high. If he had wanted to kill his roommate, he could have faked being drunk anticipating an opportunity to silence a possible witness to Helga Günter’s death.

  Billy Blackstone was certainly on the list even though Margaret thought he was unlikely. Billy had no alibi for any of the crimes. The only other man that lived in the Colter House who was not working during any of the crimes was Sam Gilbert. I was anxious to see the photo of Billy’s mother. He was not from a broken home, but his father was career military and probably strict.

  Amy pulled up in her Park Service vehicle, and we headed for the airport about fifteen minutes away. We talked about Sam Gilbert’s chance of surviving the fall from the River Trail. Amy had investigated many accidents in the park. She felt that the chances of Sam still being alive were one in a thousand. The external frame pack would have made it difficult to swim the foaming rapids a short distance downstream. The body would have bounced along the river bottom hitting boulders. She felt that the young man’s remains would wash onto one of the sand bars that had had formed in the quiet waters past the three rapids. The Colorado River where Sam went in was too fast and dangerous to use divers to attempt to recover the body. That would not be easy to explain to Sam’s father. There was little the Park Service could do except to continue making helicopter sweeps along the river downstream.

  I updated Amy on my suspect list and explained that I was working on getting a woman law enforcement officer who was similar in appearance to the victims to act as bait for the murderer. The officer could eat alone at the El Tovar dining room and then watch the sunset and sunrise along the Rim Trail while under close surveillance.

  While we were driving, I phoned Sheriff Taylor at his home to discuss the undercover operation a
nd update him on the Sam Gilbert accident. The Sheriff had found several women police officers in Phoenix who could fit our victim description more closely than any local officers. They would take turns visiting the Grand Canyon, changing their appearance enough to seem like different guests on each visit. I explained that Alan Markley would be moving to the El Tovar dinner service tomorrow. He would keep an eye out for women dining alone, and we would keep them under surveillance during their Grand Canyon visit. The Sheriff said he would ask the Tusayan Office to supply two officers to assist with the surveillance.

  That was an awkward moment. I explained, “One of my suspects is a local deputy, Craig Callison. I think he’s dirty, but I can’t prove it. I’d rather not have anyone else from his office involved. Is there any chance I could use Chad?”

  “What do you have on Callison?”

  “Just hearsay so far. Maybe you could personally call the Fort Worth Police Chief,” I suggested.

  Sheriff Taylor trusted me, but a charge against a fellow employee based on hearsay did not sit well with him. He said gruffly, “You can have Chad, but I don’t like your comment about Callison unless you have more to go on than hearsay. I’ll call Ft. Worth on Monday.” He hung up without saying goodbye.

  I felt a knot in my stomach as we approached the Tusayan Airport. I had been in law enforcement for thirty years, but I never got used to notifying the next of kin of the death of a loved one.

  CHAPTER 27

  We waited only a few minutes for the sleek white corporate jet to land. A middle-aged man and three teenaged girls emerged and walked straight toward Amy’s Park Service Suburban. Sam’s father, Steven Gilbert, was blond with thinning hair and blue eyes. He looked very much like an older version of Sam. He had a stocky build and a quick walk. Sam’s sisters also showed a clear family resemblance. All four of Sam’s family members showed signs of worry. There had been tears shed on the flight from Provo. I knew from past experience that the uncertainty of Sam’s death might be more difficult for the family than dealing with the fact of Sam’s death. The Gilberts were a religious family who would be confident in the reality of eternal life. That knowledge did not prevent the deep grief that is our common reaction to death.