The Big Dive

by Bruce Most

  Young Japs Suspected

  In Woman’s Death

  Prowers County Sheriff Wayne Silver and military authorities suspect radical young Japanese men are responsible for the murder of a 19-year-old Japanese woman, Mitsu Nakatoshi. Her half-frozen, raped, and brutally beaten body was discovered a week ago inside Camp Amache.

  Although authorities admit they have no solid evidence, they suspect her death may have been in reprisal for her working for the camp administration and because her older brother, Frank, served in the U. S. Army until his recent death on the battlefield. Young Japanese radicals inside the relocation camp have voiced strong, often violent, opposition to Japanese internees working for the camp administration or enlisting in the U.S. military.

  Acts of violence against Japanese internees who have cooperated with American authorities have occurred at four of the other nine Japanese-American relocation camps, though none has resulted in death. Military authorities say the violence has been instigated by young Japanese, known as disloyalists, particularly among Kibeis educated in Japan.

  Investigators believe . . .

  I looked up at Ellen. “Does this story mean anything to you?”

  “No. I never saw those clippings before today.”

  I looked back at the article. “I’ve seen the word Kibei before, but I don’t remember what it means. Do you?”

  She shrugged. “I never paid much attention to the camps.”

  Neither had I. Too busy ducking German bullets.

  “Where did you find these clippings?” I asked.

  “An old trunk in the basement. Benedict kept his army uniform in it, along with pictures, stuff like that. I was cleaning it out this morning. I thought his folks would like the uniform. That’s when I found the envelope. Hidden, actually, under a false bottom.”

  I set the clipping aside and examined the envelope. No postmark or address. No writing of any kind. I skimmed through the other clippings. Most came from the Lamar paper, with a few clipped from the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post. All concerned the investigation into the death of the young Japanese woman. She’d been murdered December 5, 1944. Camp internees found her body behind one of the barrack kitchens.

  “I don’t understand why Benedict hid stories about that poor girl,” said Ellen, her voice full of pain that her husband had hidden something else from her. First the $3,500 bank loan, now this. Like me, she was discovering that Benedict was not who she thought he was. “Did he mention this murder to you?” she said.

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Why was he interested a seven-year-old murder in Lamar?”

  Yes, why? At the time, Benedict and the 106th Infantry Division were on the other side of the world in Belgium about to battle the Germans in the bloody Battle of the Bulge.

  I shrugged. “Maybe it was part of a case he was looking into before we partnered. Stumbled across these clippings and they connected with something he’d seen or heard. Every patrolman checks out things on his own, hoping to bring something big to the detectives.”

  God knows I’d done that, though not always for the better.

  But why hide the clippings in the false bottom of a trunk?

  A mental itch surfaced. I read more of the clippings. Just as I suspected. The name of Marcus Raschke peppered several articles, his name often underlined. He’d served as deputy administrator at Amache. Here, he was quoted as the camp official working as liaison with local and military police.

  The camp he’d denounced as a concentration camp.

  Marcus Raschke, the man whose unlisted phone number Benedict wrote in his bloody notebook.

  Raschke denied knowing or ever speaking to Benedict. I didn’t believe him then, and I believed him even less now.

  Another name caught my eye: Crawford Kane, the state senator who’d spearheaded Raschke’s dismissal from his university post. A freshman state lawmaker at the time of the woman’s death, Kane cited her murder as an example of the “Jap problem,” indicative of the mistake of establishing the relocation camp in Colorado. “This incident proves,” he was quoted, “that all Japs are treacherous, depraved, ungodly, disloyal, and not fit to associate with human beings.”

  Ellen moved away from the kitchen sink and pulled a folded piece of plain white paper from a skirt pocket. She smoothed it out atop the clippings. “I found this in the envelope, too.”

  Individual letters snipped from newspaper headlines were pasted onto the paper, like a child’s craft project at school. The letters spelled out:

  I know about December 5 1944 and the Jap woman

  I held the note up to the kitchen light. No watermark. Cheap typing paper one could buy at any drugstore. Fresh paper, not yellowed like the clippings.

  “That looks like a blackmail note,” said Ellen.

  “If it is, why isn’t there a dollar amount to pay?”

  Ellen sighed. “Why would Benedict even have it?”

  “The note’s recent. Maybe he was investigating it for the victim. Trying to identify the blackmailer.”

  Jesus, Benedict, what the hell did you get yourself into? Did this get you murdered? Was your killer somebody besides dirty cops?

  I held up one of the clippings. “Did Benedict ever mention this Marcus Raschke quoted in these articles?”

  “That awful man? No, why?”

  “He underlined his name a lot. What about Crawford Kane? He’s in the articles. Benedict mention him?”

  She shook her head, a growing expression of betrayal on her face.

  “Show me the trunk where you found this stuff.”

  We went into a low-ceilinged basement with a cracked cement floor and an old coal furnace whose huge ducts snaked out like the arms of an octopus. The trunk was black with brass clasps and corner brackets. I unbuckled the latch and flipped open the lid. The stench of mothballs wafted out. Men’s sweaters of various colors and styles layered the top shelf.

  “I put everything back the way I found it except for the envelope,” she said.

  I rummaged through the sweaters, then set aside the top shelf. Below lay more old clothes, including one neatly folded, olive drab, army-issue military dress uniform.

  I examined the jacket. The brass buttons were tarnished, but the material looked in decent shape. “Did you find any medals or insignias in here?”

  “No. What medals?”

  I set down the jacket and began probing along the edges and bottom of the trunk. “Benedict would have worn chest hardware on this uniform—unit citations, campaign ribbons, Bronze Medal, Purple Heart, ETO ribbon, stuff like that. Hell, I’m sure he earned himself a few medals in battle.”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t know. I was never in the trunk before today. It was Benedict’s. I never saw that uniform before today.”

  I reexamined the uniform. “There’s no division patch on the sleeve, either. The 106th was nicknamed the Golden Lion. The patch has been ripped off, just like everything else on the uniform. See.” I pointed to the upper part of the left sleeve so Ellen could see telltale pieces of torn thread that once held the round patch.

  “Both rank patches are missing, too,” I noted. “You can see by the faint chevron marks Benedict was no Hollywood corporal. He made sergeant. Yet everything’s been removed. Even the Hershey bars.”

  “Hershey bars?” she asked.

  “A gold stripe you get for every six months overseas duty. With the 106th, he’d have a couple at least. Maybe he kept all this stuff in a cigar box.”

  “I don’t know of one.”

  “Safe deposit box?”

  “We don’t have one.”

  Maybe not one you’re aware of.

  “Did he keep any mementos of the division around—pictures, stuff like that?”

  Ellen shook her head. Confusion loomed large on her face. The past of her dead husband was growing darker, not clearer.

  “You two met after the war, right?”

  “At a church dance here in Denver.” A f
aint smile broke her pained face, the rush of a wonderful memory. Then it faded.

  “Did he talk about his time with the 106th?”

  “No, never. He never talked about his years in the war. Just as he rarely talked about his job.” She looked at me. “None of you men do.”

  Benedict had spoken little of the war to me. No surprise. I rarely spoke of it, either. I lost too many buddies to want to relive that shit. Most men who’ve seen war, real war, don’t want to relive it. It’s the ones who never saw a damn thing who jabber as if they had.

  Still, I found it odd he’d saved nothing. He’d fought in one of the bloodiest campaigns in the war at the Battle of the Bulge, with the 106th Infantry Division taking the brunt of the German assault. He’d saved his uniform, yet ripped off every patch, every insignia, every possible memory. No medals, no pictures, nothing.

  “Do you have his military records?” I asked. “Discharge papers, stuff like that?”

  “No. I’ve searched all over the house for them. What does this mean, Joe?”

  “Benedict must have removed the patches and hardware and stuck ’em somewhere. They’ll turn up some place you never thought of looking.”

  We returned to the kitchen.

  “May I take these clippings and the note?” I asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  I stuffed everything back in the envelope. I’d have to hide it from Paula and come up with an excuse for why Ellen needed to see me.

  “I need a picture of Benedict, too,” I said.

  She retrieved a snapshot of him in civilian clothes standing in their backyard.

  “I’ll see what I can find,” I said at the front door.

  Marcus Raschke was the first person who came to mind. What explanation did he have for Benedict hiding the clippings with his name underlined?

  A deep gloom settled in Ellen’s face. “Joe, I’m scared.”

  “I’m sure there’s a simple explanation,” I said as reassuringly as I could.

  “But the loan . . . and now these clippings . . . and the uniform.”

  I touched her arm. “I’ll look into. But for now, keep this between us.”

  Chapter 14

  I wanted to go straight from Ellen’s to Marcus Raschke’s home to confront the professor about the news clippings, but I was in uniform, and Raschke believed I was a detective.

  Instead, I went on to work, where Sergeant Hawkins pulled me aside before roll call. My hopes rose he was going to reassign me a new partner, that Perdue had bailed after Hector Diaz turned up dead and didn’t want to risk riding with “Typhoid Joe” any longer.

  No such luck. Detective Bock wanted to see my ass downtown. Now.

  “What for?” I said.

  Hawkins shrugged.

  While Perdue took to the streets alone, I drove downtown to police headquarters and hoofed up two flights to the bullpen. I hadn’t stepped foot in the place often, but often enough to draw stares from detectives who recognized the “Denver Kid.” A detective pointed out Bock’s desk. I threaded my way through a warren of cluttered desks and gruff detectives grilling suspects and witnesses. I stopped at Bock’s desk. His face was deep in an open file. To my surprise, the desk was organized—piled with papers and files, yet organized. Maybe his mother was in earlier in the day and straightened it up for him.

  “Sergeant Hawkins said you wanted to see me,” I said to the top of Bock’s head. Oily black hair, as if he’d used grease from a locomotive.

  He flipped the file shut, but not before I glimpsed a black-and-white photo of a male body face down in a field. A field of newly planted cabbage was my guess. Bock ran fingers through his hair and looked up. “Yeah, I got more questions.”

  “Haven’t you questioned me enough? We’ve been over that night half a dozen times.”

  “I’ll stop when I get the answers I want.” I started to sit in a chair next to his desk but he said, “Not here.”

  He grabbed a notebook and pen, stood, then stopped. He pulled his gun out of the shoulder holster under his jacket and laid it on the desk of a detective across from him. He motioned for me to do the same.

  “No guns where we’re going. Regulations.”

  I complied reluctantly and followed him down a hallway to an interview room. The dingy kind with cracked tiles, no windows, and a metal table flanked by two metal chairs. A room that smelled of a thousand desperate lies. A room I didn’t belong in and now wasn’t sure if I’d come out of in anything but handcuffs.

  Bock shut the door and gestured toward a chair.

  “What bullshit is this, Bock?” I said, remaining standing. “I’m a fellow cop, not some common street criminal.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. Sit.”

  Unless he planned to arrest me, I could tell him to fuck himself and leave the room. Yet that would only reinforce his belief I was guilty of whatever crimes he believed I’d committed. Better to face him head on, call his bluff.

  I sat in the chair. “Where’s your partner? Kaufman.”

  He settled his fat ass in the opposing chair. “It’s just us. He and I aren’t on the same page on this.”

  “What page is that?”

  Bock lit one of his Pall Malls and blew out smoke. He didn’t offer me a cig, though at the moment it was all I wanted. But I wasn’t going to give him leverage by begging for one.

  “Why were you looking for Hector Diaz,” the detective said.

  Damn. Had Perdue ratted? Was that why he was out on patrol and I was in here?

  “Who said I was?” I asked.

  “Not your concern. Why were you looking for him?”

  “I wanted to talk to him.”

  Had they grilled Jailbait in this very room? Worked him over as he’d claimed?

  “About what?”

  “What else, Bock? I wanted to find out what he knew about my partner’s murder. I wanted to see if he killed him.”

  “That’s our job, not yours.”

  “He walked, didn’t he? Lack of evidence.”

  Never needle a detective who’s got you on the hot seat. But with Bock I couldn’t restrain myself.

  The detective took a drag on his cigarette. “You expected the spic to confess to you when he wouldn’t confess to us?”

  “Worth the shot.”

  Bock looked sharply at me. A poor choice of words, come to think of it. He tapped ashes onto a battered metal ashtray, the only item on the table. “Did you hunt for Diaz while you were on duty?” he asked.

  “Some. Mostly my own time.”

  He took a drag. My mouth watered. “Your current partner is a guy named Perdue, that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Helped you with the Rawlins case, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah. But he didn’t help me with Diaz. I did it on the sly.”

  Bock looked skeptical. “How’d he not know?”

  “He’s not too bright.”

  “You ever catch up with Diaz?”

  “No. Word on the street said he’d gone into hiding after you released him. Nobody claimed to know where he was and I never found him.”

  I fingered one of the many deep scars scratched into the metal table. Maybe Perdue hadn’t tipped Bock that I’d been looking for Diaz. Otherwise, the detective wouldn’t have brought up Perdue’s name. Bock also hadn’t mentioned our visit to the home of Diaz’s fourteen-year-old poontang. If Perdue had squealed, Bock would be going after me harder.

  Aside from Perdue and my street sources, only one other person was aware of my hunt for Diaz—his parole officer, Fitch. Probably dropped a dime to Bock after Diaz turned up dead.

  The detective set down his cigarette and scribbled notes in his notebook that a handwriting analyst couldn’t decipher. “This word on the street say why he’d gone into hiding?”

  “He was scared.”

  “For killing a cop?”

  “For being accused of killing a cop. Alleged cop killers don’t always make it to trial alive.”

>   Yet another insult that didn’t exactly ingratiate me.

  “You sure you didn’t find him?” he asked.

  “Do you actually listen to my answers, Bock? I told you, I didn’t find him.”

  “Somebody did.” He scratched a cheek on a face as deeply scarred as the interrogation table. “Where were you last Wednesday night, Stryker? I checked the records. You weren’t on duty.”

  No, that was the night Sergeant Hawkins inexplicably switched Perdue and me to Saturday.

  “Is that the night you believe Diaz was murdered?” I asked. “He wasn’t found until Friday evening.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I went to a police union meeting that evening. You can check with Zingano.”

  “I wouldn’t check the weather with that asshole. Where were you afterward?”

  Watching Zingano and Wes Jackson doing something suspicious in the alley by union hall.

  “I went home,” I said. “To my wife and daughter.”

  Bock wrote more in his notebook.

  I stared hungrily at his cigarette smoldering in the ashtray. “Why all the questions? The man who killed my partner is dead.”

  Maybe.

  “Could be,” he said. “But that don’t explain who killed Diaz.”

  “The guy was a three-time loser. He had more enemies than you got warts.”

  He picked up his cigarette, took a drag, and blew smoke my direction. “Someone shot him with a thirty-eight. A cop’s gun. Like the one you carry.”

  I tried to remain calm, to sit as casually as possible, but the metal chair purposely wasn’t built for casual.

  “A lot of cops carry thirty-eights,” I said. “So do other people. Including criminals.”

  “But as you said, cop killers don’t always make it to trial.”

  I leaned forward, my arms on the hard metal table. His cigarette smoke drifted into my face. I took a sniff. “Look, Bock, I know what you’re throwing around in that pea brain of yours. You’re thinking I found the Mex and fired a bullet in his head. Out of revenge for killing my partner. But I didn’t find him. I didn’t kill him.”