A Child's Garden of Death (6 page)

“Yes, sir,” the divers said together. “That's what it is, a house trailer.”

Three

The cruiser siren missed a beat as the car hit a large hole in the logging road and skidded toward the shoulder, regained its forward momentum and screeched to a halt a few yards from Rocco and Lyon.

“Ten to one here comes the Goddamn Lone Ranger,” Rocco said.

Two of the cruiser doors slammed shut simultaneously as Captain Norbert strode purposefully toward them. “We found it, Captain,” the young diver said.

“Good work, men.” Captain Norbert turned to Rocco and Lyon. “I told them to radio when anything significant turned up. What do we have?”

“A car and trailer,” the second diver said.

“Good. Now we'll have some good hard physical evidence to work with. Chief, I imagine you are entertaining a move to request formal State Police assistance in the continuance of the investigation.”

“Nope.”

“Now come on, Rocco.”

“Lay off, Norbert. Thanks for the help, but we'll handle the case.”

“I can have derricks here in two hours; in three we'll have those vehicles on shore ready for the lab boys.”

“In three you'll have a bunch of wet wreckage,” Lyon said. “That stuff has been down there thirty years. The frames will have rusted through; the wood must be filled with rot; the whole damn mess will fall apart.”

“We'll photo in the water and reconstruct on the land,” the captain responded firmly.

“It will be a mess,” Rocco agreed. “What next?”

“Let's go take a look,” Lyon said.

“Dive?”

“That's the best way,” Lyon replied.

“You know how?”

“Read a book once.” Lyon turned to a scuba diver. “Let me borrow your stuff.” The young State Police diver looked imploringly at Captain Norbert.

“His equipment is State Police property,” Norbert said, and pushed the diver slightly in back of him.

“Oh, no, sir,” the diver said. “I bought everything myself. I've got over a grand sunk in this stuff. The very best money can buy.”

“I'm commandeering it, right now,” Rocco said.

“Damn it all, Rocco. Get off your high horse,” the captain said.

“We are in the confines of the incorporated Township of Murphysville. I have reason to believe a felony has been committed and that the scene of that felony is under water. I am taking this young man's equipment.”

As the diver peeled off the wetsuit, Rocco and Norbert went over to a small clump of pine trees and began to argue heatedly. Lyon shivered as he removed his pants and shirt and began to pull on the wetsuit over his underwear.

“You know,” the diver said, “we're never going to find a suit big enough for the Chief.”

“I know,” Lyon said. “I'll go down.”

“I'll go with you,” the diver said. “The buddy system is a necessity. I'll hold the lights for you.”

“Thank you,” Lyon said as the first diver jockeyed the tanks onto his shoulders and helped him adjust the straps. He donned the helmet cowl and put the mouthpiece uncomfortably into his mouth.

“You've got it in upside down,” the diver said.

“Oh,” Lyon replied as they helped him to adjust the mechanism. “Thank you.”

As they walked slowly into the water, the police diver turned to him. “Are you sure you know what you're doing, sir?”

“Not a bit,” Lyon replied. “But it doesn't look too hard.”

“Thank God it's not deep,” the diver said. As they reached chest-high water, the diver put his hand on Lyon's shoulder. “Wait one sec, sir. Half a lesson at least.”

In three minutes he pointed out to Lyon the tank measurement indicator, the proper placement of the mouthpiece, and a few necessary items for a first shallow dive. Turning, Lyon could see Captain Norbert striding toward the shoreline in a manner too purposeful for comfort, and he quickly ducked his head under and kicked off toward deep water.

The water was illuminated in front of him for several feet, and turning he could see the police diver not far behind, carrying two large lamps. The other diver jiggled the lights and pointed downward. Twelve or fifteen feet below the surface Lyon could see the vague outline of a car and the long, rectangular roof of the trailer. They swam down and grasped the edge of the car window.

Lyon took one of the lamps from the diver and shone it through the car window. The window on the diver's side was down and he was able to signal Lyon to come over. Lyon stuck his head through the window with the lamp held before him.

Small sunfish swam between the spokes of the steering wheel, and a layer of silt rose from the floor past the level of the seats. Plants grew in the floor and sent stalk tendrils upward through the window to catch the filtered surface light.

If anything was to be found in the car, underneath the layers of silt and mud, it would have to be when it was hoisted to the surface. He backed out of the car and swung the light toward the trailer. Together they circled the long vehicle.

It had evidently dropped into a hole several feet lower than the car, and now mud and silt reached above the level of the windows, and although part of the silt, mud and plant life had been brushed away from the roof by the divers, from a short distance away the trailer would have been invisible.

Lyon put his lamp down on the trailer roof and made a hand signal to the police diver that outlined the shape of a door. The diver nodded understanding, and on the opposite side began to feel around the edge of the trailer, while Lyon started on his side. Trailer doors were almost always on the left hand side of the vehicle, to the rear, which in this case would be away from the sunken automobile.

Three feet away from the rear of the trailer, his hands deep in mud, Lyon felt the door frame. The police diver joined him and unhooked a small crowbar from his utility belt. Inserting the edge of the crowbar into the top edge of the door, they easily pried the complete door away from the frame. Lake-bottom mud slid into the trailer, but the aperture was large enough to admit them. Holding the top of the trailer, the police diver extended his feet through the doorway and with a slight shove was propelled into the vehicle. Lyon followed more slowly.

Under the circumstances the trailer's interior was in remarkable condition. It had landed easily on the soft bottom of the lake, as proven by the fact that the floor hadn't buckled. Although filled with water, the trailer's structure was sufficiently tight to keep out most forms of marine life. Trickles of silt lay in corners and around seams and window edges; but for the most part, the trailer outlined in the soft glow of the underwater lamps gave the impression of being almost habitable.

Lyon wondered about the origin of caravans and house trailers. Of course the Middle European gypsies had had them for more than two hundred years, perhaps the Visigoths before that … he'd have to read material on the subject.

They moved slowly through the trailer. The door entered into the main living area, with a convertible settee along the rear wall. A table fitted into the wall near the door, and beyond that a stove, cabinets and small bedroom to the front of the trailer. In the diffused light, Lyon could see that a blotchy film inundated everything in the trailer, a combination of algae and rust rising to thin knobs in certain sections, but easily wiped away.

He started with the back bedroom. A triangular-shaped object rested by the bed, and he wiped his hands across the covering growth. A peaked roof, a little window, a door, a doll house. He turned away from the tiny room with revulsion.

They opened the cabinets in the kitchen area. Food cans, still retaining their shape, but the contents unrecognizable, filled one cabinet. A set of dishes in another, and another set, oddly enough, in the final cabinet. Rusted silverware in two drawers, a gas stove with three eyes, stove ring missing from one eye.

Above the rear settee-bed was a bookcase filled with rotting books. Swimming upward, Lyon ran his hands along their spines. The books crumpled and disintegrated before him and pieces of pulp floated before his eyes. At the end of the shelf he found a large volume bound in calfskin and gently removed it. The print was unreadable and fell from his touch, but he could make out one word of the title on the spine, “Das …”

The police diver grasped Lyon's shoulder and gestured to their air gauges. Only a few minutes left. They swam through the trailer and together, at the bottom of the clothes cabinet, dragged out a large tool-box. The police diver pried the lip open with his crowbar and they looked into the rusted contents. The tools were alien to Lyon, rusted metal in odd shapes and forms. He picked up one small piece, a gauge of some sort, but its readings were rusted through, and he let it fall back into the box.

Gesturing to the police diver to continue the search, he let himself float free. His back came to rest against the trailer roof, giving him a draftsman's view of the trailer as he bobbed gently. There must be a pattern, an indication of life style in the things he had just seen that would fit together to, form a living picture of the people who had lived here. There was not the slightest doubt that this was the house trailer of the three victims found on the ridge. The room of a little girl, the remains of artifacts and clothing belonging to a man and woman; obviously three people lived here. A man, wife and child. Now, what else … Lyon Wentworth had a great deal of thinking to do.

Why was Rocco Herbert standing waist deep in lake water with all his clothes on? Why was Rocco holding him by the back while other troopers carried him to shore?

They laid Lyon on the bank and began to strip off the diving equipment and wetsuit. Large hands wrapped him in a blanket. A few feet away, near a pine, the police diver bent over and retched.

Captain Norbert was yelling at Chief Herbert, which somehow, Lyon thought, seemed to be the natural order of things.

“If he had died my ass would be in a sling, damn it!” the captain said.

“He didn't die, Captain,” Rocco's quiet voice returned. “The guy's got a charmed life.”

“No more. No more dives except to attach the cables. We're hauling the whole mess up.”

“All right, for Christ's sake.” Rocco left the captain and bent over Lyon with a plastic cup. “Brandy. Good for what ails you.”

Lyon drank greedily, feeling the warmth spread to his feet. “That is good. What happened?”

“You bastard,” the big man's quiet voice said. “You are now officially a menace on land, sea and air. Not only did you almost drown, but that young trooper almost bought it bringing you out. What in God's name were you doing down there?”

“Doing? Why, thinking.”

“Thinking. Jesus Christ! If the kid hadn't been an expert diver, you'd be thinking for eternity. Your tanks were out.”

By early afternoon the equipment was assembled along the edge of the lake. Lyon and Rocco had gone off to a nearby diner for a large breakfast and home for a change of clothes. They returned in time to see the last traces of activity before the hoist began the raising of the vehicles.

The automobile came up first, water and mud streaming through the windows and doorway as it swiveled across the water and was set down gently on a flatbed truck.

“If that's not a thirty-eight Ford, I'll eat it,” Lyon's savior exclaimed in glee as he rushed to examine the car. He turned back to Rocco in amazement. “Hey, Chief. There's no engine in this thing.”

“And I'll bet no body serial numbers either,” Rocco said.

“I didn't think he'd leave the marker plates on,” Lyon said.

“Scratch that one off.”

In short order the roof of the trailer broke through the surface of the lake. Captain Norbert gave a quick, triumphant glance over his shoulder toward Rocco and Lyon, and directed his gaze forward in time to see the trailer break neatly in two.

It hung from the guy wires for a suspended moment, each half gaping downward as silt, furniture and myriad other material slid into the lake. Then the remainder of the frame crumpled, and in seconds the trailer was in pieces, the debris falling into the water to sink almost immediately.

Captain Norbert turned back to them. “We'll dredge the whole lake if we have to; we'll get every piece … eventually.”

The office of the Murphysville police chief was next to the two detaining cells, just over the first selectman's office and in front of the library. Lyon and Rocco sat in straight wooden chairs, their feet on the radiator, finishing the brandy and silently contemplating the erection of a hamburger palace across the street that violated the Village Green.

The phone rang and Rocco picked it up impatiently. He listened. “Yes, Mrs. Henderson, but I've been out to your place three times this week already. The court says he can't come out there except on the children's visiting days.… I know, yes.… Well, if you let him in the bed, it's up to you to get him out of the bed.” He hung up with a bang. “She'll call the first selectman about that and I'll have to go out there.”

“Lock them both up.”

“I would, except they'd screw in the detaining cell and embarrass the drunks.”

Rocco flipped the now empty brandy bottle into the trash can. “Couldn't you do the dredging yourself, or with town maintenance people?” Lyon asked.

“Not enough men or equipment for it. Norbert has the upper hand. It'll take him days to get all that stuff from the bottom and sort through it, but he'll do it; he's very thorough. If only I could have gone down there myself, or if you could have made another dive or two instead of … thinking.”

Lyon's feet came off the radiator with a bang as the front legs of the chair hit the floor. He crossed to Rocco's desk, scratched around for a pad and pencil and made a few notes.

“Let's see what we have. Probabilities, that's all. One. Three people inhabited the trailer; two adults, man and woman, and a child. It was probably owned by our victims. No license plates on trailer or car.”