Murder in Little Egypt (23 page)

On Saturday morning Patrick ran off to play with a friend. At about eleven, Dale showed up at Grandpa’s house. Everyone sat around in the kitchen drinking coffee. Marian tried to keep the conversation going—the clear early spring weather, Kevin’s college life—but her stomach was in knots. As she always did on holidays—in St. Louis, for instance, when Dale made his entrance drunk and sour—she told herself that she was doing this for her boys. She would try anything to make Dale behave like a civilized human being. One Christmas Eve in St. Louis, when Dale was pouring himself a tumblerful of vodka and berating Sean for his low grades, Marian, trying to be funny, invoked Noma’s ghost to try to derail him, saying that his mother would not approve of how he was behaving and was gazing down at him and shaking her finger. No, Noma was not doing any such thing, Dale said. She was not gazing down at him, because she was not up there. She was down
there
, he shouted, pointing at the floor.

Now Marian sat in Grandpa’s kitchen hoping that they might get through this holiday without incident, smoking one cigarette after another and saying to herself that it would all be over by Monday and she could go back to work and her new life. It was not that she hated Dale after all these years, It was just that he made her so nervous. The one blessing was that he never stuck around for very long. Sure enough, he drank one cup of coffee and was ready to depart.

“I’ve got to get going,” he said, fidgety as always. ‘‘I’ve got things to do. ”

“I wonder where Mark is,” Marian said. “I can’t imagine where he’d be. I was sure he’d come around last night. He asks us to come down and then doesn’t show up. That’s not like Mark. It’s almost noon.”

“I can’t sit around here all day,” Dale said. He was wearing baggy jeans tucked into work boots and a torn plaid shirt, looking like someone called in to fix the roof.

“Did you talk to Mark yesterday?” Marian asked. “Didn’t he say he was coming over here?”

“I haven’t seen that damn Mark since Monday night,” Dale said. “You never know what the hell he’s up to. I told him he couldn’t go on working for me the rest of his life. Said he should see about getting a job in the coal mines.”

“That’s a ridiculous idea,” Marian said. “Mark in the coal mines?”

“What’s wrong with the mines? You want him on state aid? By God, do you think I’m going to support him for the rest of his life?”

“Mark isn’t going on state aid,” Kevin said. “Him and me—”

“He and I,” Marian interrupted. “My goodness, Kev, you’re in college now. I’m getting a little worried about Mark. I’m afraid he’s hurt somewhere.”

“That’s a mother,” Kevin said. “If a kid doesn’t show up, he’s lying bleeding to death in a ditch.”

Kevin leaned over and put his arm around his mother and spoke to her softly.

“Mom, calm down. He’s not driving. His license is suspended, you know that. I bet he’s just been out partying with some of his buddies.”

“Bunch of aardvarks,” Dale said.

“He’s probably at their house passed out in Carbondale or Harrisburg or somewhere.”

They sat in silence for half a minute or so. Kevin poured himself more coffee and brought his mother a fresh cup.

“I don’t know,” Dale said. “I got a funny feeling about him.” He did not elaborate. He stared into his cup.

“Well,” Kevin said. “What do you mean?”

“I think he’s dead.”

Marian looked out the window and sighed, as though Dale had just said something designed specifically to irritate her and that she chose to ignore. Kevin stared at his father, who did not return the glance. Kevin stood up.

“That tears it,” Kevin said. “I’m going looking. I’m getting some wheels and starting to hit people’s houses that know him. Where’s the Jeep?”

“It’s—I don’t know,” Dale said. “It’s out at the Shea house.”

“Where’re the keys?”

“Think the keys—they must be in it. Yes. I got to go to Herod to do some things. I have to see after some things at the Handle. I’ll get with you later.”

And Dale took off.

Kevin said that Marian would have to drive him out to the Shea house, so-named because of its last occupants, now an empty cottage on the Galatia farm. Sean decided to tag along.

They climbed into Marian’s tan Dodge and headed for Galatia. Driving the familiar road brought back many memories for Marian, many of them unpleasant. Everyone seemed to be having trouble with their kids these days. At least Mark had been too young for Vietnam, although going into the army now might do him some good. Marian decided that she would try to talk him into finally earning his high school equivalency diploma and attending some junior college. He was not dumb. It was time for him to buckle down. Once he got onto the right track, he could be happy. He had been at a terrible age to go through a divorce and a change of schools, and he had fallen into bad habits.

Marian turned onto the dirt road that led to the farm and the Shea house and the trailer where Mark was living. Sean grew excited in the backseat:

“Is Mark here? He could be here.” A peeling shack came into view. “There’s the Shea house! There it is!”

“Those keys had better be in the Jeep,” Kevin said.

Marian swung around the rear of the house. Parked parallel to it, in a kind of unfenced yard, were the ten-by-forty-foot trailer and the white Jeep pickup truck, separated by a lone hickory tree that was just coming into bud. No sign of Mark. The new grass had grown up half a foot or more.

“Okay, Mom,” Kevin said, “you wait while I see if this ignorant thing starts. Don’t go running off. I don’t want to get abandoned out here.”

Marian watched from the car as Kevin and Sean started walking through the tall grass toward the truck, Kevin in the lead, Sean trotting along behind. As they passed the pickup’s tailgate on their right, Marian noticed something in the grass to their left. Trash? A dog lying there?

Kevin reached the driver’s side of the truck. The door was ajar. Kevin started to look inside. Sean, lingering and looking around, suddenly shouted, “There’s Mark!” and pointed at something in the grass, what Marian thought was a dog.

Sean started to run; Kevin grabbed him. The boys stared down at whatever was in the grass.

Marian pushed open the door of her car. She had to see what had frightened Sean. “What is it?” she called.

“Stay in the car!” Kevin shouted. He was holding on to Sean. “Stay in the car! Don’t come over here!”

But Marian was out of the car, moving forward. She started screaming.

“Is it Mark? Is it Mark?”

“Get back in the car!” Kevin shouted.

“It’s his belt buckle,” Sean said. Kevin tried to cover his brother’s eyes.

“His boots,” Kevin said. “What is this? What’s happened to him?”

“What’re we gonna do!” Sean wailed.

“Take it easy,” Kevin said, “just take it easy. Oh, Lord!” Marian was screaming.

“Get back!” Kevin shouted.

Kevin held on to Sean and started walking slowly toward Marian, picking his way between the tailgate of the pickup and Mark’s remains, trying not to look down at his dead brother.

“What’ll we tell Mom?” Sean whimpered.

“Take it easy. Keep walking. Mom! Don’t go over there! No!”

Marian reeled toward the Shea house and stumbled onto the porch, her legs and arms flying in all directions. She beat her fists on the sides of the house, choking and sobbing. She knew that Mark was dead.

Kevin and Sean reached their mother. The three of them clung to one another, moaning and sobbing, murmuring Mark’s name.

Minutes passed before anyone could think of what to do next. Kevin said that he had better try to call the cops. There was a phone inside the house. Maybe it still worked.

He was able to telephone. They waited on the porch, huddling together for what seemed like hours. Kevin grew angry. What could be holding up the cops? Twice he telephoned again to see what could be keeping the sheriffs deputies.

“They’re probably giving somebody a speeding ticket,” Kevin said.

Finally along the road came a black-and-white with two officers in it, but it rolled slowly past, the driver lifting his hand casually in greeting. Kevin sprang from the porch, waving. He recognized the driver, a young deputy.

“Hey, you idiot!”

The car slid to a stop.

“What’s the problem, buddy?”

“What’s the problem! This is it!
This is it!
”

“Okay. Calm down.”

“He’s over behind the trailer,” Kevin said, pointing. He did not want to go over there again.

“I better get my camera.”

“Sure. Get your camera.”

Marian, leaning against her car now with her head cradled in her arms, began to sob again. It was as if the appearance of the police confirmed in her mind what she had still been trying to disbelieve. The deputy whom Kevin had recognized approached.

“Look, lady. You’re just gonna have to calm down.”

Kevin wanted to clobber him but restrainted himself, afraid he might pull his gun.

“That’s my son over there!” Marian cried.

“You’re gonna have to calm down.”

“It’s my son!”

Kevin led his mother and Sean back to the porch. The trailer blocked their view of the truck and the body, but Kevin could hear the officers open the truck and the whirr of a Polaroid camera. Now an officer from the Eldorado police department drove up and joined the others. Kevin had to see what the officers were doing. He walked over to his mother’s car to get a view.

The officer taking Polaroids of the scene was dropping the used pieces of paper on the ground. Two of the cops flicked cigarette butts into the grass. Another had his head poked into the truck. To Kevin these officers were not conducting what seemed like an orderly, professional investigation. How would they be able to distinguish their own trash from evidence? Were they capable of reconstructing Mark’s suicide—or was it murder?

Kevin had a clear recollection of what he had glimpsed inside the truck in that instant before Sean had blurted, “There’s Mark.” He had been thinking about what he had seen there, during those long moments when he had been waiting for the police, trying to comfort his mother and brother. His instinct was to try to figure out what had happened: What else could he do? He knew that if he started becoming hysterical, Marian and Sean would crack, too.

He remembered distinctly that on the passenger side of the seat a shotgun was lying with the barrel pointing toward the driver’s side. The gun, which Kevin recognized as one of Dale’s, was inside its case, but the barrel-end stuck out several inches, as if the end of the case had been blown off when the gun had been fired. And he believed that he had noticed blood on the driver’s side door.

The gun looked as if it had been booby-trapped. The hook end of a wire coat hanger was wedged into the trigger guard through another hole in the gun case. On the coat hanger was a camouflage hunting vest with its lower part caught in the closed passenger-side door.

Watching the officers, Kevin wondered what they were thinking. Was this a booby-trap murder, or had it been an accident? He imagined Mark standing outside the truck on the driver’s side, reaching in, grabbing the gun by the barrel. The coat hanger, hooked on to the trigger at one end and caught in the passenger-side door by the vest, had pulled the trigger, shooting Mark and sending him staggering and sprawling the ten or twelve feet back onto the grass where he lay.

But this sequence quickly seemed absurd to Kevin. No experienced hunter, which Mark certainly was, would reach across a seat and pull a gun toward himself by the barrel; nor could Kevin believe that the coat hanger had managed to end up in that lethal configuration by itself. And if Mark had wanted to commit suicide, he would not have left the gun in its case.

Kevin was sure that someone had rigged the scene to make it look like an accident. Mark had been murdered. But by whom?

Sheriff Arnold Stafford drove up in one car, Coroner Wendell Lambert in another, and Special Agent Jack T. Nolen of the Illinois D.C.I. in his unmarked state car.

Detective Nolen walked over to Kevin and Marian, who were standing beside the Dodge. Sean had taken refuge in the backseat. It was nearly two-thirty in the afternoon.

Marian managed to tell Detective Nolen that they had arrived just after one o’clock to pick up the Jeep. The boys had noticed something lying on the ground. They recognized Mark’s belt buckle and—she broke down. Nolen tried to comfort her. There was not much he could do.

Nolen asked the other officers to stop throwing their cigarette butts and Polaroid papers on the ground. How was he supposed to be able to distinguish their trash from what was already at the scene? He saw that Sheriff Stafford already had a shotgun in his hands and was aiming it at the sky.

“Hell of a gun,” the sheriff said.

It was a big .12-gauge, three-inch magnum; a goose gun, Browning automatic. Nolen was irritated. He would have to rely on the sheriff and his deputies to describe the interior of the truck as they had found it. Nor would he be able to take fingerprints from the gun. He told everyone not to disturb the scene further.

Kevin watched, barely able to keep his emotions in check. He could see that the investigation was being screwed up. He chewed on his tongue and swallowed blood.

Nolen walked over to take a look at the body. He had to suppress a gasp.

There was very little left of it. It lay on its back, mostly raw bones, shreds of red meat clinging to fresh skeletal remains. The flesh from mid-thigh up was gone, baring thick thigh bones, the balls and sockets of hips, the pelvis, arm bones, the delicate bones of wrists and hands and fingers. An anatomy lesson. The empty rib cage arched upward, a hollow cavity to the spine, all internal organs gone. Only the lower legs, still encased in jeans, and the feet in lace-up work boots remained intact.

Nolen saw a dozen or so dead bodies every year; he was a veteran of autopsies; he had never seen anything like this. What must it have been like for the mother and brothers to see it, to recognize it as their own? Nolen could feel their eyes on him.

Nolen knew the woods. Animals had gotten to this body—varmints, wild dogs. Then the turkey vultures. The possums usually attacked a carcass first, nibbling their way in through the anus to the innards. A human being was only another meal to them.