The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed (9 page)

“But Curt,
two
of them?”

“The killer was probably after only one, but he doesn’t seem to care if others go too. Look at Sandy and her baby; the baby just happened to be there.”

The next was:

Marvin DeVore,
38, killed in cement mixer. Assumed that he’d gotten shovel caught in it, reached in to get it without shutting down machine. Presumably his clothes caught and he was pulled up inside. Immense weight of rolling cement on blades crushed and mutilated his body, inflicted several deadly wounds. (Comment: Official of cement mixer company states that he’s never heard of a man being
drawn
inside from ground level. Falling in from a higher level, or being thrown in, conscious or unconscious, would probably have been fatal. Condition of body precludes accurate determination of cause of death.)

Barney Proctor,
45, killed by train in rural crossing. Engineer stated the car was stopped at crossing; fireman thought driver was slumped over wheel, but wasn’t sure. Theory: He’d stalled his car at the crossing, seen the train, and suffered a heart attack. Autopsy revealed nothing; body too badly shattered. (Comment: A farfetched chain of circumstances. Equally reasonable to assume the man was knocked unconscious and his car driven on the tracks. Convenient means of concealing evidence.)

Jerry Blake,
40, died when butane tank exploded in his store. Verdict: accidental death. (Comment: Takes time for butane to accumulate in sufficient quantity to explode. Why didn’t Blake smell it? Store burned down, body burned beyond recognition. Cause of death therefore uncertain.)

I looked up. “Curt, I knew Jerry very well. He was Lou’s partner. He was the kindest, best-natured guy in town. It’s unthinkable that he was murdered—”

“Consider the unthinkable, Velda. Jerry could have learned something, and the killer had to silence him. Don’t worry about motive, look at similarities, the mutilation of the bodies. Read on.”

I read:

Harold Simpson,
38, died of shotgun blast in mouth. Verdict: suicide. Wife had left him, taken children. Depressed. (Comments: Left no note. Tractor left standing in field, as though he planned to return to work. Blowing a man’s head off with a 12-gauge shotgun is effective way of concealing murder by other means.)

Dean Slaughter,
55, suffocated when storm blew barn down, haymow collapsed and buried him in baled hay. Verdict: accident. (Comment: Check it out. Too neat.)

I jerked my head up. “Curt, how in the world could you suspect
that?”
Curt shrugged. “Hell. The killer could have seen the storm coming and smothered him before the barn ever blew down.”

“And then blew it down himself?”

“He could have hammered some rafters loose and weakened the barn enough that a good wind would blow it over. Sure, it’s far out. If there’s nothing to connect his death with any of the others, I’ll mark it off and work on the easier ones.”

I glanced down at the next one:

Albert Simmons,
gored to death by bull in barnyard. (Probable accident.)

“Probable! Now Curt, really—!”

“It could have been arranged. The man knocked unconscious, the bull goaded. Simmons owned the bull, you think he’d take any risk if he knew the bull was dangerous? If you’ve ever seen a bullfight, you’d know how easy it is to goad a bull into charging. The killer probably had plenty of time; here in this sparsely populated county, half the people die unseen. How many deaths are listed as heart attacks which were really murder? I didn’t even include heart attacks, but I know there are drugs which over-stimulate the heart. Say our killer knows his victim has a weak heart; he introduces a drug into his food and pouf! Without an autopsy, who knows? That sheriff is so damn considerate of other people’s feelings he won’t cut up somebody’s next-of-kin without permission. Go on to the next one.”

Maynard Schoentgen,
62, body found partly devoured by hogs. Presumed cause of death, heart attack.

“You see?” said Curt. “This man could have died from strangulation, stabbing, or anything. This is like the train wreck, like the fire and the cement mixer, all the evidence has been obliterated.”

I felt a strange coldness at the back of my neck as I went back to my reading. The sheer weight of evidence was beginning to convince me:

Adlai Neilsen,
42, died in plane crash five minutes after takeoff from pasture landing strip. County officials, CAB, ruled death accidental through malfunction of aircraft. (What caused malfunction of aircraft? Unknown.)

Ben Burger,
54, and
Elbert Sim,
60, found dead from exposure. Both known drunks, left tavern with bottle during blizzard, presumably passed out in cold. (Comment: Could have been followed, drugged.)

Vera Bollinger,
43, electrocuted by massage machine. Short found in wiring. (Comment: Be wary of electrical mishaps unless they’re witnessed. Death can occur any place, then the business arranged to look like an accident. This includes following:)

Bryon Danley,
40, electrocuted in home welding shop. Working alone, late at night, found next morning.

Bernice Struble,
21, dead in well, death by drowning, while unconscious. Unconsciousness induced by striking head on bricks; hair and pieces of scalp found there. (Comment: Difficult to see how glancing blow could produce unconsciousness. Also more likely she’d lose her footing while pulling up the bucket, rather than after she’d pulled it up. Another shaky chain of circumstances.)

That was all—except for poor Sandy, who hadn’t yet been added. I handed the papers back to Curt and felt a cold shiver pass up my spine:

“Curt, that kind of thinking scares me. If there are people like this, then nobody’s safe. I’ll be suspicious of people who come into the store; afraid to let Sharon stay out late. It’s like … a wolf following a caribou herd, waiting to pull down the cripples. Like a snarling beast lurking outside the circle of light.”

He was putting his papers away. “He’s there, Velda. He looks just like anybody else, just like you and I.”

“Look, I know we’re backward in Sherman, but at least we’re
civilized.”

“Sure. The French thought they were civilized with their gold tasseled cushions and learned debates in the Sorbonne. At the same time Giles de Rais was killing 2,000 people, almost depopulating a province of France. Only 60 years ago in Chicago a certain Doctor H. H. Holmes confessed to killing twenty-seven people in a single year. Actually they figured he killed over a hundred—and he sold their skeletons to medical schools.”

“But this man … you say he’s been twenty years …”

“He’s smart. So far there’ve been only doubts. Doubts pass. People forget.”

“But what could be his motive?”

“I think we make a mistake in looking for a motive. It could be anything. He wanted to kill, he built his own motive. Maybe he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing; he worked himself into a position where he had to kill simply because he wanted to kill.”

Suddenly I glanced at my watch. I was used to having the afternoons creep by; I was amazed to see that it was four-thirty. Sharon would be coming home in a quarter hour; now of all times I wanted to be near her and assure myself she was safe. Even the woods seemed prickly and hostile. I picked up my sweater and wrapped it around me. “Curt, I’ve got to go.”

“Yes.” He rose and put his manila envelope under his arm. His face wore a watchful, waiting look. I knew what he was waiting for.

“I’ll help you if I can Curt. But don’t ask me to take any risk. Not that I’m scared; I mean, certainly I’m scared, but I’ve got more than myself to think about.”

He nodded. “There’s something you can do. Take some of these cases. Anne was your sister. Jerry Blake was your husband’s business partner. Marston was your fiancé. Ethel works for you. Find out all you can without seeming too interested. I don’t want him to get suspicious.”

“But … what am I supposed to be looking for?”

“I don’t know. Some common denominator. Something that ties them together. Somebody they were all intimate with, or somebody they’d all had trouble with. I don’t know … It seems ridiculous that he got away unseen every time. If we find out that the same person happened to be nearby when two or three of the accidents occurred, we’ll have something to go on.”

Just before we parted at the top of the ridge I asked Curt: “You still want the key to Bernice’s house?”

“It’s better than breaking in.”

All right,” I said. “I’ll try to have it tomorrow morning.”

I drove home and picked up Sharon, telling her I had to come back to the store and work on the books. In the store I talked to Ethel, trying to find a casual way of bringing up her husband, but there was no need. Ethel had gone to Sandy’s funeral; her mind had been turned to thoughts of death:

“So few people there, Velda, I couldn’t help but think about Barney’s funeral. Churchyard full of people standing, I was just sorry it was a closed casket, poor Barney was so cut up. I remember cars parked all the way down to the river bridge from the cemetery. He had so many friends.”

“What was he doing the day he died?”

“Fishing. You know he’d rather fish than eat, that man. There was a water hole under the railroad bridge, where he usually went with Gil Sisk, who never had much to do, or Johnny Drew, who could have done a lot but never did. Barney didn’t care much who went with him as long as there was fishing involved.”

“Were either of them with him that day?”

“No. Johnny got mixed up in a dice game down behind the depot and Gil … funny, I remember that day just like it was yesterday. Gil stopped by the store to say he couldn’t make it because he was going to Kansas City, but Barney had already gone. Gil didn’t even know Barney had been killed until he got back a week later.

At home I thought about it. Both Gil and Johnny Drew had known that Barney planned to fish under the old railroad bridge. Gil had also gone unexpectedly to Kansas City the night Anne was killed. And Gil had sometimes helped Mart on the farm; they were the same age, and had run together all through high school. Gil had known that I brought Mart’s lunch to him. (What about those binoculars, that girl-watching on the lake? Tie that in with the glint of glasses on the hill.)

The thought upset me. Even though I was disappointed in Gil, the thought of him being a murderer … that would imply that I’d been totally blind—

Johnny Drew was another matter. As prospective brothers-in-law of similar age, he and Mart would be expected to be friends. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Johnny Drew used it as an excuse to borrow money from Mart. He also knew about the farm and the fact that I brought Mart’s lunch. The day Mart was killed, Johnny had been drinking in a tavern. Nobody had kept track of his comings and goings. He’d been connected with Jerry Blake too. He and Lou had hired him to work in their store, but they’d had to let him go. Lou hadn’t told me why, but I’d assumed he’d either been stealing from stock or from the cash register. Lou and I never discussed my brother-in-law if it could be avoided; it left a bad taste in my mouth. But Johnny was one person who could have approached Anne’s car outside the Club 75 without alarming her. That was the same night Johnny—Oh God! What horrible tricks the subconscious plays. He’d tried to rape me that night, and I’d completely forgotten about it. Now I recalled him banging on the door at ten p.m. Sharon had been asleep and Lou had gone to Omaha with a cattle shipment. “Where’s Anne?” he yelled. “Where is that goddam woman?” I could tell through the door that he was drunk. I told him to go away or I’d call the police. He calmed down and asked if I could just let him in, because he wanted to call the club and see if Anne was there. I was young and naïve then and I let him in. The moment I opened the door I knew I’d made a mistake. His eyes were glazed and red-rimmed; it was clear that he was too drunk to see. He made a grab which tore my nightgown off my shoulder; he called me a dirty name which I’d heard him use on Anne. I told him I wasn’t Anne, but he was past hearing. He was ripping the nightgown right off my body and I made the mistake of trying to fight him. All I had were fists and fingernails, and Johnny was so drunk that only a bludgeon would have stopped him. Finally I gave up trying to fight; I tore myself free of the nightgown and left him holding it. I ran into the bedroom and slammed the door. He pounded on the door awhile and cursed me—he was still calling me Anne—then he wandered outdoors. I locked all the doors and windows and called Lou’s hotel in Omaha; Lou had gone out to eat and so I told the operator to have him call back. I went to sleep beside the phone and Lou called up at three a.m. He said the clerk had forgotten to give him the message when he came in and what was wrong? I looked out the window and saw that Johnny’s car was gone and the danger was over; I felt like a foolish, hysterical girl and said I just wanted to talk. So we’d talked—briefly—and next morning Anne had been found dead and I’d forgotten all about Johnny’s visit. But I remembered that Johnny liked to sit in taverns and tell anybody who’d listen what a great Jap-killer he’d been in the islands …

Excited, I got Curt on the phone. His first words dampened my enthusiasm:

“Velda, listen, just remember that this is a party line. Okay?”

“Oh.” Suddenly I sensed a dozen ears listening. I’d been using the party line for years and it had never bothered me before. “Well, remember what you said about looking for a common denominator? I’ve found one: Johnny Drew.”

“Got it. Thanks.” He hung up, and so did I. I felt disappointed; phone calls were so unsatisfactory.

Lou came home at eight, tired. He’d gotten the road job and had been out all day with surveyors. I drew his bath and fed him supper and waited until he was snoring softly. Then I snagged his key ring off the bureau, and carried it into the kitchen. I found one key with a tag taped to it marked
Struble.
From my own key ring I took a similar key, switched the tags, and put it on Lou’s key ring. Then I tiptoed into the bedroom and replaced Lou’s key ring on the bureau. If somebody else wanted to see the Struble place tomorrow … tough.