Friday, October 25, 1985

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1985

Watching the pallbearers carry Richard Boyd’s coffin to his grave reminded me uncomfortably of the five strong men who barely got his body down from his ceiling, and I wished I hadn’t come. I’d expected a big turnout and thought some new witness or maybe even a suspect might present themselves by showing up and acting strangely. No such luck.

Reverend Fowler was saying something and everyone looked like they were listening, gazing earnestly at the glossy box as it was lowered into the ground with heavy white straps. The Reverend finished and people started drifting away. I thought I might follow them to make an appearance at the potluck at the Boyd house, but something caught my eye as I turned for my car. A quick blur moving a few yards away. The back of a head covered in a mess of black hair on top of a skinny frame that ducked into a bramble of dead trees at the edge of the cemetery.

About ninety percent of this job is repeated, careful, diligent collection and review of available evidence. It’s following prescribed procedures and time-tested investigative strategy. The rest is hunches. I followed the hair.

I got to where I’d seen him slip away, a square corner made by the end of a well-maintained split rail fence and a patch of rough underbrush being lorded over by a huge gnarled oak. It looked like a short, steep ridge that made a natural boundary for the cemetery, but there was a faint path heading back into the woods. I followed it and after climbing a couple of yards I got to a small clearing that overlooked a wide swath of rolling farmland. There were a few large round and weathered stones placed roughly an equal distance from each other, like the points of a triangle. In the middle of those stones was a more modern-looking but modest memorial with “Roberts 1921 – 1965” chiseled into it. A slim figure in jeans and a black leather jacket sat on the stone, looking out at the fields.

“Hello?” I said.

When there was no answer, I reached out to touch his shoulder. The boy whipped around in shock, losing his balance and tumbling off the stone. His black sunglasses had slipped halfway off his face, flashing pale green eyes. He fumbled with them awkwardly with one hand and pulled a pair of headphones off his ears with the other. His pale complexion flashed red in the cheeks as he panted to catch his breath.

“Shit—I was just—”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Sorry I startled you.”

“’S cool. I guess I had my music on too loud.” He pulled one of those portable tape players out of his jacket and snapped one of the buttons down. “Am I in trouble?”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re with the police, right?”

“That’s right,” I said. “Are you involved in any criminal activity I should know about?”

“Uh . . . no?”

“Great. That solves that.” I did my best at a smile and reached out to shake his hand. “Detective Sergeant David Carlson.”

He met my shake tentatively. A lanky arm ending in long fingers covered in black grease stains and a few cuts and scratches. “James,” he said.

We stood there in awkward silence. I decided to make the first move. “Nice spot,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I like to come up here. Sorta clear my head and stuff.”

You could see for miles. Long, slow rolling hills stretching out into the horizon. In the distance you could see rows and rows of pale yellow corn stalks that hadn’t been harvested yet, but the field closest to us was fallow.

“You know something else?” he asked, a hint of excitement creeping into his voice.

“What?”

“This is where they buried Boris Orlof.” He said, showing me the stone with no small measure of pride.

“Who’s that?”

“Seriously?” he scoffed. “Saturday Nightmares? I thought everybody over thirty knew about him. Like Howdy Doody, or whatever.”

I was about to answer when we were interrupted. “Carlson, you back here?”

We both turned back to the path. It was Jerry West, the Sheriff of Mahigan County. A big, broad-shouldered country boy from Swedish stock. Close-cropped, white-blond hair and deep blue eyes. West liked to act like John Wayne but was usually pretty easy to work with and didn’t worry about politics as much as other sheriffs I’d known. I’d seen him at the funeral, but hadn’t thought much of it.

He looked at me, then at James.

“James,” he said sternly. “You know this is private property.”

“I was just leaving,” James answered, slipping around the clearing and down into the woods before I could say another word. Sheriff West shook his head and grit his teeth.

“You know each other?” I asked.

“He’s my nephew. Older brother’s son. Lung cancer took him in ‘79. I try to look in on him and his mom,” he said. “Probably not as much as I should,” he added quietly.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “You want to get some lunch? Reckon we could talk some after.”

“Sounds good.”

“Edie’s okay with you?”

“Always. I’ll meet you there.”

X

“Edie’s Grotto” was a roadside place about ten miles outside of town. They’d opened in the 50s to try and make some extra money off travelers who stopped at the Sinclair filling station next door. They’d outlasted the gas pumps, but the huge green brontosaurus statue out front had stayed. Different owners over the years have tried, but the locals would never forgive them if they got rid of it.

I pulled in next to the sheriff’s car. We headed inside together and picked a quiet booth in the back. Tenderloin sandwiches were the special, the ones at Edie’s were pounded thin and as big as the platter they were served on. We each ordered one and ate in more or less comfortable silence. I wasn’t hungry, but I made myself clean my plate. I’d worked with Jerry West enough to know he wasn’t much for small talk. Neither was I. Edie’s also served the best cup of coffee in the county, so afterwards we each ordered one and let our sandwiches settle.

Jerry spoke first. “I talked to John Hayes last night,” he said. “Told him what I’m telling you. I really want to help with this Boyd business, but we’re stretched thin.”

The Iowa State Patrol mostly sticks to the interstate, so that left Sheriff West and eight deputies to cover the other eight-hundred-square miles in his jurisdiction. Dubois had the only municipal police department in the county, so they usually left us to fend for ourselves.

“Thinner than usual,” he added, as if he’d been reading my mind. “Crazy stuff, too. Folks out in the country are calling in wolf sightings every damned other day.”

“Wolves?”

“Wolves.” He let out a short joyless laugh and shook his head. “I figured it was just Halloween pranks, but I’ll be damned if after the third call one of my deputies tells me he saw one, too.”

“I didn’t think there were any wolves this far south.”

“There’s not.” He shook his head and took a sip from his mug. “My theory is someone’s been breeding big dogs of some type, maybe even wolf-hounds, and they’ve gotten loose. I’ve been out with the DNR every night this week.”

“Are they taking livestock or anything?”

“Can’t prove it, but we think so. Or at least scaring them off. One of the farms that called is missing two cows. They’re crafty SOBs, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they were driving them somewhere.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“They aren’t leaving tracks, but when they’re sighted, it’s always on hard ground so it’s almost like they know how to cover for themselves.”

“Huh.”

“On top of that nonsense, something’s gotten into everybody we’ve got in custody up at the jail. They’re so wound up we can hardly contain them. Had a small riot three nights ago and I’ve had to pull deputies to augment my COs.”

We sipped our coffee in silence. I’d heard about the trouble at the jail. You put that many men in that small a space, I’m amazed they don’t riot every day, but usually things keep to a simmer. Sometimes the wind changes and it sets things off. There’s no explaining it really.

“Dick Boyd was a good man,” he said. “He really cared about this town. Really understood it was a good place. Wanted to keep it that way.” He hesitated a moment. “You have any suspects?”

“No,” I said quietly, scanning the room over the brim of my cup for anyone listening.

“Is it true what I heard? Hogtied and bled out?”

“Yep.”

“Jesus,” he whispered. “Stuff nightmares are made of.”

We were quiet again for a while, so I thought I’d change the subject to something lighter. “Hey, uh, speaking of . . . You grew up around here, didn’t you? You remember some TV show called Saturday Nightmares?”

Jerry choked on his coffee. “If I never hear that name again, it would be too soon.”

“How’s that?”

“Just some bullshit from the old days,” he said.

“Some guy,” I said. “Boris something?”

“No,” said West, shaking his head. “His name was Mel. Nothing but another drunk washout that thought he was hot shit. Some idiot put him on TV and then he wanted everybody to start calling him ‘Boris’ like he’s a movie star or something.” The sheriff dumped two Sweet ‘n Low packets into his coffee and winced as one of the wrappers fell in. I pretended not to notice. “We used to pick him up for brawling with truckers and fellas from the plant, back when I was a deputy. Small guy, big mouth, you know the type. Always starting something. He didn’t ever look like much, but he really knew how to handle himself. Put more than a few guys in the hospital. He’d gotten himself in Dutch with those Skoger Sisters and they’d post his bail every time.”

“So what did he do on TV?”

“I never watched it. Sounded pretty stupid. Got shut down after a couple of years, then he started putting on these ‘burlesque shows’ out at the Drive-In back in the 60s. We knew he was bringing underage talent out there, girls from out of the county, runaways. Probably running dope to all the college kids that went out there, too, but we couldn’t prove anything. County wouldn’t prosecute, so he and those Skoger’s did whatever they pleased out there until he managed to burn the place down and take himself along with it.”

“Jeeze.”

West sipped his coffee and gave me an appreciative nod. “You know some a-holes are opening that place back up?”

“I think I met them,” I said. “They were handing out flyers out at the Farm and Fleet.”

“It’s their land and they’ve got all their permits,” he grumbled. “If I could stop it, I would. In a heartbeat. Nothin’ good ever came out of that place.”

We finished our coffee in silence. West pulled some bills out of his wallet and left them on the table. “I’ll be in touch, Carlson.”

X

I spent that afternoon camped out behind the screen of a tempermental microfilm machine in the back of the public library. Four days out and I’d exhausted every line of investigation I could think of and was left grasping for anything I could find relevant to Boyd’s past.

I’d been reading through every article from the Dubois Press Citizen about Boyd that was in the library’s index and had gotten nowhere. Anyone I could find who was close to him all said the same thing: He was a big-hearted guy who spread his money around town and had plenty of friends. His meat packing plant had basically kept the town afloat, and nothing really changed besides the name when he sold the place. I finished the last reel the librarian had pulled for me and sat rubbing my eyes while the machine rewound the film.

The random thrill killer theory was still the only one that would stand up, but it felt wrong. Probably only a matter of time before the chief decided he had to file this one away with the cold cases and hope things would settle down on their own. But leaving something like this unsolved would fester in a town like this. Who could say the killer wouldn’t come back? Or that he wasn’t still here?

I stood and slumped over to the massive oak reference desk to return the microfilm. The librarian smiled at me. I couldn’t remember her name, but I knew we’d talked a while at some singles thing Mrs. Walshans made me go to at her church last summer. She had to be at least ten years older than me, but it was hard to tell. Bright eyes that always looked like she had just been laughing.

“Were these any help, detective?”

“I’m afraid not,” I said, defeated. I was in a bit of a daze after staring at projected newsprint on the dim screen. I leaned on the desk and looked around the building absentmindedly until my eyes finally settled on a small sign hanging on a table covered with a neat stack of books.

“Warning: The Library is Not Responsible for Nightmares!” I read out loud, walking over to look at the books. Well-worn volumes with pink skulls grinning back at me from stickers on their spines. Dracula. Frankenstein. The Invisible Man.

The librarian smiled. “Oh, yes,” she chuckled. “For Halloween, you know.”

I thought of James West out for a stroll at midnight in the fog. “You wouldn’t happen to have anything in that index about an old TV show? Saturday Nightmares?”

She pursed her lips slightly and walked out from behind the desk to a large wooden cabinet full of small drawers. She glanced at her watch, then pulled out one of the drawers and shuffled through the tiny cards inside, pausing once to pull out a card, then another a few seconds later.

“Pretty fast,” I said.

She disappeared with the cards into a back room and returned with two reels of microfilm. She glanced at her watch again, and then handed them to me along with a satisfied smile. “Fastest in the west.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking them back to my nest around the machine. The first card cited an article from October of 1960. I loaded the film reels and lazily scanned to the right date. The article was only an inch or so long, buried in the back corner on the “Happenings” page.

Shock Theater returns to KMCD as Saturday Nightmares.

Fright film fans will no doubt scream at the “return” of Shock Theater to local KMCD TV this Saturday night. The show, now dubbed Saturday Nightmares, will follow the same format as Shock and will again feature the self-styled “cool ghoul” Boris Orlof. Tune in Saturday at 10:00 for Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man!

I don’t know what I was expecting. I felt more than a little silly for wasting time, and I hit the rewind button sharply in frustration. But I still loaded the other reel and scanned ahead to the first week of July 1964. This time the article was on the front page and featured a large photo of a group of men and women on the street outside the TV station downtown.

Citizens to KMCD: Cancel Smut or Else!

Thursday, a group of concerned citizens gathered outside of KMCD and demanded the station cancel the weekly Saturday Nightmares program. In a prepared statement, the group’s spokesperson, Reverend Matthew Fowler, said “This is nothing but pornography of the ugliest sort. It celebrates wanton violence and the degradation of the human spirit. Furthermore, this program has had a clear and deleterious effect on the impressionable youth of Dubois and the county at large.”

The group contends that, in addition to promoting films to children which were intended for an adult audience, Saturday Nightmares features near constant references to murder, dismemberment, cannibalism, and the occult, as well as many other unsavory behaviors.

The group also accuses the program’s host, a ghoul named “Boris Orlof” (portrayed by KMCD’s electrician and handyman Melville Roberts), of regularly inciting panic among his young viewers. “One of my parishioner’s children came to her in near hysterics. Pleading and crying to ‘not let Boris get her’. Afterwards, she learned that her child had watched the program, and was told [by “Boris” sic] that if they ever stopped watching she would be torn to pieces in her bed!”

These allegations might be easily dismissed as macabre showmanship, the group concedes, if it were not for Mel Roberts’ actions outside of the TV studio. Numerous complaints have been made against Roberts for charges ranging from public intoxication to menacing. “This is not a man we can trust with our children. Their bodies or their minds.”

At press time, representatives of KMCD were unavailable for comment as was Melville Roberts.

There was another picture at the bottom. It was darker than the other one and harder to make out in detail, but I could see a tall and cadaverously thin man in a black suit with a greasy looking pompadour leering at the camera and leaning against the side of a black hearse. The hood had been removed and you could see the body of an obscenely massive engine and multiple oversized exhaust pipes jutting out in its place. The caption read: Mel Roberts, aka “Boris Orlof”, and his custom-built hearse (courtesy Lyles’ Auto Body, Dubois).

 I scrambled through the file folders I’d brought until I found the copy I’d made of Franklin’s report, remembering what he had told me that morning.

“A car. Big one, maybe a truck. Black or dark-colored. Really loud engine.”

I stared at the caption, a lump rising in my throat. “Lyles’ Auto Body, Dubois.” I took out my notebook and flipped backwards until I found it. Breaking and Entering, possible grand theft. Lyles Auto Body & Collision. 10/20/85 21:00. The call had come in the day before the murder, but I’d put it off to deal with the Boyd case.

“He used to come in here all the time you know.”

I half jumped out of my skin, but quickly regained composure when I saw the librarian hovering over my shoulder. “Big reader?” I managed.

“This was back when I’d first started working here, but I remember him very well. His real name was Melville,” she said, glancing back at the cabinet. “Like the author. Come to think of it, I think he may have been indexed separately . . . ”

I watched her flick her thin fingers through another drawer, and in a moment she had returned with a single reel of film.

“He used to read Poe out loud when children were around. The Raven. Casque of Amontillado,” she said with a wistful smile. “He would act out voices and make faces.”

“What did the kids think?” I asked.

“Oh, the children loved him. They loved being scared, anyway, and he terrified them! He was usually a quiet, kind of sad man. But he just came to life when he was scaring them. I suppose that wasn’t enough for him, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, well, he went on to scare everybody, didn’t he?”

The story was on page three from the November 2nd, 1965 edition.

Fire Claims One at Theater

A stage caught fire during a special Halloween triple feature at the Moonlite Drive-In Theater late Saturday night. Melville Roberts (See Obituaries B:3) had been performing on the stage between films when the fire started and was trapped there when the blaze quickly grew out of control. Many in the audience were shaken, but none were injured. Witnesses reported that they thought it was part of the performance, and did not attempt to aid Mr. Roberts until it was too late. Officials report the fire was caused when faulty wiring in the stage lights ignited a supply of paint, turpentine, and other flammable materials stored underneath the stage. Owner and proprietor Myrna Skoger has stated that the theater is now closed until further notice.

I skimmed ahead to the Obits, but only found a few more lines.

Melville Roberts, 44, of Dubois died October 31st, 1965. Roberts served as a Lance Corporal in the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater from 1941 to 1945. He is preceded in death by his mother and father. Private services to be held at the home of Myrna and June Skoger.

X

I left the library around six and ran into Peter Graham while walking back to my car. Mr. Graham was the principal at Dubois High, and while he’d held that job for close to thirty years, he always struck me as kind of clueless when it came to the lives of teenagers. When I started in town, I was assigned all the truancy cases, so we ended up working together quite a bit. Decent guy, all things considered. I figured his hearts’ in the right place anyway.

“Mr. Graham,” I said, with a short wave.

“Ah, hello!” He waved back. He was thin, but soft around the edges. Bright eyes set in a plain face with jowls that sagged a little at the corners of his mouth. “Just getting ready to head over to the game.” He held up a piece of white cardboard with “Beat Blackburn” written on it with poster paint.

“Well, I won’t keep you.”

Suddenly a pickup screeched around the corner. Three teenage boys in letter jackets were standing up in the bed howling and laughing.

“Ah, the vigor of youth,” said Graham, smiling wanly. “Just letting off some steam before the big game, I’m sure.”

The truck passed an alley and then slammed on the brakes. Someone in the shadows had caught their attention. They backed up and the boys started chanting “FAG-OT! FAG-OT! FAG-OT!” at the darkness. One threw an empty can into the alley, and the others howled with laughter.

“Sweet kids,” I said, as they squealed off.