Thursday, October 24, 1985

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1985

My clock radio snapped to life at dawn, and I regretted my dinner selection immediately. I took a cold shower and resisted the temptation to add a little hair of the dog to the coffee and toast with peanut butter I made myself eat before leaving. I ran into Mrs. Walshans, the landlady, on my way out. She looked worried, and told me she heard shouting from my upstairs apartment in the middle of the night.

I smiled as best I could that early. “Bad dreams, I guess.”

Innovative Foods Incorporated bought out Boyd’s Quality Meats close to fifteen years ago. They kept on all the workers who wanted to stay, but never seemed to really expand and bring new jobs in the way that they’d promised. Still, IFI remained the steadiest employer in Mahigan County and they’d stayed when the other factories had left.

The stench from outside the plant had long ago melted into the background of the town. On windy days, I’ve heard you can smell it as far as Keosauqua, but the summertime road kill smell of the inside of the place hit me like a wet slap across the nose. It smelled like the air itself in there had become evaporated hog fat, and I understood why these guys need a drink as soon as they leave.

There weren’t many people still working there that had been with Boyd’s, and none of them wanted to waste their break talking to me, so I interviewed them all from the floor. More than a few said they “wouldn’t miss the sonofabitch” but there wasn’t any more animosity behind their words than for any other boss anywhere else in the country. Franklin’s hunch still made sense to me, though. That the method was purposeful, symbolic maybe, and that suggested someone from Boyd’s past had an axe to grind.

X

Doc Gurns found me that afternoon at the station going over the photos again. He’d brought his report and the lab results, which were neatly tucked into a manila folder and held shut with a paperclip. Doc estimated that less than ten percent of the body’s blood could be accounted for. Toxicology found traces of prescription heart medication but otherwise nothing else out of the ordinary. Which meant Boyd hadn’t been drugged. Some contusions on the wrists and ankles where the rope had dug in under the weight of the body, some trace blood in his ears and scalp where it had been pulled downwards by gravity, but otherwise nothing. So, no other clue as to how he’d been subdued.

“I’m placing the time of death at just after midnight. He would have likely gone into shock after his throat was cut, but there’s a good chance he was conscious while he was bleeding,” said Doc.

“Cheery thought,” I said. “Any idea what happened to the blood?”

“Have you checked Castle Dracula?”

“Thanks, Doc.”

The rope that had been used on the body didn’t match anything on the property, so I took a sample and checked in at hardware stores around town. Gus down at the True Value said it wasn’t something he’d normally stock, and said I’d have better luck at the Farm and Fleet. I drove through the McDonald’s on the way and forced down a limp cheeseburger.

X

Farm and Fleet was a massive corrugated steel and cinderblock slab sitting in the middle of about two acres of concrete off 32, just past the 218 interchange. Folks from out and around the county go there for everything from tractor tires to school supplies, but mostly on the weekends. Today, the parking lot was practically deserted.

On my way in, I passed an unfamiliar face moving from car to car putting flyers between the wipers and windshields. In his late twenties, probably, but looked rough for his age. My first thought was drugs, given his complexion and sunken features, but something about that didn’t quite fit. His clothes were clean, but not new. A basic looking blue work shirt fully buttoned up to his neck and matching pants. Halfway house, maybe? I turned to walk over to him, but he looked up first and came right to me.

“Big show. Next week,” he croaked, pushing one of the folded flyers into my hands and then continuing past me before I could say anything.

I turned and saw him meet another man who was pushing a cart out of the store over to a gray pickup. This one was around the same age, much taller, slim but with broad shoulders and long arms. Completely shaved bald, but dressed the same way. They unloaded the cart—gas cans, extension cords, and several five gallon buckets of paint—in silence. The taller one lifted the buckets two in each hand without straining. The smaller one gathered up the lighter things.

I made a note of the plate number out of habit, and then unfolded the flyer and stared at it as they drove off. It was a cheap-looking photocopy covered with what looked like ads for horror movies that had been torn out of a newspaper, with hand drawn pictures of skulls and bats filling all the other blank spaces. Big swatches of text in old-fashioned fonts mixed with words made out of cut out letters from magazines covered the rest of it.

Midnight Spook Party

SEE the dead return!

SEE live on stage: Johnny Alucard—a zombie nightmare with hex appeal!

SEE buckets of blood!

SEE a live murder!

Triple feature shriek show starts at sundown Oct. 31. Stage show at midnight. Moonlite Drive-in HWY 139 at north county road. $5.00 per car—bring your friends, you’ll be afraid to go home alone!

Something about this—something I knew I should remember. It floated at the edge of my memory, then it was gone like a passing cloud. I folded the flyer into my jacket pocket and went inside.

It didn’t take long to prove Gus right. They carried a rope that was an exact match. Unfortunately, unlike Gus’s, where he could tell you the size screws your uncle bought two seasons ago, none of the staff at Farm and Fleet were much help in identifying who had bought any of the rope in the last week or so. The manager took me up to his office and went over some receipts and inventory records, but all the sales that included any kind of rope had been with cash. I showed him the flyer and asked about the two men I’d seen in the parking lot.

“You mean the Skogers?” he asked. “Yeah, those two come around once a week or so. Brothers, or cousins, I think. Sometimes they have another one that comes along. They inherited the old Moonlite and are fixing it up.” The manager was the kind of guy my dad would have called “squirrely.” His eyes lit up at the chance to gossip with me.

“You’ve heard of the Skoger Sisters right?” he asked with a cheeky grin. “These are their relatives from out West somewhere.”

“The Skoger Sisters” were a local legend that I’d assumed had grown more colorful over the years. I knew their names were Myrna and June, and that they both had said their last name was Skoger although it was an open secret that they weren’t really related. They had lived together on a farm right outside of the city limits since the twenties and had owned a few businesses in town. One of those was “The Moonlite,” a big drive-in movie theater that had been closed since Myrna and June both committed suicide in the sixties. The Skoger Sisters never went to church, were stingy with their money, and didn’t seem to give a damn about public opinion. Those inclined to speculate about such things gossiped that they were lovers. Kids swore they were witches. Most everybody else thought they were just mean old maids. I had learned to basically take anything I heard about them to be patently false after my first week in the department when I’d been told by our old dispatch operator that their farmhouse was haunted.

I thanked him and gave him one of my cards, asking that he call me if he saw anything unusual.

X

I radioed in to dispatch to see if the tip line had picked anything up. It hadn’t. Hoping for a distraction, I took the long way back to town, up 218 and then over along the county road so I could get a look at the creek and see if there were any kids from the high school cutting class out there. There weren’t. So, I turned onto Black Hawk and headed back to the station. This part of town, north of the river but south of the creek, is where I spend most of my time. It’s the older part of Dubois, where the city started and spread from. The farther north you go, the bleaker it gets. There are a few small farms tucked in here and there, but the hills get steep fast so it’s okay for grazing cattle but not much grows all that well. The old timers say it’s because of all the limestone out that way. Some say the big caves in Mahigan County Park stretch out that far and make the soil too rocky. Whatever the case, if you cross the creek heading out of town, you’re not going to find much more than woods and a few abandoned trailers.

The land is better south of the river. Pretty much all of the family farms down that way sold out long ago, so there’s not much but acres of high yield corn and soybeans. In the last few years, some of the land had been sold off and is covered with new houses. Big ones with big yards for big families. All of them have matching vinyl siding and swing sets out back. They make me think about what I could’ve had with Chrissie, so I try to avoid the place. Luckily, those people don’t call the police that often.

I checked in with dispatch as soon as I got back, in case there’d been any tips in the last few minutes. Sandy offered me a half-smile and shook her head to tell me that there hadn’t been, of course. I slumped back to my desk to re-read Doc’s lab report and check over the interviews from the neighbors again. The words started to bleed together after an hour or so. I wandered over to the coffee pot and picked through the cups by the sink until I found a clean one. White, with a big DeKalb flying corn cob logo on it.

“How’s it coming?”

The chief looked at me over the rim of his mug, a brown glazed souvenir cup from the 1971 Old Thresher’s Reunion. It was the only one I’ve ever seen him use and, as far as I knew, it marked the only time he’d ever taken a vacation. I finished pouring and then topped him off before putting the pot back.

“Rope was from Farm and Fleet,” I said. “But IFI was a bust.”

Chief grunted solemnly. “Need to put out another statement for the news.”

“I know it’s not what you want to hear, but this is really looking like it might be some kind of psycho. I can’t find any motive and the MO is just . . . awfully specific.”

“You may be right, but we need to be sure before we say something like that. Folks are scared enough as it is.”

“I’ll keep at it,” I said. “You want any help with the statement?”

The chief took a long sip and offered a weak smile from under his gray mustache. “Naw, it’s all right. I was going to just use the one from Tuesday, ‘cept rumors are starting to spread about the condition of the body. Folks are talking about satanic cults and other nonsense. I don’t want to get into those details if I can help it. At least not before the funeral.”

“Could say ‘subdued and died from wounds incurred’ and leave it at that.”

He nodded and lumbered back to his office. I made my way back to my desk and tried another pass at the interviews but gave up and switched to skimming the blotter from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation again. At shift change, I felt lots of curious looks but no one dared to ask me about the case. The chief came by and showed me his prepared statement. Three lines on a full sheet of paper:

At approximately 12:00 a.m., Tuesday, October 22, Richard M. Boyd died in his home at 19 Halverson Ave. from wounds incurred during a break in. There are no suspects at this time. Individuals with any information regarding Mr. Boyd’s death are strongly encouraged to call our anonymous tip line. 

“Looks good.”

“Go get some sleep,” said Chief Hayes, taking his paper back. “Funeral’s tomorrow.”

I drove around a while before going home to try and clear my head. It didn’t work. I pulled up to the curb on my street, cut the engine, and sat there for a few minutes in the dark. Most of the leaves had fallen off the trees and were skittering along the pavement like rats on ice. The streetlight caught one of the Styrofoam tombstones the kid across the street had put up on his lawn and it cast a shadow like a long thin bridge from their house to Mrs. Walshans’ place.

I’d rented the second story here since I transferred from Des Moines in ‘75. It wasn’t much but it was close to the station, and pretty quiet. I took care of the lawn and shoveled the walk, and Mrs. Walshans gave me a break on the rent. Her husband had been a state trooper, so she liked renting to cops.

Inside, I opened the fridge and reached for a package of hot dogs but the thought of getting a pot of water out to boil them seemed like too much work so I opened a beer instead. I took the shoebox out from under my bed that holds my gun cleaner, brushes, and rags and sat down at the second hand Formica table and started going over my .38. The radio played songs I didn’t know and I tried not to think about Des Moines. About Chrissie.

X

I’d met Chrissie in the spring of 1970. I’d started the police academy in Des Moines, and she was working as a secretary at the capitol and going to school at night. Just one of those things, I guess. We met one night out at a bar and there were sparks. She was smart, funny, full of life. She was way out of my league. I guess I was a little better looking back then than I am these days, but Chrissie? She was beautiful. I don’t know what she saw in me. I didn’t think about it. Pretty soon we were spending all of our free time together. We were married the next year.

When I graduated from the academy, I had a job waiting for me in the Des Moines Police Department. Chrissie finished night school and started a job at a commodities brokerage. We got ourselves a place and just lived. Nothing fancy, but it all clicked. We sat close together on the couch. She’d drink out of my glass sometimes. It was nice. I wanted to have kids, but she wanted to focus on her career for a couple years first. Wanted us to get established so we could really make a go of it. I wanted her to be happy, so I said okay. I volunteered for night shifts for the extra pay.

In ‘73 I was working nights only and Chrissie and I mostly saw each other at breakfast. Her breakfast anyway. We’d plan date nights, but those had turned to just dinner out. And then to just dinner in front of the TV. She went into work early so she would usually fall asleep by ten and push me off if I tried anything. When we were together it was a strain. We didn’t have much to talk about besides work, but what she did was so intangible I couldn’t relate. I couldn’t talk about what I did. You see a different version of the city after dark. The night side shows you the worst of everything. Shows you how generations of bad decisions erode hope. It gets under your skin and it’s hard to look at the same streets in the daylight. I think I wanted to protect her from that. Maybe I didn’t know what I’d say.

Most guys get into this line of work for two reasons. Either they believe in the rule of law and they want to help or they want the power you get from a badge and a gun. I had always thought I was the first type, but I’d started to think that people’s troubles run so deep there’s nothing you can really do but try to manage the fallout. Guys I trusted would complain that they have to follow the rules and the bad guys don’t. So they’d bend them when they felt like it. It looked to me that the result is the same either way. The dominos started falling a long time ago and nothing can stop them now.

I couldn’t talk to Chrissie about it. Couldn’t talk to anyone about it, especially the other guys in the department. It goes unsaid, but everybody knows how rough the job can get. You’re either man enough for it, or you’re not.

I started drinking around then. Really drinking, I mean.

Chrissie started working late around then, too.

I don’t know when it started exactly but working late led to dinner with her boss afterward a couple nights a week. Then probably more than that. I don’t want to speculate on the details. By the time I bothered to notice how far apart we’d become, she’d already prepared divorce papers. I didn’t blame her then, and I don’t now. I didn’t want to be around me either.

When Chrissie left, I couldn’t stand to be in the city anymore and I knew if I stayed that I’d go over the edge so I requested a transfer to a smaller department. I thought maybe in a smaller town I could focus better, not get so overwhelmed. A spot was open in Dubois, so I took it. Early on, it seemed like things weren’t going to change for me and I got pretty low in those first couple of weeks. There’s a night side here, too.

Chief Hayes reached out and I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t. One day he took me along to speak to a witness in a domestic case, a nineteen-year-old dropout who sat in the car while her boyfriend put his ex in the hospital. She said she didn’t want to talk to us because she was scared of what would happen to him. Or what he might do if he found out. She said she didn’t know what to do.

The chief had listened to her with his quiet way, and then he said something I’ll never forget. “It’s not easy to know what to do, but I think you want to do the right thing. That’s what matters. Right’s almost always harder. Sometimes it’s so hard you can’t do it no matter how hard you try. But if you don’t give it your best shot, well, you might as well fold up shop altogether.”

The girl started to cry. Then she started to give a statement. I decided it wasn’t time to fold up shop yet either.

I promised myself no more than a couple of drinks a day, except for maybe the really hard days, but only after work, not before anymore. I’ve stuck to that ever since, more or less, and it’s working. I got my act together with everything else after that and mostly just focused on the job. Pretty soon I was closing all my cases faster than anybody in the department and the chief had me picking up for some of the other guys. It felt good. Felt like I was doing good again. He encouraged me to take the Detective’s Exam, and when I passed, he promoted me to Investigations.

I’ve been here about ten years now. In that time I’ve gone on two dates. Both were nice girls, but we didn’t have much to talk about. Chrissie married that guy and I heard they have kids now. Some nights I wonder what their names are and if he plays catch with them after supper. Mostly I try to think about work instead.