A Child's Garden of Death (2 page)

“We could try a trace on the doll …”

“I don't think so. You know, the family could have been from out-of-state, passing through … killed by a hitch-hiker.”

“I know,” the Chief said. He sat on the wall, his back to the road, looking up the gradually sloped hill where police formed a hive of activity at the grave site. His voice was sad. “All the informers, computers and legwork in the world won't help on this one. How, Lyon? How in the hell do you find a murderer if you don't know who the victims are?”

“I don't know, Rocco.” He sat on the stone wall next to the large police officer, and they both let their gaze wander from the grave toward the clear Connecticut afternoon sky. “I really don't know, but that's your job.”

“It's a miracle they were found, even today. This area is rural, the real boonies. Thirty years ago it must have been the ends of the earth.”

“Why the bulldozer out here?”

“A developer.”

“Here, in the middle of nowhere?”

“I thought maybe you knew about it. A group is planning to build a large condominium retirement village out here. Natural setting, homes built in the hillside, clusters, retain all the natural beauty, all that sort of thing. Thank God the 'dozer operator didn't have a hangover and saw what in hell he was slicing through.”

“You might have been better off if they'd left it the way it was.”

“That's a hell of a thing to say.”

“Don't involve me, Rocco.”

“I need this one, Lyon. My finale, my swan song. If this thing is handled properly, I can retire, and now that Garfland's gone, I can run for town clerk.”

“You've got your own force and a couple thousand state police you can call on.”

“The Murphysville Police Force boasts twelve men, and that includes writing traffic tickets, school grade crossings, and trying to keep Hinkle sober.”

“I've always been interested in your work, Rocco. But I'm not a professional. And besides—I'm working on a project.”

“That child in the grave up there would be about the same age as …”

“Come on, Rocco.”

The large man beside Lyon looked instantly remorseful. Although his daughter, Remley, was Lyon's goddaughter, unspoken between them was a spring day years ago.

An instant picture transformed the country lane before him.

A little girl, skirt billowing in the wind as she pedals furiously on her new bike as he turns and goes back into the house on the Green. Lyon stood … and the picture was gone.

The Chiefs voice softened. “She liked your last book.”

“Which one?”

“The Monster on the Mantel. What's the new one?”

“The Cat in the Capitol. And I intend to finish it.”

“Finish it in your spare time.”

“That's my livelihood you so blithely give away.”

They were standing face to face, and a slight twist of the police officer's lips betokened the good humor Lyon knew lurked just below the surface.

“You've just never realized that it isn't Korea anymore, Chief.”

“For God's sake, that was more years ago than I care to remember.”

“Agreed.” In the slightly graying but huge police chief before him, Lyon could still see the young ranger captain of twenty years before. They had met accidentally in division headquarters. Lyon was the youngest Assistant G-2 in FECOM and Rocco Herbert a recently promoted ranger captain and company commander. In those days, from that time, Rocco and his ranger company became Lyon's eyes and ears. They foraged behind enemy lines, acted as point company, and constantly fed information back in an orderly and complete manner. They made an excellent team, and higher command seemed to sense this strange alliance between the all-American tackle and gruff ranger officer and the almost effete Lyon, who, although commissioned as an Infantry officer, never served with a line company.

They had operated as an effective team, as if a strange symbiotic relationship transcended each of them and allowed the sums of their parts to become a force larger than each individually.

Rocco Herbert kicked at the stone wall. “I swear to Christ,” he said, “I'm going back to resign. Even watching rock festivals is better'n this.”

“Retire, run a security force at some plant and get fat.”

“Screw you,” the Chief said and kicked the wall again.

“Every time you kick that wall you knock a rock off. Do you know the work it took to build that thing one hundred and fifty years ago?”

They both looked down the shaded road and the wall that stretched its length for several hundred yards. “Poor bastards,” Rocco said reflectively.

“Who? The ones who built the wall?”

“No. The ones on the hill up there.”

They contemplated the hill in the quiet day. Occasional distant murmurs from men working at the grave site could be heard. The road behind them ran through the bed of the valley, a small stream on the other side of the road, and the hill before them rose in a gentle slope from the wall to traprock crest. Once, years ago, cleared and utilized as dairy pasture. Now, covered with second-growth timber and spotted with glacier boulders too large to be moved to the wall site.

The grave far up the hill several hundred yards from the road was near the ridge top, and that bothered Lyon. He began to think about that while Rocco waited patiently.

“Something's wrong,” Lyon said. “It doesn't fit.”

“What's that?” Rocco replied, trying to hide the eager lilt to his voice.

“I don't think they were killed here, but were transported and buried.”

Rocco thought a moment. “Possibly.”

“The configuration of the hill.” Lyon lapsed into silence again. “Whose land is this? Who would use it, walk over it?”

“It's part of Water Company property. Just recently they sold off this side of the ridge to the condominium developer. I doubt that anyone's been here in years except for hunters.”

“Hunters. Yes,” Lyon said. “In the past fifty years they're probably the only ones who have walked this land.”

“Not picturesque enough for tourists, no trail for hikers, too wild for lovers.”

Lyon continued looking up the hill. Except for the naked cut made by the bulldozer that had unearthed the bodies, the hillside was close to virginal. “Pheasant country,” he said.

“An occasional deer,” the Chief replied.

The location of the grave, the wild aspect of the hill—something in that combination bothered Lyon. He turned toward Chief Herbert. “Too far up the hill.”

“What?”

“Why would he bury them that far up the ridge when a few yards in from the road would have been adequate?”

“He? Yeah—probably was a man. Offhand I can't recall any women mass murderers bashing in the collective skulls of whole families. At least not since Lizzie Borden. But as far as the distance up the hill, he was probably just cautious.”

“That's a long way to lug three bodies for caution's sake.”

“Not if he didn't want them found for thirty years—or ever.”

“Perhaps,” Lyon mused. “Perhaps.”

“That's not much to go on,” Rocco said. “A five-state missing persons search, maybe something from the physical evidence. Not much, Lyon.”

The descending sun reflected orange globes on the windshields of the line of police cruisers. A man's deep laugh echoed across the valley from the grave site and Lyon wondered what could be humorous in that small plot, that garden of death. His car waited and he wanted to leave, to be away from this place with its shattered secret which cast a foreboding aura over the valley.

He turned toward the expectant chief. “We're having a few people over to the house Monday night. Why don't you and Martha stop in?”

“We'd like to,” the police officer replied. “Are you sure there's no chance we can do something with that doll?”

“I know you'll try, Rocco, but I doubt it.”

“Jesus, I don't know where in hell to start.”

“Another one like the girl in the fire.”

“I'm afraid so, unless something unexpected turns up,” Rocco said.

They both knew that Lyon referred to the body of the little girl discovered in the smoldering ruins of the Hartford circus fire. In 1944 the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus tent had unexpectedly caught fire in Hartford. Within four minutes the fire had raged out of control and quickly killed over a hundred people. One of the victims was a small girl who was never identified or claimed. For several years the body was kept in a local mortuary, then finally buried. Twenty-five years later the child was still unknown and unclaimed. Rocco had once learned that newly commissioned troopers were assigned to the investigation as a sort of initiation ritual. After thousands of hours of investigation there was still no clue to the identity of the girl.

“Monday about eight,” Lyon said and put an arm on the morose chief's shoulder.

“Damn it all, Lyon. Just think about it.”

“I know you'll do all that can be done.”

“Which won't be much.”

Lyon walked toward the small red Datsun parked beyond the police cruisers, his pace becoming quite brisk as from the corner of his eye he saw a group of officers coming down the hill carrying large rubber bags.

He was compelled to turn. Two officers carried each bag, except for the smallest bag, held by the youngest officer—carried away from his body as if he were afraid of defilement.

In the car he turned the ignition too violently. The starter engine buzzed and the car stalled. Sitting back in the seat he breathed deeply and then slowly started the engine again. Turning the wheels abruptly he pulled away from the line of cruisers and accelerated quickly down the country road. The late afternoon sun spreckled through overhanging trees and cast rapidly changing patterns across his face, and he jammed the gear into fourth and felt the car jerk forward with gained momentum.

He thought again of his relationship with the large police officer. Initially a natural bond of interest between intelligence officer and ranger captain; a needed thing in a combat zone. Later, the discovery that they were both Nutmeggers, and finally R and R leave in Japan and Lyon's introduction, by the captain, into strange and erotic rites with dimpled young Japanese women.

Chief Rocco Herbert, at one time the youngest chief in the state. Still certainly the largest in physical size. The man's sheer mass aided his innate gentleness and usually precluded the necessity for him to utilize violent methods. A man who during his Army career wanted to be division food officer, and by order of senior command stayed on as ranger captain, delegated to carry out the most dangerous and necessary missions of the division.

Rocco Herbert, professional police officer whose greatest desire was election to town clerk—keeper of documents, neat and dusty volumes of deeds and mortgages—an incongruous man in a vault of records. And yet Lyon remembered his last visit to the Chief's house, a vivid picture of a man holding a small kitten in his hamlike hands, with a Colt Trooper MKV magnum revolver clipped to his belt.

They had been discharged from service almost simultaneously and their friendship had continued. Rocco, already married and a father, as the returning war hero had been unanimously offered the position of town police chief, a Bronze Star for bravery and his large size seeming to be his greatest assets.

Lyon had gone to Yale for graduate work, and even then the friendship had continued. It had been Rocco who had read the first draft of Lyon's thesis on violence in Victorian children's literature, and it was Rocco who had pointed out in clear fashion new insights that allowed Lyon to finish his work with a firm and unique slant.

The relationship continued over the years as Lyon taught English and Rocco, in an initial burst of ambition, studied law and criminology. The police chief, with his natural affinity for children and animals, was often the first reader of Lyon's books, while Lyon would listen to Rocco's enthusiastic reports of his ongoing education, an enthusiasm that began to wane over the years with the killing drudgery of mundane duties and boredom. Over the years the relationship had changed both of them; perhaps in light of what had happened to their lives, had saved each of them.

No, Lyon thought, friendship stopped at the brink of immersion into violence and death. No way. He wrenched the car violently into the fast lane of the Interstate and accelerated the sports car to eighty.

The honking car pulled alongside and broke Lyon's reverie. The state trooper, his cruiser parallel to Lyon's car, waved, and Lyon waved back. With whining siren the trooper pulled ahead of the Datsun to make quick movements in and out in front of the small car.

A glance at the speedometer showed Lyon that both cars were doing over eighty, and it suddenly occurred to him that the trooper's gestures were not a friendly salutation but an order to pull off the highway. The small car slowed with a drift onto the emergency lane and came to a halt on the shoulder. The police cruiser pulled up a few yards behind him. The trooper, shaking his head, left his car and approached Lyon's.

“I've been following you for a mile, sir. Didn't you see my lights?”

“No, officer. I didn't notice until you pulled alongside.”

“You were doing over eighty.”

“Yes, this thing really moves along, doesn't it?”

The trooper shook his head. “Yes, sir. May I see your license and registration? Please take them out of your wallet and hand them to me.”

“I don't seem to have my wallet with me.”

“The registration. Look in the glove compartment.”

“No, I keep it in my wallet also.”

“Are you the owner of this vehicle?”

“Yes. My name is Lyon Wentworth.”

“Just a moment, please.” The trooper went back to the cruiser, and Lyon could see him talking into the microphone of his radio. Lyon was annoyed at the delay and momentarily considered pulling off the shoulder, back onto the highway, but then again, he supposed that would annoy the trooper.