Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (33 page)

She wasn't surprised to learn that he'd barely heard of the case. Northern and southern Big Horn County were divided by twenty miles of mineral-rich badlands, and most public officials lived in the area around the county-seat community of Basin in the south. The only time the folks from the upper Big Horn Basin saw them was just before elections. She couldn't remember ever seeing this Tharp person.

He looked unhurried, so she gave him the full briefing, starting with her anger over the laudatory letters in the Lovell
Chronicle
and the phony twenty-fifth anniversary celebration. A few times she had to stop to compose herself, and when she talked about her family she couldn't hold back the tears.

Dean sat quietly while the county attorney blinked behind his rose-tinted glasses and didn't give her much encouragement. He had a funny little habit of repeating back your last few words in a kind of mumble:

"So I told Minda to go home and get some sleep."

". . . Get some sleep."

"We came down here as a last resort."

"... A last resort."

When the echo of her final comment died away, he said, "If you and your daughters can round up twenty more victims, then maybe we can do something."

"Twenty?" Arden asked. The numbers game was getting tougher. "Why twenty?"

"Well, there's no magic in twenty," Tharp admitted in his lazy tenor drawl, "but if you have twenty, your chances with a jury are better than if you have two or three."

She said, "One should be plenty."

"One should be plenty," he repeated. After a long rumination

DOC'

while he stared at his pencil, he observed that it didn't make much sense to bring charges that wouldn't stick. A doctor with twenty-five years of service would have everything going for him. If he were brought to trial and cleared, he'd end up more powerful than ever. Was that what she had in mind? "Me neither," he said, without waiting for an answer. Then his face relaxed a little and he said, "Do you think some of the victims would visit with me? Mind you, I'm not guaranteeing a thing."

"They're sick of just talking," Arden said. "They already talked to their bishops and a bunch of lawyers and two state investigators. Six of 'em testified at the Medical Board hearing. I hate to even mention their names. I've got a daughter over in Gillette that's fed up with the whole thing. Plumb finished! Another one just sits and cries. And after all they've gone through, that dang Story is still up on the hill giving pelvics! And you want twenty names! These poor women, why should they talk to you at all?"

"Talk to you at all," Terrill Tharp said. He repeated that he'd be more than willing to listen to their stories. The McArthurs left, more upset than ever.

47

ALETHA DURTSCHE

Things were getting sticky on the mail route. Formerly friendly shopkeepers, neighbor folks who'd sent flowers when she had babies, sisters and brothers who'd worked with her on church projects—all turned cold toward her. She would walk into a store with a fistful of mail, call out her usual "Good morning!" and conduct her business in a cold silence. She listened in church as the women stood up to give their testimony: "Dr. Story is being persecuted and we should all help him. . . ." "I can't believe that the man who saved my dad's life is being run out of town . . ." "God bless Dr. Story. . . ." The grandmother of one of his victims announced in church that Dr. Story was "being crucified just like Jesus Christ."

One day Aletha delivered mail to Ponderosa Floral on Main Street. "Good morning," she said to the proprietor, and laid the mail on the counter.

"Aletha?" Beverly Moody said. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"I just found out last night that you're one of the witnesses. We had a meeting at our church and Dr. Story gave us your names."

Aletha had heard that he was using the Lovell Bible Church for support and that he'd called for a boycott of the victims' business establishments, but she was surprised to learn that Bev Moody was a church member. She'd always thought the chunky little florist was a Mormon from another ward.

"Yes," Aletha said nervously. "I testified."

"I can't believe you'd do that to Dr. Story."

"What do you mean?"

The woman emerged from behind the counter. "You Mormons!" she said. "You wicked
wicked
Mormons! Dr. Story's been preaching the word of God for over twenty-five years. He's been a good teacher for our children. He's a kind, loving, considerate human being. . . ."

Aletha backed toward the exit. Keep your cool, she told herself. Let her talk.

The woman's round face turned pink. "Are you claiming he raped you?" she demanded.

"Yes."

"Oh, you're gonna pay! You'll go straight to hell. You wicked people will pay dearly. . . ."

"Yes," Aletha said as she backed out the door. "The wicked people will pay."

She attended a family function at her Uncle LaMar Averett's house. The former police chief was a short barrel-chested man with white hair and glasses and the profile of an eagle. He was her mother's oldest brother and one of her favorite relatives. She'd hardly arrived before Uncle LaMar's daughter Carol began complaining about what "those women" were doing to Dr. Story. Another cousin noted that Arden McArthur was a liar.

"Well, he raped
me,"
Aletha put in.

"Oh, Aletha!" one of the cousins said in the tone of an indulgent adult. The relatives sat in the kitchen and traded stories about Dr. Story and his skills. Aletha didn't take part, but she knew that most of the remarks were intended for her ears.

Not long afterward, Uncle LaMar cornered her at another gathering and said, "Aletha, we need to talk about all this shit that's going on."

"What shit is that, Uncle LaMar?" the plainspoken woman asked.

"Well, I hope you don't think I've ever called you a liar, but Doc Story's never done anything to my family. He's just been totally good to all of us."

"He was always good to my family, too, Uncle LaMar. That's why it hurt me so deeply when he did what he did. I couldn't understand why he'd do that to me—but he did."

"Well, honey," the old man said, "I just can't go along with that."

"Well, then, you're calling me a liar."

"That's not what I mean and you know it."

"Well, it
is
what you mean, Uncle LaMar! I'm saying he did it. If you don't believe me, then you're calling me a liar."

"I just don't want these bad feelings between us."

"Uncle LaMar, as long as you think I'm a liar, there'll always be bad feelings."

He shook his head and walked away. Aletha thought, He can't admit he was mistaken when he refused to take action. Why, he's one of the reasons this whole thing happened! What a shame; my favorite uncle would rather lose me than admit he was wrong.

Aletha dragged Mike to a postal workers' party and someone suggested a liars' game. A woman who'd testified for Story said, "I can't tell a lie. There's only one person in this room that's a liar." Aletha and Mike left quietly.

Mike had been supportive, but she knew he was being taunted daily at the bentonite plant. "I told you," he said one night after work. "Look what Arden McArthur got us into."

Aletha said, "Hey, nobody made me testify. I had to do it." But she let her voice drop off and wasn't sure he heard. They went to bed without speaking.

With Mike's support waning, her own spirits fell. She'd always shampooed her furniture every few months, kept her carpets spotless, dusted walls, spritzed bugs, ripped out garden weeds. For seven years she'd never failed to write in her journal daily. But now she let everything slide. She even stopped work on a sweater she'd been knitting for her daughter.

"DOC"

It didn't help that a few other women dropped hints that they'd been abused on the doctor's automatic table. When Aletha asked why they didn't come forward, they mumbled apologies. Once she wouldn't have understood, but she sure did now.

48

ARDEN McARTHUR

Arden hit on a way to meet Terrill Tharp's demand for twenty names. If it worked, it would be the coup of a lifetime. She phoned the idea to her childhood friend John Abraham. She suggested that his bishops contact the victims who were known to them and urge them to get in touch with Arden, anonymously if preferred. Object: justice. What happened after that would be up to each woman's conscience.

Arden could tell by the stake president's tone that he didn't think much of her suggestion. From the beginning he'd tried to keep from involving the church. She knew his reasoning and had to admit he had a point. Story was trying to make the Medical Board's action look like the result of an LDS conspiracy. Arden decided she needed another plan.

She remembered hearing a rumor that Diana Harrison had tried to bring two new victims to the Medical Board hearings. Maybe these women would talk now. But who were they?

She drove to her old sewing companion's house and found her working in the yard. At first, Diana didn't want to discuss the case.

"Diana," Arden said, "you've got to get off the fence."

"DOC"

"I'm not on the fence."

"Yes, you are!"

Diana sighed.

"What if this goes to court?" Arden persisted. "You're gonna have to decide, 'cause you know more about him than anybody. You tried to tell me about him the day I went up to pick up the laundry, and I just walked out crying."

The two Mormon women talked for an hour in the twilight. Diana finally admitted that her aunt, Emma Lu Meeks, was plenty annoyed about Story, and Emma Lu's elderly neighbor Julia Bradbury might have something to say, too. "Fine," Arden said. "I'll call the prosecutor. They can all get together in my home."

49

TERRILL THARP

He'd learned early in his short career as a rural county attorney that the more he acted like the shy farm boy he'd once been, the more cooperation he got. In the case of Dr. Story, it hadn't been hard to feign ignorance. Tharp had read a few newspaper items about the license revocation, but it seemed to be the Medical Board's show and he was just as happy to be on the sidelines.

A few weeks back, Lovell Police Chief Dave Wilcock had mentioned Story on the telephone and said that his victims were playing their hands so close that nobody even knew their names. "Well, what are we supposed to do about that?" Tharp had asked. "The damn Medical Board isn't about to release names. Doctors are more secretive than lawyers'll ever be."

Wilcock said he'd just wanted to bring him up to date.

"Well, I appreciate that," the county attorney had said. "Now, by God, all we can do is twiddle our thumbs and see if somebody comes forward." He knew this wasn't the perfect posture for a man sworn to uphold justice all the way from the Rockies to the Big Horns, but he didn't see where he had much choice.

He couldn't decide what to make of the McArthurs. The Mrs.

had seemed articulate and respectable, if a little shrill and overpro-tective of her daughters and the other LDS women. She was certainly ultrarighteous, but that was the norm in Big Horn County, a land of stern and stubborn people. He'd been forced into jury trials for $16 traffic tickets, and he'd tried cases involving fanatics like the Posse Comitatus and the Minutemen and others who seemed to believe that their main right under the U.S. Constitution was—as he once put it—"to act like horses' asses in court."

Arden McArthur hadn't seemed quite that irrational. After she'd stopped snuffling and sniffling and waving the letters to the editor, she'd laid out her evidence pretty much like a good lawyer. He had to admit it was a hell of a case—if true. But why hadn't any of the victims made an official complaint in the twenty-five years this had been going on?

He summoned the police chief for a talk. Dave Wilcock was an odd duck for a cop—shy, reserved, soft of voice, with the command presence of a nervous deer. The joke on him was that when he yelled "freeze!" suspects had to ask him to repeat. But Lovell wasn't known for conventional lawmen. Most of Wilcock's predecessors had been farmers. Until recently, the Lovell P.D. had operated out of a storefront across the street from the Cactus Bar. Now it was squeezed into a two-room addition in the rear of the small Town Hall.

Wilcock was in his mid-thirties, an educated cop with a degree in police science. When he wasn't fighting crime, he was fighting weight. Tharp had seen him so big around the middle that he couldn't see his sox.

"Tell me what you know about Dr. Story," Tharp said as he poured a welcoming cup of orange pekoe. He avoided coffee; he didn't like doing business from his ceiling.

Wilcock was LDS, but the county attorney had seen enough of him to suspect that he was really a jack Mormon, one with the same casual air about his church as Tharp had about his own Lutheranism. He'd seen Dave Wilcock smoke and now watched him suck up his tea like a heathen.

"Story's a tin god in Lovell," the chief began in his quiet voice.