Dream of The Broken Horses, The Page 11

  Time to take a break. I step out into the corridor, refresh myself at the water cooler. The Sheriff's Department is quiet this time of night. Down the hall the pebbled glass in Mace's office door is still lit up.

  Returning to the conference room, I decide to examine some of the physical evidence. I pull on a pair of latex gloves, open the first big carton... and am horrified! It contains the bedding from room 201 — blanket, sheets, pillow slips — discolored, bullet-rent, encrusted with rust-colored stains, which I take for residue of the victims' spilled blood and guts, even possibly of their sex.

  I reel back from the table. One thing to imagine the scene, quite another to be confronted by its effluvia.

  I close the first carton, open the second. This one contains the victims' clothing and personal possessions recovered from the crime scene: a woman's white tennis shirt, long khaki shorts, underwear, and sandals; a pair of men's jeans and blue denim work shirt, underwear, socks and sneakers; assorted men's and women's rings, watches, wallets, and keys. Just seeing this stuff makes me feel strange. Suddenly the victims are all too close. In my imagination, I realize, I've endowed them with mythic stature. Now, looking at these humble garments, they seem smaller and ever so vulnerable.

  I open a third box, find it filled with numerous glassine envelopes identified by neat handwritten labels. Some contain fingerprints lifted from room 201: exterior and interior doorknobs, phone receiver and dial, water glasses, faucets, bureau drawer handles, even the handle of the toilet. Others contain samples of hairs, fibers, various sweepings, scrapings and swabs, four red, ejected empty shotgun shells, and, most distressing, numerous shotgun pellets recovered from the room. There is a treasure trove of forensic evidence here — DNA samples, possible identifiers such as shoe and weapon material — all carefully preserved for presentation in a court of law, still available for analysis by forensic technologies that at the time of the murders did not exist.

  I examine the crime scene photographs. Like everything else in the case file, I find them meticulously keyed in Mace's hand to numbers inscribed on the lower right corners: (1) VICTIMS VIEWED FROM FOOT OF BED; (2) VICTIMS VIEWED FROM NORTH WALL; (3) VICTIMS VIEWED FROM BATHROOM DOORWAY... the list goes on.

  The pictures are brutal. It's the harsh colors that makes them so, and their total lack of artistry. It's clear no effort was expended on lighting or composition. These are straight-on, flash-lit police photographs that rob the victims of anything heroic. I barely recognize the neat and undistinguished motel room where I executed by moody drawings. The room, depicted in these photographs, appears smaller, more confining, and totally befouled. I sense the photographer's distaste, his wish to quickly do his job and get out. In one shot I note a reflection in the mirror above the bureau of young, eager Mace Bartel holding a handkerchief to his nose, watching with disgust.

  Enough! I prefer my own drawings, my imagined romantic renderings of the scene. When I drew the slain lovers, I wrapped them in gloom; in these pictures, their bodies are etched by a pitiless strobe.

  I turn back to the file folders, start reading through eyewitness statements. There isn't much of substance.

  Motel office clerk Johnny Powell thought the shots were backfire noises. By the time he turned to look, all he saw was the back of a man in a black raincoat running toward the street.

  A Mr. Jeff Slade, vendor of kewpie dolls and other amusement park prizes and giveaways, was returning to his room on foot after a taxing negotiation with the managers at Tremont Park, when he saw a man rush from the Flamingo Court into the adjoining parking lot. He didn't think much about it until a few seconds later when, entering the courtyard, he saw a number of people wearing dazed expressions standing on the motel balconies. Perhaps, Mr. Slade surmised, it was on account of his military training that he turned just as a dark car pulled rapidly out of the lot. He identified the car as a late-model Olds and caught a quick glance of the driver. The product of this sighting accompanies the interview report, a crude Identi-Kit portrait that resembles a classic square-faced cartoon thug. At the bottom, the interviewing officer notes that he doubts the reliability of Slade's account as two other persons independently identified the suspect as a four-year-old Chevrolet.

  A Mr. and Mrs. Albert Cranston from Buffalo reported a fleeing black-hatted, black-raincoated man, as did a Miss Bonnie Lanette, known to local police as a prostitute who worked the grounds of the amusement park and frequently brought her johns to the Flamingo for fun and games.

  Two small children were interviewed, a boy and a girl who'd been frolicking in the pool at the time. Neither could offer anything beyond the fact that a man had run down the exterior stairs then out toward the parking area just after the shots.

  All four of the ejected shotgun shells had been wiped clean of fingerprints, suggesting a well-thought out professional hit. It was also conjectured that since the shooter had worn a long coat and wide brim hat, he was also probably wearing gloves.

  Mr. Andrew Fulraine, through his attorneys, offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the shooter. Later this offer was raised to $75,000 and still later to $100,000. Investigators passed on word of this offer, huge for the time, in the hope of prying information from snitches. In fact, according to an advisory from the FBI, only two men in the entire Midwest were suspected of specializing in hitman work, neither of whom had recently been sighted in the Calista area.

  A search of public trash barrels, private garbage cans, and construction debris, Dumpsters within a quarter-mile radius of the Flamingo yielded no sign of weapon, hat, coat, or gloves. A thorough but fruitless search was made of trash-collection points within Tremont Park on the theory that the car seen leaving the motel parking lot might not have been an escape vehicle driven by the shooter. Rather, according to this alternative theory, the shooter had left the scene on foot, then merged into the crowds that thronged the amusement park that hot, humid afternoon.

  Fliers were printed up and placed beneath the doors of all rooms at the Flamingo, also posted on telephone poles and lampposts surrounding the motel, soliciting information abut anyone seen hovering suspiciously in the vicinity of the motel as far back as a week before the killings.

  Six people responded to this solicitation. None was able to provide any information beyond the fact that they'd seen a man (described by some as ‘tall and thin,’ by others as ‘medium height and stocky’) either strolling by the motel at a suspiciously slow speed.

  A thirty-two-year-old black man named Ralph ‘Snooky’ Vaughan, former employee of the Flamingo fired three months before for petty pilfering of soap, toilet tissue, and other room disposables, was interviewed by Detective Joe Burns for six hours. Vaughan had a criminal record for minor crimes going back to his early teenage years. A search of his room in a Gunktown rooming house produced a black raincoat and black fedora-style hat. Vaughan swore he'd been nowhere near the Flamingo Court since the day he was fired and had been engaged in a game of pick-up basketball on a housing project court the afternoon of the shootings. Nine witnesses verified his alibi. When his coat proved negative for powder burns, he was released.

  Seven of Barbara Fulraine's former lovers were interviewed, culled from a list provided by her ex. Of the seven, five were married. All begged investigators not to leak their names.

  Charles Maw was associate director of the Calista Repertory Theater Company. He stated that he had been a longtime friend of Barbara Fulraine, that they'd been lovers prior to her marriage, and had resumed their affair approximately six months after the Fulraine child was snatched.

  Maw stated he had acted as intermediary in a bizarre encounter in connection with the earlier crime. According to his account, about a year and a half after the snatching, Mrs. Fulraine, desperate to find her daughter, was actively consulting gypsy fortune-tellers around town. One, a card reader who worked out of a storefront at Danvers and 36th, told her that her child was dead and promised to provide information on the whereabouts of the b
ody in exchange for $15,000 cash, $5,000 to be paid up front, the balance upon delivery of the girl's corpse.

  A late night meeting was arranged. Charles Maw, acting for Mrs. Fulraine, placed the $10,000 final payment in a locker at the Central Bus Terminal, then followed a chain of complicated instructions that led him, in the style of a treasure hunt, from a public phone booth to a message secreted in the men's room of a Gunktown bar to another message hidden beneath a rock on the east bank of the Calista River. Finally, he was picked up by a van with blacked-out windows, driven around town for a while, then into a garage at an unknown location.

  Here a man and two women, faces encased in stockings, pointed to a cardboard carton that, they said, contained the preserved remains of the Fulraine child. When Maw opened the carton, he found what he took to be the body of an infant, but the lighting was so dim, the odor so horrific, the corpse so wrinkled and distorted, he could not possibly identify it as Belle Fulraine. Nevertheless, intimidated by the people surrounding him, he handed over the key to the locker, at which point the three jumped into the van and sped off, leaving him alone with the pungent leathery remains.

  When Maw picked up the carton and stumbled out of the garage, he found himself not two hundred yards from smelters with smokestacks bearing the words FULRAINE STEEL.

  It had been a swindle, of course. The little body was that of a black male infant, preserved, according to experts, in a manner employed by Haitian voodoo practitioners. By the time police were brought in, the $10,000 was gone and the storefront card reader had disappeared. The incident marked the end of Charles Maw's affair with Barbara Fulraine and left him with badly shattered nerves.

  It's a strange story and it fills me with pity. It hurts to think of Barbara stooping so low, then being taken in by such a transparent scam. That she was running around consulting with scummy fortune-tellers tells me how very desperate she must have been. As for Maw, he strikes me as a fool. What kind of friend was he not to have warned her off these con artists?"

  The six other interviewed former lovers were a junior executive at Fulraine Steel; a star third baseman with the Calista Forgers; a cellist who played with the Calista Symphony; an orthopedic surgeon from the Lucinda Taft Medical Center; a professor of theology at Calista State University; and a mechanic who worked at British Motors in Van Buren Heights where he took care of Mrs. Fulraine's Jaguar coupe.

  All spoke of her with affection and respect, not one expressing the slightest degree of ill will. The mechanic described her as ‘a gracious person’ whom it had been his ‘great privilege’ to know. The theologian said, ‘She was quite the finest woman I've ever known.’ The cellist said that making love with her was ‘akin to reveling in the music of the spheres.’ Charles Maw, the only one to make negative comments, described her as ‘a user who left many husks behind... and I count myself among them.’ But even he claimed he harbored no animus toward her. ‘With Barbara I had some of the most memorable and pleasureful experiences of my life.’

  Gossip columnist Waldo Channing was interviewed by Mace Bartel. His comments, unlike those of the former lovers, were not respectful at all:

  Witness stated he was close friend and confidant of victim for many years. Witness stated victim was ‘splendid, exciting person of great passion and sensuality’ and ‘I was privy to all her secrets. There was nothing that happened in her life she did not reveal to me, knowing I would always hold her confidences.’

  Witness stated that contrary to opinion commonly held in victim's circle, victim was not promiscuous. Witness stated, ‘She did not engage in serial affairs. She was a one-guy-at-a-time-type gal.’ Witness stated he and victim were in love, but ‘a physical affair between us was not to be. Our affair was far more sublime than that, what the French call “une affaire de coeur.”’

  Witness stated he is certain victim Fulraine was not romantically involved with victim Jessup. Witness stated, ‘If she were she would certainly have told me about it. So, you see, it's simply impossible. There has to be another explanation.’ When told that investigators had proof that victims met numerous times at the Flamingo Court, witness became angry. ‘Impossible! Can't be true!’ When assured that it was, witness broke out in a sweat. Witness then asked for a glass of water and time-out ‘to collect my thoughts.’

  When interview resumed, witness stated, ‘if you ask me, there was something fishy going on between Barbara and that shrink she was seeing.’ Asked to explain what he meant, witness stated, ‘That's my impression. I just don't trust the man. I think he's a total opportunist. Anyhow, I very much doubt she revealed to him the same intimate details of her life she shared with me. I'm sure she never shared those secrets with anyone else.’

  Witness stated that now that victim is deceased, he feels free to reveal some of her confidences. Witness stated victim despised Jack Cody. Witness stated, ‘She thought him common, which of course he was. She told me the only reason she continued to see him was that they were into the same kind of sexual kinks and that made sex with him a lot of fun. She never believed for one instant that he could turn up her missing daughter, but still she pretended she did. She told me, “He thinks he's using me, Waldo, but really I'm using him.” She told me she was not afraid of Cody, that “he puts on a tough front, but he'd just a big pussy underneath.”’

  Witness stated victim believed her husband had homosexual inclinations and that she'd had him followed by a private detective in hope she could turn up sufficient proof to embarrass him so he'd back down on his custody claim. Witness stated victim told him the private eye she hired never came up with anything. Witness stated victim told him, “I think Andrew's just too uptight to indulge himself like that around here.”

  Witness stated, ‘Barbara had all sorts of evil schemes up her sleeve. She could be pretty malicious at times, which is why we got along so famously. She had no use for the hypocrites who run Calista society, especially her former in-laws. In fact, she held the Fulraines in utter contempt.

  Witness stated that victim told him her shrink was secretly in love with her. Witness stated that victim told him, “I can tell by the way he looks at me, he wants to get into my pants.” Witness stated victim told him she often tried to arouse shrink with tales about her sexual depravity. Witness stated victim was contemptuous of shrink and only continued to see him ‘because it amused her to see how crazy and lovesick she could make him.’

  Witness stated, ‘Barbara was a great actress. She could convince anyone of anything. If she'd gone on the stage, she'd have been a tremendous star.’ Witness stated, ‘People thought she was this self-confident, cool beauty. In fact she was terribly insecure about herself, didn't even think she was particularly attractive. One time when I was with her, she looked at herself in the mirror then ran her hands down the side of her face. “Soon it'll be all over for me, Waldo,” she told me. “I'll become an old bag and no one will lust after me anymore.”’

  Witness stated victim feared old age. “It's like a shipwreck,” she told me. “You get bashed and battered against the rocks, pieces of you break off, then finally you slip into the drink.”’

  Witness stated victim was a manipulator who played up to other women she viewed as her rivals. Witness stated victim actually loathed these women but ‘she beguiled them with her false concern and friendly smile.’ Witness stated victim ‘was the sort of woman who, if she discovered one of her rivals was in love with a man, she'd go after that man, seduce him, just to hurt and vanquish the rival.’ Witness stated victim told him tales about her affairs and then mocked the way her former lovers acted when she broke off with them. Witness stated victim enjoyed ‘sending them scurrying back to their wives knowing that having been with her, tasted her delights, they'd never be content with their little “wifie-poos” again.’

  Witness stated that if it were true that victim Fulraine had been carrying on an affair with victim Jessup, ‘it must have been one of those inconsequential ventures with which she amused herself, and I'm certai
n the only reason she didn't tell me about it was she was saving up the story till she'd engineered an amusing denouement.’

  Witness stated he had no idea who might have wanted to harm victim or have her killed. Witness stated, ‘She probably had a zillion enemies, so your guess is as good as mine.’

  Evaluation:

  Witness started out praising victim. However, once witness was assured victim had been involved with Jessup, he became so angry she hadn't confided in him about affair that he attempted to use remainder of the interview to destroy her character and reputation. There is absolutely no evidence that victim's psychiatrist had anything but a professional relationship with her, not that victim hired a private investigator to find proof that her husband was homosexual. For these reasons, and because witness's remarks contradict information conveyed by other interviewees, investigator deems this witness unreliable.

  Whew! Impossible not to concur with Mace's evaluation. Waldo Channing's portrait of Barbara is at odds with everything I know of her, the ravings of a man consumed by spite.

  What upsets me most, of course, are his comments about Dad — that he was an opportunist and that there was something between him and Barbara. Here again I feel the sharp edge of Waldo's malice, a nearly insane jealousy of anyone beside himself who had access to Barbara's confidences. Unable to make love to her yet spellbound by her glamour, he had to believe he was her only confidant. That a mere psychiatrist, not even a member of their ‘Happy Few,’ might have access to secrets she denied to him seems to have sent Waldo into paroxysms of rage.

  It's also difficult for me to believe Barbara spent three hours a week on Dad's analytic couch merely because it ‘amused her to see how crazy and lovesick she could make him.’ Between her two affairs she had sufficient diversions in her life... and as anyone who's been in analysis knows, the process is a good deal more painful than amusing.

  Continuing to read through the case file, I come upon a folder devoted to Jack Cody: interviews with his friends and Elms Club staff and those who supported his alibi — the judge who was his luncheon companion at the Downtown Athletic Club the day of the killings, as well as the waiters and barman who served them as they ate and drank.