SAFELY BURIED Chapter 14: Cranking for Clues

I rolled out of bed, stretched, and yawned. I needed a shower, but first I rinsed the old grounds out of my French press, boiled some water, and made a cup of coffee. In yesterday’s underwear I sat in the living room and drank it while I listened to the rain. The sound of church bells rode the breeze through the window. What to do, what to do? I could worship with Don Grapevine at the Presbyterian Church. I could try to talk to Walter Boofey, now that Edna Mae had given me his phone number. I could find out which nursing home Esther Dubbs was living in and pay her a visit. Or I could look into the foster home where Paula had stayed.

Once I put my mind to it, the decision was easy: I ate a bowl of Cocoa Puffs and a blueberry muffin while I watched Fox News. Then I showered, shaved, and got dressed. I didn’t want to call anyone before nine o’clock on a Sunday, so I paid some bills at my desk.

At nine on the dot I phoned Walter Boofey.

“Yeah what?” he said.

“Is this Mr. Walter Boofey?” I asked.

“Who are you?”

“Phil Larrison. I’m the editor of the paper in Campbellsville, Indiana.”

“How’d you get this number?”

“Your sister-in-law, Edna Mae, gave it to me.”

“She did, did she?” His voice moved a tenth of a millimeter closer to politeness. “I’m gonna have to get me a new number. You callin’ about them two murders up there?”

“As a matter of fact I am.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about it. I’d like to get my hands around the neck of the bastard that did it though.”

“Did you know Mr. and Mrs. Garth very well?”

“Not hardly. Edna Mae put them in touch with me. They were lookin’ for a place in the country, and she knew I had that old house. They went and looked at it and liked it, so I rented it to ’em. A few months later they asked if I’d sell the place. I said no, my wife grew up there and she’s sentimentally attached to it. The only reason I rented it to ’em was so somebody could take care of it for me. I guess I’d better get my butt up there and see what the place looks like. I don’t need this garbage.”

“Did you ever have any problems with them?”

“No. They paid their rent. That’s all I cared about. Look, I can’t talk right now. You caught me at a bad time.”

“I just have one or two more questions.”

“Goodbye.”

He hung up.

I paced the apartment from window to window, replaying the curt conversation. Instead of answering my questions, Boofey only added more. Why wouldn’t he sell the house to the Garths? Would Esther Dubbs have sold it if her daughter, Caroline, had been attached to it? Why had he even bought it if he couldn’t take care of it?

Perhaps fueled by all the sugar in the Cocoa Puffs, my mind raced to imagine possible explanations. Maybe Esther had sold simply because she needed the cash, or because she had moved to Brickton and didn’t want to pay for upkeep. Maybe Caroline had not been attached to the place back then. Maybe Boofey had bought it because he once meant to live there. As for his unwillingness to sell to the Garths, well, he didn’t have to sell the house if he didn’t want to. That line about Caroline’s attachment may have been just a polite excuse. When you don’t want to do something, one excuse is as good as another. Maybe he was the one who was attached to it. Perhaps he just liked owning a piece of land in the knobs. Lieutenant Bakery had told me that Boofey married Caroline a year after he had bought the place. Maybe it was the real-estate transaction that had brought them together.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. What did it matter anyway?

I had not brought up Chuck Martin’s story of the marijuana crop found in Blind Horse Hollow, but what difference did that make either? All Boofey had to say was he didn’t know anything about the marijuana, and for all I knew, he’d be telling the truth.

I began to get depressed. My so-called investigation was getting nowhere, and I was spending most of my time on it. On the other hand, only three days had passed since Paula had found the maggoty corpses. Take it easy, I said to myself. Don’t beat yourself up. The police haven’t solved the murders either.

The pep talk helped. I made another cup of coffee and looked up the two Dubbses in the phone book. There was no listing for a Judy Dubbs, but there was a Frank Jr. I knew that Esther’s husband had been named Frank, so it was likely that Frank Jr. was Judy’s deceased husband. She may have left the phone in his name for protection, so strangers wouldn’t think she lived alone.

A bright cheery voice that made me think of sunshiny water answered on the second ring: “Hel-lo.”

I introduced myself and asked if she was Judy Dubbs.

“Busted,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“I understand you’re related to Esther Dubbs,” I said. “I’m trying to reach her. I’d like to talk to her if I can.”

“You can talk to her, but she might not talk to you. She’s got Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t talk as much as she used to, poor thing. She’s in Twin Lakes Health Center—the memory-care unit.”

“You’re her daughter-in-law, aren’t you, Mrs. Dubbs?”

“That’s right, but please, call me Judy.”

“Judy, will I be allowed to see her if I go there?”

“What do you want to see her about?”

“I’d like to ask her about a marijuana harvest that took place on her property about eleven years ago.”

“You know, she might remember that. That’s the kind of thing she still hangs on to. She has her good days and bad days. She’s very confused. The wires in her head are crossed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “But I’d still like to meet her. Maybe I’ll get lucky and catch her on a good day.”

“You never know. Tell you what—if you go by yourself, you might scare her. She might think you’re a dentist. She’s afraid of dentists. Or she’ll think you’re going to steal her sweater or something. Maybe I should be there too.”

“I’d appreciate that—but I don’t want to put you to a lot of trouble.”

“You won’t. I go to see her every Thursday anyway. Would next Thursday be okay for you?”

I checked my calendar on the BlackBerry. “That’s good for me. Should I meet you there?”

“Yes. Let’s make it 12:30. She’ll be done with lunch by then. I’ll meet you in the lobby outside memory care.”

“Sounds good. Thursday at 12:30. See you then, Judy.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting you, Phil.”

That was different. A friendly voice on the telephone. Maybe I wouldn’t have to go on Prozac after all.

As I poured a fresh cup of coffee, what Paula had said about Chuck Martin and the foster home popped into my head. If her story was true, could it be proved? Did I have time to pursue it, or should I turn it over to a reporter? I could look into it first, then decide. I wouldn’t want anyone to get the idea that I thought Martin was a sex offender. I’d have to have proof. Personally, I had nothing against the man. The old publicity hound had always been accessible to me. But I didn’t owe him anything either. If he had abused Paula or anyone else, the public had a right to know. And he should pay for it.

I envisaged another front-page series. The Associated Press would pick it up. My stories would be in papers all over the state, maybe even the nation. Dateline and 48 Hours would be calling me. . . .

I shook off the vainglory and went to the Gleaner. As I entered the building, I heard the press running in the back—probably printing an outside job—but I had the newsroom to myself. I stood at my desk and wondered where to start. The Gleaner did not maintain a clip file, so I couldn’t go straight to a cabinet and pull out a folder with every story we had ever run on foster homes, and the archives on our Web site went back only five years. But we did have every issue of the Gleaner on microfilm.

In an effort to save time, I called my boss. Luckily I caught him just as he was about to enter his church. I asked him if he could remember if the paper had ever run any stories about a foster home for kids, a big brick farmhouse somewhere in the county.

“Sounds like the Good Shepherd Home,” Edward said. “Yeah, we did some stories on it. I think we ran a feature when it opened. Let me think now . . . that would have been back in the early eighties. It shut down when the county built its own group home about ten years ago.”

In the background I heard his wife say, “Ed, come on!”

“Who ran the place?” I said.

“Uhhh, you can look it up. I’ve got to run. The queen’s tapping her foot.”

At least now I knew I could find something in our back issues. I unlocked the safe and took out every reel of microfilm from 1980 through 2005. I chose this range of dates because Edward had not been precise about when the foster home had opened and closed. It was going to be a tedious job. I had fifty-two reels, two for each year, to look at. If I spent only ten minutes on each reel, it would take more than eight hours to go through all of them. Did I really want to do this? I began to have second thoughts, but the cool, rainy day was tailor-made for research. Rain pelted the windows, and the cubby hole where our microfilm reader stood felt snug and cozy. To move from page to page you had to crank the ancient machine by hand. I sat down and went to work.

Because I was looking for a particular story about the opening of the home, the cranking went fast at first—all I had to check were front pages and feature-fronts. I got through the first two reels in fourteen minutes, and on the third reel I found it. A front-page story in March 1982 had a photo of the home on a low rise against a backdrop of hills and clouds. A banner headline in 48-point Bodoni blared, “Good Shepherd Home Promises Safe Pasture for Stray Lambs.” I gagged. Headlines like that were the work of Miss Maudie Armbruster, the lifelong society editor who was still on the job when I first joined the staff. She was all right when writing about weddings and showers, but her flowery flattering prose should have been banned from the rest of the paper.

I learned from her article that Mr. and Mrs. Hugh DeLong were inviting everyone in Meridian County to join them in celebrating the grand opening of the Good Shepherd Home for the Innocents in the lovely countryside of Clark Township. “This much-needed facility,” according to Miss Armbruster, “will provide a caring and disciplined environment for children who, unfortunately, find themselves in need of proper supervision in loco parentis. Mr. and Mrs. DeLong deserve the county’s gratitude for unselfishly devoting themselves to shepherding these stray lambs.”

God help us. I made a few notes and moved on. I glanced at the headlines and photos on every page to make sure I didn’t miss something related to the home. Occasionally, in a summary of courthouse news, I found a couple lines stating that an unidentified juvenile had been placed in the home by Judge Jack Brandon. I cranked and cranked. By noon I was yawning, but I kept cranking. In a December 1985 issue I found a photo of members of the Campbellsville Disciples of Christ wrapping Christmas presents for children at the home. In 1986 there was an announcement that the home was planning a fund drive to add a wing on the south side. The Gleaner followed the drive for the next two months and eventually reported that more than $60,000 was raised in donations and pledges. The DeLongs then purchased a half-page ad thanking the contributors for their support.

In a 1992 issue I found a photo of Hugh and Grace DeLong receiving a plaque from the Campbellsville Rotary Club in honor of the tenth anniversary of the home. The small photo lacked contrast, which made the couple look as sinister as Paula had described them. Their black hair and clothes merged with the dark background, and their white faces looked like wraiths. Broad-shouldered and big-chested, Mr. DeLong seemed to be sucking in his gut. His wife was a cylindrical matron in a straight black dress.

As noon approached, I thought about going home for lunch, but instead I went to the lounge and bought a Snickers bar and a pack of peanut-butter crackers. After every two or three reels, I got up and walked around the office to work the kinks out of my legs. When the rain stopped and the sun came out, I wished I was outside. Then staff members began dribbling in.

In a 1996 reel I found a photo of several children from the home who were touring the old county jail. Deputy Chuck Martin was in the picture, grinning at the camera while two girls and three boys peered into an empty cell. Their names and ages were in the cutline. One of the boys was named Rickie Davidson. I wondered if he was the Rickie that Paula had told me about. I added their names to my notes. I sat back and stared at Deputy Martin’s toothy smile. The scene looked like an everyday civics lesson, but I suspected it was more than that. It was probably meant to tell the kids they’d better be good if they wanted to stay out of jail.

In a 2000 reel there was a front-page story about an eight-year-old boy, Barry Wilson, who had run away from the home. The next issue of the paper contained a head shot of the boy when he was six. The Gleaner followed the story for several weeks, but the child was never found, despite a statewide alert and an extensive search in Meridian County. The prevailing theory was that the boy had tried to thumb a ride on the highway and someone had picked him up and kidnapped him.

I came across other references to the home, but no stories or photos that provided me with names of other residents.

The county built a modern group home for children in 2001 and hired a professional administrator to run it. Shortly afterward, without fanfare, the Good Shepherd Home closed. I nearly missed a small item on the social pages that said Mr. and Mrs. Hugh DeLong had sold their farm in Meridian County and moved to Florida.

I quit cranking the machine in the middle of the reel for 2003, when I reached my first issue with the Gleaner. Since then we had not run anything about the Good Shepherd Home that I could remember. My neck felt stiff and the newsroom was buzzing. It was nearly four o’clock, and I had not yet done a thing for tomorrow’s paper, but I could catch up. As I returned the microfilm to the safe, the sliding blur of pages went on running in my head, as if it had been burned into my retinas. I felt nervous and jumpy, but it was a good kind of jumpiness.