SAFELY BURIED Chapter 20: Face to Face with the Devil

I soaked in the tub, made some coffee, and turned on the news. The talking heads were screaming at one another again, and every other story had some kind of celebrity tie-in. I couldn’t take it. I zapped the TV and spent the next hour eating breakfast and preparing my class.

At 12:45 I finally got dressed and went to the Gleaner. Normally I had off Wednesday, but I went in anyway. I ran a gauntlet of gasps and questions in the front office. I held a brief news meeting to get myself up to the minute. Then I got on the computer.

While I was deleting the nearly 200 emails that had accumulated since yesterday, Detective Lieutenant Bakery knocked on the door frame. When I looked up, he said, “What’d you do to your face?”

“It’s what someone else did,” I replied. “Come in, Lieutenant. Have a seat.”

He took two long strides into my office and sat on the chair alongside my desk. Hunched slightly forward, he was almost in my face. “You look like you got clawed by a cat,” he said.

“Thanks.” I leaned back and rolled a few inches away from the desk. “It happened at the Garth house last night. I have a confession to make—I sort of broke in.”

“You ‘sort of’ broke in. . . . What does that mean?”

I told him how I discovered someone was in the house, how I banged on the door but no one answered, and how the piece of plywood on the door “practically fell off when I touched it” (a slight exaggeration). I kind of sort of in a way made it sound as though someone had broken in just moments before I did, as if that gave me the right to do the same thing. I told him how I searched the rooms but couldn’t find anyone—until I started down the cellar steps.

“Somebody was under the steps,” I said. “He grabbed my ankle and yanked it backwards between two of the steps. I went flying head first. I scraped my face on the wall and hit my head. I was out for a while.”

With a snarky smile, the detective said, “Do you have a death wish, Larrison?”

“If I do, it’s unconscious.”

“People get shot breaking into other people’s houses.”

“I know. That’s why I made a racket. I even shouted who I was.”

“People don’t have to open their door because you shout at them.”

“True. But I don’t believe anyone lives there right now.”

“It could have been the owner, that Boofey guy.”

“Then why didn’t he answer the door?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to. Or maybe he was on the can. If you thought something was wrong, you should have called the police.”

“My phone doesn’t work in the hollow. I think I told you that.”

He made a tinny, sarcastic laugh. “Okay, so you went in thinking it might be the killer. What were you going to do if it was, make a citizen’s arrest?”

“Actually, I thought it might be Paula Henry.”

“Oh you did, did you?” He stuck his tongue in his cheek, sat back, and patted the arms of his chair with his palms. “That’s who I came to talk to you about,” he said. “Except her real name is Paula Boofey.”

I began to feel nervous. I wondered what was coming next. “Boofey?” I said. “Are you sure?”

“Do you think I’d tell you if I wasn’t? We located the clinic where she had her leg set. As soon as I heard the name Paula, I knew who it was. How could two Paula’s have broken their right leg around the same time? Not only that, but the description they gave us of her matched your description of Paula Henry.”

“Your hunch was right then—she was using a fake name. Way to go, Lieutenant.”

“Don’t congratulate me yet. I still haven’t found her.”

“Do you know where she lives?”

He nodded. “Indianapolis. She lives with her mother, Edna Boofey. I went to their house, but no one was there. The Indianapolis P.D. is checking it periodically in case one of them shows up, but it looks like they’re gone.”

My blood pressure went down a point or two. If he hadn’t found Edna Mae and Paula yet, he didn’t know that I had already found them and kept it to myself.

I continued playing ignorant: “Do you know if Walter Boofey is related to them?”

“Yeah. He’s Edna’s brother-in-law.”

“Did you talk to him?” I said.

“I’ve tried, but his wife, Caroline, says he’s always on the road in his truck. She gave me his cell-phone number, but whenever I call, the phone’s not on.”

“I see. Well, I appreciate your telling me all this, Lieutenant. It’ll keep the story alive in the paper.”

“That’s what I want,” Bakery said. “Put in that anyone who has information related to the case should contact the Indiana State Police or their local police department.”

“I will do that. Oh, one other thing. Last week you said you had a couple of leads that you were working on.”

“They didn’t pan out.”

“Do you have a theory on why the Garths were killed?”

He glanced at his watch. “We’re treating it as a drug-related homicide,” he said quickly. “We found some marijuana hidden in the house—about twenty grams. We brought in a dog, and he sniffed it out under a board in a closet.”

“I wish you had let me know,” I said. “The dog would have made a good picture.”

“Sorry about that. I suspect the pot was for their own use. We’ve been over the hills and fields with a helicopter, and we didn’t see any marijuana growing, but I still think the murders have something to do with drugs. I expected to find a meth lab.” He looked at his watch again and stood up. “I’m due in court in Jennings County in twenty minutes. I’d better get going.”

I followed him out of my office and watched him rush out to his car. A Campbellsville police cruiser stopped in the street, and Bakery exchanged a few words with the cop at the wheel. Then he took off with his lights flashing.

I was somewhat surprised that Bakery hadn’t said anything about the recovery of my car. Maybe he didn’t even know it had been stolen. That was fine with me.

I went to the lounge for a cup of coffee. I thought over what Bakery had said about Paula and Edna Mae—how both of them had dropped off the radar screen. Were the two of them in the Garth house? (Maybe.) Was there a secret room? (Maybe.) Was there a second dug-out cellar? (Maybe.) Did one of them trip me down the steps last night? (No.)

I could not believe that either one of them had tripped me. And they certainly wouldn’t have worked me over after the trip. But what if someone else had joined them—Walter Boofey, for instance? . . . What the heck, Norval might be there too, and Caroline could be on her way. Maybe the Boofeys were having a family reunion.

I felt like running out to the Garth house right away, but the doctor at the emergency room had said I sustained a grade-three concussion and warned me not to get any more knocks on the head for a while.

Back at my desk, I sat down to write a story with the information Bakery had given me. I had mixed feelings about this one. I was glad I no longer had to conceal the fact that Paula’s real name was Boofey, but at the same time I regretted that Chuck Martin would now find out who she was. If what she had told me about him was true, her life was in danger.

I had Edna Mae’s phone number, so I tried calling to tell her and Paula that Bakery’s report would be in tomorrow’s paper. No one answered. I wrote the article, and then I tried calling again. Still no answer. Damn. I had to move on.

I took out my notes on the Good Shepherd Home.

On Monday, when I had tried to locate the six former residents whose names I knew, I was unable to get any information on Candy Apple and Judith Ann Shult. I picked up the phone again.

The phone book listed only two parties named Apple in Meridian County, and neither of them had answered my earlier calls. Today I had better luck.

The first was David Apple, who said he didn’t know anyone named Candy.

The second was P.J. Apple, who said he was her brother. “Her name’s Gilstrap now,” he added. “Her name’s in the phone book. Look for Josh.”

Josh Gilstrap’s address was in the Parkside Trailer Court next to the Campbellsville Airport and Industrial Park. Instead of phoning and possibly getting blown off, I took a chance on finding Candy there and drove to the west end of town.

Lot 81 was occupied by a maroon mobile home with a broad white stripe in the middle. There were no trees in the trailer court, and the brutal mid-day sun beat down as if punishing the inhabitants. The treeless landscape and the low, widely separated factories in the distance resembled a futuristic setting in an old science-fiction movie.

I parked in the street and crossed a mostly bare lawn to the trailer. I knocked on the lower half of the door, waited, and knocked again, this time hard enough to shake the flimsy door. A curtain parted in a window on the left, and a sliver of a face peeked at me.

“Mrs. Gilstrap?” I said.

The window slid up a few inches, and an unexpectedly sweet, musical voice said, “Yes? What is it?”

I introduced myself and asked if she had a few minutes to talk to me.

“I’m busy right now,” she said warily. “What do you want?”

Perhaps it was the sight of my face that made her wary. Or maybe it was a function of where she lived. Parkside Trailer Court was not the safest place. Fights and drugs kept the police busy, and a few weeks ago a woman had been raped in her car. I held up my press I.D. “I’m writing an article about the old Good Shepherd Home,” I said. “I understand you lived there for a while when you were little. Your name used to be Candy Apple, didn’t it?”

“I prefer Candace now.”

“Sure. I’d like to ask you a few questions about your memories of the home.”

She thought it over. “I guess I can help you with that,” she said. “Just a minute.”

The window closed, and I heard her running around inside. I started perspiring under the blazing sun. Just as I was beginning to think she wasn’t going to let me in, the door squealed open.

She was around twenty, short and stocky, deeply tanned. She had an oval face framed by straight brown hair that fell below her waist. The hair and the long, plain skirt she was wearing marked her as a Pentecostal.

“I’m sorry I took so long,” she said. “I was washing up. I had been out in the garden.”

I climbed two metal steps into the living room. It was cool inside, thanks to a rattly air conditioner in the wall. Although the exterior of the trailer had a faded, run-down look, the interior was neat and cozy. To the right, an overstuffed sectional sofa wrapped around one corner of the room, which also featured a wooden rocking chair, a gray shag carpet that was spotlessly clean, a small high-definition TV, and a small stereo system. An open Bible lay on a steamer trunk that served as a coffee table. Two trophies for cross-country running were displayed on a shelf, and several graduation and wedding photos hung on the walls.

“Have a seat,” she said.

I sat at the kitchen table so I could take notes more easily. She stood with her back against the counter and her arms folded. After some small talk about the heat wave we were suffering through, I asked some safe background questions about when she had stayed at the foster home and how old she had been when she was there. Then I got down to business:

“What was it like there, Candace? Did you like living there? It must have been hard being away from home.”

She thought long and hard. I wondered what horrors might be running through her head.

“It’s hard for me to answer that question,” she said at last. “I know it’s a simple question—basic—but it was a difficult time of my life.” She stopped and thought some more. She seemed more intelligent, more reflective than I had expected. “Would you like something to drink?” she said. “I have iced tea in the fridge.”

“Thanks. That sounds great.”

As she poured the tea, she said, “I hate to say anything unkind about other people, so maybe I shouldn’t answer your question.”

“I understand,” I said. “If you want to tell me something off the record, I would go along with that.”

“You wouldn’t put it in the paper?”

“That’s right—as long as we’re talking about a private person.”

Her doubtful expression suggested she did not like the qualification, but she said, “The therapist I go to tells me it’s good for me to talk about what happened. She’s a psychiatrist. I could never afford to pay her if I had to. I know she’s right—I should talk about it. I just don’t want to do something that my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, would not approve of.”

Hypocrite that I was, I nodded.

Candace went on: “I was put in the home after my mother died. She caught meningitis somehow. They said it was a miracle I didn’t get it too. She was a single mom, and there was no one else who could take care of me and my older brother. Our grandparents couldn’t afford to raise us.” She gulped half her glass of iced tea. “Believe it or not, I liked it there, at least at first I did. It was so different from my life at home. Mom loved us, but she had so many problems. We were dirt poor. She drank too much. Men moved in and moved out. She was all messed up. In the foster home we had to be nice to one another. We knelt down and prayed together. Most of the kids hated the discipline, but it didn’t bother me. It was like a different world. I started to read. That’s where I developed a love of reading. I have to say that getting sent to the Good Shepherd Home changed my life—in most ways for the better.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said. “It’s not what some others have told me.”

She nodded slowly. “I expect it isn’t.” She finished drinking her tea. “I try to focus on the good things.”

“Do you remember a girl named Paula?”

She shook her head.

“She was only there for a few months,” I said. “It was about twelve years ago, when she was fifteen. She told me some bad things happened to some of the kids while she was there.”

“Twelve years ago I was only seven,” Candace said. “A lot of kids came and went. I don’t remember all of them. I didn’t get to know them all.”

“But Paula remembers you. In fact, she’s the one who told me your name.”

Candace stared at the floor.

I went on: “She said sometimes a policeman would come and take one of the kids away for a day or two. She told me about a little boy who said he was taken to a big house where another man played games with him and they ate pizza and then the man took him to bed. Paula said after he came back to the Good Shepherd Home, he had terrible nightmares. He would cry all night.”

She raised her eyes and gazed at me. “That’s true, Mr. Larrison—I mean about the nightmares. I remember the screams.”

“Did anything like that ever happen to you, Candace?”

Without hesitating, she said, “One day I was raped. For years I wouldn’t talk about it. I tried to pretend it never happened, as if it was all a bad dream. But Dr. Metz helped me learn how to deal with it. When I finally stopped repressing, I felt like a new person. I felt reborn.”

She paused, and I watched her mind drift into the past.

“I came face to face with the devil once,” she continued. “Some of the kids used to play hide-and-seek in the ‘castle’ out in the barn. The hay loft was full of heavy bales of straw. They were like giant building blocks, and we made a big castle out of them, with rooms and tunnels. It was fun. I hated when we had to stop playing and go back to the house.”

She licked her lips, and her eyes narrowed. “Then one day I was hiding in a little secret room in the castle, and everything got real quiet. The other kids were hiding too. Nobody was moving. It stayed quiet for so long I began to think the others must have snuck out and left me by myself. I began to get scared, then all of a sudden, right in front of my face, a snake stuck its head out of the straw. It was a black snake, and its head came out about six inches and just hung there, real stiff, looking at me. . . . It was the devil. I was so scared I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even scream. I just knelt there frozen. It flicked its tongue at me. I thought there must be other snakes all around. I seemed to feel one crawling on my legs. . . . Then I heard somebody screaming. The snake was coming out of the straw. The screaming didn’t stop, and then somebody was hitting it with a pipe or something and I realized it was me screaming, and I still couldn’t stop.” She paused as if intentionally heightening the drama. “I did not know it then—I guess I was too young—but later I realized that that was the day I rejected Satan for the first time.” She paused again and with a little snort of amazement said, “You know, it’s funny. I’m not afraid of snakes anymore. I’ve watched men handle them in church, and I feel like I could do that too, if they’d let me. My lord and savior Jesus Christ would protect me, just like he protected me in the castle.”

This was all very interesting, but it wasn’t what I wanted to know. “Candace,” I said as gently as I could, “who was the person who raped you?”

“I don’t know his name,” she said.

“Think back. Could it have been a policeman named Chuck Martin?”

“He wasn’t a policeman.” She used her thumbs to sweep her hair back from her eyes. She eased away from the counter and released her hair. “The man who raped me was a man who worked on the farm sometimes. He helped Mr. DeLong. He was quiet. He never even talked to me before that day. But one day I was picking daisies in the field, and he did it.”

I felt like saying where was your lord and savior then? Instead I said, “Did you tell anyone about it, Candace?”

“No. I should have, but I was too scared. Besides, I thought it was my own fault. We weren’t supposed to go anywhere by ourselves.”

I said, “The more I hear about the Good Shepherd Home, the more it sounds like a hell hole.”

“Satan can appear anywhere, Mr. Larrison. Even inside a church. Think about all those Catholic priests who abuse altar boys. I don’t blame the Good Shepherd Home for what happened to me. It wasn’t a hell hole, as you put it. Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd. He said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’ I found Jesus there. I saw Satan there too. It wasn’t a perfect place, but there is no perfect place in this world, is there?”

“Whatever happens is God’s will, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Were the children subjected to any other kinds of abuse?” I said. “Did Mr. and Mrs. DeLong ever paddle the kids?”

“If we did something wrong, I think we deserved to get paddled. Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

She sounded self-satisfied, even smug. I felt as if my interview had been hijacked by a religious fanatic. But I didn’t want to argue with her. I had quit arguing about religion when I was a freshman in college. It seemed like a futile debate that no one ever won.

On the verge of another dark night of the soul, I went back to the office and made some more phone calls. I spoke to two people named Shult, but neither of them knew a Judith Ann. Then I called Paula and Edna Mae a third time, but still no one answered.

Later that night, driving home from Columbus under a canopy of stars, I fancied the possibility of finding Paula at the Brickton exit again. A full week had now passed since our first encounter, but it seemed more like a month. Maybe I should run out to the Garth house once more tonight. . . .

Be patient, I told myself. Don’t try to force it. The truth will out, God willing.

Yeah, sure. Keep telling yourself that.