Canyon Secret (8 page)

David stopped by the bar and ordered a double shot of Jim Beam and quickly drained it. He picked up his can of Great Falls Select beer and walked over to the corner table near the west wall of the bar. He faced the door. His plan was simple. He’d tell the truth about the additional two months of fraudulent time cards and ask him for a way out.

The large wooden door opened slowly and the late afternoon light from the outside poured into the dimly lit Blue Moon. The man in the expensive blue suit looked out of place as he stopped at the bar and ordered a bottle of Pepsi Cola. He acknowledged David’s wave and walked over and sat down at his table. “Thanks for coming, Dave. How’s your family in Butte doing?”

David nervously took a long drink of his beer before he answered, “My little Anna is doin’ a lot better. I talked to my wife yesterday. The strike’s getting worse, and she’s worried about it getting rough. She’d like to move up here, but until Anna gets strong enough to get off the iron lung, she’s goin’ to have to hang tough in Butte. I’m goin’ down in three weeks or so.”

“That’s good news, Dave. How’s it working out with your father-in-law working here?”

“I ain’t seen him in a couple of weeks. I see my brother-in-law some and that’s been fun. He’s a good kid.”

The man across from David calmly lit his Chesterfield and blew a large, perfect circle of smoke. He admired it as it disappeared into the air and then he looked at David. “We need to be sure of everything before the auditor digs into payroll. Accounts payable matches perfectly. Make sure—”

“I, I have it taken care of. We’re in great shape.”

The man systematically rubbed out the remains of his cigarette in the glass ashtray. His entire mood and demeanor changed and his pasted smile turned into a scowl. Without looking up from the ashtray he spoke, “Now with our other project, Dave. Everything is ship shape, right.”

Perspiration rolled down David’s armpit and blood rushed to his face and neck, “Ya. We’re in great shape.”

“You’re repeating yourself David. That concerns me a little bit. For your sake, we better be in great shape. As I was saying, Dave, make sure your records match mine. Bring them around Friday afternoon and we’ll compare. I want to see my deposits on our other project too. Follow.” He stood up, straightened his tie in the reflection of the mirror above the beer sign, and left through the side door.

David sat motionless. His brain went numb while his stomach hinted at emptying his baloney sandwich lunch. He walked into the men’s room and splashed some cold water in his face. His pale face stared back at him in the cracked wall mirror. Oh shit! I’m in it up to my eyeballs. What the hell am I going to do with May and June? It’s all written in ink. The paymaster’s records will show I paid out five more checks than there are men for two months.

Back in Martin City, Tim Nolan sat across from Tomas in the Club Café. He enjoyed watching the young man devour his cheeseburger deluxe and fries. It was obvious Tomas was in the middle of a growth spurt. Just in a matter of a month, his biceps and shoulders showed muscular definition. He ate like a man who faced his last meal. Tomas looked like he grew several inches just since his high school graduation a year earlier. His voice even seemed deeper and more man-like. Nolan guessed Tomas put on ten to fifteen pounds in the last couple of months.

His thoughts came to an abrupt end as Tomas wiped the corner of his mouth with his paper napkin and their eyes met. “I think you and Dad are wrong about David. He’s really a good man. I’m gettin’ to know him, and—”

“Bullshit, Kid. He’s a first class prick. Stay away from him. He’ll take you down the wrong road.”

Tomas sat back in the booth. “You’re wrong. I know you’re wrong.” His voice quivered as he finished his words. It was the first time he ever spoke like this to his godfather. The words came out before he measured what he said. “I, I’m sorry. Please just give David a chance. That’s all I mean. You’ll see.”

Nolan’s face reddened as he waived his finger at Tomas. He stammered as he spoke, “Don’t you never talk to me like that again, Kid. Where was he when you made your First Communion? I was there. Where was he when that Stosich kid kicked your ass after school and you came to me cryin’? Who taught you how to box so you gave that kid his own asskickin’? And I don’t remember seeing him at your graduation from Butte High. Where was he when your mother moved out on you and your dad? Goddamn you! You listen to me. Stay away from that crooked, worthless son of a bitch! He’s no earthly good I tell ya.” The other customers looked over toward their booth, but no one said a word.

Tomas watched and heard the café door slam as Tim Nolan disappeared into the street. He had never seen his godfather so mad. Oh God, what’ve I done? He walked over to the cash register and paid his bill. The young girl working there smiled at him as he fumbled for his wallet. “Your father’s pretty mad at you ain’t he.”

“He ain’t my father.” Tomas shrugged his broadening shoulders, forced a polite smile, and walked outside to look to see if he could track down John Nolan.

For the first day in two weeks it didn’t rain. Friday, he thought as he set his coffee cup down on his office desk. “Today I get to meet with two FBI agents. I wonder what the hell they want with me?”

His secretary Mary knocked on the doorframe to his makeshift shack of an office. “W.R., the two gentlemen from the FBI are here to see you.”

“Thanks Mary, send them on in.”

Two men in dark blue suits walked into his office. They introduced themselves as Agents Hughes and Moore. “Mr. Scalf, we’re here to talk to you about something confidential. It’s imperative that this conversation remains here between us only. Is that understood?”

“I understand. What’s going on?”

Hughes went ahead first, “We have good reason to believe that there is a murderer here on the Hungry Horse Dam site. There were identical unsolved murders at the Hoover and Grand Coulee Dam building sites. Both murders occurred during the last months of completion. Both murders were execution style with single gunshots to the head. Both were from the same rifle.”

Scalf walked toward the coffee pot and filled his white clay cup. “Can I get either one of you a cup?”

Moore motioned yes with his finger. Scalf filled a cup and brought it to him at his chair near the window. Agent Moore picked up where his partner left off. “Both men killed were shift bosses and had been with the projects for at least two years.”

His partner cleared his throat and continued, “We need a list of every man employed here now who worked on either or both Hoover or Grand Coulee. We also want a list of your walking bosses. We’d like those lists before five o’clock today.”

W.R. Scalf wasn’t used to being instructed what to do. He normally was the one barking out the orders. “Why do you need the list of those men?”

Moore answered, “If they worked on the other two projects, they might be good suspects in those other murders. Or they may be planning to kill someone else here. I think it’s obvious why we want a list of your walking bosses.”

Scalf nodded his head before he replied, “I’ll get those lists to you before five. Come back then and pick up the list from my secretary.”

“No, you compile the lists and you keep the lists with you. No one else is to have any idea what we’re doing here. Not even your secretary.”

His lip curled and he rubbed his right ear as he normally did when his temper flared. Scalf organized the papers in front of him “Pick up the lists from me later.”

Before Al Sutter became the owner, publisher, editor, and photographer for the
Columbian News
, four previous publishers in the area saw their newspaper company fail. All he had when he founded
The Hungry Horse News
was the $4,000 he saved from his career in the United States Navy, a desk, a portable typewriter, and his trademark Speed Graphic camera. Sutter was thirty-one years old in 1946 when he founded his newspaper. In the beginning, he distributed the first editions of his news for free in an effort to attract businesses interested in becoming advertisers. Much of his early advertising arose from the many bars and taverns that catered to the Hungry Horse Dam workers.

The Hungry Horse News
featured black and white photographs mixed in with local news articles and controversial editorial written by Sutter. His newspaper depended heavily on photographs.

Breaking news events became a large part of his repertoire. His nose for late breaking news allowed him to be first on the scene of a car accident, a burning building, or important event like the first photographs of the building of Hungry Horse Dam. He used the unwieldy Speed Graphic to insure high quality photographs. His photographs allowed for short, concise stories. These photographs portrayed the story.

Superintendent Scalf kept Sutter informed of all progress in the building of Hungry Horse Dam as he chronicled each phase of construction. He was the only person allowed to see Scalf without an appointment. Sutter greeted the Superintendent’s secretary as he entered her office. “Hello there, Mary. You got any news for me?”

“No, Al. Pretty quiet as far as I know. But then I don’t know much about what goes on around here.”

He dressed in a checkered shirt, weathered sport coat, a white hat with a colored band around the rim, and he toted his oversized camera, clipboard, and a light meter. “Is the Supt busy?”

“I imagine he is, but he seems anxious to see you all the time. Just go ahead and knock on his door as you always do.”

Scalf motioned him in and managed a smile. “I see you got a copy of my latest memo.”

“I did. What’s the FBI want?”

Scalf shook his head slightly as he shuffled the papers on his desk into his briefcase on the floor. “I can’t tell you much at this point, Al. Maybe I’ll have somethin’ for you in a week or two.”

The young newsman rested his camera on the floor and lifted his clipboard to the desk as he sat down across from the Superintendent. “Did they ask you about the unsolved murders on the Grand Coulee and Hoover Projects?”

Coffee blurted out of Scalf’s mouth. “How in the hell did you hear about that? The FBI left only twenty minutes ago. Do you have my office bugged?”

He tilted his head to the left as he measured the light in the room using his light meter. “My old Navy friend in Coulee called me yesterday and asked if anyone had been murdered at Hungry Horse. He filled me in on the unsolved murders.”

“You gotta keep this quiet, Al. The FBI is all over it and not in the mood for anybody butting in. You’ll get the first crack at a story once they nail it down. Right now, nobody knows nothin’ about nothin’.”

“I’ll lay low for awhile. But I might snoop around just a little bit.”

“Shit no, Al! You never just snoop a little bit. Let them do their jobs. We got secret service men and magazine people comin’ around soon in makin’ plans for Truman in early October. We can’t have some high profile murder investigation going on too.”

Sutter picked up his camera and prepared to take a photo out the front window in the direction of the Dam. Looking through the lens of his camera he said, “First crack at the story, right?”

“First crack.”

David drank the lukewarm coffee. He drank enough coffee during the night to last a lifetime. The lack of sleep and the overdose of caffeine dulled his thoughts and emotions. He just wanted to get it over with and get to bed. The shift hours for the past two months were now rewritten in his financial record book. The five fictitious employees and their hours worked were now erased in the fire in the garbage can outside of his trailer. Now he had only one more bit of work to do. He waited outside of the office of the bookkeeper, Fred Winters.

The thin man with the rounded eyeglasses quietly shut the door to his 1949 Ford Sedan. Everything about his car was perfect. Just like his suit. Just like his bookwork. Just like everything about him and his life. This wasn’t going to be an easy task David thought. Fred Winters spoke to David as he placed the silver skeleton key into the worn door latch to his office. “What brings you here so early, Dave?”

David struggled to gain some clarity in his thoughts and a bit of motivation to even answer Winters, “I need to temporarily borrow the timecards from the men on my shifts for all of May and June up to yesterday. The Federal Auditor is comin’ next week and I need to compare my records with the timecards.”

“Well, Dave, I’m sure my figures are accurate. There’s no need to compare. I copied my figures directly from the timecards you tendered.”

He really didn’t have the energy to argue with this man. “I’m sure your figures are right on the money, Fred. I just got to be sure. Alright.”

After he set his lunch bucket in the small fridge near the window, he continued, “It’s unusual. I hate to mess with my—”

“I need to compare your goddamn timecards with my record book! So do I get them, or do I have to go to the building next door and have Hansen come and get them for me?”

Fred Winters nervously pulled out a ring of smaller keys from his desk drawer. He fingered the keys until he rested upon the key for his file drawer. The ring of keys clanged on the gray concrete floor. After he picked up the keys, Winters slipped on a rubber thumb grip and fingered the stack of the 1952 May and June time cards. “Here are your shift time cards. Bring them back to me in an hour! One hour, you understand. One hour.”

Without making any eye contact, David took the rubber banded timecards and left. Once back at his trailer he banged around his bathroom cabinets for aspirin. None. He went to the kitchen and looked above the sink and found a near-empty bottle of aspirin. He swallowed the remaining three pills and washed them down with a dirty mason jar of water. “I got to get rid of this pounding headache so I can take care of these goddamn timecards.”

He spread the timecards on the kitchen table. One by one he removed the bogus timecards for each week. He placed them into a stack. Then he discarded the stack into the garbage can outside. He spilled some fuel oil on the cards and dropped a wooden match.

Back in his kitchen he organized the remaining timecards back in alphabetical order just like Winters had them arranged. “I’m sure my figures won’t work out exactly, but the auditor won’t be able to figure out why. My books’ll match the bookkeeper’s timecards and that’s all I have to worry about.”