Desert Run (7 page)

It did not escape my notice that on the occasion of each of Chess Bollinger's arrests, the
Scottsdale Journal
always made reference to the 1944 murders of his family and his subsequent trial. The newspaper's disclaimer that Chess had been found innocent always sounded less than convincing.

“The name ‘Bollinger' will never be cleared. The damned Nazi saw to that sixty years ago.”

Did MaryEllen believe Ernst held information that could clear her father's name? I thought about the possibility for a while, eventually coming up with a more intriguing question. Was it possible that MaryEllen suspected that
Ernst
killed the Bollingers?

While returning the boxes of microfilm to the librarian, I began to wonder why MaryEllen believed that Kapitan Ernst 'ssupposed crimes were the only things tarnishing the Bollinger name.

Why didn't she hold her father responsible, too?

Chapter Seven

Continuing to break my vow not to work today (hanging out in the library didn't count) I drove to back Desert Investigations and let myself in. I hit the light switch to kill the gloom empty offices always have, and crossed to my desk. Many of the art galleries along Main Street opened on Sundays, and as tourists wandered by, some of them stopped to peek through my glass office door. I ignored them and punched in MaryEllen Bollinger's number. Although it was early afternoon, MaryEllen sounded like she'd just crawled out of bed, her sweet soprano deepened to a rasp. Working the night shift can do that to you.

“Christmas Day, 1944,” I said. “Your grandparents and your aunt and two uncles are killed. Later, your father stands trial for murder, but thanks to a neighboring farmer and a friend who alibis him, he gets off. How am I doing?”

She coughed and cleared her throat. Then I heard something that sounded like the click of a Bic, and seconds later, a deep inhale. The real reason for the rasp. “You did your homework, Ms. Jones. Now we're ready to talk.”

“First question. How did you know Erik Ernst was living in Scottsdale?”

Another inhale, another cough. “I didn't. At least not until they started filming that documentary in Papago Park. The
Journal
ran an article about it and actually mentioned him. I started dropping by and hanging out in back with the other film groupies, knowing that he'd have to turn up sooner or later, and he did, about a week ago. I made sure he didn't see me, and later, I followed him home, but I didn't try to talk to him then because I was too shook up. I only confronted him the night he, uh, died.”

The night he, uh, was murdered. I didn't believe her. Rada Tesema had told me that Ernst complained about a “crazy lady,” and I was certain he'd meant MaryEllen Bollinger. I said as much.

“Oh, all right. I called him a few times. So what?”

So plenty. “Why? What was the point?”

Inhale. Exhale. Cough. She really should stop smoking. “Because I wanted to make him confess. I thought if I told him how much he'd hurt my father, how much he'd damaged my family, that he'd finally tell the truth, go with me to the police and confess.”

Somehow I refrained from laughing. MaryEllen was abysmally ignorant about human behavior. Getting a murderer to confess his crimes out of the goodness of his heart seldom worked, which is why we have trials. “Ernst denied killing your grandparents, didn't he?”

“Yeah. When I went to his house that night and asked him to clear our family name, he laughed in my face.”

I tried to put myself in her place: late at night, alone in a house with the man she believed had destroyed her family. What would I have done? “MaryEllen, did you search his house to see if he'd hidden some kind of proof?”

“No.” More coughing, a real fit this time. Maybe she had searched his house, maybe she hadn't. Probably not. Like most people trying to get information on their own, she could only go so far and no farther, which is why God created private investigators.

A tap at the door made me start. A man in a pink golf shirt and madras shorts. “Hold on, MaryEllen. I'll be right back.” I set the phone down and opened the door. “We're closed on Sundays. Come back tomorrow.”

“I'm looking for the mystery bookstore,” the man said in a Minnesota accent. “It used to be here.”

“Not for years.” Irritated, I directed him to Poisoned Pen's new location and closed the door. Then I killed the lights and closed the door blind so no one else could see in. Fortunately MaryEllen was still on the phone, puffing away at her cigarette. “Sorry about that,” I told her. “Just a tourist. But back to your visit at Ernst's. What did you think would happen even if Ernst confessed everything to you?”

“My poor father would be vindicated.”

Ah, yes. Poor Chess, the father who beat his wives and shattered his little girl's ribs. Why should she care how the thug felt? I was so curious, I asked.

“You don't understand. Nobody does.”

“Try me.”

“Ms. Jones, please believe me when I say that Daddy isn't a bad man. He's had a rough life and he never got any good breaks. After his whole family was murdered, he was forced to go live with some older cousin of his who already had seven children, and resented him being there. Her husband beat him every time he opened his mouth, so he ran away when he was seventeen. Not that it made any difference. Maybe he was found innocent at the trial, but no one ever believed it. His…his problems later weren't his fault. Things just kind of happened.”

“Beating a child until she suffers broken bones doesn't ‘just kind of happen.'”

“You don't understand.”

“You already said that.”

Her voice dropped so low I could hardly hear her over the laugher of tourists passing by on the sidewalk outside. She'd said something about “reasons.”

“You'll have to speak up, MaryEllen.”

“I said, ‘Daddy had his reasons.' He said I was a real handful as a kid.”

I considered her reply, then put two and two together. As softly as I could, I asked, “MaryEllen, does Clay say you're a real handful, too?”

She hung up on me.

As long as I was in the office, I decided to make a few more calls. I knew that former Maricopa County Sheriff Leroy Jeakins was dead, because I had pulled traffic duty at his funeral during my first year at Scottsdale PD. And even if the FBI agent in charge of the Bollinger case was still alive, well, the Feds were notorious for not cooperating with PIs. Or anybody, for that matter. This left then-sheriff's deputy Harry Caulfield. Although he had to be in his eighties, I decided to give him a try anyway.

Sometimes, although not often, life gets easy, and this was one of those times. The first Harry Caulfield in the Phoenix phone book turned out to be Deputy Caulfield's son. Without coaxing, he gave me his father's phone number. “Dad has a lot of time on his hands and he loves to talk about the old days,” Caulfield Jr. said. “Especially the Bollinger case. He gave a long interview about it to a reporter a few years back, you know, the same woman who wrote about those German POWs in that book,
Escape Across the Desert
. I guess she's kinda famous now, 'cause they're turning it into a movie. Let me warn you, once Dad gets started on the Bollingers, there's no stopping him.”

A garrulous subject would make for a nice change, so I punched in Caulfield Sr.'s number.

“Harry's Bar and Brothel.”

What a card. “Deputy Caulfield?”

“If you're sellin', I'm not buyin'. But if you're giving it away, what the hey.” A snicker.

“Deputy Caulfield, my name's Lena Jones. I'm a private investigator working on the Erik Ernst murder, which I'm sure you've read about, and I've begun to suspect that the Bollinger case might be connected. Could you spare me some time?”

The snicker grew into a guffaw. “Are you good-looking, PI Jones? If you are, hustle yourself over here tomorrow and I'll tell you anything you need to know. Come to think of it, I'll tell you even if you're only medium-looking!”

For a moment I wondered how fast Deputy Caulfield could run, then took comfort in the fact that I could probably run faster. “I'm booked tomorrow, Deputy Caul…”

“Call me Harry. I retired twenty years ago.”

“Okay, Harry. How about right now? Or at least as soon as I can get there from Scottsdale.”

“It's a date, sweet thing. Leave your chastity belt at home.”

God help me.

***

Apache Junction, only twenty-five miles due east of downtown Phoenix, had originally been an Apache Indian hunting grounds, but in the mid-eighteen hundreds, the Apaches were edged out by prospectors mining for gold in the nearby Superstition Mountains. Local legend held that one of those mines, the Lost Dutchman, still contained untapped reserves of gold, but the word “Lost” wasn't a mere romantic term, it was descriptive. Jacob Waltz, the man who supposedly discovered the rich vein in the mountains, died in 1891 without revealing its location. Apache Junction now played host to retirees instead of gold miners and Indians, but from time to time, you could still see twenty-first-century prospectors leading their pack mules into the Superstitions in search of the Lost Dutchman.

Deputy Harry Caulfield lived in Sundown Sam's Retirement Village, a small mobile home park huddled against the foothills of the mountains. The park was typical of Arizona's many retirement communities: about five acres of concrete pads with hookups for trailers and RVs, an over-chlorinated pool, and a rec center that offered card games and crafts. A purple shuttle bus was parked in front of the rec center to haul the residents off to Barry Manilow concerts in downtown Phoenix. As I drove along the narrow lane looking for Caulfield's pad, I noticed numerous elderly women walking in groups or tending to the flowers that grew in pots in front of their trailers. I saw almost no men.

The exterior of Caulfield's double-wide reflected the local legend. Life-sized decals of miner's tools decorated the white sides of his trailer, and a plaster statue of an old prospector and his burro stood on his concrete porch. Affixed to the trailer door was an incongruous bit of whimsy: a sign reading
IF
THE DOUBLE-WIDE'S A-ROCKIN', DON'T COME A-KNOCKIN'
. I took a moment to make certain the double-wide wasn't a-rockin,' then rapped on the door. It opened immediately.

An elderly pirate look-alike—wolfish grin, black eyepatch—faced me. What little hair the man had left was white and slicked back with something that smelled like Old Spice. “Pretty Miss Lena, I take it! We been waiting for you!”

We? He stepped aside to usher me into a living room crammed with a large sofa, two recliners, a gun cabinet stocked with a large assortment of rifles, and several oak tables weighted down with U.S. Navy memorabilia and award plaques from the Maricopa Sheriff's Department. As he made his way to one recliner, he limped badly. The man sitting on the sofa clutching his cane was easily as old as Harry, and his bald pate was speckled with age spots. He looked vaguely familiar, but for the moment I couldn't quite place him.

“Pardon the hobble, but my arthritis is acting up,” Harry explained, as he lowered himself into the recliner and motioned me into the other. “I shouldn't complain. Here I am, eighty-two years and my cholesterol count's damn near perfect, unlike my buddy's there, whose blood could butter pancakes. In case you're wondering, after we hung up I called him and told him to get his butt over here. He moved to Sundown Sam's a year ago. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that my new neighbor used to guard those Nazis over at Camp Papago.”

Now I recognized the man. Warren had hired him to tell his story in
Escape Across the Desert.
He'd been chauffeured to the set one morning while I was finalizing the pilfering investigation, but when it had started to rain, his scene was rescheduled and he was taken back home. During that brief time, we hadn't said a word to each other.

He waggled his fingers at me. “I'd be pleased ta meetcha if Harry'd perform the formalities.” His voice sounded as young and elastic as a teenager's.

Harry chuckled. “If it's formalities you want, then formalities you'll get. Private investigator Lena Jones, meet former U.S. Army Corporal Frank Oberle, once stationed at U. S. Service Command Unit Number Eighty-Four, also known as Camp Papago. Now he's going to be a big movie star. Say, anyone want some iced tea? It's already made.”

Amazed to be offered anything weaker than moonshine in this hyper-male lair, I opted for a glass. When seconds later Harry handed us glasses of mango-flavored tea complimented by a sprig of fresh mint, I was further amazed. Harry was good at reading faces. “The wife domesticated me before she died,” he explained, his tough-guy image only slightly marred by the sudden tremble in his voice. “She said I'd starve to death if I didn't learn to do things for myself.”

Oberle nodded. “She was took by the cancer, just like my wife. Same year, too.”

After Harry cleared his throat, the wolfish leer left his face and his brash manner gentled. “I hope you don't hold my smart mouth on the phone against me. When you first called I assumed you were one of the broa…women from around here. I'm one of the only, ah, relatively healthy men left, and they…” He flushed.

Oberle cackled. “Oh, come on, Harry. The ladies have elected you Official Trailer Park Stud. Now quit with the apologies and let's get on with the show.”

Apology duly rendered, Harry settled down to the basics. “What did you want to know about the Bollinger case? If you've done any research at all, you must be aware that I never believed Chess Bollinger killed his family. He was a punk then and he's probably a punk now—if he's still alive—but he's not a murderer.”

Oberle rolled his eyes. I ignored him. “You're sure of that, Harry?”

“As sure as a one-eyed detective can be.” Pleased by my startled expression, he gestured to his eyepatch. “Shrapnel at Pearl Harbor. After the Navy patched me up, I couldn't see well enough to fight but as it turned out, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department was glad to have me because so many of the county's able-bodied men were overseas scrapping with Hitler and Tojo. By the time the Bollingers were killed I'd been with the Department almost three years, and by then, I'd learned a thing or two about bad guys.”

I took another sip of Harry's mango tea. “You seem to be the only person who believes in his innocence.”

“You're right. These days, every serial killer caught in the act gets ‘the alleged killer' treatment. It never used to be like that. Back in the days when the Bollinger killings went down, Arvis Spaulding, the
Journal
's publisher back then, was Edward Bollinger's very own drinking buddy, so he wasn't inclined to be neutral. Long before the murders he'd heard enough about Chess from Edward to make him think the kid was the spawn of Satan. Before, during and after the trial, Arvis printed screeds that would get his newspaper sued to blue blazes today. The public, which was as prejudiced as he was, ate it up. Arvis didn't give a rat's ass about child psychology—if he knew such a subject existed—but over the years I took a few courses at ASU, courtesy of the G.I. Bill, and was able to figure a few things out about Chess. Edward had elected him as the family scapegoat. Anything that went wrong, Chess was blamed for. Sick cow? Chess' fault. Bad weather? Chess' fault. Plague? Chess' fault. Locusts? Chess' fault. World War II? Chess' fault.”