Last Place on Earth
Don Cushman sat in the common room of the retirement home, completing a jigsaw puzzle of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Mrs. Wilma Oxley, another resident, was knitting a sweater in front of the television set. Oddly enough, the sweet, white-haired grandmother of seven had a penchant for true crime programs.
"This show is my favorite," she announced and temporarily put down her needles so as not to miss a minute of the program.
Don shook his head and chuckled softly.
When did murder become family entertainment? he wondered.
As he was completing the dome on the third president's neoclassical home, he tried to tune out Wilma's comments. He did not need a play-by-play of a gruesome killing.
"Isn't that what they always say?" the old woman asked rhetorically and returned to her knitting during the commercial break. "It seems in every true crime drama I watch, some man or woman always says the same thing. You would think they'd know better by now."
"What is it they say?" he asked, more out of courtesy than curiosity.
"'This the last place on earth you'd expect such a thing to happen.' It's as though those fools believe murder only occurs in places like New York or Chicago. It can happen anywhere, even in the smallest towns in America."
Don put down the puzzle piece he was holding and stared out the window at two octogenarians strolling through the garden with their walkers.
The last place on earth.
Those words echoed in his mind, the phrase a harbinger of memories he would just as soon forget. How many people had said the exact same thing to him back when he was working as a reporter? So many that he lost count. In fact, he had even included them in several of the articles he wrote.
"It was the last place on earth you would expect such a thing to happen," he mumbled to himself before leaving behind the world of jigsaw puzzles, true crime reenactments and the clicking of Wilma Oxley's aluminum knitting needles to journey back through time to the supposedly good old days of the Fifties.
* * *
Don was in grammar school when his father went off to fight the Nazis and had just entered high school when both peace and his father returned. Four years later, he attended college, majoring in journalism. After graduating, he got a job as a reporter for the Herald, his grandfather's newspaper—God bless nepotism!
"Of course, I don't plan on working for a small-town paper all my life," he told his parents. "Once I have experience, I'd like to get a job at The New York Times or maybe The Washington Post."
Until that day arrived, he would keep his ambition in check and strive to improve his skills as a reporter. Unfortunately, since the Herald was a local paper with limited resources, it relied on the Associated Press for world news. Staff writers covered only local stories. When Don joined the paper, there was only one other full-time reporter, a middle-aged man by the name of Quincy Ryman, who was content to put in his eight hours and go home to his wife, teenage sons and pet beagle at the end of the day.
In addition to Quincy, there was part-timer Sally Heaton, a war widow with a young daughter. Art Cushman, Don's grandfather, took pity on the young woman and hired her to write a "woman's section" for the Sunday edition, which consisted of six pages, four of which were allocated to shopping advertisements. The remaining two pages Sally filled with recipes, household advice and articles on cooking, fashion, childcare and other subjects that would appeal to those of her sex.
Fresh out of college, Don reported to work an hour early on his first day, only to find the door locked. Eventually, his grandfather showed up with the keys.
"Where is everybody?" the eager young man asked.
"It's Monday. Everyone's always late on Monday."
Ten minutes past the hour, Quincy finally arrived. He offered no apology or excuse for his tardiness, and there was no stern word of warning or chastisement from the editor.
Grandpa runs a lax ship, Don thought as he took a seat at a new, uncluttered desk.
"Now that we're all here, it's time for the huddle-up," Art explained to his grandson. "Every day, we meet in my office first thing in the morning, to discuss who is going to cover what stories for the next edition."
"Did you catch the game on the radio yesterday?" Quincy asked as he strolled into Art's office. "Joe D. went three for four."
"I like the new kid the Yankees got, Mantle. He shows a lot of promise."
After wasting nearly ten minutes on baseball talk, the editor finally picked up a pen and a pad of paper and began to write.
"I'll go interview the mayor about his reelection campaign. You," he told his more experienced reporter, "can cover the board of ed's proposed expansion to the high school."
"And hope it doesn't require a hike in our property taxes."
"I hear ya! Don ...."
Art turned to his grandson, who nervously chewed his lip with excited expectation.
"You write a piece on why townspeople think there should be a traffic light on the corner of Main and Hamilton."
That's it? the young man wondered with profound disappointment. I spent four years in college studying journalism to write about a traffic light!
The task proved more difficult than he had imagined. His grandfather had designated an entire column to the piece, which Don thought, at best, would consist of only two paragraphs.
"Did you have something to say?" the editor asked when Quincy left the room but his grandson remained.
"How am I supposed to write a full column on the necessity of a traffic light? I only need one short paragraph to present the reason."
"Oh? And what is that?"
"It's a busy intersection, and there have been a number of accidents there over the years."
"How many?"
"I don't know."
"Have any resulted in death or serious injury? How much will it cost to put a light there? Who will pay for it? How long will it be until we get it? Will traffic be rerouted while it's being installed? If so, for how long? The Herald's readers will ask themselves these questions. As reporters, it's our duty to find the answers."
"I never really gave much thought to traffic signals before. They were just something that was always there, like the streetlights, the stop signs and the white lines painted down the center of the road."
Art smiled, seeming like a wise old man with years of knowledge to impart to the young.
"I know what it's like to be a young reporter. You probably aspire to be the next Edward R. Murrow someday, maybe you even hope to win a Pulitzer Prize. Even in your short lifetime, there have been many history-shaping news stories: Pearl Harbor, the atomic bomb, FDR's death and the end of the war. But for every earthshattering headline, there are thousands of articles on state and local matters that need to be written, some as mundane as erecting a traffic signal."
Don finally rose from his chair and exited his grandfather's office, calling over his shoulder, ""I'll be back in a little while."
"Where are you going?" the editor inquired.
"Over to the department of transportation to do a little research on the accidents that have occurred on the corner of Main and Hamilton."
"While you're at it, you might want to get a photo of that intersection. After all, it's true what they say: a picture is worth a thousand words, or in this case, a couple of inches of column space."
* * *
Don was still with the Herald in January 1960 when a young senator from Massachusetts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, announced his intention to run for president. America was experiencing a postwar economic boom. Television had replaced radio as the dominant form of home entertainment. On a more personal note, the reporter was now married with a baby on the way.
Art Cushman, who would celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday in March, was still the editor but rarely wrote any articles himself, preferring to let his staff do the writing. Quincy remained a nine-to-five man (although it was rare for him to be in the office promptly at nine), and Sally still submitted recipes and wrote advice to women. It was Don, however, who contributed the most to the paper's continued success. Although he still professed a desire to write for a large city newspaper, people, including his wife, believed he would take over the Herald when his grandfather finally retired.
In April of that year, with the birth of his child only two months away, Don got a small taste of what life in urban America could be like. Art was in his office, editing Quincy's piece on the opening of a new movie theater in town when his telephone rang.
"I got a story for you," the caller said.
The aged editor recognized the voice. It was the chief of police, one of his best sources.
"What is it?"
"Archer Pellington's daughter is missing."
Archer Pellington was a name everyone in town knew. As the owner of Pellington's, the four-story department store, he was one of the wealthiest men in the state.
"What do you mean by missing?"
"She wasn't in her bed this morning when her mother went into her room to wake her up for school."
"Thanks for the tip. I'll put Don on it."
"You don't think it's a kidnapping, do you?" his grandson asked when he was given the assignment.
"God, I hope not! I remember when Lindbergh's son was taken. I covered the trial for the Herald. It was heartbreaking. You were only a few months old at the time, and I couldn't help wondering what it would be like if a kidnapper took you."
"Our family wasn't rich like the Pellingtons."
"Let's not jump to any conclusions. She might have just snuck out of the house. Remember what Joe Friday always says: just the facts, ma'am."
"I'll go down to the police station and talk to my friend, Lou Wagener. He'll tell me what's what."
There was little information to include in the article. The mother had put the six-year-old to bed the night before and found her missing the next morning. People in the surrounding neighborhood were questioned, but no one admitted to knowing anything. As of yet, no ransom demand was received.
For three days, there was no news (in this case, no news was most definitely not good news). After the tearful mother and stoic father appeared on television, asking for help in finding their daughter, no one came forward. Then on the fourth day, little Tina Pellington's body was found, and all hell broke loose.
After speaking with Lou and the detective in charge of what was now a homicide investigation, Don sat at his Underwood typewriter and wrote the first of many articles on the murder.
This is the last place on earth one would expect such a heinous crime to happen, he began.
That summed up in one sentence what the entire town felt. They lived in a safe, middle-class community, far from the sordidness and violence of the city (or so they had believed). Yet here, one of the most innocent among them, a mere child, was victimized in the most brutal way possible.
"I spoke to the medical examiner," Don told his grandfather when they discussed how to best present the disturbing details of the crime in the article. "He said the girl was sexually molested. There were bite marks and bruises on her body. Should I quote him directly? He was pretty specific in what this pervert did to her."
"Just say the body showed signs of abuse and leave it at that. When the prosecutor's office puts the killer on trial, then we can be more specific."
"Trial? What trial? The police don't even have a suspect yet."
"A six-year-old girl, whose father is the richest man in town, was strangled and her body left in the woods where wild animals could feed on it. I have no doubt the killer will be caught."
Don was not so sure. What did their small-town police force know about investigating a homicide? There had never been a murder in their town. However, by the end of the week, Art was proven right. The police found their man, and an arrest was made. They did not have far to look. The perfect suspect was right under their noses.
Davis Ledbetter, the janitor at Tina Pellington's school, knew the victim. After being wounded in battle in France, he was prone to nonspecific "mental issues." He drank. He was a loner with no wife, no children and no close friends. He did not live in town but on the outskirts. He was poor. He had no alibi. He was black. And it was 1960.
* * *
"He swears he's innocent," Don told his wife at dinner the night before the trial was to begin.
"What did you expect? If he were going to confess, he would have done it by now."
Their newborn child, a baby girl, was napping in her bassinet, and the couple enjoyed some quiet time together.
"He just doesn't strike me as a killer."
"In the movies, it's always the person you least expect."
"This isn't the movies; this is real life. Unless the prosecutor is holding something back, I don't see how he can hope to get a conviction. There's no physical evidence. No witnesses."
"Didn't one of the teachers claim to have seen him with Tina two days before she went missing?"
"They were in the hallway at the same time. Big deal! He worked at the school. He claims he was on his way to the boys' lavatory to fix a clogged toilet, and she just happened to pass him on her way to the office with the daily attendance reports."
"I'm sure if he is innocent, his lawyer will get him off."
"He's got a public defender, a guy right out of law school. He's a nice enough fellow, but he doesn't know his ass from his elbow about murder trials."
"Stop being so cynical. Besides, if Davis Ledbetter didn't kill that poor child, who did?"
That was the question that swayed the twelve jurors' minds. If it wasn't Davis Ledbetter, then it must be one of their own. Surely, none of their neighbors was guilty! It could not be the man who delivered their mail, repaired their vehicles, waited on them at the deli, filled their prescriptions at the pharmacy or—God forbid!—preached to them from the pulpit on Sundays. No, it had to be an outsider, not one of them.
Thus, despite the flimsy case the prosecutor presented, the janitor was found guilty and was sentenced to death.
"I just don't see how they could have convicted him!" Don said to his grandfather as the two men were leaving the courtroom upon the conclusion of the trial. "The mother put the child to bed at night, and her body is found in the woods days later. What did he do, break into the house and physically abduct her? Why didn't the parents hear anything?"
Art shrugged his shoulders and answered, "Who knows? Maybe he coaxed her out with candy."
"Or maybe he's innocent."
"You're probably right."
"You think so? Then why doesn't the Herald take a stand and demand answers to these questions?"
"Who's going to answer them? The judge? The prosecutor? The jury? The police? You're young and idealistic, but when you get to be my age, you see the world differently. No one really cares who killed that poor little girl. They want to put the whole ugly crime behind them and go back to their 'normal' lives. So, they found a scapegoat. Once he's executed, they can forget all about poor Tina Pellington and enjoy their Sunday afternoon barbecues and baseball games without fearing for the safety of their own children."
"I'm sure her parents won't forget about her."
"Maybe not. But the rest of the town will."
"I won't!" Don insisted emphatically. "I've got a daughter of my own now. I can't help worrying if, in a few years, that same killer will cross paths with her. In fact, I just might pack up and move to a safer community."
"Oh? And where is that?"
"The last place on earth where you would expect such a heinous crime to happen," Don replied, sadly realizing there was no such haven of safety anywhere on the planet.
* * *
The Cushmans welcomed their second child, a boy, into the world two years later. The child's father was still working for the Herald, as both a reporter and a managing editor. Art Cushman, who retired shortly after Davis Ledbetter met his end in the electric chair, still owned the paper but had no part in its daily operations.
Although he still remembered the tragic death of poor little Tina Pellington, the reporter looked forward to the future. JFK was in the White House, John Glenn had gone up into space and there was a growing Civil Rights movement to seek racial equality down on earth—or at least in the United States.
On Monday morning, Quincy Ryman sauntered into the office five minutes late—which was early for him. Sally Heaton was already at her desk, waiting for the morning huddle-up. Since her child was now a teenager, she worked full-time as a reporter while Don's wife took over writing for the Sunday edition's women's section.
"Now that we're all here," the editor said, nodding his head to the perennially late reporter, "let's get started."
He assigned Quincy the responsibility of covering the opening of a McDonald's, the first fast-food chain restaurant in town. Next, he told Sally to write a piece about the high school principal who was retiring and moving to Florida at the end of the school year.
"Take as much space as you need," he said. "I'd like to see a lot of biographical material, maybe an interview with him on how education today varies from education when he was a young teacher fresh out of college. And see if he has any old photographs of himself that we can include with the text."
"Will do," she agreed. "But I'm surprised you gave me this assignment. This is the kind of story you usually like to write yourself."
"That's true, but to be honest, I never liked the guy much. He once gave me a week's detention when I fell asleep in class."
"He was a hard ass!" Quincy agreed. "My sons hated him."
"Besides, I'm going to do a piece on Skip McDougall, the pitcher for the high school baseball team. He's been invited to try out for the Baltimore Orioles, but first I want to check into the death of Zelma Lossing."
"Isn't that the woman who runs the bookstore?" Sally asked. "I didn't know she died."
"She passed away late last night. Some kind of household accident."
On his way to the high school to speak with the young athlete, Don stopped at the fire department to question the members of the first aid squad who had picked up Zelma Lossing's body from her home and transported it to the hospital.
"It was a freak accident," the lead rescue worker claimed. "It seems she was setting her electric alarm clock before she went to bed. Her hair was wet, and there must have been a frayed wire. She electrocuted herself."
It was a tragic mishap, to be sure, one that might easily have been prevented. Instead, a woman in her early forties died needlessly. But the facts, sad though they were, would not make for a compelling news article.
Three paragraphs, tops, he thought, believing her official obituary would sum up her life in greater detail.
As the reporter drove his Chrysler Windsor to the high school, he had no inkling that Zelma Lossing's death was to be the first of many to come.
* * *
"They say bad things come in threes," Quincy observed as he sat in the editor's office for the morning huddle-up.
Only a month after Zelma Lossing's fatal mishap with her alarm clock, a third resident, Fern Karpis, drowned in her swimming pool. Just three days earlier, Norbert Alston fell down his basement stairs and broke his neck. The following week, when Amelia Bagby crashed her Chevy Impala into a tree and died, Quincy had no words of wisdom to quote.
"Four people dying in such a short period of time is weird," Sally said. "If they weren't all accidental deaths, I'd think we had a serial killer running loose."
"Serial killer?" Quincy laughed. "We've only had one killer in this town, and he's been executed."
"Let's not get into that subject," Don said, as he tossed his brown paper lunch bag into the trash and got up from the table in the paper's small lunchroom.
"I forgot. You believe Davis Ledbetter was innocent."
"I never said that. I just don't think there was enough evidence to arrest the man, much less convict him."
"Yeah, well, the jury found him guilty."
Don did not want to debate the issue; there was work to be done. Moments after he returned to his Underwood typewriter, a call came in from Lou Wagener, his friend on the police force.
"Thought you'd like to know," the policeman said. "There's been another death."
"Who?"
"Frieda Gingerich."
"I don't think I know her."
"She lives here but works in the city."
"How did she die?"
"She had a severe allergic reaction to a bee sting."
That makes five, Don thought. If I were a superstitious man, I'd begin to wonder if this town wasn't living under a curse.
During the following two months, the accidental death toll rose. One man was killed in a fire; another was struck in the head by a falling tree limb; a third was crushed beneath his Ford Galaxy when his jack gave way. The most bizarre death, to date, happened when a middle-aged mother of three was struck by a bolt of lightning.
"This is absurd!" Sally cried when she learned a former boyfriend, Hogan Trotter, had become the ninth accidental death in town after choking on a piece of hamburger. "When is all this going to end?"
Her two fellow reporters had asked themselves the same question. It could not be a coincidence that ten people died in such a short span of time. And yet, all ten died as a result of accidents. Not one of them had been a homicide or suicide.
The eleventh and twelfth deaths were discovered on the same day. Whitey Campion was impaled by a metal rod at his workplace just hours before an inebriated Hattie Rainier stepped in front of a speeding motorcycle after coming out of a beauty salon.
"That brings the toll to an even dozen," Sally declared, as she waited for Don to announce her next assignment one Monday morning in November. "Did you notice how people are behaving lately? Most of them walk around as though in a daze."
"They're probably all afraid they're gonna be unlucky number thirteen," Quincy joked.
"Maybe it's time we ran a story about all these deaths," Don suggested. "So far, there's been no mention of this disturbing trend in the Herald."
"What kind of article can you write?" Sally asked. "These deaths are not connected in any way. Even if there have been a large number of them lately, they're still random."
"I know that but, as you said, people have noticed. Maybe we ought to acknowledge the growing number of fatal accidents and then remind people to observe more caution in their day-to-day lives."
Exactly what he would have said will never be known, for the article was never written. Four days later, on Friday, November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. In the face of this national calamity, the spate of accidental deaths was temporarily forgotten.
Then came the thirteenth death, that of teacher Dora Van Houten. In the wake of her passing, new light was shed on the previous twelve deaths, and what was revealed was far more terrifying than even the murder of the country's president.
* * *
Don Cushman was alone in his office late one evening, looking over the layout of the next day's edition before it went to press when he picked up his head and saw a man standing in his shadowy doorway.
"You scared the hell out of me," he said with a start.
"I'm sorry. I saw that you were busy, and I didn't want to interrupt."
"What can I do for you?" the editor asked.
"My name is Van Houten. I wanted to talk to you about my wife, Dora."
"I'm sorry about your wife. Are you here about her obituary?"
"No," the widower replied nervously. "I ... she ...."
"Would you like a seat? Something to drink? There's a vending machine that sells soda in our lunchroom."
"No, thank you," the visitor said, sitting in one of the two chairs in front of the editor's desk, the one in which Quincy Ryman always sat during the morning huddle-ups.
"So, what did you want to see me about?"
"My wife, she ... I don't know how to say this."
"Just take your time."
"She wasn't herself lately. You may have noticed a number of people in the community have recently died."
"I've noticed. It's very odd, indeed."
"My wife got it into her head that they weren't accidents."
Don was immediately intrigued by the man's statement. Were these deaths orchestrated to look like accidents?
"Please go on," he prompted.
"Dora knew most of the people who died, and those that she didn't know, she recognized."
"From the school?"
"No, the courtroom. You see, Dora was a witness during the Tina Pellington trial. She was the one who testified against Davis Ledbetter."
That's why the name sounded familiar, the editor thought.
"The police questioned everyone who worked at the school, not just Dora. And they asked her point-blank if she had ever seen Ledbetter with the little girl. She was being honest when he said that she saw them in the hall together, but she never accused him of anything. In fact, she never believed he was guilty."
"What does any of this have to do with the recent deaths?"
"The twelve people that died before my wife ... they all served on the jury."
Don was stunned. Could the man's claim be true? It was easy enough to confirm. He could go to the courthouse the following morning and look through the records.
"Dora believed they were deliberately killed because they found an innocent man guilty."
"Even if the deaths weren't accidental, who could be responsible? Ledbetter had no family and no close friends. He was a loner. Who would go to such great lengths for revenge?"
The widower's face took on a sickly pallor, what Quincy might have described as being green around the gills. The editor wondered if he was about to vomit.
"My wife believed it was Davis Ledbetter himself."
Although there was no mirror in the office in which he could see his reflection, Don had the feeling that his face had the same sickly appearance as his visitor's. A vengeful ghost killing the people who had wronged him! It was something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. It was downright ridiculous! And yet, it had a ring of truth about it.
* * *
"You can't print that story in the Herald," Sherry Cushman said when she read what her husband had written.
"Why not?"
"Fifteen people killed by a ghost? Come on, honey! This is the kind of drivel one would expect to see in the National Enquirer."
"This isn't some crazy UFO story. Every fact I've included has been verified. All twelve members of the jury, the state's key witness, the prosecutor and the judge have all been murdered."
'The deaths were all ruled accidental."
"It doesn't matter. There's no way this can be considered a mere coincidence!"
"But a string of supernatural murders? Sorry, I just don't buy it. You're a reporter, not a fiction writer. Where's your proof?"
"I'm afraid ghosts don't leave fingerprints behind."
"And you're not likely to get a confession, not unless you hold a séance."
"Hey, that's an idea."
Sherry shook her head and walked back to the kitchen. She wanted no part in such nonsense.
Don did not resort to holding a séance. Like Harry Houdini, he believed mediums were fakes that relied on trickery to dupe their customers. However, he did consult Rafaella Thoms, a psychic who had once assisted the state police in finding a missing teenager.
"What have I got to lose?" he asked himself as he started out on the ninety-minute journey to her house.
Rather than tell Rafaella about the actual reason for his visit, he claimed he was conducting a private investigation into the murder of Tina Pellington.
"I've always had doubts about Ledbetter's guilt," he explained. "There was never any real evidence connecting him to the crime. I'd like to know what you can sense about the girl's death."
"Did you bring me something that belonged to her?" the psychic asked.
Cushman removed a rabbit's foot keyring from his pocket.
"Will this do? It was all I could find."
Moments after Rafaella took hold of the object, she smiled.
"This didn't belong to Tina," she said. "It was Davis Ledbetter's."
"It was a little test," he said, sheepishly.
The psychic closed her eyes and rubbed the soft dyed-blue fur.
"I'm getting an impression," she announced. "It's a number. Fifteen."
The reporter's pulse quickened. Fifteen was the number of people who had died, yet there was no way the psychic could have known that.
"Fifteen," she repeated. "Only two more."
"Two more?" Don cried. "Who?"
Rafaella opened her eyes and stopped rubbing the rabbit's foot with her fingers.
"Who are the other two?" the reporter repeated.
The woman closed her eyes and attempted to make contact again, but the tenuous psychic link was broken.
"I'm sorry. That's all I can see. I don't know what the number fifteen refers to or what he meant by 'only two more.'"
"I think I do."
* * *
If Rafaella's message from beyond was accurate, the town could expect two more accidental deaths.
But who could they be? Don wondered. The judge, the prosecutor, the key witness and the entire jury are already dead.
Then he remembered that juries consisted of twelve members and two alternates. These two extra people had to attend the trial and step in should something happen to one of the jurors.
"I have to find out the alternates' names and warn them," he told his wife at dinner that evening.
"What are you going to tell them? That a ghost is out to get them?" Shelly laughed. "They'll never believe you. And even if they do, how can they protect themselves from what will surely be considered an accident? They can't lock themselves away in a room for the rest of their lives."
"I've got to try. If they do wind up dead, I'll never forgive myself if I remain silent."
"All I'm asking is that you think about it before you say anything. If word gets around that the editor of the Herald believes that a ghost is responsible for the deaths of more than a dozen people ...."
"I know. They'll think I'm insane. I'll wind up in a padded room in the state mental hospital."
"Maybe not anything as drastic as that, but it's bound to hurt your reputation and that of the paper."
In less than a week, Don discovered that his silence had not endangered the alternate jurors' lives. Since they had never actually voted to convict Ledbetter, they were not held responsible for his fate. Instead, the final two victims were, to the reporter's astonishment, Tina Pellington's parents.
"All their money," Quincy said after submitting his article on the couple's death by carbon monoxide poisoning. "You would think they would have kept their gas furnace properly maintained."
Why them? his editor wondered. Had they accused Ledbetter of their daughter's death?
Quincy looked at his watch; it was ten minutes to five.
"Is there anything else?" he asked the editor, anxious to leave.
"No. You go on home. I've got to get out of here early myself. I promised my wife we'd take the kids to see Santa."
"I remember those days," the reporter laughed, thinking of his two sons who were now both in college. "We'd wait in a long line so they could sit in his lap and get a cheap candy cane that Pellington's department store had left over from the previous Christmas."
The word candy struck a chord in Don's mind. It reminded him of a conversation between him and his grandfather about Tina Pellington's abduction. He had wondered then how Davis Ledbetter got the girl out of her house without the parents' hearing anything. Art had suggested the janitor lured her out with the promise of candy.
"How did the killer—whoever he was—get her out?" he asked himself again.
An idea came to him that he had never considered before. Maybe the girl never left, maybe she was killed inside the house.
Suddenly, the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Pellington made sense. Acting on a hunch, he arranged to have lunch with Lou Wagener, who had worked his way up from patrolman to detective.
"This is a nice surprise," the police officer declared as the two men walked into the Rustler Steak House. "I suppose you want information for a story you're writing, in which case, I expect you to pick up the check."
Don bided his time, waiting until Lou had finished his salad and was about to cut into his steak. Then he played his hand. It was a bluff, but he hoped the ruse might pay off.
"So, who else knew about Archer Pellington?"
Lou's face turned white, and the hands that held his knife and fork came to rest on the table.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Cops make bad liars."
"If you plan to write a story about Pellington, you won't get any dirt from me."
Bingo! the reporter thought. He does know something. Now, all I have to do is get it out of him.
"Come on. We've known each other since kindergarten," he declared, playing the boyhood friend angle. "You can tell me. I've already got a pretty good idea of what happened. All I need from you is confirmation."
"What is it you think you know?"
Another gamble.
"That Tina never went missing, that she was killed right there in her bedroom."
Lou remained silent, but he nodded his head in agreement.
"The police knew," Don said—a statement, not a question.
"There were whispers about Archer, but we never seriously thought he killed his own daughter. If he did, why didn't his wife come forward?"
That's why she had to die, too. She knew all along what her husband had done.
Having lost his appetite, the reporter pushed his plate away, despite having barely touched his food.
"Why did the police blame it on Davis Ledbetter?" he asked.
"He seemed the most likely suspect at the time."
"I grew up believing in a legal system where people were assumed innocent until their guilt was proven beyond a reasonable doubt, not one where a man can get convicted and executed because he was the most likely person to have committed a crime."
"A little girl was molested and strangled. Her nude body was left in the woods where the wild animals got to it. The community was on the verge of panic. We needed to solve the case. We needed a killer."
"Don't you mean scapegoat?"
"Archer Pellington was the richest man in town. He had a lot of powerful friends. We couldn't very well accuse him of such a loathsome crime without proof. His wife swore that the two of them were in their beds asleep when Tina was taken, and when the detectives brought Ledbetter in for questioning, he had no alibi. What could we do?"
"You could have let the case go cold. But, no, you let an innocent man be executed instead!"
"The prosecutor was the one who pushed for the arrest, not the police. And who do you think financed his campaign for reelection?"
"Archer Pellington," the reporter said before laying money on the table to cover the check and then leaving his friend to finish his meal alone.
* * *
"You're not serious about printing this?" Sally asked when Don requested she look over his article on Pellington's guilt before he sent it to the typesetter.
"If I remain silent about Ledbetter's innocence, then I'm no better than the people who sent him to the electric chair."
"What proof do you have that Archer murdered his daughter?"
"Lou Wagener told me as much."
"And if you're sued for libel, will he speak on your behalf?"
"Honestly? I have no idea. I've known him all my life, but you know how cops are. They usually stick together."
"What does your wife say?"
"I haven't discussed it with her."
"You should. A story like this will impact her life, too. And your children's."
Don frowned. He hadn't given any thought as to how the backlash might affect his family. After Sally left, he tore the article in half and wrote a single-column editorial questioning whether Davis Ledbetter was guilty of the crime for which he was executed. In it, he stuck to the facts of the case and did not mention the seventeen deaths, the ghostly quest for revenge or the probability that Archer Pellington was the guilty party.
His conscience somewhat mollified by his attempt to clear Ledbetter's name, he sent the editorial to the typesetter, put another sheet of paper into his Underwood typewriter and began to write.
It was not an earth-shattering story. It was simply an article about the need for another traffic signal: this one on the corner of Main and Jefferson. As his fingers plucked at the keys, he was grateful that he lived in a small town where crimes like child molestation, murder and political corruption were the rare exception, not the rule, a quiet, peaceful town where people believed it was the last place on earth where such criminal acts occurred.
Salem once made the front page of the Herald when he ran across the infield at the former Shea Stadium.
