The World's Finest Mystery Part 10

Tuesday, September 16 "Ghost towns of Kansas?"

In New York City, in the office of the managing editor of American Times, Amelia Blaney had slapped the palm of her left hand against the side of her head, as if to clear her ears. The spontaneous gesture was meant to indicate, humorously, that- surely- she had misunderstood her boss. It was not possible, her facial expression suggested, that she had heard him correctly.

One side of Dan Hale's thin mouth lifted in wry acknowledgment of her humor, but he didn't say, "Just kidding." Instead, he inquired, bitingly, "Is it the word ghost, town, or Kansas that gives you trouble, Amelia?"

She was merely young, not stupid. She knew that Dan himself was originally from the state. Maybe he hated it; maybe he loved it. Already regretting her comic miming, Amelia trod carefully with her next words.

"No doubt," she said tactfully, "Kansas is beautiful in September. All that golden... wheat."

"It's not a wheat state."

"It's not? Corn, then."

"Corn is green in the fields."

Amelia grasped the edge of her chair to keep from throwing up her hands. Okay! she thought in exasperated surrender. Whatever! She decided to skip over Kansas altogether and cut to the truth.

"I'm afraid of the dark," she admitted.

She said it lightly, not really expecting her boss to believe her, much less to feel sympathy and to change his mind. But it was embarra.s.singly true. Ever since she was a small child, Amelia had been nearly pathologically afraid of the dark. As much as a claustrophobic hates closets, as much as an agoraphobic is terrified of open s.p.a.ces, Amelia was scared of the dark. She felt panicky and sick on the rare occasions when she got caught without sunlight, nightlight, flashlight, or headlight. She didn't know why, hadn't even been able to tell a shrink what it was- exactly- that she was scared was going to "get" her in the dark. She only knew the fear was excruciatingly real, and only as far away as the next sunset.

Sure enough, the characteristic little curve appeared at the side of Dan Hale's mouth again. She could see that he thought she was joking. Nearly everybody did, including her last boyfriend, who had finally walked out, angrily accusing her of ignoring his needs because he couldn't sleep with a light on in the bedroom. She couldn't sleep without it. She had cried when he left, but the truth was that she was less afraid of being alone than she was of the dark.

In one scathing word, Dan summed up his reaction: "So?"

Amelia tried one last time, though she knew that no reporter with only six months of job experience between this moment and journalism school could afford to reject an a.s.signment, no matter if it turned her knees to custard and made her feel queasy. Dan Hale could have told her to interview a serial killer, and she might not have trembled, but this- this. .h.i.t her where she knew she had a gaping hole in her courage.

"So," she explained, "that's where ghosts live. In the dark."

Amelia smiled tentatively at her boss, knowing it must look more like a grimace. A skeleton's grin.

He didn't appear to notice. In fact, he next uttered what at first sounded to Amelia like a total non sequitur.

"You're an animal nut, right?"

Startled at the change of subject from ghosts to animals and taken aback at his phrasing, Amelia replied with a cautious, "Yes?" She was surprised that Dan knew of her pa.s.sion for animals. She supposed it must show on her college transcript that she had had a brief flirtation with veterinary medicine, before switching to J school. The transcript would not, she hoped, betray how disastrous and tragic the outcome of that flirtation had been. Amelia had ghosts of her own that she would have hated for any reporter, such as herself, to investigate.

"I thought so," Dan said. His voice was brisk now, and she knew it was a done deal. She was going to Kansas. He said, "That's why I've made reservations for you at the Serengeti Bed and Breakfast."

Amelia nearly whacked the side of her head again. Incredulously, she said, "The what?"

"It's a bed-and-breakfast inn on the grounds of an exotic animal farm," he told her, which only increased her astonishment. "Camels, llamas, giraffes. Ostriches, elks, kangaroos. It's all owned by a vet."

"Now, there's a story," she murmured, then flushed with embarra.s.sment because she'd said it loud enough for him to hear. But good grief! She couldn't keep herself from reacting. An exotic animal farm? In Kansas? Could such a thing be true? And if so, would she get to see these animals, maybe even touch them? As unlikely as it seemed, Amelia began to feel excited about the a.s.signment.

"No." Her boss's tone was annoyed, sarcastic. "That's not the story. Ghost towns are your story, remember that."

His blunt words slapped her back to earth, and to her fears.

The dark honestly frightened Amelia, down in a deep, shadowy cave in her soul. But the man seated across from her scared her in a more immediate and direct place: her pocketbook. She had student loans to pay off. She was only a beginner. She couldn't afford to beg off just because an a.s.signment unnerved her. Amelia didn't have to look at the crowded walls of Dan's office to recall how pivotal this man's opinion could be, to her, to the city, to the world.

Those walls held awards and photographs, personally and admiringly autographed, of Dan Hale with so many heads of state that Amelia was hard pressed to identify all of them by name and country. He might be only thirty-six years old, but already he was managing editor of one of the four most influential weekly newsmagazines in the world. He was a man whose opinion, it was rumored, could end a war or start one.

Amelia was, in the old-fas.h.i.+oned parlance of her adopted trade, only a cub reporter. She doubted she would even get to compose any of the eventual story; more likely, she would type up her notes and turn it all over to a senior writer. Dan was sending her out as a researcher, that was all. But it was really something, to receive an a.s.signment personally from the man himself.

If I'm a cub, she said to herself, as all these thoughts flashed through her mind, then he's a bear. It was an animal he resembled: tall, overweight, with a small-eyed, jowly face and a deceptive shambling gait that disguised a legendary ability to attack fools, in print and in the newsroom, viciously and without warning.

She felt flattered, even honored, by his interest in her.

There was nothing remotely romantic or s.e.xual about it, Amelia felt sure. Dan Hale gave no sign that he even noticed Amelia in that way, and that was a relief to her. She liked very much meeting "brain to brain," as it were, editor to reporter. Amelia had been so saddened by her last failed love that she still tensed when a man showed any attraction to her. Compliments made her feel uncomfortable. She didn't want love, she had decided, it was work she needed, only work.

Thank G.o.d, she thought, that this interview between her and the legend was strictly professional. For some reason, this feared and respected journalist seemed to think that Amelia Blaney was worth his personal mentoring. Amelia sat up straighter and tried to swallow her doubts about the a.s.signment. She concentrated instead on pleasing this difficult boss and reminded herself of how much she loved animals. He was doing her many favors with this a.s.signment. She would try to appreciate it and live up to it.

Even if it meant ghost towns in Kansas.

He handed her airplane tickets and a highway map of Kansas, with certain town names circled in red ink. Then he impatiently dismissed her from his office. Only when she was standing outside his office, feeling rather breathless, did Amelia realize that he hadn't given her a single clue to why this a.s.signment was made or what in the world she was supposed to be looking for.

She turned around, intending to barge back in and ask him.

But he was already on the phone, his back turned toward his window.

When she asked an older reporter about it, the woman advised her, "Don't expect explanations. Sometimes he never says why he wants you to do a story. That might prejudice your investigations. You're supposed to dig up the facts and figure out for yourself what the real story is." The older reporter grinned at Amelia. "And heaven help you if it doesn't turn out to be what he knew it was all along."

Oh, G.o.d! thought Amelia, feeling a terror that had nothing to do with the dark.

Wednesday, September 17 On the connecting flight between Kansas City, Missouri, and Wichita, Kansas, the next day, Amelia studied the map Dan had given her. She decided the order in which she would drive to the abandoned, or nearly deserted, towns of Spale, Bloomberg, Wheaten, McDermott, Flaschoen, Parlance, and Stan. She loved the name of the last one. A town named Stan. It sounded friendly and, well, small-townish. Bemused, she wondered if New York City could ever have become the center of the universe (as she considered it to be) if the founders had named it Stan. On the plane, she laughed to herself.

While she was in an organizing mood, Amelia read over the bits of research she had pulled out of the library as well as from the magazine's files (which were a veritable library themselves) and the Internet. What she found was intriguing and went a long way toward explaining why her worldly-wise editor had considered the topic newsworthy in the first place. It was going to be a story of a changing America, she predicted to herself, of rural residents leaving for the cities, and of the towns they abandoned turning back into prairie dust.

These ghosts wouldn't scare her, she felt sure.

They might be sad, but they wouldn't be frightening, at least not to her personally. And, with any luck, she could do all of her research by daylight and retire every evening to the well-lighted security of her hotel room. B&B, she reminded herself as the outskirts of a small city appeared below the plane. Amelia had never stayed at a bed-and-breakfast lodging before. She wondered what they would serve her to eat at an exotic animal farm. Oats? Hay? It's all cereal to me. She laughed to herself as they landed.

She was beginning to appreciate just how deliciously bizarre this a.s.signment could turn out to be. Giraffes and ghosts. In Kansas. Oh, my. Why, she could dine out on this story for weeks back home. Her New York friends would laugh till they begged her to stop.

Although she put away her paperwork, Amelia left the reading light on overhead. They were flying through a cloud cover that had darkened the cabin. Amelia wasn't particularly afraid of the storm or of a b.u.mpy landing. She just liked the way the little lamp cast a circle of security around her in the pa.s.senger cabin.

Her first clue that she was nearing her destination was a camel hanging its head over a fence. Behind the camel- dromedary, she corrected herself when she saw only one hump- there were several zebras, including an adorable colt running circles around its elders. In her rental car, Amelia drove past another pasture, where huge ostriches lifted their beautiful wings and fluttered them over their backs. She was tempted to think, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, that she "wasn't in Kansas anymore." But a large sign spelled out, "Welcome to the Serengeti." Below that: "Bed & Breakfast Inn." And farther down, stating the obvious in graceful script: "Exotic Animals." Visitors were advised: "No Tours without Permission."

Amelia turned onto a gravel lane.

Along a fence line, she stopped to stare back at the ostriches which ambled over to stare at her. As they batted their white eyelids at her, she shocked herself by nearly bursting into tears. Once, at a time that now seemed long ago, she had dreamed of being an animal doctor. And not just for any dogs and cats, either. A large-animal vet was what she'd wanted to be. "You," Amelia told the ostriches in a thick voice, "are certainly big enough, but I didn't quite have you in mind!"

Horses, cows, even sheep.

A practice in upper New York state, where she had spent summers with her grandparents. Farm country. Dairy land.

But it had all come to an ignominious, horrifying end. And she had slunk off to journalism school, not really caring anymore what degree she earned or what job she landed or even what her future held. She had, in fact, lost any grasp of the concept of future. Time became divided into then and now, and there was no tomorrow.

Suddenly impatient with herself (Amelia's grandmother had never tolerated what she called the "pig wallow of self-pity"), Amelia sniffed, blinked, and hurried on toward a white ranch-style house that waited at the end of the drive. She saw an ordinary-looking long, white motel structure to the right and metal pens and gates and a series of connected wooden barns. Nearly everything was painted white with red trim. It looked like a perfectly ordinary, well-maintained ranch. Except for the inn. And the zebras.

In a pasture beyond the barns, Amelia spotted a giraffe.

She wasn't quite sure she was going to approve of this place, this zoo on the prairie, because why weren't these wild creatures back in Africa, where most of them belonged? Still, she couldn't help but grin at the sight of the giraffe, and as she parked her car, she wondered if she ought to keep an eye out for wandering lions.

At first, it seemed as if the farm itself might be her first ghost town. "n.o.body around but us chickens," she observed to a beautiful, glossy brown rooster that had walked up to the front door with her. "Are you the guard bird around here?"

When n.o.body answered the doorbell or her knock, she obeyed the sign that said, "Come in," and walked into a living room that had been transformed into an office. There were two desks with bulletin boards behind them. The walls were covered with photographs of people posing with animals, tear sheets from newspapers and magazines, and cute letters of appreciation from schoolchildren.

To pa.s.s the time until somebody showed up to sign her in, Amelia walked around the room, looking at all of the pictures and reading everything, feeling as if she were searching for the "real story" that Dan had sent her on. Was it about the economics of the heartland? Or was it about the traffic in exotic animals? How did these animals get here, anyway? Were they treated decently? Did they include endangered species that were illegal to own? Maybe, instead of researching ghost towns, she should have looked up references on the international wild animal trade- Of late, Amelia had begun to get the sinking feeling that she was just not cut out to be a journalist. In truth, she didn't enjoy being suspicious of people, and she wasn't even particularly nosy. Curious, yes, in a courteous and scientific kind of way, but not nosy in the way of natural-born gossips. Or, she often thought wryly, journalists. She hated to ask rude questions. She much preferred to give people the benefit of the doubt rather than to suspect them. She'd drifted into feature writing, because investigative reporting was absolutely impossible for her; she always felt bad for the families of people whose lives were exposed. She stared, unseeing, down at one of the desks and thought, And here I am, looking for a story, and I don't even know what it is!

She had lost track of what she was reading and now discovered it wasn't about wild animals at all. What? she asked herself, confused by what she was seeing. Having worked her way around the room, she was now standing behind one of the desks, looking at the newspaper clippings tacked up there.

The word murder was in the headlines.

It was a set of clippings from local newspapers, dating back almost seventeen years. They were all about a long-ago murder. Of a girl named Brenda Rogers. Seventeen years old. A senior at Spale High School. Honor student. Valedictorian. Homecoming queen. Voted Most Likely to Succeed. Winner of a full scholars.h.i.+p to the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Oldest child of a couple who farmed outside town. The photos showed a smiling, pretty blond girl who appeared to enjoy having her picture taken.

A terrible crime and loss revealed itself to Amelia, and she felt sadness for the girl, the families, the town where, it was reported, "nothing so heinous has ever occurred before."

The killer's name was Thomas Rogers.

"Same as hers," Amelia murmured, transfixed by what she was reading. Also seventeen. Her brother? "My G.o.d, her husband?" Not only that but the father of- "Her child?"

To Amelia, it seemed an unlikely combination of facts for a small town in the Midwest around 1980. But what was it that was so improbable, really? An early pregnancy? Or the fact that the boy married her? No. It was the continued high achievements of the young mother, and the scholars.h.i.+p, the full four-year scholars.h.i.+p going to a seventeen-year-old with a baby. To Amelia's mind, it all suggested an extraordinary young woman, a generous-hearted high school, a forgiving town, a trusting scholars.h.i.+p committee, and- more than likely- a wonderful, supportive family. Her glance pa.s.sed quickly over the obituary that named the survivors.

My Lord, she thought sadly, what an awful blow to all of them.

And the boy? The husband/killer?

Also a senior. Also a straight-A student. A football, basketball, baseball star. Almost as outstanding as she was, and honorable to boot, in marrying her. Honorable, that is, except for the appalling fact that he killed her. Amelia read how her body was found in an old tunnel under the town, that it was discovered she had been strangled and dumped there. She read of Thomas's confession, conviction as an adult, sentencing to a federal penitentiary, the town's stunned grief over the fate of these young people.

He never said why he did it, she read, only that he did.

She realized that Spale was one of the ghost towns circled in red on her map, which meant that the town had emptied in the time between the murder and now.

And then she turned over one more clipping and saw, to her regret, that this was the story she was looking for and that she was going to have to go after it. The final clipping, and the most current, reported that Thomas Rogers, having served his time for the murder of his wife, Brenda, was getting out of prison at last. This week. He was quoted as saying that he would return home to live in Spale, "because there's n.o.body left to hate me."

Amelia knew what to do now: call Dan Hale in New York and get his approval. He would tell her to locate the released killer, alone in his ghost town, and interview him. So tell me, Tom, how does it feel, coming back to the scene of the crime? Did you love her? Why did you kill her? Our millions of subscribers want to know! Amelia felt frightened and sick at the idea of what she was going to have to do. Track down the girl's remaining family, her high school friends, some teachers, get them to relive a horrible time in their lives.

I don't want to, Amelia thought, but her practical brain inquired: Do you prefer to be unemployed? No, she did not. She'd do it. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, maybe she was making too much of the whole thing. Maybe Dan wouldn't even like the story idea. That thought cheered her up, and she smiled to herself.

The front door opened, admitting a breeze and a tall man.

"You always find murder amusing?"

"What? No, I-"

"That's my desk you're-"

"I was reading all of your-"

"Yeah. Are you checking in?"

She was tempted to say, "No way," and stomp out. But giving him her usual benefit of the doubt, Amelia realized that his first sight of her could have annoyed anybody. She softened her voice and said, "I'm sorry. I've been looking at all of your photographs and mementos, and it led me around back here. When you came in, I was thinking of something else. Not the murder of that poor child. And yes, my name is Amelia Blaney, and I think there's a reservation in my name."

He stared at her for a moment, giving her enough time to realize that he was an extremely attractive man. Possibly near thirty. Tanned face with wonderful dark eyes, thick dark brown hair that curled down around the top of his s.h.i.+rt collar. The wide shoulders of a man who had tossed a good many hay bales. He wore dirt-streaked blue jeans over cowboy boots and a red and white plaid wool jacket over a denim work s.h.i.+rt. He was a big presence in the room. Amelia stepped quickly around to the front of his desk and then stood off to the side of it.

"I'm the sorry one," he said, shaking his head. "No excuses. Jim Kopecki. Welcome to our zoo. I'm the head jacka.s.s."

They both grinned, and suddenly the air was cleared between them.

"Dr. Kopecki?" she inquired.

"Yeah. The locals call me Dr. Doolittle behind my back."

"I'll bet they do. How'd you end up in the Wild Kingdom?"

"I've always been here," he said easily. "Inherited the farm. And the animals, too, in a way. First, it was just a few llamas out of a local rancher's estate. n.o.body else wanted them; they weren't a cash crop at the time." His tone was wry. Somewhat to her dismay, Amelia felt herself being attracted not only to the story but also to the man. "Then it was a couple of abandoned ostriches from a wild animal show, and then people took to bringing me orphaned mule deers, that sort of thing. Then I read about a mistreated giraffe, and I went and got him." The young vet grinned. "You should have seen that, driving down the interstate with a hole cut in the top of an eighteen-wheeler and a half-grown giraffe sticking out of the top."

Amelia laughed. She was delighted with the story, and she was feeling warmed by Jim Kopecki's obvious feeling for animals.

"And," he concluded, "things just pretty much got completely out of hand from that point on." He made a comically rueful face and laughed along with her. "I figured that a lot of wild species are being born now in this country, and somebody's got to take care of them. When I was a kid, I dreamed of owning my own kangaroo, so maybe this falls in the category of 'Be careful what you wish for.' "

"I envy you," Amelia blurted. "I wanted my own elephant."

He shook his head and looked sincerely regretful. "Sorry, I don't have one of those yet. You might not envy me if you could see me trying to pull a calf out of a water buffalo when it's freezing cold and the middle of the night."

Yes, I would, Amelia thought.

He c.o.c.ked his handsome head at her, and she easily read the interest that showed in his beautiful dark eyes. "So what do you do?"

"I'm a reporter," she told him, feeling like a fraud as she said it. "For American Times magazine."

Later, she would decide she had never seen a human face shut down so fast. All of the good humor and warmth drained out of his expression. Briefly, there was a look of shock, then disappointment. And then he returned to the cold-looking man who had first opened the door and caught her smiling beside the homicide stories.

He looked down at his desk, saying in clipped tones, "Would you like the Giraffe Room, the Zebra Suite, the Kangaroo Single, the Elk Double, the-"

Astonished by the alteration in his behavior, she managed to reply, "A single will be fine," but what she wanted to say was What did I say? What happened? What's the matter?

In fact, she opened her mouth to ask that very question but only got as far as "What-" when he ruthlessly interrupted her.

"You get a full breakfast with your room and a tour of the animals."