by Jeffrey Meyers

Party, a college town in Montana, is surrounded by high mountains and immersed in thin air that cuts off the supply of oxygen to the brain.  The town has a weird Magic Mountain-like climate: hot spells in January, snowstorms in July and flash floods year round.  Beautiful half-naked girls—running, skating or riding through the streets—greet strangers with an enthusiastic “Hi!” as if they were old friends.  Despite the alpine air, it is a Midwestern town: the Great Plains start a mile to the east.  Yet young and old strut around in leather vests and cowboy boots.  Turquoise is big, and Indian beads, bolo ties, silver watchbands and huge belt buckles.  In winter all the inhabitants ski or slide down the slopes and the town is deserted.  The people of Party are in perfect condition, with gleaming white teeth and blond hair—sleek athletes dedicated to the strenuous pleasures of the body rather than the life of the mind.

The Kinkades owned a 7,000-square-feet mansion in Party.  Enclosed by a wavy brick wall, it had a walk-in safe, two balconies and an impressive view of the Rocky Mountains.  At seven o’clock on the morning after Christmas a tragedy occurred in this idyllic town.  The corpse of Sidney, their seven-year-old daughter, was found on the concrete floor of the wine cellar.  She was wearing pajamas and wrapped in a blanket.  Her hands were tied and extended over her head, and her mouth was covered with duct tape.  Her skull was cracked and her brain fatally injured by the blow of a blunt weapon.

Sidney was an exceptionally beautiful, delightful and precocious little girl, who took part in many beauty contests and talent shows.  Her second-floor bedroom was filled, in addition to soft dolls and colorful mobiles, with her elaborate costumes, makeup and blond wigs, her trophies and crowns from pageants.  One could easily imagine her as a princess in a tower, letting down her golden locks to help her lover climb up.  She watched videos of her idol, Shirley Temple, and learned to imitate her song and dance routines, her provocative poses and enticing gestures.  While other young competitors were tedious and chaotic, Sidney was poised and professional. She didn’t cry when she lost the contests, but the intense pressure sometimes made her wet her pants and her bed.

Leslie, Sidney’s ten-year-old sister, was very different.  Brainy and skinny, fearful and withdrawn, she still sucked her thumb.  She had no close friends, played alone and hid under her comfort blanket to watch video games.  But she was very close to her warm and responsive younger sister, though Sidney sometimes bossed her around in the nicest way.  Used to attention and lonely in their echoing mansion, Sidney sometimes slept in Leslie’s bed in the adjoining room.

Seven people were possible suspects for the brutal murder.  Sidney’s father, the handsome Clifford Kinkade, had made millions selling hospital supplies, from bandages to brain-scanners.  He found her body an hour before he called for help.  Interviewed by the police, he seemed to change suddenly from unnaturally calm to incredibly keyed up.  “I’ve been though all this before,” he said.  “My teenaged daughter from my first marriage was killed in a car crash a few years ago.  I’m not exactly used to disaster but have become, one might say, hardened to adversity.  Still, it’s difficult to accept the idea of someone creeping through the corridors and entering her bedroom while we slept.”

Colette, Sidney’s mother, swung between wild hysterics and sudden fainting fits.  She had been a beauty queen and minor television actress, and was putting on quite a show.  She had wanted Sidney, her alter-ago, to fulfill her disappointed ambitions.  In between sobs and fits, Colette told the police detectives: “We thought we could cherish and care for her forever.  I feel terribly guilty that she was murdered, right in this house, and we couldn’t protect her.  On Christmas evening she was alive.  We read her a story and kissed her goodnight.  She was, as always, sweet and charming.  Now she’s dead and will always be dead.  We prayed for her in church, but no one explained why God allowed this to happen.  Did He really want her to die?”  When Colette screamed out, “the pain of the blow must have been terrible,” Clifford tried to soothe her by saying, “it was all over in a few seconds.”

Leslie Kinkade and her parents were the only people known to be in the house on the night of the murder.  Leslie slept soundly through the night, Clifford woke her up at eight o’clock, and a friend came over to take her safely away to his nearby home.  The police thought Leslie was a gentle child, devoted to Sidney, and she was not a suspect.  Clifford’s twenty-year-old son, Bruce, brother of the car-crashed teenager, was a college student in town.  He had a key to the house and sometimes slept there, but was with friends in his apartment on Christmas night.

The Nanny, Mattie Stores, also had a house key but was at home with her husband that night.  Very close to Sidney, she would write stories and poems and read them to the two sisters.  When she recited a line from her poem about a female baboon—“Her bottom’s inflamed but she isn’t ashamed”—Leslie wrinkled up her nose and said, “I don’t like that red butt poem.”  When Mattie read her stories and the girls wanted to sit next to her, she placed them across from her so she could see their reactions.  Sidney suddenly said, “I have to go potty.”—“Go!”  She dashed out of the room and ran back a few seconds later.  “I don’t think you had time to go to the bathroom.”—“I didn’t want to miss the story.”

There was also the possibility of an unidentified Intruder and kidnapper who could have entered the house through a broken window in the basement.  He left a long and rambling ransom note demanding the sum of $157,000 for Sidney’s safe return.  Kidnappers usually ask for the ransom in round numbers for ease of delivering and carrying away the cash.  No one ever phoned to get the ransom money.  Sensational murder cases always attract cranks and madmen.  One sex offender, who sometimes dressed as a woman to get closer to little girls, confessed to the murder.  But he could not produce any evidence and the police could not find any proof to suggest he had committed the crime.  His confession was merely an attempt to attract attention and extract some money from newspapers for his sensational story.

The parents hired a high-powered criminal lawyer and a prominent public relations firm.  They naturally wanted to protect their surviving daughter and refused to cooperate in the investigation.  Arguing that Leslie had suffered enough trauma, they persuaded the police to delay her interview.  In that interval she was coached by Clifford’s lawyer and allowed to prepare her story.  The parents even planned to leave the country, if necessary, before a grand jury could force Leslie to testify in court.  The police gave the wealthy and influential family special treatment and hoped in vain that they would incriminate each other.  Clifford owned a private airplane and had planned to fly the family to his relatives in Virginia on December 26th.  They couldn’t bear to carry Sidney’s little coffin with them and asked friends to arrange her cremation.  But these crucial witnesses, ordered to remain in Party, were not allowed to make a hasty escape.

This high-profile infanticide case attracted widespread newspaper publicity.  The small-town police, confused and out of their element, badly muddled the investigation.  Besides treating the family with kid gloves, they allowed many policemen, friends, neighbors and employees to wander through the house and contaminate the evidence before it had been properly collected.  The police delayed the crucial interviews, shared vital information with the Kinkades and treated them as victims rather than suspects.  The police chief, who looked like a broken-nosed boxer, and the District Attorney, who resembled a Ken doll, competed for control of the investigation.  To get the most favorable publicity both leaked confidential material and criticized each other in the press, which fiercely struggled and paid to get the best inside story.  Reporters said it was like watching a real-life noir movie with an amateur cast.  A scandalous newspaper called it a “forensic fuck up.”

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A week later, the town mayor and state governor, fearing they would take the blame and suffer politically for police incompetence, called in the greatest living detective: Samuel Johnson.  As Boswell entered the premises of the Johnson Detective Agency at 220B Baker Street in London, the wooden floorboards creaked, and the house reeked of cabbage and drippings from the kitchen, of charred logs and dead ash from the fireplace.  He announced his arrival by stating, “I’m your new assistant.  We’ve been summoned to Party, Montana, to solve the Kincade murder case and must depart straightaway.  Believe me, good sir, it is an honor, a great honor I should affirm, to work with you and learn from you.”  Johnson, staring intently at him, observed, “I perceive you are a lawyer from Scotland.”—“How on earth did you know?”—“Your barbarous accent, pompous stance and obsequious manner gave the game away.”  Grateful for his attention, Boswell bounced back from Johnson’s crushing assaults.  “I do indeed come from Scotland,” he said, “but I cannot help it.”—“That is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help.  The noblest prospect that a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.  And, in your case, to the Wild West territory of our former colony.”  He was so pleased with his jest at Boswell’s expense that he burst into a fit of immoderate laughter.

Tall and stout, with a commanding presence, Johnson slowly rose to shake hands, his mountainous belly foremost.  His costume was unprepossessing and needed immediate repair.  He wore a dirty brown jacket, frayed-collar shirt, food-stained tie, baggy trousers, down-at-heel shoes and skullcap too small for his outsized head.  He moved convulsively, his face a riot of tics.  His speech was interrupted by grunts and groans, and his mouth opened and shut as if he were chewing meat.  Like Frankenstein’s monster, he dragged his heavy feet and walked with a shuffling movement, twisting his hands and swaying his body like a sailor in a storm.

They caught the next plane to Montana, via Chicago and Salt Lake City.  Johnson was struck, as always, by the quaint humor of the Americans, not his favorite people.  On the plane he heard another passenger exclaim, “Have fun now.  You’re approaching Utah.”  An aggressive child at the airport bon-bon shoppe wore a pin that warned, “Just gimme choclit and no one will git hurt.”  On the taxi ride from the airport to town, Johnson noticed a car-repair garage that boasted, “No muff too tough.”  A salacious sign on a well-appointed van proclaimed, “If this truck’s rockin’, don’t bother knockin’.”

Rolling along through the clear air and noting the ribald jests prompted Johnson to tell Boswell, “My idea of paradise would be to combine mobility with sensual pleasure.  I should like to drive briskly in a bright red Mercedes convertible with a pretty and elegantly dressed woman at my side.  I remember once taking an attractive young lady on my knee, kissing her and exclaiming, “Let us do it again and see who shall tire first.”

Johnson had an impatient and irascible, vehement and violent temper, and loved to aim warning shots across Boswell’s bow.  Instead of politely introducing him to the local constabulary, he churlishly declared: “I hear from sound sources that this gentleman has been idle.  He was idle in Edinburgh.  His father send him to Glasgow, where he continued to be idle.  He then came to London, where he has been very idle.  And now he is in America, where he will be as idle as ever.  Unless I take him in hand.”

Shocked by this unprovoked and unseemly attack, Boswell led him to a quiet corner and plaintively asked: “You make me uneasy by your behavior to me.  Why must you humiliate me in this manner?”—“Why, indeed?  If you must know my strategy, it is to establish dominance, impress the police with my power and put you down so they won’t suspect that you are clever.”—“All the same, it’s cruel and rather hard to swallow.”—“Fear not,” Johnson said, suddenly deferential. “I am sorry for it and will make it up to you, as you please, in twenty different ways.  I plan to challenge and defy them, as Kinkade himself has done.”  Assuming his professional stance, Johnson remarked, “Let us now proceed to detection, carefully and incisively.  Curiosity is a permanent and certain characteristic of a vigorous mind, and to a detective nothing can be useless.  As I once wrote in The Rambler, ‘It is easy to guess the trade of an artisan by his knees, his fingers or his shoulders.’ ”

“Tell me, then, chief detective Speck, what you have so far determined?”  With a cowboy twang he sagely revealed: “Waall, we haven’t found any conclusive evidence about this shocking murder.  But we’re giving it all we got.  Right now everyone is under suspicion.”  Suppressing his laughter, Johnson drew Boswell aside and exclaimed, “That fellow is a mean wretch who only desires to please.  He treads on the brink of meaning and indulges in the vicissitudes of speculation.  Such an excess of stupidity is not commonly found in humankind.”  Boswell was greatly relieved that another victim had provoked Johnson’s wrath.

While searching the house and the huge walk-in closet Johnson noted Clifford’s twenty suits and Colette’s hundred pair of shoes.  But the evidence he sought had disappeared and he found nothing new.  After listening to the interviews belatedly taped by the police, Johnson had another go at the suspects in a private chamber.  He asked Clifford, “what did you do between finding the body at seven o’clock and ringing the police a full hour later?”  He answered, with a desolate smile, “We had to get ready to fly east.  I looked in Sidney’s bedroom, saw she wasn’t there, called out and searched the house for her.  When I finally found her in the wine cellar, I was in a state of shock.  I took her in my arms and tried to revive her.  But it was too late.  She was already cold and beyond all help in this world.  I wrapped her in the blanket and carried her from the concrete floor to her own soft bed.  I wept and wondered who could possibly want to kill my beautiful and innocent child.  I woke my wife.  I woke Leslie, who had been sleeping soundly.  I called a friend.  Then I wept again.”

“Allow me to ask a few more specific questions.”  Clifford seemed to respond in a forthright fashion to this catechismic exchange.

—What time did you go to sleep?  —We had a big Christmas party that day.  I was exhausted from supervising all the arrangements, greeting everyone and having more than a few drinks.  We went to bed, earlier than usual, at about ten o’clock.

—Was your bedroom door open or closed?  —We keep it open so we can hear the girls if they call us from the floor below.  That night we slept heavily and heard nothing.  The basement was too far away to hear any noise coming from there.

—Was the radio or television on?  I see you have a gigantic screen in the bedroom.

—They were not on.  We were too tired to hear or watch anything.

—Where was the ransom note found?  Did you recognize the handwriting?  —My wife found it at the bottom of the main staircase.  The wobbly handwriting was very peculiar.  The note seemed too long and rambling.

—Who did Colette first contact after she’d found the note?  —She told me.  She then gave it to the police and phoned her close friend.

—Did you hear any sounds and get up in the night?  —No.  I was dead beat and slept all through the night.  My God, I wish I had been more aware of what was happening.

—Do you own a dog?  Does it bark at strangers?  Where was it that night?  —We have Hermione, a black Labrador bitch.  She was at the vet’s.  She’s gentle with the girls, but does bark at strangers.  But she wasn’t here to bark that night.

—Why was the murder committed on Christmas?  —I don’t know.  You’d have to ask the murderer.  If I had to venture a guess, I’d say there were more distractions that day with many people coming in and out, and more opportunity to enter the house unseen.  If the murderer knew us and wanted to take revenge, it would be even more painful if he killed our child on that supposedly joyous day.

—Do you suspect anyone?  —I have no idea who could do such a horrible thing.

—Why did you disturb the evidence by carrying the child upstairs?  —I regret doing that.  I was far too upset to think about evidence.  I just wanted to take her to a safer place.

—Finally, why were you so eager to leave town?  —We made those plans months ago.  Now the well was poisoned and I just wanted to get far away.

Colette, composed and elegantly dressed as always, stopped to admire herself in the mirror on the way into the room.  But she became hysterical when Johnson’s queries renewed her grief.  She screamed through her tears: “How could another mother hug her living child while my little girl is so cold and will never smile again.  Her life, so full of promise, was cut off before it scarcely began.  Nothing makes any sense anymore.  Nothing can ever be right anymore.  My life is broken and destroyed for ever.”  Aware that Colette was still under suspicion and may have been overreacting, Johnson offered only perfunctory condolences.  Drawing on his own philosophical beliefs, he observed, “Grief is a species of illness.  There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow.”  Colette thought his well-meant stoicism was a heartless response from man who lacked sympathy and had no children of his own.  But she did corroborate her husband’s testimony.

With Leslie, Johnson was bound by the conditions previously agreed by the police.  Her parents were allowed to remain in the room.  His questions were limited to ten minutes.  She had already been coached by their lawyer.  Though he treated her gently and didn’t mention Sidney’s name, she was understandably nervous and sometimes broke into tears.

—How did you feel about your sister?  —I loved her and miss her.  She was my best friend.

—Did you admire her?  —I thought she was great.  One thing, though.  I was better at judo and pony riding.

—Was she nice to you?  —Yes.  She was always nice to everyone.

—When was the last time you saw her?  —When we went to bed, later than usual, at about nine o’clock.

Why did you give up your judo lessons?  —It was too rough.  I didn’t like throwing people around. and hurting them.

—That’s all, my dear.  Thank you very much.  –But I keep thinking, “what if this happens to me?”

Fair-haired and blue-eyed, with perfect teeth and muscular build, Sidney’s half-brother, Bruce, was a fine specimen of Party’s eugenics.  Instead of taking a year off following graduation, he took all four years off in college.  During his time as a student, Bruce had learned nothing more than how to get drunk and get laid.  Boswell could not help interjecting that these talents were more useful in later life than academic knowledge.  Testing the quality of his mind, Johnson found that Bruce confused Audubon and Autobahn, Ovid and Enovid, Chekhov’s “Brute” and brut champagne.  But Bruce had a rock-solid, rock-climber’s alibi.  On Christmas night, after attending his father’s party, he continued to celebrate with fraternity brothers and complaisant girlfriends in his apartment near the campus.  Bruce was not given to introspection, and between an endless repetition of “like” Johnson could not extract anything useful.  Everyone liked Bruce and he smiled, like, on all alike.

The Nanny, Mattie Stores, had seen the sisters grow up and obviously adored them.  But she was rather critical of Clifford and Colette.  Despite his fabulous wealth (beyond the dreams of avarice) he paid her only slightly above the minimum wage.  When her husband was unemployed, she had to beg Clifford to lend her $2,500 to pay her next month’s rent.  He provided a lot of jobs in town, but said he already had a janitorial service and refused to hire her husband.  Colette was essentially kind-hearted and gave her a lot of cast-off clothes, some of which she sold in consignment shops.  But she treated Mattie as a servant rather than as a member of the family and expected her to be on call day and night.

—What sort of marriage do they have?  —She flatters him and he spoils her.  (Johnson thought: “She loved him for the presents he had bought, and he loved her that she did value them”).

—Did you ever get angry with Sidney when she misbehaved?  —Sidney is the nicest girl I ever knew and, without being goody-goody, is never naughty.  She feels different from other girls, but not superior.  I try to reassure her, say it doesn’t matter, when she wets her pants.  Colette sometimes becomes impatient but never spanks her.

The putative and unidentified Intruder, whose footprints disappeared overnight in the melted snow, could have entered through the broken basement window.  But he would have to be familiar with the large and complex mansion to move Sidney from her bedroom into the semi-hidden wine cellar.  He may have intended to kidnap and have sex with her.  But when she struggled to escape, he seemed to lose control of himself and killed her.  The Intruder had to leave the corpse behind and rush out of the house.  Once her body was found, there was no possibility of ransom money.  So he botched the whole crime: a pointless and profitless murder.  The police had no clues about the Intruder.  They were investigating sex offenders, local criminals, and any employees or competitors who might have a grudge against the Kinkades.  There was also the possibility of Sidney’s jealous opponents.  Johnson remembered the case of a champion figure-skater who deliberately injured her main rival and put her out of action.

Johnson next proceeded to the most unpleasant part of the inquiry: the morgue.  As in a crime movie, the body was rolled out of a refrigerated compartment.  It was placed on a tilted stainless-steel table so the blood could drain into the hole at the bottom. Sidney, though too small to play this role, even had a paper nametag attached by a string to her tiny toe.  Johnson examined her deep head wound.  But he couldn’t bear to lift the sheet to see the cut up and sewn up corpse, and left that dreadful task to Boswell.  The pathologist assured them that there had been no sexual molestation or rape.  The Intruder-kidnapper planned to assault her later on, when he’d captured her and had plenty of time to do the worst.

That night Johnson and Boswell deliberated in their hotel room while a neon sign flashed outside in the dark.  The next morning they presented their conclusions to a panel of police and lawyers.  Johnson disliked the incompetent town officials, who had bungled the investigation and failed to identify the murderer, and did not hesitate to show his disdain.  Some of them disagreed with him and rejected his ideas, but provided no convincing evidence to substantiate their own theories.  When one man made a particularly fatuous remark, Johnson leaned over to Boswell and said in a stage whisper, “I do not care to speak ill of any one, but I believe that man is an attorney.”

Boswell then took the floor.  “There were seven suspects in this case.  Sidney’s parents, Clifford and Colette Kinkade, adored their daughter and had no reason to murder her.  Bruce Kinkade had a key and certainly knew the layout of the house.  He might have wanted to have Sidney’s share of their father’s vast fortune.  He could have disappeared for an hour when friends thought he’d taken a girl to the bedroom.  If he killed Sidney, the Intruder theory and ransom note were a ruse.  But several companions provided a convincing alibi.

The Nanny, Mattie Stores, bore a slight grudge, rather than a deep resentment, against Clifford and Colette.  But she loved Sidney and had no reason to kill her.  The supposed Intruder—prime candidate of the police—might have entered the house and then escaped through the broken basement window, but he has never been identified.  In any case, he had no time, while the parents were asleep upstairs, to write the long and elaborate ransom note, not in advance but on a pad he found in the house.  The transgender Sheehy, desperate for attention and encouraged by the newspapers, ought to be confined to a mental asylum before she could perpetrate more damage.”

Johnson, at first cast as the village idiot, took command and presented his findings before the assembled dignitaries.  He commenced by stating, “the police have focused on the admittedly botched evidence leading to the Intruder.  In fact, as we have seen, this theory leads nowhere.  We have separately grilled all Bruce’s friends who supplied his alibi and found, though drunk at the time, they were telling the truth.  In any case, I doubt if he would kill his sister to get more money when his father died thirty or more years from now.

“I prefer to focus on motive rather than evidence.  Colette, by exciting emulation and comparisons of superiority, laid the foundation of lasting mischief.  Leslie had been expertly tutored, learned her lines well and answered my queries with nervous but unpersuasive self-assurance.  Sidney was queen of the Christmas party, Leslie was ignored.  Everything Sidney did was admired and praised, everything poor plain Leslie did, even her judo and pony riding, was criticized or ignored.  One thing I must tell you, but so softly that I am loath to hear it myself: Leslie killed Sidney. She had the anger to commit the crime, the strength to carry Sidney downstairs, the cunning to disguise her feelings and the knowledge that Clifford would protect her.  Her motive was jealousy of her beautiful and talented sister.  Strangely, she had no moral scruples and was not tormented by guilt.  She murdered Sidney on Christmas night to give the knife another twist and retaliate for her parents’ lifelong neglect.  With Sidney dead, her parents would transfer their affection to their one remaining and now more precious daughter.”

But Leslie was not the only criminal in this case.  Johnson said, “How would you like, when conscious of your guilt, to be tried before a jury for complicity in a capital crime?  If a man knows he is going to be hanged”—capital punishment still existed in Montana—“it concentrates his mind wonderfully.  I gave no credibility to Clifford’s contrived explanation of his activities between finding Sidney at seven o’clock and calling the police a whole hour later.  He immediately realized, since there were only three other people in the house, that Leslie had killed Sidney.  (By doing so, she inadvertently increased Bruce’s share of the wealth.)  Using his expert experience in hospitals, he covered up all the evidence against Leslie and threw suspicion on the Intruder.  He carried Sidney downstairs, broke the basement window, hid the baseball bat (missing from the storeroom) that killed her, and wiped away all traces of hair and blood.  Disguising his handwriting, he hastily composed a weird and unconvincing ransom note.  As Clifford himself told me, ‘I’ve lost one child and don’t want to lose another one.’ ” When some police disagreed with Johnson’s findings, he crushed them by exclaiming, “I have found you an argument.  I am not obliged to find you an understanding.”

Since there was not sufficient evidence to convict Clifford and Leslie, and an incredulous and sympathetic jury would be reluctant to sentence a ten-year-old child, the case was left open.  But this was not the end of the tragic event.  Four years later, when Colette was dying of pancreatic cancer, she falsely confessed to the murder in order to shield both Clifford and Leslie.  She claimed, “Sidney surpassed my achievements even as a child.  I couldn’t compete with her any more.  I killed her because she was too demanding and ate up my life.”  But no one believed her sacrificial deathbed lies and the real murderer remained at large.

Jeffrey Meyers, FRSL, in addition to his 54 books, has published stories and poems in Denver Quarterly, Bloomsbury Review, London Magazine, Arizona Quarterly, Rolling Stock and Satirist.