Show of Evil

598 Pages·1996·1.44 MB·English

by  William Diehl

SHOW OF EVIL
by William Diehl

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
But, being season'd with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil?
- THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, ACT 3, SCENE 2
PROLOGUE
The town of Gideon, Illinois, biblical of name and temperament,
squats near the juncture of Kentucky and Indiana at the edge of
the Blue Ridge Mountains. A trickle of a river called the Wahoo
forms the western boundary of the town, while Appalachian
foothills etch its southern and eastern parameters. It was
founded in the mid 1800s by a handful of farmers driven south
by encroaching midwestern cities, by railroads, and by brutal
winters. They were followed soon afterwards by a fire-eyed
reader of the Church of Latter-Day Saints named Abraham
Gideon, who had split from Brigham Young and led a small
troop of followers towards the southern mountains. They had
blundered onto the fledgling village, liked what they'd seen,
and settled down there. It was Gideon who gave the town its
name and a strict moral code that has persisted for nearly one
hundred and fifty years.
Inhabited by two thousand and some citizens, most of them
hardworking conservatives and many of Mormon descent, it is
a town that takes care of itself and minds its own business. Its
architecture is stern and simple; its streets paved only when
necessity demands; its town core a collection of indispensable
businesses without frills or fancies; its town meetings held at
the Baptist church, the largest building in town.
The only car dealer sells Fords and farm equipment. A foreign
car in Gideon is as improbable as Grandma Moses rising from
the grave and running naked through the streets on Sunday
morning.
The city council, a collection of dour curmudgeons, runs the
town with a kind of evangelical fervour, enduring its handful of
bars and taverns but drawing the line at sex, having chased
away Gideon's one topless bar during the late Eighties and
railing against R-rated movies so vociferously that most of the
citizens watch them on cable rather than venture forth to the
town's twin theatres and thereby risk the scorn of the five old
men who set both the tone and moral temper of the town. The
young people, who silently revolt against its anachronisms,
usually spend their weekends driving to nearby towns that
have shopping malls and multiplex theatres, where they can
buy a six-pack of beer without being recognized. For the most
part, Gideons are friendly, concerned, protective people who
help their townsfolk when they are in trouble and who practice
a kind of archaic combination of do-unto-others and love-thy-
neighbour. And as long as its citizens sequester their more
shocking vices behind closed doors and shuttered windows,
nobody really gives a hoot. In short, it is a place that time,
distance, and desire have cloistered from the rest of the world.
Gideons like it that way. They do not take kindly to others
snooping in their business and they solve their problems
without the intrusion of outsiders like state politicians or
federal people or snoopy, big-time newspaper reporters.
On a Tuesday morning in October 1993, a few days before
Hallowe'en, a single shocking act of violence was to change all
that.
Suddenly, trust was placed by suspicion, ennui by fear,
complacency by scorn. People began to lock their doors and
windows during the daytime and porch lights glowed all night.
And casual neighbours, who once waved friendly hellos in
passing, were suddenly as cautious as strangers.
Yet like a protective family, Gideon kept this scandal behind
locked doors and whispered of it only in rumours. The
horrifying act itself was kept from the rest of the world - for a
while, at least.
On that autumn morning, Linda Balfour prepared her
husband's customary lunch: tuna fish sandwiches with mayo on
white bread, a wedge of apple pie she had made the night
before, potato chips, orange juice in his thermos. She had also
polished his bright orange hard hat before fixing a breakfast of
poached eggs, crisp bacon, well-done toast, and strong black
coffee, and the hat and lunch box were sitting beside his plate
with the morning edition of the St Louis Post-Dispatch when he
came down.
George Balfour was a bulky man in his early forties with a
cherubic smile that hinted of a gentle and appreciative nature.
A life-long resident of Gideon, he had married Linda late in his
thirties after a brief courtship and regarded both his twenty-
six-year-old wife and their year-old son, Adam, as gifts from
God, having lived a solitary and somewhat lonely life before
meeting her at a company seminar in Decatur three years
earlier.
Their two-storey house was seventy years old, a spartan, white-
frame place near the centre of town with a wraparound porch
and a large front lawn and an old-fashioned kitchen with both a
wood-burning stove and a gas range. It was George Balfour's
only legacy. He had lived in the house all his life, both of his
parents having died in the bedroom that Balfour now shared
with his wife.
He loved coming down in the morning to those smells he
remembered from his youth: coffee and burned oak slivers
from the wood-burning stove, and bacon and, in the summer,
the luscious odour of freshly cut cantaloupe. The TV would be
set on the Today show. His paper would be waiting.
He was wearing what he always wore: khaki trousers, starched
and pressed with a razor crease, a white T-shirt smelling of
Downy, heavy, polished brogans, his cherished orange wind-
breaker with SOUTHERN ILLINOIS POWER AND LIGHT
COMPANY stencilled across the back and the word
SUPERINTENDENT printed where the left breast pocket would
normally be. Everything about his dress, his home, and his
family bespoke a man who lived by order and routine. Balfour
was not a man who liked surprises or change.
He kissed his son good morning, wiping a trace of pabulum
from the boy's chin before giving Linda a loving peck on the
back of her neck. She smiled up at him, a slightly plump
woman with premature wrinkles around her eyes and mouth
and auburn hair pulled back and tied in a bun. The wrinkles,
George often said, were because his wife laughed a lot.
Nothing about George Balfour's life was inchoate.
'Saints finally got beat yesterday,' she said as he sat down.
'Bout time,' he answered, scanning the front page of the paper.
'By the way, I gotta run up to Carbondale after lunch. They got
a main transformer out. May be a little late for dinner.'
'Okay. Six-thirty? Seven?'
'Oh, I should be home by six-thirty.'
At seven-fifteen, he was standing on the porch when Lewis
Holliwell pulled up in the pickup. He kissed Linda and Adam
goodbye, then waved at them from the truck as Lewis drove
away from the white-frame house. They turned the corner and
suddenly the street was empty except for old Mrs Aiken, who
waved good morning as she scampered in robe and slippers off
her porch to pick up the paper, and a solitary utility man
carrying a toolbox who was trudging down the alley behind the
house. A bright sun was just peeking over the hills to the east,
promising a day of cloudless splendour.
Thirty minutes later the Balfours' next-door neighbour, Miriam
Perrone, noticed that the Balfours' back door was standing
open. Odd, she thought, It's a bit chilly this morning. A little
later she looked out of her dining room window and the door
was still open. She went out the back door and walked across
her yard to the Balfours'.
'Linda?' she called out.
No answer. She walked to the door.
'Linda?' Still no answer. She rapped on the door frame. 'Linda,
it's Miriam. Did you know your back door's open?'
No answer. A feeling of uneasiness swept over her as she
cautiously entered the kitchen, for she did not wish to intrude.
'Linda?'
Suddenly, she was seized with an inexplicable sense of dread. It
choked her and her mouth went dry. She could hear the
television, but neither Linda nor the baby was making a sound.
She walked towards the door to the living room. As she
approached the door, she saw the empty playpen and a second
later Adam lying on his side on the carpet with his back
towards her.
And then, as she stepped through the doorway, she stopped.
Her lips trembled for what seemed like eternity before a low
moan rose to a horrified shriek.
A few feet from the crib, Linda Balfour's butchered body was
crumpled against the wall, her glazed eyes frozen in terror, her
mouth gaping, a widening pond of her own blood spreading
around her, while Katie Couric and Willard Scott joked about
the weather in the bloodstained television set nearby.
That was how it started.
THE CITY
FOUR MONTHS LATER