King 4

Charles Peterson had been dead for fifteen years by the time I sought him out. As the curator for Cedar Lawn Cemetery, he had signed the police report dated December 16, 1967. The report went into a brief description about the body found among the tomb stones, but lacked details other officers recalled about the crime.

Cedar Lawn had the distinction of being the only cemetery within the city limits, a sprawling 135 acre protestant facility that had a Catholic component stuck onto its back end like an after thought. Located between Crooks Avenue on the South, Market Street on the North, Lakeview Avenue and Route 20 on the West and East, the cemetery seemed a near perfect setting for any number of movie thrillers, a dark, crumbling concrete wall bordering one side, while the host of pine and other trees provided a perpetual twilight inside.

This was not its original location. Its founders Thomas D. Hoxsey and David B. Beam thought to put it on the other side of town, astride the side of the Preakness Mountain where the county later installed it vocational school just after the American Civil War. Digging graves in the hard basalt proved a daunting task and they later relocated their charter to its current location.

Peterson's eldest son, Charles Jr. greeted me warmly enough when I came to the house just inside the highway side gate. The Victorian era building was as dark as the grounds, painted brown and black as if to fit in with the setting and not call attention to itself. The porch where Peterson greeted me was large enough to park a bus on, its boards groaning as Peterson's advanced.

"Detective," he said. "How can I help you?"

A cool wind blew through the branches with a haunting whisper. I showed the man the same two photographs I had shown Martin.

"I was wondering if you might recognize these men," I said.

Although the man was only in his late thirties, he had premature gray hair. His thick gray brows folded down over his large brown eyes as he peered. He shook his head slowly.

"No, I don't recall ever seeing either one of them before," he said.

"How about these boys?" I said and showed two mug shots of Zarra and Fetterland.

The curator’s face went pale.

"No," he said, his voice strained.

"Are you sure?"

"I said so, didn't I? Why would I lie?"

"I don't know," I said. "Why would you?"

"Is that all? I have work to do."

"I think not," I said. "I'm following up a report of a death that happened here about twenty years ago. Your father was part of the police report, but he didn't seem to have much information except to say that he found the body on the west side of the cemetery near the wall."

"I wouldn't know anything about that," Peterson said, his voice in the same squeak. "I was only 17 then. I wasn't curator."

"If you know something and you fail to report it you can be charged as an accessory."

"Isn't there a statute of limitations?"

"Not on murder."

Peterson seemed to ponder this a moment. "All right," he mumbled, "Maybe you should come inside."

Peterson had never told his father about what he saw the same night the hold up downtown, a on a cold night just after Thanksgiving.

"I wasn't even supposed to be here," he said. "My old man thought I was in Fort Dix training to go overseas. I went AWOL."

Although he was assigned to Fort Sill in Oklahoma until he turned 18, he knew he was destined for action in Vietnam.

"I didn't want to go to Vietnam," he said. "The drill sergeants kept telling me how bad it was. I never wanted to kill anybody. The only reason I joined the army was to get away from my old man. He had this idea in his head that I should take over for him here. That's the last thing I wanted. But I didn't have the guts to tell my old man that, or to find a better way of getting out of it."

He came back to the cemetery because he didn't have any place else to run to. As a young man, he had frequently hidden out among the graves, finding a strange sense of peace there that most people didn't understand.

He was trying to sort out his life when he heard the voices near the wall and crawled along the low bushes to get a glimpse of the intruders.

"My father locked the gate at dusk, no one was supposed to come in here after dark," he told me. "So when I heard people whispering I knew they were up to no good."

The elder Peterson had come from a previous era when grave robbers still prowled local cemeteries. The younger Peterson had not quite believed his father's tales until that night.

"I remember how cold it was. It had snowed Thanksgiving weekend and the low temperatures had kept the snow from melting," Peterson said. "I kept slipping on the slick snow and making noise. I was afraid the intruders would hear me and run away before I got to see who they were."

Peterson saw two figures slipping over a cracked section of the wall, their shapes revealed by the spill of street light from the other side. One, he said, was a broad-shouldered boy with blondish hair, wearing a denim jacket and denim pants. The other wore even less protection against the cold, a t-shirt with cut off sleeves and work pants.

"He was a skinny kid who kept hissing at the other boy to hurry up and stay quiet," Peterson said. "They were constantly arguing, but I couldn't make out about what until they got closer."

"This is crazy, Puck," the broad shoulder boy said. "We can't spend the night here."

"Why not?" the other one asked. "I've done it before. Lots of times."

"I remember this one squirming lot," Peterson recalled "One of his arms was in a ragged sling. His clothing was too large and clearly wasn't his."

I learned later from an interview with one of Red Ball's girls that the girls had giggled the whole time dressing Fetterland, slipping into silk socks and pin striped pants, buttoning his thin arms and scrawny chest into a pale blue shirt, over which they had put a pined striped double breasted jacket. He fought them all, tooth and nail, to avoid the tie, and insisted on wearing his still wet sneakers. He looked as much like a TV mobster as anything else. But once on the street was so humiliated by the outfit that he grabbed the first person he could find, and had gun point, forced some poor fool from a Hawthorne factory to change clothing with him.

"The one with the t-shirt knew his way around," Peterson recalled. "He kept directing the other boy, searching for a particular place. He seemed determined to get away from the low spot in the wall in case the police saw them climbing over and came over to investigate. That part of the cemetery had a lot of willows, but the leaves were mostly gone so anybody with a flash light could see quite a distance if they chose to shine it inside."

Peterson was apparently caught between terror and fascination, creeping along with the two to see just where they would end up and what they would do once they got to their destination.

"I can still remember how it smelled," Peterson said, "and how the bigger boy kept sniffing at the air. There were a few new graves dug nearby and the grass had been recently mowed, and it all smelled so sweet. The boy kept shivering, and looked a bit scared. I guess he expected ghosts to leap out at him or something. The other boy, the one with the bad arm, kept urging him on, telling him not to dawdle. He kept looking over his shoulder at the wall."

Less familiar with the landscape than Peterson, the two boys made a lot of noise, stumbling over stones in the dark, cursing each instance, while cursing each other for not being quiet.

The cemetery had a lot of ground-level markers, stones implanted for the unimportant souls who could not afford to mark their passing with anything more significant -- paupers compared to the grand style in which the prominent families went to their end. Numerous important families from the rich history of Paterson had planted their bones here, reserving walled in sections or full glass-doored above the ground facilities.

Peterson described Fetterland as growing more giddy with each step, perhaps glad to have found his own turf again.

"He kept telling the other boy that he had dope and they were going to have a good time together," Peterson recalled. "The other boy seemed shocked.

"`How can you want to get high after all that's happened?' he asked.

"`I need it,' the other one said."

Fetterland and Zarra settled into the middle of a copse of pine, where a floor of brown needles provided them with a soft and snow-free bed to settle into.

"I couldn't get really close," said Peterson. "But I could see them well enough, even in the dark, and I could hear them because their voices carried farther because of all the stone. I remember seeing the small one pull out a plastic bag from his pocket and start cursing."

"That son of a bitch!" Fetterland howled.

"What's wrong now?" Zarra asked.

"That mother fucker stiffed me."

"That's not dope?"

"It's not the kind I wanted."

"What kind is it?" Zarra asked, peering at the bag, trying to make out the shape of the pills it contained.

"The fucker gave us acid."

"Acid"

"LSD."

Peterson said Zarra looked startled.

"I don't think he had a great deal of experience with drugs," Peterson concluded, "just the typical information you get from television. He seemed a little scared as he looked down at the pills the other boy had poured out of the bag into the palm of his hand."

"Maybe we should throw the stuff away," Zarra suggested.

"Like hell we will," Fetterland snapped.

"Then what are we going to do?"

"What do you think? We're going to take it."

"Take it? I don't want any of that!"

"Keep your voice down," Fetterland scolded. "Kids might think we're ghosts. But the cops won't."

"I'm sorry."

"You're always sorry. I don't understand what your problem is."

"LSD scares me."

"Hell, everything scares you."

"I've heard talk," Zarra insisted.

"You've heard shit," Fetterland snapped. "Who's been telling you tales this time, your uncle, Charlie?"

"Leave my Uncle Charlie out of this."

"Why? You're the one who's always bringing him up."

"Because he's dead."

Puck blinked. "When did this happen?"

"I don't know exactly. We got a call from the Department of Defense. His unit was overrun in Vietnam. I found out about it after I got home with the car to night. The whole family is freaking out."

"So that's why you were brave enough to come out with me."

Zarra shivered. "I couldn't stay in the house like that."

"And being with me is better than being with a bunch of sobbing ass holes?"

"I wouldn't put it that way."

"How would you put it?"

"Let's say I don't think the family cares as much as they let on."

"That's too bad. Hold out your hand."

"I told you I didn't want any."

"I don't care what you want. I need to get high and I'm certainly not going to trip out while you sit there straight as a Buddha. Hold out your hand."

Peterson watched Zarra extend his hand and Fetterland dump several purple pills into the palm.

"Put them under your tongue and let them melt," Fetterland said.

"But I don’t want to..."

"Do it!"

"The larger boy just stared down at his hands," Peterson told me. "I don't know what he was thinking, but his face showed grave concerns. Then, as if he'd come to some decision, he threw them into his mouth and clamped his lips closed, as if he was afraid they might jump out again if he gave them a chance."

"What now?" Zarra asked.

"You'll see."

"See what? At least give me a clue as to what I should expect."

"I couldn't describe it even if I wanted to," Fetterland said. "But you should always try and do things you've never done before."

"What haven't you done?"

"I haven't died."

The reply even startled Peterson a few yards away so that he staggered back, his heal snapping a twig.

"What was that?" Fetterland snapped.

"I thought it was all over for me," Peterson said, his clear eyes seeming to still register the dread of that singular moment. "He yanked out a pistol and swung it around. But he didn't aim it at me."

Apparently, it was a cough in the dark, not the twig breaking that twisted Fetterland towards the gloom between trees.

"Come on, asshole, show yourself. Don't think you can fool anybody by hiding in the shadows."

"At first, only a shape showed," Peterson recalled, "a foot-dragging, limp-shoulder shape, emerging from between two pale grave stones, as gray and grim as the graves behind which he had hidden. The features of his face and clothing were sanded smooth by darkness. Only when the man neared, could I smell the stench of alcohol and that gut-wrenching smell of life on the street that suggested the man had not bathed in months. He was an old man, so haggard and stooped. He already seemed on death's doorstep."

"Who the hell are you?" Fetterland demanded.

"Nobody, mister," the old man said. "Just somebody sleeping here. Nobody important."

"Here?" Puck snapped. "What the fuck are you doing sleeping in here?"

"The old man answered with a shrug," Peterson said. "It was the only answer many of them had to explain their situations, as if how they got where they were was as big a mystery to them as it was to anybody else. My father was constantly encountering them, and putting them out. I had less heart for that."

Fetterland clearly did not like the answer. His face grew grim as starlight and distant street lights caught the edge of his anger-carved cheeks and jaw.

Peterson saw the flash erupt from Fetterland’s midriff, followed by the delayed thunder of the roaring gun.

  The impact of the first shot spun the bum around, arms flailing like loose rags, feet stumbling in a strange searching dance over the inch high grave markers. The second shot hit the bum in the side -- interrupting the man's efforts to recover his balance. He fell sideways into the flat face of a grave stone, seemingly pinned against it, his dark form making a human silhouette that allowed Fetterland to take more careful aim.

The third shot exploded the bum's head. The darkness and grave stone backdrop showed only the gray mass as it boiled out the other side, splattering against stone, grass and the mausoleums, gray that dripped down the flat grave stone like a misshapen slugs. No moan came from the bum. He no longer had a mouth with which to moan. That last shot had removed most of his face, shattering jaw and nose, leaving only a black hole in their place.

The smell of street evaporated -- replaced by the smell of spent gun powder and the sticky sweet odor of blood.

It was a smell that floated over Peterson, so strongly and thickly, he might have floated in blood, breathing it in, gagging over it, vomiting it out again. He retched and retched again, as the echoes of the three shots died in the distance and the ruins of the former bum crumbled to pieces on the ground.

Zarra apparently had a similar reaction, explaining why Fetterland did not discover Peterson then.

"I remember him stepping forward, pistol hanging from his fingers at his side," Peterson said, hands shaking as if the event had just transpired. "He made no move to touch the body when he reached it; he just stared down at it."

Fetterland squinted so hard he seemed to search for something important among the ruins, something rising of steam to indicate the escaping spirit. Where did the life go? How did it get away so unnoticed? Why did the man's eyes -- which remained frozen open in their moment of horror -- show a sense of intelligence even when the heart had ceased? They were the same eyes. It was the same wreck of a man. Yet staring down,  Fetterland frowned over the differences.

"Why the fuck did you do that?" Zarra yelled, wiping the strands of vomit from his mouth, though he made no effort to straighten himself, holding both his arms across his stomach.

"Keep your voice down," Fetterland said in an eerie calm tone. "The cops'll hear you."

"Fuck the cops," Zarra shouted, even more loudly. "You just killed someone and you expect me to stay calm."

"I killed a bum."

"That's still somebody."

"No," Fetterland said, turning away from the body. "It isn't."

Zarra retched again and moaned.

"Something had changed in the larger boy," Peterson said. "The drug apparently had started to take effect and he stared down at his own vomit and the blood. Only God knows what additional horrors he was seeing then."

"Come on, come on, stop staring at it," Fetterland said and pulled Zarra's arm. "It's only a bum. Nothing to go on a bad trip about. Come on. Let's get out of this place. We'll go hang out under the rail road bridge. You were right. We shouldn't have come here."

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