Desert Run by Betty Webb

days when the Bollinger killings went down, Arvis Spaulding, the Journal ’s publisher back then, was Edward Bollinger’s very own drinking buddy, so he wasn’t inclined to be neutral. Long before the murders he’d heard enough about Chess from Edward to make him think the kid was the spawn of Satan. Before, during and after the trial, Arvis printed screeds that would get his newspaper sued to blue blazes today. The public, which was as prejudiced as he was, ate it up. Arvis didn’t give a rat’s ass about child psychology—if he knew such a subject existed—but over the years I took a few courses at ASU, courtesy of the G.I. Bill, and was able to figure a few things out about Chess. Edward had elected him as the family scapegoat. Anything that went wrong, Chess was blamed for. Sick cow? Chess’ fault. Bad weather? Chess’ fault. Plague? Chess’ fault. Locusts? Chess’ fault. World War II? Chess’ fault.”
    He stared out the trailer’s tiny window for a moment, but I knew he was really looking sixty years back. “Okay, the kid liked to fight. He even went after his father once and broke the bastard’s nose. I never blamed him for that. Edward Bollinger drank real heavy—today he’d be called an alcoholic—and he was pretty fast with his fists when he got drunk. So every time something bad happened around the place, he beat the snot out of Chess just on principle. You ask me, it’s no wonder the kid went bad. And he did go bad, make no mistake about that. Turned out more vicious than his daddy.”
    A sordid tale, but not unusual. I wondered aloud what had happened to Chess after he’d dropped off the Scottsdale Journal’ s radar.
    â€œNo clue,” Harry said, his voice deepening with regret. “Maybe I should have kept tabs on him, but I didn’t. Too depressing.”
    Harry still believed someone other than Chess killed the Bollingers. I wondered if he was simply in deep denial, a condition which sometimes happened to detectives when they got too close to a case. Against all proof to the contrary, they’d become convinced that a suspect was innocent, and would start ignoring proof to the contrary. Sometimes their denial got them killed.
    Unaware of my line of thinking, Harry continued. “I’m not saying that at some point Chess might not have beat somebody ’til they died and then didn’t get caught, but I’m telling you he didn’t murder his family. Certainly not his mother or sister. That little girl…Chess was crazy about her. You shoulda heard him carry on when I drove him out to her grave.”
    Yeah. Deep denial. “That was a kind thing to do.”
    He shrugged. “The family was already buried when we caught up with him, and I felt it was kind of a shame that he never got to say goodbye. So, yeah, I drove him out to the cemetery. The kid totally fell apart.” He paused, then added, “Not that a bucket of tears prove anything.”
    At least Harry realized that some of the worst murderers were the biggest criers at their victims’ funerals. “If Chess didn’t kill his family, who do you think did? One of the Germans?”
    Harry started to answer, but Frank Oberle, who all this while had been sitting quietly if impatiently, jumped in. “Not the Germans! Say what you will about them boys, they wasn’t dumb enough to get themselves mixed up in that kind of trouble. As soon as they crawled out of that tunnel, they put as much distance as possible between themselves and Camp Papago. ’Sides, none of them, other than Ernst, was a stone cold killer. When I found out we was both going to be in the same place at the same time again, I just about chucked up my Raisin Bran. Why, I almost backed outta the movie! Thank God I was able to control myself, ’cause that check the film folks is givin’ me will buy an awful lot of Twilight Specials down