The Lions Of Lucerne

13

By the time the Lions reached the farmhouse of Joseph and Mary Maddux, they were seven minutes ahead of schedule. Miner was pleased.

The farmhouse had been selected because of its remote location. It was on the outskirts of the small town of Midway, which bordered Deer Valley. The nearest neighbor was three miles away. The only access was via either a terribly potholed dirt road or the narrow canyon behind the west side of the farm, which, during this time of year, was only navigable by experienced snowmobile operators or cross-country skiers.

Joe and Mary Maddux had spent their Sunday the same way as always. Even though their large extended Mormon family saw them as retired, the word didn’t exist in their vocabulary, and who could be with twenty-two grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren? If anything, the Madduxes had become even busier in their golden years.

The morning had started with the elderly couple getting up before the sun. While their faith prohibited labor on the Sabbath, there were some exceptions, such as tending to animals, which Joe and Mary did before having breakfast and heading off to their ward for Sunday services.

The bishop spoke of the success of four local Mormon boys on mission in Asia and the tragedy of two others who had been killed in the past week in an Atlanta ghetto while they were spreading the good news of the Mormon Church. Joe’s mind wandered, as it did more and more these days during the almost five-hour Sunday services. Mary, ever the devout follower, listened intently as the bishop spoke about the role of a good Mormon wife and reminded his flock that it was only through a husband’s proclamation that a wife would be accepted into the celestial kingdom. Mary smiled at Joe, knowing that after fifty-seven years of marriage to her best friend, he was certainly going to bring her into the celestial kingdom with him. She was absolutely correct. What she didn’t know was how soon she would be dispatched.

For the last week, Joe had been feeling a bit under the weather, and so he and Mary decided to forgo the traditional Sunday family supper at their oldest daughter’s home. Instead, they decided they would have a light meal and relax at the farmhouse without the distraction of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Had they chosen to attend supper at their daughter’s house, it would have saved their lives.

At two in the afternoon, no one really paid attention to the eighteen-wheeler truck that rolled down Sweetwater Road toward the Maddux farmhouse. Its driver cursed the minefield of potholes he was forced to navigate. The truck was emblazoned with the Mormon Church’s trademark seagulls and the logo of Deseret Industries so it would appear as if it were headed out to a farm to pick up a charitable donation of furniture, farm supplies, or canned goods, or to deliver a contribution to a deserving family. Although the Church never did anything on Sundays, Miner had anticipated correctly that anyone who saw the truck would just assume the Church’s business was a rare exception to Sabbath abstinence.

Miner’s groundsman turned up the long, snow-covered lane of the Maddux farm, convinced that he had not drawn any undue attention to himself. The idea of painting the semi truck and trailer with the Mormon seagulls and Deseret Industries logo had been brilliant. In a state where Mormons were raised not to question the actions of their church and where non-Mormons didn’t pay much attention to Mormon goings-on, nothing would seem out of place, and therefore the truck was the perfect cover. Miner had also informed the groundsman that to the trained eye of someone like a state trooper, the truck would obviously appear overloaded, but even troopers wouldn’t pull it over for fear of the tangled web of hassles it might create in this heavily Mormon state.

The lane opened into a wide courtyard, which was bordered by the farmhouse, a large white barn, two grain silos, and several outbuildings. The groundsman turned the truck around so that it was facing the way it came, with the trailer doors pointed toward the barn. It was parked at a slight angle so that any passing motorists who might be curious would see that the truck was from the Church.

Having observed the Madduxes for the last several weeks, the groundsman had their routine down pat and knew they would not be home from their daughter’s before six-thirty at the earliest, and by then the Lions would be long gone. He unlocked the rear trailer doors and extended a long skid plate ramp. He then slid open the barn door and disappeared into the semitrailer. As he was about to unload the first of his cargo, he stopped and cocked his head in the direction of the driveway, thinking he heard something. The man’s keen hearing hadn’t deceived him. Faintly, in the distance was the low rumble of Joe Maddux’s truck turning up the snow-covered driveway.

Quickly, the groundsman jumped out of the back of the trailer, closed its metal doors, and slid the ramp back into place. A million questions should have raced through his mind, but he was trained to react, not waste time. He managed to slide the huge barn door closed before the Maddux’s truck came into full view.

In his blue-and-white Deseret Industries coveralls, he knew he looked the part. He struck a casual pose by the side of the semi and even managed a small grin. He waved to Joe and Mary Maddux as they pulled into the courtyard.

“Good afternoon, Elder Maddux,” said the groundsman with a slight Utah lax on the consonants of his perfect American English when Joe Maddux stepped down from his pickup truck. “And good afternoon to you as well, sister.”

“Good afternoon,” replied the couple in unison. Mary climbed out of the passenger side to get a better look at the enormous truck parked in their driveway.

“I’m sorry I’m a little bit late for our appointment,” said the groundsman as he walked toward the couple, his right hand outstretched.

“Our appointment?” replied a confused Joe Maddux, who shook the groundsman’s hand and then watched Mary do the same.

“Yeah, I got caught up in traffic on 215, and then with this weather and all, I almost couldn’t get up the canyon. But, being a soldier for the Lord doing the Church’s good work, I think He was looking out for me.”

The logos on the truck and the uniform of the groundsman impressed Joe Maddux. Ever mindful of pleasing the Church, he replied, “I owe you an apology. I didn’t know we had an appointment. I feel a bit embarrassed. Can you tell me what this is all about?”

“Oh, no. Don’t tell me. You folks didn’t hear about this either? Well, if this isn’t the third surprise stop I’ve made today. And on a Sunday to boot. I’m gonna have to get on the phone and give someone a good talking to,” said the groundsman, smiling.

This time it was Mrs. Maddux who spoke. “We don’t know what this is all about, but if it involves the Church, I’m sure they do. It’s cold out here. Why don’t we go inside, and you can use our phone to get to the bottom of this.”

“You are both too kind.”

The Madduxes led the groundsman across the snowy drive and toward the farmhouse. They climbed the flight of concrete stairs, and Mr. Maddux opened the glass storm door covered with the sun-faded stickers of his grandchildren. Joe then opened the unlocked front door, seemingly unconcerned that he was revealing his lack of concern for security. It didn’t matter. The groundsman already knew that the Madduxes habitually left their home unlocked. As a matter of fact, he had been inside on several different occasions, both when they were out and when they were home asleep. He probably knew the house and the property better than the doddering old couple did themselves.

“So, how can we help, Mr…” began Joe Maddux.

“Baker. Brian Baker, sir,” replied the groundsman. “I am here to pick up some old farm equipment that you offered to donate for some of the Church projects in Mexico.”

“Hmmm…” said Maddux as his wife took his coat and hung it in the hall closet. “I can’t say that I remember offering to donate any farm equipment. I mean we have in the past, but now all we really have is the tractor for the light bit of cropping we do, and we need that. I don’t know what to tell you. Must have been some sort of mistake somewhere.”

“There probably was. Like I said, you folks aren’t the first ones today who were an incorrect pickup for me. Would you mind if I made a quick call to the dispatch at Deseret to let them know?”

“Of course you can,” replied Mrs. Maddux. “You can use the phone in the kitchen. Just follow me.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Not at all.”

Mrs. Maddux led the groundsman to a canary yellow rotary dial phone that looked as if it had been mounted on the wall in the mid seventies.

“I haven’t seen one of these in years,” marveled the groundsman. “I didn’t even know folks still used rotary phones.” He laughed.

Mrs. Maddux smiled. “We have a simple rule around here: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

“I hear you. Too many folks spending too much money on things they just don’t need.”

“Amen to that,” came the voice of Mr. Maddux from the other room, where he had turned on the old color television set.

“Ma’am, I don’t want to be a bother, but we’ve got one of those tricky phone mail systems down at the dispatch-”

“Oh, I can’t stand those,” broke in Mrs. Maddux.

“Well, that makes two of us,” responded the groundsman with his warmest smile, “but you see I need to use a push-button phone if I want to bypass the system and get through to the dispatch man. Seeing how it’s Sunday, all we’ve got is a skeleton crew down in Salt Lake. There’s no operator on duty. You wouldn’t happen to have a push-button phone, would you?”

The groundsman knew perfectly well that they did and where it was located.

“Yes, we do have one upstairs. But I think our service is just rotary. Would that still cause a problem for you?”

“No, ma’am,” lied the groundsman.

“Okay, then. Follow me and I’ll show you where it is.”

Halfway up, he stopped and asked Mrs. Maddux, “Ma’am, do you suppose your husband would mind coming up, just in case I need him to confirm anything to the dispatcher?”

“Of course not,” said Mary Maddux, who leaned over the banister and called to her husband.

“Okay, I’m coming!” yelled back Mr. Maddux, who didn’t like being pulled away from his TV, even if it was for the Church.

Mary led the groundsman into the master bedroom. On the nightstand was a Touch-Tone phone with oversized glow-in-the-dark buttons. It was preprogrammed with the names of the Maddux’s children and had special speed dial buttons for Police, Fire, and Ambulance.

The groundsman moved toward the right side of the bed next to the phone and unzipped the top of his coveralls. He pretended to fumble in his breast pocket for something.

“I’ve got that invoice in here somewhere. Probably ought to get a clipboard one of these days.”

Mrs. Maddux smiled politely and inwardly hoped that this misunderstanding would not put her and Joe in bad standing with the Church.

The groundsman heard the footsteps of Mr. Maddux as he came down the green shag carpeted hallway. He stopped fumbling in his coveralls when he found the true item he was looking for. His hand tightened around the butt of a cold Walther P4. The nine millimeter was fitted with a silencer, and despite its extended length, he drew it from his coveralls in less than the blink of an eye.

This was the part that he enjoyed the most, the expressions on his victims’ faces when they knew death was only seconds away, but this couple had no telling expressions whatsoever. They were in utter shock, and their faces were blank. This kind of thing never happened in Midway, never even happened in Utah. It was utterly beyond their ability to comprehend. Not even a sniffle from the missus. They just stood there as if they were watching it happen to someone else on television.

Then, the dam broke. Mrs. Maddux let out a wail; the tears welled up in her eyes and began to roll down her cheeks as the reality of the situation hit her full force. They were going to die. The mister, on the other hand, still had no clue. His instinct was to comfort his wife, and as he reached out for her, the groundsman shot him twice in the forehead.

Spatters of blood, mingled with slivers of bone and pulpy gray matter, sprayed across Mary’s face, and she began a repetitive mumble through her sobbing. All she could manage was, “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God…”

“Good thing you went to church this morning, eh, Mary?” hissed the groundsman, his English now accented with his Swiss-German tongue. “In your next life, when the kids invite you to dinner, I suggest you accept.”

He pointed the suppressed Walther at Mary Maddux and pulled the trigger. Anticipating the end, Mary turned her head at the last moment. The bullet tore away a huge piece of flesh and the underlying cartilage from the bridge of her nose. She fell to the floor screaming. Angrily, the groundsman fired his remaining rounds into her neck, chest, face, and head as she writhed in agony on the bedroom floor. Soon, her movements ceased, and she was still.

Mr. Maddux, unlike his wife, the groundsman mused, had been cooperative enough to fall back onto the bed. The groundsman lifted the man’s feet and placed them on top of the chenille bedspread. Except for the bullet holes in his head, it looked as if he had just lain down to take a nap.

The groundsman then dragged Mrs. Maddux across the floor to the other side of the bed and hefted her up and onto it. When she landed, her arms were upright above her head. He toyed with the idea of stripping the old couple and leaving them in a sexually suggestive pose, wondering what the Mormon relatives would think, but there was other work to be done.

After he washed his hands in the small guest bathroom down the hall, careful not to leave any fingerprints, he went outside to finish unloading the contents of the semi into the barn.

With the truck unloaded, there was nothing for him to do but come inside and wait for Miner and his fellow Lions.

The small family room was warm, and its large window provided the groundsman as good a view as was possible through the blowing snow of anyone coming up the driveway. The television was still on, tuned to a station with an American football game.

Halfway through the third quarter and a pack of cigarettes later, the groundsman began to feel the telltale signs of his low blood-sugar level. Healthy as a horse since a child, he had made his doctor in Zurich explain three times how diabetes could have chosen him when no one in his family had ever had it. The doctor explained that there was no specific reason but that it was quite manageable, provided he took the right precautions. Of course the first precaution he took was never to let Miner know about his condition.

From a pocket in his coveralls, he withdrew a Nestlé’s chocolate bar and broke it into perfect little squares, calculating how many he might need to keep his blood sugar up for the rest of the day. He lay the silver foil, with its purple-and-white wrapper, on his lap and put a piece of the creamy milk chocolate into his mouth. He sucked on it slowly, savoring it as he closed his eyes.

Then, from out of nowhere, came the sound of breaking glass from upstairs. The groundsman leapt from his chair and grabbed the German-made pistol from the end table beside him. Cautiously, he moved forward toward the stairs, crept up them and then down the hallway’s green shag carpet. He inched toward the master bedroom, which was where he believed the sound had come from. He gripped the pistol tighter, grateful that he had replaced its spent magazine. As he neared the bedroom door, he inhaled deeply, applied slight pressure to the trigger, and spun into the open doorframe.

In an instant, he had not only surveyed the room, but also the condition of the two bodies lying atop the bed. The source of the noise was apparent at once.

He had left the woman’s arms above her head and now noticed that one arm was splayed across the nightstand and the glass frame of a picture of seven small children lay broken on the floor. Post mortem reflex.

The groundsman lowered his pistol and laughed out loud. As quickly as he started, he stopped. His ears had picked up the high-pitched whine of snowmobiles. He looked at his watch. Miner and the men were ahead of schedule.

He took the stairs three at a time and landed with a large thud in the downstairs hallway. As he bounded into the family room, he found his chocolate wrapper and bent down to gather up the pieces that had fallen on the floor. Not wanting Miner to find him away from his assigned post, the groundsman folded the wrapper around the chocolate and shoved it back into his coverall pocket. He used his handkerchief to grasp the half-filled water glass he had been using to ash his cigarettes in and flushed the contents down the hall toilet. He rinsed the glass with rusty brown water from the kitchen tap and returned it to a drying rack next to the sink.

He made it outside just in time to pick out the first glimmer of snowmobile headlights. Through the swirling and blowing snow, he could see them speeding toward him at the rear of the farmhouse.