Murder in Little Egypt (25 page)

Mark, Dale, Kevin, Marian, 1960

Dale, Kevin, Marian, college graduation, 1980

Sean Cavaness, circa 1981

Dale with lab assistants, Pearce Hospital, 1957

(Courtesy Marilyn and Chuck Leonard)

Dale with Mark, McLeansboro, 1955

Dale and Marian after a ball, St. Louis, 1965

Dale and Marian; Peck and Noma Cavaness, circa 1960

1966 Christmas card. On a whim, Marian altered the spelling of her name for a brief period.

Dale at his office, 1957

(Courtesy Marilyn and Chuck Leonard)

Mug shot
(Courtesy St. Louis County Police Department)

Kevin and Charli Ann Cavaness, St. Louis, 1988

15

DALE DID NOT SHOW UP AT GRANDPA’S HOUSE UNTIL ABOUT EIGHT that evening. It was a quiet scene, friends moving in and out, Marian sitting at the kitchen table with Patrick, Kevin close to Sean in the living room. The Sullivans, the Davenports, the Becks and others came up to him murmuring condolences. Kevin had started phoning people as soon as he and his mother and Sean had returned to Grandpa’s, found Patrick and broken the news to him. Kevin would have preferred to be alone but thought familiar faces might help his mother through.

Sean rushed up to his father and hugged him; Kevin stood back, torn by conflicting emotions, sorrow, anger at the nameless killer or killers and at what seemed to him the sloppiness of the investigation. He was unmoved by the offerings of help and endless cups of coffee. From time to time he went off into one of the bedrooms or to the bathroom to cry by himself or to try to comfort Sean. He did not want to cry in front of other people or his father. He wondered why it had taken his father so long to get to Grandpa’s—surely he hadn’t gone to see Martha?—but he was not about to ask.

Dale made his way into the kitchen. Marian cradled a Coke in her hands, staring into it.

“This is going to be a tough one,” Dale said to Marian and to the friends standing around. “The cops say there wasn’t much left. I didn’t see the body myself. It was gone when I got there.”

“Don’t talk about that, Dale,” Marian said.

“What they say is, it was all dismembered. The way I get it, there was an arm over here and a leg over there—”

“Dale!”

“—like, I don’t know, it might be real tough to piece this thing together, I mean to find out how it happened, with the body all torn apart like that. I—”

“Dale! Stop. I can’t take that kind of talk. You’re talking about Mark!’’

“Just dealing with the facts,” Dale said, and he left the kitchen.

Pat Sullivan took Dale aside and out into the backyard. The night was crisp and quiet.

“Dale, this is the most awful thing,” and Pat threw an arm around his old friend, towering over him, like a father comforting a son.

Dale wept. He buried his head in Pat’s shoulder.

“Dale, you know we all love you. We love you and Marian and the boys. We’ll do all we can. We’ll help you through this. My God, losing a child, like this. If our Greg—”

“Do you think it was an accident? Who would’ve wanted to kill him?”

“I don’t have any idea.”

“Do you think it was drugs? I always worried about Mark and drugs.”

“I know you did.”

“It could have been an accident. This D.C.I. guy gave me the lowdown. It could have been an accident.”

“Sure, it could have been an accident. Who would’ve killed Mark? One of those things.”

“I was worried about Mark.”

“Yes. You’ll get through this, Dale. Thank God you have the other boys. We’ll help. We all love you.”

The funeral was set for Monday. For Marian and the boys, Easter Sunday was like another long Good Friday. Grandpa’s house filled again with people bringing hams and turkeys and pies, but no one ate. In the afternoon some of Kevin’s old buddies arrived to take him out, to try to distract him. Marian was alone in the house when Dale walked in. He said that they needed to discuss the funeral arrangements.

“Everything’s taken care of,” Marian said.

Her moods had careened from numbness to grief to rage and bitterness. She had been brooding through the night and morning about everything—Mark, Dale, the endless troubles they had had, the way her life had been in the depths, then seemed to rise again. Now this. She had been right about the mistake Mark had made in coming back here. Everything Dale touched seemed to turn rotten—except his patients. The patients! They were phoning and dropping by. She could not blame them but . . .