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.