An Almost Perfect Murder

By Leo Cohen

The year is 1950 and Ruth Banes is a newly hatched high school graduate who yearns for independence from her family, particularly from a dull and

judgmental father. She wants to make life happen, rather than having life happen to her. Barry Crowder will graduate from USC with a degree in aeronautical engineering. His father, Henry Crowder,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Books, LLC
• Release date: Mar 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985549270

Leo Cohen

Leo Cohen has a fairly lengthy history in the early computer industry and published on program generators and database.Not the stuff of bedtime reading. And now, he writes; fifty or more political screeds published in local Colorado newspapers, a few short stories, some poems and six novels to date.

Book preview

Novels by Leo Cohen

Letter From a Fictitious Person

Running From Tomorrow

An Almost Perfect Murder

Tracking Shadows

Computer Dreaming

The Autobiography of a Lesser God

An Almost Perfect Murder

Leo Cohen

Joshua Books

Yucca Valley, California

An Almost Perfect Murder

Leo Cohen

Joshua Books, LLC

7446 Chippewa Trail

Yucca Valley, CA 92284

joshua-books.com

Copyright©2022 Leo Cohen

All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed are fictitious.

Book and cover design: RSBPress, Waitsfield, Vermont

Cover images: All images are in the Public Domain. Unsplash images by photographers Vic Chen and Ian Dooley; under the Creative Commons license, Andrew Magill. Cloud photo by Kitty Werner.

Tradepaper ISBN 979-8-9855492-6-3

Ebook ISBN 979-8-9855492-7-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022903145

PART 1

HENRY – 1917: Meeting Devoe

Trees stripped of leaves and limbs, a thin morning fog low to the ground, Belleau Wood a dripping silence, the air thick with anticipation. The Marine company’s lines so close to the Germans that any artillery from either side would be indiscriminate murder of their own troops. Then the whistle, a long and three shorts that jumped the marines out of their trenches and sent them running through deep underbrush, demanding high stepping and slowing the charge. The two or three German squads apparently believed they were creeping up unnoticed. The attack whistle stopped them and now they were hunkered down in the undergrowth not more than twenty or thirty yards in front of the Marines, volley after volley keeping German heads down, the marines firing low just below the tops of the underbrush, German grenades snapping angrily behind the charging line. Evidently the Boshe had no idea how close the attackers were. And then they were on them, surprise and fear in the faces beneath the spiked stove pot helmets. Cries of pain and dying added to the yelling and gun fire tumult.

There was a sudden, searing pain across his chest, his face planted in the pliable footing, darkness closing, then nothing. Henry Crowder’s body was jolted, bouncing out of a painful nothingness into the painful reality of bearers running with his litter. Then black again, interrupted by brief periods of pain and a woozy awareness. Fuzzy whites moving in slow motion and fuzzy sounds in a hospital far enough behind the lines for distance to muffle the signatures of war. Months of fading and returning followed by an impossible rolling strapped into a bunk crossing an ocean, then an American hospital.

Eight months later Henry Crowder was quietly ejected from both the hospital and the Marines and onto a train that eventually dropped him off in Cairo, Illinois.

The Crowder farm, just outside of Cairo, focused on truck farming and milk cows. It was an ideal place for an almost entirely recovered twenty-year-old former Marine. The farm looks pretty good, Pa, he said to his father that first evening at home. The Marines had gotten him to Chicago and he had taken a noonday train to Cairo, then hitched rides on two farm trucks.

We prosper with the help of strong backs and God’s approval, his father acknowledged definitively. He was a Christian who leaned heavily on Lutheran commitment and the strong backs of his children. Henry’s brother, Edgar, was one of those strong backs, and his two sisters, Delilah and Sophie, both in their teens had also been conscripted. There was one hired hand. Got enough work and money for two, his father said, but I figured you’d be back, so I held off. At first Henry helped with the cows but within a few months he had added his back to the others doing the heavy work on the farm.

Before Belleau Wood and the German bullet that had engendered the loss of one lung quadrant, Henry’s Marine regiment had been stuck in a line trench on the Western Front about 45 miles east of Paris. It was the third German offensive of that year and it had been difficult to stop. Both sides had airplanes and there were clear days when the stalemate boredom of trench life was entertained by a dog fight show. The planes fascinated Henry. He tried to imagine the swooping, rolling, sudden turning effects on both man and machine and marveled that a society with the brain power to conceive of and build such machines was stupid enough to stuff thousands of men into trenches a few hundred yards from each other and direct them to shoot to kill.

The Allied command had determined there was a buildup of German forces in Belleau Wood to the northwest of the city, and sent Henry’s Marine regiment to deal with it. A year later that command decision had put Henry Crowder back on the family farm in Cairo, IL, minus about twenty five percent of his lung power.

Farm life was good for Henry. He was outdoors, the weather cycled through seasons with clean air naturally perfumed by the farm’s business, and the work brought him close to twenty-year-old health. Henry’s father was uninterested in the world beyond Cairo; God had given him the land to work, animals to care for and a family to feed. That was more than enough; the rest of the world could go about its business without his concern. But there was occasional air plane traffic over Cairo, and newspaper stories about ideas to build a commercial airport just outside Chicago to the southwest near Cicero, less than fifty miles away. It whispered to Henry of a world with opportunities outside the farm, and he decided to dedicate his Sunday afternoons after church and the Sunday meal to walks around Cairo, a place to sit and a Chicago newspaper to read. Gravitation to the Anderson Bakery was as natural as a law of physics.

Devoe Anderson was the first born of the Andersons. The family ran a bakery for years in the town of Cairo, Illinois. Baking things like boules and brioche, and the business they generated, was an intrinsic talent of Mr. Anderson’s. But his bakery business anchored him in Cairo and limited his experience of the world around him. What he wanted for his children was something broader and when Devoe suggested a nursing career her parents agreed. Devoe applied to the Cook County Hospital Nursing School which was sufficiently close to keep her in the family orbit but out of Cairo and in the big city of Chicago. The Andersons had taken over a piece of the empty lot next to their establishment and put out a half dozen tables and chairs. After two winters they closed it in and cut an entrance to it into the bakery’s front room. The Andersons had three daughters and all of them worked at the family business. That included the younger two, Helen and Clara, after school, and Devoe through six weeks in the summer when her nursing school was dormant.

And that’s how they met. Henry with coffee and a buttered croissant, and a copy of Chicago’s Daily Tribune, Devoe collecting small dishes, mugs and saucers. She was 18, nineteen in two months’ time, and back from her first year in Chicago. She had seen Henry in the bakery over the past two Sundays, paging slowly through the newspaper, apparently reading everything. Henry was good looking, just on the edge of handsome, his features strong, the jaw line straight and slightly narrowing to the small round of chin. His hair was light brown, naturally curly and obviously trimmed at home. Henry looked up at her and smiled as she picked up his empty croissant dish. You working one of the farms? she asked him. You only need about two weeks around here to see everyone lives in town at least once.

Yes. I guess Cairo’s pretty small. Well, I’m Henry Crowder, oldest son at the Crowder Farm out Landry Road. You just starting here? I only noticed you a week or so ago for the first time.

Oh no. I’m an Anderson, working summers. Devoe Anderson. I go to nursing school, in Chicago.

Henry was almost staring at her, a grin slowly blooming on his face. There was a great open look about her. Brown hair in a tidy bun at the back above her neck, blue eyes, blue eyes that smiled. He liked that and he took it as an invitation. So, after Anderson’s Bakery, any other firm commitments?

A small dog at home named Hilda. Why do you ask?

Just wondering if you’re free for an evening stroll, a sundae on a weekend, maybe a talkie at the Gem. If Hilda wouldn’t mind, that is.

I may be. Depends who’s asking.

Henry pushed himself out of his chair. He’s a fairly simple guy who applies his muscle to a family farm. He was six feet tall and was pleased to see that Devoe was fairly tall, at least five eight, slim but nicely proportioned. She was wearing a plum-colored dress, its hem just below her knees, a short-sleeved blouse that showed off her arms, all of it under a simple white apron. But this farm boy has been to Europe in a war, and escaped nearly unscathed.

Aha. ‘Nearly unscathed’. So, this farm boy may need some nursing. Now I understand everything.

An understanding woman, Henry said. It’s just what this farm boy needs. How about next Saturday afternoon at the drug store for a soda or something. I’m buying.

The jazz age and big spenders finally come to Cairo. I’ve got to get back to work. We close at three on Saturdays. Sound, okay?

BARRY – 1951: About Barry

They had just come off the field. The inning was all outs, one, two, three. He liked that a lot; up there on the mound he was his own boss, no obligations to anybody. If he pitched a hit, a homer, it was on him. Someone got on base because of an error, that was out of his control. Barry Crowder was less interested in controlling the world around him, than controlling himself in it. If you insisted on controlling events then you were responsible for their outcomes. That was not in Barry’s playbook. But there were good players in the league making for good teams and he was definitely aware that a large part of the defensive side of their team’s game very much depended on his pitching. That, generally, was not in his playbook as well, but he recognized that participating in life, in this case softball, meant shouldering at least some burden of responsibility, whether he liked it or not.

This was three pitch softball. The at-bat got no more than three pitches in his hit zone, a box defined by the width of home plate and the distance between the batter’s knees and shoulders. Three whiffs or three fouls and out. It moved the game right along through its nine innings. The bottom bench row of bleachers on the third base line would be the Grants team dugout for home games once the league got underway. Grants was a hardware store across the street from Dockweiler beech and sponsored Barry’s team in the Southern California Softball League. You’re looking too good out there, Barry. I’m getting bored. Bill Sammet, sitting next him, was their left fielder. He was almost as tall as Barry’s five feet ten, but wider all around, not pudgy wider but stockier, muscles giving him surprising strength and a very solid look. Barry in comparison was positively lean. He and Bill were good friends and partners in the USC stress analysis lab. They worked well together, with Barry better with the more abstruse mathematical issues, Bill with the patience and precision their experiments demanded.

You poor kid, Barry answered, his eyes on Danny Grace, up first for the inning. I’ll set one up for you next inning. But if you don’t catch it Billy, and we lose the game, I’m calling all the sports writers.

It’ll be my fifteen minutes of fame. So, what sports writers do you know?

Right. Barry turned to him with a big grin on his face. Every time I turn around it seems like there’s another problem I haven’t solved.

How about the job problem. We’ve got one more year of free ride to go. So, it’s Douglas for you?

Looks like it. Having a father in the upper ranks helps.

Oh, for sure. You should think about taking your lab partner with you. Lockheed’s been sniffing but I don’t want a company that big.

Tell you what. You get on base next time you’re up and I’ll talk to mister Douglas about it.

You’re on. I always like having incentives. So, what’s the plan after graduation? Going to move out?

It’s in my plan. The thud of bat against softball raised both their heads as the batter headed to first, the ball in a low arc over the third baseman’s head and dropping in front of the left fielder racing towards it. Well, Bill, m’boy. Looks like you’ll get an at-bat. So, it’s whether or not I talk to mister Douglas. Your future in the passenger airplane business is going to be up to you.

Keep in mind, after I get on base you get to give the crowd, all twenty-five of them, at which he waved a lazy arm, the usually less than memorable experience of Barry Crowder at the plate.

Hey, anybody home? There was a foyer table just beyond the front door, a basket for mail at its center, a painted wooden key holder cut in the shape of an automobile profile on the wall just above it. Barry tossed his glove on the table, his baseball cap on top of it and hung the car keys

No. Nobody’s here, his mother’s voice coming from the kitchen. What you’re hearing is an echo of what I said about an hour ago. And don’t leave your glove and hat on the foyer table.

He had to grin. His tossing things on the foyer table was his habit, and his mother’s response was hers. He picked his things up and put them on the third step of the stairs to the second floor and his room and headed back to the kitchen, stopping long enough at the sun room entry way to hello his father sitting in his big leather lounge chair, what looked to be a manuscript in his hands, a notepad and pencil on the small side table with a Lucky Strike smoking in a small cut glass ashtray. He waved at Barry without missing a beat in his reading. Barry knew that when his father was focused on something it got all his attention, with little time available for unnecessary niceties.

Hi, Mom. Devoe was working on dinner. She turned to smile at him. You’ll be happy to know that my glove and hat are not on the table.

Good, Devoe said looking back to a chicken she was getting ready for the oven at the cutting board on a counter next to the stove. I’ll be even happier to know that you remembered to take them off the steps when you go upstairs. He came over to peck her cheek. Careful. I’m up to my elbows in chicken juice. You taking a shower?

Indeed I am.

Well, you’ve got a least an hour. Your father’s in the sun room.

I waved at him as I went by. He’s reading.

Just tell him I gave you permission to interrupt him.

Okay. Let’s see if that works. He turned back to the doorway and started down the hall past the dining room, headed for the sun room, when a sudden thought stopped him just short of the sun room entrance. ‘Permission’. It was the word permission that stopped him, the idea that he needed someone’s permission to interrupt his father. Permission had been an issue in subtle ways he had never before considered; ‘tell your father I said dinner is ready.’ ‘If he doesn’t get his shoes on tell him I said we’re going to be late.’ What had just become clear was that it was apparently okay to interrupt his father on someone else’s authority. It implied something tentative in their relationship. Model airplanes? For some reason a faint voice was warning him off. But he promised himself to think about it and stepped into the sun room.

Entering the sun room, he recognized an illustration in the manuscript in Henry’s lap. It told him the manuscript was about the distortion of fluid flow when it encountered various shaped objects. It involved an area of mathematics known as imaginary number theory that had been part of one of his courses in his second junior year semester. The mathematics was elegant, but there had only been hints as to its engineering application.

So, you’re having fun with the square root of minus one, Barry said, knocking on the entry molding. What you need is a winter storm and a blazing fireplace.

Henry looked up at his son, an instant of puzzled frown on his face, as if, for just a faint fraction of a second he had to fit the voice to the person. Both in short supply in Long Beach, he said, a shallow smile immediately eclipsing that fleeting look of uncertainty. The cigarette had burned short between thumb and forefinger. Henry looked at it then stubbed it out in the ashtray by his side.

It’s interesting stuff, he added, tapping the papers in his lap.

Does it apply to wings?

Well, in two dimensions, yes. But a wing tapers horizontally and vertically. We’ll see. I’m only about half way through the paper.

Horizontally and vertically, Barry repeated. Which means the air speed over the wing changes along its length.

He liked sounding smart to his father because he knew that his father wanted him to be smart. And then the thought immediately following that one was that his father wanted him to be particularly smart about airplanes. Henry Crowder was smart about airplanes. He was head of the Douglas Stress Analysis department and a key member of every development team in the company. Barry was fairly certain that he would be more than pleased if he took a job at Douglas and ended up in Stress Analysis.

And that brings up turbulence and Reynolds numbers. Barry had settled into the second lounger, Devoe’s chair, the two of them angled toward each other and facing a wide glass wall with a sliding door that looked over the grass blanket of the side and back yards. It was bounded by a double fence, wooden planks about six feet tall, the inner plank about five inches from its outer partner and staggered to let breezes through with privacy. Have you gotten to Reynolds numbers yet? his father asked.

A couple of lab sections. Sort of an introduction to turbulence. Professor Garner said we would get the math next year, this year now, and we’d be doing turbulence experiments in the lab.

Henry had been quiet for a few moments with a hint of smile, the slightest nod. Barry understood it as approval. Me, you, your mother. A family of college graduates. That’s something to be proud of. By the way, Joe Carlin told me they’re really looking forward to having you at Douglas. He thinks you’ll be a whiz.

Just like my old man, mister imaginary numbers. Barry raised a hold-up finger. However, he said after a pause, I’m on third base. I’ve got the tech interviews coming up before I get to home plate, plus this last year.

"Worried about that?

Nope. Two years in the stress labs have cemented all the theory. My brain is heavy with aeronautics, which reminds me, Douglas should interview Bill.

Bill Sammet.

‘Right. He’ll be an absolutely top simulation engineer. He told me today he’s had an invitation from Lockheed, but he wants a smaller company and wants to stay here."

Henry was quiet for a time, eyes on his son. You told him you would talk to me about it, a hint of accusation in his tone.

No, no, Dad. I told him I would talk to Mr. Douglas if he got on base on his next at bat, and he hit a double.

Aha. Well, Mister Douglas is pretty busy these days, so how about if I talk to Joe Carlin? I’ve got a good record for hiring recommendations with him.

Starting at age twelve there were many Saturday or Sunday afternoons that Barry and his father would be huddled together over a three-foot square of plywood on a card table in Barry’s room. It would be covered with variously sized sheets of balsa wood, each associated with a facsimile blueprint and templates for the fuselage, wings, cowling, tail and rudder for a model airplane. To get a project under way they would go over each section of the blueprints, Henry pointing out design goals, places in the structure where there could be important stress issues and parts of the whole that could present manufacturing problems.

Initially, most of it was over Barry’s head, but Henry was patient and after a while it started to gel for him. Henry insisted that all the raw materials be organized on the table; Things need to be in place, son. It’s the only way to manage complexity. Using an Exacto knife, Barry would properly slice the balsa wood into the stanchions and bulkheads specified in the drawings, cutting the parts on the plywood square and gluing them into an exact rendition of the specifications so that the completed plane looked like it could indeed fly. For Barry it was an introductory course in aircraft engineering, well beyond what was needed to transform the sheets of balsa into the particular model plane. This was a fairly regular activity for the two of them until Barry’s first high school year when scholastic demands and new social opportunities preempted the time and focus model building required. But those nearly three years had forged a very solid bond between them, and was always a background for their relationship.

This evening he had talked with his father for a while, then dinner, some sociable reading, a little television, and now bed. But sleep was slow in coming for Barry. There was a part of his sun room conversation with Henry that persisted, a pirouette for his attention. It had to do with Bill Sammet and it took him a while to tease out the problem.

Bill Sammet was a good friend, more than his partner in the stress lab, and not just a ball field friend, but a partner in planning, life planning. They had had so many conversations over beers or a lunch time sandwich about careers, short term and long-term prospects, even retirement, although Bill thought that was in such a distant future, he found it hard to give it much thought. But Barry had his parents as strong retirement models. Henry Crowder had risen through the technical side of the Douglas company quickly and had a very solid income. It allowed him to allocate significant money to his company retirement plan. He still had about ten years to go for an early retirement, but Barry had noticed their vacation trips going further afield, travel brochures and magazines a burgeoning staple in their mail, conversations frequently referring to foreign settings. And although Henry loved his work and was devoted to it, it was rather clear that there was a certain allure to being free of a job’s boundaries, and to having the wherewithal to do whatever and go wherever their retirement fancies might take them.

But remembering his eighth inning conversation with Bill, the talk with his father had brought the subject up naturally. What was bothering him in the penumbra of sleep was the possibility that