Joyland(60)

Joy land

199

Erin raised a teacherly flnger. "And only five if all the guy's victims have been found. There could have been others in '62,

'64, '66 . . . you get it."

The wind gusted and moaned through the struts of the Spin.

"Now for the things that trouble me," Erin said . . . as if five dead girls weren't troubling enough. From her folder she took another Xerox. It was a flier-a shout, in the Talk-advertising something called Manly Wellman's Show of 1 000 Wonders. It showed a couple of clowns holding up a parchment listing some of the wonders, one of which was AMERICA' s FINEST

COLLECTION O F FREAKS ! A N D ODDITIES ! There were also rides, games, fun for the kiddies, and THE WORLD's SCARIEST

FUNHOUSE !

Come in if you dare, I thought.

"You got this from interlibrary loan?" I asked.

"Yes. I've decided you can get anything by way of interlibrary loan, if you're willing to dig. Or maybe I should say cock an ear, because it's really the world's biggest jungle telegraph.

This ad appeared in the Waycross Journal-Herald. It ran during the first week of August, 1961."

"The Wellman carny was in Waycross when the first girl disappeared?"

"Her name was DeeDee Mowbray, and no-it had moved on by then. But it was there when DeeDee told her girlfriend that she had a new boyfriend. Now look at this. It's from the Rocky Mount Telegram. Ran for a week in mid-July of 1963.

Standard advance advertising. I probably don't even need to tell you that."

It was another full-pager shouting Manly Wellman's Show of 1 000 Wonders. Same two clowns holding up the same parch-200

STEPHEN K I N G

ment, but two years after the stop in Waycross, they were also promising a ten thousand dollar cover-all Beano game, and the word freaks was nowhere to be seen.

"Was the show in town when the Sharp girl was killed in the movie theater?"

"Left the day before." She tapped the bottom of the sheet.

"All you have to do is look at the dates, Dev."

I wasn't as familiar with the timeline as she was, but I didn't bother defending myself. "The third girl? Longbottom?"

"I didn't find anything about a carny in the Santee area, and I sure wouldn't have found anything about the Wellman show, because it went bust in the fall of 1964. I found that in Outdoor Trade and Industry . So far as I or any of my many librarian helpers could discover, it's the only trade magazine that covers the carny and amusement park biz."

"Jesus, Erin, you should forget photography and find yourself a rich writer or movie producer. Hire on as his research assistant."

''I'd rather take pictures. Research is too much like work.

But don't lose the thread here, Devin. There was no carny in the Santee area, true, but the Eva Longbottom murder doesn't look like the other four, anyway. Not to me. No rape in the others, remember?"

"That you know of. Newspapers are coy about that stuff."

"That's right, they say molested or sexually assaulted instead of raped, but they get the point across, believe me."

"What about Darlene Shoemaker? Was there-"

"Stamnacher. These girls were murdered, Dev, the least you can do is get their names right."

"I will. Give me time."



Joyland

201

She put a hand over mine. "Sorry. I'm throwing this at you all at once, aren't I? I've had weeks to brood over it."

"Have you been?"

"Sort of. It's pretty awful."

She was right. If you read a whodunit or see a mystery movie, you can whistle gaily past whole heaps of corpses, only interested in finding out if it was the butler or the evil stepmother.

But these had been real young women. Crows had probably ripped their flesh; maggots would have infested their eyes and squirmed up their noses and into the gray meat of their brains.

"Was there a carny in the Maxton area when the Stamnacher girl was killed?"

"No, but there was a county fair about to start in Lumberton

-that's the nearest town of any size. Here."

She handed me another Xerox, this one advertising the Robeson County Summer Fair. Once again, Erin tapped the sheet. This time she was calling my attention to a line reading 50 SAFE RIDES PROVIDED BY SOUTHERN STAR AMUSEMENTS.

"I also looked Southern Star up in Outdoor Trade and Industry.

The company's been around since after World War II. They're based in Birmingham and travel all over the south, putting up rides. Nothing so grand as the Thunderball or the Delirium Shaker, but they've got plenty of chump-shoots, and the jocks to run them."

I had to grin at that. She hadn't forgotten all the Talk, it seemed. Chump-shoots were rides that could be easily put up or taken down. If you've ever ridden the Krazy Kups or the Wild Mouse, you've been on on a chump-shoot.

"I called the ride-boss at Southern Star. Said I'd worked at Joyland this summer, and was doing a term paper on the amusement 202





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industry for my sociology class. Which I just might do, you lmow.

After all this, it would be a slam-dunk. He told me what I'd already guessed, that there's a big turnover in their line of work.