Bone Harvest (15 page)

“Mom already did.”

“I know. But could you answer a few more for me?”

“Sure.” She rubbed her nose.

“Did you know this man?”

Jilly scrunched up her face. “Not really.”

“Have you ever seen him before?” Claire dared hope she might get something.

“I don’t think so.”

“Was he as big as your daddy?” Claire glanced over to where Jeff Daniels was standing. He looked to be about six feet tall and probably carried about one hundred and ninety pounds.

“No.”

“Was he old or young?”

“Pretty old.”

“Older than your daddy?”

“I think so.”

“He was wearing a hat?”

Jilly nodded.

“What kind of hat?”

“Like Thomas wears.”

Claire looked at Celia. “A baseball cap,” she said.

“Was he fat or skinny?”

Jilly turned her hands out. “Not fat, not skinny.”

“In between?”

“Yup.”

“What color of hair?”

“Don’t remember.”

“Could you see his eyes?”

“They were black.”

“Did he wear glasses?”

“Huh-uh.” Jilly shook her head.

She answered no to Claire’s questions about a beard and a mustache.

“Anything else you can remember?”

“He seemed nice.”

Celia wrapped her arms around her daughter. “I think it’s time she went to bed.”

Claire nodded and wished she could go with Jilly. Bed was where she wanted to be right now, but as she stood up she saw a squad car pull in behind her car. She had a long night ahead of her.

CHAPTER 18

The light was on at the Sands Hotel just outside of Wichita, Kansas. The sign overhead advertised rooms at thirty-nine dollars a night. When Earl Lowman tried to stand up from his car seat to check into the motel, he thought his legs were going to go out from under him. He was bone-tired, had to pee so bad he could taste it, eyes were dry in the sockets, and he was hungry to the pit of his stomach. He should have stopped four hours ago, but now he could make it to Wisconsin in a day’s time.

Things like that were important to him. He figured out how long it would take him to get someplace and then he wanted to get there on time. As if time were a special commodity. As if being on time was the same as being holy. If it were, he’d be a saint.

He held on to the car and steadied himself. It was a typical Kansas summer night, hot and muggy, weather only mosquitoes liked. Enough water in the air to lay a slick on your body.

It had been a sweltering day like this when he had gone over to the Schulers’.

All the long day driving he had been remembering what had happened that day, nearly fifty years ago. If he could have that moment back and live it over again, he would do it differently. He had been so young.

He pushed himself out of the car and headed toward the motel registration. Walking up to the desk, he saw a dark-haired young woman bent over something behind the desk. When he got closer, he saw that she had a baby with her. It was sleeping in a carrier and it looked pretty close to a year old. Same age as the youngest Schuler had been.

“Evening,” Earl said.

“Can I help you?” The woman snapped to attention, swinging back her long black hair and looking at him with dark brown eyes like a doe. She looked exotic in Wichita. Probably from India. He had heard that Indians had bought up all the small motels in middle America. Fine by him as long as they ran them clean. He hated a dirty room.

“Do you have a room?”

“Sure.”

“Do you give a discount for seniors?”

“Absolutely.” She gave him the once-over. “Would you qualify?”

“Don’t get smart on me.” He laughed. Here he was in the middle of Kansas on an adventure and a young woman was teasing him. Things could be worse. Then he remembered where Andy was and remembered why he was traveling and realized they
were
worse.

He gave her his credit card. After sliding it through a machine, she handed it back to him and gave him a map, drawing a big circle around his room. His room was on the far side of the motel.

He parked right in front of it and took out his bag and walked in. Nothing fancy, but it was clean. The king-sized bed looked great to him. He sat down on the edge of it and called the hospital. The number that Marie had given him rang and rang.

Finally he hung up and decided to call Andy’s house. Maybe Marie would be home from the hospital and she might have some good news.

Their boy, Ted, answered.

“This is your grandfather,” Earl explained.

“Who?”

“Your dad’s dad.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I haven’t seen you since you were two.”

“I’m twelve now.”

“That sounds about right. How’s he doing, your dad?”

“Not great. He’s in the hospital.”

Not very forthcoming, this kid. “I know. Is your mother home?”

“No, she’s still down there. She called and said to go to bed. I think she’s sleeping there tonight.”

“Has he come out of the coma yet?”

“Nope.”

“I’m sorry.”

The boy didn’t say anything. Earl wondered if he was crying. He didn’t know what to do about that, so he kept talking. “Listen, I want you to let your mom know that I’m on my way there. To Wisconsin. I should get in sometime tomorrow night.”

“Are you coming here?”

“I’ll probably go right to the hospital. Can you tell her that?”

“You’re Dad’s dad and you’re coming to Wisconsin?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“Thanks, I’ll see you.”

“I’ll see you, Grandpa.”

Grandpa—that did him in. Earl sat on the edge of the bed and hung on to the bedspread. He hoped he would get there in time.

The phone rang and he jerked up and answered it.
“Durand Daily.”

“Harold, do you know what time it is?”

He propped himself up and tried to focus on his wristwatch. “Agnes, it appears to be nearly eleven o’clock.”

“Wouldn’t you say that’s time to come home?”

“I was on my way when I stopped to look up one more article. I must have dozed off.” Harold looked at the bottle of brandy that was sitting next to a glass by his hand. Maybe once a month, he’d have a snort or two. Tonight had felt like one of those nights.

“Are you sober enough to drive?”

“I will be by the time I lock up.”

“Come right home.”

“Yes, dear.” After she hung up, he stood up and wandered around the empty office. He was getting too old to be running a newspaper. Maybe he’d go right from running a full-time business to addleheaded in a nursing home. If he didn’t get home soon, Agnes would divorce him and he would be forced to go to the nursing home.

Nothing had happened today. He had heard no reports of anything amiss. Maybe this whole thing would blow over. The Schulers could go back to being dead and buried. Poor family! What had they done to deserve any of their misfortune?
But then, what have any of us done,
he thought.

He checked the back door. It was locked. He couldn’t always count on Sarah to remember to lock up. She was a bit flighty.

He gathered up his lunch box and his briefcase. Silly of him to be dragging a briefcase back and forth, but it had been with him more years than Agnes and had held up nearly as well as she. It was part of him. He put his calendar in there and a copy of today’s paper. Agnes, poor woman, was always a day behind on the news.

He turned off the lights in the back office and walked out to the front.

He almost missed it.

He walked out the door and then turned back to make sure it was locked. That was when he saw it, the letter, lying on the floor in the office. He must have walked right over it. Another letter.

Quickly he unlocked the door and picked it up. He set his briefcase down on the counter and put the letter down next to it. Deputy Watkins had left him some plastic gloves. He found them under the counter and put them on. Holding it carefully, he cut through the top of the letter. The same handwriting. A longer note, it read:

The day is almost here. The day of reckoning. When the truth will come out or the people will pay for it with their lives. Just as the lives of the Schuler family have been poisoned, so will the water be poisoned. Let the truth be known or the innocent will pay.

I mean it.

Wrath of God

Harold read it through a couple times and thought of the water that ran through their lives. Poisoning the water would be horrible. It could ruin everything in the county. How did this guy think that he could get at the water supply in an area where most people had their own wells? The water-holding tank in town? He needed to call the sheriff and let him know about the letter.

They didn’t find anything. Claire hadn’t thought they would. There were trails going from the fields off into the woods, but they were deer trails. All someone had to do to camouflage their steps would be to follow those paths.

At midnight the sheriff called the search off. He said he would send some more officers over tomorrow to look more carefully in daylight. Scott Lund volunteered to stay the night at the Danielses’ in case the man showed up again.

Claire drove down the hill to Fort St. Antoine a little more slowly.

When she got in the door, she decided to make one more call. One more try to reach Earl Lowman. It was only a little after ten down in Tucson; maybe he’d come home from wherever he’d been all day long. The phone rang five times and she knew what would happen next.

The answering machine picked up. Earl Lowman’s gravelly voice said slowly, “Don’t seem to be here at the moment. I’d like to know you called. Please leave me your name and number. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Claire wondered if it would be soon enough. “Mr. Lowman, this is Claire Watkins again. I very much need to talk to you. It’s an emergency. Please call me no matter when you get this message.” She left her home number and the number at the sheriff’s office, adding, “You might still remember this number. I don’t think it’s changed since you left. Thanks.”

That was all she could do. She hung up.

She wished Rich were waiting for her upstairs, but she couldn’t even think of calling him. Their dinner hadn’t gone too well. She needed to think about what she had to tell him, but she couldn’t do it now. Hard to have a life when you were trying to work a crime of this breadth.

She just hated feeling so jangled. She knew she’d have trouble getting to sleep. She thought of having a nice big glass of wine, but in the long run it wouldn’t help that much either.

Instead she went down to the basement and folded a load of wash and brought it upstairs to her room and Meg’s room. She set the piles of clothes on Meg’s bed. Meg liked to put her clothes away herself. She had a special system. She had tried to explain it to her mother once, but Claire was glad to let her take care of her own things. Meg was growing up.

Claire sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed and thought about what had happened with Jilly. The pesticide guy could have done something awful. He could have taken the little girl, but he hadn’t. If Jilly hadn’t been sitting outside, Claire was guessing that he might have just left the tobacco tin with its bones on the Danielses’ doorstep, where they might not have discovered it until morning. Still a creepy thing to do, but not so threatening. What did he want, and what was he willing to do to get it?

July 7, 1952

Schubert sneaked out to the hallway to see what was going on, but there was no one there. Loud shots had exploded in his sisters’ room. Firecrackers? Balloons? That was what they had sounded like.

He could hear someone doing something in there, but he couldn’t hear his sisters talking or laughing anymore. They had been playing together and talking. He had been waiting to hear his mother call them for dinner. The cake was what he was really waiting for. Arlette’s birthday cake.

His birthday had been in April. He had turned six. There had been balloons and they made a loud noise when they popped. But maybe the loud bangs had been something else. If it had been balloons, his sisters would be laughing, and he couldn’t hear them doing anything at all. It made him feel nervous. He didn’t want to go any closer, because he felt so nervous.

If only he knew what had made that noise.

He didn’t know who was in their room. Maybe it was Denny, playing a joke. Where was his father? Where was his mother? Why didn’t they want to know what was happening? Why didn’t they come?

His mother didn’t call and there had been two bangs and he felt like he was going to wet his pants. He went back and stood in the middle of his room, trying to think what he should do.

Schubert felt like he was playing a game they played at school called Statues, where someone would twirl you around and then let you go and you had to stay perfectly still, like a statue.

Maybe if he stayed perfectly still, nothing would happen to him. Maybe whoever was in the next room, moving things around and making odd noises, would go away and they could have dinner and eat the cake.

Schubert was afraid that he would never get to eat the cake. He heard footsteps leaving his sisters’ room and coming down the hallway toward his room.

Dropping to the floor, he lifted up the blanket edge and tried to crawl under the bed. He had to get away and hide. He should have done it before. But there were too many toys stuffed under his bed. He couldn’t get under it far enough. He heard the footsteps stop close to him.

“Dad, please, Dad,” Schubert yelled into the darkness under the bed.

He heard a loud blast and his leg burst into flames and then he didn’t know anything more.

After the second shot, the boy was pulled out from under the bed and his hand placed down on the floor. It didn’t take much effort to cut off a finger with a hatchet. Just the way he’d take the head off a chicken.

The man stood and knew he was nearly done. He walked out of the room.

The room was quiet. The boy lay stretched out on the floor, a bloody pool around his hand.

Then the clothes in the closet moved.