Bone Harvest (5 page)

“Sure, I can help out. I was going to go into town anyway. I’ll look through my books here and then I’ll check at the pharmacy. Rachel has been saying she wants to go for a ride today.”

Claire felt relieved that Bridget would be on the case. “Buy the kid an ice-cream cone for me.”

Two hours later, Bridget called her back. “I’ve got what you need. Rachel and I shared an ice-cream cone.”

“Vanilla?”

“Of course. She’s too young for chocolate. I’ve written down all the specifics on the pesticides and I can fax that to you.”

“You’ve included the antidotes?”

“Yes, but let me just tell you. For Caridon atropine sulfate is antidotal. For Parazone it would be a little more difficult. It would have to be done in a hospital because they would use charcoal or clay to bind the material in the stomach, removing the main ingredient, paraquat, from the blood by cleaning out the blood. Because it can burn tissues, you wouldn’t want the person to throw up.”

“It sounds like either way, get the victim to the hospital as quickly as possible.”

“That would be my recommendation.”

CHAPTER 5

Meg climbed out of the bathtub, rubbed her body dry, and stepped into her new summer pajamas. Her mother had bought them for her—shorty pajamas with bunnies on them and a pink ribbon at the neck. Meg wished she could go stay at someone’s house for a sleepover just so she could show them off. Maybe she should visit Aunt Bridget and her cousin, Rachel.

It was only a little after nine o’clock and Mom was letting her stay up later in the summer, but she didn’t even care tonight. Meg was tired. Since her mom had worked most of the day, Meg had gone over to the Daniels farm and played with their kids. She had helped them get the eggs away from the chickens. There was one chicken that tried to attack them, but they had managed to escape her sharp claws.

They let Meg bring a dozen eggs home with her. The eggs were not the normal white, but soft brown, as if they had been dusted with dirt. They seemed more real to her; they looked like they actually came from the earth. When Mom fried them, the yolk was a bright orange color.

“Mom, I’m going to bed,” Meg shouted at her mother, who was sprawled on a wicker chair on the front porch, reading.

“You going to read for a while?” Claire asked.

“Maybe. I’m kinda tired.”

“I’ll be up in a few minutes to tuck you in.”

Meg stood on the middle stair and yelled down, “Is Rich coming over?”

“I think so. We left it a little vague.”

“He should just live here, he sleeps over so much.”

Her mother didn’t say anything for a moment, almost as if she hadn’t heard Meg; then she yelled back, “Everything in its time.”

“What does that mean?”

Her mom lifted her head from her book, turned, and gave Meg a look. “When we get good and ready.”

“I’m ready right now.”

“Noted.” Her head dropped back down to her book.

Meg walked the rest of the way up the stairs. She knew her mom was working on another case. It didn’t sound that exciting to her. Someone had stolen weed killer out of a store in Durand. What a weird thing to steal. It just sounded like shoplifting. Kids did it all the time. What was the big deal?

Meg climbed into her bed. Clean sheets. She loved the feeling of clean sheets. In the summer Mom hung them out on the line and they carried some of the outdoor smell in with them. She smoothed her hands over the sheets and remembered the one time she had shoplifted.

It had been at the grocery store in Pepin. She had slipped a candy bar into her pocket when she was shopping with her mom. Then she had to wait while her mom had gone through the checkout line. She had almost thrown up, she was so sure that Peggy, the lady who ran the cash register, would catch her. When she got home, she had run upstairs and eaten half the candy bar and then thrown the rest of it away. It hadn’t tasted as good as she had expected. She had decided then and there that a life of crime was not for her. Probably just as well with a mom as a deputy sheriff.

But then Mom had told her tonight at dinner that someone had ruined all the flowers in front of the sheriff’s department. Meg had only seen them once a few weeks ago, but she thought they had looked real nice. She didn’t get why someone would do that. Was it a message to the sheriff? To her mom? She didn’t want to have to start worrying about her mother again.

She was glad Rich was in their life. He was almost as good as a dad. Maybe he would be her dad one day. She wondered if he and her mom were ever going to get married. They had been going out forever. She was already too old to be a flower girl. Maybe her mom would let her be a maid of honor. That would be totally cool.

Her eyes were closing. She could hear her mother’s footsteps coming up the stairs, but her eyelids were too heavy to lift up again. Her breathing had gone into the deep zone, slow and even. Her mother patted the sheets and then leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

Meg floated away on top of smooth white water.

Claire looked up from the book she was reading, a new Irish novel called
My Dream of You—
very romantic and with a heroine who was turning fifty. How refreshing to read about an older woman who was still sexual. She thought she had heard something outside the window, but when she checked, she didn’t see anything.

When she had talked to Rich earlier, he hadn’t been sure when he would come over. He was playing poker with the guys, but they didn’t usually go too late. These were older guys who had responsibilities in the morning. She thought of getting undressed and climbing into the bed to wait for him, but it was so pleasant out on the front porch. She had all the windows open and the night air flowed in the house, humid and soft. All the sounds of summer surrounded her.

Claire was a little worried about her relationship with Rich. She had been getting the feeling that he wanted to change it. She suspected that he was going to want to get more serious, and she wanted to head him off.

Suddenly the headlights of his truck bounced down the driveway. Earlier than she expected. How nice. She heard the engine being turned off. She set her book down.

As she stepped outside to greet Rich, the gentleness of the air hit her. Balmy nights were rare enough in Wisconsin that she felt like staying up and enjoying it. She walked up to the truck.

Rich opened the door and swung down. “Hey, good-looking,” he said.

“You sound lucky. You bring me any money?”

“You bet. I’m the big winner.”

“How much?”

“Twenty-four dollars.”

She stepped in closer and they kissed. She could tell from his kiss that he was feeling good about himself.

They broke apart for a moment and looked up at the sky together. Other than the porch light, it was dark outside. The moon wasn’t out and the sky was sprayed with the Milky Way, but it gave off little light. She put an arm around his neck and pulled his face to hers again. They kissed a longer kiss—deep and thrilling.

She could feel that he wanted her. The way he was pressed up against her left little to the imagination. He started to lead her toward the house.

“Let’s stay outside,” she whispered in his ear.

He pulled back enough so he could see her face. “Really? Outside?”

She could feel his resistance. Rich liked everything in its place, and she knew he thought the place for lovemaking was in the privacy of one of their bedrooms. Usually she agreed with that. But not tonight. She felt as if the idea had been under her thoughts all night long, that the warm summer air had been seducing her—and now lucky Rich had walked right into it. “We could do it behind the roses.”

He looked around, checking to see if anyone was walking down the road. There were no lights on in the closest neighbor’s house. The town was quiet and dark.

“No one will see us. Everyone’s sleeping,” she reassured him. “Besides, it’s not against the law.”

“Indecent exposure?”

“We’ll be hidden.”

“Let me get a blanket out of the truck.”

She patted his butt as he turned back to the truck. “You must have been a good Boy Scout. Always prepared.”

She watched as he grabbed the blanket from the backseat. He turned and wrapped an arm around her shoulders and they walked to the other side of the wild rosebushes. Thank goodness the neighbors weren’t close enough to see anything, even if they had been looking, even if there had been some light to see by.

He spread out the blanket and settled her down on it, pushing her back so she was stretched out on the blanket.

Claire closed her eyes and smelled the wild roses’ sweet nutmeg aroma. The blooms lasted for only a week or so, and all the rest of the year the bushes were scroungy-looking, but she loved them for what they gave her this one week: delicate pink blossoms and gorgeous perfume.

Rich knelt down beside her and unbuttoned her blouse. He spread it open, leaving it loose on her shoulders. He ran a hand down between her breasts from her neck to her waist. Then he dipped his head down to her right breast and kissed it.

She thought of bees; she thought of nectar. She felt herself opening, blooming inside. She wanted him in her. She loved what he was doing. She wanted to rush it. She wanted it to last forever. All of it. She wanted all of it.

She ran a hand up his thigh and then unzipped his jeans. But there was no hurrying him. Rich knew how to take his time. She let him set the pace. The waiting made it sweeter. When he finally came into her, she exploded immediately. He laughed and moved slowly through her.

The stars were in her eyes. Then they fell into her.

Later, after they had rolled back into their clothes and laughed their way into the house, Rich went back outside. When she was curled up in bed, he brought her a rosebud that he had picked and put in a little vase. He set it on her bedside table, right under the lamp. She could smell the whiff of nutmeg it gave off.

Then he crawled in next to her, kissed her gently, curled into her, and fell asleep. Sometimes she thought he barely got his eyes closed before he was gone.

Claire loved to watch him fall asleep while reading. His breath would slow and she would glance over and notice that his mouth was slightly open, the book listing, and suddenly his eyes would be shut. She often watched until the book fell and jolted him awake.

She rested her arm over his waist. Rich was a nice man to sleep with. He didn’t hog the covers; he gave her enough room.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to marry him, she thought as she held him in her arms. She wasn’t crazy to get married again. Didn’t think the institution offered much to women. She had never cared for the term
wife
, implying as it did the biblical
helpmeet.
The last thing she wanted to be was a helpmeet—ever since she had read the term in the Bible as a child, she had wanted to avoid that designation. Even so, she would marry if that was what Rich wanted. She loved him.

But she didn’t want to do it soon. There was something so sweet about the slightly illicit nature of their romance—the coming over after poker games, the stopping by for a coffee and a quick moment of love. She didn’t want all that to end just yet. Once they married, they would never retrieve that carefree element.

She hoped the love they would grow into would be deeper, more committed; but what she wanted now was the wild roses that only bloomed for a moment.

He stood in the dark next to the truck.

Dark as the inside of a closet.

The wind moved around him. He could hear the sounds of the night, sounds he had grown up with: crickets, frogs, the occasional howl of a wild animal.

He didn’t like everything he had to do. There were moments when he wanted to stop. But it was clear to him that this was the path he had to follow. It had been laid out for him.

The lights were off in the farmhouse. He knew the family had no dog. He knew their habits. He had been watching them. This was the old Schuler place.

He had learned to move quietly over the land. It was his way. He never made much noise. Often when he was a child, he had crept down the stairs at night and startled his mother while she was reading a book. She always got mad at him, asking him why he had to sneak up on her. He didn’t mean to. He just didn’t like to make noise. And he found that he learned a lot by being quiet.

He had been up to this farm recently to buy vegetables and eggs. He knew where all the outbuildings were. He knew that this family was trying not to use any pesticides. He thought that wasn’t a bad idea. But he had to go ahead with his plan.

It would happen quickly, while they slept. It would be over before they would wake, he hoped.

He had made the mixture himself. Grain and some Parazone.

He turned on his special flashlight. A very strong but narrow beam of light cut through the darkness. He held it like a sword in front of him and began to walk. These steps were new for him, but, as always, he counted them. When he got to the door of the building, the number was 107. The right number. He felt like someone had patted him on the back.

The feeder was right in the middle of the yard. He poured his mixture into it. He went back to the door of the building and shone his light around the inside. The birds slept with their heads tucked into their wings. Some of them lifted up and looked at him, jerking their heads and making a low clucking noise.

“You are the next step,” he whispered to them.

He left them to their sleep and carefully walked out the way he came. He hoped it would happen quickly and was glad that he would not be there to see it.

CHAPTER 6

Whirling chicken, whirling chicken. Jilly Daniels stood in front of the chicken coop with the egg basket in her hand and watched the fluffy chicken they called Lupita whirl in front of her. The brown-striped chicken kept turning as if she were trying to look at something behind her.

Two other chickens were sleeping by the door. Usually they went into the coop to sleep. Jilly walked up to one and touched it with the toe of her shoe. It didn’t move. So tired. She walked around it and went into the dark chicken coop. She used to be scared to go in alone, but now she was used to it: the dusty smell, the dark, small room, the hay all over.

She made the rounds of where the chickens left their eggs and didn’t find very many. Only seven. Maybe the chickens were too tired today to lay eggs. Usually she found between fifteen and twenty. She was only six, but she knew how to count up to a thousand.

She went back out into the sun and looked at Lupita. The chicken had stopped whirling but was still walking funny. Tilted to one side.

It reminded Jilly of how she felt when she had the flu last winter. Like her head was on crooked. Maybe the chickens were sick. The two by the door hadn’t moved at all. They should be out pecking at the ground.

What was the matter with them? The chickens were mainly her responsibility. That was what Dad told her when they came and they were only little fluff balls. She had begged him to let her have chickens and he had made her promise that she would take care of them. That meant she had to feed and water and gather their eggs every day. Sometimes when she was reaching under the hens to get the eggs, they pecked her, but it didn’t really hurt. She had learned a lot about chickens, but she had never seen them behave like this before.

Lupita went head-down into the dirt. Now look at what had happened. Her chickens were falling over.

Maybe she’d better tell someone, Jilly thought.

Her mother was out in the backyard, hanging up the sheets.

“Mom,” she hollered.

Her mother looked over and waved.

“Mom, the chickens are acting funny.”

Her mother didn’t seem to hear her. Maybe she was too far away. Maybe it wasn’t important.

Jilly looked back at the chickens. Lupita rolled onto her back and started to shake. Jilly had never seen a chicken do anything like that before. It reminded her of Henny Penny, the little chicken who thought the sky was falling. Maybe Lupita was scared and that was why she was shaking.

“Mom!” Jilly heard her voice rise up high in the sky, a scream.

Her mother’s head lifted at the sound. She dropped the sheet she was stretching out on the line and came running.

Rich had driven to the Daniels farm a few times before. They lived up the bluff from Fort St. Antoine, on the rolling farmland that surrounded the lake. As he approached the farm today, he felt the sky open above him. He sometimes drove up near their farm just to watch the weather. It was so much easier to see when a storm was coming out of the basin of the bluffs.

Rich had bought eggs from the Danielses, but he didn’t know them very well. Having moved to the area about ten years ago, they were relative newcomers. Meg played with their children, so Claire knew them better.

Rich had been surprised when Celia Daniels had phoned him this morning—surprised that she even knew who he was. As he drove up the bluff, he remembered her call.

She had been terribly upset, her voice high and shrill. “Our chickens are dying. The vet is out on call. I didn’t know who else to try. Because of your pheasants, I thought you might know something.”

He wasn’t sure he could do anything, but at a time like this it often helped to have someone else there. She had mentioned that her husband had gone to the Fleet Farm in Menomonie and wouldn’t be back until late afternoon. Rich had a sack of clothes sitting next to him on the seat. He would change his before he went back home. If the poultry at the Daniels farm were carrying anything, he didn’t want to bring it back home to his pheasant flock.

Rich pulled into the long driveway that curved around the farmhouse and headed toward the barn. He stayed on it until he saw the family gathered at the other side of an outbuilding. He stopped the car and got out. A lanky boy of about ten ran out to greet him.

“Four have died so far,” the boy announced.

“Are you Thomas?” Rich asked, hoping he had remembered correctly.

“Yeah.” The boy pointed at the little girl standing next to her mother. “That’s Jilly. She’s the one who found the chickens. They’re kinda hers. Dad bought them for her. She takes care of them.”

On the drive up, Rich had been searching his mind for any disease that could come on this fast and be this fatal. The one that occurred to him was Newcastle disease. He knew that the Danielses were into back-to-the-land living, eschewing pesticides and chemical fertilizers; he wondered if they believed in inoculating their animals. If they didn’t, that might be the problem.

As he walked up to Celia Daniels, he could see that she and her daughter had been crying. The little girl’s face was streaked with dirt and tears. She was holding an egg in each hand. Her head was leaning against her mother’s thigh.

“I don’t know what to do about them,” Celia Daniels told him. “I don’t know what’s wrong. They’re dying.”

Looking over the flock, Rich saw that they were all Barred Rock chickens, handsome chickens with brown and white stripes and small combs. His uncle used to have a flock of them.

As he recalled, Barred Rocks did well in the cold weather of the upper Midwest. His uncle kept them because they were a good dual-purpose chicken for a small farm. They laid nice brown eggs and then when their productive time was over, they could be dressed into good broilers, too.

Rich bent down and looked at the chicken that was flopped on the ground in front of him. No spittle at the beak, no nasal discharge. He touched the small bird, not so long dead that warmth didn’t hang in its feathers, and wondered what had happened in its body that it had failed.

“How long has this been going on? Did you notice anything wrong with them last night?” he asked.

Celia reached down and tipped up Jilly’s face. “How did the chickens seem last night?”

“Normal.”

“What does that mean?” Rich asked.

The little girl looked up at him. “I found a bunch of eggs. They were going to sleep. None of them were dancing or anything. Just normal.”

“How many eggs did you find today?”

“Only seven.”

“What’s usual for them?”

“More like over twenty.”

“Are the chickens coughing or sneezing?” he asked.

Jilly thought before she answered. “No. Just spinning around and then lying down and dying.”

Rich stood back up. He had some questions for Celia. “Have you vaccinated your birds?”

She stared at him, then reluctantly shook her head.

“Have they been in contact with any other poultry? Did you introduce any new birds to the flock recently?”

“No.”

“Has anyone who raises chickens come and had contact with your birds?”

“No. Not that I’m aware of.”

“Let me look at their food and water.”

Jilly took him over to the feeder that was out in the yard. He bent down and examined the mash that was in it. He could see some hard, granular shapes. Didn’t look like any feed he had ever used. “What is this?” He held up a piece for Jilly and her mother to see.

“I’ve never noticed that before,” Mrs. Daniels told him.

“Jilly, bring me a cup of your feed.”

The child dutifully ran and got him some feed in a coffee can. No dark, granular shapes were in it.

“It looks like someone might have put something in your chicken feed.”

Celia Daniels looked at him with fear in her dark brown eyes. “Will all the chickens die?”

“I can’t tell you that. I hope not. Let’s get a paper bag for what’s in here and I’ll take it with me. Then wash out the feeder and put new feed in it.”

Thomas ran into the house, happy to help.

His mother yelled at him as he went, “Grab a couple of plastic garbage bags, too.”

Rich looked at her and she answered his question without its being asked. “For the chickens. I suppose we should preserve them.”

“I’ll take them with me, too.”

Thomas came back with a brown paper bag on his head. Jilly laughed. Rich found it a pleasant sound. They dumped the contaminated feed into the bag and he rolled the top up so it wouldn’t spill over in his car.

Then he reached down to pick up the closest of the dead chickens. First he was surprised by the depth of the bird’s feathers. His hands sank in until he found the small body hiding under all that down. Then he wondered at the lightness of the bird. Fluffier than the pheasants he was accustomed to. And lighter still because it was so quiet. No struggling against him as he lifted it. He wondered if the soul of a chicken were a measurable weight.

After he had filled the bag with the four chickens, he looked at Celia.

She shrugged her shoulders as if to say,
What can we do?

He answered her gesture. “You’ll just have to wait and see on the others. I’ll bring this feed in to be tested, and if there’s an antidote, someone will bring it out.”

“What do you think was put in the feed?” She looked at him with swollen eyes. “Why would anyone do this to us?”

“I don’t know. I’d hate to try to guess. Someone from the sheriff’s office will contact you about this.”

Jilly, who had been standing quietly next to her mother, suddenly held up something for him to see. “Lookit what I found.”

Rich looked down and saw a small white bone gleaming in her hand. “Where did you find that?”

“In the chicken coop. In with the eggs.”

Rich took the bone and studied it. He remembered what Claire had said about the culprit leaving a memento. “I think I need to make a call from your house.”

“A story about chickens dying?” Sarah Briding asked him with disappointment and disbelief deep in her voice. Harold knew she had not graduated from journalism school in order to write about chickens. But it was the news of the day. And they needed it quickly, as the paper was about to go to bed.

“Go up to the sheriff’s department and talk to the deputy on the case. I think it’s Watkins. Dig. There might be more to this than you think.” He would see what she found. As he watched her leave the press office, he noted that all of her was in slight disrepair: her handbag dangling from her drooping shoulder, her blond hair pulling out of a loose ponytail, and the hem of her light summer dress falling down in back.

This was a bad business. Sitting at his desk, Harold Peabody worked his forehead with his fingers. He had made a list and he didn’t like the looks of it at all. His role as editor was not to scare the public, but rather to give them the news, warn them if necessary. So he wouldn’t connect it all together for his readership. At least, not yet.

Chickens twirling and dying. Pesticide in their feed. This was the second incident since the break-in at the Farmer’s Cooperative. The destruction of the garden in front of the sheriff’s department, he had decided, could go on the third page. This piece he would put on the front page, but below the fold.

Glancing at the clock on the wall, he saw it was after five. Agnes knew that he was often late for dinner on weekdays. She was in the habit of cooking something that could be held indefinitely in a warm oven or a cold refrigerator. In winter it would be some mishmash of noodles and ground beef and cream of mushroom soup. Summers she often made a cold salad of macaroni noodles, canned shrimp, and peas. Suited him fine.

Tomorrow was the Fourth of July. Middle of the summer. The air conditioner in the back window droned on. Nearly ninety out and very soupy. For the holiday, he planned on grilling a chicken; Agnes would make her potato salad and strawberry shortcake. When it started to get dark, they would drive to the river and watch the fireworks.

Harold heard the door to the front office open. He thought of getting up and talking to whoever had entered, but he wanted to finish this last piece before interrupting his work. When the door opened and closed again, he figured his visitor had come in to buy a paper.

A pile of papers was always left on the counter, and a box sat next to them for quarters. The honor system worked pretty well in these parts. Once or twice they had even come out ahead on the money. Maybe he wasn’t charging enough for his paper—although circulation was not where the money came from; the money was all in advertising. With two more businesses closing on Main Street, he’d be losing some other reliable clients soon.

Sighing a deep sigh, Harold pushed himself out of his chair. He needed to get up and walk around from time to time. Otherwise his legs bothered him. It was time to lock the front door. He walked out to the front desk and turned the dead bolt.

He waved at Harriette Pinkerton as she passed on the street. She’d be a pretty woman if she didn’t pull her hair back so tight and if she put on a little lipstick. Women walked around these days looking more informal than his mother would have ever allowed herself to be seen out of the bedroom: skimpy T-shirts, slippers on their feet, and their bra straps showing on purpose. But he was certainly glad that he didn’t have to wear a suit to work every day. Or a hat for that matter.

When he turned to walk back to his desk, he saw an envelope sitting on the counter with his name on it. mr. harold peabody, it was labeled, then underneath, put in the paper, please. Assuming it was a letter to the editor, he wondered who was ranting about what this week.

Curious, he opened the envelope and pulled out a single piece of paper. Not much writing on it. He peered down through the bottom half of his glasses. At the top of the paper was written a series of numbers:

7, 7, 10, 52.

Offhand, he couldn’t make them mean anything. Then he read the body of the note:

The killer has gone free for far too long. The truth must be told. Or more will die. The flowers and the birds were only the beginning. The murdered are crying out for revenge. I have listened to them for half a century.