Dark Coulee (14 page)

“You couldn’t be like them if you tried.”

Bridget reached back and untied her hair and fanned herself with the length of it. “Let’s talk about something else. I think I’ve vented enough. How’s your love life? Tell me about it so I can live vicariously.”

“Nonexistent.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I don’t think I mentioned it, but I’m seeing a therapist.”

Bridget leaned forward and clapped her hands together. “Wow. That’s big for you, Sis. I think it’s a good idea. Are you going because of what happened with Bruce?”

Claire nodded. “Remember I told you that I was scared sometimes?”

“Yeah.”

“It escalated into full-out panic attacks. The whole works—heart pounding, ready to burst, breath out of control, arms tingling, hands twisting in on themselves. I knew I had to do something about it. So I decided to get some help. To talk about Bruce and Steve.”

“Is it helping?”

“I think so. The woman I’m seeing is pretty straight ahead. She lets me do most of the work, but she steers me so I don’t get off track. The hard thing is that I decided that I can’t deal with seeing Rich while I sort through all my own mess. He’s such a nice guy, he doesn’t need to see this side of me. I’d scare him away.”

“I doubt it.”

“Anyway, it was scaring me to get close to him, so I told him we needed to take a break.”

“That’s hard. Do you miss him?”

“Yes. More than I thought I would. He is like the earth: solid and reliable. I don’t mean to make him sound dull, because he’s never that. But when I’m around him, I actually believe that good things might happen.”

Bridget rubbed her belly and said, “That sounds better than therapy.”

T
HE woman was walking toward her with long hair streaming down her back. The woman was walking steady. The sky was dark behind her. The sky was dark red, as if the sun was setting. There was no sun. The woman kept walking forward, as inevitably as life, as death. Then she lifted her eyes, and they were red. Then she lifted her arms up, and her hands were gone.

She had no hands.

Claire felt like she had been shot. Electricity coursed down her body. She bolted out of bed. Before she even woke up, she found herself standing upright next to her bed, shivering. She grabbed a blanket off her bed and wrapped it around her shoulders, slumping down onto the floor.

The darkness in the room told her it was the middle of the night. She tried to stop shivering and calm herself. Put her bathrobe on, have something warm to drink, tum on a light. A light would help. She crawled over to her bedside table and turned on her lamp. The burst of brightness it threw out into the room eased her panic. The darkness receded behind the windows.

The woman—Rainey Spitzler—had come to visit. Beseeching. What was she trying to say?

Claire hated the thought of a woman with no hands. This image haunted her. As she sat there on the floor with her feet folded under her, she realized that a woman did everything with her hands. She soothed babies, made beds, cooked dinner, folded clothes, drove a car. A woman without hands was totally powerless. That’s what made Claire hate the image so. Looking down at her own hands, she began to cry. What had she done with her hands?

A soft footfall in the hallway made her look up. Meg stood in her doorway, watching her.

“Mom?” Meg’s small sleepy voice was filled with concern. “What’s the matter, Mom?”

Claire snuffled in her tears and cursed herself for letting Meg see her like this. “I had a bad dream. It’s nothing. It scared me, but it was only a dream. You go back to bed, noodlehead.”

“Noodlehead,” Meg said, laughing. “You haven’t called me that in a long time.”

“Well, that’s what you look like right now.” Claire stood up and put the blanket back on the bed. She took her robe down from a hook near the door and put it on. “Back to bed.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Go downstairs and make myself some chamomile tea.”

“I want some too. I need it to go back to sleep.”

Claire thought of arguing but decided it might be easiest if she gave in. Meg would see that her mother was fine, it would be a little nighttime adventure they would share, and it would be over.

“All right, noodlehead. You run down and fill the tea kettle.”

Meg ran to the stairs and slid down them on her butt. She loved to be helpful. Claire worried that she was creating a little caretaker. Meg was such a barometer already of how her mother was doing. She hated that she wasn’t better able to protect her daughter from her own problems. That’s why two people should raise a child. When one was in a slump, the other could pick up the slack.

When she got downstairs, Meg had the teakettle already going on the stove and two mugs out of the cupboard. Claire took out her stash of chamomile tea, bought from the local herbalist. She filled two teaballs, and when the water boiled, she poured it into the two mugs.

“Would you like some honey?”

“Mom, you know I always need honey.”

Claire took down the honey jar from the shelf over the stove and handed it to her daughter. “But you’re so naturally sweet.”

Meg dipped her spoon in and pulled it out full of honey. Then she slowly drizzled it into her tea. “Mom, I just like it.”

“I do too, sweetie.”

“What was your dream about?”

Claire thought for a moment. She could not tell Meg the truth about her nightmare; she did not want her to have that awful image in her mind. “It was a falling dream. Do you ever have those?”

In her enthusiasm to talk about these dreams, Meg set her tea mug down with a thud. “Yes. Those kind of dreams are horrible. I try not to have them. You know my favorite kind of dream?”

“What?”

“Flying dreams. I’m just walking along, normal as ever, and then all of a sudden I remember I can fly. I run and hold my arms out and up I go. Do you have those, Mom?” Meg turned her face up and smiled.

“I used to have those dreams. It’s been a long time since I flew.”

“You should work on having one of those.”

Claire’s commute to the Pepin County sheriff’s office from Fort St. Antoine was about twenty-five minutes, which wasn’t much longer than she had commuted to work in the Twin Cities, but much more pleasant than driving through rush-hour traffic. She drove along the river and then inland through rolling Wisconsin countryside. There was no traffic. The occasional delivery truck, a school bus, and many pickup trucks. People often waved as they passed you, even if it was only the two-finger wave, hand still gripping the steering wheel.

This late morning, she saw evidence of fall coming. The sumac had turned—it always went burnt red early—the aspen were slowly moving from green to yellow, their autumn color. The once solid green hillsides were dappled with these other glorious colors. For the next month the colors would only get more spectacular, usually peaking in early to mid-October.

As Claire drove, she thought about what she had to do today. She had decided she needed to have another try at Pit Snyder. He was not telling her all that he knew, and she wanted to get to the bottom of this killing. If he did it, she’d like to get him to confess to it; and if he didn’t, head them in the right direction.

After a cup of coffee, a bit of jawing with Billy and Dan, she sat for a few minutes at her desk, figuring out her strategy for approaching Pit. His vulnerability was his concern and compassion for other people. He was your basic caretaker. She felt strongly that the way to get to him would be through his wife, and through Rainey. If he was covering for someone, he would not give them up for himself.

Walking down the hallway toward the jail cells, she decided to do it all off the record. Just to see if she could get him talking. It was worth a try. She didn’t think she had anything to lose. If he confessed once, he would do it again, and he was more apt to talk openly without the microphone.

Claire stood outside Snyder’s cell and asked, “May I come in?”

He looked up from the bunk on which he was lying. “I believe you can come and go as you please.”

“I didn’t want to be disturbing you.”

“Are you serious?” Snyder sat up, and his voice was bordering on sarcastic, but he was too nice a man to be able to pull it off. “I’m locked up, and you’re worrying about disturbing me?”

“Okay, it was a figure of speech.”

“You can’t help yourself. You’re just too polite to be a cop.”

“Huh, and I was just thinking you’re too decent to be a politician.” Claire opened the iron door and let herself in. “Let me assure you that I am not too nice to be a cop. Quite the contrary.”

She walked over and handed him a cup of coffee. “They don’t usually come around with seconds. Thought you might need this.”

He took it from her gratefully.

She sat down on the one chair in the room. The cell block was quiet. Friday morning right before the weekend rush began. She was glad there was no one else locked up with him so they could have some privacy.

“I went over and talked to your wife yesterday.”

Snyder’s head came up, and he said with emotion, “Leave her out of this.”

Claire knew she was on the right track. “She’s very worried about you. She doesn’t seem to think that you are responsible for what happened to Jed Spitzler.”

“There’s a lot she doesn’t know.”

When Snyder said nothing more, Claire prodded, “I asked Ruth about your relationship with Rainey.”

“It’s no secret. I have talked to her about it. It all happened before Ruth, so it doesn’t bother her.”

“That’s what she said. But she seems to feel you’re protecting someone. I think she’s very scared about what’s going to happen to you. Have you thought about what Ruth’s life will be like if you continue on this path?”

Snyder dropped his eyes.

“Let me clue you in. The going sentence for this type of crime, for manslaughter, is twenty to life. Ruth’s a young woman. How long do you think she’ll wait for you?”

Snyder shook his head as if trying to knock these thoughts out of it. “Can’t be helped.” He sipped his coffee and stared at the floor.

“I like Ruth,” Claire said. “Did you get the rolls she sent you?”

“Yes,” Snyder said. “Thanks for letting me have them.”

“No problem.”

Claire let the silence stretch on for a while. There was no need to rush this. Let him get used to her, wonder what she was up to, have time to think through what she was saying.

Finally, Claire started, “I had a horrible dream last night. I dreamed that a woman with no hands came walking toward me. She seemed to want something from me. I feel like you might know what that is.”

Claire saw that she had finally reached him. He bowed his head, and his shoulders shook slightly. “Rainey,” he said.

“Ever since I’ve heard about what happened to her, I’ve been haunted by it. I know there’s a lot of farm accidents. I’m a city girl, so at first it surprised me. But now I’m getting used to seeing farmers with fingers missing, hearing the stories of kids losing limbs. But you know what gets me about this accident? She lost both her hands. I have trouble seeing how that could happen.”

Slowly, Snyder nodded his head in agreement, his eyes lifted up to watch Claire as she talked.

Claire continued. “I questioned Dr. Lord about it. He said that she fell into the press, that she was the one who was putting the sorghum stalks into the press. I wonder why Jed Spitzler wasn’t doing that? It sounds like the hardest job.”

Pit finally spoke up. “Not necessarily. According to the kids, Jed was lifting the stalks down off the trailer. They had just harvested it, and he was carrying the sorghum stalks over to Rainey. They can be mighty heavy. But I agree with you. I don’t know why he had Rainey doing that. It’s a god-awful job for a woman, and she wasn’t very big. Not as big as you, but a couple inches taller than Ruth.”

“What do you think happened? How could she have fallen into the press with both hands? Wouldn’t she have tried to catch herself with one?”

“I have thought about it until I’ve had to puke. I don’t understand it either. And I have my suspicions. Always have had. I think Jed Spitzler killed his wife.”

“Why didn’t you do anything about it?”

“I did, goddamn it.” Snyder’s temper was rising. “I talked it over with the sheriff at the time. But he had already talked to the children, and they had said it was an accident. Jed insisted it was an accident. Nothing in the autopsy said it wasn’t. There wasn’t anything we could do.”

“What an awful way to die.”

“The worst was, I think Rainey knew it was going to happen.” Snyder’s voice broke as he talked. He cleared his throat.

“What do you mean?”

“She called me the night before the accident. I hadn’t talked to her in a couple years. I mean more than saying hi on the street. She asked me to help her. She said she was going to leave Jed. Take the kids. She wanted to know if there was someplace safe she could go. I asked her what was going on, and all she would say was, she had had enough. I told her I’d look into it. That was the last time I talked to her.”

“Did you tell the sheriff that?”

“Yes. He didn’t think it made any difference. People have marriage problems. Didn’t change his mind. Not with the kids saying it was an accident.” Snyder calmed. “You gotta understand. I was married to Ruth. I was happy. I didn’t want people to start talking again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I’ve always regretted that I didn’t do more. That I didn’t push harder. At least get the children away from Jed. But I didn’t have anything. No evidence of abuse or anything. I went out and checked on them from time to time. But they seemed okay. Shy. Quiet. Brad’s always been a real good kid. But Jenny has turned into a lost soul. I always wished I could have done more for her.”

“How do you think this ties in with Jed Spitzler’s death?” Claire asked him.

“An eye for an eye.”

When Claire had finished getting dinner ready—nothing fancy, just BLTs—she went to call Meg and couldn’t find her anyplace.

Then she remembered that Meg said she was going to visit a friend. Claire had assumed she meant Trevor, so she called over there. They hadn’t seen her.

Claire stood in the middle of the kitchen and felt panic start to build. Where was Meg? She tried to calm herself. Meg was in no danger. That was all over with. Meg was old enough to walk around the neighborhood by herself. They had agreed that she could. She would be coming in the door any minute now. But Claire could feel the charges building up in her body, the fear soaring.

Then the phone rang.

Claire picked it up before the second ring. “Hello?”

“Hi, this is Rich. Listen, I have a visitor here, your daughter, and I just wanted you to know she had walked over. I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Thanks, Rich. I was beginning to wonder.”

“If you’d like, I’ll bring her home in a few minutes. She said she came to see King Tut, and we’ve had a nice visit.”

“Great.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Not at all. I’m so glad you called.”

She hung up and went to the sink and filled a glass with water from the tap. She loved the water down here, especially after growing up on city water. She had her own well in the backyard that went down a hundred feet to the aquifer. The water had high levels of calcium from the limestone bluffs and was as sweet as anything. She sat down with her water and waited for her daughter to come home with the man that she wasn’t seeing at the moment. She could hardly wait to see him.

Fifteen minutes later, Rich’s pickup truck pulled into her driveway. Meg hopped out the passenger side, and Claire got nervous that Rich was going to drive away, so she ran out to say hi. But he stayed sitting, with the engine idling, waiting for her.

“Hi there,” she said.

“Howdy yourself.” He smiled.