Dark Coulee (3 page)

She looked up at him and said, “I know. But now that I’m investigator, I should probably follow up on this while it’s fresh. I’m sorry. I had plans too.”

That’s what he liked about Claire. She didn’t pull away, she didn’t back off, she never played coy. She might be slow coming to him, but when she got there, she was there.

“What’re you going to do?” he asked.

“Talk to a few more people here. But I also want to talk to his children, and I’ve heard they went down to the hospital. I’ll probably go down to get statements from them. Billy can take me. You don’t need to stick around through all this. I don’t know how long it will take.”

“Billy can bring you home?” Rich hated to walk away from her, but she was doing her job.

“Yeah.”

Rich thought about what he wanted to say and then decided to say it. What the hell. “You might ask him to drop you off at my house.”

Claire thought for a moment, then nodded. “I could do that. I could tell him I left my car there. But it would probably be pretty late.”

“I’ll leave the door open.”

“Okay. I’ll see you later.”

He pulled her close for a moment and leaned down and kissed her. She kissed him back, quickly and deeply.

He walked away with a spring in his step. The old cowboy boots felt pretty good on his feet. He imagined Claire waking him in the middle of the night. What a pleasant surprise that would be.

C
LAIRE smiled to herself as she watched Rich walk away. He didn’t quite swagger, but there was a little backbeat in his walk. She was glad she would get a chance to see Rich later on tonight. She had surprised herself by agreeing to stop by, but now she was glad. That last kiss had been full of promise.

Billy came over to talk, and she asked him if he had found anyone else who saw what had happened.

“Not really.”

“I find it surprising that no one saw someone get stabbed at a street dance. Everyone was all crowded together.”

“What’re you suggesting?” Billy asked.

“I’m not sure. Often people are eager to tell what they saw. Was Jed Spitzler not well liked?”

“Could be. Didn’t really know the guy myself.”

“You feel like taking me over to the hospital? This guy’s kids are over there, and I’d really like to talk to them tonight while it’s all still fresh in their minds. Steve can stay here and keep on with the questioning.”

“You’re the boss,” he said.

“No, I’m not. I’m not even here in an official capacity.”

He slapped her on the back. “Hey, you are the investigator of the Pepin County Sheriffs Department. You are as official as they come. If you weren’t here now, we’d probably be hauling your ass out of bed.”

She laughed. She liked Billy. Straight brown hair cut desperately short, lake-water blue eyes that sparkled when he smiled, and a lanky body. He was just out of the academy, and had chosen to work for a small sheriff’s office because he had grown up in this area. Also, he was one of the deputies who liked her. He did not appear to feel threatened by her, and in fact he went out of his way to let her know how much he appreciated her help on anything. She found him completely charming in how open he was to most everything.

A month ago, Chief Deputy Sheriff Stewart Swanson had assigned her to be chief investigator for the department. This had caused a commotion, since a couple of other deputies had more seniority, but Swanson had explained that Claire had more experience and ended his announcement by commenting that Claire had worked on more murder cases in a year than all of them combined had ever worked on. It had the effect of shutting complaints up short-term, but Claire had felt the resentment from the others. For her the appointment, because it meant she always worked the day shift, was a godsend. She could be at home every night with Meg.

As Claire and Billy were walking toward his patrol car, a balding man with a big mustache walked up and tapped Billy on the shoulder. When Billy turned, the man asked, “What have we got here, son?”

“Pit, how you doing?”

Billy knew Little Rock better than she did. He lived out this way. “This is Claire Watkins. She’s a deputy too. She was here when it happened, she can tell you more than I can.” Billy introduced her to the mayor, a man by the name of Pit Snyder.

She wondered how he got the name Pit but figured she’d ask later. There was nothing fierce about Pit, a short man with a soft fuzz covering the front of his head. Claire felt the urge to pet him.

“Jed Spitzler was stabbed. They took him off to the hospital, but between you and me, he looks bad. I’m not sure he’s going to make it,” Claire told him.

“I don’t like to hear this. It’ll give the town a bad name. Can’t believe something like this could happen here at our annual street dance.”

“Do you know Jed?”

Pit shuffled his feet in the dirt. “Not well. He’s not, as they say, one of my constituents. He doesn’t live in the village. His farm is part of the township. Keeps to himself pretty much. We know the kids, because they go to school in town. They’ve always been good kids.”

“Have you seen him around tonight?”

“Actually, I think I saw him right before it happened. I had gone to use the john when I walked by him.”

“Was he alone?”

“I believe he was.”

“When you came out, did you see him?”

“I don’t recall that I did.”

His use of the word recall struck Claire. This happened ten minutes ago; there hadn’t been time to forget it. Why would he have to recall it? She decided not to push it right at the moment.

“If you remember anything, please let me know.”

“Always happy to cooperate with the police.”

After he walked away, Claire asked Billy about the mayor. “How well do you know him, and what’s the deal with his name?”

“Well enough, I’d guess. He’s been mayor longer than I’ve been around. I know he looks like a real softy, but if you’ve ever seen him in action at a town council meeting, you’d understand. Once he latches on to something, he won’t let go of it. Like a pit bull with their smooshed-in snouts. He holds on forever.”

The country can be so dark sometimes, Jenny thought as she watched for a light to appear in the landscape. Brad drove, and they were silent in the car.

That wasn’t unusual. Their dad didn’t talk much, and they had gotten used to the quiet. Mom had talked. Jenny remembered the sound of her voice, like water on rocks, glistening.

Jenny wanted a light to fasten her eyes onto. Something to draw her across the land as they drove to see Dad in the hospital.

Her dad, dying.

She had wished for it for so long, she could hardly believe it might come true. Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about it. You’ll jinx it.

She thought of taking another Darvocet, but she decided she needed her wits about her at the hospital. She had first gotten the pills when she had had a root canal. After using them for the pain, Jenny found she liked them so much she went back to her dentist, complaining of more pain. Men doctors always thought women needed pills to handle pain. She was glad she had the pills—they sure had made her life easier. Then she had found someone at school who could get them for her from time to time. She had stocked up.

Add a beer or two to the mix, and she was flying.

She wondered if there was a hell. She kinda hoped there was. A hell where her father was kept bent over, weeding row after endless row of sunflowers. Let them go on for absolutely forever. That should be his punishment.

And it would barely make up for what he had done.

She had sometimes imagined that she was not his daughter—that she had been stolen or switched at birth—and that her real father was trying to find her. He would be a man she could love and respect. She would sit and think about this fantasy in school when she had finished her work. But she had always known that her mom was her real mom.

Maybe she should talk to Brad. The idea floated in her head, and she could almost feel her mouth opening, ready to move, but then she saw a light. A farmhouse light. She watched it as they drove by. Someone had left it on for the last person to come home. How nice.

“You okay?” Brad asked.

“Usual.”

“How much you drink tonight?”

“What’s it to you?”

“We have to be together on this thing. If Dad, you know, doesn’t make it, they might try to split us up and put us in foster homes or something. We might lose the farm. We can’t let that happen.”

“We won’t let them split us up.”

‘Well, yeah, but you have to get it together, Jenny,” Brad said urgently. “Think of Nora. You have to help me out here.”

Jenny sat up straighter. She liked the idea of helping Brad out. He had tried to be a good brother, and he never really asked her for anything. He had always been the big brother, and she the little sister who needed him.

Staring out the window again, Jenny thought about her brother. For her, Brad was like that yard light on in the dark countryside. You always knew where he was, and he’d help you find your way home.

As Rich approached his car, he saw Leonard Lundgren sitting in his old Chevy pickup truck. The lights weren’t on, and the engine wasn’t running. Rich walked over to talk to him.

Leonard was nursing a beer and staring through the windshield at nothing. He had his cowboy hat pulled on tight, and his ears stuck out underneath it. A dark jean jacket was pulled on over a Lone Star T-shirt. A stylish man Leonard would never be. Big and bruising, he got into fights whether he wanted to or not. Usually he did.

“Hey, Leonard.”

“Well, if it isn’t Rich Haggard. Don’t see much of you around.”

Rich thought to say that he didn’t hang out at the bars, but decided it would be better to jump straight to the question. “You know anything about what happened to Jed Spitzler tonight?”

“That son of a bitch. ‘Bout time someone stuck him.” Leonard looked over at Rich, and his look dared him to say different.

“You didn’t care for him?”

Leonard started laughing. “You always were a smart-ass, Rich.”

‘Were you there when it happened?”

“Close enough, my friend, close enough.”

“You see who did it?”

Leonard took another swig of beer and said, “Listen, my man. I know who you’re hanging with these days. She can come and ask me questions any old time. But I don’t have to tell you a thing.”

“That’s true. Just wondering.”

“You’re not about to bring my head on a platter to your true love.” Leonard laughed a high, rasping laugh while his shoulders shook.

Reaching down with his keys, Leonard started up his truck. The vehicle sounded like it was only running on half the cylinders. Rich backed away and watched him careen down the street. Rich remembered him from school. If there was trouble, Leonard was often in the middle of it.

B
RAD knew he had to keep a sharp eye on Jenny. He didn’t know what she had taken tonight, but she had mixed it with alcohol. Needles pricked him all over his skin. High alert. Don’t let anyone know what’s really going on. He was the oldest. He had to try to watch out for them all.

Brad drove carefully as they approached the hospital. He hadn’t been there since he broke his arm two years ago. Don’t think about that. Just take care of Jenny and find out what’s happening to Dad. Then get them all home.

“Do you want to wait in the car?” he suggested when they pulled into one of the spaces reserved for the emergency room.

“No,” she said and pushed her door open.

“You know you don’t like hospitals.”

“Who does?”

He came around and helped her out of the car. She seemed to be able to stand fine. He got right up to her and said, “Jenny, I’m counting on you.”

With as sober a look as he had gotten from her in a while, she stared at him. “You don’t have to worry. I won’t mess anything up.”

They walked into emergency side by side, and he was comforted. The bright lights hit him after the dark night, and the interior of the hospital seemed strangely quiet. Maybe they had beat the Saturday-night after-the-bar rush. He walked up to the counter, which looked like a check-in at a cheap hotel, and gave his name to the dark-skinned nurse. “I think my father was just brought in.”

The nurse raised her head and gave him a sad smile. “Are you a Spitzler? They took him right in.”

“Right in?”

“To the operating room.”

“Can we talk to anyone?”

She nodded. “Go sit down, and I’ll send someone out to you.”

Brad felt his shoulders tighten up on him. Dad was in the operating room. They must be sewing him up. He tried not to let his mind go there, to the blood. He hated to see blood. But not as bad as Jenny. She’d even fainted when she got her first period. That had been a mess.

But she hadn’t fainted tonight.

Brad and Jenny sat down in the waiting room. A white-haired woman sat in a corner, shredding a Kleenex. Jenny picked up a Good Housekeeping magazine. That was a laugh. She couldn’t even make her own bed in the morning. Once she had tried to bake a cake for Nora’s birthday and burned it so badly they had to throw the pan out.

An older woman dressed in white came out and called their names. Brad stood up, and she walked over to them.

“They took him in about ten minutes ago. It will probably be a while. He has a very bad puncture wound. Do you know what happened to him?”

Brad shook his head, but Jenny said, “It looked like someone stuck him.”

He shot her a glance, and she lowered her head.

“He’s lost a lot of blood. I’ll let you know when I know more.”

“Are you going to give him some more blood?” Jenny asked.

“Yes, I think they will have to transfuse him.”

“Oh, Dad won’t like that. Remember, Brad, how he wouldn’t even give blood. Said he didn’t want his mixing with anyone else’s.”

“Yeah, but this is different.”

Then Lola barged into the room. Brad felt like hiding.

“What’s going on?” she screamed. “How’s my Jed?”

Brad always felt like a small tornado had been let loose in a room when Lola entered. He reacted the same way he did to storm warnings: He looked around for a safe place to take cover. Something to read. He grabbed today’s newspaper, opened it up, and ducked behind it.

Jenny yelled back at Lola, “He’s dying. That’s how he is. Your Jed is dying. What do you think about that?”

There was no way he was going to fall asleep. Rich felt like his body was lifting off the mattress when he thought about Claire coming over later on in the night. What a dream. Waking to her sliding into his bed. He hoped. He assumed that’s what she would do. Maybe she would change her mind and want to go home. Maybe she would not even come over. Maybe she would be hungry, and he would make her eggs and toast. He hated the thought of staying up all night, waiting for her.

He glanced over at his alarm clock. The lighted dial told him it was one o’clock in the morning. He had checked on the pheasants before he came in the house. They were all quietly roosting in the sheds. Some of them were large enough to start selling, but he would probably wait another month or so. Take some to the farmer’s market in Red Wing. Sell them to the local restaurants in the area. The Harbor View Café had a standing order for them all through the fall. What they did to pheasant was amazing.

He should cook a pheasant for Claire one of these nights. Cook it the way his grandmother taught him. Sauté it in oil and butter in a big cast iron pan, season it well with salt and pepper, then put the lid on, tum the heat down, and cook it until the meat fell off the bone. An old-fashioned way to cook, he knew. Now everyone did everything so fast. Seared the meat. But he still liked it the slow-cooked way. It seemed succulent to him. So good that you had to lick the bones when you had eaten all the meat.

He wondered if he was hungry, thinking of pheasant. He thought about what he had eaten that night and then realized what he was feeling was all about Claire.

He was hungry for her.

He wanted her so bad, he felt like his body was strung to play a song that only she could coax out of it.

Think of something else. This will not help you fall asleep.

Leonard. He must tell Claire about Leonard. He would tell her about what he did a few years ago. It would show her what she needed to know about his character.

Shaking his head on his pillow, he tried to relax. The night was streaked with the rays of the full moon. He could see the lake glint in the silver light out his window. The moon floated on its surface like a coin waiting to be picked up.

She wouldn’t stay long, Claire had decided before she even walked into the emergency room with Billy. She would take a short statement from the children and then tell them she would talk to them in the morning.

This part of her job, which she had taken for granted in Minneapolis, felt more invasive down in the country. You were supposed to bring people hot dishes and words of consolation when a loved one was in trouble, not ask them disquieting questions. But the job must go on.

“Why don’t we divide up?” Claire suggested to Billy as they walked in the door. “You talk to the boy, and I’ll take the girl. I think they’ll respond better that way, and it certainly will go faster. What’s the girl’s name again?”

“I think it’s Jenny.”

The nurse nodded them through when they mentioned Jed’s name, and they found Jenny sleeping in a chair, Brad sitting next to her reading the paper, and Lola pacing the floor. Lola was talking, but no one appeared to be listening to her.

Billy tapped the paper that Brad was reading and sat down across from him to ask him some questions.

Claire sat down next to Jenny and looked at her for a few moments before waking her. Passed out is really what the girl looked like. Claire guessed her age to be fifteen and wondered if Jenny would be doing better if her mom were still alive. She felt the urge to push back the girl’s tumbled straw-blond hair, to arrange it behind her ears so she could see her clear face. The girl had lovely skin. But she herself was not lovely. If she took care of herself, she would be attractive, but her fair looks could be destroyed all too easily.

Claire put a hand on her shoulder and shook her. The girl’s eyes flew open, and her mouth rounded itself. A slight compression of breath came. Claire recognized the signs. Fear. She had been waking with the same sense of panic all summer long. Fear of what you might wake to.

“It’s okay. I’m sorry to startle you. My name is Claire Watkins. I’m a deputy sheriff here in Pepin County. I need to talk to you about what happened to your dad.”

Jenny leaned forward, shook her hair over her face, and rubbed her hands, palms open, into her eyes. Then, just as suddenly, the girl whipped her hair back off her face, wiped her face with her hands, and said, “What do you want to know?”

“I heard you found your father.”

“Brad and I did.”

“Did you see anyone with him?”

“It wasn’t like that. We weren’t paying attention. We were actually watching the band and talking, and all of a sudden we looked down, and there was Dad.”

“Was anyone else around?”

“There were a lot of people, but it was dark, and no one was real close or anything. I didn’t notice anyone.”

“What did you do?”

Jenny thought for a moment, her sight turned inward as she recalled the scene. “I tried to figure out what was going on with Dad, why he was lying on the ground. He was making a weird noise, like a stuck pig.”

“I don’t know what they sound like.”

“Hope you never hear one. It isn’t really a squeal, it’s more like a moan. A high-pitched moan.” Then, for the edification of her audience, Jenny let loose with a sound that was halfway between a moan and a squeal.

Brad looked over from his conversation with Billy and shot her a dirty look.

Jenny clapped a hand over her mouth, then lifted it off and said, “I think he was trying to breathe.”

“Did you see anything? A knife of any sort?”

“No.”

“Do you know who might have done this to your father?”

Jenny rubbed her fingers, staring at her hands. “I got blood on my hands. Brad helped me wash them off.”

Claire repeated her question.

This time Jenny answered it. “Not really. Dad kept to himself. I don’t think anyone knew him well enough to dislike him.”

“Anything else you can tell me?”

Jenny shook her head. Then she ran her fingers through her hair and looked up at Claire. “But what if he has to stay here, in the hospital? Will they let me and Brad take care of the farm?”

“Where’s your mom?”

“She’s dead. Farm accident.”

Jenny’s answer threw Claire for a moment, then she asked, “How old is Brad?”

“Nearly eighteen.”

“You have any family close by?”

“Nope.”

“I would think so. Can you manage on your own?”

“Oh, sure. We do it all the time.”

“Is your father gone a lot?”

“No, he just thinks that we should be able to do most of the work on the farm. That’s all.”

Claire stood to leave. She wanted to hear what Billy had learned from Brad, see if their two stories matched. Jenny had slumped back into her chair and would be asleep again in no time at all.

Then a nurse walked in. In her fifties, she was dressed traditionally, all in white. Her shoulders were broad, and her face was solid. She stopped inside the doorway and looked at the two teenagers. Jenny’s eyes popped open, and Brad dropped the paper. “I’m sorry,” she started, but was interrupted by a wail from Lola, who had finally settled in a corner of the room.

Brad stood up, and Jenny looked up at him.

“Is he—?” Brad asked.

The nurse nodded her head. “Yes, he died. He didn’t make it through the surgery. I think he had lost too much blood.”

“Maybe Dad knew that would happen. Maybe that’s why he guarded his blood so carefully,” Jenny said to Brad.

Lola slumped into a chair and cried. She was quieter, and neither of the children looked at her. Claire was surprised by how they acted as if she didn’t exist.

“Would you like to come and see him?” the nurse asked.

Jenny turned a panicked eye to Claire. “Do we have to?”

Claire’s heart went out to the poor girl. “No, you don’t. But often it helps people to see someone after they have died. To get a chance to say good-bye. To know for sure that they are gone. It might be a good idea.”

“Will you go with us?” she asked.

Claire looked over at Billy. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, It’s your call. She decided it wouldn’t hurt her any to help out these children. “Sure, I’ll walk down with you.”

Lola started to follow, but the nurse stepped in her way and said, “Let’s let the children go first.”

Claire was surprised at this act of sensitivity. If Lola went with them, it would all become a scene, her scene.

“Billy, why don’t you ask Lola a few more questions?”

He nodded and sat down next to the crying woman.

Claire and the children followed the nurse down the long, quiet hallway. “He’s still in the operating room. We put a sheet over him, except his face. You don’t have to be afraid of what you might see.”

Jenny was walking with her shoulders up near her neck and her arms wrapped around her body. Brad was stiffly walking right next to her, but they weren’t touching. They seemed horribly lost to Claire. Was it any wonder? Both parents dead, and both in violent ways. What must the world seem like to them? Unstable, unpredictable, full of danger.

Dad looked more peaceful than Jenny had ever seen him before. His head was tilted back and his eyes were shut, his lips were cracked open a bit as if he were still breathing through them, but she knew that was not so. The room seemed to shimmer with departure.

As the nurse had promised, he was covered with a white sheet, and there was no blood to be seen.

Jenny stood at the doorway and watched Brad go up close to their father and stand at attention near him. The good son. Doing what was expected of him. Brad’s shoulder shook, and Jenny knew he was crying. Unlike other boys, Brad wasn’t ashamed of crying. It was one of the things she liked about him.

Jenny could tell the Darvocet had worn off, and so had most of the beer. The world was a sharper place when she wasn’t on anything. She could see the edges to everything—doors, the sides of the gurney—even Dad’s nose came to a crisp point. Like he was made of wood. It scared her to see the world so clearly, which was one of the reasons she usually took something. To soften it all. To make the world marshmallowy.

But Dad looked crisp and clear. She walked up and stood next to Brad and looked down at her father. She wondered where he was right now. Maybe he didn’t have to go to hell. Maybe limbo would be bad enough. She knew what that felt like. Never knowing what was to come. Waiting and waiting for it to end. Trapped in a situation. Yeah, that might be a good lesson for him.

She reached out and touched the end of his nose. Something she would never have dreamed of doing when he was alive. She leaned down toward him and said, “Good-bye, Daddy.”