Witch Cradle (23 page)

Chapter Forty-Four

Alien Finn Free on Bail.
No photo this time. McIntire spread the week's issue of the
Monitor
on the table. Erik Pelto had been ordered to deport himself, but was released on three thousand dollars bond pending appeal.

An article further down the page stated that the body found in a St. Adele Township well was thought to be that of an elderly male, and anyone with information should come forward. It added that the victim would have been missing since the late summer of 1934 and wore a set of “antique”dentures.

“Do you think he'll come back?”

McIntire could only assume his wife was referring to Pelto, not the owner of those dentures. “I suppose he will. I don't expect we'll be murdered in our beds.”

The rhythmic squeak of her ironing board ceased and McIntire looked up.

“I didn't imply that we might.” The iron hovered a few inches above the board. Leonie's expression said she might like to use it on him, rather than his shirt.

“I didn't mean anything by it.”

“Except that I'm a chicken little.” She brushed the curls back from her damp forehead. “If we were murdered in our beds, we wouldn't be the first. Not even the first to be murdered in our beds by a communist. You might be more concerned if your children were less than a thousand miles from the Soviet border. You might be more concerned about it if you
had
children.”

“I need to go out,” he said. What he needed to do was change the subject. “I'll try to find out if Cedric Hudson could have been dead for three months when he took that boat ride.”

She pressed the point of the iron into the starched collar of his white dress shirt. The one he'd broken out for Nelda Stewart's funeral. He hoped it could be put away again for a good long time.

“Leonie, are you going to tell me what's wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong. Go off and take care of your investigating.”

She couldn't be convinced to say more. McIntire went off to take care of his investigating.

As people pass through life, they leave tracks. If one had passed through and out, what sort of things would have disappeared with them? Bills. Had Hudson paid his bills? Who would he owe? No electricity in 1934, no bottled gas, no telephone. That epitome of certainty, taxes—it seemed even death is not so incontrovertible as it might be—would have been due in January. Did Hudson get any kind of pension? From the mining companies? He must have had some sort of bank account. Had he taken out money? Written a draft or two? Guibard said witnesses testified that he'd been withdrawn before his fatal trip. What did that mean exactly? Had he been moody, antisocial? Or had he been so damn withdrawn that no one had seen him?

The doctor answered the door in slippers and a flannel bathrobe. He led McIntire to a table, shoved aside a stack of mail, and poured coffee into two mugs.

“The records of the inquest should still be at the court house. But as I recall it, there were people who testified that Hudson hadn't been showing up in his usual haunts.”

“Which were?”

“I don't remember. He probably would have stopped in at your old man's place now and then. I don't know where else. He wasn't a church goer.”

“If he died in November, there might have been quite a bit of snow on the ground.”

“Probably. We can check the newspapers.”

“The driveway into the lighthouse must be a couple of hundred yards. Who would have done the plowing?”

“The county did it. But you're on the right track. They'd have plowed the driveway, but nothing else. If the car was just sitting all that time, getting buried in snow, no path to the door, somebody should have noticed.”

“Somebody put that boat in the lake, and that somebody could have made sure it looked like Hudson was still around until they did it,” McIntire said.

“Gone over and shoveled him out?”

“He was old. Maybe he usually got somebody to take care of it for him. Who'd remember after all this time?”

“Whoever it was that did it should remember, if he's still alive.”

“No smoke from the chimney?”

“I don't know! We were looking for evidence to confirm that Hudson was dead
after
he went in the lake, not that he'd been alive before that.”

It was true, they'd had no reason to think that Hudson's fishing boat had gone out empty.

Guibard added, “He might have heated with kerosene. The lightkeeper's house wasn't meant to be lived in during the winter.”

It would have had a chimney. Presumably the residents had to cook. “Why was he living way out here anyway? What would a doctor be doing here?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said he wasn't one of those who lived to fish.”

“He didn't even fish to live. The house didn't have so much as a hook in it.”

“I suppose the boat turned up?”

“Three weeks later. In Thunder Bay. His coat washed up on shore here a few days after he disappeared. His glasses were still in the pocket.”

“Back to my question. What
was
he doing here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Hiding out, in a manner of speaking. He came in 1914 or so, about the time of the strikes. You remember?”

“Barely. I was too young to take much interest, and we were pretty well out of it here. Long as folks kept on drinking, the strikes didn't affect the McIntires.”

“There was a murder in Painesdale.”

McIntire did remember that. Shots fired into a boarding house killed two English miners, strike breakers, as they slept, both hit with the same bullet. A little girl in the house was injured, and maybe a couple of others.

“They arrested three people. One of them—an Austrian—broke out of jail, and they never did catch him. Hudson was a star witness at the trial that got the other two convicted. After that he retired and moved out to the lighthouse. His wife died a few years before he did. Once she was gone he pretty much kept to himself.” Guibard was silent for a time, perhaps thinking of the parallels between Hudson's life and his own. He gave a shrug. “I see by the
Monitor
that our Alien Finn is on the loose. I suppose he'll be back among us.”

It was a discussion McIntire wasn't eager to get into again. He pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

“And J. Theodore's out too.” Guibard wasn't to be discouraged. “There are some stories going around, speculation on what might have happened, that maybe whatever brought on the murders started way back. Something with Falk and Orville Pelto maybe.”

“Orville and the Falks would have been on the same side.”

“They would have, and that would have been the wrong side to a hell of a lot of people. There were bad feelings stirred up in those organizing days. The unions might have won out in the end, but people still connect them with communism.”

“That's not surprising. There
was
a connection.”

“It might be better for Pelto and Teddy Falk to be somewhere else.”

“They're out of jail on bond. I don't suppose traveling is something either of them is at liberty to do.”

“Maybe not. It might not be pleasant for them around here.” Guibard stood and tightened the belt on his robe. “Or for their friends.”

“Is there perhaps some particular friend you have in mind?”

“Word is out that you speak the language, and I don't mean Finn. You and Teddy Falk both turned up back here about the same time. People are wondering how you knew that Rose Falk was dead and where to look for her.”

“We did
not
turn up at the same time,” McIntire insisted. Not as far as anyone in St. Adele knew anyway. “And why would one of Teddy Falk's trusted comrades be the one to unearth his wife's dead body?”

“The evidence is long gone. He'll inherit.”

“Inherit what?”

“People don't think that far ahead.”

“People don't think at all.” McIntire picked up his gloves from where they lay next to the doctor's opened mail. The flamboyance of the signature on the official-looking letter caught his eye. Rigid lines in blue ink over the typewritten,
Patrick J. Humphrey, Attorney at Law.

Chapter Forty-Five

The sky was the untrammeled crystal blue of the lake. The cold hit McIntire like a knife to the eyeballs—not the dreary grey chill of Europe, sneaking around corners and up trouser legs, seeping into your soul. This bold and merciless frigidity stood up and faced you head on. A worthy opponent to engage in battle. Or to be sensible and stage a retreat from.

What about his newly gained knowledge? Would retreating from it, dismissing his wife's call from a lawyer, a man she claimed never to have heard of, be the sensible thing to do? Had it been a mistake as she said? Or had Leonie simply lied to him?

At least it wasn't snowing. He might as well take the opportunity of the break to make that trek to the Flambeau County courthouse one more time. One last time, he hoped. If Guibard was right, maybe he would be considered too subversive to be trusted with the lofty position of constable and this particular monkey would slide off his back to make room for the troop that was scrambling to climb on. Of course the pragmatic townfolk would be unlikely to go to the trouble of replacing him this close to election time.

First he drove back to his house. He wouldn't make the mistake of leaving without issuing an invitation to Leonie to accompany him on this trip.

Funnily, she didn't seem to be at home. The house was empty and the barn contained only the two grain mills on hooves. The tread marks of unfamiliar tires showed in the snow. Someone must have picked her up. Maybe she'd run off with her attorney. McIntire left another note. More than his wife had done for him.

***

Cedric Hudson had not paid his personal property taxes for 1934, but they wouldn't have been due until the first part of January. Nor did his name appear on the voting rolls for November's election.

Just as McIntire was about to offer to help in her search, Pamela produced the transcribed proceedings of the Flambeau County coroner's inquest into the disappearance of Doctor Cedric Hudson.

It contained little more than Guibard had told him. A notarized affidavit signed by Colin McIntire attested that Dr. Hudson had not stopped in at the Lake Superior Tavern in the weeks before his boat was seen sinking into the waters of the lake. Another from a Bruce C. Hudson stated that when he'd written to settle the particulars of his grandfather's usual autumn visit, he'd received no reply.

Elsie Karvonen testified that she had glanced out a window in the second-floor living quarters of her store to see a small boat on the lake. She'd assumed it came from the lighthouse and been surprised because it was almost dark, there was a strong wind and she didn't figure either Cedric Hudson or his dinky little boat could handle the waves. She'd yelled for her young daughter, Gilette, who came upstairs with Ray Hanson. Ray had been in the store buying a can of kerosene and some molasses. They watched the boat head straight out into the open water. All of a sudden, before their very eyes, it disappeared “like a rock.”

Her story was backed up by Gilette and Mr. Hanson.

Kaarlo and Betty Saarinen said that they had seen Dr. Hudson from a distance, a couple of weeks before, poking around his yard. He had on the baggy coat and hat he always wore when he went out, but he'd only waved and headed into that funny little house.

Cecilia Torvinen testified that, while out walking along the lakeshore not far from the town hall, she'd found a black coat with a pair of spectacles in the pocket. George Armstrong Wall—Walleye—McIntire's predecessor, said that after asking “everybody and their brother” he'd determined that both the coat and the glasses had been the property of Cedric Hudson. A landing net found a quarter-mile down the shore could have come from anywhere, although nobody claimed to have lost one. The boat had so far not turned up.

McIntire stood up and strolled to the cobweb-curtained window. From now on he was going to start paying more attention to people. Look for that spark of life in their eyes. Maybe a judicious pinch now and then. Alive or dead? He wasn't taking anything for granted.

A black Buick pulled into the parking area below. Melvin Fratelli got out of the driver's seat looking a good deal more svelte than his usual outdoor self. He must have gotten that heater fixed. The man who emerged, blinking at the light, from the other side of the car was wrapped more snugly, but was not so well covered that McIntire didn't recognize him immediately as the reason Fratelli knew so much, and so little, about his recent past.

McIntire stepped back from the window. Had they come looking for him? Probably not. No one but Leonie knew he'd come here, and she only knew if she'd seen his note. She wouldn't “rat to the coppers,” as she'd love saying. But they'd be on his trail. Big Bad Buster's being here wasn't a coincidence.

He could slip out and be long gone before they got a sniff of him.

No, he couldn't. The two agents—and McIntire had no doubt that was Buster's line of work—circled his Studebaker like a pair of horse traders. After a short consultation, staring at their feet, hands in pockets, Fratelli handed over the car keys and continued to the courthouse door, while his partner returned to the vehicle. Buster apparently wasn't any more eager for a reunion than was McIntire. But if it had to be, it might as well be on McIntire's terms.

He left the files on the table and bounded down the stairs.

Buster huddled behind the wheel, engine idling, his face hidden by a copy of the
Marquette Mining Journal
. McIntire opened the door and slid onto the seat beside him.

“Buster, old buddy! You're a sight for sore eyes. Haven't seen you in a coon's age. Come up in the world since scrubbing floors and wrestling loonies into straitjackets, I see.”

“Have we met?” The words were clipped and came through a wiggle at the corner of his lips.

“Ma mentioned you called. Nice of you to want to look me up.”

Agent Buster sighed and folded his paper. “Shut the goddamn door.”

McIntire did as he was bid. “What in hell are you up to? No, never mind. I know what you're up to now. What were you up to then?”

“Wilhelm Reich.”

McIntire nodded. More or less the same reason he'd been there. In the beginning, at least.

He wouldn't soon forget his first sight of the Marlboro State Hospital, a sprawling structure of brick and timbers, its Tudor grimness in contrast to the light streaming from every window. Home to hundreds of more or less insane individuals and to a few enlightened physicians who followed the principles developed by Doctor Wilhelm Reich.

The U.S. government had had its eye on Reich since he'd been hounded out of Norway in 1939. The suspicions weren't political. The good doctor had made a name for himself as a proponent of free love. Everything from raving psychosis to hangnails could be put down to sexual repression. Who knew what such radical ideas might lead to? What sort of degradation might be imposed on the social structure of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave? And who better to pose as one of those repressed males than middle-aged, never wed, social stiff-neck John McIntire? It'd get him out of the mess in London. They'd put him in under a fake identity. A couple weeks should do it, then he could make that long-overdue visit to his parents in Michigan. It stretched from the end of winter and into spring.

The agent pulled a smoldering cigarette from the overflowing ashtray. “How for Christ's sake can you live in a place like this? This is all that's keeping my lungs from turning to icebergs.” He took a long drag and seemed to swallow the smoke. “I told Mel you were just an ordinary nut,” he said.

“Good.”

“He convinced me otherwise.”

McIntire didn't know if that was good news or bad. It depended on what that “otherwise” turned out to be. “What's Fratelli's theory?”

“That you were a patient at the Marlboro State Hospital at the behest of the State Department or the KGB…or maybe both.”

“What about battle fatigue?”

“You ain't never been near a battle.”

“There are all sorts of battles.”

“Not to the U.S. Army, there ain't.”

That was true enough. “You were a decent guy, Buster. You should have gone over to riding herd on the insane full time and given up working for them.”

“Shit! Don't know how the hell people can keep that up, either.” He studied McIntire's face. “You weren't so crazy as some,” he said. “But you were crazy enough. If you were faking it, you oughta get an Oscar.”

“Thanks.”

“But if you weren't faking, if you were a psychotic on the up and up, it'd be in your army records. And it ain't. So which was it?”

“I wish I knew,” McIntire answered. He opened the door. “Give my best to your partner.” The agent nodded and put out his hand. “Joe Hayward.”

“You'll always be Big Bad Buster to me.” McIntire left the cozy Buick and sat listening to his teeth chatter in his own car as he let the engine warm up.

Buster, or Joe, if that was his real name, fit the mold of G-man precisely, just as he had that of mental ward attendant. Odd that they should be so similar.

How much had McIntire been acting, and how much was genuine? If his craziness act had seemed a
tour de force
…. He didn't recall having had to put much effort into behaving like a neurotic. No late-night rehearsal sessions. Had he really been so convincingly off his rocker? Well, they hadn't kept him around for three months because of his good looks.

The agent hurried into the courthouse, and McIntire headed home.

The former Buster might have been the FBI's source of information about McIntire's sojourn in a state hospital, but that didn't explain why Fratelli had gone looking for the information in the first place. Surely the U.S. government didn't figure Soviet agents were posing as mental cases to infiltrate asylums. Well, maybe it did. The State Department had done exactly that when they sent McIntire in. But had Agent Fratelli just been trolling for Reds, hoping to make a big catch, when he stumbled onto McIntire's non-connection with Teddy Falk, or was he really after something specific? Probably the former. Finnish-Americans had long been the core of the country's Communist Party. Flambeau County was handy, and Fratelli might consider it as good a place as any to drop a line in the water.

***

An unfamiliar car sat in McIntire's driveway. He considered driving by and stalling for a while. He wasn't in the mood for company or door-to-door salesmen. But he was cold, hungry, tired, and had no place else to go. He pulled in behind the two-tone spruce-green and grey Nash.

The smile he pasted on his face as he opened the door went for naught. The kitchen was empty. The pile of recipes on the table had grown. Leonie hummed as she came up the basement stairs. At least she'd faced up to whatever goblins lay for her there.

He took the fruit jars from her hands. “Who belongs to the snazzy car?”

“It's mine.”

McIntire wasn't sure he'd ever been struck speechless before. She looked serious.

“I bought it in Ishpeming. Mr. Davis brought it out today.” She sounded serious, too. “I thought it was time I had my own.”

“Why?”

“So I don't have to ask to use yours.”

“You don't ask.”

“Are you saying I should?”

This time McIntire remained silent out of discretion. Leonie leafed through the recipes. “I need to be able to get around.” She examined a penciled scrawl. “It's not fair for me to take your car every time I want to go somewhere.”

“It looks like a nice car.” It did. It made the Studebaker look like a soup can on wheels.

“You can use it any time you like.” She smiled.

“Thanks.”

“Look at this. It's a recipe for goose blood soup. Do you think it's a joke?”

“Who's it from?”

“Marge Arvidson.”

“It's no joke.”

Leonie wrinkled her nose. She went back to shuffling the papers. “Mia phoned. She asked if you would stop over as soon as you get back.”

“For what?”

“She didn't say.”

“Nick?”

It took her attention off the recipes. “I doubt it. Why would she call you about Nick?”

“Maybe it's about getting his car out of the creek. No doubt there've been complaints.” McIntire got to his feet. He was ready for this day to be over.

“You can take my car if you like.”

McIntire got back into his coat and his own car.