Bone Harvest (18 page)

CHAPTER 22

Claire knew that Charles Folger lived up the bluff from her, but she hadn’t realized he lived so close. She figured, as the crow flew, his house was probably only two miles away, but as the road wound, it was more like six miles. As they rounded a bend a few miles down the bluff from Folger’s house, they caught sight of a view of the lake.

“What’s that body of water?” Tyrone asked.

“Lake Pepin,” Claire said, surprised he didn’t know. “That’s right, you came from the east and you haven’t had a chance to see the lake yet. The lake is really the Mississippi River, but since it runs so wide and deep they call it a lake for this twenty-three-mile stretch.”

“This is a first. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Mississippi before.”

“Since it meanders between St. Paul and Minneapolis, I’ve spent my life crossing it. My dad made us spell it out every time we went over it and, of course, as a kid saying the ending, I-P-P-I, seemed pretty risqué.”

As the road took another turn, they lost the lake. Claire came to Folger’s driveway and drove to the end of the lane. Two cars were parked in front of an open garage. Claire remembered hearing that Folger was married. She wondered what his wife must be like to be able to put up with him.

When Claire got out of the patrol car and looked over at the house, she saw that Folger was sitting on his front porch, watching them. He didn’t stand up, he didn’t give a howdy wave; he just watched.

Tyrone came around the car and they walked up to the porch together. “Mr. Folger, may we have a word with you?” Claire asked.

The older man glared, but motioned to two hard-backed wooden chairs sitting next to his on the porch. When she had seen him at work, he had worn a button-down shirt and dress pants. He had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and had put on tennis shoes, but otherwise was dressed the same.

Claire took the chair closest to him and moved it around so she was half facing him. She introduced Tyrone. He swung his chair around so they formed a half circle. Very cozy.

Folger squirmed as they moved in on him. He looked like he was about to bolt from his chair. “What’s this about?”

“I had a visitor today,” Claire started. “Ray Sorenson. He told me about a recent conversation he had with you.”

Folger stood up with a jolt and his chair tipped over backward. “I don’t need to say a thing.”

“No, of course you don’t. But then we might need to take you back to town for questioning.”

“I was just trying to warn the boy about his immoral behavior. I would think he would be grateful that I came to him and not to his father.”

“A warning is one thing, Mr. Folger, but the threat of blackmail is another.” Claire pointed at his chair. “Why don’t you sit back down?”

Folger perched on the edge of his chair as if he were ready for instant flight. “Ray must have misunderstood.”

“I don’t know. He seems like a pretty smart kid to me. He seemed very clear about what had happened between you two. He was even considering talking it over with his father.”

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“I think he would.” Claire paused, then went on. “But that isn’t really what we’ve come to talk to you about. Ray also mentioned that you’re quite interested in the Schuler murders. That you have files on what happened. We were thinking you might be able to help us out.”

“It’s nothing. I have a few newspaper clippings. I’m sure most of the older people in this community have the same.”

“Why this interest?” It was the first question Tyrone had asked. Claire felt it was well timed.

Folger tucked his chin into his chest and stared at the porch floor. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try us,” Tyrone urged.

“What do you know about what it’s like to live in a small community?”

“I’m learning,” Claire said.

“Those people were our neighbors. They went to church with us; they sent their kids to school. As far as I know nobody had a big beef against them. And then, boom!—like that they were killed. And nobody saw anything; nobody knew anything. They never found out who did it. We were none of us safe after that. We all followed what had happened. People talked of nothing else.”

“So you kept track of it all.”

“Yeah, to try to understand. I always felt like if we would just know what had happened we’d be a little safer. You could guard against it happening again. But the not knowing was horrible. It ate us up. It changed us.”

Tyrone leaned in a little closer to Folger. “It sounds awful.”

However, Tyrone’s sympathy had the reverse effect on Folger. He reared back. “There’s no law against keeping a scrapbook.”

“No,” Tyrone said. “Could we see it?”

“Stay here. I’ll go get it from the house.” Folger walked into the house and was gone about five minutes.

Claire gave Tyrone a what-do-you-think look and he shrugged. When Folger returned, he had a big scrapbook with a picture of a doe and a fawn on the cover. The pages and the clippings inside were golden brown with age.

“Would you mind if I looked this over?” she asked him. “It might help with the case.” She wanted to see what he had gathered. On first glance it didn’t look like he had anything she hadn’t already gotten from Harold Peabody.

“I guess, but I want it back. I do bring it out from time to time and I did show it to Ray Sorenson. He seemed interested. Not many of the young kids are. I’ve always wanted to know the truth of what happened.” Folger looked at both of them. “And now it looks like I’m not alone.”

“I’m desperately hungry,” Tyrone announced when they climbed back in the car. He felt like he hadn’t had a good meal since he left Madison. He lusted after a juicy falafel sandwich from the Middle East Café or enchiladas with plenty of salsa, but doubted anything like that was available. There might not be any spicy food available in all of Pepin County.

“I think I can take care of that. If you’re not particular. We’re pretty close to the Fort.”

The Fort,
he thought; he wasn’t even going to ask. “How about a beer?”

“This little joint I’m thinking of specializes in beer,” she paused, then added, “and hamburgers.”

Tyrone paged through Charles Folger’s scrapbook as Claire drove down from the bluff and into Fort St. Antoine. Nothing struck him as out of the ordinary. Even though the press clippings usually had the date on them, someone had written the date and the paper’s name below. Thorough, anal, but not that unusual. Then he found some loose photographs stuck into the back of the book.

“You see anything in there?” she asked.

“All the usual clippings, but he’s got a couple of photographs from the scene of the crime. I wonder how he got those?”

“Everyone knows everyone. It probably wasn’t too hard for him to find out who photographed the crime scene. I’m assuming they are the same photos that we have in our files?”

“They look like it.” He set the scrapbook down. “I’ll leave this with you. You can check it over tonight and bring it in tomorrow.”

After driving down through dense woodlands and dropping out of the farmland that crowned the top of the bluff, they drove into a small town that was right on the lake. Claire took a sharp turn up a hill and pointed out a white clapboard house. “That’s where I live,” she said.

It looked like a small run-down farmhouse. He wasn’t good at commenting on housing stock. “So you have a lake view?”

“I only glimpse the lake through the trees in the summer, but in the winter I see it much better.” She smiled over at him. “Do you want to drive down to the lake?”

“Hungry,” he said. “Barely able to talk.”

She laughed. “I hope you’re not a vegetarian.”

“Nope. I eat meat with the best of them.”

When they walked into the bar, Tyrone felt the cool air wave across his body. His hand instinctively reached up and undid his top button. The smell of the place was fried food, yeasty drinks, and loud laughter. Two men were playing pool in the center of the room. Two women were sitting at the bar holding beers by the necks.

“Hey, Claire” came from the window into the kitchen behind the counter.

“Hey, Clarence,” Claire shouted back.

Claire grabbed two menus from the holder by the cash register and pointed him toward a table. “By the window suit you?”

“Great.”

When they sat down, she explained, “The soup is made homemade every day. And it’s good. Everything else is frozen and fried. Burgers are not bad. The soup is written up on the board. Looks like bean with bacon. Leinenkugel is on tap.”

“You’re making this easy.”

When the waitress came, Claire ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, a cup of soup, and a beer. Tyrone went for the Lakeside Burger, which featured mayonnaise, a side of fries, and a beer. But when Claire’s cup of soup came immediately, he decided he had to have that, too.

The waitress came back with another cup of soup and set down their frosty beer mugs. Claire lifted hers and he clacked his against it. “What’re we celebrating?”

“The end of the day.” She pointed at the sun setting over the lake.

He felt it necessary to point out what came afterward. “But the beginning of the night.”

“What did you think about Folger?” Claire asked him while she crumbled some crackers in her soup.

“Are you going to eat all your crackers?” he asked.

“Didn’t you eat anything today?”

“No midafternoon snack and it’s almost nine o’clock.”

“How do you stay so slim?”

“By not eating. I just think about it a lot.”

“What about Folger?” Claire came back to her question.

“Guy gave me the willies, but seemed nonlethal.”

“Yeah, that’s how he struck me this time around. When I saw him the first time at his office he was much more belligerent.”

“The scrapbook still might tell us something. It’s worth looking at carefully. I guess it wouldn’t be uncommon for someone from around here to be fascinated by the murders, but that is also behavior we see in killers. Tracking their crime in the paper. Their fifteen minutes.”

“You going back to the office after this?”

“Yeah, the sheriff wanted me to be there ten to two. Do cell phones work here? I wonder if the pesticide guy has struck again.”

“Not well, because of the bluffs. Let me use the phone at the bar to check in.” She picked up both of their empty soup bowls. “Ex-waitress,” she explained.

He watched her walk up to the counter and lean over to grab the phone from behind the cash register. Claire wasn’t his type but she was sure fun to ogle. Good hair, great lips, nice ass. Not so skinny as many white women tried to be. She looked like she’d be a handful in bed. Five years ago he probably would have tried to find out, but five years ago he hadn’t met Sandy yet. She was good enough to be faithful for.

Claire came back to the table shaking her head. “Nothing’s going on. No calls have come in.”

“Maybe he’s taking a day off.”

The food arrived. The fries looked like a pile of straw, but were nice and crispy. The hamburger wasn’t bad. Tyrone was facing the door and looked up from his food as a man walked in. He stood in the doorway and looked over at Tyrone with an odd, determined look. Tyrone was accustomed to the look. It happened from time to time when someone walked into a place where they didn’t customarily see a black man and there he’d be. He usually ignored it. Did no good to even think about it. But he was surprised when the man pushed open the door and went back out. He hadn’t looked so redneck to Tyrone that he wouldn’t even have a drink in a place serving a black. Tyrone lifted his beer mug again.

Claire knocked hers against it. “What’re we celebrating now?”

“Satisfaction,” he said.

Rich didn’t know what to do with himself. He felt like an idiot. Why had he backed out the door? Why hadn’t he walked in and gone over to the table and kissed the woman he loved? Instead he had acted like he had done something wrong, or found her in a compromising position.

He walked down toward the lake and thought of going back to the Fort, but his stomach turned.

Rich felt like something broke in him. Seeing her with another man. Even though he was sure the guy was official—some deputy or sheriff or agent or cop. That was her world; that was her life. She was the only woman in an arena of men. She could handle it. Why couldn’t he?

He wasn’t sure he could share Claire the way he would have to if he wanted to be part of her life. It would always be like this. One case or another would take her away from him. She would go out for drinks with the guys after work and he would not be included.

Why, if it was so important to him to have a wife who stayed close to him, had he fallen in love with a deputy sheriff?

The lake stretched out greasy and hot under the setting sun. When he turned back to go to the bar, he saw their patrol car pull away.

He missed her.

CHAPTER 23

Debby didn’t usually work the late shift. It had been one of the requests she had made when she took the job, that she not have to work at night. Everything was screwed up these days. She had started to hate to come to work since her flowers were dead. Everyone was working longer hours. All because of that guy who had stolen the pesticides and something that had happened fifty years ago. She didn’t get it.

Debby had agreed to fill in at the front—she was tired of answering the phones. She had only another couple hours left and she could go home. It was nearly ten o’clock and she thought of her husband, her new husband, watching the news without her.

Ned told her that he loved every ounce of her. She was a little overweight, but not only did it not bother him, he saw it as positive. “Something to hold on to,” he whispered in her ear. “Something to keep me warm at night.”

She was sorry she wasn’t there snuggled next to him on the couch, her eyes opened only a slit, ready to climb into bed. But she was at the sheriff’s department, watching no one walk in the door and waiting to go home.

She left the desk for a few minutes to go to the bathroom and make a phone call to Ned. He told her he had just made popcorn. Then she came back to finish up her shift. She had told the sheriff she was leaving at eleven. She had already worked three hours extra, and although she was glad she was getting overtime, it still wasn’t worth it.

When she walked back to the front, a rolled-up napkin smeared with ketchup was sitting in the middle of the counter. She picked up the napkin to throw it away and it felt like part of a hot dog was still left inside it. She unrolled the napkin and stared at what she was holding in her hand. She couldn’t believe it.

Without thinking, she flung it back on the counter. She couldn’t even scream. She opened her mouth but the sound that came out was more like a whimper. She said, “No, no.”

This was it. This was enough. She hated this kind of thing. She didn’t even like watching scary movies.

The African American guy, Tyrone whatever his name, was walking in and looked over at her as she was whimpering. She pointed at the crumpled napkin.

“Look,” she managed to say.

He gingerly rolled back the napkin and saw the bloody stump of a finger that was tucked inside. Debby actually thought he turned paler. She didn’t know black people could do that, but he did. She swore he did. She stopped whimpering.

“How did this get here?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I went to the bathroom.”

“It happened right now?”

“Yes, in the last ten minutes.”

“You didn’t see anybody.”

“No. The napkin was just sitting here on the counter when I came back.”

“Would you get me a plastic bag to put it in? We don’t want anyone else touching it.”

The Tyrone guy seemed like he was holding his anger in. Debby didn’t give a hoot. He could throw a tantrum as far as she was concerned. She was tired of working here. This was it for her. Ned didn’t really like her working so much anyhow.

“I quit,” Debby said.

Tyrone stared at her for a moment as if looking through her. Then he said, “Yeah, I bet you do.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out plastic gloves. That alone gave Debby the creeps. Imagine living with a man who walked around with plastic gloves in his pocket.

He gently unrolled the napkin and moved the finger to one side and looked at what was written in black ink.

Point this at one of your own.

Marie Lowman woke and found herself curled up in the lounge chair next to Andy’s bed. Through sleep-heavy eyes, she looked up at the clock on the wall, which read eleven o’clock. The night air pressed against the window. She needed to go home. She hadn’t seen her children in twenty-four hours. She hadn’t changed her clothes in twice as long.

But the thought of leaving Andy tore at her heart. He hardly seemed to breathe in that white hospital bed. His hair was pushed back off his forehead, showing the tan line left by his Farmer’s Cooperative cap.

She couldn’t help herself. She put her finger in front of his nose and felt the gentle movement of air that meant he was still of the world. How long, she wondered, how long could he go on this way? If she thought of him being in a coma for weeks and then months and then years, she didn’t know if she could bear it. How would she keep her family going without him? He supported them in so many ways.

A nurse walked in and said, “Just need to take his vitals.”

Marie noticed how young the woman was. Maybe thirty, probably not. She had that clean-scrubbed look of a Wisconsin farmgirl: short bobbed blond hair, blue eyes, and pink skin. She wondered what it did to her to take care of people who were dying day after day.

Marie stood by and watched her go through the familiar routine: blood pressure, pulse, temperature. At first it had reassured her that they kept such a close watch on him, but when it all remained constant she wondered why they bothered.

“Do you expect it to change?”

“He could spike a fever. We need to watch for that.”

“He’s never sick,” Marie told the nurse. She wanted to go on and explain what a strong man he was, but she knew the nurse didn’t need to hear about it. Andy was only a patient to her.

When the nurse was done, Marie said, “I think I’m going to go home pretty soon. Just for a few hours.”

The nurse nodded.

“You will keep an eye on him, won’t you?”

“Yes, and if anything changes we will call you.”

“It helps to know that.”

The nurse was almost out the door when Marie asked her, “Do you think he’ll wake up?”

The nurse thought for a moment. “They often do. I would hope so.”

Her words were enough for now. She would be leaving Andy with someone who hoped he would wake up.

Marie felt tears rise up into her eyes, but she blinked them away. If she started she would never stop. She needed to hold them in check for a while longer. Until she got home, until she hugged her kids, until she was alone in bed.

She walked up to the bed and put her hand on Andy’s forehead. Leaning over, she said his name. “I’m going home for a while. I’ll be back.” She stopped and then couldn’t help herself. “Come back to me.”

She took his hand and squeezed it. At first when she held his hand it felt like a small animal sleeping; then it stirred. She squeezed again. Again she felt his hand move.

“Andy,” she said.

Nothing.

She leaned in closer to him. She raised her voice. “Andy, can you hear me?”

A moan came out of his mouth.

“Andy, it’s Marie.”

He coughed and his eyes flew open, then dropped shut again.

“Andy.”

He lay still.

She sank down on the floor at the side of the bed, holding on to his hand. Whatever came she would not let him go. He was coming back if she had to pull him all the way.

Then she heard her name. She lifted up her head.

She heard Andy say, “Marie?”

Claire had called to talk to Meg, but Brenda Watkins, Meg’s grandmother, told her that she was already fast asleep. “Do you want me to wake her up?”

“No, of course not. Just let her know I’ve called. She worries.”

“We wore her out today.”

Then Claire tried to call Rich, but there was no answer. It was after eleven o’clock and she wondered where he was. Maybe at a poker game. Maybe out for a beer. She wanted to hear his voice. He knew how to settle her.

After she had parked her car, she had walked by the wild rosebush and saw that the roses were no longer blooming. They had all fallen and she hadn’t even noticed. That was how fast things could change, if you didn’t pay attention to them. She needed to give Rich some attention.

She hated nights like this, when she was so tired she hardly had enough energy to take her clothes off, but she knew the moment she got into bed, her mind would start to whir. She called it whirring and it sounded a lot like worrying, but it was faster and more disorienting. Drinking helped her fall asleep, but usually she woke up a few hours later and started up anyway. The one beer she had had with dinner was enough. A hot bath might relax her, she thought, and started to run a tub.

Just as she was ready to climb into the water, the phone rang. She had set it on the toilet right next to the bathtub.

“Hello,” she answered.

“I hope you’re not asleep,” a male voice said, but it wasn’t Rich. It was Tyrone.

“What’s up?” She sat down on the toilet and grabbed at a towel. Without any clothes on, she felt odd talking to this man she hardly knew.

“We got a special delivery.”

“What?”

“From the pesticide guy.”

“Yeah, tell me.” She didn’t appreciate his fooling around.

“Well, you know how you were saying today that there weren’t enough fingers?”

“Yes.”

“Well, he must have agreed with you. He sent us another one.”

“Does it look like it could be the father’s?”

“Nope. It’s a fresh finger.”

“What do you mean, fresh?”

“It is covered with flesh. Someone lost it within the last day or so. That’s what the medical examiner thought.”

“I’m coming down.”

“No, Stewy said you would want to, but we need you to be here early. Get some sleep.”

“Any ideas whose finger?”

“Dr. Lord wasn’t sure of the sex—probably middle-aged. Whoever it was had worked hard.”

“That would match most of the people in the county.”

“Uh-huh. See you tomorrow.”

Claire let the towel drop and she looked down at her own fingers. What poor person was out there tonight without a digit? Would he or she still be alive—and be found in time?