Bone Harvest (20 page)

CHAPTER 25

Claire found Tyrone sleeping in the conference room. The poor man was sitting in a chair, his head pitched forward on the table, cradled by his arms. It was five in the morning and the sun was coming in through the blinds, dappling his dark face. A cup of half-drunk coffee was next to his head. She needed to wake him and tell him what she had figured out.

Finding a last cup of coffee stewing in the coffeemaker, she poured it into his emptied cup. Then she walked back to the conference room and shook him.

He jumped and made a deep noise in his throat.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Oh, God, I’m still here,” he said, looking around.

She handed him the coffee. “Are you getting up or going back to your room to sleep?”

“The air conditioner in my room still isn’t fixed. I figured I’d sleep better here than there. I’m getting up. I think I managed to get a few hours.” He sniffed the coffee and mumbled, “This stuff smells singed.” Then he drank it.

“What’s going on with the finger?” Claire asked him.

“It’s on ice.”

“What?”

“Literally. Some specialist is coming to look at it. We’ve checked the hospitals, put out an APB, women’s shelters, et cetera. No one has turned up with a finger cut off.”

“God, that makes me sick. I wonder who the person is.”

“I wonder how they are.”

Claire sat down next to him. “Tyrone, I figured something out. I think there was another person at the Schulers’ when they were murdered—someone who survived the massacre.”

He closed his eyes and rolled his eyes around and then opened them wide. “Another person? Tell me.”

So she told him what she had discovered.

He squeezed his mouth tight; then broke it open in a smile. “Takes a woman to count the plates.”

“Well, in all fairness the plates were easier to see in the photograph that Folger had in his scrapbook than in the photos in the file.”

“We’ve got to find this person.”

Claire nodded.

“It could be our guy, the pesticide guy.” Tyrone looked over at her. “Any ideas?”

“The person who comes to mind is Lowman, Earl Lowman. He always claimed that he went over to return something he had borrowed; but what if that was just a story; what if he was actually there when it happened? What if he was responsible?”

“We’ll just have to ask him.”

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of him.”

“Well, he’s in town.”

“Lowman?”

“Yeah, he called late last night or early this morning from the hospital. He’s arriving soon.” Tyrone looked at his watch. “He said he’d be here around eight. He said he wants to tell us what happened that day. What really happened.”

The sheriff’s department was in the new building. They had been working on it when he had left the department twenty years ago. It perched up on the hill overlooking the town, although it didn’t have much of a view. Earl Lowman sat in his car and blew on the cup of coffee he had picked up at the Burger King in town. A fast-food joint in Durand. Who woulda thought?

Marie and he had come home from the hospital about two in the morning. She had made up the couch for him to sleep on. The kids had awakened him when they were getting ready for school, but he managed to keep them quiet enough so they didn’t wake up Marie. She had still been sleeping when he left. He had called the hospital and they said that Andy was eating his breakfast. He left a note for Marie so she would know right away that Andy was doing fine.

And now here he sat, about to do what it was starting to feel like he had come back to Durand to do. Tell the truth. How had he made such a mess of things? He had been so young. Would anyone understand? What could they do to him now? Throw him in jail for obstructing the law at best, sentence him to life for killing someone at worst. Take away his badge, when he had given it up years ago. Fine him. Whatever it was, he didn’t mind. He had his son back and a family to get to know. If he had to go to jail, he’d just as soon it would be in Wisconsin, where they could come and see him.

He finished his coffee and wiped his face with his hands. It wouldn’t get any easier for waiting. Getting out of his car, he checked his back pocket for his wallet. Then he walked into the sheriff’s department.

When he gave his name, the young woman behind the counter called one of the deputies.

A dark-haired woman came out of a back room and introduced herself. “I’m Claire Watkins, the investigator for the county. Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, thanks. Just finished my coffee.”

She brought him into a large back room with a black man sitting at a long table. The man stood and shook his hand. “I’m Sean Tyrone, from DCI, Department of Criminal Investigation.”

“You been sleeping in your suit?” Earl asked.

“It’s been a long night.”

“I hear you.” Earl sat down at the table. “You want me to tell my story.”

“You comfortable with us taping this?” Watkins asked.

“Sure. That’s the way to do it.”

She pressed a button on the tape player sitting on the table in front of him. “Should I ask you questions?”

“Let’s start that way,” he agreed.

“Could you state your full name?”

“Earl Anthony Lowman. Currently residing in Tucson, Arizona. I was a deputy sheriff for the Pepin County sheriff’s department for thirty years.”

“Can you tell us what happened at the Schuler farm on July the seventh, 1952?”

“In 1952 I was twenty-five years old. I had been working for the sheriff for maybe a year. I didn’t know what I was doing.” He stopped.

Watkins leaned toward him and Tyrone tapped a pencil on the table. They waited. They didn’t care about his excuses. He might as well skip them.

“It was a hot day,” he remembered. “Crisp and hot. Not too humid. I had borrowed a saw from Otto Schuler and decided to walk it over there. That was pretty unusual. No one walked much in those days. Guess they don’t now either. I had on my uniform. I had just gotten home from work and hadn’t changed yet. I was newly married and my wife was making dinner. I told her I’d be back in fifteen, twenty minutes.

“When I walked down the driveway to the Schuler place, no one was about, but that didn’t surprise me. It was after five thirty and this was a farm family. They were probably inside eating. But then when I got to the door, I called out and nobody answered. The door was wide open. This wasn’t unusual. No one locked their doors. But I was surprised I couldn’t raise anyone. I called again. Then I stuck my head in the door.”

Earl stopped for a moment. He could see it all. The scene came up in front of his eyes like he was there again. He had remembered it so many times it was part of his body. “Maybe I could use something to drink. Some water would be good.”

Watkins went to the door and asked someone to bring in some bottles of water.

“Sorry about your son,” Tyrone said.

“He’s come around. He’s doing better. I think he’s going to be fine. He’s a strong guy.”

“That’s great.”

“Yeah, sometimes it breaks your way and sometimes it doesn’t.”

Watkins came back in with three bottles of water and handed them around. “So you were just walking into the kitchen.”

“Yes. You know what I saw if you’ve seen the photographs from the crime scene.”

“Let’s hear you describe it.”

“Well, first I saw Bertha Schuler. She was a lovely woman. Beautiful plain face, wonderful smile. Everyone fell in love with her. She was lying on the floor. Someone had shot a hole the size of a fist in her chest. Not too far from her was the baby. They were dead. There was no question of that. I called the sheriff’s office. Told them what I found.”

“Did you look around?”

“Not right away. I was sick, I was scared, I didn’t know what to do. I wanted someone else to be there with me. I had never seen anything like what was in front of me and have never since.” He took a sip of water.

“And then?” Tyrone nudged.

“I was outside, breathing the air and trying to figure out what to do, when Mr. Schuler walked out.”

Tyrone’s pencil dropped on the table. Claire set down her water bottle. They both said, “What?”

“He had a gun in his hands.”

“Was it aimed at you?”

“No. I think by then he felt like he had done his work. He looked at me and said, ‘I killed them. ’‘All of them? ’I asked. He said yes. I asked him why. He stood above me on the steps and said, ‘I can’t make it work. We shouldn’t be here. Lindstrom is trying to take our land. I cannot fight him. Folger and Wahlund are threatening to run us out of town. It has been too hard and I wanted my family all to be safe. Now they will go to heaven and I don’t have to worry. ’He handed me the gun. ‘You have come along in time, my friend. Will you please shoot me? ’“

“He asked you to shoot him?”

“Yes.”

“Did you?”

“Not at first. I tried to talk to him. But it became clear that his life was over. He had killed everything that had meant anything to him.”

“Did he tell you why he cut off their fingers?”

“Yes, he said to keep them with him. He wanted to have part of them with him because he said he would not be going to heaven. He knew that.”

“Then did you shoot him?”

Earl felt tears come to his eyes. This was the hard part to describe, but he would try. “He asked me so nicely. Calmly. He told me what a favor I would be doing him. He said he was going to go hang himself in the barn or shoot his own head off, but now I could save him that. I told him I couldn’t. He looked at me sadly and then he turned and started to walk toward the barn. I had the gun in my hands. I turned and saw Bertha lying on the floor, her hand reaching out toward the baby. I watched Otto for a moment and then I shot him in the back.”

“By this time the sheriff was coming?”

“Yeah, as soon as I shot Otto Schuler, I knew I couldn’t tell anyone what I had done. They wouldn’t understand. I hardly did. I threw the gun down into the cistern.”

“What about the fingers?”

“When I came back, they were gone.”

“What? The fingers were gone? What had happened to them?”

“I never figured that out. All I could think was that maybe an animal came and got them.”

Watkins said, “Or maybe someone took them.”

Earl looked at her. “Who?”

“I think someone else was at the farm, someone who had come for dinner, and they got away.”

“Who could that have been?”

Watkins went over what he had said. “You said you had your uniform on and they saw you shoot Otto Schuler. Maybe they thought you had killed everyone. No wonder they wouldn’t come forward if they thought a deputy had killed the family. Maybe they didn’t feel safe telling the sheriff.”

Tyrone jumped in. “Did you tell anyone what happened?”

“My wife. I finally had to tell my wife. She understood, or she said she did. When she was dying, she wanted me to tell the sheriff what I had done, but I wouldn’t. My son learned about it and he turned against me. We fought over it after my wife died and didn’t talk for many years. I’m ready to take what I deserve.”

“Why should we believe this version?”

Earl knew they would ask him that. “I didn’t have to come forward. I could have stayed living peacefully down in Tucson. You’ll find the gun in the cistern. And you can ask my son.”

Harold got to the newspaper office early. He hadn’t slept well at all. Agnes shook him awake several times in the night, telling him he’d better start breathing again. She was on him all the time, claiming he had sleep apnea and that occasionally he quit breathing entirely in his sleep. “Doesn’t bother me,” he’d tell her.

He got to the office early, but he didn’t feel very rested. He decided he’d have another cup of coffee. Agnes had him on a restricted diet of one cup of coffee in the morning. She thought that might help reduce his sleep apnea. But he missed guzzling away at coffee all morning. Another cup wouldn’t hurt.

He went out to help himself to the pot that Sarah had started when she got in. She was going over some copy and looked up as he walked by. “What’s going to happen today?” she asked.

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.” When he saw her puzzled face, he realized he was talking like an oldster, using expressions that she wasn’t familiar with. But he
was
an oldster. “Water, the note said. He’ll poison the water.”

“I saw the deputies by the water tower.”

“I know. I’m not sure that’s where he’ll go. I thought maybe the river, but I just don’t think that would do much. Plus, it would all flow away. He wants to do something we won’t forget.”

When he looked up from talking to Sarah, he saw that the deputy Claire Watkins had walked in with an African American man in a suit.
Handsome guy. Wonder what he’s doing here?
She introduced him as working for the Wisconsin crime department.

Claire asked Harold if they could go into his office and pick his brain.

“Best to do it in the office,” Harold said. “Less messy that way.”

When they all sat down, she told him about the pointing finger that had been dropped off at the sheriff’s department. The coffee turned in his stomach. She told him about how she had counted the plates on the Schulers’ table and had found one too many. He cursed himself for not ever noticing that. Then she told him that Earl Lowman was back in town.

“His son is recovering. He came out of his coma.”

“Thank the Lord for small blessings.”

“Lowman says that the killer was Otto Schuler,” Claire told him, then continued, “and he said that he shot Schuler because Schuler asked him to. He’s kept this secret all these years. Hard to believe.”

“I’m supposed to say that,” Harold reprimanded her. “Where does that leave us?”

“I think it leaves us with someone out there who wants to know all this and no way to get the information to them in time. Can you print a special edition of the paper?”

Harold thought about it for a moment, calculating what it would take. “We could do a one-sheeter that would hit the streets by late afternoon.”

“Let’s try it. We’ve decided to go public with everything. Lowman’s role in the killings, the fact that we know someone else was at the dinner.”