Indian Pipes (29 page)

“I have thought it through. You stay close enough so you can hear me when I call. If I’m right, the killer will come down the back road by the lily pond, will park in the same place as before, and will enter the barn. That’s where I’ll be, lying in wait.”

As they walked along the track, wet branches slapped against them, sprinkling them with rainwater.

“Victoria, this is a bad idea. As soon as I see someone, I’ll move in and make an arrest. We can wait in the Bronco and eat our picnic supper until they show.”

“What could you arrest them for? No, that’s not the way to do it.” Victoria shook her head. “After what I said at the gathering this afternoon, almost anyone might come here out of curiosity, someone entirely innocent. We have to wait before we can spring the trap.”

“With you as bait? No way. If we need someone to wait in the barn, I’ll do it.”

The rain had let up briefly, but the trees overhead dripped water as if it were still raining. With every slight breeze, it pattered down on the huckleberry leaves below.

“Don’t you see,” Victoria said, a trifle impatiently, “an innocent
person seeing me there will be surprised, but will say something like, ‘Just came by to have a look.’ On the other hand, if the killer believes I’ve come by myself, that person will try to get me out of the way, and we can catch them red-handed.”

“Yeah, after they’ve garroted you, Victoria.”

“I wore my turtleneck,” Victoria said.

“Not funny, Victoria. We’re not playing games. There’s a killer loose.”

Victoria held her hands in gnarled fists by her side. They had stopped briefly so Victoria could catch her breath. The trees shook raindrops onto them. “I planned this trap and I intend to set it. The only way we can catch the murderer is in the act. If they see you, a police officer, the killer will be all innocence. We have to take a chance.”

“Victoria…” Casey started to say.

“Your responsibility is to capture the killer, it’s not mine. I’m simply bait.” Victoria started walking again toward the clearing and Burkhardt’s place.

“Suppose I’m a half second too late, Victoria?” Casey strode along next to her.

“You won’t be. Dojan will be on watch, so will Junior.”

Casey threw up her hands. “Look at it from my viewpoint, Victoria. I’m a trained cop. You’re not. I’ve gone to school for this stuff. You haven’t. Suppose something happens to you? I’ll never be able to live with it, never.”

“It’s time you learned to listen to your elders.” Victoria set her mouth stubbornly, reached into her cloth bag, took out her blue baseball cap, and set it on her head.

“Okay, okay, you win. If anything happens…” Casey didn’t finish.

“If anything happens to me, there’ll be no doubt about the killer’s identity, will there?”

The track ended at the back of the barn. The road had once been used to haul hay. A long beam protruded from the roof peak above a wide window. At one time there was a pulley to lift the hay up to the window.

“I can always get out through the window,” Victoria said. “It’s not a long drop to the ground, and there’s still a mound of old hay as a cushion.”

Casey stood for a few moments, still doubtful.

“You’d better hide in case someone shows up,” Victoria said. “Otherwise, all this will have been in vain.”

Casey shook Victoria’s hand gravely and moved out of sight into the wet woods.

Victoria walked around to the front of the barn, where the wide door faced the charred ruin of the old house. She had to tug hard on the wooden handle to open the door. The wood had swollen with moisture. The hinges squealed. A barn swallow flew out.

She carefully put one foot after another on the dusty floor inside the barn, and looked behind her to make sure the footprints showed clearly. As she moved toward the back, where a ladder led up to the hayloft, she heard a rap on the back boards.

“Can you hear me?” It was a loud whisper. “It’s Casey.”

“Yes. I’m climbing up to the loft.”

“Do you need help?”

“No,” Victoria hissed.

“Be careful.”

Victoria had never liked heights, even when she was a girl, and the loft looked high above the barn floor. She studied it for a few minutes. The ladder seemed sturdy. She debated whether to take her stick up with her, and decided it would be worth it. But how would she get it up there?

While she was thinking, the barn swallow swooped back into the barn through the partly opened door, and flitted high up into the rafters in a flash of forked tail and pointed wings.

She decided the best way to get her stick up into the loft was to tie it with the belt from her raincoat, and then tie the belt around her waist. Awkward, but she could climb with both hands free. She held the sides of the ladder, her right foot on the bottom rung. Was the ladder fastened securely? she wondered. It seemed to be. She was glad she was wearing tough walking shoes. Elizabeth had cut a hole in the uppers for her arched-up toe. The soles had a sort of pattern
that would keep her feet from slipping. She brought up her left foot. She paused a moment, then moved her hands up a bit, one at a time. Then her right foot on the next rung, her left beside it.

Another swallow darted through the door and landed with a chirp near a nest she could see in the rafters.

She looked down. She wasn’t far off the ground, only about as high as a chair seat. She looked up. The loft still seemed awfully far above her. She moved her hands. Right foot. Left foot. She wouldn’t think about anything but how she would get herself over the edge of the loft floor. She wondered if the floor would hold her weight, after all these years.

She used to play in this loft with the Mitchell children, Jube’s mother and uncle and aunts. The rain had started again, and she heard it patter down steadily on the roof. Somewhere she heard the sound of running water, a leak in the roof, probably, that was letting in rain.

One foot, another foot. She remembered the sweet fresh smell of hay when she had gone haying with the Mitchells. In the hay field, long windrows of hay would dry in the sun. Mr. Mitchell and Asa Bodman’s father would pitch the hay from the windrows into the wagon with long two-tined pitchforks, and the children would stamp it into the corners of the wagon. The horse would move on. Finally the hay would be high above the wagon bed, higher, even, than Mr. Mitchell’s hat, and he would turn the horse toward home. The horse would walk, she remembered, between the bent sapling and the rock, and would trudge along the middle road, which had open pastures on both sides. The grown-ups, with much shouting, would haul the hay up into the barn with ropes and the pulley on the beam.

As children, they had jumped out of the window onto the hay. She supposed she still could, if she had to.

Only two more rungs to go. Victoria wondered where she would put her hands when she got to the top. Were there handholds nailed into the floor? She was tired. She knew how the conquerors of Pike’s Peak must have felt. Her hands trembled from holding the ladder so tightly. When she reached the top, she found the sides of the ladder extended several feet above the last rung. She had forgotten that. She
held on tightly, hands aching, until she could step onto the loft floor, which she did gingerly, feeling for soft spots in the flooring. The floor seemed solid.

The loft was dark except for a spill of light that seeped around the edges of the big hay-loading window. Perhaps she could push the window open a bit for more light. She felt her way across the floor, poking her stick ahead of her as if she were blind. A large mound of hay, dry and still sweet scented was heaped at the back of the loft. She reached the board-covered window, and pushed hard against it. The window didn’t budge. Then she recalled that the window opened inward, so she tugged it toward her. She was exhausted from the climb and was breathing heavily. She was afraid she might not have enough strength left, but the window swung in easily, letting in light and a gust of damp air. She closed it again, partway, and then looked around.

What would the killer do? Was the barn door through which she’d come the entrance he’d use? She remembered there was another door. She scolded herself for not thinking of it sooner and making sure it was locked before she made that climb up into the loft. She could never, possibly, get down to lock it and then get all the way back up again. She could only wait and see what happened. Casey and Dojan and Junior were all watching. At least, she was out of the rain; all three of them must be soaking wet by now. She scooped out a hollow in the sweet hay, a hollow with arms and back like a low easy chair. She spread her coat over it, and, using her stick as a prop, lowered herself into her nest. She tried to imagine how she would get up in a hurry if she needed to, and realized it would not be easy. She decided to rest for a bit, then she would think of a better place than this low cozy spot to wait for who knew what. Someplace where she wouldn’t be at such a disadvantage. She took her notebook and pen out of her coat pocket and started to write in the dim light from the partly opened window, a few lines of the sestina she had been mulling over. The rain drummed rhythmically on the roof over her head.

She hadn’t meant to sleep. She had simply closed her eyes to rest them. The next thing she knew, she was wide-awake, wondering where she was, then wondering what had awakened her. The rain
was still drumming on the roof. She heard a twittering from the barn swallows. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness in the corners, and she could see the barn owl perched on a beam over the main part of the barn, looking like a lump of feathers. She heard a slight scratching that must have been caused by field mice. How pleasant it was here on the soft hay with the sounds and smells of childhood around her.

But what had awakened her? Dimly, she had heard a sound that didn’t belong. She listened, wide-awake now, her eyes and ears attuned to the quiet of the barn.

She heard it again, rusted hinges creaking. The sound didn’t come from the main door, through which she’d entered, but from the side door. She had a brief moment of panic when she wondered if Casey and Dojan and Junior knew about the side door. They must, she thought. Carefully, she rolled over onto her knees, helped herself up with her stick, so quietly she didn’t even disturb the swallows. She crept over to the edge of the loft and peered down into the darkness below. She could see a line of light on the barn floor that widened, then narrowed again. She heard a creak as the door shut, heard soft footsteps on the floor below. She could see the beam cast by a flashlight, could see it swing back and forth and stop when it picked out her footprints.

She had decided not to identify herself right away. Someone might just possibly have an innocent reason for being here. She didn’t think so, but she would wait to see what happened first. Her footprints had showed up in the flashlight beam, she knew. She couldn’t tell what sort of person was holding the light, man or woman. Would the person climb the ladder into the loft supposing that she was up there? She couldn’t hope to defend herself against anyone determined to hurt her. Yet she hoped the person would threaten her enough so she would know, and Casey would witness, without a doubt, that she had trapped the killer. She knew how a circus performer swinging from one trapeze must feel when he has only an elusive instant to catch a partner who has leaped confidently from the safety of another trapeze to his outstretched hands. Timing, she thought. She wiped her moist hands on her worn trousers.

The soft footsteps moved across the floor. Victoria could hear, but still couldn’t see, the person who was holding the flashlight. “Hello! Anybody here?”

Victoria began to tremble. It was not the voice she had expected to hear.

C
HAPTER
34

The voice at the foot of the ladder was light and casual, entirely matter-of-fact, as if someone were stopping by a construction site to watch a concrete mixer at work.

It sounded so normal, Victoria wondered for a second if she weren’t mistaken. Sweat trickled down her back. This was not the way she had expected this encounter to be.

“Hello? Anybody here?”

Victoria made her decision. It would seem odd for her not to identify herself when her footprints so obviously led only one way. She called down from the loft. “Hello, hello, down there, Patience.”

Patience moved toward the foot of the ladder.

“Hello, Mrs. Trumbull.”

“Have you come to see what I’ve found?”

“Yes. When I heard you talking about evidence this afternoon, I decided I’d better have a look.”

She’s going to spoil everything, Victoria thought. Of course she would want to come by to have a look. Victoria debated about calling down to warn Patience about the trap that she hoped to spring. It might be better to wait until Patience came up to the loft. Then Victoria could enlist her to help with trapping the killer.

“What are
you
doing here, Mrs. Trumbull?”

Victoria suddenly realized with a jolt that she had guessed wrong. She could smell the fear scent of her own clammy sweat. “I wanted to check to make sure I was right about what I said this afternoon.”

“Are you sure now, Mrs. Trumbull? Have you found something up there?” Patience stood at the foot of the ladder, her face in shadow. Victoria couldn’t see her expression, but she could make out the dark costume Patience had worn this afternoon.

“How did you get here, Mrs. Trumbull? Did your granddaughter bring you?”

Victoria was not a good liar, so she said, truthfully, “I like to walk.”

“A long walk for a woman your age,” said Patience.

“This isn’t as far from my house as it seems by car.”

“I’m sure that must account for your extraordinary health,” Patience said pleasantly. “You don’t happen to have seen Chief O’Neill around, have you? I’d like to give her a copy of this afternoon’s program.”

“Not at the moment,” Victoria said, truthfully. “She told me she had paperwork to do this afternoon.”

“Interesting. I didn’t see the police car when I came by the station a few minutes ago.”

“I don’t know,” Victoria said.