Quiet Dell: A Novel (35 page)

“There will be more reporters,” Emily said, “over the next weeks. If you have a gate to close, at the road, you might—”

They were turning back to the work, taking up the pitchforks. “We have no gate,” Schroder said. “We needed no gate.”

“Schaamte, schaamte, schaamte,”
Drenth was murmuring, “God help me,” he said to Schroder in English.

“What was that?” asked Emily.

“Het meer, het meer—”
Drenth said, piercing the sharp tines of the fork deep into the hay.
“Ik wist het toen.”

“He saved Harm from drowning when the boy was twelve,” Schroder said. Hay was flying at him, for Drenth was throwing great forkfuls so quickly that Schroder had only to touch their whirling projection to direct them into the mow.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Eric said, and took Emily firmly by the arm.

•   •   •

They walked back to the truck. “The town will close ranks around them,” Emily said.

“Tell me you will not send Grimm word of Powers’ record in Wisconsin until I get this film back to the
Tribune,
” Eric demanded. “We must break this story, not Grimm.” He was behind the wheel, looking at her, waiting for her response.

“It is nearly noon. Drive, Eric, please. If Grimm had the news right now, it would take some time to contact Wisconsin, exchange fingerprint evidence, and ascertain certainty. The news itself would not appear until tomorrow’s local editions, and in any case, we have the photo. In fact, we cannot claim that Powers is Drenth, without evidence based on fingerprints, which only police can request. Aukes’ story is hearsay.”

“We shall quote his story as hearsay, and let the police corroborate it, following our lead. What difference does another day make: Pierson is Powers is Drenth. We did not come all this way to hand Grimm a notch in his belt. Let police in Park Ridge make the ID. It is where Asta Eicher and her children lived.”

“It is also where no one stopped Powers or questioned him. West Virginia has the case and must prove the case. Let us not delay justice, Eric, or take credit from where credit is due.”

He drove, silent. “Do you have a deal with Grimm?”

“I make no deals, Eric. I am surprised you ask. I do what I feel is called for, according to my own ethics and the demands of the situation.”

“I assume you are in frequent touch with him?”

“I phone him if I have reason. I told you at the service, that I asked him to search Powers’ car, to pull out the backseat.”

“And?”

“He called back that evening, to say they had found Annabel’s doll. He is sending photographs, to be identified by Charles O’Boyle, but he prefers that O’Boyle come to the trial, and identify the doll on the stand. O’Boyle mentioned the doll in our interview: Mrs. Pomeroy. The name is in my notes.”

“But isn’t it true, Emily, that we have no story to file at this moment? We will compose that story on the flight back to Chicago, and publish it in tomorrow’s edition with the photograph. Isn’t it true that Grimm made you his confidante, because he knew you were in position to aid him in the case, and because he likes looking at you?”

“Eric, do pull over. I said, pull over. We must agree on a direction before going further.” She braced herself against the bouncing dash of the truck and turned to him. “I am more than a passenger on this drive.”

He did not pull over, for they were the only vehicle on the road, and oncoming traffic in either direction was visible for miles. Eric merely slowed the truck to a stop, cut off the ignition, and turned to her. “Cousin, I’m listening.”

“Grimm likes looking at me, yes of course, and I do not consider it unethical to use his attentions to my advantage, especially as he is quite aware that I am doing so. You do the same with the girls at the office who do you favors, and with women you interview. And men would rather speak to a tall well-built blond gentleman
who can reveal a superior education or not, depending on the need, than a fat cigar-smoking pundit. Do you agree?”

Eric regarded her. “I agree.”

“As to the story, we shall file a teaser, to make the afternoon edition, under both bylines: an Iowa farmer has identified Harry Powers as his son. Full story follows. If I telegraph Grimm, and we are back in two hours, we can phone him to corroborate the Wisconsin identification made through his office, and state the ID as fact. Our stories will then accompany the photograph in the evening edition, which the AP will pick up by tomorrow. As to the Wisconsin angle, I agree; we say in the teaser that farmer Jacob Aukes of Kanawha, Iowa, alleges, et cetera.”

Eric looked at her with a quizzical smile. He was angry, or admiring, and had a high color. “You have a bit of dust, here, on your cheek, cousin.” He held her chin in one hand and touched a moistened forefinger to the corner of her mouth. “There,” he said.

“Are you practicing seduction techniques on me, Eric? You test my patience.”

“Do I? You have straw in your hair, as well.” He combed her hair with his fingers, loosening the pins, touching the bits of straw as tousled strands of her hair fell from its chignon. “We are both covered with hay dust,” he said quietly. “If you were a man of my preferences, with whom I had experienced this journey, I would be tasting you now. As it is, I keep seeing you pour that jug of water over your head at the Gore, so suddenly that you wrenched my heart open.”

“Eric, don’t play with me.”

“Emily, I think you know I am not playing. I find myself very sympathetic to Charles O’Boyle, in consideration of one matter.”

Emily felt her hair come down around her. “And which matter is that, Eric?”

His eyes were a lovely blue-green, and serious now, if not as grave and angry as before. “On the matter of marrying a woman, when the woman is superior in every way to any sexual partner
with whom one is currently engaged, or whom one employs for pleasure or safety.”

Beyond the dash of the truck, a small cloud of grasshoppers whirred along the road, alighting and arising in hopscotch motion. She made herself attend his words; her feelings for him were layered beyond clarity. “My dear Eric,” she said, and drew back to look at him. “Perhaps you are speaking to the wrong party. Perhaps you should discuss this with Charles O’Boyle.”

“Don’t be daft.” Eric pulled away from her and turned to face the road. He watched the grasshoppers rise and fall and flow into the field opposite, swallowed by the corn.

“I know you think of him. Have you contacted him at all?” These were questions, and statements to acknowledge. “He did not attend the Eichers’ service at St. Luke’s. He did not send word. No one, to my knowledge, has heard from him.”

“No. He does not answer his Chicago exchange, and careful inquiries of his firm reveal that he has not come back.”

“I wonder what has happened to him.”

“I don’t know, Emily. Perhaps someone has killed him in Mexico; that happens. Perhaps he is in love with some Mexican youth. Perhaps he cannot face coming back. His letter to the police has appeared everywhere, now that Powers is arrested and the bodies found.”

“His firm has no address for him in Mexico?”

“Certainly not. That would be very stupid of him. He has probably been in touch with them to say that he is avoiding reporters due to his involvement in the Eicher matter, and of course they would be very sympathetic, as it gives them a direct link to the story of the hour.”

She felt, suddenly, the heavy day. The truck on the flat road would appear a small dot from the sky into which they would soon ascend; the leaves of the corn all around them would be invisible; the grasshoppers would live for some days, then litter the ground.

“Eric, shall we file at Fairbank?”

He was starting the truck. “Yes. Your grandparents’ farm is there.” He looked at her, driving. “We will file the teaser, you will send the telegram. In Chicago, I will make the call to Grimm.”

“Yes, you make the call. There is the turn to Fairbank. The farm is two miles this side of the town.” Eric was her intimate, she thought, her partner in these depths, like William, but differently. She felt her breath come fast as they neared the turn, and only pointed the way.

From fifty yards, the house came into view. The tall line of cottonwoods was fully in leaf, and their canopies almost touched, rising even above the peaked roof of the house. The modest gingerbread trim was still painted yellow, and the house, dark green. Someone had fenced the yard, and built an outbuilding far back, painted to match the house. The front porch and steps, and the side porch that let onto a circular gazebo, were in good repair, and empty of any furniture.

“This is the farmhouse? It’s a small mansion.” Eric stopped the truck, shouldered his camera, and came around to assist Emily. He lifted her onto the road and set her on her feet. “You aren’t faint, are you?”

“Perhaps a bit. It is only . . . so strange to see this house.”

“How large was the farm? Where were your father’s people born?”

“They were English and came from East Anglia, nearly two hundred years ago, to a land grant of some three thousand acres. They gave the land, in the 1850s, for Fairbank Township, the Presbyterian church, and the Dutch Reformed, as well, to build the community, and of course the railroad took the land they wanted, for the route and the station.” They were walking up the front steps, where they knocked at the door and received no answer.

“No one is home,” Eric said.

“I feel as though my grandparents should be here, that I have arrived at the wrong time, and missed them.”

“Where was your room?”

“At the far end of the house, just over the gazebo,” Emily said. “I loved to wait there at night, for fireflies in the fields.”

“Stand just there, so I see the whole house behind you.” Eric was photographing the house, the view from the gazebo, all of it. “Your father left here. Did he ever return?”

They sat on the bare board floor, facing one another. “He went away to college in the East, and did return, twice a year, but my mother didn’t like the farm. He brought me, when I was very young. Even at two or three, I stayed for weeks. My grandmother . . . adored me, and was good with children.”

“Your mother wasn’t. Good with children.”

“No. She’d grown up in boarding schools and thought I would do the same. She wanted something for herself, some vocation, but was never sure what it was, and women didn’t explore such options, at the time.”

“How did your father die, Emily?”

“He died of pneumonia in Chicago, unexpectedly, in 1903. They couldn’t save him, though he was only thirty-three. He never knew about so much—the Great War, Lindbergh’s flight, nothing of my life. But when I was here, I felt him close to me, and of course my grandparents spoke of him. They let me know, every day, that I was miraculous, his gift to them.”

Eric looked up into the circular roof above them, which was hung with intricate spiderwebs. “Yes, they helped give you that—perceptive confidence. You are seldom daunted.”

“My grandmother always told me, ‘He is with you, very pleased, very proud.’ It’s not so different from what Annabel Eicher’s grandmother said to her.”

“It’s quite different, Emily, really,” Eric said gently. “According to O’Boyle, Annabel was told to listen for messages from the beyond. But I know you feel a sympathy for her, that is not simply childlike—”

“I suppose I feel a sympathy for who she might have been, and I don’t patronize an idea of her, simply because she was a child. Children are themselves, after all.”

“Are they?” Eric leaned back against the railing. “Was Harm Drenth ‘himself’?”

“I don’t know, Eric. How did you read the father?”

“Tireless Dutch farmer. Germanic, typical of his undemonstrative culture; sons should work, be good. Powers seems to have been uncontrollable early on. I do believe those stories Aukes told us.” He stood to help Emily up. “We must find Fairbank, and file.”

“I thought I might know when I saw Wilko Drenth, whether he’d done something to his son, or felt responsible—but I wasn’t sure.”

“I know a bit of Dutch.” Eric kept a hand at her waist as they crossed the yard. “Drenth repeated ‘shame’ as though to himself, but we already knew the boy shamed the family, from Aukes.”

“His own shame, perhaps. Interesting how the revelation always comes in the last moments of an interview, just as one nearly turns away.” They were in the truck. Emily looked back at the house, thankful for Eric’s voice. “What Drenth muttered was like a bitter prayer, or a curse. And what was that phrase he repeated?”

Eric pulled onto the road, throwing up an arc of dust. “I’m not sure, but
meer
means ‘lake,’ and I think the rest means ‘I knew,’ or ‘I knew then,’ as in, ‘even then, I knew’ . . . something, with certainty, but didn’t act on his knowledge.”

“Saving the boy, in a lake, when he knew,” Emily said. “That is what he meant. His responsibility in these murders is that he saved the child who would commit them. He saved the child, yet he already knew something was wrong. Something a beating, a mother’s love, chores, getting older, couldn’t fix.” She looked about them, for they had reached the town.

“This is Fairbank, then,” Eric said.

“Yes. Farther on is the town hall, the school. The train depot is beyond the curve. The telegraph office is here.”

Inside, they composed and filed. Emily sent Grimm a telegram:

Sheriff W. B. Grimm Stop Clarksburg West Virginia Stop Powers Served Time Stop Name Of Harm Herman Drenth Stop Waupun
State Prison Stop Wisconsin Stop Dutch Immigrant Stop Emily Thornhill.

They would make the airfield in fifteen minutes. Eric drove straight on. The landing strip shimmered to the right. The fields were flung out around them; miles of grain and corn lay open to the cloudless sky. It was pitiless and beautiful. She did not believe in evil, but in mistakes and conditions, in cause and effect across arcs so long that history might seem reasonless, but never was.

She saw the father, in another country, hesitate an instant, and plunge toward the boy in the lake. Not far from shore, but far enough.

And the boy, flailing, saw him, felt the hesitation, the recognition: Harm would do bad things. He was unknowable, even as a child, to himself, to others. Born different, cunning. Manipulative, unloving, remorseless. Curious. Covert. Taking things apart to see inside them. A clock. A dead bird. A living bird. Blood on his fingers. Washing his hands before they saw. Secret things, a secret life. Stealing small toys for his sister, but hiding her dolls. Cutting up the dolls, tearing off the heads. Pounding, smashing. Bury the pieces. Here, and there, where no one will look.