The Road Home (43 page)

“I don't know, Sheriff,” the woman behind the receptionist desk at the Stroudsburg police station said to Bobby. “That's a long time ago, and of course we've had a lot of turnover in our department since then.”

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Bobby and Jonathan were standing in front of the reception desk. Jenny was exhausted, so they had left her and Reuben at a motel downtown, promising to come get them if anything turned up.

The receptionist, an older woman dressed in the uniform of the Stroudsburg police, paused a moment to think and then brightened.

“I can call Bill Martin,” she said. “He was our lead detective in nineteen fifty and still comes around to do training. He might be able to help you.”

The woman got on the phone and dialed. The two men could hear it ringing, and then a tinny voice said, “Martin here.”

“Hi, Bill,” the woman said. “This is Ethel down at the station. I have Sheriff Bobby Halverson and a friend of his from Wayne County, Ohio, here. They're trying to find out about any unsolved deaths or unidentified bodies from…”

She put her hand over the receiver and looked at Bobby. “When was it again, Sheriff?” she asked.

“Thanksgiving week, nineteen fifty,” Bobby said.

“Right!” Ethel said.

She spoke back into the phone. “Thanksgiving week, nineteen fifty, Bill. What? Oh, okay, I'll have them wait.”

Ethel put down the phone and motioned to some chairs against the wall.

“Bill will be here in about twenty minutes, if you care to wait.”

Bobby and Jonathan sat down in the chairs. They were both tired but willing to wait. In about twenty-five minutes a short, burly man walked through the door. He was balding and wore a jacket that was a little too big for him. The man walked over and stuck out his hand.

“Bill Martin,” he said brusquely.

Bobby got up and took the offered hand. “Sheriff Bobby Halverson. This is my friend, Jonathan Hershberger.”

“How can I help you, Sheriff?” Martin asked.

“We're trying to trace a woman, Rachel St. Clair, who may have died here in Stroudsburg around Thanksgiving Day, nineteen fifty. We can't be sure if she was here at all, but we were hoping that if she did die here, there might be some record or perhaps an investigation that you would have notes on.”

“Nineteen fifty, eh?” Martin said. “That's a while ago, but I can look through the records. Come with me.”

Martin waited for Ethel to buzz him into the back part of the station house and waved Bobby and Jonathan ahead of him. They walked down a hallway floored with gray-and-white checked linoleum. The
sound of their shoes echoed off the walls as they passed several offices. When they arrived at a door at the end of the hallway, Martin pulled out a key and led them into a small, windowless office with a desk and two chairs. He waved them to the chairs and sat behind his desk. A picture of Martin in uniform with a group of men holding rifles hung on the wall behind the desk. Under the picture was a caption—“Pennsylvania State Police Rifle Team.” The other walls in the room were bare.

“Sharpshooter?” Bobby asked, glancing at the picture.

“What? Oh, yes. I was captain of the State Police Team in nineteen fifty-eight. That picture was taken at the Pennsylvania State High Powered Rifle Championship.”

“I was a Marine Corps sharpshooter-sniper in World War II,” Bobby said. “First Marine Division, Guadalcanal.”

Jonathan spoke up. “So that's why you didn't take my head off when you fired through the car window at Sal.”

“Yes, but I nicked your ear, and I remember thinking that I probably should get back out to the range for more practice,” Bobby laughed.

Bill Martin stared at them with a puzzled look.

“It's okay, detective,” Bobby said. “It's a long story.”

Martin shrugged. “Now, what was the woman's name again?”

“Rachel St. Clair,” Bobby replied. “She was with a man named Joseph Bender. They were fleeing a bank robbery in New York. Bender died in a car crash on or before Thanksgiving Day, nineteen fifty, in Apple Creek, Ohio. We know the car he was driving was in New York on Monday of that week, and we know the woman was with him, as well as a small child. A friend of mine found the little girl in the car the day after Thanksgiving, but she was alone. It was in the middle of the big storm that year. During the storm, the car sank into the pond. When the police recovered the car from the pond in the spring, they also found Bender's body, but there was no one else in the car or the pond.

“Bender had made a call to his mother before he died, claiming
Rachel St. Clair had died in Stroudsburg, probably from a drug overdose, which would explain why he was alone with the little girl. We're hoping you might have a record of that death.”

Martin thought for a moment. “It seems there was a Jane Doe about that time. It wasn't my case; Jerry Hanks handled it, but he passed away last year. I can go check the cold case records.”

“That would be great,” Bobby said.

Martin got up and left the office.

“Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that you almost shot my ear off,” Jonathan said.

Bobby laughed. “Yeah, it did seem to get his attention, didn't it?”

In a few moments Martin came back. “I looked in our cold case files, but for some reason they only go back to nineteen fifty-six. I'm sorry, but I don't think I can help you.”

Bobby and Jonathan looked at each other with disappointment.

“Are you sure?” Jonathan asked.

“Yes, I looked everywhere in our file room, but there was nothing before January first, nineteen fifty-six.”

The three men walked back down the hallway. Bobby and Jonathan shook hands with Martin and started to leave.

“Did you find what you wanted?” Ethel asked.

“No,” Bobby said, “we didn't.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Ethel said.

“For some reason our cold case files only go back to January of fifty-six,” Martin said.

“No, they don't,” Ethel said. “They go back a lot further than that.”

“Hmm…I couldn't find them,” Martin replied.

“They're up in the attic,” Ethel said. “Remember? We had that horrible flood in fifty-five. Almost the whole town was underwater. We moved all the records to the attic to keep them dry. And then we left them up there because we didn't use them that much.”

“You're right,” Martin said. “I completely forgot that we did that. Wait here.”

Martin went in the back and came back in a minute with a tall ladder. He went out in the reception area and set it up. Bobby looked up and saw a trapdoor in the ceiling he hadn't noticed before. Martin climbed up and pushed the trapdoor open. He reached up into the darkness. There was a click, and a light came on. Martin climbed the rest of the way up the ladder and scrambled up into the attic. In a few minutes he came to the edge of the trapdoor with a box in his arms.

“I think I've got it,” he said.

Bobby climbed up and took the box from him and handed it to Jonathan, who set it down on a chair. Martin went back into the attic and returned with a small suitcase and another bag. He handed them down and then climbed back down out of the attic, and the three men gathered around the chair. The box was labeled with black indelible marker on the end. “Jane Doe—overdose—Mill Wheel Motel, November 21, 1950.” Martin took out a file and opened it. On top was a photo labeled “Coroner's Report.” The photo showed the body of a young woman with dark hair lying faceup on an examination table. The woman was the same one that was in Magdalena's photo—Rachel St. Clair.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-S
EVEN

Robert

E
VERYTHING WAS LYING ON THE BED
in the motel room—the suitcase, the bag, and the journal. Jenny held a copy of the picture Uncle Bobby had brought from the police station. She had been staring at it for a long time. She looked at the other picture they had gotten from Magdalena. This was how she wanted to remember her mother—alive and holding her close.

“Once we confirmed that the woman in the coroner's report photo and the woman from our snapshot were the same woman, Bill Martin turned all this stuff over to us,” Bobby said, nodding toward the suitcase and bag on the bed. “They were glad to clear out some space and close out one of their cold cases.”

Jenny looked at Reuben. “It's so sad that someone's life comes down to a suitcase and a bag on a motel room bed.” She sighed deeply. From the moment she had seen the coroner's picture of her mother and known for sure that Rachel was dead, she felt a strange heaviness come over her, and her shoulders started aching. A slight headache throbbed behind her eyes. She felt detached and isolated from everyone in the room, as though they were all strangers.

She lifted the bag and set it on the dresser by the bed. It was made of canvas with two handles and a zipper. Slowly she pulled the zipper and looked inside. A familiar face stared up at her. She couldn't connect for a moment, but then it came to her in a rush.

“Bear!” she exclaimed. “Bear!”

Jenny reached into the bag and pulled out an old brown teddy bear. One of the button eyes was missing, and there was a tear on one of the seams, but it was Bear.
Her
bear. He had comforted her when she had been afraid, staying close to her in the darkest nights. She turned to the three men who were watching her.

“This is Bear,” she said slowly. “Except for my mother, he was my closest friend. I don't know how I know that, but I do.”

Jenny held the old bear close. Despite the slight musty smell, there was another fragrance she remembered, one that had comforted her at night so long ago. Memories began to flow in her mind. She was in a rocking chair with her mother and Bear, and there was a red-haired man with them, and everything felt right and good. The man's face was kind, and he was looking at her with love in his eyes. Who was he? Was he Robert? Jenny felt as if she had opened the lid of an old chest in an attic and found…what?

She dug farther into the bag to find a child's underwear, a small flowered T-shirt, and two small dresses. At the bottom was a plastic zipper bag. Slowly she examined the contents—a small comb, a brush, a bar of soap, a washcloth, and a toothbrush. She felt a deep sadness and a yearning she couldn't express.

For some reason, thoughts of her mother brought Jerusha to her mind. Suddenly Jenny wanted to just go home and crawl up in her mama's lap and sit for hours wrapped in Jerusha's arms. Those arms had always been her refuge and her strong tower of safety. Now she felt confused and defenseless. Tears began to run down her face.

“I didn't think it would be this hard, Papa,” Jenny said.

Reuben came behind her and wrapped his arms around her. “I'm here,
dochter
,” he said. “It's all right. We've been led to this place by
du lieber Gott
, and now, with His help, we will be able to put to rest the questions you've carried for so long. He is doing this for the good of us all.”

Jenny sighed. “You're right, Papa,” she said, “but I feel so strange…so anxious.”

“You're grieving, Jenny,” Jonathan said quietly.

“Grieving?” Jenny asked.

“Yes,” Jonathan answered. “Grieving shows up in a lot of different ways—physically, emotionally, even spiritually. But it's good. You need to go through it.”

I'm grieving! Of course I am
.

She picked up the journal her mother had kept. She had put it aside while Bobby and Jonathan had been at the police station, not able to read more, fearing she might read something she really didn't want to know. Now she turned to the second entry and began to read it.

“Would it be too hard for you to read it out loud?” Jonathan asked gently.

“Of course not,” Jenny said. “I'm sorry, I know you all want to hear it.”

She began to read out loud.

April 24, 1950. This morning I took the streetcar from the hotel to Fifth Avenue to see Robert's parents at the address he had given me. It was difficult to find, but I finally got to the house. It's enormous! It sits right across from a big park. The streetcar man said the name of the park is Central Park. My heart was beating when I went up to the door. There was a big knocker, so I knocked on that, and after a while a young woman in a black and white uniform came and answered the door. I told her who I was and who Jenny was and that I wanted to see
Robert's parents. She looked very surprised. She told me to wait and closed the door
.