Shadows of Lancaster County

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I finally understood why Melody had never seemed bitter about the division of assets in her divorce. Because she lived in a small house and wore secondhand clothes, I always assumed she had received the short end of the stick; now I realized that her holdings simply hadn’t been liquidated. Mr. Wynn may have kept their big fancy house, but Melody was given stock in the one branch of the company that held all the promise of DNA itself.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “when the baby was stillborn and covered with pox, I knew what had gone wrong, and I had to think fast. An autopsy would have ruined everything, don’t you see? I sent Harold on his way and helped the Schumanns clean up the baby, and we even tucked it in a cradle out in the Dawdy Haus. Then I told them to go back to the main house and stay away from the body less they contract pox themselves. I thought they would do as I said.”

  Grete paused in her tying to look at Melody in astonishment.

  “There is not a mother alive who would walk away from her newborn child, dead or not, contagious or not,” she said. “You are a parent. You should have known they would not leave.”

  Melody looked surprised, and I realized that she didn’t get it and never had, as if she lacked the very essence of motherhood itself.

  “Keep tying,” Melody instructed gruffly. “Look, that wasn’t my fault. I just knew I had to come up with some way to get rid of that body. I had a feeling Bobby and Lydia were out there in the dark, and everybody knew he used to send up fireworks as the signal to get her to join him. I left the Dawdy Haus and snuck around back and took a Roman candle from his truck. Once I found a good patch of dry grass behind the Dawdy Haus, it wasn’t hard to get the fire started, and I made sure to leave some casings a little further out, where they would show up as evidence if necessary. My plan was to make it look like a simple accident, a misfire from a Roman candle. I had no idea the Schumanns would be killed, nor that the police would treat it as a crime scene.”

  “You sure kept your mouth shut afterward, though, didn’t you?” Haley cried.

  “By then the Schumanns were dead, honey. Nothing I could say or do would have brought them back to life.”

  “You could have taken responsibility for what you did instead of making us pay for your crime!”

  “Oh, please. You got involuntary manslaughter. If they had known the truth, I would have gotten first degree murder.”

  “What about Dr. Updyke?” I asked. “He didn’t start the fire. Why was he willing to stand by and watch five people get sentenced for a crime he knew they didn’t commit?”

  “He didn’t know,” Melody said. “For all his brilliance, Harold Updyke can be an idiot. My actions saved him from having his patients autopsied twice in a row; first when I took the body of the baby who had died from a tumor and made it look as though the Amish parents had done it, and then when I started the fire here. Both times Harold actually thought he’d been lucky, the simple benefactor of convenient circumstances. I let him think whatever he wanted, but I made sure he stopped doing any more experiments that were outside of the law. He complied for a few years, until Bobby came to him asking for help in conceiving a healthy child. Considering that the procedure could be done at the in vitro level, Harold thought it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.” She gestured toward Isaac. “Obviously, things went fine that time. It’s just too bad Bobby got all panicky about a few little symptoms that had a perfectly logical explanation.”

  Haley and I looked at each other, eyes wide.

  “You tried to kill Bobby by running him off the road,” I said.

  “You killed Doug,” Haley added.

  “It’s not as though I wanted to,” Melody answered. “If the two of them hadn’t been poking around in things that weren’t their business, none of this would have happened.”

  “How did you know they were poking around?” I asked.

  “Bobby was caught red-handed trying to break the lock on a file cabinet at the WIRE. Harold gave him a warning, but when his own key to that file cabinet disappeared, he had no choice but to put Bobby on suspension. After that, Bobby obviously went to Doug for help, because Doug tried to access the archived files via computer. What he didn’t know was that those files are tied into an electronic alert system, which sent Harold an emergency notification. As soon as he told me Doug had been going into those old files, I knew we had a problem. Everything I’ve done since has been damage control.”

  “Damage control? Killing my husband was damage control?” Haley shrieked.

  “Like you even cared about him. I figured I was doing you a favor.”

  “How did you do it?” I asked.

  “Doug was easy. Thanks to those electronic alerts, I made sure I was waiting in the parking lot when he came out of Wynn headquarters that night. He was so worked up, he didn’t even ask me why I was there. It wasn’t hard to get him to talk to me and tell me what was going on. He said he’d found two files that proved Dr. Updyke had done illegal gene therapy in the late nineties, and one file in particular that made him question whether the big fire that killed the Schumanns had been an accident. Of course, at that point I knew I had no choice but to kill him.”

  Melody told Grete to hurry it up and then continued her tale.

  “Doug had left a message for Bobby and sent a fax down to Reed, but otherwise he hadn’t actually spoken to anyone. That was all I needed to know. I said I had an idea where we could find more proof, over at the new building. Like a lamb to slaughter, Doug followed me there, all the way up to the eighth floor. In the elevator, he told me that he had called Bobby’s house again from the car and left a second message, this one saying he should meet him there. I made sure I hadn’t been mentioned in that message and then proceeded as planned, relieved that this was going to be a two-for-one deal.”

  “Unbelievable,” I whispered. At some point since the accidental murders in the fire, Melody had gone off the deep end. Where before she had killed by accident, now she was murdering by intention, just to cover up the original crime. I had to wonder if her precarious mental state had somehow been distorted these past years by working in the field of DNA, by manipulating living organisms at will. I thought of Dr. Updyke’s comment that for all intents and purposes, he was God. Melody now had that same, crazed look in her eye, that same arrogance that surely came from confusing genetic manipulation with the very act of creation—an act that could only be performed by God Himself.

  “Up on the eighth floor, I led Doug near the edge, and when he turned his back, I was able to push him to his death. When Bobby got there, I was waiting for him. I dropped a box of tiles, but he managed to roll out of the way before they hit.”

  “How did you catch up with him later to run him off the road?” I asked, wincing at the knot Grete was tightening around my wrists.

  “I didn’t. Bobby took off so fast, there was no way I could catch up. I figured I was done for. I went home and packed my bags and headed to the Philadelphia airport, wondering how long it would be before someone realized that I had set that fire that killed the Schumanns. I thought I might get a few days’ head start anyway, enough time to go somewhere far away and start over.”

  “The airport,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, dumb luck, huh, that Bobby and I ended up in the same terminal at the same time?”

  I didn’t reply, knowing that luck hadn’t had much to do with it. Given that there was only one flight out at that hour of the night, it wasn’t surprising that they had ended up in the same place at the same time.

  “I was just glad I spotted Bobby before I bought my ticket—and before he spotted me,” Melody continued. “I knew he was up to something fishy, and I wasn’t sure what to do until Haley called all worked up over the stolen motorcycle and I put two and two together. On a hunch, I hid outside airport security and waited. Sure enough, about a half hour later Bobby came walking out. He hadn’t boarded that plane after all. When he took the train right at the airport, I knew for sure that he was headed to wherever he
’d stashed that motorcycle, probably in Hidden Springs. To get there, he’d have to change trains at least once, which would give me enough time to race ahead in my car and wait for him along the highway. I had no doubt he was going back to get his wife and kid. People like Bobby always do the right thing.”

  “You can do the right thing too, Melody. It’s not too late.”

  Ignoring my comment, she told Grete to stop tying and sit down with the rest of us, and then Melody used one hand to tie her in as well.

  “Once I took care of Bobby, the only variable left was Reed. All I had to do was drive down to DC, break into his condo, and take the fax Doug told me he had sent. Lucky for me, Reed wasn’t even home that night. I got the fax without any problems, and I even made it back in time for work the next morning.”

  “Except Doug never thought to mention that he’d left a message for Reed on his phone, telling him about the fax,” I said. “When Reed heard that message, he was able to reprint the fax, and then he brought it straight to the FBI.”

  “Yes, I have been concerned about that. But the files only implicate Harold. My name is nowhere to be found. It seems incredible to me, but I think I just might squeak through after all.”

  “You don’t think they’ll figure it out? Eventually, Updyke is going to tell them you were here with him the night of the fire.”

  “Maybe. But it’ll be his word against mine. Not another living soul knows I was here.”

  There was a small ax beside the wood stove, and I was startled when she walked over and picked it up.

  “But I know,” Rebecca said softly. “I saw you.”

  “Like I said,” Melody shrugged. “Not another living soul.”

  Suddenly, as fiercely as she had swung the teapot against the body-guard’s head, Melody swung the ax in a broad arc, slicing across the pole above our heads, the top of the lamp clattering to the floor. We all screamed and then screamed again as the smell of rotten eggs filled our nostrils.

  Propane.

  “You’ll blow the whole house up!” Haley exclaimed.

  “Grete, tell me about your woodstove,” Melody said calmly. “Is there a timer on the igniter?”

  Grete didn’t answer her, but her silence spoke volumes.

  “Okay, then,” Melody said, moving toward the stove and fiddling with the knobs on the top. We could hear the clack as she set the knob, then she calmly put the ax down where she had found it and headed for the back door, still holding the gun.

  “I set it to go off in three minutes,” she told us calmly, “which should give me enough time to get out of here. Sorry it had to be this way. Think of this as a simple sacrifice toward the greater good.”

  Melody set the gun down on the table and gingerly stepped over the bodyguard, who was still lying so still that if his broad chest hadn’t been rising and falling ever so slightly, I would have thought he was dead. Next to me, Haley began screaming at her mother, demanding to know how she could do this to her own flesh and blood, her own child.

  “I’m sorry, Haley,” Melody said in reply to her daughter, and when she turned around, tears were in her eyes. “For what it’s worth, I basically killed you eleven years ago anyway.”

  “By making me think I was at fault for the fire and deaths?”

  “No, I mean literally, I killed you. That summer, Harold and I were experimenting on you and Anna. I’m afraid the cancer you have now may have come from back then, much like the baby with the tumors.”

  Haley was speechless, but I wasn’t.

  “You experimented on us? How?” I demanded.

  Glancing at the timer on the stove, Melody quickly explained that Haley’s allergy injections had been, in fact, test doses for gene therapy. For comparison, I had not been subjected to injections but instead to edible gene therapy—or at least that had been their goal, though the experiment didn’t work.

  “Remember how much you always loved my tomatoes, Anna? Back then, we didn’t realize that ordinary stomach acid would kill off the genes before they ever had a chance to enter the bloodstream. You never absorbed a thing.”

  “How do you know? Did you test me?”

  “Of course, dear, once a week, when you were sleeping. When your mouth was open, I’d do a swab.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Haley finally managed to mutter.

  “Look on the bright side, darling. You’re going to be dead soon anyway, but at least now your suffering won’t be prolonged the way it would with cancer.”

  With that, Melody opened the door, stepped out, and pulled it quietly shut behind her.

  FORTY-SIX

  Immediately, we all sprang into action. The sulfur smell of the leaking propane was overwhelming, and from the top of the wood-stove we could hear the ticking of the timer as it measured out the few minutes we had to get free and get outside before the whole place would blow up. I suggested that we all try to rise upward, that if we could get high enough—if we could actually get our feet under us and stand on the wooden base—then we could slide the rope up over the pole and then we would be loose.

  It wasn’t easy, especially because Isaac was so much smaller than the rest of us. The wooden base wasn’t balanced well enough for this many people to try climbing up on it at once, all while being simultaneously bound together with rope. Still, we finally managed to get our balance and then together, as one, we stood.

  The plan worked in a way, though as we pushed the rope over the top of the pole, the whole contraption began to fall sideways, and we landed in a big heap on the floor. Relieved that no sparks had ignited an explosion, we quickly wiggled free of the ropes that were now loose on all of us. Gripping Isaac under the arms, I whipped him up onto my hip and ran for the back door, nearly throwing him out onto the ground once I got there. Haley made it outside next, and then Rebecca. Finally, with perhaps fifteen seconds left before the stove would ignite and the house would blow up, Grete and I each took a hand of the unconscious bodyguard and pulled. We weren’t strong enough to drag the massive fellow, and I knew we needed to give up and run for our own lives.

  At the last moment, seeing we weren’t going to get him out in time, Haley ran back into the house with a yell. Seconds later, Grete and I dove for cover as we heard the telltale click of the woodstove igniter.

  There was a “kaboom,” but it wasn’t as loud as either of us had expected. Still, smoke began pouring from the door, and there was no way to go inside and see if Haley had survived. Nathaniel came running from the barn, saw what was going on, and reached for the bodyguard’s hands. With one giant tug, he dragged him all the way out of the house and onto the frozen ground outside.

  With the noise and confusion and smoke that followed, I was living in real life the nightmare that had plagued my sleep all these years. Soon there were sirens and firemen and neighbors, and the best I could do was stay out of the way and pull my nephew on my lap and hold him as tightly as I possibly could while he cried deep, heaving sobs into my shoulder.

  Later, I came to understand what Haley had done in those last few seconds, when she sacrificed her life to save a man she didn’t even know. In the moment before ignition, she had run into the room, grabbed cushions off of the couch, and thrown them and then herself down on top of the propane tank in an effort to contain the explosion. According to the coroner, she probably felt no pain. She had also likely died instantly, her body absorbing most of the force of the aluminum tank as it blew.

  By the time Reed got there, I was all cried out. Still, I allowed him to hold me as I had held Isaac, and together we stood and watched the activity that swarmed around us.

  There was something about fire and this house that would always go together in my mind. But at least now I knew, for certain, that eleven years ago a group of stupid kids around a little bonfire in the back field with some fireworks hadn’t done the unthinkable, hadn’t caught a house on fire, hadn’t taken any lives.

  For now, that would have to be enough.

  FORTY-SEVEN<
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  STEPHANIE

  December 18, 1830

  My Dearest Son,

  This will be the last communication between us. Enclosed please find the remaining pieces of the Beauharnais Rubies. You should now have possession of the entire parure. These magnificent jewels were given to me in honor of your birth. It seems only fitting that they now belong to you.

  It is with a wounded and aching heart that I surrender this battle of wills between us and beg of you to depart for the safety of America with my blessing. As you may know, less than a week ago, Kaspar Hauser was attacked and stabbed in the chest. Word has now reached the palace that yesterday he died of that wound.

  My son, the forces that threatened your life at birth persist even now, in your adulthood. I once made a choice between honor and love. I understand now that in choosing love, I actually chose both. It is with honor that I again sacrifice and send you on your way. Godspeed, my son. I will keep to my death the secret of your true identity. May you live a long and healthy life, prosper in all that you do, and find much peace and happiness far away from the dark clouds of evil ambition that hover over Baden.

  You never knew me as a mother, but I knew you as my son. From afar, every year on the anniversary of your birth, I would stand atop the castle wall and the Jensens would bring you to play in the nearby pasture, the one with the gnarled apple trees along one side. Over the years, I have watched you grow in health and love and goodness.

  May this be my greatest legacy, even though ‘twas done in secret. By giving you up, I gave you life.

  No greater love hath any man than that.

  Your mother, always and

  forever,

  Stephanie de Beauharnais