by Amy Brashear
Teddy, the Clutters’ dog, ventured over to the property. He was more of a hindrance than a help. He found Landry’s uncle’s right foot and he buried it. So who knows what other body parts Teddy found. He’s no Lassie. He didn’t quite save the day. I called Aunt Trudy and told her what happened. She didn’t believe me at first. She thought I was telling a story that I made up. But it wasn’t fiction. When I mentioned how they’d found the head on an anthill, she finally did believe, and she excused herself from the phone for a while. I swear I heard gagging in the background. When she returned she said something so profound it has stayed with me ever since. “Death is a test everyone passes. But sometimes you get extra points for creativity.”
Sometimes—not very often—Aunt Trudy can come up with words of wisdom at the right time when nothing else makes sense.
I thought of her words at Uncle Thomas’s funeral. Mary Claire wondered why they didn’t just cremate the body, or at least the parts they could find. And since I had never been to a funeral before and didn’t quite grasp the concept, I had to ask what “cremate” meant.
“Reduce to ashes. Burn. Set fire to. Incinerate,” she whispered, like a thesaurus.
I was sorry I asked.
A few people wondered if he was truly dead. I mean—it was him. The head proved it. But a few hoped he faked his death. Maybe they were wishing he’d walk in through the back doors of the sanctuary and say hi. We’d get a nasty shock when he showed up, but we’d get over it. He’d be alive.
But he didn’t.
“We are gathered here to mourn the death of Thomas Davis; farmer, a man of his word, friend,” the minister said.
I burst into tears, and I wasn’t even sure why. Mary Claire sat on the other side of me, staring at the casket, which was draped in flowers. “How many body parts did they actually find?” she asked in a whisper.
“Shhhh!” Mrs. Parker sounded without turning around in her seat.
Uncle Thomas never went to church, but he had a will and it said that he wanted a funeral to make things right with the man upstairs, so just in case there was a God, Thomas’d have his bases covered.
I leaned over to Mary Claire and whispered, “When I die I want one of those New Orleans types of funerals, the kind in the movies, where there’s singing and dancing.”
She shook her head and said with a laugh, “Carly, you’re not going to die. I’m not going to die. We’re young; we’ve got too much to do for that to happen anytime soon.”
Now I think about death every day.
I first met Landry—for real, I mean, as in I spoke to him—when Nancy and I went to pay our condolences to the family. Nancy had just gotten her driver’s license and was looking for an excuse to skip our tutoring session. So she drove us out to the Davis farm. She took one look at Landry sitting on the front porch, elbowed me in the side, smiled, and said, “He’s a stud, all right.”
“He’s cute, but I don’t think a stud.”
“Seth’s no stud,” she said, shaking her head.
“Bobby is,” I said, staring through the windshield at Landry.
“Do you have a crush on my boyfriend?” she asked.
I turned to her. “No.”
“Good. He’s off limits.”
Before we got out of the car, she grabbed my arm and said, “You know you can do better than Seth. He’s a dipstick.”
Landry sat on his front porch, shucking corn. His shoulders were sunburned. They were big and muscly, bulging out from underneath his overall straps. The first words out of my mouth were, “Sorry your uncle got ran over by his tractor.”
“Me too,” he said. He looked at me, maybe smiling, maybe not.
“She’s Carly,” Nancy said, walking up the stairs. She didn’t bother to say hello, much less offer any sympathies.
I followed her, wondering why she was acting so rude and haughty. It was embarrassing. Maybe she was embarrassed. After all, her dog had found some of Uncle Thomas. Maybe this was her way of avoiding that unpleasant fact. “I’m Landry,” he said to me.
“Usually, I would bring my best friend, Sue, but I think it would be nice for you to meet another outsider,” Nancy announced.
I frowned. Landry caught my sour expression and I quickly turned away. My face felt hot. But I’d caught another glimpse of a sort-of smile playing on his lips.
Nancy and I sat on the porch swing. Landry kept on shucking. None of us said a word. I tried not to stare at him. A little while later, Mrs. Davis came out with three mugs of hot chocolate and a couple of blankets to cover us. It was starting to get cold. Spring came late in Kansas.
“Carly’s from New York City,” Nancy said once Mrs. Davis was back inside. “Her dad executed some spies back in ’53.”
“My dad didn’t do the executing,” I protested.
“He helped get them there, didn’t he?”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Anyway, she’s been here since the ninth grade, so she knows what it’s like to be new,” Nancy added.
Landry chuckled. “City kid, huh? Sounds like I might have to pick your brain . . . Carly, is it?” I nodded. With both hands I lifted the mug to my mouth and took a big swig. Bits of marshmallow stayed on my top lip.
“Carly, you’ve got some right there,” Nancy whispered, pointing it out with her index finger.
“Oh my God,” I said, wiping it with my coat sleeve.
Landry dropped the corn and hopped to his feet. “I can get you a rag,” he said, going inside the house.
“What are you doing? Are you trying to embarrass me?” I hissed, scowling at her.
She shook her head. “Don’t have a cow.”
“Cool it,” I said.
He came back with a dishrag. I took it, trying not to hold on to his hand.
“So are you two paper shakers?” he asked.
Nancy flashed a big smile. “No, we’re not cheerleaders,” she said. She sounded as if she were suddenly in front of an audience. “I’m the sophomore class president and Carly’s on the yearbook staff. She wants to be the editor next year. She usually talks more than this.”
I smiled, but I really wanted to run her over with a tractor.
He went back to shucking. “Well. I guess that doesn’t give either of you a whole lot of time to go on dates, then, does it?”
My face felt hot again. “I’m dating Seth Patterson,” I blurted out. I was furious with myself. Why did I just say that?
“Oh,” he murmured, not lifting his eyes from the corn.
“Do you need some help?” I asked, desperate to change the subject. “Honestly, I’m an excellent shucker.”
Before he could answer, I jumped off the porch swing and crouched beside the crate. I grabbed a piece of corn from it and started pulling the husks from the cob, stripping it clean in a matter of seconds. I tossed it into Landry’s finished pile and moved on to the next one.
“Hey, look at you,” he said gently. “Not bad for a—”
“City kid,” we finished at exactly the same time.
I turned to him. “Jinx, you owe me a Coke,” I said.
We were close, huddled together over the mess on the porch. I could see his eyes were more hazel than brown. I knew I had a big goofy smile on my face. But I didn’t care. He did, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” Landry asks me now.
“That traitor . . .” I begin. I point at Mary Claire, who’s putting on her coat and standing up from the table. My shoulders sag. “You don’t think Bobby did it, do you, Landry?”
“It’s not like I want to believe he did it,” Mary Claire says, placing her arm on my shoulder. “If you want, I’ll help you prove that he didn’t.”
“I’ll help, too,” Landry offers.
We stand in the middle of Hartman’s Café, the two
of them staring at me, as if I have any clue what we should do. I try to think of what my dad would do in a situation like this. Actually, I have no idea what he’d do, other than grumble, “Real life isn’t like Perry Mason.”
“We need to find some evidence to prove that someone else did it,” I tell them. I walk out of Hartman’s Café and they follow me. We stand at the curb on Main Street. “Like on Perry Mason, we need to go to the scene of the crime.”
“But it’s blocked off,” Landry says.
Mary Claire turns to him. “How do you know?”
He stuffs his hands in his pockets, looking down. “My dad and I went snooping last night. They have the road to the house blocked off.”
“Did you see anything? Anything at all?” I ask him.
He shakes his head, sheepish. “It was dark.”
I wonder if he regrets opening his mouth. If he’s ashamed, he shouldn’t be. Everyone in Holcomb is curious about that house.
“Any detail at all would help. If the person were a local, they would know the land. If the person were an outsider, then they wouldn’t.” I start to pace. “It’s daytime. We’ll be able see anything out of the ordinary with the sun still out.”
“But Landry just said it’s blocked off,” Mary Claire says.
I pause. “That’s not going to stop us, is it?”
Landry looks up at me. We both look at Mary Claire.
“Fine, I’ll drive,” she groans, pulling her keys from her coat pocket.
The River Valley Farm is a few miles from town, so it takes a while to get there. We drive in silence. I think of Nancy as the car bounces along. The trees lining the two-lane highway are mostly barren now, branches naked except for the last few dead leaves. The sky is gray. It suits my mood. Maybe theirs, too. I think it’s just too much for any of us to carry on a conversation.
When we arrive, I see that Landry was right. Police have roped off the entire drive with yellow tape. It’s impossible to get close, like I did that first night. I don’t know what I was expecting.
“Now what do we do?” Mary Claire asks, peering over the steering wheel.
“Who put me in charge?”
“You did,” Landry says from the backseat. “I’ve never even watched Perry Mason.”
Mary Claire keeps going and eventually pulls over on the side of the Arkansas River Bridge. She puts the car into park and turns to me.
I shrug. “I don’t know what to do,” I say.
She sighs. We sit for quite a while. I can hear the faint rumble of the river behind the closed car windows.
“Do you think the person dropped their shotgun here?” I ask in the silence. “You know, threw it in the water? Because that’s what the police think.”
“What are you getting at?” Landry asks.
I get out of the car and run over to the bridge. It feels colder now; the wind has picked up. I wrap my arms around myself, squinting down at the black current.
“Carly, what are you doing?” Mary Claire calls. She steps outside the car, watching me lean over the guardrail.
“Give me a second.”
I gaze back across the bridge and toward the farm. I try to imagine that night. The person came across this bridge to get to the Clutter farmhouse. Four shotgun blasts—then out of the house and back down this road. One way in; one way out. If the killer had gone toward town, he would have been caught. If only one of the Clutters had escaped and chased after him . . .
“Four gunshots,” I say out loud.
“Yes,” Landry says. I hadn’t even noticed he was standing right next to me. “Carly, what are you getting at?” he repeats.
“What did it say in the papers?”
He shakes his head, confused. “What part?”
Mary Claire runs up to join us.
“Four gunshots, four dead bodies. But they were all tied up, and Mr. Clutter’s throat was cut, right?”
They both nod.
“How could one person tie them up and then make Mr. Clutter and Kenyon go to the basement?”
Mary Claire’s eyes grow wide, and I know what she’s thinking.
I can usually read her from the way she looks at me. Narrow eyes mean she’s untrusting. Rolling of the eyes means she’s disgusted. Moving her eyes from side to side means she’s questioning my motives. Closing one eye and looking at me with the other means she’s plotting. She’s an open book when it comes to her eyes. That’s why I know what she’s thinking, and that’s why I have to say again, “It wasn’t Bobby. And there was more than one.”
The blank stare that she’s giving me, the kind where no blinking occurs, the kind that means I can’t believe you’re actually right; well, she’s giving me that one right now.
I turn to look again at the rushing water. “I have a theory.”
“A theory,” Mary Claire repeats. But she’s nodding. She’s having an epiphany moment.
“Wait,” Landry suddenly cries. “If it was just one man, Mr. Clutter could have met him at the top of the stairs with his twelve-gauge shotgun and some buckshot. Nancy and Kenyon would be alive, telling us how their dad killed an intruder . . .”
I stop listening. Something under the leaves at my feet has caught my eye: a dark splotch on the pavement. I stoop down and sweep the leaves out of the way with my gloves. There’s a gooey substance on the ground . . . It kind of looks like dried ketchup. No. Something else. Thicker. My heart starts thumping. I think I know what it is. It’s too much of a coincidence for something like that to be here. Way too much.
“Carly, what is it?”
They peer over my shoulder to take a look at the dark reddish-brown substance. I get on my knees and lean over and take a big whiff.
“Carly, that’s disgusting,” Mary Claire says.
My heart is beating so fast I can hardly breathe. “It smells rancid,” I manage. “Coppery, too, like a roll of pennies.”
“Carly?” Landry whispers. “Is that . . . ?”
“I think I found blood.”
Mary Claire drives to Garden to get the sheriff while Landry and I stay put to make sure no one comes along and disturbs the evidence. We sit together on the other side of the bridge. We can’t stop staring at the ugly spot beside the opposite guardrail.
“When did you hear about Nancy?” he asks me.
“At church,” I say. Landry isn’t Methodist like Nancy and me. He’s Catholic like Bobby. Before Bobby and Landry, I’d never met a Catholic before. Or if I had, I didn’t know it. Before moving to Holcomb, I never went to church. I don’t see the big deal about the different types of religion, but apparently other people do. Nancy told me she would never be able to marry Bobby because he’s Catholic. According to Mr. Clutter, faiths couldn’t mix. I may be naive but I don’t get it. My family’s going to the Methodist church only because a client of Dad’s recommended it. We were new to town and we were trying to fit in.
“What about you? When did you hear?” I ask.
“From Mrs. Parker, she was making the rounds.”
“Do you think the blood belongs to them—the murderers?” I ask.
“Maybe,” he says.
I shiver, wrapping my arms around myself. “Or it could be from . . . you know, one of them.”
“Could be. Or it could be from an animal,” he says.
I blink and turn to him. That hadn’t occurred to me. He shrugs. “Maybe an animal was hit by a car.”
“Like a deer?”
Before he can answer, sirens fill the air. A police car turns onto the bridge; Mary Claire’s car is following closely behind. Sheriff Robertson turns off the sirens and lights. He gets out of the patrol car and walks toward us. He’s an older man with bushy black eyebrows that stick out over his wire-rimmed glasses. He pulls up his black pants, lays his dark tie on his belly, and straightens his tan cowboy hat. An off
icer with him opens the trunk and pulls out a briefcase.
“Carly, Carly, Carly,” Sheriff Robertson says. “Carly, you shouldn’t be out here.”
“But, Sheriff . . .” I start.
He stands before me, his hands on his hips and gun, his expression stern and unflappable. He’s never been a fan of the Fleming family.
Living in the city meant that every time you heard the sound of a gunshot, you did the most logical thing: call the police. They would do the most logical thing: come to investigate. But in Kansas, the first time we heard the sound of a gunshot, we called the police and they did come, but all they did was mock us. Two officers stood on the front porch, shook their heads, and laughed. Sheriff Robertson taught us a valuable lesson that night. In the city, when you hear a gunshot, you call the cops; in the country, you better have your own. Dad went out and bought one the next day. To my knowledge, he’s never fired it.
“Sheriff Robertson, I found blood,” I say, pointing near the bridge.
The officer stands in front of the sheriff and waits for his instructions. I can tell that Sheriff Robertson doesn’t exactly want to indulge me, a fifteen-year-old girl.
He sighs. “Take a sample.”
I feel somewhat vindicated even with his disapproving stare.
“Again, Carly, you shouldn’t be out here,” he says.
“I just had to—”
“Carly, leave it alone.”
“We’re trying to clear Bobby’s name.”
The officer bends over and opens his briefcase. “That boy’s not a suspect.”
“Deputy,” Sheriff Robertson scolds him.
“Sir?” he asks.
“But, Sheriff, you brought him in as one,” I say.
“Carly,” he says with a sigh. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but he passed his polygraph test.”
“Passed is a good thing, right?”
He nods. I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Now, Carly: promise me you won’t go looking where you don’t belong. You understand me, girl?”
“I promise.”
He nods, satisfied. Of course, he can’t see my gloved fingers, snugly crossed behind my back.
