by Mary Logue
Claire heard the screen door slam behind her and turned to see Celia Daniels jogging down the path, worry tightening her face. “Is anything wrong? Why are you here?”
“Hi, Celia. Nothing that you need to worry about, but we did have another poisoning last night.”
Celia stopped a few feet in front of her and folded her arms in front of her waist. A tall, thin woman, she had muscles that showed through her shirt that were from working, not working out. “Where? Who?”
“Down in the park at the fireworks. Five people went to the hospital, but all but one are doing fine.”
“Who isn’t doing fine?”
“Andy Lowman.”
Celia shook her head. “I don’t know him.”
“He’s from around here. His father was a deputy.”
“Was it pesticides again?”
“We’re pretty sure.”
“What can I do?”
“Well, the reason I came out—“ Claire stopped to collect her thoughts. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but it seems that this wave of activity is tied in with the Schuler murders.”
Celia gave a slight nod of her head, then said, “Jilly, I want you to go find Thomas and help him with whatever he’s doing.”
“Mom, I want to be with you.”
“Jilly!” At the sound of her mother’s voice, Jilly scampered off.
“Come on in the house.” As they walked down the gravel path, Celia told Claire, “I haven’t really told the children much about what happened here. Actually I don’t know much myself. When we rented the place from Carl Wahlund, he told us about the murders, but he didn’t go into great detail. I got the impression it was a painful subject for him. He knew we’d find out and he didn’t want us to feel like we had been duped. The house was in real bad shape when we moved in. No one had lived in it for over forty years. Carl had kept a roof on it and that saved the structure.”
The kitchen was lovely. Sunshine came through white dotted-swiss curtains over the sink. A row of white ceramic pots lined the windowsill. The sink was full of white and red radishes, the chore Celia had been in the midst of when Claire arrived.
Claire looked around the room, which seemed sunnier than she remembered it from the photographs. “You’ve made this such a nice place to live. Hard to believe what happened here. Why would someone have killed the whole family?”
Celia answered, “Love or money.”
This answer surprised Claire, and she gave Celia an odd look.
“I read mysteries. That’s what it always is in the end—love or money.”
“Maybe in books, but in real life the reasons are usually more basic—stupidity, anger, or craziness.”
“I suppose.”
“Why did you rent this house?”
“It’s not that easy to get a farm around here, and we figured this way we’d get a foot in the door.” Celia looked around. “We’d love to buy this place. But I don’t know if Carl will sell it. We’ve brought it up a couple of times, and we can’t get him to say anything definitive. I suppose it’s hard to sell because it was in the family.”
“Well, not really his family. His wife’s family.”
“That’s right.” Celia pointed her to a stool. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Just water would be fine. What I’d like to do, if you don’t mind, is look around the house.”
Celia filled a large glass with water from the tap and handed it to Claire. “Sure. It’s a mess, though. This is our busy time of year and we don’t do much to keep the house straightened.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“Do you want to do it on your own?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“That’d be fine. I’ve got more to do than I can manage. Just wander around. If you need anything else, let me know.”
Claire stepped out of the kitchen and looked back in at it. Whoever had done the killings must have started outside. First the boy, then his father. Then the killer must have come in through the kitchen door and shot Bertha Schuler as she was putting food on the table. Then the baby had been shot.
The rest of the kids would have been upstairs, hearing the noise of the gunshots. It broke her heart to think of them. What a horrible time it must have been. What had they tried to do? Three were shot in their rooms—one of them had even tried to crawl under a bed to get away.
She walked up the stairs, hearing the sound her shoes made on the treads—impossible to sneak up on anyone. She turned down the hallway and looked in one room. This was where the two girls had been found. One by the door, the other over by the window.
Claire squatted down and looked at the wood floor. Right by the door frame there was a small mark on the floor, a marring of the wood surface.
She stood up and walked into the other room. The bed had been up against the wall. A large braided rug covered the floor. She rolled it back and knelt down, stared at the floor. She found the same mark again. A sawing mark, where a knife had chewed into the floor.
Maybe this was why she had come here—to examine the crime scene. Maybe it didn’t matter that the crime had happened fifty years ago. Like a bloodhound getting a faint scent from the old clothes of the hunted, she needed to sniff around and get a feel as to what had happened on that summer day.
Claire rubbed at the mark, feeling it with her fingertips. She was afraid she knew what had caused the old grooves.
The fingers had been cut off as they lay dead in their warm blood. The terrible marks were still on the wood floors.
CHAPTER 15
The new issue of the Durand Daily was so in demand that people weren’t waiting for the paper to be delivered at home; they were coming into the front office to buy a copy. The story of the poisonings in the park took up most of the front page. Sarah had done an excellent job on the piece. The headline read: PARK POISONINGS POSSIBLY STOLEN PESTICIDES.
Harold had given her the opening of the story, but she had written the rest of it on her own. He especially liked the way she had quoted him. She was going to be a fine journalist. He hoped she would stay with him long enough so he would get a chance to teach her the tricks of the trade.
Harold was standing at the counter talking to Mrs. Plummer when Deputy Watkins came in and asked for a paper.
“On the house,” he said, handing it to her. “Although you certainly know the breaking news story.”
She tossed her quarter in the jar. “Best money I’ve ever spent.” She stood there, reading the paper, until Mrs. Plummer left. Then she looked up. “I’d like to talk to you. Do you have time now?”
“Yes, of course. Come into my office. There’s not much privacy here.” He walked her through the outer office and then shut the door behind her as she followed him into his space.
As soon as she sat down in the chair, she burst out with, “I keep thinking about the fingers.”
As usual she impressed him, leaping right to the heart of the matter. Harold could see she wanted to solve this one. She knew the poisonings were just an outcropping of the terrain she must travel to solve the real mystery—what had happened to the Schuler family. “Yes, the fingers. They are puzzling.”
“Why would the killer do that—chop off all their fingers—what purpose did that serve?”
“I think, my dear deputy, that if you knew the answer to that question, you would know it all.”
“You were at the scene, weren’t you?”
“Yes, I was there. But the sheriff’s men kept us out of the house.”
“So you were at the murder site early on?”
“Nothing had been disturbed. Lowman had called the sheriff, and I heard about the call minutes later.”
“Who told you?”
“I had my connections.”
“Tell me about it, what the scene was like.”
He tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. The old wet spot in the corner still hadn’t been painted over even though the leak had been fixed. It alway
s looked like a spotted cow to him. He enjoyed looking at this flying cow. He had driven by cows on his way out to the farm. In fact there had been cows in the farmyard. They had gotten loose from their stanchions and wandered out.
He brought his head back down and started his account. “There were cows out in the yard milling about. They had gotten loose from the barn. It was frantic. Too many people were there. The sun was setting and a pale ghostly light settled over the farm. I remember everyone whispering like they didn’t want to wake the dead.”
Claire had her notebook in her hand, but she wasn’t taking notes. She was listening, just as he wanted her to do. Listen, take it in, be there for a few moments. That was the way to figure it all out.
“They wouldn’t let us in the house. I sneaked around and got a look in the barn, but didn’t see much, the boy’s shoes sticking out from under a blanket. I walked around to the front trying to see if I could talk to the sheriff, but as you can imagine he was very busy.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Earl Lowman was still there. He was the one who found the bodies.”
“Yes, I know.”
“He wasn’t needed. They told him to go home, but he couldn’t seem to leave. He was in deep shock. I could hardly believe he was still on his feet. I don’t think he had ever seen anything like it before. None of us had. All the bodies. The blood. The children.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“I did talk to him. For comfort more than trying to get more news for my story. He was the one who told me about the fingers, but I didn’t put it in the Daily. The sheriff called later and asked me not to. It would be the way that they knew who had really done it. You know how they keep an important fact out of the news so they can sift the truth from the talkers who yearn for some weird kind of fame? Turning themselves in for something they hadn’t done.”
“So Lowman told you?”
“Yes, he said they all had one of their little fingers missing. He was acting very odd. Walking around in front of the house, kicking the ground, like he was looking for something.”
“Did you ask him what he was doing?”
“I did, and he said he was looking for the fingers.”
“What?”
“Yes, he said he didn’t know where they could have gone to. He was talking crazy. I think it really spooked him. I told him it was time for him to go home. I got him to go with me. I got him in the car and drove him home. When we arrived at his house, I went in with him and asked his wife to get out some booze; as I recall she brought out some bourbon. I poured him a large shot and one for myself and we drank them together. I poured him another and watched him drink it. I told him to go to bed and try to sleep. I drove back to the Daily and wrote the first story about the Schuler murders.”
“I think I need to talk to Earl Lowman. I didn’t find his name in the phone book. Do you know where he is?”
“Last I heard he was in Tucson, Arizona. I don’t know more than that. You’d have to talk to his family.”
Claire stood up to leave, but she didn’t turn around. She stared into the air as if she were reading something. “Remember the first time we talked and you analyzed the kind of man who wrote that threatening note?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Can you do it for this—can you tell me why someone would cut off the victims’ fingers?”
Harold didn’t even have to think about it. He had always understood that. “For souvenirs. To remember them by. Nothing in the house was disturbed. Nothing was taken. This family was murdered by someone who felt strongly about them, and whoever it was wanted to keep something to memorialize what he had done.”
Marie Lowman was standing in the hallway across from her husband’s hospital room when Claire found her. Leaning against the wall with her hands covering her mouth, she was trying not to cry.
Claire recognized Marie from the night before but was sure the woman didn’t know who she was. For one thing, she hadn’t been in uniform. In those moments, that was all people saw—a woman in a deputy sheriff’s uniform. A cop. Marie was still wearing the clothes she had been wearing at the fireworks. Claire could tell because there was a dark smear of dirt from last night.
“Marie, I’m Claire Watkins.” Claire stood fairly close to her. She had found that people who were traumatized could focus on you more easily if you were closer.
“Do I know you?” Marie asked, her hands coming off her mouth, but hovering near her face.
“I was there last night. I helped get your husband into the ambulance. How is he?”
“They don’t know—“ Marie said, then stopped.
“They don’t know what?” Claire bumped her.
“They don’t know if he’s going to come out of this. You hear about people in a coma. I mean, you read about it, you watch those trashy news shows, but you really don’t know until you’re standing there in the room with him and he doesn’t know you’re there.”
“I’m sorry. We’re trying to find out who is responsible.”
“I know I should care. I know I should be angry and all that, but all I can think about is Andy. Is he ever going to be in this world again? Am I going to have my husband back?”
Claire flashed back to her own husband lying at the edge of her lawn after he had been run down by a truck. She remembered those same feelings, praying with her whole body that he would be all right while she ran as fast as she could outside, to be with him if he was still there to be with. He hadn’t been. When she knelt down next to him, he was gone. She could see that his body was only a shell of skin and muscle, that the essence of him had left and gone elsewhere. She had no belief structure strong enough to let her think that she would ever see him again.
Claire couldn’t help herself. She reached out and took hold of Marie Lowman’s hands. They seemed like frantic birds to her. She stroked them. “I hope he’s going to be all right. I’m sure he wants to come back to you.”
“My Andy’s strong. You don’t know how strong he can be. If anybody can pull out of this, Andy can.”
“Good.”
Marie looked at Claire suddenly as if she had finally seen her. Then she looked down at her hands and slowly pulled them away. “Why are you here?”
“Do you want to go sit down?”
Marie turned around in the hallway. “It’s so hard to be away from him. I try to go and get something to eat, but I keep thinking he’ll wake up and I won’t be there and no one will notice.”
Claire waited. She understood how hard it was to pull away even for a moment. “We could go and talk in Andy’s room, if that would make you feel more comfortable.”
“No, I need to do this. I need to leave him for a while. He will come back.”
Claire followed her down the hall to a waiting room, a small room with no windows, but what looked like a Mary Cassatt picture of a woman holding a child. There was one other woman in the room and she was reading a thick book. They sat on the opposite side of the room from her.
“Do you want some coffee?” Marie asked Claire.
“Yes, I could use a cup.”
“It’s not very good, but it’s awfully nice of them to provide it for us.”
Claire thought of the price this woman’s insurance was paying for every moment of her husband’s stay in the hospital, but decided not to mention it. “Black is fine,” Claire told her as she lifted up a Styrofoam cup and held it out to her.
“Thanks.” The coffee looked like beef bouillon in strength and tasted like stewed leaves. “Marie, I’d like to talk to Earl Lowman, Andy’s father. Do you know how I can get in touch with him?”
“Earl? Why do you want to talk to Earl?”
Claire didn’t think this was the time to go into the whole long story. “About something that happened a long time ago.”
“I talked to him this morning. I can give you his number in Tucson. He’s usually there.” Marie dug around in her purse and found a napkin on which a number was scribbled
. “I called him last night from the hospital to let him know about Andy. He and Andy haven’t gotten along so well the last few years, but I knew he would want to know. He’s taking it real hard.”
Claire copied the number down.
Marie looked puzzled. “Something that happened a while ago? What does that have to do with Andy?”
“Did Earl ever talk about the Schuler murders with you and Andy?”
“Not often. It was a touchy subject for him. He and Andy didn’t agree about something that had to do with the murders. I never knew what it was. It all happened when Florence was dying—Andy’s mom. They were both so mad about her dying and they took it out on each other. Sad when that happens.”
As Ray Sorenson was walking out to pick up a bag of feed, he ran into Chuck Folger, the agronomist, whose office was close by. It looked to him like Mr. Folger had been waiting for him, or waiting for someone to come along. Or maybe he was just leaning against the wall of the long building, working on his tan. It could use some work—the man looked like a ghoul.
“You got a second, Ray?”
“Sure, Mr. Folger.” Some of his buddies who worked at the co-op thought Mr. Folger was a pervert, but Ray could never be bothered to be rude to the guy. Folger had helped him out a time or two, even if he was kind of weird.
“Come on into my office.”
It wasn’t too busy in the store, so Ray didn’t figure he’d be missed for a few minutes. He followed Mr. Folger down the long hallway that ran along the front of the building, small offices off of it until they got to the end and the hallway ran right into Mr. Folger’s office. It was as neat as a pin. That was an expression of his mother’s and he had never understood it. Ray had wondered once or twice if the man was a queer. It would explain some things about him. However, Mr. Folger was married.
A bookcase full of reference books about all the various products they sold to the farmers covered the back wall. Mr. Folger had been at his job so long that he remembered when they could use the really bad pesticides, like DDT and Alar.
“You want something to drink, Ray?”
Mr. Folger had his own refrigator tucked under a shelf in his office. Ray always figured it gave the guy a sense of safety knowing his food didn’t mingle with everyone else’s. Maybe it was just about control. Having a cold drink when you wanted one. A cold drink sounded good to him. “You got any Mountain Dew?”
