Out Of The Deep I Cry

by Julia Spencer-Fleming

  “An Easter message of hope, I believe you said.”

  Sterling Sumner had drifted over. “You know, the story went out over the wires. A friend in Albany called to ask me if my priest was the one mentioned in the ‘State and Local’ item.”

  She knew. There had been a message on her answering machine from the diocesan office. Someone on the bishop’s staff wanted to Talk With Her. “It must have been a slow news day,” she said.

  “Clare! This isn’t the kind of thing designed to attract new members-”

  “New pledge-paying members,” Sterling added.

  “To St. Alban’s! ‘Local priest, artist held in armed standoff.’ ” He looked to Sterling for support. “Am I right? Would this make you want to try out St. Alban’s?”

  “I’m sorry!” Several heads turned in their direction, and she toned her voice down. “It’s not like I set out that morning with the goal of having a gun stuck in my face.”

  “We’ve suggested before that you take a look at the people you’re getting involved with,” Sterling said. “You know what they say. If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.”

  “I get involved with people who need me.” She almost threw up her hands until she remembered the brownie.

  “Notoriety isn’t a desirable quality in a priest,” Corlew said. “If we had wanted Daniel Berrigan, we’d have hired him.”

  “I’m not courting notoriety,” she said. Corlew raised one eyebrow so high it nearly disappeared into the thicket of his hair. Or toupee.

  “You must admit you’ve gotten involved in some pretty flamboyant incidents.” Sterling tossed his boys-school scarf for emphasis.

  She bit the inside of her cheek. Counted to ten. Quickly, but she made it. She could argue with these guys from now until Good Friday and she still wouldn’t make them see things her way. It was time for a little dose of southern. She put one hand on Sterling’s arm, and her other on Corlew’s shoulder. “Gentlemen, you are absolutely right.” They both looked at her suspiciously. “My grandmother always said a lady’s name should appear in the paper only three times, and I can’t say I disagree with her. I never spoke to any reporter about the unfortunate incident with Mrs. Rouse, and I promise you here and now I never will. In fact, I could live happy never speaking to another reporter again, except on church business.”

  “Like, about the white elephant sale,” Corlew said.

  “Or Easter messages of hope,” she said.

  The sight of the square brick facade of the county morgue yanked her back to the present. Mr. Madsen parked and they all got out. Mrs. Marshall looked up at the granite flight of stairs. “I won’t have to… look at the body, will I?”

  “I doubt it,” Clare said, not adding, There isn’t much you would recognize.

  Inside, Mr. Madsen gave Mrs. Marshall’s name to the attendant, who rang the medical examiner and then buzzed them through the door that separated the waiting room from the coroner’s office and the mortuary. Dr. Dvorak met them in the hall. Clare introduced Mr. Madsen, who described himself as “a family friend,” and Mrs. Marshall, who looked at the medical examiner’s hand a beat too long before shaking it, perhaps envisioning where it had been.

  “Chief Van Alstyne is already waiting for us,” Dr. Dvorak said, limping down the short hallway to his office.

  “Why?” Mrs. Marshall asked as the pathologist opened the door and ushered her through. Russ, seated at the far side of Dr. Dvorak’s desk, rose when she entered. Mrs. Marshall, Clare had noticed, had that effect on men.

  “The chief is always involved in a homicide,” Dr. Dvorak said.

  Mrs. Marshall turned on him. “Homicide?”

  “Let’s have you a seat, Lacey, and then we can hear what the doctor’s got to say.” Norm Madsen patted one of the straight-backed wooden chairs, government-issue circa 1957 and never changed since then.

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Dvorak said. “I didn’t know there would be so many.” There were three chairs ranged between the bookcases and the plants in the small office. “Maybe we can nip down to the waiting room and get another.”

  “I’ll stand,” Clare said.

  Russ, still standing, gestured to his chair. “Take this.”

  Clare looked pointedly at his cast. “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “I insist.” His back was very straight. She wondered if it was Margy Van Alstyne or the army that had instilled his good posture.

  “Sit down, Russ. Doctor’s orders.” Emil Dvorak glanced at him just long enough to see Russ lower himself back into the chair, then turned his attention to the folders neatly squared on his desk blotter. One of them was obviously modern, the kind of plastic-tabbed manila thing everyone bought by the boxful at Staples. The other had a different look to it. Older. It was muzzy green and shedding, like felt left too long outdoors. Clare realized it must be the seventy-year-old police file. The Millers Kill Police Department’s oldest cold case had come alive again.

  “Now, let me make sure I’ve got the relationship straight.” Dr. Dvorak un-capped a fountain pen and flipped open the modern file. “You are Solace Ketchem Marshall, the daughter of Jonathon and Jane Ketchem.”

  “Yes.”

  “How old were you when your father disappeared?”

  “Six.”

  “Mrs. Marshall, do you recall if your father ever broke two fingers? On his right hand? This would have been several years before he disappeared.”

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Marshall said.

  “Yes,” Clare said.

  Everyone turned to stare at her. “Dr. Stillman loaned me his grandfather’s journals.” She spoke to Mrs. Marshall and Mr. Madsen. “Old Dr. Stillman, the one you remember. He treated your siblings during the diphtheria epidemic. The ones that were alive when he was called.” She was getting off point. “Anyway, in his journal, Dr. Stillman wrote that your father had two broken fingers he had set himself the night he came to fetch the doctor. The doctor offered to reset them, but your father refused.”

  Emil Dvorak nodded. “Good.”

  “Good?” Mrs. Marshall said.

  Dr. Dvorak steepled his fingers. “The remains that were brought up out of Stewart’s Pond were skeletonized. That means many of the normal markers a pathologist will use to establish identity are simply gone. In addition, this skeleton is old, certainly more than fifty years old, and there aren’t any reliable dental records available.” Dvorak opened the old green file and flipped through several pages. “We’re fortunate in that the officer who investigated your father’s disappearance was thorough. He sent off for Jonathon Ketchem’s service records, from when he was in the army during World War I.” Dvorak held up a page of brittle, browning paper between two fingers. “They don’t have what we’d consider dental records per se, but there is a written account of the dental work your father had had done and the state of his health as of 1915.”

  “And?”

  “Jonathon Ketchem was thirty-seven years old and in good health when he disappeared. He has no records of any broken bones, other than two fingers, which Reverend Fergusson has confirmed for us. According to his enlistment records, he had eight molar fillings.” He tapped the modern folder. “The remains brought up from the reservoir are those of an adult male, between his mid-twenties and mid-forties. There is no sign of any premortum trauma other than two broken fingers on the right hand. The decedent had eight molar fillings made of a lead amalgam that fell out of use in the late 1920s.”

  Norm Madsen leaned forward. “So is this Jonathon Ketchem’s body?”

  Dr. Dvorak spread his hands. “That’s what the evidence suggests.”

  “The body was found inside the remains of an old car,” Russ said. “We had the divers bring up several pieces, but at this point, all we can say for sure is that it was some sort of old Ford.”

  “My father drove a Ford. That’s what he was in when he went missing.”

  “I know. It’s in the original report. Problem is, something like sixty perce
nt of the cars sold in the county back then were Fords, according to Lee Harse over to Fort Henry Ford.” Russ looked at the rest of them, looking at him. “Well, I don’t know anything about old cars. The state crime lab has the recovered pieces and we’ve faxed their photos over to an expert Harse recommended. So hopefully, we’ll be able to identify the exact model and year soon.”

  “But till then we don’t know?” Mrs. Marshall twisted her fine-boned hands together, and Clare, from her vantage point near the door, was reminded of the long, elegant finger bones tangled in the divers’ net.

  Russ leaned forward, bracing one arm against Dr. Dvorak’s desk. “Mrs. Marshall, the doctor here is going to tell you we can’t really be sure. But I’ll tell you what my gut says. There’s no other missing person I know of who fits the bill. Now, I’ve put the info we have out on the wire. And maybe I’ll get a report back from the Albany PD that they have a seventy-year-old unsolved missing-persons case, and their man has broken fingers and eight fillings and drove a Ford. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I believe we’ve found the body of your father, Jonathon Ketchem.”

  Mrs. Marshall stiffened. After a moment she said, “How did he die?”

  Russ looked to Dr. Dvorak.

  “Did he drown? Was he shot?”

  “If he was shot, there’s no surviving evidence of it,” Dvorak said. “I doubt, even if we had tissue to work with, that we’d find he’d been drowned.” He glanced at Russ.

  “What is it?” Mrs. Marshall was pale, composed but on the edge.

  “It appears that the proximate cause of death was a blow to the back of the skull. Several blows.” Dr. Dvorak paused for a moment, as if waiting for another question. When none was forthcoming, he went on. “From the extent of the damage, the cross-cranial impact zone, and the angle of declivity, I’ve concluded he was struck by a heavy, probably flat object with a surface area of at least eight to ten inches.”

  Mrs. Marshall looked at the pathologist. She turned to Norm Madsen, then to Russ. “I don’t understand,” she said finally. “What sort of weapon could that be?”

  There was a silence. Clare wracked her brain for some idea. Tire iron… baseball bat… none of those were flat. “A frying pan,” Russ said finally. “It has to be. Jonathon Ketchem was beaten to death with a frying pan.”

  Chapter 34

  THEN

  Saturday, March 29, 1930

  Is she asleep?”

  Jane paused at the door to the kitchen. Jon hadn’t lifted his head from the paper to ask the question. “Yes,” she said. “She was all tired out from playing with the Reid boys today.”

  He grunted. She crossed to the sink and pumped more water into the basin before lifting her apron off its nail and pulling it over her head. She knotted it behind her and attacked the dinner dishes. She was all tired out as well, after walking Solace to and from the Reids, and doing the marketing, and seeing to the chickens and the house and three meals and a triple batch of cookies intended for St. Alban’s bake sale tomorrow. As near as she could tell, Jon hadn’t moved from the davenport all day, except to go out back to the necessary. She scooped through the basin and dragged up a couple forks. All day. More like all week. He hadn’t been out of the house since Monday. She was the one who had brought him in the newspaper. The only reason he was in the kitchen right now was because the night was bidding cold, and the kitchen, with its woodstove, was the warmest spot in the house. He hadn’t gone down cellar to shovel more coal into the furnace, and she’d be deviled if she was going to do it for him. As it was, she was going to have to step out to the woodpile on the back porch and chop kindling for tomorrow morning.

  “You lookin’ at the help-wanted notices?” She knew he wasn’t.

  He grunted again.

  “Lula Reid was saying that Will has openings for a strong man on his crew. He needs reliable workers. He’d love to have a farmer like you, she said. Used to rising early and putting in a full day. The pay’s real good.”

  He dropped the paper on the oilcloth-covered table. “You some sort of job broker now?”

  She wiped one of her grandmother’s blue willow plates dry and laid it on the counter. “Somebody’s got to be. You haven’t worked since February.” She turned toward him, leaning against the sink. “You’ve got to find something, Jon. Why not work for Will’s crew? At least it’d bring some money in.”

  He looked up at her from his chair. “Ketchems are farmers. We don’t break rocks and pour asphalt so’s rich men can drive up to the mountains without bumping their asses along the way.”

  “Jonathon Ketchem, I won’t have that kind of language in my house!”

  “Don’t pester me and you won’t have to hear it.” He went back to his paper. She looked at him for a moment. He was still handsome, with his thick dark hair falling over his forehead and his dark eyes. Solace favored him. When they had made her, lying together in their marriage bed, had she loved him? One edge of his newspaper half fell over a painted iron trivet he had won for her, at a shooting gallery at the Sacandaga Amusement Park. He had been home on leave, full of stories about New York City and the South, looking like a million dollars in his uniform. Hadn’t she loved him then?

  She turned back to her dishes. She rested her reddened hands on the curved white edge of the sink and looked at her wedding band. He had wrestled it onto her finger in Justice Kendrick’s parlor, with Mrs. Kendrick pumping out “Abide with Me” on their little organ and her best friend, Patsy, giggling with his brother David. She must have loved him then. She wished she could feel it now, feel something to go with the memories, instead of this blank incredulity that sent her searching for evidence that yes, once upon a time, she had loved the intimate stranger at her kitchen table.

  “The dam’s finished up,” he said.

  She was surprised he spoke. “I’d heard.”

  “Two days now, it’s been filling up. Soon, it’ll all be gone.” The tone in his voice made her turn around. “The hayfield. The beanfield. Lord, I used to love that field in the spring, all the flowers peeping out. I wonder if the water rushes in fast or rises slow.” He looked into some middle distance that only he could see. “I wonder if people’s stuff comes floating by. You know, stuff that got left behind, not worth taking.”

  She turned back to the sink and grabbed another blue willow plate. “Anything in people’s houses or barns got burnt down. You know that.”

  “Our barn could be knee deep in water right now.”

  “There’s no barn left.”

  “Remember how the boys used to swing from that rope I hung on the cross-beam? Imagine ’em swinging back and forth and then letting go into the water.”

  She whirled, water splattering from the plate in her hand. “Don’t talk about that! There isn’t any barn there anymore!”

  His eyes were spooky-empty, looking at things he had no business looking at. “A ghost barn,” he said. “For ghost children.” His voice broke on the last word.

  She slammed the plate down so hard it rang. “Stop it! It’s no good talking about it!”

  “Why not?” He raised his head to her. “Why not?” He cracked the paper against the edge of the table. “Why can’t we talk about it?” He stood up, racking his chair back. “It’s all gone. Everything I ever worked for and wanted. Dead and gone, and all you can talk about is me joining up with some goddamned road crew.”

  “Because we’ve got to move on,” she said. She turned back to the sink so he wouldn’t see the hot blur in her eyes. She slid the skillet into the soapy water and scrubbed at it unseeing. “It doesn’t do any good to talk about what was. It just makes us feel bad.”

  “I feel bad all the time, anyway,” he said. “I used to be a father. I used to be a farmer. Maybe you don’t want to remember. But I do. Remembering about it is all I’ve got.”

  She scrubbed the dish towel against her eyes and dashed it to the counter. “You’re still a father, you jackass, unless you’ve forgotten that little girl u
pstairs.” She turned to face him. “And you could be a farmer again. There’s land around here going begging from the bank. Use some of the money and buy it!”

  “No!” His voice felt like a blow to her stomach. “Not a penny of it. I’m not touching that money, and neither are you.”

  “Why not?” She jutted her chin forward, refusing to let him scare her. “You certainly earned it.”

  His hand jerked up and she flinched. They both looked at it, at the knotted bulges where his first two fingers had been broken and never set right. He lowered it to his side. “You blame me, don’t you.”

  She shook her head.

  “You do. I see you sometimes, looking at me. Thinking it’s my fault.”

  “Then you’re a fool. It’s as much my fault as yours. Don’t you think I don’t lie awake nights, blaming myself? Going over and over everything? What I should have done, what I would have done?”

  “You hate me.”

  “No.”

  “You hate me. Admit it.”

  “No.”

  He lunged forward and dug his fingers into her arms. “Say it! You hate me! Say it!”

  “All right then!” she screamed. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate me!” She tore out of his grasp and clapped her hand over her mouth, her heart thudding, the echo of her words ringing through the kitchen.

  He nodded, as if he had proved something to his satisfaction. “That night, when they were so sick. We should have been willing to die for them. If I had known, I would have given my life to save them. But we didn’t know. That it was the end. Of all our lives.”

  “It wasn’t the end.” She was gasping now, her breath coming in high, hard pants. She thought she ought to bend over and put her head between her knees, but she was afraid. Afraid of what he’d do.

  “It’s like a curse.” His eyes were gone again, his gaze somewhere over her head. “First the children, then the farm. There’s nothing left of my life.”