He found a sharp wire cutter. It would not work well for his purposes, but he didn’t have time to dig through his tools. He put the heavy, awkward tool into the knapsack along with his lunch. He carried the knapsack over his shoulder. The portable heat lamp weighed close to thirty pounds. Bill carried it in a sling across his back.
Pulling his gloves from his coat pocket, he put them on as he walked the driveway, across the road, through the ditch and into the picked corn field belonging to his neighbor. He followed the row of bare corn stalks to the fence line at the other end and then followed the fence west to Martin’s wasted and empty pasture land.
Chapter Thirty- Eight
After an hour of sitting on the cold cement steps, Martin requested permission to get a chair. The officers guarding them allowed Martin to carry outside two wicker chairs from the porch. Martin positioned the chairs on the gravel alongside the steps and motioned for Crook to have a seat.
Crook had retreated into a distant place that Martin could not reach. Martin knew it was Crook’s defense mechanism. He also knew that Crook’s thin butt had to be cold whether Crook admitted it or not. The two men sat side-by-side without speaking.
Martin was losing patience with the time used by the cops. He also feared they were damaging his work. He was considering what action was possible on his part when Vilhallen exited the porch door and sat on the steps.
“Busy little bees inside the house. I keep imaging how Cassandra Peters hid up there, pregnant and alone.” Vilhallen sounded casual.
Martin’s heart skipped a beat, but he made no response. Crook moved his fingers slightly on his leg. Martin noticed but he felt confident Vilhallen did not see Crook move. Neither Martin nor Crook said a word.
“Of course, it is not the same place and nothing remains of how it was, from what I’ve learned. From foundation to roof, the house is clean and solid. No rodents,” Vilhallen said, continuing his monologue.
Martin and Crook continued to listen. Martin’s mouth went dry. He wanted to ask for water. Instead he said to Vilhallen, “Do you have any gum?”
Vilhallen fished gum from his pocket and handed the package to Martin. “The girl went through a lot. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine justifiable homicide.” Vilhallen looked at Martin. “As a general principle, do you believe in justifiable homicide? Let’s say if someone was avenging a rape, would that make homicide justifiable?”
Martin came within a hair’s breath of saying, “Saving a life would.” He stopped himself, shutting his lips, seeing Crook’s fingers flutter. Martin said instead, “I can’t talk theory with you, Mr. Vilhallen. I’m worried about the damage to my house.”
“What about you, Mr. Sabo? Do you think homicide is justifiable at certain times?” Vilhallen looked at Crook, not with hard eyes.
Crook did not say a word nor move a muscle. Vilhallen looked away. While looking down at the ground, his elbows on his knees, Vilhallen said, “What sent you up in the first place, Jeremy?”
Martin wanted to lash out at the detective sitting safe and calm three feet away, but he did not move. Something in the manner of Vilhallen’s speech, his casual approach made Martin think of fishing. The man was guessing. That he guessed correctly made no difference. Sandra had told him nothing.
Crook continued to look at his hands laying flat on his legs, so Martin said, “If you don’t already know that, then you have some work to do.”
“I just wanted to chat a bit while we finish up inside the house,” Vilhallen said. He smiled at Martin. “I noticed one playpen for the baby in each of the two occupied bedrooms. In one room we have a few books and one teddy bear sitting neatly by the play pen. While in the other room, we have a mass of books and toys littering the otherwise spotless room. Fairly diverse parenting styles, but nothing suspicious. I noted the baby bottles and the formula. I was trying to get the feel of things, where everybody was and what they did, when Hauk drove up to the house on Friday night.”
Martin fought glancing at Crook because he wondered this, too. Then he caught the trick. He said, “Why would Hauk drive out here?”
Before Vilhallen could answer, John White exited from the porch, allowing the door to slam. He strode down the steps, his hands in his pockets and an angry set to jaw. “The house is clean, the cleanest house I’ve ever seen. No one was murdered inside this house.”
White turned from Vilhallen to Crook. “So where did it happen? Outside someplace, in the garage, in the barn? Where? That much blood can’t be hidden.”
It was only because of Crook’s utter stillness that Martin knew. He recalled the make-shift plan with Sandra. Tell Hauk about the money, the money in the barn.
Neither Crook nor Martin said anything to White’s outburst. Vilhallen said, “Calm down, John. Gather everybody and look at the out-buildings. Look for tire tracks in the weeds. We should have thought about the dogs.”
“Let your people know I haven’t cleared the rodents from those structures,” Martin said. “They should be prepared.”
This time the detectives had no words. White looked at his watch, less than an hour until sunset. He strode back inside yelling for everybody to come outside.
Vilhallen joined his team on the steps. “We look outside,” he said. “Be prepared to encounter rodents. Look for any signs of struggle, vehicle tracks, anything out of place. Look for blood.”
“By rodents he means rats. Be prepared for rats,” White said.
Martin risked a quick look at Crook. To the untrained eye, Crook looked calm, collected and patient. To Martin, he looked depressed.
“Don’t despair,” Martin whispered to him.
“It’s all over,” Crook said.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Bill knew the tree with the bench and hidden drawing paper. Joe and Martin thought he couldn’t see them hiding in the branches. It was true, he couldn’t see them. He knew they were there, and he pretended to see them so they would come down and get back to work. The memories ran like cool water through his mind as he walked toward the tree.
He liked Joe. In fact Joe had been his favorite because he smiled and laughed a lot and joked with Tillie. Now, he expected some help from Joe. He could feel the boy’s presence beside him. Martin was the more gifted of the two, sensitive and moody. Joe was balanced, at ease with himself. Joe was fun, and Martin was fun when he was around Joe. Those boys would have made any parent proud. They made an old neighbor proud.
Bill felt foolish tears, and he quickly brushed hard at his face.
Standing under the tree in the late afternoon light, he removed his wire cutter and dropped the knapsack to the ground. He surveyed his route to the barn. Bill said, “Your mission, Joe, should you choose to accept it, is to make sure nobody comes to the barn. We may be too late already for all I know. They may have come and gone.” Talking out loud was his custom from too much time spent working alone on the farm.
From where he stood the dilapidated barn was between him and the house. He would take the path from the tree and go around to the side door of the barn, walking upright most of the way. The day held bright sunshine, maybe forty degrees, cold wind. Unusual for the wind to be cold coming from the south-west; must be looping around in a circle.
Only when he stepped past the corner of the barn, did he become visible from the house. The ragweed stood tall on both sides of the narrow path. From the corner, Bill crawled on his hands and knees with the heat lamp on his back and the wire cutter in his hand. For about three feet, someone standing by the north side of the house and looking exactly that way toward the barn could see him. He scuttled fast.
Not a sound carried to him. All those people must be inside the house. He knew there was nothing inside the house; let them look long and hard. “Right, Joe?” he said.
He reached up from his crouching position and pulled open the side door to the barn. Pulling against the wind, he had to use force to swing it open enough for him to shimmy through. He closed it behind him. For a few seconds,
he sat on his haunchesl and closed his eyes, breathing hard. The crawl was not easy for an old man. Then he pulled himself up and looked through the dim light.
From the caved-in part of the roof, light filtered through the hay-mound floor in square shafts squirming with dust mites visible in the light. He walked past the storage rooms and spotted the old ladder. Both Bill and the heat lamp did not fit through the opening, so he had to balance himself, remove the heat lamp from the sling, and push it over his head through the hole.
It dropped, crashing to the barn floor twelve feet down. Bill froze. He listened. Only silence hovered around him like a cloak.
“Better it than me,” Bill said, climbing down after it. Nothing could break the heat lamp, but the long thin bulb was a different story. He checked it before taking it back up the ladder. In the hay-mound the slant of the floor under his feet felt pronounced so he sidled sideways until he reached the pile of alfalfa hay. The last hay put up by the old man, Martin’s dad. The stuff looked too decayed to burn; he ran his fingers through it and pulled to the surface some dry, brown lumps.
Unpacking the heat lamp, he positioned the bulb exactly as the sunshine hit the pile through the roof. He placed the bulb about four inches from the mound of hay and cranked it to the highest setting for heat. Then he walked to the big hay-mound door and peered through the cracks toward the house. It was 4:15 pm and he could not see any movement. Vehicles parked in a semi-circle across the front of the house, noses facing the porch, but he could not see the front steps.
“Okay, Joe, we need to work fast. We need a flame and we can not use accelerant, it has to be natural, an Act of God.” He continued a flow of words, talking as he worked. He found Martin’s great coat exactly were Maureen told him Crook put it. The coat lay covered loosely with hay, or more accurately mulch. Anyone with an eyeball would have seen that in the first minute. The coat lay stretched out full, buttoned and sleeves across the breast, respectful. Bill shook his head. It was only a coat.
The rats had helped him out some. Smelling the blood, they had tried to find the flesh. They succeeded only in eating or clawing away bits of the tough material and exposing tufts of white colored stuffing.
“It won’t burn. Crook was right about that. He couldn’t burn this coat,” he mumbled while he pushed the big, black buttons through their holes. Once unbuttoned, he tried to open it, but the front stuck to the back, thick material. Fetching the wire cutter, he attempted to cut the material. He needed the material to be loose enough to burn. Intact and folded, the whole barn could burn to cinders, but the coat would still be there, evidence and all.
The material just bent between his cutter blades and would not cut. Finally, he carried it to the heat lamp and pried open the front, gagging from the stench. Putting one foot on each side, he straddled the coat, holding the material taut. He finally pulled increasing the holes made by the rats. Once started, Bill was able to gouge the lining. The stuffing had rotted little over its fifty years of existence. Bill did as much damage as possible to open the heavy duty material. He knew he would never be able to cut through the seams or the collar so he did not try.
He spread the coat belly down on top of the hay and to one side. Tendrils of smoke rose softly from the hay where the heat hit it directly. “We have smoke,” he announced. But he needed something more. The whole moldy stack could smolder for days and go out without ever catching the floor boards.
He stood, thinking about this, then walked to the barn door and peered through the cracks. No action on the southern front. As he turned back, his eyes followed the line of the old pulley system used to hoist the hay into the loft. The cable hung loose from the center joist of the roof because the rough-edged boards from the caving section of roof sliced it through.
But he remembered, along that wall to the west, by the cable box and end pulley was a crate of rags and a tin cupboard with grease. The roof along that edge was sagging low. Blue sky leaked among the broken boards and shingles. He had about two feet of height between the floor and the rough edge of sagging roof, right there at its lowest point. He circled around, sliding against the slant. Bill went down on his knees and then on his belly, crawling beneath the sagging section of roof.
He saw the crate. The cupboard stood upright, nailed to the wall and was out of his reach, but he could get the crate. He reached out and grabbed between the wood slates and jerked it hard toward himself. With the jerk of his arm, a six-inch roofing nail protruding from a broken slat gouged through his coat sleeve and into his right forearm. The gouge went with the momentum of his pull and cut his arm for eight or nine inches.
Bill, with great presence of mind, did not jerk his arm up. His arm was caught between the side of the crate and broken edge of sagging roof. His gloved fingers entwined in the space between the crate slats. He had only one choice, to keep pulling
Sliding backwards on his knees, he jerked the crate to him. Damn, that hurt. Blood dripped from his gloved fingers. Tillie would fix it later; for right now he had to keep going. Inside the crate was an answer to prayers: greasy, half-rotted rags.
Smoke curled to the open roof and vaporized in the wind. Quickly, Bill began to spread the rags along the floor and then turned the crate upside down and dumped the rest over the large pool of dried blood beneath the sagging basketball hoop. The floor had to catch. He loosened the rags with his hands.
Then he went back to the heat lamp. He needed to see an actual flame. The smoke hurt his eyes and throat while he positioned the greasiest of the rags loosely between the dry hay, and repositioned his lamp close over the spot. Again he walked to the big hay-mound u-shaped door and peered out. Now he saw activity; his stomach squeezed. A group of men stood in a semi-circle on his side of the house. The head honcho was giving them instructions. As Bill watched, the men broke into groups and started walking in different directions away from the house. These men would check the scattered outbuildings and the burn pit on their way to the barn. They were coming.
Chapter Forty
Crook said to Martin, “It smells like someone is burning leaves.”
“That is the smell of a smoldering haystack.”
Crook said, “I should tell you now why I was sent to the bin.”
“Okay,” Martin said. “You are under no obligation to ever tell me.”
“Is it okay if I tell you?” Crook did not look at Martin.
Martin said, “I am honored to be your confidant.” He hoped it would not be too sad.
Crook looked toward the growing dusk as he talked. He said, “I lived with my mom in a sagging old apartment building in Omaha. On the ground floor, corner apartment lived an old, crippled man. Now days we would call him a pedophile; back then we called him a dirty old man. Me and my friends thought he was funny. Every time one of my friends had cash we said, ‘You’ve been to visit the dirty.’
“When I was seventeen my mom got sick. I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t stand to be around it because it angered me. I was immature and self-centered at the time. My mother asked me to read to her, but I wouldn’t. I got the neighbor lady to read to my mother.
“I was past the age for the old man. He liked little boys, six or seven. One morning, I came down the steps late for school and in no mood to be polite. I saw the old man talking to a kid outside his door. The kid had a back pack on for school. The kid was crying and the old man was shoving a ten dollar bill into his hand and trying to pull the kid into his room.
“I always had a knife in my pocket, even then. I went up to the two of them and I grabbed the ten from the old man’s hand, but he wouldn’t let go of the kid, so I pulled out my knife and told him to let go of the kid. He wouldn’t let go so I stabbed his hand. The kid ran, and I went to school.
“When the cops found him he had twenty-seven knife wounds. The cops said I killed him for ten dollars. They tried me as an adult. My attorney said temporary insanity and a plea arrangement for the mental hospital. Enough people came to my sentencing for the judge to
have a clue.
“The judge told me after a year in the hospital, my mother could get me out. But my mother died, and I was forgotten. I couldn’t get myself out. In a way I didn’t want to. I did the time for walking away from my mother.”
Martin said, “Life isn’t fair.”
Crook sat back, apparently watching three officers systematically searching the grove.
Martin said, “You don’t have to be so all or nothing. There is a middle ground, sometimes.”
“I know. I can’t help it.”
Vilhallen called everybody to meet near the steps. It was five thirty and chilly. The wind from the south-east calmed as the sun rolled to the western horizon, but the air cooled quickly. The Officers and technicians stood in a loose semi-circle facing the detectives and waiting on orders. Vilhallen and White stood some twelve paces from the corner of the house and to Crook’s left toward the barn.
“We only have the barn left to search. I think we can finish this before dark. Any volunteers?” Vilhallen sounded half-hearted.
White said, “Let’s do this! Or we can come back at first light.” To Martin’s ear, he sounded determined – a dangerous man.
The policeman standing nearest Martin said quietly to the man beside him, “I hope whoever is burning has a permit and knows what they are doing.”
A thin haze began to cover the dusk.
White began to walk slowly toward the barn. Martin could not see the path from his position, so he rose and walked a few steps to watch the proceedings.
Crook said, “Say good-bye for me to Maureen.”
Martin did not answer.
Crook said, “My new friends possess far more issues than the nuts I left behind.”
Martin said, “You walked out of that hospital by the front door. Don’t walk back inside, not yet.”
Chapter Forty-One
Martin, Crook, & Bill Page 25
