An Iron Fist, Two Harbors

by Dennis Herschbach

  “Just wondering if he said anything about our questioning him.”

  Deidre answered, “He hasn’t said a word about that. Poor guy. I suppose he’s too embarrassed to tell us he’s being treated as a suspect. But I’m telling you, Jeff, he’s really hurting. When I look in his eyes, all I see is pain.”

  “Sometimes there’s a fine line between pain and guilt,” Jeff said, as if thinking out loud. “Or fear. Anyway, we asked Dave if we could look at his car and in their apartment. He never hesitated. Said any time, that he had nothing to hide. We went through everything in the apartment, in the car, and didn’t come up with one speck of evidence that Dave is involved, other than being a grieving partner. They weren’t married, were they?”

  Megan came to her sister’s defense. “No, but Maren said they would be in the near future.”

  “One last thing. Did Maren usually carry a purse with her, credit cards?” Jeff asked, as though it was hardly worth a second thought.

  Megan was the one who spoke up. “She had a favorite. It was brown leather with a short shoulder strap. I don’t think I ever saw her without it, because she always said most of her worldly possessions were in that bag. I know she had both a debit card and a credit card. Other than that, she usually carried a few bucks and her makeup. Oh, of course her driver’s license and her social security card. I always warned her not to have it in her purse. I told her she was smart enough to memorize nine digits, but she just brushed me off. Said if anybody wanted to steal her identity, they were welcome to it.” Then Megan choked up.

  After assuring the family that his department was doing all it could, Jeff excused himself. The three continued to sit on the deck, absorbing the smells and sounds of late spring. The blank look in Ben’s eyes worried Deidre.

  They sat in nearly a catatonic state until a parishioner from their church drove up. Another meal was on its way, and Deidre wondered if she could have managed to fix meals for the family up to this point. The man who was delivering was a complete stranger to her, and as he greeted them, Deidre sensed a the deep compassion he felt for them. After a few words of instruction about the meal, he turned away with the words, “I’ll pray that you have strength to make it through another day.”

  And I’ll take strength from wherever it comes, Deidre thought.

  Chapter

  Twelve

  NONE OF THE FAMILY could muster the energy to attend church. They knew it would be awkward, with too many well-meaning comments. “How are you doing?” “Are you okay?” “She’s in God’s hands.” “We’re praying for a miracle.” “God works in mysterious ways.” “Remember, God has a plan.” Deidre wanted none of those platitudes. She drove into town and bought copies of the Duluth and Minneapolis papers. She and Ben sat on the deck again, paging through them. When she was done, she couldn’t remember a thing she had read. Ben folded his section of the paper and, staring into space, said nothing.

  Megan walked to the place by the river where she and her family had spent so much time together. There, she sat looking wistfully at the rock she and her sister had sat on so often when they were teens, and she remembered the times they shared secrets with each other. Today, she wondered what she would do without her sister in her life.

  Sunday passed with no word, and the members of the family attempted to find things to do. Ben tried watching a baseball game on TV, the Twins playing the White Sox, but he couldn’t concentrate. After a few minutes, he found the announcer’s voice to be grating, and turned the set off. Megan was reading a book and found herself scanning the same page over and over. She eventually gave up. Deidre went upstairs to check on her sons and found them engrossed in a video game. Thank God for those games, she thought, and then felt a pang of regret that they had been left alone so much the past days.

  “Why don’t we go for a walk,” she asked, hoping to get the boys outside and away from the handheld screen. “Let’s go down by the river. You can fish and maybe catch a trout.”

  “Naw, I don’t feel like fishing,” Steve said.

  “Me neither,” Jack chimed in. “But I’d like to just go sit by the river with you. Okay?”

  “That would be great,” Deidre affirmed. “Just the three of us.”

  Together they walked the familiar path to the family’s gathering spot. The trail was well worn. Deidre thought about when she and Ben and their two little girls had first started to follow the same route through the woods and how eventually a path had formed. She remembered the time they had spent clearing the way, pulling up brush by the roots and grubbing out the larger rocks until an easily discernable trail was formed. She remembered the laughter they shared when they splashed in the crystal water of the Knife River.

  Then the boys were born, and she carried one of them in a pack strapped to her back while Ben carried the other. It seemed her family had grown up following the river and playing in the picnic spot they had cleared and improved over the years. Her thoughts were interrupted when they reached that area.

  “Let’s sit over there,” Steve suggested, pointing to a shady spot beneath a cluster of cedars. They had been decent size when she and Ben bought the property. Now they were majestic. She leaned her back against one of them after she sat down. Each of her sons did the same, and for a few moments they sat within touching distance of each other, listening to the gurgle of water as it spilled over partially submerged rocks. A belted kingfisher dived from a branch into a pool and came up with a minnow in its bill.

  “Maren’s in trouble, isn’t she?” Jack said out of the blue. His question caught Deidre by surprise.

  She looked at the river for a moment before answering. “Yes, I’m afraid she is.”

  “Tell us what you know.” This time it was Steve who spoke.

  “Your sister has been missing for a week, but you know that,” Deidre began. “Sheriff Jeff has been doing all he can to find her. We found her car up the Spooner Road. You know where that is. Dad’s taken you there when he’s been grouse hunting. We don’t know much more.”

  After several seconds passed, Steve asked, “Who called to tell you she was missing?”

  “Dave and Maren were supposed to go on a picnic last Monday. He left work early, but she wasn’t home when he got there. He called me, but I didn’t think anything of it. Not until he called later that night. You remember when I got his call?” The boys nodded.

  “Do you think Dave took her away?”

  Deidre looked shocked. “Of course not. Whatever made you say that?” It had been Steve who asked, and he looked chastised for having uttered the words.

  Deidre reached over and patted his leg. “I’m sorry I was so sharp. It’s just that we’re all on edge. You’ve seen how upset Dave is. He’s worried sick about Maren. He loves her very much. She’s said that, and he’s said that. No, Dave’s part of our family, and family doesn’t do things like that.”

  Jack turned so he could look directly at his mother. “I heard you and Dad talking about a sex offender in town. What’s a sex offender?”

  Deidre felt herself being pulled into a place she didn’t want to be. “A sex offender is a person who does really bad things to other people. You know how we’ve talked about people’s private parts? Well, a sex offender does bad things to people’s private parts. Offenders are almost always men, and they overpower women and girls and force themselves on them.” She knew that wasn’t the whole truth, but she didn’t want to get into the pedophile issue right now. The boys had enough on their plate without bringing up that horrid issue.

  “Do they kill the women?” Steve asked, his brow furrowed.

  “Many times,” Deidre answered honestly.

  “Do you think the sex offender killed Maren?” Deidre was shocked by where this conversation had led.

  “Jeff doesn’t think he’s involved for several reasons. But he doesn’t know where the man is. He disappeared a little while after Maren did.”

  “That sounds suspicious to me,” Jack said, sounding more grown
up than he was. Then he asked Deidre, “Do you think Maren’s dead?”

  Deidre was speechless, but eventually she squeaked out, “Perhaps. But we have to keep hoping for the best.”

  First Steve began to cry, and then Jack.

  “Come over by me,” Deidre said, her voice so quiet it was hardly audible. The boys scrunched over, and she put an arm around each one. She sat with them until she felt them stop shaking, and then she hugged them closer.

  “Let’s go home. Dave’s coming for supper and Dad will be wondering what’s happened to us.” She helped dry their tears, and hand-in-hand, they walked back to the house.

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  THE DAYS OF NOT KNOWING what happened to Maren stretched to two weeks, three weeks, and then a month. At first, Jeff visited them quite frequently, but as time passed, the visits became fewer and fewer. Nothing was the same for the family.

  Megan returned to Duluth. Her summer job at the lab required her attention, and she needed the money for fall tuition. She had friends to be with and things to do that took her mind off her loss. But when she was alone, she would sit and brood, imagining what her sister had endured, imagining where she might be, hoping that Maren would someday walk in the door as if nothing were wrong. And sometimes she would weep.

  Ben returned to work with the FBI. He was irritable, and on a few occasions he blew up at his co-workers, especially those who reported to him. Everyone walked on eggshells when he was present. There were times that he was needed and would be found in his office with the blinds closed and the lights out, just sitting in the dark. His superiors were beginning to wonder if he should be placed on medical leave. More than once they spoke to him about seeking counseling, but he always rejected the idea.

  Dave’s visits to the house became fewer and fewer, and even though Deidre tried to maintain contact, he gradually left their lives. Sometime toward early July, Megan called Deidre to tell her that she had seen Dave at a nightclub with a woman. She said it looked like they were more than friends. Deidre remembered someone telling her to count on one year of grieving for every five years of togetherness after her fiancé, John, had been killed. At that rate, Dave’s grieving period would be only months. She knew that wasn’t logical, and he might be pushing it, but then, everyone grieves at their own rate, she thought. She told herself that Dave was a young man who was lonely and had needs. But still, she wished he would stay in touch with her and Ben.

  Jack and Steve acted as though nothing was out of the ordinary. They played ball, went swimming, and fished in the river once in a while. But Deidre recognized signs that all was not well. Several times since Maren’s disappearance they had thrown tantrums over insignificant requests, refusing to tidy up their rooms or take the garbage out when they were asked. Once they got into a terrible row with each other that ended in a knock-down-drag-out fistfight. Deidre knew they needed more than she was able to provide, but she didn’t know what.

  She was lonely, spending most of her day in the garden, turning the soil over time and again, pulling weeds out by their roots and leaving them to wither in the sun, potting and repotting some of the annuals. More than once she picked up a stone and hurled it with vengeance into the woods. She got no enjoyment from her toil, but it helped pass the time. She had long since stopped the delivery of meals by her church, and each day she went through the motions of preparing food for the family. It was repetitious and without creativity. One day she decided she needed to talk to Pastor Ike.

  He was waiting for her at the church entry when she arrived and escorted her up the stairs to his office. He offered her a chair and a cup of coffee. She declined the coffee.

  “Things are difficult,” he stated rather than asked. Deidre nodded, and before she could say anything, she burst into tears.

  “Damn, I told myself I wasn’t going to cry, and here I am bawling my head off before we even have a chance to talk.” She grabbed a tissue from the box that had been conveniently placed on the chair next to where she sat, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes.

  Ike looked at her. “Do whatever you have to, Deidre. This isn’t a race you have to finish in a few minutes. I have nothing on my calendar for the remainder of the afternoon, so get out what you have to get out.”

  Deidre took a deep breath. “You know, Pastor, that I’m not very religious, at least not like some people. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I believe.” She paused. “Or even if I do believe. Right now, I’m so damn mad at God—if there is a God—that I’m having a hard time thinking he’s the God I hear you preach about on Sundays. Speaking of which, we haven’t been able to get up the gumption to come to church once since Maren has been gone.”

  “I’ve noticed, but I haven’t wanted to pressure you to attend. You’ve got a lot to work out, and I had faith that sooner or later you’d want to talk. I wouldn’t have waited much longer to contact you, but I wanted to give you a chance to decide when the time was right. It seems that might be now. You say you’re angry with God. Can you tell me why?”

  “People say that God controls everything. If that’s true, why didn’t he save my daughter?”

  Ike put the fingertips of each hand together and contemplated them for a few seconds. “Deidre, I’ve struggled with that kind of question for most of my adult life, especially since becoming a pastor, and I have no answers. I wish I did, but I’ve seen parishioners die who were fervently prayed for, and I’ve seen non-believers recover. It seems that people get sick, some die, some get well.” He paused again as though he was afraid to continue, but he did.

  “I’ve come to the belief that God doesn’t control everything that happens on earth.” Deidre looked at Ike with disbelief in her eyes, but before she could respond, he went on. “I’ve looked at all the pain and suffering in this world and have come to the conclusion there are just some things God can’t control, like an abductor’s actions.”

  Deidre took minutes to digest what the reverend said. Finally she voiced her question. “Then what good is God?”

  “God walks with us every step of our lives, but not to take away every ill that might befall us. There will be wars and there will be abductions. There will be accidents and there will be murders. But, and I’m talking of the survivors now, God walks with us every step of the journey.”

  Ike smiled. “Let me tell you about an experience I had that changed my thinking. Do you know where the Pines Picnic Area is? Up Highway 2?” Deidre nodded, wondering where this was going.

  “One time my family was there with another pastor and his family. There’s a nature trail in the park that winds its way through a patch of old-growth white pine. They’re massive, two hundred feet tall and eight feet in circumference. At one point the trail passes between two giants that grow only four feet apart. A sign says to close your eyes, walk between them, and you will be able to feel their presence. We all tried it and every one of us could stop exactly between the two trees. My friend’s wife said, ‘Isn’t that just like God? We can feel his presence when he is with us.’ My friend said, ‘No, just the opposite. God is with us always. We only sense Him when we choose to pull away, and then we sense His absence.’ Perhaps part of your emptiness is because you’ve wanted to pull away, when what happened wasn’t God’s fault at all.”

  Deidre didn’t feel much better, but she was beginning to mull over what Ike said when they parted with a handshake and a promise to meet again in a few days. On the way home, she wondered if she could pray. She never had.

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  THE FAMILY GATHERED for supper, including Dave, whom Deidre had invited, and excluding Megan, who already had plans in Duluth. The talk was stilted, no one quite sure what should be said. Finally, Deidre asked the question she hated the most when asked of her.

  “How are you doing, Dave?” she asked. He toyed with his food before answering.

  “It’s been really tough. I don’t sleep well at all, and it’s difficult to concentrat
e. That’s not good for an accountant. On the brighter side, though, I’ve gone out a few times with friends and have been able to have a good time. But then I think of Maren, and I sink back into the pit.”

  Deidre looked at the sad expression on his face. “Megan said she saw you one night in Duluth, but you didn’t see her. We’re glad you’re getting out.”

  Dave looked shocked, but went back to eating. Ben studied his face for several seconds, and excused himself from the table. In a few minutes he came back and ate a few more mouthfuls of food before pushing his plate away.

  “Has Jeff talked to you any more?” he wanted to know.

  Dave’s face flushed. “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering,” was Ben’s answer. “The Twins play ball tonight. Do you want to stay and watch the game with us? We’ve got snacks.”

  Dave begged off, saying that he had to be at work early the next day, and excused himself.

  “Why did you ask him if Jeff had talked to him? I think you know that makes him nervous,” Deidre said as she cleared the table.

  “Just wanted to see his reaction. I got an e-mail from Jeff today, asking if we could meet with him in the morning. I told them at work I’d be a couple of hours late. I don’t know what he wants, just assumed it might have something more to do with Dave.”

  Deidre stopped what she was doing. “Do you know something I don’t?” she asked as she put her hands on her hips. Ben looked a little defensive.

  “I don’t know anything, but I’ve got a feeling Jeff has some important news for us.” He went in the living room and turned on the TV. The boys had gone outside, and Deidre finished cleaning up.

  *****

  DEIDRE THOUGHT THE WORD “strained” didn’t exactly define her and Ben’s relationship. As they rode into town the next morning, she decided that “empty” was a better word. They didn’t joke with each other the way they had before Maren disappeared. They didn’t touch each other the way they had. Too often they were in their own worlds, separated by their own thoughts. When Ben parked the car, he looked at Deidre with a crooked smile.