An Iron Fist, Two Harbors

by Dennis Herschbach

  Chapter

  Forty-Nine

  JACK RODE SHOTGUN, Deidre drove, and Steve sat in the back. Steve gently fingered his rapidly swelling eye. His brother wiped at the thin trickle of blood oozing from his nose. The trio didn’t speak a word, and Deidre wondered where to go from here. She drove toward the lake, a place of refuge, it seemed, every time there was a crisis. After parking the car, she motioned for the boys to follow her, and they trudged across the park grass to a paved walking trail. Following it for a block or so, she veered to the left on a dirt footpath that led to a memorial bench set to expose a panoramic view of Lake Superior. Deidre sat in the middle of the granite slab and patted the cold rock on either side of her, a signal for the boys to sit. She put her arms around them, and they put their heads on her shoulders and sobbed. They sat there nearly a half hour, until Deidre thought it was time for her to talk.

  “You don’t have to tell me what happened. The principal did a pretty good job of filling me in on the details. I want to ask, do you know the meaning of displaced anger?”

  Both boys shrugged and shook their heads.

  “Displaced anger is when we take out our anger on something or someone who did nothing to us. For instance, a man might lose his job, come home and kick his dog.”

  Jack interrupted. “I’d never kick my dog.”

  Deidre sighed. “Yes, but you two picked a fight with a group of boys who weren’t bothering you a bit. To make matters worse, they were older and bigger than you. You could have been seriously hurt. Do you have any idea why you did that?”

  Neither boy answered.

  “Well, I do,” Deidre answered for them. “You’re angry at Dave, more than angry. You probably want to hurt him right now. But you can’t. So instead, you shifted your anger toward someone else. And do you know who I think you shifted it to?”

  Again there was nothing but silence.

  “You shifted it toward yourselves.” Both boys pulled away from her at the same time.

  “What do you mean?” Steve blurted out. “If that was true, we’d have gotten into a fight with each other.” He paused. “Or jumped off a cliff or something.”

  “Listen, guys,” Deidre tried to reason. “I think you see yourselves in each other, and you chose not to hurt yourself, but to let someone else do it for you. Thank God you have enough reasoning left that you didn’t jump off a cliff. That would be too final. So you picked a fight with that bunch of older kids, knowing they’d hurt you, but not kill you.”

  Jack spoke up. “That doesn’t make much sense. Steve and I never talked about any of this. It just happened. How can you think that we wanted to hurt ourselves? It’s a stupid idea.”

  Deidre ignored his hostility. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but our minds play tricks on us. Tricks we never see coming. Please, take time to think about this on the way home. After supper, we’re going to sit down with Dad. We’re all angry and confused. Not one of us knows what we should be doing, or even how we are supposed to be acting. This is the kind of thing that can tear a family apart, and I’m not going to let that happen to ours. Do you hear me?” She began to cry. The boys responded by coming close to her. This time it was they who hugged her.

  *****

  DAYS WENT BY WITHOUT another incident at school. Amid the routine of Ben going to work, Deidre putting her gardens to bed for the coming winter and the boys grumbling about too much homework, the last days of September passed without notice.

  By the first week of October, most of the leaves had fallen from the trees, creating a mess in the yard. Lost in her thoughts, Deidre was raking furiously when her cell phone rang. She fumbled taking off her gloves, but managed to extricate it from her jeans’ pocket on the fifth ring.

  “Hello,” she said, hoping she had hit the “receive” button soon enough. There was dead silence on the other end that lasted so long she thought it was a crank call or a butt dial.

  “Deidre, it’s Jeff,” a voice said just as she was about to hang up. Deidre knew in that instant something was terribly wrong. She sat down on a large tree stump without saying anything. “Deidre, are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here,” she heard herself say. “It’s not good news, is it?”

  Jeff cleared his throat, and there was a long pause. “No, it isn’t. Can you get a hold of Ben and have him come home? I’m coming out to be with you guys in about an hour. Got important things to do before then. I’m sorry, Deidre. Do you want me to send someone out to be with you before I get there?”

  Deidre sat in stunned silence.

  “Deidre, are you there? Are you okay?” Jeff ’s voice brought her to her senses.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay, I think. I’ll call Ben right away.” She hung up without saying goodbye, and mechanically hit number one on her speed dial. Ben answered.

  “Honey,” she paused. She never called him that and wondered from where it had come. “Jeff called just a minute ago.” She got that much out and couldn’t continue, because her throat was so constricted.

  “He found Maren, didn’t he?” It was more a statement than a question.

  Deidre choked back a sob and said, “I’m not sure, but I think so. All Jeff said was that he wanted me to call you right away. He’s going to be here in an hour.”

  The silence on the phone hung like a dark curtain between them. “Okay, I’m leaving right away. Be home soon. Deidre? I love you.” Ben hung up without saying goodbye.

  Deidre had enough of her wits about her that she remembered to call Megan, but ended up being connected to her daughter’s voice-mail. She left a terse message to come home as soon as she could, that there was news concerning Maren.

  Deidre scrubbed the dirt off her hands and managed to clean under her nails with a brush. She acted as though this was a normal procedure, not shedding a tear, in fact, showing no emotion at all. After stripping off her work clothes and depositing them in the wicker laundry basket, she went upstairs, took a quick shower to wash off the sweat, and dressed in a clean sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. She combed out her hair in front of the mirror, pulled it back in a ponytail, and secured it with an elastic tie. Deidre examined herself in the mirror and thought, I’m getting too old for this kind of hairdo. Closer to fifty than forty, and I’m still wearing it like a twenty-year-old. She sat on the edge of her bed and thought how ridiculous that was. She was sure of the reason Jeff wanted to see them, and here she was wondering about what she looked like. With the back of her hand, she wiped away a lone tear that had trickled down her cheek. She wanted to fix something to have for Jeff when he arrived. Another inappropriate thought, she believed.

  On the way downstairs, it dawned on her that the boys would be coming home from school on the bus, and she wasn’t sure she wanted them to barge in while Jeff was divulging his news. She decided the news might be too gruesome to be sprung on them as soon as they came in the door. Deidre called her in-laws and asked them to pick up Jack and Steve from school. Then she called the school to inform them of the plan.

  She scrounged up a few cookies and put on a pot of coffee and took a few minutes to process Jeff ’s call by retreating to her place of comfort, the stream that ran close to their backyard. She sat down on the grass under a maple tree whose leaves had turned crimson, pulled her knees up to her chest, and rested her face between them. She had no idea how long she sat that way, letting thoughts tumble through her mind, until she felt a warm hand on her shoulder. Looking up, she saw her husband’s face, contorted in pain, staring down at her. She managed to stand up and he enveloped her in his arms. They stood that way, swaying back and forth in their misery, feeling the touch of each other’s body.

  Without speaking, Ben pulled away, took Deidre’s hand, and led her back to the house. They had just walked in the back door when Jeff knocked on the front. Ben called out for him to come in, and Jeff opened the door. That was when Deidre lost it.

  “Oh, Jeff,” she blurted out as she rushed to him. He caught her in his arms and hug
ged her tightly, all the while looking over her shoulder into Ben’s pained eyes.

  After what seemed like a long, long time, Jeff said as gently as he could, “Let’s go in and sit down. I’ve got some news to tell you.” He walked over to Ben and placed his arm over his friend’s shoulder. Still holding Deidre’s hand, he led them into the other room.

  Chapter

  Fifty

  DEIDRE FORGOT ABOUT the cookies and coffee she had ready. Instead, she sat on the edge of the couch beside Ben. He, on the other hand, leaned his lanky frame into the corner of the sofa, propped himself against a pillow, and closed his eyes. Deidre found herself unconsciously wringing her hands.

  “Folks, I think you know why I’m here,” Jeff began. Deidre felt the breath go out of her, and Ben’s leg jerked involuntarily.

  “We’ve found Maren’s body,” he continued. “There isn’t any way I can soften the message. One of my deputies was called out early this morning to investigate a report, and he found her grave. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this.” Jeff hung his head and tried to gather himself to say more.

  “Where was she found?” Ben quietly asked, his eyes still closed.

  “She’s buried in a shallow grave near the Drummond Road. I think you know where the snowmobile trail crosses the road, by the Experimental Forest. There’s a dirt road that goes back to a county gravel pit.” He waited for a response from one of the two, but neither showed any sign of recognition. Jeff continued.

  “A man from town was walking the trail with his dog, and it ran off into the woods. He tried to call it back, but it didn’t return. He heard it barking repeatedly, something out of the ordinary, he said. When he got to where the dog was standing, he could see that something had been buried in a shallow depression. His dog had begun to dig at the loose soil.”

  Ben opened his eyes before speaking. “Was Maren’s body . . .” He choked up and couldn’t say the words. Deidre reached across and took his hand in hers. Ben swallowed hard and continued. “Was Maren’s body intact?”

  “She was wrapped in several layers of heavy plastic, the kind contractors use when doing cement work. It was duct-taped, sealed up pretty well. I don’t know how the dog picked up the scent. It’s not a trained cadaver dog, but it must have somehow sensed what was there. The man scraped away some of the dirt with his hands, and uncovered enough of the buried object to see that it was a body. He immediately left the area, because he said he didn’t want to destroy any evidence. His cell phone was in his car, and he called as soon as he could. A deputy was in the area, and took only ten minutes to get to the scene. He immediately called it in and guarded the grave until I arrived.”

  Despite her shock, Deidre was able to voice a question. “Are you sure it’s her?”

  At that question, Jeff ’s face flushed. “Nothing has been confirmed by forensic tests. I’ve called in the BCA and they’ll be here soon. I didn’t want to take any chances of making a mistake, so I’ve requested they take charge of exhuming her body. Their forensics expert will be here quite soon. I gave them your address and they’ll stop here so I can lead them to the site. In the meantime, I wanted to warn you in advance of what was found.”

  Pleadingly, Ben asked, “But how can you be so certain it’s Maren? I know you wouldn’t have told us this if you weren’t sure yourself.”

  Jeff didn’t want to present the grieving parents with graphic details, and he hesitated. “We did cut through some of the tape and plastic. The corpse is dressed in clothing similar to what Dave told us was missing from Maren’s closet. We were able to see her hair, and it’s the color of Maren’s. It’s very evident the body is that of a woman. But the reason we are so sure . . . she’s wearing a necklace with a pendant inscribed, “To Maren with Love, Mom and Dad.”

  Deidre slid off the edge of the couch onto the floor. She wrapped her arms around Ben’s leg and kept repeating “No . . . No . . . No,” like a plea to God. Ben reached down and stroked her hair, trying to comfort her, even in his grief. Deidre looked up, her face screwed with anger.

  “It has to be Dave. How are we going to get him?”

  Jeff had an answer. “Now we have a body, proof a crime has been committed. We have the hearsay evidence of his girlfriend. That’s a beginning. Few crimes are committed without the perpetrator leaving behind some kind of clue. Somehow he slipped up. Our job is to find out how. We’ll get him. I promise.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by the crunch of gravel beneath tires as a car pulled into the driveway. A few seconds later, someone knocked on the door. Deidre answered it, abruptly throwing open the door. Her mouth dropped, but before she could speak, a woman rushed to her, threw her arms around Deidre, and murmured in her ear, “Oh, Deidre. How could this have happened? How could this ever have happened?”

  It was Doctor Judy Coster, forensic pathologist and anthropologist with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Over the years, she and Deidre had worked two cases together, developing a strong mutual respect that turned into a lasting friendship. They had communicated infrequently the past two years, but theirs was a friendship that could withstand lapses of time.

  “Judy! What a welcome sight your face is,” Deidre exclaimed. Then it dawned on her the circumstances of her friend’s visit. “Come in. Come in. Jeff is here, and I’m sure he’ll want to get going on this as soon as possible.” Deidre ushered Judy into the living room, still holding her hand. Jeff stood to greet Judy.

  “You made good time. I didn’t expect you for another half hour.” Judy smiled sheepishly and shrugged. Before she could admit to driving well over the speed limit, Jeff turned his attention to Deidre and Ben.

  “I’ve given this a lot of thought since Maren’s body was discovered, and we’re going to keep the information within the department as long as we can. Under no circumstances do I want you to contact Dave. Judy is going to supervise the exhumation, and my department will be there to assist her. When the autopsy on Maren’s body is complete and any clues have been uncovered, that’s when I want to spring the news on him. I’d like to see his reaction first hand. Is there anything we can do for you before we go?”

  Deidre and Ben mumbled a “No” at the same time and began to usher Judy and Jeff to the door. Ben stopped.

  “I want to go with,” he blurted out between pursed lips.

  Deidre grabbed her husband. “No. I don’t want you to see Maren this way. Ben, there’s nothing you can do out there. We’d just be in the way, and I want to remember Maren the way she was the last time we saw her, and I think you do, too. Whatever you’d see at the gravesite will be hideous, and that will be the image of her that will stick in your mind forever. I’m begging you, don’t go.”

  Jeff took Ben by the arm. “She’s right. We’ll take care of Maren with the utmost respect, and as hard as it will be, we’ll do everything we can to remain objective in our search.”

  “Ben,” Deidre pleaded. “Let them do their jobs. They’re skilled at what they do, and I have all the confidence in the world in them. Please.” She searched to make eye contact with him.

  Without saying a word, Ben allowed Deidre to lead him back to the couch, while Jeff and Judy closed the door. They heard them drive away before sitting down. Deidre curled up next to Ben and placed her hand on his shoulder before completely falling apart, and they held each other until Deidre had to get up to go to the bathroom.

  When she returned, she asked, “Do you want me to call Pastor Ike?” She hoped Ben would say no, because she was in no mood to hear empty platitudes or words of hope. To her relief, he shook his head.

  “But we’d better call Mom and Dad, because we can’t just leave the boys there without a reason. What do we do? Do we tell the boys?”

  Deidre mulled the question for a moment. “I think we have to. They can’t be expected to stay with your folks for no reason. We should have your mom and dad bring them home, but tell them we need to speak with the boys in private. Do you think they’ll understan
d?”

  Ben and Deidre discussed the situation for several minutes, weighing the pros and cons, and eventually agreed the boys had to come home and be told the truth. They decided the solution would be to drive into town, pick up the boys, and bring them home before saying anything.

  As they were about to pull onto the county road, Megan sped into the driveway. Breathlessly, she rushed to her parents’ car, and as she opened the rear passenger door, said, “They’ve found Maren, haven’t they?”

  Chapter

  Fifty-One

  JEFF LED THE WAY to the Drummond Road. Judy followed, plowing through the cloud of dust that trailed his vehicle. Ten miles from Ben’s and Deidre’s, he turned off the graveled surface onto a single-track haul road that intersected the snowmobile trail. When Judy stepped out of her car, she couldn’t help but notice the thick coating of dust on their cars. She wasn’t accustomed to the silence of the forest that surrounded them. White pines as large as any she had ever seen towered above them, shading the forest floor and blocking any direct sunlight. The place felt almost sacred.

  “The snowmobile trail is just ahead,” Jeff instructed as he headed toward an opening in the trees. “I’ve had a deputy posted at the grave since it was discovered. He walked in from the other end, where the trail meets the Drummond Road. That’s why his squad isn’t parked here. Search and Rescue will be arriving in about twenty minutes to help with any digging and transporting we have to do. I’d like to be able to scour the area for clues before a crowd gets here.”

  “Will the press be here?” Judy wanted to know.

  “I certainly hope not. I instructed the person who found the grave to tell no one. Told him it was important to give us some time. I know him and think he’ll keep his mouth shut. The deputy used his cell phone to call me, so he couldn’t have been picked up on a scanner.” Judy nodded her approval and trudged along beside Jeff.