“How long ago was that?” I was stone cold frozen in my spot at the end of the bed. Shep was transfixed on me. I’m sure we both looked like statues.
“Over an hour, maybe longer. I don’t know. I lose track. You know that. Minutes are like hours when I’m here alone.”
“You’ve been here by yourself for that long?” I snapped.
“I’m fine. Just worried. I think you ought to call Hilo.”
I shook my head. “I’m going to find Ardith after I get you cleaned up.”
“I’ve been here this long. If you’re gonna go, then go now. I’m fine. It’s not like her, Marjie. It’s not like Ardith at all to walk out and not come back when I called out for her.”
I started to argue with Hank. I wasn’t about to leave him there in his own filth. But he was right. It wasn’t like Ardith Jenkins at all to leave him alone. She loved Hank. She always had. He was like the son she’d never had.
I nodded and turned to go out the door, but Hank’s voice stopped me. “Marjie,” he said, with as much authority and concern as he could muster.
“Yes?”
“I think you best take the .22 rifle with you.”
CHAPTER 12
I thought long and hard about leaving Shep with Hank, but I knew I’d feel better if he was with me. I’d always looked to the dog for comfort far more than I ever had for protection, but in that moment, he was all I had to defend the farm from the unknown, other than the rifle behind the bedroom door.
My bones ached with fear and dread. There was nothing that I could think of that would pull Ardith Jenkins away from caring for Hank. Nothing. But I couldn’t allow myself to imagine her fate any more than I could imagine the moment that Erik and Lida Knudsen had met their own deaths. . . . I just couldn’t. I loved Ardith, and the thought of her leaving Hank riled me in a way that would border on a forgiveness that could never be granted. Unless something had happened to her. Then I would blame myself for leaving her on the farm, alone, in the first place.
Hank didn’t have to tell me twice to grab the Remington .22 from behind the door. It was a light rifle, five pounds at the most, and looked like a slightly smaller version of the classic Winchester ’73, the rifle that had tamed the west. Truth was I was a better pie maker than a marksman.
Hank had taught me most everything I knew about guns—the two in the house—but I’d had little practice when it came to shooting. Guns, hunting, and chasing off coyotes had always been the provenance of the men in my life: my father, Hank, Peter, and Jaeger. I had never known a situation when a gun had to be taken up for protection, to ward something evil off the land. It was a madness never considered, something beyond a raccoon stricken with distemper or an old dog that needed put out of its misery.
My eyes glanced down to the safety, a push-pull pin that was closed. As I picked up the rifle, I opened the chamber by pressing the safety off with my thumb. The .22 was fully loaded, seventeen cartridges plus one in the chamber, ready to go; death in my hands, fear in my heart.
“You sure you shouldn’t call Hilo?” Hank asked. A wheeze in his chest echoed inside the small bedroom and danced off the walls with another warning, another dread.
It stopped me in my tracks. “Are you all right?” The smell of soured urine filled the air, and it was all I could do to not pull off the sheets, not allow Hank to lay in the wet bed any longer. There was a closet full of freshly bleached sheets just outside the door.
“All right as I can be,” he said. “It should be me goin’ out there to find Ardith, not you.”
Hank’s loss of mobility was a deep wound, but this wasn’t the time to console him. He knew that as well as I did, but I wouldn’t expect any less of him. I wanted him to be the one to go find Ardith, too.
“I need to go,” I said. “Come on, Shep.”
I had heard that wheeze in Hank’s chest before, and as much as it concerned me, it was the least of my worries at the moment. Ardith needed me more. I was sure of it.
“Marjie,” Hank called out.
I stopped again just at the threshold of the bedroom door. “Yes?” Shep followed my actions and did what I did. He stopped and never took his eyes off me.
“If you have to shoot, shoot for the head. That rifle won’t kill a man with a shot anywhere else ’less you get lucky and put it through his heart. Even then, I’d shoot till he dropped. Jus’ keep a pullin’ the lever and the trigger till the bullets are all gone.”
It was cold, hard advice, and my hand trembled against the smooth wood stock of the rifle. All I could do was nod. I didn’t know if I could kill a man. I hoped to never find out what I would do if the chips were down, if I had to consider the choice of someone’s life I cared about over a stranger set on doing them harm—or harm to me. I just didn’t know what I would do.
I pushed out of the bedroom with a different set of eyes, leaving the stench of lingering sickness behind me, and walking toward an abyss of darkness conjured only by my imagination. I was glad Guy Reinhardt had kept me from entering the Knudsens’ house. I didn’t want to know what murder smelled like, though I had a good idea.
There seemed to be shadows everywhere I looked. The cabinets in the kitchen cast an undue darkness onto the clean-as-a-whistle floor and dappled it with a saucer-shaped gloom from the dishes that rested in the drainer, air drying.
Whatever had taken Ardith’s attention out of the house had come after she’d fed Hank his lunch. I was grateful for that, even though I felt horrible for leaving him.
I didn’t linger or allow my thoughts to slow me. I made my way past the telephone, the dangling receiver, ignored the notepad on the counter, and found myself at the front door, slowing with hesitation.
I looked back over my shoulder at the notepad and stopped. My eyes had perused Ardith’s writing on the paper as I’d passed, and I knew by heart, even without my reading glasses on, the number she’d written down: 212-555-0408. It was Richard Rothstein’s phone number. He would be greatly annoyed that I hadn’t returned his call immediately, but that would have to wait, too.
My personal life—Ardith’s life—were more important than any back-of-the-book index I could ever imagine, even the one Gregor Landdow used at the Rexall.
I sucked in a deep breath and walked out of the false sense of security I felt inside my house. “Come on, Shep. Where’s Ardith? Let’s go find Ardith.”
He didn’t answer me. Instead, the dog followed after me, then bolted around me once I was fully outside. He circled me three times, then came to a frozen stance about ten feet in front of me.
It was a game, a silly border collie game that I was in no mood to play, but I stopped, too. “Stop it,” I said. “Just stop it this instance, Shep. This isn’t the time.”
Shep’s ears stood fully erect and pointed straight up to the waning sun. There were no clouds, and late afternoon would soon become evening, then night. As warm as it was, the darkness would bring a chill with it; good sleeping weather with the windows open if there was a reason not to be afraid.
I looked away from Shep’s beguiling eyes, to the ground below me, hoping to see a sign, a trail, something that would lead me to Ardith straight away.
There was nothing but grass that was in need of being cut. If it had been trampled down an hour before, the resilient blades of hearty greenness had already stood back up, reached up to the sky in praise to the sun, leaving no sign of disturbance or human touch.
I turned slowly in a circle, imitating Shep in my own way, for my own purposes, cradling the .22, the forestock in my left hand, the index finger of my right hand on the trigger.
I traversed in and out of the wind, ignoring the specks of dirt that kicked up from the drive and sprayed my face.
The morning rain had done little to tame the sandy grains. They were most likely dried ten seconds after the rain quit falling from the sky, caressed as they were by the rush of the constant movement of air.
If the wind ceased, it was like someone had quit talking.
A murmur gone. Wisdom silenced. Stillness was alien on the prairie, more noticeable, more foreboding than almost any storm, the exception being the ones that you could see coming at you from miles away; black walls of rain and thunder, mad power unleashed. There was no place to hide from those storms except in the cellar. Silence wasn’t nearly as dangerous.
I saw nothing unusual in the perfect radius of my turn. The farm looked like it always had, everything in its place, weathered a bit, neglect settling in from the lack of attention from the overseer, the man who had loved everything about the land that was once his responsibility.
All that was missing was Ardith Jenkins.
CHAPTER 13
I drew in a deep breath, settled my finger on the trigger of the rifle, and watched the ground for potential pitfalls. I knew the reality of an accident—the result of losing focus for just one second—all too well.
The grass under my feet was dry and offered little concern. In the rush to get to Hank, I had lost my shoes, and had thought little of putting them, or any others, back on as I left the house.
After brief consideration, I knew where I was going to look first after I called out.
There was absolutely no sign that anything mischievous had occurred in my absence. The murders on the nearby farm had touched me, set me on edge, and heightened my fears. But in reality, Ardith was of the age where anything could have happened to her that had prevented her return to Hank. A heart attack or stroke could have just as easily struck her down as anything else. The question was—what had pulled Ardith’s attention away from the phone in the first place? She knew how important my New York calls were.
“Ardith!” I called out. “Are you here?” My words caught on the wind, whistled upward, and disappeared east just as quickly as they had come out of my mouth. “Ardith, please . . .”
No answer. All I could hear was my own heartbeat, a little louder than normal.
“Come on, Shep,” I said, as I padded over to the cellar doors.
I didn’t bother to look over my shoulder to see if the dog obeyed my request. I knew he would, eventually, when he thought it was his idea. There was no question that Shep was Hank’s dog through and through.
I stopped at the bumpy cement lip that jutted out into the grass just before the double wood doors. They were slanted against the house, and the steps down into the cellar were steep. I hesitated. The cellar wasn’t one of my favorite places. Never had been. I had screamed like a banshee at the first clap of thunder as a little girl, anticipating an undetermined amount of time in the spider-mouse-monster-infested hole in the ground.
Unfortunately, root cellars, storm cellars, basements, whatever, were a necessity in North Dakota. Spring was ripe with tornadoes, hail storms, and a hundred other natural occurrences that could cause a person harm. The cellar was the first place to run to seek safety when trouble showed itself. But that didn’t mean I had to like going down into it.
I released my finger off the trigger and eased the .22 into my left hand. I really wished I had put on a pair of shoes. Any shoes. But I hadn’t, and I needed to look and make sure that Ardith wasn’t down in the cellar, waiting for trouble to pass, for somebody to come for her.
I lifted the right door and let it fall over onto the ground. It thudded, and dust from the inside of the door leapt into the air, looking very much like a dirty brown cloud.
Cobwebs, spider webs, and detritus of undetermined origins awaited my trip down the steps. It had been a while since I had swept them clean.
I immediately looked for any sign of human passage and didn’t see any. That didn’t mean I didn’t have to go down and have a look. I did; I just didn’t want to.
I steeled my courage, pushed all of my horrible childhood memories as far away as I could, and stepped down onto the first step. It creaked under my weight, “Ardith,” I called out, “are you down here? Please be down here.”
I didn’t expect an answer, and I didn’t get one.
All I had to do was get to the bottom of the steps, just to the edge of darkness, and my fear of the darkness would be alleviated. An eighteen-inch silver Stanley flashlight awaited my touch, sitting in the same spot for as many years as I had been on this earth, and probably more, though it was most likely a whale-oil hurricane lamp before that.
I walked downward, cautiously, pushing cobwebs out of my way, easing each bare foot down on the cruddy steps as gently as I could. I would scream bloody murder if my skin touched something furry, slimy, or moving.
The smell of rot and old, black air assaulted my nose, and I caught myself holding my breath as I counted down the steps. Three more to go.
“Anyone here?” I said. I had cradled the .22 back to its original position, my index finger on the trigger.
I stepped down on the last step. Olly Olly oxen free.
The flashlight was to my right, just where it was supposed to be.
I situated my grip on the rifle again, grabbed up the silver torch and turned it on, fully expecting light to banish the darkness, and hoping like hell to see Ardith Jenkins sitting on the floor waiting for me. Neither happened.
I felt a pair of eyes on the back of my neck and looked over my shoulder. Shep stared down at me, standing firmly on the lip.
“That’s all right, Shep. You stay right there.” I tapped the flashlight gently against the wall and it flickered dimly. The batteries needed to be replaced. I was lucky they hadn’t busted at the seams, leaked acid inside the tube, and ruined the flashlight. I tapped it again, and a soft white beam shot upward. Along with the waning afternoon sun, the light would be enough to see the entirety of the cellar.
I balanced the flashlight in one hand and the .22 in the other. If the need to defend myself quickly arose, I was a bumble of inexperience; I’d probably drop the gun.
I was comfortable reading books, breaking down their structure into understandable, digestible bites, not looking for an errant friend under questionable circumstances and worrying about shooting someone in the head.
The beam of light shook in my nervous hand and flickered as I swept it across the cellar. My eyes knew what was there, what to look for. Still, I was cautious as my glance fell across garden tools, empty insecticide cans, boxes of canned vegetables, moth-eaten blankets, and gallons of water jugs kept in case bad weather—or something worse—forced us to stay below ground for days instead of hours.
The something worse was a horror beyond imagination, beyond even the most destructive storms: a nuclear missile attack from the Soviets. The Red Threat. The Cold War. An unseen menace always in the news. Death and immediate destruction a constant worry, a never-ending threat.
Air Force men had been negotiating leases on farmland all over the northern apron of North Dakota and preparing to build a vast network of missile silos, deep launch pads, to defend the nation from such an attack. Hank and Erik Knudsen had told them no, sent them packing, but that was last year when the crops looked good and all was well with them both. The threat of a nuclear winter looked a little differently now, and so did a monthly lease check from the United States government.
As far as I knew, all of the leases had been negotiated, but I wasn’t entirely sure of that. I had ignored the event, the presence of the Air Force men, as much as I could.
I sighed. There was no sign of Ardith in the cellar. I did, however, catch sight of Hank’s knee-high black rubber mud boots. They sure would beat walking around barefoot, so I made my way to them as carefully as I could, turned them upside down, and tapped them out. A dead grasshopper fell out of the right one. I started at the sight of it, then found a rag to wipe them both out, once I was sure nothing living had taken up residence inside them.
The boots were a little big, but I could navigate in them, and that was all that mattered. No more worry about a mouse or a rat running over the top of my foot.
The flashlight flickered off on its own, and I tapped it on the wall again, but it was no use. It was dead. The light from the door led me out
of the cellar, and I was happy to be standing on solid ground.
Shep had waited for me. He circled me again, then crouched ten feet in front of me, freezing in midrun. I just shook my head and ignored the game. “Where were you at when I came home?” I said aloud, studying him.
Shep settled to the ground and tilted his head at me. Silly humans; I can’t talk—that must have been what he was thinking, what the expression on his intelligent border collie face suggested he was thinking.
I closed my eyes and thought back to driving in from the Knudsens’. Shep had come out from behind the first barn in a rage.
I looked up to the house, hoped Hank was all right, then made my way to the barn. The boots squeaked as I went, and there was no way I was ever going to sneak up on anyone.
Shep followed after me, staying close enough to my heels to nip at them if he wanted to, if I wasn’t going the way he thought I should. At least I had rubber boots on.
Fresh air felt good on my face; a relief from the stench of the cellar. “Ardith, are you there?” I called out as I rounded the side of the barn.
No answer. Just the wind, the pant of the dog behind me, and the bang of the screen door in the distance.
I slowed as I noticed a tall stretch of needlegrass knocked down alongside the garage. The grass had yet to spring up from traffic of some type. It could have been knocked down from Shep running out to greet me, but I gripped the .22 tighter and eased my finger against the trigger with the surety of needed pressure. A flick would have fired off a round. My hand was suddenly sweaty.
I bent around the corner of the barn with a peek, then stepped around a rusted old mower and nearly lost my breath.
I blinked to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing: Ardith Jenkins propped up against the back wall of the garage, her head titled forward, down, the front of her dress covered in blood.
Her throat had been slit. Slit just like Erik and Lida’s. Her eyes were wide open, and her skin was as pale as freshly fallen snow.
See Also Murder Page 9
