Bone Harvest (14 page)

“I might mention to your father that you let your friend come into a secured area. And I do mean
come
.”

There was no subtleness about this guy. The leer on Folger’s face made Ray reexamine his thoughts about him being gay. “It won’t happen again. Please don’t tell my dad.”

“No, I’m afraid that won’t be good enough, Ray. I think that I am going to need to get some information from you or I will be forced to talk to your father about your animal behavior. There are some things I want to know.”

“Like what?”

“How do they think this ties into the Schulers? Who do they suspect? I want to hear about it tonight, tomorrow morning at the latest.”

“Why are you so interested?” Ray let his full can of pop drop into Folger’s pristine wastebasket and watched dark liquid spray the insides of it. His little moment of resistance to this man’s nastiness.

“I’ve thought about what happened out on that farm a long time. I think it’s all going to come out pretty soon and I want to be one of the first ones to know about it.”

CHAPTER 16

When he saw the big headline about the poisonings emblazoned across the front of the
Durand Daily
, he was surprised that he wasn’t feeling more excited about how well his plans were working out. He sure had everyone’s attention. And so far no one had died. He guessed that was good. People who died never came back. He had tried once to bring them back and it hadn’t worked at all.

But as he sat there reading over the article, he felt hollow. It was a familiar sensation. He had had it since he was small. He felt as if he didn’t have a heart, as if his body were made of plastic and that he was a fake, a robot, but no one knew it. In this familiar story, the fact that he was a robot had been kept a secret even from him, but he had his deep suspicions.

Sometimes he wanted to cut himself to see if he bled, to see if he would cry, if he would feel the real pain, the deep pain that meant he was connected to the rest of the human race.

His wife was busy cooking his lunch. She would eat her cottage cheese and tomato slices, claiming she was on a diet. A thin woman, she didn’t really like to eat much. She didn’t like anything to do with her body very much. But she took good care of him and left him alone.

He had work to do today. He had scouted the area and figured he could go over to the pond right before sunset. The last of the pesticides were all ready to go in the back of his truck.

After this event, he had only the grand finale to do. All the other poisonings would dim in comparison.

His wife set down a plate of fried eggs. He liked two eggs and two pieces of bacon and a piece of toast cut in two equal pieces. He liked it laid out so there was a symmetry to the plate. Two was a very safe number. It was about pairing up, which he had done with his wife, which all the animals had done to go into Noah’s ark. There was a balance to it that felt like the right way to be in the world. Being with his wife didn’t make him stick out so much. He appeared more normal.

His wife had learned how he liked things at the very beginning of their marriage, and she easily went along with his requests. She had always felt bad that they could have no kids and so she worked harder at being a good wife to him.

“Isn’t that terrible about those poisonings? Aren’t you glad we didn’t go down to the fireworks? You must have known something was up. Maybe you’re psychic,” she said, and gave a little laugh.

“Too old for fireworks.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Sometimes I think you appreciate things like that more as you get older.”

He cut his eggs in quarters and humphed at her. She took it for an answer and filled his cup and her cup with more coffee. Without demanding anything more of him, she went back to her book.

They ate in silence. She was reading one of her romance novels while he browsed through the paper. She was a good wife. She lived in her own world, too. It was safer for her to read about romances than to have had to live through one. He understood. They were meant for each other. He would miss her if she had to die in the end.

When Claire walked up Carl Wahlund’s sidewalk and found him sitting on the front steps of his porch, he looked like the archetypal picture of the old farmer: white band of skin circling the top of his forehead from where his hat sat on it all day long, face lined like a dark, furrowed field, and the finishing touch was the blade of grass sticking out of his mouth.

Claire introduced herself and asked how the grass tasted.

“It’s good this time of year,” he said, removing it from his mouth to talk. “Timothy grass. Nice and sweet. Perfect time to harvest it. It’s been a good growing summer. Turned hot just when we needed it.”

“Plenty hot,” she agreed.

“You look a little warm in that uniform. Come up here on the porch out of the sun and sit.”

She was surprised by his solicitude. She walked up on the porch and sat in an old yellow wicker chair. When she sat down in it, it sank a little more and then sprang back. The movement of the chair surprised her and she let out a little yelp.

Wahlund chuckled. “That’s called a Rockerfeller. Darn comfortable chair. Got them when I was first married.”

“I came to talk to you about the Schuler murders,” she said abruptly.

He nodded. “Wondered if someone might not show up, asking some questions.”

“What do you remember of what happened?”

“Well, it was a hot day like today. My wife had just had our daughter. I remember that. She and her sister were real close. We would have gone over for Arlette’s birthday if my wife had felt up to it. Maybe then they wouldn’t have been killed.”

“It’s hard to say.”

“Yes, it is.”

“When did you hear about the murders?”

“Pretty quick. I think it was the sheriff who called us. I went over there before it was dark. I wouldn’t let the wife come. It would have been too hard on her. He wanted me to identify the bodies, but everyone knew who they were. I looked at Otto. But I didn’t want to look at the kids or Bertha.” He stared out at the field alongside the house. Claire noticed that his eyes were blue, reflecting light like a pond in dark earth. “I didn’t want to see her dead. She had been so alive. When she was in her teens, men just wanted to eat her up. She was a peach of a woman.”

“I know no one was ever charged with the murders, but did you have any ideas about who did it?”

“Sure, I did. I made no bones about it at the time. I told anyone who cared to listen. But the sheriff couldn’t get the evidence against him.”

“Who did you think was responsible?”

“Theo Lindstrom.”

Claire remembered that name, but wasn’t sure where she had heard it. “Who was he?”

“A neighbor of Bertha and Otto’s.”

Then Claire remembered. In her mind she saw the plat map and saw Lindstrom’s name on the plot of land to the north of the Schulers’.

“Why did you think he had done it?”

“You gotta remember when this all happened. It was only a few years after the war was over. Theo Lindstrom had been through some very tough battles. He had been one of the few survivors in his platoon. He hated the Germans. That might have been what it was all about. It didn’t take much to set him off. But I think he and Otto were also arguing over the border of their property. Also, some weird things had been happening at the Schulers’. He had found some dead cattle out in his field.”

“Did the sheriff look into it?”

“Yes, but supposedly Theo Lindstrom was gone the day the Schulers were killed.”

“Where?”

“He was in Madison. Buying some piece of machinery. He had an airtight alibi. Or so the sheriff told me. I still didn’t buy it.”

“Why not?”

“Madison’s not that far away. Four hours if you know what you’re doing.”

“Is Lindstrom still alive?”

“No, he died about twenty years ago. Never a happy man. The war really took it out of him. I always felt sorry for his wife and kid.”

“Are either of them alive?”

“His wife died a few years after he did, but Paul is still living on the farm. He’s an odd one. I think his dad scared the crap out of him when he was a kid and he never could do much with himself after that.”

“Well, maybe I’ll talk to him about his father.”

“You know who else you should talk to? An old army buddy of Theo’s. They went into the service together and came out together. Tight as clams. Chuck Folger. You know him?”

“Yes, I think I’ve had the pleasure.”

Wahlund scratched the front of his head. “If it was a pleasure, it must not have been Chuck.”

Rich sat at the bar of the Harbor View Café and watched the sailboats on Lake Pepin. They weren’t much to watch. Late afternoon the wind had dropped off and they bobbed on the silky surface of the lake, becalmed.

That was how he felt waiting for Claire. He had been ready to move forward, ready to begin a new phase of his life with the woman he loved, and she had taken the wind from beneath his sails—as the old saw went. He was adrift.

But he was trying to snap out of it. He decided they needed to do something fun, so he had loaded the canoe in the back of his pickup and he hoped to persuade Claire to go out on the river with him tonight. Maybe she’d want to try to make love in the bottom of a canoe. He had brought large lifesaving cushions for padding.

One of the bartenders of the Harbor View placed a bottle of Leiney’s in front of him without asking. Rich nodded his thanks. The bartender asked, “You waiting for the lovely deputy?”

“I am.”

“She working on that poisoning that happened last night?”

“Of course.”

“Must be hard for her to even take time to have dinner.”

Rich felt his shoulders rise in anger, but calmed himself. “Yup, but she has to eat like the rest of us.”

Claire walked in and said hi to some friends near the door and then made her way back to him. She was in her uniform, but had the top buttons on her shirt undone and her hair down. He saw people watching her as she walked back to where he was sitting. She leaned in and gave him a quick kiss.

“Can we just stay at the bar? I don’t have much time. I’ve got to go back to work in an hour or so.”

This was a test for him, he decided. “Sure. I like eating at the bar. Sorry you have to go back to work.” He hoped it was safe to say he was sorry.

She smiled at him. “I’m sorry too. The guys from DCI were supposed to show up late afternoon, but they called a couple hours ago and now they’re not going to be here until around eight. We’re meeting with everyone and I need to be there.”

“Sure. Let’s order. Do you want a drink?”

“Not a good idea. I need to keep my wits about me with these fellows coming in.”

“The competition?”

“I hope not. I’m sure they’ll be a big help. But they’re going to assume we don’t know what we’re doing and they’re going to want to take over. They don’t know I’ve worked much bigger cases than this.”

“You’ll just have to tell them.”

“No. I’ll have to nudge the sheriff to tell them. I can’t be seen bragging about my career. Not proper.”

“Police etiquette.”

“Exactly.”

They ordered—Claire just wanted soup and salad, but Rich went for the salmon. He had worked hard and was hungry for a real meal.

As soon as the waitress left, he turned to Claire and asked, “How’s this latest case going?”

“You know, for once I’d rather not talk about it. My head is bursting and I’d like to just have a pleasant meal with you. I’ll probably call you at one tonight and want to talk, but right now I need food.” She pulled her hair back from her face and stretched her neck.

He reached up and rubbed her neck. She pushed into his hand and he could feel how tight she was. “Listen, my timing wasn’t good last night.”

She pulled away from him and took his hand in hers, squeezing it. “Rich, your timing was fine. I forget that you don’t really understand the nature of my job. You know, Steve and I were together so long and we got married before I was even on the force. My police work was part of the fabric of our marriage. It was a given. Sure, he didn’t like it sometimes when it interfered with plans we had, but hey, I didn’t like it either.”

She paused and then looked around the room as if she were trying to sort out where she was. “It’s much easier down here in Pepin County. My life is much more predictable than it was in Minneapolis. But these incidents—the stolen pesticides, the poisonings—this is bad. This is as bad as it gets. This guy is holding the whole county hostage, and we’ve got to find him quick.”

She paused and so he quickly said, “I agree with that. I wouldn’t stand in your way.”

“No, I know, but I need to focus all my wits and desires in order to figure this out. I need to stop this man. And I can’t think about anything else. I probably shouldn’t even be here having dinner with you, but a girl’s got to eat.”

“Why don’t we just table it?”

“Really?” She sounded so hopeful.

“Yeah, pretend it didn’t happen until you have your mind and your desires back, especially your desires.”

A blond waitress placed the salads that came with their meals in front of each of them. They thanked her.

Claire laughed. “This looks great. I’m hungry.”

“That’s a good sign. My mom told me to mention a guy named Carl Wahlund to you. She said she remembered people suspecting him of coveting his neighbor’s possessions.”

“I’m on it.”

CHAPTER 17

Even driving slightly over the speed limit, Claire was ten minutes late getting back to the sheriff’s department. When she walked into the meeting room, she was glad to see only familiar faces look up at her. The DCI agents hadn’t arrived yet.

The sheriff was writing on the white board at the front of the room. He loved using the board and he was good at it. He could have been an elementary school teacher. He had
Schuler Murders
written at the top of the board and underlined, then halfway down the board:
July 1st: Pesticides Stolen.
He was writing something else below that.

“Anything new?” she asked.

“Relatively quiet here today,” the sheriff answered.

They were all on tenterhooks, waiting to see if the pesticide man would decide to destroy anything else today. She wasn’t sure if she should feel relieved that so far he hadn’t. It could be happening as they were meeting.

Claire sat down next to Harold Peabody and whispered, “I talked to Carl Wahlund.”

“What did he have to say for himself?”

“He told me about Theo Lindstrom.”

Harold pursed his lips. “One thing you should know. Those two never got along. Since they were kids.”

“Who? Lindstrom and Schuler?”

“No, Lindstrom and Wahlund.”

“Why didn’t they get along?”

“Who knows how far back it goes? Those two were at each other all the time growing up. But it got worse as they got older. When the war broke out, Wahlund didn’t join up right at first. He stayed home and farmed. Lindstrom called him a coward on more than one occasion.”

“So you think he might have been trying to pin the murder on Lindstrom to get back at him?”

Harold thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t put it past Wahlund, although why he’d bother now with Lindstrom long dead I’d be hard put to say. There probably was some truth to whatever he told you.”

As always Claire was astonished by how the lives of the people in Pepin County swirled around each other. Most of the people who lived in the county had lived there all their lives. They had been kids together, grown up together, fought for and against each other, loved each other. There was no easy way to read what went on between any two of them. Their history was so deep, it was hard to plumb.

Two men came to the door. It was obvious they were the agents sent from Madison. For one thing, Claire didn’t know them. For another, they wore suits, not uniforms. And finally, the taller of the two had darker skin than even Carl Wahlund’s, and it wasn’t from sitting out for a thousand hours under the sun.

They came in and Sheriff Talbert introduced them to everyone. “Agent Sean Tyrone and Agent Phil Singer.” Phil Singer was short, with frizzy blond hair and a wide face that made him look surprised. Sean Tyrone was at least six feet tall but quite slim, dark chocolate complexion and a pair of Malcolm X glasses. Claire wondered which one of them was the leader and which the follower.

Singer spoke up and said, “Sorry we’re late. Traffic was bad on Ninety. We’re mainly here tonight to hear where you’re at with this case. I will serve as the liaison to the forensic labs at DCI. Tyrone will work with your investigator coordinating the investigaton. But we’re here to help you out. Just let us know what you need.”

Sheriff Talbert filled them in on what had been happening in Pepin County since the first of July. He did it by talking and writing on the white board as he went. The two men listened and wrote and asked questions.

Talbert asked Scott Lund and Billy Peterson to summarize their interviews with the people who were at the park last night.

Scott stood up and began his report. “Nothing seems out of the ordinary. The couple of people who weren’t from the area turned out to be relatives of people we know. From what we could gather today and from the interviews last night, it appears that whoever did this was from around here. There were no strangers unaccounted for.” He resumed his seat.

The sheriff turned the meeting over to Claire, explaining, “I’ve done the overview, but Claire Watkins is in on all the particulars. She’s been out in the field all day long and I haven’t even had a chance to touch base with her. What have you learned?”

“Well, this isn’t all just from today,” Claire said as she rose to her feet, “but what I’d like to add to what Sheriff Talbert has laid out here is that we’re dealing with two separate crimes. The first happened nearly fifty years ago. Many of the people who have information about it are dead or gone. But I think in order to hope to catch whoever is doing the most recent series of crimes, we’ll have to understand what happened to the Schulers. If not solve the murders, at least understand how they impacted this community. However, there is a very good chance that our pesticide guy is also the Schuler killer.”

Tyrone raised his head and Claire nodded at him. “Why not just focus on what’s at hand and try to catch the perp like you would anyone who steals something?”

“Because I don’t think we have the time. I’m afraid that this guy is counting down to the seventh of this month, which is the fiftieth anniversary of the Schuler murders. I don’t think the forensic evidence is going to come back fast enough or that there will be anything significant if it does. He was careful. If he is the killer, he’s been planning this for a long, long time.

“Let me tell you what I know about the bones. Sheriff Talbert mentioned the bones that have been found at the scene of every crime. Although we do not yet have the forensic support to prove it, they are most probably the smallest digits from each member of the Schuler family. Therefore, whoever is doing this ended up with the bones. This probably means that he is the murderer. Although the note that he sent to the newspaper makes it sound as if he is
not
the murderer, since he is demanding that the truth come out and would probably not need to make this demand if he knew who had killed them.”

Claire walked up to the white board, where she wrote three names. As she began to speak, she pointed to the first one. “There are three men who have been mentioned as possible suspects in the Schuler murders. The first is Carl Wahlund. He was in love with Bertha Schuler before she married Otto Schuler. He, in turn, married her sister, which meant that when the whole Schuler family died, he, or rather his wife, inherited their farm. Which gives him two reasons to kill them all—revenge and greed. Both valid reasons. Carl Wahlund is still alive.”

Claire pointed at the next name on her list. “Then there is Theo Lindstrom, their next-door neighbor who was in a land dispute with Otto Schuler. More important, Theo never liked Schuler. Theo had fought during the war in Germany and came back with a huge grudge against all Germans. He has been described as never having gotten over the war. However, Theo Lindstrom died twenty years ago, so we will learn no more from him.”

Then she pointed at the last name. “Finally, there’s Earl Lowman. This man is still alive. He was the first person on the scene at the Schuler murders. He was a deputy sheriff for this county, but was very new to his job at the time. I don’t see him as quite as strong a contender for being the murderer. Still, one always has to look at the first person on the scene as a suspect.”

Singer lifted his pencil, eraser tip pointing at the board. “How did he happen to go there? Had he been called there? Was he there as a deputy?”

“No, he was a neighbor and had borrowed a tool from the Schulers. He had stopped by to return it when he discovered the bodies. He’s still alive—living down in Tucson. I’ve been trying to reach him today, but so far no luck.” She paused in reflection. “I suppose there is a chance he’s here in Pepin County.”

Claire sat down on the edge of the table and looked at everyone. “The problem is, these three men were certainly scrutinized at the time, and I don’t think we know anything that the sheriff’s men didn’t know then.”

The light was fading gently on the horizon. At this time of year, the sun was almost setting in the north. He didn’t think anyone could see him from the house, but he didn’t want to take any chances. Until it got dark, he would sit in the tall grass at the edge of the field and bide his time.

He liked hiding at the edge of the field. It reminded him of when he was a kid and had hidden from his father.

He had learned early on that when his father was in one of his moods, it was best to give him a wide berth. Wherever he was, when he heard a certain mean tone of voice coming from his father, he disappeared. He hid behind the woodpile, he hid in the laundry hamper, he hid behind the furnace. He had hidey-holes scattered all over the farm. After a few hours it would be safe to come out. His mother would have made dinner; his father would calm down again.

It had served him well, this ability to disappear.

He had spelled it out in his latest letter. He wanted the sheriff’s deputies to know that he would never forget that they had not done their job. But he felt it wasn’t enough. It had to do with the numbers. Seven people had died, but it had never seemed right to him. Eight was a better number—it was even, and he had always equated evenness with good. An odd number was a hungry number, waiting for one more.

He kept track of everyone who died. He had since he was young. Every year he wrote down the total of the people who had died in the county. Last year, twenty-eight people had died. It was a high year, but nowadays more people lived in the county. You had to keep that in mind.

One summer he tried to count the stars. No one had told him you couldn’t do it. He worked on it for nights, mapping out the sky, working on a section at a time, but the sky moved. He never told anyone what he was doing. Finally, after a couple of months, he gave up.

The next year, in high school, he learned that it was impossible. The teacher told them about the layers of stars on stars, the possibility of the universe being shaped like a saddle, the concept of infinity, and he had felt like he was looking down a well that had no bottom.

The light had leaked from the sky. It was time for him to make his delivery. He stood up in the field and walked down to the house. The new people who had the house had worked hard on it. He hoped it would be their house someday. They deserved it. The house was not bad. It was just what happened in it.

He had brought the bones back to where they had been severed from their bodies.

As he walked up to the house, he saw a little girl sitting on the front steps with a kitty in her arms. The kitty was sprawled against her and she was waving its tail back and forth under her nose. They both seemed quite happy.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Jilly.”

She didn’t seem afraid of him. He was surprised she wasn’t in bed yet. Her light brown hair hung to her shoulders in a cloud of soft curls. How easy it would be to take her by the hand and walk away with her. But that wasn’t in his plans. He would let her be. She could be his messenger.

He handed her the tin.

“For me?” She smiled at him. “Can I open it?”

“Sure,” he said.

He watched as she attempted to pry open the tin. It was pretty stuck together, but she seemed determined. He was sure she would get it open. At least it would keep her busy for a while. Before anyone else came out and found him standing there, he slipped away into the starlit night.

Sitting on the front steps of her house, Claire could feel a light breeze picking up. It felt like good sleeping weather. She was exhausted. She had to get up early to beat the boys from Madison into work. She felt that old competitive edge creeping into her life. The one she really needed to beat was the man behind all this.

When the phone rang, she wished she didn’t have to answer it. She had talked to Meg a few minutes earlier and there was no one else she wanted to talk to. It was probably work.

Claire answered, “Watkins.”

“He was here,” a woman’s voice shouted at her over the phone.

“Who is this?” Claire asked, not recognizing the voice, not knowing what the woman was talking about.

“You need to come up here. This is Celia Daniels. He was here, I don’t know how long ago. He handed—in person—handed Jilly a tin full of bones. I found her outside playing with them.”

Claire turned and hit the door with her hand. “Who was it? Did she recognize him?”

“All Jilly can tell me was that it was a man and he was wearing a hat. She’s so little. I’m trying not to scare her.”

“Have you called the sheriff?”

“No, I called you first.”

“I’ll be right there. Is your husband home?”

“Yes, he was already sleeping. I just woke him up.”

“Lock the doors. Stay put until we arrive. Don’t try to find him. He might still be there and he might be dangerous.”

After calling the sheriff and asking him to meet her at the Danielses’, Claire decided not to waste the time putting her uniform on. She knew it was against the regulations, but time was of the essence. She grabbed her keys, slung her gun and holster over her shoulder, jumped into her car, and sped up the hill. She made it to the Danielses’ in nine minutes.

When she got out of the car, she stood quietly for a moment or two. She listened. He could still be close by. He could be watching to see what would happen. She had her hand on her gun.

An owl hooted from the edge of the field. She could make out a bat or two flying in the light on the barn, feeding on the insects that circled there.

Celia Daniels stuck her head out the door. “Thanks for coming so fast.”

“You’re welcome.” Claire walked toward her. “Jilly still up?”

“Yes, but she’s getting ready for bed.”

Claire wanted to talk to Jilly before the little girl went to sleep and forgot everything she might have noticed about the man. Celia presented her to Claire. The little girl’s face was scrubbed to a soft pink and she was wearing dinosaur pajamas.

“Nice pajamas,” Claire said.

“My best pajamas,” Jilly told her.

“She’ll hardly wear anything else,” Celia said, patting her daughter on the head.

Claire sat down on the floor so she was the same height as the little girl. “Jilly, I’d like to ask you some questions about the man who was here.”