See Also Murder (26 page)

Hank turned his head toward me and flashed a scowl that he reserved for Raymond's name. “He's a stuffy asshole, Marjorie. He does nothing but look down his nose at you. I'm blind and I can see that. Why on earth would you be worried about him?”

A show of Hank's temper had been as rare as a snowy owl sighting in July—or Hilo cussing in front of me. It took a great deal of effort for Hank to physically express any deep emotion, much less speak it. I could count the times he'd cussed in my presence on my right hand since we'd been married. Most of those had been an occasional “shit” or “damn” here or there. He reserved that kind of talk when he was among the men, when they gathered off to themselves, out working in the barn or field, hunting, fishing, and the like. I knew they had their own secret language, their own way of expressing themselves when they thought they were out of earshot of women, but the North Dakota wind was strong. It carried voices farther than most people realized, or cared. Isolation grew to be a comfort. You got used to having no one around, not looking over your shoulder or listening in on your conversations.

“Raymond is family,” I said.

“To you,” Hank replied, then turned his head away from me so I couldn't see his face.

An old silence settled between us. Hank hated it that Raymond was an academic snob who belittled other people who were not from the same station in life as he was. I had the same issues, but I was accustomed to that tension. It had existed between my father and his sister, Aunt Gilda, Raymond's mother—a constant competition, a one-upmanship about who was smarter, richer, happier. I was so accustomed to the division between Raymond and me in my family that I rarely noticed it, though Raymond never missed an opportunity to remind me that I hadn't finished college and that I was in no way qualified to do the work that I was doing. Imagine, an indexer, educated by the United States Department of Agriculture, not classically schooled in the library sciences at all? I was a joke to Raymond. I knew it, and for the most part I had not cared. Out of sight, out of mind. I was happy to do my work on the farm and not think a wit about Raymond's snobbery.

Hank, on the other hand, had a little Irish in him and was prone to hold a grudge. I stared at the back of his head, and my throat quivered with the words as they rose upward. “He didn't mean to,” I whispered.

Hank's face snapped back to me quicker than I'd seen it move since the accident. Fire was blazing in his blind eyes. I knew what he was seeing. I knew the memory, the vision replaying in his mind.

“Yes, he did, and you know it, Marjie. He killed that dog on purpose.”

I didn't reply, didn't want to ignite an old argument, an old wound, but it was too late for that. Hank was lost to the past. He was stiff, tense, twisting inside himself the best he could. In my imagination, I saw him fighting to get out of a briar patch. With my eyes, I saw him lying in bed motionless, his eye tooth clamped down on his bottom lip so hard I feared he would draw blood.

Shep, like so many farm dogs, was one of many, a long line of animals brought onto the land to perform a single job, who before long had wormed their way into every aspect of daily life. Including emotional life. It was easy to love a smart dog, a good dog, a dog who knew how to read you better than you could read yourself. It was easy to come to rely on them, to believe they were as invincible as you. And then one day, you found out differently. Dogs were mortal, too, like everything else on the farm, susceptible to pain, illness, accidents, and sudden death.

The knowledge of two things came early to those of us born to the land: Sex and death. A ram jumping a ewe was a common sight growing up—so common that by the time a natural curiosity about sex was supposed to arise, it was already accepted, a known act that seemed as natural and necessary as breathing. If only death were as easy.

Hank had a border collie before we married. The dog was a bit bigger than Shep, and was as wise as any farm dog I'd ever known. Loving, too. Hank's dog was affectionate in a way that broke down a crusty young farmer's walls, made him forget for a time that dogs lived short lives in comparison to humans. The two were inseparable, one always inside the shadow of the other—except, of course, inside the house. Even then, Hank put his foot down, wouldn't let a working animal live inside our four walls.

One day, not long after we were married, Raymond came to visit. He drove his mother out to the farm to deliver a wedding gift, since she'd been on a trip to Rome at the time of our ceremony.

It was an uncomfortable visit from the start. Hank had little tolerance for taking time out of the day to just sit and drink a cup of tea, but he did it for me. He'd always been shy around town folk, but the college people really set him on edge. Hank could read a book well enough, but it was never an exercise he'd sought out for pleasure. He'd rather watch a mushroom rise and bloom out than engage himself in a story.

Raymond and Aunt Gilda were dressed to the nines and not accustomed to soiling their shiny shoes with the mud of a farm. They didn't stay long, and when they went to leave Hank's dog started barking his fool head off. The dog circled Raymond's car, and no matter how hard he tried Hank couldn't call him off. Without regard for the dog, Raymond gunned the engine and drove straight out the drive. He ran over the dog, sent him reeling into the field, and didn't bother to stop.

It broke Hank's heart to see that dog hurt, and it was even harder to watch him hold him in his arms as life slipped away. I learned the depth of Hank's love for months after as he moped around, grieved by the loss. To this day, he couldn't speak the dog's name without tearing up.

Thor. The dog's name was Thor. My mind instantly tried to make a connection between the dog's name and Loki, Balder, and Odin—the Norse mythology described on the amulet. I knew little of the details, but I knew that Thor was Odin's son, and Loki and Odin were blood-brothers. There was a link there. The link of an uncle, but not by blood.

It hadn't occurred to me until that very moment that Raymond had killed Thor a long, long time ago, though it seemed just like yesterday. I was starting to get an uneasy feeling about everything that had happened recently. A feeling that I didn't want to consider possible, but come the light of day, I knew I would have to investigate, whether I wanted to or not.

CHAPTER 30

The night settled in quietly. Hank calmed down, and we both went about the chore of getting ready to end another day. I ignored the box of page proofs and the fact that Duke Parsons was still parked in front of the house, offering as much protection to us as he could. Deep down, I knew if someone really wanted to get inside, to hurt us, they would. Plain and simple. They would. Nothing would stop them. The world had shown me that much in recent days. Safety was just an illusion for us all.

I worried about Peter and Jaeger as I saw to the pigs and chickens. I secured them against predators for the night, with Shep at my heels and the .22 in my possession, always within reach. It was the first time in my life that I was concerned about the location of a gun while I went about my chores.

I was certain, especially knowing that there had been another murder, that I would be more focused in my aim if I had to use the rifle again. I still didn't know if I could shoot to kill a human being, but I was confident that I would shoot to bring a killer to a stop. I'd shoot to maim, at the very least.

I didn't tell Hank about my encounter on the way home from Hilo's. He'd had enough excitement for one day. No use telling him that I'd felt threatened, scared enough to fire a rifle at a car in the dark. He knew I took such a thing seriously. It would only be one more incident to remind him of his inability as a husband to protect me, that he couldn't look out for me, keep me from harm, any more than he could have saved Thor or Ardith from the tragedies that had befallen them.

I had saved a bit of lefse and sausage for our supper, but neither of us could eat much. I think we said two words to each other before the darkness of the night grew deep and impenetrable. Finally, I locked the doors and windows, turned on the fan, and slid into bed next to Hank. He was already fast asleep, or acted like he was.

I was tempted to snuggle up against him, hold him, and pretend that he was holding me, but I couldn't force away the reality of our life, of our current situation.

We both had reason to be unsettled, afraid of what would come next. I had always thought that feeling would go away as an adult, that the unknown would become known, that sadness and pain would become easier to handle, but I was wrong. It grew harder by the day— by the night, to be more honest.

Instead of cuddling, I lay next to Hank, shoulder to shoulder, and stared up at the ceiling, trying to imagine stars and galaxies, but all I could see in my mind was a field of dead, bloody sheep. Silent, and too many to count.

I could only wonder what Lida Knudsen had been thinking about on that last night she went to sleep, the night her life had been taken from her so unmercifully. I could only wonder, because I had no way of knowing, and I knew I never would.

Sleep came in fits and turns. I was used to the window being open, to the caress of the breeze and the comforting sounds that only came alive in the dark; the ubiquitous cricket sawing its legs, a distant owl hooting for its mate, the late train pulling out of Dickinson, the whistle low and sad. Now there was nothing but the whirl of wind generated by a gray metal fan aimed up at the ceiling. I feared Hank would catch a cold if it was pointed directly at the bed. I always feared a cold, pneumonia. It would be the death of him.

Finally, I couldn't take the stuffiness, the rolling thoughts in my head, the forced desire to sleep, to rest, to retreat, to escape. Unable to reach any of it, I got up and made my way quietly to my office.

It was the middle of the night. Shep followed me to the bedroom door, stopped, and lay down, so that he was exactly in the middle of Hank and I. It was a low level of protection, but it came out of instinct, out of love, and that simple act, by our one and only dog, comforted me.

My feet ached from my time in heels. Practice for the coming days, when dress shoes would be required more often than not. I could hardly wear muck boots to a funeral home, but the thought flittered through my mind. Lida wouldn't have minded.

I glanced over at the parcel from New York on my desk, then went straight to the window, and peeked through the curtains. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the light. The moon was still in its new phase, leaving the sky black and wide, poked with tips of distant silver stars. A thumbnail of light would appear in a few days. The moon would rise and fall in its waxing crescent phase, offering a bit of light to navigate by, but for now, there was nothing. Nothing but the orange glow of Duke Parsons' cigarette against black velvet. I took a little comfort in that, too. At least he was awake, still alive.

I looked over my shoulder and saw that my purse was right where I left it: on my desk next to the box of page proofs. I took another quick look back outside just to make sure everything looked like it was supposed to. Thankfully, it did.

I dug into my purse after my Salems and matches, listening intently as I went. I felt like a teenager sneaking a smoke behind the barn, afraid I was going to be caught by my parents. Hank hated the idea of cigarette smoke inside the house more than he was against the presence of a dog, but there was no way I was stepping out the door in my nightdress. I might wake Hank, or encounter Duke. Either way, it wasn't an option that I wanted to consider. I'd just crack the window and blow smoke out as directly as I could.

It wasn't that I had forgotten that the amulet was stuffed in my purse. I think I had just pushed the possession of it from my mind and didn't want to consider its existence, especially inside my own house. I should have been more insistent with Hilo, shoved it into his hands, but my heart wouldn't allow such an act. I could have no more forced the amulet onto Hilo any more than he would have forced the possession of it on me. I had accepted it, taken on the responsibility and task of finding out what it meant, seeing if I could help find out what had happened to Erik and Lida and why. So far, I had run into dead ends. I no more knew why the killer had left the amulet in Erik's hand than where the moon was hiding in the sky.

I sat the cigarettes down, picked up the amulet, then unwrapped it, keeping the linen over my palm. I didn't want it to touch my skin like it had Erik's.

There was a simple beauty to the amulet that I'd overlooked before. The copper held no patina, showed no age. It was polished, clean, so much so that it glimmered in the dim light of my office. I traced the lightning bolt with my index finger, then over the three runes that rimmed the copper edge.

Each of the runes represented characters—Fenris, the Midgard serpent, and the goddess Hel—but it was the depiction of Thor in the middle of the amulet that captured my attention. I knew the piece of jewelry had nothing to do with Hank's dog, but I couldn't help but connect the two in my mind.

I covered the amulet back up and put it back in my purse, out of my sight, away from my touch. It had felt cold, but warmed quickly like it wanted to be warmer, come alive. My imagination was tempted to outrun rational thought. I knew better. The amulet was nothing more than jewelry, and the marks depicted on it were nothing more than a story. A simple story cast down from the ages that had absolutely nothing to do with the present. Or did they?

I knew Sir Nigel's book was more important, at least to my bank account, to my future and to Hank's, but I had to be alive to see to those tasks. Alive not dead. I had feared for my life out in the dark, on the way back from Hilo's. I was certain that the killer had come for me, was bearing down on me like a hawk swooping after a jackrabbit.

Now that I was home, I knew I had to find him before he found me. Hilo was helpless, and from what I'd seen and heard everyone else around was either unable or too shell-shocked to put two and two together.