A Simple Plan (38 page)

M
ARY
B
ETH
slept the whole way out to the farm, curled up in a ball on the backseat.

The weather didn’t change. A fine drizzle fell from the sky, dissolving into the mist. Houses materialized around me as I drove, ghostlike beside the road, surrounded by barns and silos and outbuildings, their colors bleached, their eaves dripping, old cars parked haphazardly about their yards. The ground had already begun to appear in places, dark, muddy clumps rising like gloved fists through the snow; in some fields there were whole lines of them, marching parallel into the distance, the remnants of last year’s furrows, their termini hidden by the fog.

When I reached the farm, the dog refused to climb out of the car. I opened the door for him, and he backed away from me, growling and baring his teeth, his hair rising along his neck. I had to drag him out by the clothesline.

He shook himself when he hit the ground, stretched, then jogged off ahead of me into the field.

I followed him, holding the rope in my left hand and the shovel in my right. The pistol was holstered beneath my belt.

The snow was melting rapidly, but it was still deep enough in places to rise up over my boots. It was heavy and wet, like white clay, and difficult to move through. My pant legs grew dark with its moisture, clinging to my calves so that I looked like I was wearing knickers and knee socks. The drizzle drifted down from the sky, falling lightly on my head and shoulders and sending a chill across my back.

I flipped up the collar on my parka. Mary Beth moved in a zigzag course before me, sniffing at the snow. His tail was wagging.

We headed out into the center of the field, toward the spot where my father’s house had once stood. His windmill was off to the left, barely visible in the mist, its blades dripping water into the snow.

I stopped near where I thought our front stoop should’ve been and dropped the clothesline and the shovel to the ground. I stepped on the rope with my boot, to keep the dog from running away. Then I removed the pistol from my waistband.

Mary Beth started to jog back toward the road but only got about ten feet away before the clothesline went taut and he had to stop. Beyond him, our tracks were dark and round in the snow, two wobbly lines connecting us with the station wagon at the edge of the road. There was an ominous quality to the view; the fog seemed to deny us retreat, to form a thick gray-white wall just beyond the car, imprisoning us in the muddy field. It was like a drawing from a book of fairy tales, full of hidden threat and terror, and I got a peculiar feeling looking at it, something close to fear.

Carl could be dead right now, I knew. I wanted to believe that he wasn’t, that, having spent the morning walking aimlessly around the woods, they were already heading back toward town, but my mind wouldn’t let me. Against my will, I kept picturing the wreck. The snow would’ve melted from it: it would be impossible to miss. I could see it in my head, could see the crows, the wizened trees. I could see Vernon very calmly—so that the gesture seemed perfectly innocuous—pulling a pistol from beneath his jacket and shooting Carl in the head. I could see Carl falling, could see his blood in the snow. The birds would fly up at the sound of the shot. Their cries would echo off the side of the orchard.

I bungled the shooting of the dog, transformed what I’d planned to be an act of mercy into one of torture.

I got behind him and aimed at the back of his neck, but he spun toward me just as I pulled the trigger. The bullet hit him in the lower jaw, breaking it so that it hung down from his head at a grotesque angle. He fell onto his side, whimpering. His tongue was severed; blood poured from his mouth.

When he tried to rise to his feet, I fired again, in panic. This time I hit him in the rib cage, just below the shoulder. He rolled over onto his side in the snow, his legs jerking out straight and freezing like that, rigid against the ground. His chest heaved in and out with a deep bubbling sound. For a moment I thought that it would be enough, that he was going to die, but then he started to struggle upward again, and a frightening sound emerged from his throat, something closer to a scream than a bark. It went on and on and on, rising and dipping in volume.

I stepped forward and straddled his body. I was sweating now, my hands slick with it, trembling. I placed the gun’s barrel against the top of his head. I shut my eyes, my stomach rising into my throat, and pulled the trigger.

There was a sharp crack, a muffled echo, and then silence.

The rain increased slightly, growing into full-size drops, riddling the snow.

Mary Beth’s body was outlined in blood, a large, pink circle around his head and shoulders. It gave me a guilty feeling to look at it. I thought of my father, how he’d refused to slaughter animals on his farm, persisting in this compunction year after year despite the disdain and derision it had earned him among his neighbors. And now I’d violated his taboo.

I stepped away from the dog, wiped my face with the back of my sleeve. The mist hung all about me, blocking out the world.

I picked up the shovel and started to dig. The ground was soft on top, wet and muddy, but this only lasted for about ten inches; then it was as if I were attempting to dig through a slab of concrete. The shovel’s blade made a ringing sound each time I brought it down; the earth was frozen solid. I used my boots, kicking at the dirt, but nothing happened: I could go no deeper. If I was going to bury the dog here—which I had to, there was no way I could carry his bloody corpse back to the car—it would have to be in a ten-inch grave.

I grabbed Mary Beth by his legs and dragged him into the hole. Then I scraped the dirt back over him. There was barely enough to cover his body; I had to finish the job with snow, piling it up until I’d built a little mound. It was something that wouldn’t last, I knew. If an animal didn’t dig it up by the spring, then George Muller, the man who owned the farm now, would uncover it when he plowed the field. I felt a pang of remorse over this, imagining what Jacob would’ve thought if he could’ve seen how inadequate it was. I’d failed my brother even here.

I
CRIED
on the way home, for the first time since Jacob’s apartment. I’m not sure even now what prompted it. It was a little bit of everything, I suppose—it was Carl and Jacob and Mary Beth and Sonny and Lou and Nancy and Pederson and my parents and Sarah and myself. I tried to stop, tried to think of Amanda, and how she’d never know about any of it, how she’d grow up, surrounded by all the benefits of our crimes without any of the pain, but it seemed impossible to believe, a fantasy, the happy-ever-after ending of a fairy tale. We’d romanticized the future, I realized, and this added a further weight to my grief, a sense of futility and waste. Our new lives were going to be nothing like we’d imagined: we were going to lead a hard, fugitive existence, full of lies and subterfuge and the constant threat of getting caught. And we’d never escape what we’d done; our sins would follow us to our graves.

I had to pull over onto the edge of the road before I entered Fort Ottowa and wait for my tears to run their course. I didn’t want Sarah to know that I’d been crying.

B
Y THE
time I returned to the house, it was almost noon. I hung the shovel on its hook in the garage, then went inside. I was muddy, cold. My face felt bloated from weeping, my hands weak and shaky.

Sarah called out to me from the living room.

“It’s me,” I yelled. “I’m home.”

I heard her stand up to come greet me, but then the phone began to ring, and she went into the kitchen instead.

I’d just finished taking off my boots when she leaned her head out into the hallway. “It’s for you, Hank,” she said.

“Who is it?” I whispered, moving toward her.

“He didn’t say.”

I remembered how Carl had promised to telephone me when he returned from the nature preserve, and I felt a surge of relief. “Is it Carl?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He would’ve asked about the baby.”

She was right, and I knew it, but I still allowed myself to hope. I went into the kitchen and picked up the phone, expecting to hear his voice.

“Hello?” I said.

“Mr. Mitchell?”

“Yes?”

“This is Sheriff McKellroy, of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department. I was wondering if you’d be able to come on into Ashenville for a bit, so that we could ask you a few questions.”

“Questions?”

“We could send a cruiser if you wanted, but it’d be easier if you could just drive in yourself. We’re kind of strapped for manpower right now.”

“Can I ask what this is all about?”

Sheriff McKellroy hesitated, as if unsure what he should say. “It’s about Officer Jenkins. Carl Jenkins. He’s been shot.”

“Shot?” I said, and the horror and regret in my voice were genuine. Only the surprise was counterfeit.

“Yes. Murdered.”

“Oh, my God. I can’t believe it—I saw him just this morning.”

“Actually, that’s what we’d like to talk—”

Someone on the other end interrupted the sheriff, and I heard him put his hand over the phone. Sarah stood across the kitchen, watching me. The baby was beginning to cry a little in the other room, but she ignored her.

“Mr. Mitchell?” McKellroy’s voice returned.

“Yes?”

“Did you meet a man named Neal Baxter yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes,” I said. “From the FBI.”

“Did he show you any identification?”

“Identification?”

“A badge? A picture ID?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Could you describe him for me?”

“He was tall. Maybe six-four or so. Broad shouldered. Black hair, cut short. I can’t remember what color his eyes were.”

“Do you remember what he was wearing?”

“Today?”

“Yes.”

“An overcoat. A dark suit. Black leather shoes.”

“And did you see his car?”

“I saw it this morning. I saw him climb out of it.”

“Do you remember what it looked like?”

“It was blue, four doors, like a rental car. I didn’t see the plates.”

“Do you know the make?”

“No,” I said. “It was a sedan, kind of boxy, like a Buick or something, but I didn’t notice the specific make.”

“That’s all right. We’ll probably show you some pictures when you get in, and maybe we’ll be able to identify it from that. Can you come right away? We’re at the town hall.”

“I still don’t understand what happened.”

“It’s probably best if you just wait till you get here. Do you need us to send a cruiser?”

“No. I can drive myself.”

“And you’ll come quick?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll leave right now.”

11

I
TOOK
the pistol out of the car before I left and put it in the garage. It didn’t seem like something I’d want to have with me when I spoke with the police.

The rain was still falling, an icy drizzle, but I could tell that it was going to stop soon. The sky was lighter; the air was growing colder. The fields alongside the road were quilted brown and white.

Ashenville was abuzz with activity. Two television crews—one from Channel 11 and one from Channel 24—were busy assembling their cameras on the sidewalk. Several police cars were pulled up in front of the town hall. The street was crowded with gawkers.

I parked a little ways down the block.

There was a policeman standing at the foot of the town hall steps, and at first he wouldn’t let me by. Then one of the wooden doors opened above us, and a short, pudgy man leaned out.

“You Hank Mitchell?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He held out his hand, and I climbed up the steps to shake it. “I’m Sheriff McKellroy,” he said. “We spoke on the phone.”

He led me inside. He was very small, and he waddled when he walked. He had a wan, pasty face, and short, colorless hair that smelled strongly of hair tonic, as if he’d come here directly from a barbershop.

Carl’s office was packed with policemen. They all seemed very busy, as if they were under some sort of deadline. No one looked up when we came in. I recognized one of the deputies from when Jacob had been shot. He was the one with the farm boy’s face, the one who’d dropped off Mary Beth at my house. He was at Linda’s desk, talking to someone on the phone.

“Collins!” Sheriff McKellroy yelled. “Take Mr. Mitchell’s statement.”

One of the policemen stepped forward, a tall man, older looking than McKellroy, with a lean, grizzled face and a cigarette in his mouth. He escorted me back out into the hallway, where it was quieter.

The idea of giving a statement to the police made me nervous, but it turned out to be a remarkably simple affair. I just told him my story, and he wrote it down. There was no interrogation, no third degree. He didn’t even seem particularly interested in what I had to say.

I started almost three months earlier, at the end of December. I told him how I’d heard a plane with engine trouble out by the nature preserve, how I’d mentioned it to Carl, and how—since there’d been nothing in the news about a missing airplane—he’d said it was probably a false alarm.

“I didn’t think anything about it,” I said, “until yesterday afternoon, when Carl called me over as I was leaving work. There was a man from the FBI in his office, and he was looking for a missing plane.”

“That was Agent Baxter?” Collins asked.

“That’s right. Neal Baxter.”

He wrote this down. “Did he say why he was searching for the plane?”

“He said it had a fugitive in it.”

“A fugitive?”

“Someone the FBI was looking for.”

“He didn’t say who?”

I shook my head. “I asked, but they wouldn’t tell me.”

“They?”

“He and Carl.”

“So Officer Jenkins knew?”

“I think so. That’s what it seemed like.”

He scribbled this down. Then he flipped to a clean page in the notebook. “You met them again this morning?”

“That’s right. We’d planned to go out around nine o’clock to look for the plane, but my wife called just as we were leaving and said that our daughter was throwing up. So I went home instead.”

“And that was the last you saw of either Officer Jenkins or Agent Baxter?”

I nodded. “They drove off, and I went home.”

Collins scanned his pad, rereading what I’d told him. He underlined something, then closed the notebook.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

“You haven’t heard?”

“Just that Carl’s been murdered.”

“He was shot by this man who was looking for the plane.”

“Agent Baxter?”

“That’s right.”

“But why?”

Collins shrugged. “All we know is what you and Mrs. Jenkins have told us: Officer Jenkins left town with Baxter around nine-fifteen. Just after eleven o’clock, Mrs. Jenkins looked out her window here and saw Baxter pull up, alone, in her husband’s truck. He parked it across the street, walked back to his own car, and drove away. She called her house, thinking that her husband might’ve been dropped off there, but got no answer, so she decided to drive out to the nature preserve herself and see what was going on. When she arrived at the park, she found their tracks in the snow and just followed them in. They went on for about a half mile through the trees and stopped beside the wreckage of a small plane. That’s where she found her husband’s body.”

“Linda found him herself?” I asked, horrified by the thought of this.

He nodded. “Then she ran back to the road and called us on the radio.”

“But why would he have shot Carl?”

Collins seemed to debate for a second. He slid his pen into his shirt pocket. “Baxter didn’t mention anything to you about some missing money?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Nothing.”

“Mrs. Jenkins said he told her husband there was four million dollars on the plane.”

“Four million dollars?” I stared incredulously at him.

“That’s what she claims.”

“So he shot Carl for the money?”

“We aren’t sure—Baxter may have been lying. He said it came from an armored-car robbery in Chicago last July, but we can’t find any record of that. All we know is that it had something to do with the plane. Beyond this, it’s anyone’s guess.”

C
OLLINS
left me, to show my statement to Sheriff McKellroy. I wasn’t sure if I could go yet—the sheriff had said that I might have to look at some pictures to identify Vernon’s car—so I just stuck around. They’d brought some folding chairs into Carl’s outer office, and I took one and sat down by the window. The farm boy nodded hello when I came in with Collins, but after that no one paid me any attention. Someone had brought in a police radio, which hissed and sputtered in the corner. There was a large map tacked up on the wall, and sometimes Sheriff McKellroy would go over and draw a line on it.

They were hunting for Vernon, I knew, tracking him down.

Outside, the crowd had grown. People were pulling up in cars. Both of the TV crews were filming interviews—Channel 11 with a state policeman, Channel 24 with Cyrus Stahl, Ashenville’s octogenarian mayor. The weather was clearing, and the town had taken on a festive air. People were talking in large groups. Some children had gotten out their bikes and were racing up and down the street. Little boys peered inside the parked police cars, their hands cupped to the windows.

The rain had stopped, and a wind had sprung up from the north, gusting now and then in cold little shocks of air that made the flag above the town hall snap and flutter, its lanyard clanking hollowly against the aluminum pole, like the distant tolling of a bell. The flag had been dropped to half-mast, in mourning for Carl.

I’d been sitting there for almost an hour and was staring out the window in a daze when the room behind me seemed to explode in a rush of movement.

“Where’s Mitchell?” I heard the sheriff yell. “He go home?”

I turned around and found one of the deputies pointing at me. “He’s right here.”

Collins and the farm boy were picking up their hats and jackets and striding toward the door. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, but I couldn’t focus on what they were saying.

“Collins,” Sheriff McKellroy yelled. “Sweeney. Take Mr. Mitchell with you. Have him ID the body.”

“The body?” I said.

“You mind?” the sheriff asked from across the room. “It’d be a big help.”

“Mind what?”

“We got a guy that fits the description you gave of Baxter, but we need a positive ID.” He pointed toward Collins and the farm boy, who were waiting in the doorway. “They’ll take you,” he said.

I picked up my jacket and started toward the door but then stopped in midstride. “Would it be all right if I called my wife?” I asked McKellroy. “Just to let her know where I am?”

“Of course,” he said, giving me an understanding look. He evicted a deputy from Linda’s desk and sat me down there.

I picked up the phone and dialed home.

Linda had a picture of herself and Carl on her desk, and I turned away from it, toward the window, though not quickly enough to avoid having to wonder where she was right now. Probably at home, I thought. She’d never forget what she’d seen this morning—her husband lying in the snow, dead—and it gave me a tired feeling to think this, a numbness in my heart.

Like this morning, Sarah answered on the first ring.

“It’s me,” I said. “I’m at the police station.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Carl’s dead. The guy from the FBI shot him.”

“I know,” she said. “I heard about it on the radio.”

“But it sounds like they caught him. They’re taking me out now to make sure it’s the same guy.”

“Taking you where?”

“I don’t know. I think he might be dead.”

“Dead?”

“They said ‘body.’ They want me to ID the body.”

“They killed him?”

“I’m not sure. That’s what it sounds like.”

“Oh, Hank,” she whispered. “That’s perfect.”

“Sarah,” I said quickly, “I’m at the police station.” I glanced around the room to see if anyone was listening. Collins and the farm boy stood by the door, their hats in their hands. They were both watching me, waiting for me to finish.

Sarah fell silent. I could hear the radio playing in the background, a man’s high-pitched voice, selling something. “Do you know when you’ll be home?” she asked.

“Probably not for a little while.”

“I’m so relieved, Hank. I’m so happy.”

“Shhh.”

“We’re going to celebrate tonight. We’re going to ring in our new life together.”

“I have to say good-bye now, Sarah. We can talk when I get home.”

I set down the phone.

T
HE FARM
boy drove, and I rode beside him in the front seat. Collins sat in back. We headed south out of town, speeding, our lights flashing. The temperature was dropping now, and the roads had spots of ice on them. The air seemed to grow clearer by the moment, the views wider and crisper. Every now and then a tatter of bluish sky appeared between the swiftly moving clouds above us.

“Did Sheriff McKellroy say ‘body’?” I asked the farm boy.

He nodded. “That’s right.”

“So Baxter’s dead?”

“Dead as a doornail,” Collins said from the backseat, his voice sounding almost gleeful. “Shot full of holes.”

“Perforated,” the farm boy said.

“Like a sieve.”

They both grinned at me. They seemed excited, like two boys on a field trip.

“He was killed down near Appleton,” Collins said, “at the entrance to the Turnpike there. He ran into a pair of state troopers, shot one of them in the leg, and then the other one blew him away.”

“Four shots,” the farm boy said.

“Three to the chest. One to the head.”

The farm boy glanced across the seat at me. “Does that bother you?” he asked with sudden seriousness.

“Bother me?”

“Having to go ID him if he’s been shot. The blood and everything.”

“Head shots can be pretty ugly,” Collins said. “It’ll be best if you just give him a quick glance. Try to think of it as meat, like you’re looking at a pile of ground—”

The farm boy interrupted him. “His brother was shot,” he said quickly.

Collins fell silent.

“Remember a couple months ago? That guy out here that came home and found his wife in bed with his landlord? The one that went crazy?”

“That was your brother?” Collins asked me. “The gambler?”

The farm boy shook his head. “His brother was the other guy. The one that got shot coming to the rescue.”

I could actually feel the mood in the car shift downward. It was as if we’d driven into a shadow. The farm boy leaned forward and turned the cruiser’s heat up a notch. There was a warm push of air against my face.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Mitchell,” Collins said. “I didn’t know.”

I nodded. “It’s all right.”

“How’s that dog?” the farm boy asked. He glanced in the mirror at his partner. “His brother had a real nice dog. Mr. Mitchell adopted it.”

“What kind of dog?” Collins asked. They were both working together, trying to revive their good spirits.

“It was a mutt,” I said. “Part German shepherd, part Lab. But I had to put him down.”

Neither of them said anything. The farm boy fiddled with the radio.

“He didn’t adapt very well to my brother’s absence. He got mean. He bit my wife.”

“Dogs are like that,” Collins said. “They get attached. They feel grief just like us.”

After that no one said anything for the rest of the trip. The farm boy concentrated on the driving. Collins sat smoking in the back. I stared out the window at the road.

V
ERNON
had been shot at a tollbooth, trying to get onto the Ohio Turnpike just north of Appleton. As he’d pulled up to take his ticket, his car had slid on a little patch of ice and banged into the one in front of him. There were a pair of state troopers on the other side of the median, and when they saw the accident, they came over to help. Even then, if Vernon had stayed calm, he might’ve gotten away. He’d changed his blue car for a red one sometime after leaving Ashenville and had put on a parka and a wool hat to cover his crew cut, so he didn’t look like the man the troopers were searching for. But he panicked when he saw them coming, climbed out of his car, and pulled a gun.

It took us a while to get through to the tollbooth. The entrance ramp had been blocked off, and there was a state trooper rerouting traffic, waving it on down the road to the west. There were five or six police cars parked at odd angles across the little plaza. An ambulance was just leaving as we arrived, its lights flashing.

There wasn’t much around the exit—a pair of gas stations, a boarded-up Dairy Queen, a convenience store. It was farm country, flat and featureless.

We pulled off onto the edge of the road, then got out and walked toward the tollbooth. Vernon’s car, a cherry red Toyota hatchback, was sitting there with its door hanging open. The area around it had been roped off with bright yellow tape. There were state troopers everywhere, but no one seemed to be doing anything. The car Vernon had rear-ended had been driven away.