Bone Harvest (19 page)

CHAPTER 24

Earl pulled up in front of the hospital. It was after midnight, but he had decided, driving into town, that this had to be his first stop. Marie had probably gone home, but he needed to lay his eyes on his son. No matter what he looked like. That was where this journey home had to start.

A youngish woman sat at the information desk, but she was looking down at her lap. When Earl walked up closer, he saw that she was knitting. He stood quietly and watched her for a few moments. The needles moved in and out of the yarn like magic. A hot activity for this time of year, but it was air-conditioned in the hospital.

“What’re you knitting?” he asked her.

“Oh.” She jumped. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were there.”

“What’re you knitting?”

“A sweater for my son. For Christmas. I always get a head start.”

“He’s a lucky son.”

“Thanks.” She smiled up at him. “What can I help you with?”

“I’m here to see my son, Andy Lowman.”

Her face dropped slightly. She knew what had happened to his son. She felt sorry for him. “He’s up on the second floor. It’s not really visiting hours.”

“I know, but I just drove up from Tucson. I’d like to see him for a moment.”

“I guess that’s all right.” She gave him the room number.

As he stood in front of the elevator, he remembered all the events that had taken place in this hospital. His children had been born here. His mother had died here. He had lost his appendix at this hospital. The smell—why did all hospitals smell like that? A mixture of sorrow and ammonia. Not unpleasant, but sometimes a little too strong.

As he came up to the room, he could hear talking. He wondered if one of the nurses was in there. Then he stood in the door and saw Marie leaning over the bed. Andy was sitting up with his eyes open and he was talking.

“Andy,” Lowman said.

They both turned and saw him. Marie’s face was wet with tears. “He’s back,” she said, and Earl didn’t know if she was talking about Andy or himself.

“Dad,” Andy said.

“Is it okay if I’m here?” Earl asked.

Marie walked up to him and said, “You must be exhausted.”

“I think we all are,” he said as he hugged her.

“Come and take a chair.” She pointed at the chair that was pulled up next to the bed.

“How long has he been awake?”

“A couple of hours. He’s pretty groggy. Doesn’t remember much of what happened. But doesn’t look like he’s going to slip away again. The nurses have come in and checked him over. Everything looks good. They’re pretty sure they got all the pesticides out of his system.”

“Hallelujah,” Earl said quietly.

He sat down in the chair and looked at his son whom he hadn’t seen in ten years. His son was getting old. The wrinkles had set in around his eyes and down his cheeks. But he was wearing well. Looked strong.

“I’m sorry about everything, Andy.”

The eyes fluttered shut, then jumped open again. Andy turned his head to see his father. “Don’t go there, Dad.”

But Earl couldn’t stop himself. He knew it wasn’t time to talk of such things, that it was only time to rejoice that his son was risen from the dead, but he needed to get it out and say it. He had promised himself he would. “I’m going to talk to the police tomorrow and tell them everything. I decided on my way up here that no matter what, I would tell them what happened.”

His son nodded his head. “Mom would be glad.”

The rich smell of deep summer night followed Rich as he walked up Claire’s hill from town. The slight dip in temperature, probably from a high of eighty-five that day to about seventy-five right at present, caused dew to form, glazing grasses and lilac bushes. A silvery haze glowed around the streetlights as bugs flew in and out of it.

The light he was looking for was in Claire’s house, and he found it. Her light was on in her bedroom. That meant she was still up. Before walking up the hill, Rich had decided that if her light was on, he would knock no matter what time it was. He needed to see her. They needed to talk.

After she had left the Fort, he had gone in and had two beers. He felt like such an idiot for the way he behaved. No wonder she was taking her time thinking about whether she wanted to hitch up with a guy like him.

He knocked on her porch door. Then he heard her coming down the stairs. The door opened and she was in his arms. She smelled like the last rose he had picked for her from her bush, sweet and spicy.

“I tried to call,” she whispered. “You weren’t home.” There was no hesitation. She kissed him.

He apologized for his beery breath. “I’ve been at the Fort. Had a coupla beers.”

“You want another one?” she asked, and led him into the house.

He tried to figure out what she was wearing. Her outfit looked like clothes he had left at her house—an old no-sleeved T-shirt that was very revealing and a pair of his boxer shorts.

“Cute pajamas,” he told her.

“I needed you in bed with me. Didn’t think I’d get you in the flesh.”

She walked to the fridge and pulled out two bottles of Leinenkugel’s and twisted off the tops. She sat on the edge of the table and he stood in front of her. They tapped beer bottles.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“Nuts. We’ve got a psycho man loose in the county. A chopped-off finger was just delivered to the sheriff’s office. Fresh. That means there’s someone in the county missing a digit. Who knows what he’ll do next. He’s probably lived here all his life and this anniversary of the Schuler killings has set him off.” She tilted her beer bottle up and drank a good swallow. He could feel she was shaking.

“Are you cold?”

“Not really. Exhausted to the bone. Can’t sleep. I needed you to come over. I’m glad you got my mental message.”

“I wasn’t sure you would want to see me.”

She touched his nose. “Why ever not?”

“I wasn’t sure what you wanted.”

“Well, that’d make two of us.” She leaned in and kissed him on the neck.

“I shouldn’t have surprised you with the ring.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I mean, we probably should have talked about it.”

“I suppose, but it was fine the way you did it.”

“You cried.”

“I do that.”

“Have you been thinking about it?” he asked. He knew he shouldn’t ask any more, but he couldn’t stop himself.

“In the few minuscule moments when I’m not trying to save our county from disaster, I have thought about it.”

“You want to share your thoughts with me?”

“Are you sure this is the right time?”

“No, I’m sure it isn’t, but it’s driving me crazy not to know.”

She nudged him with her knee. “I like driving you crazy.”

“I know.” He nudged her back.

“What do you think about getting married again?” she asked. She looked him straight in the eyes.

“I’d do it.”

“Enthusiastic,” she commented.

“Most of it I liked, but not the divorce part.”

“We could skip that.”

He nodded.

“And we could skip the getting married part.”

He wasn’t sure what to say.

She leaned in and kissed him hard, a kiss that reached way down into his groin. “Can’t we try something else? Maybe we should try living together for a while. Forming a partnership. You cover my back; I’ll cover yours.”

“Cop talk for being there for each other?”

“Yeah. Hey, I am a cop. I get to talk like one.”

“I’ll cover your back anytime.” He pulled her close to him and felt her wrap her legs around his waist.

“Take me to bed,” she whispered in his ear, and he followed orders.

Claire fell asleep hard and woke up two hours later. Her head was smashed into Rich’s back and he was snoring. The snoring wasn’t what had awakened her. She felt deeply uneasy. She had dreamed about fingers, long, bony fingers coming into her room, climbing into bed with her, touching her while she was sleeping.

She straightened herself out in bed and tried to manage her breathing: deep and slow, deep and slow.
From the belly,
her psychiatrist had told her.
If you breathe from the belly it will calm you.
Unfortunately it seemed to invigorate her. She kept thinking about what she would do when she got up, all that she had to do, and finally she decided to get up and start doing it.

When she crawled out of bed it was about three-thirty. She wasn’t supposed to show up at work until six, but she doubted they’d be anything but glad to see her come in a little early.

She started up her coffeemaker, putting in a little more than her usual ration of freshly ground beans. Then she dug a couple of caramel rolls from the bakery out of the freezer. She turned on the oven and put them on an old pie tin to heat up.

After grabbing the first cup of coffee that had streamed out into her carafe, she sat at the table and started to go through Charles Folger’s scrapbook. She had been given all the same articles by Harold Peabody. But Folger had a couple from other papers, which were taken from the pieces that Harold had written. She checked every page, every article, but didn’t come across any new information.

Finally Claire came to the photographs in the back of the book. They were so big he had left them loose. Obviously original prints—he must have had a contact with the photographer the sheriff had used. It was hard to look at the pictures of the dead children upstairs, sprawled out alongside their beds. The oldest brother stretched out on the hay in the barn, the cows looking on. The father by the front steps. But the photo that was the hardest for her to look at was the one of Bertha Schuler and the baby. And the table all set for the birthday party. The seven plates neatly placed around the edges of the wooden table, silverware laid out the way it should be, glasses up at the top of the plates.

Rich came down the stairs.

“Are you sure you want to be up?” she asked him.

He came up behind her and snuggled into her hair. “I smelled the coffee.”

“Do you want me to set you a plate?”

“What’s cooking?”

“Just caramel rolls.”

“Perfect middle-of-the-night snack.”

Claire leaned up into the cupboard and pulled down two dessert-sized plates. Then she stood still for a moment. The plates in the picture. How many plates?

She slammed the two plates down on the counter and grabbed the photograph. “Seven plates,” she said.

Rich looked at the picture. “Yup, it looks like seven.”

“But why would there be seven plates when only six people were eating at the table? See?” She pointed her finger at the high chair that was set up for Arlette.

“But there were seven Schulers,” Rich said.

“The baby was too little to eat at the table. They wouldn’t have set a real plate for her with silverware and a glass. She was only a year old. Someone else was there.”

“At the Schulers’?”

“Rich, someone else had come to dinner. And whoever it was either murdered them or got away.”

July 7, 1952

How long to wait? That was the question. How long to wait before he would venture out into the house? The clothes hung down in front of him. He grabbed on to them, clung to them as if they were real people. But he was afraid all the people were dead.

The gun had been fired six times in the house. The last time had been right outside this closet in the room where Schubert was. He had closed his eyes when the gun went off. He had stuffed his mouth with the hanging clothes.

He knew bad things had happened. His dad had always told him that these German people brought nothing but bad luck down on themselves, and now he believed that his dad knew what he was talking about.

In order to get out of the room, he would have to walk past Schubert. By peering through the clothes, he could see Schubert lying on the floor.

It wasn’t the blood he minded so much—he saw blood on the farm when Dad cut off chickens’ heads; he was used to seeing blood. It was the smell of death that would be coming out of Schubert. He would have to hold his nose when he walked by.

He decided he couldn’t wait any longer. He needed to get out of there. It had been quiet for what had seemed a long time. He wanted to go home. He needed to tell his mom what had happened.

He hunched over and scuttled out of the room. In the hallway he stayed still for a moment, hearing his heart beat. Nothing. No noise. He walked by the girls’ room, just glancing in to see the two of them heaped on the floor like a pile of clothes. Couldn’t think about it.

He took his shoes off and carried them. Down the stairs he went as silently as he could. Just as he got to the bottom of the stairs, he heard someone out front; then the door to the kitchen banged open. He hid behind the door that led into the kitchen.

The man walked to the phone and called someone. He talked about murders. He said they were dead. He couldn’t tell who the man was; he didn’t recognize the voice.

Then the man went back outside.

The boy sneaked out from behind the door. And he saw Mr. Schuler talking to the man. The man was holding a gun. He and Mr. Schuler weren’t yelling. They looked like they were talking about the weather. Then Mr. Schuler turned and walked away. He got about halfway across the barnyard when the man lifted up his rifle and pulled the trigger. Mr. Schuler stumbled forward; then he fell. The man shot him again.

The boy went and hid behind the door again. There was no safe way to get out of the house. The man was standing with the gun right out front. He felt like his legs were shaking so hard he would fall down. Then he heard the man come in the house, look around, and walk past him. The boy kept his eyes closed, praying the man wouldn’t see him.

The man went up the stairs and the boy ran into the kitchen. The baby was under the table. The mom was next to the chair.

He ran out the door and that was when he saw the fingers. The cut-off fingers. He grabbed them and ran. He ran past Mr. Schuler, lying facedown in the dirt. He ran past Denny out in the barn. He ran up over the hill and through the fields. He ran until he came to the hill above his house.

His mom was down there and she would take care of him.

But first he needed to put the fingers in a safe place.

He had a hiding place behind the barn where he kept his favorite things. He went there and took out a metal pipe tobacco container. It was red. His father had given it to him. He put the fingers in the container and closed it.

Then he ran to tell his mother what had happened.