Dark Coulee (19 page)

“Well, we know it wasn’t for money. Jed didn’t have any.” “Right.”

“How about to protect someone?”

The answer struck all too close to Claire’s own dilemma, why she had shot and killed her partner. She killed him to protect her sister and her daughter. “Yes, that would be a good reason. A very good reason.”

There was silence on the line. Claire didn’t want to say good night. Even listening to Rich breathe made her feel safer. “Okay, I’ll let you go now,” he said, “but first I will tell you what the French say to one another when they go to sleep. My mother used to say it to me. Fais des beaux rêves, rêves de moi.”

“I didn’t know you spoke French.”

“I don’t—that’s about all I know how to say.”

“What does it mean?”

“Have beautiful dreams, dream of me.”

You don’t know all of it.

I never imagined I did.

It didn’t happen the way I told you. I’ve told that story so many times it’s become nearly the truth. But it’s not the way it happened.

Would you like to try again?

I should tell you something about myself. I’m an unusual law enforcement person, if you will. I don’t believe in the death penalty.

I don’t talk about this very much. It’s not a popular point of view among my fellow workers. It isn’t that I’m religious about it. I’m not very religious. But now that I think about it, maybe I am religious about this. If there is a God, then that force, that power, should make such decisions.

I just don’t think we have the right, we humans have the right, to take away a human life. To kill someone because they’ve killed someone seems contradictory to me. Do you agree?

My sentiments are similar to yours.

Good. That might help you understand the rest of this. Understand how I’ve been feeling about what I’ve done. First, let me go over the particulars.

My husband was killed. We thought it was a drug gang hit. I later found out it was a hit.

My daughter saw the killer. He tried to kidnap her. He did kidnap my sister, but she got away.

I found out who had masterminded all of this. This is the part you don’t know. It was Bruce, my partner.

He was behind it all. He was the leader of the drug gang. He had my husband killed. He lied and lied to me. He wanted me all to himself. He said he loved me. But I found out. I found out who he really was. He did kill the drug dealer named Red. That part’s true. But Red didn’t kill Bruce.

I did. I killed Bruce.

After he shot Red, he turned toward me with the gun still in his hands. I don’t know what he would have done. Maybe he wasn’t going to shoot me. Maybe he would have put his gun down. Maybe he would even have surrendered to me. I don’t know for sure. I’ll never know.

But I couldn’t take the chance. I was afraid for my daughter, I was afraid for my sister. If he killed me, I was afraid he would kill them. I wouldn’t be able to protect them. I felt like I had no choice.

So I shot him.

I killed him.

Then I lied about it. To save his reputation. To save myself. It was as if there were two Bruces, and I had to protect the one I had loved.

But you shot him in self-defense, didn’t you?

It could be seen that way. But I felt like I went into the situation, which I had set up, gunning for him.

Have you told anyone?

No.

It’s time to start talking about it. It will make you sick if you don’t. It already has made you sick.

Who should I tell?

Well, you’ve started already. You’ve told me. And I’m a safe person to tell. Find one or two other people who are safe and tell them. Then be quiet for a while. That might be enough.

Telling the true story will begin to set your life back in order. I think you will feel better.

But I killed him.

Yes, but he didn’t kill you. You saved yourself. What a brave woman you are.

S
HE’S disappeared, and I’m afraid something awful might happen to her.” Ella Gunderson was so glad to get the woman deputy on the line. Claire Watkins would know what to do.

“Who is this?” Claire’s voice sounded puzzled.

“I’m sorry. This is Ella Gunderson. The school just called. She didn’t go to school. Jenny. She’s gone.” Mrs. Gunderson knew she should slow down, but she was so upset. The last week had been a very hard one, and now she was so afraid for Jenny.

“When did you last see her?”

Mrs. Gunderson thought about the morning rush, getting the girls fed. She hadn’t said much to Jenny, wishing she would dress a little nicer. She was happy to see that she was even ready to go to school. “She got up this morning like usual. She looked awful, but she was dressed and even ate some breakfast. She left when it was time to catch the school bus. That was two hours ago. Then the school called about five minutes ago. She never made it there. They’re not even sure she was on the bus.”

“Where do you think she is?”

“I don’t know. I wonder if she even got on the bus. She might be hiding out somewhere around here. She has been very upset about her brother being in jail and all the goings-on.”

“I’ll ask everyone to keep a lookout here in town. I’ll check in with the school. Call me if she shows up. Hang tight.”

When Mrs. Gunderson put down the phone, she wondered how one did that—hang tight. Keep a hold of oneself. She always did the best when she was busy. But as she looked around the kitchen, she didn’t see much else to do. She had already finished the breakfast dishes.

The horror of what Jenny might be doing to herself kept flashing into Mrs. Gunderson’s mind. Maybe gone off someplace and taking those pills to kill herself—it was almost more than Mrs. Gunderson could bear to think of.

She remembered how she had felt after receiving the news that her husband had been killed in Korea. They had only been married two months when he had left to fight. She had not wanted him to go, but he had teased her and said he would be back so soon she wouldn’t even miss him. He was wrong. She had gone on missing him for forty-six long years, and her time was not over.

She didn’t want Jenny to die. And what was worse was that she felt responsible. She had said she would leave them. How could she have done that when the losses that Jenny had suffered were so great?

She didn’t think she could quietly sit and wait. She felt too anxious. She decided to go upstairs and check Jenny’s room. Was it possible that Jenny could have snuck back in the house and gone back to bed? Wouldn’t that be a relief?

Mrs. Gunderson went to the bottom of the stairs and grabbed the handrail and stepped carefully up the stairs. She walked down the hallway and pushed open the door to Jenny’s room. The room was a mess. She had straightened in here once, but Jenny hadn’t appreciated it, so she had left it alone ever since. There were clothes strewn across the floor, and the bed was in dissarray.

When Mrs. Gunderson walked up to straighten out the bed clothes, she saw the note, a piece of paper resting on the pillow. She picked it up and held it close in front of her face, but couldn’t make out the words. Maybe it was some homework that Jenny had forgotten. But she had a bad feeling about it.

She walked hurriedly down to her room and found her magnifying glass, then went and stood in the flood of sunlight from the window and was able to make out the note:

Mrs. Gunderson felt her knees start to shake. She had to find Jenny before she did something bad to herself. The note sounded so final. How could she find her in time? Where might she have gone?

She set down the note and her magnifying glass and ran to the stairs. She started down them, and then what she had always feared would happen, did. Halfway down the stairs, she missed a step and tumbled.

“Brad, you have to help me,” Claire said to the boy as she opened up the door to his cell and let herself in.

Brad was stretched out on his cot, reading a car magazine. He looked up at her. He had a short growth of peach fuzz on his cheeks, and his hair was dark with grease and messed up. He didn’t look as pulled together as he usually did. But jail often did that to people—brought out the worst in them.

Claire perched on the edge of the table in his cell. “Jenny’s disappeared. Mrs. Gunderson just called. Jenny never made it to school.”

He tilted his head back to look at the ceiling, then stretched down an arm and set the magazine on the floor. He groaned and sat up. “Not Jenny. I need to be home to make sure she doesn’t go off the deep end. I don’t think Mrs. Gunderson can handle her.”

“Do you know where she might go? Is there any place that you can think of that she might have gone to? A favorite hangout?”

Brad lifted his head up and said, “I know one place she might be. A place she’d run off to when things got to rough with Dad. Kind of a retreat for her.”

“Is it on your farm?”

“Yes, she would walk out to the edge of the coulee.”

“Can you tell me how to get there?”

“I’ll draw you a map.”

Claire handed him her notebook and a pen. Brad talked as he sketched out the map. “Here’s our mailbox down by the road. You walk straight out into the field from there and head toward the trees. When you get to the treeline, you’ll find a path, it’s pretty winding, but follow it until you can’t go any farther. You’ll be at the coulee. She should be somewhere near there.”

“Is that where your land drops down?”

“Yeah, the drop right under the ledge she likes to hang out at is pretty steep. I’d say a hundred feet at least.”

“Okay. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks.”

“Would you tell her if she wants to come in and see me, I’ll talk to her now? Tell her I’m sorry about before.”

“Sure, I’ll pass that along.” Claire stopped and asked him what she’d been wondering since she got the call from Mrs. Gunderson. “Brad, do you think Jenny would hurt herself?”

“You mean like suicide?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Brad held his head in his hands and shook it wearily. “She drinks, she takes drugs. I think she’d step off a cliff.”

It was time to put an end to it.

Jenny lay on the ledge above the coulee and watched the clouds slide by overhead. If she was in a plane, she could jump onto them, through them. What a feeling that would be to fall through a cloud. She could imagine the droplets of water surrounding her as she plummeted. When she thought of jumping, she felt her stomach grab hold of the rest of her body, she felt power. For once, she would decide something and act on it. She would be in control.

She was going to go on her maiden voyage today. She laughed at her own sick joke. Maiden rock, lover’s leap. But the real joke was that she wasn’t a maiden. Her own sick dad had seen to that. He had come sniffing up to her not long after her mother had died. He had spoiled her, ruined her.

But she wasn’t going to think about that now. She was lying on the cold ledge, trying to purify her mind. She believed if she could empty it of all thoughts, like in meditation, she might go straight to nirvana.

She didn’t want to think too much about where she was going. All she knew was that where she had been, she couldn’t be anymore. It was too hard. Especially without Brad. And now he wouldn’t even talk to her anymore. He had cut her off. She had no one.

Last night, she had yelled at Mrs. Gunderson, and now she was leaving too. There would be no place to be anymore. The farm would be sold. Nora would be taken away. She would have nothing left. Life like that was too hard.

Nora would be okay. She was so cute and sweet, she might even get adopted by some loving couple. Maybe the Snyders would adopt her. They didn’t have any kids, and they had always been so nice to her.

Her mom had told her once that Pit Snyder had been her boyfriend. Her mom had said, “I should never have left him for your father. Even though he’s short, he’s twice the man your father will ever be.”

Jenny hoped she would be with her mother. That would be the greatest blessing in the universe. She missed her mom sometimes so much that she couldn’t breathe. She had stopped thinking about her mother so that she could get on with her life and the world, as it was, wouldn’t seem so bad. When she thought of her mother, she felt like someone had stabbed her in the guts. The pain of missing her mother would tear her right open.

One day, a year after her mother had died, she had bled into the toilet. She had known she was going to die, and part of her had been glad. She would see her mother again. She had been so afraid she hadn’t been able to stand up. When she tried to wipe the blood away, it came again. And again. Finally Brad had yelled at her and, without opening the door, she had told him what was happening. He had gone and gotten her some paper towels and explained it to her. She had heard about menstruation in school, but had never thought it would actually happen to her.

Shortly after that, her father had found out that she was having her period and called her a real woman.

She knew Brad wouldn’t understand what she was about to do. He was a real fighter. He had believed they could outsmart their father. But had they? She gave up.

Who knows? Maybe she would see him soon.

The clouds were filling her eyes.

She closed them.

The clouds were filling her mind. Her mother’s face floated among them.

She couldn’t remember how many pills she had taken.

T
HE stillness of the farmhouse disquieted her. Claire knocked on the kitchen door, and there was no answer. Chickens pecked and clucked out in the yard. The tractor was parked right next to the side of the barn. It almost looked as if it had run into the side of the old building.

Claire could see no one in the farmyard or out in the fields. She knocked again. Mrs. Gunderson must be around. Claire knew Mrs. Gunderson, with her failing eyesight, would not have driven off anyplace. Maybe she had called a neighbor and gone off to pick up Jenny.

When Claire tried to open the kitchen door, she found it locked. Unusual for around these parts—most people always left their doors unlocked, except at night. Which made her think that Mrs. Gunderson had gone off with someone. Possibly Jenny had called and wanted to come home. That would make sense. But then why hadn’t Mrs. Gunderson left her a note?

Claire stepped back from the door and was just about to leave when she heard a faint sound, a soft mewling. She looked around to see if there was a kitten hiding in the weeds or in one of the outbuildings. She saw nothing but the chickens stalking and fluttering over the yard.

Claire stood quietly, hardly breathing, and heard it again. From the house. Something inside the house had made that noise. She needed to get in there.

She hollered, “Hello. Can you hear me?”

No response. That wasn’t good.

Walking up to the window next to the door, she looked it over. The inside window was open, but there was a screen over it. A screen was a lot easier to repair than a door. She looked inside but couldn’t see anyone.

Then she heard the sound again, this time recognizable as a human voice in pain. Claire worked all the nails loose and pried off the screen. The old wood snapped, and the whole thing came loose at once. She caught it as it fell toward her and set it under the window. Then she reached in and pushed the window up. She hoisted herself up onto the window ledge and climbed through.

“Hello,” she shouted.

“Help,” a faint voice bleated.

Claire went toward the voice and found Mrs. Gunderson sprawled out on the floor. She was lying on her back with a leg skewed awkwardly in front of her. Her soft white hair framed a bruised face.

Claire bent down next to her and asked, “Are you okay?”

“I hurt. In my head, in my ankle.” The old woman spoke softly, as if she hadn’t much air in her lungs.

“You’ll be okay,” Claire told her.

Mrs. Gunderson licked her lips and gave a faint smile. She took a few deep breaths and then spoke again, stronger this time. “I think I got the air knocked out of me pretty good. That hasn’t happened since I was a child playing on a slide.”

“Let me check you over.” Claire took the old woman’s head in her hands and looked closely at the bruise on her face. Then she felt her arms and legs and finally touched the ankle that looked like it had been hurt. Mrs. Gunderson gulped in a quick intake of air.

“That hurts?”

“Yes, I think I twisted it.”

“What happened to you?”

“I missed a blasted step. I’m usually so careful, but I’m so worried about Jenny.” As soon as those words came out of her mouth, she grabbed Claire’s hand. “You must go find her. I found an awful note. I think she might harm herself. You have to find her and stop her.”

“Let me call someone for you.”

When Claire walked over to get the phone, Mrs. Gunderson managed to sit up. Claire dialed emergency and told them to send an ambulance.

“What note?” Claire asked Mrs. Gunderson when she got off the phone.

“It’s upstairs. In my room.”

Claire ran up the stairs and went into the first bedroom she saw. It was all straightened, the bed neatly dressed. Lying on top of the blanket was the note. Claire read it and frowned. This could mean many things, she thought, but we can’t take any chances. She grabbed a pillow and the blanket off the bed and raced downstairs.

“Let’s see if we can’t make you more comfortable until the ambulance gets here. I don’t feel that I should try to move you, but you can rest on this pillow and let me put the blanket over you.”

“The note? Did you read the note?”

“Yes. Don’t worry—I’ll find her.”

“You must go and try to find her. I’ll be fine here. Leave the door open, and they’ll come and help me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I couldn’t stand it if you stayed with me while you could have helped Jenny. I’m fine. Get me a glass of water and an ibuprofen. There’s some in the drawer right next to the sink.”

Claire brought her the water and pills. “Brad told me where Jenny might be. It isn’t far. Out past the field. I’ll go and see if Jenny is there.”

My feet are dangling over the edge, Jenny thought as she watched her feet move below her in the dank air of the coulee. She swung them slowly back and forth, and they looked like fish swimming in the water of the air. She would soon be a fish moving through that same water.

She just had to stand up. And she didn’t seem to have enough energy to do that yet. Her whole body felt heavy and wobbly, like a bowl of spaghetti noodles. The image amused her.

What she liked about taking the pills is that they let her have really cool thoughts; she saw everything in a different light. But what she didn’t like about the pills is that they slowed her down—nothing seemed urgent. Sleepy. She had fallen asleep. But now she was awake, and it was time.

The sun was straight up above her. She could just make it out between the web of tree branches. It would help guide her out of the world. She would follow its beams up into the heavens.

She lifted her feet up onto the limestone ledge and slid back on her seat.

She wondered where her mother was, if she had her hands with her wherever she was.

Jenny shivered and wondered where her father was.

Time to stand.

Time to say good-bye.

Time to jump.

The coolness of the forest hit her face like a slap when Claire stepped out of the bright sunshine of the sunflower fields and into the woods that surrounded them. She knew the coulee was ahead of her—she could tell from the way the land sloped near the road—but she wasn’t sure she was on the path that Brad had told her about. A faint trail was marked through the woods, and she followed it, but thought it might have been made by deer. She was thankful for the trail, even as narrow as it was, for the brambles and branches caught on her uniform, and she would have had trouble bushwhacking through the underbrush.

After following it for a few minutes, she found herself suddenly at the edge of the coulee—a drop-off in front of her that fell a good distance down before it landed in the rock-littered bottom of the coulee, the dried riverbed that held water only when it rushed off the land in the spring or after a heavy thunderstorm. The sides of the coulee were overgrown with spindly trees that could barely reach up to the light, vines that covered them and curled around fallen limbs, and towering above them all, the oak and maple and cedar that made the woods so dark.

When Claire looked down into that damp darkness, she felt her fears well up in her as if she were looking into one of her own nightmares. The coulee could be the dreamworld she inhabited at night, the place of her own horrors, the edge of reality. She started to shake and thought of running back out into the sun.

But then she saw Jenny and knew she had to get to her fast.

Jenny was standing close to the edge of a rock ledge that hung out over the coulee. Claire thought Brad’s estimate of the fall from the ledge to the bottom of the coulee was about right—a good hundred-foot drop. Jenny was about twenty yards away from Claire. Her arms were stretched up into the air in a form of salutation, and Claire was afraid that any sound or movement from her would send the girl into the void.

She started to sneak up on her. A silent prayer—Let me get to her and pull her back from the edge. Don’t let another person die in this family.

Jenny had her eyes closed, and she was facing away from the coulee. She seemed to be singing or chanting something. Claire couldn’t hear what she was saying.

Claire had to watch where she was putting her feet down so she didn’t step on a twig or walk into a branch. As a child, she had practiced moving silently through the forest around her house. Then she had walked in tennis shoes. Her heavy black shoes didn’t make it very easy to move silently, but she tried to be as quiet as she could.

Claire reached the beginning of the limestone outcropping that formed the ledge, about ten feet away from Jenny. She decided that if she had a chance she would grab the black belt that was buckled around Jenny’s waist and pull her back to safety. She didn’t know how she would have a chance to grab it, though, as any movement toward Jenny would automatically cause her to pull back, and that would send her plummeting over the edge.

Jenny looked younger than fifteen years old. Her sandy blond hair was parted in the middle and hung below her shoulders in a style reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. She was wearing a plain white T-shirt and baggy jeans, loose clothes that made her look thinner than Claire remembered. On her feet a pair of boots stuck out from under the jeans. A typical teenager—one who deserved to live.

She could hear what Jenny was saying now. She was chanting one word: “Away, away, away, away, away, away …”

Then Jenny opened her eyes and saw Claire. Claire took a step backward so she wouldn’t feel threatened.

Jenny stood her ground and smiled at her, seemingly not surprised to see Claire. “You’ve come to watch me jump?”

“No, I’ve come to talk to you.”

“There’s not much to talk about anymore. It’s all been decided. The son has put his head upon the altar and is the sacrificial lamb, so to speak.”

“That’s what Brad has done?”

“Yes.” Jenny nodded her head slowly. “He’s such a good boy, isn’t he? Always takes care of everything. Mom loved him. She loved me too.”

Claire thought she could work with this statement. “I bet she did. And she wouldn’t want you to jump. She’d want you to live.”

Jenny cocked her head. “You didn’t know our mother, did you?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad. It wasn’t her fault.”

Claire realized that Jenny was using her as a witness. That the dialogue was one that was already written in Jenny’s mind, and Claire might as well hear it out. She hoped there would be an opening for her, a way to reach Jenny, to rewrite this script into one where she could also hear what Claire had to say. “What wasn’t her fault?”

“What Dad did.”

“What did your father do?”

Jenny hunched her shoulders and pulled her arms in close to her body, wrapping them over her thin chest. “He decided that I could be the mom after he killed her. He started coming to my bed.”

Claire’s heart sunk. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

“No one could stop him. He told me it was the way it was supposed to be. It was my turn.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yes, I’m not a maiden any longer.”

“It wasn’t your fault. Your father was an evil man.”

Jenny thought about it for a moment. “I think it was my fault. If I hadn’t been a pretty girl—my dad said I was pretty, when he did it to me he told me how pretty I was—then he would have left me alone. Nora’s quite pretty too, isn’t she?”

“Yes, Nora’s a pretty girl.”

“So you see, it was my fault. He said he would kill Brad if I told anyone. He even told me how he would kill him. He said it would look like an accident. He would run over him with the tractor. He never let me drive the tractor, but Brad did. Brad taught me how to drive it. But then I crashed the tractor. I couldn’t even do that right.”

“Jenny, come over here and sit down and tell me what happened.”

Jenny shuffled in place. “Don’t say that to me. Don’t tell me what to do. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m bad.” “Why?”

Jenny’s face cleared. “Don’t you know? It’s because of me my father died. That was my knife. I had started carrying it with me. I wasn’t going to let Dad touch me anymore. When Dad and Brad started fighting, I pulled out the knife.”

“You killed your father? Not Brad?”

“Brad didn’t do it. He just said that to take care of me. He always has to take care of me. Mom told him to. But he couldn’t stop Dad from coming to my room. He tried once. That’s when Dad broke his arm. He said that would show us. That would teach us a lesson. Brad never tried to stop him again.”

“Why did you kill him, Jenny? Did you kill your father because he was molesting you?”

“No. I was used to that. That isn’t why. Why we were fighting was because he said that it was just about time to try out Nora. He told Brad and me that he was going to sleep with Nora.”

“Nora? Your little sister?”

“Yes. She’s too little. He shouldn’t do that to her.”

“You are right, Jenny. You are absolutely right. You stopped your father from hurting Nora.”

Jenny’s face crumpled. “But you don’t understand. I loved my father. I loved him, and now he’s dead. How could that happen?”

“I do understand.”

“No, you don’t.” Without looking behind her, Jenny took a step back toward the edge. Another foot or so, and she would fall. “Nobody will ever understand me. You haven’t tried to kill anyone.”

Claire felt her heart being wrenched out of her body. She had to stop Jenny. She had to break through to her. Maybe this was the way to get through to Jenny—her own confession. Let her know she wasn’t alone. “I do understand. I killed someone too. I killed someone I loved.”

Jenny stopped moving backward and looked straight at Claire for the first time. “You did?”

“Yes, it was in a fight, like you. I shot him.”

Jenny took another step away from the edge. “You shot him? Did you know he would die?”

“Yes, I was pretty sure he would.”

Jenny crumpled onto the limestone ledge, wailing out her plaintive words. “I wasn’t sure Dad would die, but he did. I wanted to teach him a lesson. I loved him. He’s dead. I loved him.”

Claire leaned over Jenny, took a firm hold of the black belt that circled her waist, and comforted her.