Death in the Pines (19 page)

“He must have been the one who made the mess, then, Miss—”

“Mrs. Frieda Schmidt,” she said, and spelled it. “I live next door. I saw the lights on over here. What are you doing?”

I showed her the files and improvised. “I came to pick up some work that Jeremiah was pulling together for me. He told me I could drop by anytime. He said if he wasn't here I could just go in and pick up these files. He told me where they'd be.”

“But he's dead.”

“He told me earlier this week, when he visited my house. He hired me to look into something for him. I'm a private investigator.”

“Oh.”

“Actually, I was just leaving.” I reached in and turned off the porch light, then pulled the door shut behind me. “Should I lock this?” I asked. “I can set the lock if you think I should, but I don't know if Jerry has a key.”

She shook her head. “Jeremiah never locked it. He might not even have had the key any longer. To me, that's asking for trouble. I've had a security system installed myself. We're only four hours from Boston, and you know the kind of people who live there. Murders every day, home invasions, I don't know.”

I saw that two other neighbors stood silhouetted in their windows, watching us in the glow of the streetlight. It made me itch to get out of there, but I said, “Tell me about the young man you saw this morning.”

She bobbed her head like a pigeon. “It was early, eight-thirty. I was still in my bathrobe. I heard him stop his car and looked out my window and saw him as he went in.” She looked thoughtful. “He was tall, a little taller than you. Blond with
an average kind of haircut. I couldn't see him well enough for much detail. I'm nearsighted, and the window was frosted over.”

“Did you see what he was driving?”

“Oh, yes, a red pickup truck.”

I nodded. “I know who that is. He lives in Northfield, but he wouldn't have had permission from Jeremiah or Jerry. Could you tell if he took anything from the trailer?”

“He did! It was a plastic trash bag. Not the biggest kind, more like a kitchen bag.” She furrowed her brow. “He carried it in the middle, as if there was a lamp or something like that in it. Or—” she glanced at the trailer door—“could it have been a gun?”

“Was it long enough to be a rifle?”

“No. But it might have been like, what do they call it, like an Uzi. It was long enough for that.” She stepped closer and confided, “But I don't think it was. Jeremiah never owned a gun that I knew of. Do you think I should have called the police, Mr. Tyler?”

“I can't say. If he comes again, I'd advise you to call 911. If he goes back inside, tell them it's a burglary in progress.”

“That young man shouldn't have made such a mess. It's not respectful. Jeremiah's dead.”

“You didn't tell me—have you noticed Jerry coming to the trailer?”

“I haven't, but I'm not home all the time, I'm often over at Margaret's house during the days, which is a full street over. I know Jerry by sight. Never talked to him much. Jeremiah was sociable enough, but Jerry never had much time for neighbors when he lived here.”

“Oh, he stayed with Jeremiah?”

“A couple of times, a year or two ago. Just briefly, like visits.”

“Did he have anyone with him? A girlfriend, any other friends?”

“No, just Jerry.”

I thanked Mrs. Schmidt and walked her to the street with good-byes, put the files on the floor under the passenger seat, and drove back toward town.

On impulse, I drove out High Street, and slowed down as I passed Darryl's house. In the backyard the pile of little trees blazed red-orange.

Now why was Darryl burning saplings? I decided to ask him. I backed in next to his truck and walked around to the fire. He was leaning against the house, and he held the hunting rifle he'd had this morning. I'd made no effort to be quiet, and he looked at me, his face invisible in the darkness. I knew the fire illuminated me, and I saw him swing the rifle barrel up.

“I told you to get off my property!” His voice held a little more authority, borrowed from his rifle. “I meant to stay off it, too.”

The Police Special was in my right hand. My left, in the pocket, held my cell phone. I raised my revolver so it pointed at his legs, as his rifle aimed at mine. “You going to shoot me, Darryl?”

“Man's got a right to shoot trespassers!”

“So I could have plugged you on my land this morning, nice and legally? What are you burning, Darryl?”

“Scrap wood,” he said quickly. “Too green for the fireplace or the woodstove.”

“Pretty small, too. Why not just let it rot?”

“I don't have to answer any questions!” He jerked the rifle up with a suddenness I had not expected. It weaved in a small
circle, but it was pointed toward my chest. “I could shoot you on the spot.”

I realized that he had not even registered that I held the pistol. I raised it and said, “Me, too. Self-defense, unprovoked attack during a perfectly civil visit. I don't see any N
O
T
RESPASSING
signs posted. You haven't registered your property, Darryl.”

“Shit!” The barrel of his rifle was weaving wildly, as if he found the weapon too heavy. “If you shot me on my own property, they'd throw you so deep in prison you'd never see daylight again.”

One step sideways took me out of the firelight. “Darryl, I don't think you'd shoot me. I don't think you'd want the police involved.” I swept my revolver to the side and shot out one of his truck headlights.

Darryl jerked. “Jesus! Why the hell didja do that?”

“Let's call the police, Darryl. I've done something illegal, firing a weapon so close to your house, damaging your property. I've got my cell phone. Let's call the police and you can tell them about it.”

He walked to the side, sighted carefully, and shot out the passenger-side taillight of my Jeep. “You want to go on? You want me to shoot you right now?”

“I'll leave if you'll tell me what you took out of Jeremiah Smith's trailer. That's burglary, Darryl. Two to five on a first conviction.”

“You shot first,” Darryl said, as if trying to talk himself into something. “Whatever I do, it's self-defense.”

“Do you need to pee?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“I bet I can pee farther than you can.”

To my surprise, Darryl giggled. “I get it. We're acting like fifth graders.” He lowered the barrel of his rifle. “Shit.” He shook his head. “Look, just go. I don't think we're even, but that's OK. I ain't gonna talk to you, and you ain't gonna call the cops. Just go.”

“OK, Darryl.” I got into the Jeep, cursing myself. John Lincoln would be laughing himself silly somewhere. You never get into dumb-ass macho games, never. As I turned toward town I heard the bang of the rifle and the crash as my driver's side taillight shattered. Darryl was a better shot than I'd sized him up to be.

I was hungry. The CLT had worn off, so I stopped at the market and picked up salad fixings and a fresh loaf of bread. I kind of hoped Sylvia would be waiting for me, and I thought she might like this kind of fare.

I drove up the logging road to within sight of my cabin, farther than I normally do because it's so much trouble to back down the narrow, rutted path. Kerosene lantern light shone in the windows. I retrieved the files under the seat and swung out with them and the bag of food, eager to see Sylvia again. As I set foot on the porch, I fleetingly wondered what I would do if it were Bill Grinder inside.

But I saw Sylvia look out the window. I felt a wave of relief. She was nutty, by my standards—maybe by common standards—but she had the kind of integrity you don't find in tobacco execs who brag that they are responsibly marketing their products in the United States, not bothering to mention that at the same time they're busily addicting preteens in developing nations.

Sylvia opened the door for me and glanced at the files in my hands and the grocery bag clutched in the crook of my elbows. She took the bag from me lightly, tentatively, and I tossed the files onto my bed.

“How are you?” I asked. “Hungry?”

“I ate with my people,” she said. She set the bag down on the counter. “Should I leave while you eat?”

“No. Are your people nearby now?”

She inclined her head, not quite a negative gesture, but it told me she wasn't interested in talking about her people at the moment. I sat in the bentwood rocker and she took the straight one, as always. “I really don't know anything about you,” I said. “Are you married? Do you have children?”

“I'm not married,” she said. “I have two offspring.”

“How old?”

She looked as if she were wrestling with the concept of age. “Mature,” she said at last.

“They don't have a father?”

“Oh, they have a father.” She smiled. “He is the father of others, as well. But let us speak of something else.”

I sighed. “Maybe you can tell me about the Abenaki. I'm thinking that Jeremiah's death could somehow be tied to his defense of the tribe.”

Sylvia stared at the floor. “The Abenaki were good members of the family of life, a long time ago, before Europeans came.” She looked almost as if she were drifting into a trance. “They could teach your people much. They suffered greatly under the French and the British. Then the Americans hunted them because some of them had allied with the French. Not many are left, but they have wisdom. They would not endanger all life as you do.”

“Me?”

“I mean your people. You are of your people's spirit. You carry that spirit. I don't mean you as an individual. You are not like so many of them.”

“That's because I'm a mongrel,” I told her. “My mother's grandfather bought his wife—my great-grandmother—as a
slave and then took her as his wife. She was part Irish and part Indian, though she was taken very young and no one knows what tribe she was from. On the other side, my grandfather's family came from Northern Europe in the late nineteenth century. They were from Scandinavia—explorers and pirates. None of them fit in very well with proper European society.”

“It is not just blood,” she said softly. “I sense a deep sadness in you. You have known great loss, and you have spent much of your life in the gray shadows, where there are no clear boundaries between right and wrong. You have empathy for others, a rare quality among whites. You share that with the Abenaki. I doubt you could hear their story without weeping.”

“Maybe. But I've read that some Native Americans weren't the good stewards of the land they're portrayed as being. Some tribes slaughtered buffalo just for their tongues, burned forests to drive out game, destroyed rather than refrained from interfering.”

“That is true and it is not,” she said. “You must understand that cultures have their own lives, their own cycles. Not just humans, but all forms of life. It is true some tribes were wasteful and thoughtless, but in their cycle things were different. When there are many, many rabbits, the foxes have larger litters. More foxes the next year means fewer rabbits, and the year after, foxes grow thin and their litters become smaller. Eventually they reach a balance.”

“So the wasteful Native Americans were really just part of a cycle.”

She looked at me then, a speculative expression in her brown eyes. “Ten thousand years ago, when the mountains of blue ice were melting northward, the ancestors of the Abenaki first came here. Then food was abundant, and they killed
wantonly, as their people had for centuries while they crossed the continent. They and others hunted whole species to extinction: the giant ground sloth, the glyptodont, the woolly mammoth. Animals here were easy prey, for they had not learned to fear man. And so the early people flourished, had large families, and believed they were in paradise.”

“But they reached a limit?”

She rocked gently and nodded. “They overfished and over-hunted. They fought each other for food during a time when winters were harsh and summers short; they killed each other. It was a time of great violence, some thousands of years ago. They had learned a bitter lesson that others all over the world have learned, to their cost: when the balance was tipped, there would not be enough for all, so they fought over what was left. Those who stole or saved the most food gained power during the times of hunger.”

“Something similar happened in Europe during a climate shift we call the Little Ice Age,” I said.

“It has happened many places, many times. All growth takes its own pace. And this was a time of great misery, when a few had much and most had little. Violence and hunger ruled. Yes, the people awakened, but slowly. Generations passed before the last of the … cannibals? Before the last cannibals were seen as so insane that the people no longer allowed them to seize power.”

“Cannibals?”