Quiet Dell: A Novel (25 page)

She took a breath, and spoke clearly. “I am happy to publicize any information you deem important, within the context I choose, as long as its veracity is unassailable. You must assure me of this, personally. My sources, should you become one, are sacrosanct; I was once jailed for protecting one.”

“I know. Forty-eight hours, wasn’t it? The settlement house story, year or so ago, according to my friend at Chicago City Hall.” He answered her small shrug with his own. “The food here, honestly, is decent.”

The fish was mild, lemony, delicious. She loved the feel of it in her mouth and felt herself enter a rarefied zone, despite her fatigue. All that she swallowed, smelled, saw, simply fed her intensity and accuracy. The food was a means to an end, as was the empty tearoom and the privacy between them. The difficult moment was achieved, and the reserve with which they now proceeded was professional rather than guarded.

Sheriff Grimm ran a hand through his hair; he might be forty, forty-five, one of those very dark-haired men who go prematurely gray, and his nearly silver hair was thick, lustrous, stylishly barbered. Even now, at the end of this long day, the pale blue pocket square in his breast pocket was perfectly folded. The impression of bearded shadow on his jawline only heightened the sense of an animal virility couched in faultless social perception. Not a usual combination, and all working to a purpose. His eyes were bright blue, and his black lashes and brows made their color noticeable from across a room.

“Sheriff Grimm,” she said. “Are you related to Deputy Bond?”

“My uncle,” Grimm said, “on my mother’s side.”

She nodded. The blue eyes, the brows. His father’s mouth, perhaps, and perfect teeth. “So,” she said, “Dorothy Lemke. Born in Northborough?”

“Maybe. Address book notes contacts in St. Paul. Ex-husband from there, possibly. Some money, not clear how much.”

“And when you spoke to the family, did someone mention that she was childless?”

“The aunt told me Lemke had a son, died young of an illness, some years ago. Lemke lived with the aunt, but visited the sister’s house with Pierson, as they were going off to be married, late July. Two of the trunks in the garage at Quiet Dell are Lemke’s.”

Emily wanted to see those trunks and remembered Eric’s request. “I know local press have been to the garage to photograph the victims’ possessions, but the
Tribune
wants us to compile our own documentation. Might we go there tomorrow?”

Grimm ate with finesse, spearing his food neatly, but pulled a piece of bread apart with his hands and touched it to the bloody juices on his plate. “Early tomorrow. Nine
A.M
. Bond will call for you here. We can only spare a half hour to catch you up.”

“That’s very generous. Thank you.”

“The Lemke family should be here by noon. I suggest you interview them in my presence, upstairs, after we escort them from the morgue. I’ll bring them to your room. No photographer.” He paused as she nodded agreement. “An officer will take all of you to the station, where the relatives will identify certain articles. Deputy Bond will bring Powers out. Stand close to the sister; appear to be one of the family. Then produce the dog quickly. Lindstrom should be there, and pick his shot, but the dog is not in the picture.”

She allowed herself a restrained, admiring smile.

“I only wish I could see it, but Powers’ lawyer is a stickler. Deputy Bond can pretend happenstance if the timing works.” He wiped his mouth, put his napkin aside, and regarded her.

The waiter had cleared, deftly serving coffee and berry pie.

She opened her notebook. “Can we establish the time line, for my notes? You arrested him on the twenty-seventh?”

“Yes, on the basis of letters found in the Eicher home, brought here by Park Ridge officers—twenty-seven letters, from a Cornelius Pierson to Eicher—Powers maintains a P.O. box, 127, in Clarksburg under the name of Pierson.”

“There were twenty-seven letters,” Emily said, “he was arrested on the twenty-seventh, and his P.O. box number was 127?”

Grimm nodded. “He married Luella Strother in 1927, on June twenty-seventh. He likes that number, perhaps. The date of arrest was coincidence.”

Powers was married. Emily wondered what wife would marry him. “Was the wife surprised, upset? Did he resist?”

“Park Ridge and Clarksburg officers were watching the Quincy Street house, in Broad Oaks. Powers drove up around noon and went inside. Two went to the front, others to the back. She answered the door and we identified ourselves, asked to see Harry Powers. She didn’t blink an eye, only called to him.”

“What did she say?”

“ ‘Harry, someone to see you’—or something similar. We rushed the house as he tried to get out the back. He asked about a warrant, then came quietly, to ‘clear up the confusion.’ He said he was Mrs. Eicher’s financial adviser, friend of the family. We got a tip about the garage that night. Numerous trunks ransacked, some of it the Eichers’ possessions, according to the Park Ridge officers. And the smell, the setup. Blood on the floor. Soundproof board in the basement cells. We went back the next morning, searched the well, uncovered the ditch back of the house. Found her that afternoon, and the children soon after. Eicher was likely dead and buried before he went back to Park Ridge. The burials seemed separate events—she was in the middle of the ditch, at the deepest point. The children were piled together, close to the creek. We interrogated him all last night. Today, we dug more. You were there.” He seemed to consider. “Lemke was buried very near the garage, as though in haste.”

“Quiet Dell,” Emily said. “Sheriff Grimm, were the women, the girls, violated?”

“No. That would have been mentioned in the initial coverage, as it plays directly to motive. He bound and starved and beat them. The boy probably resisted. He died of two blows to the head, skull fractures. The females were not sexually attacked, but the boy—and
this must not come out until the trial, perhaps not even then, are we clear?” He waited for her assent, and continued. “The boy was emasculated.”

“After death?”

He didn’t waver. “Almost certainly. Yes. After death.”

She chose to believe him. Hart was not there; the boy had flown. The bird had flown, was the phrase, and the soul was often imagined as a bird.

The moment pressed down on them.

Emily was still. It was all changed. Her vision had gone dark for a moment, but she felt calm and her blood quieted. Yes, it was after death, for this shambling, brutal creature, so filled with violent shame, would have done that in secret, in a privacy that was absolute, all of them dead around him. He did not require the boy’s fear, only his person, still warm, and no one must see. The act was the antithesis of the criminal persona Powers cultivated: gentleman Romeo engaged in murder for profit, moving one state and alias to another. She imagined him, an adolescent never given his due, prevented from success for reasons he couldn’t fathom. He’d stood aside, angry, watchful. Empathy puzzled him: he could not feel it. A means of agency presented itself: one scam led to countless others. His well-chosen subjects were so willing, so open to seduction.

“Miss Thornhill?” Grimm was watching her.

“Yes, I was only thinking.” Hart. Brave boy, fighting impossible odds. Annabel, it suddenly came to her, had run. That’s why the straps of her shoes were broken. Emily saw the shoes, with the straps torn.

“Sheriff Grimm,” she said. “I thank you, for all you’ve done. These children are quite real to me.” She reached into her bag for O’Boyle’s letter, and gave Grimm the snapshots of the family. “Charles O’Boyle took these pictures of Asta and her children. He asked that I give them to you, with the proviso that we agree on the best use of them. The letter, perhaps, should be saved for the trial—but the
Tribune
would like to publish the photos immediately, and the AP will undoubtedly run them.”

Grimm looked at the snapshots. “The pictures in her trunks were formal, and not recent.” He rubbed away a smear on the image of the children in the snow. “You take the snapshots, and publish them. For now, I’ll enter the letter into evidence.”

They gathered their things and moved toward the lobby. Grimm had taken her arm as they walked to the elevator.

“Oh,” Emily said. “Duty. I must get some leftovers. Meat, I suppose. For the dog. His name is Duty. That’s what the Eichers called him, or it was his name when he came to them.” Hopelessly, she stopped speaking.

“Go to your rooms. I’ll have them send something up.”

•   •   •

She washed her face and took the pins from her hair, and wondered what had become of Eric; she must let him know about the morning visit to the garage. She called the Waldo and left a message, suggesting breakfast at eight at the Gore. She must hope that room service, this late, would respond to Grimm’s request. Duty lay on the bed, composed, appearing noble and neglected.

“I do apologize,” she said to him. “I know I promised. And I suppose you must be walked. I’ve taken down my hair before I thought of it.”

Someone knocked on the door, quietly.

She opened the door full on, and was shocked to see Grimm himself. “Oh,” she said.

“Room service is closed.” He’d removed his hat, as though on a social call, but stood back from the door to hand her a small parcel, tied in wax paper and string. “For the dog. And you needn’t hide it anymore. I spoke to the management.”

She saw that he was quite serious. “Thank you,” she told him. She felt him notice her scrubbed face, her hair, an unruly mane cascading over her shoulders and breasts. He turned away with a pained expression. She heard him walk off to the left, toward the elevator, then peered out to be sure. Eric stood to the right, at the corner of the hallway, and mimed turning a key in a lock. She gave him an
exasperated look and motioned him closer. Quickly, she grabbed Duty’s leash and latched it to his collar, and met Eric in the doorway.

“You’re joking,” Eric said.

“I’m not, please. Walk the dog. Then come back, and if we are not too exhausted to speak, we must plan.”

“Must we?” He took the leash and gave her a small bottle of brandy from his suit coat pocket. “Can you find some glasses at least?”

She closed the door after him. The front window of Room 127 looked out on West Pike Street. She opened the window wide to let in the night air. There was not a car in sight. She thought again of the dinner napkin tucked at Grimm’s throat. Her grandfather had sat down to supper just so, all those summer evenings of her childhood. She leaned on the windowsill, clinging to the image of his clasped hands, bowed head, the short prayer he said at meals, and had a sudden impression of him close to her, kneeling down and speaking urgently.

She saw Eric then, with Duty, walking from Second Street to the corner. He leaned on the street sign, just beyond the hotel’s red-and-white awning, and gazed back at the hotel, scanning the facade. He saw Emily and grinned. On impulse, she leaned out and threw her hair over her head, like Rapunzel. She heard his soft laughter but felt a sudden, choking shame and turned from the window in tears. She felt her way to the bed and lay shaking.

Someone must pull her from this well, for she was pressed close in a deep, narrow place. She knew unspeakable things that she must acknowledge. These things happened, or so people said. Mothers must protect their children. She was not a mother, but she spoke, she wrote, for mothers, for men and women and the children they had been. They must know how to recognize a surface that was form and camouflage, how to read through to what was real, to read horror, even. One must mount a defense, to save what could not save itself.

How did it begin, such deep self-hatred, shame that turned to fury? Emily felt him there, among his kill, wild with power he did not possess but took when he controlled the means. It was a first
time, unplanned, the still-warm child exposed before him. He was not known to have preyed on boys; Hart Eicher was an accidental opportunity, a revelation, perhaps.

She opened her mouth to breathe.

That instant, she heard Eric’s knock at the unlocked door.

He pushed it open. “What is it? I could feel you fall to pieces, from outside.” He lifted Duty onto the bed. “There, dog, revive her.” Duty nudged the curve of her shoulder, licking her face. “I take it you had a grim conversation,” Eric said carefully. He sat beside her. “All right, then. Emily, you must talk to me.”

She lay motionless. “Not yet. Just, stay here.”

Hair was dead cells, Emily’s hairdresser was fond of saying, but strong, lustrous hair that grew to great length was a sure sign of health, like the teeth and the inside of the mouth. And so: Lemke’s hair: vitality, strength, no matter her age or heft. The coroner’s phrases:
severe fright or trauma . . . the hair came away completely, a reaction induced before death
.

The letters between them would say what Emily knew, for Powers’ every correspondent revealed her crucible. Lemke had no doubt written of losing her son, of his goodness, his illness and death, the pain she’d fled only to carry it with her, how
she sometimes saw him before her
—the phrase flew into Emily’s mind—but her family had saved her, saying succor would come, she must be patient, and now Cornelius was her own heart’s companion; a new chapter was before them.

Emily would never tell it, never write it, for there was no way to prove it, but she knew what Powers had said and done. Bound, Dorothy broke the noose and dropped to the basement floor. Roused to fury, Powers showed her his secret. Emily saw his hand, with the thing curled there.

She sat bolt upright, flinging her hand against the washbasin and pitcher. The rooms had this old-fashioned touch; the maid filled the large pitchers each afternoon. This one was heavy white ironstone, filled nearly to the brim. Emily stood to grasp it at the base, and could lift the spout only as high as her forehead. The
water crashed over her in a cold, furious rush; she wanted to throw the pitcher onto the tiled bathroom floor and smash it to pieces, but Eric took it from her.

“Drink this,” he said, and took her in his arms, pouring brandy into her open mouth. “Now, again.” He watched her drink and held her on her feet as he pulled the bedspread from the bed to drape around her. “You’re shivering.” He picked her up and sat with her in the armchair, rubbing her back, her wrists, as though he’d pulled her from the sea. “All right, then?”