See Also Deception (30 page)

At that moment, I heard distant footsteps clomping down the hall toward us. Guy rubbed his elbow against mine. I didn't know what Betty would do if someone else came along, pushed into the room and saw her with a gun.

“You don't know what she was,” Betty snapped. “I wanted Claude's wife to suffer like I was suffering. I wanted her to hurt and long for something forever because that's what I was going to do. My heart is broken forever, and so was hers once the librarian was dead. I watched her crumble just like I did. I watched her hurt.

“I could have told on them, could have told about us, but who would listen to me? A scrawny first year? The professor would have wiggled out of it just like he had all of the other girls' claims about him. He didn't know that I knew that. He thought I was stupid, too. I told him he was good at lying. You have to believe me.”

I did. I believed Claude Tutweiler was really good at lying. Nina, too. If only to themselves. But my immediate concern was that somewhere in Betty's young mind love, hate, and judgment had got all twisted up and exploded into a rage that knew no boundaries. I didn't know what had set her off, what had entered her mind that had suggested that killing another human being would solve all of her problems, but something had. It was something that I would never be able to understand or comprehend, even if it was just a simple breakup, a simple goodbye from Claude. That might have just been the final straw that snapped her mind. Honestly, I had no words to place on her behavior. I only knew what
I
felt at that moment, and I wanted to get her out of the way. I had to get to Hank before something else happened, before another life was taken, before she killed again.

“Someone is coming, Betty,” I said. “I just want you to know that.”

I waited a half beat. Hoped that she would flinch, look for a way out, take her eyes off mine, but she didn't move, didn't act like it mattered. Maybe she knew she had been caught and it was all over, but I didn't think so. She'd planned her way out of everything this far, and she had nearly gotten away with murder. I figured she had to have something else up her sleeve.

Hank was fifteen feet from me, and she stood in between us, fully capable and willing to pull the trigger of the gun she was holding. But there was no way out of the room other than the door.

Betty gripped the gun tighter. “I should have killed you when I had the chance, Mrs. Trumaine. But you know what? You have Pastor John Mark to thank for that. He came along and saved you. He saved you. Think about that. I knew if anybody'd come close to figurin' me out, it'd be you.”

“You've ruined Herbert's life, too, Betty. You've hurt a lot of people. Did you steal his watch and plant it to be found after you killed Calla?”

“It was easy. Everybody knows he's a drunk. I snuck in after he'd had one too many at the Wild Pony. I knew they'd go after him, but I wanted to make sure. I made sure it had blood on it and left it behind so they'd find it.”

“And Jaeger? He'll be heartbroken,” I said with a sigh.

“He's an empty old sad sack who's only good for one thing,” Betty said. “Makin' sure no one suspected that me and Claude had anything going on. That's all. I could never love someone like him. I'm not gonna be a farmer's wife. Not ever. Not me. I got bigger things planned for my life.”

“You used him.”

“He used me,” she said. “He got me into bed every chance he had. Good thing I got the pill from the Rexall. I didn't have to worry about bringin' his kids into the world.”

The footsteps got closer. They were heavier than I'd originally thought. A single pair. I was sure it was Doc Huddleston.

Betty heard them, then looked past Guy and me for just a brief second. Long enough for Guy to see an opening.

He dove toward her, stretching out with every inch of his six-foot, five-inch basketball player's body and tackled her mid-waist before she knew what hit her. Any sign of a limp, of the old injury that had halted Guy's chance at a professional career as an athlete, was not to be seen. He looked like a lion leaping after a young gazelle. A thing of beauty and horror all at once.

The gun flipped out of Betty's hand, flew upward, and nearly tapped the ceiling with the barrel before it crashed to the floor. The clatter of metal against linoleum mixed with rain hitting the window, the grunts and groans as Guy subdued and pinned Betty to the floor, all melded into a crescendo of music that I had never heard before and hoped to never hear again.

“What the hell?” a voice from behind me said.

I turned and came face-to-face with Duke Parsons, his face twisted in confusion and recognition at the same time.

I took a short breath, cast a glance at Guy pinning Betty to the floor, and said, “Looks to me like Guy just caught your killer, Duke. I think Herbert Frakes might have something to say to you about that.”

CHAPTER 49

Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. I sat in a worn, brown, vinyl chair watching my husband breathe, unable to communicate in any way, flat on his back, hooked up to machines that seemed to talk to everyone but me. After a long, lingering sickness, you thought you were ready for the moment when everything changed for the worst, but you weren't. You really weren't.

Outside the hospital, the storm had passed and the blinds remained drawn tight. The larger world—the price of grain, the Soviet threat, the coming winter, completing the index for the
Common Plants
book—was the least of my concerns. I couldn't even begin to confront the guilt I felt for having left Hank's side for one second. That had been the risk of my obsession with Calla's proclaimed suicide—that I would be away from Hank in his hour of need. I'd been naïve, convinced that all of the monsters in the world had been rounded up and the key thrown away. I had been wrong. The responsibility for Hank's safety was all mine, and I had failed. Failed greatly. Honestly, I didn't know how I was going to live with myself.

Inside, the storm had passed, too. Betty Walsh had been carted off in handcuffs, finally subdued, finally stopped. She could hurt no one else. What she did to herself, locked inside a jail cell, was no more important to me than the color of the sky beyond the window. I had no idea whether it was day or night, no idea what her fate would be, though I had a suspicion our paths would cross again. The law of the land dictated such a confrontation, no matter whether it was healthy, sane, or necessary. I had no desire to see Betty's beauty and youth turn on her.

Doctors and nurses had swarmed around us once the room had become safe, the gun unloaded, the monster chained. Somewhere in all of that fury, a nun floated into the room dressed in a full black habit. She leaned down to me and offered me her rosary for comfort. She smelled of starch and freshly waxed floors. I had refused the nun's gift and asked Olga to make sure that Hank and I were left alone from then on out.

I wasn't sure whether Hank was aware of my presence or not. He was comatose, unresponsive, still alive, stuck somewhere between life and death. In my own way, I was in exactly the same place.

There was no such place as purgatory for Lutherans, but I was on Catholic soil, and it seemed to exist in some touchable theory that I had never considered before. The open prairie of the plains had always been desolate, lonely, but where I sat now was lonelier, filled with more fear than I had felt in my entire life. I felt small and helpless. It was a terrible feeling.

There was nothing to do now but wait. Wait for answers. Did Betty Walsh do this? Did Hank ask her to? And more. More questions about Calla, Nina, and Claude that would surely be answered in the days to come, splayed open for the entire town to see on the front page of the
Press
. I shuddered at the thought. Calla would have been mortified to have had her private life exposed to the world in such a way. I was sure of it. Anybody would be.

I laid my hand on Hank's chest, felt the warmth of his body, and, finally, it all became too much for me. Tears and sobs came at the end of my storm, once I knew no one could see me, hear me.

After a good cry, I drifted off to sleep, even though I fought against it with all of my might. I didn't want to leave Hank, but I was only human. I was exhausted.

The sun was starting to tilt toward the western horizon. Late afternoon, the end of a long July day, was starting to show its certain promise of the coming night, but there was still plenty of light left. The sky was a radiant blue, reflecting a perfect day below it. A cool breeze kept the temperature in the low seventies and pushed any humidity that the air held far to the east. Swallows and martins swarmed the freshly mowed hay field in squadrons, zipping and turning, then arching upward at the very last moment to avoid a collision with other ravenous, insect-eating birds. It was a feast of plenty, a perfect confluence of luck, hard work, and bounty. The kind of day that was rare anywhere but especially in July in North Dakota. On this day, it was a blessing that the nights were short and the days were long. The sun would finally set an hour before midnight, and a hearty man could fit two days' worth of work into one.

I looked up and saw Hank walking toward me, and I smiled at what I saw. He'd been up since dawn, out with the Knudsens cutting hay. Baling would come next. Two hundred acres of backbreaking work that was a summer ritual for all of us who lived off the land.

Hank had his hat off. His hair glowed sweet yellowish-brown and looked like it had been dyed by the grain he worshiped, like he had become a stalk of promise himself. He had a sweat-soaked short-sleeve shirt on, and I could see the ripple of his muscles through the thin cotton. His shoulders were straight, and he wore a calm, satisfied smile on his face. Most of the day's work had been completed; it was time for a break.

I had laid out a blanket on the ground in one of our favorite, private spots. A thin copse of cottonwoods that sat up on a slight ridge and protected us from the direct sun but gave us a wide view of our rolling, simple land. We owned everything in every direction for as far as the eye could see. Our world seemed to go on forever, and it was a comfortable feeling knowing that we were alone, that we could see or hear anyone coming from miles away. We lived in our own little world and didn't worry about our privacy or prying eyes. Not there in that special spot.

I had a picnic basket full of Hank's favorite things—ham salad made from Mills Standish's best bologna, fried potatoes, sweet lemonade, and a chiffon cake that I learned from Peg Graham and her
Women's Club of the Air
radio program. It wasn't much of a late afternoon snack, but it was what Hank had asked for as he'd walked out the door to work.

I had been preoccupied with the correspondence course that I'd been taking to learn back-of-the-book indexing. I could hardly contain my excitement as I closed in on the finish of it. Just the thought of contributing to the farm, making some extra money in the winter by reading books, made me as giddy as a school girl.

I stood up and pressed the front of my sleeveless summer dress down. I was barefoot, comfortable in the white linen that was hardly more than a smock. The fabric caressed my skin, along with the breeze, and it felt like a luxurious massage.

“You're a sight for sore eyes,” I whispered to him as he drew near. “I was starting to worry you weren't coming.”

Hank said nothing, just grinned that silly little grin of his, walked right up to me, took me in his arms, and kissed me like he hadn't seen me in a month. I felt every ounce of his being in that moment, and I knew he had been pushing himself, that every cell in his body was alive, engaged, grateful. He was stone hard from head to toe.

He pulled his head away, but kept ahold of me. “I've been thinkin' about you all day.”

“I missed you, too,” I said, a little flushed. The temperature had suddenly risen to August extremes. A month had flown by in a matter of seconds. I didn't mind the aroma of Hank's body. It was sweet, not pungent. He smelled like he had been rolling on the ground for hours and enjoying himself the entire time.

“I'm famished.” Hank looked away from me, to the picnic basket, then back to me with warm and wanting eyes. “But that can wait.”

In one swift, practiced, knowing move, he reached his hand down and pulled my dress up over my head and tossed it behind him. I had nothing else on underneath—I had hoped he would want me as much as I wanted him.

The white linen fluttered away like an errant kite wafting to the ground. No one was going to chase after it, and I didn't protest, didn't stumble, didn't worry that we would be seen. Nothing existed but Hank and I in our moment of paradise.

I returned the favor and unsnapped his belt and began to undress him as we became a tangle of tongues, arms, legs, and desire.