The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies (26 page)

Chapter Fifty

It was after one in the morning when Mary Frances Hofer died. Mia had dozed off and wasn't aware when the woman stopped breathing for good—forever. She leapt up at Guibard's hand on her shoulder and his words, “Looks like it's over.”

“How in God's name will we get a big enough casket?” Mia heard the words as from a distance, but it wasn't like it was her speaking. She must have been still asleep. She'd never have said such a thing otherwise.

Mrs. Hofer was now only a gigantic sheet-covered mound in the bed.

Guibard was gray; an exhausted old man. “We'd better go tell the boys.”

“Maybe the priest should do it.”

“He left at least a couple of hours ago.”

“Left?” Doucet had been in the room when Mia fell asleep, talking to Mary Frances, listening to her. He'd even made her laugh a few times. A real laugh, not just the nervous cackle.

“He was on the phone for a long time. I assume trying to reach the aunt. Then I guess he went for the other kids.”

“Probably.”

It took three tries, but Mia managed to unbend her body enough to stand up.

“I'll get you home. And the boys, too?”

Mia nodded. What would happen to them now? “They're orphans,” Mia said. “Four orphans.”

“We'll think about that in the morning.”

Jake and Sam didn't start crying until they got into the dark of the coupe's back seat, and didn't stop until it came to a halt in the yard. They refused to leave the car, insisting that Guibard take them home. There was no point in arguing. They were hardly children anymore, not after tonight.

The light was on in the room where Claire should be sleeping. Otherwise everything was dark. Dark and clear and silent. Was the child awake, waiting? Mia couldn't bear to be the one to tell her. She watched the taillights disappear down the driveway and around the bend.

A faint pinpoint of light was visible beyond the garden. She could leave it on, it didn't matter all that much, but a short walk, some fresh air, would feel good. And give her time to think.

She let her memory and the moon, almost full, guide her along the path, past the gnarled remains of the pines, past the old root cellar, to the sauna.

The door was closed and latched, the single window was a hazily glowing rectangle. She pushed open the door and jumped back at the cloud of acrid smoke. What the devil had Nick done this time?

She waved away the smoke and fumbled to open the door to the steam room. A naked and retching John McIntire fell into her arms. His words as she cradled him were a painful croak. “I think I've had this dream before.”

***

Four hours of sitting with his lips wrapped around the end of a blistering hot vertical copper pipe had given McIntire a sorer neck than he thought it was possible to survive. And the sorest back, and the sorest lips. He didn't allow Mia to summon the doctor back. “I'm alive. It's too late for it to kill me now. At least not tonight.” Worrying about Black Lung could come later, as could dealing with the miscreant, the identity of whom he had no doubt whatsoever. She had other problems now. He asked, “Has anybody told the younger kids?”

Nick answered, “I suppose the priest did.”

“I'm not sure he knows,” Mia said. “He was with Mary Frances at the hospital, but he left before she died. She wasn't looking so bad then. The final heart attack happened later.” She swept her fingertips across her eyelids. “Do you think I should wake them up? Would it be okay to wait until morning? Maybe we can get Father Doucet back before we tell them.”

“They're not here,” Nick sounded mystified. “I thought you'd have seen them. He came to get them a while ago. I'm not sure what time—I was asleep when he got here—but it must have been after midnight. I thought it was crazy getting them up. I couldn't see how it would be good for them to see her sick like that, and I didn't figure the hospital would let them in. But maybe priests have pull. I guess they didn't make it back in time, anyway. It would have been better to let the kids sleep.”

“We must have crossed paths.” Her reflection in the window showed the helplessness that McIntire felt. “The poor babies. It must have been awful. Getting there too late.”

McIntire fell into a fit of coughing that sent him out the back door. When he returned, Nick handed him a glass of water, “Sorry. We seem to be forgetting that somebody tried to kill you.”

Mia spoke through a yawn. “Tried to kill John? Why? Besides they must have thought it was you in there.”

“I didn't take it quietly,” McIntire said. “They knew who it was inside, and I know who it was outside.”

Chapter Fifty-one

It was only a few minutes past eight when the phone rang, but McIntire was more or less up. He coughed into the mouthpiece to let his caller know they had reached a living body.

“John?” It was Ellie Wall.

McIntire choked out what he hoped sounded like an admission to being more or less himself.

“I've just come from getting ready for nine o'clock mass. Father Doucet isn't there, and he's not at his house.”

The question of why he should care crossed McIntire's mind. “He's probably with the Hofer children. Mrs. Hofer died last night.”

“Oh, no. How terrible. I had no idea.” There was a pause, lengthy enough to lead McIntire to wonder if she'd fainted. No, not Ellie, but she might have simply rushed off, forgetting to hang up the phone. Finally she said, “But Father should be here. He wouldn't just forget about mass.”

“Under the circumstances he might. Or he might have overslept, it was a long night. I'll go check.”

“No, don't bother. Adam is here having breakfast. I'll send him over to Hofers'. You'd better take care of that cold.”

McIntire stepped outdoors and spent a few minutes spitting disgusting black slime into his newly trimmed grass. He sank to the steps limp, depleted, physically and every other way. Kelpie turned bleary sympathetic eyes to his. He cupped her chin in his hand. “Brew a pot of joe will you?” When she made no move for the kitchen, he went on, “What the hell is the world coming to? I'm pretty damn sure that a little girl tried to kill me last night. Tried to roast me like a Fourth of July pig. I survived, but her mother is dead. She's an orphan. Is it divine punishment? What sort of God would punish four children for the act of one? Although the rest may not be so very innocent either. Did Reuben and Mary Frances Hofer spawn a family of homicidal psychotics do you suppose? Are
their
deaths the Vengeance of the Lord? The authority on the subject has gone AWOL.”

The jangling phone cut his soliloquy short. This time McIntire managed hello on the second try. It was Adam Wall.

“He ain't here?”

“At Hofers'?”

“At anywhere. And he's got the kids with him.”

McIntire tried to ignore his burning throat to focus his mind. “Maybe he went back to the church.”

“I don't think you're listening. Last night he picked up those two kids. He told Nick he was taking them to the hospital. He never showed up. He didn't say that he was going somewhere else, and he hasn't come back.”

Only one thought came into McIntire's head. “He drives like a maniac, and he must have been getting tired.”

“That's what I'm guessing. Koski and Newman are on their way to Ishpeming. We can start from this end. We'll have to check the side roads in case he got groggy and took a wrong turn.”

With luck maybe they were only lost. “What about the boys? Are they still around?”

“I doubt it like hell. They were at home when I got there. I told them to stay put, but they got a car, you know.”

“And they got a head start on us,” McIntire said. “I'll get moving.”

It was bound to happen sooner or later. But you'd think with two kids in the car, a man purporting to be the agent of God could lighten up on the gas.

How much tragedy could one family take? Would it be capped by Sam and Jake Hofer discovering the bodies of their younger siblings in the twisted wreckage of a Maroon Buick Riveria?

Chapter Fifty-two

When Claire opened her eyes it was getting light, and the car was stopped at a filling station. Father Doucet said she could go to the bathroom, and he woke Joey up so he could go, too.

Father didn't look tired at all, even though he'd been up all night.

She was stiff from sleeping curled up, and it felt good to stand straight and stretch her legs, and good to be able to look at something but the sky and the back of Father's head.

They were in a town. The sun was only just coming up, but the sidewalk felt warm under her feet. It was a pretty filling station, made to look like a tiny white and pink castle. It even had a little bitty tower with a pointy roof. The sign on the door said,
MINNOWS AND WORMS
in big letters. Underneath it said,
We Get Up Before The Fish Do.

The guy that put the gas in the car looked sort of like Sam. He filled up Father's two gas cans, too, and winked at her when he was washing the dirt off the windows. Sam was in jail now. Sleeping on a hard bunk in a cell. Claire wondered if they'd let him and Jake share a cell.

When they got back in the car, Father said Joey could sit in the front seat.

There was a bakery down the street, so the gas station people weren't the only ones up before the fish. Father went in and bought some rolls. Claire and Joey both had long johns, two each, and Father Doucet had a bismark.

“We'll stop for a real breakfast soon.”

They went over a bridge across a wide, wide river. It had to be the Mississippi. They had crossed it when they moved from Iowa, so she knew they must be going west now. Where women are double breasted.

Joey hung his head out the window to look down at the water. After they were across he said, “Next week is when I make my First Communion.”

“That's right.”

“On Saturday, I make my first confession.”

It was quiet for a while, then Father said, “You can make your first confession now.”

“There's no church.”

Father slowed the car down and drove onto the side of the road. He put his cigarette out in the ash tray, and opened the door. “This will do just fine.” He looked around at Claire. “You can both make a confession.”

It wasn't fair. Claire hadn't planned on going to confession. It was something she needed to get herself ready for, to think about for a while—for a long while. Going to confession always made her feel sick, but it felt good afterwards, to start all over with a clean soul. She hadn't been to confession with a priest that she knew, like she did Father Doucet, and she'd be humiliated for him to know all the bad things she'd done. You weren't supposed to keep anything back. That would be a worse sin. And the priest wasn't ever allowed to tell, no matter what you'd done. But he'd still
know
. It wasn't fair. If you lied to the priest, could you just go to confession again and confess that you'd told a lie? Maybe she should just say, “No, thank you. Some other time.”

They all got out and Father took Joey a little ways down the road to a tree trunk that had fallen down. Claire waited.

Father Doucet sat on the log, and Joey got down on his knees beside him. Claire saw him make the sign of the cross and then felt ashamed for watching and turned her back.

They were on a high hill, and you could see way across a valley with a creek at the bottom. Some Holstein cows, like Grandpa's, stood in a group in the mist. It made a pretty picture, but Claire could only think about the butterflies in her stomach.

She didn't hear Joey coming until he tapped her on the shoulder and said it was her turn.

She settled for telling that she lied and had bad thoughts, but it was like Father wasn't even listening to her. He prayed under his breath, and then said that her penance was out of his hands, and she should go in peace.

Joey was waiting by the car. His eyes were red, but he wasn't crying. He looked at Claire like he was scared she'd whack him or something, and said she could have the front seat.

Chapter Fifty-three

By noon it was obvious that the Reverend Adrien Doucet and the two youngest Hofer children had effectively disappeared. The only automobile casualty on any roads between St. Adele and the hospital on the outskirts of Ishpeming was the older Hofer brothers' Oldsmobile, pulled off the road, out of gas. The two had made it almost back to Karvonen's store on foot, lugging a three gallon gas can. The dread in their eyes was agonizing.

“We haven't found anything,” McIntire told them. “And the sheriff hasn't heard about any car accidents.”

“I don't get it,” Jake put down the can. “Has he kidnapped them?”

It was a bizarre idea, but it almost seemed as though he had. “They'll be okay.”

“Do they know about Ma?”

“Probably not.”

Sam gulped and turned his back. Jake wiped his nose on his sleeve. McIntire could think of nothing to say but, “Come on. I'll take you home. We can get the car later.”

Ellie Wall was waiting for them. She'd milked the long-suffering Opal and baked a pan of biscuits. She had hardly set to work, frying eggs and potatoes, before her son showed up trailed by Pete Koski, come to reclaim his Power Wagon.

They ate in silence, not from awkwardnes; in a strange way it was a companionable concentration on satisfying hunger while united in tragedy and disbelief.

Koski pushed back his chair and shifted to face the youths, tapping his fork on the table. “Think,” he said. “Think very, very hard. Yesterday when the priest drove you to the hospital, what did he talk about? I want to know every single solitary word you can remember.”

Sam swallowed. “He said that our mother had a heart attack, and…he said it was possible that she wouldn't live.”

Jake added, “And we should pray for her.”

“That's it?”

Jake nodded. Sam said, “Mostly.”

“He must have said something more. It's forty-five minutes from here to Ishpeming.”

Sam observed, “Not the way Father drives.”

Jake stared at his empty plate. “He said that nothing is more terrible than losing your entire family, and it would be especially hard for us, because we're young .”

“Are those the words he used? Your
entire
family?”

“I guess he meant if Ma died, that would be both her and Pa.”

“And Grandpa,” Sam put in.

“That's the grandfather that gave you the shotgun?”

“Ya.”

“And he taught you how to use it?”

Jake took another biscuit from the pan. “He made us practice. Mostly by shooting gophers. Every morning he gave us each one shell and sent us out to get gophers. He expected us to come back with three gophers. Three shells, three gophers. If we didn't, he'd make us wash his truck, or cut the grass, something like that.” He reached for the butter. “He wasn't mean about it. Not like Pa.”

McIntire's gaze met Koski's over the stubbly heads. Koski cleared his throat. “Three?”

“Ya. One for each of us.”

“Your sister learned how to handle the gun, too?”

“Are you kidding? No! Well, she wanted to, but Grandpa said it wasn't for girls.”

“Joey?”

“He had to rest the gun on a fence or something, but the little guy's a good shot. Sometimes Jake and me just gave the shells to him and let him shoot all….” Sam's voice trailed into a dead, suffocating silence. Jake whispered, “Christ. Joey.”

The screen door smashed against the side of the house. “Have they come back?” Mia Thorsen stood in the doorway, the eagerness fading. “What's happened? Please, are they…?”

Ellie Wall leapt up. “As far as we know they're fine. They're with Father. They'll be fine.”

“With Father where?” The mongrel terrier bounded in behind her.

“That we don't know.” Koski looked again to Jake. “Where the hell is that gun?”

He shook his head.

“Where was it kept? To hide it from your father?”

“In the chest of drawers. In the second drawer from the bottom.” The reply was automatic. The boy might have been talking in his sleep.

“Ya, that's what your mother told us. She said she saw it there the day after your father died, when she was getting sheets to make a bed for your aunt.”

Again Jake mouthed the soundless word,
Joey
, and it was left for Sam to respond, “So the burglars stole it.”

“The burglars didn't steal it We know who it was that broke in, and they didn't take the gun, they claim they didn't see it, and I don't think they'd have any reason to lie about that. It was gone before they came.” Koski leaned forward, “So that means it was there on Tuesday, the tenth, and gone by the evening of Thursday, the twelfth.”

Mia inched around the room to stand behind McIntire's chair. When she put her hand on his shoulder, he continued to regard the two bewildered youths.

“We weren't here then,” Jake came back to life. “We left for the funeral on Thursday, early in the morning.”

“With your Aunt Jane.”

“That's right. We went on the train.”

“And your father's remains were brought here the day before.” McIntire said.

“Ya. Ma couldn't go to the funeral.”

“I suppose there were people in and out most of the day?” Koski waited for a confirming nod. “How hard would it have been to sneak a shotgun out the back door?”

“To where?”

Jake had hit the nail on the head. Getting it out without being noticed might not have been impossible—it had been taken out to commit the murder, after all—but it was almost certainly not hidden around the place somewhere. The only people who'd have had both the will and the means to get rid of it effectively, by taking it off in a car, were the two young men sitting at the table.

“Carried away somewhere on foot, not too far, but far enough?” The sheriff didn't ask, but the implication was there; how far could an eight year old boy have gotten with a shotgun without being noticed? He'd managed to make it to the hayfield and back when no one was expecting him to have it.

“It would have had to be at night.” At Jake's words, Mia's hand tightened and McIntire reached to cover it with his.

“No,” Sam said, “It couldn't have been. Sister stayed in the room all night, right next to the coffin.”

“All night?”

“Ya. You can ask her.”

“She sat with the casket? Not ten feet from where the gun was kept?”

Sam nodded.

McIntire said, “She might have fallen asleep.”

“Not for long,” Sam said. “Every time I woke up, I heard her singing, and then crying for a long time.”

Koski looked up. “John, think you could dash off home and call Forrest Brothers? Ask them how the lid of Reuben Hofer's coffin was fastened.”

.