Cloudland (35 page)

Authors: Joseph Olshan

Tags: #Vermont, #Serial Murders, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Literary, #Fiction

“But I guess my Henrietta wouldn’t let him.”

Anthony turned his head toward the window and was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I just went into the kitchen to see the body. Prozzo brought one of those Seventh-Day Adventist pamphlets with him; it was lying on the floor. He had a long filleting knife in his pocket.”

“I guess we’re lucky Matthew and Hiram were here together. To be witnesses … that it was Prozzo all along, Prozzo waiting for his opportunity to kill me.”

Anthony nodded. “I’m pretty sure his tires will match the tire tracks we found up Cloudland, the ones that got frozen before the blizzard.”

Lying there, I thought of the detective who tried to strangle me now lying dead in my kitchen. I thought of his poor daughter, whom he’d been tragically trying to avenge, a daughter whose insanity made her unable to live in the everyday world, a daughter whose life became undone for the love of a young man who never loved her in return. Or at least Matthew claimed he never loved her. I wondered how true this was. I wondered about Prozzo’s belief: had I never entered Matthew’s life, might he have been able to love this girl?

The voices were closer now. I could hear the policemen beginning to climb the wooden stairs, the hollow sounds marching toward me. Preparing myself to answer their questions, I wondered if, like a butterfly beating its wings and precipitating a hurricane, I’d started a chain reaction of despair that began with Stephanie Prozzo and moved on to Matthew and then to me and, finally, to her frantic father. Perhaps the death of Angela Parker might somehow be linked to my difficulty believing in love; and if so, that would be impossible to share, much less even to explain.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe a great debt to the excellent reporting of Philip E. Ginsburg, whose book
The Shadow of Death
(Scribner, 1993) chronicles the events surrounding the serial murder of six women in the Upper Connecticut River Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire, as well as the search for the killer, who was never found.

I am grateful to Joan Harvey Cook and Nancy Anderson, who shared their stories about a famous knacker man.

I am grateful to Anne B. Adams and her account of finding one of the murdered women as well as for telling me the life story of her pig, Henrietta Rosewater, who appears in this novel under the same name.

I’d like to thank Lynne Barrett for her careful reading of an early draft of the manuscript and her triage of suggestions that made all the difference in the final draft.

I’d like to thank Ruth Sternglantz for her careful reading and her encouragement.

I’d like to thank my UK publisher of Arcadia Books, Gary Pulsifer.

I’d like to thank my U.S. editor, Keith Kahla of St. Martin’s Press.

I’d like to thank my agent, Mitchell Waters of Curtis, Brown, Ltd., for believing in this.

And I’d like to thank Bob Braunewell for being such a challenging muse.

ALSO BY JOSEPH OLSHAN

Clara’s Heart

A Warmer Season

The Waterline

The Sound of Heaven

Nightswimmer

Vanitas

In Clara’s Hands

The Conversion

About the Author

Joseph Olshan is an award-winning American novelist. His first novel,
Clara’s Heart
, won the Times/Jonathan Cape Young Writers’ Competition and went on to be made into a feature film starring Whoopi Goldberg. He is the author of eight novels, the most recent of which is
The Conversion
. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

CLOUDLAND.

For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print version as follows:

Olshan, Joseph.

Cloudland / Joseph Olshan. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-250-00017-0 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-4247-8 (e-book)

1. Serial murders—Fiction. 2. Vermont—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3565.L8237C59 2012

813'.54—dc23