Cold Black Earth (12 page)

In the morning the world had changed. There hadn’t been quite enough snow to soften all the hard edges—corn stubble poked through a layer of white, and the wind had scoured clear patches on the slopes—but the dark earth was brightened and Rachel’s mood with it. A few hours of genuine sleep with no dreams had taken her another few steps away from the horror, and she could feel the tiny pilot light of her native optimism rekindled, deep in her inner workings. She fixed a big farm breakfast for herself and Matt, knowing that keeping busy was the best way to avoid brooding. Cleanup and laundry and an hour’s worth of news on CNN took her up through late morning. Matt had gone to look at dairy equipment in Kalmar. Then she heard movement upstairs, the hiss of the shower and finally Billy’s step on the stairs.

He passed through the kitchen with strands of wet hair splayed out on bare shoulders, jeans sagging low on his hips revealing the plaid of his boxers. “Morning,” he said, making for the basement steps.

“If you’re looking for clean clothes, they’re in the living room. I did a couple of loads and folded them in there.”

He muttered something and did an about-face, his eyes fleeing hers as if suddenly embarrassed by his naked torso. He was lean and wiry, with just a wisp of hair on his chest. Rachel rose and went to the refrigerator. When Billy came back in he was buttoning a flannel shirt. “Sorry I scared you last night,” he said.

“That’s all right. Want some bacon and eggs? Your father and I went for the big artery-clogging breakfast today. We can’t do it too often, but you’re too young to worry about that.”

Billy shrugged. “Sure.” He poured himself a cup of coffee. He fiddled with milk and sugar while Rachel heated the skillet and laid strips of bacon in it. “So you found the body,” Billy said.

“That’s right.” Rachel poked at the bacon, not looking at him.

“Must have been a shock.”

“It was.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. “I knew Ed Thomas. He was a friend of your grandfather’s.”

Billy nodded. “Everybody knew him. He was a real creep.”

Rachel shoved the bacon to one side. “How do you like your eggs?”

“Aw, just scramble ’em. I’m not too particular.”

“Pancakes?”

“Nah, don’t bother. I’ll just have some toast.” He fished out a couple of slices of bread and put them in the toaster. “I know you’re not supposed to bad-mouth people when they die. But I don’t think anybody’s gonna be too sorry he’s gone.”

Rachel tended to the eggs and bacon. When they were done she put it all on a plate and brought it to Billy at the table, then sat back down with her cup of tea. “Why’s that?” she said.

Billy shrugged, swallowed and took a mouthful of coffee. “Like I said, he was a creep.”

“You mean the feeling up girls?”

Billy gave her a sharp look. “Not just girls.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope. Friend of mine did some work for him once and at the end of the day the old bastard propositioned him.”

Rachel gaped at him. “That’s unbelievable.”

“That’s what I said. But my friend swore it was true. Not that he came right out with it. It was, like, subtle. Like, ‘Why don’t you stay and have supper with me and we’ll watch some movies.’ Nothing you could take to court or anything. But the dude said the message was pretty clear.”

“Yuck.” Rachel set her cup down. “Yuck. That’s awful. I have to say, I never heard anything like that. That’s disturbing.”

“Well, you been gone a long time. Maybe he wasn’t that way when you were around. I don’t know. But that’s why nobody wanted to work for him. Word gets around.”

Rachel sat with her eyes closed, hand to her face, feeling the horror again. When she opened them she saw Billy staring at her, looking worried. “I’m sorry, Aunt Rachel,” he said. “Whatever the hell he was, I don’t mean to make light of it.”

They exchanged a long look, and Rachel could see the pain in her nephew’s eyes; he had his own horrors to remember. “How long does it take before you feel normal again?”

That was not a good move, Rachel thought, watching Billy’s expression harden. She was groping for common ground, but she could see she had blundered. “What,” he said. “After you find somebody dead? I don’t know. I didn’t find my mother. I just went to the funeral. All I can tell you is, I ain’t felt normal since.”

“I’m sorry, Billy.”

He shrugged, tucking into the eggs. “Not your fault,” he said, and Rachel could tell she had lost him.

12    

“There’s a lot we don’t know,” said Roger. “Starting with why he chose Ed Thomas.” He was warming his hands on the mug of coffee Rachel had set in front of him, his fur-lined trooper’s hat on the table at his elbow. “It was before the snow and the ground was close to frozen, but the state forensic guys are pretty good. They found tracks from two vehicles, yours on the drive and one other which was all over the place. That’s got to be Ed’s pickup. If Ryle was there, he either walked in or he rode in with Ed.” Roger hesitated, looking at Rachel, then said, “The amount of blood around the kill site helped them. They found two sets of footprints and were able to identify Ed’s, so they’ve got something to go on.”

Coolly, Rachel said, “I think I managed to avoid stepping in it. But I’d be happy to let them look at my shoes.”

Roger’s eyes fled hers. “They haven’t asked. What we’re thinking is that maybe Ed picked him up hitchhiking.”

“Would he do that?” said Matt. “I’d say he was more the type to run a hitchhiker off the side of the road.”

“Who knows? The killer got there somehow. Maybe he flagged him down on a pretext, like his car broke down or something. But then why would Ed take him back to his place?”

“For gas? I think Ed still had a tank in the yard. But I’m having trouble seeing Ed putting himself out for anyone like that.”

Roger shrugged. “Well, there’s other reasons you might bring someone home.” He stared into his coffee with a look of distaste.

Rachel and Matt traded a look. “Like what?” said Matt.

Roger took a sip of coffee. Eyes on the tabletop, he said, “Just speculating here. But when we searched Ed’s house we found what I’d call a fairly large stash of pornography. Not all of it, uh, heterosexual.”

“Oh, God, poor Ruth,” Rachel breathed.

“She may not have known anything about it. He probably kept it hidden as long as she was around. Anyway, it’s all speculation, like I said. Just one reason why he might have brought a hitchhiker home. And then had him go off on him. It would fit the profile for Ryle. According to what I’ve seen, sexual abuse as a child was a big factor in his pathologies. But we really don’t know anything. For that matter, there was no sign anybody besides Ed had been in the house. The door was unlocked, but there was no disturbance inside. Beyond the general mess, anyway. Ed wasn’t much of a housekeeper.”

Rachel wondered if she was the only person in Dearborn County who hadn’t seen through Ed. “Awful, awful,” she said quietly.

“Funeral’s tomorrow,” said Matt. “Closed coffin. I guess we have to go.”

“Of course we have to go,” said Rachel. “Whatever else he was, Ed was our father’s friend. And his wife was my friend.”

“We may be the only ones there.”

“That would surprise me,” said Roger. “That would surprise me a whole lot.”

The last church service Rachel had attended had been her wedding in Jezzine, Lebanon, in a five-hundred-year-old church, smoky with incense and echoing with strange chants. There wasn’t going to be any of that at Trinity Lutheran Church in Ontario, but as far as Rachel was concerned the simple white frame construction with its squat steeple and vista of open fields beyond was all a church should be; she was through with exoticism.

There were four TV station vans parked within a block of the church. One was from Peoria, two were from the Quad Cities and one had come all the way from Chicago. “He did it,” said Matt, easing to a stop down the block from the church and throwing the pickup in park. “Otis Ryle put us on the map.”

“I have a feeling it’s a map we don’t want to be on.” Rachel made no move to get out of the truck. “Will they know who I am?”

“Not until somebody points you out to them. Which should take about a minute.”

“Terrific.”

Matt gave her a long look. “We can turn around and go home if you want.”

She thought about it. “No. I’d feel like I chickened out. I’m here for Ruth.” She reached for the door handle.

A sparse crowd of perhaps two dozen people milled in front of the steps. Matt had put on a suit, but he was a rarity. Nobody dresses up for church anymore, Rachel thought. The best-dressed people in the crowd were the TV reporters, two men and a woman, identified by the mikes in their hands and an air of fretting about their hair. There was apparently no filming going on at the moment, the cameras sitting idle on their tripods and the crews—the most slovenly of all those present—peering at their equipment or blowing cigarette smoke up into the wind.

They went slowly up the sidewalk, a few heads turning as they approached. “Do you still come every Sunday?” Rachel asked, prey to a sudden devastating sweep of longing for a certainty she had lost years before.

“I don’t make it in every week,” Matt said. “And I stopped trying to make Billy go when he was about fourteen. But I get to feeling guilty if I miss too much.”

Rachel had given up feeling guilty as her faith waxed and waned; she figured the ongoing torment of doubt was between her and God and required no public adjudication. “I stopped going years ago,” she said.

“Well, you’ll be the belle of the ball. Old Martha Erickson was asking about you just the other day. She seemed to be under the impression you had become a Muslim.”

Rachel had to stop and turn her back on the throng, her frazzled nerves giving way.

“You OK?” said Matt, full of concern.

Rachel stood hunched with her face in her hands, giggling uncontrollably. “A Muslim,” she managed to gasp.

Matt put an arm around her shoulders. “I told her you only had to wear the veil on Fridays.”

Rachel had to ride out another spasm of suppressed laughter before she recalled what was lying in the coffin inside, killing the mirth instantly. She took a few deep breaths. “I’m OK,” she said. Matt handed her a handkerchief and she wiped her eyes.

A benefit of the attack was that she had given a perfect imitation of grieving distress in full sight of the crowd, and they shied away from her as she approached the church steps.

Except, of course, for the TV people. The Peoria crew had gotten the jump on the others, and a well-groomed youngster in a camel-hair coat came trotting down the sidewalk, microphone in hand and look of professional gravity on his face. “Ms. Lindstrom?” he said, accosting her.

“Please,” she said. “I don’t have anything to say.”

She might as well have spoken in Arabic. “I’m told you were the one who found the body.”

“Fuck off,” said Matt, and they brushed past him. Rachel saw that a camera was trained on her and lowered her eyes. The two other reporters made tentative approaches as she and Matt navigated the crowd, but Matt fended them off. They stopped to shake a few hands. Nobody had anything to say beyond the greetings; the atmosphere was strained, like a party where something embarrassing had just happened. They went up the steps and into the church.

Here in the vestry were more people they knew: The Larsons were there along with a few other neighbors, mostly elderly. Ed Thomas had shed friends over the years, but they were turning out now, whether from loyalty or morbid curiosity Rachel could only wonder. A man Rachel had never seen before, stooped and gray in an ancient polyester suit, was introduced to her as Ed’s brother Dick from Warrensburg. He looked dazed, blinking wetly at everyone and occasionally mumbling something nobody bothered to ask him to repeat. After an uncomfortable round of platitudes, Rachel followed Matt into the sanctuary, where the closed coffin sat on a bier at the front.

Her mind wandered during the service. The pastor was in his thirties, plump and high-voiced. There was no eulogy and his message was brief, a hasty rehashing of the scripture, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Nobody appeared much comforted. The church was barely half full and most of the congregation had seen the backside of sixty. Rachel tried to focus, to find solace in the ritual, but found it hard.

Afterward the church emptied fast. Standing on the steps in the chill, Rachel saw that all three television crews were occupied, interviewing people they had snagged from the congregation. She and Matt made their good-byes and started down the steps. Ed Thomas’s brother was in a knot of people at the foot of the steps talking to a man in a trench coat; Rachel knew she’d seen him recently but couldn’t place him. “Who’s that talking to Ed’s brother?” she said when they had cleared the crowd.

“Mark McDonald,” said Matt. “We saw him at the basketball game.”

“Right. What’s he doing here?”

Matt cast a look over his shoulder. “From the look of things, I’d say he’s trying to get his hands on Ed’s land. And if I had to bet I’d say he’s going to get it. Ed’s brother doesn’t look like the type of man to drive a hard bargain.”

“Where does a convicted felon get the money to buy farmland?”

“It’s not his money. He works for DAE.”

“What’s DAE?”

“That’s the big ag company that’s trying to buy up all the land around here. Dearborn Agricultural Enterprises. The word is they’re gonna grow corn for ethanol. They’ve been throwing money around the county, driving up land prices. I heard they made Ed an offer and he told them to go to hell. You’d think if anybody would sell, he would. Cash in and go live in Florida. But he was a stubborn old bastard. Go figure.”

On the drive home Rachel sat thinking of Ruth Thomas, married but childless, watching her husband grow bitter and vicious as the years went by, devoting herself to other people’s children. She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

“I know,” said Matt, glancing over. “He was a jerk, but Dad liked him. It’s like losing a little bit of Dad that was left.”

“It’s Ruth I’m crying for,” said Rachel.

“Ah,” said Matt. He sighed.

And myself, Rachel thought. I’m crying for me, too.