“It’s hotter than blazes today,” she said.
“It’s a warm one.” Rich walked around the car, got in, started the engine, and immediately cranked the air-conditioner on high.
Claire leaned her head back and felt the car move forward.
“Do you want to tell me what happened? Meg gave me the bare bones, but you could fill me in.”
Claire looked over at Rich. He had kind eyes and lacy wrinkles around them. He was such a good man. What had she ever done to deserve him? Tears leaked out her eyes and down her face.
“Claire?” Rich reached over and patted her knee. “You all right?”
“I’m a mess.”
“It’s just a broken arm.”
“It’s not that. It’s everything. I let Chet try to hang himself.
Then I let him get away. You don’t want to live with me anymore, and Meg wants to have sex. My life is a mess.”
“Whoa. Meg wants to have sex?”
“I’m a bad cop. A bad almost-wife. And a bad mom.”
Rich laughed. “You are one bad woman all right.”
“Not funny.” Claire sucked in tears and swallowed.
“There’s Kleenex in the glove compartment. Can you tell me what happened with Chet?”
“Not much to tell. I went to get him at the hospital. Rich, he looked terrible. I swear. Hunched over in the wheelchair. I felt so sorry for him. He really suckered me. When we got to the government center, he took off. I chased after him, almost caught him, grabbed at him, caught the back of his shirt and then made the mistake of putting my hand down as I was falling.”
“Ouch.”
“It isn’t bad enough that our dear friend maybe killed his wife, but then he has to run away on my watch.”
“And you get hurt in the process.”
Claire was glad he understood. She went on. “Rich, I think Chet was trying to kill himself again. When I grabbed him, he had stepped in front of a truck.”
Rich shook his head, didn’t say anything.
“Sorry,” Claire said.
“Not your fault.”
Claire leaned her head back and watched out the window as the golden fields of late summer rolled by. They were so beautiful: bounty and glory all rolled into one. Claire wished all she had to do the rest of the day was stare at them, watching them
rolling and undulating under the hot sun. Maybe in a hammock. Maybe with a tall glass of lemonade and a good book. But she still had work to do.
And she feared that what she was seeing was not fields turning gold because it was time, but rather the heat and the drought that accompanied it stressing the crops and drying them out.
She pulled herself up and launched into the speech she had been thinking about since Chet ran away. “Rich, first of all I owe you an apology. I won’t even go into how many things I would be apologizing for. Let’s just say it’s a blanket apology. Second, I’m not sure anymore about Chet. He’s almost too perfect as the murderer, but I’m starting to think he didn’t kill Anne. Something about the way he was today before he took off. And the ballistics indicate more residue on her hands than his. I guess we’re on the same side again.”
Rich turned onto Highway 35 going north. Claire felt her eyelids flutter and fall as if weights were attached to them. They’d be home in twenty minutes. She wasn’t sure she could stay awake that long.
“We’re not on the same side,” Rich started, then cleared his throat as if he had something hard to say. “Now I think he did kill her.”
* * *
Sitting at her desk, Amy called Claire to ask her what to do when Mrs. Swaggum arrived. When Rich answered the phone, he told her that Claire was sleeping. They must have really
blasted her with the pain meds. Claire was always on the job. For her to be sleeping with two murder investigations going on was nearly unthinkable.
But what that meant was that Amy was really on her own. Even Bill was out looking for Chet Baldwin. She sat at her desk and tried to think: What questions would Claire ask? The main thing she needed to find out was what Dean’s connections were down along the lake. Who did he know? Why would he be down here? Who would want to kill him? Amy figured if she just stayed focused on that, let the conversation go where it might, but always bring it back to the important questions, she would probably do okay.
It wasn’t as if this would be her only chance to talk to the wife. Often a trust had to be established before someone would tell them what they needed to know. She had watched Claire do that with victims and perps. Let them talk, listen, ask a question or two—but not so many that they were scared off.
Claire would be back. Soon, Amy hoped.
Jenny, one of the secretaries, told her there was a woman to see her. Amy stood up from her desk, tucked her hair back behind her ears, and walked out to meet Mrs. Swaggum.
The woman was older than Amy expected—she looked to be somewhere in her fifties—and was more nicely dressed than she thought the wife of a tree guy would be. Mrs. Swaggum had on a white linen blouse, a cream-colored skirt, and her blond hair was exploding up high in a spiky hairdo. Big gold hoop earrings and a pale pink lipstick decorated her face. She wore swooping dark sunglasses. A big woman, she carried herself well, like she had a lot to be proud of.
“Thanks for coming all this way,” Amy said and then wondered if that was a stupid thing to say. It didn’t hurt to be polite.
“You
are the deputy?” The woman looked her up and down.
Amy resisted telling Mrs. Swaggum her age and how long she had been a deputy. Instead she just nodded.
“I had to come. I want to see if this is my husband,” the woman said, taking her glasses off to reveal large blue eyes, red-rimmed and watery.
“Of course,” Amy said and walked around the counter. “If you’ll come with me, ma’am. We can take a squad car over to the morgue.”
Mrs. Swaggum put her glasses back on. “Please don’t ma’am me. Makes me feel old. You can call me Kari.”
After they settled in the car, Amy said, “The morgue’s in the hospital. It’s just a couple blocks away. Won’t take but a minute.”
“Thank you.”
Amy drove as quickly and carefully as she could. She didn’t want to ask any questions about Dean Swaggum until she knew for sure that he was the dead man. Even though she was almost a hundred percent sure, it seemed not only insensitive, but very premature. There was a time for such questions and it would be after Kari Swaggum knew her husband was dead.
As they stepped out of the squad car at the hospital, Kari wiped her neck and said, “It’s a hot one. I heard this was the tenth day in a row it’s been over ninety. That’s got to be a record. How do you manage in that uniform?”
“To tell you the truth, I use a lot of deodorant.” Amy ushered her toward the entrance.
Kari glanced around. “I’ve never been here before.”
“This hospital?” Amy asked.
“No, this whole area, you know, Durand, Lake Pepin. If I go any place, I always go up to the Cities. It’s pretty down here.”
“I grew up here,” Amy said, then added, “I guess it is pretty.”
They were both silent in the elevator going down to the morgue. Amy couldn’t help wondering how Kari was feeling, knowing that she might be about to look at her dead husband, yet hoping she wasn’t.
When the covered body had been rolled out on the gurney, Amy said, “Let me tell you that the body of this man, whoever he is, has been in the water for a few days. This has made him gain weight, you know, water weight. His face is going to look a little distorted. I just wanted to prepare you for that. Are you ready?”
The older woman nodded, gripping her hands tightly together.
Amy could see the white knuckles on Kari’s hands. She pulled back the sheet as gently as she could, only far enough to reveal the man’s face. Amy was always impressed with how well the medical examiner fixed the faces after the autopsy, but there was no way to overlook the damage done to this man by the water, the enlarged lips, the pale skin. The poor guy was a mess.
Kari gasped when she saw the bloated face. “Can it possibly be him?”
Amy wasn’t going to touch that question.
“I just don’t know. I can’t believe it’s Dean. It doesn’t really
look like him. He was such a handsome man. May I see the tattoo?” Kari asked.
Amy lowered the sheet so the top of the man’s shoulder was showing: Amy had decided that the color of the tattoo was a very dark green, which made sense given it was a tree. The tattoo looked to be about six inches long. The canopy of the tree filled up most of his shoulder muscle with the trunk going down the arm, then the roots spreading out again over his mid-arm.
“Damnation, it has to be him. That stupid tattoo. He was so proud of it. I kept myself from telling him how ridiculous I thought it was. Who puts a tree on their shoulder?” Kari reached out and gently touched the tattoo. “But now it’s the only thing left of him that is the same. I wouldn’t have even recognized him. What happened? How did he get this way?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out, and you can help us.”
“Please cover him up. I don’t want to remember him like this.”
Amy pulled the sheet back over his face. Kari doubled over and was silently sobbing, her whole body was shaking as if she was convulsing. This was the piece of dealing with the relatives that she hated, that she didn’t know how to handle. A huge part of her wanted to walk around the gurney and hold the weeping woman, but she had learned, watching Claire, that it was more respectful to let them have their moment of grief. Just stand by and be a witness to it without saying anything.
Amy was afraid that the woman was going to fall over so she walked behind her and found a chair and brought it to her. Kari sat down and slowly unbent, wiping her face and shuddering. “Thank you.”
“Can I get you a glass of water?”
“I need to get out of here first. Is there somewhere we can go?”
Amy thought fast. It was so hot outside that she couldn’t suggest that. Then she remembered there was a cafeteria in the hospital. She didn’t want to bring the woman back to the sheriff’s department. Keep it more intimate.
Once they both ordered coffee and sat down at a table, Amy said, “First let me say how sorry I am for your husband’s death. It must be a real shock.”
Kari lifted her head and gave Amy a tight smile. “You have no idea.”
“May I ask you a few questions? Are you up to it?”
“I’d rather not have to come down here again so yes, ask away.”
“Kari, how long has your husband been gone? When did you last see him?”
Kari thought for a second, then said, “It will be a week tonight. The longest he’s ever been gone. I have to admit I was starting to get worried. I made a few phone calls, checking with friends, guys who hung out with him, even customers. But I tried not to think about it too much. It’s just the way Dean was.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, he’d need a little adventure from time to time. It wasn’t a big deal to me. I mean, I was his wife. I knew what he was like when I married him.”
“What do you mean by adventure?”
“Oh, various things. A road trip. A hunting trip. Maybe a poker game that went on for a few days.”
“So he would go off from time to time?”
“Yes. You know I’m older than he was and we had dated for a while before we married. I knew what I was getting into. He needed me. I always knew that. I always knew he would come back.” Her voice broke, but she continued, “Except now he won’t.”
“What was he doing on this side of the river?”
“Oh, he took jobs over here from time to time. He liked working along the river. People would hire him for these big cutting jobs. Sometimes I’d go watch him. He was amazing. He would climb up to the very top of a tree and then slowly take it down. A real artist. He loved his work.”
“Was he working for someone in particular?”
“Not that I know of. I didn’t have that much to do with the business. He managed it on his own. I have my own money. My last husband left me well off, so I let Dean do what he wanted. He loved being outside. It kept him healthy. Kept him from drinking too much. I think it kept him alive, until it didn’t.”
Kari stopped talking for a moment, then blurted out, “How did he die?”
Amy was surprised that she hadn’t told the woman that yet. “Sorry. I thought I told you. He was shot.”
“Where?”
“In the belly.”
Kari’s hands flew up to her face. “Oh my god. Tell me he didn’t live long.”
Amy swallowed and did as Kari wanted. “He would have died very quickly.” She had no idea if this was true.
“Kari, I need you to think and tell me if there was anyone who might have wanted to hurt him.”
Kari gave Amy a look.
Amy was more specific. “You know, is there anyone you can think of who might have wanted him dead?”
“I can’t imagine. Dean was a really nice guy. I mean, he never did anything mean. He just liked everybody and sometimes that got him in trouble.”
“How so?”
Kari lifted her chin, pushed her hair back from her face, and said, “Well, he never met a woman he didn’t like.”
* * *
“Where have you been?” Rich asked when Meg walked in the door after eleven o’clock. Hard to tell, because she was just wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but she looked a little rumpled to him. He wondered what she had been up to. “I thought you’d stick around. You disappeared on me when I was getting your mom situated upstairs.”
“Sorry. I thought I told you. Curt and I had plans to go to a movie that was going to close after tonight. I knew you could take care of Mom better than me,” she said as she pushed her hair back from her face.
“Hey, speaking of you and Curt, your mom tells me you two are getting kinda steamy.”
“What does that mean? Kinda steamy?”
Rich wished he wouldn’t have brought it up. But he was as much of a dad as Meg would ever have. He plowed on. “You know, getting intimate.”
“Geez, why did she have to tell you that?”
“Why shouldn’t she?”
“Well, it was a private conversation between the two of us, that’s why. Why is my sex life an open book when I don’t bug you guys about yours?”
“Don’t think it’s the same thing. We’re old hands at it.” Then he thought about Claire worrying that she might be pregnant. Maybe it was the same thing.