Blood Country (24 page)

This did not surprise Claire. She couldn’t help but feel that Landers had been killed because of his land. There was such a greed for it down on the lake these days. People wanted land with a view, hopefully of the lake, preferably off the bluff. Landers’ piece of property commanded a view of the lake from the second tier of land, about one hundred feet up from lake level. Far enough away from the lake to not be bothered by the highway and the railroad tracks, but close enough to have spectacular views.

Something Mrs. Langston had said kept niggling at Claire. Something about Darla and Landers.

Landers owned ten acres. They all extended off an alley and could be cut into quarter-acre lots. That would mean a lot of money for Darla and Fred. She had noticed them over at Landers’ house today. It irked her to see them pawing through his belongings. What a funny word. She had never thought of it before,
belongings
—that which shows that we belong. She wondered if they would have a garage sale. Maybe she could buy some knickknack of Landers and keep it in her house so that he would in some way continue to belong.

But in reading over the document, she could make out a lot and block number: Lot 12, Block 1–4. She wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think they were Landers'. As she recalled, all the lot numbers on this side of the town were single digits. She would ask Stuart to open up the village hall and check it out tomorrow.

Claire taped the document together as best she could, with special tape that was easy to peel off again. She walked out to check on King Tut once more and stood in the dimness of the porch, listening to the shriek of an owl in a dark tree under the bluff.

She remembered the memory Bridget had of the two of them screaming as loud as they could. Claire longed to do it again, to step out into the darkness broken only by a spattering of pinprick stars, throw her head back, and howl at her own fears. If she could scream loud and long enough, maybe she could empty herself of all her fears. It would be her battle cry, for as sure as she was of anything, she was going to find the red-haired monster and stop him.

26

C
laire realized she’d been sitting at the kitchen table just feeling the sun fall on her. Her coffee was cold, and she hadn’t gotten anywhere with the crossword puzzle. Time for the day to begin. “Let’s go examine a map.”

Meg looked up from where she was sitting on the floor, cutting out a paper doll, and asked the perennial question of children: “Why?”

“Because I’m trying to figure something out, and a map would help.”

Meg stood up and brushed her jeans off. “Where’s the map?”

“In the town hall.”

Stuart had said he would meet her at the town hall at ten-thirty. Meg had to brush her hair before they could leave, and then she had to check on King Tut to see that he was happy in his castle.

As they walked down the hill to town, Meg babbled on, the sound of her voice like a brook to Claire, happy and full of life: “Only four more weeks of school left, Mom, and then what are we going to do for our vacation this year? We hardly have to go on one, because now we live in the country, plus what would we do about King Tut? Maybe Rich would watch him. I want to take swimming lessons this year. You promised last year, but it never happened. I need a new swimsuit anyways. My old one is too tight. It pinches me on my bottom.”

Claire nodded and clucked in appropriate places, feeling for all the world like a mother hen, herding her little chick down the hill. As they rounded the corner at the bottom, the town opened out in front of them—a row of old clapboard buildings in yellows and white, some with awnings, looking much as it did a hundred years ago. Except the streets would have been dirt, and buggies would be tied up where the cars were parked. The lake glinted through the trees in the park. The bluffs on the far side of the lake offered protection and gave a sense of the world they lived in as having a clear boundary, sheltered from the rest of the world. That was why it worried Claire even more that someone had dared to come down here and try to kidnap her daughter and harm her sister. She needed to make this place safe again.

Stuart was already in the town hall, a small square cement-block building with a vault. “They needed the vault because they used to put all the deeds in here,” Stuart explained, “but now they are kept at the county seat in Durand.”

He had the town map used for zoning stretched out on the conference table. Claire leaned over it and oriented herself. The lake was marked with blue, the railroad tracks with a crosshatching, the elevation marked on the bluffline. She ran her finger up Main Street until it intersected High Street and located her property: Block 6, Lots 3 and 4. Across from her was Landers’ piece—Block 8, Lots 1 and 2—and then the field across from that, which wasn’t platted. Looking at the map, she could see clearly that the property in question on the document was not Landers'.

“What’re you looking for?” Stuart scrutinized the map, then twirled it around on the table in front of him.

“Block 12, Lots 1 through 4.”

“Oh, that’s Fred and Darla’s.” Stuart pointed over to the other side of town, just up from the railroad tracks.

It didn’t surprise Claire that it was their property. It just confused her. Were they thinking of giving it to Landers? That didn’t make any sense. She had seriously misread what she had taken to be a clue.

“Who pays taxes on that land?” she asked.

Stuart looked surprised. “Darla and Fred, of course. Late, of course. That’s how they handle everything. Why?”

“Just wondered,” Claire said, then asked out loud, “Why would they want to give it away?”

I
T MADE A
kind of horrible sense to Bridget that two days after her attack she felt the worst she had ever felt. Her shoulder burned to the core of its bone; she felt bruised from head to toe; and she was terrified. She sat in an easy chair in the living room and looked at catalogs of clothes and food and gardens and housewares; anything to keep her mind off her pain.

Chuck brought her a grilled cheese sandwich. He had been waiting on her in a way that was foreign to him and disturbing to her. He stood in front of her, staring down at her.

“There’s nothing in the house,” he said.

At first she thought he was trying to reassure her, but then she realized he was telling her they had no food. That wasn’t good. Even though she was still nauseous, she was hungry all the time.

“I want some ginger ale,” she commented after taking a bite of her sandwich and swallowing it.

“I need to go grocery shopping.”

Without hesitation, Bridget said, “I’ll come with you.”

There was no way she was staying at home by herself. She had told Red nothing about her life, but he still might be able to find her. After all, he had seen her before, and she never found out where. He knew who she was.

Being out among people made her feel better. She felt safer, as if no one could grab her in public. And walking seemed to make her body feel better too, as if doing something physical stretched out and soothed the sore muscles.

She held on to the grocery cart and pushed it slowly through all the aisles while Chuck pulled things off the shelves and put them in the basket. They were a good team. She should always let him do the grocery shopping; he was a natural at this. He bought items in larger quantity than she did. Where she would buy two cans of tomato sauce, he grabbed five.

When they had snaked through most of the store and were coming into the cosmetics and paper items, she remembered something else she was craving. “I’d really like some yogurt.”

Chuck turned back for it and left her standing there, staring at diapers. She had no idea they came in all these different forms now. Diapers for boys and diapers for girls. Every month or two the baby needed to change to a whole new shape. She remembered the soft, thick white cloth diapers her mother had used on them and then used for years after to clean the windows of their house. Maybe she should use cloth diapers. She had read conflicting arguments on the environmental advantage of each. Yet another big decision she would have to make.

Just then, out of the corner of her eye, Bridget saw a man walk by the aisle she was standing in. He had red hair. Her blood drained into her feet, and she broke out in sweat on her back. She left the shopping cart and started to back up the aisle, away from the end she had seen him pass. She needed to get to Chuck. She reached out a hand to grab onto something and managed to knock a row of formula to the floor. The sound the cans made clanking down would draw everyone’s attention in the store. She turned and ran. Reaching the end of the aisle, she couldn’t remember where yogurt was. She stood still and yelled, “Chuck, I need you.”

An old woman walked by her and clucked. Bridget was ready to bolt past the butcher’s counter and go out the back way when she saw the red-haired man at the far end of the store, browsing in the produce. She turned in the opposite direction and ran. Her heart had bolted in her chest and her feet were flying when she ran into Chuck full tilt, coming around a corner.

“He’s here,” she whispered at him as he held her in his arms. “Who?”

“The man who did this to me.”

“Where?” Chuck asked as he pushed her off him and looked around. “Show me where he is.”

“In produce.”

“You stay here, and I’ll go check him out.” Chuck turned back to her. “Point him out.”

“He has red hair. I’m coming too.”

As they walked toward the red-haired man, who was testing tomatoes, Bridget grew less sure of his identity, but she picked up a cantaloupe just in case she needed something to throw at him.

Chuck walked up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned, Bridget got the same relieved yet horrible feeling she had had in the field, when the man kneeling over her had a different face from the one she expected. He wasn’t Red. He was just a normal man, doing his grocery shopping.

Chuck looked at her, and she shook her head to indicate it wasn’t the man who had hurt her. Then she felt faint, too heavy to keep standing. There was only one thing to do. She dropped the melon, and it broke open on the floor, spilling orange seeds on her tennis shoes.

C
LAIRE STARED AT
the big reddish-tan fortress she had worked in for ten years and felt as if she were entering a monastery—the holy order of the fraternity of cops. Taking up the whole block of Fourth Street and Fourth Avenue, the stone building had a clock tower in it and at one time had been one of the taller buildings in the city. But that was almost a hundred years ago.

She walked into the building and felt the coolness of the stone brush her face. No need for air-conditioning in this place; the marble and limestone kept it cool all summer long. The Father of the Waters statue in the atrium waved at her from his throne of turtles.

Claire hadn’t been in this building since she had left the force. She wondered if she would run into anyone she knew and hoped she didn’t see Bruce. She hadn’t told him she was coming in, and he would be mad at her. He rarely worked on Saturdays, so there was a good chance she wouldn’t.

She walked down the white hallways, devoid of any art, but now and then a plaque of some distinguished nature would appear. She turned the right corners and walked in through the glass doors of the police department. She told the woman at the desk that she wanted to go into the archives. She pulled out her deputy sheriff’s badge for Pepin County and said the right words. The woman let her pass.

Claire kept feeling like she was breaking and entering, but she reminded herself she was here on official business.

The archives were empty, which didn’t surprise her for a late Saturday afternoon. She knew the woman, Bonnie, who pulled the files, and when she told her the years she wanted, Bonnie looked annoyed. Claire had given up trying to please Bonnie years ago. What really surprised Claire was that Bonnie didn’t even remark on the fact that she hadn’t seen Claire in over a year. But nothing surprised Bonnie.

“You want to go back to eighty-seven and pull four years’ worth of files?” the woman asked in a snotty tone of voice.

“Yes.” Claire said the word clearly. “I don’t think it’s that unusual a request.”

“Usually people are a little more specific. It’s going to take me three hours just to gather that.”

Claire suggested, “Let’s start with 1992 and work backward.”

“It’s a deal. I can pull that for you pretty fast.”

It took her fifty-five minutes. Claire sat on one of the hard chairs in the waiting area, trying to reconstruct that year in her mind: Meg was five, and Steve had just gotten a new job, they had bought their house in the suburbs, and by the end of the year, she had been taken off the streets and had started working with Bruce. A good year, as she remembered it. Claire had thought at the time that she was aimed in the right direction.

Memories could do her in. She would think back to the time before her husband had been killed, and the light in the air seemed more golden. She had been another woman—open, excited, more alive. When her husband had died, part of her had died with him. More of her would have gone, except Meg needed her. She wondered if that part of her would ever return, if she would one day be whole again.

“Here you go.”

Methodically, case by case, Claire went back over the year. She had arrested shoplifters, pickpockets, johns, disorderlies, drunks, psychos, but no guy beating up a prostitute.

While she had been going through the year, Bonnie had gone and gathered another file.

Claire went through this year—1991—and found the guy. His file was in order, and there was a black-and-white mug shot. But she could tell just from reading the description that she had found the right man. Clarence Dudley Warren, alias “Nickel,” alias “Jesus,” alias “Red.” Picked up for beating the crap out of a prostitute working Lake Street.