Past Imperfect (24 page)

Or maybe her death had nothing to do with Nels Bertelsen after all. Maybe she was fleeing Godwin for some reason…all dressed up in his dead wife's clothes, and heading straight for the woods, giggling her head off when she meets him. Hardly likely—even if Godwin could have pulled it off without being spotted or having a coronary trying to move the body.

That left David. McIntire swallowed the last of the coffee and spread one of the pieces of toast with butter. He raised it to his lips, then sighed and returned it to the plate.

Something about David was definitely disturbing, something almost eerie, but oddly familiar. His outward surliness and defiance seemed to have no real target, as if he had already been defeated by life and was just getting in a few last shots at the world in general.

There was no getting around it, the evidence, what there was of it, pointed to David. He had at least as much motive for killing Nels Bertelsen as any of the others, and he had obviously lied about being in touch with Cindy. If her letters were any indication, she'd have gone readily to meet him. He had the best chance of getting her off into the woods and under that ski jump. The idea of an adult male arranging to meet a woman in the bush still didn't sit well, although such an assignation might have seemed irresistibly romantic to a girl like Cindy.

Cindy's appearance would indicate that she was heading off for a lovers' tryst, not a blackmail payoff, although the latter couldn't be ruled out. She might have dressed up and worn the makeup to make herself appear older and more confident, but would she have done that for David's benefit? What's more, if she was only going to meet David for a little roll in the ferns, why would she have brought Nina's diary? To convince him to conspire in the blackmail? But why wouldn't he say so? Why was he not talking, unless to protect himself? Nothing he said could hurt Cindy now.

And where in hell
was
he before he stranded himself at that camp? Where would a seventeen-year-old boy with no money to speak of disappear to without telling a soul? What might have happened to suddenly send him off in a cloud of dust? He disappeared after helping with the funeral preparations. So what could have triggered his leaving? Guilt? Did cleaning up Nels' trash and chauffeuring his old “army buddy” bring home to him the realization that he had committed an abominable crime? Lucy told him that David had spent most of the afternoon mesmerized by Captain Paulson's war stories. Did the tales of Nels' military heroism bring on an attack of remorse…or possibly plant some other notions? McIntire recalled his own hasty departure from St. Adele in the spring of his seventeenth year. If the captain's stories had seduced David into making a similar flight, given him a yen to visit Korea, perhaps, there was only one likely place he would have gone—and a wrong turn on a shortcut home could easily have landed him in that cabin.

McIntire pulled himself all the way up into a sitting position and swung his legs over the side of the bed. It was worth a shot, anyway. In a few agonizing minutes he was in the kitchen, standing weak-kneed by the telephone with a slightly sour-smelling dish towel thrown over his head to shield his eyes from the light. He cranked the phone with as much briskness as he could muster.

“I need to reach the army recruiter in Marquette,” he told the operator—Jeannie Goodrow again. “This is something of an emergency. I know it's a holiday, but please see if you can find out who it is and try his home number. If you can't get the officer in charge, I'd appreciate talking to anybody who works in the office. Do the best you can.” He hung up, dropped into a chair at the table and, with his head on his folded arms, let himself be submersed in blankness until time again lost its meaning.

The phone jangled and he found himself speaking to Sergeant Sam Kolquist against a background of slamming doors and boisterous children. Roses were in order for Miss Goodrow.

“This is Warrant Officer John McIntire, retired. I'm in law enforcement now, Flambeau County.” No need to go into too many details. A township constable might not fit the sergeant's definition of law enforcement. “I'm sorry to bother you on a holiday, but, as you've probably heard, we're investigating a murder here. We're trying to trace the movements of a young man from the area, and we have reason to believe that he may have been in your office sometime around June nineteenth. If he was, I think you'd remember him.” McIntire was amazed that his voice could sound so normal, coming, as it was, from a man near death.

Sergeant Kolquist did indeed recognize David from McIntire's description. “I couldn't say exactly what day it was, but yeah, he was in sometime that week. I thought the whole thing seemed kind of funny at the time. So he was running from the law, was he?”

“Not exactly, at least not then.” McIntire suddenly thought of something. “David is only seventeen, did he have any kind of consent signed by his mother?”

“No. He was truthful about his age, but he said he'd get a signature after we were done. Of course, there's no question of that now.”

McIntire wondered what the recruiter could have heard. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, of course we weren't able to accept him.”

McIntire held his breath as a hot knife passed through his left eye. “Not accepted, but he's…are you saying he has some physical problem or some illness?” The poor kid, no wonder he'd been behaving oddly.

“Mr. McIntire,” the voice on the line bristled, “you should know we have certain standards. Standards of mental ability. You probably also know that those standards are not particularly high, but I'm afraid they're well out of the reach of your young man.”

“You mean he's…”

“To put it gently,” Kolquist said, “feeble minded. Not that we got so far as actually testing him. There was no point; he couldn't even begin to understand the enlistment forms let alone fill them out. A real shame. He was in great physical shape too.”

“Tell me this,” McIntire asked before he hung up, “could he read and write at all?”

“He could sign his name, but not much more.”

McIntire replaced the earpiece on its hook and climbed the stairs, gripping the handrail and stepping softly. Only when his head was once again motionless on the pillows did he allow himself to concentrate fully on what he had just heard. So David was telling the truth when he claimed not to have written to Cindy. Whoever she heard from on the Saturday before her death, it wasn't David Slocum, unless he got somebody else to write the letter for him. Cindy wouldn't have known the difference. She obviously wasn't aware of David's illiteracy. Who would David trust enough to ask to write such a letter? Even his own family seemed to have no inkling of his problems. His mother must have believed David could read the letters he was getting from her older son—and the ones she thought were from him. On the other hand, a letter to Cindy only
purporting
to be from David would have served two purposes, to get Cindy back to St. Adele, and to throw suspicion on her boyfriend.

Poor David. It explained so much. Maybe even his irregular working hours. Dorothy had mentioned that he needed her to remind him when he had to be somewhere at a certain time. Maybe the kid couldn't even read a clock. McIntire identified the source of the twinge of familiarity that David had evoked, the vicar's dull-witted son who came to cut the grass and rake up the leaves at the home of Leonie's sister at St. Mary in the Marsh. But Tommy Alworth had found a place in a community of people who understood and accepted him. David Slocum carried his burden alone. Well, David would likely be well advised to borrow a page from the vicar's boy and keep honing his skills with rake and spade.

McIntire groaned aloud as the image of a tree with bulbous roots, dropping into a gaping hole, flashed into his mind. “Oh God. No. It couldn't be. Right in front of us?” He spoke to the darkened room. “Nobody could be
that
stupid…or that imperturbable.”

He hoisted himself to his feet once more, and, fighting back waves of nausea, dressed quickly. He picked up both pieces of toast and, putting them together sandwich fashion, took a heroically large bite, chewing as he went down the stairs. It was like swallowing sawdust and brought tears to his eyes. Before going out the door he donned his raincoat—the London-style trench coat that never failed to evoke a few snickers from his neighbors—and pulled his fedora low on his brow. When he caught sight of himself in the mirror by the kitchen door, even he had to smile at the picture he made. All that was needed was a lamp post and a little fog. Kelpie gave two sympathetic thumps with her stub of tail as he went out the door, but did not open her eyes.

XXX

The drive to the orchard was torturous. The growl and vibration of the engine served to screw the vise gripping his temples a notch tighter with each passing mile. Even on this cloud-wrapped day, the light sent his own personal Independence Day fireworks exploding before his eyes, and he pulled the hat even lower until he could see nothing but a few yards of the gravel road beyond the car's hood.

The Bertelsen homestead was deserted and looked more barren than ever in the mizzle. The door to the summer kitchen was now left unlocked and McIntire scanned the assortment of tools at his disposal. He picked up the thin-bladed spade that he had seen David wield with such gusto, then replaced it and chose instead a device intended for the digging of holes in which to set fence posts. Before leaving he noticed a conspicuously empty space on the formerly crowded shelf of handy household poisons.

He shouldered his implement and plodded up the hill, keeping his eyes on his feet except for the occasional quick glance upward to check on his progress.

He studied the two rows of saplings with increasing despondency. There were upwards of twenty newly planted trees with nothing to distinguish one from its sisters. No wilting leaves or greater amount of soil piled around a spindly trunk gave telltale evidence that a particular individual might have an occupant in its basement. He lifted the post-hole digger in both hands and approached the tree that geography told him might be the first to have been planted. Boring straight down on the outside of the burlap-wrapped rootball, he dug until he encountered the firm soil that marked the bottom of the excavation. He examined the mass of roots, probed gently under the burlap. He moved to the next tree and then the next, grasping the digger by its twin handles and slamming its curved blades into the earth, spreading the handles apart and lifting the captured soil to drop it on the grass. Every stab of the implement sent a fireball rocketing between his eyes and out the top of his skull.

He had explored the roots of over half of the young trees and was beginning to feel slightly foolish and decidedly sicker, as well as increasingly apprehensive about this vandalism, when his invasion produced, not the sight of shredded burlap, but one of bare roots snaking through the earth. McIntire placed his palms over the rounded ends of the handles and rested his forehead against his knuckles.

He stood that way for a full minute, then raised his head, wiped the sweat from his eyes with the end of his sleeve, braced his feet, and brought the instrument down a final time. The blades scraped through earth and struck an object from which it elicited a muffled thud that sent a sickening shudder up the handles. McIntire gently lifted out the dirt and added it to the small pile collecting on the grass. Crumbs of soil drifted down into the hole, landing on a tangle of dirty silk and pale, mud-encrusted hair. McIntire turned and, bending double, deposited his coffee and toast alongside the excavated soil.

XXXI

By midafternoon the St. Adele town hall was buzzing with activity. The intermittent rain, which in other years might have kept away all but the truly patriotic and those who would be seeking their vote that fall, had produced no ill effect on the turnout. The community was now drawn together by the common tragedy and a healthy sense of curiosity. The weather had driven most of the festivities indoors, and the hall was filled with the smell of tobacco smoke and baked ham, and the buzz of sundry conversations. Only the older children and adolescents ventured out to play a ragged brand of softball on the waterlogged field or to indulge in the furtive sharing of a handmade cigarette in the lee of the woodshed. In this latter they were not so different from their fathers, who stepped out occasionally into the drizzle for a “breath of air” and a quick nip from a common bottle.

The program had started at one o'clock and played to a packed house. It opened with a shaky-voiced high school student's reading of the Declaration of Independence and wound up with a patriotic medley by St. Adele's own barbershop quartet. Hard on the heels of the final strains of a rousing rendition of
Yankee Doodle Dandy
, the pot luck dinner had been served, and now the party was in full swing.

Mia Thorsen sat with a group of women enjoying the brief respite that fell between the serving and the cleaning up. She sipped coffee heavily laced with cream and gave half an ear to the conversation around her. With few exceptions, that discussion consisted of one topic only, and the presence of the Culver family necessitated that it be conducted in a muted fashion. A couple of the younger members of the bereaved brood had joined their companions outdoors, but the main part of the clutch sat with their parents and toddler sibling, all of them silently watching the gathering as if momentarily expecting the appearance of a neighbor with a large red “M” stitched to his chest.

Mia, like most of those present, had screwed up her courage and stopped at their table to offer condolences and attempt conversation, but, also like the others, had soon wandered off, leaving the family to keep its vigil alone. Thankfully, neither David Slocum nor any of his relations had put in an appearance.

Pete Koski had also been absent, thus far. This struck Lucy Delaney as a grave dereliction of duty, and for the third time in the past fifteen minutes, she jabbed Mia's arm and demanded testily, “Now why do you suppose that man hasn't shown up? He knows we all want to hear about things.”

“That's probably why he's not here,” Mia replied. “Anyway, how would it look for the sheriff to be out hobnobbing with us when there's a killer on the loose?” She contemplated the general lack of consideration for Lucy's sensibilities in the discussion of the homicides.

The impending elections had brought one unlikely visitor to the affair. Warner Godwin, with pigtailed daughter in tow, had eaten his dinner with dispatch and was now making the rounds of the tables reminding those who just might be interested that he was a candidate for county attorney. Annie stood at his side, shifting from foot to foot, abstractedly chewing one of her yellow braids. When Godwin spotted Mia, he smiled broadly and spoke into Annie's ear. The child released his hand and walked over to where Mia sat. “How do you do, Auntie Mia?” She spoke her lines firmly and put out a sweaty paw to be shaken.

“Cousin, dear—I'm your cousin.” Mia smiled and took the proffered hand, adding to herself,
Not that your father has ever recognized that relationship before. What people won't do for a vote!

Leonie spoke up beside her. “Why don't you take your niece out for some fresh air, Mia? There are plenty of us to clean up.”

Mia nodded gratefully. Leonie herself had spent the major part of the day explaining her husband's absence to skeptical listeners and couldn't be blamed if she had preferred to make her own escape. Mia, however, was beginning to be concerned as to the whereabouts of Nick, whom she hadn't seen since his stint as the barbershop quartet's lead tenor. The entire foursome, which, in addition to Nick, consisted of Wylie Petworth and the Touminen twins, Sulo and Eino, had disappeared—a situation that boded no good.

Annie brightened and danced off to ask her father's permission for the excursion. Mia retrieved her jacket from the row of pegs by the door and left the building with Annie skipping at her side as delighted as any prisoner receiving an unanticipated reprieve. They took the gravel path that ran from the back door of the hall, between the two outhouses, and into the trees.

Mia looked intently into the prancing child's face and was relieved to see the unmistakable stamp of Warner Godwin in her round brown eyes and button nose.

Nick had told her little of what had transpired between him and Pete Koski and he certainly hadn't mentioned any dealings that he might have had with Nina Godwin. When Cecil Newman brought him home late Sunday evening, Nick had gone straight to bed. For the past two days he had continued to wave off her questions about the interview, maintaining that Koski had spent the three hours badgering him about the night before Nels died, an evening of which Nick's recollection was fuzzy, at best. If anything else had been discussed he wasn't saying so, but he clung to her at night like a shipwrecked man to a drifting log.

Finally, in the early hours of that very morning, he had confessed to her that if fingerprints other than her own were found on the lathe, they would probably be his. He had gone into the studio, he told her, looking for wood scraps to burn in the sauna stove and had tripped over the cord to the lathe. He noticed it was pulled out a little from where it entered the motor. He had shoved it back in and forgot about it. It was stupid and thoughtless, he knew, and he was sorry, but if she had told him about the electric shock when it happened, he had emphasized, they would all have been saved a lot of trouble.

After walking a short way, Mia and her charge emerged at the lake. The breeze was barely a breath, and the surface of the water was broken only by softly undulating ripples. Not many yards from shore, water and sky coalesced and were lost in fog.

The beach was made up of fine pale sand, but here and there a small stone would appear, worn smooth and round by the waves, shining with a coat of polish applied by the recent rain. They strolled down the beach, away from the town.

Annie uttered a steady stream of chatter as she traipsed through the sand, stopping every few steps to bend down and retrieve some especially enticing stone. This action was executed while holding two fingers of Mia's right hand in a bulldog-like grip and resulted in a jerk that Mia was sure would eventually wrench her shoulder from its socket. As was the case with her elders, the child's prattle was largely concerned with Cindy, with the added information that she had gone to heaven to be with Mama.

Mia resisted the urge to question Annie about her Mama and sauntered along, listening more to the soft plop of water upon sand than to the little girl's commentary.

When both their pockets were filled with stones they retraced their steps back to the hall.