Witch Cradle (7 page)

Chapter Fourteen

McIntire chose his wardrobe for the day by a simple rule: two of everything, three to cover the really important parts. It was going to be a long, cold day, with little for him to do but stand around and shiver. He stuffed his trouser cuffs into his overshoes and wrapped his neck in his Christmas muffler. It was knit with Leonie's own hands in a becoming red and black snowflake pattern. Something Gopher Anderson and his fellows would not be caught dead in.

When he reached the Falk place, the flatbed truck was blocking the road, and Anderson was huddled in the cab of his shovel, face in a thermos cup, scoop poised over the cleared spot.

“I thought I'd better wait for you to give the go-ahead.”

“Go ahead.”

The engine growled, a confusing system of cables and pulleys clanked into action, and the claw at the end of a ten-foot steel beam descended with a screech and a deafening crash.

A half-hour later, Anderson was still hammering and scratching at the frozen earth, making inch-deep clefts in the frosty sand. McIntire was still stomping his feet and blowing on his frozen fingers, remembering why it was he had
not
taken up ice fishing.

After forty-five minutes, the teeth bit through the crust to expose a darker, loamier soil. The next time the bucket rammed into the ground, it brought up a bushel or so of black, lumpy earth. McIntire felt a surge of excitement. Gopher didn't seem to share it. After three more scoops he leaned out of the cab and beckoned to McIntire.

“This ain't it,” he shouted.

“What?” McIntire moved near enough to hear over the grumbling engine.

“It ain't no well. It's a shithouse hole.”

“Are you sure?”

He pointed to the mound of black earth. “That stuff ain't water. Besides, there ain't no casing.”

He switched off the engine.

The blissful spell of silence was broken by the sound of a car approaching from the south. As McIntire stood staring into the unfruitful cavity, the noise stopped and a door slammed shut, then another. A few minutes later, Sulo Touminen trudged into view, accompanied by his cousin, Uno. Sulo and Uno, dubbed the Touminen Twins. They shared the same birthdate, albeit a dozen years apart.

They did indeed make an identical pair, treading one foot ahead of the other in the shovel's tracks, dressed in plaid mackinaws, noses the same hue as the bills on their deer-hunter red caps.

Sulo looked at the pile of dark soil. “That ain't it.”

“We figured that out,” McIntire said. “Thank your sister for me.”

Sulo nodded and walked about twenty paces toward the barn, then tracked to the left, swishing his feet through the powder.

Uno voiced the opinion that if Teddy Falk didn't feel like writing home that was his own damn business. Snow began to fall, soft feathers floating on currents of air.

Anderson stretched his legs out the door of his cab, but kept to the seat of his shovel, snowflakes decorating his knees. Once he had that seat warmed, he obviously intended to keep it that way.

Uno Touminen had begun amassing a pile of fallen limbs when his cousin gave a grunt, “Uh-huh.” Uno dropped the log he carried and trudged through the snow to join him in conference. Twin wool-covered backsides bobbed amid withered bramble fern and the naked stems of wild rose as they pawed in the snow with unmittened hands. The two stood erect. “Here we go,” Sulo announced.

Gopher went into action once more. The shovel shuddered and crunched thirty yards to the east.

Uno stomped off, scratching at the thorns in his fingers, retracing his tracks to his car. Sulo ambled back to McIntire, hands in pockets. “I hope you ain't expecting the township to pay for this.”

McIntire hadn't thought that far ahead. Was he going to end up with a hole full of trash and a whopping bill from Gopher?

“You ain't gonna find anything there, anyway,” Sulo added.

“I hope you're right,” McIntire said.

Uno trundled back into view carrying a can of gasoline, with which he gave the stacked branches a liberal dousing. McIntire backed well off, while the silent Finn struck a match on the seat of his pants and transformed the brushpile into an inferno.

The roaring of the fire died, and once again Anderson's bucket rumbled and clanged and scraped frozen earth. Uno stared into the flames from under the brim of his red cap, thumb in mouth. McIntire hoped the pose was occasioned by the brambles and not his usual habit. He turned his back to the warmth and waited.

The falling snow turned the scene monochromatic, like a scratchy movie reel, and lent a ghostlike quality to the figure that now strolled into the clearing. Adam Wall, deputy sheriff when he happened to feel like it, or when Pete Koski figured he was up to it, materialized out of the gloom. He pulled off his gloves and extended his hands over the fire. “I'm not even going to ask.”

“You're wise beyond your years.”

The bucket brought up sandy soil mixed with stone and cracked concrete. The well casing. On its next descent, it sank deeper and the booty included a glint of broken glass. McIntire moved forward, Wall at his heels. Another scoop produced rusted tin cans, a few small bottles that had once contained extract for making root beer, a gray pottery snuff jar. McIntire peered into the hole. Tangles of rusted wire pierced shreds of rotted fabric. He signaled to Anderson to continue.

The claw dipped into the well once more and deposited a heap of soil and debris into the snow. The excavation was now about six feet deep. Chunks of concrete tumbled onto the crumbled remnants of an abandoned home—a broken stool, fruit jars, a rubber tire. A stick-like object, knobbed at the end, mottled sooty black, protruded through what looked like the sodden remains of a sheep.

McIntire spoke to Adam Wall. “What do you think?”

“I think you might want to go down there and have a look.”

McIntire turned to look at the stolid pair regarding him from their spot by the fire, then into the questioning eyes of Harald Anderson. He put up his hand. “That'll do it,” he said.

Chapter Fifteen

The fervor with which the Michigan State Police took on the job of cleaning out a ten-foot-deep hole in frozen earth at six degrees Fahrenheit was spooky. McIntire didn't participate. One day of standing around freezing his backside, and frontside, watching others do the work, was all he needed for the time being. Anyway, he didn't expect that his help would be necessary or appreciated.

He also hoped to be well out of the way when someone thought to ask what had led the township constable to take it upon himself to dig out Jarvi Makinen's cistern. Telling the state police that he just got to wondering what had become of good old Ted and the missus wasn't going to do it. He'd have to fork over the fragments of the bill of lading and the passport, but McIntire wasn't sure about the money. Mia might have a point. It had turned up in her yard and, so far, there was no one to say it hadn't belonged to her father. In the thirties banks weren't the best place to put that bit of extra cash. If Eban feared the Depression catching up with him and his family, he might have wanted to put something aside, somewhere out of the reach of immediate temptation. You'd think he'd have let somebody know about it in the event of his unanticipated death or disability. Eban had died from an untreated cancer. His death hadn't been unanticipated. Not by him. He'd had plenty of time to tell Mia about the stash or to retrieve it himself. It was hard to imagine that he'd simply forgotten about it.

No two ways about it, if the verdict was homicide—and how could it be anything but?—Eban Vogel was going to be the prime suspect. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the state police could very well just close the book and look no further. Or, they might brush the dirt off their hands and turn the whole thing over to the county sheriff.

McIntire hadn't spoken to either of the Thorsens since the morning after the storm. He was going to have to see them soon. Wasn't one expected to visit the ailing? Commanded to, even, in his father's Catholic religion? Mia and Nick would know by now that he'd found those bodies, and they'd also know that their own discovery couldn't be kept secret. They must be expecting, and dreading, the sheriff's knock on the door. McIntire would have to talk with them before turning over any evidence.

Rose and Teddy Falk were still only names in McIntire's mind. No one he'd talked to had much to say about them, what sort of people they were, if they had a family. Even if they didn't have children, there must have been some relatives. There would be people to notify.

McIntire turned back to his work, the translation of that epic morality tale,
The Saga of Gösta Berling
. It was a thorny process, converting nineteenth-century Swedish to modern American English without making it sound…silly. Still, he supposed he had an advantage in that many of his neighbors
spoke
nineteenth-century Swedish.

“What will they do with the bones?”

Leonie's words came as a surprise, and not just because he hadn't realized that she'd come into the room. Until now she'd shown scant interest in the fact that a young couple from the community had apparently been murdered in bed and their bodies dumped into their well. She'd only responded to his news with a few appropriate words of sympathy and had barely looked at the newspaper accounts.

“The state police took them over to let Guibard have a look,” McIntire said. “After that, I don't know. They'll have to find a way to make a definite identification.”

“They're at Dr. Guibard's
house
?”

“That's what he wanted.” When he left Makinen's farm after what he knew was a futile plea for confidentiality on the part of Anderson and the Touminens, McIntire had stopped at Mark Guibard's home to request an official coroner's visit to the scene. He'd been turned down.

“Anybody wants my professional opinion that the owners of some pile of bones are legally dead,” the doctor had stated, “they'll damn well have to bring 'em to me.”

McIntire said, “I was thinking of taking a drive over to see if he's made any progress.”

Apparently he'd been wrong about his wife's interest in the Falks. She seated herself on the davenport, put her feet up, and spread a striped wool blanket over her legs. “Do you think Mia's father killed them?” she asked.

“No.” McIntire didn't hesitate. “I can't believe that Eban Vogel had anything to do with it.”

“He had the money.”

“It does seem that way.”

“I expect you just don't want to believe it.”

“Damn right I don't!” McIntire could hardly imagine anything he wanted to believe less. He added feebly, “Eban wasn't that kind of person.”

Eban Vogel could be dogmatic and was never reluctant to point out, at whatever length he saw fit, the flaws in one's beliefs, behaviors, or opinions. But he wasn't quick tempered or malicious. He seemed to genuinely believe that he knew exactly how things should be, and that it would be shirking his responsibility not to do his utmost to bring the entire world around to his right-thinking ways.

“Eban would never want to kill somebody he was at odds with,” McIntire said. “He'd want to keep them around to convert if it took until doomsday.”

“The Falks weren't staying around.”

Leonie had a point. “It sounds like
you
do want to believe that Eban Vogel killed them.”

“Of course I don't!” She looked suitably shocked at the suggestion, an impression not reinforced by her next words. “I'd prefer not to believe that it happened at all, but it was a long time ago. Mr. Vogel is dead. He can't do any more harm, and no more harm can come to him. Maybe it's best if it's just left at that.”

“And if Mr. Vogel didn't do it?”

“I don't know. It happened a long time ago. I know we can't just ignore it, but…it's liable to stir up all sorts of….” She tucked the blanket around her toes. “It's so cold.”

It was over a year and a half since Leonie had accompanied her then-new husband to his childhood home. She'd made a few disparaging remarks about the mosquitos, and she wasn't crazy about his mother's choice of kitchen curtains, but in most ways she'd taken to Northern Michigan like it was she who was the native. She had settled in much more quickly than had McIntire himself. And, unlike himself, she'd never before complained about the cold.

“Would you rather I stayed home?” McIntire asked. “I can call Guibard instead.” And get him to say absolutely nothing on the telephone.

“Certainly not.” She held up her paperback western. “Mr. Grey and I will be just fine.” She pulled a second blanket from the back of the sofa. “You might put a stick or two of wood on the fire before you go.”

***

The smell of damp earth permeated Mark Guibard's dining room. The doctor looked dressed for a dinner party, pinstriped waistcoat over his white shirt, and he moved with uncharacteristic sedateness, footsteps silent on the carpet. He folded back the sheet with precise movements.

McIntire had expected to see a collection of moldering bones and fragments. The yellow light of the brass chandelier illuminated a macabre feast. Two skeletons lay side by side on the narrow table, finger bones touching. They were pitted and discolored, but largely intact, if he discounted the fact that the one on the right lacked a skull. Only a row of vertebrae, longer than McIntire would have thought a human neck would be, extended from its circle of ribs. A fragment of jaw with a yellowed molar, and a single shard of cupped bone, bits of sand clinging to its surface, lay on the cloth next to it.

“I didn't expect them to be in such good shape.”

“Not much to happen to them down there.”

“What about the head?”

“So far that's all we've got.”

“They still looking?”

Guibard circled the table as if he, too, were viewing the remains for the first time. “They hauled everything they dug from the well, and a few yards of dirt from around it, down to the lab in Lansing. They'll be sifting through it for some time to come.”

McIntire touched the gold band that still encircled the third finger of the left hand of the smaller skeleton, the one with a head. “It would have happened in 1934. You were here then. Who knows more about people than their doctor? Who do you think could have killed Teddy Falk and his wife days before they planned to leave the country?”

“No opinion on that. But I do know enough to tell you that this ain't Teddy Falk.”

McIntire's ears seemed to buzz. “What?”

“Teddy was a little guy. Shorter than Rose. I don't know who this man might be, but it ain't J. Theodore Falk.”

“You sure it's a man?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Rose was in bed with someone else?”

“That's entirely possible. If that was Rose's blood on the mattress.”

“Maybe this isn't Rose, either.” Maybe it was the Falks who were the killers. Dispatched some unfortunate couple and left the country quick, without their life savings.

“Oh,” Guibard spoke with sadness, “it's our little Rosie Makinen, all right. I'd recognize those fractures anywhere.” He ran a finger across a lumpy collarbone. “This is where she landed when she took the family milk cow for a ride, when she was about five. The two cockeyed ribs are from a collision with a tree on the maiden voyage of her Super Ice Skis. The left wrist and the chipped tooth…hmmm. I believe that was the high wire incident.”

“Your little Rosie Makinen sounds like quite the daredevil.”

“Ah yes. I'd be able to retire for good and all now, if Jarvi'd had any money. Rosie was a pistol. And tough as they come. All the times I sewed her up, I never heard her make so much as a whimper.”

“Maybe not above risking a fling with…whoever the hell this chap is.” McIntire couldn't help but feel relief. “I imagine that wraps it up. Falk came home, found his wife in bed with another man, killed them, dumped them in the well, and took off. End of story.”

“Could be.” The doctor didn't sound convinced.

It could very well be. Teddy Falk would have been understandably eager to leave and not be disposed to stay in close touch with those he left behind. He wouldn't be wanting awkward questions like “How's the little woman?” It didn't explain how his money ended up under Eban Vogel's pine tree, but knowing that Teddy was quite possibly still alive cast that in a different light, too. How, McIntire could figure out later.

“Any indication of what killed them?”

“I have a pretty good hunch what killed our mystery man.” He flipped over the fragment of jawbone and pointed to a tiny greyish lump wedged at the base of the single tooth. “A shotgun blast…” he fanned his fingers and placed his hand over the skull fragment, “right here.”

“It that all that was left of it? Of his head?”

“Close range with a shotgun ain't gonna leave a hell of a lot. Like hitting a melon with—”

“I'll take your word for it,” McIntire said. “What about Rose? It doesn't look like she was shot, too. At least not in the head.”

“Damned observant fella you are. No it doesn't. Left scapula a little beat up, but that could be from anything. Before or after she died. Hard to say what.” He wiped his fingers on the edge of the sheet. “Especially with Rosie. I wish now I'd gotten off my backside and been there when they pulled these two out.”

McIntire waited. The grave-smell was oppressive.

“When they brought them in, the guy here was basically what you'd have expected, a jumble of bones in a box. They say that's pretty much how they found him—without the box. But this one,” he took a long breath, “Rosie…Rosie was more in one piece, embedded in bits of wool and different material. Like she'd been bundled into something made from scraps, a patchwork quilt or maybe a rug, and laid out carefully, gently, not just thrown in the hole like a sack of grain.”

Which meant that Rose Falk might have been killed by someone who cared about her. Someone like her husband. Or it might simply have meant the murderer was getting rid of blood-soaked bedding evidence. Or that a body is easier to dispose of if it's neatly wrapped.

Wads of soggy fabric lay on the sideboard next to what looked like the fruits of an archeological dig: some shreds of leather; a clump of hair, long and dark; a few chipped buttons; a tin cup.

“Are these part of the spoils or some of your evil medical instruments?” McIntire pointed to a couple of pieces of twisted metal.

“This is what's left of Rosie's spectacles.” Guibard picked up the rusted wire. “And I believe that one's a crochet hook.”

“If you say so. Is this all there was?”

“It's only what came along with the bones. The state police have the rest. How'd you know to look for them?”

The question had been bound to come. McIntire wished he had prepared a plausible evasion. “I came across a passport and the receipt for the machinery and household goods they shipped. The bill of lading. They would have needed it to claim the stuff. After I asked around a bit, it seemed like nobody really knew for sure they'd gone. Then I found out that they hadn't shown up for the trip, and Earl Culver mentioned blood on the mattress and throwing the trash in the well, so….” His breath ran out, but the hurried explanation seemed to satisfy Guibard and draw his attention from the way it began. He didn't ask
where
McIntire had come across that passport. Nevertheless, McIntire thought it best to change the subject. “What will happen to the remains now?”

“They'll go to the state police laboratory in Lansing. The guy, they'll hang on to until they get some identification. When they're done with Rosie, I suppose they'll let her be buried.”