by Sara Blaedel
She curled up. Later she realized she had fallen asleep with her clothes on. Her pants pinched her waist. She raised herself onto her elbows and noticed that the pile of letters she’d found in her father’s desk drawer the evening before was about to fall behind the bed.
Some of the letters she’d found were hers, the ones she’d sent him over the years, bound by a wide rubber band and stuffed in the top drawer. The envelopes had been cut open, the letters unfolded. And read. She could see that from the dog-eared corners and creases. She felt a lump in her throat when she found them, and when she read the last one, the one in which she had written about Erik’s death, she began sobbing. The letter was stained; it had been read more than once; that much was certain. But it wasn’t that pile she had knocked over in her sleep. Another, smaller pack of letters had been stored in the desk, letters he had written to her. Her name was on the envelopes, but they had never been stamped and sent.
There were birthday cards and Christmas cards, and a photo of a little pony had been enclosed in the first letter. A date had been written in the right-hand upper corner—April 1983, six months after he’d left Denmark.
“See who’s here waiting for you, you’ll be the finest little horse and rider.” The photo had been taken in front of a large racetrack, and her father posed beside the pony. There wasn’t a word in the letter about him leaving for good. It was only a happy note from a father to his little daughter.
Almost eight months passed before he had written again. On December 2, 1983, he was looking forward to showing her how Americans decorated for Christmas. “They don’t hold back,” he wrote. “Wait until you see the elf arrangement in one of the fancy department stores in Chicago, and they also put caramel in the hot chocolate. I’m looking forward to seeing you again, Trotter, the pony is doing fine.”
Trotter. She’d forgotten that name. His little trotting horse. Images began popping up. Lost memories, pulled up from out of the deep. Summer evenings at Havnsie Lake, where they ate fried eel, her father’s favorite food, at the inn. One of his friends from the racetrack had owned a summerhouse down there, and occasionally they had borrowed it. They had eaten outside in the small yard. She’d been given extra scalloped potatoes, which she mashed.
She could almost physically recall what it had been like, walking down to the harbor to look at all the boats. The smell of tarred bulwarks, the sound of the water lapping against the railing. She’d held her father’s hand while carrying an ice cream cone, her mother smiling from under her broad summer hat.
After the first few years, the letters became less frequent.
“My big girl,” one of them said. “I think about you. And I think about how your mother is doing. Nothing went like I expected it to, we know that now. I have so often thought about the direction your life has taken. Do you have children? Have you found a good husband?”
There were fourteen letters in the pile. The last one had been written four years ago. Of course, that wasn’t many over a thirty-three-year period, yet she was shaken. Why had he never sent them?
She heard a faint knock on the door. Sister Eileen called out.
“Just a moment,” Ilka called. Quickly she gathered up her father’s letters and put them back in the drawer; then she walked over and opened the door.
The gray-clad nun stood holding a breakfast tray. Tea, toast, jam, and a glass of juice. “I am so very sorry about the inconvenience you had yesterday, having to fetch your things at the hotel. I hadn’t understood that you preferred to stay here.”
Ilka stepped aside. “It wasn’t a problem. Please don’t worry.” The sister walked in and set the tray down.
Ilka needed a shower, and she still had to unpack her suitcase properly. Even though it wouldn’t affect her appearance much, given how little she’d brought along to wear.
“I only thought that you might have felt uncomfortable sleeping in your father’s bed.” Sister Eileen glanced over at the bed.
“I’m okay with that; it’s no problem for me being here.”
The nun wouldn’t leave it alone. “Some people would probably not like it. We don’t know exactly how long he lay there before he was found.”
Now Ilka looked over at the bed. “You mean this is where he died?” For some reason, she had assumed it had happened at his home.
“Yes, this is where he departed this life.”
Ilka stood for a moment, not knowing what to say, and Sister Eileen misinterpreted her silence. “Of course I changed the bedclothes immediately.”
“Wasn’t my father living with his family?” Ilka asked, ignoring this bed business. She told the sister about driving by his house and seeing the two women on the porch, one in a wheelchair, the other younger.
“Your father and Mary Ann were involved in a serious traffic accident eighteen years ago. She was injured worse than he was, she never walked again, but he was also affected by it.” She stepped over to the window. “He was driving the car.”
Ilka had unconsciously moved away from the bed. Yet she didn’t feel uncomfortable knowing he had died there. It was more as if she were standing in a very private space, very intense, which her father filled even more now.
“It was probably Leslie you saw on the porch; she’s their oldest daughter. She stayed home to take care of her mother, even though Amber also has been living there since your father died. But make no mistake, he lived there, even though he often spent the night here. I believe he did so mostly out of consideration to his wife and daughter, so they wouldn’t be woken when he was dragged out of bed.”
Ilka nodded. That made sense. She set down the glass of orange juice she’d been drinking. “It’s very sweet of you, but you don’t have to take care of my breakfast. I don’t want anyone to be bothered because I’d rather stay here. It’s no problem for me to use the kitchen.”
“It’s no bother whatsoever,” the nun said. “I’m happy to help. The business is yours now, so if there’s anything I can do, please let me know.”
She stood with her hands clasped in front of her.
Ilka nodded. True, the business was hers now, as if for one happy moment she could have forgotten.
She poured herself a cup of tea and walked over to the window. A woman was sitting on a bench by the parking lot, staring up at the room, or so it seemed. Hadn’t she been sitting there yesterday, too, when Ilka came home? Ilka leaned forward and studied her. “Do you know that woman on the bench down there?”
Sister Eileen shrugged. “Don’t worry about her,” she said, without even glancing outside. “Two men are waiting for you downstairs.”
Ilka looked at her in surprise. “Who?”
“Policemen. They would like to talk to you.” The nun grabbed the empty juice glass and headed for the door.
Ilka set her teacup down and checked the clothes she’d slept in. “Police! How long have they been waiting?”
“They arrived when I was about to come up with the tea. Go ahead and eat your breakfast; it won’t hurt them to wait. They could have called and let us know they were coming.”
Ilka promised to be ready in ten minutes. An idea suddenly came to her. “I’d like to give away all my father’s clothes to your parish, if you think they could use them. I could also take them there.”
Sister Eileen looked a bit confused for a second. “That’s very thoughtful of you.” She added that she could have them sent; Ilka wouldn’t have to bother. “If you’ll just sort them, so we can put them in plastic sacks. Thank you so much. I’m certain people will be very pleased.”
After the sister closed the door, Ilka gobbled down the two pieces of toast and found her toiletry bag. Ten minutes later, she stepped into the arrangement room where she’d sat with the Norton family the day before. “Can I help you?” She looked at the two police officers.
All sorts of thoughts had rushed through her head while she’d taken a lightning-quick shower and put on clean clothes. She still hadn’t sent the papers to her lawyer, so if the
visit had anything to do with legal matters, she was very much on her own. Which she was anyway, no matter what the reason for their visit, she thought, as she studied the two uniformed men who had stood when she came in.
One of them was an older man with a thick, full beard; the other looked to be in his early thirties. He had strong features and broad shoulders. Ilka noticed the brown cardboard box on the floor beside them.
“Morning, ma’am!” the older officer said. He stuck his hand out and introduced himself as Officer Stan Thomas. He was trying—and failing—to hide how astonished he was by Ilka’s appearance. No doubt he wasn’t expecting a tall beanpole of a woman with wet hair, wearing jeans and sneakers.
Ilka held the hand of the younger policeman longer than necessary, mostly to see how he reacted. It didn’t seem to bother him; on the contrary, he smiled. “Officer Jack Doonan.”
“Sorry if we’re interrupting anything,” the other officer said.
Ilka was still looking at the younger man’s prominent chin and the line leading up to his cheekbone. His face was like something out of the comics, where masculine men looked as if they had been carved from granite. He’s on the list, she decided, even though he wasn’t exactly her type. The list of possible decent screws in Racine, which had only one name: his.
“You’re not interrupting anything.” She wrenched her eyes away. They weren’t here just to chat. Should she offer them something? Should she be a bit more aloof before she found out what was up? Would it be better to ask them to come back when Artie was around? He had messaged her once last night; he wasn’t coming in until the meeting with the Norton family. He’d worked until two in the morning and wanted to sleep in.
She cleared her throat when they sat down. “I’m sorry, would you repeat that?”
The officer nodded seriously. “We think we know who he is.” He leaned forward, as if he thought she might not understand English so well. “Is it Denmark, where you come from?”
Ilka nodded. “You think you know who who is?” She was confused, and now she was the one who leaned forward.
“At least we have a very strong suspicion of who he could be.”
“He,” she said, impatient now. “Who do you mean?”
“The man you picked up at the morgue yesterday.”
“Okay!” Her shoulders slumped. “And now you need to see him again?”
The younger officer shook his head, and he pointed down at the box to say something, but his partner beat him to it. “I would like to have a look at him, in fact.” He nodded. “We believe it’s a guy from here in town. He disappeared twelve years ago, but I knew him back when he was a boy. And I know his mother. His dental records are arriving later today, but we’re still waiting to hear from his former doctor. So, our identification isn’t confirmed yet, which is why we haven’t contacted his relatives.”
“You’re very welcome to go out and look at him,” Ilka said, well knowing she would have to pull out all three of the refrigerator drawers, because she didn’t know where Artie had put him.
“There was a bag close to where he was assaulted, and our techs found his fingerprints on it,” said Officer Doonan, the younger of the two. “We brought along his belongings.”
Ilka nodded hesitantly and remembered what Artie had said about the expense of taking in deceased homeless. Maybe that problem was solved? “I’ll make sure his belongings are taken care of.” She tried to remember the code for the garage. “Why did he disappear?”
The officers followed her past the preparation room. They kept discreetly in the background when she punched the code in to unlock the door. The black coffin was gone. In its place was the plainer one that had been standing up against the wall, trimmed and ready to go. Suddenly Ilka realized there must be another room where the deceased were placed after being embalmed and laid into a coffin. She thought about the door between the preparation room and the door out to the garage.
“Mike Gilbert was a seventeen-year-old boy back then, or maybe he’d just turned eighteen,” Officer Thomas said. “The way I remember it, he and Ashley had been going together a few months when it happened.”
“Ashley?” Ilka held the door for them.
“A girl from here in town. She was a year ahead of him in school, a real head-turner. And Mike wasn’t anything special.” The way he said this made Ilka think he’d turned his head for a look at her a few times himself.
“The afternoon it happened, they’d planned to meet after school down at the lake, at the south end of town. It was freezing. I couldn’t understand what they were doing down there.”
They reached the refrigerator.
“Later we found out they met there when they wanted to be sure they were alone. Mike had a little sister, so it was their hideout, guess you could say. There’s a little fishing cabin up on the cliff by the lake; they had blankets and a few sleeping bags stowed away there. Afterward Mike admitted they’d smoked pot and had sex; then he’d left a few hours later for work. She was found on the shore, at the bottom of the cliff. But he claims she was still alive when he left her, still in the cabin.”
“Did you think he pushed her?”
Officer Thomas shook his head. “First we thought she’d slipped on the ice. Some places around here it’s hard to see in the winter where Lake Michigan ends and the beach begins. Unfortunately, there are way too many serious accidents on the lake, and not only in winter. But the dirt on her clothes indicated she fell from above, even though there’s heavy underbrush along the cliff up by the cabin. You don’t just step off into empty space there. And the next day, like we said, Mike came into the station and admitted he and Ashley had been at the cabin. He insisted she was alive when he left, and her phone was in her pants pocket; we could see she’d sent a message to her father at four thirty. That gave Mike an alibi, because he showed up at work at four, and his boss and others at the shop confirmed he’d been there all the time. He was our main suspect, though, but we never managed to charge him. And then suddenly one day he was gone. We haven’t seen him since, and that sort of supported what we all thought we knew. That he’d done it. But what happened, and how he managed to slip out of town, I don’t know. He just disappeared, and that’s one way to admit you’re guilty.”
Now the younger officer asked, “But you didn’t have any leads when he disappeared?”
Officer Thomas shook his head. “Not even one. He left his phone in his room, but we put a wiretap on his mother’s phone just in case he called home anyway. No luck. He didn’t make any cash withdrawals, and his mother says he couldn’t have had more than ten or fifteen dollars on him when he left. We started thinking he was dead too. In a lot of ways, it resembles a case from 1988, where a young man from Milwaukee disappeared the same way. Though he wasn’t suspected of murder. He was going to visit a friend but never showed up. The police thought he’d run into a serial killer who later was sentenced for killing several young men in Wisconsin.”
“But now you believe Mike Gilbert came back?” Ilka pulled out the top drawer—old Mrs. Norton. Gilbert was in the middle drawer, and Ilka stepped back to give the two officers room.
Officer Thomas’s face changed expression when he pulled the steel tray out to view the battered corpse. Artie hadn’t worked on the deceased, since there was no money for embalming or reconstructing the battered face, and the body was still covered with blood and dirt from where he was found.
The policeman stepped back. “If we hadn’t identified him from fingerprints, it would’ve been nearly impossible.”
The young man had a full beard and head of hair; splotches of dried blood clung to his head. His face was puffed up badly, and both eyes were swollen shut. It was indeed difficult to recognize a face so badly beaten as this one.
Why am I staring down at this? Ilka thought. The officer shook his head and pushed the tray back in again. She hadn’t intended to look. And it did her no good to see someone in such bad shape. Thirty years old, and beaten to death.
“I’ll give the box of his things to Artie Sorvino,” she said.
“Thanks,” Officer Thomas said. “And, of course, you’ll hear from us when we get a definite identification; his family will have to cover the expenses. Though I just heard his sister is sick; they think it’s cancer, so if the family doesn’t have good health insurance, don’t expect to get much out of them.”
Ilka nodded, but she already knew she didn’t have the heart to squeeze money out of a mother who had lost her son many years ago, a son who’d finally returned, only to be killed.
Artie walked in the door and stopped when he saw the two officers. He glanced over at Ilka.
“I let them look at the man we picked up from the morgue,” she said. “They think they know who he is.”
“Yeah?” Artie said. Ilka thought he looked relieved that the policemen weren’t there regarding the funeral home’s demise.
“We have a good idea,” Officer Thomas said, “but it hasn’t been officially confirmed.”
“Mike Gilbert,” the younger officer said, as if the entire town should know who that was.
“Really? I didn’t see that coming.” He pulled the refrigerator drawer out and studied the body for a moment before closing it again. “It can’t be his face you recognized.”
9
“Do you know anything about what happened to him?” Ilka asked when the policemen left. She followed Artie out into the kitchen.