by Jess Lourey
I sat down heavily and ripped at the grass, the backs of my eyes growing hot. This was just shitty. I suppose the shock was wearing off and I was beginning to feel the stress of traumatic death, but what I was feeling seemed pretty self-centered to be called grief. A man had lost his life, and I couldn’t think beyond what I had lost—a new friend and lover, if not a potential partner. My thoughts strayed to my dad and wondered if this was what grief really was, a sort of inner reckoning where you faced what was no longer possible, followed by self-pity and an eventual reassignment of resources. I’d always hoped when I grew up that my grief would finally have more meaning, or at least less selfishness. I needed to work on this grief thing.
Out of the corner of a damp eye, I spotted movement near the grove where Jeff and I had become blood brothers. I turned my head slowly, expecting to find a deer pacing the woods. Instead I saw Karl Syverson. I watched him step out of the woods and walk toward the road. Could he not see me?
“Karl!” I yelled, wiping my eyes. I was happy not to be alone.
He startled his head toward me, waved, and began walking in my direction. When he drew close enough to hear me without raising my voice, I said, “Did you hear? The star football player died.”
“What?” he said, looking over my shoulder, his lips tight. “Jeff Wilson is dead?”
I nodded, feeling sorry for myself. “What’re you doing out here?”
He cocked his head, patting me on the shoulder a little roughly. “The bank asked me to come out. They manage this land and wanted to know how the museum plans are coming. I was actually hoping to run into Jeff. I got a phone call that led me to believe he would be out here finishing up.”
My logical mind latched onto this tidbit, grateful to avoid emotions for the moment. “When was the phone call? Was it Jeff? What did you talk about?”
Karl’s bland face looked sad. “I don’t know, Mira.” He looked into the distance where the old Jorgenson homestead was located. “Yesterday sometime. I talked to a representative from Trillings who said Jeff’s report was in and the property looked good and that I should get the papers ready. It was a short conversation, all business.”
“What do you mean the bank manages the land?” I was unwilling to let go of the facts I had the power to understand.
He shrugged, sighed, and looked back off to the landscape. “We’re responsible for handling the mortgage and dispensing the land. No biggie.”
“So what are you doing here?” I asked again. I just didn’t want him to leave me alone.
He chuckled softly. “Well, Ms. Lois Lane, the Jorgensen estate is in arrears, and it would be in the bank’s best interest to sell the property pronto. Trillings seems like our best bet, and the rep I talked to made it sound like a done deal. We want to have a satisfied customer, if that is the case. You know how I like to have everything neat and orderly when it comes to business.” He said it again. “Bank stuff, you know.”
Actually, I didn’t know. It didn’t seem right, Karl out here in his suit. But my thinker felt broken, full of Novocain and cotton. “I don’t think he found anything,” I said. “I came out here with him, and he seemed to think this spot was ideal. The only thing he needed to check out was that rise over there.” I pointed toward the mound Jeff had spoken about.
Karl looked at me with new interest. “Rises everywhere around here. You were out here when he was surveying?”
“Yup,” I said, suddenly defensive. “I had to interview him,
remember.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Karl was back in thoughtful mode, a distant, teasing smile on his lips. “I’ll just bet. Jeff was always very personable. Well, let me know if I can do anything for you.” He patted me on the shoulder, this time softly, before walking back to the road. He must have parked up and around the bend from where I was, because I hadn’t seen his car.
When he left, I shook my head in wonder. Too much was happening too quickly, and I had too many questions. Was this land related to Jeff’s death? And why had Jeff’s dead body been brought to the library? What sort of weirdo killer would change their victim’s shirt? What had Karl meant when he said Jeff was “personable”? And why couldn’t I maintain any sort of lasting, adult relationship with a man?
From where I was sitting, detective work seemed a better fit than feeling sorry for myself. I needed to make things stop happening to me. I had to find out what was going on, and I was going to start by looking at that rise that had interested Jeff. It was the only material thing I had to focus on at the moment. I had seen the Indiana Jones movie and the necessary sequels. I knew the basics of archaeology. This should be a piece of cake.
I walked the half mile to the mound and knelt down by it. The sense of purpose felt good. I smelled the same fresh-dirt smell I associated with gardening and poked methodically at the sod. A slithering in the grass made me jump back.
“It’s just a snake. A little snake sunning itself,” I said out loud. Suddenly, it was all I could do not to run, and I wondered about the legend of haunted Battle Lake. Maybe Jeff had disturbed some spirits and paid the price?
Foolish, I told myself, and I even half-believed it. This side of the mound was unremarkable, so I walked over to the other side. The wind picked up, and I heard a soft moaning in the trees that I didn’t remember from when Jeff and I hiked out here. The palm of my hand tickled where Jeff had squeezed the bloodroot sap. My skin felt prickly suddenly, and I couldn’t stand still any longer. I turned to walk back to my car at a calm, I-don’t-believe-in-ghosts pace, caught my heel on a rock, and fell flat on my face.
My fingers sunk deep into the earth when I hit, deeper than they should have. I felt around and was surprised to find a loose piece of sod about two square feet, representing maybe a seventh of the size of the mound. Somebody, probably Jeff, had already scalped this spot. I pulled back a corner of the grass, and what I saw underneath made me sit back. I would have whistled through my teeth if I knew how. Instead, I just said, “Whooeeeh.”
At my knees was smooth gray rock that had been carefully brushed clean, with only sprinkles of dirt freckling it from where I had pulled the sod off. What was amazing were the images etched on the stone. They looked like sections of the crude but vivid stick figures I had seen on a History Channel story about the Pueblo Indians in the southwestern United States. On this section of rock, I could see the bottom of a primitive man holding what looked like a spear, and an arrow shooting toward a four-legged creature. I rocked back on my heels and ran my eyes over the entire length of the mound, thinking, “If I pulled off all the grass, I bet I could piece together the whole story.” I leaned forward and rubbed my fingers over the rough design, fascinated to feel that it wasn’t a painting but a carving in the stone.
The Lady of the Lakes article I had written about Battle Lake’s origins again puttered through my head. For me, the interesting part of the article came before the official founding. The Ojibwe had originally named the town Battle Lake in honor of a fierce 1795 battle between their tribe and the Dakota. A party of Ojibwe hunters had left their community at Leech Lake for their annual beaver hunt. When they neared Leaf Lake, they discovered fresh signs of their Dakota enemies. A beaten path led them to the lake, where they were surprised to find long rows of three hundred Dakota lodges on an open prairie.
The first Ojibwe gun brought down the Dakota leader, but the Ojibwe were terribly outnumbered. They fought on until more than thirty Ojibwe were killed. Less than a third of the original hunting party returned home. The Ojibwe and Dakota had many skirmishes in that area until Indian ownership of the land was “legitimized” with the federal government’s Prairie du Chien peace treaty in the early 1800s. But settlers and more treaties pushed the Indians back until the area was almost totally Norwegian—white people who ate white food.
Jeff had referred to the battle the town was named after as one of the most famous in Minnesota history. Now I wondered if these carvings were tied into that. Jeff must have found them after h
e came back on Saturday to do one more visual survey. That explained why it had taken him longer than he expected in the Twin Cities and why he couldn’t make our date last night, but why had he died? It occurred to me then that I had assumed Jeff had been killed recently, either late last night or early this morning. But he may have never reached the Cities, instead decomposing somewhere, his killer waiting to position his body in the back of the library at just the right time. Meanwhile, I had been going about my life thinking he was still alive.
I felt sick in my blood. It’s an unsettling feeling, the idea of waiting for the dead, believing that they’re alive and thinking of you. It’s mental grave robbery. I needed to find out exactly how long Jeff had been dead before I freaked myself out any more.
I walked back to my car, my head buzzing with new thoughts. I searched for the roughed-up digital camera the Recall had issued me and returned to snap photographs of the rock carvings from every angle. Then I gently replaced the sod and used a gardener’s touch to blend it back with the other prairie grass.
I returned to my car again, this time to begin some research. I had enough questions. Now I needed some answers, like what Jeff had found out in this field that was worth killing for. On a hunch, I decided to drive by Kennie’s house. She had the evil eye on me last night in the Stew, and with Jeff dead, I wanted to know why.
I swerved off the main road and onto the back streets to get to Kennie’s faster. Her house was in the residential area of Battle Lake, close to the base of the water tower. If Tammy Faye Baker made $27,000 a year, she would have a house just like Kennie’s. At some point it had been the standard fifties square, one-story house, but when Kennie moved in, her personality infected the entire quarter-acre lot. Her lawn was immaculately mowed and weed-whacked. The one pine tree in her yard was Christmas-hearth perfect and strung with pink flamingo and chili pepper lights. The bright plastic flowers in her window boxes and tracing her front walk would never die, but they could also never hope to outshine the acid-pink-with-lemon-yellow-trim electric box that was Kennie’s home. If that house had a smell, it would be strawberry soda mixed with Aqua Net. I had never been inside, and the Hallmark ceramic collectibles lining her windows told me that was just fine.
I spied the new police Jeep out front of Kennie’s house. Gary Wohnt had come a-calling. It occurred to me that there should be a better place for the law to be the night after a murder, and that further cemented my suspicions of Wohnt. Growing up in a small town where the only regular crime is being a teenager—breaking curfew, smoking, vandalizing—I had an inherent distrust of the law that was deepened by Wohnt’s greasy appearance and authoritative demeanor.
I parked my car at the water tower and strolled down the hill to Kennie’s, searching for a suitable lie should I get caught snooping. I wanted to peek in her windows, but it was barely dusk, and it was too likely that I’d be caught.
At the end of her walkway, I decided that people do talk to the law, especially if they found a dead body that day. I would sit on Kennie’s stoop, and if she or Wohnt came out, I would ask them something. What I would ask, well, that would have to come to me.
I scrunched into myself, looked left and right, and then floated down Kennie’s walk and parked my ass on her stoop. Voices drifted out at me, a man’s and a woman’s, but I couldn’t decipher their words. I stood up and leaned my back against Kennie’s door. That wasn’t much better, so I tipped my ear against the wood, cultivating a look of bored disinterest should a neighbor notice me. I was just a polite gal waiting for the Chief to come out. Ho hum.
“He didn’t come over here. Y’all know me better than that.”
My ears perked up, and I leaned toward the open window closest to the front step.
“Remember, I knew you back then, too.” The Chief.
Kennie giggled flirtatiously. “Better than most, and that and a buck’ll buy y’all a cup of coffee.”
There was a shuffling of furniture and clinking of glasses that obscured the next few exchanges. I pictured Kennie and the Chief inside, he in his uniform, she in a sheer chiffon robe and wearing those high-heeled shoes with bursts of feather over the toes, stirring their martinis and admiring one another. My throat tightened queasily, and the background noise inside quieted down.
“. . . told you this town isn’t ready for gambling. You know that.”
“If I knew that, y’all think I woulda ever brought it up? People don’t know what they’re ready for until I tell ’em. This town is full of sheep and hens.”
I wondered what sort of animal that made Kennie, being that she was the mayor of said sheep and hens. January of this year had marked the beginning of her third term as the town leader. She usually ran
unopposed, but last year the local militia started a movement to unseat her. Their candidate was named Les Pastner, and his campaign slogan was “Les Government Is More.” His campaign team, made up of four guys who spent most of their productive life in a fishing shack, went so far as to craft homemade buttons with Les’s picture over an eagle and two crisscrossed rifles. At the final count, Les received 97 votes to Kennie’s 392. Battle Lake clearly believed that the devil you knew was better than the one you didn’t, even if she was nosy and had big hair.
I leaned farther toward the window, pressing my hands into the vinyl siding to keep my body at the correct height. My calves creaked with the extension.
“You know that’s not why I came. I’m here about the murder. I’m wondering what I need to know.”
The Chief’s stern words made my stomach twist. They were talking about Jeff. I stretched my body out as far as it would reach and swiveled my ears forward, until I was all but sitting in the window.
“The only thing you needed to know I already told you. Jeff was in my . . .”
“Harumph.” The faux cough from directly over my shoulder startled me right off the wall, and I fell over into the bushes. I glanced up hurriedly to see one of Kennie’s neighbors, broom in hand, giving me the “should you really be doing that?” eyebrow lift. A chair screeched inside the house, and I darted away like an antelope.
What sort of person sweeps outside anyhow? How did he know when he was done? Damn neighbor. All the good reasons I had for lurking outside Kennie’s door whipped behind me with my hair. It was just as well. Lies only worked if I was caught spying, not spying and running. Running implied a certain level of guilt. That’s why I didn’t stop at my car and kept cruising through people’s yards and down the quiet streets. Logic told me the Chief would have no problem catching me if I was in my car. He had a radio, after all. If he caught me walking the streets, well then, I was just a citizen out on a nice night. I slowed to a stroll and regulated my breathing.
The school park seemed like a good place to stop, so I pulled up on a swing and studied the brick of the Battle Lake Public School, grades K–8. The rumors in town were that Kennie and the Chief were an item, but small-town rumors were notoriously noxious and exaggerated. Their conversation, at least what I had heard of it, had been official: police chief talking to mayor in the wake of a murder. But why had he thought Kennie would know something about the murder? And what was the talk of gambling? And why couldn’t I shake the feeling that jealousy had colored the Chief’s voice when he asked Kennie about Jeff? And what had Kennie been about to say about Jeff when I had fallen off her stoop? “Jeff was in my past”? “Jeff was in my spinning class”? “Jeff was in my closet right up until I put his mutilated body in the Pl–Sca aisle of the library and isn’t that good rich fun”?
Half an hour passed before I ambled back to my car. By the time I returned to the water tower, the Chief’s Jeep was gone and Kennie’s lights were extinguished. I would get no more information here tonight, but I knew where to go for the real dirt.
Anyone who is anyone knows the best small-town information can be found in a local bar, and the best local bar in the county was Bonnie & Clyde’s. Ruby, the bartender and owner, used the four-finger rule when mixing her
drinks—four fingers of alcohol with a soda spray for garnish. The pool tables were usually full, the jukebox slammed everything from Joan Jett to Metallica to Shania Twain, and everyone knew not to drink the water or eat the ice. Something about a cistern problem in Clitherall, the tiny town located a bunny jump from Battle Lake.
I had spent quite a few nights at Clyde’s, because it was a place where anyone could feel comfortable. People just didn’t care here, or they cared too much, but they never ignored you. On a Tuesday night, I didn’t expect to see much action. The karaoke machine in the bar across the street had drawn away the big dreamers, which was just fine by me. I was looking for pickled locals, the older the better. I had a hunch baking in my head about the Jorgensen land, and I wanted to knead it a bit.
The bell over the door probably jingled when I walked through, but I couldn’t hear it over Patsy Cline lamenting on the jukebox housed in the corner of the massive room. Hal Henricks was swaying next to it, a whiskey Coke more whiskey than pop three-quarters full in his hand and threatening to spill. He had his eyes closed and his mouth open, every other tooth standing proud. “I . . . falllll . . . to pieces!” He was actually doing a pretty good job backing up Patsy. The smell of GPC cigarettes, aged beer, and something that would make good mushroom fodder crept under my pants and stroked my thighs.
My eyes scanned the room, picking up the two epileptic dart machines against the wall, both empty except for plastic bar darts hanging from one. The two pristine pool tables, their surfaces a soft field of white-dotted green, dominated the bar, clearly the ruling gods of this space. In the rear, even more poorly lit section were the tertiary distractions—a foosball table, a Star Trek pinball machine (the genuine Star Trek, with Captain Kirk, Spock, and Dr. Bones lit up in all their campy glory), and a tabletop bowling machine that came with its own sawdust dispenser to make sure the bowling puck didn’t get hung up. At intermittent points, the bowling machine would flash the encouraging message “I owe you a pitcher, cowboy!” Tonight, only Captain Kirk, in his tight black Federation pants, paid attention.