by Joe Gores
Thirty-nine years before, a fifteen-year-old girl named Heidi Johanson had been struck and killed by a Buick Skylark sedan driven by an eighteen-year-old boy named Halden Corwin. An anonymous caller reported that there was what looked like the body of a dead girl on a narrow snowy road off Highway 52 north of town, a half-mile from the Rainbow dance hall.
The Sheriff responded, and found the dead girl. Just as a call came in reporting a Buick sedan had been stolen, he found the car, run into a tree two hundred yards further down the road. Corwin was behind the wheel. He was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital ER with head lacerations. Heidi Johanson was taken to the morgue.
Heidi was a farm girl who had been two years behind Corwin at Rochester High School. She was seen at the Rainbow earlier that evening, dancing, perhaps intoxicated, perhaps with Corwin. Nobody was sure. Her injuries were devastating, instantly fatal.
Corwin had been arrested at the hospital the following morning. There had been many New Year’s Eve accidents for the ER to deal with; by the time his blood-alcohol level was tested, too many hours had passed for the results to be admissible in court. When he showed up for Heidi Johanson’s memorial service four days later, he was thrown out bodily by the dead girl’s big brother, Sven. All good, tear-jerking, small-town paper stuff.
Thorne leaned back and stared unseeing into the night. Corwin had turned eighteen just before the new year, so he had been charged with vehicular manslaughter as an adult. There was one small item about an upcoming hearing, but after that, interest in Corwin was as dead as the girl he had killed. The Post-Bulletin didn’t cover the fact that he had been given a choice by the judge to volunteer for Vietnam or face a stiff jail-sentence, and had chosen Vietnam. Yesterday’s news.
Was there any way, after all these years, to get a look at the Olmsted County Sheriff Department’s accident report? Sure. Parade in waving his FBI commission card. He had no doubt he’d get a copy of the report. Even less doubt that he’d have Hatfield’s men dragging him from his bed by dawn the next day.
He made notes from the newspaper clippings on the few facts he could explore, the few people he could try to contact.
The first and best source of information would be Heidi’s father, Oscar Johanson, but if alive he would be at least eighty now. Her brother Sven, probably around sixty, maybe still around.
Harris Spencer was listed as the ER doctor who had treated Corwin on the night of the hit-and-run. Retired? Moved away? Dead?
Time was passing. Tomorrow, hit the library to initiate internet searches for Sven Johanson and Harris Spencer.
43
The farm was on narrow blacktop highway 42 near the tiny town of Elgin. Pastures, green grass, grazing cows, corn fields. Thorne got the number off the mailbox beside the highway, and turned up a gravel road leading to a white house and a red barn with a pond down behind it.
Redwing blackbirds gently bounced on the cattails flanking the pond, their musical calls filling the air. Chickens pecked industriously in the dirt, pigeons studded the barn’s roof-line. A golden retriever came bounding down from the house, tail wagging and tongue lolling, to thrust a wet nose into Thorne’s palm with a golden’s unquenchable optimism.
The only sour note was the strong-looking sixtyish man, who would have been blond when he’d had hair, working on a tractor near the chicken coop. He straightened up and wiped the sleeve of his blue workshirt across his brow, glaring at Thorne from angry eyes. Chronic dissatisfaction calipered his mouth. He spat out a long dark-brown jet of tobacco juice.
‘Whatever you’re sellin’, I ain’t buyin’.’
From six paces away he smelled of sweat and the snoose he was chewing. Probably Copenhagen: a round can distorted the pocket of his shirt under his old-fashioned bib overalls. He looked like a man who would have thrown Corwin out of his sister’s memorial service.
‘I’ve heard you can give me some information on a man named Halden Corwin.’
‘The bastard murdered my sister!’
‘I heard it was an accident.’
‘Yeah, well, you heard wrong.’
But Johanson’s gaze faltered. He wiped his forehead again with his sleeve. Leaned back against the tractor and crossed his arms on his chest as if protecting his ribs.
‘Heidi, she was a sweet thing. Mebbe not too bright, but she was lead cheerleader at the high school.’
Thorne said nothing. Johanson’s face darkened.
‘I told Pappy it was a mistake, lettin’ her cheer-lead like that. She liked the boys, an’ all them big athletes from the football team come snufflin ’round like she was a bitch in heat.’
Thorne prompted, ‘Boys like Corwin.’
‘Yeah, Corwin. Mind, he had a girl in his own class was sweet on him, Terry Prescott, but over that Christmas they’d had a fight and broke up. Corwin musta started chasin’ Heidi. Had her with him in that Buick he stole, didn’t he?’
This was a new idea for Thorne. ‘I thought he hit her by accident.’
‘Mebbe, mebbe. But what would she’ve been doing out there alone on that road in the freezing cold on New Year’s Eve?’
‘Okay, tell me how you see it.’
Johanson recounted his own highly-colored version of the hit-and-run as if it all had happened the day before. It was obvious his sister’s death had consumed his life, but even so, he recited essentially the same facts that Thorne had gotten from the Post-Bulletin’s accounts.
‘The newspapers never said whose car it was Corwin stole.’
‘The mayor’s,’ said Johanson. ‘Justin Wallberg. He insisted on paying for Heidi’s funeral expenses an’ everything.’ Sudden pride flooded Johanson’s face. ‘His son has ended up being the President of these here United States.’
Driving away, Thorne kept turning it over in his mind. Nothing made sense. If Heidi had been in the car with Corwin, how had she ended up in front of it? If Corwin and Terry Prescott had broken up, and he’d been chasing Heidi Johanson, why had Terry married him in mid-February, just before he shipped out for Vietnam?
And that thing about Corwin stealing the Wallberg Buick was also sending prickles up Thorne’s spine. Why hadn’t he just borrowed it? Why weren’t he and Gus Wallberg out catting around together on that New Year’s Eve?
Harris Spencer’s modern but modest Rochester home was on Northern Heights Drive, N.E. The contrast with Johanson’s farm couldn’t have been greater. Walking up the concrete drive from the street, Thorne could hear laughter and splashing from behind the house. Obviously the Spencers had a pool, kids, grandkids.
A pretty dark-haired woman about Thorne’s age came up the side of the house from the back yard in flip-flops and shorts and a faded blouse with ruffles at the sleeves. There were laugh-lines around her eyes. She had a tall cold wet-beaded glass of lemonade in each hand, shoved one at Thorne as she joined him.
‘I saw you drive up. I bet you want Daddy.’ Without waiting for a reply, she turned to the open door of the house and yelled, ‘Daddy, there’s somebody here to see you.’ She turned back to Thorne. ‘He’s in his study, first door on the left.’ Then she was gone again, back to the pool-party.
‘Come in, come in,’ called a voice from down the hall.
Harris Spencer was just standing up from an easy chair near the picture window, shoving reading glasses up on his forehead. A hardback book was tented open on the chair-arm. He looked a vigorous seventy, with dancing blue eyes in a narrow, mild face.
‘I see my daughter as usual has bullied you into taking a glass of her lemonade.’ He held out his hand. ‘Harris Spencer. Glad to meet you.’
‘Brendan Thorne.’ They shook.
Spencer gestured him to the couch across from his easy chair. He sat back down. Thorne sat on the couch.
‘I’m retired from the Clinic, the freezer is full of walleyes and mallards, and you can play only so many rounds of golf. So these days I’m catching up on all the reading I missed over the years. Do you like to read, Mr. Thorne?’
&
nbsp; ‘Anything I can get my hands on.’
‘Good man. I read a lot of mysteries, all kinds. But especially medical mysteries. I’m addicted. But I’m rambling. How can I help you?’
Thorne opened with, ‘You must have seen dozens of drunk-driving accidents over the years. I’m sort of snooping into one particular one that happened on New Year’s Eve, 1966. A boy named Halden Corwin—’
‘Ran over a girl named Heidi Johanson. Damn!’ Spencer slammed a fist on his chair-arm for emphasis. ‘I’ve been waiting forty years for that other shoe to drop!’
Thorne set his lemonade on the arm of the couch. ‘What other shoe?’
‘I was only twenty-nine at the time, doing my very first tour of night duty at St. Mary’s ER. Life and death. Heady stuff. You remember your first one.’
Thorne could vividly remember his first night patrol in the Panama jungle. He’d been nineteen. Nothing had happened.
‘You probably know the basics. Corwin had always been a sort of wild kid, but not a bad one. He was underage, but that night he’d been drinking at the Rainbow, then went out and stole a car, and ran over the Johanson girl by accident on a nearby country road. He plowed the stolen car into a tree a couple of hundred yards beyond. The sheriff’s men brought him to the ER.’
‘I didn’t know about him drinking at the Rainbow.’
‘He was out cold when they brought him in to us, but after he woke up he told me the only thing he remembered was being at the dance.’ He leaned forward, face intent. ‘His blood alcohol level seemed to me too high for him to be able to drive a car. Somehow he did. That bothered me. Still does.’
‘I thought no alcohol tests were run until too late.’
Spencer gave a little half-laugh. ‘I told you I was young and eager. I ran ’em myself and didn’t tell the police when he was arrested because I hadn’t recorded them so they couldn’t be used in evidence. Besides, I felt he had enough trouble.’
Thorne sipped his lemonade. It was good. The sounds of summer carried from behind the house. Spencer cocked his head.
‘The wife, kids, grandkids. God bless ’em, every one.’
Thorne said slowly, thinking it through, ‘If he was so drunk he was passed out, how did he remember the Rainbow?’
‘He wasn’t passed out – knocked out. His head hit the steering wheel when the car hit the tree. No seatbelt, of course. Twenty-two stitches. Retrograde amnesia, common with severe concussions. Sometimes part or all of the events shortly before the blow comes back, sometimes none of it ever does.’
Amnesia. In Corwin’s case, apparently permanent. Again the prickle up Thorne’s spine that he had felt leaving the Johanson farm.
‘What did he think happened?’
‘He had no idea. Even when he was all patched up and awake, he didn’t remember much beyond the Rainbow. Something about someone helping him into a car…’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe a false memory, maybe Heidi herself. I guess we’ll never know.’
Thorne said, ‘He and Gus Wallberg were teammates in football and hockey, and great buddies off the field. Why would he steal the car of his best friend’s old man? He could have just borrowed it. And since he and Terry Prescott had broken up, why weren’t Corwin and Gus Wallberg out together that night?’
‘Who knows? Maybe Gus had a date of his own.’
‘Good point. But then wouldn’t he have been driving his dad’s car?’
Spencer nodded. ‘It never came out, but some other kids claimed the two of them were drinking together at the Rainbow.’
‘Both of them drunk?’ mused Thorne. ‘Corwin maybe more so? You said he was a wild kid in those days. Maybe he was even already passed out in the car when they left the dancehall.’
Spencer kept it going. ‘And Gus Wallberg is driving—’
‘Hell yes,’ said Thorne eagerly. ‘It’s his father’s car. Wallberg goes roaring down the little country road, Heidi pops up in front of him, he hits the brakes, too late… WHAM!’
Spencer was really into their hypothetical reconstruction. ‘So it’s Gus who’s in a panic and runs into the tree.’
‘He’s the mayor’s son,’ said Thorne. ‘Maybe he’s already planning a life in politics.’
‘Even if no criminal charges are brought, his career ends right there, before it even starts. So…’
‘So his buddy Corwin is out cold on the seat beside him. Comes from a lousy family, indifferent student at Rochester JC, probably’ll flunk out and get drafted for Vietnam anyway. So Gus slides Corwin into the driver’s seat, hikes back to the Rainbow, calls his old man… Good old Dad is a politician…’
Thorne ran down, stopped. Spencer was nodding.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Here’s where it always falls apart for me, too. I just can never quite buy it. Gus would have had to run the car into the tree deliberately, so Hal would be blamed – his best friend. Even if Gus would do that, I can’t see Mayor Wallberg saying to him, “I’ll report that my car was stolen, son, and say you were home with your Mom and me all night.”’
‘Not enough heat for the mayor to do it,’ agreed Thorne, remembering that the man who had killed Alison and Eden lost his license for a few months, that was all. ‘Wallberg was mayor, a politician himself. He would have known that a drunk-driving hit-and-run charge wouldn’t stop a young man’s later political career, especially not in those pre-MADD days. Remember Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne? And that was years later.’
Spencer gave a low chuckle.
‘We started sounding like Kennedy-assassination theorists there for a minute, didn’t we? In reality, I can’t see Gus Wallberg letting his best friend take the blame for the accident, and I can’t see his dad letting him get away with it if he tried. Mayor Wallberg felt so terrible that it was his car killed the girl that he paid for Heidi’s funeral, her memorial service, everything. He didn’t have to do that. He even paid the family compensation for their loss. They bought that farm out near Elgin with the money.’
‘An unusual gesture, don’t you think? Like maybe there was some guilt mixed in?’ Which gave Thorne an idea. He asked, ‘Were any blood tests run on Heidi to see whether she had been drinking that night?’
Spencer looked surprised.
‘I’m sure not. She was the victim, after all. And she was only fifteen. And she was already dead.’
‘How extensive were her injuries?’
‘Terrible. Almost like she’d been run over deliberately. Couldn’t have been, of course. Corwin was too drunk to formulate such a plan. I was bothered enough by it that I attended her autopsy, but…’
‘Was there anything to support that idea?’
‘Only thing would be that the poor girl was three months pregnant at the time of her death. So two lives were lost. And there were whispers that it might have been Hal’s child. But three months before, he had been very involved with Terry Prescott, was going steady with her. Plus the fact that Heidi was two grades behind him. That’s a huge age-difference for kids in high school.’
‘And Terry married him before he went off to Vietnam. So obviously she didn’t think he was the father of Heidi’s child.’
Thorne’s tickle wouldn’t go away. If Terry believed Corwin was innocent of getting Heidi pregnant…
‘They didn’t have DNA testing then, but if Heidi’s body was exhumed, even now, could they run tests to determine—’
‘The point is academic,’ said Spencer. ‘She was cremated.’
44
Thorne packed his meager belongings. Sleep tonight, leave first thing in the morning. Again, a lot of driving to do. He felt his rage trying to rise again. He ruthlessly suppressed it. It didn’t serve him here. Not yet, anyhow. He didn’t need it.
Heidi had been carrying Gus Wallberg’s illegitimate child, and would have been demanding marriage – the mayor’s son was a real catch. That New Year’s Eve was just about as Thorne had pictured it – except the hit-andrun wasn’t by Corwin and wasn’t a hit-and-run. It was deliberate murder.
Three months pregnant. Wallberg would be frantic by then. Call Heidi up secretly, tell her to meet him on the country road near the Rainbow at midnight. We’re going to elope, don’t tell anyone. Get his best friend Hal – who he was maybe jealous of? – really drunk. Maybe dope his drinks. Get him into the car, at midnight speed down the country road – wham! Heidi’s gone.
And it worked better than he could ever have hoped. Hal Corwin not only had been passed-out drunk and couldn’t remember anything, he had ended up with retrograde amnesia from a concussion. Or was it just Wallberg’s good luck? Thorne wished he’d asked Spencer if the blow to Corwin’s head could have been deliberate, not just from accidentally striking the windshield. When Hal was arrested for vehicular manslaughter he didn’t fight it. He accepted that he must have killed the girl.
The mayor knew what his son had done. Knew that Heidi was carrying Gus’s baby. He not only paid for Heidi’s funeral and memorial service, he bought her family off with a new, prosperous farm so they would agree to Heidi being cremated, along with the fetus she was carrying. It would have been the mayor, also, who made sure Corwin got a chance to choose Vietnam over jail. They wanted him in a war zone where he would probably get killed.
But Corwin wasn’t killed in Vietnam. He thrived. Became a hero. Later, became a mercenary. But then his wife Terry was killed by a drunk driver – just as he believed that he, drunk and in a stolen car, had killed Heidi. All he could do was retreat to a hermit’s life in the big woods.
Meanwhile, for the Wallbergs, him becoming a mercenary was almost as good as him becoming dead. He would never return to Rochester, would be as absent from Gus Wallberg’s life as Heidi was. Here was where, to Thorne, it got grotesque. After he became governor of Minnesota, Wallberg initiated a long-term affair with Hal Corwin’s daughter. Physical infatuation? Love? Or a subconcious further destruction of Corwin?
Thirty-nine years later, Wallberg got presidential ambitions and broke it off with Nisa. But that wasn’t enough. What if Corwin’s memory returned? What if Corwin realized his buddy Gus had made a girl pregnant, had murdered her in a panic, then had set up his best friend Hal to take the rap for it?