The State Park was abandoned as expected. The public picnic area was desolate, and the lake water rough and snapping in the wind. Hard almost horizontal rain pelted the windshield. Maureen parked close to the picnic shelter and shut off her car. Even in her beige sweater and the warm socks from Tillie, Maureen felt chilled just looking at the place.
The shelter gave little protection, but a near-by cluster of evergreens provided a wind break. Out of the wind, the temperature was maybe forty degrees. The cookout pits consisted of cement ovens built up from the ground with a grill across the top. In minutes, Maureen had the charcoal glowing red. She hovered over the heat while Crook continued to bring everything from the car. He ate a pastry with a lemon center and handed one to Maureen. They watched the charcoal heat and drank orange juice. The wind carried the smoke away in a straight line.
“Why didn’t you do this in the burn pit at the farm?” Maureen asked.
“The first place the cops would look, that and the garbage. Better to be away from there.” He lifted the first bag, opened it and then appeared to hesitate.
“What’s wrong?”
Crook said, “I have all of the clothes except for Martin’s coat. I can’t burn Martin’s coat. That coat is so thick and heavy it would take a blaze. I will have to do something about that and soon.”
“You ruined Martin’s coat?” Maureen’s face was too stiff to talk. She had to force her words.
“Yes,” Crook said. “If that is found, it could fry us all.”
“Where is it?” Maureen did not really want to know. She felt sick.
“Hidden for now, but the cops will come with a search warrant. I have to think what to do with it. It would take a bigger fire than we can light to touch that coat.”
A minute passed in stunned silence. Then Crook said, “If you close your eyes, Maureen, you can always say you didn’t see a thing.” Crook pulled from the bag a gray athletic warm-up suit with WHS in black letters across the front. Maureen closed her eyes so tight she saw lights then opened them again.
Crook loosely piled the material onto the coals. As he did so Maureen saw blood spatter across the front in a line from shoulder to hip. She looked away. Crook used a pair of pliers from her trunk to turn the clothing like cooking meat until the material burst into flame.
Maureen stepped back, grateful for the wind that carried the smoke and the smell away from her hot face. The fire was too big for the oven and they stood back, allowing it to consume the clothing, watching bits of burned fabric break free and fly into the cold dead grass where the rain killed the red edges. Nausea climbed into Maureen’s throat. She gagged and could not speak.
Crook added a pair of socks, panties, bra and light canvas shoes. Maureen added more charcoal and lighter fluid. The wind lessoned and the rain changed from drizzle to a steady beat on the shelter roof.
“I have one more sack,” Crook said. Maureen wanted to cry.
“Hurry up,” she said. “Park Maintenance drives through here on random checks.” Wet to her skin despite the roof of the shelter, her teeth began to chatter. She turned to see Crook running, head bowed, with one more garbage bag in his hand. The rain felt like tears on her cheeks and her hair curled flat on her forehead. She thought they looked like what they were: criminals. When she rubbed her eyes and cheeks she felt black smudges that followed the curve of her cheek in black lines.
Quickly working with the wet plastic, Crook emptied the last of it onto the sizzling coals. He described his favorite jeans, the pair he wore his last day at the hospital. Sliding from the bag and landing in a sloppy stack on top of the jeans, his navy ribbed shirt, his socks and briefs and t-shirt. He removed a pair of his shoes and looked at them closely. He threw them on the pile as well. .
Next came a sheriff’s uniform stiff with dried blood, briefs and socks. The fire pit was too small to adequately burn the sheriff’s clothes. Crook checked the charcoal and lighter fluid. He dumped a few briquettes on the flame.
Maureen watched Crook, his expression hard. Fear tickled her spine. Not fear of Crook but fear for him. Crook looked up and caught her expression. He said to her, “I don’t want to loose the years I have left. I’m risking it all to get away clean. Can you understand that?”
“That’s why I am here,” Maureen said. She shivered in the cold and whispered around the lump hurting her throat. “I want my chance at life, too.” She stepped toward him, put her arms around his neck and kissed his cold, trembling lips.
Suddenly the clothes caught flame and the two wet, trembling figures stepped back from the pit and watched. Maureen untangled herself from Crook’s arm and ran to the car. She ran from the cold and from the intensity of the situation and the intensity of Crook. She started the engine and turned the heat on full blast. One thing about her Mustang, the heater worked. Still, it took several minutes before she could stop shivering.
She watched Crook tend the flames. When he took one of the bags and started picking up bits of cloth and tennis shoe from the grass, Maureen once again braved the weather and ran to help him. When the fire burned down, he used a stick to stir through it, picking out buttons and zippers and the remnants of a wallet. He opened the wallet and laid out on the embers each recognizable item in the wallet, even the cash. The remaining piece of leather wallet would not burn, so he put that in the garbage bag of scrap pieces.
A sudden gust of wind caught Maureen on the side of her face and caused a sharp pain in her ear. She hunched her head and kept going, working like a fiend until not a single scrap of material remained on the grass. “That has to be it,” she shouted at him. “I can’t stand this a second longer.” He nodded and started for the warm car.
The next stop was the Food Pantry in Sioux Falls. On the way Crook tossed bits from the window. At the Food Pantry, Maureen deposited the unused cans of baby formula in the designated box outside while Crook ran to the garbage dumpster with the remaining garbage including the plastic bags and every empty formula can he could find.
“If it ever comes to searching this dumpster we are done anyway,” he told Maureen, looking sick. “The same with the formula. I left a bottle of Kirby’s in Hauk’s car. I just can’t risk it making a difference.”
His color was flushed and his lips white. As Maureen started for home, she asked him how he felt. Crook said nothing.
Maureen maneuvered her vehicle through the streets. Noting Crook’s shivering, she risked a McDonald’s drive-thru for hot coffee. Handing him the coffee, she said, “This would be the time to have Martin’s coat.”
“I think I will return the coat to where I killed Hauk. That way all the evidence is in one place. The cops either find it or they don’t.” Crook held the hot cup in both his hands.
“That coat ties Martin to the murder.”
“I know, but those detectives have no reason to search where I am going to put it, not yet. We have a little time. I would confess before anyone charged Martin.”
Crook said nothing more and Maureen did not ask. Eventually Crook would tell her. For right now it was more than enough to get through the next minute.
For a half hour Maureen drove and Crook rode in silence, not even music on the radio, only the wipers in soft swooshes on the windshield. Their clothes began to dry and the shivers stopped, color returned to Crook’s lips and the red flush cooled on his cheeks.
He looked straight ahead and not at all toward Maureen. The rain enclosed them and the wipers moved it away and Crook reached for her hand and held it tight.
It was after noon when they entered Martin’s house. Maureen went straight for the bathroom. On one side was a state of the art laundry. She shed her clothes and put them in the washer. Then she crossed the divide from laundry to bathroom and ran hot water into the claw-footed tub. Everything was new but the tub itself. She took a few minutes to revel in the clean lines and the tile floor and the big, soft towels. Then she climbed into the hot water and allowed herself to float away.
Chapter Twenty-Se
ven
In his final written statement to Villhalen and White the former deputy, Carl Banks, wrote:
“On Friday morning, the last Friday of Sheriff Hauk’s life, I was excited. All I could think about was the planned visit to Martin Webster. I pictured Hauk showing Webster who was boss. I could hardly wait.
“Hauk promised that I could drive his county vehicle while he drove his sheriff’s vehicle. The first visit when Hauk informed Martin Webster that he would need to pay money to Hauk each month, Webster did not appear to understand. He did not know that the Sheriff was talking to him. Webster looked stupid. Hauk would start the process to remove Webster’s baby from his custody. That was the threat.
“No one ever refused Hauk’s protection. They were normal people. I thought Webster might need some additional convincing. I once saw Hauk hit a trucker in the face with steel knuckles. I hoped for something like that.
“Sheriff Hauk promised a return visit. This was the visit I was to join the sheriff. And this was the visit I looked forward to. I expected Hauk and I would drive to Webster’s farm on Saturday morning.
“I was unaware of a man called Jeremy Sabo at the farm. Sabo was not there at the time of our first visit. Sheriff Hauk didn’t know about him either. Had Hauk known another nut-case was living at that house, he would have had a field day with that little creep. I did find an unopened letter from a doctor in Nebraska, but I did not open Hauk’s mail.
“On the final day of his life Hauk was still in a knot over Cassandra Peters. I was frustrated with him for that reason. I thought he should move on from the case. It was finished, done. Hauk needed to let it go. I wanted Hauk to focus on Webster. However I could not reason with him about this. Hauk had reached a point of stubborn, hard-headed obsession with Cassandra Peters. On that Friday, I could think only of Martin Webster. I had made up my mind that Webster would show proper respect and pay his money and shut his mouth. That was the rules set by Hauk and me.
“Hauk may have made a return visit to Martin’s place on Friday night. He may have driven to his death unaware that Jeremy Sabo set an ambush. I can’t help you with that. I don’t know.
“My main duty on that Friday was to keep constant updates with Hauk. As I mentioned earlier, Hauk was in a bad mood. It was difficult to speak with him. He seemed real pissy. He insisted on hourly updates. Yet, he made no response to my updates unless I was late. At the time I figured his mood would pass. I was not worried when Hauk failed to respond to my Friday night radio calls. He would be fine for our Saturday morning errand.
“On my final drive around town I spotted Hauk’s vehicle turning down the block to Cassandra Peter’s house. At that time Hauk was fine and seeing to his sheriff work. I made one last stop at the court house, did my messages and clocked out.
On Saturday morning I drove to Hauk’s house and discovered his body. That statement is already on file.
Carl Banks”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
On the last evening of Hauk’s life, Sandra was in the gym. She stayed after practice to work on a new left-handed lay-up that Martin taught her. She worked without speaking much to the assistant coach who rebounded for her and passed the ball. When the coach had to go home for supper, Sandra declined a ride and told him that she would rather walk the four blocks to her house.
She did not shower in the locker room because she felt anxious to get home. This was the night she would begin to play bait to Hauk. She knew Hauk was coming. She spotted him every afternoon driving slow on her street. She felt it as a tingle down her spine and a squeezing in her stomach. Hauk would come for her, and she would be ready.
As she made her way from the gym she felt her usual clutch of anger tighten her stomach. No one seemed to believe that Hauk wanted to kill her. Martin could not believe the fact of it. He had no comprehension of evil. Bill could not believe her because to him it did not make sense. Only Crook understood to prepare for the possibility, to make a plan. Sandra took that plan to heart and would use it. They would all believe when she was dead.
As Sandra walked home dusk lay lazily over the streets. She shivered and wrapped her jacket tighter around her. She watched everything as she walked, allowing only a hazy day-dream about using her left-handed shot at the perfect time in the state tournament. A car crossed the intersection at her block and she stopped, standing still, heart pounding until she recognized the car as her neighbors’. This fear was crazy in a small town like this where she knew almost everyone. Picking up her pace, she moved quickly down the final block. Hauk was not out prowling tonight as he had every night since she returned to town.
Upon seeing her two-story white house, no lights in the window except the lamp in the living room her mother always left on, she remembered her mother telling her they were going out for supper with friends. She went through the back door into the kitchen. This door was never locked. She dropped her gym bag and opened the refrigerator. Balancing a bag of chips, a sandwich and soda, she trotted up the steps to her room.
A light shown under her bedroom door and she thought she must have left it on this morning, which was a bit odd. Still she turned the knob on the white wood door and stepped inside. Simultaneously she screamed and dropped the things she carried, turning to run from the sight of Hauk lying on her bed playing with her underwear. He was fast for a big man and caught her. He twisted her arm behind her back.
“Stand still and I won’t break your arm,” he told her. She did this, fighting to breathe and fighting to find control. “Okay, now clean up your mess before your mother gets home.” His voice was calm on the outside but Sandra felt his excitement.
Sandra shook the pain from her arm and bent to pick up her sandwich and chips and the rolling bottle of Coke. As she did this, she thought of Crook. During her recovery and before she went home, Crook educated her on many things. One of the things he told her was not to show fear. “It is the fear in their prey that turns on the predator,” he told her. “It is not the sex, it is the power.”
They passed two afternoons practicing survival skills while Martin cared for Kirby and made notes about his house. Crook made her role-play different, dangerous situations. It seemed ridiculous and insipid at the time. But it was there in her mind, what she had to do.
Crook told her she had to face what happened, to look at it and accept it. Denying something horrible is what Martin tried to do. Martin focused on other stuff and lived in a world of denial for more than twenty years and see what happened; it catches up later.
Crook told Sandra his own story of betrayal that took away thirty years of his life on the outside. “But,” he told her, “I still lived. Strange as it may sound to you, crazy people have a life. We like dessert after supper just like you do.” When she recalled these words Sandra smiled. Her fear moved away from her, lingering at the tip of her fingers, ready to enclose her at the first sign of weakness.
In the amount of time it took Sandra to snatch a rolling soda bottle and set it on the dresser, she repeated inside her head the Wednesday plan. She would not be a victim. She would likely end up dead, but she would not be Hauk’s victim. Sandra controlled her panic.
“I guess you know about the money,” she said, putting resignation in her voice.
Hauk not only took the bait, he leaped at it. “What money, and tell it all.” He commanded her to talk, taking her arm to twist it behind her with one hand and touching her with the other. Even with her sports bra on, it hurt when he fondled her. He seemed to mistake her pain for the anguish of spilling the beans.
“I thought you already knew.” Sandra talked through clenched teeth. “The money in the barn.”
He twisted a little harder.
“The suitcase of money is in the barn on the Webster farm.” She yelled and he released her. She fell to the floor. The triumph in her heart outweighed the searing pain in her shoulder and upper arm. Tears ran down her cheeks from the pain but she knew Hauk no longer wanted to touch her. Greed consumed his eyes.
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br /> “Webster didn’t bring money with him from the loony-bin you lying sack of shit.” Hauk curled his lips as he stood above her.
“Yes, he did,” Sandra said forcing her voice to stay low and calm. She hung her head. “He kept it in a suitcase the whole time, hiding it from his ex-wife.” Careful, she thought, not too much. She shut her lips.
Hauk said, “You hid out on the Webster farm. I didn’t think you would hide there.” He sneered at her. “You and the rats and the mold, perfect.” Hauk appeared to ponder this. She saw him making connections as he stared down at her. “That bastard baby is mine. I’ll make Webster’s life so miserable he’ll give me that farm.” He was gleeful, pleased. Now Sandra saw crazy. Crazy was not Martin or even Clara, the mid-wife. Crazy was Hauk.
“Did you tell the fool about me?” Hauk glared at her.
“No.” Sandra lied.
“Your story about camping never cut it with me. But I have to tell ya, I never saw you with the crazy guy. Learn something new everyday.”
Sandra almost said, “Martin is not crazy,” but she shut her lips and said nothing. She sat on the floor caressing her shoulder.
“Let’s go.” Hauk nudged her with the point of his boot. His demeanor was that of a co-conspirator. She did not allow herself for even a second to waver in her belief that Hauk was not human. He planned to kill her.
As Sandra’s fast pace slowed in the kitchen, she felt Hauk’s breath on her hair. She leaned on the bar stool which faced the island counter. Hauk ran his fingers down her back. Sandra put her face into the island sink and threw up. The nausea was not due to Hauk’s touch though the touch did make her sick. It was partially due to the pain in her shoulder, but mostly due to her fear. Do not panic, she said to herself. Do not panic.
That money seed planted in Hauk’s sick mind could grow into danger for Martin and Kirby. This realization frightened her. But Hauk constituted danger for as long as he lived, not just for tonight. Her hope for survival rested on Crook, and that Hauk did not know about Crook.
Martin, Crook, & Bill Page 20