Critical Mass

by Sara Paretsky

  She didn’t write it down, just hollered it to the griddleman behind her and zipped off to her next battle station.

  “How’s the dog?”

  I turned to see a woman in uniform standing behind me. Jenny Orlick, her badge read. One of the deputies who’d come when I found Ricky Schlafly’s body in the cornfield. She’d done a better job than me—I wouldn’t have recognized her again.

  “She’s on the mend, Deputy. Would you like her when she’s shed her heartworm larvae? She seems to have a sweet disposition.”

  “No dog from that hellhole can have a sweet disposition,” Orlick said. “Anyway, I have three cats who would rip her to ribbons within a week. Is that why you came down? To find her a home?”

  I pulled Martin Binder’s picture out of my briefcase. “I’m hoping someone around here might have spotted him. I need to find him.”

  “Is he a Chicago kid? Why would he be down here?”

  “He’s the son of a woman from the meth house.” I gave Orlick a quick thumbnail of Martin’s disappearance, his grandmother’s murder, the drug house in Chicago where I’d flushed Judy Binder earlier in the week.

  Orlick frowned over Martin’s face. “I think I’d remember him, he looks so, well, New Yorky. We only have two Jewish families here in Palfry, so he’d kind of stand out, if you know what I mean. If you want, I’ll take it over to the Buy-Smart, put it up on their bulletin board. At the County office, too, if you have an extra.”

  I pulled a half-dozen copies out of my case and printed my cell phone number on the bottom of each one. My short stack arrived as Jenny’s partner, Glenn Davilats, came over to clap her on the shoulder and tell her it was time to roll. Both of them looked better than they had when we’d met at the cornfield.

  “This here’s my number,” Orlick said, handing me a card from the Palfry County sheriff’s department. “I’ll call you if I hear anything, but you get in touch if anything gets squirrelly, or if you find another druggie with his pecker getting pecked.”

  “Pecker pecking” must be a local idiom, not a sign that the sheriff was a psychopath. Jenny and her partner took off, but my waitress and one of my counter-mates had heard our conversation, which meant it spread through the coffee shop at warp speed. While I ate my pancakes, most of the people in Lazy Susan’s stopped by to look at Martin’s picture. None of them admitted to having seen him before.

  As the diner cleared out, the waitresses took a breather. Two went outside for a smoke, but the third perched on the stool next to mine.

  “You really a detective?” she asked.

  I nodded. “These pancakes are delicious. Housemade?”

  She grinned. “You flattering me because Jenny Orlick told you I’m Susie Foyle?”

  I shook my head. “Lazy Susan? How come? Stevedores on the waterfront don’t work as hard as you.”

  She was pleased by the compliment, but said, “Oh, you know, it’s how the two words come together. When I was a kid, my brothers used to tease me, calling me Lazy Susie. How come you want to find this Martin kid?” she asked.

  “His granny raised him,” I said. “He disappeared two weeks ago. His granny died in my arms night before last. I owe it to her to find him.”

  Susie nodded soberly. “A lot of that going around. Not grandmas dying in your arms, I mean, but grandmas having to raise their own kids’ children. We see it down here as much as you do in Chicago. It’s hard.”

  She picked up the picture and stared at it. “I haven’t seen the boy, but I’m sure he was in town, even though everyone’s saying ‘no,’ to you. One of those rumors that zips around, you know how that goes. If I was you, I’d talk to the Wengers. They have the farm closest to the Schlafly place.”

  “The sheriff told me it’s a quarter mile away, that no one there saw anything.”

  Susie grinned again. “Don’t know why he’d say that. If you think every farmer in the county doesn’t keep track of the comings and goings of the neighbors up to a mile away, that only proves you’re a city girl. I should know—I grew up on one of those farms. The gossip could crush a combine. By the way, you never did tell me if you were really a detective.”

  “Private.” I took my license out of my wallet to show her, and handed her one of my cards.

  “Well, V. I. Warshawski, good luck to you. If you’re still around at lunchtime, I bet you’ve never tasted as good a BLT as what I serve here.”

  She sketched a map on the back of one of her placemats, showing me how to get to the Wengers’ house. She also told me to put Martin’s photo on the corkboard by the front entrance. I found a place in between ads for a used tractor, an offer to exchange haircuts for fresh vegetables, and an announcement of the Palfry County haybale-throwing contest.

  In my car I studied Susie’s map. East of town, toward the Schlafly place, then right at a crossroads, left to a county road that ran parallel to the one in front of Schlafly’s. I took a minute to look up the family on my iPad. Frank and Roberta, early fifties; one child, Warren, a high school senior, still at home; two daughters who’d moved away, one to St. Louis, the other to Columbus, Ohio.

  Before going to the Wenger farm, I detoured past the Schlafly place. There were no crime scene tapes, either at the house or the field, just the broken stalks to show where the county van had driven in to collect Ricky Schlafly’s body. The house looked abandoned, but I walked around the perimeter, checking for any movement behind the windows that weren’t boarded over. I hoped the sheriff had gotten someone to remove the dead Rottweiler from the kitchen.

  The road to the Wengers’ was a badly pitted gravel track. I went slowly, to preserve my tires. I had to pull over to the verge a couple of times as pickups roared past me, covering the Mustang with a fine white dust. As I bumped along, I passed a hand-painted sign telling me that the Wengers’ Prairie Market was straight ahead. Fresh eggs, flowers, tomatoes and “notionals,” whatever those might be.

  The corn on either side of the car looked brown and tired, signs of the terrible drought gripping Illinois. Blackbirds and crows were darting through the stalks, even though I couldn’t see any ears worth harvesting. Unless there was another body in there.

  When I’d been down here before, Frank or Roberta had been on a tractor in the distance, but the fields were empty this morning. I was in luck when I pulled into the yard: a man was working on a tractor parked in front of a dilapidated outbuilding. Beyond him was another building with a bit of a parking lot around it, a large picture window, and a sign proclaiming “Wenger’s Prairie Market.”

  I don’t know the etiquette for visiting a working farmer in the middle of the morning. I walked across the yard and watched at a respectful distance—close enough to talk, but not breathing down his neck. He wasn’t working on the tractor, but a piece of machinery attached to it, something with wide, sharp teeth. One of the teeth had broken and he was having a hard time getting it out of its slot. He kept slamming at the bolt with a hammer, not bothering to look across at me.

  “Need a hand?” I asked politely.

  He looked up. “You a mechanic?”

  “No, but I can hold the bolt in place while you whack it with your hammer.”

  “Can you, now? You ready to get grease all over those fancy clothes?”

  I was wearing a jacket and a blouse over my jeans, but I had a T-shirt in my car. I went back and changed under cover of my open car door, draping the jacket and blouse across the passenger seat. As I returned to him, I saw movement behind the picture window in the Prairie Market. A woman about my own age, with skin sunburned a reddish brown, was hurrying out to join us.

  “The market isn’t open on weekdays once the school year starts,” she said.

  “I didn’t come for the market; I came to talk to you and your husband, if you’re the Wengers.”

  “Who are you, anyway?” she said.

  “V. I. Warsh
awski,” I said. “Are you Ms. Wenger?”

  “You out here selling something? We have all the insurance we need.”

  Frank Wenger, as I assumed he was, said, “She’s set to help me undo this bolt, Bobbie. If she’s selling something, wait until we’re done before you throw her off the land.”

  I squatted next to the machine. The ground was baked hard, with deep ruts from all the big wheels that had come through when the soil was wet. I made sure I had both feet planted in one of the ruts before taking the bolt wrench from Wenger. I kept my arms bent so that my biceps would absorb most of the shock. Even so, it took every ounce of strength I had not to let go when he whacked it. Five furious strokes, and I felt the bolt turn.

  “Okay, got it,” he said. “You’re stronger than you look. You a farm gal?”

  “Nope. City all the way. I don’t even know what this thing is we’re working on.”

  “Disc harrow. Need it to chop and mulch the stalks, such as they are, once we’ve got the corn harvested—such as it is. What can we do for you, city gal?”

  I sat on the edge of one of the deepest ruts, rubbing my arms. “I’m a detective, from Chicago. I’m the woman who found Derrick Schlafly’s body in the cornfield.”

  “You tell Doug Kossel you were out here?” Frank asked.

  “Yes, sir. I stopped at his office first thing. Of course, we’ve been speaking on the phone off and on since I found the body. He sent me to find one of Ricky’s old Chicago playmates, which I did, but now I’m back here, looking for a missing person.”

  “Only missing persons in our lives are our daughters,” Frank said.

  “Oh?” I pretended I hadn’t looked up his family. “How long have they been gone?”

  “Since we saw them at Easter,” Roberta said sharply, while Frank laughed. “We don’t know anything that can help you, and I’m in the middle of making up Halloween displays.”

  My hands were covered with grease, but Frank had a roll of paper towels near him. I wiped off as much as I could and went back to my car. Using one of the towels I kept for the dogs, I pulled a photo of Martin out of my case and walked back to the Wengers.

  “His mother was one of the people living in the Schlafly place,” I said, holding it out with the towel still in my hand. “He’s been gone for some weeks now. I’m wondering if he came down here to see her.”

  “You look across the field here and tell me how much you see, then ask me again what I notice about my neighbors,” Roberta said.

  I followed her finger to where she was pointing at the Schlafly house, a small gray structure in the distance. People like to be thought above nosiness and gossip. City or country, the ones who protest most about it are the ones who are probably the nosiest, but I murmured sympathetically.

  “You farm these fields, Sheriff Kossel told me. It must have been a worry, all those chemicals Schlafly and his pals were cooking with.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Frank said. “Couple-three times they blew out some windows. First time, I thought Al-Qaeda was attacking us. And the dogs—I went over there once to ask them, nicely you know, to cover up that chemical pit behind the house. You can smell it over here when the wind’s blowing. We have a kid; we don’t want him breathing that stuff.” He hammered the bolt again for emphasis.

  “Anyway, they had that gate all locked up. When I rang the bell, they didn’t even bother to answer, just saw me on their video camera and sent out the dog from hell, pardon my French. They released the gate by remote and the dog tore through. Got back to my truck right before it took my throat out. After that, I never went out without my shotgun in the truck, tell you that much for nothing.”

  I thought of the dog I was supporting in Chicago. Maybe not such a sweet disposition after all.

  “You told Sheriff Kossel?” I asked.

  “What, big-talking, do-nothing Kossel?” Roberta said.

  I didn’t speak, just cocked my head hopefully.

  “Come on, Bobbie,” Frank protested. “I told Doug, but it’s not like Ricky’s is the only meth house in the county. There are three over by Hansville.”

  “And when does he ever shut down any of them?” She glared at him.

  “Is Kossel getting a piece of the action?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” Frank said. “He’s not that kind of man.”

  “No, he’s not corrupt, he’s just lazy. He was a lazy tackle back when you played football at Palfry High, which is why you never got the scoring numbers that might have won you a scholarship. He hasn’t gotten any more energetic just because he’s a glad-hander who gets people out to vote for him. Look how he got this woman here—what did you say your name was? Warshawski, look how he got her to track down one of Ricky’s drug dealers in Chicago.”

  I let the argument run another few minutes, but didn’t hear anything that made me believe Kossel might be on the take. Before Roberta got so angry she stormed off to her Halloween displays, I held out Martin’s picture again.

  “His mom was one of the people living in Schlafly’s place, so it was his grandmother who raised him. I was holding her when she died two nights ago. I need to find Martin, to tell him about his granny, and to make sure he’s okay. Any of those times you were disking or harrowing or whatever it is you do with this lethal thing”—I nudged the broken tooth with my toe—“near Schlafly’s place did you see him?”

  Frank looked at his wife, who turned redder under her sunburn. He seemed to be waiting for her to speak, but all she said was that she never worked the big fields. “I do the greenhouses and the truck farm out on the other side of the house; it’s where we grow the organics for the Prairie Market. I’ve got to get back to work; you wouldn’t believe it in this heat, but Halloween’s just around the corner.”

  She turned back to the building that housed the market. In a city woman, I would have said she scuttled, but in her case, I suppose she was only hurrying back to her displays.

  I asked Frank, but he said when he was on the tractor there was too much noise and dust to notice much of anything. “All I can tell you is people come and go there all the time, although since they shot each other the place has been empty.”

  He busied himself with the bolt I’d helped loosen. When he spoke, he kept his head down as if he was talking to the harrow tooth. “Go check out the market. Roberta does amazing things in there.”

  22

  THE PITS

  LIKE THE OTHER outbuildings, the market was made out of unfinished wood that was showing rot at some of the joins. This made the interior all the more startling. It was a clean, bright space, with wide windows that overlooked the fields to the north and the Wenger house and barns to the south. One side was filled with refrigerated shelves for the produce. The rest of the space was taken up with “notionals,” everything from “locally sourced organic goat’s milk soap,” to birdhouses, baby blankets, lavishly decorated flowerpots, even quilts, all guaranteed handmade in Palfry County.

  Roberta was busy at a long worktable. She glanced up when I came in, but she was intent on her work, inserting a series of tiny figurines into a dried gooseneck gourd. A large wicker basket filled with gourds was on the floor next to her; two completed ones sat in front of her.

  She had cut squares in the side of the gourds and filled them with witches dancing around a cauldron. They had tiny cats and pumpkins at their feet, while a harvest moon festooned with bats hung overhead.

  “These are amazing,” I said. “How on earth do you make the witches?”

  “Pipe cleaners wrapped in gauze. The faces are the hardest because I paint them on fabric. They go on sale this weekend. Eighty-five dollars if you want one now.”

  I wandered over to the window that faced the Schlafly place. I heard her suck in a breath; when I looked over at her, she was staring at the shelf next to the window, but she quickly returned to her work.

  The shelf
was filled with packets of dried herbs, but next to the window a blue baby blanket covered something lumpy. I lifted it to find a pair of binoculars. When I picked them up and looked across the field at Schlafly’s, the whole ugly yard behind the house rushed forward to greet me: the deep pit with its toxic brew, the broken gate, the back door hanging on its hinges. I could even make out wasps circling under the eaves.

  Roberta glared at me. “You can’t come in here and dig through my things; this is private property.”

  I put the binoculars back on the shelf. “If I had a house full of crazed dopers that close and a sheriff who couldn’t get here fast in a crisis, I’d be keeping an eye on the place, too. You see whoever shot Ricky Schlafly?”

  The flush underneath her sunburn died away. “I heard a shot as I was starting to get up, but it wasn’t five o’clock yet, which is still dark this time of year. I went down to put the coffee on, then I heard another shot. Of course, like Frank said, there were always explosions and such coming out of the house, but a gun doesn’t sound anything like a window blowing out. I slipped out and came into the market here.”

  She gave the ghost of a smile. “Frank and Warren, Warren’s our son, he’s a senior over at the high school, they think it’s wrong for me to be looking at the neighbors. Spying they call it.”

  “Could you see anything?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “It was still too dark. If I’d known they were murdering Ricky, of course I would have called the sheriff, but I guess they killed him out in the north field. I didn’t even hear the shot, with the Schlafly house being between us and all. The only thing I did see that early was a car taking off. SUV, I’d guess, from the height of the headlights. I know now it must’ve belonged to the killers, parked by where they cut the fence out when they went in. I suppose the gal took off in it, because I heard all this shouting, and more shots.”

  She started twisting a pipe cleaner round and round in her fingers. “I told Frank when I went back in to make breakfast, but he said not to get involved, if drug addicts were shooting at each other they wouldn’t thank me for interfering. Of course, he was right. If I’d driven over, like I had half a mind to, they would have murdered me just like they did Ricky.”