But maybe I did believe in such things. Or, at the very least, maybe I was starting to.
The courthouse sat off of 3rd Street, and was built in the mid-1930s. Nineteen thirty-six or thirty-seven—I couldn’t remember for sure, and I wasn’t going to go look at the cornerstone to find out. I knew the building had been built toward the end of the Depression, and that was enough.
There’d been a huge building boom in Dickinson, in all of Stark County, during that time, offering men work—a chance to stay off of relief—by working for the WPA, the Works Progress Administration. My father called FDR’s New Deal program the We Poke Along Society, and he avoided any charity like it was the plague. But I had found out years later, after his death, that he’d been no different than anyone else. When the chips were down, in the depths of the Depression, he’d taken relief, too, though just for a short while. He was a proud man, my father, and it must have galled him to no end to accept a handout. I was glad that I was very young, just born during that dark time. The Depression years were a vague, distant memory for me.
The courthouse looked like a four-story wedding cake, square instead of round, made of blonde brick and accented with limestone inlaid columns. I’d heard someone say it was Art Deco once—but I never thought it was garish like some of the pictures of the New York Art Deco buildings seemed to be. There was no silver, neon, or fancy flutes adorning the exterior of the courthouse anywhere that I could see. It was an understated building that sat on a couple of grassy acres, surrounded by a few pine trees and a thin copse of tall cottonwoods.
A quick spin through the parking lot around the back told me what I needed to know. Hilo wasn’t there. His parking spot was empty. His pickup truck nowhere to be seen.
I thought about going in and talking to the dispatcher to see if I could find Hilo, but on second thought I decided I didn’t want to bother him if he was busy with the investigation, so I drove away.
Once I got out on the main street that would take me out of Dickinson, I glanced over to my purse and thought about the cigarettes I had bought at the Rexall. I wouldn’t have thought about them if they weren’t there. That’s the bad thing about having cigarettes around. But I was nervous, on edge, and uncomfortable. It was as good an excuse as any.
I passed by Luther Van’s TV shop and noticed a few people standing in front of the big window that fronted the street. It was stacked full of flickering black-and-white televisions. There always seemed to be someone standing there watching those boxes—transfixed, mesmerized, lost to the world around them.
Hank and I didn’t have a television. We hadn’t seen the need. The radio was good enough for us, and from what we’d heard from our neighbors, primarily the Knudsens, TV reception was spotty, affected by the wind and weather unless you had a really good and tall antenna. Hank had said it’d be something else to monkey with, and we had enough things to occupy our time. He was right. But I think he was afraid of the outside world coming into the house in a bad way. Farming had enough ebbs and flows of good fortune and bad. Hank’s fate was proof enough of that.
I looked away from the TV store, from the moths drawn to flame, opened my purse, and grabbed up the pack of Salems.
I watched the road as close as I could while I tore the silver foil from the right top corner of the pack. I tapped a cigarette out, let it fall into the lap of my dress, and put the pack back where it belonged.
The midday traffic thinned as I made my way out of town, making it easy enough to pop in the cigarette lighter in the dash and watch the road. I was just waiting for the businesses to thin out before I lit the cigarette. I didn’t want anyone to see me smoking as I drove by.
I hadn’t seen any sign of Herbert Frakes as I made my way out of town, but that didn’t stop me from looking. I felt bad for upsetting the man, and Calla, too. She had never hung up on me before, and it was unsettling.
With that thought, I had never been so ready to leave Dickinson in my entire life.
I had the radio on to the local station, KDIX 1230 AM. I was hoping for some news about the murders, but Peg Graham and her “Women’s Club of the Air” program was rattling on. I was in no mood to listen to how to make a perfect meringue—they always fell when I made them—so I flipped through the stations until I finally gave up and turned the darned thing off.
The lighter sprang out and announced that it was hot just as I crossed over the railroad tracks, leaving the business district behind me.
The gray weathered grain elevator towered on my right, and the flat land spread out before me, dotted with a few houses. I breathed a little easier at the familiar, and less populated, landscape.
The lighter glowed in a hot red circle, and the tobacco flamed up for a second when I pressed the Salem against it. I took a deep draw on the cigarette and felt the rush of smoke push into my lungs. I relaxed as I exhaled.
I popped the lighter back into the hole in the dash, looked ahead of me, straightened the truck up a bit, then looked into the rearview mirror.
The green Chevy was trailing me about a half a block behind.
I looked closer just to make sure I wasn’t imagining what I thought I was seeing. I wasn’t. It sure looked like the same car that I had seen around town all day—and on second glance, it was speeding toward me, coming up faster than it should have been, like it was trying to catch me.
I took a quick draw off the Salem, then tossed it into the open ashtray, leaving it to smolder. I exhaled smoke and punched down the accelerator at the same time.
The V8 engine hesitated and coughed. I feared the truck was going to die right then and there and leave me stranded with the car coming for me. I was suddenly afraid. I felt like a rabbit trying to outrun the shadow of a hawk.
Hank was always good at giving the truck a once over every spring and fall. Maintenance was important to him; he changed the points and plugs, drained the radiator, tightened the belts, whatever was needed so the truck wouldn’t fail him when he needed it the most. I had to admit that I’d let the maintenance go, had never pestered Jaeger to take on that task, and now that I needed the power of the truck to propel me out of trouble, or at least give me a shot at outrunning the Chevy, it was lacking.
The engine finally caught, but with a loud complaint as I pushed the accelerator as hard as I could to the floor. My Sunday shoes weren’t made for such things.
The Studebaker had never been spry, and the steering wheel shook like a washing machine out of balance as the truck lurched forward up to speed. I had seen a washing machine nearly dance across the floor at the Coin Laundromat one day when I’d stopped by just out of curiosity. Lida Knudsen had told me they’d got all new machines and replaced most of the wringer-washers like the ones we both had in our mud rooms.
The interior of the truck cab was thick with cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes. I didn’t dare take my hands off the wheel to roll down the window the rest of the way to clear the air. Every time I looked into the rearview mirror, the Chevy was getting closer. It was less than a hundred feet behind me.
I couldn’t make out any details, but it looked like there was only one person in the car; a man driving. The sun glared off the windshield, and I could only see a pair of dark-lens glasses on his face. Every other second I was looking at the road ahead of me.
The road stretched out in front of me for as far as the eye could see. The fields on both sides of me had been planted with winter wheat and were already cut. It wasn’t odd to see barren fields this time of year; rather, it was one of the comforts of the cycle. But plain and simple, there was no place to run, and certainly no place to hide if the man in the green Chevy meant to do me harm.
You could see a storm rolling toward you from fifty miles away—or it seemed like you could. Or a storm moving out, like the one earlier in the day. Just like I had thought, there was no sign of the earlier precipitation. Prairie dogs and gophers were the only ones with the advantage of underground towns; there one minute, then gone the next because a senti
nel alerted them to trouble. Smart little critters, those rodents. I admired them as much as I thought they were pests and dangerous. You could snap an ankle in an unseen hole—or make a man fall and discharge his shotgun accidently.
When I looked back again, the Chevy was nearly on my bumper.
I braced myself for impact.
I was certain he was going to ram into me.
I was so tense that if he hit me my arms would have snapped in two.
But the green Chevy’s front bumper didn’t touch the truck. At the very last second, the driver swerved over into the other lane, accelerated, and sped by me without so much as a nod.
I was shocked, relieved, and failed to gain a good look at the driver. Before I knew it, all I could see was the rear end of the car, the taillights blazing red, like flames coming out of the bottom of a rocket, in a hurry to leave this world.
CHAPTER 10
I pulled the truck over to the side of the road and shut off the engine. I was certain that my heart was going to jump out of my chest and keep on going, right down the road, chasing after that green Chevy.
It had disappeared from sight, leaving me on an open stretch of road that reached all the way to Montana and beyond.
I collapsed forward so my forehead rested on the steering wheel. It was the only thing holding me up, keeping me from slinking off the bench seat straight onto the floorboard. I would have stayed there forever if I hadn’t had Hank to go home to.
Once the engine started to cool down, the pings and groans diminishing and riding on the constant breeze like the rest of the worldly noises, the comfort of the plains, of the aloneness of the land, started to return to me.
The distant trill of a meadowlark eased its way into my ear, and I digested it like hot chicken soup on a cold winter night. The persistent bubbling tones were a salve to a nightmare, a return to normalcy, to a world that I recognized.
I looked up out the windshield, and movement immediately caught my eye. It was another bird—the big flittering black and white wings of a magpie as it landed on a nearby fence post. Another comfort. The curious bird stared at my truck, at me, and then seemed to shrug, as if it didn’t mind my presence at all.
I had already chastised myself enough, so there was no use adding more of a burden to the pile. Not only was I in over my head, I was out of my head. Lost. I was sure, even though I was unsettled with him, that Hilo hadn’t known what he was asking of me when he’d handed me the amulet.
I needed to write everything down that I had learned and experienced while I was in town, but the truth of the matter was that it all probably would have been for naught. I wouldn’t have been able to organize any of my thoughts if my life depended on it—and a moment ago it felt like it had.
The magpie suddenly lit into the air, and I settled back against the seat and looked forward into the nothingness; the wide blue sky against brown empty fields, edged with the greenness and wildflowers of a brief summer. Black-eyed Susan, blanket flower, and beardtongue caught my eye. For some reason it was the beardtongue that interested me the most—it was used by the Lakota as snakebite medicine—but added subtle color to what I was seeing. The flower was easily overlooked even though it was a powerful medicine. Everything looked like it was supposed to, but it sure didn’t feel like the world I knew and loved anymore. I couldn’t seem to fix anything.
I drew in a deep breath, grabbed up the smoldering cigarette from the ashtray, and took a less-than-enthusiastic puff. The taste had gone from minty cool to stale and tasteless. My tongue felt like sandpaper. My mouth was dry, and at that moment, all I wanted to do was go home, crawl into bed with Hank, and pull the covers up over my head.
But I couldn’t do that. The pies on the passenger floorboard reminded me that I had one more stop to make. After everything I had experienced in Dickinson, I needed to find it in myself to be a good neighbor, and a better friend, and offer Peter and Jaeger whatever I could to help get them though the horrible tragedy that had befallen them.
I stubbed out the cigarette, closed the ashtray, then straightened up my hair the best I could. My face was a mess, so I touched up my makeup and lipstick as quick as I could.
I didn’t want the boys to see me all a muss with straggly hairs and tear-stained cheeks. They needed to see strength and love, the same faces their parents had offered me in my time of need. I had to give the Knudsen boys hope, reassure them that somehow, someway, they would get through this and survive it. The landscape would be different, changed—they would have to learn how to walk all over again and be better for the experience. I had a twenty-minute drive to convince myself of that, because if I didn’t believe it they wouldn’t either.
There were times when being a good liar would have come in handy.
The Knudsen family had migrated from Minnesota a few years before the stock market crash in twenty-nine and the start of the Great Depression. Erik’s father, Reeger, passed his farm on to his eldest son as was the custom, while the other three Knudsen boys were free to explore at their pleasure—which they all had. Two of them died in World War II, and the other was killed in an automobile accident after coming back from service in Japan.
Lida’s family had been in North Dakota since the wagon train days, surviving and carving out a living as shopkeepers and sheep farmers. Lida had two brothers, farmers too, in Stark County, who were successful in their own right. By successful I mean they were able to hold onto their farms from year to year, but they were by no means wealthy. They were land rich and bank poor, as the saying went. As far as I knew, neither of Lida’s brothers were in financial trouble of any kind, but they would, perhaps, be sources to talk to about the cousin Herbert Frakes spoke of, if the need arose. It was obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to completely disconnect from the murders until the truth of it came out.
But, I thought, none of the Knudsens, including Erik and Lida, were the type to burden other people with their problems. I knew I would be the last person to know if they’d had any real problems—money-related or otherwise.
Erik and Lida were a happy and gregarious couple, involved in their church and community. They were good parents and the best neighbors I could have ever hoped to have. And as far as I knew, Peter and Jaeger had no aspirations other than to follow in their father’s footsteps. They wanted nothing more than to be farmers, honorable men like Erik, like Hank, who loved the life they were fortunate enough to live.
Truth be told, I was a little scared that Raymond was somehow involved with the amulet. He’d gripped it like he wanted to run off with it. I didn’t really want to think that he was involved in the murders. Raymond was a mean boy, but never physical, at least with me. I had no idea beyond that. It would have helped to clear my mind if Professor Strand had been home.
Raymond lived in a world I knew little about. Power and social standing were the farthest things from my mind as I went through my day, but it was obvious that appearances and possessions meant a lot to Raymond—just as they had to his mother.
I slowed as I approached the lane that led down to the Knudsens’ house. I was constantly aware of the other vehicles on the road and on the lookout for the green Chevy. I had not seen hide nor hair of it. Truth was, only two cars had passed by me, and neither of them were green. One was black and the other was gray. No surprise there.
I downshifted and drove up the lane that led to the Knudsens’ house with an unsettled feeling growing in the pit of my stomach. A voice screamed inside my head: Go home to Hank. He needs you.
But I didn’t listen. Peter and Jaeger needed me too.
I expected the yard to be loaded with cars, with people milling about and wandering in and out with food.
Only Erik’s five-year-old red International Harvester pickup sat next to the house. Parked next to it was a brown and tan county police car, the bubble on top dark, the windows rolled up. That was it. There were no other cars or trucks about. When Hank had got hurt there was a sea of Detroit steel in our front ya
rd, every make and model of car and truck that you could think of.
The chill of the amulet returned to me, rising up and down my spine.
I knew Hilo wasn’t standing guard at the Knudsens’. He refused to drive anything but his old, battered pickup. It was probably one of his deputies given the duty to ward off curiosity seekers.
The thought caught in my throat as I pulled next to the car and stopped . . . I could only hope the deputy wasn’t Guy Reinhardt.
Like just about everybody else in Stark County who was similar in age, Guy Reinhardt and I had known each other for most of our lives. I knew some of his joys and tragedies, and he knew some of mine, but we were never friends.
We went to different high schools, but since there were only three in the entire county, our paths crossed often. Guy grew up in South Heart. He was a Cougar. I was a Midget—an odd name for a high school mascot in my mind, even now, but it had been that way since the early 1900s.
Sports weren’t really important to me back then. According to most people, Hank included, I couldn’t pull my nose out of a book long enough to know whether it was night or day. But everybody in the state knew who Guy Reinhardt was.
Guy had been a golden boy, an athlete who was gifted beyond belief. There seemed to be nothing that he didn’t excel at: baseball, track and field, and basketball. Especially basketball. He still held the state record for the highest scoring in a single game as far as I knew. There was talk of him going professional, whispers of scouts visiting games once Guy started playing at the university—a big deal in North Dakota—which, of course, in the end came to naught.
A week before the pro draft, Guy had been out drinking with friends and celebrating. Before the night ended, two of those friends were dead, and Guy, who was the driver when the accident happened, suffered severe damage to his right leg. He was thrown from the car and run over by an oncoming truck.
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