“Hell I could. I called the dispatch three hours ago and told them I was going home. The roads of Norwich now belong to your brother state troopers.”
Gordon nodded. “Earl Blake’s on tonight. He’ll do you all right.”
He drank some more beer. The night birds were out, squawking and hunting in the woods. “We’re gonna lose this one tomorrow, aren’t we, Gordo?”
Gordon wrapped himself tighter in his coat. “That we are, my friend. My recommendation was that we not even bring it to the grand jury, but the A.G.’s office wouldn’t hear of it. So they’ll go up to the County Court tomorrow and so will we, and we’ll tell our little stories, and after Deborah Hanson’s let loose, we can lie to the newspapers and say we did a good job.”
“Weren’t much there,” Victor said.
Gordon poured himself another tumbler, his knees high up since his feet were resting on the front bumper. “Nope. Just a body in a front yard and a familiar story.”
“You thinking about the Wilson family?”
Even in the faint moonlight he could see Gordon staring down at his hands. “That I am. Three years ago and it still gives me the shakes. Middle of February, up at Towle’s Purchase. The Blizzard Month, you’ll recall that’s what the papers named it. Every few days we’d get a snowstorm barreling through, and by the time people made headway in getting dug out, another storm’d pass through and dump another foot. Some places were cut off for almost a week.”
“Including the Wilsons’.”
“Yeah. Some sister got concerned she hadn’t heard from the Wilsons so me and Fern Goodwin — he quit as the chief there right afterwards — and a state plow went up there. Nothing but acres of fields and woods and this farmhouse, and inside the five boys and girls and their two parents, all dead. Couldn’t get the smell of blood out of my mind for weeks after that. And the forensics work, my lord, what we had to do to learn what happened there.”
“Still hard to believe,” Victor said, “as much as I do.”
“Yeah. But I was out on their front porch while we were working up the forensics, just looking at all that blank whiteness for miles around, just closing in on you. Made me think, just for a second, why they did it. Killed their own children, then each other. I understood it. Just for a second.”
A car came up on Overlook Point and when the headlights touched the cruiser, it quickly backed away. Victor took another taste of his beer. “Young love. They’ll have to go somewhere else.”
“As much as there is, in Norwich.”
“You believe Deborah Hanson’s story?”
Gordon screwed on the top of his thermos. “Five or ten years ago, you ask me that, and I would’ve said no. After working in this county and seeing stuff like the Wilson family, I can believe almost anything. Odd things go on up in the hills.”
Victor nodded. “Know what you mean. Whole thing has a sense of irony about it. She probably saw her chance when his heart went out. Remember I saw a Clint Eastwood movie once, a western. Some lady said, ‘They say the dead don’t rest without a marker.’ Maybe that’s what Deborah Hanson was doing. Making sure Henry Hanson never rested.”
“Maybe so. But she’ll have to think of something else now.”
“What do you mean?” Victor asked.
Gordon drew his coat around him as a breeze rose up. “Right now what’s left of Henry Hanson’s resting in a real grave, with a real headstone. Some things don’t last.”
Victor said, “Maybe they last long enough.”
Two days later Victor Dumont was re-tracing his first visit to the Hanson family, but there were some differences. It was a warmer day, and there was no rain, and the recently released Deborah Hanson was sitting next to him in the cruiser as he brought her back to her house.
He had been surprised that she had specifically requested he drive her back, but she had looked at him at the county jail and said, “Chief, you brought me here. And by God, you’re going to bring me back.”
He couldn’t argue with her. It made sense.
Up the gravel driveway, past the rusting mailbox again, it was just like last week. By God, what a hell of a difference a few days made. He pulled the cruiser to a stop before the gaping hole where they had found Henry Hanson.
“Your daughters?” Victor asked, leaving the cruiser’s engine running.
Deborah said, “At my sister’s. They and the dog will be coming back tonight.”
“And your son Freddy?”
She went into her purse, pulled out a pack of Marlboros. “He’s almost of age and he’s moved out. I’ve not seen or heard from him in weeks. He ain’t my son anymore. And he won’t be welcome back.”
Victor nodded in the direction of the excavation. “I’ll have Tower Excavation come up and take care of this hole.”
“No, don’t do that,” Deborah Hanson said. “The tractor’s still in the barn. I’ll take her out this afternoon and fill it in myself. Might send you a bill for that, though.”
“Go ahead.”
Victor tapped a bit on the steering wheel and said, “Mrs. Hanson, with the grand jury decision you’re a free woman. You know, with the news accounts about what kind of man your husband was and the attitude of the people who live here in this county, well, I don’t think there’s anything that will put you back before the grand jury.”
She said, “You mean, a cousin or other relation comes forward with another crazy story ’bout how I killed Henry, nothing’s gonna happen?”
“Probably not.”
“So I could say practically anything to you right now, and it’d be my word against yours, and I’m still okay.”
“Most likely.”
She took out a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply. “Let me tell you this one thing, Chief. Henry was a good man in some ways, ’cept when he drank. And the problem was, it got so he was drinking all the time. And that good part left. When he was sobered up, he liked to sit at the kitchen table and quote Bible verse at me. One thing, stuck in my mind, was ‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways.’ I guess that’s one phrase that explains everything.”
“Maybe so,” he said, staring at her.
She stared right back. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a place to clean up. My daughters coming back and all.”
“Sure,” he said, and after she stepped out he backed the cruiser down the hill, remembering the look in her face, the way her eyes just fell for that moment and revealed everything, and he knew. Didn’t know how. But he just knew.
Didn’t know how. But he just knew.
After taking a long shower — the ones at the jail she never could relax in, too many bodies around — she changed her clothes and opened every window in her house. The girls would be coming back soon and she wanted to have the place look nice for them. Maybe drive down and get some ice cream. Now, that would be a treat.
Deborah Hanson went into the barn and walked past the John Deere tractor with a bucket attachment on the front. The bucket was covered with a canvas tarp. It was cool in the barn. She had depended on that. She slipped on a pair of work gloves and started up the tractor. It took four tries before the engine caught. Goddam thing needed a new battery.
As she drove the tractor out she looked over, once, at the long wooden shelf on the near wall. There were chains up there, and gardening tools and other work gloves and lengths of green hose and there, by the end and almost covered by old newspaper, a can of rat poison.
Sure, little Freddy had seen her, five years ago, dump Henry’s body in the old septic tank hole. She had told him a story, to safeguard her future, and the boy had believed her then, about the baseball bat and all.
Like the valley people believed her story now.
She halted the tractor at the edge of the hole, where last week they had tom up her front lawn looking for Henry’s body. Well, she couldn’t say she wasn’t warned. She always knew that eventually someone would find out, and the night before they did come up, with their warrants and backhoes, Freddy had come by, drunk and itching for a fight, to boast that he had gone to the cops.