Rex remained outside for a few moments, warily telling Mitch and Jeff what was known about Quentin Reynolds’s murder, and then the three of them went inside, too. “Can I pick up the gun?” Jeff asked, still sarcastic.
“I’ll get it,” Rex told him. “Go inside with your brother.”
Then he sent his wide-eyed deputies back to the Reynoldses’ home to continue dealing with the aftermath of homicide.
They gathered in the living room, taking seats on couches and in armchairs, with Nathan holding court from his leather lounger in the center of the room, opposite the television set. Nathan’s hunting rifle was propped against his chair. The judge’s pistol was in the kitchen, on the table. Rex’s own gun was still holstered at his hip, and he kept his hand on it, just in case he needed it.
Abby sat as far away from Mitch as she could get, curling herself up against Verna on one of the two long couches where Rex and Mitch had used to laze and watch Sunday football when they were kids.
His father may have been center stage, but Rex took charge.
“All right. Mitch. What did you mean out there?”
“Yeah,” his dad said in a voice that was still gruff from emotion. “What is it you think I’m supposed to know?”
Mitch shook his head. “Doc denied it, too.”
“Denied what?” Rex said.
“The night Sarah died,” Mitch said, still looking at Nathan, “I was in Doc’s office, hiding. I saw you and Patrick bring her in, Nathan. I saw what Doc did to her body. I know the two of you covered up her identity.”
Nathan Shellenberger couldn’t have looked more shocked than he did.
Verna stared at her husband, while Abby stared at Mitch.
“My God,” Mitch said, looked nearly as shocked himself. “You really didn’t know that? What Doc told me, it’s true? Neither of you has ever known? You didn’t know I was there and I saw you?”
The old sheriff shook his head, seeming incapable of speech.
“Covered up her identity?” Rex said, taking a step forward. “Dad? What’s he talking about?”
On the couch, still hugging Abby, Verna Shellenberger remembered the promise she had made to the Virgin…to Sarah Francis…to return the favor if Sarah could help Nathan with his pain. He was in a different kind of pain now, and Verna knew it was time to relieve that, too, and there was only one way to do it.
“Nathan,” she said in the same firm voice she had used to corral them when they were all standing outside. “No more secrets. It’s time for all of us to talk about it. Starting with you.” In a quieter voice that was suddenly tear-choked, she added, “Do it for Sarah. Please, Nathan, for Sarah.”
Slowly, and as if the effort hurt him more than arthritis ever had, Nathan began to talk to them. First he told them everything he remembered from the night when he and his sons had found the girl’s body. And then he told them what he knew only from hearing it from Quentin Reynolds seventeen years ago.
Chapter Forty
January 23, 1987
In the late afternoon of January 23, 1987, Doc was in the middle of medicating old Ron Buck for an inner ear infection when his nurse stuck her head in the door and said, “Judge Newquist is on the phone, Doctor. He says it’s an emergency.”
Getting up quickly from his swivel stool, Quentin said, “Don’t go away,” to his patient.
The elderly man with his head bent over to allow liquid medicine to drain down into his ear canal, snorted with phlegmy laughter, and said from his bent position, “You pretty well made sure of that, Doc.”
Quentin picked up the extension in his examining room.
“What’s the emergency?” he said, right off the bat.
The deep voice of his oldest childhood friend filled his ear. “You need to come out here to the ranch, Quentin, you have to come out right now.”
“What’s the problem, Tom?”
“I can’t tell you. Just bring your doctoring stuff and get out here as fast as you can.”
Quentin started to snap, “It would help to know whether to bring a portable EKG or a Band-Aid, Tom,” but the judge hung up before he could get the words out. Quentin glanced over at his patient, who still had his scrawny old neck cocked obediently. “You can put your head back on straight now, Ron. Slowly! Don’t go all dizzy and faint on me.” Then, as he glanced out a window at the weather-still clear, in spite of a forecast for what might turn out to be a doozy of a winter storm-he said, “I’m sorry, but I have to leave. Keep taking those antibiotics. Call me if the pain gets worse, or you get a stiff neck, or you develop a fever.”
“Already got all those, Doc,” the old man said as Quentin headed for the door.
Quentin turned around to give his patient a last moment of full attention. “I’ll check in on you tomorrow.”
Quentin Reynolds still made house calls, as he was about to do for Tom Newquist. He didn’t even have to gather any supplies, since he kept a full medical bag in his car at all times, ready to go. All he had to do was let his nursing assistant know he was leaving. It would have been nice, however, to know if he needed any extras of anything, or anything special and unusual. Damn Tom Newquist for being such a goddamn judge sometimes, thinking he could order anybody-even his best friends, even a doctor-around like court reporters.
Just before he slammed his office door, he heard the old man call out from behind him, “What’s the emergency, Doc?”
“I wish I knew, Ron.”
Instead of somebody running out of the farmhouse to meet him as Quentin expected, Tom Newquist came running from the direction of the storm cellar. He was a big man who got precious little exercise-despite the nagging of his friend the general practitioner-and he looked awkward as he ran. But then Tom Newquist had always looked like a huge lumbering bear on the football field, too, even as he was mowing down an opposing line. He wasn’t graceful, but he cleared a path, Tom did, he cleared a path.
Quentin, shorter, lighter on his feet, though not in much better shape himself now that they were both in their forties, grabbed his medical bag and hurried to meet Tom halfway. Before he was even that far, however, the big man turned, waving Quentin to follow him. When Tom broke into a run again, so did Quentin.
He was surprised they were headed back toward the storm cellar.
Its thick wooden door was wide open, revealing light inside.
Tom disappeared inside it first. When Quentin reached it and stepped in, he nearly recoiled in shock at what he saw there: Nadine, disheveled, bloody, staring toward the doorway with a look of horror that Tom had never seen on her face before. And there was Tom, staring at Quentin with hardly less dismay than his wife was expressing. And, most shocking of all, there was a young woman, a full-term pregnant young woman, writhing on a single bloody bed set up against a wall.
“What the hell have you done?” he said, but hurried to her side.
His brain had taken in other startling facts about the cellar that was appointed like an apartment: throw rugs to cover a cement floor, a toilet, a faucet and sink, a stove and oven. He also saw bloody towels that had been tossed to the floor.
The young woman turned wide, dark, terrified eyes to him.
He recognized her from somewhere, but couldn’t think where.
Pleading eyes, Quentin thought, having seen them on women in the throes of nightmare deliveries before.
“What’s your name?”
“Sarah,” she whispered.
As he settled himself at the foot of the single bed, he suspected he already knew what he would find: breech birth, baby stuck in birth canal, mother losing blood, baby losing heartbeat, both of them threatened with losing their lives.