Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [20]
Harold heard the door to the front office open. He thought of getting up and talking to whoever had entered, but he wanted to finish this last piece before interrupting his work. When the door opened and closed again, he figured his visitor had come in to buy a paper.
A pile of papers was always left on the counter, and a box sat next to them for quarters. The honor system worked pretty well in these parts. Once or twice they had even come out ahead on the money. Maybe he wasn’t charging enough for his paper—although circulation was not where the money came from; the money was all in advertising. With two more businesses closing on Main Street, he’d be losing some other reliable clients soon.
Sighing a deep sigh, Harold pushed himself out of his chair. He needed to get up and walk around from time to time. Otherwise his legs bothered him. It was time to lock the front door. He walked out to the front desk and turned the dead bolt.
He waved at Harriette Pinkerton as she passed on the street. She’d be a pretty woman if she didn’t pull her hair back so tight and if she put on a little lipstick. Women walked around these days looking more informal than his mother would have ever allowed herself to be seen out of the bedroom: skimpy T-shirts, slippers on their feet, and their bra straps showing on purpose. But he was certainly glad that he didn’t have to wear a suit to work every day. Or a hat for that matter.
When he turned to walk back to his desk, he saw an envelope sitting on the counter with his name on it. mr. harold peabody, it was labeled, then underneath, put in the paper, please. Assuming it was a letter to the editor, he wondered who was ranting about what this week.
Curious, he opened the envelope and pulled out a single piece of paper. Not much writing on it. He peered down through the bottom half of his glasses. At the top of the paper was written a series of numbers:
7, 7, 10, 52.
Offhand, he couldn’t make them mean anything. Then he read the body of the note:
The killer has gone free for far too long. The truth must be told. Or more will die. The flowers and the birds were only the beginning. The murdered are crying out for revenge. I have listened to them for half a century.
It is enough.
Wrath of God
Wrath of God. Harold read it again and felt the seriousness of the situation sinking into him. The bad business had just gotten worse. Half a century ago—that was when the Schuler murders took place. Somehow what was happening with the pesticides was connected with them. He saw that the last three numbers at the top of the note were the date of the massacre. The first number, seven, was how many people had died that day.
His hand holding the letter shook. He needed to sit down. But first he needed to call the police. He wondered if they would let him put the letter in the paper. He knew he had to do that. His motto in life had always been: The truth must be told. Now he knew that someone else felt the same way.
July 7, 1952
Bertha Schuler didn’t think much about it when she heard the gunshot, a not uncommon sound around the farm. Otto had probably caught sight of the weasel that was stealing eggs out of their chicken coop. She hoped he got the darn thing.
She picked up the crying child and rocked her in her arms. Arlette. Her last baby, she prayed. Nearly forty, her body had had a harder time carrying this one. She had almost given birth on the farm, but Otto had scooted her to town in time. Arlette had been her smallest baby, barely five pounds, the size of a bag of flour.
Otto wouldn’t even hold Arlette for the first month, said they should be done with that. He tried to stay away from Bertha, tried to keep his hands off her, but then, in the middle of the night, he would take her feverishly and they would both wait to see if her blood came when it should.
Bertha had years to go yet before she’d be done with the chance of having another baby.