Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [50]
“Did you talk to him?”
“I did talk to him. For comfort more than trying to get more news for my story. He was the one who told me about the fingers, but I didn’t put it in the Daily. The sheriff called later and asked me not to. It would be the way that they knew who had really done it. You know how they keep an important fact out of the news so they can sift the truth from the talkers who yearn for some weird kind of fame? Turning themselves in for something they hadn’t done.”
“So Lowman told you?”
“Yes, he said they all had one of their little fingers missing. He was acting very odd. Walking around in front of the house, kicking the ground, like he was looking for something.”
“Did you ask him what he was doing?”
“I did, and he said he was looking for the fingers.”
“What?”
“Yes, he said he didn’t know where they could have gone to. He was talking crazy. I think it really spooked him. I told him it was time for him to go home. I got him to go with me. I got him in the car and drove him home. When we arrived at his house, I went in with him and asked his wife to get out some booze; as I recall she brought out some bourbon. I poured him a large shot and one for myself and we drank them together. I poured him another and watched him drink it. I told him to go to bed and try to sleep. I drove back to the Daily and wrote the first story about the Schuler murders.”
“I think I need to talk to Earl Lowman. I didn’t find his name in the phone book. Do you know where he is?”
“Last I heard he was in Tucson, Arizona. I don’t know more than that. You’d have to talk to his family.”
Claire stood up to leave, but she didn’t turn around. She stared into the air as if she were reading something. “Remember the first time we talked and you analyzed the kind of man who wrote that threatening note?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Can you do it for this—can you tell me why someone would cut off the victims’ fingers?”
Harold didn’t even have to think about it. He had always understood that. “For souvenirs. To remember them by. Nothing in the house was disturbed. Nothing was taken. This family was murdered by someone who felt strongly about them, and whoever it was wanted to keep something to memorialize what he had done.”
Marie Lowman was standing in the hallway across from her husband’s hospital room when Claire found her. Leaning against the wall with her hands covering her mouth, she was trying not to cry.
Claire recognized Marie from the night before but was sure the woman didn’t know who she was. For one thing, she hadn’t been in uniform. In those moments, that was all people saw—a woman in a deputy sheriff’s uniform. A cop. Marie was still wearing the clothes she had been wearing at the fireworks. Claire could tell because there was a dark smear of dirt from last night.
“Marie, I’m Claire Watkins.” Claire stood fairly close to her. She had found that people who were traumatized could focus on you more easily if you were closer.
“Do I know you?” Marie asked, her hands coming off her mouth, but hovering near her face.
“I was there last night. I helped get your husband into the ambulance. How is he?”
“They don’t know—“ Marie said, then stopped.
“They don’t know what?” Claire bumped her.
“They don’t know if he’s going to come out of this. You hear about people in a coma. I mean, you read about it, you watch those trashy news shows, but you really don’t know until you’re standing there in the room with him and he doesn’t know you’re there.”
“I’m sorry. We’re trying to find out who is responsible.”
“I know I should care. I know I should be angry and all that, but all I can think about is Andy. Is he ever going to be in this world again? Am I going to have my husband back?”
Claire flashed back to her own husband lying at the edge of her lawn after he had been run down by a truck. She remembered those same feelings, praying with her whole body that he would be all right while she ran as fast as she could outside, to be