Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [62]
He could hear someone doing something in there, but he couldn’t hear his sisters talking or laughing anymore. They had been playing together and talking. He had been waiting to hear his mother call them for dinner. The cake was what he was really waiting for. Arlette’s birthday cake.
His birthday had been in April. He had turned six. There had been balloons and they made a loud noise when they popped. But maybe the loud bangs had been something else. If it had been balloons, his sisters would be laughing, and he couldn’t hear them doing anything at all. It made him feel nervous. He didn’t want to go any closer, because he felt so nervous.
If only he knew what had made that noise.
He didn’t know who was in their room. Maybe it was Denny, playing a joke. Where was his father? Where was his mother? Why didn’t they want to know what was happening? Why didn’t they come?
His mother didn’t call and there had been two bangs and he felt like he was going to wet his pants. He went back and stood in the middle of his room, trying to think what he should do.
Schubert felt like he was playing a game they played at school called Statues, where someone would twirl you around and then let you go and you had to stay perfectly still, like a statue.
Maybe if he stayed perfectly still, nothing would happen to him. Maybe whoever was in the next room, moving things around and making odd noises, would go away and they could have dinner and eat the cake.
Schubert was afraid that he would never get to eat the cake. He heard footsteps leaving his sisters’ room and coming down the hallway toward his room.
Dropping to the floor, he lifted up the blanket edge and tried to crawl under the bed. He had to get away and hide. He should have done it before. But there were too many toys stuffed under his bed. He couldn’t get under it far enough. He heard the footsteps stop close to him.
“Dad, please, Dad,” Schubert yelled into the darkness under the bed.
He heard a loud blast and his leg burst into flames and then he didn’t know anything more.
After the second shot, the boy was pulled out from under the bed and his hand placed down on the floor. It didn’t take much effort to cut off a finger with a hatchet. Just the way he’d take the head off a chicken.
The man stood and knew he was nearly done. He walked out of the room.
The room was quiet. The boy lay stretched out on the floor, a bloody pool around his hand.
Then the clothes in the closet moved.
CHAPTER 19
When Mrs. Lindstrom answered the door, Claire felt as if she were looking at a woman from the fifties. Mrs. Lindstrom’s hair was up in curlers and she was wearing a snap-down-the-front housedress. Claire couldn’t remember the last time she had seen a woman wearing curlers, but at least she wasn’t out in public. Mrs. Lindstrom was thin and pale, hunched over as if she were cold in the midsummer heat. Her hair was a light brown without much gray in it, but she looked close to sixty years old.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” Mrs. Lindstrom said, her slight hand flying up and patting at her curlers.
“Sorry, I called and talked to your husband. Didn’t he tell you I was coming?”
“Paul isn’t much of a talker. I think he’s out in the barn. Let me call him in.” Instead of walking out the door and heading toward the barn, Mrs. Lindstrom went back into the house. Claire stood on the steps, as she hadn’t been invited in, and watched the woman push a button on an intercom in the kitchen.
“Paul,” Mrs. Lindstrom yelled, not counting on the intercom to carry her voice adequately. “Paul, there’s a woman in a police uniform here to see you.”
Claire had nearly brought Tyrone with her to interview Paul Lindstrom. She wondered how Mrs. Lindstrom would have described him—a black man in a business suit? That was what happened when you were in the minority—you were seen only for your difference.
“I think he’s coming.” Mrs. Lindstrom came back to the screen door and pushed it open. “Please come in. He won’t be a minute.”
Claire walked into the kitchen