Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [64]
“Did you ever play with any of the Schulers?”
He picked at the steel edge of the table, then said quietly, “At school. Schubert and I played a bit. But my dad wouldn’t let me play with them when I was home. My mother and I couldn’t have anything to do with them.”
Claire closed her notebooks, disappointed in what she had learned. But you just had to keep asking the questions. She sat still and willed herself to devise one more. “Who did your dad think had killed them? Did he ever say anything?”
“I can’t remember him trying to place the blame on anyone.” Lindstrom paused a moment to clear his throat. Then he continued, “The only thing I remember him saying was something about the deputy sheriff who found them. How he could remember Earl Lowman stealing a car and nearly wrecking it, and wasn’t it something that he had ended up on the right side of the law after all.”
Harold felt oddly elated sitting at his desk. Sometimes that happened to him after he had had a little too much to drink the night before. He had realized early on that he had the potential for being a drunk, so he had put all sorts of limits on his alcohol intake. And he had married a wife who didn’t imbibe at all. But from time to time he tied one on, and occasionally that experience left him slightly euphoric. It gave him a little remove from the world and made him feel he was above it all and could see what was going on around him more clearly.
Sarah walked into his office, holding the copy of the threatening letter that had come in last night from the pesticide guy. “How do you want to handle this? What would you like me to do?”
“I think this time we should run something about the letter,” Harold said.
She looked down at the letter. “This is getting pretty weird. All this biblical language, and then he ends with ‘I mean it. ’This guy’s nuts.”
“Probably. But that might be to his advantage. He believes that what he’s doing is righteous. It gives him a kind of biblical power and authority. What have we got on the front page right now?”
She looked at her notes. “The results of the county fair baking contest, the crop report, and the two-car accident on Deer Island last night.”
“What happened? They can’t have been going very fast. The island’s not long enough to pick up any speed.”
“An older woman stopped for a rabbit that was crossing the road and one of her neighbors rear-ended her.”
“Oh, I like that. Any pictures?” he asked hopefully. “Of the rabbit?”
Sarah giggled.
“Keep that story below the fold, but bump the fair story onto the next page. Above the fold I want a picture of the letter, a quote from the sheriff, info on the two guys that DCI has sent out, and a short piece on the Schuler murders.”
He patted an old stack of papers that was sitting on his desk. “Here’s most of the pieces we ran on the Schuler murders, written by yours truly. Read them all through and you’ll know most of what was known at the time—or at least everything this reporter knew. Then write up a summary of the events, leading into what is presently happening.”
She stood up and picked up the papers. “I’ll try.”
“Bother me whenever you need to, but I’m going to let you run with this. Get those other two pieces written up.”
“Already done.” Sarah looked at the top paper and asked, “Who do you think was responsible for what happened to the Schulers? I’ve read a little about it. Did you ever come up with a theory?”
Harold steepled his fingers and touched them to his lips. An affectation, he knew, but it gave him time to think. “Not really. There was something about the whole disaster that seemed off to me. I mean, I guess that goes without saying. You have a whole family shot to death on their isolated farm and something obviously went wrong. But I never felt like we knew what really went on. That there was something everyone was missing. See what you think when you read everything.”
Sarah was a good kid. If she ever tried to buy the paper from him, he would dissuade her. No