Bone Harvest - Mary Logue [90]
Paul Lindstrom fell down on his knees. The gun flew out of his hands. Claire stepped in front of him so they couldn’t shoot again. She bent over him and saw blood spurting out of his neck—and then he toppled to the dark soil.
CHAPTER 28
“I won’t quit my job.” Rich put his Red Wing boots up on the railing of the porch overlooking what he liked to think of as his spread, his family’s estate. “Good,” he said finally, as he knew Claire was waiting for him to say something.
“Do you want me to?”
“Sometimes.”
“I don’t ask you to give up pheasant farming.”
“No, you’ve never asked me to give up my birds.”
“I know you don’t like that I’m a deputy sheriff.”
“That’s not completely true. Sometimes I like it a lot. I don’t like worrying about you.”
Claire moved her cast-covered leg so that she could sit more comfortably in the wooden chair. “Would you get me a napkin?” she asked. “I appear to have dripped on my shirt.”
They were eating chips and hot sauce. Claire had managed to get up the stairs with her crutches, but then sat in the chair she was in and didn’t want to move again. She said her armpits were already sore from the crutches. The doctors had told her she’d be wearing the cast for a good month or so.
Rich brought her the napkin, then stood over her. “Have you told Meg about your broken leg yet?”
“Not really. She’ll see it soon enough. I didn’t want to ruin her vacation.”
“So how is Paul Lindstrom doing?”
“He’s going to be fine. He nearly bled out from that gunshot wound, but he’s a tough guy. His wife went over to see him the other day. She seems to have forgiven him.”
“What will they do to him?”
“Well, I would be surprised if a jury wouldn’t see how mentally ill he is. I would think he’ll be spending time in the psych ward.”
“What about Lowman?”
“The county attorney is going over everything. I think he’s looking at minimal time. I don’t even think they’re going to be charging him with much, maybe negligent homicide. He might serve a year or two.”
They both sat quietly for a moment; then Claire said, slapping her cast, “You won’t have to worry about me for the next month or so. They’ve got me tied to my desk. Oh, did I tell you I got a call from Ray Sorenson today?” She had told Rich about what he and his girlfriend had done in the storage area of the Farmer’s Cooperative.
He nodded for her to continue.
“Looks like they’re going to be having a retirement party for Chuck Folger, the agronomist. Ray sounded awfully glad he wouldn’t be working with the man anymore.”
“We have one more thing to talk about.”
“We do?”
Rich took the box out of his pocket. “The ring. Even though we’re not getting engaged to be married, I’d like to give it to you.” He walked over to Claire and knelt next to her. “Would you like to wear my ring?”
“I would love to.” She held out her hand and he slipped the small diamond on it.
They kissed and for a moment Rich was sure he smelled the sweet scent of roses in the air.
July 7, 1952
She made him get down on his knees on the floor of her bedroom and promise to never tell anyone else what he had told her. “They’ll get us, Pauly, if you tell. They’ll come and kill us, too.”
“What about Dad?”
“Never tell your father anything. He would be so angry, who knows what he would do.”
She cried and held him in her arms and rocked him and called him her baby. “You’re all I’ve got, Pauly. You’re the only person I’ve ever loved.”
When she finally let him go, they ate dinner and he went upstairs to bed. But he couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened, about the dead children laid out on the floors of their house. He had to do something. He had to try to save them.
After he heard his mother go to bed, he sneaked down the stairs and went outside. It was a warm summer night with a big full moon. Fireflies twinkled in the long grass and over the fields.
He walked around the barn and found his special hiding place. The red tobacco tin was right where he had