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“Clyde, who’s in there?” Rooney called. Her footsteps approached, crackling on the icy snow.
“Hide that thing,” Clyde begged. “Don’t let her see it. Here…” He thrust it into the supply closet.
Rooney appeared on the threshold of the office, her face filled out a little, her eyes wide and calm. Je
Through stiff lips she managed to say, “I’ve missed you too.” She had begun to blame Rooney for everything that had happened. She had dismissed everything Rooney told her as the imagination of a sick mind.
“Je
The question was a slap across the face. “Erich’s away with the girls.” She knew her voice was trembling, u
“Come on, Rooney. You can visit tomorrow. You better get home. The doctor wanted you to go straight to bed,” Clyde urged.
He took her arm, propelled her forward, looked over his shoulder. “Be right back.”
While they waited, she managed to tell them about her search for the cabin. “It was you, Mark. Last night. I said the children would be fine with Erich and you didn’t say anything. Later on… in bed… I knew… you were worried about them. And I began to think-if not Rooney, if not Elsa, if not me… And my mind kept saying, Mark is afraid for the children. Then I thought. Erich. It has to be Erich.
“That first night… He made me wear Caroline’s nightgown… He wanted me to be Caroline… He even went to sleep in his old bed. And the pine soap he put on the girls’ pillows. I knew he’d done that. And Kevin. He must have written-or phoned-to say he was coming to Mi
“Je
“No, let me tell you. He took me back to that restaurant. When Kevin threatened to stop the adoption he told Kevin to come down. That’s why the call was on our phone. Erich and I are the same height when I wear heels. With my coat… and the black wig-he could look enough like me until he got in the car. He must have hit Kevin. And Joe. He was jealous of Joe. He could have come home earlier that day; he knew about the rat poison. But my baby. He hated my baby. Maybe because of his red hair. Right from the begi
Were those dry, harsh sobs coming from her? She could not stop talking. She had to let it out.
“Those times I thought I felt someone leaning over me. He was opening the panel. He must have been wearing the wig. The night I went to have the baby. Woke him up. I touched Erich’s eyelid. That’s what scared me. That was what I’d feel when I reached up in the dark… The soft eyelid and the thick lashes.”
Mark was rocking her in his arms.
“He has my children. He has my children.”
“Mrs. Krueger, can you find your way back to the cabin?” Sheriff Gunderson’s tone was urgent.
A chance to do something. “Yes. If we start at the cemetery…”
“Je
But she would not let them go without her. Somehow she led them back, Mark and the sheriff and Clyde. They turned on the oil lamps, bathing the cabin in a mellow Victorian glow that only accentuated the gnawing cold. They stared at the delicate signature, Caroline Bonardi, then began to search the cupboards. But there were no personal papers; the cupboards were empty except for dishes and cutlery.
“He’s got to keep his painting supplies somewhere,” Mark snapped.
“But the loft is empty,” Je
“It can’t be that small,” Clyde objected. “It’s the size of the house. It might be partitioned off.”
There was a storage area that was half again the size of the loft room, accessible by a door in the right-hand corner, a door that Je
“Caroline’s cape,” Mark said quietly.
Je
Clyde began searching through a bin of canvases near the door. “Look.” His cry was horror-filled. He had pulled out a canvas. This one in the murky green tones of stagnant water. A surrealistic collage of Erich as a child and Caroline. Scenes crowding, overlapping. Erich with a hockey stick in his hand. Caroline bending over a calf; Erich pushing her; her body, sprawled in a tub, no that was the stock tank; her eyes staring up at him. The tip of the hockey stick flipping the overhead lamp into the tank. Erich’s child-face demonic now, laughing into the agonized figure in the water.
“He killed Caroline,” Clyde moaned. “When he was ten years old, he killed his own mother.”
“What did you say?” They all spun around. Rooney was in the doorway of the loft, Rooney with wide eyes no longer calm. “Did you think I couldn’t tell something was wrong?” she asked. She was staring not at the canvas Clyde was holding, but beyond to the painting now revealed in the bin. Even with the distortions Je
“Erich killed my little girl,” Rooney moaned.
Somehow they made their way back to the house. Mark’s hand held hers tightly, a silent Mark, not attempting to offer useless words of comfort.
In the house, Sheriff Gunderson got on the phone. “There’s the chance that everything we believe he’s done is the fantasy of a sick mind. There’s one way we can be sure and we can’t waste a minute finding out.”
The cemetery was once again violated. Floodlights bathed the tombstones in u
As they looked down, they saw bits of blue wool mixed with the earth.
A man’s voice spoke from the grave: “She’s here. For God’s sake, get the mother away.”
Clyde hugged Rooney, forcing her to retreat. “At least we know,” he said.
Back at the house, the daylight was filtering in. Mark made coffee. When had Mark begun to suspect that the children were in danger with Erich? She asked him.
“Je
“Caroline was on the verge of a breakdown by then. She did the only thing she could. She relinquished custody, with the understanding that John would send Erich to boarding school. She hoped a different atmosphere would help him. But after she died, John broke his promise. Erich never did get help.