A Summer with the Dead Page 14

  “Who else did Harlan kill?”

  “Don’t say it like that, Maya. Harlan made a few bad people pay for being bad, that’s all. He never hurt nice people.”

  “But who else?”

  “Two people who wouldn’t pay him for the work he did, back when we were living in Chicago. Harlan made deliveries for Frank Zoubek and Frank Teisland. We called them, ‘the Franks.’ They sold things out of a warehouse in south Chicago. Harlan knew it was all stolen goods but he didn’t care ‘cuz he didn’t steal nothin. He was no thief. He didn’t even know what he was delivering at first, and didn’t want to know. He kept his mouth shut and they liked him for that. And then one night Harlan made a delivery to a smelter, a big ore refinery, and that changed everything. He said he opened the back of the truck to help get the stuff out, and there was a big canvas sack leaking blood. Some men came out of the refinery, dragged the sack out of the truck and across a loading dock. “Go on, get out’a here,” one of them said to Harlan, so Harlan hopped in the cab and drove away. He didn’t hang around and ask stupid questions. He told me later, when he scrubbed out the truck, he puked. The blood had already turned black and it was slimy and smelled awful, and he slipped and fell in it, twice. He went to the Franks and told them he wanted twice what they usually paid him. They laughed. So he told them not to call him anymore ‘cuz he was done with ‘em. Zoubek laughed even harder and I guess Teisland stood there grinning like a fool, so Harlan grabbed Teisland by his fancy silk necktie and sliced him open from scrotum to sternum. Harlan always carried a knife on his belt, ya see, and he was good with it. Teisland didn’t make a sound, Harlan said. He just stood there, gaping and staring at his pink innards spilling all over his expensive Italian shoes. Zoubek went for his gun but Teisland’s holster was right there and Harlan grabbed it and shot Zoubek between the eyes. ‘He dropped like a sack of shit’ Harlan said. Harlan said he waited until Teisland quit twitching and gasping on the floor before he left the warehouse. I guess that took a while. Harlan said it was like watching a gutted fish flop around on the bottom of a boat. Afterward, a different man took over managing the warehouse and he seemed more open to discussion. His name was … oh, I forget right now. Doesn’t matter anyway. He told Harlan if he wanted to quit it was fine, but he offered him a lot more money to stay. ‘Just take care of the bodies,’ he said. ‘Dispose of them anyway you want, just don’t get caught, and if you do get caught, keep your mouth shut.’ He offered Harlan five thousand per drop. That was a lot of money back then.”

  “It’s a lot of money now.” Maya felt as if she was sinking into the armchair, like something heavy pressed her down into it. “What did Harlan do with all the bodies after that?”

  “Most went to that refinery,” Elly said. “I didn’t ask Harlan and he didn’t talk about it much.”

  “Why did you move from there to Graceville?”

  Elly stared straight up at the ceiling as if pondering Maya’s question. She adjusted her blanket and worried her thumbs some more. “A year later, in nineteen sixty, Harlan had a close call. His truck got pulled over by the cops. He explained to them, all that blood in the back of his truck was from a delivery of pig carcasses to a butcher on DiMaggio Street. Harlan said they stared at the blood a long time before one of them shrugged and closed up the truck and they sent him on his way. But that encounter really scared Harlan. After a few days he started talking about leaving Chicago and starting over someplace else. Someplace quiet and peaceful. He wanted to get out of the business, he said. We had enough money saved up and we bought this farm, all fifteen hundred acres. Harlan bought some animals and he built a shed for the cow and the horse, and a coop for the chickens. The chicken coop is now the woodshed. I helped him fence them all in. We had two, long happy years here, quiet and safe, until the new warehouse manager paid us visit—in person.”

  “He came all the way out here?”

  Elly nodded. “They had what they called affiliate warehouses in Seattle, San Francisco, and L.A. It wasn’t just that one manager who was the problem. It was the people he worked for back in Chicago. Once you’re in that business, you’re never really free of it. They’re afraid you’ll talk, so they keep a tight rein on you. They offer you more money, and more money, and if that don’t work they threaten you, and you know they mean it. Harlan and me, we would have ended up buried somewhere under one of our own barns. Deep under. Harlan agreed to the new offer but he made that manager promise, only three drops a year. No more than that, he said. The people in Chicago had other drivers and other places, other people doing the same work. We weren’t the only ones. The manager finally agreed, so we had a deal.”

  “Harlan was a closer?” Maya asked.

  Elly frowned sideways at Maya. “No, honey. A closer kills people, we just buried ‘em. Someone else did the killing. Harlan was a cleaner. He cleaned up other people’s messes.”

  “How many?” Maya asked.

  “You mean around the farm here?”

  Maya nodded.

  Elly studied the ceiling again. “Well, about three a year, for forty-six years. That’s, let’s see, one hundred thirty-eight? But there were a couple extras slipped in sometimes. The managers always called the extras, spares, and we were paid double for those. So, there could be something like, one hundred forty-eight bodies stashed around this farm. Maybe one or two more’n that.” Elly shrugged. “After such a long time, I’ve lost track.”

  Maya forced a dry swallow. “Do you remember where they’re all buried?”

  Elly shook her head. “Heavens no. Harlan always told me to get inside the house when the deliveries arrived. I peeked though, sometimes. I know where some of them are.”

  “Under the house?” Maya asked.

  Again, Elly glanced at her with a surprised look. She nodded. “A few.”

  “Two men and a woman?”

  “How did you know that, Maya?”

  “I saw them. I think they saw me too.” Maya knew by the look on Elly’s face, her aunt understood what she meant.

  “Yeah,” Elly said. “I’ve heard’em scratchin’ around in the dirt while I’m stuffing laundry in the Maytag, but I get out’a there before they’re finished diggin’ their way out. Once you leave the basement, they’re back where they belong, ya see. That’s the way it works.”

  So Elly and I both see them. Did that make the ghosts real, or did that just mean that she and Elly were both crazy?

  “What about the green boy I see upstairs?” Maya asked. “He keeps begging me to not leave him here, to come find him, to help him.”

  “To help him what, Maya? He’s dead.”

  “I don’t know what he wants, Elly. Maybe just finding him would give him peace?”

  “Just leave him be, honey. Nothin’ can be undone. There’s no fixin’ dead people.”

  “But he begs me–”

  “No!” Elly sat up. “We’re gonna leave ‘em all right where they are. That’s what Harlan told me to do and he always knew how to handle things.”

  “All right, Elly. All right.”

  Elly stretched out on the sofa again and pulled the blanket up to her chin. She sniffed like a scolded child. A tear spilled from the corner of her eye, following a deep wrinkle into the hairline above her ear. “Just leave ‘em be,” Elly muttered. “We’ll just leave ‘em all be.”

  So there were over a hundred graves around the farm. More than Maya suspected, but this was not the time to insist Elly recall dates and numbers. Elly was too fragile, too emotional after her recent anxiety attack. Maya knew what those were like. There would be days ahead when they could talk about this again. This was only mid-June. There was all of July and August and part of September. There was time.

  Maya struggled from the chair, the invisible weight rolling from her lap like a boulder and dropping to the floor without a sound. In the kitchen Maya rinsed out the tea mugs.

  Outside the kitchen window, Sheriff Wimple’s car pulled up and parked in front of the bunkhouse. Coty ope
ned his door as the sheriff climbed out, talking and gesturing. Coty nodded, stepped inside, and the sheriff followed. The bunkhouse door closed behind them. Oh, to be a fly on the wall. Maya wished she knew what Coty and Sheriff Wimple were talking about.

  Sooner or later, Maya knew she would tell Sheriff Wimple about the bodies, the deliveries, and about Harlan’s job as a cleaner and about Elly’s involvement. Elly was guilty too, by association. Elly was Harlan’s accomplice. Maya felt the heaviness return, deep in her chest, like icy, skeletal fingers squeezing her heart. Poor little Elly, Maya thought. What would happen to her? What would the courts do to a tiny, seventy-six year old woman with a deadly history?

  Maya dwelled on the graves outside. Her mind refused to let them go. There were so many. She imagined bodies everywhere. Whenever she looked out a window she saw graves. That spot, right there, mounded up with the big rhododendron growing from its center. Was someone buried there? Over there, where the ground was uneven, another grave? In the orchard, between apple trees? In the old vegetable garden, where the rhubarb grew so tall with such massive stalks and table-size leaves? Maya turned away from the window. So many fallow fields around this farm, fields that had been plowed under and returned to a natural state. Overgrown. Abandoned. Forgotten.

  Some of Elly’s story made sense and some of it sounded exaggerated. Some of it sounded like she made things up as she went along—or maybe Elly avoided some details by saying she couldn’t remember, or ‘Harlan took care of that.’ Harlan must have been a harsh man. An impatient, angry soul, but Harlan had somehow convinced Elly they were doing the right thing. They were just cleaners. They were not responsible for the deaths. They cleaned up messes other people made. Forty-eight years of cleaning up messes. One hundred fifty bodies. Maybe more.

  Maya took the basement stairs one step at a time, hesitating on each one for several seconds.

  She sat down two steps up from the bottom and focused on that distant, dark corner. After a moment the scratching sounds began, rustling sounds, like canvas against ice, and the rocking motion of a rounded shadow, like a black bear struggling to break free of a cruel trap.

  “I know you’re down here,” Maya said. “I’m going to help you, I just don’t know how yet. But it’s all going to end. I know what happened to you, and what happened wasn’t right. I’m sorry.”

  She lifted the flashlight, flipped it on bright and aimed it into the thick shadows. There was no one there. Maya turned off the flashlight and returned to the kitchen.

  They heard me.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  MAYA PHONED BARTELL’S PHARMACY in Graceville. Dr. Conover had phoned in the prescription and it was ready for pickup. Maya hated needing the drug but she hated anxiety attacks even more. She hated the way the people at the pharmacy always seemed to make a point of acting uninterested and nonjudgmental, as if they had no idea what the medication was for. They knew. She felt their eyes studying her as she walked away. They think I’m one step away from being institutionalized, but I just need help with anxiety and nightmares. And the whispering voices in her head, voices that never finished a complete sentence or said anything of consequence—bits and pieces of meaningless talk—like interrupted conversation through a wall—

  … but what did they find after …

  … especially if they knew …

  … if he had tried harder he might …

  Maya was relieved Dr. Conover hadn’t insisted she schedule an appointment before authorizing the refill, because of the three-hour drive back to Tacoma. It wasn’t as if she needed to have blood drawn or her blood pressure checked. It isn’t physical, it’s emotional. Surly, if Dr. Conover needed to talk, they could do that over the phone, couldn’t they?

  Sometimes Maya suspected Dr. Conover had lost interest in her. The anxiety attacks occurred less often now and she was sometimes able to suppress them without medication by confronting her reflection in the mirror and by whispering encouragement to the wide-eyed woman staring back. Sometimes she simply told herself, “You’re okay.” With only one pill left in the bottle, though, Maya froze at the thought she might run out. She wanted that refill. She needed that ninety pill reserve that Dr. Conover always authorized. Having them was a security blanket.

  Maya parked the Ford Edge between the Ace Hardware and the front door of Bartell’s on Main Street. She climbed out, locked the car doors and, clenching her jaw, walked away without double-checking the locks. She tossed the leather strap of her bag over her shoulder and squeezed the strap with both hands to control the shaking. She didn’t look back and it felt like a small victory.

  Graceville was a quiet, one-street town. There were no cross streets and, therefore, no intersection lights. It was noon on a sunny Friday and only three other drivers were parked along the sidewalk. Two old men with canes sat on a bench across the street near the Chevron station, solving the world’s problems, Maya guessed, in typical old man fashion, with lots of frowning, gesturing and shaking of their grizzled heads.

  It promised to be a warm day, approaching eighty. A sudden change in the weather like this always brought people out like bees from a hive. A golden lab strolled by, pausing to lift one leg to pee on a light pole. Dark swallows circled overhead in the blue sky. In a small, second floor apartment a shiny, new, air conditioner hummed as Maya walked by. It was now late June and summer was making promises she hoped it kept. It had been a long, damp winter.

  The pharmacy counter was at the back of the store, straight down the candy aisle. She strode to the counter, presented her identification and shifted her weight from one foot to the other as the pharmacist searched for her prescription in a plastic bin. The pharmacist placed a small bottle on the counter. Maya picked it up and frowned at the label. Her hand shook.

  “Just twenty pills?” Maya rolled the bottle back and forth in her hand.

  “That was the amount your doctor prescribed,” the pharmacist said.

  “And—no refills?” Maya set the bottle back on the counter. Something inside her chest tightened, making it difficult to inhale.

  “Do you want me to phone Dr. Conover and double-check?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The pharmacist took several steps away and then returned. “I recall now, Dr. Conover said you need to schedule an appointment before she’ll authorize more of that particular prescription. That’s indicated on the label there, but I’ll phone her if you still want me to.”

  Maya’s breath was uneven as she finally exhaled. Her voice sounded weak. “No. I’ll call her myself. Thank you.” Maya left the pharmacy, her optimism shattered. She climbed behind the wheel of the Edge and tossed the prescription bag on the passenger seat. Enough pills for a month or two. “You’ll be fine,” she told the woman in the rearview mirror. “You’ll be okay.”

  Maya started the engine. She fastened her seatbelt and did a traffic check over her left shoulder. She spotted a man rushing from the men’s restroom at the Chevron across the street. His walk, his posture, his way of straightening down the cuffs on his shirt looked familiar.

  Benson? What are you doing in Graceville? She shivered even though the Edge felt warm from sitting in the sun. The steering wheel was hot to the touch. She lowered her window and studied the man as he jaywalked toward her across the street. He glanced up just before stepping up to the sidewalk. It wasn’t Benson. Maya released a long-held breath.

  “Elly? You here?” Maya hung her coat in the pantry hall, dropped her handbag on a kitchen chair and peeked into the living room. Elly’s blanket was on the sofa, but Elly was not there.

  Maya headed upstairs—slow and hesitant. The green boy did not appear. The bathroom door was wide open and the light off. Maya stepped inside Elly’s bedroom. She could see clear to the back of Elly’s walk-in closet. Elly was not in there either, but the top dresser drawer was open, the same drawer that had been locked before. Maya entered the closet and peered inside the drawer. It was empty. Whatever had been inside,
sliding back and forth, was now gone.

  Maya returned downstairs. Inside the stove was a bed of hot coals. She stoked it again with alder.

  Odd, she thought. Elly’s farmhouse is either too hot or too cold depending on the room. It was almost eighty degrees outside, sixty-five inside. She struggled to open the kitchen window but it had been painted shut years ago, as had the dining room window. The big living room picture window wasn’t designed to open. Opening just one window would have allowed some heat and fresh air inside.

  Maya heard a tap on the back door and saw Coty through the parted curtains. She waved and he stepped inside and said,

  “Sheriff Wimple told me to stay in the county.”

  “Why?”

  “He wasn’t exactly clear about that—maybe something to do with those bodies and those tunnels. I explained to Sheriff Wimple why I’m here. He seemed satisfied with that, but still asked me to hang around. If I need to leave the county, he said let him know first.” Coty poured himself a mug of steaming water and dropped in a tea bag before joining Maya at the kitchen table.

  “I thought I saw my ex-husband today,” Maya said. “On Main Street in Graceville.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I was picking up a prescription at Bartell’s … oh, you mean Benson. It turned out to be some poor sap who just looks like him.”

  “I saw Tony Bradley snooping around the farm. He has a criminal record. Did you know that?”

  “What kind of record?”

  “Extortion mainly. You invited him here for dinner, right?”

  Maya was uncertain how much to tell Coty. He claimed to be a private investigator and he had a laminated card to prove it, but the card could be as fake as her best strand of pearls for all she knew. Maya liked Coty, but she liked Benson once, too. She decided to reveal a few things to Coty and see what happened.