He nodded and a minute later asked, “Will the blood clear me?”
“Semen.”
“Semen?”
“Found some on her body. You sure it wasn’t yours?” I wanted to ask him without his parents staring him down.
“No.” He was mighty quick to answer. “I already told you, she wouldn’t let me.”
Another pause, while the fact of it must have sunk in. “Someone . . . raped her?”
He seemed to have trouble with the word.
“Can’t say.”
“So my . . . stuff . . . won’t match and then you’ll clear me, right? That’ll take me off your list?”
“We’ll see.” I didn’t tell him that, apart from Gerald Jones, he was the list.
He was quiet for the rest of the morning, letting nurses lead him around like some overgrown pup. After dropping the kid off back home, I swung by the Erickson place again. Winifred’s Buick was in the garage and a Chevy pickup was parked out front. I banged on the screen door for what felt like ten minutes with no answer and then headed around to the outbuildings. Winifred leased most of her land to one of the big farming cooperatives and I’d never seen her set foot in the fields since the day she shot Lars, but she had to be here somewhere.
I poked around until I heard voices coming from the machinery shed.
“—don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“You’re not going to say a word, that’s what.” Came the reply. The first person was kind of muffled, but Winifred’s old, crackly voice carried clear as day.
“Can’t keep it a secret forever.”
“Can’t say nothing till you decide what you’re going to do.”
“We’re not talking about this.”
“You have to talk to someone and I know exactly what you’re feeling.”
“It’s murder.”
“Murder has its place, just like everything else. When I was—” Winifred’s voice cut off and there was a pause. Then a gunshot deafened me.
I threw myself against the side of the shed, my gun already drawn.
“God damn it, Winifred!”
“Who’s there? You better get the hell off my property before I let another one fly.”
“It’s Sheriff Goodman. I’m coming in there and if I don’t hear a gun hit the floor in five seconds, I’m going to come in shooting. Do you hear me?”
Silence.
“Winifred? I’m counting.”
There was a thud and a grunt. “Fine, then.”
I crept into the half-lit building, my aim trained on the two women by the right wall. Winifred was dressed in a checkered housedress. She had stringy, tight curls all over her head, a pipe in her mouth, and a put-out expression on her face. An old rifle lay by her feet. The woman next to her was at least forty years younger and drawn up into herself like a fetus perched on a stool. She had a blond ponytail and round, tear-streaked cheeks. Neither of them posed any threat, but I kept a bead on them just to make a point.
“You shooting at all your visitors now, Winifred?”
She crossed her arms and sniffed at me. “Sure, when they’re sneaking up on me and there’s a murderer on the loose.”
Sighing, I holstered my weapon and fixed a stare on the younger woman. Even though I didn’t recognize her right off, she seemed familiar.
“I got a few questions for you, Mrs. Erickson.” One of the most pressing ones was why these two had just been talking about murder, but I had a feeling I’d get more out of the younger one on her own.
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“No, no. I’ll go.” The woman uncurled herself and was trying to leave when I stepped in her path.
“I didn’t catch your name.”
“It’s Mary Beth Lund, Sheriff.” She reached out a hand. “Or Mary Beth Reever, you probably remember me as.”
“Sure, sure.” I shook her hand, which seemed strong enough despite her red eyes. “You and your husband moved in with your mom last year, right?”
“Yeah, Mom’s not doing too well and she won’t move off the farm.”
“Lot of stubborn old people out here.” That got a snort out of the one standing next to me.
Mary Beth smiled. “Anyway, we’re just up the road and Winifred’s been so great, always letting me borrow something or stop by to chat.”
“I’ll walk you out, sweetling.” Winifred put her arm around the woman and used her free hand to puff on her pipe. “Del, you can head on up to the house.”
I watched them go, walking slow and talking quiet. There was no reason the two of them couldn’t be friends, but their conversation didn’t sit right at all. You didn’t come talk murder with Winifred Erickson for the hell of it.
I glanced out at the strip of woods on the north side of the property where Winifred shot Lars twelve years ago. I remembered it like it happened that morning, which is always the way it is with killings. They stick to you after everything else falls away.
I found him laid out on his back, shot clean through the side with a .308 Winchester. It was a bad year for coyotes and the Erickson chickens were suffering. Lars had been coming home from the Reevers’ at the same time Winifred was chasing a coyote away from their coop. She told the jury she shot at it and hit Lars by mistake. Even though she inherited a $500,000 life insurance policy and the entire farm, which Lars owned free and clear, unlike most in these parts, the jury still let her off on account of the number of chickens she could prove they lost plus the fact that she shot Lars in the side from a distance. Apparently the jury thought that to want to kill someone, you had to be facing them and up close.