The Pact: A Detective Locklear Mystery Page 12

  When she slammed the door, her mother’s composure vanished.

  “Pack up your things,” she said. “We no longer own this farm.”

  Maria was twelve at the time and, after all the years that had passed, it was those words that still hurt, still brought tears to her eyes. In an instant she was ripped from the place and the people she loved. Weeping, she helped her mother pack the few belongings she had and they drove from the farm in the darkness into a life she had neither knowledge nor understanding of. Cut loose, they drifted from town to town until her mother found work in the centre of Charlottesville. Maria was enrolled in a state school on a busy street where no one understood her. She barely stayed in that school a year and moved twice more to other schools that did not differ from the first. She was odd, she dressed funny, spoke funny, looked funny. By age fourteen she refused to return to any school and stayed at home, nursing her mother through her spells and working part-time in five and dimes to put food on the table during the times her mother’s illness rendered her unable to work.

  “Mr Locklear. I spent years outside of where I wanted to be, moving around with my mama. I didn’t get much of an education. I’m not smart, I know that. But this is the only place I feel like I belong. It’s the only place I can belong.”

  Locklear stood and took a few steps towards her.

  “I understand, Maria. You and I are a lot alike. But listen, Maria, we can protect you – so if there’s anything you can tell me that could help Sara, or her brother, now is the time.”

  Maria sat down and fixed her eyes on her sleeping friend.

  “My mother got a job at Shank Creamery straight out of high school. She met my father there and they fell in love. Her family disowned her. Not long after they married my father realised that she was unwell but it didn’t matter to him. He loved her. She hated Dayton. She hated the faith and she really hated Pastor Shank.”

  “Why did she hate Shank?” Locklear asked.

  Maria sighed. “Like I said, she imagined a lot of things … there’s no way to know if she was right about the things she said about him.”

  “I understand.”

  “She thought he was doing all sorts of illegal financial things here. My mother worked in the accounts section of the creamery. She began to keep notes. I don’t understand much of what she wrote. She was real smart with figures. I’m more like my dad.”

  “Do you have the notes?”

  Maria Whieler looked to the ground. “I forgot all about them. When she died I was going through her things and I found them. She said I was to use them if I was in trouble and she named families who would help me if anything happened to her. When I got back all but two of the families were gone.”

  Locklear stood waiting for an answer to his question.

  Maria slowly raised her eyes to meet his stare. “I didn’t want to keep it. Pastor Shank has been so good to me, paying for my studies, giving me a place to sleep, this job. It felt wrong to keep it.”

  “Did he ever ask you about the book?”

  “No, but …” Maria could hear her mother’s voice again, warning her to be careful, warning her to be more like her, a voice her loneliness tried hard to ignore. “When I returned to the town, I found a place of my own in Harrisonburg, right near the bus station. I was only living there a few days when the landlord threw me out, said he didn’t want the sort of trouble I’d bring to the house. Someone must have told lies about me. Same day Pastor Shank arrived and said he heard I was in trouble. I don’t know how he knew but he brought me straight to a new apartment and then got me this job. The day after I moved in, I came home and my room had been disturbed. I was so upset. The only thing I have that is of any value is my mother’s wedding ring and it was there. Nothing was missing.

  “And the book?”

  “It was never there.”

  “What’d you do with it?”

  “I gave it to someone.”

  “Who?” Locklear asked, becoming frustrated.

  Maria stood again and looked Locklear up and down – trying to decide if she could trust him, if her mother would have trusted him.

  “Luke has it. I gave it to Luke.”

  Chapter 13

  The sun was coming up over the horizon as Locklear set out for Luke Fehr’s hideout to see if he could get the book he now knew was the book Fehr held out to Bethany Stoll at the station. Luke was obviously using the book to protect himself and his family and, in the meantime, he was searching the farm for something the Shanks wanted. He knew Luke was running out of time and the book was merely holding back the tide on the wrath of Samuel Shank.

  As he drove by East Washington Street, a familiar figure hobbled by. The hunched form of Anabel Schumer, carrying a huge suitcase, rounded the corner and disappeared into the station. Locklear parked illegally and chased into the station, searching for her among the crowds of early-morning commuters. He found her at the ticket desk, paying for her ticket out of Harrisonburg.

  “Going somewhere?” Locklear asked from behind.

  Anabel Schumer let out a short, sharp scream. Locklear picked up the suitcase, took Anabel by the arm and led her out of the queue towards a half-empty coffee shop at the far end of the station.

  “Please, I can’t be seen talking to you,” she pleaded.

  Locklear half threw the young woman into the booth and ordered two coffees. “Says who? Do you know that Lee Carter is lucky to be alive? That whoever attacked him outside your library tried to kill him?”

  Anabel began to cry, attracting furtive glances from two middle-aged male tourists in the booth on the other side of the aisle.

  “I know, I’m sorry, but I can’t …” she said, sliding out of the booth.

  Locklear stood and blocked her path.

  One of the men left his booth and stood in front of Locklear.

  “Is this man bothering you?”

  Locklear flashed his badge. “Richmond PD – this woman’s wanted for prostitution.”

  The tourist backed off and Anabel gasped as a deep crimson flushed up her face from her throat. Locklear reached out and once again pulled forcibly on the young woman’s arm. Embarrassed by the attention they were starting to attract, she complied with Locklear and moved swiftly on his heels to the back exit. He led her to a large parking space where several buses were leaving for their daily journey to the larger towns or to other nearby states.

  “This is too open. Someone will see me,” she said, walking on to a disused waiting room at the far end of the lot.

  Locklear sat down facing the woman, inside the derelict building. He did not speak and waited for Anabel to talk.

  “I used to hide out here as a kid,” she said. “Sometimes Lee would be with us. He hung around with my brother. I liked him a lot. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was besotted with Sara Fehr, I would have asked him out.”

  She smiled but Locklear could see the tears welling in her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry he got hurt!” she cried. “It’s all so messed up. My dad thinks the only thing to do for everyone’s sake is for me to leave.”

  “Did Bethany Stoll threaten you?”

  “She came to my apartment the night Lee got hurt, said she was representing him in court. But I knew who she was. She wanted to know what information Lee got from the archives that day so I told her it was about John Grant and local Mennonites in the Civil War. She became really agitated and I was terrified. Then she asked if I could identify anyone in the parking lot that night. I told her no, that I couldn’t see in the dark and that’s what I told the police.”

  “What happened then?”

  “She left her card and said I was to phone her if I remembered anything and I wasn’t to speak to the police again.”

  “And that was the end of it?”

  “I thought so but later that night the library burned down. I knew it was them. She must not have realised until later that even local records would be kept in other libraries. Well, she can’t have every l
ibrary burned so the only thing she and her family could do was make sure I don’t talk to anyone else. My dad and both of my brothers work for the Shanks. Shank’s son, Isaac, brought Dad into the office and said if I open my mouth there wouldn’t be room for the Schumers in Shank Creamery any more. My mom’s real sick and my dad’s insurance plan doesn’t cover her care. Samuel Shank’s been paying her medical bills for the last year.”

  Locklear pondered this information. “So, they must have intended that Carter wouldn’t survive to tell me what he knew?” That was sloppy, he thought. Of course, but for Luke Fehr they would have finished the job.

  “Guess so. Can’t believe they’d hurt Lee. His father is a good friend of Shank’s. They go back a long way.”

  Locklear sighed. “So, you’re leaving?”

  “Nothing else I can do.” She began to cry again.

  “Where will you go?”

  “I have family in Minnesota. Thing is, I’m an only daughter and my mom needs me. I can’t bear to think of her struggling here without my help. But she’s too sick to come with me so there’s no other choice. Dad said he’d prefer that I am away from here and alive than for me to stay and die.”

  “He thinks Shank would have you killed?”

  She looked at her watch and stood. Deep dark lines ran under her eyes and her young face had aged in the few days since he’d interviewed her.

  “You need to open your eyes, Mr Locklear. Samuel Shank doesn’t only kill Mennonites. His family have been killing people here for generations or forcing them to end their own lives and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.”

  Forcing them to end their own lives.

  “Why are they doing this?” he asked. “Surely it can’t be about the Civil War?”

  “The Shanks have a lot to hide but what really motivates them is money.”

  “What do you mean by a lot to hide?”

  “About ten years ago a man named William Jefferson came into town from New York. He was black university professor and was writing a book on John Grant. He spent all day in the library researching and also tried speaking to the locals in Dayton to see if any stories had been passed down about Grant. I helped him as much as I could. I’m a historian myself and Stoll knows I know a lot more about them than I’ve said but I’m not stupid enough to repeat it. I know things – things about when that same professor went missing.”

  “Then you need to tell me.”

  She laughed. “The only reason I’m alive is because all these years passed and I kept silent. I’m in more danger now than I was back then. Professor Jefferson left a lot of paperwork behind the library desk that he said he’d come back for. Before he got a chance to return, the police came in asking about him, what he was looking for, etc. They took his research notes and then I never saw him again. I read in the paper that his wife reported him missing. He never checked out of his hotel and his hire car was still in the hotel’s car park. The police here turned a blind eye to it and to lots of other things. No one will … or can, come up against Shank.”

  “The police were involved? Does that include Carter?”

  She stopped at the doorway.

  “Not Lee but look back a bit further – not that it will make any difference,” she said as she left.

  Locklear stood at the door and watched her go. A light rain began to fall as she crossed the lot to take a bus to her new, enforced life.

  Locklear did not go back inside the bus station but walked the long way around the building. He got to his car just in time to stop Maguire from having it towed.

  “Sorry, sarge – didn’t know this was your car. Went looking inside for the owner. Fair warning and all that. I saw the Schumer girl inside. Looked like she’d been crying. She wouldn’t talk to me. Seemed real upset. Did you talk to her? Did she tell you where she was going?”

  “No, I didn’t see her,” Locklear replied. Now that he knew the police were somehow involved in covering up Shank’s crimes, he didn’t know who he could trust.

  One thing Anabel Schumer said stood out for him: that Shank’s family had been killing others or forcing them to take their own lives for generations. It would explain all the suicides of the Fehr men. But what, he wondered; would it take to force a person to take their own life? What did Shank hold over them? There was no way he would ever know the answer to that unless he got hold of the book he knew Luke Fehr had in his possession. He needed to go back to Dayton. He needed to see Helena Wyss.

  Bishop Rahn warmly welcomed Jo Mendoza when she arrived unannounced at his house shortly after nine that morning. After a brief update, he led the cop to a small room in the basement of his home and directed her to two filing cabinets which tracked the whereabouts of the various congregation members.

  Mendoza got to work. Two families had sold their farms to Shank and had moved to Richmond itself. Three more, whose farms were repossessed and bought from the bank by Shank, had moved to Harrisonburg. Two further families had moved to Arlington and one to Chesapeake and had found employment in factories or on farms in and around these towns. Three further families had left the community and their whereabouts were unknown.

  Mendoza took down any addresses and, as she made her way to the stairwell, she noticed a young girl move quickly from a bathroom into a bedroom down the other end of the long hallway. Mendoza followed and knocked on the door but there was no answer and no sound could be heard in the room.

  She made her way upstairs to the ground floor and Rahn’s office.

  She knocked gently and entered when he answered.

  “Thanks, John – I have everything I need.”

  John Rahn stood and walked around his desk. He shook her hand.

  “Happy to help.”

  “Do you … do you have children?”

  “Yes, two daughters – they’re both away at college. Both studying to be teachers in our community.”

  “Oh – I thought I saw a girl go into one of the bedrooms. I thought she looked familiar.”

  Rahn stared at Mendoza. “Andrew Fehr is being discharged in a couple of days,” he said.

  Mendoza, feeling she was being fobbed off, nodded slowly. “That’s good.”

  “The police have asked if he can stay here until he’s well enough to return home.”

  “Yes, I know. My sergeant told me.”

  “Andrew won’t be the first or last person my wife and I have offered sanctuary to, if you understand me.”

  Mendoza understood. She knew who was hiding behind the door in a basement bedroom.

  Chapter 14

  The short trip from Harrisonburg to Dayton was one Locklear was becoming very familiar with. As he neared the Wyss farm he saw Helena walking the roadway with some shopping. He slowed down and drove alongside her but the woman did not raise her eyes to greet him.

  “Would you like a lift?” he asked.

  Helena Wyss looked angrily at him. “You cannot talk to me here.”

  Locklear sighed and drove the rest of the way to the farm where he waited for her to walk the three miles to her home. As he wandered around the yard he decided now would be as good a time as any to see where Wyss was headed last night in the dark. He checked the main road to ensure no one could see him and made his way to the tree line. Slowly he moved through the dense scrub, looking for the small cabin or shelter Luke Fehr was living in. He searched the ground and ignored the worn pathway.

  It would be the route Fehr would expect unwelcome visitors to use. Locklear preferred that the feral man was not at home when he arrived. The book was not something Luke would give up easily and Locklear did not want to come up against a man who was clearly living on the edge. As he moved deeper into the woods, the light faded and splintered through the tall trees in misty, amber beams. Locklear stopped and caught his breath against an ancient red oak, taking in the eerie silence of the majestic vista in front of him. There was a peace in this place that spoke to his heart. For a moment he almost envied Luke Fehr the silence t
hat this place offered him.

  Locklear pushed forward until he came to a small stream, trickling its way down to the farmlands below him. In the distance he could hear the song of the redbird and of the cuckoo. A hummingbird beat its wings nearby and a pair of mourning doves, startled by his sudden presence, outstretched their wings and flew in unison up to safer ground. Further and further into the lush, dark foliage he pushed until he stopped again to check his bearings. The sun, now almost at its highest, was barely visible thought the forest. He listened but could no longer hear the hum of traffic from the main road. A branch cracked somewhere to his left. He turned but saw only the grey hide of a fox squirrel scuttling up a moss-laden tree.

  The feeling that he was being watched crept slowly up his body. Someone was following him, sideways, backways, forwards, whatever route he chose he felt eyes on him. He had been walking for almost twenty minutes but had seen no clearing where a small cabin might fit. Thirst began to overwhelm him. He stopped and listened for the stream but could no longer hear its slow steady descent down the hillside. Disorientated, he decided to climb a tree in the hope of catching a glimpse of the road and Wyss’s farm. He placed his hands around its massive bulk and inched his way upward. His hands touched a smooth line in the trunk. He stopped. IF1861. It was the initials of Helena Wyss’s ancestor carved in by his grieving widow over a century and a half ago.

  A face flashed in front of his. It was his mother’s – young and beautiful, her deep brown eyes looking sorrowful. Around her neck was a string of pearls, something she had never owned in her life. Her eyes moved over his shoulder and he followed her gaze into a sea of green. He climbed further and further but still could see nothing except an ever-expanding wood.

  “Where?” he heard himself asking the ghost who had now disappeared from view. A barn owl screamed – an omen, his mother would say, of evil. He slipped, plunging several feet down the damp bark, halted only by his shirt as it snagged on a sharp branch. He caught his breath and looked around until he saw it – the road, now tiny with dinky-sized cars meandering along the welcome grey sight. Locklear pulled his shirt from the branch and lowered himself towards the ground. The owl sounded again. He stopped. Fear overwhelmed him – ridiculous, superstitious fear. He looked down and reckoned he was no more than fifteen feet off the ground. Instinct made him look upward yet he hoped he would not catch a sight of the bird whose harsh scream had often terrified his mother. A spread of wings fluttered in the periphery – long golden-grey wings fluttered towards him. Locklear loosened his grip on the tree as his body entered free-fall towards the damp earth. Her eyes locked onto his again as he descended the short distance, only this time his mother was singing. He felt his body on the soft ground.