The Pact: A Detective Locklear Mystery Page 6

  “Did you get the money and cars back?”

  “Those beautiful cars were found burned out halfway to Richmond. I cried when the police towed them back here. Beautiful cars. The cash, they never got that – but they got the gang, the four kids that did it. Wouldn’t say where the money was. Says they knew nothing about it. They’re behind bars – safer there if I ever get my hands on them.”

  Locklear thought about Andrew Fehr and his apparent math skills.

  “What does Andrew do here when he’s not working?”

  “Mostly he sits in his room. Polite kid, old-fashioned. Wouldn’t come into the main house unless I was home. Don’t reckon he’ll ever be the same. Rosa loved having the boy around. Gave her a purpose again. It’ll kill her if anything happens to him, or kill her sooner.”

  “Any idea who’d have done this? Maybe someone with a grudge against you?”

  Lombardi’s eyes opened wide. It was obvious he hadn’t considered this. “No one knows we’re here.”

  “You’ve got a big online advert with your name all over it.”

  “Yeah – but, the family, they wouldn’t cause me no trouble.”

  “It’s not your family I’m thinking of. It’s your victims – their families.”

  “After all this time? Jesus!”

  Locklear sat back and surveyed the room again. He picked up another book from the top of Andrew’s locker. Soil Erosion and Conservation.

  “Where’d he get these books?” he asked, opening the cover. There were no library markings on the sleeve of the well-worn book. He leafed through the pages which were slightly yellowed and the book cover itself was stained and dirty.

  “That crazy-ass brother of his brings them. Andrew looks up to him like he’s a god.”

  “Luke Fehr visits here?”

  “Well, visits ain’t exactly the right phrase. He sneaks up here in the dark like a goddamn bobcat, throwing stones up the window to get the boy’s attention. He don’t never come in – not once. Andrew comes down and them two disappear in that wreck of a truck the brother drives, shovels in the back like they’ll be digging in the dark. Something I’m familiar with.”

  Locklear looked at Lombardi and wondered how he could joke about murder. There was no telling how many bodies the man buried in the dark or threw off a New York bridge. No doubt Lombardi could justify the killing of every “family” member who had muscled in on his business but he wondered, especially knowing how Joey died, if the faces of overdosed drug-users darkened the man’s twilight years.

  Locklear stood, took a deep breath in the airless room and put the book back on the locker. He pictured Carter’s noticeboard like a jigsaw but still could find no connecting pieces.

  “Where do ya suppose they’re digging?” Lombardi asked.

  “Their farm.”

  “What for?”

  Locklear took in another deep breath in the putrid room. “That’s something I don’t know. Not yet.”

  On his way through the yard, he noticed Rosa Lombardi peering at him through an opening in the lace curtains. He turned to face her and nodded but she quickly dropped the curtain and shrank back from the window. In the distance he could hear church bells ringing, worshippers pouring out of the town’s many churches, their one-hour lecture over. He imagined Mendoza, with her son and mantilla-wearing widowed mother, leaving the Catholic Church in Richmond and Carter smiling like a fool on the steps of his church. It seemed like everyone belonged to or wanted to belong to something except himself and the thought caused him no hardship.

  A new puzzle ran around in his head. When did Andrew Fehr start pretending to be slow and for what reason?

  He took a chance and drove towards the Baptist church and parked on the other side of the street, waiting to see if his trooper was among the worshippers. Scores of church-goers filed down the steps of the church as Locklear waited in the heat of his car, watching. He eventually saw Carter pushing a small, crooked-spined boy down the steps of the church in a wheelchair. The strong sun reflected off the shiny wheel-spokes as it moved. There was something so moving, so beautiful and yet so heart-wrenchingly sad about it that Locklear turned away, unable to look at the scene before him. He understood now the look of hurt on the trooper’s face when he quipped about junior league lessons.

  Carter’s wife, a smiling, tiny Asian woman shook hands with the vicar and, heavily pregnant, followed her husband and child, her pretty floral dress blowing in the hot summer wind. The Carters looked happy, despite their misfortune. Locklear looked away as the trooper tickled and hugged the laughing child. He wondered how Carter could be so gentle when this is what the world threw at him, how he could believe in a God while his first love endured a slow death and his son faced a life of hardship. He felt ashamed at the way he had treated the trooper and resolved to be kinder to him the following morning.

  He turned the car and headed back to Dayton towards the Fehr farm in the hope of solving the mystery of the one hundred holes.

  The highest point on the Fehr farm gave Locklear a fine view over the Dayton hinterland. Lush green pastures of fat milking cows and tilled fields of crops could be seen for miles. Occasionally a farm bell clanged gently in the breeze, once used to call great hordes of Mennonite men from the fields to eat and pray. On the other side of the steep hill Locklear could see the faint outline of a wood cabin. He could see no electricity poles near the property and he wondered if anyone actually lived there. He reasoned that apart from the population decline, not much had changed in this part of the state for hundreds of years and the thought of that filled him with a sense of both reassurance and of agitation. He knew that he was a man of contradictions and that, while the craving for stability he had as a boy had remained with him, all he had succeeded in doing was to confine his body in one place while his thoughts remained as frantic as a tethered wild horse.

  It was a tranquil scene and he remained there for as long as he could before he reluctantly dragged himself down to the lower section of the farm which had unnerved the tough Mendoza. As he descended the steep hill Locklear noticed the soil change. The thick green grass, abundant on one side of the hill, was absent on its northern face. As he descended, the grass became sparser and soon gave way to barren, lifeless land.

  Locklear knelt down and took a piece of brightly coloured soil in his hand. He smelt it and allowed the material to fall slowly from his hands onto the earth. It suddenly came to him why Maria Whieler had said Luke Fehr smelt like the sea. It was sand she could smell. The lower section of the hill face was nothing but sand. Locklear walked on and as he descended the sand became deeper and the grass sparser. What, he wondered, had caused the grass to disappear and the soil to erode on this scale? Even allowing for the altitude of the farm, run-off and erosion could not account for the extent of soil loss. He knelt down and pulled some weakly held grass from its roots. A sharp crack behind him alerted him to company. Locklear did not turn around. He had been aware of being watched since he walked onto the farm. He was not afraid. He was alone and whoever was watching him could have shot him ten times over as he climbed the hill with the summer sun in his eyes.

  “I know it’s you who has been digging these holes. What I don’t know is why. But ... I’ll wager that it has something to do with something that happened here a long time ago.”

  Locklear’s words were met with silence.

  “What I do know is that you care very much for this farm and for your brother and sisters.”

  Locklear waited for a response but all he heard was the wind and the slow steady screech of the farmhouse’s rusty swing door.

  “I don’t know why you don’t live on this farm and I don’t know who hurt your brother here except that it wasn’t you. But what I can tell you is I will find out – so, you can either help me or hide in bushes. Either way is fine with me.”

  Locklear stood and dusted the sand from his jeans. He walked to the entrance of the farm. He turned and looked back. Luke Fehr was nowhere to be
seen.

  Chapter 7

  It was after midnight when Mendoza’s wreck of a car spluttered its way into the motel’s car park. Locklear was awake but did not get up to greet her. Instead he lay fully clothed on the hard bed, anxious not to dream of Samuel Shank again. When he rose at seven he realised he had slept well and could not remember his dreams.

  Mendoza seemed surprised when he slid into the red plastic booth to face her in the motel’s diner for breakfast. She said nothing and continued eating a breakfast of huevos rancheros.

  “That stuff will kill you,” he said. “All that fat.”

  “What does O stand for?”

  “What?”

  “Your initials, O Locklear. I’ve been thinking about it. What does it stand for?”

  Locklear ignored her question and ordered porridge and coffee.

  “How do you keep your weight down when you eat that crap?” he asked, looking briefly down at the pounds he’d put on despite not eating anywhere near as much as he should.

  “Try running around after a small child and work full time.”

  “Doesn’t your husband help?”

  “Don’t got one,” she replied, smiling.

  Locklear stared at the woman. He had noticed how pretty she was but, despite being in her late twenties, Mendoza had dark lines under her eyes, too early for a woman of her years. A small white scar ran horizontally between her chin and lower lip and was matched by a scar of similar vintage over her right eye.

  “You get those scars in the line of duty?”

  “You could say that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Mendoza let out a long puff of air. It was too early for that kind of conversation.

  “I’ll tell you over a beer sometime.”

  In the incident room of Dayton police station, Carter appeared happy yet surprised by the friendly manner in which his boss greeted him. He glanced at Mendoza who shrugged.

  “Guess he missed us!”

  “Sir, it’s my son’s birthday today. I need to be home by five ... if that’s OK?” Carter asked, taking advantage of his boss’s seeming good mood.

  Locklear did not answer. Instead he told the pair what he’d learnt while they were “off enjoying themselves”, and he set a plan for the day.

  Carter was to return to the library and find historical documents on the Fehr family, especially newspaper articles. Mendoza was to try find out why Shank was paying Sara’s medical fees and to check the local cemetery for Fehr graves and take note of their dates of passing.

  “Jesus!” she said. “Couldn’t you give me anything creepier to do?”

  “You want to walk the Fehr farm alone?”

  “Think I’m safer in the graveyard.”

  “What are you going to do?” Carter asked meekly.

  “I’m going to have a little word with Pastor Plett.”

  Carter’s mouth opened in protest.

  “On my own!” Locklear growled.

  Esther Fehr was nowhere to be seen when Locklear walked into the Pletts’ home for the second time in days.

  Rachel Plett seated herself facing him in the front room and apologised that both Esther and her husband had gone to see Andrew, who had not woken up but was now breathing on his own.

  “It’s OK for me to be here without your husband present?”

  Rachel Plett smiled pleasantly. “Yes.”

  He wondered if she was waiting on her husband to return before discussing the reason for his visit or if her monosyllabic response was designed to make him nervous. If so, it was working.

  Rachel Plett reminded Locklear of a doll. Despite her frumpy figure, she had those bright blue eyes and long dark eyelashes he’d seen on dolls on his occasional visits to K Mart. Her hair was thick and was so blonde it appeared white and her skin was flawless save for a small dark mole underneath her left eye.

  “How long have you lived in Dayton?”

  “Seven years.”

  Locklear noted the time – the Pletts had arrived at the same time as Sara Fehr’s accident and when the Fehr children went into the care of the Wyss family.

  “Who was the pastor before that?”

  Rachel Plett’s face darkened and the smile slipped slowly from her mask-like face.

  “Samuel Shank.”

  “He retired?”

  “Yes.”

  A lie.

  “Where were you before that?”

  It was an open question, one that she could not give a simple yes or no answer to.

  “My husband and I have travelled extensively on our missions.”

  The response was designed to annoy Locklear, to put him in his place. He remembered Carter’s warning. These people answer to no one but the Lord. Well, Carter and the Pletts were wrong. It was time to stop wasting his time.

  He waited.

  “We … our post here was supposed to be temporary until they found a permanent pastor. We wanted to be somewhere nearer to our children but … well … the bishop didn’t feel there was anyone suitable to be pastor in Dayton at the time so … for now, we’re here.”

  “Why did your husband lie to me and say he was alone on the night someone tried to hang Andrew Fehr?”

  Rachel Plett threw her hands up to her throat. “He ... he was alone.”

  “You were with him, Mrs Plett.”

  “Why ... why would you say that?”

  “Because Mrs Wyss said you were there, in her house, when your husband supposedly drove to the Fehr farm to see what was happening.”

  Rachel removed her hands from her throat and returned them to their folded state on her lap.

  “Henry lied to protect me. If people knew I’d been to the house of a shunned person – the women here, our congregation – it would just undo what we are trying to do here.”

  “Which is?”

  “We’re trying to change things. The people here have been so afraid for so very long. We want to put joy back into the community.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  Rachel Plett looked like she was going to answer when they heard the front door opening. Then Pastor Plett was standing in the front room, Esther Fehr by his side.

  “Rachel, go upstairs,” Plett ordered.

  Rachel Plett rose and walked quickly and almost without sound to the hallway. Locklear did not hear her climb the stairs.

  Esther Fehr glared at him with her grey sun-flecked eyes.

  Plett glanced her way and she disappeared out of the room without a word. He pulled up a chair and faced Locklear. There was a new expression on the pastor’s face and, if Locklear had to name it, it would be anger.

  For a full minute Henry Plett did not speak. His eyes, while focused on Locklear, seemed miles away.

  “I miscalculated,” he said then. “I really didn’t believe that Mrs Wyss would speak with you.”

  “I gathered that – otherwise you’d have told a different story or else told her not to tell me you had been at her house.”

  “You don’t understand that’s going on here.”

  Locklear leaned forward. “Well, then – why don’t you enlighten me?”

  “You think it’s that simple? You think you can come here, upset our culture, our private business and then walk out, leaving the good people of this town in pieces? Well, I won’t allow it.”

  “Pastor Plett, neither you nor anyone else in this town are above the law. You know what happened to Andrew Fehr. You knew even before it happened. That’s why you were there – on that night. You went to stop it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I cannot say because I do not know. I am here to protect these people. If anything happens to me or to Rachel, what will become of them?”

  Locklear searched the pastor’s face. “Who is it? Is it Samuel Shank?”

  Plett stood up, his face panicked. “Stay away from Shank. He’ll ...”

  “He’ll what? Pull the plug, so to speak, on Sara Fehr ... on buying the
milk these farmers are so dependent for a living on?”

  “How do you know about Sara?”

  “It’s my job and you are trying to stop me from doing it.”

  Plett sat down and crumpled into a ball on the chair.

  “We are good people. You don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you said that already, pastor. Give me more or I’ll have the police come here and arrest you for obstructing justice.”

  “I knew what was about to happen to Andrew and I went there to stop it but I didn’t see their faces. I couldn’t risk being seen.”

  “Their faces? There were more than one?”

  “There were about three – I think. I just heard their footsteps. They didn’t speak – not one word so I can give you no names. The only sound I heard was Andrew pleading for his life.”

  Plett placed his hands over his face.

  Locklear brooded. Why did these killers deliberately leave no ladder? That was another thing that bothered him. Whoever tried to hang the boy made no attempt to make it look like anything other than murder, as though the killing of Andrew Fehr was a warning. But for whom?

  “You didn’t think to phone the police and tell them?”

  “And name who? An invisible enemy that is among us? A sickness borne of hate and blame? I simply knew where and when it would happen, nothing more.”

  “Why not warn Andrew? Take him somewhere safe?”

  “I didn’t know in time and when I did find out there was no way to reach him. He was already walking to Dayton to see Mrs Wyss.”

  “So you made an excuse to go to the Wyss farm?”

  “I drove along the roadway first – Rachel and I – searching for him. When we didn’t see him we drove up to the Fehr farm.”

  “And?”

  “There was no one there. It was getting dark so we drove back to Wysses’ and waited. He didn’t show and that’s when I saw the car lights going along the incline of Fehrs’ farm. I immediately left the house and ... that’s where I found him ...”

  Plett broke down and cried openly into his large hands.

  “Then who told you? Who provided you with this information?”