A Cry In The Night

35

She began looking for the cabin at dawn. At four A.M. she’d turned on the radio and heard the weather report. The temperature was dropping sharply. It was now twelve degrees Fahrenheit. A strong cold wind from Canada was driving it down. A major snowstorm was predicted. It should hit the Granite Place area by tomorrow evening.

She made a thermos of coffee to take with her, put an extra sweater under her ski suit. Her breasts were so sore. Thinking of the baby so much during the night had been enough to start them throbbing. She could not let herself think about Tina and Beth now. She could only pray, numb, pleading words… Take care of them, please. Let no harm come…

She knew the cabin must be about twenty minutes’ walk from the edge of the woods. She’d start at the spot where Erich always disappeared into the trees and crisscross back and forth from that spot. It didn’t matter how long it took.

At eleven she returned to the house, heated soup, changed her socks and mittens, found another scarf to tie around her face and set out again.

At five, just as the shadows were lengthening to near darkness, just as she was despairing that she would have to give up the search, she skied over a hilly mound and came on the small, bark-roofed cabin that had been the first Krueger home in Minnesota.

It had a closed-up, unused look, but what had she expected? That the chimney would be capped with smoke, lamps would be glowing, that… Yes. She dared to hope that Beth and Tina might be in here with Erich.

She kicked off her skis and with the hammer broke a window, then stepped over the low sill into the cabin. It was frigidly cold, with the deep chill of an unheated, sunless place. Blinking to adjust her eyes to the gloom, Jenny went to the other windows, pulled up the shades and looked around.

She saw a twenty-foot-square room, a Franklin stove, a faded Oriental rug, a couch… And paintings.

It seemed that every square inch of the walls was covered with Erich’s art. Even the dim light could not hide the exquisite power and beauty of his work. As always the awareness of his genius calmed her. The fears she had harbored during the night suddenly seemed ludicrous.

The tranquillity of the subjects he had chosen: the polebarn in a winter storm, the doe, head poised about to flee into the woods, the calf reaching up to its mother. How could the person who could paint like this with so much sensitivity, so much authority, also be so hostile, so suspicious?

She was standing in front of a rack filled with canvases. Something about the top one caught her eye. Not understanding, she began to flip rapidly through the paintings in the rack. The signature in the righthand corner. Not bold and scrawling like Erich’s but delicately lettered with fine brushstrokes, a signature more in keeping with the peaceful themes in the paintings: Caroline Bonardi. Every one of them.

She began to study the paintings on the wall. Those that were framed were signed Erich Krueger. The unframed ones, Caroline Bonardi.

But Erich had said that Caroline had very little talent…

Her eyes raced back and forth between a framed painting with Erich’s signature, an unframed one signed by Caroline. The same use of diffused light, the same signature pine tree in the background, the same blending of color. Erich was copying Caroline’s work.

No.

The framed canvases. Those were the ones he’d planned to exhibit next. Those were the ones he’d signed. He hadn’t painted them. The same artist had done all of these. Erich was forging his name to Caroline’s art. That was why he’d been so flustered when she pointed out that the elm in one of his supposedly new paintings had been cut down months before.

A charcoal sketch caught her eye. It was called Self-Portrait. It was a miniature of Memory of Caroline, probably the preliminary sketch Caroline had done before she started the painting that was her masterpiece.

Oh, God. Everything. Every emotion that she had attributed to Erich through his work was a lie.

Then why was he here so much? What did he do here? She saw the staircase, rushed up it. The loft sloped with the pitch of the roof and she had to bend forward at the top stair before she stepped into the room.

As she straightened up, a nightmarish blaze of color from the back wall assaulted her vision. Shocked, she stared at her own image. A mirror?

No. The painted face did not move as she approached it. The dusky light from the slitlike window played on the canvas, shading it in streaks, like a ghostly finger pointing.

A collage of scenes: violent scenes painted in violent colors. The center figure, herself, her mouth twisted in grief, staring down at puppetlike bodies. Beth and Tina slumped together on the floor, their blue jumpers tangled, their eyes bulging, their tongues protruding, blue corduroy belts wound around their throats. Far up on the wall behind her image, a window with a dark blue curtain. Peering through the opening in the curtain Erich’s face, triumphant, sadistic. And all through the canvas in shades of green and black, a slithery figure, half-woman, half-snake, a woman with Caroline’s face, the cape wrapped around her like the scaly skin of the snake. Caroline’s figure bending over a surrealistic bassinette, a bassinette suspended from a hole in the sky, the woman’s hands, grotesque, outsized like whale flippers covering the baby’s face, the baby’s hands thrust over his head, the fingers starlike, spread on the pillow.

The Caroline figure in the maroon coat, reflected in the windshield of a car; another face beside hers. Kevin’s face, exaggerated, staring, grotesque, frightened, his bruised temple swelling into the windshield. The Caroline figure, her cape flung around her, holding the hooves of a wild horse, guiding them to descend on the sandy-haired figure on the ground. Joe. Joe cringing away from the hooves.

Jenny heard the sound from her throat, the keening wail, the screams of protest. It wasn’t Caroline who was half-woman, half-snake. It was Erich’s face peering out from the tangled dark hair, Erich’s eyes wildly staring at her from the canvas.

No. No. No. These twisted, tortured revelations, this art-evil incarnate, brilliance beside which the pastel elegance of Caroline’s talent faded into insignificance.

Erich had not painted the canvases he claimed as his own. But those he had painted were the genius of a twisted mind. They were shocking, awesome in their power, evil-and insane!

Jenny stared at her own image, at the faces of her children, their pleading eyes as the cord tightened around the small white throats.

At last she forced herself to wrench the canvas from the wall, her unwilling fingers grasping it as though they were closing around the fires of hell.

Somehow she managed to snap on her skis, start back through the woods. Night was descending, darkness spreading. The canvas caught the wind like a sail, whipped her from her own vague path, bruised her against trees. The wind mocked the constant screams for help that she heard screeching from her throat. Help me. Help me. Help me.

She lost the path, turned around in the darkness, saw again the outline of the cabin. No. No.

She would freeze out here, freeze and die out here, before she could find anyone to stop Erich if it weren’t already too late. She lost track of time, not knowing how long she stumbled and fell and picked herself up and began again; how long she clutched the damning canvas to her, how long she screamed. She only knew that her voice was breaking into hoarse sobs when somehow she saw a glint through a clump of trees and realized she was at the edge of the woods.

The glint she had seen was the reflection of the moon on the granite stone of Caroline’s grave.

With a last terrible effort she skied across the open fields. The house was totally dark; only the faint light of the crescent moon revealed its outlines. But the windows of the office were bright. She headed there, the canvas flapping more wildly without the trees to break the sharp wind.

She could no longer scream; there were no sounds left except the guttural moans she heard in her throat; her lips still formed the words help me, help me.

At the door of the office she tried to turn the handle with her frozen hands, tried to kick off her skis, but could not force the binders to release. Finally she banged at the door with her ski pole until it was flung open, and she fell forward into Mark’s arms.

“Jenny!” His voice broke. “Jenny!”

“Steady, Mrs. Krueger.” Someone was pulling the skis off her feet. She knew that burly body, that thick, blunt profile. It was Sheriff Gunderson.

Mark was trying to pry her fingers loose from the canvas. “Jenny, let me see that.” And then his awed voice. “Oh, my God.”

Her own voice was a witch’s croak: “Erich. Erich painted it. He killed my baby. He dresses like Caroline. Beth. Tina… Maybe he’s killed them too.”

“Erich painted this?” This sheriff’s voice, incredulous.

She whirled on him. “Have you found my girls? Why are you here? Are my girls dead?”

“Jenny.” Mark was holding her tightly, his hand stopping the flow of words from her mouth. “Jenny, I called the sheriff because I couldn’t reach you. Jenny, where did you find this?”

“In the cabin… So many paintings. But not his. Caroline painted them.”

“Mrs. Krueger…”

On him she could vent her pain. She mimicked his heavy voice. “Anything you want to tell me, Mrs. Krueger? Anything you suddenly remembered?” She began to sob.

“Jenny,” Mark implored, “it’s not the sheriff’s fault. I should have realized. Dad had begun to suspect…”

The sheriff was studying the canvas, his face suddenly deflated, the skin folding into limp creases. His eyes were riveted on the upper-right-hand corner of the painting, with the bassinette suspended from a hole in the sky and the grotesque Caroline-like figure bending over it. “Mrs. Krueger, Erich came to me. He said he understood that there’d been talk about the baby’s death. He urged me to request an autopsy.”

The door swung open. Erich, Jenny thought. Oh, my God, Erich. But it was Clyde who rushed in, his expression frightened and disapproving. “What in hell is going on around here?” He looked at the canvas. Jenny watched as his leathery face drained to the color of white suede.

“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. Jenny felt the thin arms embracing her. “Jenny, I’ve missed you.”

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.

“Jenny, where are the girls? Can I say hello to them?”

The question was a slap across the face. “Erich’s away with the girls.” She knew her voice was trembling, unnatural.

“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 Minnesota… Erich was always toying with me. Erich must have known I met Kevin. He talked about the extra mileage in the car. He must have heard the gossip from the woman in church.”

“Jenny.”

“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 beginning when he gave him Kevin’s name, he must have been planning to kill him.”

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…”

“Jenny, you can’t,” Mark protested. “We’ll follow your tracks.”

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,” Jenny said hopelessly. “There was nothing in it except the canvas and the place is so small.”

“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 Jenny hadn’t noticed in the shadowy room. This area had stacks of file baskets; dozens more of Caroline’s paintings in them; an easel, a cabinet with painting supplies; two suitcases. Jenny realized they matched the vanity case she’d found in the attic. A long green cape and dark wig were folded over one of the suitcases.

“Caroline’s cape,” Mark said quietly.

Jenny began rifling through the file cabinets. But they only held painting supplies: charcoals and umbras and turpentine and brushes and empty canvases. Nothing, nothing that might indicate where Erich had gone.

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 Jenny recognized Arden’s face. Arden peering in the window of the cabin. A caped figure with dark hair and Erich’s face behind her. Hands around Arden’s throat, the fingers not attached to the hands. Arden lying in a grave on top of a casket, dirt being shoveled over her bright blue skirt, the name on the tombstone behind her head: CAROLINE BONARDIKRUEGER. And in the corner the slashing signature, Erich Krueger.

“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 unnatural night brilliance. Drills bore into the frozen ground of Caroline’s grave. Rooney watched, surprisingly calm now.

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.

“Jenny, after I left you home last night, I called Dad. I knew he’d been terribly upset about what Tina said about how the lady in the painting had covered the baby. He admitted to me that he’d known Erich was psychotic as a child. Caroline had confided in him about Erich’s obsession with her. She’d caught him watching her while she slept, keeping her nightgown under his pillow, wrapping himself in her cape. She took him to a doctor but John Krueger flatly refused to allow him to be treated. John said that no Krueger had emotional problems; it was just Caroline spoiling him; spending so much time with him, that was the problem.

“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.

“When Dad heard what Tina said about the lady in the painting, heard what Rooney said about seeing Caroline, he began to suspect what was happening. I think the realization brought on his heart attack. I only wish he’d confided in me. Of course he had absolutely no proof. But that was why he told me to urge Erich to allow you and the girls to visit him.”

“Mrs. Krueger.” Sheriff Gunderson’s voice was hesitant. Was he afraid she would keep blaming him? “Dr. Philstrom from the hospital is here. We had him look at what’s in the cabin. He has to talk to you.”

“Jenny, can you tell me exactly what Erich said the last time he phoned you?” Dr. Philstrom asked.

“He was angry because I tried to tell him that maybe he was wrong about me.”

“Did he mention the girls?”

“He said they were fine.”

“How long since he put them on to talk to you?”

“Nine days.”

“I see. Jenny, I’ll be honest. It doesn’t look good but it would seem that Erich must have painted that last canvas before he disappeared with the girls. There’s quite a lot of detail in it. Even if he’s been in the cabin-and we know he has-there’s a scissor there with bits of fur on it. Even so, it would seem that he painted that picture before he left with the children.”

A whisper of hope. “You mean they may not be dead?”

“I don’t want to encourage you unfairly. But think about it. Erich still fantasizes living with you, having you under his total power once he has that confession signed. He knows that without the children he can’t hold you. So until he perceives a reunion with you as being hopeless, there’s a chance, just a chance… ”

Jenny stood up. Tina. Beth. If you were dead I would know it. Just the way I knew Nana wouldn’t live through that last night. Just the way I knew something was going to happen to the baby.

But Rooney hadn’t known. For ten years now Rooney had waited for Arden to come home. And all the time Arden’s body was buried within sight of Rooney’s windows.

How often had she seen Rooney standing over Caroline’s grave. Was it because something had compelled her to go there? Something deep in her subconscious that had told her she was visiting Arden’s grave too?

She asked Dr. Philstrom about that, asked him gravely, heard her voice almost childlike. “Is that possible, doctor?”

“I don’t know, Jenny. I think Rooney instinctively suspected that Arden wouldn’t deliberately run away. She knew her child.”

“I want my children,” Jenny said. “I want them now. How could Erich hate me so much, that he would hurt them?”

“You’re talking about a totally irrational man,” Dr. Philstrom said. “A man who wanted you because you bear a startling resemblance to his mother, yet hated you for replacing her; who could not trust your love for him because he perceives himself as unlovable and who lived in mortal fear of losing you.”

“We’re going to make up flyers, Mrs. Krueger,” the sheriff said. “We’ll have their pictures in every hamlet in Minnesota and all the bordering states. We’ll get television coverage. Somebody’s got to have seen them. Clyde is going through all Erich’s records of property holdings. We’ll search out any property he owns. Don’t forget. We know he was here at least once, and that was only five hours after he phoned you. We’re concentrating on a radius of five hours’ drive from here.”

The ringing of the telephone made them all jump. Sheriff Gunderson reached to pick it up. Some instinct made Jenny push his hand away.

“Hello.” Her voice so unsteady. Would it be Erich? Oh, God, would it be Erich?

“Hello, Mommy.”

It was Beth.