Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

Grave on a Hill by Brendan DuBois

A lifelong resident of New Hampshire, Brendan DuBois has been contributing mystery short stories to magazines and anthologies since 1986. In 1987, “Driven,” one of his stories for EQMM, was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe award for best short story. Recently Mr. DuBois decided to try his hand at longer fiction; the result is Dead Sand, a mystery novel to be published by Pocket Books early next year.

In this new story, the author takes us to the New Hampshire hills he knows so well, where a visit by a cop “only means trouble”...

“Did she seem surprised when you called and said we were coming?” Gordon Moore asked from the passenger’s side of the cruiser.

Victor Dumont steered onto the gravel driveway, passing a rusted mailbox that said HANSON in black, stick-on letters. “No, not really,” he said, easing the car up the driveway. It was a late afternoon in September. It had been misting and threatening rain all day, and the windshield of his cruiser, the only car the police department of Norwich, New Hampshire, owned, had been streaked with oil with each sweep of the wipers.

“She seemed resigned, in a way,” he added.

“Doesn’t sound good.”

“Well, she didn’t panic.”

Gordon said, “She should’ve panicked. People up here, cops come visiting, only means trouble.”

“You mean the hill people? I don’t believe that garbage.”

“Maybe you should, Victor,” Gordon said. “You and me and everybody else in a uniform is a valley person. Only time cops come up to the hills is when there’s trouble or heads to be busted. The hill people’d rather starve to death than ask us for help. Or advice. Or directions. They’re proud and religious and do their own things.”

“Maybe she’s got nothing to worry about.”

“Hmmph.” Gordon Moore wore an Anderson-Little topcoat over a grey two-piece suit. His black shoes were covered with black rubber protectors. He looked too well-dressed for this part of New Hampshire, especially with his carefully cut light brown hair and the horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like an investment banker. But Victor had once seen Gordon pick up a two-hundred-pound-plus biker in full leather gear and toss him into the back of a police wagon. And all of that happened in less than a second, it seemed. Gordon hadn’t even lost his glasses.

The gravel driveway curved around a small hill and ended in front of a two-story ranch house, with peeling white paint. There was no porch, just a set of concrete steps. A barn was off to the left, unpainted and sagging. A pickup truck was on blocks and a blue Ford Escort with a cracked windshield was parked at the side of the house. A mongrel dog, its brown fur matted and mud-stained, lifted itself up and started to howl, tugging at its chain.

Victor brought the cruiser up to the steps and then halted and reversed direction until a dozen feet separated the vehicle from the house.

“Good planning,” Gordon observed.

“Thanks.”

The dog continued its half-hearted howling as Victor walked to the steps, Gordon behind him. Just yesterday he’d been looking forward to a quiet weekend with a fishing pole and nothing to disturb him except the possibility of the pager going off. The chance now of a free weekend coming up anytime soon was probably ruined.

He walked up the steps, his orange raincoat flapping in the breeze. His campaign-style police hat with the Chief-Norwich PD pin set in front kept his head dry, and he glanced over at Gordon.

“Going to need your umbrella soon.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m not. Just worried about your hair.”

He took a deep breath and knocked on the door, and it opened instantly. No doubt she had been waiting, ever since seeing the cruiser roll up.

Victor touched his hand to his cap. “Mrs. Hanson?”

“Yes?” She was in her mid-forties, wearing black polyester slacks and a brown sweater, which had been mended at the elbows. With the open door came the scent of grease and cigarette smoke. Two young girls, one six, the other about eleven, sat on a couch, which was covered by a quilt. The television was on. Mrs. Hanson’s black hair, streaked with grey, was pulled back in a simple ponytail with the help of an elastic band. She looked directly at them, her firm face even, showing no expression.

“This here’s Detective Moore, of the state police,” Victor said, not taking his eyes off her for a second. There was a look about her, especially around the eyes. Was it a look of relief? Or knowledge?

“What’s the problem?”

Victor said, “It’s about your husband, Henry.”

“Henry? He’s been gone for five years.”

“So he has, Mrs. Hanson. But we’ve received information that he was the victim of a homicide.” From the driveway came the sound of an approaching truck, laboring under low gear.

“Oh.” Her hand tugged at the neck of her sweater. “Can’t say I’m surprised, really. He was a violent sort. Where’s his body? And do you know who done it?”

Victor cleared his throat and reached into his raincoat, pulling out a folded piece of paper. “Mrs. Hanson, this is a search warrant, executed from the Norwich District Court, authorizing Detective Moore and myself to search your property, and the buildings.”

The engine sound grew louder, and a bright yellow dump truck came up over the rise, its amber lights flashing into the mist. It was towing a heavy trailer, and set upon the trailer was an equally bright yellow backhoe with large, black tires.

Victor added, almost apologetically, “It seems someone believes you murdered your husband, Mrs. Hanson, and buried him in your front yard.”

The dump truck grounded to a halt, its air brakes screeching. Mrs. Hanson said not one word.

Two days before Victor had been in his office, working up the budget for next year’s town meeting, when Corinne Grew tapped on his door and walked in. She was the widow of the town’s postmaster, and besides being Victor’s secretary and file clerk and assistant clerk to the district court, she was also his own private intelligence system for the town of Norwich.

“Someone here to see you,” she said.

“Who’d that be?” he said, putting his pen down. His department was in a small brick building, set next to the Town Hall, and contained four tiny rooms which included his office, a waiting room, storage area, and a holding pen for the few prisoners who had to spend a night before he could bring them to the county jail. The building had belonged to the town’s historical society, before one of its members died and left the society $30,000.

“He be one Freddy Hanson. Age about seventeen or so. Said it’s real important.”

Victor asked, “I know him from anywhere?”

Corinne Grew smiled, adjusted her glasses. “You’ve pulled him over twice for speeding, once for reckless operation, and you arrested him last year for disorderly conduct, in August when we had all those fights down at the bandstand.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck, feeling a knot of muscle and tendon. “Corinne, you ever forget anything?”

“Hardly.”

“Send him in, then.”

Victor had a few bad habits, and one he was especially aware of was his unceasing impulse to size people up the minute he met them. He knew the pitfalls of this, and he would sometimes think over and over again, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” like some sort of mantra, but he couldn’t help it.

Freddy Hanson was seventeen, with torn jeans, an open black leather jacket with studs and buckles, and shoulder-length brown hair. His face was reddened with a bad complexion and he had about a dozen or so hairs above his lip masquerading as a moustache. He slumped down in a chair before his desk and Victor thought, lumberyard or state aid, there’s not much ahead for this fella.

“Help you with something, Freddy?”

He nodded, his hands stuck in his jacket. “Yeah. I want to know when a crime runs out.”

Victor cleared off his desk and started writing on a fresh pad of paper. “What do you mean? Statute of limitations?”

“Yeah, that’s it. When you can’t get arrested no more for something you did.”

Victor folded his hands before him. “Depends on the crime.”

“How ’bout killing someone?”

“How ’bout you stop fooling with me?”

Freddy sat up in the chair. “I ain’t foolin’ about anything. I’m talking about someone being killed.”

“In this state, there’s no statute of limitations on murder, Freddy. That help you any?”

“Yeah, it does. I wanna report a murder, then.”

He looked at the boy’s eyes, seeing if the pupils were dilated or red-rimmed. They looked normal enough. And there was no scent of alcohol. What was going on here?

“Who was killed, Freddy? And when?”

“My dad. About five years ago. Someone clubbed the back of his head and buried him, and I know who done it.”

Victor started taking notes, feeling the knot at the back of his neck tighten. “Who, Freddy?”

“My mom, that’s who.”

By the time the backhoe was positioned and started digging, the rain had started falling at a steady shower. The open pit quickly became swollen with mud and water, and as night fell Victor called up the Norwich volunteer fire department and had outside lights set up. The backhoe snorted and roared as it dug, and Victor stayed as close as he dared to the lip of the hole. Flashing lights from the trucks and the fire department vehicles crisscrossed and bounced off the house. He nodded as a figure approached. It was Percy Layman, the volunteer fire chief. Percy wore his yellow firegear and hipboots. His bald head was open to the falling rain.

“Reporters are starting to bunch up at the driveway.”

“Let ’em,” Victor said. “Just make sure they stay off the property, all right?”

“Sure.” Percy stood next to him, looked down at the pit. “Where’s Gordo?”

Victor motioned with his head. “Inside with Mrs. Hanson and the two girls. I don’t want them touching or disturbing anything in the house.”

“Yeah.” Percy took out a grey handkerchief, blew his nose. “Any idea when you’ll talk to those reporters?”

The backhoe went in for another load, and mud and brown water swirled around. Victor shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me.”

“So tell me again what happened,” Victor had asked.

Freddy was leaning forward in his chair, elbows resting on the desk. “Like I said before, Chief. I was around twelve. I woke up and heard a noise, something that made me sit up. I looked out the window and saw Mom was dragging Dad into the septic hole, by his feet. The summer before Dad had dug this hole in the front lawn to put in a septic tank but he didn’t have enough money for the tank, so it stayed there. I watched it and couldn’t believe it. Thought I was dreaming. And then Mom went into the garage and came out with the tractor, and leveled the hole off.”

“What did you do next?”

“I ran downstairs and grabbed her and asked her what the hell was going on. She was tired and dirty and breathing hard, and she said that Dad had been beating her up, even worse than before, and she couldn’t take it anymore and she clobbered the back of his head with a baseball bat. And it was going to be our secret, ’cause if she was arrested, she’d get taken away and we’d all be put in foster homes.”

Victor was scribbling furiously. “Was it true? Did your father beat up on your mother?”

He shrugged, the buckles and belts jingling. “Yeah, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Just the ordinary stuff, then,” Victor said wryly.

“Yeah.”

“So why are you telling us this now, Freddy, five years later?”

He hunkered down in the chair. “I got my reasons.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

Victor said, “How about letting me in on them?”

Freddy said, “Shoot, Chief, I’m almost eighteen. Be out on my own soon. It doesn’t make any difference to me if she’s arrested or not.”

The rain was falling steadily, and the backhoe was still digging, slowly and without a rush, making the pit wider and deeper. Victor thought back again to the other day. Freddy Hanson’s story sounded too strange to be true, but there seemed to be something there. After the boy had left, he had gone into the storage area and dug up, folded up and covered with dust, the original missing persons report filed on Henry Hanson. He had read and re-read it for an hour. The story seemed simple enough. Henry Hanson had walked away one night and had never come back. It wasn’t unusual for him to walk, as he liked to hitchhike, but in a couple of days’ time, Mrs. Hanson had reported him missing.

There were also a few notations made by the former chief, Al Leclerk — dead now these three years — about Henry Hanson, which seemed to confirm Freddy’s story. The man had worked as an itinerant farmer and lumberman, working in the forested mountains around Norwich, and he had been arrested several times for assault, assault and battery, and once for suspected rape.

An hour later he had almost put the file away, wondering again at Freddy’s story, before he realized that something was missing. Follow-up reports. There were none. According to the report, in all the five years since Henry Hanson’s disappearance, not once had Deborah Hanson inquired about the investigation into her husband’s case.

Not once.

Maybe she already knew where he was.

With that, he got on the phone with Gordon Moore, and then with the district court judge.

The backhoe grumbled again, and in the steady rain, Victor thought he saw something in the open hole. He waved an arm and the backhoe stopped, and he got a flashlight from Percy Layman and dropped down into the pit.

The mud stopped up around his shins and his orange raincoat dragged in it. He certainly hoped the backhoe operator wouldn’t burp and drop a load of the goddam mud on his head. He aimed the flashlight at a corner of the hole.

There was the toe of a man’s boot.

He knelt down, the edges of his raincoat draping around him like a hoop skirt. Holding the flashlight in one hand, he gently started to scrape away at the mud. The brown-black boot came further into view, along with a tattered piece of denim, and then a bone.

Victor stood up, shaking his head. “Damn me, now, will you.”

Later, after making phone calls to the medical examiner and the state police forensics team, and after allowing Deborah Hanson to make a phone call to her sister, he stood with her and Gordon Moore in the living room of the house. The two daughters — Kristin and Bridget — were huddled together on the couch, holding each other, keening and sobbing.

Victor was slightly uncomfortable, standing there with his wet raincoat and mud-splattered boots. “About your son, Freddy...”

“What about him,” she said, her voice flat. “He’ll be taking care of himself now, I guess.”

Gordon nodded at him and Victor said, “Mrs. Hanson, you’ll be coming with us to the station now.”

Her eyes tightened and she tugged at the neck of her sweater and glanced back at the couch. “You won’t cuff me in front of the kids, now, will you?”

“No, I won’t,” Victor said, as he pulled a card from his pocket.

“But you are under arrest, and I’ll have to read you your rights.”

The children kept on keening as he read the Miranda warning, and when he was done he asked, “Now that I’ve read you your rights, Mrs. Hanson, do you have anything to say?”

She clasped her arms in front of her, hugged herself tight.

“Men,” she murmured, and she said not one more word on the ride to the station.

Deborah Hanson walked in the holding room, cigarette in hand, knowing that the mirror to the right was a two-way piece of glass, that she was being watched. She knew that, and she waited. If they were waiting for her to weep and scream and tear at her hair, then they would have a long wait. It had been five years and she’d known she had a pretty good chance of ending up in this room.

It didn’t bother her, not that much. It was like knowing the destination of a trip, but not being too sure if it was over the next hill or the next mountain range.

The door opened and a man in his thirties came in, dressed in a two-piece brown suit, white shirt, and red tie. He carried a black briefcase and had a plastic smile and his hair was too carefully combed.

“Mrs. Hanson?” he said, extending his hand, which she touched for only a moment, “I’m Gerald Twomey, from the county public defender’s office.”

He sat down and opened up his briefcase and she said, “I’m sorry to waste your time like this, but I don’t want you defending me.”

He paused, holding a folder from his case. “Mrs. Hanson, I’m afraid you don’t have much of a choice. I’ve been appointed by the court and—”

“You got a woman down there?”

“Excuse me?”

She took a drag off her cigarette. “I said you got a woman lawyer down there in your office?”

“Yes, well, we do, but her schedule is—”

“That’s who I want.”

“Mrs. Hanson, I—”

“Who do you think I am? Some dumb hill woman who don’t know what she’s in for? Who don’t know what she wants? I want that woman lawyer, that’s what.”

She turned in her chair and stared at the wall. It looked like cheap paneling, with hardly any backing behind it. Henry always promised he’d do up the basement, make it a play area for the girls, but no, that never did happen, now, did it. The wall was covered with scratches and grease, and duct tape covered holes where someone must have punched in a fist or a foot. She smoked her cigarette and waited and eventually she heard a briefcase being clicked shut and a door being opened and closed as the man left. Hmmph. Some man. Henry could have broken him for breakfast.

She lit another cigarette and continued to wait. Eventually, the door opened again, as she knew it would.

Victor Dumont waited in the medical examiner’s office as Dr. Lewis Fernald pulled off a blood- and chemical-spattered gown and threw it into an overflowing bin, showing a blue shirt with a white collar and a red necktie. The office was in Folsom, on the other side of the county and almost an hour from Norwich. It was cramped and book-lined, with three human skulls resting on a bookshelf. One of the skulls was real, the other two were plastic. Fernald made it a constant joke of switching them around and asking visitors which one was real.

The county medical examiner was Victor’s age but looked ten years older, with greying hair and a fine network of wrinkles about his brown eyes. He was also developing a small potbelly, despite the hour drive every other night to the nearest health club in this part of the state.

“How’s your day going, Victor?” Fernald asked, sitting down with a sigh in his leather swivel chair. He leaned back and opened a small refrigerator and pulled out a plastic container of lemonade, which he drank straight from the bottle.

“Depends a lot on what you found out.”

The medical examiner grinned. “Like what, for example?”

“Like is that Henry Hanson you got downstairs?”

“Oh, for certain.” The lemonade in one hand, he started flipping through a manilla folder. “Though he wasn’t a regular dental visitor, his teeth match right up to a T. According to his records, his left clavicle — collarbone, to you uninitiated — was broken when he was in high school, and what you found in the front yard’s got the same fracture. So, yeah, I’d say that’s Henry Hanson.”

Victor pulled out a notebook, started making some notes. “Thanks, Doc.”

Fernald tipped back his lemonade. “Sure, but I knew it was Henry Hanson within five minutes of seeing him.”

Victor stopped writing, looked up in surprise. “You did? How?”

The medical examiner grinned again. “Found a wet lump of leather and stuff and when I pulled it apart, saw it was his wallet, and stuck there in its plastic seal was his driver’s license. Ugly son-of-a-bitch, I’d say, from his picture. Overweight, too.”

“That your famous second opinion?”

“Yeah, and one more thing.” Fernald put down the lemonade, picked up the folder. “You mentioned something about looking for damage in the skull and neck area.”

Victor said, “That’s right. The son said his mom took a Louisville slugger to the back of Dad’s head.”

Fernald shook his head. “If she did, it must’ve been made of foam rubber.”

Something cold started to tickle at Victor’s forehead. “What do you mean, doc?”

He shrugged. “Means Henry Hanson didn’t die from a blow to his head. His skull and neck are in fine shape, Victor. Pristine, I’d guess. The only injury that’s there is the old collarbone fracture.”

“Then what the hell killed him?”

Fernald ruefully shook the empty lemonade container. “Victor, I’m a medical examiner, not a bloody fortuneteller. You drop a pile of bones and clothing that’s been rotting in someone’s front yard for five years. You tell me he died from blows to his head. I’m telling you he didn’t. There’s no damage that suggests anything — no fractures associated with gunshot wounds, or damage to the ribs from a knife attack.”

“Great.” He folded up his notebook, realizing with an ache that he had a long drive back to Norwich, with not much to show for it.

“So. Which one?”

“Hunh?”

Fernald swung about in his chair and pointed up to the skulls. “Which one is real?”

“Oh. The one on the right, Doc.”

His face fell. “How did you know?”

“I’m a cop. Got any more questions?”

The next day Victor was in the corner booth of Mona’s Diner, on Route 4, leading out of town. From there he could see out a floor-to-ceiling window, looking over the Norwich Valley, right on the western edge of the White Mountains. The valley was dark green today, with even darker shadows racing across the trees and fields from the clouds overhead. In his thirty years living and working in Norwich, he had never tired of this view.

The breakfast dishes had been cleared away save for cups of coffee, and across the table from him Rachel Adair stirred in another Sweet’n’Low, her red fingernails bright against the tarnished spoon. She wore a blue dress with a faint floral pattern, snuggly fit. Around her neck and one wrist she wore gold chains, and her tinted-blonde hair reflected the morning sunlight. Her briefcase was beside her on the counter.

“I tell you, Chief, you’re too good for this town. You ought to get into the state police, or go to Massachusetts and pick up some additional schooling. Maybe even the FBI academy.”

He frowned as he took a sip from his mug. There were only a few other customers here this morning, and most of them were at the long counter running down one side, where Mona held court. “Counselor, I barely keep ahead of what goes on in Norwich. My mind would be spinning within five minutes of leaving here.”

“You barely keep ahead because you’re a one-man department. You ought to lean on the selectmen to get you more help.”

“One-man department means I know what’s going on. And I lean too hard on the board, they may replace me with someone a little less noisy.”

Rachel drank from her cup, leaving a trace of lipstick on the mug. “They wouldn’t be that stupid, hill people as they may be.”

“Don’t get into that hill people crap.”

She smiled. “You’re mad because you know it’s true. You and I both grew up in the valley, relatively well-off. It’s tough up in those hills. Little farms and mobile homes, miles up on dirt roads, no neighbors, electricity going out in every bad storm, late at night and in the winter. I don’t care how good you are, Chief, you can’t know what’s going on up there all the time.”

“Like the Hanson family, for instance.”

Returning the coffee cup to the counter, she said, “That’s my case and it’d be prejudicial if I discussed it with you. But let me tell you a story that might give you some insight.”

“A hypothetical story?”

“Aren’t those the best kind?”

“Go ahead.”

Rachel folded her hands before her. “Let’s say — hypothetically, of course — you’re a hill woman married to an abusive man. His name is Henry.”

Victor said, “Some coincidence.”

“Hush. And you married young and soon, before you’re thirty, you have three children. You don’t have much of an education, money is tight, and you’re lucky if you have meat on the table once or twice a week. You try to go on welfare but Henry won’t let you. Too proud, he says, and since you’re a hill woman, you partially agree. Still, it makes you hurt inside when your kids cry at night because they’re hungry.”

Rachel picked up a paper napkin, folded it over a few times. “Your husband isn’t much of a provider, isn’t much of a person. He’s overweight and he smokes and he drinks too much, and he’s a bit of a religious nut. And when he’s drinking he starts hitting you. Nothing bad at first, nothing you haven’t experienced before or seen in your family, but it makes every day a nightmare, wondering what will happen to you.”

“Still hypothetical, Counselor?”

“Still hypothetical, Chief. Then you notice he starts to look at your daughters in a funny way. He visits them at night, in their bedrooms. And he starts quoting Biblical verse to you, about multiple wives. You’re a hill woman. Your nearest neighbor’s a half-mile away, and you have no skills. In wintertime you get to town maybe once every week. Electricity keeps on getting shut off for non-payment. You have nothing except a son and two daughters you’re frightened for, a collection of bruises, and a hate that’s beginning to burn inside you. You’re this hill woman, Chief Victor Dumont, and what do you do?”

“Take a baseball bat and bash in his head?”

Rachel smiled. “Hardly. No, you wait. You let your hate grow and one night, after eating a heavy meal, Henry goes to the couch and sits down and rolls his eyes and clutches at his chest, and he dies, right there. The horrible thing in your life is gone, right before your eyes. But there’s a problem.”

“No life insurance?”

Rachel said, “Think, Chief. Think. All of your hate hasn’t helped you or done anything. He’s escaped your hate. He’s gone. But you still want your revenge — you still want to get back at him. And how do you do this to a God-fearing man like Henry?”

He nodded and started tapping on his empty coffee mug with a spoon. “You bury his body in an unmarked, unconsecrated grave.”

“Exactly,” she said, smiling. Her teeth were white and even. “You toss him into a septic tank hole and cover him up. And you get your revenge, and you get your comfort, because every day you walk out of your house, you’re walking on his grave, and it’s not in holy ground. Everything’s fine, until your son comes of age.”

“And that story?”

“That story revolves around an inheritance you get from a distant uncle. He decides that as head of the family, he deserves a cut. You say no, he gets mad and goes to the cops with a crazy story that you murdered his daddy.”

“Hell of a story.”

“A hell of a story because you know it’s true, Chief. I’ve read the autopsy report and the statements, and you’ve got nothing on Deborah Hanson, except for maybe disposing of human remains improperly, and even with that, she’ll plead the Fifth Amendment. Your witness Freddy’s skipped out of town and no one’s been able to find him since. You and the State have zip.”

“I’ll let the State decide that.”

A teenage waitress in a stained pink uniform slapped down the bill. On the back of her hand was the tattoo of a butterfly. Rachel picked up the paper. “On me today, Chief. I’ll bill it out.”

He picked up his hat. “You got anything going on tonight, Counselor?”

She smiled and winked. “Like what, Victor?”

“Thought maybe we’d discuss some precedents.”

She laughed and the throaty sound thrilled him. “Fine. Out on Route 12, past Canaan. The Bluebird Motel. Ten o’clock sound okay?”

“Fine.”

She winked again. “Wear your utility belt?”

“Only if you file the right motion.”

“I’ll work on it.”

Deborah Hanson sat on her bunk at the Franconia County Jail, working on her third cigarette of the night. She sat up against the rough concrete and looked out at the bars, listening to the televisions and the radios and the catcalls and shouts of the other prisoners. Most of them were in for petty crap, like drunk driving or stealing things to support their boyfriends’ drug habits. She was the only one in for a serious crime, as serious as the cops made it out to be, and the other inmates left her alone.

Finished with the cigarette, she tossed it into the metal toilet. For a brief moment she considered telling it all. Life wouldn’t be that bad here. Three meals a day, simple work compared to what she was used to, and no more worrying or scraping by. Everything taken care of.

But there were Kristin and Bridget to think of, and if she did talk up, they wouldn’t keep her here in the county lockup. No, they’d send her to the new woman’s prison in Concord, almost two hours away, and that’d be no way for the girls to grow up. And Freddy, well, he was more of Henry’s child than hers, and now he was nothing to her, ever since he went to the police.

Damn the boy’s blood, anyway.

She lit another cigarette, let the flame burn down the match’s length until it scorched her skin. The girls were at her sister’s, along with that mangy mutt. They’d do all right. For she was sure she’d be out soon.

Just as soon as the valley folks got their heads straight.

Victor Dumont sat on the hood of his cruiser, next to Gordon Moore. It was almost midnight and he had driven the cruiser up to Overlook Point. In the valley below them were the few lights of Norwich. Victor had a bottle of Beck’s beer wrapped in a paper bag. He had to drive a half hour to a store that sold it but he had grown to love the taste. Gordon drank from a thermos, whiskey and water.

“You could get in trouble, you know,” Gordon said, “drinking on the job.”

“Hell I could. I called the dispatch three hours ago and told them I was going home. The roads of Norwich now belong to your brother state troopers.”

Gordon nodded. “Earl Blake’s on tonight. He’ll do you all right.”

He drank some more beer. The night birds were out, squawking and hunting in the woods. “We’re gonna lose this one tomorrow, aren’t we, Gordo?”

Gordon wrapped himself tighter in his coat. “That we are, my friend. My recommendation was that we not even bring it to the grand jury, but the A.G.’s office wouldn’t hear of it. So they’ll go up to the County Court tomorrow and so will we, and we’ll tell our little stories, and after Deborah Hanson’s let loose, we can lie to the newspapers and say we did a good job.”

“Weren’t much there,” Victor said.

Gordon poured himself another tumbler, his knees high up since his feet were resting on the front bumper. “Nope. Just a body in a front yard and a familiar story.”

“You thinking about the Wilson family?”

Even in the faint moonlight he could see Gordon staring down at his hands. “That I am. Three years ago and it still gives me the shakes. Middle of February, up at Towle’s Purchase. The Blizzard Month, you’ll recall that’s what the papers named it. Every few days we’d get a snowstorm barreling through, and by the time people made headway in getting dug out, another storm’d pass through and dump another foot. Some places were cut off for almost a week.”

“Including the Wilsons’.”

“Yeah. Some sister got concerned she hadn’t heard from the Wilsons so me and Fern Goodwin — he quit as the chief there right afterwards — and a state plow went up there. Nothing but acres of fields and woods and this farmhouse, and inside the five boys and girls and their two parents, all dead. Couldn’t get the smell of blood out of my mind for weeks after that. And the forensics work, my lord, what we had to do to learn what happened there.”

“Still hard to believe,” Victor said, “as much as I do.”

“Yeah. But I was out on their front porch while we were working up the forensics, just looking at all that blank whiteness for miles around, just closing in on you. Made me think, just for a second, why they did it. Killed their own children, then each other. I understood it. Just for a second.”

A car came up on Overlook Point and when the headlights touched the cruiser, it quickly backed away. Victor took another taste of his beer. “Young love. They’ll have to go somewhere else.”

“As much as there is, in Norwich.”

“You believe Deborah Hanson’s story?”

Gordon screwed on the top of his thermos. “Five or ten years ago, you ask me that, and I would’ve said no. After working in this county and seeing stuff like the Wilson family, I can believe almost anything. Odd things go on up in the hills.”

Victor nodded. “Know what you mean. Whole thing has a sense of irony about it. She probably saw her chance when his heart went out. Remember I saw a Clint Eastwood movie once, a western. Some lady said, ‘They say the dead don’t rest without a marker.’ Maybe that’s what Deborah Hanson was doing. Making sure Henry Hanson never rested.”

“Maybe so. But she’ll have to think of something else now.”

“What do you mean?” Victor asked.

Gordon drew his coat around him as a breeze rose up. “Right now what’s left of Henry Hanson’s resting in a real grave, with a real headstone. Some things don’t last.”

Victor said, “Maybe they last long enough.”

Two days later Victor Dumont was re-tracing his first visit to the Hanson family, but there were some differences. It was a warmer day, and there was no rain, and the recently released Deborah Hanson was sitting next to him in the cruiser as he brought her back to her house.

He had been surprised that she had specifically requested he drive her back, but she had looked at him at the county jail and said, “Chief, you brought me here. And by God, you’re going to bring me back.”

He couldn’t argue with her. It made sense.

Up the gravel driveway, past the rusting mailbox again, it was just like last week. By God, what a hell of a difference a few days made. He pulled the cruiser to a stop before the gaping hole where they had found Henry Hanson.

“Your daughters?” Victor asked, leaving the cruiser’s engine running.

Deborah said, “At my sister’s. They and the dog will be coming back tonight.”

“And your son Freddy?”

She went into her purse, pulled out a pack of Marlboros. “He’s almost of age and he’s moved out. I’ve not seen or heard from him in weeks. He ain’t my son anymore. And he won’t be welcome back.”

Victor nodded in the direction of the excavation. “I’ll have Tower Excavation come up and take care of this hole.”

“No, don’t do that,” Deborah Hanson said. “The tractor’s still in the barn. I’ll take her out this afternoon and fill it in myself. Might send you a bill for that, though.”

“Go ahead.”

Victor tapped a bit on the steering wheel and said, “Mrs. Hanson, with the grand jury decision you’re a free woman. You know, with the news accounts about what kind of man your husband was and the attitude of the people who live here in this county, well, I don’t think there’s anything that will put you back before the grand jury.”

She said, “You mean, a cousin or other relation comes forward with another crazy story ’bout how I killed Henry, nothing’s gonna happen?”

“Probably not.”

“So I could say practically anything to you right now, and it’d be my word against yours, and I’m still okay.”

“Most likely.”

She took out a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply. “Let me tell you this one thing, Chief. Henry was a good man in some ways, ’cept when he drank. And the problem was, it got so he was drinking all the time. And that good part left. When he was sobered up, he liked to sit at the kitchen table and quote Bible verse at me. One thing, stuck in my mind, was ‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways.’ I guess that’s one phrase that explains everything.”

“Maybe so,” he said, staring at her.

She stared right back. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a place to clean up. My daughters coming back and all.”

“Sure,” he said, and after she stepped out he backed the cruiser down the hill, remembering the look in her face, the way her eyes just fell for that moment and revealed everything, and he knew. Didn’t know how. But he just knew.

Didn’t know how. But he just knew.

After taking a long shower — the ones at the jail she never could relax in, too many bodies around — she changed her clothes and opened every window in her house. The girls would be coming back soon and she wanted to have the place look nice for them. Maybe drive down and get some ice cream. Now, that would be a treat.

Deborah Hanson went into the barn and walked past the John Deere tractor with a bucket attachment on the front. The bucket was covered with a canvas tarp. It was cool in the barn. She had depended on that. She slipped on a pair of work gloves and started up the tractor. It took four tries before the engine caught. Goddam thing needed a new battery.

As she drove the tractor out she looked over, once, at the long wooden shelf on the near wall. There were chains up there, and gardening tools and other work gloves and lengths of green hose and there, by the end and almost covered by old newspaper, a can of rat poison.

Sure, little Freddy had seen her, five years ago, dump Henry’s body in the old septic tank hole. She had told him a story, to safeguard her future, and the boy had believed her then, about the baseball bat and all.

Like the valley people believed her story now.

She halted the tractor at the edge of the hole, where last week they had tom up her front lawn looking for Henry’s body. Well, she couldn’t say she wasn’t warned. She always knew that eventually someone would find out, and the night before they did come up, with their warrants and backhoes, Freddy had come by, drunk and itching for a fight, to boast that he had gone to the cops.

Drinking, just like his father. And before he left, she fed him well, just like his father.

Switching the throttle on high, she tilted the front bucket and the canvas covering popped off, and Freddy — wrapped in rope and green trash bags — tumbled to the bottom of the hole.

She backed the tractor away and started to move the dirt in. Another Bible verse, there, valley cop. One my mother and her mother and her mother before her passed down to me.

The Lord helps those who help themselves.

More dirt trickled and fell in, covering up the green bags and rope, and as she worked she thought, Soon, soon we’ll tell the girls about that verse.