South Of Hell

Chapter Five

Louis turned up the collar of his jacket against the rain and stepped closer to the gate of the Brandt farm. A rusty metal sign nailed to a wood post kept him from venturing farther: TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT.

He had never spent any time on a farm. He’d been raised in the village of Plymouth, Michigan, for the most part, growing up with all the standard city-issued conveniences. His only experience with farm life had been from movies. Or as seen through the windows of the family Ford during boring Sunday jaunts to the Irish Hills or the long drives up north for the annual vacation.

He remembered thinking at ten years old that farms must be pretty neat places to live. Picking apples right from the tree or jumping from the upper window of a barn into a pile of hay or riding a horse any time you wanted.

Louis stared through the mist at the Brandt farmhouse.

But this place held no such warmth.

It was a crumbling, two-story, red brick house with a steep-pitched, green-shingled roof. The covered wood porch was missing its front steps, railing slats, and most of its gingerbread. The smaller side porch was filled with wet boxes, piles of yellowed newspapers bound with twine, and a small rusted refrigerator — what Louis remembered someone from his childhood calling an icebox. The tall windows, some boarded up, some still shrouded with tattered lace curtains, looked back at him like blank eyes through the overgrown bushes.

Beyond the house, Louis could see three wooden outbuildings, once painted red but now faded to gray, the sides listing, the roofs sunken. In the weeds, four rusted machines lay in a circle around a huge hulking thing with arms and giant gears, like a family of petrified prehistoric monsters.

There was junk everywhere — pitchforks, coils of barbed wire, wagon wheels, pocked metal drums, a faded green tractor with john deere spelled out in rust. And dominating it all, a crumbling cathedral of a barn, its massive doors padlocked.

Louis surveyed the farm. It was hard to believe anyone had lived here just nine years ago. The place had the feel of a land destroyed by war or abandoned to plague.

He heard the door of the car close and turned to see Shockey making his way across the gravel road. He was working his long arms into his dingy raincoat.

Shockey stopped at the gate and stared at the house. He hadn’t said much on the way out here, and Louis had not pushed it, sensing that whatever else there was to this story was not something Shockey talked easily about.

But now that they were here, only a few yards from where Jean Brandt had lived, and maybe died, it was time.

“Did it look like this when you knew her?” Louis asked.

Shockey stuffed his hands into his pockets. Again, he seemed to steel up, and Louis gave him a few seconds to get a grip on his thoughts and memories.

“I drove by here a couple of times right after she disappeared,” Shockey said. “It looked a little better than this but not much.”

“Tough way of life,” Louis said.

“It wasn’t the farming that wore her down,” Shockey said. “She grew up on a farm not that far from here. It was Owen Brandt who made it rough.”

“How’d you meet her?” Louis asked.

“She used to come to the farmer’s market in Ann Arbor and sell potatoes and cukes and things,” Shockey said. “I loved the vine-ripened tomatoes, and I’d browse the market on Sunday mornings and pick up the fresh stuff I couldn’t get from Kroger’s.”

“She came to the market alone?”

“Yeah.” Shockey nodded. “That’s why I noticed her. She was a little thing and used to unload all those baskets by herself, set up her table herself, and load back up again at dark. After watching her a few times, I offered to help.”

“When was this?”

“June 1980.”

“How long after that first meeting did you start an affair?”

Shockey’s jaw ground in thought and maybe a little embarrassment. Again, Louis let him have his time.

“A month,” Shockey said finally. “But it was hard to be together. Brandt kept a tight leash on her and expected her home exactly three hours after sundown. If she was late, she got beat.”

“So how’d you make time?”

“About an hour before dark, if she hadn’t sold all her stuff, I’d buy it, and then we’d do a quick load-up and head for the motel.”

Louis glanced around. The rain had thinned to a fine spray, blurring the land for miles, leaving everything obscured in fog. He wanted to suggest that they sit in the car to finish this conversation, but Shockey seemed more unguarded, as if he felt he was giving Jean Brandt more respect by telling her story out here in this godforsaken place.

“What about when summer ended?” Louis asked. “She wouldn’t have come to market then. Did the affair continue into winter?”

“She could only get away a few times after October,” Shockey said. “She told Owen she had female problems and had to see a specialist in Ann Arbor. Bastard never questioned that, didn’t want to hear anything about her problems, so he let her go.”

“You said you met at motels,” Louis said. “Why not go to your place?”

Shockey sighed. “I was married. I had a kid.”

“So that’s why you didn’t come forward when she disappeared,” Louis said. “You didn’t want your wife to find out.”

Shockey sniffed and pushed his wet hair off his forehead. He was staring at the house again. “That, and I didn’t want to lose my job,” he said. “We had — hell, we still have it, but no one pays much attention to it now — we had a morals clause in our job description. I would’ve been fired.”

“Not to mention you might have been considered a suspect in her disappearance.”

“Yup.”

“Why now?” Louis asked. “Why open this after nine years?”

“Brandt’s been in prison in Ohio for the last seven years. He beat up a woman and threw her out of a car,” Shockey said. “He was paroled a week ago.”

Louis was looking at the farmhouse.

“He almost killed that woman. I know he killed Jean,” Shockey said. “And I am not going to just stand by and let him kill again.”

“You’ve let this get personal,” Louis said. “I don’t need to tell you that’s not right.”

“I’m older than you,” Shockey said. “And the older you get, the heavier the shit becomes, the shit you didn’t take care of when you were younger. You live under it, thinking it will go away by itself. But it doesn’t.”

Louis was quiet.

“And no matter how much good you do later, it never makes things right.”

“Did you plant the bra in the trunk of the Falcon?” Louis asked.

“Yeah.”

“Who did it belong to?”

“My ex-wife.”

“Whose blood was on it?”

“Mine. I got the idea almost a year ago,” Shockey said. “I knew Jean and I had the same blood type, and I cut myself and bled on it and then left it in my backyard for months trying to make it look old.”

“And the ten grand and my expenses to come here. Where was that money going to come from?”

“My retirement fund.”

“You’re a real piece of work, Detective.”

Shockey faced him, his eyes as empty as the farmhouse’s windows. “I’m not sorry,” he said. “I’d do it again if I thought I could get away with it.”

Louis shook his head. This case was about as cold as they came. Not one shred of evidence or a viable lead.

“Kincaid,” Shockey said, “Owen Brandt abandoned this place like a month after Jean went missing. But he never hired anyone to work this farm for him, and he never put it up for sale. Why do you think that is?”

“You think Brandt buried her out here?” Louis asked.

“I know he did.”

“How big is this place?” Louis asked.

“Sixty acres.”

Louis took a long look around. There was nothing but a cold, lonely grayness as far as he could see and he thought about the possibility that Jean Brandt’s bones were buried out there somewhere, forgotten by everyone but Shockey.

“Are you going to help me?” Shockey asked.

Louis met Shockey’s eyes. But his mind was churning backward a few years. Kneeling in the sand in Florida, digging a hole with his hands to bury a piece of evidence, the only thing he could do to bring justice to a dead girl. He did understand. He understood something else, too: what it was like to love a woman so much you’d do almost anything for her.

“I’ll help you, Detective,” Louis said. “But it will be my way. Are we clear?”

“Yeah,” Shockey said. “We’re clear.”