The Dead Man

Chapter Sixty-six

"We had a big snow the night before and it was hell getting to Sam's place. Some of the county roads in those days weren't much more than a dirt track.

"By the time I got there, Charlie and Maggie were in the front yard, both of them covered in blood. They looked like something out of one of those slasher movies. Ed's out of his car, walking right up to Charlie, sticking his shotgun in Charlie's face, telling Charlie to let Maggie go only Charlie holds onto her like she's a hostage. I roll my window down, throw my car door open, and get a bead on Charlie. I holler to Ed, are we okay here, Sheriff, and Ed, he asks Charlie are we okay and Charlie says yeah and it's all over. He lets Maggie go and I stay with him until another deputy come and then I went into the house.

"I find Ed in Sam and Gretchen's bedroom, just staring at their bodies. They were a mess. Coroner said each of them was stabbed more than twenty-five times. Ed, he kept saying over and over, what kind of person does a thing like this and I kept answering Lord only knows."

Lucy asked, "Why do you think the killer spared Maggie?"

"Don't know that he meant to. Maggie was in her bedroom. She had a balcony with double-wide French doors. She said when the killer came for her, she jumped off the balcony and ran and hid in the fields."

"Jumped?" Lucy asked. "How far down was it?"

"Two stories," Goodell said, whistling softly. "Two stories onto hard froze ground, barefoot, and in her nightgown. Sprained her ankle and kept on running. Haven't heard anything like it before or since."

Lucy shook her head. "Doesn't seem possible."

"No, it don't. No, it don't. We never did catch the killer, never even came close. This all happened right after the Clutter family got murdered out near Holcomb. Sheriff Beedles drove out to Garden City to talk to Smith and Hickock after they was captured but there was nothing to link them to the Brennan case."

"Did Charlie's story stand up?" Lucy asked.

"Sure did. He always told the same story and he passed the polygraph."

"What about the physical evidence? Did that match up to Charlie's story?" she asked.

"Well, you got to remember it was 1959 and we were a small operation back then. We didn't know CSI from ABC. There was a blood trail from Sam and Gretchen's bedroom into Maggie's room, led right up to the balcony. Maggie said the killer had hold of her, but his hands were so bloody she was able to squirm her way out. That's when she jumped."

"What about the murder weapon?" Lucy asked.

"Coroner said it was probably a hunting knife and Sam, he was a hunter. Charlie said Sam had a hunting knife but we went through Sam's things and never did find it. Could have been the murder weapon but we don't know for sure."

"Did Charlie take Maggie in?" Lucy asked.

"Nope. He shipped her off to his sister in California. Charlie sold Sam's place and sent his sister the money. The next day, Charlie drove his truck off the road and into a culvert and was killed. We ruled it an accident but I don't know it wasn't on purpose. He was never right again after what happened."

"How did Maggie handle it?" Lucy asked.

"'Course I only seen her a few times after that morning before she went to California. That day, she didn't say much except for what happened. She didn't even cry. I took her to the hospital, had her checked out. The doctor said she was in too much shock to cry. Still, I thought it was a mighty odd thing for a child to go through something like that and never shed a tear. The whole time the doctor talked to her, she just picked the dried blood off her fingernails like it was old paint."

"Sounds like she was one strong little girl," Lucy said.

Goodell looked at her sharply, hesitating. "She was all of that. Squeezed my hand like she was full grown when I walked her into the emergency room."

"You said you've kept up with her," I said. "How did you know she was at the Harper Institute?"

"It was in the Kansas City paper. They run a business section on Tuesdays with announcements of new people being hired."

"The police have been to her home and she wasn't there. Any idea where we might find her," I asked.

He nodded. "Her parents' place. I used to check the county records from time to time, just to see what happened to it, see if anybody would buy a place with that many ghosts. Maggie bought it right after she moved back. That's how I knew for sure it was her."

"She told me that she lived in the country," I said.

"She told you right. She bought her uncle Charlie's old place too. That's where she lived."

"We need the address for Sam Brennan's farm," I said.

"I expect you do," he said, pushing himself to his feet. "Be right back."

He disappeared down a hall and came back carrying the sagging cardboard box he'd brought to lunch the day he presented his case. He put the box on the coffee table, lifting out a three-ring binder.

"Murder book," he said, handing it to me. "You'll find everything you need in there. Best you take a look at it."

I spread the binder open, leafing through the pages. The crime scene photos were faded, more gray than black and white, though the close-ups of Sam and Gretchen's multiple stab wounds stood out in stark relief. The passage of fifty years hadn't diminished the photographs' power.

There were more photographs showing each room in the house and the black spots on the upstairs hallway tracing the blood trail to its endpoint on Maggie's balcony. The coroner's report gave a dry recitation of the cause of death. Charlie Brennan's handwritten statement matched Tom Goodell's memory.

And, there were newspaper articles from the Kansas City Star. The headline of the first read "Parents Murdered, Child Escapes Killer." The story was wrapped around a split-screen photograph; one-half showing the exterior of the farmhouse, the other half a picture of Maggie surrounded by dolls and scattered gift wrap beneath a banner that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I read the opening paragraph in the article.

Early yesterday morning, Charlie Brennan discovered the mutilated bodies of his brother, Sam Brennan, and sister-in-law, Gretchen, in the Brennans' farmhouse in rural Johnson County, Kansas, five miles west of Spring Hill. He also reported finding the Brennans' ten-year-old daughter, Maggie, in the bushes beneath a second-floor balcony. Sheriff Ed Beedles said there was no evidence of a struggle, suggesting that the Brennans were killed in their sleep. He declined to provide further details, citing the need to keep the investigation confidential until a suspect was apprehended. "The Brennan farmhouse is a quarter mile from the nearest road. People who live in isolated areas without any nearby neighbors have to be especially vigilant to protect themselves from criminals," Sheriff Beedles said, noting that the Brennans had left their house unlocked.

A second article a week later highlighted the sheriff's frustration at the lack of any leads and quoted his plea to the public for information that could lead to the capture and conviction of whomever was responsible. The last article, written on the fifth anniversary of the murders, quoted Sheriff Beedles's successor, Tom Goodell, who said that the investigation was still open though authorities had no suspects or hopes of identifying one. The article also quoted Maggie's aunt, Adele Jensen, who declined the reporter's request to interview Maggie, saying that Maggie was a normal teenager except for her recurrent nightmare that she would die the same way as had her parents.

I pointed Lucy and Simon to the newspaper articles and studied Tom Goodell as he avoided me, fidgeting with the fire in the fireplace, poking the burning embers, stirring a shower of sparks. He had never stopped working this cold case, had sought the advice of the retired cops at our monthly lunch, had kept track of Maggie Brennan all these years and, yet, had not contacted her since she moved back to Kansas City. When Lucy asked him why, he ducked the question.

The murder book gave me an idea of what his answer would be but I had to hear it from him. If he were right, his answer would provide the unity of a complex of phenomena that Kate and Simon had talked about a few nights ago, the real truth, not just the directly visible truth, one filled with horror and sadness and none of Einstein's magnificent feeling.

"Tom," I said, "Maggie Brennan has lived here for over a year. Why haven't you talked with her in all that time? Maybe she remembers something that would help you solve the case. She's had a lifetime to think about what happened. A sixty-year-old woman can be a much better witness than a ten-year-old girl, even after all these years."

He jammed the poker into the burning wood, his back to me. "Like I told missy, ask me after you find her."

"That may be too late. Why haven't you talked to her?"

He faced me, his eyes flickering, his cheeks reddening. He took a deep breath. "That woman scares me more than anyone I've ever known."