JEFF STUTZMAN PULLED UP IN FRONT OF THE ONE-STORY BUNGALOW and shut off the engine. The road to the modest dwelling was dirt like so many others this far from town, but it had rained the night before and the dust along the half-mile driveway had been minimal. Connie Griffin drove a tan Jeep Cherokee that was parked at an angle in front of the house. Jeff had called ahead to make sure she’d be home, and as he climbed out of the Suburban, he looked up to find her standing on the front porch waiting for him.
“Good morning, Connie,” he said. The sun was to his right, and his body cast a shadow that stretched halfway across the yard toward a dry creek bed thick with weeds. He’d been out here in the spring when water from the melting snowpack flowed through the shallow channel, transforming it into something young again. With the approach of winter, it was good to remember that, he decided. Life still coursed through the veins of Wolf Point, and there was no telling what another season might bring. Nothing, Jeff thought, lies dormant forever.
There were four steps leading up to the front porch, and he ascended them slowly, wishing there was some other reason for him to be here. When he’d left the Montana State Crime Lab four days ago, Jeff had forgotten to take the DNA collection kit with him. Dr. Lester had shipped it to him by FedEx, but Jeff had still waited a few days to contact Ms. Griffin. This was the hardest part of his job, delivering bad news to unsuspecting people. He’d become accustomed to everything else, but visits like this one never got any easier.
Connie smiled at him as he stepped up onto the porch. “Your boots are dragging this morning, Lieutenant. It’s a good thing I just brewed a fresh pot of coffee.”
“I can use it,” he said. “I’m never fully conscious until the second cup.”
“Then three cups it’ll be, two for you and one for me.” She turned and headed back into the house, and Jeff followed her into the kitchen.
The interior was mostly wood, but sunlight streamed through a bump-out window above the sink, and small dust particles hung in the shaft of light, suspended in the air like fireflies on a summer evening.
“I don’t have a special cup for officers of the Wolf Point Police Department,” she said, “but I do have one with a Boy Scouts of America logo on it. I suppose that’s the best I can do. Were you a Boy Scout, Lieutenant? I can’t remember.”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “I kind of went the other way. Got into some fights, played hooky, and came pretty close to getting kicked out of school before I pulled my act together.” He smiled. “I guess you could say I’m a reformed juvenile delinquent.”
She gave him a stern look. “I do not remember that, Lieutenant. You were always a good boy. That’s what I remember.”
“Well then, your memory serves me well.” He pulled out a chair and took a seat at the table. Jeff watched as she stood at the counter and poured the coffee. She reminded him of his own mother, the way she’d been before the death of his brother. His mother was dead now, the victim of too much grief and too many pills in the medicine cabinet. He wished things had been different. He wished she’d had the courage to stick it out.
Connie settled into the chair across from him and gave him a brief smile as she arranged the items. She’d placed the coffee mug—Boy Scouts of America, it read, just as she’d promised—on the table in front of him. There was a jar of sugar and a small white ceramic pitcher with creamer, and she’d set out a folded napkin and a spoon for each of them.
“I’m not supposed to have too much sugar,” she told him, “on account of my diabetes. Half a scoop is all I allow myself, and no sweets in the morning, just a slice of toast and a pat of low-fat butter.” She sighed. “The things I would eat if my body only allowed it.”
“You look good. I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit.”
“Hogwash,” she said. “I’m fifty pounds overweight, and that’s not likely to change in this lifetime.” She paused and looked at him. “Help yourself to the cream and sugar, Lieutenant.”
“None for me, thank you.” He lifted the mug to his lips and took a sip. It was hot, but not scalding. He swallowed it down, and the comforting warmth of it filled his stomach. He took a second sip. It was almost good enough to make him forget why he had come here.
“So,” she said, as if reading his mind, “what brings you all the way out here to see me, Lieutenant?”
Jeff put his coffee mug back down on the table. He watched as she lifted the top of the sugar jar, scooped out half a spoonful, and submerged it in her coffee. She looked down at the spoon as she stirred. It clinked along the inside of the ceramic cup like a wind chime.
“You’re a busy man,” she said, “and although you’ve been out here before for social visits, that was a long time ago. I don’t imagine that’s the purpose of your visit today.”
“No, ma’am. I’m sorry to say that it isn’t.”
She stopped stirring, removed the spoon, and placed it on her napkin.
“You’ve found something on David Reece’s farm.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and his heart ached at the sound of it.
“And now you’re here. Because it involves me, doesn’t it? One of the bodies you discovered buried in the ground.”
He leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t know if it involves you or not,” he said. “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”
She stood up and went to the window, leaving Jeff alone at the table. He looked across at her empty chair, at the small dark stain where the head of her spoon was resting on its napkin.
“I almost told you not to bother coming,” she said. “He’s been gone for two decades. I’ve found a way to come to terms with that.”
Jeff folded his hands on the table in front of him. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say to make it better.
“He had a place of his own, but he used to visit me every Sunday,” she said. “When two Sundays came and went without him walking through that door, I knew he was gone.” She shook her head. “Abel was a good boy, like you, Lieutenant, but he was always slower than his brother. It wasn’t his fault. He got turned around in the womb and had to be cut out of me. By the time he made it into this world, the damage was already done.”
She leaned forward and looked out the window, as if she thought he might be walking up the driveway, returning home at this very moment.
“‘Dimwitted,’ people called him, and as much as I hated them for saying it, I have to admit that it was accurate. Kids leave when they get older, but not Abel. He relied on me. He couldn’t make it on his own. That’s how I knew, Lieutenant. That’s how I knew that something terrible had happened.”
“We don’t know that it’s him,” Jeff said. His voice was soft, as if he was calming a child. “The age seems about right, but . . . there were a lot of people who went missing back then. It could be any one of them.”
“You know it’s him,” she said. “You know or you wouldn’t be here.”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “We’re not certain. The pathologist gave me a DNA specimen kit. I’m supposed to ask you for a sample.”
Connie stood there with her back to him. He could hear her whispering to herself, a prayer that began with “Dear God” and became fiercer and more personal after that. She was in her mid-fifties, and her shoulders were more rounded than the last time he’d been out here. Jeff tried to remember when that had been. It was difficult to pin down, the years since then tumbling together.
He waited until she was finished praying, until the whispering stopped and she was just standing there, looking out the window. “I’ll come back later,” he said, and when he stood up to go, the legs of his chair squawked against the floorboards.
She turned her head. “Tell me at least that you have enough to prosecute.”
“We’re working on it.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“We’re being careful,” he said. “We want the charges to stick. We need to gather as much evidence as possible.”
“And a DNA sample from me will help you with that?”
“Yes, ma’am. Just a quick swab from the inside of your cheek.”
“Take it, then,” she said. “Collect your sample and then bury this man the way he’s buried the rest of us. And if his daughter had anything to do with it, you can bury her, too.”
“We’re looking into it. We haven’t ruled out any possibilities.”
Connie turned and looked at him. Her eyes were red and puffy, but her jaw was set and her lower lip protruded from her face. Again, she reminded Jeff of his mother, Avery, and the determined look she’d had on the night she checked out forever.
“I know this is difficult,” he said. “If it ever becomes too difficult, if you ever start to have thoughts of hurting yourself—”
“I’m not like that, Lieutenant,” she said. “I’m a survivor. I keep going. It’s the only way I know how.”
He nodded.
“If you find out that it’s my Abel who’s buried in the ground there, I don’t want to know,” she said. “You can do me that courtesy, can’t you?”
“If that’s what you want,” he said. “You might hear about it from the others, but you won’t hear about it from me.” He looked down at the floor. “The kit’s in the truck,” he said. “I’ll go get it. We’ll take the sample, and then we’ll be done with this.”
“Okay,” Connie said, but she had turned and was looking out through the window at the long stretch of driveway leading up to her house.