The vibe was mellow inside the Sportsman’s Tavern when Jane entered just before closing time. Kevin was wiping down tables, singing along with the Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody on the jukebox. Only one customer remained seated at the bar—an old guy with nothing better to do than nurse his last inch of beer.
When Kevin looked up to see who’d come in, his face brightened. He even looked a little relieved. But then the memory of what had gone down must have penetrated because the smile dissolved into a frown. He switched off the music, then called, “Hey, Burt, time to call it a night.”
The old guy turned and nodded to Jane. “Evening,” he said.
“Morning,” she responded.
“I suppose you’re right.” He finished his drink in two sips. “I’ll catch you tomorrow,” he said, tossing a look at Kevin. As he shuffled to the door, he donned a fur-lined cap with earflaps. “Cold out there,” he said to Jane with a wink. The bell above the door jingled as he trudged out.
As Jane glanced around, she unbuttoned her sheepskin jacket, making sure she had easy access to the holster clipped to the back of her belt.
“Surprised to see you here,” said Kevin, moving behind the bar, tossing the white towel over his shoulder.
Jane kept her distance. “Have you talked to your daughters today?”
The question seemed to confuse him. “Daughters?”
“I met Grace this morning.”
A silence followed her comment, brief but undeniably charged. “You just never quit, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I thought I made it clear the last time we talked that you were to leave this town and never come back.”
“Funny thing about that last conversation,” said Jane. “I don’t remember a word of it. It’s called retrograde amnesia. Often happens after a traumatic injury. I’d say that the beating I took falls under that heading, wouldn’t you?”
He pulled the rag off his shoulder, dropped his gaze to the bar.
“Why, Kevin? Why did you do it?”
His eyes inched up. “You really don’t remember?”
“I vaguely recall dragging myself out to a highway, getting picked up by a van. I remember looking at myself in a mirror in a bathroom somewhere, seeing my face all bruised and bloody.”
“Honestly, Jane, I’m glad you’re here. I was worried and hoped you’d be okay. I’ve thought about you so many times.”
“You should have been worried. I suppose, since I don’t remember much, you could lie, tell me whatever you want, but I don’t think you will. Some part of the man I met and got to know during the time I worked for you had to be real.”
His eyes searched the row of glowing lanterns hanging above the tables. “I wasn’t the one who hurt you.”
“Right. It was your evil twin.”
“Look, I just wanted to talk to you away from the bar. I had to find out how much you knew, and what you intended to do with that knowledge. Mostly, I needed to convince you to leave town, to get the hell away from me and my family and never come back. You lied to me about who you were, why you were in town.”
“Yeah, lying sure is a mortal sin, isn’t it? I mean, you’d know if anybody would.”
“I thought we were friends.”
“In another time and place, we might have been.”
“My brother came along that night. He was the one who got rough with you.”
“Rough?”
“I know,” he said, eyes cast down again. “I know. I never intended any of that. When Doug gets drunk, he’s hard to control. He slugged me in the stomach and shoved me into the snow, then he started in on you. I finally dragged him off and pulled him back to the car. I told you to wait for me, that I’d be back. I had to get Doug calmed down. It took longer than I’d expected. He eventually agreed to sit in the car while I ran to get you, but when I reached the clearing, I saw that you’d gone out to the road. Laurie’s Windstar was parked there, so I knew she had you—that you were safe. But then I got to thinking that you might convince her to drive you straight to the police station. That you’d file an assault charge against us, maybe even tell them what you thought you’d found out. Doug and I drove over to the government center. The Windstar was nowhere around, so we got the idea of driving to Hannah’s house, thinking that Laurie might have taken you there. Sure enough, the van was in the drive. We ran up and banged on the door.” He stopped. “You don’t remember any of this?”
“Nothing,” said Jane.
“We demanded to be let in. Hannah came out on the front steps. She refused to let Doug into her house because he was so obviously angry—and hammered. She acted like she didn’t know what we were talking about. She eventually let me in, but you weren’t there. You must have told Laurie what had happened when she picked you up, but she refused to talk about it. At that point, since I assumed you’d heard what I said to you, I figured you were sufficiently frightened and that you’d taken off. Only thing is, when I got back to the bar, your SUV was still parked behind the building.” Kneading the white towel, he added, “You may not believe me, but I’m sorry about what happened.”
“Really? If Doug hadn’t been there, and if I refused to do what you asked, how rough would you have gotten?”
He hesitated before answering. “I don’t know.” Approaching his next comment more warily, he said, “You said you met Gracie this morning. How—”
“Guthrie Hewitt and I came back here last night. We drove to the farmhouse this morning. Kira was in the process of feeding us this fake story about how her mother died when Grace appeared out of nowhere and said it wasn’t true. She gave us the real story, which came as a complete surprise to Kira.”
“Oh God,” groaned Kevin, placing both hands flat on the counter to steady himself. “Can this get any worse?”
Jane moved up to the bar, removed the package of photographs from her pocket, and dropped them in front of him. “You said there was no proof that Delia was murdered. You might want to take a look at that.”
“What is it?”
“Photographs of the crime scene. Strangulation marks are clearly visible on your wife’s throat.”
He pushed the package away. “I don’t need to see them. I was there. Tell me how Guthrie got them?”
“They were sent to him in the mail along with a note that said, ‘Proof Delia was murdered. Stay out of it or the same thing will happen to you.’”
Kevin seemed confused. “Who—”
“Father Mike looked at the handwriting and said it was Doug’s.”
His smile was bitter. “Ah, Dougie. I can always count on him to do the wrong thing, especially when he’s had too much to drink.”
“So you admit you murdered Delia?”
“Are you wearing a wire?”
The comment struck her as funny. “No, Kevin. No wires. No recording devices. Just you and me talking.”
He considered that for a moment, then seemed to accept it. “Whatever I say means nothing without proof. That’s critical to any investigation and you don’t have any.”
She shrugged.
“Those photos may show that my wife was murdered, but that says nothing about who did the deed. The death was ruled accidental. There’s nothing out there that points to anything else.”
“You’ve covered your tracks well,” she agreed.
“Thank you.”
“Still, I’ve managed to figure most of it out.”
“If you say so.”
“I know what happened. I know you did it. But I don’t know why.”
“Why would you care?”
It was a good question. The answer slipped out before she could stop herself. “Because I don’t want to hate you.”
The tightness in his face eased. “You think understanding why someone does something mitigates the action?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“You had to have a reason.”
“I had many reasons.”
“So it wasn’t just an impulse?”
“It was a total impulse. It was over before I even knew what I’d done. But that doesn’t mean I was sorry. I wasn’t. Not then. Oh, I was sorry enough for myself—for what it would mean for my life if I got caught. It’s taken me years to realize how disastrous my actions were for everyone else—my family and all the people I love. Delia’s death is the gift that keeps on giving, in more dreadful ways than I could ever have imagined.”
“But you still haven’t said why.”
“Are you always like this? A dog with a bone?”
She sank her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “Yes, pretty much.”
Pulling over a stool, he sat down, nodding for her to do the same. “It’s been a long day.”
She drew one of the bar stools away from the counter. She didn’t want to sit too close to him.
“You don’t trust me.”
“No.”
“But you don’t want to hate me.”
“What I want more than anything, Kevin, is to understand.”
“Won’t change anything.”
“Why can’t you just say it?”
Looking away, he said, “Because it’s ugly. Deeply, irrevocably ugly.” Pressing his hands together, he gave himself a moment. “Right from the start, Delia and I had a stormy relationship. It was one of the things I liked. She was a party girl. I thought I was a party guy. She came from a military family and I was in the army when we first met. But then, after we married and I left the military, I dragged her back to the middle of nowhere to raise two kids she didn’t even like. She couldn’t believe she’d ended up in rural Wisconsin. I think she thought of it as almost a fate worse than death. We began talking about divorce. The kids were miserable.
“I’d started a construction company with a friend of mine, so I was gone a lot. She couldn’t stand being alone, so she dumped the kids at my mother’s place and found various waitress jobs. Because the kids were spending so much time at the farmhouse, and because Hannah was often there to visit, she got to wondering about Gracie, why she was the way she was. She did some digging, had some tests done, talked to a few doctors she knew at a couple of university hospitals, and eventually came to the conclusion that Grace suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome. It wasn’t talked about—or even understood well—back in the mid nineties, not like it is today. I was always after Delia to stop the wine and beer when she was pregnant with Grace, but I know she still drank. She held her liquor well for such a small woman. Most people, if they didn’t know her, wouldn’t even realize she’d been drinking when she was high as a kite. Vodka was her go-to beverage if she didn’t want anyone to know she’d been drinking. She thought people couldn’t smell it on her breath. Thank God she was on the wagon when she was pregnant with Kira. Only problem was, she fell off it not long after Kira was born. I mean, maybe she wasn’t an alcoholic. But she sure abused alcohol.
“You have to understand: The effects of alcohol on a fetus are devastating. It’s like receiving a traumatic brain injury in the womb. Gracie had a very low birth weight. She didn’t sleep well, or eat well. As she grew, there were other issues. Hyperactivity. Poor impulse control. She had trouble telling time. She’d fly into rages when she became frustrated. And the weirdest thing for me was, she never seemed to be able to learn from her mistakes.
“The morning Hannah came to the farmhouse to talk to our mom about it—to run the diagnosis past her and discuss how she should tell me—I was there. I was working in the barn, rehabbing it for my mom after my dad’s death. I walked into the kitchen and heard part of their conversation. I asked what they were talking about. Hannah pretty much had to tell me. I listened, tried to take it in, and then I left, roared off in my car. I made it home in five minutes flat. Delia was in the kitchen, unpacking groceries. I came in and started screaming at her. I mean, I lost it. Our daughter was suffering because of her drinking. Grace would struggle with these problems for the rest of her life because of Delia’s selfishness. I followed her around the house. She said that Hannah was a quack, that she didn’t know what she was talking about. That Gracie was difficult, sure, but it had nothing to do with her having a glass of wine every now and then. She just refused to hear what I was telling her.
“She tried to change the subject, she said she’d been to counseling with Father Mike, that he had such an obvious crush on her—wasn’t that hilarious. She did admit that he’d helped her understand what she really wanted out of life. Her conclusion was that she did love me. She wanted to make it work between us. She went back into the kitchen, saying that she planned to spend the rest of the day making Christmas cookies. As she was emptying out the last bag, I noticed a couple of white boxes with pink lettering on them. I picked one up. It was a pregnancy test. I shoved it at her, demanded to know why she had it. She got all lovey-dovey, said that she had a really special Christmas gift in mind for me. I loved children so much, she thought we should have another.
“I started shaking. I asked her if she was already pregnant. She said she wasn’t, but she’d been off the pill for several weeks, so it was only a matter of time.
“I don’t even remember what I said after that. I think I hit her. We were running through the house at one point, and then we were out on the deck. I had my hands around her neck and I was squeezing and squeezing. I remember her going limp. How disgusted I was by the sight of her, how I just wanted to erase her. I must have dumped her over the railing because the next thing I knew, I was standing there, looking down at her body in the ravine. Reality eventually sank in. That’s when I rushed back to the kitchen and called my mom. I told her what I’d done. She made me promise to stay where I was, said she’d be right over.”
Jane watched in silence as tears streamed down his face.
He scraped them away. “So now you know. Does it change anything?”
She shook her head.
“You can freely hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You should.” He picked up the bar towel and wiped his face.
The copy she’d made of Walt Olsen’s letter felt like a burning coal inside her pocket. Part of the reason he’d come clean with her so easily was that he was sure Jane had no proof that he’d murdered his wife. She reached into her pocket, touched the paper.
A loud knock interrupted them.
Turning around, Jane saw a police officer standing at the front door, the strobe lights on his squad car lighting up the dark street behind him.
“What did you do?” demanded Kevin, desperation filling his voice.
“Nothing,” said Jane. “Honestly. I have no idea why he’s here.”
Wiping his face one last time, Kevin went to open up.
Jane strained to hear the conversation, but they were talking too quietly. After nearly a minute, Kevin closed the door and came back inside. “I have to go.”
“What is it?” asked Jane, moving off the stool.
“My brother. They’ve got him in the cruiser. Seems he was running around the trailer park where he lives, buck naked except for his hiking boots, knocking on doors and cursing people out.”
“Is he drunk?”
“Blitzed out of his mind.” He grabbed his coat off a hook by the cash register. Stopping before he reached the front door, he waited for Jane. “You know, this may be hard for you to believe, but except for that one horrible act—for which I know I should rot in hell forever—I’m the most normal person in my family.” His smile was sad. “The truth never sets anyone free. I’m glad you’re okay, but I hope to God this is the last time I ever see you.”
All Jane could do was nod.