Dead Man's Song

Page 54

“Did your father?”
“I don’t know, but I think so. I asked him a few times, but he never really answered me. He’d just spread his hands and say something like ‘World’s a funny place, Val…who knows what people will do,’ which is no answer at all.”
“Even after his nephew was killed?”
“I think Val’s dad was planning to go after Griswold himself,” Crow said. “He never said as much, and I don’t have anything but a gut feeling about it, but that’s what I believe.”
Val sipped her coffee, said nothing.
“So,” Newton said in a summing-up tone of voice, “the Bone Man sees and recognizes the killer as the guy he used to work for, is rebuffed by the local cops when he tried to make a police report, and probably got a noncommittal answer from your dad, Val, when he shared his suspicions with him. Okay, so then what? He goes out as some kind of vigilante? I’m not feeling it. A guy who ran from the draft because he didn’t want to carry a gun? That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? I mean, do people change their character just like that?”
“Some people do. Sometimes an event can change a person’s entire nature and personality,” Val said, sharing a significant look with Crow. Newton had the impression, though, that she was referring to something else as well, but he let it go.
He said, “Crow, didn’t you tell your father that you’d seen Griswold’s face, and that you could identify him?”
Crow’s face darkened a little. “Sure, I told my father. I told him everything I saw, and once I remembered whose face it was I’d seen I told him that, too. He beat the shit out of me for lying. Laid into me so hard I was sick for three days. People just assumed I was shaken up by the attack, but it was because of my father, and he told me to keep my mouth shut, to never say anything about it to anyone. Ever.”
“Why? I would have thought he’d have wanted some kind of payback for what happened to his sons.”
“The matter is a little more complex than that. You see, if I’d named just about anyone else in town as the guy who’d attacked me, then my dad would have rounded up some of his redneck cronies and gone out and killed the guy. No question. But when it came to Griswold all bets were off because dear old dad all but worshipped Griswold. There were a handful of guys who used to hang out at Griswold’s place. Young turks, mostly—high school age all the way to early thirties. My dad would have been the oldest, probably, at thirty-two. Youngest would have been Vic Wingate who works at Shanahan’s. Also around the same age you have Stosh Pulaski, Phil Teague, and then a little bit older was Jim Polk, who’s a local cop now, and our esteemed chief of police, Gus Bernhardt,” Crow said, “who was ten years younger than my dad but already a cop, and maybe one or two others that I didn’t know at the time. All of them were either closet-Klansmen or something like it. Don’t forget, Newt, that we have more KKK members here in Pennsylvania than in any other state.”
“I’d heard. Something to be proud of.”
“You Jewish, by the way?” Crow asked.
“Only my mother’s side, which I guess makes it official.”
“So you probably have the same opinion of these boneheads as I do. So, then we have Griswold who was very probably of age to have been a soldier in World War Two—and who is German—and you have an interesting little clubhouse out in the woods where these redneck mouth-breathers can drink and raise whatever brand of hell they thought was fun. No way any of them would turn on Griswold, even if they believe he was guilty, which most of them probably did not.”
Newton was shaking his head. “This must have traumatized you.”
Val nodded and reached out to touch Crow’s shoulder. “It did.”
“More than I can express,” Crow agreed. “Every part of that autumn traumatized me, and it took me a long time to get over it. It’s one of several reasons why I had such a long love affair with the bottle. When you drink, you always have something to blame for your nightmares. And the booze hides them.”
“But you don’t drink anymore,” Newton said, “so what about the nightmares?”
Crow glanced at Val again, and then shrugged. “They’re back, and I have to face them without the support of my old friends Jim Beam and Jack Daniels. That’s one of the reasons I’m being so candid with you, Newt. I guess it’s a kind of therapy for me. What’s the word? Cathartic?” He shrugged again. “I’m doing it to myself, and, I guess, for myself, I want to get it all out. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah. I had come out to the farm here for the memorial service for Roger Guthrie. Afterward I talked to Morse for a bit, and I told him that I thought the man who had attacked me was my dad’s friend, Mr. Griswold, but the Bone Man told me to just forget I saw anything. He told me to make sure I stayed indoors at night, and made me promise to tell Val the same. Then he smiled, gave me a kind of pat on the head, and took off.” Crow paused. “I never saw him again. Well…not alive anyway.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know the details, you understand, because I wasn’t there, but from what I’ve been able to figure out is that the Bone Man must have gone and confronted Griswold. They must have fought, and I think the Bone Man killed him. How he managed it, I don’t know. Morse really was just a skinny bag of bones, and Griswold was this big tough son of a bitch, but Morse must have done it. Killed him and buried him God only knows where. No trace was ever found of Griswold’s body. Not a single trace.”
“What about the Bone Man? What happened to him?”
“They killed him,” Val said simply, and when Newton looked at her she spread her hands in a gesture of disgust. “Beat him to death and then tied him to the scarecrow post that marks the boundary line between my property and the section of state forest over by Dark Hollow Road. Which is another tie-in to the present…events. That was the same spot where those two poor officers were killed.”
Newton licked his lips. “I’m glad you’re telling me this while it’s bright daylight.”
Val grunted, then picked up the thread of the story. “Crow and I were the ones who found him next morning. I screamed so loud my dad heard me all the way from the barn and he came pelting out with a pitchfork in his hands and ten of the field hands at his heels. I’ve never seen anyone look so scared and so furious!”
“He thought someone was attacking you,” Newton said, and she nodded. “So…if the Bone Man really did kill Griswold, then who killed him? You think it was the crowd that hung out on Griswold’s property?”
“Who else could it have been? I mean, what else would make sense?”
“Maybe Griswold killed him. Killed him, strung him up, and then took off for parts unknown.”
“That’s one of the popular theories,” Crow said. “Though I’ve heard some talk that the town fathers did him in as a way of protecting the community, which paints them as heroes and the Bone Man as the villain.”
“Which you think is horseshit?” Newton asked.
“Yep. I think that bunch of redneck assholes lynched him, either on Griswold’s orders or as a revenge killing after their friend Griswold had been killed.”
Newton sipped his Yoo-Hoo; Val sipped the last of her coffee. Crow blew across the neck of his bottle, making a mournful wail.
“Would you…um…know the names of any of these guys? Not just the ones who hung around Griswold’s but the ones who may actually have had a hand in murdering Morse?”
Crow reached over and punched the OFF button on the tape recorder. “You didn’t hear me say this, and if you print it I’ll call you a liar. Are we clear?”
“We’re clear.”
“Okay. Gus Bernhardt let something spill once, years ago, back during that short—and I mean very short—period where he and I were kind of chummy. My first days on the job as a cop. We were both off duty and had been drinking and he let it slip that he was there when the Bone Man was killed, and then he clammed right up. Never said another word again but it was enough. No way on earth are you going to get that into print without poking a stick in the beehive.”
“I guess not. Well, can you tell me—off the record—who else was there?”
“I never did put names to all of them, but from what I’ve been able to pick up here and there over the years, I can say for sure that Jim Polk was one of them. He and Gus were always thick as thieves. Maybe my dad, too. And Vic Wingate, and he is one mean bastard. If I had to pick someone as the ringleader at that lynching, it’d be Vic.”
“He was just a teenager, Crow,” Val said. “Just a kid.”
“That bastard was never a kid,” Crow snapped, his voice suddenly bitter and harsh. “He was born old, mean, and twisted. He was over my house enough when my dad was still alive, and from my earliest memory Vic was always very controlled, very focused, and as evil as the day is long.”
“Evil is a pretty strong word, Crow,” Newton said, but Crow only shrugged. “Okay, I won’t print the names of the men you suspect. Can I turn my recorder back on?” Crow nodded and Newton hit the button. “So, what happened to Morse’s body? Where is he buried?”
“In your hometown actually, Newt—Black Marsh. The people in Pine Deep nearly threw a fit when they learned that Morse’s body was going to be buried in our local cemetery. There were threats and some of them were nasty, so Henry somehow managed to have the body shipped to Black Marsh and had it buried there. He put up a stone and even bought a suit for Morse to be buried in.”
“So it was all swept under the carpet?”
“Sure. It wasn’t long after that that the town started building up, going upscale. The Massacre was pushed back out of sight and no one really ever talks about it. We have too many fun ghost stories to keep us in business, no real-life tragedies need apply.” He gave an ironic laugh. “In all the official reports Griswold was counted as murder victim number seventeen. Problem was that Griswold was local money who left no heirs, no will, no papers of any kind, so it was a bitch of a legal tangle to decide what to do with his property. It’s still there. Fields and gardens all gone back to forestland now, I expect, but the big old stone farmhouse would still there, back past Dark Hollow. I think the property reverted back to the state, or something like that. I don’t know how the law works on something like that. I would imagine the place is overgrown, and the local folklore insists the place is haunted.”