William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

I stepped out onto the porch.

Jake came too, glued to me, and said, “The sheriff was here? What did he want?”

“Mostly to see Dad. But he asked me some questions about Karl and Ariel.”

“What kind of questions?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I spoke to Jake curtly in a way meant to cut off his probing because something else had captured my attention. In the aftermath of Ariel’s death I often found myself noticing some unusual convergence of natural circumstance that I took as a sign. Not necessarily from God but clearly from forces beyond my own constricted understanding. The night before, I’d observed two shooting stars whose paths crossed in the sky to the east and I knew it meant something extraordinary but what I couldn’t say. And after my father and Jake had left for Mankato as I listened to the Twins game on the radio I’d heard, during a few moments of transmission static, a voice speak from a different broadcast source and I thought I made out two words, though not clearly: The answer . The answer to what? I wondered at the time.

Now as I stood on the porch I saw that the sun was behind the church steeple and the steeple shadow had fallen across the street and was pointing directly at me like a long proscriptive finger.

“Frank, are you okay?”

The sheriff’s car came down Tyler and swung onto Third and pulled into the church lot. The sheriff got out and walked to the front door of the sanctuary and went inside.

Jake tugged on my arm. “Frank!”

I pulled loose from his grip and started quickly down the porch steps.

“Where are you going?”

I said, “Nowhere.”

In an instant he was at my side. I didn’t want to argue so I let him come. I raced to the church’s side door that opened onto the basement stairs. Gus’s motorcycle had been gone all day and as I descended into the cool under the church I knew he wouldn’t be there to stop me. I went to the disconnected furnace duct that ran up to my father’s office and pulled out the rags meant to block the flow of sound. Jake watched and his eyes told me he considered it an enormous transgression.

“Frank,” he whispered.

I shot him a look that shut him up.

There was a knock on my father’s office door and the boards above us squeaked as he crossed to greet his visitor.

“Thank you for coming,” he said.

“Could we sit down, Mr. Drum?”

“Of course.”

They walked to my father’s desk and chairs scraped.

My father asked, “What did the medical examiner find?”

The sheriff said, “He confirmed van der Waal’s initial assessment. Your daughter sustained a head trauma from an elongated instrument, maybe something like a tire iron, but the actual cause of death was drowning. There was water in her lungs, silty like you’d find in the Minnesota River. But there’s something else. Mr. Drum, your daughter wasn’t the only one killed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I wish to God I could keep this from becoming public but this is a small town and sooner or later everyone’s going to know, so I wanted you to know first. Ariel was pregnant when she died.”

There was no sound from above, nothing down the duct at all, but beside me Jake sucked in an astonished breath and I grabbed him and clapped my hand over his mouth to ensure his silence.

“Did you know, Mr. Drum?”

“I had no idea,” Dad said and I could hear his astonishment.

“The medical examiner estimated that Ariel was five or six weeks along in her pregnancy.”

“A baby,” my father said. “Dear God, what a tragedy.”

“I’m truly sorry, Mr. Drum. And I’m sorry but there are some questions I have to ask you.”

A painful silence followed then my father said, “All right.”

“How long had your daughter been seeing Karl Brandt?”

“They’d been dating about a year.”

“Did you believe they might get married?”

“Married? No. They both had other plans.”

“This afternoon your son told me that Ariel had changed her mind about going away.”

“She was just nervous about leaving home, I think.”

“Do you still think that? In light of what the medical examiner found?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your son also told me that Ariel sometimes sneaked out at night and didn’t come back until almost morning.”

“I can’t believe that’s true.”

“It’s what he told me. If it was true, any idea where she might have gone?”

“No.”

“Is it possible she was sneaking out to be with the Brandt boy?”

“I suppose it’s possible. Why are you so interested in Karl?”

“Well, it’s like this, Mr. Drum. All along I’ve pretty much figured that Warren Redstone or Morris Engdahl was responsible for what happened to your daughter. Now I’ve looked at Redstone’s past and although the man isn’t any stranger to jails he has nothing violent on his record. And those items Officer Doyle found in Redstone’s little camp on the river, they were none of them worth anything and exactly the kinds of items you might find dropped somewhere along the railroad tracks or a riverbank or in an alley. So I don’t have a real strong feeling at this point about him being responsible for Ariel’s death. And first thing this morning, I went out to Sioux Falls to have a talk with Morris Engdahl and Judy Kleinschmidt. They’re sticking to their story about being in Mueller’s barn together the night your daughter went missing. Aside from the minor altercation with your son, I don’t really have any reason to suspect Engdahl, except he’s the kind of kid who always seems to be shaking hands with trouble. The Mann Act charge’ll let me hold him and pump him good, so maybe we’ll get something out of him yet.”

My father said, “But you think because Ariel’s pregnant and she and Karl have been dating that it’s more likely Karl had something to do with her death?”

“Look, Mr. Drum, this is the first homicide investigation I’ve ever conducted. Things like this don’t happen in Sioux County. Right now, I’m just asking questions and trying to find someplace to go with my thinking.”

“I can’t imagine Karl would ever harm Ariel.”

“Did you know they had a huge argument the day before she went missing?”

“No.”

“I talked to some of Ariel’s friends who witnessed it. Anger on both sides, apparently. They couldn’t tell me what it was about. Can you?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“Maybe about a baby, a child that would complicate both their lives enormously?”

“I don’t know, Sheriff.”

“Your son told me that Ariel was a lot more fond of Karl than Karl was of her.”

“I don’t know how he would know that.”

“Would your wife?”

My father didn’t answer right away. I glanced at Jake and even in the dark I could see that his face was flushed and he gripped the furnace duct as if it was a horse that might gallop away.

“I’ll talk to her,” my father finally said.

“I came to you first, Mr. Drum. Now I have to talk to Karl Brandt. And then I’d like to talk to your wife, after you’ve told her what I’ve told you, of course. Will she be here later?”

“I’ll make certain she is.”

“Thank you.”

A chair scraped and a moment later another and the floorboards gave noisily under the weight of the men as they left and above us there was no sound and in the basement there was only a kind of stunned silence until Jake stuttered astonished and angry, “K-K-K-Karl.”

My father went from the church to our house and when he could not find us there returned to the front porch. A wind had risen out of the southwest sweeping in thick clouds the color of soot. He saw us coming from the church parking lot under that oppressive sky and he eyed us with concern.