Mary Clark - A Cry In The Night

With a last terrible effort she skied across the open fields. The house was totally dark; only the faint light of the crescent moon revealed its outlines. But the windows of the office were bright. She headed there, the canvas flapping more wildly without the trees to break the sharp wind.

She could no longer scream; there were no sounds left except the guttural moans she heard in her throat; her lips still formed the words help me, help me.

At the door of the office she tried to turn the handle with her frozen hands, tried to kick off her skis, but could not force the binders to release. Finally she banged at the door with her ski pole until it was flung open, and she fell forward into Mark’s arms.

“Jenny!” His voice broke. “Jenny!”

“Steady, Mrs. Krueger.” Someone was pulling the skis off her feet. She knew that burly body, that thick, blunt profile. It was Sheriff Gunderson.

Mark was trying to pry her fingers loose from the canvas. “Jenny, let me see that.” And then his awed voice. “Oh, my God.”

Her own voice was a witch’s croak: “Erich. Erich painted it. He killed my baby. He dresses like Caroline. Beth. Tina… Maybe he’s killed them too.”

“Erich painted this?” This sheriff’s voice, incredulous.

She whirled on him. “Have you found my girls? Why are you here? Are my girls dead?”

“Jenny.” Mark was holding her tightly, his hand stopping the flow of words from her mouth. “Jenny, I called the sheriff because I couldn’t reach you. Jenny, where did you find this?”

“In the cabin… So many paintings. But not his. Caroline painted them.”

“Mrs. Krueger…”

On him she could vent her pain. She mimicked his heavy voice. “Anything you want to tell me, Mrs. Krueger? Anything you suddenly remembered?” She began to sob.

“Jenny,” Mark implored, “it’s not the sheriff’s fault. I should have realized. Dad had begun to suspect…”

The sheriff was studying the canvas, his face suddenly deflated, the skin folding into limp creases. His eyes were riveted on the upper-right-hand corner of the painting, with the bassinette suspended from a hole in the sky and the grotesque Caroline-like figure bending over it. “Mrs. Krueger, Erich came to me. He said he understood that there’d been talk about the baby’s death. He urged me to request an autopsy.”

The door swung open. Erich, Jenny thought. Oh, my God, Erich. But it was Clyde who rushed in, his expression frightened and disapproving. “What in hell is going on around here?” He looked at the canvas. Jenny watched as his leathery face drained to the color of white suede.

“Clyde, who’s in there?” Rooney called. Her footsteps approached, crackling on the icy snow.

“Hide that thing,” Clyde begged. “Don’t let her see it. Here…” He thrust it into the supply closet.

Rooney appeared on the threshold of the office, her face filled out a little, her eyes wide and calm. Jenny felt the thin arms embracing her. “Jenny, I’ve missed you.”

Through stiff lips she managed to say, “I’ve missed you too.” She had begun to blame Rooney for everything that had happened. She had dismissed everything Rooney told her as the imagination of a sick mind.

“Jenny, where are the girls? Can I say hello to them?”

The question was a slap across the face. “Erich’s away with the girls.” She knew her voice was trembling, unnatural.

“Come on, Rooney. You can visit tomorrow. You better get home. The doctor wanted you to go straight to bed,” Clyde urged.

He took her arm, propelled her forward, looked over his shoulder. “Be right back.”

While they waited, she managed to tell them about her search for the cabin. “It was you, Mark. Last night. I said the children would be fine with Erich and you didn’t say anything. Later on… in bed… I knew… you were worried about them. And I began to think-if not Rooney, if not Elsa, if not me… And my mind kept saying, Mark is afraid for the children. Then I thought. Erich. It has to be Erich.

“That first night… He made me wear Caroline’s nightgown… He wanted me to be Caroline… He even went to sleep in his old bed. And the pine soap he put on the girls’ pillows. I knew he’d done that. And Kevin. He must have written-or phoned-to say he was coming to Minnesota… Erich was always toying with me. Erich must have known I met Kevin. He talked about the extra mileage in the car. He must have heard the gossip from the woman in church.”

“Jenny.”

“No, let me tell you. He took me back to that restaurant. When Kevin threatened to stop the adoption he told Kevin to come down. That’s why the call was on our phone. Erich and I are the same height when I wear heels. With my coat… and the black wig-he could look enough like me until he got in the car. He must have hit Kevin. And Joe. He was jealous of Joe. He could have come home earlier that day; he knew about the rat poison. But my baby. He hated my baby. Maybe because of his red hair. Right from the beginning when he gave him Kevin’s name, he must have been planning to kill him.”

Were those dry, harsh sobs coming from her? She could not stop talking. She had to let it out.

“Those times I thought I felt someone leaning over me. He was opening the panel. He must have been wearing the wig. The night I went to have the baby. Woke him up. I touched Erich’s eyelid. That’s what scared me. That was what I’d feel when I reached up in the dark… The soft eyelid and the thick lashes.”

Mark was rocking her in his arms.

“He has my children. He has my children.”

“Mrs. Krueger, can you find your way back to the cabin?” Sheriff Gunderson’s tone was urgent.

A chance to do something. “Yes. If we start at the cemetery…”

“Jenny, you can’t,” Mark protested. “We’ll follow your tracks.”

But she would not let them go without her. Somehow she led them back, Mark and the sheriff and Clyde. They turned on the oil lamps, bathing the cabin in a mellow Victorian glow that only accentuated the gnawing cold. They stared at the delicate signature, Caroline Bonardi, then began to search the cupboards. But there were no personal papers; the cupboards were empty except for dishes and cutlery.

“He’s got to keep his painting supplies somewhere,” Mark snapped.

“But the loft is empty,” Jenny said hopelessly. “There was nothing in it except the canvas and the place is so small.”

“It can’t be that small,” Clyde objected. “It’s the size of the house. It might be partitioned off.”

There was a storage area that was half again the size of the loft room, accessible by a door in the right-hand corner, a door that Jenny hadn’t noticed in the shadowy room. This area had stacks of file baskets; dozens more of Caroline’s paintings in them; an easel, a cabinet with painting supplies; two suitcases. Jenny realized they matched the vanity case she’d found in the attic. A long green cape and dark wig were folded over one of the suitcases.

“Caroline’s cape,” Mark said quietly.

Jenny began rifling through the file cabinets. But they only held painting supplies: charcoals and umbras and turpentine and brushes and empty canvases. Nothing, nothing that might indicate where Erich had gone.

Clyde began searching through a bin of canvases near the door. “Look.” His cry was horror-filled. He had pulled out a canvas. This one in the murky green tones of stagnant water. A surrealistic collage of Erich as a child and Caroline. Scenes crowding, overlapping. Erich with a hockey stick in his hand. Caroline bending over a calf; Erich pushing her; her body, sprawled in a tub, no that was the stock tank; her eyes staring up at him. The tip of the hockey stick flipping the overhead lamp into the tank. Erich’s child-face demonic now, laughing into the agonized figure in the water.