Mary Clark: A Cry In The Night

“Tina, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Jenny tried not to let her voice break. “I’m sorry, Tina.”

There was a clunk as the phone was moved, then Tina’s wail.

“Jenny, why are you so upset? The girls were dreaming. It’s just that they miss you as I do, darling.”

“Erich.” Jenny knew she was shouting. “Where are you Erich? Please, I promise you. I’ll sign that confession. I’ll sign anything. But please, I need my children.”

She felt Mark’s grip on her shoulder, cautioning her. “I mean I need my family, Erich.” She forced her voice to calm, bit her lips over the urge to plead with him not to hurt them. “Erich, we can be so happy. I don’t know why I do such strange things when I’m asleep but you promised to take care of me. I’m sure I’ll get better.”

“You were going to leave me, Jenny. You just pretended to love me.”

“Erich, come home and we’ll talk. Or let me send the letter to you. Tell me where you are.”

“Have you talked to anyone about us?”

Jenny looked at Mark. He shook his head warningly. “Why would I tell anyone about us?”

“I tried to phone you three times yesterday afternoon. You were out.”

“Erich, I hadn’t heard from you for so long. I needed to get some fresh air. I skied for a while. I want to be able to ski with you again. We had such fun, remember?”

“I tried to phone Mark last evening. He wasn’t home. Were you with him?”

“Erich, I was here. I’m always here waiting for you.” Tina was screaming now. From the background she could hear road sounds again, like heavy trucks shifting gears on a grade. Could Erich have been at the farm last night? If so had he gone to the cabin? No, if he had been in the cabin and seen the broken window, realized that people had been there, he wouldn’t be calling now.

“Jenny, I’ll think about coming back. You just stay in the house. Don’t go out. Don’t go skiing. I want you right there. And someday I’ll open the door and be there and we’ll be a family again. Will you do that, Jenny?”

“Yes, Erich, yes. Yes. I promise.”

“Mommy, I want to talk to Mommy.” Beth’s pleading. “Please, please…”

There was a sharp, clicking sound and the dial tone began to hum in her ear.

Jenny listened while Mark repeated the conversation. She only interjected when the sheriff asked, “But why would the kids have thought it was you?”

“Because he has my suitcases with him now,” Jenny said. “He probably put one of my robes on… Maybe even that red one I’ve been missing. He must have a dark wig with him. When the children are very sleepy they see what they think they’re seeing. Dr. Philstrom, what will he do now?”

“Jenny, anything is possible. I can’t deny that. But I suspect that as long as he still holds the hope that you’ll stay with him, the girls are fairly safe.”

“But Tina-last night…”

“You have that answer. He tried to phone you in the afternoon and you were gone. He tried to phone Mark in the evening and couldn’t reach him. It’s uncanny how some psychotics develop almost a sixth sense. Some instinct told him you were together. In his frustration he came very near to harming Tina.”

Jenny tried to swallow over the quiver in her voice. “He sounds so strange, almost rambling. Suppose he does come soon? He could conceivably decide to come back tonight. He knows every inch of this property. He could ski in. He could drive a car we wouldn’t recognize. He could walk in from the riverbank. If he sees anyone around here who doesn’t belong here, that will be the end. You’ve all got to go away. Suppose, oh, God, suppose he sees Caroline’s grave has been disturbed? He’ll know that Arden’s body was found. Don’t you see? You can’t have any publicity. You can’t send out flyers. You can’t have strangers here. The cabin. If he goes to the cabin and sees the broken window… those bits of cloth tacked on the trees…”

Sheriff Gunderson looked from Mark to Dr. Philstrom. “Obviously you both agree. All right. Mark, will you ask Rooney and Clyde to come in here? I’ll get the people from the coroner’s office. They’re still sifting the dirt in the cemetery.”

Rooney was surprisingly composed. Jenny knew that Dr. Philstrom was studying her closely. But Rooney’s concern seemed to be only for Jenny. She hugged her, laid her cheek on Jenny’s. “I know. Oh, my dear, I know.”

Clyde had aged ten years in the past hours. “I’m listing all the property Erich owns,” he said. “I’ll have that for you soon.”

“The painting,” Jenny said. “We’ve got to put that painting back. It was on the long wall in the loft.”

“I left it in the supply closet in the office,” Dr. Philstrom said. “But I think it might be better if Mrs. Toomis would agree to come back and stay in the hospital until this is over.”

“I want to be with Clyde,” Rooney said. “I want to be with Jenny. I’m all right. Don’t you see. I know.”

“Rooney stays with me,” Clyde said flatly.

Sheriff Gunderson walked over to the window. “This place is a mess of footprints and tire tracks,” he said. “What we need is a good snowstorm to cover them. Keep your fingers crossed. There’s one due tonight.”

The storm began in the early evening. Snowflakes fine and rapid bit at the house and barns and fields. The wind blew and scattered the flying flakes, eventually banking them in rapidly growing piles against the trees and buildings.

The next morning, in prayerful gratitude, Jenny observed the glaring whiteness outside. The violated grave would be quilted with snow, the tracks to the cabin obliterated. If Erich came he would not be suspicious; even Erich who could instantly sense a book out of place, a vase moved a quarter of an inch, would have nothing to trigger his awareness of their presence in the cabin.

During the night, pushing their way through the treacherous roads, Sheriff Gunderson and two deputies had come back. One had wired the phones to monitor incoming calls, had given Jenny a walkie-talkie and taught her how to use it. The other had made copies of the papers Clyde pulled from the files, the pages and pages of income tax forms showing the Krueger holdings: deeds, rental contracts, office buildings, warehouses. The originals were back in the files, the copies taken to be pored over by investigators who would then begin to search possible hiding places.

Jenny adamantly refused to allow a policeman to stay in the house. “Erich could open the door and walk in. Suppose he realizes that someone else is here. And he would. You can count on it. I won’t risk it.”

She began keeping track of days with the awareness of seconds turning into minutes, minutes crawling to the quarter hour, the half hour. She had found the cabin on the fifteenth. On the morning of the sixteenth, the grave had been opened and Erich had phoned. The snowstorm ended on the eighteenth. All through Minnesota the cleanup began. The phone lines were down all of the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth. Suppose Erich tried to call? Would he realize that it wasn’t her fault he couldn’t get through. The entire area of Granite Place where the farm was located was harder hit than the rest of the county.

Don’t let him get angry, she prayed. Don’t let him take it out on the girls.

On the morning of the nineteenth she saw Clyde coming to the house. The upright set of his head and chest was gone. He bent forward as he walked the freshly plowed path, his face puckered not so much against the wind as under an invisible burden he seemed to be carrying.

He stepped into the kitchen foyer, stamping his feet to break the cold. “He just called.”

“Erich! Clyde, why didn’t you ring through? Why didn’t you let me talk to him.”