Free Deadly Descent by Charlotte Hinger Page B

pie. But it was after the war. He was losing his farm, taking it hard, because all around him folks were doing better.”
    “You said this was one of the murky ones. Why?”
    “Herman never owned up to it. Said he didn’t do it. Then he was crazy out of his mind for so long no one would have believed him anyway. But it’s always bothered me that he never owned up to it. I was a kid at the time, but when I was elected sheriff and got to looking at it, there were some things that didn’t seem right. Never have.”
    “Such as?”
    “Can’t see where they looked for much of anyone else. ‘No need,’ they said. Herman was already half-crazy with worry over the farm. In fact, that’s why he had gone to town so close to Emily’s time. He had talked to the banker, trying to keep them from foreclosing. Didn’t work. They were coming Monday morning, anyway. Going to take everything he had. Common knowledge at the time. They figured he snapped. Tried to keep Emily and Johnny and the baby from an even harder life than they already had.”
    “But you weren’t satisfied with this account?”
    “Nope. Wasn’t then, and I’m not now. Read on.”
    I opened the manila envelope containing the official police report and pulled up the photos. The hair on my arms rose. I ran for the bathroom and threw up. I marched back out. Not looking Sam in the eye, I grabbed my purse, went back to the laboratory, pulled out my cosmetic bag, gargled Listerine, squared my shoulders. Then I went back to the table and picked up the photos. I risked a quick look at Sam who was disguising a bleak smile with a pull on his pipe.
    “Her belly was slit open,” I said. “The paper just says ‘in childbirth.”
    “Yes. Like a hog being butchered. It was different back then,” he said. “We figured the press didn’t need to know everything. The
Gateway Gazette
just called Sheriff Morrow for information and he sort of cleaned things up. According to the coroner she was strangled first.”
    “The mutilation wasn’t in the paper,” I said.
    “No. A lot of folks knew about it. But they didn’t print every gory little detail like they do now. They had some respect for families and for cops trying to do their job.”
    “What would drive a man to do this?” I stared at the yellowed hand-written report.
    “Everything I’ve heard about Herman tells me that he couldn’t have, wouldn’t have done this,” Sam said flatly.
    “Where is Herman Swenson buried?”
    He smiled. “In the nursing home.”
    “He’s still alive?”
    Sam snorted. “If you can call it that. He had a stroke ten years ago. Been at Sunny Rest ever since.”
    “Can I see him?” I asked eagerly. “Do you mind?”
    “Won’t do no good. He can’t talk. Can’t think. And no, I don’t mind.”
    “But before I see him, since we don’t have a microfilm reader here, I’m going back to the historical society and look at old newspapers.”
    “Everything that’s ever been written about it is in that file.”
    “That’s not the kind of thing I’m looking for.”
    ***
    Back at the office, I dug out microfilm of early Carlton County newspapers and located birth announcements for Herman Swenson and Emily Champlin.
    There’s an art to reading newspapers. It’s dependent on intuition and open-mindedness. The scholarly analysis comes later, but in the beginning, I Zen it, making connections I wouldn’t notice if I began with preconceived ideas.
    This initial research is a mystical process. Some mornings when there is a certain slant of light and if I’m not interrupted, it’s as though I step into the past. I’m there, living the time, wearing the clothes, eating the food, breathing the air.
    Herman was three years older than Emily, born in 1921. Just to be on the safe side, I started reading back issues of the
Gateway Gazette
well before his birth.
    There was nothing that caught my eyes about Herman’s parents. Back then, local news columns reported everything. No detail