Page 59 of The River We Remember

The woman did but with obvious reluctance and with something else. Fear? Anger? Brody couldn’t tell.

“Did your husband and James Quinn see each other that Thursday night?”

Her jaw clenched and her mouth went into a thin line. She clasped her hands tight on her lap in exactly the way Graff had described from his own questioning of her. And she did not answer.

Brody looked at her hands. “Mrs. Bluestone, I see you’re wearing a wedding ring.” He reached into his pocket and drew out the ring he’d found on Jimmy Quinn. “Would you put out your right hand?’

She seemed puzzled by the request but complied. Brody slid the ring onto her finger. He looked at Graff. “Perfect fit, wouldn’t you say?”

As Brody took the ring back and returned it to his pocket, Kyoko Bluestone’s eyes locked fearfully on the orchard where the dogs had begun to dig at the earth in canine earnest, their paws kicking up sprays of loose dirt. Brody wondered if it was the strain of his questioning that was upsetting the woman or if it was the activity of the dogs.

“Connie,” he said. “Go see what’s up with those two.”

The deputy walked into the orchard. The trees were saplings and their limbs sparsely leafed, and, against the vast, threatening sky, they seemed small and fragile, their existence precarious. Graff reached the dogs, knelt, shoved Hector and the old dog away, and dug into the earth himself. He stood and hollered, “Brody, you’ll want to see this.”

Brody looked down at the woman on the iron bench, and her face was crestfallen. He left her and joined Graff in the orchard. The deputy had cleared soil from what was obviously a freshly dug hole into which a canvas tarp had been thrown. The tarp was badly scorched, as if it had been exposed to significant flame. Brody pulled it up and held it open.

“Is this the one you saw hanging in the butchering room last night?”

“Military issue,” Graff said. “I’d be willing to swear it’s the same one. Appears that someone tried to burn it.”

“Highly flame resistant,” Brody said. “God bless the military. So Bluestone buried it.” He touched a large stain the color of plum juice, clearly visible in one corner despite the scorching. “Pig’s blood?”

“Maybe. Or maybe this was how Bluestone hauled Jimmy’s body out to Inkpaduta Bend.”

Brody looked back at the farmyard where the woman sat under the Dutch elm tree and stared west at the mounting clouds. Behind her, a plume of dust rose against the trees along the course of the Alabaster River, and Brody watched Noah Bluestone’s pickup truck race toward the farmstead.

Graff said, “This’ll be interesting.”

They met Bluestone where his truck skidded to a stop in the dirt between the barn and house. The man leapt out.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Dern?” He went immediately to where his wife sat alone on the iron bench. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, but he must have seen something in her eyes that told him more. He looked toward Brody and then at Graff, who held up the tarp.

“Found this in your orchard, Noah,” Brody said. “Care to explain why you’d bother to bury a tarp out there?”

Bluestone didn’t reply.

“Got any idea what this bloodstain is all about?”

Bluestone sat down beside his wife, and the two of them became like the iron of the bench.

“Noah, I’m taking this tarp and I’m going to have that stain analyzed, and if it’s Jimmy Quinn’s blood, I guarantee you I’ll be back with a warrant for your arrest. You could make this a lot easier for yourself, your wife, me, and the citizens of Black Earth County if you just tell me the truth now.”

Noah Bluestone took his wife’s hand and didn’t speak.

“Mrs. Bluestone? Do you have anything you’d like to say?”

She squeezed her husband’s hand and followed his example.

“All right then. I think we’re finished here.”

Brody took the tarp from Graff and put it in the trunk of his cruiser. He called Hector, who came running. Douglas and the dog got into the backseat, and Brody and Asa Fielding got in the front. Graff climbed into his truck and headed toward Jewel. Brody did the same, giving his deputy enough lead that no one in the cruiser would have to eat his dust. As he drove away, Brody looked in his rearview mirror. Across the sky behind him, huge thunderheads had risen, and from them lightning sparked as if something terrible were being forged on the anvils of heaven. Against that great darkness, the farmstead seemed small and vulnerable. On the tiny iron bench beneath the Dutch elm, Bluestone and his wife sat together, staring at the approaching storm.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

AS BRODY SUSPECTED, the blood on that tarp matched the blood type of James Patrick Quinn. In the absence of airtight confessions or reliable eyewitness testimony, justice, as has so often been the case, had to rely on speculation accompanied by a preponderance of circumstantial evidence.