Hunted Across the Frozen Plains (Preview)

Chapter One

Hastings, Minnesota

1876

“Did you hear what I said?”

Erika Muller put a hand to her mouth, then looked down at her fingers. They were covered with blood, and her split lower lip was already swelling. She looked up through her blonde hair at her husband Karl. He was a big man, a sawmill worker with broad shoulders.  He was drunk again, pacing restlessly across their little parlor, waving his big arms. He turned to glare at her.

“Did you?”

“Yes, of… of course I heard you, Karl.”

She struggled up from the floor with a glance at the bedroom door. Kirsten was in there, terrified and hiding under the bed like she always did when her father beat her mother. Erika curled her trembling fingers around the back of a chair. She’d learned that the important thing was to keep Karl’s attention on her so he wouldn’t turn toward their daughter.

He rounded on her, pointing a finger in her face. “When you go to the market again, you are not to speak to that man behind the counter. I saw the way he was looking at you. It made me sick! And the way you were smiling, you were loving it, weren’t you? Weren’t you?”

Erika watched him warily as he glared at her. “I was just trying to be polite, Karl.”

He lunged at her, grabbing her collar so tight that she suddenly couldn’t breathe. Her hands scrabbled at her neck as his glaring eyes and red face blotted out the rest of the room. “Don’t lie to me, I have eyes in my head! If I see you with him again, I’ll kill him, you hear me? And you!”

He tossed her away with a flick of his big hand, and she went spinning into the wall and slid down to the floor. She collapsed there with her hair hanging over her face until his next word brought her head up again.

“What’s that noise in the bedroom?”

Erika’s eyes widened in terror. She blurted, “You think I’m having an affair with the grocer, is that it?”

He had been walking toward the bedroom door, but at that he turned toward her, as she had intended. He threw the table aside with a clatter and she shrank back as he hauled her to her feet by her hair. She turned her face away as he stuck his up to hers and growled, “If I ever see you with him again, I’ll kill you, Erika. With my bare hands!”

He slapped her with a pop like a gunshot, then turned to collapse into a chair. His rage was already melting into drunken tears, and he put his head in his big hands and wept.

“What do you see in them?” he moaned. “What do you see in these other men? It’s what I always ask myself. Haven’t I been a good husband to you? Haven’t I been a good father to Kirsten?”

Erika stared at him blearily with a mixture of baffled pity and revulsion. Karl hadn’t always been like this. Once he’d been sweet and gentle. She didn’t know what had turned him into this evil mockery of the man he’d once been. Just that the violent stranger always rose up from a whiskey bottle.

She closed her eyes wearily. It had been that way for years, ever since Karl had been passed over for a promotion at the mill. He came home and took his frustrations out on her, inventing reasons to be angry with her. Inventing excuses to berate her.

She’d forgotten what it was like to live without fear, and she’d almost forgotten the kind man Karl had once been. There was a part of her that still pitied his insecurity, but it was only a small part now. The love that she’d once had for Karl was long gone. He’d beaten that to death, even if he hadn’t yet killed her.

“I haven’t betrayed you,” she told him wearily, and for the thousandth time. If only he would believe her!

His head snapped up, and his eyes blazed at her. His voice jumped to a shout. “You’re lying! I see it on your face, in your—”

His eyes bugged out suddenly, and he put a hand to his throat. He choked, coughed, and bent double in the chair.

“Gah!”

Erika frowned. “Karl? Are you all right?”

He gasped suddenly and sat up again. He was still breathing, though his face was red.

He shook his head and moaned, “My heart, my heart! I can’t bear to look at you. I have to get away from here!” He looked around wildly and bent to grab a bottle on the floor. But it was empty, and he threw it away in disgust, then reached for his coat.

She shrank against the wall as he walked toward her, but he passed her by, and she followed him with her eyes. “Where are you going?”

He shrugged into the coat and opened the door. A blast of cold air rushed in as he looked back over his shoulder. “I’m going to the vaertshus. I need a drink!”

He stormed outside, and he slammed the heavy door so hard it bounced on its hinges. Erika closed her eyes in relief, then tottered over to lock it after him. She closed her eyes and pressed her brow into the rough wood, struggling with a wave of tears. But she couldn’t let her daughter see her cry. She refused to cry in front of Kirsten.

So she dragged the back of her hand across her eyes and veered across the room to splash her face with water. She wiped her eyes on her apron, smoothed her wild hair back from her brow, and went to open the bedroom door.

The room was dark, and she walked unsteadily to the bedside table to turn up the lamp. Yellow light bloomed out to reveal the pretty quilt and the rag dolls on her daughter’s bed, but there was no little girl lying in it.

Erika lowered herself to the floor, slowly and painfully, and rested on her elbows to peer under it. Two frightened blue eyes stared back at her from the darkness.

“Mama?”

She couldn’t help reaching out to caress her daughter’s smooth cheek. She smiled crookedly. “Right here, my little candy.”

“Why is Papa angry? I’m scared.”

Erika smoothed her hand across her daughter’s bright blonde hair. “Papa’s gone now. He went out for a while. He’s not feeling well, and he gets…cranky.”

Kirsten’s innocent eyes were sad and undeceived. She was only four, and Erika’s heart shriveled in pity to see that already, she understood.

“He hit you again, didn’t he?”

Erika smiled again and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m with you now. Everything is all right.”

Kirsten frowned, an angry baby frown. “No, it isn’t,” she insisted. “I’m scared. I’m not coming out!”

Erika stared at her sadly. “Well then,” she whispered, “maybe I can come under the bed with you, hmm? Would that make you feel better?”

Kirsten nodded, and Erika stifled a moan as she ducked her head and slid under the bed with her daughter. It was small and cramped and uncomfortable, but she had to create some semblance of safety for her daughter. She turned her head to kiss Kirsten’s chubby cheek and whispered into her hair.

“What if I sing a song? Would you like that?”

Her little daughter nodded. So she inhaled and sang shakily:

“There was a little girl

Who sang just like a bird

Her voice would dance and twirl

The sweetest ever heard.”

To her relief, Kirsten relaxed a bit and sang with her:

“The birds came to her window,

Together they would sing,

They sang so sweet together

Their music was like Spring.

“Lalalalala, sing a song to me.

Lala little girl, sing a song to me.”

She stopped to press a tender kiss into her daughter’s hair. “There now, isn’t that better? Aren’t you sleepy?” Erika murmured. “It’s time to go to bed.”

Kirsten glanced at her uncertainly, and Erika added, “What if I read you a bedtime story?”

Her daughter frowned but replied, “If you’ll sit with me.”

Erika pressed her brow to her daughter’s. “I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep. I promise. Come on.”
She watched as Kirsten wriggled out from under the bed. Her cotton gown and pink feet disappeared as she climbed in, and Erika grunted as she pulled her bruised body out after her.

Kirsten snuggled into her pillow, and Erika pulled up a chair and reached for her daughter’s favorite storybook. She opened the well-worn cover and began to read as Kirsten clasped her hands on the quilt cover in anticipation.

“In the land of Far Away, a princess lived in a glittering castle deep in the forest. The princess was beautiful but very lonely. She longed one day to meet a… handsome prince.” Erika put a hand to her head and took a painful breath.

Her daughter’s sleepy voice pled, “Don’t stop, Mama.”

Erika took a grip on her emotions and read on. “The princess had a pretty white horse, and one day she rode it deep into the forest to a place she’d never seen before.” She turned the page and continued, “She came to a high waterfall, and she stopped to gaze at its beauty.” She glanced up at Kirsten’s closed eyes and open mouth. “And then…and then….”

She set the book down on the table, then leaned over to pull the quilt up around her daughter’s chin.  Her body was aching, and she longed for her own bed. But the thought of sharing it with Karl made her shudder, and she couldn’t bear the thought of Kirsten waking to find her gone.

So she closed her eyes and settled into the chair but soon opened them again. She remembered that Karl might burst in on them if she fell asleep and rose to lock the bedroom door. Then she returned to the chair, sighed, and closed her eyes.

Shortly after she was wakened from a light doze by a thumping, blundering noise from the parlor. Karl had apparently come back home at last. Erika settled more comfortably into the chair and went back to sleep.

Chapter Two

“Er- er-er-er- ehrrrr!”
The sound of a rooster crowing in the yard outside made Erika’s eyes flutter open. The house was cold, and she was stiff and sore. She took a deep breath and stretched. It was still dark outside, but the roosters started to crow a couple of hours before dawn.

She glanced over at Kirsten. Her sleeping baby face was so sweet and innocent that she couldn’t resist leaning over to place a kiss on her brow before turning for the kitchen. She might as well light the stove and get started on breakfast. If her daughter woke to the warm scent of bread baking, it would comfort her. Help her not to be afraid.

She stood up and forced her aching muscles to carry her out into the parlor. The first thing she noticed was that Karl was sitting in his favorite stuffed chair facing the fireplace. But there was no fire in it, and she could only suppose he’d stumbled in drunk the night before, collapsed into the chair, and passed out.

The second thing she noticed was that her husband had torn the parlor apart in a drunken rage. Every other chair was knocked over. He’d pulled all their books off the shelves, and they were lying open on the floor like downed birds.

Erika stifled an impatient exclamation. The parlor was such a mess that her day was already mapped out for her. She’d spend most of it putting the house right again.

But she had to be careful. Karl was usually irritable when he was hung over, and she moved toward the kitchen quietly.

She had to pass Karl on the way there. She was tempted to ignore him for as long as she could, but there was something about the tilt of his head as it lolled against the chair back that made her brows twitch together. Made her forget cleaning up.

“Karl?”

There was no answer. None of the groans and curses that she expected, and she drifted closer.

“Karl, are you asleep?”

She slowly moved around the high sides of the chair, and her husband moved into full view. His head was tilted back, his eyes were closed, and his mouth was open. But a long, ragged gash opened his throat from one ear to the other, and Erika clapped a hand to her mouth and stifled a scream.

Her terrified eyes moved over him. His face was as pale and cold as marble, but as her eyes darted over his shirt, her frown deepened. Her husband’s throat had been savagely cut, but there wasn’t a drop of blood anywhere.

The bedroom door creaked open, and Kirsten’s sleepy face appeared in it. “Mama, where did you go?”

Erika moved between her husband and her daughter and barked, “Go back to bed!” She added in a softer voice, “It isn’t morning yet.”

To her overwhelming relief, Kirsten didn’t seem to see Karl. She closed the door, and Erika gripped the chair back, because a wave of faintness swept her. She staggered to a chair and collapsed into it.

She put a hand over her mouth and stared at her husband’s body in terror. How had this happened? How could a man have his throat cut in his own house without a drop of blood? And if he’d had it cut elsewhere, how was he back home?

Her eyes fell on the overturned chairs and scattered books. Slowly it began to dawn on her: Karl hadn’t flung their things over the floor. The murderer had carried Karl inside the house and dumped him in his own chair. The murderer had destroyed the room as well.

She scanned the scene with new eyes, and horror curled its sharp claws over her shoulder as the full truth settled down on her. Someone else had been in their house while she and Kirsten had been asleep in the bedroom.

They could’ve been murdered, as well. She gasped to remember the heavy sounds she had wakened to a few hours before and dismissed. What would’ve happened if she’d gone out into the parlor to check on Karl? Or if the murderer had decided to enter the bedroom?

But another, more terrifying question followed hard after these. Who would believe her story, if she told it? The local sheriff wouldn’t believe it. It had happened somehow, but the truth was so bizarre that…

Erika started to tremble. She was in terrible danger, because everyone in their neighborhood knew Karl beat her. She wasn’t always able to hide the bruises, and the neighbors’ houses were so close that they could probably hear him shouting from a block away. They all knew the truth.

What more natural thing than that his angry wife should cut his throat in his sleep?

Erika looked around the disheveled room in rising panic. She would have to take Kirsten and run far away, run while she still had the chance. She’d be hung if she didn’t. There was no hope she’d survive a trial when the circumstances were so damning against her.

She dragged herself to her feet and hurried to the kitchen to find the tin can on the top of the stove, the can where she kept her money. It should hold a hundred dollars, money she’d been saving. But when she emptied it on the kitchen table, five dollars fell out of it. She reached for it and crumpled it up in her hand, her chest swelling with a muffled sob.

Karl had drunk up everything she’d saved. Five dollars wasn’t enough even to buy a train ticket. She glanced at the window. It was half-covered in frost, and the ground outside was slick with ice. Even if she fled, she wouldn’t get far on foot in the winter with a child.

But she had to think of something for Kirsten’s sake. If they hanged her for Karl’s murder, what would become of her four-year-old daughter? Erika leaned against the cold iron stove and wept. But not for long. She didn’t have the luxury of indulging her feelings. If she couldn’t run away, there was only one alternative. No matter how impossible it seemed, she had to get rid of Karl’s body.

She glanced at the window again. It was still dark outside. She had some time before dawn.

She gnawed her nails and tried to think. Karl was a big man, and she didn’t have much time. She couldn’t take his body far. Where could she get rid of it?

Erika closed her eyes and forced her stunned mind to think. She pictured the street outside. They lived in a neighborhood on the edge of town. Their own house was almost the last on the row, and the road west was mostly wooded and full of meadows.

There was a big pond about a quarter of a mile away, straight down the main road. She could dump it there. It might not erase all suspicion against her, but at least it would get Karl’s body out of the house. Even if his body was found there, it would be hard for the authorities to convict her when there was no evidence to tie her to the murder.

If she was lucky, the pond would refreeze over him within hours. It would certainly refreeze in a few days. If she was very lucky, they might not find him until the spring thaw. Perhaps by then she could raise the money to get away.

Erika clasped her hands in front of her face and pressed her brow against them. How would she get Karl’s body to the pond? As long as it was still dark, she could take it straight down the road, because there were no houses down that way. But she couldn’t hope to lift him. Karl was a logger, a burly man who worked at a local mill.  He was far too heavy.

Logs. She glanced at the firewood for the stove, stacked neatly in the corner, and they gave her an idea. Karl had a big sled with a thick rope pull on one end. He used it to bring in the firewood he’d finished chopping. It was almost five feet long.

If she could only get his body onto that sled, she could drag it down the icy road to the pond.

Or at least, she hoped she could. It was treacherous outside, bitterly cold, and there was a thin layer of ice on the ground.

She turned on her heel and rushed to their bedroom. She closed the door behind her and ransacked the chest of drawers for Karl’s long johns, a flannel shirt, and dungarees. She sat down on the bed and quickly dressed in his clothes, pulling on the pants, pulling up her husband’s thick socks, and searching frantically for his boots.

Karl worked at a lumber mill. He had ice boots with spikes embedded in the soles. They were meant to grip logs, but they’d help her get traction on the ice.

She buttoned up the shirt, pulled a couple of his sweaters over them, and shrugged into his big coat. She found a couple of his toboggans and stuffed her hair up under them, then went looking for his lined gloves.

When she was pulling them on, she got a glimpse of herself in a mirror over the chest. Her eyes were wild, and she looked so different that she hardly recognized herself.

She reached for a neck scarf and muffled up in it up to her nose, then rushed out again to the kitchen, then out into the night.

The wind struck her like daggers, even with all her layers of clothing, and she fumbled for the rope pull on the sled. It was propped up against the house, and she pulled it inside the house and slammed the door to shut the wind out.

She gasped and leaned against it, rested for a few seconds, then went to the parlor. She studied her husband for a moment, then moved behind the chair and pushed on it with all her might, thinking she might be able to move Karl and the chair.

But it was hopeless. The chair hardly moved. He was far too heavy.

She frowned at his body in frustration. Her only other alternative was to let him fall from the chair onto the sled and drag it through the kitchen and outside. But it would make a terrible scraping noise on the wooden floor, and Kirsten would come out of her bedroom to see what was going on,

Erika put a hand to her head and fought another wave of tears, then rallied and pulled herself upright. She pulled off the gloves, then went softly to her daughter’s bedroom and opened the door a crack.

Kirsten was in bed, breathing softly in sleep. Erika looked around in desperation and her eyes fell on the rag doll on the bed. She hurried in, snatched it up, opened a seam in the body, and pulled out a wad of stuffing. Then she leaned in and gently pressed the cotton into her daughter’s ears.

She stepped back a pace and snapped her fingers. Kirsten showed no signs of having heard. She stepped back a few yards and cleared her throat. Still no sign.

She turned to abandon the room, and once she’d pulled it closed, she took a chair and braced it against the knob. It would help ensure her innocent daughter wouldn’t see what she was about to do.

Such a thing could never be unseen.

The rooster crowed again, and Erika cursed it under her breath, but it spurred her to drag the sled from the kitchen to Karl’s feet.

She took his hand and pulled his body with all her might. He slumped down with his chest on his knees. Erika rested, then pulled his arm again, and the body collapsed onto the sled with a thump. She rushed back to the bedroom and brought a few of his belts to use as ropes. She looped them through the planks and cinched his arms and legs tightly to each end.

Then she put the gloves back on, wrapped up in the muffler, and pulled him back to the kitchen. It was harder than she’d feared. It took her fifteen minutes to get him into the kitchen, and she was so exhausted she had to sit down and rest.

But as soon as she got her breath back, she opened the door and began again. The doorway was the last challenge, and she struggled until she had the sled outside.

The cold struck her like a hammer. It found its way into her coat the instant she stepped outside, and her eyes burned and her cheeks stung with it. She closed the door behind her to blot out the light and gripped the rope. She took one careful step after another, digging the spiked boots into the ice as she pulled the sled. But it slid over the ice behind her, and while it was still heavy, she found he could manage it.

She put one foot in front of the other, making her painful way through the darkness. She moved in a straight line down the road, fearful of falling or of the sled sliding away from her. The wee hour before dawn was so quiet, every scrape of the sled sounded loud in the stillness.

She trudged along, pulling with all her body, ears straining for any sounds.

It seemed forever before she reached the edge of the pond, and by that time the darkness in the sky was lightening to gray. Soon she would be easily visible.

Erika bent to pick big rocks off the side of the road and stuffed them into her husband’s coat pockets. Then she pointed the sled toward the pond, its front edge teetering out into space over the lip of the gentle slope. She pushed the back edge with all her might, and it slid down easily and went spinning out over the frozen pond.

Suddenly there was a faint crackling, then a louder, more tearing crack. Erika shielded her eyes from the wind with one gloved hand and squinted to see if the sled would sink. It was just light enough for her to see the ice break under its weight. The pond ice gave way under the sled, and it dipped into the water and disappeared, leaving a dark hole as the only evidence.

Erika stood there for a moment, her heart beating wildly. The cold was punishing, but she couldn’t just turn away without some small moment of acknowledgement of what Karl had been to her. Sadness swept her to think that this was the end of the man she’d once loved.

But she couldn’t afford to stay for more than a moment, and she pulled the muffler up over her nose and mouth and hurried back home as fast as she was able.

The sky was lightening fast. Halfway back home, as she rounded a bend in the road, to her dismay, she noticed one of her neighbors in the distance. It was Finn Doherty, the manager at the mill where her husband worked. He was always the first to the mill, and he opened it up every morning.

She hadn’t been fast enough to avoid him.

He raised a hand, and Erika realized, with a slap of surprise, that from a distance, in the dim light, the man must have mistaken her for her husband. She was wearing his clothes, after all.

She raised her hand and said nothing but left the road to plunge into the trees and disappear as quickly as she could. To her relief, Doherty didn’t follow her, and he soon faded from sight as she put a line of evergreens and bushes between them.

She entered her own house with a sigh of overwhelming relief. She rushed through the back door, hurried to the bedroom, and stuffed Karl’s wet clothes under the bed before changing into her own things.

She went to the kitchen and scanned the floor. There were scratch marks on it from the sled, and she went to the parlor, grabbed a few rugs, and threw them over the most obvious marks.

She had barely cleaned up the overturned furniture and scattered books when there came a knock at the door. She froze in terror.

“Karl,” a voice was calling. “Karl, it’s Finn.”

Erika put a hand to her throat and licked her lips. What was she going to tell him?

“Karl, open the door.”

She smoothed her hair back, closed her eyes, and composed herself. Then she walked slowly to the door and opened it.

Finn Doherty stood in the opening, and he nodded to her. “Morning, Mrs. Muller. Can you tell Karl to come to the mill early? I saw him on the road just now.”

Erika licked her lips and stammered, “You saw him? Where is he? I’m worried sick. Karl hasn’t been home all night. He went to the saloon and never came back!”
The redheaded man’s brows went up. “Well, I saw him out on the road just now. It hasn’t been ten minutes. I… I’m sure he’ll be back any time. Can you give him that message when he comes?”

“Certainly, Mr. Doherty.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Erika stood in the doorway just long enough to see him off, then closed it and locked it and put a hand to her mouth. She staggered to a chair and the wave of nerves that had threatened all night suddenly broke. She put a hand to her head and wept, and only rose again when the sky was light enough for her to make breakfast.

Chapter Three

“Mama, did you hear me?”

Erika blinked and forced her wandering thoughts back to her daughter. Kirsten was sitting at the breakfast table, and her big blue eyes were puzzled.

Erika put a hand to her head. “I’m sorry, baby, Mama was thinking about something else. What did you say?”

“Can I have another roll?”

“Of course.” She passed the basket and watched her innocent daughter with a sudden wave of grief. What would happen to Kirsten if she was found out? Finn Doherty thought he’d seen Karl, but her husband’s disappearance would soon be confirmed to everyone. Then what?

Would they start looking for him? If so, that pond suddenly seemed like the first, most obvious place to look. What had she been thinking to dump his body there? But where else could a small woman like her have taken it?

Erika clasped and re-clasped her hands. The sheriff would be at her door, asking questions that she had no answer for. Just: My husband went to the saloon and never came back. It was a thin excuse, it was suspicious, and it was only marginally better than Karl’s murdered body being found in her house.

She gnawed her nails. Karl had been a drunkard, that was in her favor. Everyone in town knew what he was like in a drunken rage. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine that he’d gotten into a fight and maybe killed.

“Mama?”

She closed her eyes and forced her voice to drop to a low, soothing murmur. “Yes, baby.”

“Where’s Papa?”
Erika shot her daughter a stricken glance. Panic clawed at her throat. It was one thing to lie to a town that wouldn’t believe the truth. It was another to lie to the little person she loved most in the world.

But she had no choice. She had to do it. The truth was too painful for Kirsten to ever hear.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” she stammered. “Papa went to town last night and… he’s not back yet.”

Kirsten shifted her weight in the chair and took a bite of bread. “I’m glad Papa’s gone. He scares me.”

Erika blinked back tears and looked away to keep Kirsten from seeing them. Another soothing lie jumped to her lips, but she refused to utter it. She might lie about what happened to Karl, but she couldn’t lie to her daughter about what he was.

“Papa drinks too much,” Kirsten added sagely, with a knowing look far beyond her years, and Erika jumped up from the table and turned to face the stove.

She wiped her eyes with her apron. “Yes, he does, baby. But when he comes home, he’ll be… too sick to be angry.”

She inhaled and looked up at the ceiling to compose herself. She didn’t have to explain farther. Kirsten already understood that sick always came after drunk.

“Yes,” Kirsten sighed. “You’re right, Mama. So we can eat up all the breakfast ourselves.”

Erika sputtered out a laugh and turned to look at Kirstin’s satisfied baby face. Thank God she’s so young, she thought. Maybe most of this will go over her head.

 

* * * * *

She spent the rest of the morning going about her tasks mechanically and with one ear pricked toward the door. She had to force herself to stay away from the window, because she was on fire with worry.

After hours of fretting and deliberation, she threw her shawl over her head, put on her coat and mittens, and went out to visit the mill. It would look natural and might help deflect suspicion from her.

It was what a worried wife would do if her husband hadn’t come home by dawn.

The Doherty Mill was on the opposite side of town from her house, and she walked through the snow with arms crossed and her head down. She noticed as she walked that the ice was still on the ground, maybe even a little thicker.

That was good for her, at least in the short run. The thicker the ice, the better the odds no one would find Karl.

The mill was a sprawling clapboard building on the other edge of their community. There was a big lumberyard, just outside with boards stacked high, and the grounds smelled of sawdust even in the cold. The high whine of a steam saw wafted out through the big open doors of the main building.

When Erika reached the entrance, her heart gave a sickening thump to see that Sheriff Stokes was inside the office with a group of men. She pulled her coat closer around her as she approached. There was something about that man had never set right with her, though she didn’t know anything definite against him. He just had a hungry, predatory look in his eye that made her nervous. And now that Karl was dead, it affected her even more unpleasantly.

She stood just inside the front door, waiting for them to notice her, and finally Doherty did.

He nodded toward her, and they all turned their heads to look. Erika put on a grieved, worried expression and clasped her hands together in a nervous gesture that was all too real.

They all took off their hats, and Doherty came out to greet her. “Come in, Mrs. Muller,” he said softly, and Erika’s spirits revived a little. The overflowing kindness in his voice told her that she might be an object of sympathy. If that was true, it was good news. It meant these men didn’t suspect her in Karl’s disappearance, or at least that they were willing to suspend judgment.

Doherty gestured toward a potbellied stove in the middle of the room. “Come in here by the fire, it’ll warm you up. It’s so cold outside.”

“Thank you.” Her voice was barely audible, and she wasn’t faking its faintness. She felt like a rabbit going into a den of hounds, and her wary eyes moved to the leader of the pack.

John Wesley Stokes, the sheriff of Hastings. He nodded politely as she approached, but she had trouble mustering even a wintery smile. There was something wolfish about that man, she’d felt it long before this disaster struck her. He even looked a bit like a wolf, with his shaggy, salt and pepper hair, lean face, and keen, narrow gray eyes.

He was a hunter, and she was feeling more and more like prey.

“Morning, Miz Muller,” he said and smiled gently, with all his teeth. “Come and sit down by the stove. I expect you’re worried about Karl. Finn took the liberty of telling me he didn’t show up to work.”

Erika sank into a chair beside the fire and looked up at the faces ringed around her. “Oh. I… I came to see if Karl reported to work,” she quavered. “I haven’t seen him since last night and I… I’m worried about him.”

Mr. Doherty walked up with a distressed look on his face. “I saw him walking on the road early this morning, and he waved to me, but he took off into the woods. Do you know any place Karl would go out there?”

She looked up at him and shook her head sadly. “No,” she murmured. “But he was behaving strangely last night,” she stammered. “I was afraid he might be sick. He said his heart was pounding and that he had to go get a drink.” She bit her lip. “I’m afraid… he might be wandering in his mind. He wasn’t himself.”
The sheriff nodded gravely, but his eyes gleamed. “Some of you men were at the saloon last night,” he replied and looked around at the circle of men. “How did Karl seem to you?”

Erika closed her eyes. The unbidden mental image came to her of Karl’s handsome face, blue and frozen, and his hair floating in the icy water of the pond. A faint wave of nausea swept her, and she pressed a handkerchief to her lips.

One of the men rubbed his jaw and answered, “He was upset about something, that was plain as print. He was drunk when he walked in, and his face was red and sweaty. He sure enough didn’t look good. And he kinda kept to himself, and that’s not like him, either.”

Another man chimed in, “I heard him mumbling to himself. Something about the grocery. I couldn’t make out anything else.”

Erika felt her face going hot, and she put a hand to her head in an attempt to pass her embarrassment off as distress.

The sheriff turned back to her. “Miz Muller, are you sure there was no place else he meant to go? Was he gonna meet somebody at the grocery, or talk to the grocer?”

She raised startled eyes to his. “No,” she replied a little too quickly, then added more slowly, “No. I think he was ill. Perhaps feverish. But he wouldn’t hear of going to the doctor.”

One of the men added, “I think he was, too. He was sweating like a hog at the saloon.”

Mr. Doherty turned to him and snapped, “That’s enough, Henry!”

The man shot her a stricken look and added, “Your pardon, Miz Muller. I just meant to say, he did look like he might be running a fever.”

Mr. Doherty came to her and helped her stand. “Why don’t you go back home, ma’am. We’ll come and tell you the minute we hear any news, I promise.”

Erika looked up at him gratefully. “Thank you.” Her eyes moved to the sheriff’s, and she found they were already on her. He nodded grimly.

“I promise, Mrs. Muller.”

She repressed a shudder and walked out with her hands clasped and her eyes down. But she was thinking: Yes, I know you will.