Bone Harvest by Mary Logue Page B

the situation sinking into him. The bad business had just gotten worse. Half a century ago—that was when the Schuler murders took place. Somehow what was happening with the pesticides was connected with them. He saw that the last three numbers at the top of the note were the date of the massacre. The first number, seven, was how many people had died that day.
    His hand holding the letter shook. He needed to sit down. But first he needed to call the police. He wondered if they would let him put the letter in the paper. He knew he had to do that. His motto in life had always been: The truth must be told. Now he knew that someone else felt the same way.

July 7, 1952
Bertha Schuler didn’t think much about it when she heard the gunshot, a not uncommon sound around the farm. Otto had probably caught sight of the weasel that was stealing eggs out of their chicken coop. She hoped he got the darn thing.
She picked up the crying child and rocked her in her arms. Arlette. Her last baby, she prayed. Nearly forty, her body had had a harder time carrying this one. She had almost given birth on the farm, but Otto had scooted her to town in time. Arlette had been her smallest baby, barely five pounds, the size of a bag of flour.
Otto wouldn’t even hold Arlette for the first month, said they should be done with that. He tried to stay away from Bertha, tried to keep his hands off her, but then, in the middle of the night, he would take her feverishly and they would both wait to see if her blood came when it should.
Bertha had years to go yet before she’d be done with the chance of having another baby. What would they do? She had tried to get Otto to go buy protection, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it in Durand. Maybe when they went to Eau Claire.
But her sweet Arlette was a prize. Always sunny, smiling. Now, with her tiny fist, she rubbed her head and gave a little weak cry and then smiled at her mother. Bertha kissed the girl on her head where the spoon had hit her.
Bertha set the baby in her high chair and gave her a hard cookie to suck on. Footsteps running above her head told her the children were still playing. She should calm them down. Picking up the platter with the roast, she set it next to Otto’s plate for him to carve and serve.
When she heard the door push open, she turned to see who it was. The gun was what she saw. The gun coming into her kitchen.
She wiped her hands on her apron and turned to pick up her baby. Her last thought was how she had wanted to see them all grow up, her children, her angels on earth.

CHAPTER 7
    “I’m an agronomist. Plants I can tell you about. Crops I can tell you about. Chickens, you got the wrong man.” Charles Folger’s voice came over the phone like a blast of cold air. “What am I supposed to do with this chicken? I don’t know nothing about chickens.”
    Claire held the phone away from her ear for a moment and wished she didn’t have to deal with this cranky old guy, but it was her job. She contemplated correcting his double negative but didn’t think their relationship would stand up to the complexities of grammar. She needed this man. If he chose to cooperate, he could be a big help. She had sent the other two chickens to the crime lab, but it might be days before she’d hear back. She needed answers soon.
    Claire had just received a call from Celia Daniels. Another chicken had died. The distress in the woman’s voice had been alarming.
    “We’ll never be able to use these chickens again,” she had said to Claire. “We raise everything organic, and they’ve been poisoned. No eggs, no meat. I don’t know what we’ll do with the ones that survive. We’ll have to start over next year. Who could have done this?”
    Trying to be reassuring, Claire had promised answers—even though she wasn’t sure they would be easy to get.
    She needed Folger’s cooperation. She imagined him sitting there with a dead chicken on his desk, and a smile lit up her face. Someone had