Bury This by Andrea Portes Page B

ride, another promenade.
    And the Lt. Colonel gets called, out, out of his dreams in the middle of 2 AM . And there she is, his handsome wife from Odessa, lying broken on the white-and-black tile of this crap-lounge called Dreamers.
    A husband gets to walk through the pore-blotch faces, the bloodshot eyes, the flannels. A husband gets to pick up his wife off the floor and carry her, with the bartender, back to the car, back to the house. Back to the bed. A husband gets to take off her shoes. One shoe. Two shoe. Red skirt. Blue shoe. A husband gets to lie his wife on the bedspread and place her, tuck her tight. Quiet. Gentle. Silent. A husband gets to love his wife, helpless. To want to tear out his heart and give it to her. Replace her broken pieces. Take me. Take me, Dotsy. I will deliver you.
    And, in the morning, the kitchen dawn of the day, the coffee grinds brewing in the kitchen, the phone rings and the phone gets picked up and there’s a pause, a miracle pause, a savior pause. And the Lt. Colonel puts down the receiver and stares at the ceiling. A husband gets to tell his wife.
    â€œShe made it. Our baby girl made it.”
    A wife gets to cry into her pillow, thank you. A wife gets to whisper thank you, Lord. A wife gets to hold her baby again and never, ever let her go.
    A wife gets to stand there, forty-seven years later, in the middle of Beth’s room. Light blue. The white wood doll bed and dresser, the white gilded mirror, the light blue curtains, the white closet door, a wife gets to stare at a portrait while, somewhere in town, a projector flickers round and round, telling how her baby girl got put six feet in the ground.

ELEVEN
    T he facts.
    On March 3, 1978, Elizabeth Lynn Krause, age twenty-two, clocked in at 6 PM for an eight-hour shift at the Green Mill Inn.
    There was snow on the ground. It was a brisk thirteen degrees, with a seven-below wind chill.
    At 9:15, an anonymous 911 phone call was made. “Please . . . something’s wrong . . . there’s noises . . . a robbery.” A man’s voice, middle-aged.
    Two days later, Beth Krause was found on the outskirts of town, off Route 31, dumped by a tree, in ripped clothes with multiple injuries, pummeled, strangled, and discarded. Around her neck, a Wedgwood locket, blue and white.
    These were the same facts from years ago. Nothing new. So it was strange that now, twenty-five years later, Detective Samuel Barnett, now a thirty-year veteran of the Muskegon Police Force, would look up at that screen, that small-town screen playing that small-town documentary, and say to himself quite simply, in the parlance of the town, “Something’s jacked.”
    But that’s exactly what he did.
    As the students, sweet kids, Lars, Danek, Brad, and Katy were congratulated lavishly by the townsfolk, fellow students, and even fellow members of the force . . . although “force” was a strong word for the boys in blue from Muskegon. They were more of an “inkling.” As Lt. Colonel Charles Krause and his elegant wife, Dorothy, were noticeably absent, but thanked nevertheless, Detective Barnett had his mind on a clock.
    Yes, it was the clock that ticked and tocked and beat its hideous heart between his ears, chiming its way through his cranium and emerging front and center, as elegant as an atom.
    The clock said 8:45.
    Don’t you see? The clock, thrown willy-nilly next to that crappy little safe in that crappy little wood-paneled office of the Green Mill Inn, said 8:45.
    But the robbery . . . according to the 911 phone call, was taking place at 9:15.
    All this time it had been thought, the innocent bystander on the 911 call had said, “There’s been a robbery.” Past tense. But no. The tape was played and replayed in the film. The commotion, the “something wrong” was supposedly happening at 9:15. But the clock, in the background of the crime scene, frozen now forever on celluloid, was stopped at 8:45.
    He