Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

She lit another cigarette, let the flame burn down the match’s length until it scorched her skin. The girls were at her sister’s, along with that mangy mutt. They’d do all right. For she was sure she’d be out soon.

Just as soon as the valley folks got their heads straight.

Victor Dumont sat on the hood of his cruiser, next to Gordon Moore. It was almost midnight and he had driven the cruiser up to Overlook Point. In the valley below them were the few lights of Norwich. Victor had a bottle of Beck’s beer wrapped in a paper bag. He had to drive a half hour to a store that sold it but he had grown to love the taste. Gordon drank from a thermos, whiskey and water.

“You could get in trouble, you know,” Gordon said, “drinking on the job.”

“Hell I could. I called the dispatch three hours ago and told them I was going home. The roads of Norwich now belong to your brother state troopers.”

Gordon nodded. “Earl Blake’s on tonight. He’ll do you all right.”

He drank some more beer. The night birds were out, squawking and hunting in the woods. “We’re gonna lose this one tomorrow, aren’t we, Gordo?”

Gordon wrapped himself tighter in his coat. “That we are, my friend. My recommendation was that we not even bring it to the grand jury, but the A.G.’s office wouldn’t hear of it. So they’ll go up to the County Court tomorrow and so will we, and we’ll tell our little stories, and after Deborah Hanson’s let loose, we can lie to the newspapers and say we did a good job.”

“Weren’t much there,” Victor said.

Gordon poured himself another tumbler, his knees high up since his feet were resting on the front bumper. “Nope. Just a body in a front yard and a familiar story.”

“You thinking about the Wilson family?”

Even in the faint moonlight he could see Gordon staring down at his hands. “That I am. Three years ago and it still gives me the shakes. Middle of February, up at Towle’s Purchase. The Blizzard Month, you’ll recall that’s what the papers named it. Every few days we’d get a snowstorm barreling through, and by the time people made headway in getting dug out, another storm’d pass through and dump another foot. Some places were cut off for almost a week.”

“Including the Wilsons’.”

“Yeah. Some sister got concerned she hadn’t heard from the Wilsons so me and Fern Goodwin — he quit as the chief there right afterwards — and a state plow went up there. Nothing but acres of fields and woods and this farmhouse, and inside the five boys and girls and their two parents, all dead. Couldn’t get the smell of blood out of my mind for weeks after that. And the forensics work, my lord, what we had to do to learn what happened there.”

“Still hard to believe,” Victor said, “as much as I do.”

“Yeah. But I was out on their front porch while we were working up the forensics, just looking at all that blank whiteness for miles around, just closing in on you. Made me think, just for a second, why they did it. Killed their own children, then each other. I understood it. Just for a second.”

A car came up on Overlook Point and when the headlights touched the cruiser, it quickly backed away. Victor took another taste of his beer. “Young love. They’ll have to go somewhere else.”

“As much as there is, in Norwich.”

“You believe Deborah Hanson’s story?”

Gordon screwed on the top of his thermos. “Five or ten years ago, you ask me that, and I would’ve said no. After working in this county and seeing stuff like the Wilson family, I can believe almost anything. Odd things go on up in the hills.”

Victor nodded. “Know what you mean. Whole thing has a sense of irony about it. She probably saw her chance when his heart went out. Remember I saw a Clint Eastwood movie once, a western. Some lady said, ‘They say the dead don’t rest without a marker.’ Maybe that’s what Deborah Hanson was doing. Making sure Henry Hanson never rested.”

“Maybe so. But she’ll have to think of something else now.”

“What do you mean?” Victor asked.

Gordon drew his coat around him as a breeze rose up. “Right now what’s left of Henry Hanson’s resting in a real grave, with a real headstone. Some things don’t last.”

Victor said, “Maybe they last long enough.”

Two days later Victor Dumont was re-tracing his first visit to the Hanson family, but there were some differences. It was a warmer day, and there was no rain, and the recently released Deborah Hanson was sitting next to him in the cruiser as he brought her back to her house.

He had been surprised that she had specifically requested he drive her back, but she had looked at him at the county jail and said, “Chief, you brought me here. And by God, you’re going to bring me back.”

He couldn’t argue with her. It made sense.

Up the gravel driveway, past the rusting mailbox again, it was just like last week. By God, what a hell of a difference a few days made. He pulled the cruiser to a stop before the gaping hole where they had found Henry Hanson.

“Your daughters?” Victor asked, leaving the cruiser’s engine running.