Chapter 5 - The Road to Iron Mountain
By six in the morning, the light on the ridge was not golden; it was a dull, bruised slate that offered no warmth.
Mark did not take the highway. He took the old railway spur—fourteen miles of abandoned iron track where the ties had rotted into the ballast fifty years ago, running north toward the industrial rail yards outside Iron Mountain. The rails ran through a deep limestone trench cut by the mining companies in the twenties, four feet below the surrounding grade, invisible to the county patrol units cruising the parallel farm-to-market roads.
He carried Rosie on his shoulders now, her small legs hooked over his collarbones, her hands gripping his greasy wool cap. She had stopped shivering; the movement and the shelter of the trench kept the worst of the wind off her, but her silence was heavier than her weight.
At seven-fifteen, they reached the back fence of the Henderson farm.
Not the old doctor’s house—the doctor lived in the white brick colonial on the hill behind the bank—but the home of his younger brother, Arthur Henderson. Arthur had run the county veterinary clinic for forty years until the local agricultural cooperative went under; he was seventy-two, lived alone with three half-blind blue heeler dogs, and had despised Thomas Vance since 1968, when Thomas had foreclosed on their father’s dairy herd during the drought.
Mark didn't go to the front porch. He slipped through the broken cedar rails of the heifer pasture, crossed the frozen garden plot where dead tomato vines lay black beneath the frost, and tapped three times on the mudroom glass.
A minute passed. Then the yellow curtain pulled back, revealing a narrow, weathered face with wire-rimmed glasses held together at the bridge by green florist’s tape.
The deadbolt turned with a dry clack.
Arthur Henderson didn't ask who was there. He took one look at Mark’s split shoulder, the dried cabernet staining the denim, and the four-year-old child riding his neck with bruised arms, and stepped back into the warmth of the kitchen.
“Gary’s got the whole southern district blocked off,” Arthur said, his voice like gravel turning in a cement mixer. He didn't look at Mark; he walked straight to the cast-iron kettle on the stove and turned the gas valve. “Radio says you tried to kill your sister with a fire iron and took the girl into the swamp. They got the volunteer fire department out with the four-wheelers looking for your truck down in the river bottoms.”
Mark swung Rosie down from his shoulders, setting her on a red-and-white vinyl kitchen chair.
“It wasn't a fire iron,” Mark said. “It was my hand.”
“Ought to have been a timber adze,” Arthur muttered, reaching into an enameled bread box and pulling out half a loaf of sourdough and a crock of salt butter. He set them in front of Rosie without looking at her, then dropped a chipped ceramic mug of warm whole milk beside the plate. “Eat that, little bird. Don't look at the butter knife; use your fingers.”
Rosie looked at Mark. Mark nodded once. The child didn't hesitate; she grabbed the bread with both hands and began tearing into it with the silent, desperate hunger of an animal that hadn't seen food since yesterday’s breakfast.
Mark pulled the small glass vial from his pocket and set it on the oilcloth table beside the salt shaker.
Arthur Henderson stopped with the tea tin in his hand. He looked down through his thick bifocals at the pale yellowish-white residue clinging to the glass walls of the vial.
“Where’d you get that?” Arthur asked, his voice losing its dry rasp, dropping into a sharp, clinical register.
“Out of the blue tin Sarah kept in the pantry,” Mark said. “The one Bethany brought down from the ridge the week before the funeral.”
Arthur didn't pick up the vial with his bare hands. He reached into his cardigan pocket, pulled out a clean linen handkerchief, and used it to lift the cylinder to the light of the kitchen window. He unscrewed the plastic cap, waved his hand gently over the opening to draw the scent toward his nose, and took a single, shallow breath.
His eyes narrowed behind the taped lenses.
“Sodium arsenite,” Arthur said.
Mark didn't move. “The cattle dip?”
“The old stock,” Arthur replied, his voice completely flat. “The stuff your father bought five drums of back in '84 when the state banned it for timber treatment. He kept it in the locked shed behind the gravel wash. Tastes sweet if you mix it with bergamot and brown sugar. Kills the stomach lining over ninety days. Looks exactly like a bleeding ulcer to an eighty-year-old doctor who doesn't want to spend four hours doing an autopsy on a Sunday morning.”
Arthur set the vial down on the table, took off his glasses, and wiped them slowly on the hem of his sweater.
“My brother signed that death certificate, Mark,” Arthur whispered.
“I know,” Mark said.
“He didn't know what was in the cup. Thomas told him Sarah had been spitting blood since the miscarriage. My brother was seventy-nine years old, Mark; he hadn't read a medical journal since the Carter administration. He trusted your father because your father paid the property taxes on our clinic when the bank came calling.”
“He murdered my wife, Arthur.”
Arthur looked down at Rosie. The little girl had finished the bread, her face smeared with butter, her heavy eyelids drooping again as the warmth of the woodstove began to work into her small bones. He reached out with one dry, liver-spotted hand and gently touched the purplish welts on her ankles where the willow switch had broken the skin.
“Your father didn't just murder your wife, Mark,” Arthur said softly. “He killed this county thirty years ago. We just haven't smelled the carcass yet.”
The old veterinarian walked to the wall phone beside the refrigerator, lifted the heavy black receiver, and dialed a seven-digit number from memory.
May you like
“Who are you calling?” Mark asked, his hand dropping toward his belt.
“The only man in this peninsula who doesn't have a note held by the Vance Commercial Trust,” Arthur said into the mouthpiece. “Special Agent Miller down at the Marquette federal building. Not Clint—Clint’s an idiot who takes his orders from your uncle. Miller’s his cousin. The one who went to Quantico and hasn't spoken to his family since they paved over the Indian cemetery on the south ridge.”
