Chapter 19 2025
The sheriff waits in his office for the two Mrs. Reichers to arrive—bereaved wife and mother.
A DNA test confirmed the reverend’s identity, but it’s standard protocol to have the identity also confirmed by a loved one.
To spare them from seeing the gruesome remains, he will have them instead identify the reverend’s belongings.
The meeting will also give him a chance to assess the women now that the news of the death is more than a week old and it’s been confirmed the death was likely a murder.
Sixteen percent of homicides in the United States are perpetrated by family members.
Six and a half percent are of a spouse. And somewhere around two percent are of sons or daughters by a parent.
Of course, nearly nine in ten murderers are male, which makes it much less likely that either Mrs. Reicher was responsible.
Regardless of the statistics, his gut tells him neither woman was involved. Heddy was holding something back when she learned the body was found at the pond, but she seemed sincerely concerned when her husband went missing.
At this point, he’s fishing. The murder is a literal cold case, pun intended, nearly all the evidence frozen during the five months the body was submerged beneath the ice of Black Hollow Pond.
And with no evidence to prove otherwise, theories of a soul-stealing serpent as the culprit are running wild.
It’s even made the national news, and for days, people have been driving in from all over Minnesota and beyond, hoping to catch a “Holly” sighting, the name the press affectionately anointed the serpent, in the same vein as the Loch Ness Monster is called Nessie.
The non-myth-believing folk have their own theories.
Everyone from the barber to the mailman has an opinion on who did it and why.
While Moosewood’s not as small a town as it was when he was a boy, it still has a Main Street with a single diner, a bar that’s been around since before both great wars, and enough people who have lived here all their lives to know one another and talk.
The Reichers have been a part of the community as far back as anyone can remember.
The reverend’s father had also, at one time, been the school’s reverend, and his father before him started the town’s first bank.
The family lost their fortune in the financial downturn of the late nineties, which the sheriff understands was the reason the reverend’s father took his life.
The sheriff remembers when it happened. He was a young deputy at the time and new on the job.
He went with the sheriff on the call. The reverend had shot himself with a shotgun under the chin in the school’s chapel.
It was the grisliest sight he’d ever seen, and he’s never been able to walk into that space since without reseeing it.
Twenty-nine years later, Bart Reicher was killed at the very same age as his father, a few short miles away, also with a gun. And while the sheriff doesn’t see how the two are connected, it does strike him as strange, and a lot of the townsfolk agree.
He hears Tricia, the receptionist, greet Heddy and the older Mrs. Reicher, and leaves his office to meet them.
“Afternoon,” he says with a sympathetic nod to each woman.
Heddy offers a thin smile. She’s dressed in a fitted gray dress with small black polka dots, fittingly somber yet still attractive. Twenty-nine, she has her whole life ahead of her, and he sincerely hopes she can put this tragic chapter behind her and move on.
The elder Mrs. Reicher scowls. She’s fifty-three, a year younger than the sheriff, but her silver-streaked hair and the deep lines on her face make her appear much older.
She lost her husband when she was Heddy’s age and is a cautionary tale of how holding on to grief can blot out the light in the life of a surviving loved one.
With the thought, he thinks of Grace and knows he’s being a hypocrite. If he loses her, he will be far worse off than the older Mrs. Reicher. Without her, he can’t imagine having the will to get out of bed in the morning.
“Would either of you like some water?” Tricia asks.
“That would be lovely,” Heddy says. “Thank you.” She turns to her mother-in-law and says loudly, “Bettina, would you like some water?” and the sheriff realizes the woman is hard of hearing.
The older Mrs. Reicher shakes her head brusquely, her eyes narrowed angrily at the sheriff as if somehow this is all his fault.
He leads them to the conference room. On the round laminate table is a manila file folder and, beside it, a large padded envelope.
The women stare at the envelope as they take their seats across from him.
Tricia arrives with a bottle of Evian.
“Thank you,” Heddy says, while the elder Mrs. Reicher scowls again, this time at Tricia. She’s a woman angry at the world.
“Before we begin,” the sheriff says, “I’d like to know if either of you have any new thoughts as to why the reverend might have been at the pond the day he died.”
Heddy shakes her head, while the older woman sits stone-still, eyes returned to the envelope.
The sheriff wonders if maybe she didn’t hear him and is about to repeat himself, when Heddy says, “It makes no sense. I keep running it through in my head and can’t come up with a single reason why he’d have gone there. ”
“Likely to meet someone, possibly the person who killed him,” the sheriff says.
It’s the only theory that makes sense. The reverend was a big man, well over two hundred pounds, which means the idea of someone killing him somewhere else, then dragging him over drifts of snow through a blizzard to dump him in the water is highly unlikely.
“Who?” Heddy says, then answers her own question. “Unless he went there to meet a kid, a holdover who was struggling, like that boy last year. And maybe the kid had a gun and shot him in a fit or by accident?”
Holdovers are kids whose parents leave them at the academy over the holidays. The boy who took his life last year had been one of those kids.
“Possible,” the sheriff says, though he’s already considered the idea and dismissed it.
Every kid who stayed at the school over the Thanksgiving break was young, under twelve, and all of them were accounted for on the day the reverend went missing.
Plus, if the reverend was going to help a kid, why wouldn’t he have gone home and gotten the truck and driven to the pond?
Heddy’s brow is furrowed as if truly trying to puzzle out why her husband might have gone to the pond that day, convincing him again she had nothing to do with his death.
He turns his attention to the items on the table.
“This is merely a formality, but it’s protocol to have someone who knew the deceased make a formal identification.” He looks at the older Mrs. Reicher. “We only need one of you for this.”
The older woman locks her rheumy eyes on his, letting him know she’s not budging.
“The photos are of the clothing the reverend was wearing when he was found. I just need you to confirm that they are his and that they were the clothes you recall him wearing the day he went missing.”
The sheriff pulls two photos from the folder.
One is of the reverend’s wool coat; the other is of his boots.
The photos are not dramatic. The wool coat is dry and neatly folded.
The black, heavy rubber boots are mottled gray from being in the water but otherwise no worse for wear.
He slides the photos in front of the women.
Heddy nods slowly. The older Mrs. Reicher’s jaw locks tight, and her nostrils flare.
“Yes,” Heddy says. “That’s what he was wearing.”
The sheriff returns the photos to the folder and sets it aside.
He moves on to the more dreadful business of the envelope.
He’s given careful consideration to the order in which to reveal the items with two goals in mind.
The first is to do it as compassionately as possible, which means progressing from the prosaic to the profound.
The second is to gauge the women’s reaction to the final item, the single interesting thing found on the reverend’s body and possibly a clue.
First he pulls out the reverend’s wallet.
It’s a typical black leather billfold, fat with credit cards and mulch of what were likely receipts.
The women sit unmoving, except for their eyes, which follow his hands as if transfixed in a hypnotist’s trance.
He reaches back in the envelope and pulls out an Apple Watch.
The silicone strap is the same water-mottled black of the boots.
Next, he removes a ring with four keys and a car fob.
He’s already determined that the fob is for the truck the reverend and Heddy shared, and the keys are for their home, the chapel, the school’s gate, and a padlock for the garden shed behind the reverend and Heddy’s house.
He sets the fob beside the wallet and Apple Watch, reaches back into the envelope, and takes out the reverend’s phone.
A search of the reverend’s text, email, and call history turned up nothing.
Every call made near the time of his death was to Heddy or his mom, except for a barber appointment he made for three days after he died, which indicated the reverend didn’t appear to have any idea he wouldn’t be alive to keep it.
He sets the phone down backside up. The case is custom printed with a photo of the reverend and Heddy cheek to cheek.
On seeing it, Heddy’s chin trembles, and he watches as she fights to keep it together.
Next, he pulls out the reverend’s two rings, a wedding band and a clergy ring, both sawed along their backs and warped from being pried from the reverend’s bloated fingers.
The older woman gives a low, plaintive wail a second before her veiny hand darts out to snatch the clergy ring. She fists it and clenches it to her heart.
Heddy reaches sideways as if to wrap a comforting arm around her mother-in-law, but the older Mrs. Reicher rears from her touch, and Heddy returns her hands to her lap.
“Is that it?” Heddy asks.
“One more thing,” the sheriff says.
“I thought so,” Heddy says as if she’d been waiting for what he’s about to reveal, which makes him even more curious about the item.
The bracelet, which was found in the reverend’s left coat pocket, is made of carved orange beads and an engraved silver capsule, which when opened, revealed the remains of a small scroll.
The writing had been lost to months of being in the water, and the paper was mulch.
He showed the bracelet to a local jeweler who told him the piece was worthless, an inexpensive amulet, likely from Africa and typically worn to ward off evil spirits.
Heddy tilts her head.
“Not what you were expecting?” he asks.
It’s the older woman who answers, “Where’s the rabbit’s foot?”