Chapter 4 Sandhill Crane
Four
Sandhill Crane
Antigone canadensis. Cranes symbolize luck but also retribution and are often used as a metaphor for witnessing crimes and bringing culprits to
years old. The genus name is shared with the title character of the play by Sophocles about a brave, loyal, doomed young woman.
I always thought I had a vocation for true crime—writing about it, that is, not living it. When you’ve had a lucky life, with
no significant bad fortune inside or outside the fence, it’s tempting to think you could ace something big and dangerous,
no problem. Now it was freaky to think of meeting people like no rep from Prada or Burberry ever was.
I knew fuck all about the dark side.
Looking back, I would rather spend eighteen months writing personality profiles of every plumber in the city of Chicago than ever again talk to the family of a murder victim.
The reason most crime stories are about the murderer is not just because the personality of someone who does wrong is more fascinating than the mind of someone who gets done wrong (which is almost everyone, at some point, to a greater or lesser degree).
It’s because the victim of a crime is usually innocent, sometimes unbearably innocent. Everything is sad.
When I called Emil Gardener’s house, a woman answered who identified herself as Elizabeth Doll.
I told her what I was doing. She said, “Oh dear.”
Gathering my courage, I asked to speak to Erica Doll Gardener. She apologized. “My aunt is literally dying. She’s in a coma.
She couldn’t talk to you if she wanted to.”
“You know about the woman accused of killing Mr. Gardener.”
“I do know. And Aunt Erica did too. My aunt was sick even when she was a young woman. She was so sad that she couldn’t have
children. But she really loved Emil. He really loved her too. Can you make sure that you say that?”
“I will,” I told her. I wanted to weep. “I’m sorry for your loss and her loss. Is there someone you’d prefer me to talk to
instead of you?”
“Oh no! I’m fine. With them, you know how it is when you love someone, you want him to be happy.”
“Not so much as that,” I said, without taking time to think, and immediately repented it.
“He was devoted to Erica in other ways. He read to her every night, for almost forty years. They went to church together every
Sunday, even when Erica was in her wheelchair.”
“Can I mention that?”
“Yes, of course you can. I don’t blame you, you know, Miss . . . ?”
“Reenie. Reenie Bigelow.”
“Reenie, I don’t really blame you. I know you’re only doing your job. Do you think that woman really killed Emil?”
“It seems the police are pretty sure. But there are so many questions. The dates don’t line up very well. And no one knows how they died really, except probably some kind of poison or toxin.” I asked then, “Can you tell me about Emil?”
He was apparently just like another grandfather to those nieces and nephews, so generous at Christmas that they thought of
him as the second Santa Claus. He had no family of his own, an only child whose parents died in their middle years. His wife’s
family was as dear to him as if they were his own. The Gardeners paid for college for four nieces and a nephew.
“Uncle Em is why I’m a nurse now, and lucky thing, because I can look after Erica.” She said then, “Gosh, it probably won’t
be long now, and she’ll be with Emil.”
“So she was a believer?”
“She was a churchgoer. I suppose none of us really knows about what happens after we die. That’s what you take on faith, right?”
I murmured something that I hoped sounded like assent. Elizabeth Doll added, “My mom and my aunts will pray for that young
woman as well. Her family must be crushed.”
“Thank you,” I said and then got flustered, because I wasn’t the one needing the prayers, although I’d take them if they were
offered. She asked if I needed anything else. Ivy had instructed me to arrange for photos of the survivors, but there was
no way I was going to further intrude on these people. Just a photo of the couple, I said, that the magazine could copy. The
niece agreed, saying there was a lovely clear picture of the two of them at a summer picnic.
“You know, Erica would want you to find out what really happened. She was a very smart woman. She wanted to be a lawyer but
she was the oldest, so she wound up in the dairy business. Wanting to help was in her nature. My brother and my aunts and
I, we think it’s almost a blessing that Aunt Erica is not aware of all this.” She apparently had been in and out of consciousness
for months, and no one knew if she understood that Emil was dead—although she sometimes asked for him.
When I finished talking to the niece, I felt as filthy as if I’d been left overnight in an old deep fryer. I wanted to call her back and tell her that I was not the mercenary she probably imagined me to be.
So it was almost gratifying by contrast when Cary Church’s wife, Suzanne, barely let me finish saying my name before she ripped
me a new asshole.
“I want to say I can’t believe your gall but of course, I can. You’re a vampire so I shouldn’t expect any kind of moral behavior
from you . . .” I counted backward from ten, reminding myself that this was a newly bereaved mother of two who’d suffered
an additional shock in addition to the death.
“I’m not trying to hurt you, Suzanne. This is something that already happened and I can’t change that.”
“But you can squeeze it and shape it until it sounds like Cary deserved to die . . .”
“I would never do that. In fact, your perspective on Cary will help people see that there was another side of him . . .”
“What do you mean, ‘another side of him’?” she snapped.
“Another side of his character, as a husband, not just as a guy who paid Felicity Wild for . . . companionship.”
“There’s no proof that he did that,” Suzanne Church said. “Just because you can only see the worst, because you’re a bottom-dwelling
slug . . .”
“Wait! Are you suggesting that he did not have a paying friendship with Felicity Wild? Why else would he take out a two-million-dollar
life insurance policy with her as the beneficiary?” Something snapped in me then, and I said, “Cary’s death is horrible for
your family and a terrible injustice. But I don’t see how not writing about it would benefit anybody.”
She said then, “I hope the same thing happens to you.”
“Being written about . . .”
“No, having your husband murdered.”
If this was how Suzanne Church fought, no wonder they were separated. I bit the tongue of my wicked mind on that thought. She was misplacing her anger, that was all, and it was to be expected. “I don’t think you mean that. You would never want someone else to have to live with this.”
“I would though. I hope your husband dies horribly. Then you’ll think of what you put us through.”
“Respectfully, the murderer put you through this. And Cary put you through this. Not me.” I added, “You can’t blame other
people for wanting to know how such a strange, awful thing happened.”
In the pause that intervened, I could all but hear her gathering her thoughts for the next assault. “Is that what you think,
that you’re so wise and brave that you’ll be able to work out the truth and share it? Or are you just licking your chops to
be able to dine out on our grief?”
“Do you want to keep any of this off the record? Like the part where you said you hope someone kills my husband?” I asked
her then. That was nasty; I didn’t intend to quote her.
“I never said anything like that,” she told me. “If you write that down, who do you think people will believe, me or the murderer’s
buddy pal?”
She hung up. I hung up.
Then, to my horror, she called back. I considered not answering, but I did.
“Why couldn’t you even have the decency to come here and look me in the face as you tried to destroy my life?” she said.
“I would be happy to come and see you,” I said, and thought, About as happy as I would be to do bowel surgery on myself in the woods with a stick.
“You should. I would kick your fat face in.”
“Then I should stay right where I am,” I said. “Honestly, I feel terrible for you and your children. I am writing this because I should, but it’s not fun. When I think of the ways it involves me too, it makes me sick to my stomach.”
Until now, I’d never really grappled with how fragile I would feel if someone else was writing about my biggest heartbreak.
I didn’t even want to write about that myself. I had the righteous dread of hipster-style first-person “participatory” journalism.
Yet, what other choice did I have but to look in the mirror? Would it not have been disingenuous otherwise?
Suzanne Church was quiet for so long I believed that she’d hung up again. Finally, she said softly, “I’m sorry. You’re right.
This isn’t your fault. I’m so angry at Cary but there’s no one else except Cary I would tell. I want him to comfort me. I
wish we stayed together. Maybe it was partly my fault that he went to that woman.”
“No. Don’t think that.”
“I could have been a better wife.”
“I’m sure that you were a fine wife. Who knows why people do the things they do? It certainly wasn’t any failure on your part.”
Then I asked the big question. “You really didn’t know anything about this, huh? Not the fact of the woman or the money or
any of that.”
“I found out when he died. He wasn’t around as much as he should have been. I told him I felt like a single mom. But he would
ask me, what did I want him to do? I wanted to be with the kids until they were a little older, so he was doing consulting
along with teaching and, I guess, this other stuff too.” Eventually, Cary came home from some supposed late-night consulting
gig and Suzanne confronted him with her suspicions. He admitted everything. She threw him out.
“Maybe it’s better in the end that you didn’t know.”
“It’s more than the grief. I feel like a complete fool,” she said. She had nightmares of walking into Cary’s funeral with