Aposiopesis

––!!--- There were no words. Of all the —

He’s got balls, I’ll give him that. To even suggest that I finish the case after everything that’s happened is the most ridiculous, unbelievable, incredible…offensive.  That’s the word.  Offensive. So really, I shouldn’t be surprised at all. That tracks perfectly with Nihls Porter.

Nihls and I have run in the same circles since grade school. Not by choice. Small town in the north, you know? Even back then he was a prick. You’d think I would’ve been clear of him when I went off to school. I did have 4 years of undergrad Nihls-free. But turns out, he got into the same single, solitary law school that accepted lil’ old me. It wasn’t a big class. Then, I would never have come back to Port Robert to hang out my shingle, but life, y’know?  Mom got sick, and it was just me and her. Then there was the estate to settle, and I had the house, and well, I’m still here. And so is he. A thorn in my side perpetually, working at the same office – the ONLY law office in a radius of 50km. Mostly, it’s fine. I do a lot of estates and wills, stuff like that. He sticks to family law – divorces, child custody, things where he gets to be a part of watching someone get screwed. We don’t specialize, per se, in such a small firm, but we have our preferences. And with the McReedy case, he wasn’t just trespassing on my territory, he was interfering with a friendship.

Jonas McReedy is a good guy. Grew up with him too; he was 2 years ahead of me in school. His mom died in ‘96 of breast cancer, his brother joined the military. So it was just him and his dad. Then his dad died. He came to us to do all the paperwork; there was the farm to think about, and a small estate to settle. Nihls does all he can to avoid any kind of work, so I thought it was strange how he jumped to take on Jonas. With no will, it would be a sea of paperwork to get everything in order. Not that I pay particular attention to anything Nihls does, but it was weird. So when Jonas left, I decided I may as well have it out with Nihls. 

“That was about the McReedy estate, wasn’t it?”

“Karla, I’m not going to talk to you about it. You know how it works.”

“Bullshit, Nihls. What do you want with the McReedy paperwork? I know there’s no will. Jonas told me at the wake. It’s going to be a pain in the ass. Give it to me.”

“I’m not going to add to your workload, Karla. You’ve already got three clients. I don’t have anyone right now. I’ll take this one off your hands. Really. It’s fine.”

I smelled skunk, but I couldn’t argue that he had anything better to do.  So I left it at that. 

I wasn’t entirely surprised when Jonas called me up two days later. We’d been in the same circle in highschool, and had developed a casual friendship again when I moved back. 

“Hey, can we grab a cup of coffee or something this week?  There’s something I want to ask you about.” Jonas began.

“Me too, actually. Why didn’t you get me to do the estate paperwork for you?”

“I mean…I was going to. But Nihls kinda cornered me. He had me in his office going through papers before I figured out that he wasn’t going to step out and get you. But it doesn’t make a difference legally, does it?  I mean, he’s qualified to do that kind of stuff, isn’t he?”

“Well, yeah, but Jonas, it’s Nihls.”

“I know. But, it’s a bit late now. It would be awkward…” 

“Don’t worry about it.  It’s fine.  What did you want to ask me?”

“Well, it’s kinda…it’s something I don’t really want to talk about on the phone. Can we meet at Hill’s on Thursday?  I’ll be in town anyhow to...” he cleared his throat.  The pause was enough for me to finish his sentence for him.

“To meet with Nihls?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Sure.  Hill’s on Thursday.”

“Karla…”

“No, it’s fine. 1:30?”

“Yeah. 1:30 is good.”

****

Hill’s has been around in one incarnation or another since my grandparents moved to the area in the thirties.  It was a general store, then a hotel or something. It’s been a restaurant as long as I can remember. 

“Decaf”, I told the waitress as I sat down across from Jonas. He already had a half-empty cup of coffee in front of him.

“So, Jo, whadda ya know?” I said, slipping easily into the chummy banter that was usual between us.

He wrapped his hands around his coffee mug and looked up at me. “Karla, How well did you know my dad?”

“What?” I’m not usually at a loss for words, but his abruptness caught me off guard.

“It’s just something he said. I can’t make heads or tails of it. I don’t think he ever thought there was anything, you know, between us, but I can’t think of any other reason except if you knew him .. a lot better than I thought you did.”

“WHAT?”

Jonas sighed.

“We were sitting on the deck one night near the end.  We’d just sit and talk.  About the farm, mostly.  What fences needed fixing, what cows were going to calf when, farm business.  We were talking about turning over the far field that night.  Well, I was, anyhow. He didn’t have a lot to say in the last few days.  He’d never say, but I think he was in a lot of pain. But then, he looks at me and says “Look after Karla.” Well, you’re the only Karla I know.  Can’t think that he knows another Karla, he hasn’t barely been off the farm in 20 years. So I thought…well, I don’t know what I thought. Why would he want me to take care of you in particular?”

“I don’t know!” I was more than puzzled.  “I really didn’t know your dad. I remember he gave out the best halloween candy when we were kids...that’s about it, Jo. I really didn’t know him.”

Jonas chuckled.  “Always bought the full-sized candy bars.  He said he didn’t want the kids messing with the livestock because they thought he was chintzy with the candy. But that doesn’t explain..”

“Yeah. It doesn’t. I don’t think I even talked to your father in the last ten years.  I have no idea what he was talking about.”

“I guess it must’ve been the meds, then. He was taking an awful lot at the end. Did your mom say weird things when she was on all them cancer meds?”

“Not that I remember, but I can’t think of any other explanation.”

“Huh. well I dunno then. It probably isn’t anything. I’d best be gettin’.” He tossed down a twenty on the table as he stood up.

“Jo, are you okay? If you need anything, to talk, or anything…”

“I’m alright. I’ve got the farm and the business to tend to.”

“I know. But I know what its…if you ever want to talk, I’m here.”

“I appreciate it. I’ll be seein’ you.”

“Yeah. Take care of yourself, Jo.” I resisted the sudden urge to hug him as he nodded and turned away.

****

The following Tuesday, Nihls practically tackled me when I walked in the office.

“What the hell, Karla? Where is it?!” 

“Nihls, I have no –”

“The hell you don’t!  You’re off talking to Jonas at Hill’s, now the damn key is gone. Going through my files, that’s low. Stealing from them, though, you are so much more than fired if I say even a word. Gimme back the key, Karla.”

“Nihls, I don’t know what you’re smoking, but I don’t have a key from your files.”

“I am going to crucify you!” He shouted as he flew back to his office and slammed the door in a rage.

***

Nolan Cranby, my boss and senior partner of the firm – well senior partner when it had been a partnered firm, before Sam Porter, Nihls’ father had his stroke – stopped by my office that afternoon.

“I don’t know what’s between you and Nihls, Karla, but you need to get it sorted out. He’s on the warpath.”

“Honestly? Nolan, he went off this morning about me stealing some key from his files. I have no idea.  You know how he is.  He’s lost it and can’t take the blame.”

“Well, that explains one thing, anyhow,” Nolan said, taking a safety deposit box key out of his pocket. “Found this on the carpet last night on my way out. Just between you and me, how ‘bout we let him stew for a little bit longer?” He set the key on the corner of my desk. “I’m off to the city for the Martin case, but I’m sure you can figure out a way to have Nihls find it after awhile,” he said with a wink. 

I smiled back. Nolan and I had an “understanding” about Nihls.  He had felt obligated to hire his former partner’s son when he graduated. But he knew as well as I did what Nihls was like, and he didn’t turn down any opportunities to see Nihls get his own back. As it turned out, it was a long while before I got around to thinking of the key again.

****

Jonas called me again that night, this time at home.

“Hey, Jo, you doing okay?” I asked. It was unusual for him to call in the evening out of the blue.

“Yeah, um, no.  Karla, I’m not. Can you come out to the farm? I, uh, I think I need some legal advice.”

“What kind of legal advice?  Do you want to set up an appointment tomorrow?” I said, thinking Nihls had somehow screwed things up.  It would figure.

“No, no I think I need you to come out here now. That thing on cop shows about client-lawyer confidentiality, it’s a real thing, right?”

“Yeah, it is. You’re scaring me Jo.  What’s going on?”

“Okay, I’m hiring you as my lawyer.  Like, right now.  Can you please come out to the farm?”

“Yeah. I’ll be right there.” We hung up as I grabbed my keys. I couldn’t imagine what kind of legal emergency a dairy farmer would have at 8:30 at night, but I wasn’t going to waste time trying to figure it out.

Jonas was waiting for me outside when I pulled up in front of the farmhouse.

“Come on,” he said, waving to his side-by-side.

“Wait, hold on, Jonas, what’s going on? Where are we going?”

“Just…okay, I was plowing the far field. The one dad never touched. It’s been fallow for practically forever. I never figured why he didn’t want to plant it. He always said he never got around to it…”

“Jonas, seriously. What’s going on?”

“I plowed it over.  Was thinking we could put in soy in the spring. But..just get in, Karla.  I keep thinkin’ I’ve gone crazy. Just come out to the field.”

I swung into the passenger side of the side-by-side and we drove on the farm track out to the far field. He pulled up about twenty feet behind a large piece of equipment sitting in the field.

“There.  What do I do? I mean, do I call the cops? If I do, then what? Om my god, Karla..you’re a lawyer.  What do I do?”

“Jonas, I don’t know what…” 

But then I did. As I walked towards the tractor I did suddenly know exactly what had upset Jonas so much. It was sticking out of the ground about five feet behind the tractor. The side-by-side lights were shining directly on it. A leg. A human leg, big enough that it must be a grown man’s. A leg, sticking out of the ground like a stalk of corn. I passed out.

Jonas did call the cops. When I came to, he had already placed the call and was ready to call an ambulance for me. He saw me move and came running over. “You alright?  Jeezus. It’s a shock, sure, but I didn’t figure you’d faint!”

“I’m fine,” I said, though I patently was not fine.

“I did it. I called the cops. I gotta go back to the house to meet them now.  Do you want to….do you want to sit here and rest?”

I looked up at him. “No. No, Jonas, I don’t want to sit alone in your field with a dead body.  What the HELL, Jonas?”

“I don’t know!  I mean, I… let’s get back to the house. They said they were sending someone around.”

On the ride back, I managed to ascertain that Jonas didn’t think it was him that had killed the man. No one had been around. No one was ever out in the far field. And he didn’t think the tiller dug deep enough to bury the rest of a person if it WAS somehow someone he’d run over. So that left only the possibility that he’d just dug up what someone else had buried.

The police were nearly as shocked as I had been when we took them out to the far field. Dead bodies aren’t exactly your run-of-the-mill police work in rural Ontario. But it didn’t take long for the constable who examined the scene to determine that the body had been there long before Jonas started plowing. They cordoned off the area, with the promise to return the next day to excavate the remains.

I was sitting at the farm’s kitchen table, on my second tumbler of whisky trying to reassure Jonas that he wasn’t going to jail when something occurred to me.

“Jonas, that night you told me about.  When your dad said to take care of me.  You said you were talking about the far field.  What exactly did your dad say?”

Jonas paused to think.  “He said that the shit was going to hit the fan sooner or later, then to take care of … jeezus, was he talking about… about the far field? You don’t think he knew?”

“I think, Jo, that we both need another drink.”

***

I never knew my dad. He took off before I was born. It had always been just mom and me. So when I got the call that the DNA from the body in Jonas’ field was his, I didn’t grieve, exactly. I didn’t have any need for closure or anything. What I did feel was a flood of confusion.

“I always thought he just took off because he didn’t want to be a dad.” I was talking to Nolan, trying to make some sense of the fact that my deadbeat father had just turned up in my friend’s field.

“Well y’know, back at the time, there was a hullabaloo, now I think about it.” Nolan offered. “Seemed your dad just up and leaving didn’t sit well with people. There was a search and all, but well…” He trailed off, shrugging his shoulders. “I guess in the end everyone just assumed he’d cut bait when he found out your mother was in the family way.”

The police report said that the cause of death was multiple stab wounds. There were defensive injuries. He hadn’t abandoned us. Based on the evidence, he’d fought for his life and lost. 

“This must be some shock for you, Karla.” Nolan continued. “If you need to take some time off, well…” he looked out my office door, across to Nihls’ door “Nihls can pick up the slack for awhile.” But he didn’t sound very convincing.

“Nolan, you know I won’t leave my cases to him.  He’s next to incompetent.”

“Humph. That reminds me. Tell me about the look on his face when he found that key he said you stole.”

“Jeez! With everything else that’s happened, I never did get it back to him!”

“He said it was from the McReedy file, yeah? Hell of a coincidence. Did Nihls mention the troubles he’s having with that file? Real big sums of money popping up and disappearing. Unaccounted for. Seems strange, for a farmer to have such problematic financials.”

***

The key was...well it was the key to everything in the end. I didn’t give it back to Nihls. I called Jonas and he took it to the bank and opened the safety deposit box. The letters – between my mother and Sam Porter – painted a pretty clear picture. The forensic results from the knife that was with them moreso, with blood matching my father’s and prints matching Porter’s. But it was the financial records that dropped the last piece into place. Large sums of money transferred from Sam Porter to Silas McReedy every few years, and statements for a trust account in Jonas’s name.

Sam Porter fought with my father over the affair Porter was having with my mother. The letters my father found sparked the argument, which was overheard by Silas late one night in the backwoods and ended in my father’s stabbing, witnessed by Silas. 

Money, and the threat of being named an accomplice, it seems, kept the secret for 30 years. Porter threatened and finally bribed Silas to help him bury the body and keep quiet. Silas, with a toddler and young wife at home, a farm mortgaged to the hilt, took the money at first out of desperation and fear, but over time, built up a small nest egg from the secret and the proof that he kept in the deposit box.

***

“You were right,” Nihls –my half-brother, as it turns out – said, flipping through the McReedy file again. “It’s a total nightmare. You still want it?”