Read Online Hippie House by Katherine Holubitsky - Free Book Online

police officers were careful not to commit, but they also admitted the girl was likely Katie Russell. They werecertainly not experts, they were quick to emphasize, but judging by the condition of the body they would estimate the girl had been dead at least a month.
    Now they waited for detectives and forensic units to arrive from the provincial police department and the RCMP It was a day of many arrivals and few departures. By mid-afternoon our lane had become a parking lot, and the once snowy trail to the Hippie House had been trampled by so many feet it was muddy and worn. Men stood talking among the black-and-white cars while the photographer first walked through the Hippie House. A large area around the small building was cordoned off. No one was to enter from the road; a barricade was erected. The entrance through the woods, just past the duck house, was also blocked, as was a significant portion of the surrounding woods.
    Dad was asked if he would be willing to take the photographer over the area for some aerial shots. Yes, he said, he would. It would require that he plow a strip of snow from the field, but between his neighbor, Grant Fraser, and brother-in-law, Pat, it shouldn’t take long. The three men were relieved to be doing something useful and they worked quickly to clear a narrow runway. Cocking her head as if something wasn’t quite right, Halley was the first to hear the engine of the Maul Rocket as it struggled, unaccustomed as it was to being dragged into the cold.
    Once the plane was in flight, Uncle Pat plowed the trail down to the duck house, allowing the coroner’s long dark vehicle to pass. It would be several hours before it would carry the body back to the main road.
    The first reporters and cameramen began to show up very soon after the police. They continued to arrive from the larger and more distant cities all day. They took pictures and they filmed the house, the workshop and the frozen pond. With each snap of the shutter, anger rose inside me—who were they, these people tramping all over our farm?
    Megan and I spent most of the day in the sunroom, which had the best view of the yard. We chattered on the edge of hysterics. Eric’s friends drove up in Jimmy’s pickup truck. For a few minutes they joined us in the sunroom.
    Jimmy toyed with the change in his pockets as he blinked at Eric, who sat slouched in a chair. “What a drag, man, to find a dead chick in your own backyard.”
    Malcolm agreed. “And what sick head would do something like that?”
    Staring across the pond in the direction of the Hippie House, Jimmy rubbed his head in disbelief. He turned and lay a hand on Eric’s shoulder. “Are you going to be alright? Can we do anything—get anything for you?”
    Mrs. Fraser and Ruby were two of the many neighbors from miles around who brought casseroles as if we personally had suffered a death. They did not know what else to do.
    Once the police were in control, Mom and Aunt Alice were thankful to be in the kitchen, where they prepared sandwiches and served endless cups of coffee. They were women who thrived when given something nurturing to do. It was cold outside and there was no reason for the investigators to suffer physically along with everything else they had to see. Knowing that Carl would be nothing but an annoyance, they had relegated him to wash dishes so that no officer in my mother’s kitchen would be forced to drink from a Styrofoam cup.
    I did not know what role each of these people played, mostly men, but a few women, who worked well into the night with spotlights fixed on the Hippie House, the officers who took measurements and those who planted markers in our fields. But at some point I wanted them all to pack up and leave us alone.
    The sunroom had doors to both the kitchen and living room. This allowed Megan and me to watch the activity outside as we strained for details in the conversations in both these