when we came inside, because of the headache that had been escalating steadily since we’d started the trip back, I went to the computer instead. I’d had an inspiration about another way I might recall what happened that night, so that I could finally get it over with, be able to testify, and dilute the memory of the power it had held over me for so long. Now that I had the image of a tattoo, which meant that Rud Petty might not have been involved after all (making it even easier to prove to everyone that Dawn was also innocent), I needed to do everything I could to learn the truth.
I didn’t use the computer very much anymore—only for e-mail and occasional online shopping—because it strained my eyes to look at the screen. But I managed to find, without very much trouble, the archives from the Albany newspaper that had covered the trial. Since I’d been unconscious in a hospital bed for three weeks after the attack, I missed all of the immediate news stories. After that, I made a point of avoiding them. It had occurred to me, driving home on the turnpike, that making myself read the details might unlock something in my memory that the district attorney could use.
Most of the first articles I found were only brief, factual accounts—things I already knew—and not likely to offer any insights. I clicked through months’ worth of articles, feeling that I was getting nowhere. Finally I paused when I reached a longer feature that had appeared a year earlier, on the second anniversary of the attack, under the headline
Mysteries Persist in Nightmare Suburban Killing:
Everton, N.Y. —When Hanna Schutt failed to show up for their weekly walk on Saturday morning of Thanksgiving weekend two years ago, Claire Danzig knew something was wrong. Unable to reach her friend by phone, she drove to the home Mrs. Schutt shared with her husband, Joseph, on a street in this oak-shaded suburb of the state’s capital. Approaching the house, Mrs. Danzig found a dirt-encrusted key in the lock of the front door, and looking through the entry window, she saw Joseph Schutt lying in copious amounts of blood on the stairway landing.
Claire had never told me what that day was like for her, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask. Because she was a good friend, she visited me at the hospital and accompanied me on my first trips out to the supermarket and the library, the pharmacy and the post office—places I had to relearn to negotiate, with my not-quite-up-to-par brain. Sometimes we went to a movie together, sometimes a dinner out. Gradually, though, the visits diminished, until we rarely even talked on the phone anymore.
It devastated me to lose Claire. We’d known each other since nursing school, and she and her husband, Hugh, had followed Joe and me to Everton to start their family. Although occasionally we went out as a foursome, we mostly did things in pairs; Joe helped Hugh with the financial paperwork when Hugh opened Caprice, the bakery and coffee shop at Four Corners, and then they took to scheduling weekly racquetball games. Outside the office, Claire and I often made plans to go to garage sales or movies or the book discussion group at the library.
It’s probably fair to say that Claire’s sensibility and mine were more aligned than even mine and Joe’s. Once, we signed up together for a yoga class at a new place in town called Namaste, but we got ejected the first night because we caught each other’s eyes as we struggled our way into the Downward Dog pose, set each other off laughing, and couldn’t stop. When Dawn started kindergarten, Claire recommended me for a part-time job in Bob Toussaint’s office, where she worked. After she retired early, a couple of years before the attack, we began walking our dogs together at Two Rivers on Saturday mornings, as a way to make sure we had a regular time to see each other and to pick up our continuing conversation wherever we’d left it off. The things we talked about seemed so
I didn’t use the computer very much anymore—only for e-mail and occasional online shopping—because it strained my eyes to look at the screen. But I managed to find, without very much trouble, the archives from the Albany newspaper that had covered the trial. Since I’d been unconscious in a hospital bed for three weeks after the attack, I missed all of the immediate news stories. After that, I made a point of avoiding them. It had occurred to me, driving home on the turnpike, that making myself read the details might unlock something in my memory that the district attorney could use.
Most of the first articles I found were only brief, factual accounts—things I already knew—and not likely to offer any insights. I clicked through months’ worth of articles, feeling that I was getting nowhere. Finally I paused when I reached a longer feature that had appeared a year earlier, on the second anniversary of the attack, under the headline
Mysteries Persist in Nightmare Suburban Killing:
Everton, N.Y. —When Hanna Schutt failed to show up for their weekly walk on Saturday morning of Thanksgiving weekend two years ago, Claire Danzig knew something was wrong. Unable to reach her friend by phone, she drove to the home Mrs. Schutt shared with her husband, Joseph, on a street in this oak-shaded suburb of the state’s capital. Approaching the house, Mrs. Danzig found a dirt-encrusted key in the lock of the front door, and looking through the entry window, she saw Joseph Schutt lying in copious amounts of blood on the stairway landing.
Claire had never told me what that day was like for her, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask. Because she was a good friend, she visited me at the hospital and accompanied me on my first trips out to the supermarket and the library, the pharmacy and the post office—places I had to relearn to negotiate, with my not-quite-up-to-par brain. Sometimes we went to a movie together, sometimes a dinner out. Gradually, though, the visits diminished, until we rarely even talked on the phone anymore.
It devastated me to lose Claire. We’d known each other since nursing school, and she and her husband, Hugh, had followed Joe and me to Everton to start their family. Although occasionally we went out as a foursome, we mostly did things in pairs; Joe helped Hugh with the financial paperwork when Hugh opened Caprice, the bakery and coffee shop at Four Corners, and then they took to scheduling weekly racquetball games. Outside the office, Claire and I often made plans to go to garage sales or movies or the book discussion group at the library.
It’s probably fair to say that Claire’s sensibility and mine were more aligned than even mine and Joe’s. Once, we signed up together for a yoga class at a new place in town called Namaste, but we got ejected the first night because we caught each other’s eyes as we struggled our way into the Downward Dog pose, set each other off laughing, and couldn’t stop. When Dawn started kindergarten, Claire recommended me for a part-time job in Bob Toussaint’s office, where she worked. After she retired early, a couple of years before the attack, we began walking our dogs together at Two Rivers on Saturday mornings, as a way to make sure we had a regular time to see each other and to pick up our continuing conversation wherever we’d left it off. The things we talked about seemed so
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