Blood Hollow

34

“She was murdered four years ago?”

“An investigation of her murder was conducted four years ago. Whatever that means.”

Jo fell quiet on the other end of the line. She was in her office at home. Cork knew the window was open because he could hear Stevie in the backyard with some other children. They were yelling. A game of tag, it sounded like.

“Did you call him back?”

“I tried. No answer. I left a couple of messages. He told Annie he’d be in his office all day Monday if I wanted to call him back. Jo, I need to go out to California. I want to talk to Hadlestadt in person first thing Monday morning.”

“Maybe he’ll call before Monday.”

“Maybe. But I still think I should go. Kane lived most of his life in California. It could be that a lot of the answers we’re looking for are there.”

“It means you’ll have to fly out tomorrow. That’ll be expensive.”

“Would you want to cross-examine a witness over the phone?”

“You really think it will be worthwhile?”

“Yeah.”

“Gut feeling?”

“Gut feeling.”

“All right. I’ll get on the Internet and see if I can get you a reasonable fare.” He heard her breathe, a sigh like wind across the wire. “What’s going on, Cork?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. With any luck, come Monday we’ll have an answer.”

He was distracted the rest of the evening, and thankful when it came time to close. As he was preparing the slip for the night deposit, Annie called to him from the front where she was finishing with the cleaning.

“Dad, Aunt Rose is here. She wants you to come outside.”

“Tell her to come in.”

“No, she says for you to come outside.”

Cork put the day’s take in a bank envelope and sealed it, then he left the Quonset hut.

It was almost dark. Rose stood in the gravel lot, waiting.

“This is a surprise,” he said.

“I was out for a walk.”

“Long walk.”

“I seem to take a lot of those these days. Mind if we talk down by the lake? It’s so pretty in the evening.”

They strolled to the dock, where the water was smooth and dark. The town of Aurora lay along the shoreline to the south, and far across the lake to the east the lights of isolated cabins glimmered here and there like stars fallen to earth.

“What is it, Rose?”

She crossed her arms and looked at the distant lights. “Do you remember the first time we met, Cork?”

“Sure. Beef stroganoff and cherry pie. Best meal I’d had in years.”

She laughed gently. “You always had a good appetite. I knew right away you were a man who could be trusted. In Jo’s life, that was important and rare.”

“You grilled me pretty good that night.”

“You passed with flying colors.”

A fish jumped. A splash of water, blue-black rings widening. Then the night was quiet again.

“Why Jo?” she asked.

“What?”

“What made you fall in love with Jo?”

“Her eyes for one thing. They were fire and ice at the same time. Her brain. The way she talked so passionately about things. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful, too.”

Rose breathed a sigh. “Men like a pretty woman, don’t they?”

“Beauty comes in a lot of forms, Rose, and I’ll tell you this. I’ve never met anyone with a more beautiful soul than yours.”

In the dim light, she smiled at him. “Thank you.”

“You clean up pretty nice, too.”

She laughed again.

“Long walk just to ask about Jo and me.”

“That wasn’t the reason I came.”

Maybe not, but it was certainly on your mind, Cork thought.

“Jo told me you’re flying to California tomorrow. She said you think Fletcher might have had something to do with Charlotte’s murder.”

“I’m just following leads, Rose.”

“What if you don’t come up with anything?”

“I’ll keep digging until I do.” Cork leaned against one of the dock posts. “You know, Rose, you’ve always been the soul of discretion, but if you’ve got something to say, I wish you’d just spit it out.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I made a promise. An important one.”

“To whom?”

“I can’t say.”

“Do you know something about Charlotte? About the Kanes? Rose, this is important.”

“I know. But I can’t tell you now. When do you leave?”

“First thing in the morning. Why can’t you tell me now?”

“I told you that I knew you were a man who could be trusted. Well, I need you to trust me now.”

If anyone else had put him in this position, Cork would have throttled them. But Rose asked little, and when she did, it was a request to be heeded.

“All right.” He let out a huge breath that conveyed, he hoped, his frustration. “You want a ride back to the rectory?”

“I’d rather walk. I’ve still got a lot of thinking to do.”

A breeze arose, glided off the water cool and fresh, lifted her hair. Cork saw how beautiful she was then, and how any man might love her.

She said, “I used to believe life was pretty simple. There was my family, my friends, and my church, and there wasn’t much that prayer couldn’t help.”

“And now?”

“Some days,” she said, “I wonder.”

She turned away from the lake.

“I wish you’d take a ride,” Cork said. “Until we know who stalked Annie, it might not be safe to be out alone so late.”

She weighed his concern, and after a moment, she said all right.

“Wait in the Bronco. I’ll get Annie.”

Inside, Annie had finished the cleaning and was ready to go.

“What did Aunt Rose want?” she asked.

Cork gathered everything for the night deposit, shook his head, and said, “I’m not sure she knows.”

Early the next morning, before he left town, Cork drove to Sam Winter Moon’s old cabin. Blue woodsmoke rose up from the stovepipe, and the smell of frying bacon was in the air. Dot’s blue Blazer sat under a birch tree. The cabin door opened as Cork walked toward it, and Solemn’s mother stepped outside. She wore jeans and a blue and white Timberwolves T-shirt and held a spatula in her hand.

“Morning, Dot.”

“Cork.”

“Looking for Solemn.”

“He’s along the creek.” With the spatula, she pointed toward the east.

“Where are the bodyguards?”

“Bodyguards?”

“Junior and Phil Medina.”

“Solemn sent them away.” She swung her free hand at a fly that was darting about her head. “Jo told me you’re going to L.A. today.”

“Yeah.”

“I told Solemn. He didn’t seem to care much. He heard about the miracles. That they were bullshit.”

“How’s he doing?”

She shook her head.

“Think he’d mind if I talked to him?”

“You can try. Hungry? I got pancakes and bacon coming up soon.”

“No, thanks. I’ll just have a word with Solemn then be off.”

He found Winter Moon sitting on a stump a hundred yards down Widow’s Creek. It wasn’t far from the place where, months earlier, Cork had found the dead whitetail. All remains of the deer were probably gone now, eaten by scavengers and insects. Nature cleaning up, Cork knew.

Solemn sat slumped, his arms on his knees, his head down, watching the creek water run past a few yards away. He didn’t seem to hear Cork coming.

“Solemn?”

The young man didn’t turn, didn’t move at all. “They don’t believe,” he said.

“A lot of people never did. Does that make a difference?”

“It’s gone. That feeling I got in the woods. I’ve lost it. Why did it come to me if it was just going to go away?” He shook his head. “You were right all along. It was just a dream. Hallucination, whatever. All those people looking to me, they really were just a bunch of suckers.”

Cork sat down on the ground next to the stump and looked at the water moving past, saw how the sky was reflected on the surface without obscuring the rocks beneath that formed the creek bed.

“Solemn, last winter I saw something that to this day I don’t understand. It was right after Charlotte disappeared. I was part of the search team looking for her, but I got lost in a whiteout on Fisheye Lake. Couldn’t tell up from down. I haven’t been so scared in a long time. Then someone, some thing, guided me to safety. I never saw it clearly. It stayed just at the edge of my vision, but I felt it was Charlotte, and I don’t know how that could have been.”

“You believe what you saw?”

“I want to believe. I want very much to believe, but I fall way short. It saved my life, that’s all I know, just like what you saw saved yours.” Cork shrugged and stared beyond the creek where the forest lay deep as any secret he knew. “I remember something Sam used to tell me. He said there’s more in these woods than a man can ever see with his eyes, more than he can ever hope to understand.”

For a long time, Solemn didn’t respond. Then he said, “Sam’s dead.”

“What I’m saying is that most people would give anything for a moment of the kind of certainty you had out there in those woods. What you experienced is a rare gift and one that gives the rest of us hope.”

Solemn slowly lifted his head. There were tears in his eyes.

“I felt like I was overflowing. Now I wish it had never happened, Cork, because now that it’s gone, I feel more empty than ever. And more alone.”

Cork wanted to reach out and hold Solemn, but touching that way wasn’t Ojibwe.

He stood up. He had a plane to catch.

“Go to Henry,” he said.

He stopped in Aurora to gas up. As he headed south out of town, he drove past the sheriff’s department and the park where the crowd had once gathered, hoping for a glimpse of a man who’d talked with God. The park was empty now. Whenever hope packed its bag and left for good, all that remained was a terrible emptiness, immeasurably sad.

That was something Solemn understood well.

Cork drove to the Twin Cities, and at two o’clock caught a plane to L.A. By the time he’d shuttled to the Hertz lot to pick up his rental and driven to his hotel, a quaint place called the Claremont Inn just across the city line from Pomona, it was nearly six o’clock. His stomach was still on Minnesota time and he was starved. After he checked in, he headed out in search of food and the Worthington Clinic.

He found the clinic first. It was a multiwing building of snow white stucco set in a sea of grass behind iron gates and a wall hung with bougainvillea. In the background rose the San Gabriels, copper green in the late afternoon haze. It looked like the kind of place only an Oscar or a million bucks would get you into.

He had a decent steak in a restaurant just off Route 66, then he drove awhile. He hadn’t been in Southern California for years and what had bothered him then bothered him now. The orange groves had become subdivisions and parking lots, and even with all the freeways no one seemed to be able to get anywhere fast enough.

He returned to the hotel a little before ten, and saw from the blinking light on the room telephone that he had a message. It was from Jo. “Call me, sweetheart,” she said. “I have some good news.”

Although it was nearly midnight in Minnesota, Cork called immediately. Jo answered, sounding a little sleepy.

“I talked with Rose today,” she told him. “After you left. She knows where Glory is.”

“How?”

“Glory heard about the angel of the roses and called Rose last week. She made Rose promise not to tell anyone. And you know how Rose is when she makes a promise.”

He did. And now he understood the discussion he’d had with his sister-in-law the night before.

“She talked with Glory today, and Glory asked her to have you call as soon as possible.”

Jo gave him Glory’s number.

Cork looked at the area code. “Where is this?”

“Iowa. Rose said that when you call you should ask for Cordelia Diller.”

“Who?”

“That’s the name Glory is using. She’ll explain. One more thing, Cork. Dorothy Winter Moon’s been getting a lot of threatening calls. People are pretty angry about the miracle business. A lot of them seem to blame Solemn, think he must’ve been in on it. He’s gone to Henry Meloux’s, by the way.”

“Good. If anyone can help, it’s Henry. How’s Annie?”

“She’s at the Pilons. Claire invited her for a sleepover.”

“Make sure she’s careful. Make sure both of the girls are.”

“That’s a roger.”

“I love it when you talk cop.”

“I miss you.”

“Miss you, too.”

After he hung up, he punched in the number Jo had given him for Glory Kane. The phone at the other end rang several times before it was finally answered.

“Rosemount. This is Sister Alice Mary.”

“Sister?”

“Yes?”

“I’m trying to reach Cordelia Diller.”

“It’s rather late. Everyone is in bed.”

“She asked me to call her.”

“Is it an emergency of some kind?”

“I wouldn’t call it an emergency, no.”

“Then I’m sure she didn’t intend for you to call near midnight. I’ll see that she gets your message first thing in the morning. Is there a number where she might return your call?”

Cork gave her the motel telephone number.

“Sister Alice Mary, where are you exactly?”

“Just outside Dansig, Iowa, right on the Mississippi River.”

“I guess I mean what are you? What is Rosemount?”

“We’re a retreat center for Catholic women, particularly those who are considering entering a religious life.”

“You mean becoming a nun?”

“That’s certainly one of the options.”

“Thank you, Sister.”

Cork hung up and spent a few minutes trying to picture Glory Kane as a nun. God might be able to see it, he finally decided, but his own eyes were way too blind.