Blood Hollow

38

Cork picked up his Bronco at the Twin Cities airport and headed south. In the bluff country near the Iowa border, he began to see the effects of the storms that had swept through two nights earlier. Great trees lay uprooted. High water had left tangled debris in the undergrowth along stream banks. Road signs hung bent on their metal frames. This was the Midwest and it was that season.

Cork drove through Dansig in the late afternoon. Near the south end of town, a warehouse stood with its walls ripped open, the corrugated siding broken and twisted. A mile farther, he encountered a sign, temporarily repaired with a thick binding of silver duct tape, that pointed east down a secondary road toward Rosemount Retreat Center. The road was a long, narrow lane bordered on both sides by windrows of tall western yews. In several places, a fallen tree lay in freshly cut sections along the shoulder. As Cork neared the Center, he heard a chain saw droning in the humid air.

Rosemount Retreat Center stood on a wooded bluff high above the Mississippi River. The buildings were all dark red brick and looked as if they’d been there since the Civil War. The trunk of a large oak near the entrance had split. Half the tree lay on the ground. The white wood deep at the heart was visible in a long gaping wound. Much of the lawn was littered with broken branches. In several buildings, the glass was gone from windows and temporary covers of plywood filled the empty panes. Cork parked in the lot in front of the main building where a green sign indicated OFFICE. He got out and stood a moment in the summer heat. The sound of the chain saw had ceased.

Inside, the air was cool. Cork told the woman at the reception desk that he was there to see Cordelia Diller and that he was expected. The receptionist made a call, told him it would be a few minutes, and asked if he would like to have a seat. He’d been driving for three hours, so he stood.

When she came in the front door, he barely recognized the woman he’d known as Glory Kane. Her hair was cut severely short and was no longer black but a soft auburn. She wore no makeup. She was dressed in a simple white blouse, jeans, and sneakers. A small black purse hung over her shoulder. She’d always been slender, but she looked even slighter now. She seemed to have lost something of herself, though it wasn’t necessarily weight that was missing.

“Hello, Cork.” She gave him her hand.

“Cordelia,” he said.

“Let’s walk.”

He followed her outside, down a path that ran toward the river.

“Cordelia Diller?” he said.

She shrugged. “It’s what’s on the birth certificate. I changed it to Ruby James when I moved to Las Vegas.”

“And Glory Kane?”

“That was Fletcher’s idea. When I became his sister.”

“Are you related to Fletcher at all?”

“No. His real sister died shortly after she was born. Some kind of complication related to her mother’s pregnancy. There.” She pointed to a wooden bench perched at the edge of the bluff. They sat down. She opened her purse, took out a pack of Pall Malls, and lit a cigarette. “Still trying to quit,” she said, blowing smoke. “One more thing I’m working on changing.”

The humidity felt oppressive to Cork. The smell here was different from up north. There was an odor of desiccation, of dead leaves and wet earth and slow rot. He missed the fresh scent of pines and the clean air as it came off Iron Lake.

“You can hardly breathe,” she said, as if she’d read his thoughts. “That’s how I felt every day I lived here.”

“When was that?”

“A long time ago.” She tapped her ash. “That’s how I knew about Rosemount. I was born in Iowa. A town called Winterset. You know Winterset?”

“No.”

“Birthplace of John Wayne. He changed his name, too.” She took a long draw on her cigarette and appraised Cork through the veil of her exhaled smoke. “Rose says you think Fletcher might have had something to do with Charlotte’s murder. I don’t know you, but Rose thinks a lot of you, and I think a lot of Rose. So I’m going to set you straight on a few things. I hope it does some good.”

She fell silent. She was quiet for so long Cork began to think she’d changed her mind. Somewhere on the other side of the buildings, the chain saw started up again and droned on like one crazy cicada.

“It was a long and, believe me, unpleasant road from Winterset to Las Vegas. It doesn’t matter how it happened, but I ended up supplying very rich men with very young, pretty, powerless girls. The streets of Vegas are full of runaways, kids thinking that with all that money floating around, there has to be a way to grab a little for themselves. It’s the lights, too, and the sun. The kids, they’re just waiting to be preyed on.”

“Charlotte was one of them?”

“That wasn’t her real name, of course. She told me it was Maria, but I’m almost sure that was a lie. She was the brightest. The one with the most promise. She had class. I guess I saw some of myself in her. I don’t know what was true about her. She told me she was from St. Louis, that she’d gone to Catholic school there. Wealthy family, she said, but she hated them. Her mother especially. Her father started having sex with her when she was pretty young, and the mother turned her back on it. That part I’d guess is true. Old story with a lot of the street kids.

“She became the exclusive property of a regular client, a man named Frankie Vicente, well connected with the mob. He treated her special. Bought her things. Maria fell in love with the bastard. As much as a fifteen-year-old can fall in love with anybody. I tried to warn her, told her to be careful. I’d known Frankie a long time. He was handsome, charming. But he wasn’t a man capable of love. If you crossed him, he became a sadistic animal.”

She closed her eyes. The cigarette burned so low between her fingers Cork thought it would sear her. She must have felt the heat. She let it fall into the grass and crushed the ember under the toe of her shoe. Immediately, she reached into her purse for the pack of Pall Malls.

“Eventually Maria learned the truth about him. The hard way. She tried to get away. Ended up on the street in Phoenix. I don’t know how he tracked her there, but he did. Sent his goons. They brought her back. Frankie beat her. Broke her ribs. Nobody leaves Frankie unless Frankie wants them to leave.”

“She didn’t go to the police? You didn’t?”

She looked at him for a moment with contempt, then understood. “That’s right. You were a cop. Well, the cops in Las Vegas are different. Frankie and his people own them.”

She lit another cigarette and clouded the air in front of her.

Then suddenly the tears began to flow. She wiped at them with her free hand.

“Have you ever been scared, Cork? Desperate? I mean so scared and so desperate that you couldn’t see any way out of something? You know how many times I thought about killing myself, and maybe Maria, too, just ending the misery for both of us. But I was too weak for that. So I mostly kept myself in an alcoholic stupor and let things happen.

“Then Maria did something that angered him. I don’t even know what. He hit her with a whiskey bottle, the son of a bitch. Crushed her cheekbone, disfigured her horribly. Of course, he paid for the best plastic surgeon money could buy.”

“Fletcher Kane,” Cork said.

“Yes, Fletcher. Frankie told me to take care of it. Maria and I flew to California several times to consult with him. He was wonderful. Patient, kind. But hurt, too, you could see it. Over time, seeing him, listening to him, I trusted him. He was such a funny-looking man, but he seemed to have a good heart.”

“You still think that?”

“Let me finish. Away from Vegas, I began to think about going back to that life, and I didn’t like the idea. I didn’t like the idea of Maria going back to Frankie. I didn’t know what to do. I finally confessed everything to Fletcher, and he suggested a way he could help. He used a computer to show us how Maria would look after he was finished with the surgery. It was different, but still nice. He said if we changed her hair color, too, Frankie would never recognize her. And he said he would help find a place for us to hide.

“I know men. I knew that there was more to all this than his good heart. I didn’t care. It was a way out. Maria, she finally understood about Frankie, and she was scared of him. So we agreed. The whole process took several months. We rented a condo not far from the clinic. Frankie never once visited. The son of a bitch didn’t want to see her until she was pretty again.

“After the procedure, Fletcher set us up in another place, in Ventura. He let a few weeks pass so no one would connect our disappearance to him, then we all moved to Aurora.”

“Did you know he’d altered Maria to look like his own daughter?”

“I knew he’d had a daughter who died. I didn’t know what she looked like until we’d come to Aurora and I found some photographs he kept in a box.”

“Did you know how she died?”

“Not until Rose told me that you’d gone to California and why.”

“What did you think when you found out?”

“That you were wrong in believing Fletcher might have been responsible for Maria’s death. Fletcher is not an easy man, but he’s no murderer.”

“How do you know?”

“He was with me the night Maria went missing. I was drunk, but not enough to pass out. We both went to bed around two. But you probably knew that from my statement. You just didn’t believe it.”

That was true.

“Did Maria know about Charlotte?” Cork asked.

“No. Fletcher didn’t want her to know. I think he was concerned that she wouldn’t understand or that it might scare her. I don’t know, maybe he was afraid of letting her in on the secret, afraid she might tell someone.”

“How did you feel about him using her that way?”

“We’d been used by men in a lot of ways, Maria and me. It didn’t seem so terrible. At first. We all tried to be the family Fletcher imagined. But he didn’t want Maria just to look like his daughter. He wanted her to be Charlotte. He told her how to dress, how to talk, what to say. He tried to get her to do things with him, the kind of things he’d done with his daughter. Biking, skiing, tennis. He was always correcting her. Sometimes he got short with her. She had a large birthmark on her hip, shaped a little like Florida. He wouldn’t let her wear a bikini or a high-cut suit because it might show. He even suggested she have it removed, because Charlotte didn’t have a blemish like that. He never understood, or maybe just never accepted that no matter how Maria looked and acted, she would never be Charlotte, and he didn’t know how to love who she was. She understood that, I think, even though she didn’t understand why.” She shook her head. “Maria tried so hard to please him. She needed to be loved. Eventually she tried to get him to love her in the same way her father had. She came on to Fletcher, tried to use her body to get his love.”

She closed her eyes, as if the memory or the talking exhausted her.

“What happened?”

“Fletcher was disgusted. Maria was confused. I was drunk. After that, he kept her at arm’s length, but he watched her all the time. He got a little scary that way. Maria began to say she felt like a prisoner. The silence was suffocating. Toward the end, Maria was pretty messed up. I wanted her to see someone. You know, a therapist or something. But Fletcher wouldn’t allow it. Sometimes I thought about taking Maria and leaving, but I had no money. And I was scared to death that if we left, Frankie would find us. Or Fletcher. He’d become so strange. Disgusted with Maria, but desperate not to lose her.”

“Fletcher never did anything about Maria’s advances?”

“You mean sleep with her? No. Believe me, I would have known. Maybe I wouldn’t have done anything about it, but I would have known.”

“Why did you stay? I mean after Maria disappeared?”

“I hoped she might turn up at the door one day, and I wanted to be there when that happened. I never had a daughter, and I wasn’t any good at playing mother, but I cared about Maria. Once she was buried, there was no reason to stay. Fletcher was actually quite generous. Money is something I don’t have to worry about now.” She stood up and looked back at the Center. “Rosemount is for women considering a religious life. You’ve got to be wondering how someone like me could ever think they might be able to serve God.”

“I’m not thinking that at all,” Cork said.

She dropped her cigarette and crushed it out. “I thought that Fletcher was offering a chance at a new life for me, for Maria. I thought that maybe we could all escape our pasts. I was wrong. There’s only one way to start a new life, and that’s by facing the truth. I don’t know what’s ahead. God hasn’t shown me yet, but for the first time in my life, I’m not afraid.”

She couldn’t seem to decide whether to sit or stand. She began to pace.

“I’ve told you all of this because I owe Fletcher something. In his way, he tried to help. I’m hoping that now you know the truth, you’ll be a little more compassionate toward him. I pray for him all the time. I know what it is to be lost. I think of him alone in that big, awful house, and I’m sorry for him. If it hadn’t been for Rose, I never would have made it through all that.”

“Did you tell Rose the truth?”

“I told her nothing. I wanted to. I knew she wouldn’t judge me, but I just couldn’t do it. She knew something was terribly wrong, though, and she did her best to be a friend. She helped me to believe there’s good in me. And the sisters here, they’re helping me, too. I know I still have a long way to go, but I believe I’m on the right road.” She looked at Cork. “I don’t know if Solemn Winter Moon is responsible for Maria’s death-”

“He isn’t.”

“Either way, I’ll pray for him. It’s the best I can do.”

Cork waited a bit to see if there was something more she wanted to say, but apparently there wasn’t. He had the information he’d come for, so he got up to leave.

“I think I’ll stay here awhile,” Cordelia Diller said. “Give my love to Rose.”

Cork walked to his Bronco. When he looked back, she was sitting on the bench again, a thin ribbon of cigarette smoke unraveling in the air above her.

He drove north for a couple of hours but was too tired to drive the final 250 miles to Aurora. He stopped in Red Wing and called Jo from a Super 8 motel to let her know he’d be home the next day. He ate a pretty good burger at a place called the Bierstube and drank a couple of cold Leinenkugels. It was dark by the time he came out, but he wasn’t ready to turn in. He drove to a park on the Mississippi River, got out, and walked.

It was a clear night, the sky full of stars, the moon not yet risen. The river was a wide sweep of black with the far side lost in darkness. Cork stood in the quiet under a cottonwood on the bank.

Even after he’d talked to Cordelia Diller, he’d considered the possibility that Kane might have killed the second Charlotte because he couldn’t control her, couldn’t make of her the daughter he’d tried to resurrect. But unless Cordelia Diller had lied-and Cork didn’t believe she had-Fletcher Kane had an airtight alibi. So Cork had to accept that he’d been wrong in his thinking. Although the manner in which the man had used Maria was unconscionable, of the particular sins Cork had ascribed to him, Kane was innocent.

He thought about the desperate minutes on the cold ice long ago in January when he’d been lost in the whiteout and the gray figure that had kept itself just out of his vision and reach had led him to the safety of his snowmobile. He’d sensed that it was Charlotte, and at the same time, it wasn’t Charlotte. Now he understood. Somehow, the girl Maria had reached out to him, saved him. But why? Because he’d tried to save her, and like her had become lost? Or was it that she wanted him to find her killer, that she simply wanted justice?

If that was the case, there was a problem, because he had no suspects left. He believed the killer wasn’t Fletcher Kane, nor was it Arne Soderberg, or Lyla. He still believed in Solemn’s innocence. The crime was old and cold now. Cork wondered if this was one that would go unsolved. Sometimes you just had to accept it.

But not when the dead reached out to you. Not when you knew they demanded justice.

Far to the east, the moon lay just below the horizon, and its glow lit the sky like a distant fire. All around Cork, the night was still black.