Blood Hollow

42

Cork sat on the front steps, in the glaring wash of colors from the cruisers’ blinking lights, drinking coffee Cy Borkmann had poured from the Thermos he always kept in his cruiser. The steps were broad, and the crime scene team had no trouble moving past him, in and out of the house. He was grateful for the coffee. The bitter taste of it was something familiar, grounding. Even so, he felt as if he’d taken a long fall and had left an important part of himself behind.

With Solemn dying in his arms, he’d said a desperate prayer, but it had done no good. Maybe if he’d believed, if he’d been sure of God the way Solemn had, it would have made all the difference.

It was ridiculous thinking, he knew. The kind of thinking that sprang from guilt and grief. From believing that he hadn’t done enough to protect Solemn. From realizing too late how much he’d cared. He drank his coffee, and he remembered the small boy with fierce, dark eyes who’d loved fishing and Sam Winter Moon’s jokes. He wanted to block from his memory the feel of Solemn limp in his arms, the sight of his chest shredded by buckshot, the helplessness that had led to a prayer unanswered.

Gooding came out and Borkmann followed him.

“Finished?” Cork asked.

“We’re just about to bag the bodies.” Borkmann heaved a sigh that sounded like the wheeze of a tired draft horse. “You take a good look at things before you called us?”

“Good enough, I guess.”

“Notice the top of Kane’s desk?”

“I didn’t look that good, Cy.”

“Nice cherry wood, but scratched up pretty bad. New scratches. Gooding, here, thinks they’re from the recoil of the shotgun. I think he’s right. I think Kane laid the barrel across the desk and pointed it directly at Winter Moon where he sat. The kid had to know what was coming. I don’t see any way Kane could have sprung the shotgun on him sudden, a piece that big.” He held off for a moment, as if waiting for Gooding or Cork to offer another theory. When they didn’t he said, “Murder-suicide is what I’d say.”

A cruiser door slammed, and Pender came up the walk.

“Dross just radioed. She finished interviewing Olga Swenson.”

Borkmann glanced at Deputy Gooding and nodded approval. Immediately after they’d arrived at the house, Gooding had recommended to the acting sheriff that, despite the late hour, he dispatch someone immediately to talk to Kane’s housekeeper.

Pender looked at his notes. “According to Ms. Swenson, she had dinner on the table at eight o’clock, which was a little later than usual, but she said Kane’d been keeping odd hours. After the food was out, she left. Didn’t stick around for any compliments on her cooking. I guess the drill was that Dr. Kane bused his own dishes. As far as she knows, Kane was alone in the house. She also said that he still insisted on her fixing a big family meal even though he wasn’t eating much these days. Getting pretty lax in all his personal habits, too. Sounds like he was definitely on the edge. Dross’ll give you a full report back at the office.”

“Eight o’clock,” Borkmann said. “And what time did you get here, Cork?”

“Ten-forty-five.”

“All right.” Borkmann tipped back the brim of his hat. “Looks like, Dr. Kane made a pretty good dent in that pot roast on the dining room table. And that bottle of wine is better than half empty, so he took some time to mellow out good. Let’s assume he started eating right after the housekeeper left, and took his time stuffing his face. Maybe half an hour. Now from what you say, Cork, Winter Moon left his mother’s place around twenty hundred hours. If he came straight here, he’d have arrived at about twenty-thirty hours, just about the time Kane was finishing his meal, sipping on that last glass of wine. Winter Moon comes in. They palaver, end up in the study with the shotgun between them. I’m guessing time of death is going to be around twenty-one hundred hours. It’s a miracle he was still alive when you got here, Cork.”

Gooding had been conspicuously quiet. He leaned against one of the big stone pillars of the porch and stared down at his feet. Every once in a while, he shook his head, as if he were having a conversation with himself.

“Dot Winter Moon still at your house, Cork?” Borkmann asked.

“Probably. She thinks I went out to Henry Meloux’s place. She’s waiting for me to come back with word about Solemn.”

Borkmann looked like he had bad indigestion. “Guess I better head on over and break the news.”

“I’ll do it, Cy.”

“Part of the job, whether I like it or not.”

“I think it’ll be easier coming from me.”

Gooding said, “It wouldn’t be good for her to see you like that, all covered in blood.”

“I’ll stop by Sam’s Place and clean up. I keep a change of clothing there.”

Borkmann said, “All right. But come on down to the office afterward. We’ll get a formal statement from you there, okay?”

“Fine.”

Borkmann went back into the house. Gooding stayed a minute longer.

“Dorothy Winter Moon called the office this evening,” he said. “I took the call. I went out to Sam Winter Moon’s old cabin first. I should have come here, Cork. I might have stopped this.”

“You didn’t know, Randy.”

Gooding looked down at a Bible in his hand. “This was in the living room. It’s the one Winter Moon had with him in jail. I thought maybe his mother might want it.” He gave it to Cork. “We don’t see any way that it’s relevant to the investigation.”

Gooding turned away and returned to his duties inside the house.

Cork stared at the book. A small, New American Bible, white cover. A simple thing, really, but weighty enough in Solemn’s thinking that he’d brought it to the scene of his death.

Why had Solemn come here? Did he hope he could ease Kane’s suffering, take away his hate? Did he really believe that he could offer the peace he himself had found in Blood Hollow? If so, Cork wished he could think of it as something courageous, but in his grief, he could only think how tragic and useless a gesture it had been.

He lifted himself from the steps and started toward home, carrying the burden of the news that would destroy Dorothy Winter Moon’s world.