Blood Hollow

5

“You’re quiet,” Cork said after they’d ridden a long time in silence. “Sure you want to do this?”

Because he never went to church anymore, Cork didn’t relate to Mal Thorne as a priest. They just played basketball together. Mal had come to Aurora a couple of years earlier to assist the aging pastor of St. Agnes. He was an energetic man, well liked, and had done an excellent job managing the parish. Whether he was capable of handling what he might see on Moccasin Creek was something Cork didn’t know.

Mal said, “I’ve just been thinking. If it is Charlotte Kane’s body out there, in a way it may be a blessing.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Fletcher and Glory are desperately in need of resolution, one way or another.”

“Kane’s in need of resolution in a lot of ways, you ask me.”

The priest studied him. “I gather from some of the things Rose has said to me that you and Fletcher aren’t on the best of terms.”

Cork turned onto County 5, a narrow strip of asphalt heavily potholed during the freeze and thaw at the end of winter. They were driving through the Superior National Forest, far north of Aurora. The April sun was bright and promising through the windshield of Cork’s old Bronco.

“I’m pretty sure Fletcher blames my father for the death of his own father.”

Surprise showed on the priest’s face. “How so?”

“You know my father was sheriff here a long time ago.”

“I’d heard that, yes.”

“Fletcher’s father was a dentist. When Fletcher and I were kids, his old man killed himself. Turned out my father was investigating a complaint of sexual assault lodged by one of Harold Kane’s female patients.”

“And Fletcher holds your father responsible?”

“He’s never said as much, but his actions have spoken pretty eloquently.”

They thundered over an old wooden bridge and Cork began to slow down, watching for the turnoff. He knew it would come up suddenly around a sharp bend.

“Rose tells me things are rough for them,” Cork said.

Mal nodded. “Fletcher’s totally withdrawn. And Glory loved that girl as if she were her own daughter. I think if she didn’t have Rose to lean on, she’d have fallen apart completely by now.”

“The death of a child.” Cork shook his head. “I can’t think of anything more devastating.”

“They have a lot of people praying for them.”

“Might as well be throwing pennies down a wishing well.”

The priest gave him a long look. “Someday I’d like to know the whole story.”

“What story?”

“The one that ends with you angry at God.”

“And someday I’d like to know the other story,” Cork said.

“Which one is that?”

“The one that ends with a guy as obviously capable as you are exiled to a small parish buried in the Northwoods. You must’ve really pissed off God or somebody.”

“Maybe the choice was my own.”

“Yeah,” Cork said. “Right.”

A brown road sign marked the trailhead at Moccasin Creek. Cork pulled into the graveled parking lot. Snow still lay banked along the edges in small dirty humps, the last of the great piles that had been plowed during winter and that had been melting slowly for weeks. The lot was filled with vehicles, mostly from the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department. Cy Borkmann, a heavy man and a longtime deputy, stood near his cruiser, smoking a cigarette. Not far away, another man, a stranger, sat in a red Dodge Neon. The door of the Neon stood wide open. The man sat hunched over, legs out of the car, feet on the wet gravel of the lot, staring at the ground.

Cork parked next to Borkmann’s cruiser and got out. “Morning, Cy.”

The deputy smiled, and his already big cheeks mounded some more. “Hey, Cork. Father Mal. What’re you guys doing here?”

“We heard the news. Dropped by to see if we could help.”

Borkmann’s smile faded. He shook his head, and the sack of skin below his chin wobbled. “Sheriff said to keep everybody but authorized personnel out. You’re not exactly authorized these days.”

Borkmann had been a deputy long before Cork was sheriff. They’d always got on well. But things had changed, and Borkmann had his orders.

Cork nodded toward the man in the Neon. “Who’s that?”

“Found the body.”

“Looks a little shook up. Mind if I talk to him?”

Borkmann thought it over. “Sheriff didn’t say anything about that. Go ahead.”

Cork walked to the man, who looked up without interest. He appeared to be in his late twenties with dark, heavily oiled hair and the kind of deep tan that told Cork he was not from anywhere near Minnesota.

“Cork O’Connor.” He offered the man his hand.

“Jarrod Langley.”

“I understand you found the body.”

“My wife did.”

Cork looked around.

“She’s back at the lodge,” Langley said. “I left her there when I called the sheriff’s office.”

“You’re not from around here,” Cork said, noting the accent.

“Mobile,” Langley said. “Alabama. On our honeymoon.” He picked up a piece of gravel and tossed it a couple of times in his hand. “I wanted to go to Aruba. Suzanne wanted to go north. She never saw snow before.”

They’d missed the pretty snow by a few weeks. What was left on the ground now were isolated patches littered with dead pine needles and branches and other debris shaken from the trees by the spring winds. Uneven melt left the snow pock-marked and cancerous looking. In those places where the sun shone steadily all day long, the wet earth was laid bare and the black mud looked like pools of crude oil.

“How’d you find the body?” Cork said.

“We were going for a hike. Figured if we couldn’t ski or snowmobile at least we could walk. Got down there to the bridge and Suzanne saw something sticking out of the snow along the creek. She climbed down to see what it was. Hollered back up to me that she’d found a big machine. She thought it was a snowmobile. Next thing I know, she’s screaming her head off.” He threw the piece of gravel he’d been holding, heaved it across the lot, where it embedded itself in a gritty snowbank. “Hell of a honeymoon.”

“I can imagine,” Cork said.

Langley looked at him, squeezing his eyes a little against the bright sunlight. “You one of the sheriff’s people?”

“Retired,” Cork said. “In a manner of speaking. Mr. Langley, anybody offer you coffee?”

“No.”

“Would you like some?”

“Sure.”

Cork went back to where Borkmann and the priest stood together. “Cy, you used to carry a Thermos of coffee in your cruiser.”

“Still do,” Borkmann said.

“How about giving that man a little. Might not settle his nerves, but it can’t hurt.”

Borkmann looked at Jarrod Langley and nodded. “Good idea.”

When the deputy headed toward the Neon with the Thermos in his hand, Cork said to Mal Thorne in a low voice, “Let’s go.” He started quickly for the trail along Moccasin Creek. Without a word, the priest followed.

The trail access was through a break in the pine trees that enclosed the parking lot and began with a fairly steep incline ending at the creek. Cork led the way. The ground was thawed and muddy and full of boot prints. In a few minutes, the two men reached the footbridge where melting snow and ice had turned the little stream beneath into a milky torrent.

Nine people worked the scene, nearly a third of the whole department. Deputies Jackson, Dwyer, and Minot were using a hand winch hooked to the trunk of a big red pine to pull the snowmobile out of the creek and up the bank. Deputy Marsha Dross was documenting the scene with video while Pender did the same with a still camera. Johannsen and Kirk were working with a tape measure. Randy Gooding hunkered at the water’s edge, half hidden by a boulder that sat on a thick plate of melting snow. Also on that plate, jutting from behind the boulder like a couple of bread sticks, was a pair of jean-clad human legs.

Sheriff Arne Soderberg stood looking over Gooding’s shoulder. Soderberg never wore a uniform. He preferred, in the normal course of his duties, to dress in trim three-piece suits, crisp white shirts, silk ties. On the street, he could easily have been mistaken for a successful banker or stockbroker from the Twin Cities. He was a few years younger than Cork, but his hair was already a magnificent silver, which he had razor cut once a week. He was a good-looking man-strong jaw, piercing blue eyes, a charming, practiced smile-and he photographed well. He had no experience with law enforcement. It was widely known that he was simply being groomed by the Independent Republicans for higher office and that the job as sheriff was an opportunity for Soderberg to prove himself as a public servant before moving on to grander things. For years, he’d been on the family payroll, a vice president in his father’s company, Soderberg Transport, a huge enterprise that dominated trucking on the Iron Range and much of the rest of northern Minnesota. His enthusiasm for politics coincided with the age at which most men experienced a midlife crisis. Cork suspected public office might have been the answer for a man who could buy an expensive sports car anytime he wanted.

Cork and Mal crossed the bridge and worked their way down the creek bank toward Gooding and Soderberg. The deputies who knew Cork well gave him a nod, but no one said a word about his presence. Until Soderberg raised his head.

“O’Connor. What the hell are you doing here?”

The sheriff wore something a bit more appropriate to the work at hand than his usual three-piece suit. He sported a new Pendleton shirt and jeans that carried a sharp crease. Despite the April mud, he’d somehow managed to keep his Gore-Tex boots spotless.

Cork had been certain that after their heated exchange on Olaf Gregerson’s radio program Soderberg would not be happy to see him. Anger, however, wasn’t what Cork saw in that first moment his eyes locked on the sheriff. Instead there was a look of horror, the expression of someone whose senses brought to him a reality his sensibility couldn’t deal with. Cork figured the dead girl must be a gruesome sight.

“I heard about Charlotte Kane,” Cork said.

He’d reached the boulder and could now see what Gooding and the sheriff saw. The body lay on a bed of snow crystals like a fish in a meat market display. She was fully clothed, still wearing her down parka. The skin of her face and hands seemed well preserved, and Cork figured the body had been frozen all winter.

From Soderberg’s reaction, Cork had assumed the worst, but he’d been wrong. Even in death, Charlotte Kane was lovely to look at. Her hair was long and black, sleek from the snow around her melting under the April sun. Cork remembered how, whenever she’d stopped at Sam’s Place for a burger or a shake, she’d always been extremely polite. She’d been a quiet, lovely young woman. Now her face was pale, relaxed, her arms crossed over her chest, as if she were only in a long, deep sleep. Seeing her this way, Cork felt an overwhelming sadness for her and her family.

And something more, something he hadn’t felt in months. The tug of a dark shape from behind a curtain of solid white, an unseen hand that reached out to him.

“Pender,” Soderberg hollered. “Pender, get these men out of here.”

Cork looked back at the footbridge, then at the snowmobile being hauled up the bank, and finally at the place where the body lay. “Looks like her Arctic Cat flew right off the bridge,” he said. “Must’ve come hell-bent down that hill.”

Gooding nodded. “And she couldn’t negotiate the bridge. She’d been drinking, we know that.”

The bridge was well marked and wide enough for an easy crossing. Cork recalled what Jenny had told him about Charlotte the night she’d disappeared, about the girl’s dark poetry and fascination with suicide.

Soderberg stepped in front of Cork, eclipsing the body. “I want you out of here, O’Connor. This isn’t your concern.” He looked around. “Where the hell is Pender?”

“What’s that?” Cork pointed toward a scrap of brightly colored paper just visible in the snow a few feet away.

“I was just going to check it.” Gooding wore surgical gloves and he reached over and pulled out a red, white, and green wrapper. “Pearson’s Nut Goodie,” he said. He brushed away a bit of snow and brought up some torn cellophane. “Beef jerky.” He widened the cleared area and uncovered the remnant of a Doritos bag, pieces of frozen orange rind, and a Corona beer bottle with a couple of inches of pale liquid still in the bottom.

Gooding looked up at Cork. “What do you make of that?”

Soderberg, who still appeared shaken, said, “Maybe she was trapped by the storm and ate to keep her strength up, hoping to get found.”

Cork studied the body, its peaceful repose. There was a detail that bothered him. “Take a good look at her, Arne. Notice anything?”

Soderberg swung his attention back to Cork and to the priest, who stood observing at a slight distance. “Out of here, O’Connor. And look, Father, I’m sorry, but you need to leave, too. Pender,” he cried. “Pender, where the hell are you?”

“Here, Sheriff.” Duane Pender emerged from the shadow under the footbridge, zipping his fly as he came. He stepped carefully among the rocks and pockets of snow along the creek bank. “Nature called,” he said with a look of chagrin.

“Escort these men back to the parking lot,” Soderberg ordered. “O’Connor, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give my deputy any trouble.”

Cork said, “Where are her gloves, Arne?”

“What?”

“Her gloves.”

Soderberg looked down at her hands, which were white and bare.

“If she’d driven that snowmobile out here without gloves on, her hands would have been frozen long before she got to Moccasin Creek,” Cork said.

Soderberg nodded to Gooding. “Check her coat.”

Gooding went through the pockets of her parka and came up empty-handed. He sifted the snow around her body and shook his head.

“Why would she have the presence of mind to bring food with her but not gloves? And one more thing,” Cork said. “That bottle of Corona. Hard to believe it would have survived the crash in one piece.”

“But not out of the question,” Soderberg countered.

“Maybe not. How’d she open it?”

“How do you usually get a beer open? You twist off the damn top.”

“That’s a Corona, Arne. They don’t make a twist top. Unless you find an opener around here, you gotta wonder.”

Soderberg said, “I thought I told you to get these men out of here, Pender.”

Deputy Pender was new to the sheriff’s department. He hadn’t served under Cork. To him, Corcoran O’Connor was just a guy who ran a burger joint on Iron Lake. Because Pender was a Baptist, the priest had no special authority as far as he was concerned. He jerked his head in the direction of the trail up to the parking lot. “You heard the sheriff.”

“Are you going to bag that stuff?” Cork asked, indicating the things Gooding had uncovered near the body.

“O’Connor.” Soderberg put out a hand, as if to move Cork bodily from the scene. Cork glared at the hand, and Soderberg drew up short of actually touching him.

“I’ll bag it,” Gooding said.

Cork turned and started up the bank. The priest held back.

Mal Thorne asked, “Sheriff, when are you going to tell her parents?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I’d like to be there when you do.”

Soderberg shook his head. “I don’t think-”

“Arne,” Cork said, “have you ever had to tell a mother or father that their child is dead?”

In reply, the sheriff simply glared. It may have been meant to demonstrate Soderberg’s perturbation, but more probably it was meant to disguise the fact that he’d never had to shoulder that particular burden.

Cork said, “When you do, I think you’ll be glad to have someone like Mal there with you.”

“When I want your advice, I’ll ask for it.” To his credit, Soderberg spoke civilly to the priest. “I’ll think about it, and I’ll let you know.”

“I’ll be at the rectory.”

Soderberg turned an angry eye on Pender. “When you get to the parking lot, relieve Borkmann and send him down here. I want a word with him.”

They walked up the trail, slowly because of the slippery terrain and because there was something heavy on them now. Cork thought about Soderberg, about the anguish on his face as he’d stared down at the body of Charlotte Kane. It occurred to him that the sheriff had probably never dealt with death in this way before. He wondered how Soderberg liked the responsibility of the job now.

The priest let out a deep sigh that had nothing to do with the effort of the climb. “Is Rose home?”

“I think so,” Cork said. “Why?”

The priest kept his eyes on the mud. “Glory’s going to need her.”