Copper River

19

Jewell called to let Cork know the dead girl wasn’t Charlie and to say she and Ren were headed back to Marquette.

Cork hobbled from the phone to the sofa. He caught sight of Ren’s sketchbook sitting on an end table where the boy in his haste had dropped it.

“He likes you, you know,” he said, easing himself onto a cushion.

Dina turned from the window where she’d been watching what blew past the cabin on the wind. “Who?”

“Ren.”

“He’s a nice kid.”

“No, I mean he’s quite fetched with you.”

“ ‘Fetched?’ ”

“In my neck of the woods we still use that word. Means-”

“I know what it means. You’re crazy, though. To him, I’m an old lady.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Great. All the good men are gay, married, or under fifteen.” She swept a few strands of hair from her face. The day had been so busy that she hadn’t had a chance to do much with it, but she still looked good. “I need some coffee. Want some?”

“I’d take a cup if you made it.”

He sat back and listened to the wind sweep around the cabin like a great flood around a small island. He felt marooned, out of touch with the world beyond the old resort. He also felt helpless. Although he’d proved to himself that he could get around despite his wounded leg, the reality was that he had nowhere to go, no way to move toward resolving everything that threatened.

Which got him to thinking about the issues that were unresolved. Not all of them looked hopeless. His people, the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department, were closing in on Lou Jacoby’s daughter-in-law, Gabriella, and her brother, Tony Salguero, for the murder of Gabriella’s husband. The case wasn’t nailed down yet, but everything was in place. The Winnetka police had good leads connecting Salguero with the murder of the other Jacoby son, Ben. Not enough for an arrest, but they were pushing hard in that direction. These were positive things.

There was another issue, however, that was nothing but a deep well of rage. Cork had worked at keeping himself from thinking about it, because whenever he did, he started to go ballistic.

The man who’d raped Jo.

Man? Hardly that. An angry rich kid who’d assumed Jo was something she wasn’t-Ben Jacoby’s lover. He’d used Jo to lash out at the man he hated-his father. Cork had that much figured, but knowing the motivation didn’t blunt the horror of the act or its effect. He couldn’t think about the young man, whom he’d never seen, without imagining his fists breaking the bones of the rich kid’s face, his knuckles covered in the rich kid’s blood.

“You okay?”

At the feel of Dina’s hand on his arm, he looked up.

“I’ve been talking but you haven’t heard a word, Cork. For a minute there you looked like you were staring down a cobra. Are you all right?”

He heard the wind again, felt the soft cushion of the sofa, the lingering touch of her hand, smelled the aroma of the freshly ground coffee beans, and he came back to the moment.

“I don’t like this waiting,” he said.

She smiled. “You’d make a terrible PI.”

“What time is it?”

“Four-ten. Fifteen minutes later than the last time you asked.” She headed back to the kitchen. “You ask me, you need to talk to your family.”

“I’d love to hear their voices, but until this thing with Lou Jacoby is settled I won’t risk it. ‘An eye for an eye,’ he said to me. I don’t want him even thinking about my family. I’m afraid if he knows I’m in communication with them in any way, he might use them as leverage.”

“Threaten them?”

“Exactly.” He laid his head against the sofa back. “Maybe I should just head down there and kill him, eliminate the risk.”

He heard the clatter of cups on the countertop, the gurgle of coffee being poured. Dina came to his side a moment later and handed him a full cup.

“Go down there?” she said. “With that leg? I doubt it. And let me clue you in to something else. You’re a lot of things that probably aren’t good, but a cold-blooded killer you’re not.”

She went back to the kitchen for her own cup, then returned to the window.

“What things?” Cork said.

“Huh?”

“You said I was a lot of things that aren’t good. What things?”

She looked back at him and rolled her eyes.

Later, she stood at the open door. Beyond her the sky was going dark. The wind blew straight out of the north now, and a cool breeze came through the door screen. Dina was working on her third cup of coffee. She’d be up all night, Cork figured.

“Mind if I ask you a question?” he said.

She kept her back to him and shrugged.

“What was your childhood like?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Why do you want to know?”

“Something you said this afternoon made me wonder.”

She turned back to the darkening sky. “I didn’t have a childhood. My mother was an alcoholic. I took care of her. Until I wised up and left.”

“When was that?”

“When I got tired of everything, including her boyfriends pawing at me. About Charlie’s age.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Relatives first. It didn’t take me long to realize where my mother’s problems came from. Then I was on the streets for a while.”

“Harsh,” he said.

“Reality check.”

“And you got yourself together?”

“Not without help. A social worker. Marcia Kaufmann. A smart woman with a dry sense of humor and a big heart. She helped me get a place to live, finish school. She worked with me until I was off to college. Sometimes you’re born into the wrong people’s lives. If you’re lucky, you stumble into the right ones.”

Cork heard the sound of Jewell’s Blazer.

“Here they come,” Dina said.

A couple of minutes later, Ren walked in. His mother was a few steps behind.

“Well?” Cork asked.

The boy shook his head and looked down at the floor. “She wasn’t there.”