Iron Lake

12

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS TWINKLED in shop windows along Center Street as Cork pulled into Aurora. With only a week to go until Christmas, the stores would be open late. Cork spotted a woman standing in front of Lenore’s Toy and Hobby Shop. Although the temperature was in the teens, she wore only a light sweater. Cork pulled into a parking space, stepped out of the Bronco, climbed over a snowbank, and walked to where the woman stood.

“Christmas shopping, Arletta?” he asked.

Arletta Schanno glanced at him and a frown came to her pretty face. “Wally?”

“Corcoran O’Connor.”

“Sheriff O’Connor.” She suddenly brightened. “I can’t seem to remember if I’ve bought gifts for the children.”

“Here,” Cork said. He took off his leather jacket and put it around her shoulders. She was shivering.

“Janie told me she wanted a game this year. Clue, I believe. I think that sounds fine, don’t you? Clarissa says she wants a Barbie doll, but she has so many already.”

Janie was thirty-five and lived in Baltimore. She worked for the post office there. Clarissa taught high school geography in St. Paul.

“How about a ride home, Arletta,” Cork offered. “I just happen to be going that way.”

“I don’t know,” Arletta Schanno said. A distressed and helpless look clouded her face.

“I’ll bet Wally would like to help with shopping, don’t you?”

“Wally’s so busy.”

“Not too busy for Christmas shopping. Come on, let’s go home.”

Cork urged her gently into the Bronco and drove to the Schannos’ house. Wally Schanno opened the door, and Cork could tell from the relief that flooded his face he’d been worried sick.

“I found her Christmas shopping,” Cork explained.

“Sheriff O’Connor was very kind, dear,” Arletta said.

Wally handed Cork back his coat. “Thanks,” he said. “You’re chilled, Arletta. Why don’t you go put on a warmer sweater.”

“I think I will.” She smiled and walked down the hallway toward the back of the house.

“I called everywhere. The housekeeper had to leave early. It was just a few minutes. Just a few goddamn minutes,” Schanno said miserably, “and she was gone.”

“Not many places to get lost in Aurora, Wally,” Cork said.

Schanno shook his head. “It only gets worse.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your doing,” Schanno said, offering his hand to Cork. “Thanks again.”

Cork started to turn away.

“By the way,” Schanno said, “I called Doc Gunnar this morning. Sandy Parrant was absolutely right. The judge was in bad shape. Riddled with cancer. Gunnar said he only had a few months to live. Guess we’ve got a motive for suicide.”

“Did Sigurd authorize an autopsy?”

“You know how much an autopsy costs, Cork. Sigurd didn’t see anything he felt justified an autopsy.”

“How about the LeBeau boy? Any word?”

“Darla says she got a call from the boy last night. She says he’s with his father. Safe. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. It’s clear she doesn’t want me involved. Unless Darla makes an official complaint, I can’t do anything anyway.”

Arletta Schanno stepped back into the room wearing a heavy white wool sweater. She came toward Cork smiling warmly.

“Sheriff, what a nice surprise.”

Cork glanced at Schanno, who looked down.

Molly had talked him into a sandwich at her place—hummus, sprouts, and tomatoes—that he’d washed down with a beer, so he wasn’t hungry. But he still had a while to kill before his meeting with Father Tom Griffin. He drove to Sigurd Nelson’s mortuary on Pine Street. The sign on the front door directed him to ring the buzzer in back and Cork complied. In a moment Nelson opened the door, sock-footed and with bread crumbs at the corner of his mouth. He looked surprised to see Cork.

“Sorry to bother you, Sigurd. Wally said you’ve finished with the body.”

“Haven’t even started,” the coroner said.

“I mean in your official capacity.”

“Oh, that. Wasn’t much to finish.” He stepped back. “Come on in before this house gets full of winter.”

They stood in a long hallway at the back of the mortuary. The place was actually a house, a beautiful old two-story affair, one of the nicest in Aurora. The first floor was for business. A showroom up front displaying coffins, to one side a large chapel for memorial services. In back a business office. Over his years in Aurora, Cork had been to the chapel many times. The time he most remembered his father had been there, too, laid out in one of Sigurd Nelson’s coffins, a strong, practical man gone to rest in a box lined with satin.

“Who is it, dear?” Grace Nelson, called from upstairs. The second floor of the house was the living area for the mortician and his wife.

“Cork O’Connor, Gracie.”

“Your dinner’s getting cold,” she warned him gently.

“I’ll be right there,” Nelson called back. “What are you doing here, Cork?” he asked impatiently.

“I just wondered why you decided not to autopsy.”

“Because I’d have difficulty explaining it to the taxpayers of this county is why. Christ, the man had cancer everywhere. He blew his brains out because he was going to die anyway. What’s to autopsy? Open-and-shut case.”

“But you looked at the body carefully yourself?”

“Sure I did. And I found just what I expected. He died because he blew his brains out. Period.”

“No other marks on his body?”

“Why would there be other marks?”

“Mind if I have a look?”

“Of course I mind. Why are you here, Cork? You’re not even the sheriff anymore.”

“Come on, Sigurd. Open-and-shut case. You said it yourself. What harm can it do letting me see the body? Just for a minute.”

“He’s a mess.”

“I’ve seen him before.”

Nelson didn’t look happy, but he finally turned and led the way.

The basement was divided into several rooms, all with shut doors. Sigurd opened one of the doors, turned on the light, and stepped in. In some ways, the prep room reminded Cork of a scientific laboratory. Red tile floor, off-white walls, cabinets, embalming pump, and flush tank. On a row of pegs along the wall hung Sigurd’s blue prep clothing and the plastic face shield he wore when preparing a body. The judge’s naked corpse lay on an old white porcelain prep table near the embalming pump.

“He’s all yours,” Nelson said with a wave toward the table.

The corpse lay on its back. The face was pallid and the features relaxed. Above the eyebrows, the cavity that had at one time held a very bright, but in Cork’s opinion very devious, brain was nearly empty. With the top of the skull blown away, the head was crowned by a blood-crusted rim of jagged bone. Cork looked carefully at the neck, the wrists, the ankles, the ribs.

“If you’re looking for bruises, you won’t find any,” the coroner told him. “He wasn’t tied up, beat up, or strangled. He just blew his brains out, okay?”

Cork looked closely again at the judge’s arms, then at his thighs, and finally his abdomen. “Help me turn him over, Sigurd.”

“Why?”

“Just help me, will you?”

Nelson gave a reluctant hand. Cork studied the judge’s shoulders, the back of his arms, the small of his back, the cheeks of his buttocks.

“What the hell are you looking for anyway?” Sigurd demanded.

“Nothing. Just looking.”

“Just looking?” Nelson grunted as they turned the body onto its back again.

“Chalk it up to idle curiosity, Sigurd,” Cork said.

“Idle curiosity? I swear to God—” the coroner said growing red with indignation. “I’ve got a perfectly good dinner getting cold.”

Nelson draped the body with the sheet and flipped off the light switch. He followed Cork upstairs. At the door he warned, “Cork, I got half a mind—” But he didn’t finish.

“Thanks,” Cork said, and started away.

At his back, Nelson slammed the door.

The coroner had a right to be upset. Cork had no business looking at the body, no business thinking about the case at all. But an Ojibwe boy was missing and Henry Meloux was sure that a Windigo was about, and although Wally Schanno was a good cop, he was one hundred percent white, and neither the boy nor the Windigo would matter as much to him as they did to Cork. Cork sat in the Bronco thinking about the body of the judge. He’d come because he was always suspicious of an easy explanation. Few things were so sure and simple that they could be taken at face value. If he’d believed Sigurd had done a decent job as coroner, he might not have asked to see the body. He was glad he had.

He was running late, but he wanted to stop by Darla LeBeau’s house. The place was dark, the side-walks unshoveled. He rang the front bell anyway. No one answered. He started back to the Bronco, but didn’t get in. He studied the woods from which had come the voice Meloux said was the call of the Windigo. The evening was dark and still. Stars dusted the black sky. Cork could see the glimmer of other houses in a small subdivision a hundred yards away, but on the deserted part of the road where he stood, there was no light, no sign of life, no sound but the whisper of his own quiet breathing.

He walked toward the woods, stepped in among the trees. He stood still, listening, watching. The woods felt empty and Cork felt alone.

“Why do you want me?” Cork spoke softly to the stillness. His eyes darted all around. “What have you come for?”

If he expected an answer—and he wasn’t certain that he didn’t—he was disappointed. He told himself he had imagined the voice in the wind. The Windigo was a myth.

But there was a part of him that knew different. Sam Winter Moon had cautioned him long ago that it was best to believe in all possibilities, that there were more mysteries in the world than a man could ever hope to understand.