Mercy Falls

47

They took turns driving, nodding off briefly when they weren’t behind the wheel. Once, Cork jerked awake with a terrified suck of air.

“Bad dream?” Dina said, shifting her attention momentarily from the road ahead. “You have a lot of those?”

“Tell me someone who doesn’t.” Cork rubbed his eyes and directed her to pull off at the next exit. He was ready to drive.

He wondered what was true about Dina Willner. How much of her had Jacoby bought? Was she really along to keep him from sleeping at the wheel or mostly to keep him in her sight for Jacoby? He was tired, knew that his judgment was off, and decided if he couldn’t trust himself it was best to trust nothing.

They hit Evanston around five-thirty and fifteen minutes later pulled up in front of Mal and Rose’s duplex. There was a faint glow in the eastern sky, but under the trees on the street where Cork parked, night still held solid. Most of the homes were dark. Upstairs in the duplex, a light shone behind the curtains.

Mal opened the door and hugged Cork in welcome. Rose was right behind him.

“Anything?” he asked. He’d checked in by phone only an hour earlier, but he still hoped that good news might have arrived.

“Nothing,” Mal said.

“This is Dina Willner.” Cork stepped aside. “She’s been helping with the investigation in Aurora. She offered to come along and make sure I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.”

“Won’t you come in?” Rose said to her warmly. “I’ve got coffee.”

“Thanks. I could use a cup.”

Inside, Cork asked, “The kids?”

“Asleep,” Mal said. “The girls have been up most of the night but they finally conked out a couple of hours ago.”

“Let them sleep,” Cork said.

They sat around the kitchen table, hunched over the coffee Rose poured. Jo’s note lay in front of Cork. He could almost hear her voice in her carefully handwritten script.

“I feel so helpless,” Rose confessed. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Let’s start with what we know,” Cork said. “She left to meet Ben Jacoby, but before he called to cancel. Did you save Jacoby’s message?”

“Yes.”

“Let me hear it.”

Rose brought him the phone and punched in the number for voice mail. She tapped in a security code, then a code to replay the message, and handed the phone to Cork.

“Jo, it’s Ben. I apologize, but something extremely important has come up that I have to take care of right away. I won’t be able to meet you. I’m hoping you haven’t left yet, but just in case you have, I’m going to call Phillip and let him know to expect you. You can certainly leave the painting, but I’d much rather you gave it to me personally. Again, I’m sorry to bail on you at the last minute. Honestly, this is business that can’t wait. I’ll be in touch.”

Cork handed the phone back to Rose.

“Time on the message is five-fourteen. And the note Jo wrote said she left at five-ten.”

“Yes,” Rose said.

“So he just missed her.” He looked at Dina. “You said you updated Jacoby about Stone. When did you talk to him?”

“As soon as we came out of the Boundary Waters. Later I gave him a full update on what we learned from Lizzie Fineday.”

“About Eddie’s murder?”

“That’s right.”

“What time?”

“I don’t know. Around five, I’d guess.”

“And when you talked to him, you had the feeling things seemed to fall into place for him, right?”

“That’s the feeling I got, yes.”

“A few minutes later, he calls Jo, cancels their meeting, and rushes off to take care of something that can’t wait. Something that had to do with Eddie’s murder?”

Dina nodded thoughtfully. “If I were you, that’s the first question I’d ask when I see him.”

“Second,” Cork said. “The first thing I’m going to ask is ‘Where the hell is Jo?’”

He stood up and took his mug to the coffeepot on the counter.

“Okay,” he said, pouring himself a refill. “She was headed to Jacoby’s place. He has two residences. A townhouse near downtown Chicago and a home on Sheridan Avenue in Winnetka. Her note says she’ll be gone less than an hour. I’d say that eliminates the townhouse. During rush hour, it would take at least that long just to get there. So I’m betting it was the house on Sheridan.”

“The uniforms who talked to Phillip said she hadn’t been there.”

“Maybe Phillip lied.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but it’s the only solid lead we have, so that’s where I’m starting.” He grabbed his yellow windbreaker from where he’d draped it over the chair back.

“What are you going to do?” Dina asked.

“Pound on the door, or on the kid, until I get some answers.”

When Cork pulled off Sheridan onto the private brick drive that led to Ben Jacoby’s palatial home, the sky along the horizon above Lake Michigan burned with a warm orange glow that was dawn. The trees of the estate, a mix of yews and Catawba and maples, were eerily quiet, and Cork, as he stepped from the Pathfinder, realized that there were no birds in them and wondered where they’d all gone.

Curtains were drawn across the windows. The panes reflected an empty sky. At the end of the drive, which circled a small fountain edged with dewy grass, Cork spotted the garage doors, three of them, each with a row of glass panes roughly at eye level. He walked to the doors, Dina a step behind him, and peered in. It was an area large enough to accommodate four vehicles. Currently it was full. There was a Mercedes, a Jaguar with a smashed front headlight, a Lincoln Navigator, and a blue Toyota Camry with Minnesota plates.

“She’s here.”

“And that’s Ben’s Mercedes,” Dina said.

He went back to the Pathfinder, opened the glove box, and took out his Smith amp; Wesson. 38 Police Special and a box of cartridges. He filled the cylinder and snapped it shut.

Dina watched him. “You’re not going in shooting.”

“If this isn’t a kidnapping, I don’t know what is.”

She put a hand on his arm. “Cork, what if she’s here because she wants to be?”

“If that were true, she would have called. She wouldn’t want Rose or the children to worry. Or me.”

He approached the front door under the portico and tried the knob. Locked. He stepped back, looked left and right, turned toward the south corner of the house.

“I’m going around in back, see if I can find an open door,” he said in a low voice.

“Why don’t we just ring the doorbell?”

“You wait here,” he said. “And don’t ring the doorbell. Not yet.”

He started across the lawn, the heavy dew soaking his shoes and the cuffs of his pants. He tried to move carefully, to keep his breathing steady while he battled fear and a mounting rage. Though his brain was fried from exhaustion and worry, he kept focused on the one thing he knew absolutely: Jo was somewhere inside this house, and she was not there because she wanted to be.

He turned the corner and lost sight of Dina. Trimmed bushes grew against the length of the house and Catawba branches reached above him. It seemed as though he’d entered a long, dim hallway that opened at the end onto the back lawn.

He’d gone less than halfway when shots rang out, two of them. Without thinking, Cork dove for the cover of the bushes and lay in the dirt, gripping his. 38. He scanned what he could see of the estate, which wasn’t much. In his mind, he replayed the sound of the shots. They’d come from ahead, from somewhere behind the house, out of his line of vision. He decided that they were probably not meant for him.

The quiet had returned immediately, pressing so heavily on Cork that he felt as if he were underwater. He forced himself to move and in a crouch went forward. At the back corner, he peered around the edge of the house. The yard was empty. He saw a pool, a small pool house, stairs that led up to a veranda. A black robe hung over the back of a lounge chair beside the pool.

He hugged the wall, edging his way toward the stairs. He finally pushed from the house and swung his revolver toward the veranda, which proved to be as empty as the yard. He looked at the pool, at the rose-colored stain spreading across the water. He crept nearer and bent over the edge. The body lay on the bottom, eyes closed, two dark plumes rising from somewhere underneath, near the middle of the back.

He didn’t hear her but felt her presence. He turned his head and there she was, gripping a white robe closed over her breast, her hair a tangle, her feet bare, her blue eyes wide with astonishment.

“Oh, Cork, no,” she whispered.

He was so happy to see her, he wanted to cry.

“Jo,” he said, “I came to bring you home.”