Red knife

EIGHTEEN

T hat night Cork was responsible for dinner. The schedule of meals they’d all worked out for the week called for spaghetti and tossed salad. The spaghetti sauce was Prego. The salad came in a bag. This was a meal Cork could handle.

Shortly before five, Jo called to say she would be late. Opposing counsel in a trust dispute wanted to meet to discuss a settlement. Annie called a few minutes later from school to say that she and Cara Haines were going directly from softball practice to the Pinewood Broiler. Cork knew there’d been some kind of falling out between the two friends and was glad they were patching things up. He and Stevie ended up eating dinner on television trays while they watched a rerun of The Simpsons.

“What do you say we head over to the Broiler for a little apple pie a la mode?” Cork suggested.

“Or French silk,” Stevie said, and his eyes danced with delight at the prospect.

They were halfway to the Broiler when Cork’s cell phone rang. He pulled it from the pocket of his jacket and glanced at the ID. A pay phone.

“O’Connor,” he answered.

There was a lot of static on the line, and Cork could barely hear the voice at the other end. “Cork, this is Oly Johnson. Got a call there’s a fire at Sam’s Place. We’re on our way. Better get your ass over there, too.”

Oly Johnson was the fire chief in Aurora.

The line went dead. Cork slapped his cell phone closed, tossed it to Stevie in the backseat, and hit the accelerator.

“What is it, Dad?” Stevie asked in a frightened voice.

“Fire at Sam’s Place,” Cork replied.

Cork sped through Aurora. At Second Street, he took the corner too fast and wide and barely missed hitting a pickup in the oncoming lane. He took the turnoff to Sam’s Place too quickly and the Bronco drifted on the gravel road. He brought it around and shot toward the Burlington Northern tracks. He sailed over the raised track bed and pulled into the unpaved parking lot. The old Quonset hut stood solid and silent, looking no different than it had when Cork left that afternoon.

“Where’s the fire, Dad?” Stevie asked.

Cork turned off the engine. “Hand me the flashlight in my toolbox back there.”

Stevie unbuckled and rummaged around in the toolbox behind him, then passed the flashlight to his father.

“Wait here,” Cork said. “And make sure your door’s locked.”

He got out of the Bronco and circled Sam’s Place slowly, poking the beam here and there. Back at the Quonset hut door that faced the parking lot, he inserted his key in the lock and swung the door open. The dark inside was both familiar and unsettling. In the silence there, he realized he didn’t hear any sirens coming his way. He considered the call from Oly Johnson, and understood that, of course, there was something incredibly not right about it coming from a pay phone. In his panic over the destruction of Sam’s Place, he’d let himself be fooled. Hoax? he wondered. Warning? In the second before he heard the shot, he thought, Ambush.

The chunk of the round hitting the side of the Quonset hut came almost simultaneously with the rifle report. Cork spun into the cover inside Sam’s Place. Another report and another round hit the wall outside, penetrated, and struck the cupboard over the sink. This time Cork was able to tell the direction from which the shot had come. A hundred yards south was a stand of poplars that surrounded the ruins of an old ironworks. It was good cover, and with a nightscope anyone who was a decent shot could bring down a target wandering in the parking lot.

“Dad!”

Cork heard the slam of the Bronco passenger door. He peered around the doorway of Sam’s Place and saw the black shape of his son separate from the larger dark of the Bronco.

“No, Stevie!” he yelled. “Stay there!”

But his son had already begun to run.

In his mind’s eye, Cork was seeing the image through a nightscope: the crosshairs centered on the small, moving glow; leading the target just enough to account for bullet velocity and the lope of the boy; exhaling evenly as the finger squeezed the trigger.

He launched himself from the doorway and rocketed toward his son. He hit Stevie on the fifth stride, lifted him in his arms with barely a pause, and sprinted toward the Bronco. He reached the big vehicle and dropped Stevie behind the shield of its bulk.

“You okay?” he said, breathless and scared.

Stevie nodded.

They huddled together. Cork felt his son trembling, then realized the trembling was him. He was shaking worse than if he’d been naked in a blizzard.

“You’re sure?” he said.

“I’m okay, Dad, honest. I thought they shot you.”

“I’m fine.” Though he wasn’t. Not by a long sight.

“Who is it?” Stevie asked.

“I don’t know.”

He tried to think, not just about the identity of the shooter but also about the shooter’s location and whether the son of a bitch would seek a better firing position. The Bronco sat broadside to the old ironworks and provided good cover, unless the shooter moved.

“What are we going to do?” Stevie asked. “Do you have your gun, Dad?”

No, damn it, he didn’t. “What did you do with the cell phone?”

“I left it on the seat. I can get it.” Stevie started to move, but Cork grabbed his son’s arm.

“No you don’t. You stay right here.” His big quaking hands cupped Stevie’s shoulders and he looked sternly into his son’s eyes. “This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to open the driver’s door and turn on the headlights.”

“But he’ll see us.”

Cork didn’t want to waste time explaining, but his son needed to understand.

“If he’s using a nightscope, the glare from the headlights might blind him. I’ll grab my cell phone and zip right back here to you and we’ll call 911. If I’m hit, Stevie, you have to promise me you’ll run. Run to Sam’s Place and lock the door.”

“No, I wouldn’t leave you.”

“If I’m hit, I’ll need help. Use the phone in Sam’s Place to make the call. Do you understand?”

“I don’t want-”

“Run. That’s all there is to it. Understand?” It came out harsh, but he didn’t have time to make it easier.

Stevie stared at him, his eyes dark cups full of hurt. He said nothing, but he nodded.

“All right.” Cork let go of Stevie’s shoulders and moved toward the driver’s door.

The Bronco faced the lake and like a wall shielded him from the shooter’s position down the shoreline. Once he opened the driver’s door, however, the dome light would give him away and for a moment he would be a perfect target. Cork hoped maybe the light would be startling enough to make the shooter hesitate and he could switch on the blinding glare of the headlights before the squeeze of the trigger came. It was a gamble with odds he didn’t particularly care for, but at the moment he couldn’t think of another strategy. He grabbed the door handle and yanked. The dome light winked on. He leaned in and reached for the headlight switch. The brilliance that burst from the Bronco was like white ice, freezing the gravel of the lot, the red cedar picnic table, the lone pine near the shoreline, and thirty yards of the smooth black surface of Iron Lake. Cork reached to the backseat, expecting any second to hear the bark of the rifle, though he knew he wouldn’t hear the bullet that got him. He snatched the cell phone and began to slide back toward safety.

And the shot came.

He heard the report but didn’t feel any impact nor did he hear the round hit. He thought the shot had gone wild.

Then he heard Stevie grunt, and his heart yanked a cord that drew every muscle of his body taut.

“Stevie!” he cried.

He pushed from the vehicle. His feet slipped on the gravel and he went down on one knee, tearing a hole in his jeans. He stumbled toward the rear wheel well where he’d left his son.

Stevie knelt on the ground, bowed forward, his hands pressed to his face. Cork dropped beside him.

“Stevie?” He touched a shoulder.

His son looked up. Blood dripped over his lips and chin. For a second, Cork stood absolutely frozen.

“I’m okay, Dad,” Stevie said. “I went down when I heard the shot and I hit my nose on the bumper. Are you all right?”

Cork felt almost giddy with relief. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just fine.”

He flipped the phone open and 911’ed the sheriff’s department. Then he put his son against the Bronco and with his own body shielded him until he heard the sirens rise out of the distance.