Tamarack County

CHAPTER 11

On the way back to Aurora, Cork called Marsha Dross on his cell phone. She was still at the Judge’s house.

“We’ve taken blood samples from the knife blade. They’re already on their way to the BCA lab in Bemidji. We also took prints from the knife handle and from the tubing and the gas cans. We dusted the whole garage basically. We’re also dusting her car.”

“How’s the Judge?”

“Rattled. Pissed.”

“Worried about Evelyn?”

“He’s making more of a stink about someone breaking into his house than about his wife still missing. I’m not sure how to read it. Does he not realize that things aren’t looking good for Mrs. Carter? Does he just not care? Or is he not surprised that she may not be coming back?”

“Have you questioned him?”

“Waiting for his lawyer. He’s old and mean as spit, but he’s not stupid. This man’s got the personality of a scorpion. How the hell did he stay on the bench so long?”

“Connections. Political contributions. Entrenched cronyism. Voter apathy. Once judges are elected, they’re hard to unseat, even bad ones. He sat on the bench during a couple of high-profile cases, and that didn’t hurt him any either.”

“Yeah, but one of those was Cecil LaPointe’s conviction.”

A case that Cork knew well and that didn’t make him happy whenever he thought about it.

“The LaPointe case didn’t come back to bite him in the ass until long after he’d retired,” he said. “Although it sure scuttled any kind of legal legacy he might have hoped to leave behind.”

“Okay, tell me about the dog,” Dross said.

“Brutal. Someone lured him with meat, then killed and decapitated him.”

“Some kind of reprisal, you think?”

“Stella Daychild claims she doesn’t know anyone who’s that angry with her, but it may be a customer she wasn’t nice enough to at the bar and who has a very mean and very vindictive streak in him.”

“Christ, if that’s the case, I’ll nail his ass to the wall.”

“You want this one?”

“Does Daychild intend to file a complaint?”

“At the moment, she doesn’t seem inclined.”

“The truth is that with Ed Larson gone I’m going to be stretched pretty thin while we sort out what’s happened to Evelyn Carter. Are you willing to hang in there with the Daychilds?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Cork.”

“But I also want to be kept apprised of what’s going on with your investigation of Evelyn’s disappearance.”

“It’s a deal.”

By the time he parked Jenny’s Forester in the garage on Gooseberry Lane, it was nearing eleven. Inside the house, he found the first floor deserted, though a couple of lights had been left on so he wouldn’t enter in the dark. Trixie greeted him at the kitchen door with a friendly woof, but when he flipped off the lights and headed upstairs, she returned to her dog bed near the patio door. The second-floor hallway was lit by a plug-in night-light shaped like a full moon with a pleasant, smiling face. In the night, when Waaboo woke and needed comfort, the soft light helped ensure that a sleepy Jenny-or sometimes Cork-didn’t stumble into a wall by mistake. He paused at the open door to his grandson’s room. The little guy was making noises, not happy ones, small whimpers. He’d twisted his sheet and blankets into a snarled heap, which he’d pushed against the wall. Cork stepped in, untangled the mess of bedding, and laid the covers over the child. As he was about to leave, Waaboo gave a sudden cry and sat up. He began sobbing.

Cork quickly picked him up. “It’s okay, buddy. It’s okay. Grandpa’s here.”

Waaboo wrapped his little arms around Cork’s neck. “Dream,” he said. “Bad dream.”

“It’s over,” Cork told him. “All gone.”

“Cared,” Waaboo said.

“Scared of what?” Cork asked.

“Monter. Eat me.”

Cork said, “I won’t let any monster eat you, I promise.”

It was clear that Waaboo was still upset, so Cork sat in the rocker in the corner near the window. His grandson lay against his chest, his head against Cork’s cheek, his little heart to Cork’s big heart. Cork rocked him gently, and in a few minutes, Waaboo was asleep again. Cork could have put him back to bed, but he liked the feel of the small body holding on to him.

Above him, Cork heard Anne pacing in the attic room. The floorboards creaked where she walked, and he could follow her from one side of the room to the other. His middle child had never been a worrier. Her faith had made her strong. But clearly, she’d lost something-that faith?-and with it had gone her certainty. He wished he could hold her, as he held his grandson, and assure her that what she’d lost wasn’t lost forever, but she didn’t seem to want that from him. Didn’t seem to need that from him.

Cork felt weary, tired from the events of the day, but tired in another way as well. His children were grown or, in Stephen’s case, almost grown. What they needed from him seemed only a thimbleful of what he’d once been asked to give. Long ago, looking toward the time when he might be free from all the demands made on a father, he’d thought it would be a relief, a great weight off his shoulders. But the truth was that it sometimes felt more like abandonment.

Anne’s steps finally crossed the room to the set of narrow stairs that led down to the second floor. A moment later, she passed Waaboo’s door on her way to the bathroom. She caught sight of her father in the rocker, stopped, and gave him a questioning look.

“He’s afraid of monsters,” he told her quietly.

Anne stared a long time at her nephew, and in the dim drizzle from the night-light in the hallway, her face seemed inconsolably sad. She said, “Who isn’t?”