Tamarack County

CHAPTER 40

Alva Brickman lived in a small, run-down rambler that had, maybe twenty years earlier, been painted bright yellow. It was now the color of a faintly urine-stained sheet. There were no Christmas lights in the windows, and the sidewalk and narrow driveway hadn’t been shoveled for a couple of snowfalls at least. It sat back from the street behind two wild evergreens. The front steps were almost swallowed by a tangle of some type of ornamental shrubbery. As Cork sat looking at it from his Land Rover, it seemed to him the kind of place that on Halloween only the bravest kid would visit.

He’d driven an hour and a half from Duluth to the address in the small town of Aitkin, which Warden Gilman had given him over the phone earlier that day. He hadn’t called before he came, figuring if the woman was home, he didn’t want to tip his hand, and if she wasn’t, he’d wait. If her son had taken up residence there, Cork for sure didn’t want Frogg to know a visitor was about to come calling. He studied the house. The blinds were up and the curtains drawn back, maybe to open the rooms to whatever warmth the sun might deliver through the window glass. There was an attached garage, but the deep snow in the drive told him no one had moved a vehicle in or out for some time.

He left his Land Rover and walked in the impressions made in the deep snow by a set of boots that led directly to the mailbox beside the front door. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor dereliction of a homeowner’s duty, Cork thought with admiration for mail carriers everywhere. He tried the bell; no one answered. He knocked. Same result. He stepped into a drift to the left of the door, waded to the front window, and peered through his reflection into the dark interior. A living room, done in either antiques or thrift store acquisitions. No sign of an occupant. He made his way to the garage and peeked through a dirty window. Inside sat a Ford Escort, mostly a dull red but with one white panel over the front wheel well. Lots of crap piled along the walls in what appeared to be no particular order.

Cork returned to the street, glanced at the neighboring home on the right, a place as different from the Brickman spook house as you could get. He spotted a woman standing at the front picture window, a cup in her hand, watching him. He crossed to her property, where the sidewalks were cleaned and salted. He headed toward the door, on which hung an evergreen Christmas wreath decorated with a bright red bow. The door opened even before he began to climb the steps.

“Looking for Alva?” the woman asked.

She had white hair, carefully coiffed, and Cork put her at maybe seventy. Her makeup had been tastefully applied. She wore a bright yellow sweater, which hung on her loosely because she was too slender, in what seemed an unhealthy way. There seemed an unnatural hollowness to her face as well. Some kind of illness, Cork figured.

“Yes,” he said. “Do you know when she may be home?”

“Some of us might hope never. But that would be too optimistic and terribly uncharitable. She owns the Second Look Thrift Shop, a block north of the stoplight. Christmastime, she stays open late.”

“The stoplight?”

“Middle of town. Can’t miss it. It’s the only stoplight in the entire county. Are you with the police?”

“No, ma’am.”

She took an idle sip from the fragile-looking teacup she held. “Pity,” she said.

“Why? Is there some trouble next door?”

“Yes. And her name is Alva.”

“Do you know her son?”

“Everyone knows her son.” It was an acknowledgment that clearly gave her no joy.

“Have you seen him lately?”

“Not since Thanksgiving.” She flashed a thin smile and added, “Thank goodness.”

She sipped again from her cup, and Cork could smell the tea inside, some herbal mixture that included mint.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“Where Alva and Walter are concerned, everyone in this neighborhood tries to be sure.” She studied him, her look a mix of curiosity and wariness. “What’s your interest in them?”

“It’s of a personal nature.”

She nodded, eyed him a long while from that hollow face, and finally said, “As they say on those television shows, watch your back.” She looked beyond him at the deep snow and the cold morning. “I’m letting too much winter in. My heating bill will be through the roof. Is there anything else?”

Cork told her no, thanked her, and returned to his vehicle. He buckled in and glanced back. She was still watching him, teacup in hand, from behind her windowpane as he pulled away from the curb.

He found the store north of the stoplight, just as Alva Brickman’s neighbor had said. It was a dismal little place full of discarded pieces of the lives of people on their way down. It smelled of must and dust. Except for a woman behind the counter where the cash register sat, the store was empty. She’d been looking at a newspaper, but when Cork entered and the bell over the door gave a jingle, she put the paper aside and narrowed her eyes on him. A woman alone often watched a man with suspicion or even concern. This woman’s look was different. Almost a challenge to try something, he thought. He saw that she’d been working the New York Times crossword puzzle in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press and had been using a ballpoint pen. She’d set the pen down along with the paper, and her right hand was out of sight below the counter. He wondered if she had some kind of firearm down there. And he wondered, too, if this woman ever had any repeat business.

“Mrs. Brickman?” he said as cordially as he could.

“Who wants to know?”

“My name’s David Simms. I’m trying to locate your son, Walter.”

“What do you want with Walter?”

“I have a message for him from a mutual friend.”

“What friend?”

“Cecil LaPointe.”

She was a decade younger than her neighbor. Her hair was brown, but the color probably came from a bottle. She was smallish, yet Cork got a spiderlike feel from her, something dangerous despite its size. Her face had been ceramic hard, but at the mention of LaPointe’s name a few cracks appeared.

“What message?” she said.

“Cecil asked me to give it only to Walter.”

“I don’t know where Walter is.”

“Then we have a problem. Cecil’s dying. Mesothelioma. He doesn’t have much time. I just saw him, and he asked me to deliver a message to your son.”

“Why you?”

“Cecil trusts me.”

“Because?”

“I’m Ojibwe, like him. And we go way back.”

“You don’t look Indian.”

“A lot of us Indians don’t look Indian.”

“You a friend?”

“A trusted associate is more what I’d say.”

For some reason, this answer seemed to weigh in his favor. Her hand came out from under the counter.

“Do you know my Walter?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t.”

“Spell chlorophyll.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Spell chlorophyll.”

Cork gave it a shot.

“Wrong,” she said with satisfaction. “That was the word my Walter spelled correctly in the sixth grade that got him to the championship in the state spelling bee down in Saint Paul. He came in second there. Know why? They cheated him.”

“Is that so?”

“The girl before him, the last one left onstage except for him, they asked her to spell chrysanthemum. You want to know what word they gave Walter? I’ll tell you. Autochthonous. It means indigenous or native. Can you spell autochthonous?”

“No, ma’am. But then I’d be hard put when it comes to chrysanthemum, too.”

She ignored him. “I ask you, what child could possibly know how to spell autochthonous? She was a black girl. It was rigged. Some kind of equal opportunity bullshit.”

“No doubt,” Cork said, but his heart wasn’t in it. Which was a mistake. The hard look of distrust returned to Alva Brickman’s face.

She said, “I told you, I don’t know where Walter is.”

“Does he have a phone?”

“If he does, he hasn’t given me the number.”

“Mind if I leave you my number, just in case you hear from him?”

“It’s a free world, Mr. Simms. Do what you want.”

He wrote his cell phone number on the back of a grocery receipt he found in his wallet and slid it across the counter toward Alva Brickman. He doubted it would do any good, but it was one more base covered.

* * *

The Aitkin Police Department was located just inside the town hall. It consisted of three small, cluttered rooms. Cork found an officer sitting at a desk in the front room, a guy edging toward sixty, who judging from his weight, liked food better than exercise. His face was reddish, as if he’d just recently come in from the cold.

“Yes, sir,” he said to Cork in hearty greeting.

“Good afternoon,” Cork replied. “I’m looking for a little information.”

“I’ll see what I can do to help.”

“My name’s Cork O’Connor. I used to be sheriff up in Tamarack County.”

“Tamarack County? O’Connor?” The cop sat up straighter. “Any relation to the kid who was shot there yesterday?”

“My son.”

“I heard about it on the news. I’m truly sorry. Have a seat.” He held out his hand toward an empty chair next to the desk.

Cork took off his parka and sat down. “We think we’ve got a pretty good handle on a suspect, which is why I’m here.”

“Oh?”

“What can you tell me about Walter Frogg?”

“Frogg? Oh, Christ, he’s your suspect?”

“He’s certainly a person of interest.”

The officer held up a finger. “Wait here.”

He left his chair and went to a row of low file cabinets that stood against a wall. The bulletin board above the cabinets was filled with uniform patches from police jurisdictions all across the country.

“Your collection?” Cork asked, nodding toward the patches.

“We all kick in when we’ve got a new one.”

The cop pulled open a drawer, thumbed a row of folders, grabbed a thick one, and brought it back to the desk. He dropped it in front of Cork.

“That’s Walter Frogg, from age nine.”

“Nine?”

Cork opened the file and leafed through incident report after incident report, complaint after complaint.

“Smart kid. I mean really smart,” the cop said. “But a weasel from the word go. And an angrier kid I never knew.”

“Why so angry?”

“By the way, my name’s Karl Sterne.” The cop reached across the desk and shook Cork’s hand, then settled back and laced his fingers across his big belly. “I know this is going to sound all Freudian, but me, I’d say it was his mother. Alva’s always been a piece of work. Life never treated anyone as badly as it treated her, that’s always been Alva’s take. A litigious woman. Bitter. She’s driven away”-he paused a moment to do a mental count-“four husbands. Walter’s her only child. I’m making no excuses for Frogg, but I figure that he never had much chance of seeing life in any but an adversarial way. In Alva’s eyes, it’s always been her against the world, and right from the get-go, she enlisted her son in that endless battle.

“The first time I picked up Walter Frogg, he was nine years old. The charge was arson. He set fire to the little equipment shed of Mac McGregor, one of Alva’s neighbors. Mac and Alva had got into it over some branches he cut from one of her trees. Mac claimed that the offending limbs had been growing wild all over his phone and power lines, and that he cut them to make sure they didn’t bring those lines down in a big wind. Alva claimed he’d done irreparable damage to her tree. She sued him, lost. Right after that his shed caught fire. Thing was, Mac had been having so much trouble with Alva that he’d had a couple of security cameras installed. The one in back caught it all on tape. Little Walter, a gas can, a cigarette lighter. Alva paid for the damage, sold her house, and moved across town to that place she has on Fourth Avenue. Mac continued to have vandalism problems over the years. Slashed tires, that kind of thing. Never caught Frogg at it again, but it would take an idiot not to know who was responsible. Soon as Frogg left town for good, Mac’s vandalism problems ended. And Mac wasn’t the only guy Alva sicced her son on. Those complaints in that file there? All of ’em came after someone had a run-in with Alva. I was able to pin less than a handful on that boy of hers, but I knew he was responsible for every single one. Hell, he even got me. Snakes in my car. I don’t know how he did it, but I knew it was him. It didn’t surprise me in the least when I heard he got sent up for those terroristic threats against that judge and prosecutor down in the Twin Cities. And I guess it doesn’t surprise me a whole hell of a lot that you’re looking at him for what happened with your son. Anything you need from me, you got it.”

“You haven’t seen him around here?”

“I heard he’s been back a couple of times to visit Alva since he finished his stretch in Stillwater. Haven’t actually seen him myself and never had any complaints about him.”

“Any idea where he might be?”

“Last I heard, Duluth.”

“Not anymore. He left a while ago.”

Sterne thought a few moments. “He’s got a cousin lives somewhere up near Babbitt. Name’s Hanson, Hanshaw, something like that. No stranger to a jail cell himself, so I’m guessing if you checked in with the local constabulary there, they’d be able to give you some direction.”

Cork stood up. “Much obliged.”

Sterne rose, too, grunting just a little with the effort. “Your boy, how’s he doing?”

“He’ll be all right.”

“I’m glad to hear that. And if there’s anything more I can do for you, you just ask.”

They shook hands again, and Cork returned to the bitter cold of that midwinter season.