Larson paused and looked up at the hill that was now a towering black shape hard against a soft night sky. “What’s going on, Cork?”
“I’d say it was a trap.”
“You guys got pulled out here to be shot at?”
“No,” Cork said. “To be shot.”
3
Cork left Ed Larson in charge with Borkmann backing him up. He intended to drive himself to the Aurora community hospital so that he could check on Marsha and have his ear tended to, but Larson stopped him.
“You shouldn’t drive.”
“It’s just my damn earlobe,” Cork said.
“It’s a bullet wound and your body knows it and any minute may decide to overrule your stubborn brain. If that happens, I’d just as soon you weren’t behind the wheel. Collins,” he called to a deputy who was taking digital photos of the bullet-riddled Land Cruiser, “take the sheriff to the hospital. Radio ahead and let them know he’s coming.” He turned back to Cork. “You want us to call Jo?”
“No, I’ll do that from the hospital. And I’ll take care of contacting the BCA, too.”
At the hospital, Cork told the deputy not to wait, that he’d have Jo give him a lift from there. Collins headed back to the rez.
In the emergency room, Cork ignored the admitting clerk and walked directly to the main hallway. As he approached the reception desk to ask about Marsha, he ran into his dispatcher Patsy Gilman, who was asking the same question.
Cork had hired Patsy during his first stint as sheriff. She was not quite forty, bright and funny, with deep laugh lines on either side of her mouth, and small intense eyes that noticed everything. She was good in Dispatch because she kept her head and her humor. As two of the only three women in the department, she and Marsha Dross had formed a tight friendship, so much so that Patsy was to be the bridesmaid at Marsha’s wedding, which was scheduled for the day after Halloween. Marsha was engaged to a big Finn named Charlie Annala.
“As soon as I knew they were bringing Marsha in, I called Charlie.” She walked with Cork toward the surgery waiting area. “Then I called Bos and asked her to relieve me early. I didn’t want Charlie to have to wait alone. You mind?”
She was still wearing her uniform, and there were dark stains under the arms. It had been a tough evening all around.
“Makes good sense,” he said.
Cork knew he shouldn’t feel this way, but he hated hospitals. They were places that did people good, that cured the sick and healed the injured, but it was also a place completely outside his control. He’d watched both his parents die in hospital rooms, and there hadn’t been a damn thing he could do about it. Rationally, he knew that hospitals weren’t about death, but whenever he entered the glass doors and caught the unnatural, antiseptic smell in the corridors, his heart told him differently.
They found Charlie Annala in the waiting room. He was sandy-haired, heavy, with a face made babylike from soft fat. He wore a forest green work shirt, dirty jeans, and scuffed boots. Cork figured he’d come straight from his job at the DNR’s Pine Lake Fish Hatchery. He stood with his big, fat hands stuffed in his jean pockets, his head down, staring at the beige carpeting. There was a television on a shelf in a corner, tuned to one of the new reality shows. Cork figured Annala wouldn’t have minded dealing with somebody else’s reality at that moment. When he heard them coming, Annala looked up, not a happy man.
Charlie Annala was the protective type. Marsha didn’t need that, but apparently she didn’t mind, either. Maybe she appreciated that Charlie saw her in a different way than her male colleagues: saw the woman who liked, off duty, to show a little leg, line dance, and wear jewelry and cologne. Cork knew that her job was a sore point with Charlie, who was worried about her safety, a worry that, until this evening, Cork hadn’t particularly shared.
Patsy rushed forward and threw her arms around the big man. “Oh, Charlie, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” he said. He looked over her shoulder at Cork.
“Any word?” Cork said.
“Nothing since she went in. I haven’t called her dad yet. I won’t until I know how it’s gone. What happened?” Charlie’s eyes were full of unspoken accusations.
Patsy stood back, and let the two men talk.
“We’re still trying to piece it together.”
“What do you mean, ‘piece it together’? You were there.”
“At the moment, all I know is somebody shot her.”
“Who?” He’d leaned closer with each exchange, putting his face very near to Cork’s. There were deep pits across his cheeks from adolescent acne.
“I don’t know,” Cork said.
“Why not?”
“He was too far away, hidden in some rocks.”
“Why her?”
Cork figured what he really meant was Why not you?
“When I understand that, Charlie, I’ll let you know. I honestly will.”
Patsy put her arm around Annala just as a nurse entered the waiting area. “There you are,” the nurse said to Cork. “We’ve been expecting you in the ER.” When he turned to her, she said with surprise, “Oh, my.”
The shot that grazed his ear had opened a spigot of blood that had poured all over his shirt, and he looked like hell, as if he’d sustained an injury far worse.
“Keep me posted,” he said to Patsy.
“You know I will.”
Cork followed the nurse. He was beginning to feel his strength ebbing, and thought about what Larson had said. Maybe his wounded body was finally overtaking his stubborn brain. He hoped not. There was still so much to do.
He called Jo from a phone in the ER and asked her to pick him up, then he let them sew his earlobe closed.
She was waiting for him when he came out. She looked with alarm and sympathy at the gauze and tape on his ear. “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
Two blocks from the hospital, Jo pulled her Camry to the side of the street, parked in front of a fire hydrant, and listened. He told it calmly, almost blandly, but her face registered the horror of the scene.
“Oh God, Cork. How’s Marsha?”
“She’s still in surgery. We won’t know for a while.”
She gently lifted a hand toward the side of his face. “How’s your poor ear?”
“Smaller.”
“Does it hurt?”
“They gave it a shot. Can’t feel much now.”
She stared through the windshield. It was night and quiet and they sat in the warm glow of a street lamp. She put a hand to her forehead as if pressing some thought into her brain. “Why, Cork?”
“I don’t know.”
She leaned to him suddenly and held him tightly, and the good smell of spaghetti came to him from her hair and clothing. It was a quick dinner and a favorite of their children.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said. “I’ll get you home and you can relax.”
“No. I need to go to the department. I want to listen to the tape of Lucy’s call.”
It was a little before nine on a Tuesday night. Aurora, Minnesota, was winding down. Many of the shops had
