“No.” The priest looked puzzled and glanced at the boy.
“I was there,” Paul admitted.
“In the ski mask?” Cork asked.
The boy shook his head. “I fired a couple shots at the ski mask and scared him away.”
“Fired a couple of shots?” the priest said with surprise. “Wait a minute. Paul, put some more wood in that stove. Crank up the heat for our friend. Cork, we’ll tell you everything, but it’s going to take a while.” He glanced at Paul. “Maybe even longer than I thought. How about putting some hot water on the stove, Darla? I could use some coffee. Even if it’s instant.”
Paul and Darla did as the priest directed. Wanda Manydeeds finished changing Makwa’s diapers.
“Cork, help me haul this pew nearer the stove,” the priest said. “Give you a warm place to sit.”
When the backless old pew was settled, the water hot, and the instant coffee stirred into foam plastic cups that had been pulled from the grocery bags, the priest said, “Okay, let’s talk. But before we do, I want to remind you of a couple of things, Cork. First of all, you’re not the sheriff anymore. That’s one reason we’ve all decided to trust you. Also you told me not long ago that you don’t believe there is such a thing as justice. These people feel the same way.”
Cork sat on the pew near Wanda Manydeeds, who rocked Mawka. Darla and Paul stood near the back door. Tom Griffin moved about freely with his coffee in his hand, gesturing toward those present.
“What we discuss here goes no further,” the priest said.
“Then why tell me at all?”
“Because I think you’ll keep digging until you know the truth anyway. We’d just as soon try to deal with it now.”
Cork considered them all a moment. “All right. But first there’s something I have to tell you.” He looked at Darla and Paul LeBeau. “You might want to sit down.”
Darla moved to her son and put her arm protectively around him, although he was a full head taller than she. “We’re fine,” she said.
He plunged in, telling it bluntly because there seemed no other way. “Joe John’s dead. I believe he was murdered.”
He’d delivered tragic news before. It had been part of the job, but he’d never become immune to the effect tragedy had on those who had to hear of it, and he’d never become used to his own feeling of helplessness in those situations. But the LeBeaus surprised him. Their faces didn’t change in the least.
“They know, Cork,” St. Kawasaki informed him quietly. “I already told them.”
“You knew?” Cork asked the priest.
“I’ve known since Vernon Blackwater passed away.” He gestured toward Wanda. “We both have known.”
“How?”
Wanda spoke while she rocked Makwa next to her breast. “When Vernon was dying, he asked us both to come. Tom for the part of him that was Catholic, me because I am a Midewiwin. We were alone in the room with him. When he made a last confession to Tom, I overheard.”
“He confessed to helping kill Joe John?” Cork asked the priest.
Tom Griffin stood near a window looking uncomfortable. “Why don’t you talk to Wanda about what she overheard. It probably doesn’t matter now, but I still don’t feel right about sharing with you what was told to me in confession.”
“You shared it with Darla and Paul,” Cork pointed out.
“That was different. I had no choice.”
“Why?”
The priest pulled the shade away from the window just a crack and looked out at the road. A streak of afternoon sunlight cut across his face like yellow war paint. “Because I had to explain to Paul why the judge was dead.”
Cork felt as if his brain were stuffed with cotton. He squinted at St. Kawasaki and asked dumbly, “Was it you who killed the judge?”
The priest let the shade fall back into place and shook his head. “No.”
Wanda said, “I did.”
Makwa began to whimper again. Wanda stood up and walked slowly about the room, cooing softly to her baby. She didn’t seem in any hurry to tell Cork any more.
“Was it an accident, Wanda?” Cork asked hopefully.
“No. I meant to kill him.”
“Here,” Darla said to Wanda when the baby went on fussing, “let me take him awhile.”
Wanda gave Makwa over to her sister-in-law and turned back to Cork. Her long black hair was braided and hung over her shoulder like a length of rope. Her face was the color of sandstone and no less hard.
“Vernon confessed to watching Harlan Lytton kill my brother. He said the judge set it up. He wouldn’t say why, only that Joe John was murdered and the judge and Lytton were responsible. Vernon didn’t want to die with that secret weighing on him as he walked the Path of Souls.”
Cork glanced at the priest. “Did you ask him why?”
St. Kawasaki shook his head. “He was barely able to speak as it was. I just listened.”
“You should have asked,” Wanda said with an accusing tone.
“I was his confessor, Wanda, not his inquisitor,” the priest reminded her gently. “We’ve speculated it probably had something to do with Russell embezzling.”
“You know about that?” Cork was surprised.
“Everybody knows about that now,” Wanda said.
“Small town,” the priest added.
“So what happened between you and the judge?” he asked Wanda.
“I went there that afternoon to talk to him. Tom wanted me to wait until we could figure a way to do something about it. I didn’t want to wait. I couldn’t. It was like having a wild animal inside me eating me up.”
“So you confronted the judge,” Cork said.
“Yes.”
“And I’ll bet he just laughed at you.”
Wanda gave Cork a look that said he was right on the money.
“He said I had no proof of anything. ‘Hearsay,’ is what he called it. I told him I didn’t need any proof. I’d just tell what I’d heard. People would listen.”
“You threatened the judge? I would like to have been there. What did he do?”
Wanda, who’d looked directly at Cork until that moment, looked away.
“He threatened her back, Cork,” St. Kawasaki said. “He had some.. information.” The priest hesitated, and it seemed as if he and Wanda spoke silently to one another with their eyes.
Cork said, “It’s all right. I know about the judge and his pieces of information. You’re not the only one he dealt with that way, Wanda. What happened then?”
“He told me to get out,” Wanda went on bitterly. “He turned away to go to the front door. I grabbed the poker from the fireplace and I hit him. I didn’t even think about it. I just hit him, right in the back of the head.” She put her hand on her own head to show Cork.
“Then you put the shotgun into his mouth to make it look like suicide,” Cork finished for her.
“No.” The priest folded his arms and leaned against the mission wall. “That was my doing,” he said.
“You?”
“Wanda called me from the judge’s place. I went over on Lazarus, cut across the lake as fast as I could. He was dead when I got there.”
“And you figured in a white courtroom, under white law, Wanda stood a snowball’s chance in hell of getting justice. So you faked the suicide.”
“That’s about the size of it, Cork. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was workable. I’ve seen worse things in my life, believe me.”
Cork did. He rubbed his forehead a moment, wishing like hell he had a cigarette. He glanced at Paul. “So you must have stumbled onto all this, is that it?”
