“Going away would be safer for everybody.”
“Thanks for your concern, Cork. I’ll take it from here.”
Reinhardt moved past him and headed toward the house. He mounted the steps, knocked at the door, and was let in. Cork climbed into his Bronco and left.
Supper was over when he arrived home. Annie had taken her brother and Trixie to Grant Park for an evening romp. Jo fixed him a roast beef sandwich and he pulled a bottle of Leinenkugel’s from the refrigerator to wash it down.
“We ate on the patio,” Jo said. “It’s a little chilly, but if you put on a sweater it’s nice. How about we sit there?”
She joined him in the cool blue that was the shadow of coming night. Cork had built the patio himself, a smallish brick affair that Jo had outlined with hostas. In spring and fall, it was a good place to eat a meal and relax. In summer, there were mosquitoes to contend with and blackflies and yellow jackets. The backyard wasn’t separated from the neighbors’ yards in any formal way; in Aurora, there weren’t many fences. But everyone knew where their property lines ran, especially when it came to mowing grass or raking leaves.
“And?” Jo finally said.
Cork realized he hadn’t said a word since they’d sat down.
“I talked to Tom Blessing, gave him a deadline for putting me in touch with Thunder.”
“He didn’t spit in your eye?”
“No, but he wasn’t exactly quaking in his boots either.”
“Will he? Put you in touch with Lonnie Thunder, I mean.”
“Doesn’t matter. One way or another I’ll find Thunder. By the way, George LeDuc says that Alex Kingbird was seeing Henry Meloux.”
“Now that’s interesting.”
“I’m planning on having a talk with Henry tomorrow, see what he has to say about that. He might have an idea about Thunder, too.”
“Cork.” From the way she said his name-a mix of tender and tough-he knew, more or less, what was coming next. “I know you promised Marsha that you’d help her, but I keep thinking that if you’re alone on the rez poking around trying to find Lonnie Thunder, sooner or later the Red Boyz are going to catch you isolated out there and do something about it.”
He put his beer down and nodded thoughtfully so that she could see he really was hearing what she said. Then he replied, “The people I need to talk to will be more inclined to open up if I go alone. I won’t do anything stupid, I promise. And I won’t be completely alone. I’ll take my thirty-eight, loaded and locked in the glove box.”
She drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t understand what’s so important about bringing in Thunder now. It seems to me the damage has already been done.”
Cork nodded again and then he explained: “The more players we’re able to remove from the situation, the better the chances of handling it.”
“ We’re able to remove? Sweetheart, you gave up the badge. And just exactly who are we bringing in from the other side of this situation? The people on the rez are going to be very interested to see how diligently our sheriff-and those helping her-go after Kingbird’s killer, especially since all the signs point toward Buck Reinhardt.”
“Elise says Buck was with her when the shootings occurred.”
“Oh, now there’s testimony that would convince a jury.”
“I think that at the moment Marsha doesn’t have any evidence to the contrary.”
“She’d better find some fast. Whatever people on the rez thought of Alex Kingbird doesn’t matter. The situation as they’ll see it-and you know this better than anybody, Cork-is that an Ojibwe’s been killed-very likely by someone who’s white-and the authorities are dragging their heels. It doesn’t matter what the reality is, the perception will be damning. You’ll have young Shinnobs lined up around the block to join the Red Boyz.”
“People rush to judgment all the time, Jo. A proper investigation moves more slowly.”
“Proper investigation? You sound exactly like a white cop now.” Her face changed, softened. “Cork, I’m playing devil’s advocate, saying things you know are going to be said. Unless Marsha’s able to wrap this up quickly, it’s apt to fall apart on her. It scares me to think of you in the middle when that happens.”
“I know it does. What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to step away from it.” She held him with the clear blue wish of her eyes, then gave up with a sigh. “But I know you and I know you won’t.”
She fell silent, tilted her face upward, and gazed at the night that was crawling into the sky.
THIRTEEN
That Sunday night Annie sat in front of her computer, trying to work on the final paper for her lit class. She was asking the question: Was it really William Shakespeare who’d penned the plays that all the world loved? She’d constructed the paper to be a kind of whodunit, presenting evidence that pointed toward various suspects: Marlowe, Raleigh, Bacon, Johnson. She needed to begin wrapping it up, but she sat staring at the screen, dreadfully aware that she didn’t care who’d written the plays, didn’t care about the paper, didn’t care about school at all. She was finished. All the seniors were finished. For the next few weeks, they were just going through the motions.
A message appeared on her screen. From Uly Kingbird. They’d IM’ed a lot while they were practicing the music they’d played that morning at church. thanks what4, she IM’ed back. thought i wanted to be alone this afternoon but i didn’t. the dark is no place for children and children we all are. more dylan more mine pretty pretty words don’t change anything. the worlds still an ugly place. the words come from somewhere beautiful inside you. your music comes from the same place.
He didn’t respond for a minute. She wondered if he was still online.
Then another message: i used to believe… what, she replied. nothing. late. good night.
She sat back and stared at the screen. She was about to turn her own computer off when a final message from Uly appeared. that every day is a chance for something better. but the truth is every day is a hole you try to climb out of. and one day you won’t.
Misty took forever going to sleep. By the time Lucinda laid the baby in the crib that she’d put up in Alejandro’s old room, she was exhausted. She went to her own bedroom and found Will sleeping deeply. She stood looking down at her husband and realized she was exhausted with him, too. It wasn’t that he was an awful man, a bad man, he was just a difficult man, a man hard to love. Even after more than a quarter century together, he was like a foreigner to her, speaking from a sensibility she couldn’t understand, following rituals she couldn’t appreciate. More than anything else, it was his silence that kept him a stranger. He spoke, yes, but often in a way that felt to her like silence. Years before, she’d thought of leaving him, but she had no way of supporting herself or her boys. And it wasn’t as if he was cruel to her, abused her, beat her. He never did.
When she was a girl in Los Angeles, in the backyard of her stepfather’s home there was a carob tree. It had been a beautiful thing, huge and shady. Under it her mother had put a little grotto, a bathtub virgin. Lucinda spent much time under the carob, daydreaming or praying to the Virgin Mary. Then one day the tree fell apart, just fell apart. The inside, it turned out, was completely rotten. As it collapsed, a huge section of the carob tree smashed the bathtub and its virgin. These days, Lucinda often thought of her marriage as being like that carob tree: something that was rotting from the inside and would someday simply crumble.
She took a blanket from the linen closet and stretched out on the sofa in the living room. From there, she could easily hear if the baby woke and began to cry. She’d always been a light sleeper.
She closed her eyes. Against the darkness splashed the image of Alejandro and Rayette, tangled in the meadow grass, their bodies torn open by the shotgun blasts. She sat up and stared at the curtains, drawn closed over the picture window. The curtains were new. Rayette had helped choose them, and while they considered fabric she had talked to Lucinda about her childhood.
When Rayette was seven, her mother had left her with her grandparents and gone to Minneapolis with a man named Douglas Bear. She’d promised to come back for Rayette when they were settled. That never happened. Her