mother and Bear were killed in a head-on collision north of Cloquet. Her grandparents raised her, but they were not young and both were dead by the time Rayette hit fourteen. She was passed from relative to relative, giving them all trouble. At sixteen she chose to make her own way. It was her luck, she told Lucinda, that the way had led to Alejandro. It felt like finding God, she confided. She didn’t mean it in a sacrilegious way. It was just that she’d never known such hope before. Such happiness. He wasn’t a perfect man, but he loved her, and that made all the difference in the world.
Lucinda opened the curtains and looked out the window. The house stood just beyond the town limits of Aurora. It was a one-story rambler on a large lot with two young maples in front, near the road. The backyard abutted a stand of mixed spruce and poplar. Will had given her a small section of the property for her garden, but most of the yard was grass that, thanks to her husband, was thick and velvety all summer. He kept everything perfect and orderly. It had been the same at every place they’d lived, from Camp Pendleton to Camp Lejeune, with a dozen postings, foreign and domestic, in between. He was hard on the boys in that respect. No bikes left lying in the yard. No digging to China the way boys sometimes did. They both had their part in helping with the tasks, a strict duty roster that Will kept posted on the refrigerator and oversaw as rigidly as if the boys were part of his command rather than part of his family. When he retired from the military and opened his gun shop, Will had expected the boys to help out there as well. Alejandro had finally mutinied; he and Will began a battle that had seen an occasional truce but never an ending. Uly, on the other hand, never fought back. He bent beneath the weight of his father’s expectations, and it hurt Lucinda to see him burdened so.
She looked toward the lights of town, which she sometimes thought of as the campfires of strangers. She left the window, returned to the sofa, and lay down. She was afraid to close her eyes, afraid of what she would see in the darkness there. Almost immediately, however, her exhaustion overtook her and she fell asleep.
She woke suddenly. It was still dark, still night. Had she heard Misty crying? She listened carefully and realized that what had waked her was the tiny squeak of the platform rocker in the corner of the living room. In the drift of light through the picture window, she saw Will’s face. He looked at peace. In his arms lay the baby, asleep against his chest.
It was the only moment of beauty in that whole brutal day, but it was almost enough.
The light on Stevie’s nightstand stayed on late, and when Cork went to bed, he poked his head in his son’s room. The little guy was wide awake, fingers laced behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.
“Lights out,” Cork said.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Is it always wrong to kill?”
Cork walked in and sat on the edge of Stevie’s bed. “Why are you asking?”
“Zip Downey told me that the Kingbirds sold drugs to kids. So maybe whoever killed them didn’t think it was wrong.”
“Killing somebody is never the right thing to do,” Cork said.
“You killed people,” Stevie said. It wasn’t an accusation.
“And I pray all the time to be forgiven.”
“Did you think it was wrong?”
He hesitated, then answered truthfully. “I don’t remember thinking about right and wrong when it happened. But I suppose somewhere in my head I must have believed it was the right thing to do.”
“But you just said-”
“I know. Stevie, I hope you never find yourself in a situation where you have to decide whether to kill someone. I hope that with all my heart. Whatever people thought of the Kingbirds and whatever the Kingbirds may have done, killing them wasn’t the answer. It was calculated, cold-blooded murder. It was wrong, absolutely wrong, and that’s all there is to it.”
The troubled look didn’t leave Stevie’s face. Cork had watched his son play at killing, using a stick or a golf club or an old curtain rod as a rifle. He’d never stepped in to stop it. When Cork was a boy-raised on John Wayne westerns-he’d played the same games. He believed that the real killing for which he was responsible as a man didn’t come from the games of his childhood, and taking a stick away from Stevie or any other boy who fought make-believe battles wouldn’t solve a thing.
“Do you understand?” he finally asked his son.
Stevie said, “If somebody killed you, I’d kill them back.”
“Then I guess I’d better do everything I can to make sure I stay alive, huh?”
He ruffled his son’s hair. Stevie didn’t smile.
“Promise?” Stevie said.
“I promise. Going to read for a while?”
“I guess so.”
Cork handed him the book on the nightstand, The Indian in the Cupboard. “See you in the morning.” He kissed Stevie’s forehead and went to his own bedroom.
Jo was almost asleep, nodding over one of her legal files that she’d brought to bed to study. Cork stood in the doorway, thinking Jo had twice asked him to promise that he wouldn’t put himself at risk in whatever trouble seemed to be coming to Tamarack County. He hadn’t been able to do that for her. Yet he hadn’t hesitated in making that same promise to his son. What was the difference, he wondered, and if he told her, would Jo understand?
Hell, why should she? He wasn’t certain he did.
Worse, he wasn’t certain it was a promise he could keep.
FOURTEEN
Monday morning, Sheriff Marsha Dross was in the common area making coffee when Cy Borkman buzzed Cork through the department’s security door.
“Go on ahead to my office,” she called to him with an empty pot in her hand.
Cork walked into the office that twice before had been his. The first time around, he’d served nearly two terms. The second time, several years later, he’d occupied it for a brief but tumultuous three months. He liked what Dross had done to the place. She’d had the walls painted a soft sand color that reminded him of the desert and provided a pleasant backdrop for all the leafy green of her plants. She’d hung a couple of photographs on the wall. The one behind her desk showed her standing beside her father on a boat dock, both of them grinning wide. Her father had been a cop himself, down in Rochester. In the other photograph, Dross stood with her arm around Ann Bancroft, a Minnesota native and one of the world’s great polar explorers. The photo was signed and was inscribed: “To another sister who braved the ice.”
He stood at the window. The morning was overcast, promising much needed rain. Across the street was a park, a nice square of grass with a playground dead center. The playground was empty, but a small cluster of teenagers was making its way among the swings and slides, carrying book bags and packs, bumping and shoving each other in a playful way as they headed toward the high school on the far side of town.
“Coffee’ll be ready in a minute,” Dross said as she swept in. “Have a seat.” She sat behind her desk, while Cork grabbed one of the two no-nonsense tan plastic chairs available for visitors. “What have you got on Lonnie Thunder?” she asked.
“Nothing at the moment,” Cork said. “But I’m going to see Henry Meloux this morning. Seems Kingbird had been talking to him, so maybe Henry knows something. I figure it’s worth a try.” He hesitated before going on. “But I’m thinking, Marsha, that after I talk to Meloux, I’m finished helping with this investigation.”
She sat back slowly, her face a blank of waiting.
He could have told her about his promise to Stevie and the promise he should have made to Jo. Instead all he offered was, “I’m sorry.”
“You’re under no obligation.”
“Where are you with Reinhardt?”
She shrugged. “He swears he was home at the time of the murders. His wife says the same thing.”
“What do you think?”
