“You’re one to talk. Late night.”
“And not over yet.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll be getting a couple of visitors soon.”
“Should I make coffee?”
“No. We’ll leave right away.”
“Anyone I know?”
“I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”
She studied his face. “You look… peaceful. A good day?”
“An enlightening day. Jenny, if you ever wonder what your life is all about, just pick up Waaboo and hold him. Everything you need to know, it’s all right there.”
“And right here,” she said and leaned to him and kissed his cheek. Then she yawned.
“Go back to bed,” he told her gently. “Everything’s okay now.”
The knock at the back door came just as he returned to the kitchen. When he opened up, Marsha Dross stood on the doorstep beside a hulking Isaiah Broom.
“Holter’s pissed as hell,” she said. “If he doesn’t have answers from you by the time the sun comes up, he says he’ll arrest you for obstruction.”
“He’ll know everything by the time he pours his first cup of morning coffee,” Cork replied. “Promise.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Broom said.
“You’re free, Isaiah.” Cork reached to his leather jacket hanging on the peg beside the door. “And you’re coming with me.”
“Yeah?” Broom threw back, not happily. “Where?”
“You’ll see.”
The big Shinnob frowned, then lifted his broad nose. “Cookies?”
Cork went to the table where the plate still held half a dozen. He picked up a couple and returned to the door.
“For the road,” he said to Dross and handed her one. The other he gave to Isaiah Broom. “Let’s get going.”
In the light that fell through the doorway, Cork saw Dross wince. She was taking a big chance, and he appreciated it. “I’ll be at your office by first light,” he promised.
She took a bite of the cookie he’d given her and said, “I’ll be waiting.”
He drove down the empty streets, through a town deep in its own dreaming. Snow spit from the sky, a few flakes, like moths fluttering in the headlights. For a long time, he drove in a silence that both he and Broom seemed comfortable with.
“Traitor,” Cork said at last, breaking the silence.
“What?”
“That’s what you wrote on the arrow you shot into the door of Rainy’s cabin. Traitor. Why?”
“Why traitor, or why the arrow?”
“Both.”
They’d left Aurora behind, and the dark had swallowed them. The only light came from the back splash of headlights and the glow of the dash. The big Shinnob sat silent and brooding in the night gloom, and was quiet for so long that Cork wasn’t sure he’d get a reply at all.
“I made that arrow for Jubal Little,” Broom finally said. “I meant to shoot it into his heart myself. When I heard it was you who killed him, I figured I’d let you know that I understood.”
“You could’ve just told me. I admit I was more than a little confused by that message.”
Broom stared ahead where the thin scatter of snowflakes drifted white against the black asphalt of the highway. “I was drunk. Celebrating his death, I thought, but later I decided maybe I was just relieved that I didn’t have to go on hating him. I knew you’d be at Henry’s.” He swung his face toward Cork for an instant. “Rainy,” he said. Then he shrugged. “The decisions you make when you’re drunk usually aren’t your best.”
Cork didn’t have to press him about the traitor part. That arrow had long ago been intended for Jubal Little. “When did you realize it was Willie who killed him?”
Cork felt the huge body on the other side of the Land Rover tense up.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, you do, Isaiah. That’s why you gave yourself up. To protect Willie. He would never have let you take the blame, you know.”
They’d negotiated the southern end of Iron Lake and had started up the shoreline toward the reservation. Broom was like one of those wooden statues he carved so adroitly, massive and silent.
Cork went on. “I talked with Willie earlier tonight. He’s going to turn himself in.”
Broom twisted quickly, facing Cork. “No.” It was like a command.
“It has to be done, Isaiah. Willie understands that.”
“There’s no way he’s going to spend his life in jail. I won’t let him. And it’ll kill Winona.”
Cork drew to a stop at the side of the road. “Isaiah, there’s something else you need to know. I wish…” He was suddenly at a loss for words. He’d delivered bad news, news of death, many times in his law enforcement career, and it had always knotted his gut. “Winona’s dead, Isaiah. She killed herself. That’s pretty much what drove Willie to kill Jubal.”
Broom looked as if Cork had just done the same to him, put an arrow into his heart. He seemed stunned, deeply wounded, then he turned away, hid his face by staring out the window on his side of the Land Rover.
“We’re going to see Willie,” Cork told him. “I figured you might want to talk to him alone before he turns himself in. Everything’ll get hard after that.”
Broom kept his face to the window. “Drive,” he said.
When they reached Willie Crane’s cabin, there was a light on inside and the Jeep was parked in front. They stood on the doorstep with snowflakes wetting their faces, but when Cork knocked, no one answered.
“Willie?” he called. He tried the knob and pushed the cabin door open. “Willie, it’s Cork O’Connor. I’ve brought Isaiah with me.”
“Was he expecting us?” Broom asked.
“Not exactly. He wanted some time to get things ready before he turned himself in. I figured he’d be here.”
But the cabin was empty. On the table where Willie ate his meals lay a sheet of paper printed with text, and at the bottom was Willie Crane’s signature. Cork picked it up and read it. A full explanation of the killing of Jubal Little. A signed confession. There was also a note to Cork on a separate sheet of paper. It said simply, “With Winona.”
Broom read the confession and the note. He walked to one of the windows overlooking the lake that backed the cabin. “There’s a fire on the shore,” he said, and he turned and quickly went outside.
Cork followed, and they stumbled through the dark along the path where a couple of days earlier Willie had led Cork on a wild-goose chase in search of Winona. They came to the place in the lee of the great rock where the earlier fire had been kindled, and a more recent fire had also burned. The flames were slowly dying. Willie had been there but was gone.
Broom turned to the black hole that was the lake. “Willie!” he cried desperately. “Willie!”
Cork stood beside him, thinking how, long ago, Willie Crane had saved his good friend’s life. Thinking how Isaiah Broom, in trying to take the blame for Jubal’s murder, had done his best to repay that debt. Thinking, too, that, in their lives, Willie Crane and Isaiah Broom had been blessed by their great friendship. Thinking of Jubal Little, who’d done his best to have Cork killed. And thinking, finally, that for a big man with such huge ambition, Jubal had had a very small heart.
“He’s gone, Isaiah,” Cork said.
Broom turned to him, and the Shinnob’s cheeks were cut by streams of tears that glistened in the light of the dying fire. “Where?”
“He told me that, when he died, he wanted to be left out there.” Cork nodded toward the deep forest that began on the far side of the lake. “He wanted to become a part of all that beauty. Wherever he is, he’s with Winona, and I doubt that we’ll find them.”
