shoulder.
“I’ll be praying.”
Jo closed her eyes a moment. “Me, too.”
A light snow had fallen in the night, covering Aurora in a thin layer of white. Like the sheet over a corpse, Jo thought as she drove to the Aurora Community Hospital. Morning was crawling up the eastern horizon. The snow clouds had moved on. The sky was a pale blue-white, the color of deep, hard ice on a lake.
Because the hospital served a large, rural area, a heliport had been constructed on the eastern side of the building. In summer, especially, the heliport got a great deal of use-accidents with axes or chainsaws, drownings, cardiac arrests in city men who eagerly shed their suit-and-tie identities and, envisioning themselves as latter-day voyagers, embarked on canoe expeditions far more demanding than their flabby, cholesterol-ridden bodies could endure.
Wally Schanno was in the parking lot near the heliport, hunched up in his leather sheriff’s jacket, hands sunk deep in the pockets. Booker T. Harris and Nathan Jackson were there as well, sitting in a blue Lumina, engine running to keep them warm. Schanno walked over to Jo’s Toyota when she parked it.
“I’m real sorry about this,” he told her as she got out. “I probably should have waited until I knew some thing for sure.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” she said.
She scanned the sky. Lots of stars were still visible, particularly in the north, the direction from which the helicopter would come.
Schanno looked at his watch. “ETA about ten minutes.”
“How’d they find the body?”
“One of the search parties set up camp at nightfall at a landing on the north side of Embarrass Lake. Guy gets up in the middle of the night to relieve himself and stumbles over a pile of rocks. He pulls off a few and sees that there’s a newly dug hole underneath. Digs down a little and finds the body.”
Dear God, Jo found herself praying, please don’t let it be Cork.
“You okay?” Schanno asked.
“No.”
“Yeah.” He nodded sympathetically.
“Wally” She wanted to know, but couldn’t bring herself to ask.
As if he’d read her mind, he said, “It wasn’t an accident, Jo.” He studied the sky with undue interest and the muscles at the back of his long jaw twitched. “An ax blow. To the neck.”
“Jesus,” she said. “Oh, Jesus.”
Lights around the heliport came on. The double doors of the hospital opened and two orderlies in parkas appeared, pushing a gurney. They moved into the glare of the lights, men Jo didn’t know, looking tired, as if they’d been on duty all night. There was no doctor with them. What the helicopter was bringing was far beyond healing.
“Here it comes.” Schanno motioned toward the north.
Jo heard it, too. Then she saw it, coming in low over the trees, its lights tracking across the sky like shooting stars. Harris and Jackson got out of their car and waited. Harris cast a glance in Jo’s direction. The helicopter came down in a swirl of blowing snow. Jo could see the body bag on a sled secured to one of the runners. A couple of men jumped from the helicopter. They wore jackets that had TAMARACK SEARCH AND RESCUE printed across the back.
“Wait here,” Wally Schanno said.
Jo nodded, barely able to breathe and unable to talk at all. Schanno went to the helicopter, joined by Harris and Jackson along the way. They gathered around the sled. Jo saw them zip open the body bag and confer. Schanno turned, remained hunched under the blades of the chopper that hadn’t stopped spinning, and started back toward Jo. She turned away. She didn’t want to try to read his face.
Schanno put his hand lightly on her shoulder. “It’s not Cork.”
Jo almost collapsed. Tears of relief blinded her momentarily. She put her hands over her eyes a minute, then she faced the sheriff. “Who is it?”
“The man named Grimes.”
The orderlies wheeled the gurney with the body of Grimes across the parking lot and into the hospital Harris and Jackson approached Jo and Schanno.
“I want a meeting with Benedetti,” Harris said “And I want it now.”
“You don’t think Vincent Benedetti is responsible for this?” Jo asked.
“What I think is that there are six more people out there and I’m scrambling for answers before any of them show up dead. Get Benedetti. We’ll be at the Quetico.”
38
The world felt new to Cork. Like Easter morning. Like hope had been born again.
The sun was up, bright as a vision of God. The lake was blue as heaven. Snow lay thick on the evergreens and made them white as angels’ wings.
The patches on the canoes were holding.
Cork and the others had hit the lake at first light-Raye in the bow of Cork’s canoe, Sloane, Stormy, and Louis in the other. They spoke little, putting all their effort into their strokes, into making distance. They’d set Louis, whose eyes were young and hawk sharp, to the duty of watching for any sign of Shiloh or the man who pursued her. The morning was so clear that had it not been for all the islands that obscured the horizon, Louis could have seen for miles.
The contrast struck Cork powerfully. In the midst of a beauty so pervasive and dramatic it made his soul quiver, they were racing against a faceless, depthless evil. If Shiloh’s life hadn’t been the stake, he would have allowed himself to exalt in the thrill of the chase. It was a day for doing battle, and he couldn’t help but feel that God and Kitchimanidoo, the Great Spirit, were on the lake with them. When he heard the blaring of a line of Canada geese coming over the treetops, it was as if Gabriel had sounded his horn. He believed-believed absolutely and for no other reason than the day was glorious and their luck was holding-that they were meant to beat the evil. It could easily have been a false euphoria, he admitted to himself, born of exhaustion and the strain of the last two days. But it felt like a gift, a sign, a revelation, and he bent his will to what seemed a greater will that guided them.
He knew the feeling was not just with him. The others were on fire, too. Their faces may have been hollow, sunken with fatigue, but in their eyes burned a light as illuminating as that morning sun. They’d reached deep inside themselves, deep into a place where warriors reached for extraordinary courage. Cork was glad-immensely proud-to be in the company of such men. In a grim way, he was pleased for Louis. The boy had seen terrible things, it was true. But he’d also been given a chance to experience this rare companionship, to feel this rare emotion that lifted them all up and carried them forward together.
They moved swiftly through the morning hours. The lake remained calm and the canoes flew across the water like swallows through air. He’d worried about Arkansas Willie at first, but the illness of the previous night seemed to have passed and Willie made no complaint.
Midmorning, as they approached the Deertail River, Louis cried out, “Over there!”
He pointed toward a jut of land ahead of them and a little to the north dominated by a tall lightning-scarred pine tree. Cork ceased paddling, shielded his eyes against the glare, and squinted where Louis had indicated.
“What is it?” he asked, for he saw nothing.
“A camp,” Louis said. “A tent and a canoe.”
Once Louis had defined the images, Cork could see them, too. The tent was covered with snow and blended almost invisibly into the snow-covered evergreens behind it. The canoe was a long white finger pointing out from the whitened shore.
“Do you see anybody?” Cork asked.
Louis shook his head. “Looks deserted.”
“Let’s check it out,” Sloane said.
