Cavanaugh was silent. Although Cork considered the man his friend, he knew that Max was used to being obeyed. Perhaps in a mine or in a boardroom his silence might have had the desired effect, but Cork simply held his ground and matched Cavanaugh’s silence.
Cavanaugh broke first. “They asked me questions, as if I was a suspect. Am I a suspect, Cork?”
“More likely a person of interest. At this point, pretty much everyone in Tamarack County who knew her is a person of interest. It’s not personal, Max. Did you give them a formal statement?”
“No. I’ll go in tomorrow morning.”
“I’d advise you to take legal counsel with you. I know how it will look, but it’s the prudent thing to do.”
Cavanaugh turned slowly, like a windmill adjusting to a change in the direction of the wind. He stared across the empty lake, where the distant shore was marked by solitary pinpricks of light from cabins hidden among the pines.
“You had someone you loved die this way, Cork. You’ve got to understand what I’m feeling.”
Cavanaugh was probably talking about Cork’s wife, Jo. But he might also have been speaking of Cork’s father. Either way, the answer was yes, Cork understood.
For the briefest moment, he thought about telling Cavanaugh that it was likely one of the old bodies in the Vermilion Drift was his mother. And that he knew what that was like, too, having someone you love disappear and a very long time later learning their true end.
Instead he waited and listened in vain to hear the earth breathe.
Cavanaugh straightened. “I’d like you to continue working for me.”
“In what capacity?”
“I want to know who killed my sister.”
“There are a lot of very capable law enforcement personnel who’ll be investigating.”
“I want someone working on it just for me.”
“Believe me, Max, the resources they have available to them are light-years beyond anything I could bring to the table.”
“You know this town, the people in it. You don’t have to walk a thin legal line and go by the book.”
“You mean I can twist arms and bust faces? I don’t work that way. The sheriff’s people and the BCA are the best there is. I’ve worked with them for years.”
“And if you were me, would you trust them or you?”
A complicated question, not just because of the convoluted syntax. Cork thought a lot of his own abilities, and the truth was that in an investigation he had certain advantages over those who were uniformed and badged. Which was one of the reasons Marsha Dross had already sought his help. And that was part of the complication. If Cork agreed to hire on with Cavanaugh, he couldn’t also agree to sign on with the sheriff. Conflict of interest.
He felt for Max Cavanaugh. He understood the man’s grief, his confusion, his frustration, his desire to rip away the veil of mystery surrounding his sister’s death and, although Cavanaugh didn’t yet know it, his mother’s death as well. Because Cork thought he had a better chance of making that happen working with the sheriff and the BCA, he said, “No, thanks, Max. But if you’re bound and determined, I can recommend a couple of good investigators.”
The old dock groaned under Cavanaugh’s weight as he brushed past Cork, wordless, and returned to his Escalade. In the quiet by the lake, Cork could hear the angry growl of the engine for a long time after it had disappeared into the night.
ELEVEN
The next morning Cork was up before sunrise and running.
Years earlier, he’d been a smoker and enough overweight to worry about it. When he hit forty-two, his life went into a meltdown. He lost his job as sheriff, lost a lot of his self-respect, nearly lost his family. Part of pulling himself together involved getting comfortable in his own skin, and running helped him do that. He discovered that when he ran all the tight screws in his head loosened, and he seemed to think a little clearer.
That morning he had a lot to think about.
He jogged easily to Grant Park, which was situated along the shoreline of Iron Lake, a quarter mile south of Sam’s Place. He spent ten minutes stretching, then began his run in earnest. He headed north along a trail that followed the shoreline, past the poplars that hid the old foundry, past Sam’s Place, past the abandoned BearPaw Brewery. He curved into town and then out again, to the end of North Point Road, where the old Parrant estate stood. This was a halfway point, and he stopped to watch the sun rise over the lake.
In Cork’s experience there was nothing to compare with sunrise in the North Country. Across any lake on a calm morning, the crawl of the sun played out twice: first in the vault of heaven and again on the surface of the water, which was like a window opened onto another heaven at his feet. Five decades of life and he could still be stunned to silence by such a dawn.
The old Parrant estate sloped down to the shore. As Cork stood and watched the sun bubble red out of the horizon, something startling occurred. The brick from which that great house was built turned scarlet, and the walls began to melt, and rivulets of blood ran red across the emerald lawn. Cork stood mesmerized and amazed, but it wasn’t the first time he’d had a discomforting vision involving this particularly cursed piece of real estate. Half a dozen years earlier, shortly before he’d discovered the murder-suicide there, he’d observed a sea of black snakes churning in the yard, snakes seen by no one but him.
He blinked his eyes, and the morning was again as it had been, and the Parrant estate was solid brick, and its broad lawn was clean and green.
The tall, lean figure of Derek Huff came from the back of the big house. He was dressed only in a bathing suit. As he headed toward the lake, he cast a shadow that followed him, long and black, like one of those snakes in Cork’s vision years before. He reached the dock, dropped the towel he’d carried over his shoulder, and dove into the lake.
Cork drank water from the bottle he carried, and he stretched some. His muscles were a little sore. Lately he hadn’t been running as regularly as he would have liked. Despite his best intentions, life often got in the way.
As he prepared to resume his run, he looked back at the lake, where Derek Huff stroked easily away from shore, leaving a wide, undulating wake behind him that rattled the reflection of heaven.
When he’d finished the run and had showered and dressed, Cork composed and sent e-mails to his children. He didn’t tell them about what he’d found in the Vermilion Drift. He told them he was busy, happy, missed them. The Vermilion Drift would come up sooner or later, he knew. He wanted it to be later.
He headed to Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler for some breakfast. He could have eaten at home, but he needed to talk to Cy Borkman, and Borkman always breakfasted at the Broiler.
He found Borkman sitting on a stool at the counter, already doing major damage to a platter of eggs over easy, link sausage, hash browns, and toast. An empty juice glass sat off to one side, and coffee steamed in a cup within easy reach. Borkman had been hired as a deputy when Cork’s father was sheriff of Tamarack County, and he was still a deputy when Cork held that office thirty years later. He’d always been a big man, always overweight, but with retirement from the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department he’d edged more and more toward the girth of a walrus, and the little stool he sat on seemed hard put to keep from buckling.
“Morning, Cy,” Cork said and gave Borkman a hearty slap on the back as he sat down beside him.
“Hey, Cork.” Borkman spoke around a mouthful of breakfast, and it came out something like, “Hey, Hork.”
It was a busy morning at the Broiler. Kathy Lehman was waitressing the counter. She was blond, fortyish, a transplant from Wisconsin, but nice as they came. She stopped as she hurried past with three plates balanced on her right hand and forearm, shot Cork a smile, and said, “Coffee, hon?”
“Thanks, Kathy.”
