Borkman said, “It wasn’t that he didn’t love your mother. It’s just that sometimes a man, well, you understand.”
“No, Cy, I don’t. Enlighten me.”
“Look, the Vanishings had him all twisted up. He was going crazy. And frankly, your mother was riding him hard, because it looked like her people were the ones being targeted. He wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t particularly eager to go home at night. And, hell, you were being a little shit.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were a teenager, and, hell, teenagers are always difficult. And because the investigation took your dad away a lot those days, I suppose you were the one helping your mother through what she was dealing with and saw mostly her side of things. Anyway, you did nothing but give him grief and push him away, and I got the sense your mother was doing the same. He ended up getting pushed into the arms of a woman.”
“What woman?”
“I didn’t know who it was, but he met her at Jacque’s. And it wasn’t about love, Cork, I can tell you that.”
“What was it about?”
“Look, it happened like this. We got a disturbance call. Your father and me, we both responded, arrived in our cruisers about the same time. A couple of guys in the parking lot were beating the hell out of each other over a woman. A skanky looking thing, a peroxide blonde in a skirt that barely covered her ass. We broke up the fight. Didn’t book anybody, but the woman claimed she was afraid, so your father offered to give her a ride. He was gone a long time, longer than necessary, and when he came back into the department, there was something different about him. The kind of different easy to spot. Wouldn’t look me in the eye. None of my business, so I didn’t push him. We were in the middle of the investigation of the Vanishings, so he was out a lot anyway, but after that, sometimes when he was gone, I figured it had nothing to do with the job.”
“How’d you know?”
“A feeling. I knew your old man pretty well. Anyway, after the Cavanaugh woman disappeared, I didn’t see any more of that behavior from him.”
“And you’re saying what?”
“You were the one who said the Cavanaugh woman could’ve worn a wig and called herself something else. It’s pretty coincidental that after Monique Cavanaugh disappeared, your old man settled back down. And you know as well as I do that coincidence is never coincidence.”
Cork looked outside at the lake and tried to think clearly through a spin of unpleasant images.
Borkman said, “You asked about Monique Cavanaugh and Indigo Broom, so you must know something about her I don’t. Was she the kind of woman who could’ve got her jollies disguising herself and slumming it at Jacque’s? And if she was, was she the kind of woman who’d make your old man the kind of offer he couldn’t refuse?”
Before Cork could answer, his cell phone rang. Sheriff Dross.
“Cork, I wanted to let you know. That bloody fingerprint we found in Lauren Cavanaugh’s boathouse? We finally got a match.”
“Who is it?”
“Hattie Stillday. We just brought her in.”
THIRTY-ONE
Sheriff Marsha Dross looked tired but relieved. She wore her khaki uniform, something she usually did only when she had to face the media and wanted to be certain that the impact of her authority came through in every way possible. Agent Simon Rutledge sat in a chair in a corner of the office. He wore a tan sport coat, white shirt, and yellow tie. The knot on his tie was pulled down a comfortable few inches, and the collar of his shirt was unbuttoned. He was working a Rubik’s Cube and seemed to be paying very little attention to the conversation between Cork and the sheriff.
“When we showed up at her home to interview her, she took one look at us and told us everything,” Dross said. “We brought her back to the department. She refused an attorney and then repeated everything on videotape for us. She seemed happy to get it off her chest.”
“You believe her confession?” Cork sat on the far side of the sheriff’s desk, trying not to pay too much attention to the pounding in his head, which, despite the Tylenol, threatened to crack his skull wide open.
“The evidence is all there,” Dross said. “In the back of her pickup we found a canvas ground cloth with bloodstains on it. She claims she wrapped Cavanaugh’s body in it. Simon’s people are taking it down to Bemidji to analyze the stains. And she certainly knows things about the murder that we haven’t made public.”
“Like what?”
“That Cavanaugh was killed with a thirty-eight.”
“Does she have the weapon?”
“She claims she threw it into the lake.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere along the eastern shoreline, near the rez. She doesn’t remember exactly where.”
“What about the details of the shooting itself? Lauren Cavanaugh was shot twice, right? The graze and the fatal wound. What did Hattie have to say about that?”
“She was unclear about the number of shots she fired.”
“Unclear?”
“She said she fired once. I didn’t press the issue. But she told us other things only the killer would know.”
“Like what?”
“She claimed to know precisely the location of Lauren Cavanaugh’s car.”
“Which is where?”
“Sunk in a bog half a mile from the entrance you and Haddad found to the Vermilion Drift. Ed Larson and his crew are out there right now checking on it.”
“What was her motive for the killing?”
“She argued with Lauren Cavanaugh over payment for some photographs. She didn’t mean to kill her, just to threaten her. Things went south. An accident.”
“What was the deal with the photos?”
“Cavanaugh bought them but kept sidestepping the issue of payment. Finally Stillday demanded they be paid for or be returned. Cavanaugh flat-out refused, so Stillday confronted her in the boathouse with the gun. Bang.”
Dross glanced at Rutledge, intent on his Rubik’s Cube, then said, “It makes sense, Cork. People get crazy when money’s involved.”
“And she put the body with the others already in the mine?”
“Yes.”
“How did she know about the Vermilion Drift?”
“On that subject, she’s saying nothing.”
“For now,” Rutledge said without looking up.
Cork thought that before too long Hattie Stillday would be “Simonized.”
“Did she say where she got the murder weapon?”
“Claims she’s had it for years. Came down to her from some dead relative on the reservation.”
“Does she know the thirty-eight was also the weapon that killed Monique Cavanaugh?”
“She didn’t offer any information that would indicate she did. Like I said, she wasn’t inclined to talk about the Vanishings.”
