“I wish you were sheriff,” Annie said.
“Why?”
“You could do something.”
“Wally Schanno is doing everything he can.”
“I trust you more.”
“Thanks, Anne.” He put his arm around her. “Come here, Jen.”
His oldest daughter sat beside him on the swing, and he had both daughters in his arms. It hadn’t been very long ago that he’d come near to losing his children, losing his whole family, losing everything he held most dear. They’d all had to struggle to hold together. He refused to believe that they’d come this far only to have happiness snatched away so cruelly. But then he’d never claimed to understand life. The only thing he knew absolutely was that he wouldn’t think twice about sacrificing himself for those he loved.
“I’m tired of sitting, too,” he said. “I think it’s about time I did something.”
“What?” Jenny asked.
“I’m going to start by talking to someone.”
“Who?” Annie looked up at him.
“Henry Meloux.”
“What can he do?”
“He always surprises me.” Cork stood up.
“May I come, too?” Jenny asked.
“Me, too,” Annie put in.
“I’d prefer someone to stay with Rose.”
“That’s not necessary, Cork,” Rose said.
“That’s okay.” Annie left the swing and put her arm around her aunt’s ample waist. “I think Dad’s right. I’ll stay.”
Cork ruffled her hair affectionately. “Thanks, kiddo.”
“It’s almost dark,” Rose pointed out. “You should go quickly.”
Cork kissed his sister-in-law on the cheek. “Hold down the fort.”
“Don’t I always?”
The thunderheads had completely muscled out the stars by the time the Bronco left the town limits of Aurora. Lightning-a lot of it-played across the clouds, illuminating the face of a storm that had yet to break.
Jenny leaned forward and looked up through the windshield. “How come it’s not raining?”
Cork said, “Maybe the air’s too dry, or maybe it’s too hot. I don’t know.”
They drove a while on a county road, the dark growing deeper around them, pierced only by the Bronco’s headlights and by the startling bursts of lightning that were growing more frequent by the minute.
“When you and Mom split up,” Jenny said after a time, “I used to lie in bed at night thinking of ways to trick you into getting back together. Like, you know, faking a deadly illness or running away.”
“You never did.”
“I was never sure what was the right thing to do, what would work. Is that how you feel right now?”
“Pretty much.”
Jenny stared out at the darkness of the North Woods. “I wish you had your gun.”
“Who would I shoot? It’s only Henry we’re going to be seeing.”
“Just in case.”
“Relying on your brain is better. First lesson I ever learned in law enforcement.”
Jenny sat back and Cork felt her staring at him.
“How did you feel when your dad was killed?” she asked.
“That was a long time ago.”
“But you haven’t forgotten.”
You never forget, he thought.
His father was the youngest sheriff ever elected in Tamarack County, and the best remembered. He’d been killed when Cork was thirteen. An old curmudgeon of a woman deaf as a post had stepped into the middle of an exchange of gunfire between the sheriff’s people and some escaped convicts making for Canada. Cork’s father put himself between the old lady and a bullet from a stolen deer rifle. The clock on the tower of the courthouse was hit in the fracas, and the hands had not moved since. Cork had only to look at the clock to be reminded of a moment that had changed his life forever.
“I was angry,” he finally replied to Jenny’s question. “I wanted to kill the men who’d killed him.”
Jenny looked straight ahead. “That’s how I feel.”
“I understand,” he said.
He turned off the county road and onto a narrow track of dirt and gravel.
“Do you think Henry Meloux will know what to do?” Jenny asked.
“Not necessarily. But I’m hoping that after I talk with him, I will.”
By the time Cork parked next to the double-trunk birch that marked the trail to Henry Meloux’s cabin, black clouds had gobbled the moon. Except for those frequent moments when lightning made the trees jump out at them, Cork thought it was the darkest he’d ever seen the woods. He took a flashlight from the glove compartment and gave it to Jenny.
“Go ahead and light the way. Just follow the path. I’ll be right behind you.”
The lightning was all around them by now. Cork knew there could be a lot of ground strikes. With the woods tinder dry, he believed that unless a good rain came with the storm, things could be bad. Unfortunately, the clouds didn’t seem inclined to offer anything but the lightning that jabbed at the night and the forest. Cork stayed close behind Jenny as she made her way along the path. He was surprised at how quickly and nimbly she moved. A wind swept in with the clouds, and it shoved against the trees so the trunks bent as if something big walked among them. Although he didn’t want Jenny to know, he was becoming very concerned about being in the woods.
When they stepped out of the trees and onto Crow Point where Meloux’s cabin stood, Cork felt a moment of relief. In the flashes of lightning, he could see the dark cabin a hundred yards ahead. They’d gone less than a dozen strides in that direction when he heard a dull roar growing behind them. He puzzled for a moment, but as the sound grew in nearness and intensity, he suddenly understood.
“Run for the cabin,” he shouted to Jenny, and he pushed her forward.
His daughter didn’t question him. She took off at a hard run, the beam of the light she carried bouncing crazily ahead of her, mostly missing the trail. Twenty yards from the cabin, she stumbled and fell. The flashlight flew from her hand and when it hit the ground, the light went dead. Cork could hear the roar almost upon them. He grasped Jenny and pulled her to her feet. As they bolted over the last stretch of dark ground, the hail overtook them.
The stones were larger than any Cork had ever seen, big as his fist, and had plummeted thousands of feet. They hit with a force like hard-thrown baseballs. Jenny screamed and put her arms over head. She stopped dead still so that Cork, coming up fast from behind, almost knocked her down. He lifted her up and carried her forward. The hail struck Meloux’s cabin with a deafening clatter that seemed to put into question the ability of the thick logs to withstand such a beating. Cork threw open the door and, shoving his daughter before him, stumbled into the dark inside. He grabbed an oil lantern from a wooden peg next to the door and a match from a box that sat on a small shelf next to the peg, and he quickly gave the cabin some light. Finally, he slammed the door against the hail. Still the stones came inside, breaking through the panes on the windows, bouncing across the old plank floor before finally coming to rest near the stove or under Meloux’s bunk.
“Are you all right?” he called out to Jenny over the din of the stones striking the roof and the walls and the windows.
She looked dazed, but she gave him a slow nod.
Cork glanced around the cabin, a place he’d often spent time. The walls were hung with trappings collected over the long life of a man of the woods-a bearskin, a deer-prong pipe, snow-shoes, a toboggan. It was all familiar but somehow strange at the same time, for Meloux was missing.
As abruptly as it had struck, the hailstorm ended. The cabin grew very quiet.
“Is it over?” Jenny asked.
“For us,” Cork said.
Jenny looked around. “Where’s Henry Meloux?”
