Cork received notice that access to Sam’s Place could no longer occur as it had in the past. A development company had purchased Shorty’s land and intended to put a fast-food franchise there, a move that would pretty much insure the end of Sam’s Place. Jo mounted a marvelous legal battle and won back the easement rights. The franchise was never built. In the litigation process, Jo discovered that the major investor in the development company was none other than Fletcher Kane.
Cork pulled into the muddy drive of Valhalla, deep in the woods north of Aurora. It was hard dark by then, and his headlights flashed on the back end of Fletcher Kane’s silver Cadillac El Dorado. He parked, killed his lights, and got out.
The night was still, but the lake was thawing. Beyond the pine trees, it moaned and cracked and made Cork think of a great animal awakening.
A bright three-quarter moon lit the scene. There were no lights on in the big cabin, nor in the guesthouse. Cork took a flashlight from the glove compartment of his Bronco, but he didn’t turn it on. He approached the big cabin, carefully mounting the wooden steps built into the hillside. With its grand deck that overlooked the water, the cabin seemed like a ghost ship anchored among the black trunks of the pines. He crossed the deck to the screen door and saw that the heavy inside door was open. The room beyond it was completely dark.
As he stood at the threshold, Cork became aware of a strong odor all around him that was out of place among the fresh scent of spring pines.
Kerosene.
“Fletcher,” he called toward the black inside.
He heard movement, then a metallic squeak. In the dark of the room, a small circle of glowing red rotated into sight. Cork interpreted the squeak to come from the mechanism of a swivel rocker. He was pretty sure the red glow came from the end of a lit cigar.
“Fletcher?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Glory asked me to come. She’s worried.”
“Tell her I’m touched. Now go away.”
“I’m not leaving until we talk.”
“I don’t want to talk to you, O’Connor.”
Kane’s speech was slurred, and despite what Glory said about her brother not drinking, it was clear to Cork that’s exactly what Fletcher had been doing. The whole situation struck Cork as odd. Glory, who drank, was sober. Fletcher, who didn’t, was drunk.
“I know how hard this must be for you, Fletcher,” he said.
“You have no idea.”
“I have daughters. I know it would just about kill me to lose one.”
“But you haven’t lost one.”
“I know you loved Charlotte. And that’s why I know you’re going to do the right thing for her.”
“The right thing?” The tip of his cigar bloomed red as he took a deep draw amid the strong odor of kerosene that was everywhere.
“Do you know why Arne requested an autopsy?”
“All I heard was that he wanted to butcher my girl.”
“In situations like this, an autopsy is almost automatic.”
“Situations like what?”
“A death in which drinking might have played a part. In Charlotte’s case, there’s probably something even more compelling.”
Although he could not see Kane clearly, he could see the dark shape and how still it was.
“They found some food wrappers and a beer bottle next to Charlotte’s body. An autopsy could probably tell the sheriff if it was Charlotte who did the eating and drinking.”
“What do you mean if it was Charlotte?” He thought about it. “Somebody was with her?”
“Maybe.”
“Then why didn’t the son of a bitch do anything to help?”
“I suppose there are several possibilities.”
A long silence, then Kane struck on the darkest of the implications. “Somebody wanted her dead?”
“That’s one of the possibilities.”
“Who?”
“A question the autopsy could help answer.”
Cork watched the glowing ember descend, and he heard the tiny squeal of the tobacco as Fletcher Kane ground out the cigar in an ashtray. A moment later, a small lamp came on.
Kane sat in a rocker. Over the years, he’d grown to resemble his father, a man of elongated proportions and bug eyes. He put Cork in mind of a giant grasshopper.
“I want to be alone, O’Connor.” When Cork didn’t move, Kane said, “You can tell Glory I’m fine.”
Cork walked to his Bronco, but he didn’t get in. He stood watching Valhalla, worried that it might yet go up in flames. In a few minutes, however, he saw Kane at a window, a tall, bent figure, staring down at the lake. Kane’s mouth moved, speaking words Cork couldn’t hear. Below him, as if in reply, the lake ice moaned.
7
Corcoran O’Connor was three-quarters Irish and one-quarter Ojibwe. Except for a few years in college, and as a cop in Chicago after that, he’d lived his whole life in the town of his birth. He’d been raised Catholic, baptized at St. Agnes, received his first communion and was confirmed there. He’d served as an altar boy, sung in the choir, spent his share of time in the confessional. Being Catholic had been important to him once. For several years, however, he’d refused to set foot in church, and didn’t give a hoot about the commandment of keeping the Sabbath holy.
On that April Sunday afternoon, Cork stood at the frozen edge of Iron Lake with Sam’s Place at his back. The sun was high, its warmth soaking into the earth, melting the ice that still held the deeper soil prisoner. The air was laced with a fragrance that augured spring. He’d come with his tools and with half a mind to work on the old Quonset hut, but he knew he wouldn’t disturb the peace of that afternoon. Even though he was at odds with God, he couldn’t ignore the fact that on such a day there was a sacred feeling to everything.
Part of it was the place itself, that small parcel of land Sam Winter Moon had deeded to Cork. It was bounded on the north by the Bear Paw Brewery and on the south by a copse of poplars that held the ruins of an old foundry. West lay the tracks of Burlington Northern and beyond that the streets on the outskirts of Aurora. East, below the sun and beneath a thinning layer of ice, lay the deep, clear water of Iron Lake. There may have been places more beautiful, but none in Cork’s thinking that were more special. Whenever he stood on that little stretch of shoreline, he could feel Sam Winter Moon’s spirit there.
Sam had been his father’s good friend. When Liam O’Connor died, shot dead in the line of duty as Tamarack County sheriff, Sam Winter Moon had stepped in and guided fourteen-year-old Corcoran O’Connor into manhood. Sam had done it without fanfare, as if the fatherless were the natural concern of every man. Summers in high school, Cork had worked at Sam’s Place, learning his way around the grill, the state laws governing cleanliness, the rules of simple bookkeeping. Suffusing all their time together was the spirit of Sam Winter Moon’s own manhood, a quiet strength couched within a gentle humor that was decidedly Ojibwe in its sensibility. In those days, despite the death of his father, Cork still practiced his Catholicism. The murder of Sam Winter Moon, a brutal killing for which Cork blamed both himself and God, had been the first of a series of tragedies that had hardened Cork’s heart against the spirit of his baptism and the church of his confirmation.
Still, on such a day as this, standing at the edge of Iron Lake with the sweet, distant breath of spring breaking over his face, Cork couldn’t help but feel gratitude. He remembered the words his Grandmother Dilsey, a full-blood Ojibwe, had once taught him. Great Spirit! We honor you this day, and we thank you for life and for all things. Mother Earth! We honor you this day, and we thank you for life and for all things. You are our mother. You feed us, you clothe us, you shelter us, and you comfort us. For this we thank you and honor you.
