“I’ll find a way to swing it.” Cork lifted her hand to his lips and softly kissed her palm. “You’ve got yourself a gumshoe, ma’am.”
In the relative quiet that had come with the closing of the windows, Cork heard a slight sniffle at the bedroom door. He rose up on his elbows and saw the small, dark shape of Stevie in the doorway.
“What is it, buddy?”
“I keep hearing things.”
Stevie heard things even when there was nothing to hear. Cork and Jo never chided him for the fears caused by night noises, real or imagined. They’d decided the best way to help their son was to let him know he was never alone.
“I’ll go,” Jo said. “I can’t sleep anyway.”
She went to the door, put her arm around her son, and the two of them walked back down the hallway.
The wind pushed through the trees outside like something huge and panicked. Alone, Cork lay staring at the ceiling, thinking about Solemn Winter Moon, about the evidence, about what Jo would be up against. He finally sat up and turned on the light on the nightstand. He pulled a pencil and a notepad from the drawer and set about making a list of all the factors stacked against Solemn.
Breakup with Charlotte Kane.
Seen arguing with Charlotte at the New Year’s Eve party.
No alibi.
Murder weapon is his; his prints all over it.
Fingerprints on a beer bottle at the scene of Charlotte’s death.
He looked at his list and knew that in Aurora these were not the only things that could influence the thinking of a jury. He added two more notations.
Troubled past
Solemn is an Indian.
He drew a line under these items to separate the page and began to list the factors that might help Solemn’s case.
No confession. Denies guilt.
This was important, because despite what movies and television said about the value of forensic evidence in securing a conviction, the truth was that in the vast majority of homicide cases the killer’s confession was the most damning exhibit the prosecution could present in a murder trial.
No eyewitnesses.
At the moment, there was no one who could actually place Solemn at the scene when the crime occurred. That meant that all the evidence against him so far was circumstantial, and a good defense attorney could mount an effective attack on that basis alone. Still, with circumstantial evidence, what a jury would finally decide was anyone’s guess.
Cork tried to think if there was anything else working in Solemn’s favor. Only one possibility occurred to him, and he wrote it down.
Talked with Jesus.
Cork looked at that one a long time, weighing the effect it might have on anyone’s thinking about the case. Solemn seemed to believe truly in what he’d experienced, and that belief had changed him dramatically. But it might be that not everyone would see that change, or believe it to be sincere. Maybe Cork’s own thinking was influenced by his love of Sam Winter Moon and by what he thought he owed Sam’s great-nephew. In a town like Aurora, once the opinion about a thing was set, changing that opinion was like trying to reverse the rotation of the earth. Solemn was a wild kid, a troublemaker, a hoodlum. It wouldn’t be a hard stretch at all to believe he’d killed Charlotte Kane. He was also the desecrator of St. Agnes, and the fact that he claimed to speak to Jesus might well be the final blasphemy.
Cork drew a line through his third notation under the list of things helpful to Solemn’s case, and assigned it number eight under the things against. Then he looked at what he’d put together. Jo was right to be concerned. On paper, Solemn was already a goner.
16
The next morning, as soon as he’d seen the children off to school, Cork went to St. Agnes to talk to Mal Thorne. He tried the rectory first. When he knocked, Rose opened the door.
She’d been absent from the O’Connor house for over a month, and Cork had seen her only two or three times in that period, not very recently. The children and Jo stopped by the rectory regularly, and they saw her every Sunday morning, but a stop at St. Agnes was never on Cork’s agenda. Now he stood at the doorway to the priests’ residence and looked at Rose as if he were seeing a stranger. For a moment, he simply stared at her, speechless.
She smiled. “Hello, Cork.”
“Rose?”
She laughed, reached out, and hugged him.
“You’ve lost weight,” he said.
“A few pounds.”
“New dress?”
“Yes. My old clothes tend to hang on me these days.”
“Your hair’s different.”
“I’ve decided to let it grow a bit.”
That wasn’t all that was different. There was a light in her eyes, a rosy aura about her, even a subtle, enticing fragrance that was the faintest hint of perfume, something that, to Cork’s knowledge, Rose never wore.
“Come in, won’t you?” she said.
From inside the rectory came the blare of the television. The Price Is Right. Father Kelsey, Cork figured, because the old priest was nearly deaf and Rose never watched television during the day. Cork held back. “I’m looking for Mal. Is he in?”
“He’s working in his office in the church this morning.”
“Think he’d mind if I dropped by?”
“You? In St. Agnes? He’d welcome that like a miracle.”
“I’ll just go on over then.” Cork took one last look at his sister-in-law. “You know, you look wonderful, Rose.”
“Why, thank you, Cork.”
Walking to the church, Cork mulled over the change in Rose. He considered that maybe just getting out of the O’Connor house had made the difference, but that was unconvincing. There was something else going on.
Mal Thorne was at his desk, shoving around the mouse for his computer. Cork knocked at the door, and the priest looked up. The pleasant surprise of seeing Corcoran O’Connor at his door carved a wide smile on his face.
“Well, come on in.” He stood up and bounded toward Cork, his hand already out in greeting.
“I stopped by the rectory first. Rose said I’d find you here.”
“Just finished brewing up a pot of coffee. Join me?”
“Thanks.”
Mal went to a small table pushed against the wall where a framed charcoal drawing of St. Agnes hung.
“Nice picture,” Cork said. “Where’d you get it?”
“Randy Gooding. A Christmas present. Remarkable, isn’t it?” Mal lifted the pot from the coffeemaker and poured some into a disposable cup. “All I’ve got is this powdered creamer crap.”
“Black’ll do.” Cork took his coffee. “Rose seems to be doing fine covering for Ellie Gruber.”
“Are you kidding? Rose is a saint.” The priest tipped the jar of creamer and tapped some into his own coffee. “I’ve never seen anybody handle Father Kelsey with such a firm, loving hand. Don’t get me wrong. Mrs. Gruber is
