looking to me, they really were just a bunch of suckers.”
Cork sat down on the ground next to the stump and looked at the water moving past, saw how the sky was reflected on the surface without obscuring the rocks beneath that formed the creek bed.
“Solemn, last winter I saw something that to this day I don’t understand. It was right after Charlotte disappeared. I was part of the search team looking for her, but I got lost in a whiteout on Fisheye Lake. Couldn’t tell up from down. I haven’t been so scared in a long time. Then someone, some thing, guided me to safety. I never saw it clearly. It stayed just at the edge of my vision, but I felt it was Charlotte, and I don’t know how that could have been.”
“You believe what you saw?”
“I want to believe. I want very much to believe, but I fall way short. It saved my life, that’s all I know, just like what you saw saved yours.” Cork shrugged and stared beyond the creek where the forest lay deep as any secret he knew. “I remember something Sam used to tell me. He said there’s more in these woods than a man can ever see with his eyes, more than he can ever hope to understand.”
For a long time, Solemn didn’t respond. Then he said, “Sam’s dead.”
“What I’m saying is that most people would give anything for a moment of the kind of certainty you had out there in those woods. What you experienced is a rare gift and one that gives the rest of us hope.”
Solemn slowly lifted his head. There were tears in his eyes.
“I felt like I was overflowing. Now I wish it had never happened, Cork, because now that it’s gone, I feel more empty than ever. And more alone.”
Cork wanted to reach out and hold Solemn, but touching that way wasn’t Ojibwe.
He stood up. He had a plane to catch.
“Go to Henry,” he said.
He stopped in Aurora to gas up. As he headed south out of town, he drove past the sheriff’s department and the park where the crowd had once gathered, hoping for a glimpse of a man who’d talked with God. The park was empty now. Whenever hope packed its bag and left for good, all that remained was a terrible emptiness, immeasurably sad.
That was something Solemn understood well.
Cork drove to the Twin Cities, and at two o’clock caught a plane to L.A. By the time he’d shuttled to the Hertz lot to pick up his rental and driven to his hotel, a quaint place called the Claremont Inn just across the city line from Pomona, it was nearly six o’clock. His stomach was still on Minnesota time and he was starved. After he checked in, he headed out in search of food and the Worthington Clinic.
He found the clinic first. It was a multiwing building of snow white stucco set in a sea of grass behind iron gates and a wall hung with bougainvillea. In the background rose the San Gabriels, copper green in the late afternoon haze. It looked like the kind of place only an Oscar or a million bucks would get you into.
He had a decent steak in a restaurant just off Route 66, then he drove awhile. He hadn’t been in Southern California for years and what had bothered him then bothered him now. The orange groves had become subdivisions and parking lots, and even with all the freeways no one seemed to be able to get anywhere fast enough.
He returned to the hotel a little before ten, and saw from the blinking light on the room telephone that he had a message. It was from Jo. “Call me, sweetheart,” she said. “I have some good news.”
Although it was nearly midnight in Minnesota, Cork called immediately. Jo answered, sounding a little sleepy.
“I talked with Rose today,” she told him. “After you left. She knows where Glory is.”
“How?”
“Glory heard about the angel of the roses and called Rose last week. She made Rose promise not to tell anyone. And you know how Rose is when she makes a promise.”
He did. And now he understood the discussion he’d had with his sister-in-law the night before.
“She talked with Glory today, and Glory asked her to have you call as soon as possible.”
Jo gave him Glory’s number.
Cork looked at the area code. “Where is this?”
“Iowa. Rose said that when you call you should ask for Cordelia Diller.”
“Who?”
“That’s the name Glory is using. She’ll explain. One more thing, Cork. Dorothy Winter Moon’s been getting a lot of threatening calls. People are pretty angry about the miracle business. A lot of them seem to blame Solemn, think he must’ve been in on it. He’s gone to Henry Meloux’s, by the way.”
“Good. If anyone can help, it’s Henry. How’s Annie?”
“She’s at the Pilons. Claire invited her for a sleepover.”
“Make sure she’s careful. Make sure both of the girls are.”
“That’s a roger.”
“I love it when you talk cop.”
“I miss you.”
“Miss you, too.”
After he hung up, he punched in the number Jo had given him for Glory Kane. The phone at the other end rang several times before it was finally answered.
“Rosemount. This is Sister Alice Mary.”
“Sister?”
“Yes?”
“I’m trying to reach Cordelia Diller.”
“It’s rather late. Everyone is in bed.”
“She asked me to call her.”
“Is it an emergency of some kind?”
“I wouldn’t call it an emergency, no.”
“Then I’m sure she didn’t intend for you to call near midnight. I’ll see that she gets your message first thing in the morning. Is there a number where she might return your call?”
Cork gave her the motel telephone number.
“Sister Alice Mary, where are you exactly?”
“Just outside Dansig, Iowa, right on the Mississippi River.”
“I guess I mean what are you? What is Rosemount?”
“We’re a retreat center for Catholic women, particularly those who are considering entering a religious life.”
“You mean becoming a nun?”
“That’s certainly one of the options.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
Cork hung up and spent a few minutes trying to picture Glory Kane as a nun. God might be able to see it, he finally decided, but his own eyes were way too blind.
35
Cork didn’t sleep well. He got up early and tried calling Glory Kane in Iowa. All he got was a busy signal. He showered, shaved, dressed, and tried the number again with the same result. He went to a little restaurant down the street from the Claremont Inn and ordered eggs Benedict. They weren’t bad, and the coffee was good and strong. He read the Los Angeles Times. The sports page, anyway. The Twins had dropped a game back of the White Sox for the division lead. He returned to his motel room and tried one last time to reach Glory Kane. The line was still busy. He wondered just how popular a retreat center in the boondocks of Iowa could be.
At eight, he presented himself to the receptionist at the contact desk of the Worthington Clinic. A blonde with a Rodeo Drive walk showed him to Steven Hadlestadt’s office. Hadlestadt stood up to greet him and they shook hands.
The man was younger than Cork had expected, early thirties. His head was shaved smooth of hair. He had a
