“Yes,” she said.
“Where did you see him?”
“In the mess hall.”
The magistrate was chronicling her responses in his log. “Why was he in the mess hall?”
At this Thea looked down. “For me. He came for me.”
Rolf translated slowly.
Mayfair stopped writing, looked up at her. “What did he do when he got there?”
When Rolf was finished translating Thea put her face in her hands and started to cry.
Mayfair took a deep breath. “My wife and I, we go to church every Sunday.” He waited for Rolf to finish translating. “The constable tells me you’re an ardent believer yourself. Is that true?”
Thea could not imagine what he meant to ask. “Beg your pardon?” she said.
“Am I wrong that you came to your meeting with the constable here with the good book last night?”
Thea paged through her old testament and offered the judge the same scripture she had offered the constable twelve hours before.
Mayfair listened patiently and when she was finished, he took another deep breath. An uneasy silence came over the room. Finally the magistrate said, “Have you known this girl to be a liar, Trond?”
“I don’t know the girl well, but no, I haven’t known her to lie. And cookee would have her a saint. She does the work of three.”
“Does anyone here object to the statement regarding this girl’s integrity?” He went from face to face and watched them shake their heads no.
“Trond, what do you make of Smith’s character?”
“I don’t have much of an opinion. He’s a souse. He was easy pickings at our stud game the other night. He had nice wares in his haversacks. I can’t say much beyond that.”
“What about you, old man?” the judge asked Rolf. “Do you have any opinion about Smith, accusations notwithstanding?”
“I don’t know him from Adam.”
Curtis dutifully copied their responses. Now he addressed Thea again. “Is there any reason I should doubt your story?”
Rolf translated. Thea shook her head and looked into her hands on her lap.
Now Mayfair took the viola from the table and held it as though it were a banjo, plucking a few folksy chords. “Good Lord almighty,” he said. “That means there’s a certified felon running free. I can’t see any reason not to put a warrant out on him. I’ll offer a reward.” Again he sighed. “And I suppose I ought to let them know over at the newspaper. They might want a statement from you, Trond. You mind having lunch in town today?”
When he finished reading Trond commented on the swiftness of the court. It was warm enough in the midafternoon sun to remove his coat, which Trond did and then stood with his face raised toward the sun. “Now, if only they’ll be as swift replacing the horse.” The thaw meant he’d have only another three or four weeks to get the rest of the lumber down from the parcel. Three weeks, most likely. With temperatures like this, the ice road would be gone in three weeks. It would not be enough time to finish the cut.
XVII.
Hosea trembled as he walked, his heartbeat fluttering, his face cold beneath a sheen of sweat, the swirling lakeside wind rising up to cuff him whenever he turned toward the water. He usually made visits to the fish house an occasion to take his truck out for a drive, but Odd had borrowed the flatbed to haul the boat engine and not yet returned it. So that morning Hosea walked the Lighthouse Road and turned down an alleyway after the outfitters and found Odd’s secret path across the isthmus. Hosea had had another bender up at the Shivering Timber the night before, drunk off whiskey he’d supplied, sated by harlots he as much as owned. He knew his appetites were becoming insubordinate, knew he ought to check them but lacked any resolve to do so.
Sundays were Rebekah’s day to tend the store. It was open short hours — from ten, when the service was finished at the Lutheran church, until two — and though it was seldom busy, folks did stop in. Hosea used his Sundays to sleep off Saturday nights. He rarely woke before ten or eleven o’clock, when he’d fix a plate of scrambled eggs and buttered toast and drink a pot of coffee.
That morning, though, he woke early and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. He couldn’t say why, but as he stood over the sink, his hands trembling, he felt a kind of emptiness in the flat. It seemed colder and darker and in a way hollow on the third floor. He chalked it up at first to the great queasiness rolling around his gut, but as he drank another glass of water, and as the light of dawn began filling the room, he felt the emptiness stronger still. He finished the second glass of water and went to Rebekah’s bedroom door and knocked. When she did not answer, he pushed it open a crack. Her bed was empty, the room dark but clearly disheveled. The bureau and armoire were picked through, more than half of her dresses were missing, her jewelry box, her hats and beaver-skin coat. He hurried downstairs, checked the offices on the second floor and the shop on the first, and when he saw no trace of her hurried back upstairs to dress.
When he came out of the woods and into Odd’s yard he saw the skiff upturned on the western wall of the fish house, saw a teepee of a dozen or more cedar logs in front of the house, an odd-as-hell way to cure wood, an even odder place to do it, but he thought nothing more of it. His truck was parked at the end of the road. Smoke rose from the chimney.
He knocked on the door and stepped back, his hands joined behind his back to hide their shaking. When no answer came he knocked again and cupped his hands around his eyes and looked through the window beside the door. When after another minute there was still no answer, Hosea turned to face the lake. The sky was low, the wind from the north. The season shifting.
He was about to leave when Daniel Riverfish opened the door.
“Danny?” Hosea said. He leaned forward and peered into the fish house. He squinted, couldn’t see much. So he stepped back and cocked his head, looked queerly at Riverfish. “Is Odd here?”
“Nope.”
“Where is he?”
