“Can’t spend a reputation. I need a job that brings in a regular income.”
“What’ll you do about Sam’s Place?”
“Unless I win the litigation, there won’t be a Sam’s Place. And unless I can pay for it, there won’t be a litigation.”
“And if you win the lawsuit, are you out of here again? I’ve got to tell you, Cork, you’ve been in and out of uniform more times than a kid playing dress-up.”
“I was never playing.”
She looked away, out her window at the gorgeous November sky and the liquid sun that made everything drip yellow. “I’ve got a dozen qualified applicants wanting Cy’s job, young guys itching for experience. I hire one of them, he’ll be with me for years. I can start him out at a salary that’ll be healthy for my budget. I can assign him the worst shifts and he won’t complain.”
“Did I ever complain?”
“Let me finish. The feeling around here is that I ought to hire you. You’re clearly the popular choice. Hell, you brought most of our officers into the department yourself. These guys love you. But I have to look beyond the question of how well you’d fit in here. I have to think about the future of this force. And I also have to think about the welfare of the officer I hire.” She gave him another long, direct look. “What’s Jo think about this?”
“That it’s not the best idea I’ve ever had.”
“An understatement on her part, I’m sure.”
“This is between you and me, Marsha.”
“Until I run into Jo in the produce aisle at the IGA. I can’t imagine that would be pretty.”
“You’re saying you wouldn’t be inclined to hire me?”
“I’m saying we both probably have better options.”
It was Cork’s turn to eye the promising blue sky. “I don’t know anything but law enforcement.”
“I heard the new casino management firm might be looking for someone to head up security.”
“All paperwork,” Cork said.
“Sixty percent of what we do here is paperwork.”
“I guess I have my answer.” Cork stood up. “Thanks for seeing me, Marsha.”
They shook hands without another word. Cork headed out, passed the contact desk, where Pendergast gave him a thumbs-up.
TWO
Day One
Cy Borkman’s enormous butt ate the stool he sat on. “Coffee, Janice,” he said to the young woman who was serving the counter at Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler. He looked at Cork, who, until Cy arrived, had been sitting alone. “So, what did Marsha say?”
“That although she might be tempted, she wouldn’t actually burn my application.”
“Come on. What did she say?”
Cork sipped his coffee. “She encouraged me to pursue other career options.”
“She say why?”
“To make way for youth.”
Janice brought Borkman’s coffee and asked him, “Anything else?”
“Yeah. Two eggs over easy, patty sausage, hash browns, and wheat toast.”
“Tabasco?”
“Naturellement.”
Janice walked away, without writing on her pad.
“You ever think about security at the casino?” Borkman asked. “They’re always looking for guys.”
Cork shook his head. “Checking IDs, throwing out drunks, not for me.”
“What do you think you’d be doing as a deputy? Hell, a lot of it’s checking IDs and dealing with drunks.”
“Maybe so, but I’d prefer doing it with a deputy’s badge.”
Borkman clapped a beefy hand on his shoulder. “Pride cometh before a fall, Cork.” He took one of the little containers of half-and-half from the bowl on the counter, creamed his coffee, stirred in a packet of Splenda. “What about your PI business? You’ve got a good rep.”
“And not enough work to afford to pay a lawyer.”
“Why won’t Jo take your case?”
“She says it’s best to have a disinterested third party handle it.”
“Even if it breaks the bank?”
“She’s encouraged me to settle.”
“What would that mean?”
“Letting the bastards surround Sam’s Place with a lot of fucking condos.”
“You’d make a lot of money.”
“And ruin everything that Sam Winter Moon loved. And, hell, that I love, too. I’m going to win, Cy. I’m going to fight these bastards and I’m going to win.”
“What did Jo think about you applying for my job?”
“About what you’d expect.” Cork pushed his cup away. “Got things I have to do. When’s your last day?”
“Two weeks from tomorrow. They’re throwing me a shindig at the Four Seasons. You better be there.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Cork dropped plenty for the coffee and a good tip on the counter and headed outside.
In Aurora, Minnesota, things got quiet in November. The fall color disappeared. The stands of maple and oak and birch and poplar became bone bare. The tourists lost interest in the North Country. Deer-hunting season was nearly finished, and the orange vests, like the colorful foliage, were all but gone. There were still fishermen on Iron Lake, but they were the hardy and the few and came only on weekends. In town, the sidewalks became again the province of the locals, and Cork recognized most of the faces he saw there. November was usually a bleak month, days capped with an overcast and brooding sky, but the last week had been different, with the sun spreading a cheerful warmth over Tamarack County. Cork wished some of that cheer would lighten his own spirits.
He drove his Bronco from the Pinewood Broiler to the gravel access road that led to Sam’s Place. He stopped at the chain that had been strung across the road and that had been hung with a No Trespassing sign. He wanted to drive right through, break the chain into a dozen pieces. Instead, he simply drove around the barrier. He followed the road over the Burlington Northern tracks and pulled into the parking lot of Sam’s Place, where he got out and stood looking at what was, in a way, the vault of his heart.
Sam’s Place was an old Quonset hut built on the shore of Iron Lake. More than forty years before, it had been bought and refurbished by an Ojibwe named Sam Winter Moon. Sam had divided the structure in half. In the front he’d installed a freezer, a grill, a deep fryer, a shake machine, and a soft drink dispenser, and had begun serving burgers, fries, and drinks during the tourist season, May through October. It had become one of Aurora’s icons, a destination, a place for many that, until they patronized it, their vacation wasn’t complete. Sam, when he died, had passed the place to Cork, who’d been like a son to him. Years before, when Cork had lost his job as sheriff, he’d poured himself into keeping the spirit of the wonderful old burger joint alive. He’d brought his own children in to work the windows and flip the burgers and learn, in the way he’d learned, when he was their age, both the necessity and, ultimately, the pleasure of a job well done.
He heard the water lapping gently against the shoreline, and he walked down to the lake. There was an old dock where folks could tie up their boats, disembark, and order a meal. Ever since the chain had gone up across the access from town, that dock was the only legal way to come at Sam’s Place.
To the north stood a Cyclone fence that separated Cork’s property from the BearPaw Brewery. Cork’s land, two acres of mostly open field full of native wild grass and wildflowers, ran south along the shore of Iron Lake and stopped just short of a copse of poplars that surrounded the ruins of an ancient ironworks. Beyond the poplars, the open land continued until it hit Grant Park. Except for the lake, Cork’s property was bounded on all sides by land now owned by the Parmer Corporation, a development company headquartered in Odessa, Texas. Parmer intended to turn the entire lakefront, from the BearPaw Brewery, which they now owned, to Grant Park, into a large condominium resort community. All they needed to complete their ownership of a quarter mile of prime lakefront was to acquire Cork’s property. They’d offered him a lot of money, three-quarter
s of a million dollars. He’d turned them down. They’d offered him more, a full million this time. He’d declined the proposition. They’d made one more offer, one and a quarter million. He told them to take a hike.
Cork had an easement agreement with those who, before Parmer, had owned the property that stood between Sam’s Place and Aurora. This gave his customers access to the old Quonset hut along the road over the Burlington Northern tracks. But Parmer’s lawyers had wormed their way around the language of the agreement and, near the end of August, had chained off that access. Cork had gone to court, seeking a temporary injunction until the easement dispute could be resolved. The court had turned him down. He’d had so little business—only from boats on the lake—that he’d been forced to close Sam’s Place six weeks earlier than usual, cutting significantly into the cash that might otherwise have been available for legal fees.
From the beginning, Jo had overseen her husband’s interests. As the depth of Parmer’s pockets and the corporation’s resolve to string the proceedings out over years, if necessary, became more apparent, Jo had explained to Cork that it might be best to retain someone who was an expert in this kind of dispute and who could, perhaps, bring about a more expeditious resolution. She recommended a firm in Minneapolis. It was, she cautioned him, going to cost enormously.
Then Parmer had offered a compromise. Cork could keep Sam’s Place. They would build around it; in fact, they would incorporate the old landmark into their design. Cork simply had to sell them the remainder of his property at the last price they’d offered. He’d drafted his own response, told them to go fuck themselves, that he’d sell at no price, that only over his dead body would they ruin the shoreline of Iron Lake.
Jo had carefully pointed out that Parmer held all the cards, that if the lawsuit did, in fact, go on for years, and access to Sam’s Place continued to be effectively blocked, Cork would be forced out of business and they would have to find a way to shoulder a significant legal debt. She cautiously suggested that compromise might be possible.
Christ, of all people, she should have been behind him. Of course she was a lawyer, but she was his wife first. Compromise? Settle? Hell, fold up like a card castle, that’s what she wanted him to do.
Now he stood at the edge of the lake, looking south, where the shoreline met the sapphire reflection of the sky, thinking how he’d be tempted to kill to protect that unspoiled view.
“Howdy.”
Cork turned and watched a man emerge from the shadow of Sam’s Place and approach him over the gravel of the parking lot, smiling cordially as he came. He was tall and lean, sixtyish, a face like a desert landscape full of deep cuts and hard flats, with a couple of blue-green oases that were his eyes. He wore jeans, a tan canvas jacket open over a blue work shirt, and a Stetson that matched the color of his jacket.
“Morning,” Cork said.
The man stopped beside Cork and spent a moment admiring the view. Under the bright sun, the water sparkled. Along the far eastern shore, a ragged line of dark pines cut into the blue plank of sky like the teeth of a saw. The man breathed deeply and seemed to appreciate the smell of clean water and evergreen.
“Beautiful spot,” he said.
“I’ve always liked it.”
“Yours?”
“For the time being.”
“Lucky man. Business good?”
“In season,” Cork said. “Visitor?”
“Yep.”
“Fisherman?”
“Nope.”
“Fall color’s gone and hunting season’s basically over.”
“Depends on what you’re hunting.” He stuck out his hand. “Name’s Hugh Parmer.” The man’s fingers were long and steel-cable strong.
“Cork O’Connor,” Cork said.
“Figured.”
“Hugh Parmer.” Cork drew his hand back. “As in the Parmer Corporation.”
“That’d be me, son.”
“You’re trespassing.”
Parmer looked back toward the chained access and smiled. “Appears to me we’ve both stepped a little outside the law.”
“What do you want?”
“In general? Or right at this moment?” He kept smiling. “Just wanted to see for myself the parcel of land that’s holding things up.”
“It’s not the parcel that’s in the way. Look, Parmer, why don’t you just forget about this place and go back to your other developments? I understand you’ve got a number of them in the works.”
“Here and there.”
“Not here, not if I can help it.”
Parmer used the tip of his forefinger to nudge his Stetson an inch higher on his forehead. “My people have told me about you. Burr under the saddle, they say.”
“I don’t need people to tell me about you.”
“You sum up a man easy.”
“Some men.”
Parmer shrugged. “Me, I think everybody’s complicated, and I confess that sometimes I never do get the exact measure of a man.”
“In town long?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“I’d prefer not to see you here again.”
“I understand. Much obliged, Mr. O’Connor.” He eyed the shoreline once more. “Nice,” he said. “Very nice.”
Cork watched him cross the parking lot and hike the gravel access toward town. He watched until Hugh Parmer was a small figure well beyond the Burlington Northern tracks. Then he turned and promised the lake, “Over my dead body.” He picked up a rock and threw it far out and watched the ripples spread. “Over my dead and rotting body.”
THREE
Day One
He spent much of the day at Sam’s Place working on the only paying investigation he had at the moment. He made calls to several police departments in Tamarack County and in the three adjoining counties. He’d been hired by Covenant Trucking to look into break-ins at a couple of their depots, and he was trying to find out if there might be a more widespread pattern to the crimes, something he’d seen a few years before, when he was sheriff.
At three thirty he turned onto Gooseberry Lane and pulled into the driveway of his home, a two-story white clapboard nearly a century old. The house had been in his family since its original construction and was known in Aurora as “the O’Connor place,” a designation that would probably continue long after the last O’Connor was gone from it. A huge elm stood on the front lawn, with a rope scar visible on one of the low, thick branches where for years a tire swing had hung. A tall hedge of lilacs edged the driveway. In spring the fragrance from the blossoms was the next best thing to heaven, but now the bushes were a thick, unpleasant mesh of bare branches. Cork parked in front of the garage and went in the side door to the kitchen. He let Trixie, the family mutt, in from the backyard, where she’d been drowsing in the sun.
He was home five minutes ahead of Stephen. At thirteen, Cork’s son was just beginning to get some height and bulk to him. He’d always been a small kid, but in the last few months, the growth hormones had kicked in and Stephen was mushrooming. His coordination hadn’t caught up with his muscle development, and he was heart-wrenchingly awkward these days and knew it. His voice was changing, too. He was self-conscious about everything. Including his name. Until the last few weeks, he’d been known to everyone as Stevie. Now it was Stephen, a name he felt had more substance to it, more sophistication.
Stephen stumbled in carrying his school pack, which he slung onto the kitchen table. Trixie jumped up and pawed Stephen’s thighs and licked his hand. Stephen petted her fiercely in return. “Hey, girl. Miss me?”
“How’d it go today?” Cork asked.
“Okay.” Stephen turned from the dog and made a beeline for the refrigerator. He hauled out a carton of milk, grabbed a glass from the cupboard, and filled it to the brim. He gulped down half the milk, then refilled his glass.
“Cookie with that?” Cork asked.
“Mmmm,” Stephen grunted.
Of all Cork’s children, his son most visibly
showed his Anishinaabe heritage. His eyes were dark walnuts, his cheekbones high and proud, his hair a fine black with, in the proper light, hints of red. Despite all Stephen’s awkwardness, both of Cork’s daughters had declared that he was growing into a bona fide hunk.
While Cork pulled out the cookie jar—Ernie from Sesame Street, a ceramic relic that had survived mishap for a dozen years—Stephen picked up the phone and listened to the messages.
“Nothing for me,” he said, disappointed. He’d been begging for a cell phone of his own, but Cork hadn’t knuckled yet. “There’s a message from Mom.”
“Let me listen.” Cork put the phone to his ear and replayed the message.
“Cork, it’s me.” Long pause. Was that the wind he heard in the absence of her voice? “I’ll call you later.”
It was a simple message, nothing of import, but for some reason, Cork saved it on voice mail.
He looked at his watch. He thought she was supposed to be in Seattle around 1:00 P.M. PST. He adjusted for the time zones and figured she should be there by now. He said to Stephen, “I’m going into your mom’s office and give her a call.”
Around a mouthful of cookie, Stephen asked, “What’s for dinner?”
“Mac and cheese.”
“How about we go to the Broiler for fried chicken?”
“We’re on a tight budget, buddy. But tell you what, I’ll slice up a few hot dogs and throw ’em in.”
“I like fried chicken better.”
“Maybe after dinner we could hit the Broiler for a little pecan pie à la mode.”
Stephen shook his head. “I’m going over to Gordy Hudacek’s house.”
“Video games?”
“Yeah.”
“What about homework?”
“I’ll have it done before dinner.”
“See that you do.”
Cork headed through the living room and down the hallway to Jo’s home office. She ran her law practice from a suite in the Aurora Professional Building, but she kept an office at home as well, and she often used it in the evening or on weekends to keep up with her cases. It was done in oak panel, with bookshelves across three of the walls. Plants hung in every window, and a big, healthy ficus stood in a pot in one corner. The office was neat and clean, and the smell of it—thick books and heavy paper—reminded Cork of Jo.
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