“What is it?” Rose said.
“It’s nothing. Oh, Rose. I’m so sorry.” Jo put her arms around her sister.
“He’s leaving Aurora,” Rose said. “He’s talked about it, now he’s going to do it.”
“Leaving for where?” Cork said.
“I don’t know. That’s never been clear.”
“I’m getting dressed.” Cork started out of the kitchen.
He hadn’t gone far when Jo grabbed his arm.
“I need to get some answers,” he told her. “Before the chance is gone. You know I do.”
He could see the struggle reflected in her face. Finally she released her grip.
The morning outside was deathly still, but high up, an unseen wind pushed scattered clouds relentlessly across the hard blue sky. The sun intermittently splattered the Bronco’s windshield with blinding light, and Cork squinted to see his way. There seemed to be a restlessness in the atmosphere, but he chalked it up to his own unsettled mind.
He was surprised to see the Nova still in the drive at the rectory. He jumped from the Bronco as a huge cloud swept across the sun, and he waded through deep, blue shadow toward the rectory door. Ellie Gruber answered his pounding.
“I need to see Mal,” Cork said.
Ellie wrung her hands and didn’t answer.
“I know he’s here, Ellie.”
“He’s in a state, Cork. I don’t know.” She looked behind her in a frightened way.
Cork put his hands firmly on her shoulders and urged her aside. “It’ll be all right, Ellie.”
He entered without her uttering an objection.
The door to Mal Thorne’s bedroom was open, and Cork found him packing. A big suitcase lay open on the bed, and beside it a pile of clothing. The priest stood carelessly folding a pair of pants.
“Leaving Mal?”
The priest looked up, startled. “Cork?”
“Taking off without saying good-bye?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“Where are you going?”
“Not sure.” Mal went to the dresser and opened a drawer.
“Leaving the parish high and dry, aren’t you?”
“There’s always Father Kelsey.”
“Right.”
“The diocese will send somebody. Somebody better than me.”
“You sound like you’ve lost your faith in yourself.”
“You could say that.”
“A gluttony for sin?”
The priest swung around. For a moment, he seemed upset, then it was as if he simply shrugged it off. He resumed his packing.
Cork stepped nearer to the bed. “Mal, you told Annie a story a while back. Something about a sin eater.”
Mal Thorne stuffed a handful of assorted socks into the suitcase. “It’s something I tell all the kids I work with. I use it as an example of how the substance of Christianity is sometimes warped by church doctrine. It’s a little on the ghoulish side, but it gets their attention.”
“You don’t believe in sin eating?”
Mal glanced up. “This day and age you’d have to be a little crazy to believe something like that.”
“I see. But it’s perfectly sane to believe in, for example, a virgin birth?”
“Why are we having a theological discussion?” The priest squeezed his temples, as if pressing against a headache. He reached into the suitcase, pulled out a fifth of Southern Comfort, and unscrewed the cap. As he brought it to his lips, he said, “Hair of the dog and all that.”
“Sure. Got a lot on your mind, I imagine.”
“Glad you understand.”
“Are Fletcher Kane and Solemn part of it?”
The priest took a long swallow. He looked at the bottle and shook his head. “Big help there, wasn’t I?”
“The night they died, where were you?”
Mal Thorne hesitated. He glanced at Cork, then away. “I was here.”
“At the rectory?”
“Yes.” He bent to his packing.
“The whole evening?”
“I may have stepped out for a minute.”
“Try an hour and a half.”
The priest shot him a killing look.
“Where were you in those ninety minutes, Mal?”
“With all due respect, that’s none of your damn business.”
“Ellie told me you got a call about nine o’clock and hurried out. Was it Fletcher Kane calling? Did he call to tell you what he’d done? What he was going to do? Did you rush over there and find out you were too late? And did you sit down at the table that had been set for a meal and consume the sins of the two men you couldn’t save?”
Mal Thorne stared as if he thought Cork had gone stark raving mad. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? The two men who tried to rob you in Chicago, they were murdered after the attack. And whoever killed them ate their sins afterward.” Cork leaned across the bed, pressing tight the space between him and the priest. “Tell me about Yvonne Doolittle, Mal.”
The priest froze. His eyes went cold, his tone icy. “That’s why you’re here? You know, you’re a real son of a bitch.”
“That I am, Mal. In the pursuit of truth right now, I’d spit in the eye of God.”
“Truth.” The priest spoke the word as if he were cursing. “You’ve assembled a lot of facts, but you haven’t come anywhere near the truth.”
“Then enlighten me, Mal. I’m all ears.”
The priest almost laughed. “Fine. Yvonne Doolittle. That poor, confused girl. She’d been sexually abused at home and in foster care. She saw me as a father figure. Unfortunately for both of us, to her a father also meant sex. When I wouldn’t respond, she threatened me, and finally made those allegations. You see? I was no more help to her than I was to Fletcher Kane or Solemn Winter Moon. Or Charlotte.” The priest seemed to go limp, as if he might fall, and he steadied himself by putting his hands on the bed. “Liar. The writing on the wall? That was directed at me.”
“Why?”
“Charlotte came to me one day. It must have been November. She was so confused, so convinced that she was the most awful human being. All she wanted was to die, she said, because she loved someone who didn’t love her back. You know how many teenagers I’ve heard that from? So what did I tell her? That time would take care of it. That she should put her trust in God, her father. That He loved her. That she was one of His treasures. She went absolutely crazy. Called me a liar. Said the church was a lie because fathers didn’t love their children. They fucked them. She left and never came back. Not just to talk but even to worship. Gone from the church altogether until the night she broke in with Solemn.”
From the dark forest of his own self-loathing, he stared at Cork.
“The whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. Isn’t that how it goes? All right then. While Fletcher Kane, in all his suffering, took his own life and the life of that remarkable young man, do you know where I was? I was with Rose.” He looked up, his face screwed into a mask of pain. “With Rose, trying my damnedest to convince her to help me shatter my priestly vow of celibacy, a thing she would not do. How’s that for pathetic? You don’t believe me? Ask Rose. She won’t lie to you. She’s the finest person I’ve ever known.”
Mal Thorne reached into his suitcase for the bottle of Southern Comfort.
“A gluttony for sin? Try pride, for example, so cocksure I could make a difference somehow. And to everything else, you can now add lust.” He raised the bottle. Before he drank, he said, “I’m tired, Cork. I just want to be left alone.”
A knock on the door frame brought Cork around, though the priest seemed not to hear. Ellie Gruber stood timidly in the hallway. She held a cordless phone in her hand.
“A call for you, Cork,” she said. “It’s Jo.”
“Thanks, Ellie.”
Cork took the phone. Ellie retreated.
“Hey,” Cork said.
“Before you go crazy over there, there’s something you sh
ould know. The night Fletcher Kane and Solemn died, Rose was with Father Mal. She swears it.”
“I already went crazy. And Mal told me the truth.”
“Oh.” She was quiet a moment. “How’s he doing?”
“Less than fair, I’d say.”
“Is he still leaving Aurora?”
“I don’t know.”
“What a mess. You got a call from Boomer Grabowski. He asked me to pass along some information you wanted. He said the other murder victims in Chicago were a young, engaged couple. The case was never solved. He said it was interesting that the young man was a former priest and his fiancée was a former nun.”
“Any names?”
“Yes. His name was James Trowbridge and hers was Nina van Zoot.”
“Say that again.”
“His name—”
“No, hers.”
“Nina van Zoot.” She waited. “Cork? Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” he said when he was able to breathe again. “A nun, Boomer said? You’re sure? Not a prostitute?”
“Definitely a nun. Boomer says to call him anytime. And he doesn’t believe you’ve actually given up being a cop.”
“Right.”
After Cork hung up, he looked at Mal Thorne. The look alone seemed to sober the priest dramatically.
“Are you all right, Cork?”
“Randy Gooding?” Cork said.
“What?”
Cork took some time to rearrange his thinking, put things in place. “It sounds crazy, Mal, but Gooding may be our sin eater.”
“Why would you say that?”
“He told me once about a woman he knew in Chicago. He lied about her in some respects and didn’t tell me the important part, that she was murdered, and someone ate her sins.”
“Gooding? I don’t believe it. He’s such a righteous young man.”
Cork rubbed his forehead and thought out loud, “If it is Gooding, why would he kill the two men who attacked you?”
“You don’t know that he did.”
“You think all of this is just coincidence? When the murders occurred, he was working the FBI’s Milwaukee field office, just a hop, skip, and a jump from Chicago. He was involved with one of the victims. Did you have any contact with Gooding in Chicago?”
“No.”
Cork tried to put it all together, but there were gaps. Still, the direction of his thinking felt right. “I’m willing to bet he knew you somehow. I think he followed you here, and the sin eater killings continued.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but there’s got to be a connection. We just haven’t found it yet.”
Cork started out the door.
“Where are you going?” Mal Thorne asked.
“To have a talk with our acting sheriff.” He paused before he left the room. “What about you? Still taking off?”
The priest looked down at the bottle in his hand. He put the booze in the suitcase and closed the lid. “There’s no way in hell I’m leaving town right now.”
46
CY BORKMANN wasn’t in his office. He’d gone to the village of North Star, Deputy Marsha Dross said, to confer with Lyman Cooke, chief of police there, who was interested in taking over as Tamarack County sheriff should the Board of Commissioners choose to offer him the position.
Dross shifted in her chair and picked up a pencil from the contact desk. “I was sort of hoping they’d offer you the job. I heard you might be interested. I hope you’ll consider it. Having you back as sheriff, that would sit just fine with me.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Marsha. We’ll see what the commissioners decide to do. Say, is Randy in?” He looked past the contact desk toward the heart of the department.
She shook her head. “He’s not on until three today.”
“Do me a favor, will you? It’s important. Have Cy give me a call as soon as he’s back from North Star. I’ll be at home.”
“I can try to raise him on the radio.”
Cork considered it but decided he didn’t have anything concrete on Gooding. He’d probably have to do a lot of talking to convince Borkmann, and he didn’t want to do it over a radio.
“Don’t worry about it, but when he comes back tell him we have to talk ASAP.”
“All right.”
“One more thing, Marsha. Any idea if Randy was on duty New Year’s Eve?”
“If you give me a minute, I can pull the duty roster for that night.”
“Would you?”
“Be right back.”
A few minutes later, she returned.
“Randy was on from eight to three-thirty that day. One of the lucky few who had the evening off.”
By the time Cork returned to his house on Gooseberry Lane, Jo had left for work. Jenny was in the kitchen, eating a bowl of Cheerios, still wearing her sleep shirt.
“Are we going to open Sam’s Place today?” she asked.
“I’ve got something else on my agenda.”
“You know,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. If you hired Sean to help, Annie and I could pretty much run Sam’s Place by ourselves. It’s not exactly rocket science, Dad.”
“Sean? Your boyfriend?”
“I don’t know any other Sean.”
Cork walked to the doorway of the living room. Stevie was still on the floor in front of the television, but he was working with crayons and a coloring book now and paying no attention to what was on the tube.
“The other thing is,” Jenny went on, “if you don’t open Sam’s Place pretty soon, I’ll have to find another job. I’m starting to dip into my savings account. You know, the one I’ve been putting money into for college.”
“Where’s Rose?”
“She got a call from the church office a little while ago. They needed her, so she walked on over.”
“How’s she doing?”
“I’ve never seen her so sad. Maybe helping out at St. Agnes will do her good.” She paused a beat. “What about it?”
“What about what?”
“Hiring Sean?”
“All right. On a trial basis.”
“Really? That’s great.” Jenny stood up. “I’ll get changed and go tell him.” She gave her father a huge smile. “I’m going to love being my boyfriend’s boss.” She put her bowl in the sink and started out of the kitchen. “Oh, Mom wants you to call her right away.”
Cork walked to Jo’s back office, to use the phone there. He wanted privacy to tell her of his suspicions about Randy Gooding. He was thinking that although he didn’t know the reason yet, it all made a strange kind of sense. Gooding wasn’t on duty the night Charlotte was killed. He could easily have heard about the party at Valhalla and posted himself out there, waiting for his chance. He could have stolen Solemn’s wrench and picked up the Corona bottle Solemn had left in the snow. If he’d gone to Valhalla with murder on his mind, he’d probably stopped at a convenience store for the food he’d eventually consumed along with Charlotte’s sins. As for the evening Fletcher Kane killed himself and Solemn, Gooding must have lied. He hadn’t gone to Sam’s old cabin first. He’d gone to Fletcher Kane’s home, gone too late to stop the killings, but with enough time to consume the sins.
But why? What did he know about Gooding that would have pointed toward a motive for killing Charlotte?
He reached for the phone just as it rang.
“Cork? This is Mal. I’m at Randy Gooding’s.”
“Jesus, Mal, what are you doing?”
“I know how Gooding knows me. And there’s something here you have to see.”
“Is Gooding there?”
“No.”
“I’m on my way. But if he comes before I get there, don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
“That’s a promise.”
Cork hurried upstairs to his bedroom. From the top shelf in his closet, he took a metal lockbox and put it on his bed. He keyed in the combination and lifted the lid. Inside, wrapped in an oilcloth, was his S & W .38
Police Special. The revolver had belonged first to his father, who’d worn it every day while he was sheriff, and then it had been Cork’s, who’d done the same during his own tenure serving the citizens of Tamarack County. There was a trigger lock on the weapon. Cork took the key from his key ring and undid the lock. He went back to the closet and pulled down a cardboard box. Inside was a basket-weave holster and gun belt, which he put on. From the cartridges he kept with the revolver, he took enough to fill the cylinder. He lifted the weapon to feel its heft, a thing he hadn’t done in quite a while, and he slid it into the holster and pressed the thumb snap into place. There was a time when he’d worn the gun daily, when the weight of it on his hip would go unnoticed for hours. Much had happened in his life between that time and now. The .38 made him feel prepared for what might lie ahead. But he was also aware that the badge, which used to be a standard part of the ensemble and that was the unquestioned rationale for carrying the weapon, was missing, and in a way, he felt naked.
He stepped into the hall just as Annie came out of her bedroom. She looked still asleep, her hair a tangle in her eyes. She yawned.
“Morning, Dad.”
Then she saw the revolver at his side, and her eyes crawled up until she looked with concern into her father’s face.
“I have to go out for a while, Annie. Until Rose comes back, you or Jenny need to be here to watch over Stevie. Do you understand?”
“What’s wrong, Dad?”
“Nothing, I hope. Just stay here,” he said. “I’ll explain when I get back.”
He brushed against her in the hallway, barely a touch, but she fell back as if he’d shoved her.
He drove to Gooding’s place, a block north of St. Agnes. Gooding’s Tracker was parked under a big maple in front of Mamie Torkelson’s house. Cork pulled to the curb across the street and got out. He checked the Tracker. It was locked.
A dozen years earlier, after her husband died, Mamie had turned her two-story home into a duplex and had begun leasing out the upstairs. Cork looked toward the upper floor, which Gooding now rented. The curtains were drawn.
The clouds that had been scattered most of the morning were coming together in an organized line that threatened rain. They advanced across the face of the sun, and the whole block around Cork dropped into a dark, blue quiet.
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