“I understand.”
Cork stood up and offered his hand. Her face slowly relaxed.
“I heard Solemn claims he talked with Jesus,” she said. “Is it true?”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Around. I also heard that Jesus was wearing Minnetonka mocassins.”
“That’s what Solemn says.”
She allowed herself a brief smile. “That’s funny. I always figured Him for a Birkenstock kind of guy.”
That night after Cork got home from Sam’s Place, Jo cornered him in the kitchen.
“Annie said she saw you lurking in the halls at school today.”
“I didn’t see her,” Cork said. “How come she didn’t say hello?”
“Are you kidding? Acknowledging the existence of one of your parents at school? What planet are you from?” Jo was about to make a pot of decaf French roast coffee. As she lifted the bag to pour the beans into the grinder, she asked, “So, what were you doing there?”
“I had a talk with Juanita Sherburne about Charlotte Kane.”
“Cork, you didn’t.” She dumped beans all over the counter. “After you promised.”
“I said I would behave myself. And I did. I was very polite.”
“You’re splitting hairs. And you’re splitting them because you know you’re wrong. Oh, Cork.” Angrily, she began to gather the spilled beans. “If we have to go to trial, and even before we’ve selected a jury you’ve turned this whole town against us-”
“Charlotte may have been sexually abused.”
That made her pause.
“Why do you say that?”
“Some of the things Juanita told me. I think Charlotte exhibited a number of telling symptoms.”
Jo looked thoughtful and troubled. “Did you talk about who it might have been?”
“Not specifically. But according to Juanita, usually it happens among family members.”
“Family, as in…?”
“The only family we know about is Fletcher and Glory, so maybe we start there.”
She shook her head. “I think we should leave it alone, Cork.”
“Fletcher’s a widower. No lady friends. He’s certainly an odd duck. And remember what Solemn said about Charlotte being so secretive. Maybe it’s the reason she hid so much, and why the one person who should have known she was troubled did nothing. Jo, I’m not accusing him. I’m just saying we should check it out.”
“Due diligence?” She gave the words a sarcastic sting. “It’s a dangerous speculation, Cork.”
“Look, this girl had problems. Someone somewhere along the line messed her up. Maybe that same someone killed her. Or maybe someone else preyed on her and then killed her. The more we know about Charlotte, the better we’ll be able to understand what happened.”
“How did Juanita react to your questions?”
Cork paused a moment. “When she understood I was asking about Charlotte, she clammed up.”
“She didn’t want to go there with you, right? And she’s a professional. Imagine what the average citizen of Aurora will think. Solemn already has a lot of black marks against him in Tamarack County. If jurors know that we’re casting aspersions on their friends, their neighbors, God knows who all, even before Solemn’s been charged, they’re going to be sworn onto that grand jury already prejudiced against him. And us. They may not admit it to themselves, but the prejudice will be there. The fact is that the character of their town is being called into question, and they’ll be looking for the easiest way back to normalcy. In their minds, I guarantee you, that way will be to indict and then convict Solemn.”
“That’s a lot of speculation, Jo.”
“I know how juries think. That’s part of what I do. It may be that the questions you ask lead nowhere. Suppose Charlotte was sexually abused. Does that mean it necessarily had anything to do with her death?”
“Jo, they’re going to charge Solemn with murder eventually. First-degree, second-degree, whatever. I promised him I would help. This is how I do that.”
“I understand that, Cork. And I hope you understand that I’m trying to handle a very delicate situation here, a balance between my client’s needs at this point, the prejudice of this community, the long-term effect of every move we make, and the fact that you can’t even sneeze in this town without everyone knowing it.
“Charlotte’s been dead for several months. Will another week or two change anything? Once Solemn’s been officially charged you can ask your questions. People will expect it then. They may not like it any better, but they’ll understand.”
“You ask for my help and then you ask me to sit on my hands.”
“I know.”
Cork stooped and picked up a bean that had fallen to the floor. He looked at it, hard and black in the palm of his hand. That was him inside.
“All right,” he said. He threw the bean onto the counter and turned toward the side door.
“Where are you going?” Jo asked.
“I need to be by myself for a while.”
He opened the kitchen door.
“Cork,” Jo said to his back. “It’s good information. I’m sure it will be a big help if we have to go to the mat for Solemn. Thank you.”
“Yeah.”
He stepped out under the early night sky and walked away into the gathering dark.
19
The first miracle occurred a few days later, on Memorial Day.
Every year on that holiday, weather permitting, the O’Connors had a backyard barbeque. They invited friends and neighbors, and over the coals of a couple of grills, they cooked up hamburgers and hot dogs that they served with Rose’s famous potato salad. Everyone who came brought a dish to share. Cork nestled beer and pop in a half-barrel full of ice, and the kids made lemonade from real lemons. The piece de resistance was a tub of vanilla ice cream handmade in an oak bucket filled with ice and rock salt, and everyone had to take a turn at the crank.
Memorial Day weekend was a big one for tourists. Cork could have made a tidy profit keeping Sam’s Place open, but for him family came first. If he was going to flip burgers, he’d just as soon do it in the company of people he loved for people he cared about.
Rose was late. She had planned to come early with Father Mal so that she could help the rest of the O’Connor clan get everything ready. When she hadn’t arrived by one, Jo called the rectory. The phone rang half a dozen times before Father Kelsey picked up. He’d been invited, as always, but Father Kelsey seldom left the rectory anymore. He preferred the comfort of his easy chair in front of the television.
The priest said that Rose and Father Mal had left some time ago after Mal got a phone call. Something odd at the cemetery. Father Kelsey didn’t know what kind of oddness, or why anyone would call out the priest, or what made Rose feel she needed to accompany him.
Cork was about to start the coals when Jo reported all this to him and asked if he’d mind popping over to the cemetery to check things out. As Cork headed toward his Bronco, Stevie ran to him begging to go along.
Lakeview Cemetery occupied the crown of a big hill at the southern end of town. The site was surrounded by a black wrought iron fence, built tall so that deer couldn’t jump it to feed on the flowers inside. Because this was Memorial Day, Cork expected to see a number of people there, paying their respects to loved ones who existed now only in memory, but he was surprised to find the cemetery looking nearly deserted.
Gus Finlayson, the cemetery groundskeeper, stood smoking a pipe under a burr oak tree just inside the gate. Cork stopped. “Where is everybody?”
“Way to the other side,” Gus said. “You ain’t heard?”
“What?”
“Best go on and see for yourself.”
Cork drove ahead, threading his way down the narrow lanes between the rows of gravestones. He soon saw the place, dozens of cars parked on a hillside at the distant end of the cemetery. As Cork approached, Stevie stuck his head out the window.
“It
smells pretty,” he said.
And it did. The air was redolent with the scent of roses.
Cork parked behind Mal Thorne’s Nova. Just ahead of that was a sheriff’s department Crown Victoria. Randy Gooding stood next to the cruiser, his arms crossed. Mal and Rose were with him.
“What’s up?” Cork said.
Gooding nodded down the hillside where a crowd had gathered. “Check it out.”
Cork glanced at Mal, who looked a little mystified. Rose glowed and seemed about to speak, but she held herself back.
Cork descended the hill with Stevie at his side. A quiet murmur came from the gathering. In the gaps between people, Cork glimpsed deep red, like a pool of blood, at the center of things. He found an open space and moved in. It was not blood but rose petals, thousands of them, a foot deep over the grave and covering the grass around it in a circle several yards wide.
Then he looked at the gravestone.
Fletcher Kane had paid a pretty penny for the stone that marked his daughter’s grave, bought her a white marble obelisk six feet tall. Carved in relief above Charlotte’s name was a beautiful angel with eyes cast toward heaven.
“Look, Dad,” Stevie said. “The angel is bleeding.”
Not exactly bleeding, Cork thought. Weeping. Tears of blood, it seemed, dark red trickles that ran glistening from the angel’s eyes all the way down the white face of the stone into the petals that lay deep around the base.
A few of the crowd were on their knees, praying. Most of the others simply stared at the weeping angel with a quiet reverence. Cork turned away and walked back up the hill.
“Where did the petals come from?” he asked.
Gooding shrugged. “The question of the day.”
“It’s like they fell from the sky.” Rose lifted her hands, as if to catch any petals that might yet flutter down. “And the angel, Cork. Did you see the tears?”
“I’d take a sample of those tears, if I were you,” Cork said to Gooding.
“I already have. Over great objection from the true believers down there.”
The priest gave Cork a dazzling smile. “Don’t you feel it? Something absolutely amazing has happened here.”
“Amazing all right,” Cork said. “Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble. Did Gus Finlayson see anything?”
Gooding shook his head. “It was like this when he opened the gate this morning. Says there was nothing last night when he locked up.”
“Does Arne know?”
Gooding said, “Sheriff’s over in Hibbing, spending the day with Big Mike and the rest of his family. I didn’t see any reason to haul him back here for this. No harm done, so far as I can see. I’m guessing at some point somebody will come forward and we’ll find out it was just some kind of extravagant gesture.”
“No one will,” Rose said. There was a look in her eyes that was a little like madness. Cork wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her so happy.
Stevie climbed back up the hill, cradling something in the palm of his hand. “They look like red teardrops,” he said of the three delicate petals he held. “Can I keep them?”
“I think it would be all right,” Cork said. “Let’s get on home, buddy. Your mom will be wondering.” He turned to Rose and Mal. “You guys coming?”
“We’ll be along,” Rose said in a dreamy voice.
The girls, when they heard, had to see for themselves. They came back with Rose and Mal Thorne, excited and mystified. Then Jo had to go, too.
In a day that was normally filled with talk about baseball and fishing and gardens and remembrances of the past, most conversations centered on what had quickly been dubbed “the angel of the roses.”
It was dusk before the gathering in the O’Connors’ backyard broke up and people drifted home. Rose and Mal Thorne lingered, sitting across from each other at the picnic table, talking in quiet tones. Mal sipped from a can of Leinenkugel, Rose from a coffee mug. Jenny and Stevie were finishing a game of croquet. Annie was devouring the last hot dog. Cork stood just inside the sliding back door, watching the scene in his yard. Jo came from the kitchen, put her arm around him.
“Annie’s still eating?” she said.
“She’s a growing girl, an athlete. And she does like to eat. She told me she wants to be a professional sin eater when she grows up.”
“A what?”
“A sin eater. It’s something Mal told her about. Back in the Middle Ages, rich people hired poor folk to feast over the bodies of their dead loved ones. Basically a ritual eating of sins so the rich would go to heaven.”
“And the poor people?”
“Fat and damned, I guess.” He saw Jo’s look of concern. “Relax. She was only joking.”
“A grotesque joke. Why would Father Mal tell her such a bizarre story?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
With a small frown, Jo regarded her sister and the priest.
“What is it?” Cork asked.
Mal leaned across the picnic table and said something. Rose laughed and lightly touched his hand.
“She’s in love with him.”
“Rose? With Mal?”
Jo nodded.
“She told you?”
“She didn’t have to.”
Cork could see it now. A comfortable intimacy between the two of them. Almost like a married couple. In truth, the revelation didn’t surprise him much. He thought back and realized that he’d noted the signs but simply hadn’t put them all together. Jo, of course, had been way ahead of him on that.
“Do you think Mal knows?”
“I don’t know. Men can be so blind. Maybe a priest even more so.”
“What are you going to do?”
“It’s her life.”
“You’re not going to talk to her?”
“If she wants to talk to me, she will.”
“Nothing we can do?”
“Be there for her when she needs us.”
“I’m sorry, Jo.” He put his arms around her. “You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Mind if I slip out for a while?”
“Where?”
“I want another look at the angel of the roses.”
Gus Finlayson was preparing to lock the gate when Cork arrived at the cemetery.
“Hold on dere, Cork,” the old Finn shouted, waving the Bronco down.
“Five minutes, Gus, that’s all I need.”
Gus leaned in the window and shook his head. “Been a hell of a long day, that’s for sure, and it ain’t gonna get any longer if I got anything to say about it.”
“Everybody cleared out?”
“ ’Cept the sheriff. He’s still out dere.”
“At Charlotte’s grave?”
“Yah.”
“If you lock the gate, how’s he going to get out?”
“He’s got a key. The department copy.”
Cork had forgotten. Not surprising. He couldn’t remember ever having cause to use it himself when he’d been sheriff.
The cemetery was going dark at Finlayson’s back. The rows of stone markers, rigid and charcoal colored, reminded Cork of a military brigade standing watch over the dead.
“How about letting me in and I’ll come out with him?”
Finlayson puffed out his cheeks but gave in easily. “I’d argue, but I’m too pooped. Pull on in. Sheriff’s somewhere over to the other side of the cemetery.”
“Thanks, Gus.”
As he approached Charlotte’s grave the smell of the rose petals was astonishing, the fragrance both pleasing and overpowering. Mal Thorne had asked him earlier, didn’t he feel it? Didn’t he feel that something remarkable had occurred? He wasn’t entirely sure what he felt, but what he thought was that the hands that had created this event were made of flesh and blood, and sooner or later the mind behind it, and the motive, would reveal itself.
Soderberg’s BMW sat under a linden tree. The sheriff was nowhere in sight. Cork parked in the middle of the lane, blocking traffic if there’d bee
n any. He got out and stood awhile, taking in the hillside and Iron Lake in the distance. The sky was the color of an old nickel, and everything under it lay in a dim light that was not day nor yet night. Everything around Cork was absolutely still. He had the feeling he was looking at an underexposed black-and-white photograph, one that didn’t give away what the photographer had intended to capture.
Then he saw the flare of a match reflected off the shiny marble pillar thirty yards down the hill.
Soderberg drew meditatively on his cigarette and didn’t turn at Cork’s approach. When Cork spoke his name, the sheriff jumped, a cloud of smoke shot from his mouth, and he dropped his cigarette. The ember exploded in a small burst of sparks in the grass at his feet.
“Jesus Christ, O’Connor.”
“Sorry, Arne.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Same as you, I imagine. Trying to understand the angel of the roses. Thought you were in Hibbing.”
“I was until I heard about this.” Soderberg picked up his cigarette. There was still enough glow to the ember to salvage a smoke if he’d wanted. Apparently he didn’t. He just held the cigarette in his fingers. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out,” he said.
“You have a theory?”
Soderberg looked the graves over and nodded to himself. “The Ojibwe.”
Cork almost laughed. “What are you talking about?”
“Winter Moon claims he talked with Jesus. He gets his Indian friends to do this. Big miracle.” Soderberg waved his hands in a gesture of magic. “Poof, everyone believes he’s pure and blessed and how could they ever convict him of murder? You realize what all the roses for these petals must have cost? The casino brings in that kind of money. Hell, it’s pocket change to those people.”
“Show me the receipt, Arne,” Cork said. Although he had to admit it might be a plausible theory, if you thought the Iron Lake Ojibwe gave a hoot and a holler about Solemn Winter Moon.
Soderberg lifted his foot and snuffed out the cigarette against his sole. Rather than toss the butt out among the petals, he put it in his pocket and turned uphill toward his car.
“I need to follow you out, Arne.”
“Hurry up then.” Soderberg started walking.
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