Blood Hollow (Cork O'Connor)

by William Kent Krueger

  “Don’t you understand? I was born so that it could be this way. I was raised from the dead for it.”

  “Don’t do this, Jimmy.”

  “I have my duty, Father. And not even you can intervene.”

  The priest faltered a moment. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its pleading. “Not here, then. Not in God’s house. You will not spill blood where the Blessed Virgin will have to see, where our Lord Jesus will have to look down on it from His cross, in this place He promised sanctuary to all His children. This thing must be taken outside. You take it out into the world where the sin is everywhere. You will do this, Jimmy. You will do this for me and for our Lord.”

  The voice from the chapel didn’t reply.

  “Jimmy,” the priest said sternly.

  “You’re right, Father. Outside, then. But you move back.”

  The priest backed away until he reached the place where the center aisle divided the rows of pews.

  Rose came first, her eyes wide with fear. A strip of silver duct tape sealed her mouth, and her wrists were bound with duct tape as well. Blood stained the collar of her white blouse. Gooding held her from behind in a tight grip and pressed a hunting knife against her throat. Below the blade, a thin line of blood ran down her neck

  Gooding wore black. At first Cork figured it for the color of an executioner, but then he saw the collar and realized the man was dressed as a priest. Gooding urged Rose forward, and she walked with halting steps, her chin lifted above the knife blade.

  Cork had a clear shot at Gooding’s back, but he was afraid the bullet might go all the way through and hit Rose.

  “Up the aisle, Father.” Gooding jerked his head, directing the priest toward the front of the church.

  Mal Thorne gave way.

  Gooding reached the center aisle and executed a quarter turn so that he and Rose faced Mal. Far down the aisle, at the priest’s back, stood the altar with its crucifix. Above the altar was a large stained glass window. On sunny Sunday mornings, the window blazed with light and a dazzling array of colors. At the moment, it was dark.

  Cork remained crouched behind the last pew, his .38 trained on Gooding. The deputy pressed himself tight against Rose from behind. They were thirty feet from Cork. Because there was no separation of their bodies, he had no chance at a clean shot. His hands were shaking, from tension and from fear. Sweat crawled down his forehead, stung his eyes, and he blinked desperately to clear his vision. He knew if he pulled the trigger now, Rose was at great risk of being hit. On the other hand, if the deputy were to look to his left, he would see Cork and understand how the priest had deceived him, and he would do his duty, as he saw it.

  Cork prayed for an opening, just one moment of opportunity.

  And that’s when it happened.

  The clouds above the church parted. Light, suddenly brilliant, burst through the window behind the altar, and flooded the aisle with a blaze of gold that hit Gooding square in the face. Blinded, he let go of Rose and raised his left hand to shield his eyes. The knife in his right hand lifted from her throat.

  “Rose,” the priest screamed.

  She twisted from Gooding and rushed into Mal’s waiting arms.

  Gooding lowered his hand and stood looking at the stained glass window, transfixed. Cork had the shot he’d prayed for, but he hesitated. Rose was with the priest now, the knife no longer at her throat. And Gooding was not moving. Maybe there was another way to end this.

  But the blade was still in the man’s hand, the steel still warm where it had pressed against Rose’s flesh. She was only a few steps distant, an easy lunge, and Gooding was anything but predictable. And if what Gooding believed was true, that there were those born to protect, and damned in that birthing, then Cork knew he was one, too.

  He squeezed the trigger. Twice.

  The crack of the .38 seemed to shake the walls of the sanctuary.

  As if the strings that had moved him all his life had suddenly been cut, Gooding dropped to the floor.

  Mal Thorne let go of Rose and started instinctively toward the fallen man.

  “Wait,” Cork shouted.

  He kept his revolver trained on Gooding, and he came forward. He could hear the note sung from Gooding’s chest, the high pitch that was the leak of air from a lung shot. Gooding’s hand was empty, the knife fallen near his feet. His eyes, a clear, crystal blue, stared straight up, as if they were focused on something beyond the beamed arch of the church ceiling.

  Mal pulled the tape from Rose’s mouth. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, Mal,” was all she could manage, and she buried her head against his shoulder.

  A moment later, Gooding’s eyes closed. His body relaxed.

  Mal said to Rose, “It’s all right now.” He gently gave her over to Cork, stepped toward Gooding, and knelt. “May the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed.”

  In the golden light that fell across Randy Gooding’s forehead, Father Malachi Thorne traced a cross.

  From outside the church came the wail of a siren, and the sound mixed in an eerie way with Gooding’s final, whistling breath. Long ago, Randy Gooding had died and been brought back to life. Cork was pretty sure that this time he was dead for good.

  JULY

  48

  HE STOOD ALONE in the cemetery.

  Two hours earlier, the sun had risen and now the dew was evaporating from the grass, carrying upward the smell of wet, fertile earth. Scattered across the hillside below Cork lay the buried dead, seeds whose planting had brought forth a crop of stone.

  North, in a grave less than two weeks old, lay the body of Randy Gooding. A hundred yards south was Fletcher Kane’s marker, a block of white marble, small for a man who could have afforded a mausoleum. Down the hillside to the east stood the angel pillar that marked the resting place of the young woman whom Aurora had known as Charlotte Kane. The three graves were within sight of one another. Three points of a triangle, Cork realized. A closed shape. Completed. Explained. Understood, however, only as much as anything human could ever be fully understood. There were still a lot of questions in Cork’s mind, but they were questions only the dead could answer now.

  Gus Finlayson drove up on his little tractor, hauling a trailer full of garden tools. He stopped behind Cork’s Bronco, got down, and came to where Cork stood.

  “My favorite time of the day,” the groundskeeper said.

  “It’s peaceful.”

  “Usually is. I figure that’s why I see you here so much these days.”

  “Mind?”

  “Why would I mind? Lots of folks drop by to spend some time here. This place, it makes you look at life a little different, I figure.” Finlayson gazed across the headstones. “Some people seem upset about Gooding being buried in the cemetery. Like any of his neighbors here care. How’s that saying go? Fences make good neighbors? You ask me, it’s death does that. The dead, they’re not prejudiced. They don’t complain. And they never make too much noise.” Finlayson scratched his nose with his thumbnail. “Heard the priest left town.”

  Cork nodded. “Taking some time to think a few things through.”

  He didn’t know what to hope for. But if being together was what they finally decided, he thought he would be very happy for Mal and Rose.

  “Guess everybody needs that now and again, even priests.” Gus thought a moment. “Maybe especially priests. But then I’m Missouri Synod Lutheran, so what do I know?” He turned back toward his tractor. “Gonna be a beautiful day. You take ’er easy, Sheriff.”

  “You, too, Gus.”

  By the time Cork drove down the hill into town, Aurora had awakened. Traffic was moving on the streets. A few cars had already pulled into the lot of the IGA grocery store. Fishermen who’d been on Iron Lake since before dawn were being joined by pleasure boats cruising out from the marina.

  He loved Aurora and understood why it was the kind of place people who wanted to escape from problems—of the world, of a big city,
of a troubled past—came to. But there was no place far enough away to run from who you were. The secrets people hid from others, they still had to live with themselves. It was just as Cordelia Diller had told him on that high bluff in Iowa. In starting over, the best place to begin was facing the truth.

  The truth about Gooding was something Cork would never fully know. A man cold enough to kill many times over, but also compassionate enough to consume the sins of Solemn Winter Moon and Fletcher Kane, freeing them, in his own belief, to stand unstained before God. He understood why some people might object to Gooding resting forever in Lakeview Cemetery. They thought he was evil, pure and simple. Cork didn’t believe anyone was purely and simply anything. All human beings, it seemed to him, were a collection of conflicting impulses stuffed into one skin, trying somehow to find peace. Death was certainly one way.

  He didn’t go directly to the sheriff’s department but headed first to St. Agnes.

  He stood at the bottom of the steps looking up at the church doors. Over the course of his life, he’d crossed that threshold hundreds of times. Then horrible things had happened, and he’d turned his back on St. Agnes and all it stood for.

  Two days before, he’d gone with Henry Meloux to Blood Hollow and in the sweat lodge there had worked with Meloux to restore a sense of harmony. At the end, when they emerged into sunlight, Meloux had said, “It’s not finished. You’re a man of two bloods, two people, a spirit divided. I think you still have a long road ahead of you, Corcoran O’Connor.”

  Now he mounted the church steps. Inside, he came to the place where Gooding had fallen. The carpet had been cleaned of blood, leaving nothing to indicate that a man had died there, killed by Cork’s hand. But Cork knew, and he would never be able to cross that spot without remembering.

  He stood almost where Gooding had stood and had held a knife to Rose’s throat, and he looked where Gooding had looked the moment the light had filled the church and the man had stood transfixed.

  What Cork saw was the window behind the altar, a stained glass rendering of Jesus, his right hand uplifted in blessing. The figure had always been there, during every service ever held in the church. Randy Gooding must have seen it a hundred times. So why, on the morning he’d held Rose’s life in his hands, did he seem paralyzed? What did he see that day that he’d never seen before? Maybe he really was blinded by the light. Or maybe his own warped mind had conjured up a vision. With Gooding dead, there was no way to know for sure. Cork was more than willing to accept another possibility, however, one that the life and death of Solemn Winter Moon, the simple faith of people like Rose McKenzie and the family from Warroad, and the reality of his own experience while lost in a whiteout on Fisheye Lake had opened him to. It was possible that what had stayed Gooding’s hand was nothing less than a miracle.

  Near the confessional, the new parish priest waited. His name was Father Edward Green. He was an earnest young man, still a little uncertain in his manner. He was half Cork’s age, and Cork had trouble thinking of him as “Father” anything.

  “Thank you for agreeing to this,” Cork said.

  “No problem.” The priest smiled.

  “It’s something I wanted to do before I put this on.” Cork held out his badge.

  “I understand. Welcome back to the church.”

  The young priest didn’t really understand. It wasn’t the church Cork was returning to. It was the journey. Meloux was right. In his search for that place where his soul would feel undivided and finally at peace, Cork knew he still faced a long road. He could have chosen any number of paths, but the religion of his youth and his family seemed to him as good as any other.

  “Shall we?” The priest stepped into the confessional and pulled the curtain.

  Cork entered the other side.

  There was a moment of silence, then the priest said, “Go ahead.”

  Cork crossed himself, surprised how natural the gesture felt after so long an absence.

  “Bless me, Father,” he began, “for I have sinned.”