Half an hour later, as he was coming downstairs, the doorbell rang. When he opened the door, he found Dina Willner standing on his front porch, a grocery bag in one hand and a twelve-pack of Leinenkugel’s in the other.
“I figured after the kind of day you’ve had, you might need a little company,” she said. “So I brought dinner. Hope you like New York strip.”
Cork’s surprise probably showed on his face. “I don’t know, Dina.”
“Look, you just relax.” She squeezed past him into the house. “I’ll do the cooking. Just show me to the kitchen.”
She twisted the caps off two beers, handed a bottle to Cork, and drank the other as she worked. She started charcoal going in the backyard grill and wrapped garlic bread in foil so she could heat it over the coals while she grilled the steaks. Then she began to prepare a salad of assorted greens, red onion, and avocado. She talked the whole while, pleasantly.
“People around here think a lot of your family.” She took a long draw on her beer and tore up lettuce. “They tell me your father was the youngest sheriff ever elected in Tamarack County. That true?” She glanced at him, her brows lifted questioningly above her attractive green eyes.
“True,” he said.
“I also heard that the hands on the clock tower of your county courthouse have been stopped for thirty-five years, frozen at the moment of his death. Is that true, too?”
“More or less.” He told her the story. The escapees from Stillwater, the shoot-out in front of the bank during which his father stepped between a bullet and an innocent bystander. How the clock was hit about the same time by an errant round and the hands had never moved since. How the town viewed it as a kind of memorial to his father’s selfless act.
“Board of Commissioners periodically discusses getting the clock fixed, but they never do anything. They say it’s out of respect. I think they just don’t want to spend the money.”
“I think it’s a wonderful tribute.” Over her shoulder, she threw him a lovely smile.
The steaks sizzled when she laid them on the hot grill, and the good smell made Cork’s mouth water. He realized how hungry he was, and how happy that Dina had come.
It was dark outside by the time they sat down at the kitchen table to eat. The steak was excellent: rare, tender, juicy. She’d dressed the salad with her own balsamic-vinegar-and-oil preparation that tasted of garlic, lemon, and pepper. It was accompanied by the garlic bread and more beer.
“How are you feeling now?” she asked.
“Better. Thanks.”
She eyed him as she lifted her beer bottle to her lips. “Mind if I ask you a question? About this morning?”
He paused in cutting his steak. “All right.”
“A shooting, that’s a hard thing, I know. Still, I find it interesting that you didn’t kill Carl Berger.”
“It was a lousy shot.”
“Is that so? With a rifle at thirty yards? People around here seem to think you’re an excellent shot. Been hunting all your life.” She put her hands on the table and almost imperceptibly leaned toward him, narrowing the distance between them. “I’ve been wondering if you really meant to kill him.”
“Of course I meant to kill him. You never shoot unless you mean to kill. He was drawing a bead on Rutledge.”
“You’ve killed two men. People here talk about that. Respectfully. Men, I gather, who were better off dead. I’m guessing it wasn’t easy, but you did it. So I’m wondering what was different about this shooting.”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
“I managed to get a copy of your statement, and I’ve gone over it. Stay with me for just a minute. The mist. A figure not clear to you. Panicked, afraid, finally cornered. A slender figure with long, dark hair. I think you might have been wondering if it was Lydell Cramer’s sister, a woman you were about to shoot. Could that have made a difference?”
“It shouldn’t have mattered.”
“But it did.” She reached across the table and laid her hand against his cheek. “It did, didn’t it?”
“Like I said, I’d rather not think about it.”
“I understand.” She pulled her hand back slowly. “How about another beer?”
After dinner, they sat in the quiet of the living room. It was late—later than Cork had imagined he’d be up. He was tired, what with the beer and the weight of all that had occurred that day. He wanted to be alone, and at the same time he didn’t.
“How’s your back?” Dina asked. “You said you wrenched it this morning during the raid.”
“Stiff. Hurts. A lot of it’s probably stress.”
“I can help that.” She put her beer on the end table and moved toward the easy chair where Cork sat. “Lie down on the floor. Come on. I won’t hurt you, I promise. That’s right. On your stomach.” She took her shoes off. “Now, close your eyes.”
The next thing Cork knew, she’d stepped onto his back. She was surprisingly light or knew exactly how to distribute her weight, because she was anything but oppressive. With her toes and the balls of her feet, she started to knead his muscles, beginning with the small of his back.
“Oh my God. Where did you learn that?”
“Picked it up along the way.”
“You know, this could be very effective in getting suspects to cooperate.”
“There’s something I’d like to tell you.”
“Go ahead. I’ll try to listen, but this is distracting.”
“I was wrong about you.”
“How?”
“I’ve worked with a lot of rural law officers. More often than not they’re pigheaded, defensive, and incompetent.”
“I hope I’m only pigheaded.”
“I don’t work well with just anyone, but I feel like we’re working well together.”
“That’s interesting. I’m not sure I feel the same way.”
He could sense her reaction in the momentary pause of her feet.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I can’t help thinking that there are things about Eddie Jacoby you know but aren’t telling.”
“I can’t. Client confidentiality.”
“His? Or his family’s?”
She didn’t reply.
“Would you tell me if I wore a push-up bra?”
She laughed. “There is one thing I’ll tell you about Eddie that might give you an additional glimpse of the man. When he was twenty-five, he received the distribution from a trust fund his grandfather had set up for him. Several million. Eddie always wanted to be a hotshot movie producer, so he invested in a production company in California, proudly told everyone he was in the movie business. You know what kind of movies he was making? The kind that show pretty young girls doing pretty ugly things. And he was proud of that. His partners ended up taking him, stole most of the fortune, though legally. His father refused to bail him out of that one. But he still has business cards with his Hollywood logo, and I know he doles them out and when he hits on women he uses some line about making them a star.”
“Do they ever buy it?”
“I’m thinking Lizzie Fineday might have. I can’t imagine any other reason she’d be with Eddie.”
“Anything else you’d care to share?”
“I’m helping you all I can, trust me.”
She stepped off him. He couldn’t move, didn’t want to.
“Better?”
Slowly he rolled over and looked up at her. She seemed taller from that perspective, even prettier, if that were possible. He did want to trust her, and felt himself inclined. But he also knew his thinking was being filtered through exhaustion and alcohol. And he couldn’t forget the fact that, in the end, Dina worked for the Jacobys.
“I think it’s good night now,” he said.
“Don’t get up. I’ll see myself out.”
While she put on her shoes, he gradually pulled himself off the floor and followed her to the door.
“We’re closing in on the end, Cork,�
� she said in the doorway. “Coming toward the home stretch. Once we bring Lizzie in, I think it will be over, one way or another.”
She hesitated a long moment before heading into the night, as if there was something more she wanted to do or to say. Whatever it was, she thought better of it, and the last moment of their evening together was left empty. She went down the porch steps and walked through the light of the street lamp to her car.
He flipped the dead bolt, checked the other doors and windows, began turning out the lights, thinking all the while that if he loved Jo so much, why did he feel a small disappointment in the emptiness of that last moment with Dina.
He headed toward the stairs, but before he took the first step, the telephone rang. It was almost eleven o’clock. It was either the office or Jo, he figured.
“O’Connor,” he said into the phone.
“You think it’s over?” the voice at the other end said. “Think again. You’re dead, O’Connor. You’re so dead.”
28
IT WAS THE quiet that woke her. That and Stevie’s elbow burrowing into her hip. The elbow didn’t surprise her: her son was a restless sleeper. But the quiet was an odd thing. Not quiet exactly because there were the usual city noises. Traffic early and heavy on Green Bay Road two blocks east, the rattle of suspension, the screech of brakes, the warning beeper on a truck backing up, probably collecting garbage. Like Stevie’s elbow, these were expected things. What was unexpected was the silence of the birds. Spring, summer, and fall in Aurora, the birds began their songs and arguments long before dawn. Jo had grown so used to their chirp and chatter that she didn’t even notice anymore. Except when it was missing. In Evanston, Illinois, that morning there seemed to be no birds at all.
It was the West Nile virus. Rose had told her the night before how the mosquito-borne disease had devastated the avian population all along the north shore of Lake Michigan, leaving birds on the ground under trees like fallen, rotting fruit. It was an awful image to spring to mind first thing in the morning, and the silence in the wake of all that death was disturbing.
She hadn’t slept well, and not just because of Stevie’s restless jerking. She missed Cork. She was relieved when he’d called the evening before and told her about the raid on the farmhouse in Carlton County, relieved that it ended the danger to him. She wanted so much to be with him then, to hold him. But he was safe, and that was the important thing.
Her nose lifted at the smell of coffee brewing, and she pulled back the covers and slipped from the bed, careful not to wake her small son. She threw on her robe and left the guest room of her sister’s home. Rose lived with her husband, Mal, in the upper level of a duplex in a nice neighborhood at the north end of Evanston. The building was long and narrow, what Rose called a railroad car design. In front was the living room, connected by a long hallway to the kitchen in back. Off the hallway on either side were the bedrooms and the bath. Jo found Rose in the kitchen rolling dough on a cutting board while coffee trickled into a pot on the counter.
“Cinnamon rolls,” Jo said. “The kids will love you. They’ve missed your cooking.”
“And I miss their appetites. Mal appreciates my cooking, but eating’s never been that important to him. All those years of self-denial, I suppose. Coffee’s just about ready. Want some?”
“I’ll get it,” Jo said.
“Sit down, relax. This is my kitchen,” she said proudly. She wiped her hands on her apron and went to the cupboard.
Jo watched her sister with amazement and pleasure. There was so much different about Rose now. She’d been plain and heavy all her life, but in the past few months she’d dropped weight, and a lovely color flushed her cheeks. There was a lively snap to all her movements, a joyous energy. This, Jo suspected, was due to love.
“Mal likes his job?”
“It’s perfect. Basically the same thing he did before he came to Aurora, but he doesn’t have to be celibate now.” She laughed sweetly.
For seventeen years, Rose had lived with the O’Connors, most of that time in a cozy attic room, taking care of the household while Jo and Cork both worked the law from different angles. Near the end, Mal Thorne had come to Aurora. Father Mal Thorne, then. For nearly two years, he’d served the parish of St. Agnes. During that time, he began to question significantly his commitment to the Church, and in the fertile ground of that doubt, his love for Rose had grown until he could not deny it. She’d felt the same. Yet, it had taken the actions of a madman to put her into Mal’s willing arms and to convince him it was time to divest himself of his collar and cassock. They’d been married in a civil ceremony and had moved to Chicago, where Mal, as a priest, had once headed a homeless shelter run by the Chicago Archdiocese. He did the same now for a publicly funded shelter.
As Rose turned to bring the coffeepot to the table, Mal walked into the kitchen in his drawstring pajamas. He was medium height. His hair was light brown, thin, and cut close enough to see the tan of his scalp. In his youth, he’d been a champion boxer, middleweight—he still had scar tissue over his left eye and a nose that was crooked from having been broken several times—and carried himself in a way that suggested both power and grace. He smiled often and broadly and did so now.
“Good morning, ladies.” He swept Rose into his arms and kissed her lavishly.
Rose held the hot coffeepot at a safe distance. When Mal stepped back, she said, “I was going to offer you coffee to wake up, but I see you don’t need it.”
“A beautiful day,” he said, and opened his arms toward the window and the sunlight beyond. “Family here and Cork out of danger, blessings both. Where are the kids?”
“Sleeping,” Jo said. “Even Stevie. It’s been hard on them lately. They could use the rest.”
“I’m sure.” Mal sat down at the table, opposite Jo. “What’s the plan for today?”
Jo hid a yawn behind her hand. The coffee was good, but rest would have been better. “I’m thinking that Jenny and I will take a look at Northwestern, since that’s one of the reasons we’re here.”
“Good. Then tomorrow or maybe the next day we might drive to South Bend so Annie can have a look at my alma mater.”
“She’d love that, Mal. She talked nothing but Notre Dame the whole way down.”
“Is she still hoping for a softball scholarship?”
“She’s determined.”
Rose, who was forming dough strips into tight spirals for the cinnamon rolls, said, “She’s like you. When she sets her mind to something, she makes it happen.”
The phone in the hallway rang. Mal got up.
“Sit down, I’ll answer it,” Rose said.
Mal kept moving. “You’ll get the phone all sticky.” In the hallway, he answered with a cheery “Good morning.” Then: “Yes, she is. Just a moment.” He put the receiver to his chest. “For you, Jo.”
“Is it Cork?”
“No, but it’s a man.” He handed her the phone and went back to the kitchen.
It was Ben Jacoby. His voice sounded showered and shaved and sparkling. Jo still had sleep in her eyes.
“Ben? How did you know I was here?”
“Dina Willner.”
Dina. The woman working with Cork to solve the murder of Ben’s brother. It made sense.
“I’m sorry about the bomb scare, but I understand they got the bastards.”
“Yes.”
“That’s wonderful. Look, I’m sorry to be calling so early. I have some good news. I talked with a friend of mine in the admissions office at Northwestern. If you and Jenny are available today, he can arrange a private tour of the campus.”
“Today?” she said.
“Unless you have other plans. I’m sure he’d be willing to schedule anytime. I just wasn’t certain how long you’d be staying.”
“Today would be fine. Thank you, Ben.”
“Also, I was wondering if you might be free for a drink tonight.”
“I don’t think so.”
“A glass of wi
ne and half an hour of your time.”
“It’s not a good idea, Ben.”
“I understand, but . . .” He fell silent, and Jo didn’t know if he was gathering himself for another attempt or had given up. “Look, there are things I need to say to you.”
She moved into the front room, distant from the kitchen.
“Like what?”
“Give me half an hour.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
“I want to tell you why I left.”
“That’s not important to me now.”
“It might be, if you knew. One drink. One glass of wine. One last time. Please.”
She considered a long time before replying. “All right.”
“I’ll pick you up. Seven?”
“Seven is fine, but I’ll meet you there.”
“Deal.”
He gave her the name of a restaurant on Green Bay Road, and he gave her his cell phone number, just in case.
“Ben?” Rose said when Jo came back to the table.
“Jacoby. I told you about him last night. The brother of the man who was killed.”
“That’s right. Your old law school buddy.”
Although they’d shared many confidences, Jo had never told her sister about Ben Jacoby, and as far as Rose and Mal knew, they’d simply been acquainted in law school. At some point, Jo intended to tell Rose the whole story, but not at the moment.
“He’s pulled some strings to get Jenny a tour of Northwestern today.”
“That’s great,” Rose said.
“He also asked me out for a drink.”
“We’ll be glad to watch the children,” Mal offered.
“Thanks.”
She reached for her coffee. Although she’d put Ben Jacoby behind her long ago, his sudden departure from her life had been a nagging mystery for twenty years. She cradled her cup in both palms and carefully sipped the strong French roast amid the deep quiet of the dead birds.
29
THEY ALL SAT in Cork’s office and for a long time said nothing, just drank the good coffee Dina Willner had brought, and sifted through their own, silent thoughts.
The William Kent Krueger Collection 2 Page 52