Vermilion Drift

  Dross sat at her desk, listening, her face unreadable. Larson leaned against a wall, arms crossed, expression neutral.

  “Think about it,” Cork said. “It fits. The second round of threats referenced his sister’s death. He was the only one outside of our investigators who knew that his sister was among the bodies in the Vermilion Drift.”

  “Why the second round of threatening notes?” Larson asked.

  “To throw us off, maybe. Make it look like her death was about the mine stuff, not about—hell, whatever it was about.”

  “What was it about?” Dross said.

  “I don’t know. I do know that he was bleeding money to support his sister and the Northern Lights Center.”

  “Money?” Larson said. “You really think he’d kill his sister over money? He’s a very rich man, Cork. And I suspect anything he loses to the center is simply a tax write-off.”

  Dross got up, walked to a window, and stood looking out with her hands clasped at the small of her back. “You found the second We die. U die. notes shoved under the Kufus woman’s windshield wiper and pinned to Cavanaugh’s door. How did he do that, with the woman there?”

  “Slipped away from the dock while she was swimming in the cove,” Cork said. “Maybe he went inside, ostensibly to get drinks or to use the head, and he did it then. It wouldn’t have been that difficult. If we can get a look at his computer, we can check to see if he’s accessed the website for the From Hell font. That would be pretty damning.”

  Larson shook his head. “Not necessarily. He could simply have wanted to check it out for himself once he knew where the font had come from. At least that’s how I’d argue it if I were his attorney.”

  “We have to walk carefully here,” Dross said, not turning from the window.

  “We come back to why,” Larson said. “Why would a man kill his sister?”

  Simon Rutledge, who’d been sitting quietly, said, “In many of the homicide investigations I’ve been involved in, Ed, it’s ended up being about family.”

  “There’s a big problem with thinking of Cavanaugh as a suspect,” Larson responded. “He was at a reception for Genie Kufus and her team the night his sister was killed.”

  “You confirmed that with Kufus and the others?”

  “Not Kufus, but Lou Haddad, who was there, too.”

  “The reception was at the Four Seasons?” Cork asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Which is five minutes from the center. Is it possible Max left and came back? Said he was going out for a smoke or something?”

  Larson said, “I’d have to look at my notes. But I’ve got to tell you, it feels like a stretch.”

  “Did you ask him about that final call from his sister?”

  “Of course. He said she often called at the end of a day, just to talk. They were close. The phone records bear that out.”

  “She said nothing about being shot?”

  “I think he would have mentioned that, don’t you?”

  “I agree with Ed, Cork,” Dross said. She faced them. “We need something substantial, and, until we have it, I’m not going to harass Max Cavanaugh.” She rubbed her forehead in a tired way. “You’ll have to bring me more.”

  Larson pushed away from the wall. He arched his back. “Christ, I’m beat. I’d love to go fishing tonight, clear my head.”

  Dross said, “I think we could all use an evening to ourselves.” She glanced at Rutledge. “You’re dying to be home for your son’s birthday tomorrow, Simon. Why don’t you go now?”

  “What about Cavanaugh?” Rutledge asked.

  “Let’s all give our brains a break,” Larson suggested. “Maybe we’ll come up with a bright idea.”

  Rutledge seemed about to object, and Cork said, “Cavanaugh isn’t going anywhere, Simon. There’s always another day.”

  Rutledge gave in. “You know how to reach me. Good luck with your fishing, Ed.”

  They separated, all going their own ways. Cork walked to his Land Rover in the parking lot. He understood everyone’s exhaustion. He was tired, too. He was glad Simon Rutledge had decided to go home for his son’s birthday. A festive family affair, he imagined.

  Cork headed home, too. Home to his big, empty house and to the only female in his life these days, a little spotted mutt who was always glad to see him.

  FORTY-ONE

  He unscrewed the cap on one of the Leinie’s Rutledge had brought earlier that day and checked the clock on the wall. Nearing five. He thought about heading to Sam’s Place to give a hand with the dinner rush but instead went out to the patio in the backyard, and drank the beer and threw the ragged tennis ball for Trixie. It was a pattern he’d followed since Stephen had left, and he was getting sick of it. He thought about calling one of his friends, or maybe doing a little fishing or, hell, even going out to the Pinewood Broiler for dinner. Nothing appealed to him. He felt stuck. Part of it was the general realization that as his children left he would have to redefine himself and his life, and he wasn’t even sure where to begin and the idea was overwhelming. But a part of it, too, was that he simply felt weighted by the burden of all the events of the past week and the questions about his own past that those events had raised and that still remained unanswered.

  So mostly he just felt like getting drunk.

  When the beer was empty, he went back inside. Instead of going to the refrigerator for another bottle, he went to the office and checked his e-mail. He was pleased to find messages from both his daughters. He read Annie’s first.

  Dad,

  I got a note from Jenny saying that some pretty horrible things have been happening back home. Bodies buried in a mine. Is that true? She said the press is speculating that it was the work of a serial killer a long time ago. Is that true, too? She also said that you’re involved in the investigation. I was like, duh. Can you tell me anything?

  Buried bodies. Hard to imagine in Aurora. But that’s something people here in El Salvador are familiar with. During the civil war in this country, a lot of families had loved ones who disappeared in the night. Just disappeared. Whole villages vanished, too, I’ve heard. People still stumble onto mass graves in the jungle. Here, it’s about politics and economics. And the crimes are committed by the kinds of people you pass on the street every day. It’s easier to think that kind of atrocity is only committed by crazed serial killers. If it were only so.

  Jenny says she’s coming home for a few days just before the Labor Day weekend. I’d like to be there, too. Will Stephen be back from camp? And could Aunt Rose and Mal come, too? It would be wonderful to have us all together, even if for only a few days.

  Love and peace,

  Anne

  Cork sat back and stared at the screen. Without realizing it, Annie was keeping him grounded to the reality of the world. Which was that, as bad as things seemed in Aurora, in the world at large, these events were next to nothing. Death on an enormous scale was as common as rain.

  A depressing thought, so he considered instead the enticing possibility of all the O’Connors being together for a little while at summer’s end, and that cheered him.

  Jenny’s e-mail queried him further about what the hell was going on in Aurora and why hadn’t he called her back? For the moment, he held off replying. He didn’t want to think about it.

  It was late afternoon, and dark was still a long way off. He took Trixie for another walk, and although he tried to keep his mind away from the investigation, his thinking kept coming back to Max Cavanaugh and the reception at the Four Seasons the night his sister was murdered.

  Larson had said he’d questioned Lou Haddad, who’d confirmed that Cavanaugh was at the Four Seasons until after midnight, beyond the time Lauren Cavanaugh had been murdered. If that was true, Cavanaugh was off the hook. But if Ophelia was correct about the time of her own encounter with Lauren Cavanaugh, then Max had talked to his sister on the phone after she’d been shot. And what woman, having been grazed by a bullet, wouldn’t say something to her
brother about it? Her silence made no sense. What made a great deal more sense was that Max Cavanaugh had lied to Larson about the content of that final conversation.

  When he returned home, he went straight to the telephone in his office and punched in Haddad’s cell phone number.

  “Lou, it’s Cork O’Connor.”

  “Hey, Cork, what’s up?” What sounded like jazz was playing in the background.

  “I just wanted to check to make sure you and Sheri are okay.”

  “We’re fine. Down in the Twin Cities, staying at a fancy hotel, eating fancy food in fancy restaurants. Listening to some great jazz at the moment and drinking some good wine. And get this. Max told me all expenses are on the company. This has turned into a great getaway.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Look, Cork, I know you didn’t call to chat.”

  “Could I ask you a couple of questions, Lou?”

  “Sure. About what?”

  “The night of the reception for Kufus and her team.”

  “Fire away.”

  “What time did the reception at the Four Seasons break up?”

  “Officially at around ten-thirty. But several of us headed to the bar and hung out there until after midnight.”

  “Max Cavanaugh?”

  “Yeah, he was with us.”

  “The whole time?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What do you mean by ‘pretty much?’”

  “We all took trips to the head now and then. Alcohol does that, you know.”

  “Did Cavanaugh take any long trips?”

  “To the head? Nothing unusual, seems to me. He stepped outside for a smoke a couple of times.”

  “Was he gone long?”

  “Five, ten minutes, I think.”

  “That’s all? You’re sure.”

  “Honestly, I wasn’t keeping track. By that time, I’d had a few myself, and we were all having a pretty good time.”

  “So he could have slipped away for longer than a few minutes and you might not have noticed?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Just a minute,” he said. He covered the mouthpiece for a few seconds. “Sheri says he went out for a while.”

  “Does she remember when?”

  Cork heard Haddad pose the question to his wife. Her reply was too faint to hear.

  Haddad said, “A little after eleven o’clock. She remembers because he got a cell phone call, just as she was getting ready to call our babysitter and let her know we wouldn’t be home until after midnight.”

  “Does Sheri remember how long he was gone?”

  Haddad asked, then relayed the reply, “Twenty minutes, maybe.”

  “Thanks, Lou. You guys just go on having a good time, okay?”

  “What’s up with the investigation?”

  “We have answers to some of the questions, but we haven’t nailed down a suspect in Lauren Cavanaugh’s death yet.”

  “Is that why you’re asking about her brother?”

  “No comment, Lou. Like I said, you guys just have a good time. And tell Sheri thanks for the information.”

  He’d put the phone down and was a few steps away when it rang: Lou Haddad calling back.

  “Cork, Sheri has something you might be interested in.” He gave the phone over to his wife, who said, “I don’t know if this is important, Cork, but I thought you might want to know. It was noisy in the bar at the Four Seasons, so I went outside to make my call to our babysitter. I saw Max leave the parking lot in his Escalade. And another thing. That evening he’d been wearing a knockout blazer. Armani, de la Renta, some expensive designer thing, I’m sure. Anyway, when he came back and joined us at the bar, he didn’t have it on anymore. He didn’t stay long, mostly just said good night, and went home.”

  “How did he seem when he came back?”

  “Distracted, I thought. I figured he’d had a bit too much to drink and he was a little, you know, distant. Maybe fuzzy-headed. Which was different from the way he’d been before he left. He was all charm then.”

  “Anything else, Sheri?”

  “Not that I can think of. Does this help?”

  “A lot. Thanks. But, Sheri, why didn’t you tell someone all this before?”

  “Nobody asked me,” she replied, a little curtly.

  Haddad came back on the line. “Cork, you want us to come back and give statements of some kind, we’ll be happy to.”

  “If that’s necessary, Lou. I’ll let you know.”

  “All right, then. You take care.”

  In Cork’s thinking, you needed three things to hang a crime on someone: opportunity, evidence that placed the suspect at the scene, and motive. Cavanaugh had left the bar around the time of the killing. So opportunity. When he returned, he’d removed his expensive blazer, perhaps because it was covered with bloodstains. If he was smart, he’d gotten rid of the blazer, but maybe there was residue on some of the other clothing he wore that night, or on his shoes. And maybe he still had the shoes and the other clothing. So physical evidence. But what about motive? That was the tough thing. Why would Cavanaugh kill his sister? From all indications, he’d taken care of her all his life. What happened that night that made a difference?

  That was something only Max Cavanaugh knew.

  FORTY-TWO

  Cavanaugh was clearly surprised to find Cork at his door. He also didn’t seem pleased, but he was cordial.

  “A business call, Cork? More questions?”

  “Just something I need to get off my mind, Max. May I come in?”

  “Be my guest.” Cavanaugh stepped aside.

  The house was cool, and from another room came the sound of sitar music, something Cork hadn’t heard since the seventies. A glass of red wine sat on a table near the front door, and Cavanaugh lifted it as he passed.

  “Can I offer you something to drink?” he asked.

  “No thanks, Max. Okay if I sit?”

  “By all means.”

  Cork took one of the two wing chairs in the living room. It was upholstered in a green fabric soft as doe hide. Cavanaugh took the other.

  “Ravi Shankar?” Cork said, with a slight nod toward the music.

  “Nikhil Banerjee. I became familiar with his music while I was working in the Great North’s bauxite mine in central India. He’s dead now. This is a rare recording. Did you come here to talk music?”

  “I came here to talk about Hattie Stillday.”

  Cavanaugh nodded and looked concerned. “I’ve been thinking about her, too. What she did, it was so needless. Christ, there was plenty of money. I was angry with Lauren, I mean all the mismanagement, but I’d have given her what she needed to pay off Stillday.”

  “Do you know Hattie?”

  “Just her work.”

  “A fine woman. Very Ojibwe in a lot of respects, especially in her disregard for the value of money. She didn’t think much of it, except for the good it could do others.”

  “Apparently she thought enough to murder for it.” His tone had turned cold.

  “See, Max, I have a problem with that. I don’t think Hattie did it.”

  “She confessed. From what I understand, she knew everything about the murder.”

  “Not everything.”

  “Well, I suppose where murder’s involved a person’s thinking might not always be clear.”

  “My sentiment exactly. You know, Max, you’ve always seemed to me to be a fair man.”

  Cavanaugh didn’t respond. He swirled red wine in his glass and watched Cork.

  “I’m wondering if you really intend to let Hattie Stillday go to prison.”

  “That’s not my call, is it?” he said.

  “Oh, but I think it is. Hattie Stillday didn’t kill your sister, and you know it.”

  Cavanaugh said, “I do?”

  “Max, I’m not here in any official capacity. I’m here to give you a chance to do the right thing, before it all turns ugly. And it will. All the dirty secrets will get dragged out, and the press will ha
ve a field day with you and your family.”

  “You’re talking in riddles, Cork.”

  “Am I? Let me tell you how it went down that night. A few minutes after eleven, you received a call from your sister. She was upset. She’d been shot, but not seriously. She wanted you, needed your comfort, your protection, which you’d given her your whole life. You left the gathering at the Four Seasons, drove to the Northern Lights Center, and found her in the boathouse. There was a gun there, left by the person who’d shot her earlier. A kind of accident, really. You had an exchange with Lauren, a fight maybe. And you took the gun and killed her. When you realized what you’d done, you ran. You went back to the Four Seasons, spent a few minutes with the people you’d left, then you made your excuses and went home.

  “I’m guessing,” Cork continued, “that you expected to hear about your sister’s death the next day, but that didn’t happen. Nor the next. And when it became clear that Lauren’s body wasn’t anywhere to be found and that her car was missing and there was no evidence of your crime, you were surprised and probably scared. What the hell happened to Lauren? And that’s where I came in.”

  “I loved my sister,” Cavanaugh said.

  “I’m not hearing you deny you killed her. What I don’t understand is why, Max.”

  “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this.” But he made no move to end it.

  “I’m telling you things I shouldn’t, because I really don’t believe you’re the kind of man who’d let Hattie Stillday take the blame for something you did. And I’m doing it because, if I were you, I’d be eaten up inside by guilt. Everything will come to light sooner or later. Rutledge and Larson will be out with a search warrant. You’ve left tracks. Like you said, where murder’s involved, you don’t think straight. And don’t bother trying to figure out what tracks I’m talking about. We know too much. Come back to Aurora with me, Max. Talk to the sheriff. Get it all off your chest and be done with it.”

  Cavanaugh stared at Cork, then said coldly, “You sound just like Lauren. Next you’ll be telling me I’ve got no other friend in the world but you.”

  “Believe it or not, I am your friend. Come back with me, and I’ll stand by you, I promise.”