Purgatory Ridge

  “What of it?”

  “So did Charlie.”

  “Lots of guys did.”

  “Not so many around here.”

  Loomis stared at Cork. His eyes were watery and rimmed with red. It could have been from what was in the glass. Or lack of sleep. Or maybe even from grieving.

  “Was Charlie Warren your friend, Harold?” Loomis tried to maintain his stare, but he finally broke and looked down at the glass in his hand.

  “Because if he was, they’re saying your friend was responsible for the destruction out at Lindstrom’s, that he botched things, Harold, and he killed himself with his own bomb.”

  “Charlie’s dead. What difference does it make what anybody says about him now?”

  “He was playing checkers with you that night, wasn’t he? Maybe sharing a drink. Talking over old times. Exchanging war stories. Helping the night get by for both of you. I’m guessing neither of you wanted folks to know. You had a job to worry about, and maybe Charlie figured it wouldn’t look so good, him hanging out at Lindstrom’s, what with all the hullaballoo over logging right now. You know, Harold, it’s pretty understandable.”

  Loomis stared at the ice melting into his whiskey.

  “I’ll bet it got lonely out there at night.”

  Loomis stepped out and let the door swing closed behind him. He walked to the porch railing, took a long drink from his glass, swirled the ice, drank again. He looked out at the night, and when he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “We served in the same unit. After the war, coming home, we never had much to do with one another. Charlie, he had all that business out on the reservation. Me, I went back to my own life. But you get old, Cork. People you got anything in common with pass on. You get lonely. Charlie and me, we bumped into one another sometimes at the VFW. Got to talking about old times. Korea, you know. I liked him. Didn’t matter he was Indian. Didn’t matter to him I was white. Yeah, at the end, he was my friend.”

  “He didn’t have anything to do with the bomb. He was just there to play checkers.”

  Loomis nodded. “He always left before the guys started showing up for first shift. The other night, I had my rounds to make. We were in the middle of a game. Charlie stayed in the shed while I headed out. I was on the other side of the mill when it happened.” Tears piled up along the rims of his eyes. “I couldn’t do anything. Honest to God, there was nothing I could do.” He shook his head. “They find out about Charlie, I’m out of a job, Cork. I got no pension. I got no way to pay my bills.”

  “I have to tell somebody, Harold. I have to tell Wally Schanno. I’m sorry.” Cork felt bad, but there was no way around it. “Look, it doesn’t have to be done tonight. And I’ll see if Schanno can do something about keeping the details confidential. I can’t promise anything.”

  Loomis stared down at the old boards of his porch. He seemed dazed. The effect of the whiskey. And a lot more.

  “Thanks for your help, Harold.”

  Loomis looked at him and a question seemed to surface from somewhere deep in his consciousness. “Why do you care about any of this? You’re not the sheriff anymore.”

  “‘Night, Harold.”

  Cork left him standing in his doorway, the question unanswered.

  13

  JOHN LEPERE LEFT HIS SMALL CABIN and walked through pools of moonlight scattered among the trees that separated his place from the big log home on the other side of Grace Cove. He crossed the dry bed of Blueberry Creek that was the property line, then followed the curve of the cove until he came to a narrow sand beach, white in the moonlight. The beach was not a natural feature of the shoreline there. Lindstrom had had it constructed the year before when the log home was built. LePere carefully skirted the sand so that he would leave no tracks. He often trespassed this way. For years, when his was the only dwelling on the cove, he’d walked the shoreline unrestrained by concerns about boundary lines. Although he actually owned only a small parcel of the land, over the years he’d come to think of the cove as his. It was wrong thinking, he knew, but inhabiting the place alone for more than a decade had made it so. Then Lindstrom had come, changed the look of everything. LePere resented the man, his wealth, and his thoughtless trespass on LePere’s life.

  He moved onto the grass of the wide lawn, a lake of silver under the full moon, and he slipped into the shadow of a spruce. From the darkness there, he watched the house.

  Lights were on in several rooms, upstairs and down. Occasionally, a light would switch off in one room and switch on in another as if someone inside were moving about. It was an illusion. No one was home. LePere had learned over time that the lights were simply part of the rich man’s security system.

  He left the shadow of the spruce and headed to the dock. The boards were new and firm, the posts thick and well anchored so that the dock didn’t move at all under his weight. It had been built to withstand a hurricane, although Grace Cove was so well protected the surface was generally smooth as glass. LePere ran his hand along the lifeline of the sailboat tied up there, the one called Amazing Grace. The 28-foot Grampian sloop, a boat for big water, was a little large and ostentatious for Iron Lake, LePere thought. He’d seen Lindstrom take the sloop out on occasion. The rich man looked soft, but he was a good sailor. Even alone, he handled the boat well. At first, Lindstrom had taken his wife and the boy with him, but he’d barked orders impatiently, until one day the boy stood on the dock and refused to go. LePere had witnessed the scene through his field glasses. Now the boy went out only in the dinghy and only with his mother. The woman was a good sailor, too, firm with the boy, but patient. Except for the cold darkness inside him, LePere might have allowed himself to admire her style.

  When he’d first learned who his neighbors on the cove were to be, he’d considered it ironic. Now he considered it destiny. Although he fully realized the Fitzgerald woman was not to blame for the sins of her father, he understood—in the way of a man who knew firsthand that life was anything but just—that if ever there were to be retribution, it would fall to her to pay.

  He stepped onto the sloop. The mast gleamed in the moonlight like a clean, white bone. He liked the idea that with every step he was further violating Lindstrom’s territory. For a moment, he considered breaking something small, just to leave a sign of his presence, to let the rich man wonder, but he held himself back. Although it would be hard to connect him to any vandalism, they would look his way. On that isolated cove, he was all there was for them to see.

  Headlights flashed, blasting among the pine trees that lined the private road to the cove. LePere didn’t move. It would be the woman and the boy. Lindstrom would come home later. He worked long hours. Barely ever were they all together as a family. He would come after the woman had gone to bed and the lights were out in her room. LePere figured that as man and wife, they seldom connected. There was something about the unhappiness the situation suggested that pleased him in a bitter way. The people who had everything were no happier than he.

  LePere heard the garage door lift at the approach of the car. He saw the headlights swallowed and heard the garage door close. Silence returned to the cove.

  Lights went on, purposefully now. LePere tracked them through the house, up the stairs, to the bedrooms. He saw the boy pass a window. Hung on the wall visible through the window was a poster LePere had long ago identified with his binoculars as Bart Simpson on a skateboard. A couple of minutes later, the boy passed again wearing boxers and a T-shirt. A light went on in the room LePere always suspected was the bathroom, stayed on long enough for the boy to brush his teeth, then went off. When next the boy appeared in his room, he was followed by his mother. She would stay a while, LePere knew. Probably she read to the boy, because she often carried a book. LePere figured it was the kind of thing he would have done, too, if he had a son.

  By the time the woman left the room, the moon had risen high, almost directly overhead. LePere’s shadow puddled around his feet. He was tired, thinking of heading home. But he
stayed, watching the room he knew to be hers, waiting for her to prepare for bed. Often, they didn’t even bother to draw their blinds.

  Grace Cove was so isolated and they seemed so secure in their privacy. Who was there to see them? He liked watching the woman as she settled into bed, propped her pillow, opened her book. All of it alone. Her husband had his own bedroom, on the other side of the house. In those rare times they were home together at night, he sometimes came and sat on her bed. They talked a while, but LePere had never seen them kiss. Sometimes after her husband had gone, the woman stared out the window in a way that reminded LePere of how he himself sometimes gazed across Lake Superior from Purgatory Ridge, looking for things that had existed long ago but had long ago been lost.

  He was caught off guard when the door to the first-floor deck opened and the woman stood silhouetted in the light from within. She closed the door, descended the deck stairs, and came across the lawn toward the dock. He looked around him on the boat for a place to hide and finally crouched in the shadow of the cockpit, hoping desperately the woman would not board.

  She passed the Amazing Grace and walked to the very end of the dock. LePere eased himself up and watched her. She stood with her back to him, looking over the water. Through the gap in the pines that flanked either side of the entrance to the cove, Aurora was visible, a scattering of lights far across a deep, black emptiness.

  In the moon’s silver light, she began to undress.

  She kicked off her shoes, undid the buttons of her blouse, and let the garment fall to her feet. Her hands slid up her back between the sharp bones of her shoulder blades and below the fall of her yellow hair. She worked free the hooks of her bra, slipped the straps down her arms, and dropped the large lacy cups atop her blouse. Her hands disappeared in front of her, working at her waist. She tugged down her slacks, stepped out of them easily, and dropped them in the pile with her other things. She was left in panties whose color LePere could not tell by moonlight, but the fabric had a sheen to it, as if what covered that most secret part of her body had been cut from ice. With her thumbs, she hooked the elastic of the waistband and drew off the last of her clothing. She stood naked at the end of the dock, her hair and skin and shadowed clefts all poised above dark water. She raised her arms, dipped her body, and sprang from the dock, cutting the surface of the lake with barely a splash. As the woman breaststroked out into the cove, LePere left the cockpit, leaped the railing, and loped along the dock back to land. He made for the spruce where he’d hidden before, and he let the shadow suck him in. He glanced back to see if the woman had spied him. She lay on her back, gazing up at the moon, her body outlined in ripples of black and silver.

  She didn’t know John LePere was watching. She probably didn’t even know he existed. And she could not possibly have known why, as he stared at her from the darkness, he unconsciously balled his hands into tight, bloodless fists as if he clenched in them something he was determined to hold on to, something invisible to anyone but him.

  14

  JO WAS AWAKE long after Cork lay sleeping beside her. She watched moonlight gather on the windowsill and spill into the room. The minutes of the alarm clock on the nightstand crept by like a procession of condemned men. At midnight, she slid from the bed and stood at the window, staring into the night. The branches and leaves of the big maple in the front yard shattered the light from the street lamp in a disturbing way, and the quiet of the night felt suffocating. She went to the rocker in the corner and sat down. When Stevie was a baby, Jo had spent many nights rocking him there. Cork had taken his turns, too, losing sleep as they dealt with ear infections, upset tummies, and nightmares. She didn’t miss those sleepless nights, but she grieved their simplicity, when the comfort of holding was all it took to set things right. She wanted to do that now. Just hold Cork, and have him hold her, and in that simple way make everything all right.

  He’d come home late with Stevie asleep in his arms, and he’d explained that they’d hiked through the woods to visit Meloux.

  All this time? she’d asked.

  He went on, explaining that they’d also visited Harold Loomis, and he related his talk with the night watchman. When he finished, he looked at her as if he expected praise because he’d solved the mystery of Charlie Warren at the mill.

  Instead she’d asked, What do you think you’re doing, Cork? She hadn’t meant her voice to be so cold, but it froze the happy look in his eyes and killed the smile on his lips.

  She closed her eyes and heard her words again.

  “Jesus, Jo,” she whispered miserably. “What were you thinking?”

  She felt sick with regret. She knew she had no one to blame but herself and no reason for the coldness except her own fear.

  She leaned across the moonlit room and spoke softly, “Cork, I’m so sorry.”

  She wished that instead of chiding him, she’d been able to tell him how afraid she was, how everything still felt so fragile between them. The truth was that she didn’t trust it was love that held their marriage together. She couldn’t believe that after such grave pain as they’d given one another love could ever grow strong again.

  That evening, with Stevie in his arms, Cork had only confirmed what she’d already guessed. He missed being a cop. For a long time, she’d sensed he was restless. She hadn’t been sure what it was until the bombing at Lindstrom’s mill had brought it into the open. It was so obvious now. She wanted to be able to support him if he chose to run for sheriff, but the prospect of an election concerned her, for selfish reasons.

  More than a decade before when she’d come with Cork back to his hometown, she was the first woman to hang an attorney’s shingle in Tamarack County. She’d struggled long and hard against a lot of prejudices directed at her as a woman and an outsider. She’d succeeded in establishing a good practice and an unimpeachable legal reputation, but it hadn’t been without some cost. Because she’d often taken on clients no other attorney in the county would touch—among them, the Iron Lake Ojibwe—she frequently found herself at odds with the prevailing sentiments in Aurora. Although she felt respected, she also felt that most people held her at a distance, just waiting for the day when she’d screw up royally. What no one knew—no one except Cork—was that she’d already blown it big time. There was a long black moment in her history in Aurora, but she’d been able to hide it for almost two years. She was afraid an election, especially a bitter one, might dredge up that history for public display. In another, larger place, her mistakes would be little more than a footnote in the news. In a place like Aurora, they could wash her life away. She and Cork never spoke about that part of their lives, their separation and what had precipitated it. They had—by tacit mutual consent, Jo believed—agreed to move on and let the past be buried. She was afraid that if Aurora knew the whole of her history, she and Cork would be forced to face the past straight-on. Under such scrutiny, could any marriage long survive?

  All these things she wanted to tell Cork, but she was afraid to begin a conversation whose end she couldn’t foresee.

  She left the rocker, walked around the bed, and knelt near her husband. He was such a good man, so different from any other she’d ever known. Softer in a lot of ways. When she’d first met him, he’d been a cop on Chicago’s South Side. He’d seen more than his share of brutal things, yet there was something good and beautiful at the heart of him that hadn’t been touched by the brutality. Whenever she’d looked into his eyes, it was as if she could see all the way down to that beautiful heart.

  His eyes were closed now, his breathing a little irregular. He turned, mumbled in his dreaming. Jo reached out and touched his cheek. In a voice so soft he could not possibly have heard, she promised, “I’ll try, Cork. I swear to you, I’ll try.”

  15

  HE DREAMED OF HIS BROTHER alone in the hold of the Teasdale, swaying in deep currents as if he were dancing in an empty ballroom, and John LePere, when he woke, found himself weeping. He didn’t give himself over to the fresh gr
ief the dream brought with it but rose immediately in the gray of first light, hit the cool, gunmetal water of Iron Lake, and swam out his emotion. By the time the sun had risen fully, he felt nearly empty and almost clean.

  He was on the road by seven A.M., winding his way down Highway 1 toward the north shore. He cruised through Finland, hit Highway 61, and headed south—across the Baptism River at Tettagouche, past Shovel Point and Palisade Head, past the big taconite processing plant at Silver Bay. The sun was hazy and copper colored. Under it, Lake Superior had taken on an unsettling hue and seemed to have assumed a foul mood as well. A strong wind blew out of the southeast. The water was full of whitecaps. Not a good day for a dive, but LePere was determined.

  As he entered the tunnel beneath Purgatory Ridge, he poured the last of the coffee from his thermos and swallowed it down. When he broke into the light on the other side, he slowed, took a sharp left onto the narrow lane, and headed through the poplars down to Purgatory Cove.

  He parked his truck at the house and got out. The southeasterly wind funneled through the opening to the cove, pushing the water against the rocky beach. The Anne Marie rocked restlessly at her mooring. LePere headed to the house, unlocked the door, and went in.

  Bridger’s accusation the day before—that LePere never let anyone enter—was true. No one but LePere had been inside since Billy died. As much as possible, he’d kept the rooms exactly as they’d been before the event that had destroyed his life. The stove was an old cast iron wood burner and was also the only source of heat. The table and chairs had been made by his father from birch trees that grew among the hills on the other side of the highway. His mother’s careful needlepoint, done in the years before Billy was born, hung framed on the walls. In the bedroom that had been first his parents’ and then his mother’s alone, the chest of drawers was empty, but on top, among the old jars and bottles that had contained the lotions and scents she’d once used, sat a photograph in a gold frame. A wedding photo. The man was half LePere’s age but had LePere’s strong, stocky build and black hair. The young woman had beautiful Indian features, and the shine in her dark eyes was evidence of a happiness LePere could barely remember in her.