Blood Hollow

  Solemn looked calm and rested. He folded his hands on the table.

  “How are you doing?” Jo asked.

  “Good. Father Mal stopped by to see me this afternoon. We had a long talk. He said you asked him to come, Cork. Thanks.”

  Jo offered Cork a what in the hell kind of look, and he realized he hadn’t said a word to her about consulting the priest.

  “Solemn, I want you to know how a few things stand,” Jo said. “I’m almost certain you’ll be charged in Charlotte Kane’s death. I think that won’t occur until after a grand jury hearing.”

  “But you’ll defend me.”

  “Not before the grand jury. Only the prosecution has an opportunity to appear there. The question they’ll consider is whether there’s enough evidence to charge you with first-degree murder. If they hand down an indictment, that’s when you’ll go to trial and I’ll defend you. Now if the county attorney doesn’t get an indictment, he’ll probably charge you with second-degree murder. If that happens, we may have some leeway.”

  “What kind of leeway?”

  “A plea bargain is one possibility.”

  “I would have to admit to something.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then there won’t be a bargain. I didn’t have anything to do with Charlotte’s death.”

  “Let’s talk about Charlotte.” Jo brought out a small notepad and a silver Cross ballpoint pen. “You told us before that you thought Charlotte was seeing someone else while you were dating. That’s why she broke up with you. You said you thought it might have been a married man. Why did you think that?”

  Solemn sat for quite a while, thinking. He was composed and didn’t seem in any hurry to reply. The room had no windows. The air was warm and stuffy. Cork felt a trickle of sweat crawl down from his armpit. Jo watched Solemn, the point of her pen resting against the notepad.

  “I know a lot of Shinnobs who have next to nothing, but they’re still happy,” Solemn finally said. “Charlotte had everything, but she was one of the saddest people I ever knew. You wouldn’t have guessed it, looking at her. I mean, she seemed to have the perfect life, but the truth was she didn’t like herself at all. Sometimes she seemed desperate to be loved.”

  “Did you love her?” Jo said.

  “In the beginning, what I felt came mostly from below the waist.” He said it with regret. “But in the end, yeah, my heart got caught up in it.”

  “Did she love you?”

  Solemn thought it over. “At first, I figured I was just her walk on the wild side. A good, quiet Catholic girl, straight-A student, finally looking for a thrill. But from the things she said, I finally decided she was seeing me for the shock value. Using me to get at someone. Probably the guy she was really interested in.”

  “And you still felt strongly about her?”

  “The head and the heart, you know, they don’t always see eye to eye.”

  “Did she give you any indication who the guy was?”

  “No.”

  “But you think he was married.”

  “From the way she acted, all secretive, I figured married was the reason.”

  “Think back. Did she ever say anything that might have been a clue to his identity?”

  Solemn closed his eyes for a while. “No.”

  “Okay. Tell me about Charlotte.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Anything that you might think is relevant.”

  Solemn thought a moment. “She was beautiful, but didn’t see herself that way. She always needed compliments. She was depressed a lot. Took some kind of medication for it. She had this fixation with death. She told me she tried suicide once. She believed she would die young.” Solemn looked down. “She was sure right about that.”

  “How about drugs?”

  “Yeah. And booze. But she worked hard not to let it show.”

  Jo wrote in her notebook, then looked up.

  “Let’s talk about your wrench,” she said. “The one that was used to kill Charlotte. Did you know it was missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “A couple of days after Charlotte disappeared. My fan belt was squealing. I thought the alternator was a little loose. I’ve got a tool chest built into the bed of my pickup, and I went there to get a pry bar. The hasp on the chest was broken. I went through everything. Only thing missing was the wrench. I went to Hardware Hank’s and bought a new one. New hasp, too.”

  “Before that, when was the last time you checked your tool chest?”

  Again he closed his eyes and spent time being sure. “I don’t remember.”

  “Do you have a receipt for the hasp and wrench?”

  “I probably threw it away.”

  Cork said, “Remember who waited on you?”

  “Sure. It was old man Springer.”

  Cork glanced at Jo. “I’ll talk to him, see if he remembers.”

  Jo nodded. “Okay. How about the bottle found at the scene? The night Charlotte disappeared, did you have a Corona?”

  He smiled at her. “Corona’s my favorite beer. Everyone knows that. I drink it all the time.”

  “Were you drinking it at Valhalla?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you do with your empty bottles?”

  Solemn scratched his cheek while he puzzled that one. “I don’t remember.”

  “Okay.”

  “Wait. When I was leaving, I took a beer with me out to the truck. I had to pee, and I set the bottle down in the snow while I took care of business. I don’t remember picking it up.”

  “Good.” Jo looked seriously at Solemn. “Did you have sex with Charlotte Kane?”

  “Yes. And right from the beginning. She knew what she was doing. That surprised me. She didn’t seem the type.”

  “I mean that night. Did you have sex with her on New Year’s Eve, before she disappeared?”

  “No, we were history by then.”

  Jo said, “Tell me about the break-in at St. Agnes. It wasn’t you alone, was it? I’m betting Charlotte was with you that night.”

  “Yeah, but it was my truck that got reported, and when they grabbed me I didn’t see any reason to bring her into it.”

  “The break-in, your idea or Charlotte’s?”

  “Hers. But I did the damage.”

  “Why Mendax? Why ‘liar’?”

  “I don’t know. She was pissed.”

  “At the church?”

  “I got the feeling it was the priest.”

  “Father Mal? Why?”

  He shrugged. “A lot of the time, she was hard to figure.”

  “Did she talk about him?”

  “No.”

  “What did she talk about?”

  “Reincarnation. She was real big on that. Always talking about her other lives, things that had happened in them.”

  “Like what?”

  “Awful things, mostly. She claimed that in her first life, she was raped as a child. In her second, she was a prostitute.”

  “She believed this?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “And in her next life, she was murdered,” Cork said. “What kind of karma is that?” He remembered the poem Jenny had told him about, the one Charlotte had written. Lazarus, angry at being raised from the dead. Given what he knew now, he thought he had a better sense of the girl’s perspective.

  “It’s almost dinnertime,” Solemn said. “And I am hungry. Mind if we call it?”

  “One more question. In your statement, you admitted arguing with Charlotte at her home shortly before Christmas. Her father overheard. He claims you threatened her. Is that true?”

  “No. What I said was that someday somebody was going to tear her heart out like she’d torn mine.”

  “That was it? No threat?”

  “Just something to hurt her. Like she needed more of that.”

  “I think we’re through for now. If there’s anything you need, just let me know.” Jo lifted the wall phone and called Pend
er.

  The deputy opened up and stepped in. “Come on, Winter Moon. Got a dinner reservation for you.” He held a small, black Bible in his hand. “Oh, and the priest stopped by, brought this for you. Sheriff asked me to check it out before I gave it to you.” With a snort, he handed the Bible to Solemn. “Believe me, there’s nothing in here that’ll do the likes of you any good.”

  “You’re quiet,” Cork said as they drove home.

  “Just thinking about Charlotte. She wasn’t exactly the young woman we all thought she was.” Jo looked out the window. “I feel sorry for her, Cork. And a little guilty that none of us saw how troubled she was.”

  “We have our own children to worry about.”

  “And who worries about the Charlotte Kanes?”

  After a little while, Cork said, “I’d love to know exactly what Nestor Cole has, what he intends to base his case on.”

  “From the documents I’ve been able to look at so far,” Jo said, “it goes something like this. At the party, just before midnight, Charlotte made it clear that she was going to the guesthouse to grab her snowmobile for a ride, some kind of crazy way to see the New Year in. But according to the statements of some of the kids at the party, the snowmobile didn’t actually leave until around one A.M. In the meantime, Charlotte had sex with someone. Probably she was assaulted with Solemn’s wrench after leaving the guesthouse, since there was no blood found inside. If she bled outside, the snowfall covered it. She was carried to the snowmobile, driven to Moccasin Creek where the ‘accident’ was staged. After that, someone calmly feasted on junk food and watched while the girl froze to death. Then her assailant either walked back to Valhalla, only a mile or so away, or went to a vehicle parked in the lot at the trailhead.

  “So, Nestor has the bottle found at the scene with Solemn’s prints all over it, and the murder weapon with his prints on that as well. There’s the argument at the party, and the fact that Solemn has no alibi. It’s still circumstantial. I keep thinking there’s something else, something we don’t know about, and probably won’t until Solemn’s charged.”

  Cork paused for the traffic light at the intersection of Oak and Fox.

  “I keep asking myself if Solemn didn’t kill Charlotte, who did?” he said.

  “And why.”

  “Let’s start with why. Maybe that will lead us to who.”

  Jo said, “In making the case against Solemn, I’m sure the prosecution’s going to say it was scorned love. Maybe what’s a good motive for Solemn would be good for someone else. Maybe the man she was having the affair with?”

  “That would make sense. When I saw her at the creek, she looked peaceful, her arms across her chest. She seemed composed, almost tenderly so, as if whoever killed her had put her gently to rest. If that’s true, it might point to someone with very mixed emotions about her, someone who loved her, and maybe killed her in a moment of jealous rage. That would fit with some of the other things we know. He killed her with an object at hand, Solemn’s wrench. And the beer bottle that points to Solemn’s guilt, I don’t see how that could have been planned. Just Solemn’s bad luck that he left it in the snow. All of which would point toward not a lot of forethought in the killing. It could be that he arrived at the party, saw Solemn’s truck, assumed that Solemn and Charlotte were an item again, and went ballistic.”

  “On the other hand,” Jo said, “maybe he’d wanted to kill her. Maybe she wasn’t satisfied with an illicit affair and wanted more. She threatened to go public if he—what?—didn’t leave his wife and marry her? At the party, he finally saw his chance and killed her.”

  A car honked behind them and Cork realized the light had changed to green.

  Jo leaned back against the headrest and stared out her window at the familiar houses of Aurora. She could probably give the names of the families who lived in them. When she spoke again, she sounded weary and sad. “This seems unreal, somehow. Do you realize we’re talking about Aurora, Cork, about someone we may see every day on the street? It feels dirty, speculating this way. Is this how the police always look at people in an investigation?”

  “The good cops,” Cork said. “The ones who realize anybody can be driven to kill under the right circumstances. It’s not a cop’s job to pass judgment. Once you put judgment aside, uncomfortable speculations become bearable. So,” he said. “Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think about the adults she normally comes into contact with. Who would they be?”

  Jo thought. “Teachers.”

  Cork nodded. “A good possibility. Affairs like that happen all the time. Who else?”

  “Employer.”

  “Maybe. But with Kane’s money, I doubt if Charlotte ever had a job.”

  “A family friend.”

  “Worth checking out.”

  Jo fell silent. Cork could feel her shutting down, turning away from the speculation.

  “I don’t like this thinking,” she said.

  “Nobody does. But it’s what you do if the truth is what you’re after.” Cork hesitated a moment, then asked, “What do you think her anger at Mal was all about?”

  “Don’t even go there, Cork.” Jo shoved at the empty air in front of her, pushing away the thought. “This makes me sick. I can’t do it.”

  “That’s why you asked me to help,” Cork said. “Because I can.”

  Jo was silent for a long time. As Cork turned onto Gooseberry Lane, she reached out and laid her hand on his arm. “I’m concerned about pursuing this line of investigation right now. I’m afraid all it will do is stir people up. Until we see what Nestor Cole’s plan is, especially if he’s thinking grand jury, I’d like you to hold off asking questions, especially any that might probe an affair. I don’t want to prejudice the whole county against us even before we start.”

  “The question will still be hanging out there unanswered, Jo. Who killed Charlotte?”

  “My job is to keep Solemn out of jail.”

  “A few minutes ago you asked me who watched out for the Charlotte Kanes.”

  “She’s dead, Cork. I can’t help her now.”

  In his mind’s eye, he saw a dark figure beckoning to him from a lonely place.

  “The dead can’t speak for themselves,” he said. “They’ve got no way to ask for justice. What’s left behind in the details of their deaths is the only hope they have for pointing the way toward the truth, and someone ought to pay attention.” He slowed down and looked at Jo. “It’s called due diligence, Jo. It’s what a good cop does. He considers all the possibilities, turns over all the stones, and he tries to do it without prejudice. Arne won’t do that. He’s not a cop. Like everybody else, he thinks Solemn is guilty and that’s all there is to it. The truth will have to be found by someone else. And, sweetheart, at the moment, it looks like there’s just you and me.”

  “I understand what you’re saying. I do. And it’s one of the things I love about you. But I’m still going to ask that you wait a little while before you stir things up. Just a while. Okay?”

  Cork didn’t reply.

  “Okay?”

  He pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine. In the pale evening light that filtered through the trees and fell across the car, he looked at Jo. She was beautiful to him in so many ways. He loved her so much that sometimes it made him ache. Often when he was alone at Sam’s Place, out of the blue he would think of her, and it always felt as if his heart had suddenly ballooned and filled his whole chest. But looking at her now, he understood they were two very different people, and there were some things deep in the heart of each of them that the other could never touch, would never understand. It made him sad, but he didn’t say so. Instead he said, “I’ll do my best to behave myself.”

  18

  THE NEXT MORNING, Cork paid a visit to Aurora High. He stopped at the office first, spoke with Jake Giles, the assistant principal, and was given both a schedule of the classes Charlotte Kane had taken while attending the high school and a list
of her extracurricular activities. Then Cork went to see Juanita Sherburne.

  Sherburne was the school psychologist. Her office was on the second floor of the new consolidated high school that had been built three years earlier just west of town, near the gravel pit. An athletic woman, Sherburne could often be seen jogging along Lakeshore Drive with her husband and their two Afghan hounds. The Sherburnes were avid canoeists and regularly led groups of students into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, north of Aurora. She was fortyish, had short black hair, and despite her vaguely Hispanic features, spoke with a flat, nasal accent that pinned her upbringing to somewhere in the heart of the Wisconsin dairy land. In addition to her duties as the school psychologist, she coached the girls’ softball team.

  “Cork.” She stood up from her desk and reached out to shake his hand.

  “I probably should have made an appointment, Juanita. I’m wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes.”

  “About Annie, I assume.”

  “Annie?”

  “Those slipping grades. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  “Should I be concerned?” Cork said.

  The office was spare, neat. Tan filing cabinets lined the walls, and above them hung photographs of the teams she’d coached over the last five years. Behind her, the window opened toward the west where, visible beyond a line of white birch, stood the tall conveyor of North Star Aggregate’s gravel pit.

  Cork waited until the woman took her seat, then he sat down, too.

  “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, Cork. She’s a little distracted these days. I see it on the ball field, too. I’ve just chalked it up to normal teenage stuff. You know, boys, social status, boys. Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “She just started dating Damon Fielding.”

  “Damon? Very nice. Well, there you go. I wouldn’t worry unless her grades don’t rebound, but I believe they will. Annie’s not a frivolous young woman. She’s serious in the things she cares about.”

  “Used to be just sports and religion,” Cork said.

  “If you’d like, I’ll talk to her about it, see if I can get her to focus a little more on her studies. And her pitching.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”