“You can hardly breathe,” she said, as if she’d read his thoughts. “That’s how I felt every day I lived here.”
“When was that?”
“A long time ago.” She tapped her ash. “That’s how I knew about Rosemount. I was born in Iowa. A town called Winterset. You know Winterset?”
“No.”
“Birthplace of John Wayne. He changed his name, too.” She took a long draw on her cigarette and appraised Cork through the veil of her exhaled smoke. “Rose says you think Fletcher might have had something to do with Charlotte’s murder. I don’t know you, but Rose thinks a lot of you, and I think a lot of Rose. So I’m going to set you straight on a few things. I hope it does some good.”
She fell silent. She was quiet for so long Cork began to think she’d changed her mind. Somewhere on the other side of the buildings, the chain saw started up again and droned on like one crazy cicada.
“It was a long and, believe me, unpleasant road from Winterset to Las Vegas. It doesn’t matter how it happened, but I ended up supplying very rich men with very young, pretty, powerless girls. The streets of Vegas are full of runaways, kids thinking that with all that money floating around, there has to be a way to grab a little for themselves. It’s the lights, too, and the sun. The kids, they’re just waiting to be preyed on.”
“Charlotte was one of them?”
“That wasn’t her real name, of course. She told me it was Maria, but I’m almost sure that was a lie. She was the brightest. The one with the most promise. She had class. I guess I saw some of myself in her. I don’t know what was true about her. She told me she was from St. Louis, that she’d gone to Catholic school there. Wealthy family, she said, but she hated them. Her mother especially. Her father started having sex with her when she was pretty young, and the mother turned her back on it. That part I’d guess is true. Old story with a lot of the street kids.
“She became the exclusive property of a regular client, a man named Frankie Vicente, well connected with the mob. He treated her special. Bought her things. Maria fell in love with the bastard. As much as a fifteen-year-old can fall in love with anybody. I tried to warn her, told her to be careful. I’d known Frankie a long time. He was handsome, charming. But he wasn’t a man capable of love. If you crossed him, he became a sadistic animal.”
She closed her eyes. The cigarette burned so low between her fingers Cork thought it would sear her. She must have felt the heat. She let it fall into the grass and crushed the ember under the toe of her shoe. Immediately, she reached into her purse for the pack of Pall Malls.
“Eventually Maria learned the truth about him. The hard way. She tried to get away. Ended up on the street in Phoenix. I don’t know how he tracked her there, but he did. Sent his goons. They brought her back. Frankie beat her. Broke her ribs. Nobody leaves Frankie unless Frankie wants them to leave.”
“She didn’t go to the police? You didn’t?”
She looked at him for a moment with contempt, then understood. “That’s right. You were a cop. Well, the cops in Las Vegas are different. Frankie and his people own them.”
She lit another cigarette and clouded the air in front of her.
Then suddenly the tears began to flow. She wiped at them with her free hand.
“Have you ever been scared, Cork? Desperate? I mean so scared and so desperate that you couldn’t see any way out of something? You know how many times I thought about killing myself, and maybe Maria, too, just ending the misery for both of us. But I was too weak for that. So I mostly kept myself in an alcoholic stupor and let things happen.
“Then Maria did something that angered him. I don’t even know what. He hit her with a whiskey bottle, the son of a bitch. Crushed her cheekbone, disfigured her horribly. Of course, he paid for the best plastic surgeon money could buy.”
“Fletcher Kane,” Cork said.
“Yes, Fletcher. Frankie told me to take care of it. Maria and I flew to California several times to consult with him. He was wonderful. Patient, kind. But hurt, too, you could see it. Over time, seeing him, listening to him, I trusted him. He was such a funny-looking man, but he seemed to have a good heart.”
“You still think that?”
“Let me finish. Away from Vegas, I began to think about going back to that life, and I didn’t like the idea. I didn’t like the idea of Maria going back to Frankie. I didn’t know what to do. I finally confessed everything to Fletcher, and he suggested a way he could help. He used a computer to show us how Maria would look after he was finished with the surgery. It was different, but still nice. He said if we changed her hair color, too, Frankie would never recognize her. And he said he would help find a place for us to hide.
“I know men. I knew that there was more to all this than his good heart. I didn’t care. It was a way out. Maria, she finally understood about Frankie, and she was scared of him. So we agreed. The whole process took several months. We rented a condo not far from the clinic. Frankie never once visited. The son of a bitch didn’t want to see her until she was pretty again.
“After the procedure, Fletcher set us up in another place, in Ventura. He let a few weeks pass so no one would connect our disappearance to him, then we all moved to Aurora.”
“Did you know he’d altered Maria to look like his own daughter?”
“I knew he’d had a daughter who died. I didn’t know what she looked like until we’d come to Aurora and I found some photographs he kept in a box.”
“Did you know how she died?”
“Not until Rose told me that you’d gone to California and why.”
“What did you think when you found out?”
“That you were wrong in believing Fletcher might have been responsible for Maria’s death. Fletcher is not an easy man, but he’s no murderer.”
“How do you know?”
“He was with me the night Maria went missing. I was drunk, but not enough to pass out. We both went to bed around two. But you probably knew that from my statement. You just didn’t believe it.”
That was true.
“Did Maria know about Charlotte?” Cork asked.
“No. Fletcher didn’t want her to know. I think he was concerned that she wouldn’t understand or that it might scare her. I don’t know, maybe he was afraid of letting her in on the secret, afraid she might tell someone.”
“How did you feel about him using her that way?”
“We’d been used by men in a lot of ways, Maria and me. It didn’t seem so terrible. At first. We all tried to be the family Fletcher imagined. But he didn’t want Maria just to look like his daughter. He wanted her to be Charlotte. He told her how to dress, how to talk, what to say. He tried to get her to do things with him, the kind of things he’d done with his daughter. Biking, skiing, tennis. He was always correcting her. Sometimes he got short with her. She had a large birthmark on her hip, shaped a little like Florida. He wouldn’t let her wear a bikini or a high-cut suit because it might show. He even suggested she have it removed, because Charlotte didn’t have a blemish like that. He never understood, or maybe just never accepted that no matter how Maria looked and acted, she would never be Charlotte, and he didn’t know how to love who she was. She understood that, I think, even though she didn’t understand why.” She shook her head. “Maria tried so hard to please him. She needed to be loved. Eventually she tried to get him to love her in the same way her father had. She came on to Fletcher, tried to use her body to get his love.”
She closed her eyes, as if the memory or the talking exhausted her.
“What happened?”
“Fletcher was disgusted. Maria was confused. I was drunk. After that, he kept her at arm’s length, but he watched her all the time. He got a little scary that way. Maria began to say she felt like a prisoner. The silence was suffocating. Toward the end, Maria was pretty messed up. I wanted her to see someone. You know, a therapist or something. But Fletcher wouldn’t allow it. Sometimes I thought about taking Maria and leaving, but I had no
money. And I was scared to death that if we left, Frankie would find us. Or Fletcher. He’d become so strange. Disgusted with Maria, but desperate not to lose her.”
“Fletcher never did anything about Maria’s advances?”
“You mean sleep with her? No. Believe me, I would have known. Maybe I wouldn’t have done anything about it, but I would have known.”
“Why did you stay? I mean after Maria disappeared?”
“I hoped she might turn up at the door one day, and I wanted to be there when that happened. I never had a daughter, and I wasn’t any good at playing mother, but I cared about Maria. Once she was buried, there was no reason to stay. Fletcher was actually quite generous. Money is something I don’t have to worry about now.” She stood up and looked back at the Center. “Rosemount is for women considering a religious life. You’ve got to be wondering how someone like me could ever think they might be able to serve God.”
“I’m not thinking that at all,” Cork said.
She dropped her cigarette and crushed it out. “I thought that Fletcher was offering a chance at a new life for me, for Maria. I thought that maybe we could all escape our pasts. I was wrong. There’s only one way to start a new life, and that’s by facing the truth. I don’t know what’s ahead. God hasn’t shown me yet, but for the first time in my life, I’m not afraid.”
She couldn’t seem to decide whether to sit or stand. She began to pace.
“I’ve told you all of this because I owe Fletcher something. In his way, he tried to help. I’m hoping that now you know the truth, you’ll be a little more compassionate toward him. I pray for him all the time. I know what it is to be lost. I think of him alone in that big, awful house, and I’m sorry for him. If it hadn’t been for Rose, I never would have made it through all that.”
“Did you tell Rose the truth?”
“I told her nothing. I wanted to. I knew she wouldn’t judge me, but I just couldn’t do it. She knew something was terribly wrong, though, and she did her best to be a friend. She helped me to believe there’s good in me. And the sisters here, they’re helping me, too. I know I still have a long way to go, but I believe I’m on the right road.” She looked at Cork. “I don’t know if Solemn Winter Moon is responsible for Maria’s death—”
“He isn’t.”
“Either way, I’ll pray for him. It’s the best I can do.”
Cork waited a bit to see if there was something more she wanted to say, but apparently there wasn’t. He had the information he’d come for, so he got up to leave.
“I think I’ll stay here awhile,” Cordelia Diller said. “Give my love to Rose.”
Cork walked to his Bronco. When he looked back, she was sitting on the bench again, a thin ribbon of cigarette smoke unraveling in the air above her.
He drove north for a couple of hours but was too tired to drive the final 250 miles to Aurora. He stopped in Red Wing and called Jo from a Super 8 motel to let her know he’d be home the next day. He ate a pretty good burger at a place called the Bierstube and drank a couple of cold Leinenkugels. It was dark by the time he came out, but he wasn’t ready to turn in. He drove to a park on the Mississippi River, got out, and walked.
It was a clear night, the sky full of stars, the moon not yet risen. The river was a wide sweep of black with the far side lost in darkness. Cork stood in the quiet under a cottonwood on the bank.
Even after he’d talked to Cordelia Diller, he’d considered the possibility that Kane might have killed the second Charlotte because he couldn’t control her, couldn’t make of her the daughter he’d tried to resurrect. But unless Cordelia Diller had lied—and Cork didn’t believe she had—Fletcher Kane had an airtight alibi. So Cork had to accept that he’d been wrong in his thinking. Although the manner in which the man had used Maria was unconscionable, of the particular sins Cork had ascribed to him, Kane was innocent.
He thought about the desperate minutes on the cold ice long ago in January when he’d been lost in the whiteout and the gray figure that had kept itself just out of his vision and reach had led him to the safety of his snowmobile. He’d sensed that it was Charlotte, and at the same time, it wasn’t Charlotte. Now he understood. Somehow, the girl Maria had reached out to him, saved him. But why? Because he’d tried to save her, and like her had become lost? Or was it that she wanted him to find her killer, that she simply wanted justice?
If that was the case, there was a problem, because he had no suspects left. He believed the killer wasn’t Fletcher Kane, nor was it Arne Soderberg, or Lyla. He still believed in Solemn’s innocence. The crime was old and cold now. Cork wondered if this was one that would go unsolved. Sometimes you just had to accept it.
But not when the dead reached out to you. Not when you knew they demanded justice.
Far to the east, the moon lay just below the horizon, and its glow lit the sky like a distant fire. All around Cork, the night was still black.
39
HE WAS ON THE ROAD AT DAWN, and hit the outskirts of Aurora by eleven. The first thing he did was go to Jo’s office. He closed the door behind him and she stepped into his arms.
“It feels like it’s been forever,” he said, drinking in the scent of her, Dentyne and the faint suggestion of Sunflower cologne.
“You look tired,” she said.
“Strange motel rooms, hard beds.”
“But you’re home now.”
“How’s Solemn?”
“I haven’t seen him since he left the jail. I talked with Dot yesterday. She’s changed her telephone number. Too many people calling, saying cruel things. Some threats. Even if the charges are dropped, it won’t make Solemn innocent in people’s thinking. Are you going to tell Cy Borkmann what you found out about Fletcher?”
“Enough to clear his name.” He laid his cheek on her shoulder. “You were right, Jo. If you’re not careful, all you see in someone is what you’re looking for. I probably ought to apologize.”
She took his head in her hands and kissed him. Her lips were the best thing he’d tasted in days.
“You’re a pretty smart woman, you know?” he told her.
She laughed gently. “I’ve been trying to make that clear to you for years.”
He disentangled himself from her embrace. “I’m going to see Fletcher.”
“Good luck, sweetheart.”
Blue thunderheads climbed quickly out of the west as Cork turned onto North Point Road. He drove slowly past the Soderberg house. Lyla’s PT Cruiser was there, as well as Marion Griswold’s mud-spattered jeep. Arne’s BMW was gone. Cork had heard that Soderberg had taken up residence in the family cabin on Lake Vermilion and had gone back to work for Big Mike. He wondered about Tiffany, how she was doing in all this.
As he pulled up to the old Parrant estate and got out, thunder rolled out of the distance. The wind picked up, and Cork could smell the coming storm in the air. It was a good smell, one that in his experience promised something cleansing and refreshing.
He knocked on the door. Almost immediately, Fletcher Kane opened it. He greeted Cork with an angry look and the barrel of a Remington shotgun.
“You’ve got to be the world’s stupidest man,” Kane said.
The Remington scared Cork. “I’m going to turn around right now, Fletcher, and just walk away.”
“It’s that easy for you? I don’t think so.”
Cork decided not to move. “I talked with Constance. And with Glory down in Iowa.”
“What gives you the right to pry into my life?”
“I know the truth now. And I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Kane said. “Sorry for what?”
“That a lot of bad things happened to you that you didn’t deserve. I’m sorry that Charlotte’s dead. And Maria. I’m sorry that I thought you might have been responsible, because I know now how much you loved your daughters.”
“Daughters?” He frowned. “There was only Charlotte.”
“I know you would never have done anything to hurt her.”
>
The blue-black clouds had gobbled up the sun. The deep boom of thunder shook the porch. Cork waited. Kane stared at him. The black eye at the end of the rifle barrel stared at him, too. Cork tried to think if there was anything more he should say.
“Get out of here,” Kane finally spit.
Without another word, Cork backed off the porch and down the stairs. He moved at an even pace, never taking his eyes off Kane. Big drops of rain thudded onto the ground around him and thumped against his skin. By the time he reached his Bronco, the rain was a torrent. He got in, wiped the drips from his face, and carefully left the drive. The whole time, Fletcher Kane followed him with the shotgun. When he was safely away, Cork finally let himself breathe.
Cork headed north out of town. The storm passed quickly, leaving a steaming vapor rising from the pavement. He turned onto a graveled county road and continued for several miles before he came to the place where the split trunk birch marked the trail to Henry Meloux’s cabin. He left the Bronco parked at the side of the road and began the long walk in.
Half an hour later, he crossed the ruddy water of Wine Creek. On the far side, the air was still. Shafts of sunlight broke through the high branches like boards shoved down out of heaven to create a sanctuary. Whenever Cork entered the deep woods, he knew he was stepping into a sacred place. This was much the same way he’d felt as a child entering the church. It was not just the peace, although it was truly peaceful. It was more than the incense of evergreen all around him and the choir of birds in the branches above and the cushion of the pine needles like a thick carpet under his feet. There was a spirit here so huge it humbled the human heart. The Anishinaabe blood that ran through his body might have been the reason Cork felt this way, but he didn’t think so. He believed that any man or woman who walked there without malice would feel the same.
He found Henry Meloux sitting on the ground, cross-legged, in the sunlight in front of his cabin. Walleye, his old yellow hound, lay in the shade not far away. Meloux held a small pine branch in one hand and a Green River knife in the other. He was carefully working the wood with the sharp blade. Walleye slowly got to his feet and shuffled out to meet the visitor, but Meloux seemed not to notice.