Blood Hollow

  As he stood at the threshold, Cork became aware of a strong odor all around him that was out of place among the fresh scent of spring pines.

  Kerosene.

  “Fletcher,” he called toward the black inside.

  He heard movement, then a metallic squeak. In the dark of the room, a small circle of glowing red rotated into sight. Cork interpreted the squeak to come from the mechanism of a swivel rocker. He was pretty sure the red glow came from the end of a lit cigar.

  “Fletcher?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Glory asked me to come. She’s worried.”

  “Tell her I’m touched. Now go away.”

  “I’m not leaving until we talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you, O’Connor.”

  Kane’s speech was slurred, and despite what Glory said about her brother not drinking, it was clear to Cork that’s exactly what Fletcher had been doing. The whole situation struck Cork as odd. Glory, who drank, was sober. Fletcher, who didn’t, was drunk.

  “I know how hard this must be for you, Fletcher,” he said.

  “You have no idea.”

  “I have daughters. I know it would just about kill me to lose one.”

  “But you haven’t lost one.”

  “I know you loved Charlotte. And that’s why I know you’re going to do the right thing for her.”

  “The right thing?” The tip of his cigar bloomed red as he took a deep draw amid the strong odor of kerosene that was everywhere.

  “Do you know why Arne requested an autopsy?”

  “All I heard was that he wanted to butcher my girl.”

  “In situations like this, an autopsy is almost automatic.”

  “Situations like what?”

  “A death in which drinking might have played a part. In Charlotte’s case, there’s probably something even more compelling.”

  Although he could not see Kane clearly, he could see the dark shape and how still it was.

  “They found some food wrappers and a beer bottle next to Charlotte’s body. An autopsy could probably tell the sheriff if it was Charlotte who did the eating and drinking.”

  “What do you mean if it was Charlotte?” He thought about it. “Somebody was with her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then why didn’t the son of a bitch do anything to help?”

  “I suppose there are several possibilities.”

  A long silence, then Kane struck on the darkest of the implications. “Somebody wanted her dead?”

  “That’s one of the possibilities.”

  “Who?”

  “A question the autopsy could help answer.”

  Cork watched the glowing ember descend, and he heard the tiny squeal of the tobacco as Fletcher Kane ground out the cigar in an ashtray. A moment later, a small lamp came on.

  Kane sat in a rocker. Over the years, he’d grown to resemble his father, a man of elongated proportions and bug eyes. He put Cork in mind of a giant grasshopper.

  “I want to be alone, O’Connor.” When Cork didn’t move, Kane said, “You can tell Glory I’m fine.”

  Cork walked to his Bronco, but he didn’t get in. He stood watching Valhalla, worried that it might yet go up in flames. In a few minutes, however, he saw Kane at a window, a tall, bent figure, staring down at the lake. Kane’s mouth moved, speaking words Cork couldn’t hear. Below him, as if in reply, the lake ice moaned.

  7

  CORCORAN O’CONNOR was three-quarters Irish and one-quarter Ojibwe. Except for a few years in college, and as a cop in Chicago after that, he’d lived his whole life in the town of his birth. He’d been raised Catholic, baptized at St. Agnes, received his first communion and was confirmed there. He’d served as an altar boy, sung in the choir, spent his share of time in the confessional. Being Catholic had been important to him once. For several years, however, he’d refused to set foot in church, and didn’t give a hoot about the commandment of keeping the Sabbath holy.

  On that April Sunday afternoon, Cork stood at the frozen edge of Iron Lake with Sam’s Place at his back. The sun was high, its warmth soaking into the earth, melting the ice that still held the deeper soil prisoner. The air was laced with a fragrance that augured spring. He’d come with his tools and with half a mind to work on the old Quonset hut, but he knew he wouldn’t disturb the peace of that afternoon. Even though he was at odds with God, he couldn’t ignore the fact that on such a day there was a sacred feeling to everything.

  Part of it was the place itself, that small parcel of land Sam Winter Moon had deeded to Cork. It was bounded on the north by the Bear Paw Brewery and on the south by a copse of poplars that held the ruins of an old foundry. West lay the tracks of Burlington Northern and beyond that the streets on the outskirts of Aurora. East, below the sun and beneath a thinning layer of ice, lay the deep, clear water of Iron Lake. There may have been places more beautiful, but none in Cork’s thinking that were more special. Whenever he stood on that little stretch of shoreline, he could feel Sam Winter Moon’s spirit there.

  Sam had been his father’s good friend. When Liam O’Connor died, shot dead in the line of duty as Tamarack County sheriff, Sam Winter Moon had stepped in and guided fourteen-year-old Corcoran O’Connor into manhood. Sam had done it without fanfare, as if the fatherless were the natural concern of every man. Summers in high school, Cork had worked at Sam’s Place, learning his way around the grill, the state laws governing cleanliness, the rules of simple bookkeeping. Suffusing all their time together was the spirit of Sam Winter Moon’s own manhood, a quiet strength couched within a gentle humor that was decidedly Ojibwe in its sensibility. In those days, despite the death of his father, Cork still practiced his Catholicism. The murder of Sam Winter Moon, a brutal killing for which Cork blamed both himself and God, had been the first of a series of tragedies that had hardened Cork’s heart against the spirit of his baptism and the church of his confirmation.

  Still, on such a day as this, standing at the edge of Iron Lake with the sweet, distant breath of spring breaking over his face, Cork couldn’t help but feel gratitude. He remembered the words his Grandmother Dilsey, a full-blood Ojibwe, had once taught him. Great Spirit! We honor you this day, and we thank you for life and for all things. Mother Earth! We honor you this day, and we thank you for life and for all things. You are our mother. You feed us, you clothe us, you shelter us, and you comfort us. For this we thank you and honor you.

  It seemed to Cork to cover things as well as any prayer of thanksgiving he’d ever heard.

  The sound of an approaching car brought him around. Jo’s Toyota mounted the grade over the railroad tracks and pulled into the gravel parking lot. Jo wasn’t alone. Dorothy Winter Moon was with her.

  In appearance, Dot Winter Moon reminded Cork a good deal of her uncle Sam Winter Moon. She was tall, solid, her hair black, but with a bit of red in it that came out in the proper light, like a second personality. She wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt with the sleeves cut away, and her arms were muscular.

  When she was sixteen, Dot had left the Iron Lake Reservation and headed south to the Twin Cities. She came back four years later with a boy child, her maiden name, and no inclination to explain herself. She’d done her best raising her son, Solemn, but the early years had been tough going. She wasn’t very successful at holding on to a job, mainly because she was hardheaded, not particularly customer oriented, and didn’t believe in apologies. She didn’t ask for them, didn’t give them. She was scrupulously honest and forthright, however, and she expected the same of others. She finally found her niche working on a road crew for the county. The men on the crew gave her a hard time at first, a woman on male turf, but Dot gave as good as she got, and then some, and it wasn’t long before she was one of the boys. Eventually, she ended up driving an International dump truck spring through fall with a plow on the front in winter. She wasn’t a striking woman, but there were probably men who found her attractive, in a hard sort of way. She had a wide, sun-dark
ened face, a strong slender body, eyes that over the years had taken on a perpetual squint from working outside.

  Cork put down his saw and smiled at the women. “Hey there, Dot. Been a while.”

  “Cork.” Dot reached out and shook his hand so hard the bones grated.

  “What’s up?”

  “Cops been at my place,” Dot answered. “Looking for Solemn. Sons of bitches wouldn’t say why.”

  “Was Solemn there?”

  “Haven’t seen him for a couple of days. I told them that.”

  “Has he been in any trouble lately?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “They have a warrant?”

  “No.”

  “How many of them?”

  “Three.”

  Jo said, “My first thought was that since they’ve found Charlotte’s body, they’re just interviewing everyone who was at the party the night she disappeared.”

  “Maybe,” Cork said. But he thought, not three of them.

  “It would be good to know for sure,” Jo said.

  “Did you call Arne?”

  She nodded. “I tried. He wasn’t available. No one at the Department was able to offer me an explanation.”

  “You’re sure you don’t have any idea what this might be about, Dot?”

  For all her strength, Dorothy Winter Moon looked suddenly vulnerable.

  If it hadn’t been for Sam Winter Moon, young Solemn would often have been left to fend for himself while his mother worked to make a living. Summers, Solemn hung out at Sam’s Place helping with the things that were within a small boy’s capability. He cleaned the grounds, swept the Quonset hut, Windexed the windows. When he wasn’t helping, he was fishing from the dock on Sam’s property or swimming in the lake. Whenever Cork stopped by to pass the time with his old friend Sam, Solemn was there, a thin boy, good-looking, who didn’t smile much but who loved to tell knock-knock jokes that Sam never failed to appreciate.

  Still, there was a dark side to Solemn, even then. Sam knew it. There was something that came into the boy and filled him with anger, a hot, bubbling churn that put fire in his eyes and gave his movements a fast, jerky quality like bursts of flame. Eventually, Sam could tell when his great-nephew was ready to erupt. On those days, he sent young Solemn onto the lake in a rowboat to fish alone, and told him not to come back until he had a full stringer of sunnies. The solitude, the warm sun, maybe just the passage of time itself usually opened young Solemn up and let loose whatever it was that had entered him. By the time he came back and tied up at the dock, the dark look was gone, and the boy who loved Sam and loved knock-knock jokes was fully returned.

  Unfortunately, Sam wasn’t always around when Solemn went into one of his moods, and his great-nephew often got into trouble. Fights, mostly. Public disturbances. Cork, who was sheriff then, often had young Solemn in his office awaiting the arrival of Dot or Sam. In those days, the transgressions were usually minor. Solemn wasn’t a liar; he never denied his guilt. He wasn’t a thief; he never stole anything. He was, in his dark moments, simply ruled by an impulse to strike out, and when the moment had passed, he was full of contrition. Generally, an apology would do the trick, or sometimes if property had been involved, a bit of time and labor served in repairing the damage. Solemn never tried to duck his sentence.

  The spring Solemn turned sixteen, Sam Winter Moon died, died in Cork’s arms with his chest opened up from a shotgun blast. It happened at a place called Burke’s Landing during a tense conflict between whites and Anishinaabeg over fishing rights on Iron Lake. Without Sam’s firm, loving hand to hold him in place, Solemn spun off into space. The trouble he got into became more serious. He became a kid with an unhealthy reputation.

  Cork knew the boy needed help. He remembered only too well how Sam Winter Moon had come into his own life after his father died and had guided him through the long journey of his grief. Solemn needed someone to step forward in the same way. That someone should have been Cork. But Sam’s death had nearly destroyed Corcoran O’Connor. Both the whites and the Anishinaabeg blamed him for the bloodshed at Burke’s Landing. Cork blamed himself, too, so it was pretty much unanimous. After that, for a while, his life fell apart. He lost his job as sheriff and his self-respect. He nearly lost his wife and family as well. He viewed Solemn’s plight from the distance of his own isolation and suffering. Although he knew he should help, he’d been unable to scrape himself off the bottom of his own dark hole, and Solemn was left to find his way alone.

  Cork studied Dorothy Winter Moon, and she flinched under his stare.

  “Why do they want to talk to Solemn, Dot?”

  “Used to be I’d know. Used to be he’d tell me when shit was going to hit the fan. Not anymore. He’s been gone for the last two days, vanished, then the sheriff’s people show. I thought it might be serious this time, so I took the day off and looked for him. Then I went to Jo.”

  Dot had often turned to Jo when Solemn’s impulses put him on the wrong side of the sheriff’s people. For many years, Jo had represented both the Iron Lake Reservation and the Ojibwe people in court actions. This hadn’t endeared her to the citizens of Aurora, but the Ojibwe trusted her as they would one of their own. So far, Jo had always been able to negotiate Solemn’s freedom in court.

  Jo said, “I was hoping you might use your influence to get a few answers, Cork.”

  “My influence is limited these days.”

  “Would you see what you can do?”

  “Sure.” As Cork gathered his tools, he said, “I’ve got to warn you, Dot, this may be all about Charlotte Kane, and it could be serious. Wasn’t Solemn her boyfriend for a while last fall?”

  “They broke up.”

  “And then she disappeared. And her body was found a few days ago, and now Solemn’s taken off. The police may see a connection.”

  “But it was a snowmobile accident. Everybody says.”

  “He’s just thinking like a cop, Dot,” Jo said. “Look, I’ll drop you back at your car, then why don’t you go on home. When I hear from Cork, I’ll give you a call. If Solemn shows up in the meantime, or if he contacts you, let me know.”

  Dot nodded. It was obvious that the possibility Cork raised had shaken her. She walked toward Jo’s Toyota with her head down, staring at the gravel under her feet.

  Jo asked Cork quietly, “Do you really think that might be it?”

  He shrugged. “Like you said, just trying to think like a cop.”

  When Charlotte Kane moved to Aurora with her father, everyone remarked on her beauty, which she must have inherited from her mother. They remarked on her manners, her reserve (very Kane-like), her intelligence. And when, in her senior year of high school, she began to run with Solemn Winter Moon, they remarked on her disastrous choice in a young man.

  For several weeks, beginning with the homecoming dance in early November when they were first seen together as a couple, until around Christmas, when word filtered through town that it was all over, they were a hot gossip item. She, the shy beauty; he, the bad boy off the rez. She, the kindling; he, the fire. At nineteen, Solemn had a reputation not just for his impulsive behavior but also for his conquests. His hair was panther black, and he wore it long, so that it hung down his back like a moon-lit river. He was lean, good-looking, with a brooding Brandoesque quality to his face. As far as Cork knew, Dot had never said a word about Solemn’s father, but it was clear that something more than Indian blood ran through his veins. Solemn used all of this, the good looks, the mystery, the lure of being part of a culture that to whites was mythic and forbidden, to hook and reel in the attractive bored tourist women deserted by their husbands who spent whole days away fishing Iron Lake. No complaints had ever been lodged against Solemn, but the town knew him as a kind of Ojibwe Romeo, and a lot of folks were disappointed when a girl as polite and sensible as Charlotte fell for the Indian’s line. If there were any evidence concerning her death that pointed at Solemn Winter Moon, Cork feared many in the town would re
nder a verdict of guilty long before a trial ever took place.

  When he arrived at the sheriff’s department, he found Deputy Duane Pender on desk duty. Pender told him that Arne Soderberg had been in earlier but wasn’t anymore. That was all Pender would tell him.

  “Do you expect him back?”

  “Can’t tell you that.”

  “You don’t know?”

  Pender didn’t reply, just gazed at Cork with a face stolid as a guard at Buckingham Palace.

  “All right. Then how about telling me why Arne had people out at Dorothy Winter Moon’s place at sunup looking for Solemn.”

  “You’d have to talk to the sheriff about that.”

  “And he’s not in.”

  “Now you’re getting the picture.”

  Behind Pender, Randy Gooding came into view. He was carrying a stack of papers, and when he saw Cork he stopped and listened to the exchange. Cork figured it probably wouldn’t have made a big difference if Gooding had been on duty at the desk. Probably, they were all under instructions to keep quiet. The difference would have been that Gooding wouldn’t have played it like a game.

  “Any way I might be able to get word to the sheriff that I’d like to talk to him?”

  “Can’t think of one.”

  Cork glanced at his watch. “Any possibility he’d be at home?”

  “I can’t help you there.”

  Cork saw Randy Gooding offer the ghost of a nod.

  “Thanks, Duane,” Cork said. “You’ve been more of a help than you know.”

  Pender’s face took on a slightly troubled look as he considered how this could possibly be.

  The Soderbergs lived behind a red brick wall. The wall stood only waist high, but it made a statement. Every year, once the earth warmed enough to welcome new roots, the yard behind the wall became a showcase of annuals that were ordered by Arne’s wife, Lyla, and delivered by the truckload. Lyla always did something different—new flowers, new arrangements, complex and beautiful patterns. The grounds around the Soderbergs’ big, brick Tudor were so perfect by summer that even the birds knew better than to crap on Lyla’s lawn.