Mercy Falls

  “I was hoping you would answer.” The voice was low and certain, and she knew it instantly. “I need to see you.”

  “What for?”

  “To talk.”

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  “Please. Just to talk.”

  “We can talk on the phone.”

  “There are things you need to know. For your own good. Please.”

  She closed her eyes and knew even as she made her decision that it held all the potential for disaster. “All right. My office in the Aurora Professional Building. In fifteen minutes.”

  “Thank you.”

  She went to the living room, where the children sat among their scattered books and notebooks and pencils.

  “I have to go to my office for a while. You guys okay?”

  “Sure, Mom,” Jenny said. “A client?”

  “Yes.” The lie felt like something piercing her heart.

  The rain had ended in the afternoon, but a dreary wetness lingered. It was after seven, the sky a dismal gray that was sliding into early dark. The radio in her Camry was on, tuned to NPR, All Things Considered, but she wasn’t listening. She turned onto Oak Street, pulled to the curb, and stopped half a block from her office. She sat with her hands tight on the steering wheel, staring through the windshield at an old tennis shoe abandoned in the street. It looked like a small animal cringing in the beam of her headlights.

  She closed her eyes and whispered, “Christ, what am I doing?”

  She heard the car approaching, the whish of the tires on wet pavement. A black Cadillac passed and half a block farther turned into the parking lot of the Aurora Professional Building. She took a deep breath and followed.

  When she parked beside the Cadillac, he stepped out.

  “This way,” she said, and went to a side door where she used her key.

  The hallway was quiet and dimly lit, but from somewhere she couldn’t see came the sound of a buffer going over a floor.

  “Cleaning staff,” she said, more to herself than to him.

  She led the way to her office, unlocked the door, stood aside to let him pass. Closing the door behind her, she walked to her inner office and flipped on the light. She turned around. He stood close to her, smelling of the wet autumn air.

  “What do you want, Ben?”

  He wore a light-brown turtleneck that perfectly matched his eyes and hair and pressed against his chest and shoulders in a way that made it seem as if the muscles beneath it were about to burst through.

  He said, “A very long time ago I built a wall across my life. There was everything before you and everything after.”

  “Very poetic,” she said. “And what? The wall crumbles now, our lives suddenly merge again? Ben, you left me, remember? How’s your wife, by the way?”

  “She’s dead, Jo.”

  “Oh.” She felt the knot of her anger loosen just a little. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve been a widower for a year. But even before that we were…” He shrugged in his tight, expensive sweater. “The marriage was over years ago. It was never much of a marriage to begin with.”

  She slipped behind her desk, put the big piece of polished oak between her and Benjamin Jacoby. “I’m sorry your life didn’t work out the way you’d hoped, but I put you behind me a long time ago. I went on with my own life. I’ve been very happy.”

  He came to the desk. “You never thought of me?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “It’s a big world, Jo. It’s unthinkable to me that fate would bring us together again without a reason.”

  “Fate?” She laughed. “Ben, you never left anything to chance. How long have you known I was here?”

  He looked deeply into her eyes. “I always knew it. I just never did anything about it. Then one night, we’re having dinner at my father’s house, the whole family. Eddie’s talking about this casino deal he’s working on in Minnesota, going on about the gorgeous lawyer he was dealing with. I ask him where this casino is. And bingo—Aurora. I don’t know. With Eddie coming here, it made a difference somehow, connected us. Since then I’ve often thought about using him as an excuse to contact you, but I’m not egocentric or stupid enough to believe there could ever be anything between us again. I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for what happened to Eddie. I don’t have any desire to complicate your life.”

  “You can’t complicate it, Ben. You’re not even a part of it.”

  “I’m not looking for that, Jo. My life hasn’t been perfect, but it was the one I chose, and it’s had its advantages.” He moved his hand across the desk but stopped far short of touching her. “You haven’t asked why I left you.”

  “It was pretty obvious. You were married within six months.”

  “The roads we take aren’t always of our own choosing.”

  “What? She was pregnant?”

  “There are other compelling reasons to marry.”

  “Love?”

  “In my whole life, Jo, I’ve loved one woman. I didn’t marry her.”

  “I don’t want to go on with this conversation. But I do want to know why the charade? Why pretend that my being here was such a surprise?”

  “I was afraid that I’d scare you. I know how crazy all this must seem.”

  Jo shook her head. “I haven’t heard you say one thing so far that sounded real to me.”

  He looked genuinely hurt. “The wall, Jo, that was real. You did divide my life. For a while, you absolutely defined it. I’m not saying that I’ve thought of you every day for the last twenty years, but whenever I think about a time when I was happy, I think about the summer with you.” He seemed to be at the edge of defeat. “Look, I’m in town for only a couple of days. Could I…” He faltered. “Could I ask a favor? A small one, I promise.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’d like to meet your family.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d love to see the life you’ve made for yourself.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Only you and I know the truth about us. It wouldn’t be awkward, I promise. And maybe it would help with closure.”

  “After twenty years you need closure?”

  “All right. Then just to satisfy my own damn curiosity. An hour of your time and your family’s. Is it really so much to ask?”

  “Yes, it is. I can’t believe you don’t understand that.”

  “There’s so much you don’t understand. So much you never will.” He put up his empty hands. “I guess that’s it.”

  “You said there were things I needed to know, for my own good.”

  “I was mistaken. They were things I needed to know, and now I do.”

  He turned and walked to the anteroom. At the door that opened onto the hallway, he turned back, his hand on the knob. He took a look around him, at the ordinary room where Fran Cooper worked and Jo’s clients waited. “Do you like this?”

  “I love it,” she said.

  His eyes held a look of wistful sadness. “I wish I could say that about what I do. I wish I could have said it, ever. Good night, Jo.” He went out and closed the door behind him.

  She waited until the sound of his footsteps in the corridor had faded to nothing, then went back into her office, sat down, and put her hands over her face as if she were trying to hide behind a small, fragile fence.

  14

  THE BAR AT the Four Seasons was a big room with a stone fireplace and wide windows that overlooked Iron Lake. On sunny days, the view of the marina and beyond was stellar, row after row of boats at rest on blue water, framed by the sawtooth outline of pines. But at night there was only darkness outside the window glass, and what people saw then was the reflection of the fire and themselves, and the room seemed much smaller.

  Cork caught Augie Newsome in an idle moment, wiping down the bar. Newsome was a rubbery-looking man with a willowy body, long arms, and face like stretched putty. He wore Elvis Costello glasses and combed his hair in a gelle
d wave. He usually appeared to be on the brink of smiling, as if all the ironies of life were right in front of him and always amusing. Cork had known him a dozen years, ever since Newsome migrated up from the Twin Cities for reasons that only Cork and a very few others knew. During his first stint as sheriff, he’d given Newsome a break that had meant a difference in the kind of bars behind which the man spent his time.

  “Sheriff,” Newsome said brightly, wiping his way down the bar toward Cork. “What can I do you for?”

  Except for a couple seated at one of the tables near the fireplace, the bar was deserted. It was Thursday, the night before the weekenders descended. The locals called them 612ers, because the vast majority of the tourists and the nonresident landholders came from the Twin Cities where for years those three numbers had formed the prominent telephone area code.

  Cork said, “Ed Larson talked to you today.”

  “That he did. Asked about the dead guy out at Mercy Falls. Man, is that crazy or what? Right here in Aurora. Say, I understand Marsha Dross is doing fine. Glad to hear it. Her and Charlie Annala are pretty regular customers. Can I get you something?”

  “I just need a few answers, Augie. You told Larson that Edward Jacoby asked you where he might find a prostitute around here. Is that correct?”

  “He didn’t use the word prostitute, but that’s what he wanted.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him the lake was all the entertainment most folks needed up here. If it was a boat he was looking to rent, or fishing gear, I could point him in the right direction.”

  “Augie,” Cork said, leaning close so that his voice wouldn’t carry to the couple near the fireplace. “I’ve got a dead man on my hands. I need you to cut out the bullshit and help me here. Whose name did you give him?”

  Newsome looked pained that Cork didn’t believe him. “Sheriff, I—”

  “Augie, do I have to remind you about the incident in Yellow Lake?”

  “All right. I gave him one name and that was a few months ago. Krisane Olsen.”

  “Where’s she working these days?”

  “She hangs out at the casino.”

  “One name, last year, that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “He never asked again?”

  “He asked. I played dumb.”

  “Why?”

  “Talk to Krisane, you’ll understand.”

  “All right, Augie. Thanks.”

  “Guys like him, Sheriff, when they end up with their balls cut off, it’s not hard to figure why.”

  Cork gave him a puzzled look.

  “Talk to Krisane.”

  Augie Newsome walked down the bar to where a man in a Minnesota Twins T-shirt had just sat down on a stool.

  The Chippewa Grand Casino was a blaze of lights among the pine trees a quarter mile south of the town limits just off State Highway 1. Before the Iron Lake Ojibwe purchased the land and built the casino a few years earlier, the area had been a county park. The lot was packed with cars when Cork arrived. Even in the worst winter weather or in the black hours of morning when the rest of the county slept, the casino lot was never less than half full. That so many people felt compelled to empty their pockets, blithely or in desperation, had always baffled Cork. He’d been among the most skeptical when the casino had first been proposed, and while he knew that its success was a blessing both to the Anishinaabeg and to the economy of Tamarack County, there was something about the enterprise that felt like wolves feeding on sheep.

  He found Krisane Olsen sitting at the bar, smoking a cigarette, a glass of red wine on a napkin in front of her. She chatted with the bartender, Daniel Medina, a Shinnob from Leech Lake. Krisane wore a shiny lime-green dress with a hemline that barely covered her ass. There was gold, or more likely imitation gold, around her neck and wrists and dangling in big hoops from her earlobes. She was a small woman, nicely built, with cranberry-colored hair and a face done brightly to mask her fatigue. Days, she worked as a dog groomer. Nights, she worked even harder.

  Cork had changed out of his uniform before leaving his office, put on a blue flannel shirt, brown cords, a yellow windbreaker. When he wanted information, the uniform often presented a barrier. People would talk to Cork, but they clammed up in the official presence of the sheriff.

  “Evening, Krisane.” He took the stool beside her.

  “Oh Jesus.” She sent a cloud of cigarette smoke heavenward.

  “What’s she drinking, Dan?” Cork asked.

  “Merlot.”

  Cork pulled out his wallet. “Give her another on me and then give us some space, okay?”

  “Sure thing, Cork.”

  “What do you want?” Krisane said.

  “Information, that’s all.”

  “Right.”

  “Know a guy named Eddie Jacoby?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “A little shorter than me, dark hair, nice physique. From Chicago. Wears a gold ring on both of his pinkies.”

  “Never laid eyes on him.”

  Medina brought the glass of merlot. Cork laid a ten on the bar, told him to keep the change.

  When they were alone again, he said, “I’ve always been square with you, Kris. I know how it is when you’re a single parent trying to make ends meet, and as long as you’ve done business quietly and safely and no one complained, I haven’t bothered you. Isn’t that right?”

  “Whatever,” Krisane said. She ashed her cigarette in a star-shaped tray.

  “This is the deal. You play straight with me now or I’ll arrange to have an undercover vice officer follow every move you make.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “I just said I would.”

  “I’ve got a kid to worry about.”

  “Right now your biggest worry is me. Understand?” He turned on his stool and faced her directly. “Did you ever hook up with Edward Jacoby?”

  She stubbed out her cigarette, dug out a pack of Salems from the small beaded purse she carried, and fished out another smoke.

  “Well?”

  She lit the cigarette and exhaled with a sigh. “Only once. Four months ago.”

  “Only once? He didn’t look you up again?”

  “He came looking all right. I didn’t want to have anything to do with him.”

  “Why?”

  “The guy was psycho. He liked to hurt people. Women, anyway.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Come on, Sheriff.”

  “I need to know.”

  She rubbed her thigh nervously with her free hand. “He was into a rape thing. He wanted me to fight him—you know, struggle. But he got rough for real. I tried to stop him for real. He just beat me up and did what he wanted. When he was done, he threw the money on the floor. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “Why didn’t you come to the department and make a complaint?”

  She gave him a withering look.

  “Anything like that ever happens again, Kris, you come to me directly. Okay?”

  She was twenty-seven years old. Cork figured that by the time she was forty, the dye would ruin her hair, the smoking would make her voice like the growl of a bad engine, and the hard life would burn her out, leave her with no more substance than the ash at the end of her cigarette.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Where were you last night?”

  “Here. Danny’ll tell you.” She nodded toward the bartender, who was laughing with a man farther down the bar.

  “You were here all night?”

  “I left at ten.”

  “Alone?”

  She hesitated a moment. “No.”

  “But not with Jacoby.”

  “No way. You can ask Danny about that, too. He knows who Jacoby is.”

  “What time did you go home?”

  “Around one.”

  “I may have to talk to the john you were with.”

  “Jesus, Cork.”

  “I didn’t say
it was for sure. But you’d better know who he was, or how to find out who he was.”

  “He had a room at the hotel here. I can give you the number.”

  “All right.”

  She seemed to think she’d given him everything she could and turned away.

  “Krisane, is it possible he went to another working girl?”

  She smoked her cigarette and didn’t look at him, like they were lovers who’d just had a quarrel. “There aren’t that many around here, and I made sure they all knew about him.”

  “Okay.” He slid off his stool. “I meant it.”

  “What?”

  “You ever have any trouble again like you had with Jacoby, I want to hear about it.”

  She studied the glowing end of her cigarette, finally gave a slight nod.

  15

  CORK CAME HOME LATE. Jo pretended to be asleep as he undressed for bed. He had to be exhausted, with so little rest since the shooting on the rez; but he lay for a long time, and although he was quiet, she knew his eyes were open and he was staring at the ceiling in the way he always did when he was worried. When he finally nodded off, she was certain his dreams would be troubled.

  She couldn’t sleep, either, but she didn’t want to talk to him. Pretending sleep was easier than pretending other things. Like pretending she had never loved Benjamin Jacoby, loved him desperately.

  Cork rolled over, his face, so familiar even in the dark, close to hers. She could feel the strong grip of his love around her, her own love covering him like a blanket.

  So what was this unsettled feeling, this rumble of fear? Ben Jacoby was twenty years ago. She’d lived a whole life since then, a full life with Cork and her children at the center.

  Oh God. Was it possible that even after all this time, after all her experience, there was still some ember alive in her heart, burning for Ben Jacoby? Could she still feel something for the man who’d abandoned her on a cold rainy autumn night twenty years before—abandoned her without explanation?

  She’d met him at law school, the final semester of her second year. He was older, funny, brilliant, gorgeous. They’d become lovers.