William Krueger - Vermilion Drift

Cavanaugh stared at Cork, then said coldly, “You sound just like Lauren. Next you’ll be telling me I’ve got no other friend in the world but you.”

“Believe it or not, I am your friend. Come back with me, and I’ll stand by you, I promise.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you, Cork. You’re going to leave and I’m going to finish my wine and have some dinner and a good soak in my tub and go to bed. And I think I’ll call my lawyer while I’m at it.”

“The longer you string this out, the more it will twist your gut. I’m just trying to help.”

“Your kind of help gets people hanged.”

Cork stood up. “Think about it. If you want to talk, call me.” He took a card from his wallet and held it out to Cavanaugh, who didn’t even look at it. Cork put the card on the coffee table and headed out the door, leaving Max Cavanaugh alone in the cool dark of his big house, listening to music played by a dead man.

Marsha Dross lived alone on Lomax Street, in a little house with flower boxes on the front porch and green shutters on the windows. Her pickup was in the driveway when Cork pulled up and parked at the curb. Smoke drifted from the backyard, and the breeze carried the delicious aroma of barbecue and sizzling fat. He walked across the lawn and around to the back, where he found the sheriff on her patio, dressed in khaki shorts and sandals. She was turned away from him, and she had a beer in her hand. She wore earbuds that snaked up from an iPod cradled in the pocket of her khakis, and she was doing a line dance move as if the smoking Weber grill with its rack of ribs was her partner. Ed Larson fished to relax. Cork walked his dog. Marsha Dross, apparently, danced.

He hated what he had to do to her.

“Yo, Marsha,” he said, but not loudly enough, because she kept on dancing. “Marsha,” he said again.

This time she heard.

She had never been what most people would call pretty, and Cork seldom gave it much thought, but turning to him, she looked, for an instant, happy and relaxed, and Cork could see a kind of beauty in her that was common and good. When she saw his face and understood that she was probably not going to like what he had to say, she changed. She became, in the blink of an eye, the law.

She pulled off the earbuds and reached down to turn off the iPod and said, with a little brittleness, “What did you do now?”

“You could offer me a beer.”

“Tell me first, then I’ll decide about the beer.”

“Want to sit?”

“For Christ sake, just tell me.”

“I was out at Max Cavanaugh’s place. I told him I thought he killed his sister.”

“You did what?” She put the beer bottle down on her patio table, hard enough that a bit of the brew splashed out the longneck.

“Before you toss me on that grill with those ribs-which, by the way, look pretty good-just listen a minute.”

“This is what I get for bringing you in on a case. Jesus, it’s always the same. You never do things the way I ask or that you promise. You just go off and do whatever comes into your head. You’re not the sheriff anymore, Cork. Christ, you haven’t been in, like, forever.”

“I know. But just give me a minute to explain.”

“God, I thought for a little while, just a little while, I could relax.”

“He did it, Marsha. He killed his sister, and I can almost prove it.”

“Almost? Oh, that’ll sound good to a grand jury.”

“Hear me out.”

She huffed an angry breath, crossed her arms, gave him a killing look, and said, “All right, I’m listening.”

“I talked to Lou Haddad and Sheri this afternoon. Sheri told me that Cavanaugh got a cell phone call at the Four Seasons, after the official reception, when they were all gathered in the bar.”

“We know this already.”

“He went outside, and Sheri did, too, so that she could make a cell phone call to her babysitter. She saw Cavanaugh take off in his Escalade.”

Her eyes changed, the anger transformed in an instant to interest. “He left the Four Seasons?”

“He sure did, and we have a witness to that. According to Sheri, he was gone twenty minutes, enough time to drive to his sister’s boathouse and kill her. And get this: When he came back, he wasn’t wearing the designer blazer he’d worn all evening. According to Sheri, he seemed distant. ‘Fuzzy-headed’ was how she put it. He didn’t stay long.”

“Why did he take off his blazer?” she said. Then answered herself, “Bloodstains.”

“A pretty good speculation.”

“Did he get rid of the clothes, do you think?”

“A search warrant would answer that question.”

She sat down at the table, looking troubled. “Here’s one a search warrant won’t answer: Why?” She picked up her beer and idly sipped.

Cork sat down with her. “It was a risk talking to Max. I knew that, Marsha. But the truth is he’s not a bad guy. I think that what happened wasn’t premeditated. And I was hoping that when he understood what I suspected, he might want to talk about it. A thing like that, it’s got to weigh on his conscience. When I left, he looked pretty dismal.”

Dross thought for a while in silence. The fat from the ribs fell onto the coals and sizzled. Finally she stood up.

“I’m going to see if I can’t get a search warrant. It’s all pretty thin, but I’d like to try. Ed’s fishing at his cabin on Emerson Lake. He told me he was leaving his cell phone at home.”

“He usually fishes from his dock. I’d be glad to head over and give him the word.”

“Thanks.”

“Sorry to interrupt your evening, Marsha.”

“If it means I can sleep tonight, I’ll forgive you.”

She took a long set of tongs, lifted the ribs off the grill and put them on a waiting platter, then headed inside to start making phone calls.

He was halfway to Emerson Lake when Max Cavanaugh called. Cork pulled over to the side of the road and answered his cell phone.

“I want to talk,” Cavanaugh said. “But only to you. Come alone. You’ve got twenty minutes.”

“Your place?” Cork said.

“No. I’m at the Ladyslipper Mine.”

“All right.”

“Twenty minutes,” Cavanaugh said. “Alone.”

“Max-” Cork began. But Cavanaugh had hung up.

He swung his Land Rover around, called Dross, and told her what was up.

“I’ll meet you there,” she said.

“He said alone, Marsha.”

“Fine, you meet with him alone, but I’ll be lurking in the general vicinity.”

“That’ll do.”

“Just before you have your talk, call me on your cell and leave the phone on, okay? I’d like to hear what he has to say.”

“Kind of like wearing a wire?”

“Make sure you get close to him.”

It was late, and the sun had set. From the eastern horizon a red smear was spreading across the sky, and the clouds that hung there became like bloodstained cotton. At the gate to the mine, the guard directed Cork to follow one of the roads into the great pit.

“Mr. Cavanaugh went down there himself maybe forty minutes ago.” The guard gave Cork a map and outlined the way. “Mine operation’s shut down for the night, so you don’t have to worry about being run over by one of them monster trucks or blown up in the blasting.”

Which was, in fact, a comforting piece of information.

Cork followed the road the guard had indicated. It was paved asphalt for a couple of hundred yards, then turned to hard-packed red dirt and curled south of the Great North office complex. It sloped into the pit and almost immediately cut sharply to the left, and Cork kept his Land Rover at a crawl as he negotiated the narrow switchbacks that angled toward the floor of the great excavation. Cork had seen the hole only from above; being inside was different. Above there was grandeur to the scale. Inside and up close, he could see the rugged scars of all the intimate battle that had taken place to open that great hole and tear the ore from the earth.