William Krueger - Mercy Falls

By the time he arrived at the clinic, Jo’s examination was over and she’d gone home with Rose.

At the duplex, he found the women gathered around the kitchen table-where else?-drinking tea. The long night of despair had left them with puffy, dark-circled eyes and faces still pinched with worry. Jo was safe, but Cork suspected that for Jenny and Annie the ordeal was not over. It was clear they knew what she’d been through, were probably even now imagining it, living it in their own minds, feeling the filth of it on their own bodies. What had happened to their mother had been the kind of thing that happened to other women, other families, in other places, but here it was at their table, the monster of all fears, and Cork understood that for a while it would shadow their world.

He kissed Jo and held her.

“They kept me a long time,” he said. “I would have been there.”

“It was fine. Rose was with me.”

“Thank you.” He spoke over Jo’s shoulder to his sister-in-law. “Where’s Stevie?”

Rose said, “Mal took him to the park. He doesn’t really know what’s happened.”

“Good. Hi, guys.” He kissed both his daughters as he circled the table toward an empty chair.

They smiled bleakly.

“Would you like some tea?” Rose offered.

“Sure, what the hell. Wouldn’t happen to have a cookie to go with it?”

“Chocolate chip.”

“Rose, you are an angel.”

He looked at the two most dour faces at the table and he spoke especially to them. “You know, in the last week I’ve been shot at, threatened with a bomb, attacked with a knife. Your mother’s gone through her own terrible hell. But here we are together around this table, and I can’t remember a time when I’ve felt so lucky. Rose,” he called, “cookies all around. And don’t stint on the chocolate chips.”

Smiles like small bright caterpillars crawled across his daughters’ lips.

Later, in the privacy of the room Jo had shared with Stevie, Cork held her for a long time.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair.

She spoke, her breath soft against his cheek. “The truth is, I don’t remember anything. I only have vague impressions, like a bad dream. I suppose that’s lucky.”

“It may hit you later.”

“Probably.”

“I have to see Faith Gray when I get back to Aurora. Maybe you should, too.”

“All right.”

“I wish I could have kept it from happening.”

She drew back just enough to look into his eyes. “How could you? It was such a predatory act, who could have predicted it?”

“It’s not the first time Phillip’s done something like this, Jo. I’m going to do everything I can to make certain he doesn’t prey on anybody else.”

“Do they have any idea about Ben? Who killed him?”

“Not yet. I get the feeling they’d like to pin it on me.”

“They can’t possibly suspect you.”

“If I were them, I’d consider me a pretty good suspect. Jo, Dina told me some things I think you ought to know.”

They sat on the bed in the room she had shared with Stevie, and he told her everything he knew.

“All this,” she said, “because Eddie Jacoby thought he could make a gift of me.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“All this death.”

He touched her cheek, felt her heat, her life flowing into his fingers. “We’re not dead, you and me.”

“But Ben is. Why him?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want to leave here, Cork. I want to go home.”

“The Winnetka police would like us to stay awhile. They’ll have more questions when they’re finished with the crime scene and start looking at the evidence.”

“I’ve told them everything I know.”

“So have I, several times. They’ll ask again. Before we talk to them we should have a lawyer. And there’s something else, Jo.”

He told her about Phillip Jacoby’s assertion that she had consented to the things he’d done.

“That little son of a bitch,” she gasped.

“So for a while, we sit tight and see what develops and make sure that we’re prepared to face the worst.”

She felt the tears welling, her throat closing. “Shit doesn’t just happen, does it, Cork. It happens and happens and happens.”

“Here,” he said. He kissed her hands, lifted them, and waved them gently over their heads.

“What was that?” she asked.

“A shit shield.”

She was laughing quietly when the knock came at the door.

“Cork?” Rose called. “There’s a call for you.”

Jo followed him to the kitchen, where he took the phone and said, “Yes?” He listened, looked concerned. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up.

“What is it?” Jo asked.

“That was Lou Jacoby. He wants to see me.”

Cork parked on the drive that circled in front of Lou Jacoby’s Lake Forest estate home.

“I swear to God,” he said, killing the engine, “the North Shore has more castles than the Rhine.”

He’d tried to convince Jo not to come, but she’d insisted, telling him that now that they were together, she’d be damned if she’d let anything separate them.

Evers, Jacoby’s houseman, answered the bell. He looked tired but still maintained the rigid formality his position required.

“The O’Connors,” Cork said. “Mr. Jacoby is expecting us.”

Evers led them down a long hallway to the rear of the house, where a small, lovely woman with black hair and a Latin look awaited them. She seemed familiar, but Cork couldn’t recall where he’d seen her before.

“I’ll take it from here,” she said to Evers.

“Of course.” The houseman vanished back into the vast silence of the place.

“It is a pleasure to see you again,” she said to Jo. Then to Cork: “We have not met. I am Gabriella Jacoby, Eddie’s widow.”

She spoke a foreign accent he’d recently heard, and he realized where he’d seen her before. In the face of a pilot.

“Do you have a brother?”

“Yes.”

“Tony Salguero?”

“Do you know Antonio?”

“I’ve met him.”

“He is a good brother.” She smiled briefly, then lapsed into a somber tone. “I told Lou this was not a good idea, but he insisted. I warn you, he is out of his head with grief. He will probably say things that will sound crazy. You may leave now, and I will explain it to him.”

“If he wants to see me,” Cork said, “let him see me.”

She reached for the knob, hesitated as if she were going to speak again, perhaps argue the wisdom of proceeding, then she opened the door and stepped ahead of them inside.

The room was mostly dark and smelled of an old man and his cigars. The only illumination came through the slits of partially opened blinds over the long windows. In the far corner, bars of light like the rungs of a ladder fell across a stuffed chair and its occupant. Jo’s eyes climbed each rung until they encountered the red eyes of Lou Jacoby staring back. He wore a dressing gown that hung open over his chest, showing a white undershirt. His legs were bare, his feet slippered. His hair was a wild spray of white. He seemed smaller than the last time she’d seen him, as if Ben’s death had taken away something physical from his own form. He held a glass that contained ice and a hickory-colored liquid. A smoking cigar sat in a standing brass ashtray to his right.

“I knew you were trouble the moment I saw you with him.” The voice came from the darkness beneath his red eyes, from the mouth Jo still couldn’t quite make out.

“I’m sorry about your son,” she said.

For a moment, he didn’t reply. Then: “The sons should bury the father. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

Gabriella crossed to him and stood at his side, her hand protectively on his shoulder. In the slatted light, her shadow fell over the old man and swallowed him.