William Krueger - Tamarack County

“You have her address?”

“Yes. And a telephone number. Do you have something to write with?”

* * *

Dr. Buckley walked into the waiting room a little before ten a.m. She looked weary but wore a smile. She told them that the surgery had gone well, that they’d removed the bullet and had repaired the damage done by it and the other round. Stephen had tolerated the procedure well. He was in post-op. When he came out from under the anesthesia, he would be taken to his room, and they could see him then.

“His legs?” Cork asked.

“We’ll have to wait until he’s fully conscious, then we’ll see,” Dr. Buckley said. “In cases of spinal shock, it can take several weeks for feeling to return to the affected extremities. In your son’s case, I think there’s every reason to be hopeful.”

Cork thanked her and, at that moment, thought she was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen.

It was another forty-five minutes before Stephen was taken to a private room and his family was allowed to be with him. He lay in the bed on his side, looking pale and still a little woozy. The braces that had held him rigid had been removed, and he watched his father and sisters as they came. He didn’t smile.

Anne and Jenny both kissed him, then Cork stepped up next to the bed. He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “How’re you doing, guy?”

Stephen stared up at him. His eyes, the dark eyes of his Anishinaabe ancestors, held steady and were unreadable. “Tired,” he said. Then he said, “Legs. Still can’t feel them.”

“The doctor says it will take time for the feeling to come back into them. She says that’s normal.” Cork tried to sound confident and comforting, as much for himself as for Stephen.

Stephen thought about that, then gave the slightest of nods.

“I have to leave for a little while, guy. But your sisters will be here with you.”

“Meloux?” Stephen asked.

“I’ll send him in.”

Stephen’s eyes drifted closed and Cork thought he’d gone to sleep. He started to turn away. Then Stephen mumbled something Cork didn’t quite hear. He bent nearer and said, “What was that?”

Stephen whispered, and this time Cork heard. In the next moment, Stephen was asleep.

“What did he say?” Anne asked.

“Minobii-niibaa-anama’e-giizhigad,” Cork said.

“What does that mean?”

Cork understood the words, but had no idea what they meant coming from his son in that particular moment. He said, “Your brother just wished us a merry Christmas.”

Alva Brickman lived in a small, run-down rambler that had, maybe twenty years earlier, been painted bright yellow. It was now the color of a faintly urine-stained sheet. There were no Christmas lights in the windows, and the sidewalk and narrow driveway hadn’t been shoveled for a couple of snowfalls at least. It sat back from the street behind two wild evergreens. The front steps were almost swallowed by a tangle of some type of ornamental shrubbery. As Cork sat looking at it from his Land Rover, it seemed to him the kind of place that on Halloween only the bravest kid would visit.

He’d driven an hour and a half from Duluth to the address in the small town of Aitkin, which Warden Gilman had given him over the phone earlier that day. He hadn’t called before he came, figuring if the woman was home, he didn’t want to tip his hand, and if she wasn’t, he’d wait. If her son had taken up residence there, Cork for sure didn’t want Frogg to know a visitor was about to come calling. He studied the house. The blinds were up and the curtains drawn back, maybe to open the rooms to whatever warmth the sun might deliver through the window glass. There was an attached garage, but the deep snow in the drive told him no one had moved a vehicle in or out for some time.

He left his Land Rover and walked in the impressions made in the deep snow by a set of boots that led directly to the mailbox beside the front door. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor dereliction of a homeowner’s duty, Cork thought with admiration for mail carriers everywhere. He tried the bell; no one answered. He knocked. Same result. He stepped into a drift to the left of the door, waded to the front window, and peered through his reflection into the dark interior. A living room, done in either antiques or thrift store acquisitions. No sign of an occupant. He made his way to the garage and peeked through a dirty window. Inside sat a Ford Escort, mostly a dull red but with one white panel over the front wheel well. Lots of crap piled along the walls in what appeared to be no particular order.

Cork returned to the street, glanced at the neighboring home on the right, a place as different from the Brickman spook house as you could get. He spotted a woman standing at the front picture window, a cup in her hand, watching him. He crossed to her property, where the sidewalks were cleaned and salted. He headed toward the door, on which hung an evergreen Christmas wreath decorated with a bright red bow. The door opened even before he began to climb the steps.

“Looking for Alva?” the woman asked.

She had white hair, carefully coiffed, and Cork put her at maybe seventy. Her makeup had been tastefully applied. She wore a bright yellow sweater, which hung on her loosely because she was too slender, in what seemed an unhealthy way. There seemed an unnatural hollowness to her face as well. Some kind of illness, Cork figured.

“Yes,” he said. “Do you know when she may be home?”

“Some of us might hope never. But that would be too optimistic and terribly uncharitable. She owns the Second Look Thrift Shop, a block north of the stoplight. Christmastime, she stays open late.”

“The stoplight?”

“Middle of town. Can’t miss it. It’s the only stoplight in the entire county. Are you with the police?”

“No, ma’am.”

She took an idle sip from the fragile-looking teacup she held. “Pity,” she said.

“Why? Is there some trouble next door?”

“Yes. And her name is Alva.”

“Do you know her son?”

“Everyone knows her son.” It was an acknowledgment that clearly gave her no joy.

“Have you seen him lately?”

“Not since Thanksgiving.” She flashed a thin smile and added, “Thank goodness.”

She sipped again from her cup, and Cork could smell the tea inside, some herbal mixture that included mint.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“Where Alva and Walter are concerned, everyone in this neighborhood tries to be sure.” She studied him, her look a mix of curiosity and wariness. “What’s your interest in them?”

“It’s of a personal nature.”

She nodded, eyed him a long while from that hollow face, and finally said, “As they say on those television shows, watch your back.” She looked beyond him at the deep snow and the cold morning. “I’m letting too much winter in. My heating bill will be through the roof. Is there anything else?”

Cork told her no, thanked her, and returned to his vehicle. He buckled in and glanced back. She was still watching him, teacup in hand, from behind her windowpane as he pulled away from the curb.

He found the store north of the stoplight, just as Alva Brickman’s neighbor had said. It was a dismal little place full of discarded pieces of the lives of people on their way down. It smelled of must and dust. Except for a woman behind the counter where the cash register sat, the store was empty. She’d been looking at a newspaper, but when Cork entered and the bell over the door gave a jingle, she put the paper aside and narrowed her eyes on him. A woman alone often watched a man with suspicion or even concern. This woman’s look was different. Almost a challenge to try something, he thought. He saw that she’d been working the New York Times crossword puzzle in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press and had been using a ballpoint pen. She’d set the pen down along with the paper, and her right hand was out of sight below the counter. He wondered if she had some kind of firearm down there. And he wondered, too, if this woman ever had any repeat business.