William Krueger: Blood Hollow

Cork spent the afternoon working on Sam’s Place, getting ready for the tourist season. Sam’s Place was an old Quonset hut that had long ago been converted to a burger stand on the shore of Iron Lake, just beyond the northern limits of Aurora. Beginning in early May until late October, Cork, with the help of his daughters, catered to the hungry fishermen and tourists and locals. For an ex-lawman, it was a quiet existence, but one Cork had come to appreciate.

He was thinking about Charlotte Kane as he worked, about how peaceful she’d looked in death. He’d heard that freezing wasn’t a bad way to go, that people who froze to death experienced a false warmth at the end, a final euphoria. Maybe that’s how it had been for Charlotte. He hoped so. However, that didn’t explain why she had no gloves with her, or who’d opened the curiously unbroken Corona bottle. Cork had considered from several angles the food wrappers found in the snow near the body. He would love to have a look at the autopsy, to know if any of that junk food was in her stomach when she died. Because more and more, the circumstances caused him to consider the possibility that she had not been alone at the end.

He’d already pulled away the plywood that had covered the serving windows all winter, and was just preparing to clean a squirrel’s nest from the lakeside eave, when his cell phone chirped.

“Cork O’Connor,” he answered.

There was nothing but static on the phone, which didn’t surprise him at all. Technologically speaking, Aurora was at the edge of a frontier. The demand for cell phones wasn’t great enough yet to warrant the building of relay towers that would easily service the area. North of Aurora, cell phones didn’t work at all. In town, reception was often sketchy at best. Usually, Cork didn’t even bother to carry his cell phone with him.

“Hello,” he said. “You’re not coming in well.”

Within the scratchy static, he made out Rose’s voice and two phrases. “Glory Kane…” and “… needs your help.”

Glory Kane opened the door before he knocked. Cork was surprised to see that she seemed perfectly sober.

Glory was in her midthirties, a good thirteen years younger than her brother. Aside from the surname they shared, there was little about the two Kanes that was alike. Fletcher was tall, awkward looking, already gone bald. Glory was a small woman, with long black hair, and lovely features. When she did the full nine yards of makeup, she was absolutely stunning. For a while after she’d arrived in Aurora with Fletcher, she’d often taken the time to look that way. Little by little, however, she had abandoned the enormous effort it must have taken to paint over and powder smooth her pain, and now her face was different. It bore the beaten expression of a war veteran, the sometimes vacant stare of someone who’d survived a long and bitter campaign. Very often, this was simply the effect of the booze, for it was no secret that Glory Kane drank. She wasn’t obnoxious in her drunkenness. Usually, she holed up in her brother’s big house, and no one saw her for days. In the Kane household, she seemed to cover much the same territory that Rose did with the O’Connors, and to care about Charlotte as deeply as Rose did her own nieces and nephew. This might have been the reason she had allowed Rose closer than anyone else in Aurora. That and the fact that Rose didn’t have a judgmental bone in her body.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, and stood back to let him enter.

Like Cork and a lot of others who now lived in Aurora, the Kanes had returned after a long absence. Fletcher and Glory had been gone longer than most, thirty-five years. Fletcher, when he left, had been Cork’s age, thirteen. Glory had been conceived, but not yet born, visible only as an obvious rounding of her mother’s belly. So far as Cork knew, no one had heard a word from them after they’d gone. Any relatives they’d had in Tamarack County had died or departed long ago. They had no old friends and no apparent reason that compelled their return. The middle-aged Fletcher, now a widower, had simply showed up unannounced one day a couple of years earlier, bringing with him his daughter, his sister, and enough money to be one of the richest men on the Iron Range. He’d settled into life in Aurora without any word about what had happened to him in the nearly four decades of his absence. The facts known about him were few. He was a physician, a plastic surgeon, but he no longer practiced. He speculated in real estate and land development instead. He supported the Independent Republican party with heavy donations. And he guarded his privacy fiercely, something guaranteed to raise an eyebrow in any small town.

In addition to building Valhalla, his isolated retreat, he’d bought one of the grandest houses in Aurora, the old Parrant estate, which occupied the entire tip of the finger of land called North Point. The house was huge, gray stone, surrounded by cedars and an enormous expanse of lawn that ran down to the shore of Iron Lake. Cork knew the Parrant estate well. One snowy night a few years before, he’d been the one who found Judge Parrant in his study with most of his head blown away.

Glory led him into the living room. Rose was already seated on the couch. She made room for Cork beside her.

“You know about Charlotte,” he said.

Glory nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Cork said.

“Thank you.” It was obvious she’d been crying, but she seemed to have composed herself. Cork figured Rose had been a big help.

Glory generally kept to herself. Except for her regular attendance at St. Anges, she was seldom seen in public. This spawned all kinds of gossip. Rose listened to none of it, and from the beginning had made an effort to befriend her. Once or twice a week, she came visiting, and the two women talked over coffee. After Charlotte disappeared, Glory stopped going to church and Rose became very nearly her only contact with the world outside the stone walls of her brother’s home. Glory was an intelligent woman and talked about books, religion, politics, but not, Rose said, about her life before she came to Aurora.

“You used to be sheriff,” Glory said.

“That’s right.”

“Rose thinks you might know something about finding people.”

“I suppose I do.”

“When Sheriff Soderberg told us there was going to be an autopsy on Charlotte, Fletcher was furious. He’s a doctor. He knows what they do to a body during an autopsy. He argued. If Father Mal hadn’t been here to intervene, I think he might have become violent. He went into his office, locked the door, stayed there until the sheriff and Father Mal had gone. He wouldn’t open it when I knocked. A little while later, he stormed out of the house. I haven’t heard from him since. That was several hours ago.”

“You’re worried about his safety?”

“In his state of mind, I’m afraid he could do something drastic.”

“And you want me to find him before he does?”

“Yes.”

“Why not the sheriff’s people?”

“I know he wouldn’t talk to them, and they might only upset him more.”

In the days of Judge Parrant, the house had been a dark place, full of hunting trophies and a suffocating silence. The trophies were gone but Cork still felt the silence there, thick in all the rooms he could not see.

“He might not want me looking for him,” Cork said.

“But I do.”

“I mean, he might not want me looking for him.”

Glory’s hands worked over each other, as if she were washing them, desperate to be clean. “I know he doesn’t like you. I don’t know why, but that doesn’t matter now. I just want to be certain he’s okay.”

Cork said, “All right.”