William Krueger - Blood Hollow

“I hate making these decisions.” Borkmann hung up.

An hour later, Cork picked up the promised documents. It was early evening by the time he returned home. Except for Jo, the house seemed deserted.

“Where is everybody?” he asked.

“Jenny’s with Sean. I think they’re going to a movie. Stevie’s across the street playing in the O’Loughlins’ tree house. Rose is upstairs, standing watch over Father Mal.”

“Any word on Annie?”

“No.”

Cork looked outside, thinking about the man who’d stalked his daughter.

“Don’t worry,” Jo said. “She’s always home before dark these days. Are you hungry? I’d be glad to make you a sandwich.”

“What have we got?”

“Ham and cheese on rye.”

“I can make my own.”

“Sit down. Relax.” Jo walked with Cork to the kitchen. “Chips and beer with that?”

“Thanks.”

Jo took a bottle of Lienenkugel beer from the refrigerator and gave it to him. On the kitchen table, Cork laid out the folders of material he’d picked up at the sheriff’s department and opened the first file.

“You didn’t happen to discuss a reasonable fee with Oliver Bledsoe,” Jo said as she put a chunk of smoked ham on a cutting board to slice.

Cork took a long drink of cold beer. “I’d do this even if they paid me nothing.”

Jo set a block of cheddar on the counter and, beside it, put what was left of a loaf of dark rye. “People are asking if you’re ever going to open Sam’s Place again. Some of them. The rest seem to be wondering if you’re going to take the job as sheriff if it’s offered.”

“Which group do you fall into?”

“I don’t fall. I stand firmly behind whatever you choose to do.” She began to slice the ham. “Going to want mustard on this?”

“Do you have any advice?”

“It’s best with mustard.”

“About the sheriff’s job.”

“I have enough trouble keeping my own life in order. I know you’ll do whatever’s right for you.”

Cork sat down and leaned back in his chair. “Want to hear a story, Jo?”

“Does it have a happy ending?”

“For a crippled kid and his folks, yeah.”

“I’m all ears.”

As he began to tell her about the family from Warroad, she sat down with him at the table. When he’d finished, she said, “What do you think?”

“That I should have done more to protect Solemn. Maybe he had been given a gift, Jo, something important to share. Now that gift is gone.”

She reached across the table and took his hand. “These people, you’re sure they weren’t part of some con?”

“As sure as I am of anything right now. I’m not saying that Solemn had the gift of healing. Maybe his gift was just that he helped these people believe enough to make their own miracle happen. You know?”

“Yes.”

“It’s important to me that people think of Solemn in a good way. So it’s important that everybody know the truth of what happened to Charlotte Kane.”

“I understand. What can I do to help?”

“For starters, you can finish making that sandwich.”

Later, Jo ran a bath for Stevie, and while her son played in the tub, she came down to the kitchen where Cork had the documentation of Charlotte Kane’s death investigation spread out on the table.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“Nothing so far.” He folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. “One thing I keep going back to. The food wrappers at the scene of her death. The fact that some bastard sat there callously eating while she died. I keep asking myself what kind of ghoul would do that kind of thing?”

“A sin eater.” Annie stood at the screen door, looking in. Night was beginning to settle in at her back. “Can I come in?”

“Of course, sweetheart,” Jo said.

She walked in, her eyes tracing the lines on the linoleum. “I’m sorry for the way I behaved.”

“That’s all right,” Jo said. “Are you hungry?”

“I’m always hungry.”

“How about a ham and cheese sandwich?”

“I recommend it highly,” Cork said.

“Thanks.”

Jo got the things from the refrigerator.

“Just walk?” Cork said.

Annie shook her head. “I bumped into Randy Gooding and he walked me to the Broiler. We talked. Look, he gave me this.”

She held out a drawing that had been done on the back of a paper place mat from the Broiler, a pencil portrait of her. She looked very pretty and a little sad.

“Helped?”

“Yeah, it helped.”

“Here you go,” Jo said.

Annie took the plate. “Is it all right if I eat in my room?”

“Sure. Just bring the dishes down when you’re finished.”

Annie moved toward the living room, then stopped and glanced back. “I love you guys.”

“Good night, sweetheart,” Jo said. She watched her daughter head upstairs and she smiled. “Think she’s okay?”

“She’ll work it out. Good head on her shoulders,” Cork said. “And quite lovely. She gets that from you.”

“Thanks, cowboy.” She bent to where he sat at the table and kissed the top of his head. “I’m going up to check on Stevie and get him into bed.”

Cork went back to studying the files, looking for anything he might have overlooked before or seen and too quickly dismissed. It took a while before something dawned on him. When it finally did, he grabbed the documents that dealt with the night Fletcher Kane killed himself and Solemn, and he scanned the autopsy report for each man.

He went to the telephone table in the living room and pulled out his address book. He took it back to the kitchen and made a long-distance call. Jo came downstairs just as he was finishing.

“Stevie’s asleep,” she said.

“Sit down, Jo.”

She heard the taut pitch of his voice. She took a chair at the table. “You’ve found something.”

“Maybe.”

Jo looked at the phone on the table. “Who were you talking to?”

“Boomer Grabowski in Chicago. Remember him?”

“Sure. But you haven’t talked to him in years.”

“I called him last week actually.”

“What about?”

“To see if he’d be willing to investigate Mal Thorne.”

“Why?”

“It was part of due diligence. But he was busy on a case in Miami, and then my head got all turned around for a while and I didn’t follow up with him right away. That was a big mistake, because Annie got me to thinking tonight, Jo. We believe that someone was with Charlotte and ate food while she died. Now take a look at this.”

He handed her the autopsy report on Fletcher Kane.

After reading it for a minute, she asked, “What am I looking for?”

“Stomach contents.”

“There’s not much.”

“Exactly. Olga Swenson set a good pot roast dinner down on the table for Kane the night he killed himself. Somebody ate a lot of that food and drank a good deal of the wine that went with it.”

Jo’s eyes went down to the document in her hand. “It wasn’t Fletcher Kane.”

“That’s right.”

“Solemn?”

“He’d been fasting for several days, and his autopsy confirmed that.”

Jo frowned. “You’re talking about Annie’s sin eater comment.”

“Yeah.”

“Cork, that was just joking. A sin eater? That’s crazy.”

“Whoever killed Charlotte Kane wasn’t exactly sane. Who told Annie the sin eater story?”

Jo thought a moment. “Father Mal.”

“What do we know about him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. What do we really know about the man who’s the parish priest?”

“Why is this even a question? Because he told Annie the story?”

“Humor me.”

“He’s a good priest.”