William Krueger: Blood Hollow

“No.”

Cork tried to put it all together, but there were gaps. Still, the direction of his thinking felt right. “I’m willing to bet he knew you somehow. I think he followed you here, and the sin eater killings continued.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but there’s got to be a connection. We just haven’t found it yet.”

Cork started out the door.

“Where are you going?” Mal Thorne asked.

“To have a talk with our acting sheriff.” He paused before he left the room. “What about you? Still taking off?”

The priest looked down at the bottle in his hand. He put the booze in the suitcase and closed the lid. “There’s no way in hell I’m leaving town right now.”

Cy Borkmann wasn’t in his office. He’d gone to the village of North Star, Deputy Marsha Dross said, to confer with Lyman Cooke, chief of police there, who was interested in taking over as Tamarack County sheriff should the Board of Commissioners choose to offer him the position.

Dross shifted in her chair and picked up a pencil from the contact desk. “I was sort of hoping they’d offer you the job. I heard you might be interested. I hope you’ll consider it. Having you back as sheriff, that would sit just fine with me.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Marsha. We’ll see what the commissioners decide to do. Say, is Randy in?” He looked past the contact desk toward the heart of the department.

She shook her head. “He’s not on until three today.”

“Do me a favor, will you? It’s important. Have Cy give me a call as soon as he’s back from North Star. I’ll be at home.”

“I can try to raise him on the radio.”

Cork considered it but decided he didn’t have anything concrete on Gooding. He’d probably have to do a lot of talking to convince Borkmann, and he didn’t want to do it over a radio.

“Don’t worry about it, but when he comes back tell him we have to talk ASAP.”

“All right.”

“One more thing, Marsha. Any idea if Randy was on duty New Year’s Eve?”

“If you give me a minute, I can pull the duty roster for that night.”

“Would you?”

“Be right back.”

A few minutes later, she returned.

“Randy was on from eight to three-thirty that day. One of the lucky few who had the evening off.”

By the time Cork returned to his house on Gooseberry Lane, Jo had left for work. Jenny was in the kitchen, eating a bowl of Cheerios, still wearing her sleep shirt.

“Are we going to open Sam’s Place today?” she asked.

“I’ve got something else on my agenda.”

“You know,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. If you hired Sean to help, Annie and I could pretty much run Sam’s Place by ourselves. It’s not exactly rocket science, Dad.”

“Sean? Your boyfriend?”

“I don’t know any other Sean.”

Cork walked to the doorway of the living room. Stevie was still on the floor in front of the television, but he was working with crayons and a coloring book now and paying no attention to what was on the tube.

“The other thing is,” Jenny went on, “if you don’t open Sam’s Place pretty soon, I’ll have to find another job. I’m starting to dip into my savings account. You know, the one I’ve been putting money into for college.”

“Where’s Rose?”

“She got a call from the church office a little while ago. They needed her, so she walked on over.”

“How’s she doing?”

“I’ve never seen her so sad. Maybe helping out at St. Agnes will do her good.” She paused a beat. “What about it?”

“What about what?”

“Hiring Sean?”

“All right. On a trial basis.”

“Really? That’s great.” Jenny stood up. “I’ll get changed and go tell him.” She gave her father a huge smile. “I’m going to love being my boyfriend’s boss.” She put her bowl in the sink and started out of the kitchen. “Oh, Mom wants you to call her right away.”

Cork walked to Jo’s back office, to use the phone there. He wanted privacy to tell her of his suspicions about Randy Gooding. He was thinking that although he didn’t know the reason yet, it all made a strange kind of sense. Gooding wasn’t on duty the night Charlotte was killed. He could easily have heard about the party at Valhalla and posted himself out there, waiting for his chance. He could have stolen Solemn’s wrench and picked up the Corona bottle Solemn had left in the snow. If he’d gone to Valhalla with murder on his mind, he’d probably stopped at a convenience store for the food he’d eventually consumed along with Charlotte’s sins. As for the evening Fletcher Kane killed himself and Solemn, Gooding must have lied. He hadn’t gone to Sam’s old cabin first. He’d gone to Fletcher Kane’s home, gone too late to stop the killings, but with enough time to consume the sins.

But why? What did he know about Gooding that would have pointed toward a motive for killing Charlotte?

He reached for the phone just as it rang.

“Cork? This is Mal. I’m at Randy Gooding’s.”

“Jesus, Mal, what are you doing?”

“I know how Gooding knows me. And there’s something here you have to see.”

“Is Gooding there?”

“No.”

“I’m on my way. But if he comes before I get there, don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

“That’s a promise.”

Cork hurried upstairs to his bedroom. From the top shelf in his closet, he took a metal lockbox and put it on his bed. He keyed in the combination and lifted the lid. Inside, wrapped in an oilcloth, was his S amp; W. 38 Police Special. The revolver had belonged first to his father, who’d worn it every day while he was sheriff, and then it had been Cork’s, who’d done the same during his own tenure serving the citizens of Tamarack County. There was a trigger lock on the weapon. Cork took the key from his key ring and undid the lock. He went back to the closet and pulled down a cardboard box. Inside was a basket-weave holster and gun belt, which he put on. From the cartridges he kept with the revolver, he took enough to fill the cylinder. He lifted the weapon to feel its heft, a thing he hadn’t done in quite a while, and he slid it into the holster and pressed the thumb snap into place. There was a time when he’d worn the gun daily, when the weight of it on his hip would go unnoticed for hours. Much had happened in his life between that time and now. The. 38 made him feel prepared for what might lie ahead. But he was also aware that the badge, which used to be a standard part of the ensemble and that was the unquestioned rationale for carrying the weapon, was missing, and in a way, he felt naked.

He stepped into the hall just as Annie came out of her bedroom. She looked still asleep, her hair a tangle in her eyes. She yawned.

“Morning, Dad.”

Then she saw the revolver at his side, and her eyes crawled up until she looked with concern into her father’s face.

“I have to go out for a while, Annie. Until Rose comes back, you or Jenny need to be here to watch over Stevie. Do you understand?”

“What’s wrong, Dad?”

“Nothing, I hope. Just stay here,” he said. “I’ll explain when I get back.”

He brushed against her in the hallway, barely a touch, but she fell back as if he’d shoved her.

He drove to Gooding’s place, a block north of St. Agnes. Gooding’s Tracker was parked under a big maple in front of Mamie Torkelson’s house. Cork pulled to the curb across the street and got out. He checked the Tracker. It was locked.

A dozen years earlier, after her husband died, Mamie had turned her two-story home into a duplex and had begun leasing out the upstairs. Cork looked toward the upper floor, which Gooding now rented. The curtains were drawn.