William Krueger: Blood Hollow

The clouds that had been scattered most of the morning were coming together in an organized line that threatened rain. They advanced across the face of the sun, and the whole block around Cork dropped into a dark, blue quiet.

He didn’t like the setup. It felt wrong, threatening. He reached down and thumbed back the safety strap on his holster, then started walking cautiously up the walk toward the house. Mamie Torkelson was nearly deaf. As Cork approached the porch, he heard her television blaring from the first floor, a commercial for Wendy’s. He realized that he hadn’t eaten yet and he was hungry. Suddenly all he could think about was eating. It was an odd thing, but he remembered it was like that sometimes in a tight spot. You thought of a thing and once your mind got hooked on it, you couldn’t let it go. Even as you were telling yourself to focus, to concentrate because your life might depend on it, you were thinking about the other thing that had nothing to do with your immediate survival. As he mounted the steps toward the deep shade of the porch, he was sure he could smell hamburger grilling, and his mouth watered, and as he reached for the doorknob, he wanted the taste of a burger in the worst way.

Before Cork touched it, the door swung open. He stumbled back and his right hand dropped toward his holster.

Mal Thorne stepped out. When he saw where Cork’s hand was headed, he brought his own hands up in surrender.

“Don’t shoot.”

“You shouldn’t be here, Mal.”

“I wanted to talk to Randy.”

“That was not a good idea.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s not here.”

Cork glanced back at the Tracker parked on the street. “What did you want to show me?”

“Upstairs.” He waved Cork to follow him inside.

The stairway was dark, lit only from the light that slipped through a small window on the upper landing. Mal went ahead, mounting rapidly. Cork followed more slowly, eyeing the closed door at the top.

“You’ve been inside?” Cork said.

Mal nodded.

“How?”

“He didn’t answer when I knocked, so I went downstairs and told Mrs. Torkelson that I was supposed to wait for him inside. She was reluctant. She told me she believes in giving her tenants complete privacy. But I was insistent and sincere and she opened it up.” Mal reached for the door. “Nobody ever believes a priest would lie.”

He slipped out of sight inside.

A moment later, Cork went in after him.

Like many of the homes in that area, the house had been built in the early 1900s, in a time of prosperity in Aurora, when the iron mines were operating day and night and the supply of timber seemed inexhaustible. The trim was all oak, stained and polished to show the beautiful, fluid grain. The window construction included leaded glass in most frames. The floors had been recently sanded and refinished to a mirrorlike gloss. Gooding had furnished the living room and dining room modestly. Everything seemed surprisingly clean for the home of a bachelor.

Mal stood across the room at a built-in hutch with a mantel. In the middle of the mantel sat a domed Seth Thomas clock, and flanking it on either side were a number of photographs in frames. Mal picked one up. “Take a look at this,” he said.

Cork walked over and looked at the photo. The shot showed a group of seven adolescents, boys and girls, standing in a line on green grass in bright sunshine in front of a white clapboard building. The kids had their arms linked as if they were great friends. Standing behind them was a much younger Mal Thorne.

“Yvonne Doolittle is the girl in the middle.”

She was taller than the others, and from the development of her body, appeared to be older. She was blonde, squinting into the sun, and very pretty.

“This was taken at the orphanage?”

“At St. Chris. St. Christopher’s Children’s Home. Outside Holland, Michigan. The kid on the end, far left. Does he look familiar?”

“Not really.”

“He was only thirteen and small for his age. His name back then was Jimmy Crockett. He wanted desperately to become a priest someday. I’d never known a kid with a more profound sense, in his own mind, of what was right and what was wrong according to church canon, and he wasn’t reluctant to tell you so. He made it his business to keep everyone on the straight and narrow. The kids started calling him Jiminy Cricket. You know, Pinocchio’s conscience.”

The bells of St. Agnes rang the hour, eleven o’clock. Because they were so near, the sound was beautiful and pure.

“Cork, his middle name was Randall. Imagine him a foot taller, a hundred thirty pounds heavier, and with a beard.”

“Randy? But his name’s Gooding.”

“After the fire, the publicity generated a sympathetic response. I heard that many of the kids were adopted, even ones like Jimmy who were considered to have little chance.”

“Why little chance?”

“His age for one thing. Teenagers aren’t often adopted. His background for another.”

“What about his background?”

“When he was little, Jimmy was in and out of foster homes. His mother was psychotic, frequently institutionalized. During her psychotic episodes, she believed she was the Virgin Mary. When Jimmy was six, she drove off a bridge with him in the car.”

“Suicide? Not an accident?”

“No accident.”

“Did Gooding know that?”

“Yes. Much of the time he was at St. Chris he was seeing a therapist.” Mal put a fist to his forehead. “He was an artist even then. How could I not have recognized him?”

“He’s entirely changed, grown into a man, a very big, very disturbed man. Did you ever see him after the fire?”

Mal shook his head. “The church snatched me out of there, and forbid me to have contact with any of the kids.”

“What kind of relationship did you have with Jimmy Crockett?”

“He never knew his father. I think he saw me as a surrogate. A lot of the children did.”

“Could he have been responsible for the fire that killed Yvonne?”

“Why would he?”

“Maybe he believed he was protecting you.”

Mal’s look turned dark as the possibility settled into his thinking.

Cork said, “The two punks who attacked you in Chicago. If Gooding killed them, it might have been for the same sort of reason. Maybe revenge in your name. But if that’s true, why Nina van Zoot?”

“Nina van Zoot?”

“Another sin eater killing in Chicago. She and her fiance.”

Mal nodded toward the photograph. “Bottom row, middle. The thin girl, smiling. Nina and Jimmy were good friends. She became a nun, I heard.”

“She left her order to get married, Mal. Her fiance was a former priest.”

“Why would Jimmy kill them?”

Cork thought a moment. “When he told me about Nina, he called her a prostitute and the man she fell for a pimp. He may have killed them because they broke their vows to the church, and he considered them criminals. I’m beginning to think he sees himself as some sort of policeman of God. If that’s true, then maybe he followed you here to protect you.”

“How did he find me?”

“When you were attacked by those two punks, was the story in the newspaper?”

“You kidding? A priest attacked? It was front page for a while.”

“If he was a good agent, Gooding was reading everything in the news. Maybe that’s when he became aware you were in Chicago.”

“When he came here, why did he kill Charlotte?”

“I don’t know. He was in charge of the investigation of the vandalism at St. Agnes. Maybe he figured out she was responsible and he interpreted it as an attack against the church. Maybe that’s why he framed Solemn, too. His thinking is not exactly rational.”