William Krueger - Northwest Angle

Jenny settled herself on the ground with her back against rock and the baby in her arms, sucking greedily. “Thanks,” she whispered.

Cork turned away, still angry and ashamed at his anger, and he said, “I’m going to the top of this rise, see what I can see.”

“The boat didn’t come this way. What does that mean?”

“Maybe I can find out.”

Under the moon, the rocky rise lay mostly white, though it was cut by long fractures that were dark, like poisoned veins. The outcropping was bare, no cedars or any other growth offering cover. Cork recalled how clearly the man in the cigarette boat had stood out in silhouette on the rise back of the cabin, and he was careful to keep himself low as he approached the top, which was only slightly higher than the crowns of the trees it protected. He found an isolated boulder and sat in its shadow while he studied the other islands to the southwest. There were so many that they seemed to merge into one inseparable mass. He focused and tried so hard to see detail that his eyes began to hurt and his vision blurred a little.

He closed his eyes. Images came to him, unbidden, of the body in the cabin.

During his life as a cop, he’d seen cruelty in so many forms. What he’d found in the cabin topped them all. She wasn’t much more than a child. There was something about her face, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, that was disturbing. Not the bruises that had resulted from beatings—though these were horrific enough—but something in the structure itself that nagged at him. Her body was small and lean, the weight she had to have put on during her pregnancy nowhere evident. Was it possible she wasn’t the baby’s mother? No, he decided. There were stretch marks. And her breasts were full, as with milk. The hard life alone on the island could have rid her quickly of extra fat. Which made him wonder how long she’d been there. Since winter? But how would she have kept warm? She couldn’t have built a fire in the stove if hiding out was the point of her being there; eventually the smoke would have given her away. So probably, she’d come after the thaw. Had she delivered the baby there, in that primitive place? Or had she come afterward?

Cork rolled around in his head the question Jenny had considered: Was there evidence of rape or some other form of sexual violation? He tried to recall the locations of the bruises and if he’d seen a pattern. There’d been discoloring across her left cheek and around the left eye. She’d been hit repeatedly from the right. Bruising also across the left side of her torso. Bruising as well where she’d been bound about the wrists and ankles. But no bruising of the insides of her upper thighs, which he would have expected had she been sexually molested.

He was not terribly shocked at his ability to recall all these horrific details. A lifetime of training, he understood. What really bothered him was that he couldn’t help seeing Jenny in that young woman’s place. As soon as his mind started to go there, his gut drew taut and his eyes blinked open.

And he saw it. A small flicker of light. Maybe only a match struck for a cigarette. But there it was. For a few long moments. Then gone. Although the dark made it difficult for him to judge distance accurately, Cork made a rough guess that the light had come from three or four hundred yards away.

Why had the man in the cigarette boat stopped there? Simply to wait at a safe distance until it was light enough to check the island where the woman had been murdered? Or was there something particular about the place he’d tied up?

Questions, only questions. Cork would have given his right arm to know who was out there and what they were after. His right arm to know what he would be facing when he finally took his stand.

FOURTEEN

At eighteen, she’d been in love. Desperately in love. The way you can be in love only once and only when you’re very young. His name was Sean Pflugleman. He was a poet and the son of a pharmacist. She was a writer of—well, everything then. They’d begun dating when he was seventeen and she sixteen. They’d talked of going to Paris together after graduation, of becoming the new Lost Generation, of embracing the bohemian, of throwing convention to the wind and living simply to discover life and all the experiences that the world offered. Sex was, of course, a part of that discovery. And although they were careful—condoms—in the summer after she finished high school, Jenny O’Connor had become pregnant.

And that had changed everything.

Sean, so eager in his lovemaking and gallant in his poetry, bridled at the idea of becoming a father. He became sullen and accusatory, and when his parents strongly suggested that he “do the right thing,” he blamed Jenny for ruining his life. It was odd, she’d thought then, how quickly that kind of love could die. She wasn’t necessarily thinking of Sean’s love for her; when she saw what he’d become, she’d wanted nothing to do with tying her life to his, or his to the child they’d conceived, and her love for him had shriveled to almost nothing. She’d been determined to have the baby, and her mother and father had pledged their full support in helping her raise their grandchild.

Near the end of her first trimester, she’d miscarried. She was counseled not to think of it as losing a child, but how could she not? Life had been inside her, connected to her, dependent on her. Her blood had flowed through the baby and the baby’s blood through her. She’d felt it every day, a connection more powerful than anything she’d ever known, including her passion for Sean. Once she’d accepted her situation and had made her decision to keep the baby, she’d embraced her new life with joyful expectation. A baby. Her baby. She would wake sometimes, alone in her bed in the house where she’d grown up on Gooseberry Lane in Aurora, Minnesota, and feel tears of happiness as she imagined what her new life would be like. Not easy, she clearly understood. A single mother. It would mean a shift in all her plans. She’d been accepted to the University of Iowa, with the idea that someday she might become part of the famous writers’ program there. But that wouldn’t be. The child would come first. Maybe she would attend Aurora Community College. Maybe she would take over management of Sam’s Place, the burger stand her father owned on Iron Lake. It didn’t matter. What she did would be done for her child, and whatever was required of her, she would do it with love.

The miscarriage had changed everything again.

She’d gone to Iowa City, graduated with honors, been accepted in the writers’ program. She’d met Aaron Houseman, a poet-farmer who lived in the area. He was older than she by several years, but he was a good man and shared with her a love of language and an understanding of the power of words. Last June, they’d moved in together, his place, an old farmhouse on acreage that straddled a little creek a few miles outside Iowa City. He hadn’t grown up farming, but land was part of his inspiration and poetic vision, and he dabbled at planting and harvesting, though his real money came from a trust fund. He’d built a shack on the stream, where he would disappear for long hours to write. She had a job at the Press-Citizen, the Iowa City newspaper. In the evenings, she worked on a novel.

It was a good life. But there was a complication. Aaron wanted to marry; she did not. The reason for her reluctance was the whole question of children. She wanted them; Aaron didn’t. In a way, he was like Sean. He had his work and he had Jenny and he was happy with that. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand. To be an artist required so much focus, so much energy. But she believed that this kind of creation was only a part of a life. And in its way, Aaron’s refusal to have children was a refusal to participate fully in the panoply of existence, and wasn’t that really the responsibility of an artist? To experience life in all its aspects?