Iron Lake (16 page)

“What?”

“Don’t say anything about this to anyone. Please.”

“Why not?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Is it because you don’t want anyone to know you’re afraid?”

That seemed as good an explanation as any, so he nodded.

“I understand,” Jenny said. And she smiled as if she did. Perfectly.

A
FTER LUNCH
, Cork and Rose took the children and headed to the offices of Great North Development Company, where Jo had worked much of the morning with Sandy Parrant. Great North was housed in the old firehouse a block off Center Street. Built in 1897 of charcoal gray granite, the firehouse had been scheduled for demolition, but Sandy Parrant and the judge had bought it and had it remodeled as a home for Great North.

Before he disappeared, Joe John LeBeau had the contract to clean the Great North offices. He’d told Cork the old firehouse was haunted. He claimed that when he cleaned alone late at night, he could hear the boots of the long-dead firefighters clomping across the floor overhead. He swore that once he saw the ghost of Lars Knudsen, who’d become a local hero by giving his life trying to save the children when the old Freemason orphanage burned in ’09. Joe John told Cork these things in the time when he was sober, before he walked away drunk from his truck, abandoning his family and his livelihood, a thing Cork had never understood. But a man who heard ghosts was probably a troubled man to begin with.

Jenny and Rose stayed in the Bronco. Cork took Anne and Stevie into the old firehouse. Joyce Sandoval, a woman with white hair and half glasses, sat at a reception desk typing into a computer. She looked over the flat top of her glasses at Cork and the kids.

“They pay you a lot for working Saturday, Joyce?”

“They don’t pay me a lot, period,” she grumbled, but amiably.

“Why aren’t you out doing something with Albert?”

Albert Nordberg and Joyce Sandoval had been dating for a quarter of a century. Their courtship was an institution of sorts in Aurora.

Joyce took off her glasses, which were secured by a beaded cord around the back of her neck. “He says he’s buying me a Christmas present. He says he doesn’t want me to know what it is.” She gave Cork a knowing and hopeless look. “He buys me Wind Song cologne. Every year. I made the mistake twenty-five years ago of telling him it was my favorite.” She glanced at Anne and winked. “Men, huh?”

“Joyce, would you let Jo know we’re here?”

She lifted the receiver of her phone and pushed three buttons. “Cork O’Connor and a couple of elves are here for Jo.” She put the receiver down. “They’ll be right out. Why don’t you have a seat.” Joyce Sandoval went back to working on her computer.

Behind the reception desk, the area of the firehouse where the big engine had parked was occupied now by a dozen work spaces, all currently empty. Cork and the children sat on a brown leather sofa in a small waiting area. While they waited, Cork entertained them with ghost stories he’d heard from Joe John LeBeau. By the time the elevator doors opened and Jo and Sandy Parrant stepped out, Stevie’s eyes were huge with amazement.

Cork rose and offered his hand in greeting. “Sandy,” he said.

“Cork.” Sandy gave the children a warm smile. “Hi, kids.”

“Hello, Mr. Parrant,” Anne said politely.

“Please, it’s Sandy,” Parrant said.

“Mr. Parrant,” Anne began, “I mean, Sandy. When you go to Washington, will you meet the President?”

“I already have, honey,” he said. “He’s a very nice man.”

Stevie picked his nose and looked unimpressed. He was watching the ceiling carefully.

“How’s it going?” Cork asked Jo.

“Like a three-legged horse,” Parrant replied for her.

Jo zipped the briefcase she carried. “Bob’s death complicates Sandy’s transition to Washington in a lot of ways.”

“Jo tells me you’ve got a furnace on the blink, Cork,” Parrant said, moving abruptly away from the subject of his father’s death. “I’ve got a good man who does a lot of work for Great North. I’d be glad to send him out.”

“Thanks, Sandy, but Art Winterbauer is coming on Monday. I’ll be fine until then.”

Stevie stopped picking his nose and asked suddenly, “Ith it really haunted?”

“Haunted?” Jo looked annoyed. “Who told you that?”

“Daddy.”

“I was telling him some of the stories Joe John used to tell me about the things he saw in this place,” Cork explained.

“I hate to disappoint you, Stevie“—Sandy Parrant smiled—”but I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in the stories of a man like Joe John LeBeau. He’d probably been drinking when he saw those things.”

“I think we should be going,” Jo said. “Sandy’s busy.”

Parrant wished them good luck finding a tree and saw them to the door. “Cork, if you change your mind about that furnace, just let me know.”

“I’ve got the situation under control.”

“Sure,” Parrant said. He watched them until they were all in the Bronco, then he stepped back into the old firehouse.

“He’s nice,” Anne said.

“Do you think so?” Jo asked.

“And he’s met the President,” Anne said.

“The President puts his pants on one leg at a time like every other man,” Jenny said, dourly unimpressed.

Stevie looked down at his own pants, confused. “I do ’em both together.”

The St. Agnes Boy Scouts had been given a corner of the Super Valu parking lot to sell their Christmas trees. Cork’s family spread out and called out their finds to one another. Finally they settled on a big white pine with needles soft as cat fur. Cork hauled it to the trailer to pay, and Arne Bjorkson, the scoutmaster, asked if he wanted a new cut on the trunk. Just at that moment, Cork caught sight of Darla LeBeau coming out of the supermarket with a cart full of groceries.

“Go ahead,” he said to Arne. “I’ll be right back.” He jogged away. “Darla!” he called after her.

She was clearly not excited to see him.

“What do you want?” she asked as she unloaded the sacks into her station wagon.

“I just wanted to ask about Paul.” He wheezed, trying to catch his breath, swearing silently to quit smoking. “And Joe John. I’m worried.”

“I’m Paul’s mother. And Joe John’s wife. I’ll worry.” She shoved a sack onto the backseat, pushed the cart away fiercely, and slid into the driver’s seat.

“Is something wrong, Darla?” Cork put a hand on her arm. “Is Paul in any danger?”

“I have to go,” she said. She pulled her arm away and closed the door.

Cork leaned his face close to the window, so that when he spoke, his breath fogged the glass. “I’m Joe John’s friend. I only want to help.”

She was intent on jamming the key into the ignition and didn’t answer. She started the engine. Her tires spit snow and gravel as she drove away.

Cork stared after her and thought about some of the items he’d seen in the grocery sacks. Cheerios, Pop-Tarts, peanut butter, Fig Newtons, potato chips, Slim Jims. It was possible Darla LeBeau ate these things. But Cork thought they would appeal a great deal more to a hungry teenager.

They moved the sofa into the living room and set the tree in front of the big window that faced the street. Cork hauled the boxes of Christmas decorations up from the basement. Stevie helped him check the lights while Rose and Anne and Jenny put hooks on all the bulbs. Jo sorted through the albums in the record cabinet and pulled out Christmas music and put it on to play.

For a long time Cork had felt lost, but there was something about the tradition of decorating the tree that brought him home. When he unpacked the small box that held the last of the delicate blue bulbs from the first Christmas after he and Jo were married, Jo smiled, and it made him happy. Together they placed the bulbs on the tree, then the children tossed on the icicles. When it was done, they plugged in the lights and stepped back and all of them were silent. The bulbs blinked and the tinsel and garland sparkled, and although it was very much like every tree they’d ever had, this one felt special. Cork moved close to Jo and took a chance. He put his arm about her waist. She seemed a little startled, but didn’t stop him. Rose began to sing along with Andy Williams on the stereo, lending her fine soprano to “Joy to the World.” Pretty soon they all joined in. It felt like old times, almost as if nothing had ever happened to shatter their happiness.

The telephone rang. Rose answered. “It’s for you, Cork,” she said.

Cork took the phone. “Yes?” He nodded and said, “Uh-huh,” a couple of times; then, “Your office?” He glanced into the living room, where the others had begun to pack up the ornament boxes. “I’ll be there,” he promised, and hung up. He went back to the living room. “I have to go.”

“Will you be back for dinner?” Rose asked.

“I’ll call and let you know.”

“Do you have to go?” Anne moaned.

Cork put his hand on her red hair. “It’s important.” He looked once more at the tree. “It’s sure a beauty.”

Anne smiled and said, “It’s the best.”

Wally Schanno sat at the desk Cork had occupied for seven years. Cork hadn’t set foot in the jail since he’d left office, and he felt strange walking into this room that had been so much a part of his own life and finding another man so comfortable in his place. Cork had hung framed prints on the walls, Matisse and Renoir, reproductions of paintings he’d seen and appreciated in the Art Institute in Chicago. He liked to think that the law and the rest of a civilized society were integrated. Schanno had removed the paintings and put up photographs of himself in a boat and on a pier proudly holding up big muskies. Among the items on the three-shelf bookcase behind Schanno was a simple black Bible. Cork could see from the tattered corners of the cover that it was often read. The end of a slender, fabric bookmark, forked like a serpent’s tongue, jutted from the pages near the middle.

“Thanks for coming, Cork,” Schanno said. He waved toward the chair on the other side of his desk. “Have a seat.”

Cork sat down.

Schanno held a rubber band in his hands and played with it while he talked. “I heard you were home. That’s why I called there.”

“What was so important?” Cork asked.

“Sigurd called me. He said you’d had a look at the judge’s body. Why?”

“Curiosity.” Cork sat back and watched Schanno’s fingers fidget with the rubber band.

“Was your curiosity satisfied?”

“I wouldn’t say that, no.”

Schanno dropped the rubber band. He got up and went to a big metal thermos sitting on the windowsill. “Coffee?” he asked.

Cork declined. He watched Schanno pour steaming coffee into the thermos cup. It was like Schanno, that big thermos. In his suspenders and khakis, he looked just like the kind of man who’d carry a lunch bucket to work. Schanno took a big gulp of coffee and his throat drew taut against the heat.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

“Sigurd does a fine job of making a corpse look good for an open casket, but he doesn’t know squat about forensic medicine. Why should he?”

Schanno drank some more coffee and waited.

“Dorsal lividity,” Cork explained. “Blood settled along the back of the judge’s body after he died. Back of his arms and legs, buttocks. Nothing in front along the ribs, stomach, pelvis. He’d been lying on his back quite a while. But I found him on his stomach.”

“You point this out to Sigurd?”

“Sigurd wouldn’t have cared. Much simpler for him and everybody if the judge killed himself and that’s that.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Because the truth is, I wouldn’t care much either except for what it might mean about the boy.”