Vermilion Drift (15 page)

No one built small anymore. Certainly not Max Cavanaugh. And the woods stood back from his opulent construct, as if drawing away, repulsed.

The great home lay in deep purple cast from the evening sky. The wide lawn appeared to be an inlet of a wine-colored sea. The black asphalt gave way to a circular drive made of crushed limestone bordered with flowers. Parked in the drive, near the front door, was the red Explorer that Kufus had rented for her time in Aurora. Cork pulled up behind her vehicle, turned off his Land Rover, and stepped out onto the drive. He saw immediately that the Explorer’s tires were flat. On closer examination, he discovered they’d been slashed, all four. He also discovered that an envelope had been slipped under the windshield wiper on the driver’s side. On the face of the envelope, printed in the dripping red font called From Hell, was Kufus’s name.

When he reached the porch of Cavanaugh’s house, he wasn’t surprised to find another envelope, this bearing the name of Max Cavanaugh, printed in From Hell. The envelope had been pinned to the door with a hunting knife that would have been perfect for gutting a moose or slashing tires.

He rang the bell, twice. No one answered. He began a slow circumnavigation of the property, checking the windows as he went, unable to see anything because the curtains were all drawn. From the back of the house came the sound of soft jazz playing over good
speakers. Rounding the rear corner, he saw the great bricked patio, the table and wine bottle, the two chairs with towels folded over the back of each, but he saw neither Cavanaugh nor Kufus. The music came from an opened patio door.

Cork was just about to head that way when he caught sight of the dock on the far side of the back lawn where it edged the cove. Cavanaugh and Kufus were there. Cavanaugh wore red swim trunks. Kufus wore a swimsuit, a black one-piece that looked designed more for exercise than for showing off at the beach. They stood close together, and, as Cork watched, Kufus put her arms gently around her companion. Behind them in the late dusk, the surface of Moon Haven Cove was a perfect mirror of the plum-colored sky.

Cavanaugh spotted him and pulled away. He said something to Kufus, and they both turned toward the house. They spoke a moment more, then walked the path to the patio.

“My, my,” the woman said, taking one of the towels from the back of a patio chair. “You do get around.”

“I rang the bell,” Cork said. “No one answered.”

“Can’t hear much from down there,” Cavanaugh said, indicating the dock. He had a body taut and sinewy but also scarred in a number of places. In the shower after one of the basketball games the Old Martyrs had played, he’d told Cork they were all the results of his mine work over the years. He’d said he liked the danger of the job. “What’s up?”

Cork said, “Ms. Kufus, did you know the whole county is worried about you?”

“It’s Genie, and whatever for?”

“Some more threats have been delivered. As a matter of fact, you have one waiting for you on your car. And, Max, there’s one for you.”

Cavanaugh looked confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Why don’t we all go to your front door and I’ll show you.”

Cavanaugh led them into the house, leaving a gray trail of water droplets on the white carpeting all the way to the front door. When he saw the envelope, he reached for the knife that pinned it.

“It might be better to wait, Max,” Cork said. “The sheriff’s people will want to go over it for prints.”

Cavanaugh ignored him, tugged the knife blade free, and opened the envelope.

We die. U die. Just like her
. In dripping red From Hell.

He held it out for Kufus to see. She read it, and her response surprised Cork.

“Fuck them,” she said. She looked beyond Cavanaugh to where her rental was parked. The envelope was clearly visible on the windshield, a white rectangle against the reflection of a bruise-colored sky, and she said again, low and hard, “Fuck them.”

Azevedo was the deputy dispatched on the call. When he arrived, he told Cork the sheriff wanted to see both Kufus and Cavanaugh at the department as soon as possible. Cavanaugh stayed while the deputy filled out an incident report, but Cork offered to drive Kufus into town immediately. Cavanaugh told her to go ahead. He’d be in touch. Azevedo put the notes, the envelopes, and the knife into evidence bags and gave them to Cork to deliver to the sheriff. Then Cork and a taciturn Kufus took off for Aurora.

Dark had fallen, and a mist of stars covered the sky. Kufus sat silently on the far side of the Land Rover, and Cork could feel her anger.

“Mind if I ask a question?” Cork said.

“Would it matter?” Clearly she was still pissed. Maybe about the threats. Maybe about Cork’s intrusion. Maybe about having to be chauffeured back to Aurora by a guy she didn’t particularly like.

“What is it between you and Max?”

She looked out the window and up at the stars. “He knows I’m a swimmer, and he invited me out to swim in the cove.”

“And to talk about mine business?”

“Yes,” she said. “Mine business.”

“That’s why you were holding each other? Mine business?”

“It’s not what you think.”

“I haven’t told you what I think.”

“You’re a man. I’ve spent my whole life in a business dominated by men. I know what men think.”

“Men like Max Cavanaugh?”

“Max is different.”

“How?”

She looked at him. “Are you really trying to get me to open up to you? Because if you are, you’re doing a shitty job.”

He kept his eyes on the road ahead, but he could feel her glare.

“Hell,” she finally said, settling back. “Are you married?”

“I was. My wife died.”

It had been well over a year, but the actual words still felt alien to him, and every time he was forced to say them, he wondered if they would ever come easy.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice softening just a bit.

“Gauging by the rock and the gold band on your finger, I’d say you’re married.”

“To a wonderful guy named Steve, whom I love very much. Given what you’re clearly assuming about me, you may not believe that.”

“I don’t know you well enough to assume anything about you.”

Cork swerved to avoid a deer lurking at the edge of the road.

“Look, Max speaks highly of you, so I’m going to level,” she said. “I knew him a long time ago. Before Steve. We were in graduate school together at Carnegie Mellon.”

“You knew him well back then?”

“Very well.”

“The one that got away?”

“I let him go. He made it clear from the beginning that he had no intention of ever settling down, having a family. And those were things I wanted very much.”

“For two people who let go of each other a long time ago, you looked pretty cozy on the dock.”

“We’ve stayed in touch over the years, okay? He needed to talk to someone about Lauren. It’s tearing him up, and he doesn’t have anyone here he feels he can confide in.”

Cork said, “I appreciate what you’re telling me.”

“And I’d prefer it wasn’t something you share with people.”

“Worried about conflict of interest where Vermilion One is concerned?”

“The appearance of it. In my mind, there is no conflict of interest.”

“Folks around here would give a whole lot to know your thinking about the mine right now.”

“I still have a lot of mine to look at. I’m excellent at what I do. And fair. If it’s a good site for nuclear storage, I’ll say so.” She was quiet again, then: “I have children, Cork. I have a home I love. I understand how people here must feel.”

“But in the end, you have a job to do?”

“In the end, don’t we all? And isn’t a part of who we are about the integrity we bring to our work?”

It was a tough point to concede, but Cork understood exactly where she was coming from.

He delivered Kufus to the sheriff’s office, along with the evidence bags. He stayed while Dross and Larson and Rutledge interviewed her.

As the two men drew their questioning to a close, Dross signaled Cork to follow, and they exited the interview room.

In the hallway, Dross said, “We got a preliminary indication from Agent Upchurch this evening. All the skeletal remains are female and, except for one, appear to be Native American. The one that isn’t was the one with the bullet in her spine.”

“Monique Cavanaugh,” Cork said. “Mother and daughter killed with the same weapon. Curiouser and curiouser.”

Cork escorted Genie Kufus back to her hotel. He walked her to her room, where she opened the door and allowed him inside to check the safety of her lodging.

“Lock your door,” he said as he prepared to leave.

“See? Just like a man. Of course I intend to lock my door.”

“Sorry,” Cork said. “Habit.”

“Are there any women in your life?”

“A couple.”

“They haven’t taught you anything, have they?”

“They’ve tried. Night,” Cork said.

“Good night.” Then she added, though it seemed to go against her better judgment, “Thank you.”

She closed the door behind him.

He waited in the hallway until he heard the lock click.

M
uch earlier that night, when he saw how things were going, Cork had called Judy Madsen and asked her to supervise the closing of Sam’s Place. She’d agreed, though reluctantly, and had said, “You know, if I were a bona fide partner in this enterprise or, heck, owned the whole damn thing, I’d feel a lot better about this.”

Cork had never before seriously considered taking her up on her offer, but that night he thought the unthinkable. He thought,
Maybe
.

At the house on Gooseberry Lane, he fed Trixie and walked her. Afterward he carted in the boxes he’d taken from Millie Joseph’s room. He carried them to the office on the first floor, the office that had, for nearly twenty years, been his wife’s, and he set them on the floor next to the desk. Then he stopped, caught in one of those moments that still ambushed him sometimes. He reached out and ran his hand along the polish of the desk, recalling the day Jo had bought the old antique. He remembered the overcast sky, the farm where the estate sale had been held, the look on his wife’s face when she’d seen the desk that had been stored in the barn, covered with dust and strung with cobwebs. Somehow beneath that thick skin of neglect, she’d been able to see the beauty waiting to be rediscovered. She refinished the piece herself, over the course of the summer that she’d been pregnant with Stephen, and now, sometimes, when Cork’s hand touched the wood, it was as if he was touching Jo’s hand as well.

The moment set him to wandering. He left the office and walked the first floor, encountering apparitions. Trixie followed him, but only Cork saw the ghosts, which were the memories that haunted him and made him happy. They were his memories of being a father and husband.
Memories of his children and Jo and him gathered around the dining room table for the pleasure of a thousand meals he’d thoughtlessly taken for granted. Of the games they’d played in the living room—Operation, Monopoly, Risk! Of wrestling with the kids when they were small enough and the girls not so worried about being girls. Of Jo and him on the sofa together in that quiet hour after Jenny and Anne and Stephen were asleep and before they themselves, wearied, had trudged upstairs to bed. Often in that sofa hour, Jo would slip her feet, cold always, under him for warmth.

So small and so precious, the moments lost to him now, lost to him forever except as the ghosts of memory.

He realized that he’d forgotten to eat, a chronic occurrence since Stephen had been gone and Cork had become responsible for feeding only himself. In a saucepan, he stirred together milk and Campbell’s tomato soup, and when it was hot he crumbled in some crackers. He grabbed a cold beer to wash it down.

He returned to the office and ate at the desk while he checked his e-mails, hoping for word from his children. He wasn’t disappointed. Jenny had sent him a short note updating him on a home painting project she and Aaron had undertaken. Anne had sent him a longer note. Her work in El Salvador was hard and the conditions were difficult and she was tired. But the bottom line was that she was doing what she felt she was meant to do and was happy. Nothing from Stephen. No surprise. Stephen was too busy having fun being a cowboy.

At last he turned to the boxes from Millie Joseph, boxes that contained more ghosts. Ghosts, Cork would discover, that he could never have imagined on his own.

He began to read his mother’s journals.

July 22, 1946

I wasn’t excited about the reunion in Chicago. My father’s family are ruffians, for the most part, and I’m amazed that Mother seems to enjoy herself in their company. They call her “their darlin’ squaw.” If it were said by anyone else, Mother would lash them and not just with her able tongue. She calls them “ignorant Micks,” an epithet that would land most folks
flat on their back with a bloodied lip. But the men laugh and toast her, and I have heard them say to my father that she’s the prettiest and smartest bit of skirt they’ve ever laid eyes on, and how the hell did a four-eyed bookworm covered in chalk dust ever manage to land such a prize?

Tonight at dinner a guy sat across from me. A little older than me, I suspect. His name is William, although he goes by Liam, and he’s an O’Connor, too, the grandson of my grandfather’s brother, I’ve learned. I’m still trying to figure out what iteration of relation that makes us. He said nothing to me during the meal—it would have been hard, anyway, to be heard above the hubbub—but his eyes kept finding me and later he caught me outside, alone, enjoying the dusk. He introduced himself and I was about to offer my name in return when he said it wasn’t necessary. He already knew all about me. Attending teacher’s college in Winona—on scholarship, he said. I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of that or if it was something he saw as admirable. I told him he had me at a disadvantage. He said, rather pleased, “Then I’m a mystery to you.” And I said, “Not so much as you imagine.” I looked him up and down and said, “You’re a policeman. New to the force. You have very little money and you live with your parents. On Friday nights, you drink with your bachelor friends. On Saturday, you play baseball. And on Sunday, you go to Mass and pray that a pretty young colleen will be swept off her feet by your blarney and favor you with a kiss.” He laughed and said, “And, sure, you’re the answer to my prayer.”