He dialed the sheriff’s office and spoke with Deputy Marsha Dross, who was on desk duty. Fletcher Kane hadn’t been there. Cork called the morgue at Aurora Community Hospital where the autopsy would be performed, but he got no answer. He called and spoke with Arne Soderberg at home, who said that since he’d left the Kanes’ house several hours earlier, he hadn’t seen or heard from the man. Cork went back to the living room.
“Glory, is there a working telephone at Valhalla?”
“I think so. We never had the service canceled. But you’re wasting your time, Cork.”
“It’s one more place we can eliminate.”
Glory gave him the number.
Cork let the phone ring ten times. He was just about to hang up when the receiver at the other end was lifted. No one spoke.
“Fletcher?” Cork said.
He heard only the sound of breathing, heavy but not labored.
“Fletcher, it’s Cork O’Connor.”
There was a long moment of silence, followed by a single word uttered like a curse.
“Butchers.”
Glory didn’t accompany Cork. Fletcher, she said, wouldn’t listen to her. Cork suspected Fletcher wouldn’t listen to him either, but he agreed to try.
He wasn’t surprised that Glory didn’t know the roots of her brother’s enmity toward the O’Connor name. It had occurred in a time when Glory was still contentedly inside her mother’s womb.
Cork remembered Harold Kane as a spidery man, long-limbed, with bulging eyes, and soft hands that smelled of antiseptic. On a Saturday morning when Cork and Fletcher were both thirteen years old, Harold Kane had locked himself in his dental office on Oak Street, sat in the chair where his patients usually reclined, and put a bullet in his head.
In a small town like Aurora, suicide was the kind of event that lingered a long time in the collective memory. When it came to light that Sheriff Liam O’Connor had been investigating Dr. Kane because one of his patients had alleged that the dentist molested her while she was anesthetized in his office, there was a good deal more to remember than the desperate act itself. Because the man died before all the evidence could be considered and formal charges brought, his guilt or innocence was never established. That didn’t matter. In the mind of the town, his response was proof enough. He was, in public opinion, tried and convicted.
A few weeks later, Fletcher Kane’s pregnant mother left town, taking her son away from the vicious tongues.
Cork all but forgot the Kanes, but Fletcher had not forgotten the O’Connors. An incident occurred soon after the Kanes’ return that signaled to Cork the deep resentment the man must have felt all those years as a result of his father’s death.
Access to Sam’s Place was via a narrow, gravel road that branched off a street on the outskirts of Aurora. Before it crossed the Burlington Northern tracks, the road passed through land privately owned by Shorty Geiger. Sam Winter Moon, the old Ojibwe after whom the establishment was named, had obtained easement rights through Geiger’s land and across the Burlington Northern tracks. On Sam’s death, when the Quonset hut and surrounding property passed to Cork O’Connor, there was a clause that required renegotiation of the easement agreement. In Aurora, not much happened in a hurry, and no one rushed to litigation. But shortly after Fletcher Kane returned, Cork received notice that access to Sam’s Place could no longer occur as it had in the past. A development company had purchased Shorty’s land and intended to put a fast-food franchise there, a move that would pretty much insure the end of Sam’s Place. Jo mounted a marvelous legal battle and won back the easement rights. The franchise was never built. In the litigation process, Jo discovered that the major investor in the development company was none other than Fletcher Kane.
Cork pulled into the muddy drive of Valhalla, deep in the woods north of Aurora. It was hard dark by then, and his headlights flashed on the back end of Fletcher Kane’s silver Cadillac El Dorado. He parked, killed his lights, and got out.
The night was still, but the lake was thawing. Beyond the pine trees, it moaned and cracked and made Cork think of a great animal awakening.
A bright three-quarter moon lit the scene. There were no lights on in the big cabin, nor in the guesthouse. Cork took a flashlight from the glove compartment of his Bronco, but he didn’t turn it on. He approached the big cabin, carefully mounting the wooden steps built into the hillside. With its grand deck that overlooked the water, the cabin seemed like a ghost ship anchored among the black trunks of the pines. He crossed the deck to the screen door and saw that the heavy inside door was open. The room beyond it was completely dark.
As he stood at the threshold, Cork became aware of a strong odor all around him that was out of place among the fresh scent of spring pines.
Kerosene.
“Fletcher,” he called toward the black inside.
He heard movement, then a metallic squeak. In the dark of the room, a small circle of glowing red rotated into sight. Cork interpreted the squeak to come from the mechanism of a swivel rocker. He was pretty sure the red glow came from the end of a lit cigar.
“Fletcher?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Glory asked me to come. She’s worried.”
“Tell her I’m touched. Now go away.”
“I’m not leaving until we talk.”
“I don’t want to talk to you, O’Connor.”
Kane’s speech was slurred, and despite what Glory said about her brother not drinking, it was clear to Cork that’s exactly what Fletcher had been doing. The whole situation struck Cork as odd. Glory, who drank, was sober. Fletcher, who didn’t, was drunk.
“I know how hard this must be for you, Fletcher,” he said.
“You have no idea.”
“I have daughters. I know it would just about kill me to lose one.”
“But you haven’t lost one.”
“I know you loved Charlotte. And that’s why I know you’re going to do the right thing for her.”
“The right thing?” The tip of his cigar bloomed red as he took a deep draw amid the strong odor of kerosene that was everywhere.
“Do you know why Arne requested an autopsy?”
“All I heard was that he wanted to butcher my girl.”
“In situations like this, an autopsy is almost automatic.”
“Situations like what?”
“A death in which drinking might have played a part. In Charlotte’s case, there’s probably something even more compelling.”
Although he could not see Kane clearly, he could see the dark shape and how still it was.
“They found some food wrappers and a beer bottle next to Charlotte’s body. An autopsy could probably tell the sheriff if it was Charlotte who did the eating and drinking.”
“What do you mean if it was Charlotte?” He thought about it. “Somebody was with her?”
“Maybe.”
“Then why didn’t the son of a bitch do anything to help?”
“I suppose there are several possibilities.”
A long silence, then Kane struck on the darkest of the implications. “Somebody wanted her dead?”