Mal Thorne was at his desk, shoving around the mouse for his computer. Cork knocked at the door, and the priest looked up. The pleasant surprise of seeing Corcoran O’Connor at his door carved a wide smile on his face.
“Well, come on in.” He stood up and bounded toward Cork, his hand already out in greeting.
“I stopped by the rectory first. Rose said I’d find you here.”
“Just finished brewing up a pot of coffee. Join me?”
“Thanks.”
Mal went to a small table pushed against the wall where a framed charcoal drawing of St. Agnes hung.
“Nice picture,” Cork said. “Where’d you get it?”
“Randy Gooding. A Christmas present. Remarkable, isn’t it?” Mal lifted the pot from the coffeemaker and poured some into a disposable cup. “All I’ve got is this powdered creamer crap.”
“Black’ll do.” Cork took his coffee. “Rose seems to be doing fine covering for Ellie Gruber.”
“Are you kidding? Rose is a saint.” The priest tipped the jar of creamer and tapped some into his own coffee. “I’ve never seen anybody handle Father Kelsey with such a firm, loving hand. Don’t get me wrong. Mrs. Gruber is fine. It’s just that there’s something special about Rose. But I’m sure you know that.”
Cork sipped from his cup. The coffee was hot and strong, just as he liked it. “Whatever it is she does here, it agrees with her. She looks terrific.”
“She’s absolutely lovely.” He became intent on stirring his coffee with a white plastic spoon, as if he’d said too much. He indicated a chair to Cork, and he sat back down in the swivel chair he’d been using at the computer. “What’s up?”
Cork sat down. “Solemn Winter Moon turned himself in last night.”
The priest was about to take a sip, but he paused. “Does Fletcher Kane know?”
“I’m sure he does by now. Mal, there’s a strange twist to all this.”
“How so?”
“Solemn claims he’s had a vision. He claims he talked with Jesus.”
“A prayer talk?”
“No, like we’re having right now.”
“Jesus in the flesh?”
“That’s what he says.”
“When?”
“While he was out in the woods.”
Cork told him about Henry Meloux, giigwishimowin, and Solemn’s visitation in the clearing.
When Cork finished, Mal swirled his coffee for a moment, then said, “Minnetonka moccasins?”
“That’s what he claims.”
“Why did you come to me with this?”
“I was hoping you might talk to Solemn.”
“The man who urinated in the baptismal font.”
“Please. Just talk to him.”
“To what end?”
“I’d like your reaction to what he says and to the change in him.”
“Change?”
“Talk to him. You’ll see what I mean.”
“How do I get in?”
“I’ll have Jo arrange it. She’s agreed to represent him. He’s scheduled to be arraigned later this morning. Maybe this afternoon you could see him.”
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”
“Thanks.” Cork gulped down the last of his coffee.
Mal Thorne stood up with him as he prepared to go. “Do you believe it’s possible he talked with Jesus?”
Cork said, “What I believe doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does,” the priest said. He placed his thick hand gently on Cork’s shoulder. “I think it does more than you realize.”
17
At 11:00 A.M., Solemn Winter Moon was arraigned in the Tamarack County courthouse on a single charge of assaulting an officer. Dressed in the blue uniform and wearing the plastic slippers of a county jail inmate, handsome with his long black hair down his back, Solemn stood before Judge Norbert Olmstead and entered a plea of not guilty.
Nestor Cole, the county attorney, had a narrow face and eyes that lay alongside his thin nose like two stewed oysters. He wore black-rimmed glasses that made him look more like a science teacher than a lawyer. Everyone knew he had a good shot at a judgeship when the next vacancy arose, provided he kept a reasonable profile and didn’t blow anything too important. He vehemently maintained that Solemn was a flight risk. Near the end of his argument, he slapped his hand down on the table, but his timing was a hair off and the gesture seemed overly theatrical.
Jo argued that Solemn’s first absence wasn’t flight; he often sought solitude at Sam Winter Moon’s old cabin. She contended that the second instance was panic, understandable in light of the questionable tactics the sheriff had used in questioning her client. Both times, she pointed out, Solemn returned of his own accord.
Cork knew that public sentiment ran against Solemn, that he would probably be charged eventually with Charlotte’s death, and that it would be smart to hold on to him until a formal murder charge could be made. Judge Olmstead, a hunched man with a twitching right eye that made him look like a nervous pickpocket, set bail at $250,000.
Jo was on her feet instantly. “For assaulting an officer?”
“Counselor,” the judge broke in. “I was thinking half a million. You persuaded me to be lenient.” He banged his gavel to seal his decision and told both attorneys that he wanted to see them in chambers to discuss a date for the scheduling conference.
Fletcher Kane had come to the arraignment. He sat alone at the back of the courtroom. Although he didn’t say a word, the force of his presence was clear in the way Judge Olmstead kept glancing in his direction. Once that impossible bail had been set, Kane unfolded his hands and rose from the bench on which he sat. No emotion showed in his face as he ambled out of the courtroom.
Dorothy Winter Moon had taken the morning off from her county job. She’d done herself up carefully and come to court looking as if she handled realty papers all day long instead of wrestling the wheel of a dump truck that could haul ten tons. When bail was set, she said under her breath (but loud enough for Judge Olmstead to hear if he’d cared to take note), “You lousy son of a bitch Republican bastard.” Jo explained to Dot and to Solemn that the only alternative to coming up with $250,000 in cash would be to have a bondsman post bail. In order to arrange that, someone would have to be willing to fork over to the bondsman a nonrefundable twenty-five grand.
Dot clearly looked distressed. “I’ll come up with it somehow,” she said.
“Keep your money, Ma,” Solemn said. “I’m not afraid.” He kissed her just before the deputies led him away.
After Solemn was gone, Dot turned to Jo. She wiped at her eyes with a rough knuckle. “He’s Indian. And he never goes to church. Why would Jesus talk to him?”
Cork didn’t arrive at Sam’s Place until almost noon. As he pulled up, a boat with a couple of fishermen aboard putted toward the dock and tied up there. Cork hurried inside and began to ready things for customers.
Shortly before three o’clock, Mal Thorne parked in the graveled lot and walked to the serving window. Jenny wasn’t due for another half an hour, and Cork was still handling things alone. Mal waited until Cork finished with his only customers at the moment, a man and woman who’d ordered chocolate sundaes, then he stepped up and leaned in the window.
“I just came from talking with Solemn Winter Moon,” he said.
“Well?”
“You know, Cork, when I was running the mission in Chicago, I had a regular there, an old man who called himself Jericho. I don’t have the slightest idea if that was his real name or simply what he went by. He had no family so far as I ever knew, no home. He was a harmless old guy. Always wore a tam, like he was Scottish or something. Anyway, despite his life on the streets, Jericho was basically a happy man. Why? He said he had a talk with God every day and that set the tone. Not prayer talk, mind you.”
“Like Solemn claims to have had with Jesus?”
“Exactly. I often asked him what God said to him, but he wouldn’t tell me. Well, one day I get a call from Cook County General. Jericho’s been admitted, hit by a flower delivery truck. He’s in pretty bad shape, and they don’t think he’s going to make it. He’s asking for me. So I go to his bedside, give him Last Rites. When I’m done, he crooks his finger, signals me down close, and he whispers in my ear, ‘You always wanted to know what God said to me. Well, Father, I’ll tell you. I never understood a word because He always talked in Hebrew.’