“Do you think he killed her?” he asked.
“My gut feeling is no,” Cork said.
Solemn stared down at the gray sneakers worn by all the long-term guests of the county. “So. It may do me some good, but I imagine it’ll pretty well mess up Sheriff Soderberg’s life.”
“I imagine.”
And he did. Cork imagined Lyla like a withered fruit, sucked dry of compassion. And he pictured Arne on the streets of Aurora, a man people would pretend not to see.
“He never seemed to me to be very happy,” Solemn said. “I can’t help feeling sorry for him.” He turned to Cork. “Is he a religious man?”
“No more so than most folks, I’d guess.”
“I’ll pray for him.” He returned to his chair and sat down with his hands folded in his lap. “I’m still going to trial?”
“We’ll have to see about that.” Cork signaled Pender, who was on cell block duty that day. “If I were you, Solemn, I’d pray a little for myself.”
Solemn looked up at him, looked out of the deep brown wells that were his eyes. “Some days that’s all I do. It’ll help me, praying for someone else.” He hesitated, as if reluctant to say the rest. “Thank you for all you’re doing. Only…”
“What?”
“Maybe some things that are secret should stay that way.”
“Sometimes we just turn over rocks, Solemn. What’s there is there.”
Heading out of the department, Cork passed the opened door of the sheriff’s office. Soderberg was not inside. Gooding came over from the front desk.
“The sheriff got a call from the county attorney a few minutes ago,” Gooding said. “He took off right away. Listen, Cork, even if you could prove that he was with Charlotte Kane that night, it doesn’t mean he killed her.”
“Maybe not, but it’ll raise a hell of a question in a jury’s mind. I’ll catch you later, Randy.”
In the parking lot, he got into his Bronco. Although it was still morning, the sun was hot already. He rolled down his windows to let in air. He was about to crank the engine when he spotted Arne Soderberg sitting in his BMW, staring. The wing that housed the prisoners was in front of him, and he seemed to be looking at the dull brick wall. Cork watched for a few minutes until Soderberg started his car and pulled out of the lot.
The sheriff drove slowly. At Fourth and Holly, he ran a stop sign. Not fast, just drifted through as if he didn’t see it at all. He headed out past the town limits and turned onto North Point Road. He pulled into the drive of his home, got out, and went inside. Cork cruised past the house, drove a hundred yards, turned around, parked, and waited.
Less than five minutes later, Soderberg stepped out. He backed from his drive and headed into Aurora. He skirted Oak Street, the county courthouse, stayed well away from the sheriff’s department, and kept going south. At the far end of town, he turned onto Lakeview Road and wound his way up the hill to the cemetery.
At that time of the morning, the grounds were almost deserted. Just beyond the gate, Cork saw Gus Finlayson, the groundskeeper, standing in the cool shade of a big maple, tossing hand tools into a small trailer hitched to the back of a John Deere garden tractor. Finlayson waved as Cork passed. Far ahead, the BMW pulled to a stop under a familiar linden tree, and Arne Soderberg got out. By the time Cork’s Bronco rolled up behind the car, Soderberg was already down the hill standing at Charlotte’s grave.
For a long time, Cork sat in his Bronco. He watched Soderberg smoke a cigarette, then light another. He remembered the wonderful fragrance that had filled the cemetery the day the rose petals appeared. Now the air smelled of cut summer grass, a good scent, but not at all a miracle. After a while, Cork got out, and descended the hill.
Soderberg saw him coming. “Haven’t you done enough damage, O’Connnor? Just leave me the hell alone.”
Cork looked at the towering marble monument erected in Charlotte’s memory. “She was a beautiful young woman, Arne.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“I suppose not.” He let a few breaths go by. “That day on Moccasin Creek when you saw her body, it must have been hard on you. You didn’t know she was there, did you?”
Fingers of smoke crept from Soderberg’s lips, stroked his cheeks and his hair, then lifted free of him and drifted idly away. “She was alive when I left Valhalla.”
Cork nodded. “The problem is this. There’s no way for you to prove it.”
Soderberg reached into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. Without a word, he handed it to Cork.
It was a receipt for the purchase of 13.6 gallons of gas, a credit card transaction bearing Soderberg’s signature. It had been generated at the Food ’N Fuel at 1:27 A.M. on January 1.
Soderberg said, “I was in Aurora when Charlotte was killed. It was Winter Moon. I know it was that son of a bitch.”
Cork handed back the receipt. “What are you going to do, Arne?”
Soderberg looked up, squinting at the sun. His face was full of deep lines, like a flat stone fractured with a hammer. “Funny how things change. Yesterday I had the world by the balls.”
“Let me ask you something,” Cork said. “The rose petals in the cemetery on Memorial Day. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, especially now in light of what you and Charlotte shared. I’m thinking it was you. Some kind of grand gesture. You used Soderberg Transport and the department copy of the gate key, all for Charlotte. An amazing memorial. Am I right?”
“Go to hell,” Soderberg said. He flicked his cigarette away. It tumbled end over end, trailing smoke and embers, until it hit the stone on the next grave down the hillside and exploded in a shower of sparks. “Go to hell and burn, you meddling son of a bitch.”
27
Cork found Jo in her office.
“Well?” he asked.
“I filed the motion. Everything goes public now.”
Cork sat down. “I just talked with Arne Soderberg. He as much as admitted the affair with Charlotte, but he insists he didn’t kill her.”
“Do you believe him?”
“It appears that he has an alibi. And, yeah, I guess I do believe him.”
Jo picked up a paper clip from her desk and turned it round and round between her fingers. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Don’t hurt yourself.”
He smiled; she didn’t.
“Thinking what?”
“I don’t like it, but I’m thinking maybe Arne isn’t the only Soderberg we should be looking at.”
Cork considered the implication and leaned forward, resting his arms on her desk. “Lyla?”
Jo shrugged. “She left the Lipinski party early. And if she knew about the affair, she had motive.”
“Marion Griswold said she dropped her off around midnight. I suppose there was enough time for her to drive to Valhalla before Charlotte was killed.”
In fiddling with the paper clip, Jo had bent it all out of shape. Cork saw that it now resembled a figure eight. Or the symbol for infinity.
“We should probably talk to Lyla. But…” She hesitated. “I don’t know. If she’s innocent, if she really didn’t know about the affair, it seems cruel to badger her.”
“A few questions judiciously phrased and we might be able to put everything to rest quickly.”
Jo looked up from the paper clip. “What does your gut tell you about this one?”
“That it will feel better after I’ve fed it a few answers.”
“The truth is, mine will, too.”
She tossed the paper clip into the wastebasket beside her desk.
When Cork pulled into the drive of the Soderberg home, he saw that Arne’s BMW wasn’t there, nor was Lyla’s PT Cruiser. But a little red Miata was. Tiffany was washing it. She wore jean shorts and a purple Viking football jersey. A bucket of sudsy water sat on the drive. The water hose snaked out from a spigot on the side of the house. The end was capped with a brass spray nozzle, closed at the moment. Tiffany bent over the car with a big yellow sponge in her hand and worked at lathering the hood. When she spotted Cork and Jo, she actually smiled. It was a better reception from her than Cork had experienced… ever.