“After the procedure, Fletcher set us up in another place, in Ventura. He let a few weeks pass so no one would connect our disappearance to him, then we all moved to Aurora.”
“Did you know he’d altered Maria to look like his own daughter?”
“I knew he’d had a daughter who died. I didn’t know what she looked like until we’d come to Aurora and I found some photographs he kept in a box.”
“Did you know how she died?”
“Not until Rose told me that you’d gone to California and why.”
“What did you think when you found out?”
“That you were wrong in believing Fletcher might have been responsible for Maria’s death. Fletcher is not an easy man, but he’s no murderer.”
“How do you know?”
“He was with me the night Maria went missing. I was drunk, but not enough to pass out. We both went to bed around two. But you probably knew that from my statement. You just didn’t believe it.”
That was true.
“Did Maria know about Charlotte?” Cork asked.
“No. Fletcher didn’t want her to know. I think he was concerned that she wouldn’t understand or that it might scare her. I don’t know, maybe he was afraid of letting her in on the secret, afraid she might tell someone.”
“How did you feel about him using her that way?”
“We’d been used by men in a lot of ways, Maria and me. It didn’t seem so terrible. At first. We all tried to be the family Fletcher imagined. But he didn’t want Maria just to look like his daughter. He wanted her to be Charlotte. He told her how to dress, how to talk, what to say. He tried to get her to do things with him, the kind of things he’d done with his daughter. Biking, skiing, tennis. He was always correcting her. Sometimes he got short with her. She had a large birthmark on her hip, shaped a little like Florida. He wouldn’t let her wear a bikini or a high-cut suit because it might show. He even suggested she have it removed, because Charlotte didn’t have a blemish like that. He never understood, or maybe just never accepted that no matter how Maria looked and acted, she would never be Charlotte, and he didn’t know how to love who she was. She understood that, I think, even though she didn’t understand why.” She shook her head. “Maria tried so hard to please him. She needed to be loved. Eventually she tried to get him to love her in the same way her father had. She came on to Fletcher, tried to use her body to get his love.”
She closed her eyes, as if the memory or the talking exhausted her.
“What happened?”
“Fletcher was disgusted. Maria was confused. I was drunk. After that, he kept her at arm’s length, but he watched her all the time. He got a little scary that way. Maria began to say she felt like a prisoner. The silence was suffocating. Toward the end, Maria was pretty messed up. I wanted her to see someone. You know, a therapist or something. But Fletcher wouldn’t allow it. Sometimes I thought about taking Maria and leaving, but I had no money. And I was scared to death that if we left, Frankie would find us. Or Fletcher. He’d become so strange. Disgusted with Maria, but desperate not to lose her.”
“Fletcher never did anything about Maria’s advances?”
“You mean sleep with her? No. Believe me, I would have known. Maybe I wouldn’t have done anything about it, but I would have known.”
“Why did you stay? I mean after Maria disappeared?”
“I hoped she might turn up at the door one day, and I wanted to be there when that happened. I never had a daughter, and I wasn’t any good at playing mother, but I cared about Maria. Once she was buried, there was no reason to stay. Fletcher was actually quite generous. Money is something I don’t have to worry about now.” She stood up and looked back at the Center. “Rosemount is for women considering a religious life. You’ve got to be wondering how someone like me could ever think they might be able to serve God.”
“I’m not thinking that at all,” Cork said.
She dropped her cigarette and crushed it out. “I thought that Fletcher was offering a chance at a new life for me, for Maria. I thought that maybe we could all escape our pasts. I was wrong. There’s only one way to start a new life, and that’s by facing the truth. I don’t know what’s ahead. God hasn’t shown me yet, but for the first time in my life, I’m not afraid.”
She couldn’t seem to decide whether to sit or stand. She began to pace.
“I’ve told you all of this because I owe Fletcher something. In his way, he tried to help. I’m hoping that now you know the truth, you’ll be a little more compassionate toward him. I pray for him all the time. I know what it is to be lost. I think of him alone in that big, awful house, and I’m sorry for him. If it hadn’t been for Rose, I never would have made it through all that.”
“Did you tell Rose the truth?”
“I told her nothing. I wanted to. I knew she wouldn’t judge me, but I just couldn’t do it. She knew something was terribly wrong, though, and she did her best to be a friend. She helped me to believe there’s good in me. And the sisters here, they’re helping me, too. I know I still have a long way to go, but I believe I’m on the right road.” She looked at Cork. “I don’t know if Solemn Winter Moon is responsible for Maria’s death-”
“He isn’t.”
“Either way, I’ll pray for him. It’s the best I can do.”
Cork waited a bit to see if there was something more she wanted to say, but apparently there wasn’t. He had the information he’d come for, so he got up to leave.
“I think I’ll stay here awhile,” Cordelia Diller said. “Give my love to Rose.”
Cork walked to his Bronco. When he looked back, she was sitting on the bench again, a thin ribbon of cigarette smoke unraveling in the air above her.
He drove north for a couple of hours but was too tired to drive the final 250 miles to Aurora. He stopped in Red Wing and called Jo from a Super 8 motel to let her know he’d be home the next day. He ate a pretty good burger at a place called the Bierstube and drank a couple of cold Leinenkugels. It was dark by the time he came out, but he wasn’t ready to turn in. He drove to a park on the Mississippi River, got out, and walked.
It was a clear night, the sky full of stars, the moon not yet risen. The river was a wide sweep of black with the far side lost in darkness. Cork stood in the quiet under a cottonwood on the bank.
Even after he’d talked to Cordelia Diller, he’d considered the possibility that Kane might have killed the second Charlotte because he couldn’t control her, couldn’t make of her the daughter he’d tried to resurrect. But unless Cordelia Diller had lied-and Cork didn’t believe she had-Fletcher Kane had an airtight alibi. So Cork had to accept that he’d been wrong in his thinking. Although the manner in which the man had used Maria was unconscionable, of the particular sins Cork had ascribed to him, Kane was innocent.
He thought about the desperate minutes on the cold ice long ago in January when he’d been lost in the whiteout and the gray figure that had kept itself just out of his vision and reach had led him to the safety of his snowmobile. He’d sensed that it was Charlotte, and at the same time, it wasn’t Charlotte. Now he understood. Somehow, the girl Maria had reached out to him, saved him. But why? Because he’d tried to save her, and like her had become lost? Or was it that she wanted him to find her killer, that she simply wanted justice?
If that was the case, there was a problem, because he had no suspects left. He believed the killer wasn’t Fletcher Kane, nor was it Arne Soderberg, or Lyla. He still believed in Solemn’s innocence. The crime was old and cold now. Cork wondered if this was one that would go unsolved. Sometimes you just had to accept it.
But not when the dead reached out to you. Not when you knew they demanded justice.