“If you give me a minute, I can pull the duty roster for that night.”
“Would you?”
“Be right back.”
A few minutes later, she returned.
“Randy was on from eight to three-thirty that day. One of the lucky few who had the evening off.”
By the time Cork returned to his house on Gooseberry Lane, Jo had left for work. Jenny was in the kitchen, eating a bowl of Cheerios, still wearing her sleep shirt.
“Are we going to open Sam’s Place today?” she asked.
“I’ve got something else on my agenda.”
“You know,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. If you hired Sean to help, Annie and I could pretty much run Sam’s Place by ourselves. It’s not exactly rocket science, Dad.”
“Sean? Your boyfriend?”
“I don’t know any other Sean.”
Cork walked to the doorway of the living room. Stevie was still on the floor in front of the television, but he was working with crayons and a coloring book now and paying no attention to what was on the tube.
“The other thing is,” Jenny went on, “if you don’t open Sam’s Place pretty soon, I’ll have to find another job. I’m starting to dip into my savings account. You know, the one I’ve been putting money into for college.”
“Where’s Rose?”
“She got a call from the church office a little while ago. They needed her, so she walked on over.”
“How’s she doing?”
“I’ve never seen her so sad. Maybe helping out at St. Agnes will do her good.” She paused a beat. “What about it?”
“What about what?”
“Hiring Sean?”
“All right. On a trial basis.”
“Really? That’s great.” Jenny stood up. “I’ll get changed and go tell him.” She gave her father a huge smile. “I’m going to love being my boyfriend’s boss.” She put her bowl in the sink and started out of the kitchen. “Oh, Mom wants you to call her right away.”
Cork walked to Jo’s back office, to use the phone there. He wanted privacy to tell her of his suspicions about Randy Gooding. He was thinking that although he didn’t know the reason yet, it all made a strange kind of sense. Gooding wasn’t on duty the night Charlotte was killed. He could easily have heard about the party at Valhalla and posted himself out there, waiting for his chance. He could have stolen Solemn’s wrench and picked up the Corona bottle Solemn had left in the snow. If he’d gone to Valhalla with murder on his mind, he’d probably stopped at a convenience store for the food he’d eventually consumed along with Charlotte’s sins. As for the evening Fletcher Kane killed himself and Solemn, Gooding must have lied. He hadn’t gone to Sam’s old cabin first. He’d gone to Fletcher Kane’s home, gone too late to stop the killings, but with enough time to consume the sins.
But why? What did he know about Gooding that would have pointed toward a motive for killing Charlotte?
He reached for the phone just as it rang.
“Cork? This is Mal. I’m at Randy Gooding’s.”
“Jesus, Mal, what are you doing?”
“I know how Gooding knows me. And there’s something here you have to see.”
“Is Gooding there?”
“No.”
“I’m on my way. But if he comes before I get there, don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
“That’s a promise.”
Cork hurried upstairs to his bedroom. From the top shelf in his closet, he took a metal lockbox and put it on his bed. He keyed in the combination and lifted the lid. Inside, wrapped in an oilcloth, was his S amp; W. 38 Police Special. The revolver had belonged first to his father, who’d worn it every day while he was sheriff, and then it had been Cork’s, who’d done the same during his own tenure serving the citizens of Tamarack County. There was a trigger lock on the weapon. Cork took the key from his key ring and undid the lock. He went back to the closet and pulled down a cardboard box. Inside was a basket-weave holster and gun belt, which he put on. From the cartridges he kept with the revolver, he took enough to fill the cylinder. He lifted the weapon to feel its heft, a thing he hadn’t done in quite a while, and he slid it into the holster and pressed the thumb snap into place. There was a time when he’d worn the gun daily, when the weight of it on his hip would go unnoticed for hours. Much had happened in his life between that time and now. The. 38 made him feel prepared for what might lie ahead. But he was also aware that the badge, which used to be a standard part of the ensemble and that was the unquestioned rationale for carrying the weapon, was missing, and in a way, he felt naked.
He stepped into the hall just as Annie came out of her bedroom. She looked still asleep, her hair a tangle in her eyes. She yawned.
“Morning, Dad.”
Then she saw the revolver at his side, and her eyes crawled up until she looked with concern into her father’s face.
“I have to go out for a while, Annie. Until Rose comes back, you or Jenny need to be here to watch over Stevie. Do you understand?”
“What’s wrong, Dad?”
“Nothing, I hope. Just stay here,” he said. “I’ll explain when I get back.”
He brushed against her in the hallway, barely a touch, but she fell back as if he’d shoved her.
He drove to Gooding’s place, a block north of St. Agnes. Gooding’s Tracker was parked under a big maple in front of Mamie Torkelson’s house. Cork pulled to the curb across the street and got out. He checked the Tracker. It was locked.
A dozen years earlier, after her husband died, Mamie had turned her two-story home into a duplex and had begun leasing out the upstairs. Cork looked toward the upper floor, which Gooding now rented. The curtains were drawn.
The clouds that had been scattered most of the morning were coming together in an organized line that threatened rain. They advanced across the face of the sun, and the whole block around Cork dropped into a dark, blue quiet.
He didn’t like the setup. It felt wrong, threatening. He reached down and thumbed back the safety strap on his holster, then started walking cautiously up the walk toward the house. Mamie Torkelson was nearly deaf. As Cork approached the porch, he heard her television blaring from the first floor, a commercial for Wendy’s. He realized that he hadn’t eaten yet and he was hungry. Suddenly all he could think about was eating. It was an odd thing, but he remembered it was like that sometimes in a tight spot. You thought of a thing and once your mind got hooked on it, you couldn’t let it go. Even as you were telling yourself to focus, to concentrate because your life might depend on it, you were thinking about the other thing that had nothing to do with your immediate survival. As he mounted the steps toward the deep shade of the porch, he was sure he could smell hamburger grilling, and his mouth watered, and as he reached for the doorknob, he wanted the taste of a burger in the worst way.
Before Cork touched it, the door swung open. He stumbled back and his right hand dropped toward his holster.
Mal Thorne stepped out. When he saw where Cork’s hand was headed, he brought his own hands up in surrender.
“Don’t shoot.”
“You shouldn’t be here, Mal.”
“I wanted to talk to Randy.”
“That was not a good idea.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’s not here.”
Cork glanced back at the Tracker parked on the street. “What did you want to show me?”
“Upstairs.” He waved Cork to follow him inside.
The stairway was dark, lit only from the light that slipped through a small window on the upper landing. Mal went ahead, mounting rapidly. Cork followed more slowly, eyeing the closed door at the top.
“You’ve been inside?” Cork said.
Mal nodded.
“How?”
“He didn’t answer when I knocked, so I went downstairs and told Mrs. Torkelson that I was supposed to wait for him inside. She was reluctant. She told me she believes in giving her tenants complete privacy. But I was insistent and sincere and she opened it up.” Mal reached for the door. “Nobody ever believes a priest would lie.”
He slipped out of sight inside.