“Hello, Sandy,” Cork greeted him somberly.
Sandy was a large, powerfully built man, just as the judge had been before the frailty of age had withered him. Both had strong, square faces, huge brown eyes, and long, sharp jawbones. Before the judge’s hair had turned white, it had been the same color as Sandy’s-a red-blond, like honey mixed with a few drops of blood.
Beyond the physical, similarities in the two men were few. In politics they might as well have been from different planets. Where the judge had been bitterly conservative, Sandy was fiercely liberal. The difference in the men’s philosophies might have been explained by Sandy’s upbringing in Boston. He’d moved there at age twelve when, following the scandal that killed his father’s run for governor, his mother had divorced the judge. More than a dozen years later, he returned to make Aurora his home again. Despite their political differences, he and his father had worked well together in business and had created the Great North Development Company. In an area beset by economic chaos as a result of the closing of the great iron mines of the Mesabi and Vermilion Ranges, the developments financed by the Great North were a godsend.
On the campaign trail during his successful bid for a seat in the U.S. Senate, Sandy Parrant had been indefatigably upbeat and assured. The man standing in the entryway of the judge’s home looked pretty well devastated.
“I want to see him,” he said.
“No, you don’t, Sandy,” Schanno advised.
“He’s my father. I want to see him.”
“He’s dead, Sandy. Seeing him like he is now won’t do any good.”
Parrant stood firm, and for a moment Cork thought he was going to ignore the sheriff’s advice, which Cork understood was a veiled order. In other circumstances, a man of Parrant’s stature might have prevailed. But Sandy finally nodded, moved to the sofa in the living room, and sat down heavily.
“My god,” he said in disbelief. “He was such a tough old bastard.”
“I know,” Schanno agreed.
“I was afraid of something like this.”
“Why?” Schanno asked.
“Cancer. It’s everywhere.”
“I didn’t know,” Schanno said.
“He didn’t want people to know.”
“Prognosis?” Cork asked.
“He didn’t have more than six months to live.” Parrant shrugged. “Talk to Doc Gunnar.”
Schanno wrote something on a notepad he took from his shirt pocket.
“What are you doing here, Cork?” Parrant asked.
“I found your father’s body,” Cork explained. “I was looking for Paul LeBeau.”
“Joe John’s boy?”
“He went to deliver newspapers this afternoon and never came back.”
“What’s my father got to do with that?”
“Last house on the route. It was a long shot,” Cork admitted.
“You just walked right in?” Parrant gave him a look of alarm.
“Door was unlocked.”
“Nothing unusual about that, Sandy,” Schanno pointed out. “Lots of folks in Aurora don’t lock their doors. It’s that kind of town.”
“Or used to be,” Cork said.
There was a furious pounding at the front door. Schanno hurried to the entryway. Cork heard the angry voice of Sigurd Nelson. “You got any idea how tough it is getting around out there, Wally?”
“Special case, Sigurd,” Cork heard the sheriff reply.
“Special my ass. What’s so special it couldn’t wait until tomorrow? Old man like the judge dies at home, he probably died of a heart attack or a stroke like most men his age.”
“It wasn’t a heart attack, Sigurd,” Schanno said, bringing the coroner into the living room. “Didn’t the office say anything?”
“Just to get out here pronto.”
The coroner was a bald man in his late fifties with a comfortable potbelly. A mortician by profession, he’d been the assistant coroner under Dr. Daniel Bergen until Bergen died of a heart attack while fishing the Rainy River. Sigurd Nelson filled in until a special election could be held, then he’d been officially voted into the position. Once or twice a year, he was called to look at someone who’d died unexpectedly. Cork, while he was sheriff, had lobbied the board of commissioners for a change to a medical examiner, someone with some expertise, hired instead of elected, but in that effort he’d been unsuccessful. Judge Robert Parrant had wanted a coroner who was elected. It was another position he could keep under his thumb.
Nelson put down his black bag, removed his heavy black overcoat, and shook it out. He looked around for a place to put it, finally threw it over the back of a chair.
“I can tell you from experience that when a man that old dies suddenly, odds are ten to one it’s either a heart attack or a stroke.”
“It wasn’t a heart attack, Sigurd,” Schanno said again.
“No? Well, let’s just go and see.” He noticed Cork and Sandy Parrant. “Oh. Sandy. I’m sorry.”
Parrant lifted his hand in a halfhearted pardon. “That’s okay.”
“Where is he?” the coroner asked.
“That way,” Schanno said, and nodded down the hall.
Sandy Parrant stayed on the sofa, watching them as they moved down the hallway. Sigurd Nelson stepped into the study and stopped dead in his tracks. “Great God Almighty,” he whispered when he saw the blood streaking the map on the wall behind the desk.
“He’s all yours, Sigurd,” Schanno said.
Thirty minutes later they were back in the living room. As Sigurd Nelson put on his coat, he said, “I’ll be able to tell you some more after I work on him tomorrow. But like I said, if it’s time of death you’re worried about right now, the judge hasn’t been dead more than four or five hours.”
“Thanks for coming, Sigurd,” Schanno told him.
“I’m sorry, Sandy,” the coroner said, offering his condolences. “But the judge.” He shook his head. “Who would’ve figured?” He opened the door and pushed into the storm.
Cork began to put on his own coat.
“Where you headed?” Schanno asked.
“Darla LeBeau’s.”
“Tell her I’ll have a man over soon. I’ll put a notice about the boy out on the NCIC computer.” Schanno took a deep, tired breath and looked at his watch.
“Call home and check on Arletta, Wally,” Cork suggested as he pulled on his gloves. “Home ought to be every man’s first concern.” He glanced at Sandy Parrant, whose face was drawn and colorless and who, for a politician, was unusually quiet. “Want a lift, Sandy?”
Parrant shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” Cork said.
“Yeah.” Parrant gave him a brief smile of thanks. But he was a man way on the other side of something terrible, and the look in his eyes came from far, far away.
7
Traditionally the Anishinaabe were a quiet people. Before the whites came, they lived in the silence of great woods and more often than not, the voices they heard were not human. The wind spoke. The water sang. All sound had purpose. When an Anishinaabe approached the wigwam of another, he respectfully made noise to announce his coming. Thunder, therefore, was the respectful way of the storm in announcing its approach. Spirit and purpose in all things. For all creation, respect.
The storm that bent the pine trees and the tamaracks, that drove the snow plows from the roads and froze and snapped the power lines was not an angry spirit. In its passage, it created chaos not because of anger but because it was so vast and powerful and those things it touched, especially those things human, were so small in comparison. In a way, it was like the bear that Cork had once hunted with Sam Winter Moon, huge and oblivious. If the storm, in fact, was responsible for the disappearance of the boy, Cork knew it was not a thing done maliciously. In his experience, only people acted out of pure malice.
When he finally reached Darla’s house, the porch light was on and he saw an ancient Kawasaki snowmobile parked near the steps. As he approached the machine, he knew without actually seeing that under the engine oil was staining the snow. He knew it because the machine belonged to Father Tom Griffin and was the oldest of its kind in Tamarack County. It always leaked oil.