“I’ll be right there,” Nelson called back. “What are you doing here, Cork?” he asked impatiently.
“I just wondered why you decided not to autopsy.”
“Because I’d have difficulty explaining it to the taxpayers of this county is why. Christ, the man had cancer everywhere. He blew his brains out because he was going to die anyway. What’s to autopsy? Open-and-shut case.”
“But you looked at the body carefully yourself?”
“Sure I did. And I found just what I expected. He died because he blew his brains out. Period.”
“No other marks on his body?”
“Why would there be other marks?”
“Mind if I have a look?”
“Of course I mind. Why are you here, Cork? You’re not even the sheriff anymore.”
“Come on, Sigurd. Open-and-shut case. You said it yourself. What harm can it do letting me see the body? Just for a minute.”
“He’s a mess.”
“I’ve seen him before.”
Nelson didn’t look happy, but he finally turned and led the way.
The basement was divided into several rooms, all with shut doors. Sigurd opened one of the doors, turned on the light, and stepped in. In some ways, the prep room reminded Cork of a scientific laboratory. Red tile floor, off-white walls, cabinets, embalming pump, and flush tank. On a row of pegs along the wall hung Sigurd’s blue prep clothing and the plastic face shield he wore when preparing a body. The judge’s naked corpse lay on an old white porcelain prep table near the embalming pump.
“He’s all yours,” Nelson said with a wave toward the table.
The corpse lay on its back. The face was pallid and the features relaxed. Above the eyebrows, the cavity that had at one time held a very bright, but in Cork’s opinion very devious, brain was nearly empty. With the top of the skull blown away, the head was crowned by a blood-crusted rim of jagged bone. Cork looked carefully at the neck, the wrists, the ankles, the ribs.
“If you’re looking for bruises, you won’t find any,” the coroner told him. “He wasn’t tied up, beat up, or strangled. He just blew his brains out, okay?”
Cork looked closely again at the judge’s arms, then at his thighs, and finally his abdomen. “Help me turn him over, Sigurd.”
“Why?”
“Just help me, will you?”
Nelson gave a reluctant hand. Cork studied the judge’s shoulders, the back of his arms, the small of his back, the cheeks of his buttocks.
“What the hell are you looking for anyway?” Sigurd demanded.
“Nothing. Just looking.”
“Just looking?” Nelson grunted as they turned the body onto its back again.
“Chalk it up to idle curiosity, Sigurd,” Cork said.
“Idle curiosity? I swear to God-” the coroner said growing red with indignation. “I’ve got a perfectly good dinner getting cold.”
Nelson draped the body with the sheet and flipped off the light switch. He followed Cork upstairs. At the door he warned, “Cork, I got half a mind-” But he didn’t finish.
“Thanks,” Cork said, and started away.
At his back, Nelson slammed the door.
The coroner had a right to be upset. Cork had no business looking at the body, no business thinking about the case at all. But an Ojibwe boy was missing and Henry Meloux was sure that a Windigo was about, and although Wally Schanno was a good cop, he was one hundred percent white, and neither the boy nor the Windigo would matter as much to him as they did to Cork. Cork sat in the Bronco thinking about the body of the judge. He’d come because he was always suspicious of an easy explanation. Few things were so sure and simple that they could be taken at face value. If he’d believed Sigurd had done a decent job as coroner, he might not have asked to see the body. He was glad he had.
He was running late, but he wanted to stop by Darla LeBeau’s house. The place was dark, the side-walks unshoveled. He rang the front bell anyway. No one answered. He started back to the Bronco, but didn’t get in. He studied the woods from which had come the voice Meloux said was the call of the Windigo. The evening was dark and still. Stars dusted the black sky. Cork could see the glimmer of other houses in a small subdivision a hundred yards away, but on the deserted part of the road where he stood, there was no light, no sign of life, no sound but the whisper of his own quiet breathing.
He walked toward the woods, stepped in among the trees. He stood still, listening, watching. The woods felt empty and Cork felt alone.
“Why do you want me?” Cork spoke softly to the stillness. His eyes darted all around. “What have you come for?”
If he expected an answer-and he wasn’t certain that he didn’t-he was disappointed. He told himself he had imagined the voice in the wind. The Windigo was a myth.
But there was a part of him that knew different. Sam Winter Moon had cautioned him long ago that it was best to believe in all possibilities, that there were more mysteries in the world than a man could ever hope to understand.
13
The Rectory door was opened to him by Ellie Gruber, a stout woman in her late fifties who’d been housekeeper for the ancient Father Kelsey more than a decade. She told him Father Griffin wasn’t there yet, but she showed him to the priest’s office and brought him coffee. Cork could hear a television in another room. Ellie said the Timberwolves were playing the Bulls. Cork could also hear Father Kelsey mumble and groan and occasionally toss in an unpriestly expletive.
“The Timberwolves must be losing.” Cork smiled.
Father Tom Griffin’s office was a mess of papers and books covering every flat surface of the room. The furniture consisted of a desk with a telephone and a small brass lamp, three scarred wooden chairs, an ancient green filing cabinet, and, in front of the window, a typing table with an old Olivetti electric. A crucifix hung on one wall; on another were several framed photographs; against the third stood a bookcase with every shelf crammed full. Cork gravitated to the photos. He believed a lot could be inferred from the photographs a person chose to display. In Father Tom Griffin’s case, Cork saw much of the road the man had traveled to reach that cluttered office. One photo showed a young Tom Griffin, a long and lanky college kid in a Notre Dame baseball uniform with a self-confident and likable grin. Another, taken much later, showed him in his collar standing with the pope. The pope looked small and severe next to the tall priest, who was relaxed and smiling. Several of the other photos seemed to have been taken in Central America. They were village shots, dusty streets or cobble-stone, and shy, emaciated mestizo kids smiling for the camera. The last picture was quite recent, taken on the Iron Lake Reservation, and showed Tom Griffin standing beside the mission building he was restoring. With him stood Wanda Manydeeds. It was fitting. The priest and the Midewiwin. Wanda looked serious as ever. The priest, although he had a black eye patch now and he’d let his hair go shaggy, was still smiling just as broadly as the kid in the photo who’d played ball for Notre Dame.
Tom Griffin’s eye wasn’t the only wounded part of his body. The priest bore other scars, some visible on his hands and arms. Although he had never asked the priest directly, Cork had heard about the long political internment that had ended the cleric’s involvement in the church in Central America. This information was always offered in a hushed tone, as if to the conservative parishioners of St. Agnes it was some kind of questionable skeleton in the priest’s closet.
Tom Griffin caught Cork by surprise, sweeping into the room suddenly, bringing with him the hard cold that had stiffened his old leather jacket. He wore a stocking cap with the red face mask still pulled down, so that, with only the eye holes and nose hole and mouth, he looked like some kind of demon conjured out of a North Woods black night.
“Sorry I’m late, Cork.” He pulled off the stocking cap and mask.
“Didn’t hear your snowmobile, Tom,” Cork said.