“What is it, Rose?”
She spoke in a hush. “Harlan Lytton called. He wants you to call him as soon as you can.”
“Did he say why?”
“No. But he sounded scary, Cork. And he didn’t sound sober.”
“Thanks, Rose. Is everything okay there? The kids?”
“Fine. Everything here’s fine. I’ve made sure the doors are locked.”
“Good. I’ll call Harlan. And, Rose?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks.”
Lytton answered right away, as if he’d been watching the phone and waiting to pounce.
“O’Connor. It’s about time. Listen, I got something you want to see.”
Lytton had a raspy voice. Drunk, it was like splinters.
“What is it?” Cork asked.
“Not over the phone. Get your ass out here.”
“It’s late, Harlan. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“O’Connor, you fuck, get over here. What I got to show you, you’ll want to see.”
“All right, Harlan. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Jo and Sandy Parrant were standing together in the living room talking quietly.
“I’ve got to go,” Cork told her.
“Everything’s okay at home?” Jo asked.
“Everything’s fine. I’m going out to see Harlan Lytton.”
“Lytton?” Parrant said. “Why on earth do you want to see him?”
“He says he’s got something to show me. I can take you home first, Jo.”
“I’m not ready yet,” she said.
“I’ll see she gets home,” Parrant assured Cork.
Cork shook his hand. “Nice memorial for your father.”
“He was a good man,” Parrant said. “He deserved it.”
Sure, Cork thought. And monkeys fly out my butt.
21
The wind had turned fierce, a bitter southern wind. It made the trees sway and the loose snow rise up, so that occasionally the road was lost in brief ground blizzards. On his way to Lytton’s, Cork heard the forecast. More snow. Plunging temperatures.
He parked on the road. Lytton hadn’t yet plowed himself out, and the lane leading to his cabin was heavily drifted over. Cork had stopped by the house on Gooseberry Lane to change his clothes and to strap on his belt and holster and his. 38. He doublechecked the cylinder, snapped it back in place, and got out of the Bronco. What Lytton had in mind, he couldn’t even guess at, but things were strange in Aurora these days, and he didn’t want to be caught unprepared.
Even in the shelter of the woods, the branches of the trees whipped about wildly. The trunks of the birch and tamarack moaned as they twisted and strained. The wind slapped his face. Little crystals of ice hit him like needles and made his eyes water. The sound of the wind through the trees swallowed every other noise. In the lane, Cork felt vulnerable. But the woods were full of bogs, and he didn’t want to leave the certainty of the solid ground. He unbuttoned his coat and reached in to be sure he could get to his revolver quickly. He watched the woods carefully as he crept toward Lytton’s cabin.
Three-quarters of the way in, the clear crack of a high powered rifle from the direction of Lytton’s place made Cork hit the snow and roll. He scrambled off the open lane and hunkered down under the low branches of a small tamarack and waited.
He breathed hard and thought fast. Would Lytton really try to kill him because of the dog? Was that what this was about? Lytton was a mean son of a bitch and torn up over the death of the Ripper, but was he so stupid-or so confused by grief-that he’d lead a man into an ambush he’d advertised so broadly? Maybe it was exactly what a man would do when he lost what he most loved.
Cork risked a peek around the base of the tree. The ground all around was a tangle of brush and vine clumps. Nothing moved.
A minute had passed. Cork replayed the sound of the shot in his head. It had come from the direction of Lytton’s cabin. That didn’t mean that Lytton had fired it, or that Cork was the target. He’d been an easy mark on the road, and Lytton was a good shot.
He crouched and stumbled forward to the next tree. He made for the next tree, leaping brush and vines in an open run. Only moments before, he’d been freezing, but as he knelt behind a slender birch and strained to listen, sweat trickled down his temples. He heard nothing but the incessant rush of the wind and the creak and moan of the living woods. Carefully he stepped back out onto the lane and crept toward the cabin.
The lights were on, the cabin door ajar. Cork could see that the front window had been shattered. Wind tore at the curtain inside. He crouched behind the cover of a fallen tree as someone stepped into the doorway. Against the light inside, only the dark outline of the figure and a long rifle barrel were clear. The figure slumped a moment against the doorjamb as if exhausted or maybe wounded, then gathered itself and started around the cabin toward the woods in back.
Cork readied his revolver and hollered into the wind. “Stop! Police!”
The figure turned, scanned the woods, and wildly fired. The tree trunk high above Cork splintered and flakes of bark showered down. The figure turned and ran for the deep woods. Cork sighted, but held off pulling the trigger.
“Stop, goddamn it!”
The warning shot Cork fired into the air didn’t make any difference. In a moment the figure was lost in the darkness and the far woods. Cork dashed to the open door of the cabin. Lytton lay on the floor, facedown. His back was a bleeding mess. Cork knelt beside him and found a weak pulse in Lytton’s neck. He grabbed the phone that hung on the wall and called the sheriff’s office.
Lytton’s eyes were open when Cork came back to him. A pool of blood had oozed from beneath him and was slowly spreading across the bare cabin floor. Cork knelt beside him and leaned close to his ear.
“Harlan, this is Cork O’Connor. Hang on. An ambulance is on the way. Harlan, can you hear me?”
Lytton’s eye’s were yellow-brown, the color of new pine wood. He had a mole on his left cheek that somehow Cork had never noticed before. His ear was small with a long lobe. He smelled raw, smelled of the thick unpleasant odor of blood. Cork felt again at Lytton’s neck. This time he found no pulse. He considered pumping Lytton’s chest, trying to push his heart back into a rhythm. But the man had a hole in him big as a fist, and Cork was pretty certain anything he tried would be useless.
In the stillness he shared with the dead man, Cork heard the sound of a snowmobile far out in the woods. As he listened, the snowmobile grew distant and then could be heard no more.
He sat beside Lytton, enormously tired. He was no stranger to brutal death. Both as sheriff and as a cop on Chicago’s south side, he’d seen his share of dying. Murder, accident, overdose-it happened in many ways, but the end was the same. Something sad and confusing left behind. Only the shape of life, only the empty outline.
He stood up. There was nothing more he could do. The ooze of Lytton’s blood had stained his pant leg. The sole of his right boot put a bloody print on the floor. Contaminating the scene. But what was done was done. He wondered what it was Lytton had wanted to show him, wondered if it had anything to do with the man’s death. From where he stood, he looked the cabin over. It was small, but efficient. Bunk, table, stove, refrigerator, sink, all in the one room. Lytton wasn’t a good housekeeper. A clutter of dirty dishes sat in the sink. The stove was like an erupted volcano with streams of old cooking hardened on the top and sides. Clothes lay wadded on and around the bunk where they’d been carelessly tossed. However, the cabin walls were different. They were carefully decorated with framed photographs, landscapes of the North Woods. The rapids of a small stream, a deer bent to its feeding in an empty meadow, a pond at sunset. Cork was surprised. In the home of Harlan Lytton, he’d expected to see something harsher hanging, something on the order of stuffed animals or mounted heads.
The north end of the cabin had been walled off with plywood into a small second room. Cork took his handkerchief and wiped the blood from his boot, then crossed to the door and opened it. Inside, he pulled a cord to turn on an overhead bulb. It was a darkroom. There was a sink and trays for developing, an enlarger, shelves full of chemical containers and camera equipment. The equipment was sophisticated. Lots of complicated lenses. A few prints hung from a line. Cork took a close look. Winter photos-black and white-of delicate ice formations on the rocks of a small stream. They were surprisingly good. He found other prints sitting on a counter, some in black and white, others in color. They were lovely, and that surprised the hell out of him. He would never have thought it of Harlan Lytton. He opened the drawers under the cabinet. Miscellaneous supplies. A drawer with strips of negatives. Cork lifted a couple of the strips. Wildlife shots. He opened the largest of the drawers, but it was completely empty.