Back in the other room, he wandered the cabin a bit, looking over everything for anything. He checked the small bathroom. There, as everywhere else, Harlan was careless in his cleaning. Cork could hear sirens down on the road approaching Lytton’s lane. When he turned back and took a good look at the dead man from another angle, he saw the corner of a manila folder sticking out from under the body. He knelt beside Lytton, trying to avoid the blood. There was something written on the raised corner of the file folder.
The sirens had gone silent, which probably meant they’d reached the lane and were trying to figure how to get to the cabin through the deep snow. He lifted Lytton’s body carefully and took the folder off the floor. It was soaked in blood. The scrawl of the handwriting was quite clear, however. In black pen on the label was written Jo O’Connor.
Cork’s hands cradled the bloody folder. He opened it. Inside were several black-and-white photographs. They appeared to have been taken at night with some type of night vision lens. In the first photograph Cork clearly recognized the home of Sandy Parrant. It was a view from the lake and showed the dock and boathouse, the long backyard, the house on three levels, the decks. There were two white forms near the hot tub.
Cork could hear the bump and scrape of a plow clearing the lane for the sheriff’s cars.
The second photograph was an enlargement of the first with the details enhanced. The enlargement centered on the hot tub. The white forms were two people, clearly naked.
The plow stopped. Cork could hear car doors slamming shut outside the cabin and men shouting to one another.
In the third photograph, a further enlargement with the details grainy but distinct, Cork could see that the two people were making love. The woman was bent slightly forward, leaning on the hot tub for support. The man held her hips, his pelvis shoved against her buttocks, entering her from behind.
Sandy Parrant’s grainy face was lifted toward heaven. Jo’s eyes were closed, but her mouth was open in what looked to be a little moan of ecstasy.
Cork closed the folder and slid it under his coat a moment before Wally Schanno and his men came through the door.
22
“And you don’t have any idea what it was he wanted to show you,” Schanno said, repeating what Cork had already told him.
“If I knew that, Wally, I wouldn’t have come all the way out here. He died without saying a word.”
Schanno looked down at the dead man, then at Cork. “If the Ripper was alive, the Ripper would’ve warned him.”
“No,” Cork said. “The Ripper would’ve torn the killer apart.”
“Lytton’s bad luck,” Schanno said.
“Yeah,” Cork agreed. “Lytton’s luck.”
“I’m going to have to take your firearm,” Schanno said.
“I understand.”
“And those clothes. They’ve got blood all over them.” Schanno glanced around and his eyes settled on a young rookie, Jack Wozniak. “Jack, I want you to follow Cork home. Get the clothes he’s wearing and bring them back to the office.” He eyed Cork again, shook his head in a frustrated way, and said, “I don’t want you doing anything else on your own, okay?”
“If I’d known it was going to turn out this way, I’d have invited you.” Cork started toward the open door.
“I’ll want to talk to you some more tomorrow,” Schanno called after him. “You’ll be home?”
Home? Cork thought about it. No, he wouldn’t be home. He wouldn’t be home ever again. “I’ll be around,” he said.
It was almost midnight when he reached the house on Gooseberry Lane. The back door was locked and all was quiet inside. Cork told Wozniak to wait in the kitchen and asked if he wanted some coffee and cookies. Wozniak said no thanks to the coffee, but he did accept one of Rose’s chocolate chip cookies. Cork went upstairs to change. He cleared the bottom drawer of his dresser and put the folder there. The manila was stiff and black with dried blood. He took off his clothes and hung them carefully on hangers. After putting on a robe, he walked the bloody clothing downstairs.
“I’m sorry about this, Cork,” the deputy said, looking genuinely guilty about the whole thing.
“Standard procedure. Let it go. Good night, Jack.”
Cork checked Jo’s room. She wasn’t there. He took a shower, put on clean boxer shorts and a clean T-shirt, and went to bed. The wind shook the windows and made the house creak and groan. In a few minutes, he heard the sound of Stevie’s footie pajamas shuffling down the hallway. It was only a soft shooshing, but it was a sound that could bring Cork up in an instant even from the deepest sleep. In a minute, Stevie was at his bedside.
“What’s up, buddy?” Cork asked.
Stevie clutched his stuffed doll named Peter and stared at his father in the dark. The windowpane shuddered. Stevie glanced toward it and said a single word, whispered in terror. “Monthterth.”
“Monsters.” Cork nodded gravely. He pushed himself up. “Come on. Let’s go have a look.”
Stevie pointed to the closet and Cork searched there. Stevie indicated the ultimate blackness beneath his bed and Cork knelt and demanded all monsters come out now. Nothing came, but Stevie grasped his father as if he’d seen a ghost and pointed to the window.
“Outthide,” he said.
Together they pressed their noses to the frigid glass. Around the house swirled a white rush-loose snow and wind-and the great elm in the backyard waved its branches as if dreadfully alive. What Cork saw was the awesome power of nature, but for Stevie it was simply the confirmation of his nightmares.
“Only the wind, Steve,” Cork explained gently. “It’s noisy but it’s only wind.”
“Monthterth,” Stevie insisted with a defiant certainty of some terror to come.
Cork guided him back to bed. “Would you like me to lie down with you awhile?”
In that instant, Stevie’s fear vanished. Cork knew it wasn’t manipulation, only a son’s naive trust in his father’s stature. What were monsters, after all, to a man who could touch the ceiling?
Cork lay down beside him. Stevie made himself into a little ball, his breath breaking warm and sweet against Cork’s face. In only a minute he was breathing steadily again, sleeping.
It was time for Cork to return to the bed in the guest room. But he lingered beside this son who trusted him, lay awake knowing there were monsters in the wind outside, that his son’s fear was not unjustified, and that Stevie would have to face them alone someday. There were people out there so cruel they would wound him for the pleasure of it, dreadful circumstances no man in his worst imaginings could conjure, disappointments so overwhelming they would crush his dreams like eggshells. For a child like Stevie, a child of special graces, there would be such pain that Cork nearly wept in anticipation of it. Against those monsters, a father was powerless. But against the simple terrors of the night, he would do his best.
He heard Jo come in the front door and a moment later the sound of her feet on the stairs. He slid from Stevie’s bed and stepped into the hallway. Jo came up the stairs, her hands behind her neck, undoing her pearls. She looked tired.