“Even when we made love?”
“By then we were just having sex, Cork. I don’t even know when we stopped making love.”
Cork set his gym bag down and put the bearskin on top of it. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the door. “And along comes Sandy Parrant with his good looks and his money and just sweeps you off your feet.”
“It wasn’t his money or his looks. I needed someone, Cork. We’re not all as strong and self-contained as you are.”
“Oh, yeah, I was real strong after Burke’s Landing. Hell, I couldn’t even muster the energy to fight the recall petition. I could have used a little support then.”
“I tried to reach out, Cork, but you were like something made of ice. It was like everything in you had frozen over. There wasn’t any warmth toward me or the kids. Stevie was afraid to go near you, for Christ sake.”
“And that’s why you asked me to leave. It didn’t have anything to do with Sandy Parrant,” he said with bitter sarcasm.
Jo looked down. “You’re right. It probably had a lot to do with Sandy.”
“Christ, Jo, do you know how long I’ve felt like shit, felt like everything was all my fault?”
“I know, Cork, I know. The truth is,” she confessed, “I let you believe it because it made things easier for me.”
There was a knock at the door. Rose poked her head in and smiled. “I’m about to start breakfast. Anyone interested?” She glanced down and saw Cork’s gym bag and the bearskin, then she looked sadly at the two of them.
“I won’t be staying, Rose,” Cork told her. “Thanks anyway.”
Jenny pushed in behind her, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Dad, I want to feed the geese.” She yawned. “Can you take me to school? We can stop by Sam’s Place on the way.” She looked carefully at the three adults, then at Cork’s things on the floor. She seemed wide awake suddenly. “You’re going back?”
“Yeah. But I’ll give you a ride so you can feed the geese.”
“No, thanks,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now.” She turned and shoved past Rose out the door.
Rose eyed them both again, gave her head a faint shake of disapproval, and stepped out.
“I’m sorry,” Jo said.
“Who isn’t?” Cork picked up his gym bag, hefted the bearskin, and left.
A dirty van waited outside Sam’s Place, the engine running. On the side, barely readable through the crust of grit, was printed “Winterbauer Plumbing and Heating.” Art Winterbauer stepped out. He held coffee in a big paper cup from Jeannie’s Donuts, and there was a splotch of white cream filling on his upper lip.
“I promised you first thing, Cork. And first thing, here I am. Freeze your butt over the weekend?” He was a short man with a square body and square face. He wore a hat with flaps that hung down the side like the ears of a basset hound. Sliding his van door open, he pulled out a heavy toolbox. He carried his coffee in one hand, his toolbox in the other.
“I took your advice. Stayed somewhere else.” Cork unlocked the door.
Winterbauer stepped in and saw the mess. “Christ, what happened in here?”
“You know where everything is,” Cork replied without answering.
“Yeah,” Winterbauer said, looking at the destruction around him. “But is it still there?”
“I’ll be outside if you need me,” Cork told him, and left.
He dug into the grain sack and took the bucket of dried corn out to the lake. A light snow was falling. The flakes settled on the gray open water and disappeared. At first he didn’t see Romeo and Juliet. Then he spotted them huddled under a safety station at the edge of the ice. They seemed oddly subdued, quiet and motionless, and didn’t appear to be in any hurry to feed.
A maroon Taurus station wagon pulled up beside Winterbauer’s van. Helmuth Hanover, editor of the Aurora Sentinel stepped out, spotted Cork, and started toward him. Hanover was a tall, slender man in his mid-forties. A veteran of Vietnam, he’d left the lower part of his right leg on a rice paddy dike, courtesy of a claymore mine. He had a prosthetic appendage and walked with a slight limp. He’d begun to bald young, a characteristic he’d chosen to exaggerate by shaving his head clean. With his narrow face, blue unkind eyes, and that shaved head like a cleaned bone, he had an intimidating austerity about him, not unlike a sharply honed knife. Although his byline read “Helm Hanover,” he was unaffectionately known as Hell Hanover by anyone who’d been the target of his editorials. And Cork had. During the spearfishing business, Hanover had flayed Cork alive.
Helm exercised a good deal of wisdom and restraint in publishing the Sentinel, which was a small town paper devoted to small town news-commissioner’s meetings, church bazaars, births, obituaries. He crammed as many names in a story as he possibly could and he was sure to spell them all correctly. In reporting the local news, he generally kept things about as controversial as cottage cheese. But in his editorials and the Letters to the Editor section, he allowed a lot of latitude. Consequently, the Sentinel was frequently a voice for all the crackpot philosophies at liberty in Tamarack County. He’d printed odes to the Posse Comitatus, elegies to the Branch Davidians, proclamations of supremacy from the Minnesota Civilian Brigade-all with a nod toward the First Amendment. His own editorials generally carried a sharp, bitter edge, and more often than not, the target of his criticism was government. In any form. Helm Hanover had no use for the distant, inept interference of the federal government, particularly. Cork suspected a lot of this was a deep, burning anger that went all the way back to the flesh and bone Hell had left in Vietnam.
“Morning, Cork,” Hanover said. He nodded stiffly in greeting.
“Helm,” Cork said. “I don’t suppose you’re out here hoping for a burger and a shake.”
“I’ve just come from the sheriff’s office. I’d like to ask you a few questions.” Hanover took a small notebook and pencil from the pocket of the down vest he wore. “About last night.”
The geese were slowly making their way to shore, black ripples following in the gray water. Cork watched the geese. He didn’t want to look at Hell Hanover. The man always made him angry.
“What exactly did the sheriff tell you?” Cork asked.
“I’d like it to be in your own words,” Hanover said.
“My words, Wally’s words, what difference does it make? You’ve got the facts.”
Cork set the empty bucket in the snow. Hanover glanced in as if there might be something worth writing about inside it.
“The sheriff said Lytton called you. He wanted to show you something. What was it he wanted to show you?”
“If he hadn’t been killed, I might know.”
“You haven’t got any idea? When he called, he didn’t say anything?”
“He only said to come out.”
“Why did you feel compelled to go?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Anything to do with killing his dog?”
Cork glanced over and found Hanover’s hard, unkind eyes watching him closely, his sharp pencil poised above his notebook. “Who told you about the dog?”
“Might’ve been the same person who told me about the Windigo. I heard the Windigo called his name. Is that true?”
Cork looked Hanover in the eye. “You’re a newspaperman, Helm. You deal in facts. The Windigo is a myth.”
“It wasn’t a myth that killed Harlan Lytton.”
“My point exactly.”
“Did you see the assailant?”
“Just a silhouette.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Why do you say ‘him,’ Helm? There’s nothing sexist about murder. Women kill, too.”
“Can you describe the assailant?” Hanover corrected.
“You can get my description from the sheriff.” Cork bent and lifted the bucket. The geese seemed reluctant to come to shore with Hanover there. Cork turned back toward Sam’s Place. Hanover limped after him.