Cork crept down the short hallway to the study. The curtains were closed and the room quite dark. He made his way to the desk and fumbled to turn on the lamp. When the light came on, he heard a discreet cough behind him. He turned quickly and found himself staring across the room at Wally Schanno, who stood in front of a wall lined with bookshelves.
“Evening, Cork,” Schanno said. In one hand he held a flashlight. In the other was a gun pointed directly at Cork. Stacks of books pulled from the shelves lay on the floor at Schanno’s feet.
“Library closed?” Cork asked.
Schanno glanced down at the books, but didn’t smile.
Cork jabbed his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. “Window’s broken. Wasn’t me.”
“I know,” Schanno said.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“It’s been a tough week. Not much surprises me now.”
“What are you doing here, Wally?”
“Police quarantine. I’m allowed here. The real question is what are you doing here?”
Cork glanced around the room. “Lights off. Bookshelves ransacked. And you even have a thermos of coffee. What’s going on, Wally?”
Schanno narrowed his eyes severely. “I look at things on the surface and what I see is you, Cork. The judge is dead and there you are. Lytton’s killed and there you are again. On the surface, looks like I ought to suspect you like hell.”
“Do you really think I killed those men?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think. A man can always be wrong in his thinking. I try to look at the facts.” He holstered his gun. “I sent Ed out this afternoon to check on your story about Henry Meloux and that-what did you call it?”
“Windigo.”
“Yeah, that. Old Meloux told Ed he didn’t know what the hell you were talking about.”
Cork relaxed against the judge’s big desk. “That doesn’t surprise me. Ed’s white.”
“The old man lied?”
“Sure. If you were crazy enough to indict me, he’d tell the truth. In the meantime, there’s no reason. He knows you’d just look at him like he was goofy.”
“Or like maybe he had something to do with killing Lytton,” Schanno suggested.
“I’d consider a lot of other people before I’d consider him,” Cork replied.
Schanno took a deep breath, then reached down toward the floor for his steel thermos and poured himself some hot coffee. “You told me a lot of stories without much of anything to back them up. The break-in at your place. The condition of the judge’s body. Somebody shooting at you out at Lytton’s.”
“They weren’t stories, Wally.”
Schanno took a sip of his coffee, drawing his throat tight against the heat. “You’re a hard man to disbelieve.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen. “I came here the night after the judge died to look things over for myself, see if I could find anything we missed. I surprised somebody coming in the side door. Don’t know who. They got away. I’ve been here a lot since then, checking to make sure things stay secure, and still looking for anything that might support your claim about the judge’s body being moved.”
Cork looked down at the books pulled from the shelves. “Find anything there?”
Schanno set his coffee on an empty shelf and walked to the big desk. The mess of the judge’s death hadn’t been cleaned away. The Minnesota map on the wall was still splattered with blood and bits of what once been a complex-and devious-brain. Traces of blood streaked the wall toward a pooling on the floor. It had all gone brown now, clotted over. Schanno stepped carefully. He slid open and then shut drawer after drawer in frustration.
“I’m just about down to checking the cobwebs in the corners. Nothing, Cork. Not a goll darn thing anywhere. If someone moved the judge, they did a pretty good job of covering up after themselves and covering up the reason why.” He arched his back, stretching in a tired way. “I got my hands so full at the moment, I can’t sleep at all. I’ve posted Cy Borkmann over to Harlan Lytton’s cabin nights to make sure nothing’s disturbed there. He’s pissed about that. Arletta’s staying with her sister. She’s got it in her head I’ve deserted her and taken the kids somewhere. Hell Hanover’s on my ass. Says I’m just another example of incompetent, interfering law enforcement. It strikes me that man just doesn’t like cops. Cork, I know there’s something going on in Aurora. I just can’t get a handle on what it is.” Wally Schanno looked straight at him with his honest gray eyes that were sunk deep with exhaustion. “And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”
Cork heard the sound of a snowmobile again, closer this time, cutting along the ice around North Point. It sounded small and distant, like a pesky mosquito. He thought about the folder with Jo’s name on it, the one that had first belonged to the judge, and didn’t know how to tell a man-Schanno or anybody else-what was in it. He couldn’t even be sure there was any significance in the folder having been in the judge’s hands at one time. Finally, he said, “Pretty much the same reason you are, Wally. To see about the judge’s body being moved.”
“You’re sure that’s it?”
“As sure as I am of anything.”
Schanno grunted unhappily. “You’d best leave this to me. I’m the one on the payroll.”
Cork left the study and headed down the hallway with Schanno following. At the staircase, Schanno halted and said, “Better go out the front. Sounds like you already made a mess of the kitchen back there. Close the door on your way out. Me, I’ve got to take a good long piss.”
Cork took in the empty house, where the feel of death was as real as any of the furnishings. “Be careful, Wally,” he cautioned.
“Nothing to it. I been pissing all my life.” Schanno managed a grin.
Cork stepped out the front door. The snow was falling harder, and he could barely see beyond the hedges that edged the front of the estate. Slowly he made his way around the house down the slope of the grounds to the Bronco, but he didn’t get in right away. The air was still, the snow tumbling straight down in huge beautiful flakes. He lit a cigarette and turned his face upward so that the snow settled cold on his forehead and cheeks and melted there.
He smoked and thought about truth.
He’d learned early not to invest a lot of emotion in thinking about the truth in a crime. As a cop, he’d gathered evidence that had been used to guess at the truth, but in the end responsibility for assembling the pieces and nailing truth to the wall was in the hands of others-lawyers, judges, and juries. Truth became a democratic process, the will of twelve. He’d been burned when he cared too deeply. As a result, he’d trained himself to remain a little distant in his emotional involvement on a case. In the end, the outcome was out of his hands, and to allow himself to believe too strongly in the absoluteness of a thing he couldn’t control was useless. He felt different now. Desperate in a way. This time he had to hold the truth in his own hands like a beating heart.
In the stillness, two gunshots came from the house, two clear pops like kernels of corn. Cork threw down his cigarette, reached into the glove box of his Bronco, and drew out the revolver he’d picked up earlier at the sheriff’s office. He started around the boathouse and up the backyard at a dead run, stumbling in the deep snow. When he reached the door to the kitchen, he stopped. It was wide open. He hesitated before plunging into the dark of the house and he listened.
Deep inside, someone swore painfully.
“Wally?” he called.
“Damn it, Cork!” Schanno hollered.
Cork ran in, knocking cans across the kitchen floor.
Schanno sat at the bottom of the stairs holding his right thigh with both hands. Cork could see the dark blood welling up, spilling between Schanno’s fingers.
“Bastard sneaked up,” Schanno said through clenched teeth.
“I’ll call you in.” Cork turned quickly to the phone on the stand beside the banister.
“No! Go after him! I’ll call myself in. Go on before he’s away clean.”