Hanover’s eyes were frozen on Cork. His bare scalp glistened. Finally he nodded, once. “Another day, O’Connor.” He settled the black stocking cap on his head and moved from the desk limping toward the door. “Come on, let’s go.”
When the men had gone, Cork gathered the documents from the desk. As he took a last look at the GameTech office, he noticed an indentation in the carpeting next to the file cabinet. He knelt and looked at it carefully. It was just the right size and shape for the cabinet that had held the files Wally Schanno burned.
Wally and Arletta Schanno lived just outside Aurora in a nice one-story rambler painted blue with gray shutters on the windows. The back of the lot ran along the east side of a small pond surrounded by red pines. In the front yard stood a couple of crab apple trees that were beautiful in the spring when the branches were full of blossoms. Arletta Schanno was famous in Tamarack County for her crab apple jelly.
Arletta answered the door, greeting Cork with a warm smile. “Sheriff O’Connor. What a nice surprise. Won’t you come in?”
“Thanks, Arletta.” Cork stepped in, tugging off his heavy gloves. “Is your husband home?”
“In here, Cork.” Schanno’s voice came from the living room.
“Let me take your coat,” Arletta said. “And could I offer you coffee?”
“Thanks, no,” Cork replied.
He handed her his coat and she hung it carefully in the closet of the entryway.
“Come on in, Cork,” Schanno called to him.
Cork walked to the living room. It was a pleasant room with a flowered sofa and matching love seat and a big leather easy chair, where Schanno sat in a robe with his bandaged leg up on an ottoman. A glass-topped coffee table was situated between the sofa and love seat, a small white vase full of silk daisies in the center and several issues of Smithsonian magazine fanned out carefully beside it. Proudly displayed on the mantel above a pale brick fireplace were framed high-school graduation photographs of the Schannos’ two daughters. Between the photos sat a beautiful old Seth Thomas clock. A decorated Christmas tree-a big Scotch pine-took up one corner of the room. A large console occupied another, but the television in it was off. Schanno took off his glasses and closed a book on his lap. Cork saw he’d been reading from the Bible. Revised Standard Version.
“Taking good care of him?” Cork asked Arletta, who’d followed him in.
“He’s difficult.” She smiled and shook her head hopelessly. “Could I offer you coffee?”
“You already did,” Schanno reminded her gently.
For a moment a look of distress and then sadness came over Arletta’s pretty face.
“That’s a nice tree you have there,” Cork put in quickly.
She brightened immediately. “The girls like them big. Do you have children, Sheriff?”
“Three,” Cork replied. She’d taught two of them, Jenny and Annie, when they passed through her third grade class at Aurora Elementary. He’d sat in conferences with Arletta many times.
“Then you know. Christmas is such an important time for children.”
“I wonder if I could speak with your husband alone, Arletta.”
“Why, certainly. I’ve got things to do myself.” She started away, but turned back suddenly. “May I get you a cup of coffee or anything before I go?”
“No thank you,” Cork said.
Arletta left, humming softly to herself.
“Have a seat,” Schanno said.
Cork sat on the flowered sofa.
“This a friendly visit or official?” Schanno asked.
“They told me at the department that you were home, nursing that leg,” Cork said. “I’ve got to have some answers, Wally.”
Schanno settled back. “Sounds official.”
Cork leaned toward him. “Tell me about GameTech.”
“GameTech?” Schanno gave him a blank look.
“You heard me. GameTech.”
Schanno shrugged. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“What is GameTech?”
Arletta passed in the hallway, heading from the kitchen toward the back of the house. She was singing softly in a fine voice, “Sleigh bells ring, are you listening…”
“Just a company I do some security consulting for.”
“Security consulting? What exactly does that involve?”
Schanno gave him a hard, impatient look. “What the hell do you think it involves?”
“Building security?” Cork offered. “Personnel checks. That kind of thing?”
“Yes, that kind of thing.”
“Who hired you?”
“What’s all this about, Cork?”
“Who hired you, Wally?” Cork pressed him.
“How do you know about GameTech?” Schanno countered angrily.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m not going to play games with you.”
“Not a game, Wally. People are dead.” Cork kept his voice low because of Arletta, but there was an explosive tension in his words. “You’re a security consultant for GameTech. Stu Grantham, head of the board of supervisors, is a real estate consultant. Mark Hawras, the BIA man out of this district, is consultant on Indian affairs. And Sigurd Nelson, of all people, is a personnel consultant. I could go on. It’s a long list. If you were me, what would you think? Wally, did you burn those files to cover your ass, or maybe to cover somebody else’s?”
Schanno’s long hands gripped the arms of his chair, making deep indentations in the leather. “There was nothing in those files that had to do with GameTech. I give you my word.”
“Hell, Wally, right now your word carries about as much weight with me as a rabbit turd. What’s GameTech all about?”
“GameTech is perfectly legal,” Schanno insisted.
“Then why are you so jumpy? Why won’t you tell me who hired you? What is it that’s making you so nervous if everything’s so legal? Come on, Wally, what’s going on with GameTech? Is GameTech why all these men are dead?”
Wally’s right fist came down on the arm of his chair. “I told you, GameTech’s got nothing to do with anything that’s happened!”
“You keep talking, Wally, but I don’t hear any answers. What are you hiding? What are you so afraid of?”
Schanno gave Cork a fierce glare with his hard gray eyes. His long jaw worked, but he didn’t say a word. He breathed through his nose, deep and fast, and the air moved in and out in angry little whistles.
“All right,” Cork told him coolly, “I’ll tell you what I know, then I’ll tell you what I suspect. Then if I don’t get something more out of you, I’ll give a call to a reporter I know on the St. Paul Pioneer Press. We’ll see how you like it with your name in headlines.”
Cork stood up and walked to the Christmas tree. It was nicely done. Lots of colored bulbs. Garlands. Icicles. Ornaments that looked old and probably conjured memories for the Schannos of Christmases past. More pleasant Christmases than this one, for sure.
“I checked out the GameTech office in Duluth,” Cork told him. “Checked it out this morning. A one-room office in an old building, Wally. No warehouse. No machines, no parts. Just one room. You were doing building security for a company that has one room. And personnel checks? As near as I could tell the only personnel on the GameTech payroll are all consultants like you, paid pretty well for doing nothing. Am I right?”
Schanno looked down at his bandaged leg and didn’t appear to have anything to say yet.
“Ernie Meloux adds the GameTech logo to all the gaming equipment at the casino. He doesn’t know why. Just does what he’s told. The judge bought gaming equipment and leased it to the casino through GameTech. Didn’t even bother to launder the process much. Had the companies ship the equipment straight to the casino, where Ernie added the logo. The lease agreements I saw and the invoices for the equipment made it pretty clear that GameTech’s making a fortune off the arrangement. A nice pool of money for the judge to draw on. And what for? I’d guess that if he didn’t have dirt on somebody, he simply bought them. You and Sigurd Nelson and Stu Grantham and the others. And no one really gets hurt in the end, right? Sure, a little money’s siphoned from all that cash the Indians are raking in. But with so much, who’s to miss it? And the beauty of it is that it’s all perfectly legal. Am I right, Wally? Your hands are clean, aren’t they?”