“They know, Cork,” St. Kawasaki informed him quietly. “I already told them.”
“You knew?” Cork asked the priest.
“I’ve known since Vernon Blackwater passed away.” He gestured toward Wanda. “We both have known.”
“How?”
Wanda spoke while she rocked Makwa next to her breast. “When Vernon was dying, he asked us both to come. Tom for the part of him that was Catholic, me because I am a Midewiwin. We were alone in the room with him. When he made a last confession to Tom, I overheard.”
“He confessed to helping kill Joe John?” Cork asked the priest.
Tom Griffin stood near a window looking uncomfortable. “Why don’t you talk to Wanda about what she overheard. It probably doesn’t matter now, but I still don’t feel right about sharing with you what was told to me in confession.”
“You shared it with Darla and Paul,” Cork pointed out.
“That was different. I had no choice.”
“Why?”
The priest pulled the shade away from the window just a crack and looked out at the road. A streak of afternoon sunlight cut across his face like yellow war paint. “Because I had to explain to Paul why the judge was dead.”
Cork felt as if his brain were stuffed with cotton. He squinted at St. Kawasaki and asked dumbly, “Was it you who killed the judge?”
The priest let the shade fall back into place and shook his head. “No.”
Wanda said, “I did.”
Makwa began to whimper again. Wanda stood up and walked slowly about the room, cooing softly to her baby. She didn’t seem in any hurry to tell Cork any more.
“Was it an accident, Wanda?” Cork asked hopefully.
“No. I meant to kill him.”
“Here,” Darla said to Wanda when the baby went on fussing, “let me take him awhile.”
Wanda gave Makwa over to her sister-in-law and turned back to Cork. Her long black hair was braided and hung over her shoulder like a length of rope. Her face was the color of sandstone and no less hard.
“Vernon confessed to watching Harlan Lytton kill my brother. He said the judge set it up. He wouldn’t say why, only that Joe John was murdered and the judge and Lytton were responsible. Vernon didn’t want to die with that secret weighing on him as he walked the Path of Souls.”
Cork glanced at the priest. “Did you ask him why?”
St. Kawasaki shook his head. “He was barely able to speak as it was. I just listened.”
“You should have asked,” Wanda said with an accusing tone.
“I was his confessor, Wanda, not his inquisitor,” the priest reminded her gently. “We’ve speculated it probably had something to do with Russell embezzling.”
“You know about that?” Cork was surprised.
“Everybody knows about that now,” Wanda said.
“Small town,” the priest added.
“So what happened between you and the judge?” he asked Wanda.
“I went there that afternoon to talk to him. Tom wanted me to wait until we could figure a way to do something about it. I didn’t want to wait. I couldn’t. It was like having a wild animal inside me eating me up.”
“So you confronted the judge,” Cork said.
“Yes.”
“And I’ll bet he just laughed at you.”
Wanda gave Cork a look that said he was right on the money.
“He said I had no proof of anything. ‘Hearsay,’ is what he called it. I told him I didn’t need any proof. I’d just tell what I’d heard. People would listen.”
“You threatened the judge? I would like to have been there. What did he do?”
Wanda, who’d looked directly at Cork until that moment, looked away.
“He threatened her back, Cork,” St. Kawasaki said. “He had some.. information.” The priest hesitated, and it seemed as if he and Wanda spoke silently to one another with their eyes.
Cork said, “It’s all right. I know about the judge and his pieces of information. You’re not the only one he dealt with that way, Wanda. What happened then?”
“He told me to get out,” Wanda went on bitterly. “He turned away to go to the front door. I grabbed the poker from the fireplace and I hit him. I didn’t even think about it. I just hit him, right in the back of the head.” She put her hand on her own head to show Cork.
“Then you put the shotgun into his mouth to make it look like suicide,” Cork finished for her.
“No.” The priest folded his arms and leaned against the mission wall. “That was my doing,” he said.
“You?”
“Wanda called me from the judge’s place. I went over on Lazarus, cut across the lake as fast as I could. He was dead when I got there.”
“And you figured in a white courtroom, under white law, Wanda stood a snowball’s chance in hell of getting justice. So you faked the suicide.”
“That’s about the size of it, Cork. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was workable. I’ve seen worse things in my life, believe me.”
Cork did. He rubbed his forehead a moment, wishing like hell he had a cigarette. He glanced at Paul. “So you must have stumbled onto all this, is that it?”
“Yeah,” Paul said.
“About where did you come in?”
“When I delivered the paper, I heard the shotgun go off.”
“And you went inside to check on the judge. But you found Father Tom and your Aunt Wanda instead.”
The boy nodded.
The priest broke in, “I brought him out here so I could explain to him carefully what he saw. Then I went to Darla’s to get her so she wouldn’t be worried. When you came and told us the sheriff wanted to speak to Paul about the judge, I thought it would be best to keep him out here awhile. We let out that Joe John was around, hoping to create a little smoke.”
“What about Harlan Lytton, Tom? Whose doing was that?”
The silence of the room reminded Cork of how it was to be underwater, making your way to the surface in a thick, unbreathable stillness. Everyone looked at everyone else and all of them looked unhappy he’d asked.
It was Paul, drawing himself up to his full height, who said, “I killed him. And I’d do it again.”
If he’d sounded like a boy before, the youthful sound was gone from his voice now. Cork looked at him and saw the hard face of a man.
“No, he wouldn’t,” Darla said, putting her arms around her son.
Paul shrugged away from her. “He killed my father and I killed him and I’d do it again without thinking twice.”
“Cork,” the priest interjected. “It wasn’t entirely his fault. I left him Lazarus in case he needed transportation. And Wanda-well, Wanda-”
“I left him my rifle,” she said evenly. “I didn’t think he’d use it that way. But I don’t blame him at all.”
Cork studied the young man, who didn’t flinch under his gaze. “And it was you on Lazarus at Lytton’s place yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was there to kill another man,” the boy said almost proudly.
“Paul!” His mother looked horrified.
“You don’t mean that,” St. Kawasaki told him.
“It’s the truth,” the boy said. “I thought we were supposed to be telling the truth.”
“No, Paul,” Darla pleaded.
“Let him tell it, Darla,” St. Kawasaki said. “He’s right. The truth is what we’re here for. We’ve come this far.”
“What man were you going to kill?” Cork asked young LeBeau.
“The last man who had a part in murdering my father,” Paul said.
“Who was that?”
“Mr. Parrant.”
“Mr. Parrant? You mean Sandy?”
“Yeah, him.”
Darla put her hands to her mouth. “No,” she whispered.
“Why do you think he had something to do with your father’s death, Paul?” Cork asked.
“Well.” Paul stopped a moment and seemed for the first time a little uncertain. He glanced at the priest and Wanda Manydeeds and his mother. “They said it.”