“Yes.”
Then he remembered something, something frightening. “Annie?”
“She is fine, Stephen. She is with your father and her friend. Would you like to see them?”
Stephen closed his eyes. When he opened them next, his father was beside the bed, and behind him were Anne and Skye.
“Hey, guy,” his father said gently. “How’re you feeling?”
“Tired. Confused.”
“I can imagine.”
Stephen’s eyes drifted to Anne. “You’re okay?”
She stepped up next to her father. “Yeah. How about you?”
He tried to smile, but couldn’t tell if he’d succeeded. “Never better. Still not real sure of things.”
A stranger came into Stephen’s field of vision, a woman dressed all in white, who said, “I need everyone out of here.”
His father said, “We’ll be back, Stephen.”
Anne bent and kissed his cheek. “God heard our prayers,” she whispered.
“Hallelujah,” Stephen said and knew the smile he gave her this time was successful. “Dad, could I talk to you for a minute? Alone?”
“Sure.” Although the others left, the nurse remained until his father said to her, “Just for a minute, please.”
The nurse nodded and vanished.
When they were completely alone, his father leaned close to him and said, “What is it, guy?”
“I didn’t want to say anything while Annie and Skye were here.”
“Say what?”
Stephen looked up into his father’s eyes and tried not to sound too afraid. “I can’t feel my legs.”
CHAPTER 39
Although the hospitalist had arranged for an airlift to Duluth, the weather had turned lousy, bringing heavy snow and a fierce wind. Stephen went by ambulance instead. Cork, Anne, and Jenny followed in the Land Rover. Skye had volunteered to stay behind with Waaboo, who was still asleep in his bed in the house on Gooseberry Lane. Deputy Weber was at the house as well, continuing protective duty. But he wasn’t alone. When Cork had returned home briefly to deliver Skye and to pick up Jenny, he’d found the Studemeyer brothers parked on the street in their truck. As Cork approached them, Wes rolled down his window, letting loose a cloud of cigarette smoke.
“What’s up?” Cork asked.
“Heard about that bastard going after your boy, Cork. Heard that he’s still out there somewhere, and that he might be looking to take a shot at one of your other kids. Figured it might be helpful if we made a show of force here, make him think twice about trying something else.”
Cork took the glove off his right hand and reached through the open window to shake Wes’s hand. “Much obliged,” he said.
“What’s the word on Stephen?” Randy asked from the other side.
“They’re taking him to Duluth this morning. They’ll operate on him there. The situation’s a little delicate.”
“Bullet in his spine, we heard. Tough. Look, you just worry about your boy, okay?” Wes said. “Don’t worry about things back here. We got it covered.”
“You know there’s a deputy inside my house.”
“Think of us as backup. Now go on and see to that boy.”
The night was black, the snowfall steady, the wind was tricky. The ambulance wasn’t able to make the kind of speed Cork would have preferred, but better to arrive safely, he knew, than not at all. He drove carefully, just far enough behind so that the ambulance’s flashing lights were never lost in the curtain of blowing snow. Anne sat with him in front, Jenny in the backseat. They didn’t talk much. Fifteen minutes before they arrived at the hospital, the snow ended. It stopped as suddenly as if someone had turned off a switch, and the wind died with it.
They pulled into the hospital’s parking lot, where a plow had just begun clearing away the new snow. It had been a long drive, and once inside the hospital, Cork hit the first men’s room he came to. He’d finished washing his hands and was drying them under a blower when he got a call from Dross on his cell phone.
“Pender and Duluth PD just completed their visit to Frogg’s apartment,” she told him. “The place was empty. They talked to the building manager. Frogg only lived there a couple of months. Probably just long enough to get a driver’s license mailed to him. Left no forwarding address. You know what you said to me about not really having him until we have him in cuffs? You were right.”
“Being right doesn’t give me a lot of satisfaction at the moment, Marsha.”
“We’ll keep on it. We’ll find him,” she promised.
Cork thought about the Studemeyer brothers standing post outside his house. He felt an additional measure of security in their generous presence and was grateful to call a place like Tamarack County home.
Once again they found themselves in a waiting room. They’d been there an hour before the surgeon came in to speak to them. Dr. Lillian Buckley was a small woman with grayed hair and slender, graceful hands. She told them that additional X-rays and a CT scan had been done and that she felt confident about removing the bullet.
“He has no feeling in his legs,” Cork said.
Dr. Buckley nodded. “That’s typical in cases of spinal shock. It may be that once we remove the bullet, the feeling will eventually return.” The next part was spoken evenly but with a clear sense of the enormity of the words. “It’s also possible that more permanent damage has already been done.”
“Which means?”
“In a worst-case scenario, your son may never walk again. But we won’t know the full extent of his injuries until after we operate.”
“And when will that be?”
“He’s being prepped right now.”
The surgeon had indicated that because the procedure was particularly delicate, it would take time. Stephen had been in the operating room for ninety minutes when Cork’s cell phone rang again. Once again, it was Dross.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“They’re still working on him,” Cork said.
He stood at a window facing east across the frozen expanse of Lake Superior. The snow had ended, and the sun had risen just above the horizon, looking ineffectual behind a haze of clouds.
“We’ve learned something I thought you might want to know,” Dross said.
“What is it?”
“Azevedo just finished interviewing the Carters’ last housekeeper, Irene Simek. Azevedo showed her a photo of Frogg. She recognized him, said he worked as a handyman for the Carters last fall. Raked leaves, stacked firewood, helped Mrs. Carter prepare her gardens for the winter. According to Irene, he and the Judge’s wife got on well together.”
“So he probably had lots of access to their home.”
“Exactly. He could easily have taken the key they kept in the garage and had a duplicate made, come back when they were gone, and taken the Judge’s knife from his case. Or he could even have gone inside on some excuse-to use the bathroom, maybe-and taken the knife then.”
“How’d he happen to be their handyman?”
“Apparently he showed up at their door one day in early fall and told them he was new to town. Told them his name was Walter Friend. He was trying to start a lawn service and offered to take care of the leaves in their yard for free. If they liked his work, he’d be happy to do any odd jobs they needed, including snow removal in the winter. His rate was way below what anyone else charged.”
“And for good reason,” Cork said. “All he was looking for was an in. And I’m betting he was always paid in cash. What would he do with a check written to Walter Friend? So what did Irene think of him?”
“Pleasant enough guy. A good worker. Didn’t steal the Carters blind, as far as she could see. She didn’t have much interaction with him, but whenever she did he was respectful.”
“Salt of the earth,” Cork said bitterly. “Was he still working for the Carters when Irene left their employment?”
“No, which didn’t surprise her. Nobody worked for the Carters very long. Eventually, the Judge drove everyone away.” For a long moment, Dross was quiet on her end. “If retribution was what Frogg was really after, why wait until Christmas?”