“The stoplight?”
“Middle of town. Can’t miss it. It’s the only stoplight in the entire county. Are you with the police?”
“No, ma’am.”
She took an idle sip from the fragile-looking teacup she held. “Pity,” she said.
“Why? Is there some trouble next door?”
“Yes. And her name is Alva.”
“Do you know her son?”
“Everyone knows her son.” It was an acknowledgment that clearly gave her no joy.
“Have you seen him lately?”
“Not since Thanksgiving.” She flashed a thin smile and added, “Thank goodness.”
She sipped again from her cup, and Cork could smell the tea inside, some herbal mixture that included mint.
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“Where Alva and Walter are concerned, everyone in this neighborhood tries to be sure.” She studied him, her look a mix of curiosity and wariness. “What’s your interest in them?”
“It’s of a personal nature.”
She nodded, eyed him a long while from that hollow face, and finally said, “As they say on those television shows, watch your back.” She looked beyond him at the deep snow and the cold morning. “I’m letting too much winter in. My heating bill will be through the roof. Is there anything else?”
Cork told her no, thanked her, and returned to his vehicle. He buckled in and glanced back. She was still watching him, teacup in hand, from behind her windowpane as he pulled away from the curb.
He found the store north of the stoplight, just as Alva Brickman’s neighbor had said. It was a dismal little place full of discarded pieces of the lives of people on their way down. It smelled of must and dust. Except for a woman behind the counter where the cash register sat, the store was empty. She’d been looking at a newspaper, but when Cork entered and the bell over the door gave a jingle, she put the paper aside and narrowed her eyes on him. A woman alone often watched a man with suspicion or even concern. This woman’s look was different. Almost a challenge to try something, he thought. He saw that she’d been working the New York Times crossword puzzle in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press and had been using a ballpoint pen. She’d set the pen down along with the paper, and her right hand was out of sight below the counter. He wondered if she had some kind of firearm down there. And he wondered, too, if this woman ever had any repeat business.
“Mrs. Brickman?” he said as cordially as he could.
“Who wants to know?”
“My name’s David Simms. I’m trying to locate your son, Walter.”
“What do you want with Walter?”
“I have a message for him from a mutual friend.”
“What friend?”
“Cecil LaPointe.”
She was a decade younger than her neighbor. Her hair was brown, but the color probably came from a bottle. She was smallish, yet Cork got a spiderlike feel from her, something dangerous despite its size. Her face had been ceramic hard, but at the mention of LaPointe’s name a few cracks appeared.
“What message?” she said.
“Cecil asked me to give it only to Walter.”
“I don’t know where Walter is.”
“Then we have a problem. Cecil’s dying. Mesothelioma. He doesn’t have much time. I just saw him, and he asked me to deliver a message to your son.”
“Why you?”
“Cecil trusts me.”
“Because?”
“I’m Ojibwe, like him. And we go way back.”
“You don’t look Indian.”
“A lot of us Indians don’t look Indian.”
“You a friend?”
“A trusted associate is more what I’d say.”
For some reason, this answer seemed to weigh in his favor. Her hand came out from under the counter.
“Do you know my Walter?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t.”
“Spell chlorophyll.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Spell chlorophyll.”
Cork gave it a shot.
“Wrong,” she said with satisfaction. “That was the word my Walter spelled correctly in the sixth grade that got him to the championship in the state spelling bee down in Saint Paul. He came in second there. Know why? They cheated him.”
“Is that so?”
“The girl before him, the last one left onstage except for him, they asked her to spell chrysanthemum. You want to know what word they gave Walter? I’ll tell you. Autochthonous. It means indigenous or native. Can you spell autochthonous?”
“No, ma’am. But then I’d be hard put when it comes to chrysanthemum, too.”
She ignored him. “I ask you, what child could possibly know how to spell autochthonous? She was a black girl. It was rigged. Some kind of equal opportunity bullshit.”
“No doubt,” Cork said, but his heart wasn’t in it. Which was a mistake. The hard look of distrust returned to Alva Brickman’s face.
She said, “I told you, I don’t know where Walter is.”
“Does he have a phone?”
“If he does, he hasn’t given me the number.”
“Mind if I leave you my number, just in case you hear from him?”
“It’s a free world, Mr. Simms. Do what you want.”
He wrote his cell phone number on the back of a grocery receipt he found in his wallet and slid it across the counter toward Alva Brickman. He doubted it would do any good, but it was one more base covered.
* * *
The Aitkin Police Department was located just inside the town hall. It consisted of three small, cluttered rooms. Cork found an officer sitting at a desk in the front room, a guy edging toward sixty, who judging from his weight, liked food better than exercise. His face was reddish, as if he’d just recently come in from the cold.
“Yes, sir,” he said to Cork in hearty greeting.
“Good afternoon,” Cork replied. “I’m looking for a little information.”
“I’ll see what I can do to help.”
“My name’s Cork O’Connor. I used to be sheriff up in Tamarack County.”
“Tamarack County? O’Connor?” The cop sat up straighter. “Any relation to the kid who was shot there yesterday?”
“My son.”
“I heard about it on the news. I’m truly sorry. Have a seat.” He held out his hand toward an empty chair next to the desk.
Cork took off his parka and sat down. “We think we’ve got a pretty good handle on a suspect, which is why I’m here.”
“Oh?”
“What can you tell me about Walter Frogg?”
“Frogg? Oh, Christ, he’s your suspect?”
“He’s certainly a person of interest.”
The officer held up a finger. “Wait here.”
He left his chair and went to a row of low file cabinets that stood against a wall. The bulletin board above the cabinets was filled with uniform patches from police jurisdictions all across the country.
“Your collection?” Cork asked, nodding toward the patches.
“We all kick in when we’ve got a new one.”
The cop pulled open a drawer, thumbed a row of folders, grabbed a thick one, and brought it back to the desk. He dropped it in front of Cork.
“That’s Walter Frogg, from age nine.”
“Nine?”
Cork opened the file and leafed through incident report after incident report, complaint after complaint.
“Smart kid. I mean really smart,” the cop said. “But a weasel from the word go. And an angrier kid I never knew.”
“Why so angry?”
“By the way, my name’s Karl Sterne.” The cop reached across the desk and shook Cork’s hand, then settled back and laced his fingers across his big belly. “I know this is going to sound all Freudian, but me, I’d say it was his mother. Alva’s always been a piece of work. Life never treated anyone as badly as it treated her, that’s always been Alva’s take. A litigious woman. Bitter. She’s driven away”-he paused a moment to do a mental count-“four husbands. Walter’s her only child. I’m making no excuses for Frogg, but I figure that he never had much chance of seeing life in any but an adversarial way. In Alva’s eyes, it’s always been her against the world, and right from the get-go, she enlisted her son in that endless battle.