He was almost finished eating when his cell phone chirped. “O’Connor,” he answered.
“It’s Marsha Dross, Cork. We have a situation here. Can you come to my office right away?”
The instant he walked into Dross’s office, he could feel the tension in the air. Dross was at her desk. Rutledge was standing at the window. Ed Larson was sitting with Lou Haddad and his wife. All eyes swung toward Cork.
“Come in,” Dross said, rising. “You know Sheri?”
“Of course. How are you?” he asked.
Haddad’s wife smiled bravely, and her hand lifted a little in a halfhearted greeting.
“Sheri got a note,” Dross said. “Same message Lou and the others received, but with a twist.”
Dross indicated a sheet of paper on her desk. Cork walked over and took a look but didn’t touch. There was a trifold, just as there’d been with the others. The note had been printed on paper that Cork was pretty sure had no identifying watermark, and the same blood-dripping font-From Hell-had been used. The message was almost the same as before, but, as Dross had indicated, it was different and in a terrifying way: We die, U die. Just like her.
“Just like her?” Cork said.
“We’re assuming it refers to Lauren Cavanaugh,” Ed Larson said. “Which is interesting. As far as we know, only those of us associated with the investigation knew that Lauren Cavanaugh was one of the victims in the mine.”
“Not true,” Cork said. “The person who put her there knew.”
“Exactly,” Larson said. “We’re taking this very seriously.”
“Where did you get this, Sheri?”
“It was under the windshield wiper of my car.”
“Have Max Cavanaugh or Genie Kufus received anything more?” Cork asked Dross.
“We contacted Cavanaugh at his house this afternoon. He’s got nothing more.”
“And Kufus?”
For a moment, they all appeared to be frozen, a tableau of awkward concern. Then Dross said, “She seems to be missing.”
SIXTEEN
Genie Kufus wasn’t at her hotel, nor was she answering her cell phone. Her car was gone. None of her team from the DOE knew where she was.
“When was the last time anyone saw her?” Cork asked.
“She met with her team over lunch, then she returned to her room to work. None of them have heard from her since, and none of them saw her leave the hotel.”
“Have you checked her room?”
“Of course,” Dross said. “She’s not there.”
“You went in?”
“Yes. With the manager.”
“Any sign of a struggle?”
“No.”
“Anything appear to be missing?”
“That’s hard to say without knowing what should be there.”
“You put out a BOLO?” Which was shorthand for Be on the Lookout.
Dross nodded. “She’s driving a rented cherry red Explorer. Not easy to miss.”
“You mind if I have a look at her hotel room?”
Dross shot glances toward Larson and Rutledge. They both gave nods. “Under the circumstances, I’m going to say okay. But I’d like to be there with you.”
“Of course.” Cork stood up and smiled at Haddad and his wife. “I think you should go somewhere safe. When was the last time you two took a vacation together?”
The room Genie Kufus occupied at the Four Seasons overlooked Iron Lake and the marina. It was a lovely view of white-masted sloops and powerboats set against dark blue water.
Dross said, “My guys have already been here, Cork. What are you looking for that they didn’t see?”
“I hope I’ll know it when I see it.”
He turned from the windows and scanned the room. Kufus was neat, well organized. Either she traveled a great deal and had the process down or this was who she was all the time. Nothing looked out of place, and that was helpful to Cork. He walked to the desk. Her laptop was closed. He opened it.
“Don’t turn that on,” Dross warned. “Until I’ve determined that she’s officially missing, we’re on thin ice just being here.”
She was right. Cork glanced through the documents that lay stacked next to the computer. They all appeared to be technical papers dealing with the mine and mining in general. He went to the closet. Dresses and slacks were hung with care; shoes had been set on the floor like soldiers in formation. He went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Lingerie, scented with lilac from a little pouch of sachet. Which seemed odd for a woman in town on business. The rest of the drawers held other, less interesting, clothing: folded tops, sweaters, shorts.
He entered the bathroom, where he found the towels racked with measured precision. Not even an errant hair on the sink.
“Interesting,” he said.
“What?”
“Kufus is a swimmer, but I don’t see a bathing suit anywhere. Why don’t you call the front desk, make sure none of the staff saw her go out for a swim this afternoon.”
“We already did that.”
“Never hurts to double check.”
She looked ready to offer a reply, probably not a pleasant one, but instead moved to the phone to make the call.
Cork went back to the desk. The charging cord for the woman’s cell phone was still plugged in, but the phone was gone. Next to the cord was a small pad of notepaper supplied by the hotel. There was a clear indentation from a note that had been written and then torn from the pad. Cork lifted and turned it so that the white paper caught the light through the window just right, and the faint grooving of Kufus’s handwriting was legible. He put the pad back down as Dross hung up the phone.
“She usually takes a swim in the afternoon, but, as we’ve already been told, no one saw her go out today,” Dross reported.
“All right,” Cork said. “I’m finished here.”
“Wasted trip,” she said.
Cork chose not to contradict her.
It was dusk when he headed out of Aurora, south along the shoreline of Iron Lake. He passed the Chippewa Grand Casino just outside of town, where the parking lot was three-quarters filled and still filling. The casino had been a godsend to the Iron Lake Ojibwe, whose profits had underwritten more improvements on the rez than Cork could count. Over the years, however, the casino had also delivered its share of difficulties, but that evening when he passed, he wasn’t thinking about the pros and cons of Indian gaming. He was thinking about the words Kufus had written on the sheet of notepaper she’d torn from the pad in her room: Moon Haven Cove.
Four miles south, Cork turned off the highway onto Moon Haven Drive. The road narrowed to a slender thread of black asphalt weaving among a thick stand of red pine. He didn’t have to think about where the road led. There was only one home on Moon Haven Cove, and it belonged to Max Cavanaugh.
He could have told the sheriff what he’d found, but the note had satisfied him that the disappearance of the DOE’s mining consultant probably wasn’t cause for alarm, and he’d decided that it would be better to pursue the lead quietly on his own. If, as he suspected, Kufus’s visit had nothing at all to do with mine business, a sudden appearance by the authorities had the potential for being embarrassing for all involved.
Of course, the whole question could have been easily answered with a phone call, but Cork had a gut sense-and he was nothing if not a man who followed his gut instincts-that something very interesting might result from seeing to this personally.