Tamarack County: A Novel Part 2

"That's a good idea, and Marsha's already on it," Cork told him. "The Forest Service is loaning us one of their Bells and also a De Havilland Beaver. They'll join us tomorrow, provided this storm has broken."

Jenny propped an elbow on the tabletop and rested her chin on her fist. She frowned. "Was Evelyn's car stuck in the snow?"

He shook his head. "Out of gas."

"On the Old Babbitt Road? What was she doing out there on a night like this?"

"Question of the day. And it gets even curiouser," Cork said. "She filled up her tank yesterday and, according to the Judge, hasn't really gone anywhere since. That Buick of hers probably holds twenty gallons."

"So she covered a lot of ground tonight," Jenny said.

"It certainly appears that way. One speculation is that she was disoriented for some reason. Just drove and drove until the gas was gone."

Stephen said, "Disoriented why?"

"I don't know. Maybe a stroke or something."

"Prescription drugs?" Jenny offered. "Some kind of bad reaction?"

"Possibly," Cork said.

"Where all did you search?" Stephen asked.

Anne had the eggs going in a frying pan, along with several precooked link sausages. The smell intensified Cork's hunger to the point of distraction. He was dead tired and didn't want to go over all the details of the failed search again, so he said, "Let's talk about this tomorrow, okay? I'm bushed."

Stephen's cell phone chimed.

Jenny gave him a playful nudge with her elbow. "Marlee?"

"Tell her good night," Cork said firmly.

They ate the eggs Anne had scrambled and the sausage and talked about Christmas and Christmases past, and by the time they turned out the lights and went to bed, it was very late. Cork was exhausted. It had been an unusual night, Anne mysteriously home too early and a good woman mysteriously gone, but as he settled gratefully into bed, with all his children gathered around him in his house once again, he found himself unusually happy.

CHAPTER 5.

They regrouped at sunrise in the parking lot of the Tamarack County Sheriff's Department. Every man who'd been there the night before was there again, and more. A number of women showed up, too, because Evelyn Carter had been well liked in Aurora, and also deeply pitied for having lived her life under the loveless eye of a man like the Judge. While they drank steaming coffee from thermoses and talked among themselves, there were some grumbled speculations that Evelyn might simply have had enough of the old b.a.s.t.a.r.d and given herself over to a frigid and purposeful end.

The sky was searing blue, wiped absolutely clean of clouds. In the heavens, there was no hint of the weather that had battered the North Country for much of the night. The storm had moved south and east and was creating havoc all across Wisconsin and the UP of Michigan. But with the clear sky had come plummeting temperatures. In Tamarack County, the predicted high for the day was one below.

Those who owned them had hauled their snowmobiles on trailers, antic.i.p.ating that the dangerous temperature and the deepened snow and the long time lapse since Evelyn's disappearance all added up to the need for a wider and more mechanized approach to the search. Sheriff Marsha Dross had a different idea. She thanked everyone for coming but directed those who were not officially a part of the Sheriff's Department or Tamarack County Search and Rescue to return to their homes. They went but not happily. Then she explained her thinking and her intent to those who remained.

The Old Babbitt Road had been plowed regularly since the snows began weeks earlier and was like a little canyon walled on both sides by three-foot mounds of snow. It would have taken a significant effort to mount one of those walls and walk off into the woods. Unless Evelyn Carter intended to lose herself that way, it made more sense, despite the fact that Gratz's dogs had found no scent, that she'd left the car and followed the road. How far she might have been able to walk in the storm was anyone's guess. So their plan was to search the road in both directions, looking for any sign of the woman-a dropped article of clothing perhaps, or a mounding that stood out against the regular contour of the s...o...b..nks and that might indicate a body beneath. Four snowmobiles would work in each direction, two on the road and two along the shoulders beyond the banked snow. The helicopter and the De Havilland Beaver provided by the Forest Service would fly a grid around the area of her car, then up the road and back down, keeping low and searching for anything farther afield. Gratz had brought several dogs, one of them a cadaver dog, and would be working the area as well.

Cork had never been fond of snowmobiles. He understood their attraction, but he believed anything that made that much noise in the woods didn't belong there. Still, he owned one, a Bearcat 570, which he'd finally purchased for two reasons. The first was for his volunteer work with Tamarack County Search and Rescue. The second was to be able to get quickly out to the cabin of his good friend, the very aged Ojibwe Henry Meloux, should Henry need help in the long winter months.

Gratz, Dross, and Azevedo went ahead to the place where Evelyn Carter's car had been found. Gratz didn't want a lot of people around to confuse the scents while his dogs tried once again to pick up any trail Evelyn might have left. The others split into two teams and headed toward opposite ends of the Old Babbitt Road. Cork was with the group that would come in from the north. They began at a crossroad nearly ten miles from the parked car and slowly made their way south. Cork took the shoulder on the far side of the s...o...b..nk that edged the west side of the road. The storm had dropped nearly a foot of snow, and sunlight came off that clean white powder in a blinding glare. He wore tinted goggles. He had on a ski mask, Klim snowmobile pants, a Canada Goose down parka, mitts made of moose leather with wool liners, two layers of socks, and good Sorel boots, and after an hour he was still cold everywhere. As the snowmobile cut over the rugged terrain and broke through drifts, he thought Search and Rescue would be lucky to find Evelyn at all, and if they did, what they would bring back to Aurora would be her frozen corpse.

They checked every branch off the road, most of which were narrow lanes that led to private cabins or small resorts, all of them closed for the winter. They found no sign of Evelyn, no indication at any of the buildings that she'd managed to make it that far and had tried to break in for shelter. They reached her car a few minutes behind the group who'd come from the south. That bunch had also arrived empty-handed. The chopper and plane had spotted nothing, and the dogs, once again, had picked up no scent. Gratz had walked his cadaver dog, a German shepherd named Violet, along the road a couple of miles in both directions, to no avail.

Dross's next step was to send both groups off-trail into the woods. It was her last best effort at finding a woman who, if she was in the area, should already have been found.

They regrouped several hours later, cold, tired, hungry, and unsuccessful. Dross thanked them all, and told them to go back home. If she needed them again, she would let them know.

As he was getting ready to mount his Bearcat and return to where he'd parked his Land Rover and trailer ten miles north, Dross called to him, "Cork, would you mind sticking around?"

Dross said something to Deputy Azevedo, who nodded and headed toward his cruiser. She walked to where Cork stood waiting beside his Bearcat, eyeing her in the long slant of the late afternoon sun. She stood five-ten, and although her cold-weather outerwear didn't show it, she was lean and muscular. The hair hidden by the hood of her parka was a dull auburn hue and cut to a length that fell just below her jawline. Her face was red from the daylong exposure to the bitter arctic air, and Cork knew she had to be every bit as bone-numb cold as he. Nearly fifteen years earlier, when he was sheriff of Tamarack County himself, he'd hired her as a deputy, a decision he'd never regretted.

Dross removed her goggles and blinked a moment at the sudden brilliance that seemed to have ambushed her eyes. "How well do you know Judge Carter?" she asked.

"Well enough not to like him at all. Why?"

"I've talked with Social Services. Without his wife at home, he's pretty much a mess. He tried to cook himself dinner last night and nearly set the stove on fire. Luckily, your parish priest had come out to be with him or he might have burned the house down. Father Green agreed to stay with him again today. Apparently there's n.o.body else willing to give him . . ." She searched for the word. "Comfort," she finally settled on.

Although he'd pretty well lost all the feeling in his toes, Cork waited patiently for her to get to the point.

"We've asked the folks at WMRZ to keep broadcasting our request for anyone who might have information about Evelyn's whereabouts to contact us. All the adjoining counties and the State Patrol have been notified to keep an eye out. I've talked myself blue with the Judge trying to find out if there's somewhere Evelyn might have gone, someone she might have gone with, but it's clear he doesn't have a clue about her." She shrugged. "It's possible she's just left him."

"Most people who just leave someone drive somewhere. They don't circle until they run out of gas."

Dross nodded. "Some folks this morning suggested to me she might have decided on another way to leave the Judge."

"Killed herself, you mean? Walked off into the woods and gave herself over to the cold? How well did you know Evelyn?"

"Almost not at all."

"She and the Judge have been parishioners at St. Agnes as far back as I can remember. She's devout. For devout Catholics, suicide is an unthinkable sin. Besides that, she's a pretty strong woman. For reasons of her own, maybe that Catholic ethic again, she's stuck it out with the Judge for a lifetime. Why suddenly decide to exit now? And if she did that, why didn't she leave a trail the dogs could find?" Cork removed his goggles and looked at her steadily. "You don't believe she killed herself."

"No," she said. "I've checked her list of medications. There's nothing there that would have caused her significant disorientation. I've considered a stroke, always a possibility, but if that was the case, we should have found her body, or like you said, the dogs should have been able to pick up her trail. So, my best guess is that someone stopped, picked her up, and for whatever reason, hasn't delivered her home or bothered yet to let anyone know where she is. I'm still hoping that might happen."

She purposefully looked away from him, looked toward the sun, which was a fluorescent tangerine hanging just above the jagged line of the treetops to the west. The woods cast a long blue shadow across the snow toward the Old Babbitt Road. After half a minute, she turned her face again to Cork and came to the point. "There was a case in Tamarack County before you brought me into the sheriff's department. A woman with car trouble picked up by a man who stopped to help, and then raped and murdered her. Charles Devine."

"Ruth Wheeling was the victim," Cork said. "Long time ago, and Devine's still in prison. At least last I knew."

"I'm just thinking that that kind of thing has happened here before."

"So maybe again? I suppose."

"I'm going to have my guys go over her vehicle for prints."

"Worth a try," Cork said. "But weather like this, business like that, a perp would be a fool not to wear gloves."

She was quiet, and it was clear to him that she'd already considered this.

"So, have you checked out Devine yet?" he asked. "Is he still in the supermax at Oak Park Heights?"

"I told Azevedo to do that as soon as he gets back to the department." She glanced at the sun again, her face a pale orange fire of reflection. "Evelyn Carter's daughter is flying in."

"Justine?"

She nodded, then dabbed a gloved finger against her nostrils, which were runny in the bitter cold. "She should be here in the morning."

"What are you going to tell her?" he asked.

"The truth. That we're doing our best."

"But that you don't really have a clue? Good luck with the reception you get on that one."

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, misting the air in front of her face. She looked tired. Probably she hadn't slept much the night before. "Any suggestions?"

"On what to tell Justine?"

"On anything."

Cork studied the road, the powdered snowfall stamped hard by far more traffic than was natural in that season, the deep woods on both sides a maze of snowmobile tracks. "You've done everything out here I would have done. And your current thinking seems pretty reasonable to me. In your shoes, I'd seriously consider foul play."

"Motive?"

"Maybe like Devine, just a sick mind and a crime of opportunity."

"If that's the case and her car's clean, then we're at a dead end."

"Unless someone who listens to WMRZ saw something and gives you a call," he offered.

"Folks who knew her and loved her, her family, they're going to think there's more I should be doing." It wasn't a plea for his sympathy, just a statement of fact.

"You got any idea what that might be?"

"Not at the moment."

"Want my advice?"

She laughed, and that seemed to relax her a little. "Why do you think we're standing here freezing our b.u.t.ts off?"

"Put Azevedo in charge for the night. Go home. Take a hot shower. Then meet me at the Four Seasons. I'll stand you to a steak and some good scotch. We'll relax a little, and then think about all this again."

"Folks see me relaxing with Evelyn Carter still missing, what are they going to think?"

"The worst. But you don't have to worry about that until you're up for reelection. By then, you'll have this whole case wrapped up with a bow. Trust me."

CHAPTER 6.

When he came home from school to the house on Gooseberry Lane, Stephen found Anne alone in the kitchen. Normally, he'd have been delighted, but there was an air about his sister since she'd come home, something dense, like the atmosphere around an alien planet, slightly poisonous.

She was sitting at the table, writing in what looked like a journal. When he came in she glanced up, a little annoyed, it seemed to him.

"Hey," he greeted her with a smile.

"Hi," she replied with a clear lack of enthusiasm.

He hung his coat on a peg by the door and went, as he always did the minute he got home from school, to the refrigerator to grab something to eat. He pulled out a plate of cold fried chicken and a half-gallon plastic jug of milk.

"Want anything?" he asked.

"No," she said and closed her journal. "I'm fine."

That morning, before he'd gone to school, they'd shoveled the walk and the driveway together, but not like they had in the old days. When he was a kid and hated the ch.o.r.e, Anne had always made a goofy compet.i.tion out of it-who could shovel the most? She was six years older than he and could easily beat him, but because things like that mattered to him, she always managed to make it a close race and frequently lost. That was the old Anne. The young woman at the table was someone else. Something that had always been essential to her was missing. As he put a couple of chicken legs on a plate for himself and poured some milk, Stephen thought about what that was.

At seventeen, he understood a lot about people and about life. When he was just seven years old, he'd been kidnapped, along with his mother, and had seen his father take a bullet in the chest and been certain he was dead. For a long time after that, he'd worked with the old Mide, Henry Meloux, in order to heal in mind and spirit. A few years later, he'd lost his mother in a tragedy caused by the greed of others. Two summers ago, he and Jenny had had their lives put in peril because they'd taken little Waaboo into their care. He thought of these things often, but never dwelled on them in a way that brought darkness to his thinking. This was the influence of Meloux, who'd taught him that, although human beings were often blind to the ultimate purpose of the Great Mystery, the Great Mystery never acted blindly.

He turned from the counter toward the table, studied his sister, and thought he understood what was missing from her. It was joy. He wanted very much to know what terrible thing had happened to take that essential element from her. But one of the other important lessons he'd learned from Meloux was the virtue of patience, and so he simply sat at the table with her and began to eat.

"Where are Jenny and Waaboo?" he asked.

"A playdate with Claire Pilon and her son. She'll be home in time for dinner. She was wondering what you planned on fixing."

"Shoot," Stephen said. "My turn to cook. I forgot."

"I'd be glad to put something together."

"Really? Thanks."

Anne left the table, eagerly it seemed, as if she was uncomfortable just sitting there with him. She went to the refrigerator to take inventory. To her back, Stephen said, "We've got everything for macaroni and cheese and hot dogs."

"Is that what you'd like?"

"One of Waaboo's favorites."

"Okay," she said, and when she turned back to him there was, at last, a hint of a smile on her face. "For Waaboo, then."

She began to pull things together. "How come you haven't put up a Christmas tree yet?" she asked.

"Dad wanted to wait until you got home. He wanted you to be a part of that."