Tamarack County: A Novel Part 28

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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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. n.o.body 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?"

Cork turned from the window and walked the length of the waiting room. Jenny and Anne had gone down to the cafeteria for some breakfast, and he was alone. There was a framed painting on one of the walls, a surreal watercolor of Duluth harbor, with the lift bridge represented by a swash of black.

"If your speculation about his motive is correct, that he wanted to take away what was of greatest value to his victims," Cork said, thinking it through out loud, "then he needed to know his target. That's why he spent time with the Carters. When he had what he wanted, an understanding that Evelyn was pretty much all that stood between her husband and the locked unit of a nursing home, he was done with the ruse. But he needed to be sure that he separated himself from any connection with the Carters and whatever action he eventually took. So he waited. He's a man with a long prison history, a man used to patience. In the meantime, he found out all he could about Ray Jay and about me, and figured how to make us pay."

Dross said, "When he discovers that he didn't succeed in taking Stephen out of your life, he might try again, Cork. Or he might try something with Anne or Jenny or Waaboo."

Cork stared at the black splash that represented the bridge. "Then we have to find him," he said. "We have to find him now."

Warden Gilman took his call right away. When Cork explained what he needed, she said she'd have it for him as soon as possible. The Tamarack County Sheriff's Department had kept her fully informed about Stephen's situation, and she asked how it was going. He told her they were still operating.

His daughters returned. Breakfast seemed to have refreshed them. They told their father that he should eat, too, and if anything occurred, they'd let him know. He was hungry, and he was tired, and he took their advice.

He'd just stepped from the elevator on his way to the cafeteria when his cell phone rang. It was Gilman.

"Aside from his attorney, Frogg had only one visitor in all the time he was here," Gilman told him. "His mother. She visited him two or three times a year. Her name is Alva Brickman."

"You have her address?"

"Yes. And a telephone number. Do you have something to write with?"

Dr. Buckley walked into the waiting room a little before ten a.m. She looked weary but wore a smile. She told them that the surgery had gone well, that they'd removed the bullet and had repaired the damage done by it and the other round. Stephen had tolerated the procedure well. He was in post-op. When he came out from under the anesthesia, he would be taken to his room, and they could see him then.

"His legs?" Cork asked.

"We'll have to wait until he's fully conscious, then we'll see," Dr. Buckley said. "In cases of spinal shock, it can take several weeks for feeling to return to the affected extremities. In your son's case, I think there's every reason to be hopeful."

Cork thanked her and, at that moment, thought she was the most beautiful person he'd ever seen.

It was another forty-five minutes before Stephen was taken to a private room and his family was allowed to be with him. He lay in the bed on his side, looking pale and still a little woozy. The braces that had held him rigid had been removed, and he watched his father and sisters as they came. He didn't smile.

Anne and Jenny both kissed him, then Cork stepped up next to the bed. He put his hand on his son's shoulder. "How're you doing, guy?"

Stephen stared up at him. His eyes, the dark eyes of his Anishinaabe ancestors, held steady and were unreadable. "Tired," he said. Then he said, "Legs. Still can't feel them."

"The doctor says it will take time for the feeling to come back into them. She says that's normal." Cork tried to sound confident and comforting, as much for himself as for Stephen.

Stephen thought about that, then gave the slightest of nods.

"I have to leave for a little while, guy. But your sisters will be here with you."

"Meloux?" Stephen asked.

"I'll send him in."

Stephen's eyes drifted closed and Cork thought he'd gone to sleep. He started to turn away. Then Stephen mumbled something Cork didn't quite hear. He bent nearer and said, "What was that?"

Stephen whispered, and this time Cork heard. In the next moment, Stephen was asleep.

"What did he say?" Anne asked.

"Min.o.bii-niibaa-anama'e-giizhigad," Cork said.

"What does that mean?"

Cork understood the words, but had no idea what they meant coming from his son in that particular moment. He said, "Your brother just wished us a merry Christmas."

CHAPTER 40.

Alva Brickman lived in a small, run-down rambler that had, maybe twenty years earlier, been painted bright yellow. It was now the color of a faintly urine-stained sheet. There were no Christmas lights in the windows, and the sidewalk and narrow driveway hadn't been shoveled for a couple of snowfalls at least. It sat back from the street behind two wild evergreens. The front steps were almost swallowed by a tangle of some type of ornamental shrubbery. As Cork sat looking at it from his Land Rover, it seemed to him the kind of place that on Halloween only the bravest kid would visit.

He'd driven an hour and a half from Duluth to the address in the small town of Aitkin, which Warden Gilman had given him over the phone earlier that day. He hadn't called before he came, figuring if the woman was home, he didn't want to tip his hand, and if she wasn't, he'd wait. If her son had taken up residence there, Cork for sure didn't want Frogg to know a visitor was about to come calling. He studied the house. The blinds were up and the curtains drawn back, maybe to open the rooms to whatever warmth the sun might deliver through the window gla.s.s. There was an attached garage, but the deep snow in the drive told him no one had moved a vehicle in or out for some time.

He left his Land Rover and walked in the impressions made in the deep snow by a set of boots that led directly to the mailbox beside the front door. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor dereliction of a homeowner's duty, Cork thought with admiration for mail carriers everywhere. He tried the bell; no one answered. He knocked. Same result. He stepped into a drift to the left of the door, waded to the front window, and peered through his reflection into the dark interior. A living room, done in either antiques or thrift store acquisitions. No sign of an occupant. He made his way to the garage and peeked through a dirty window. Inside sat a Ford Escort, mostly a dull red but with one white panel over the front wheel well. Lots of c.r.a.p piled along the walls in what appeared to be no particular order.

Cork returned to the street, glanced at the neighboring home on the right, a place as different from the Brickman spook house as you could get. He spotted a woman standing at the front picture window, a cup in her hand, watching him. He crossed to her property, where the sidewalks were cleaned and salted. He headed toward the door, on which hung an evergreen Christmas wreath decorated with a bright red bow. The door opened even before he began to climb the steps.

"Looking for Alva?" the woman asked.

She had white hair, carefully coiffed, and Cork put her at maybe seventy. Her makeup had been tastefully applied. She wore a bright yellow sweater, which hung on her loosely because she was too slender, in what seemed an unhealthy way. There seemed an unnatural hollowness to her face as well. Some kind of illness, Cork figured.

"Yes," he said. "Do you know when she may be home?"

"Some of us might hope never. But that would be too optimistic and terribly uncharitable. She owns the Second Look Thrift Shop, a block north of the stoplight. Christmastime, she stays open late."

"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?"