Mercy Falls co-5 Read online

  “I just need a few answers, Augie. You told Larson that Edward Jacoby asked you where he might find a prostitute around here. Is that correct?”

  “He didn’t use the word prostitute, but that’s what he wanted.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him the lake was all the entertainment most folks needed up here. If it was a boat he was looking to rent, or fishing gear, I could point him in the right direction.”

  “Augie,” Cork said, leaning close so that his voice wouldn’t carry to the couple near the fireplace. “I’ve got a dead man on my hands. I need you to cut out the bullshit and help me here. Whose name did you give him?”

  Newsome looked pained that Cork didn’t believe him. “Sheriff, I-”

  “Augie, do I have to remind you about the incident in Yellow Lake?”

  “All right. I gave him one name and that was a few months ago. Krisane Olsen.”

  “Where’s she working these days?”

  “She hangs out at the casino.”

  “One name, last year, that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “He never asked again?”

  “He asked. I played dumb.”

  “Why?”

  “Talk to Krisane, you’ll understand.”

  “All right, Augie. Thanks.”

  “Guys like him, Sheriff, when they end up with their balls cut off, it’s not hard to figure why.”

  Cork gave him a puzzled look.

  “Talk to Krisane.”

  Augie Newsome walked down the bar to where a man in a Minnesota Twins T-shirt had just sat down on a stool.

  The Chippewa Grand Casino was a blaze of lights among the pine trees a quarter mile south of the town limits just off State Highway 1. Before the Iron Lake Ojibwe purchased the land and built the casino a few years earlier, the area had been a county park. The lot was packed with cars when Cork arrived. Even in the worst winter weather or in the black hours of morning when the rest of the county slept, the casino lot was never less than half full. That so many people felt compelled to empty their pockets, blithely or in desperation, had always baffled Cork. He’d been among the most skeptical when the casino had first been proposed, and while he knew that its success was a blessing both to the Anishinaabeg and to the economy of Tamarack County, there was something about the enterprise that felt like wolves feeding on sheep.

  He found Krisane Olsen sitting at the bar, smoking a cigarette, a glass of red wine on a napkin in front of her. She chatted with the bartender, Daniel Medina, a Shinnob from Leech Lake. Krisane wore a shiny lime-green dress with a hemline that barely covered her ass. There was gold, or more likely imitation gold, around her neck and wrists and dangling in big hoops from her earlobes. She was a small woman, nicely built, with cranberry-colored hair and a face done brightly to mask her fatigue. Days, she worked as a dog groomer. Nights, she worked even harder.

  Cork had changed out of his uniform before leaving his office, put on a blue flannel shirt, brown cords, a yellow windbreaker. When he wanted information, the uniform often presented a barrier. People would talk to Cork, but they clammed up in the official presence of the sheriff.

  “Evening, Krisane.” He took the stool beside her.

  “Oh Jesus.” She sent a cloud of cigarette smoke heavenward.

  “What’s she drinking, Dan?” Cork asked.

  “Merlot.”

  Cork pulled out his wallet. “Give her another on me and then give us some space, okay?”

  “Sure thing, Cork.”

  “What do you want?” Krisane said.

  “Information, that’s all.”

  “Right.”

  “Know a guy named Eddie Jacoby?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “A little shorter than me, dark hair, nice physique. From Chicago. Wears a gold ring on both of his pinkies.”

  “Never laid eyes on him.”

  Medina brought the glass of merlot. Cork laid a ten on the bar, told him to keep the change.

  When they were alone again, he said, “I’ve always been square with you, Kris. I know how it is when you’re a single parent trying to make ends meet, and as long as you’ve done business quietly and safely and no one complained, I haven’t bothered you. Isn’t that right?”

  “Whatever,” Krisane said. She ashed her cigarette in a star-shaped tray.

  “This is the deal. You play straight with me now or I’ll arrange to have an undercover vice officer follow every move you make.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “I just said I would.”

  “I’ve got a kid to worry about.”

  “Right now your biggest worry is me. Understand?” He turned on his stool and faced her directly. “Did you ever hook up with Edward Jacoby?”

  She stubbed out her cigarette, dug out a pack of Salems from the small beaded purse she carried, and fished out another smoke.

  “Well?”

  She lit the cigarette and exhaled with a sigh. “Only once. Four months ago.”

  “Only once? He didn’t look you up again?”

  “He came looking all right. I didn’t want to have anything to do with him.”

  “Why?”

  “The guy was psycho. He liked to hurt people. Women, anyway.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Come on, Sheriff.”

  “I need to know.”

  She rubbed her thigh nervously with her free hand. “He was into a rape thing. He wanted me to fight him-you know, struggle. But he got rough for real. I tried to stop him for real. He just beat me up and did what he wanted. When he was done, he threw the money on the floor. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “Why didn’t you come to the department and make a complaint?”

  She gave him a withering look.

  “Anything like that ever happens again, Kris, you come to me directly. Okay?”

  She was twenty-seven years old. Cork figured that by the time she was forty, the dye would ruin her hair, the smoking would make her voice like the growl of a bad engine, and the hard life would burn her out, leave her with no more substance than the ash at the end of her cigarette.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Where were you last night?”

  “Here. Danny’ll tell you.” She nodded toward the bartender, who was laughing with a man farther down the bar.

  “You were here all night?”

  “I left at ten.”

  “Alone?”

  She hesitated a moment. “No.”

  “But not with Jacoby.”

  “No way. You can ask Danny about that, too. He knows who Jacoby is.”

  “What time did you go home?”

  “Around one.”

  “I may have to talk to the john you were with.”

  “Jesus, Cork.”

  “I didn’t say it was for sure. But you’d better know who he was, or how to find out who he was.”

  “He had a room at the hotel here. I can give you the number.”

  “All right.”

  She seemed to think she’d given him everything she could and turned away.

  “Krisane, is it possible he went to another working girl?”

  She smoked her cigarette and didn’t look at him, like they were lovers who’d just had a quarrel. “There aren’t that many around here, and I made sure they all knew about him.”

  “Okay.” He slid off his stool. “I meant it.”

  “What?”

  “You ever have any trouble again like you had with Jacoby, I want to hear about it.”

  She studied the glowing end of her cigarette, finally gave a slight nod.

  15

  Cork came home late. Jo pretended to be asleep as he undressed for bed. He had to be exhausted, with so little rest since the shooting on the rez; but he lay for a long time, and although he was quiet, she knew his eyes were open and he was staring at the ceiling in the way he always did when he was worried. When he finally nodded off, she was
certain his dreams would be troubled.

  She couldn’t sleep, either, but she didn’t want to talk to him. Pretending sleep was easier than pretending other things. Like pretending she had never loved Benjamin Jacoby, loved him desperately.

  Cork rolled over, his face, so familiar even in the dark, close to hers. She could feel the strong grip of his love around her, her own love covering him like a blanket.

  So what was this unsettled feeling, this rumble of fear? Ben Jacoby was twenty years ago. She’d lived a whole life since then, a full life with Cork and her children at the center.

  Oh God. Was it possible that even after all this time, after all her experience, there was still some ember alive in her heart, burning for Ben Jacoby? Could she still feel something for the man who’d abandoned her on a cold rainy autumn night twenty years before-abandoned her without explanation?

  She’d met him at law school, the final semester of her second year. He was older, funny, brilliant, gorgeous. They’d become lovers.

  She was living in a small apartment in a run-down building on South Harper in Hyde Park, an easy walk to the University of Chicago Law School. Ben worried that it was not a good neighborhood, but Jo, a military brat, assured him she knew how to take care of herself.

  Although they often ate out, he had come to her place for dinner that evening. She was a horrible cook, but she knew how to make spaghetti and that’s what she’d prepared. He brought a good Chianti. He looked tired when he stepped in, and when she kissed him, he seemed to hold back.

  She took his wet overcoat. Cashmere. He always dressed well, as if he had money, or his family did, although he never talked about it. In fact, he never talked about his family at all. He claimed he was a man of the moment. He didn’t discuss his past, never speculated on the future, his or theirs together. Jo had a brief glimpse into his life, however. Ben had a younger sister, Rae, a student at Bennington, an art major, a fine artist already from the things Jo was allowed to see. Rae worshipped her older brother. In the long summer of Jo’s affair with Ben, Rae, home from college, had joined them on some of their outings. She’d once taken them through the Art Institute and proved to be a knowledgeable guide. Jo liked her immensely. Rae was under strict orders not to talk about family, and although she tried to hold to that, once in a while she let something slip. Often it was something harsh about “Daddy.” In September, she returned to Bennington.

  Jo wasn’t reluctant to talk to Ben about her own life, her own past. About the rootlessness that went with being raised by a single parent, an army nurse. About her teenage rebellions, her drive to excel in everything she did so she could escape the alcoholic mother whom she referred to as The Captain. She’d confessed her fear that, like her mother, she drank too much, was too harsh in her judgments of people. Ben Jacoby had been a marvelous listener, something new to her in a man, and although his intellect was towering, she never felt it was a shadow he cast over her or anyone else. He was, in her experience, a rare, good man. And she loved him powerfully.

  “Are you all right?” she asked that rainy October night.

  “Just a little tired,” he said.

  On graduation from the U of C Law School, he’d taken a prestigious clerkship with a state supreme court justice, a demanding position, and he worked long hours.

  “I have something for you.” He handed her a cardboard tube.

  “What is it?”

  “Open it.”

  She popped out the metal cap and from inside pulled a rolled canvas. She moved to good light under a standing lamp.

  It was a portrait of her. She sat on the green grass of Grant Park, in a white dress, looking at something to her right that must have pleased her because she was smiling. Behind her, Michigan Avenue was an impressionistic mist of suggested buildings and pedestrians. It was a beautiful painting, and she fell in love with it immediately.

  “Oh, Ben, where did you get this?”

  “I asked Rae to do it. I gave her a photograph.”

  “I love it. I absolutely love it.”

  She kissed him passionately, but again felt his reserve.

  Often they made love before dinner. That night they simply ate, seated at her small kitchen table in the glow of candlelight, with the sound of rain against the windows.

  “You’re quiet,” she finally said. “And you keep looking at me like I’ve just left on a train out of town. What’s going on?”

  He said, “Jo.” One word, but oh, it was like a funeral bell.

  She sat back in her chair as if he’d hit her. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

  In the candlelight, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. Men never cried when they said good-bye. They found some way to make it not their fault, to feel justified. They left behind a foul sense that somehow it was all wrong from the beginning, a mistake everyone was better off forgetting.

  But not Ben Jacoby.

  “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.

  “Then why?”

  He shook his head and looked truly bewildered. “I wish I could say the thing that would make it all clear, but it’s so complicated. It has nothing to do with you or with what I feel for you.”

  “Right,” she said, not bothering to hide her bitterness.

  He reached across the table and took her hands. “If I had a choice, I would stay with you forever.”

  “You always have a choice. It’s clear you’ve made it.”

  “Not being with you will just about kill me.” He gripped her hands so powerfully that he’d begun to hurt her a little.

  “Just go,” she said. “And here. Take this with you.”

  She gave him back the painting.

  “That’s yours,” he said.

  “I don’t want it. I don’t want anything to remind me of you. Take it. Take it, goddamn it.”

  He didn’t argue, didn’t try to wheedle from her one last time in the sack, didn’t suggest a last glass of wine or a final kiss. But he didn’t hurry, either. He left with an air of profound sadness, and when she was able to think about it later through the filter of time, without anger or hurt, she realized that he’d left with a sense of dignity, his and hers, somehow intact. And for that she loved him, too.

  They hadn’t made promises, but they’d been in love, and there had never been a clear reason for the ending. Time had helped put him behind her. Time and her marriage. She hadn’t thought of Ben Jacoby in years.

  That something inside her still responded to him-his presence, his voice, even the scent of him, the same after all these years-surprised her. There was something going on with her emotions over which she seemed to have no control. She knew she would never act on what she felt, but it still frightened her.

  She studied her husband, sleeping restlessly beside her. There had been rough periods in their marriage, but they were in the past. And the truth was, she loved Cork, as much for all he’d committed to working through with her and forgiving as for all that had been effortless and good between them.

  He stirred, moaned softly. She lifted herself, leaned to him, and gently kissed his lips. Although she knew his sleep was troubled, for a moment in his dreaming he smiled.

  16

  First thing in the morning, before the day watch came on, Cork met with Ed Larson and Simon Rutledge so they would have time to alter duty assignments for the deputies if necessary. Cork related his conversation with Krisane Olsen and suggested it would be a good idea to interview the other women in Tamarack County who were known to take money, even occasionally, for sex. He and Larson came up with the list, and Larson said he’d see to it. Rutledge expected the records for Eddie Jacoby’s cell phone any moment. He hoped they might offer more leads. Cork wanted to talk with the Jacoby family, find out if Eddie might have said anything to them that would be enlightening about his activities in Aurora. Rutledge thought he would try again to interview Lydell Cramer’s sister. The possibility of Cramer being involved in the rez shooting was thin, but until
they got more lab results there weren’t any other threads to follow. They agreed to stay in touch and to meet again around noon.

  The overcast of the day before was gone, and the morning was bright and crisp as Cork drove to the Quetico Inn. For the last quarter mile, the road ran alongside the resort’s Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course, where the grass sparkled with dew. All the holes appeared to be empty, but Cork spotted a lone figure jogging in the green apron between the thirteenth fairway and the road. He recognized Tony, Lou Jacoby’s driver. He passed, slowed, pulled over, and stopped. As the man approached the Pathfinder, Cork got out to meet him.

  “Good morning, Sheriff,” he said brightly. His face was flushed and his long black hair was damp with sweat, but he seemed barely winded. He wore tight black Lycra pants and a light-blue windbreaker. “Paying a call on the Jacoby family?” He glanced toward the lodge in the distance, then down at his sports watch. “You’ll find Lou eating breakfast. He has breakfast every day sharply at nine. Ben’s probably with him. Or playing golf.” Now Cork could hear very definitely the Spanish accent he thought he’d caught the day before.

  “Golf?” Cork said, thinking the man’s brother had just died.

  Tony smiled. “It’s a strange family, Sheriff.”

  “I didn’t get your full name.”

  “Tony Salguero.”

  “You do something for the Jacobys besides chauffeur?”

  “I almost never chauffeur. Mostly I’m a pilot.”

  “You flew the Jacobys out here?”

  “Yes.” He rubbed his thighs vigorously. “My muscles are getting a little stiff, Sheriff. Do you mind if I return to my run?”

  “Maybe you could help clear up a couple of things first. You got here awfully fast yesterday. Lou must’ve called you right away.”

  “He did. I was sailing. I got the call on my boat.”

  “Sailing where?”

  “I was returning from an outing to Mackinac Island.”

  “And you still made it back to Chicago to fly the Jacobys?”

  “I had docked at a marina in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for the night. When Lou called, I arranged for a helicopter to O’Hare where we keep the jet.”