Heaven's Keep (3 page)

Her greatest regret as she accepts the inevitable
—Cork imagines this, because it is his greatest regret as well—
is that they didn’t say to each other, “I’m sorry.” Didn’t say, “I love you.” Didn’t say good-bye.

A
fter Stevie took off for school that morning, Cork O’Connor left the house. He headed to the sheriff’s department on Oak Street, parked in the visitors’ area, and went inside. Jim Pendergast was on the contact desk, and he buzzed Cork through the security door.

“Sheriff’s expecting you,” Pendergast said. “Good luck.”

Cork crossed the common area and approached the office that not many years before had been his. The door was open. Sheriff Marsha Dross sat at her desk. The sky outside her windows was oddly blue for November, and sunlight poured through the panes with a cheery energy. He knocked on the doorframe. Dross looked up from the documents in front of her and smiled.

“Morning, Cork. Come on in. Shut the door behind you.”

“Mind if I hang it?” Cork asked, shedding his leather jacket.

“No, go right ahead.”

Dross had an antique coat tree beside the door, one of the many nice touches she’d brought to the place. A few plants, well tended. Photos on the walls, gorgeous North Country shots she’d taken herself and had framed. She’d had the office painted a soft desert tan, a color Cork would never have chosen, but it worked.

“Sit down,” she said.

He took the old maple armchair that Dross had picked up at an estate sale and refinished herself. “Thanks for seeing me so early.”

“No problem. Jo get off okay?”

“Yeah, yesterday. She and LeDuc flew out together. They stayed in Casper last night. Due in Seattle today.”

“You and Stevie are bachelors for a few days, then?”

“We’ll manage.”

Dross folded her hands on her desk. “I don’t have an application from you yet, so I can’t really consider this a formal interview.”

“You know those exploratory committees they form for presidential candidates? This is more like that.”

Cork had hired her years ago when he was sheriff, and she’d become the first woman ever to wear the uniform of the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department. She’d proven to be a good law officer, and when the opportunity had come her way, she’d put her hat in the ring, run for sheriff, and won easily. In Cork’s estimation, she’d filled that office well. She was in her late thirties, with red-brown hair, which she wore short, no makeup.

“Okay,” she said. “So explore.”

“Would you consider me seriously for the position?”

“If you apply, you’ll be the most experienced applicant.”

“And the oldest.”

“We don’t discriminate on the basis of age.”

“I’ll be fifty-one this year.”

“And the man you’d replace is sixty-three. Cy Borkman’s been a fine deputy right up to the end. So I’m guessing you might have a few good years left in you, too.” She smiled, paused. “How would you feel taking orders from an officer you trained?”

“I trained that officer pretty well. So no problem there. How would you feel giving orders to the guy who trained you?”

“Let me worry about that one.” She lost her smile and leveled at him a straight look that lasted an uncomfortably long time. “You told me a year and a half ago, after the shootings at the high school, that you would never carry a firearm again.”

“No. I told you I would never fire one at another human being.”

“Does that mean you’d be willing to carry?”

“If required.”

“The job definitely requires it.”

“In England the cops don’t carry.”

“This isn’t England. And you carry with the understanding that someday you might have to use your firearm. That’s why all our deputies certify on the range once a year. Your rule, remember?”

“How many times since you put on that badge have you cleared your holster and fired?”

“Yesterday is no predictor of tomorrow. And, Cork, the officers you work with need to believe you’re willing to cover their backs, whatever it takes. Christ, you know that.” She sat back, looking frankly puzzled. “Why do you want this job? Is it the litigation?”

“The lawsuit’s draining me,” he admitted.

“You’ve built a good reputation here as a PI.”

“Can’t spend a reputation. I need a job that brings in a regular income.”

“What’ll you do about Sam’s Place?”

“Unless I win the litigation, there won’t be a Sam’s Place. And unless I can pay for it, there won’t be a litigation.”

“And if you win the lawsuit, are you out of here again? I’ve got to tell you, Cork, you’ve been in and out of uniform more times than a kid playing dress-up.”

“I was never playing.”

She looked away, out her window at the gorgeous November sky and the liquid sun that made everything drip yellow. “I’ve got a dozen qualified applicants wanting Cy’s job, young guys itching for experience. I hire one of them, he’ll be with me for years. I can start him out at a salary that’ll be healthy for my budget. I can assign him the worst shifts and he won’t complain.”

“Did I ever complain?”

“Let me finish. The feeling around here is that I ought to hire you. You’re clearly the popular choice. Hell, you brought most of our officers into the department yourself. These guys love you. But I have to look beyond the question of how well you’d fit in here. I have to think about the future of this force. And I also have to think about the welfare of the officer I hire.” She gave him another long, direct look. “What’s Jo think about this?”

“That it’s not the best idea I’ve ever had.”

“An understatement on her part, I’m sure.”

“This is between you and me, Marsha.”

“Until I run into Jo in the produce aisle at the IGA. I can’t imagine that would be pretty.”

“You’re saying you wouldn’t be inclined to hire me?”

“I’m saying we both probably have better options.”

It was Cork’s turn to eye the promising blue sky. “I don’t know anything but law enforcement.”

“I heard the new casino management firm might be looking for someone to head up security.”

“All paperwork,” Cork said.

“Sixty percent of what we do here is paperwork.”

“I guess I have my answer.” Cork stood up. “Thanks for seeing me, Marsha.”

They shook hands without another word. Cork headed out, passed the contact desk, where Pendergast gave him a thumbs-up.

C
y Borkman’s enormous butt ate the stool he sat on. “Coffee, Janice,” he said to the young woman who was serving the counter at Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler. He looked at Cork, who, until Cy arrived, had been sitting alone. “So, what did Marsha say?”

“That although she might be tempted, she wouldn’t actually burn my application.”

“Come on. What did she say?”

Cork sipped his coffee. “She encouraged me to pursue other career options.”

“She say why?”

“To make way for youth.”

Janice brought Borkman’s coffee and asked him, “Anything else?”

“Yeah. Two eggs over easy, patty sausage, hash browns, and wheat toast.”

“Tabasco?”

“Naturellement.”

Janice walked away, without writing on her pad.

“You ever think about security at the casino?” Borkman asked. “They’re always looking for guys.”

Cork shook his head. “Checking IDs, throwing out drunks, not for me.”

“What do you think you’d be doing as a deputy? Hell, a lot of it’s checking IDs and dealing with drunks.”

“Maybe so, but I’d prefer doing it with a deputy’s badge.”

Borkman clapped a beefy hand on his shoulder. “Pride cometh before a fall, Cork.” He took one of the little containers of half-and-half from the bowl on the counter, creamed his coffee, stirred in a packet of Splenda. “What about your PI business? You’ve got a good rep.”

“And not enough work to afford to pay a lawyer.”

“Why won’t Jo take your case?”

“She says it’s best to have a disinterested third party handle it.”

“Even if it breaks the bank?”

“She’s encouraged me to settle.”

“What would that mean?”

“Letting the bastards surround Sam’s Place with a lot of fucking condos.”

“You’d make a lot of money.”

“And ruin everything that Sam Winter Moon loved. And, hell, that I love, too. I’m going to win, Cy. I’m going to fight these bastards and I’m going to win.”

“What did Jo think about you applying for my job?”

“About what you’d expect.” Cork pushed his cup away. “Got things I have to do. When’s your last day?”

“Two weeks from tomorrow. They’re throwing me a shindig at the Four Seasons. You better be there.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Cork dropped plenty for the coffee and a good tip on the counter and headed outside.

In Aurora, Minnesota, things got quiet in November. The fall color disappeared. The stands of maple and oak and birch and poplar became bone bare. The tourists lost interest in the North Country. Deer-hunting season was nearly finished, and the orange vests, like the colorful foliage, were all but gone. There were still fishermen on Iron Lake, but they were the hardy and the few and came only on weekends. In town, the sidewalks became again the province of the locals, and Cork recognized most of the faces he saw there. November was usually a bleak month, days capped with an overcast and brooding sky, but the last week had been different, with the sun spreading a cheerful warmth over Tamarack County. Cork wished some of that cheer would lighten his own spirits.

He drove his Bronco from the Pinewood Broiler to the gravel access road that led to Sam’s Place. He stopped at the chain that had been strung across the road and that had been hung with a No Trespassing sign. He wanted to drive right through, break the chain into a dozen pieces. Instead, he simply drove around the barrier. He followed the road over the Burlington Northern tracks and pulled into the parking lot of Sam’s Place, where he got out and stood looking at what was, in a way, the vault of his heart.

Sam’s Place was an old Quonset hut built on the shore of Iron Lake. More than forty years before, it had been bought and refurbished by an Ojibwe named Sam Winter Moon. Sam had divided the structure in half. In the front he’d installed a freezer, a grill, a deep fryer, a shake machine, and a soft drink dispenser, and had begun serving burgers, fries, and drinks during the tourist season, May through October. It had become one of Aurora’s icons, a destination, a place for many that, until they patronized it, their vacation wasn’t complete. Sam, when he died, had passed the place to Cork, who’d been like a son to him. Years before, when Cork had lost his job as sheriff, he’d poured himself into keeping the spirit of the wonderful old burger joint alive. He’d brought his own children in to work the windows and flip the burgers and learn, in the way he’d learned, when he was their age, both the necessity and, ultimately, the pleasure of a job well done.

He heard the water lapping gently against the shoreline, and he walked down to the lake. There was an old dock where folks could tie up their boats, disembark, and order a meal. Ever since the chain had gone up across the access from town, that dock was the only legal way to come at Sam’s Place.

To the north stood a Cyclone fence that separated Cork’s property from the BearPaw Brewery. Cork’s land, two acres of mostly open field full of native wild grass and wildflowers, ran south along the shore of Iron Lake and stopped just short of a copse of poplars that surrounded the ruins of an ancient ironworks. Beyond the poplars, the open land continued until it hit Grant Park. Except for the lake, Cork’s property was bounded on all sides by land now owned by the Parmer Corporation, a development company headquartered
in Odessa, Texas. Parmer intended to turn the entire lakefront, from the BearPaw Brewery, which they now owned, to Grant Park, into a large condominium resort community. All they needed to complete their ownership of a quarter mile of prime lakefront was to acquire Cork’s property. They’d offered him a lot of money, three-quarters of a million dollars. He’d turned them down. They’d offered him more, a full million this time. He’d declined the proposition. They’d made one more offer, one and a quarter million. He told them to take a hike.

Cork had an easement agreement with those who, before Parmer, had owned the property that stood between Sam’s Place and Aurora. This gave his customers access to the old Quonset hut along the road over the Burlington Northern tracks. But Parmer’s lawyers had wormed their way around the language of the agreement and, near the end of August, had chained off that access. Cork had gone to court, seeking a temporary injunction until the easement dispute could be resolved. The court had turned him down. He’d had so little business—only from boats on the lake—that he’d been forced to close Sam’s Place six weeks earlier than usual, cutting significantly into the cash that might otherwise have been available for legal fees.

From the beginning, Jo had overseen her husband’s interests. As the depth of Parmer’s pockets and the corporation’s resolve to string the proceedings out over years, if necessary, became more apparent, Jo had explained to Cork that it might be best to retain someone who was an expert in this kind of dispute and who could, perhaps, bring about a more expeditious resolution. She recommended a firm in Minneapolis. It was, she cautioned him, going to cost enormously.

Then Parmer had offered a compromise. Cork could keep Sam’s Place. They would build around it; in fact, they would incorporate the old landmark into their design. Cork simply had to sell them the remainder of his property at the last price they’d offered. He’d drafted his own response, told them to go fuck themselves, that he’d sell at no price, that only over his dead body would they ruin the shoreline of Iron Lake.

Jo had carefully pointed out that Parmer held all the cards, that if the lawsuit did, in fact, go on for years, and access to Sam’s Place continued
to be effectively blocked, Cork would be forced out of business and they would have to find a way to shoulder a significant legal debt. She cautiously suggested that compromise might be possible.