Purgatory Ridge (27 page)

Rose sat alone at the kitchen table. She was dressed in a beige chenille robe, her road dust-colored hair unbrushed, rosary beads gripped in her right hand. She studied Cork as he stepped in the back door.

Cork walked to the coffeemaker, poured a cup of what Rose had made.

“They called,” he said. “They’re demanding two million dollars.”

Her eyes fluttered as if she’d been struck in the face by a hard, icy wind. “For them all?”

“Of course for them all.”

“They have Jo and Stevie? You’re sure?”

“I’m not sure of anything, Rose.” He sipped his coffee. It was cold. He didn’t care.

“They?” Rose asked.

“What?”

“You said ‘they’ have Stevie and Jo.”

“They. Him. We don’t know.”

The rosary beads clattered softly against the tabletop. Cork walked to the table and sat down. Rose had dark circles under her eyes.

“You look tired,” she said to him. Then she said, “What do we do?”

Cork stared at her. He hadn’t heard in her question any of the fear or hopelessness that threatened his own perspective.

“We start by telling the girls. They should know.”

“All right,” she agreed. “How do we get the two million
dollars?” She asked as if she’d been questioning him about fixing the bathroom sink.

“I don’t know. Karl Lindstrom…” He stopped because Lindstrom hadn’t sounded certain, and Cork didn’t want to build a hope that would crumble.

“If Karl Lindstrom can’t?”

“I don’t know, Rose. I just don’t know.”

“All right,” she said.

Through the window, carried on a breeze that barely ruffled the curtains, came the sound of church bells. The morning Angelus was being rung at St. Agnes. Rose listened intently, as if the bells were voices that spoke to her. Cork heard the creak of the old floorboards above him.

“The girls are up,” he said.

“They’ll be getting ready for Mass.” Rose reached across the table and put a hand gently on his. “Maybe you should come.”

Cork hadn’t been to a church service in more than two years. Not since Sam Winter Moon had been killed and Cork had lost his job as sheriff and Jo had asked him to leave the house. He’d felt abandoned in those days—by God and everyone else. Although he envied Rose her strength of conviction and was glad that Jo had seen so carefully to the children’s spiritual upbringing, he couldn’t in good conscience share their belief. He couldn’t remember when last a word directed at God had passed his lips. Still, he believed prayers couldn’t hurt, especially if prayed by those who believed.

“You go and pray for both of us,” he told Rose.

Annie came down first, dressed in a green sleep shirt that reached to her knees and that was embossed in front with the words
FIGHTING IRISH
. “Where’s Stevie?”
she asked. “He’s always watching cartoons by now.”

For the moment, Cork ignored her question. “Is Jenny up?”

“Yeah.” Annie yawned and stretched. “She’s crawling down the stairs now.” She went to the refrigerator, took out a carton of Minute Maid orange juice, and headed toward the cupboard for a glass.

Jenny came in wearing the black workout shorts she usually slept in and a wrinkled, baggy, gray T-shirt. Her white-blond hair was wild from sleep, but her ice-blue eyes—
her mother’s eyes
, Cork couldn’t help thinking—were wide awake.

“So…” She offered her father a devilish smile. “You and Mom must’ve stayed out at Sam’s Place again last night. You weren’t in bed when I got home, and Aunt Rose was pretty evasive.”

“Sit down, Jen,” Cork said. “You, too, Annie.”

The girls looked at their father a moment, then exchanged a glance between them. Cork hated seeing the dark veil that dropped over both their faces. They did as he asked, sat at the kitchen table. They eyed their aunt and saw there, too, something worrisome.

“Is somebody—like—dead?” Jenny asked, not seriously.

“Just listen a moment.”

A dark understanding seemed to come to Jenny. “Where’s Mom?”

“Yeah,” Annie added. “And Stevie?”

Cork didn’t know how to tell them any way but outright. “They’ve been kidnapped.”

“Right.” Jenny laughed. When her father didn’t, she asked, “That was a joke, wasn’t it?”

“No joke, Jen.”

“Kidnapped?” Either the word or the context seemed incomprehensible to Annie. “How? When?”

“Last night. At Grace Fitzgerald’s home. From the note that was left, it’s pretty clear that Ms. Fitzgerald and her son were the targets. Your mother and Stevie were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“They’re okay?”

Cork couldn’t tell if Jenny was insisting or asking, but he replied firmly, “Yes.”

Annie still looked puzzled. “How do we get them back?”

“Mr. Lindstrom is working on putting together the money the kidnappers have asked for.” He avoided using the word
demanded
.

“How much?”

“Two million dollars.”

“He has it, right?”

“He’ll get it, Jen.”

Her eyes took on an unfocused look and moved slowly away from her father. She stared out the kitchen window. Annie looked down at the tabletop.

“You okay?” he asked them both.

“It’s not fair,” Jenny said, under her breath. Cork reached out to take her hand, but she drew away. Her eyes seemed full of accusation. “Everything was good again. Everything was finally right again. How could you let this happen?”

“We’ll get through this,” Cork said. “We’ll get them back, I promise.” He stood up and stepped toward her, wanting to take her in his arms, to give her the only comfort he could, but she shoved him away.

“How can you make a promise like that? You’re not the sheriff anymore. What can you do?”

“Jenny—” Rose began, a soft admonition in her voice.

Jenny stormed from the kitchen, leaving behind her a question that cut to the heart of the matter as quickly and cleanly as a butcher’s knife.

Annie put herself in her father’s arms. “What can you do?” she echoed, holding to him desperately, her voice choked with tears.

He laid his cheek against her hair. “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said.

“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.” Rose stood up decisively. “I’m going to do what I always do on Sunday mornings. I’m going to church. And I’m going to pray my heart out.”

Annie looked up at her father.

Cork offered her the best he could. “For now, that’s about all anyone can do.”

T
HEY HAD COME TO HIS CABIN IN THE NIGHT
, just as Bridger predicted they would. Knocked on his door. Politely at first, then with a firm and heavy fist.

“Sheriff’s department, Mr. LePere,” they’d said to identify themselves. Two of them. A woman in a deputy’s uniform and a man in a suit. He’d seen the woman before, at the sheriff’s office in the days when he was routinely hauled in for drunk and disorderly. She recognized him, too. He saw it in her face when
she caught the whiskey smell on his breath and saw the nearly empty fifth in his hand, most of which he’d poured down the sink hours ago.

“Yeah?” he said, feigning both drunkenness and anger. “Wha’ the hell do you want? I may be drunk, but I’m drunk in my own house. There’s no law against that so far as I know.”

“Just to ask you a few questions,” the woman said.

He swayed a bit as he stood in the open doorway. “Like what?”

“Have you been home all evening?” the man in the suit asked.

“Who’re you?”

“Agent Earl. Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.” He flashed an ID. LePere had caught the odor of cigarette smoke wafting off his clothing. “Have you been here all evening?”

“All evening,” LePere said. “Me ‘n’ ol’ Cutty ‘n’ Clint Eastwood.” He stepped back, stumbling just a little, so that they could see the television and the video playing on the screen—
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
.

“Did you happen to look outside at all?” the deputy asked.

“Maybe I glanced now ‘n’ then.”

“Did you notice any activity on the lake?”

“Can’t see the lake from here. Only the cove.”

“Did you see anything on the cove?”

“Loons, maybe.”

“No boats?” the man asked.

“Boats, I’d’ve noticed. ‘Less it was dark.”

“How about on the road?” the man asked. “Did you see any vehicles moving along the road to the cove?”

LePere eyed the man as if he were a simpleton, and
he lifted the hand in which he held the scotch bottle and pointed into the dark behind the intruders. “You take a look back there. Can you see the road? Hell, too many trees to see anything, even if I was looking. And I wasn’t. Say, what’s all this about, anyway?”

“We’re trying to find some folks that may be lost,” the deputy said.

“Well, you’re looking in the wrong place. Only people out this way are me ‘n’ that big log home over there. We all keep pretty much to ourselves, ‘n’ we like it that way. Tha’s why we live out here.” He looked at them pointedly, to let them know his privacy had been invaded enough.

“I thought you gave up the drinking, John,” the deputy said. She said it as if it concerned her.

“I gave up drinking lotsa times. What the hell business is it of yours anyway?”

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. LePere,” the man in the suit said.

They left.

He’d seen lights the rest of the night. Around the big house. Down at the shoreline. In the morning before he left for work, he heard dogs in the woods between his place and Lindstrom’s. He hadn’t slept at all despite the bit of whiskey he’d drunk in order to make a good show. He hadn’t taken his morning swim. He’d showered, shaved, dressed for his shift at the casino and gone to work as usual.

But he felt watched. Bridger had predicted that, too. Told him not to let it get to him. It was natural. As if Bridger did this sort of thing all the time.

John Sailor LePere went about his routine as naturally as possible, complaining of a terrible hangover
every chance he got. Although it was Sunday morning, the casino was still doing a brisk business. LePere wasn’t a particularly religious man, but there seemed something unsettling about a world in which so many people gambled on a day that was supposed to be kept holy. A commandment was being shattered, yet there seemed no punishment. God, John LePere had decided long ago, was asleep at the wheel. For a brief moment, he thought about his share of the ransom money—one million dollars. It was not money he would gamble away. It was to purchase justice, another thing that God, in his carelessness, had overlooked.

S
HE HAD A SENSE OF MORNING
. Of light. Of air moving as day pushed out the night. She heard birds, too, and that was a dead giveaway of dawn.

She was past aching. Or she hurt so much and in so many places now that she couldn’t separate what hurt from what didn’t. Her back, she was certain, had begun to fester from the splinters wedged under skin when her captor had forced her down the square post.

All night, she’d heard the van come and go. She’d decided there was no one watching when the man who’d brought them was gone. Whenever the van drove away, she’d felt along the ragged post, hoping to find a way to nick an edge of the tape, to begin the work of freeing herself.

She’d heard the others moving, shifting, making noises of discomfort. However, Stevie hadn’t made a sound at all, and that worried her.

Fear had passed. What moved in to replace it was anger, a hatred that festered like the splinters on her back.
The bastards
. She wanted to get her hands free, to fill them with something big and deadly to smash the heads of the men who would hurt her child. She couldn’t fathom why God would let this happen.

A little moan came from somewhere in front of her and to her right. Was it Stevie? She tried to speak, to offer her son some comfort, but words couldn’t pass her taped lips, and the sound came out an unintelligible mumble, frightening even to her. God, she wanted to speak to him, and to have him reply, just to know that he was all right. She thought of the night before, when she’d put him to sleep with a song. How wonderful and simple that had been.

Jo began to hum, thinking the words in her head.

Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John, Brother John? Morning bells are ringing. Morning bells are ringing. Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong
.

She stopped, hoping for a response that didn’t come.
Oh, God, please let him answer. Let his little heart be strong
.

She tried again.
Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John, Brother John?

Now she heard the resonance of another voice, but it wasn’t Stevie’s. It was Grace, who hummed with Jo,
Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing. Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong
.

The two women paused. Once again, only a terrible, silent waiting filled the cabin.

Then she heard a smaller voice humming.
Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John, Brother John?

It was Scott. Grace joined him, and Jo’s voice became a part of the music, too.

Morning bells are ringing. Morning bells are ringing. Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong
.

To hum was liberating, to fill the cabin with the nearest thing to talk they could achieve. They went through the round once again, Jo praying that she would hear Stevie. But at the end, he was still silent. A moment passed. Then a high little hum, like an echo of the round’s final line, reached her—
Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong
—and her heart leaped. Stevie was with her, and he knew she was with him. It was so small a triumph, yet she found herself overwhelmed and weeping. She began the round again, and four voices joined in a sound Jo believed the angels would have envied.

The birds had been singing for a couple of hours before the van returned again. Jo could hear it a long way off, the undercarriage rattling as it bounced over what she still assumed was an old logging road. Her stomach tightened. The man was so vile. The van stopped; a door opened and closed; the morning fell quiet. For two minutes there was not another sound. Then he was next to her. He spoke no words, just warmed her cheek with his foul breathing. She’d have spit at him if her mouth hadn’t been taped. He made a sound, a tiny snort as if he’d decided something. And his breath was no longer there.