“Did you and the good father come to any conclusions?” Cork said.
“He has his doubts. Mostly, though, he asked about my prayers. The priestly thing, I guess. He asked me if I talked to God.”
“Do you?”
“All the time now. But it’s not like praying, like I grew up thinking of prayer. I just clear my mind and I find that God is there.”
“Kitchimanidoo?”
“The Great Spirit, if that’s the name you want to use, sure. Words don’t mean a lot. They get in the way.” Solemn closed his eyes and was quiet for so long that Cork thought he’d gone to sleep standing up. “I grew up thinking Henry was some kind of witch. Everything I knew about religion was what I was told in church, and I didn’t listen much. I wasn’t ready for any of this, Cork. Now, when I clear my mind, the one question that’s always there is, why me? And the answer that keeps coming back is, why not?”
He smiled gently. “Maybe that’s what this is really all about. Jesus didn’t come to me because I was prepared for Him. He came to me because He can come to anybody. I’d like people to know that. That’s what I told Father Mal.”
Solemn looked peaceful and convinced, and Cork found himself thinking about the kids he used to see at O’Hare in Chicago, the Hare Krishnas, beating their drums and chanting, so sure that they’d connected with the divine. How many of them now wore business suits, and took medication for high blood pressure, and didn’t want to talk about their Krishna days? Fervor was something the young possessed, and then it trickled away. He thought about Joan of Arc. If somehow she had managed to escape the burning and live to see wrinkles and the other slow wounds of time on her skin, would she have ceased to hear God speak, laid down her sword, become some man’s vessel carrying some man’s child? He wondered how long it would take Solemn’s certitude, his moment of grace, to pass and leave him as empty and lost as everyone else. Some part of Cork hoped that wouldn’t happen, but mostly he was sure it would.
“Look, Solemn, the reason I came today. I’m still trying to figure who it was Charlotte was seeing before her death. I’d like to talk to her friends, get an idea if they had any inklings. Do you know who her friends were?”
“Real friends, I don’t think she had.”
“Who did she hang with?”
“Three people usually. Bonny Donzella, Wendy McCormick, and Tiffany Soderberg. She was tightest with Tiffany.”
“You’re still certain you don’t know who the married man might have been?”
“No clue.”
“Did she ever talk about her father?”
“Not much.”
“When she did, how did she sound?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was she particularly emotional in any way?”
“Not that I recall. Why?”
Cork considered sharing his suspicions about the sexual abuse in Charlotte’s past. But everything about Solemn at the moment felt clean and refreshed, and Cork figured there was no point dragging him through the mud. “No reason.” He stood up. “I’m sure Jo will drop by later. You need anything in the meantime?”
“Everything I need, I have. Thanks.”
Cork lifted the phone and called for Borkmann, who opened the door. Up front, Marsha Dross was talking with some people in the waiting area, a man, a woman, and a boy. The man wore old corduroys, the line of the wales worn and broken in places. His blue dress shirt was frayed at the collar and sleeves. The woman wore a light brown housedress with little chocolate brown flowers along the hem. The boy was in a wheelchair.
“We came down from Warroad,” the man was saying. He gripped a blue ball cap in his hands, and turned it nervously while he spoke. “We heard about the roses and about the Indian who talks with Jesus. All we’re asking is a minute of his time. We just want him to put a hand on our boy here, that’s all.”
Their son sat in the wheelchair with his fingers curled into claws, his head lolled back, his mouth hanging open. His mother stood beside him, looking past Marsha Dross, as if locked somewhere behind the deputy was the answer to all her prayers.
Cork walked outside without waiting to hear the response he knew Dross would give. He stepped into the sunlight of that late May morning and saw a television news van pull into the parking lot of the sheriff’s department, and then another. He went to his Bronco, got in, and watched for a few minutes as the cameras and cables came out and two more vans arrived.
There was no way around it now. The circus had begun.
21
June
The news of the miracle went national. After that, every day, starting an hour or two after sunrise, the faithful began to gather in the park between the jail and Zion Lutheran Church. Their numbers varied as did the reasons they came. Some believed that the angel of the roses and the vision of Solemn Winter Moon were somehow connected, that Solemn was blessed, and that what had already occurred was not the end of whatever it was that God intended for Tamarack County. Some, like the Warroad couple who believed Solemn’s touch would free their son from the curse of his body, came seeking a personal miracle. Others were merely curious and visited the now-famous cemetery, then joined the crowd in the park on the slim chance that during their brief stay they might catch a glimpse of Solemn and get a snapshot for an album. One day a vendor arrived selling minidonuts and corn dogs from a mobile stand. After that others showed up, hawking T-shirts and icons, snow cones and cotton candy. People put out lawn chairs and blankets and the park had the feel of a festival. Cy Borkmann told Cork that he’d talked with some folks who visited sacred sites all over the country, and who’d just come from Hillside, Illinois, where the Virgin Mary was reputed to appear in a cemetery every day but Tuesday. They hadn’t seen the vision but were hoping in Aurora to be able to see the man who’d talked with Jesus, maybe even hear him speak.
Jo advised Solemn not to say anything publicly and to give no interviews to the media. Even so, a lot of information had already leaked. Maps purporting to show the location of Solemn’s vision were circulated, and the reservation crawled with pilgrims seeking the footprints that Jesus, in his Minnetonka moccasins, might have left behind.
Mostly, these were outsiders. The natives of Tamarack County who’d watched Solemn grow up and who knew the darker aspects of his history didn’t believe for an instant that he’d been tapped on the shoulder by the Son of God. Even though local business boomed, many residents of Aurora resented the reason for the intrusion and griped about the disruption of their own lives caused by the publicity.
They showed their sentiment in exactly the way Jo had feared. On an afternoon in the first week of June, with little more deliberation that it took to choose a new pair of shoes, the grand jury handed down an indictment of Solemn Winter Moon for first-degree murder.
“All a grand jury hears,” Jo had explained to Solemn earlier, “is the evidence against you. All they see is the prosecution’s case. There’s no opportunity for us to challenge the assumptions the county attorney has made, to question the evidence, to cross-examine witnesses. The point of a grand jury is to make sure that such a serious charge as first-degree murder isn’t made frivolously. Honestly, if I were on that grand jury looking at the evidence as Nestor Cole, our county attorney, will undoubtedly present it, I’d be hard-pressed not to indict.”
“I’m glad you’re on my side,” Solemn had joked.
“I’m trying to prepare you for the worst,” Jo explained. “If they indict, we go to work. We’ll have a chance to make a trial jury see things from another perspective, to question everything the prosecution lays before them.”
“I appreciate what you’re doing,” Solemn said.
To her client, Jo presented a positive image, but after the indictment was handed down, she shared her concerns in private with Cork.