“You ever get a call down there?”
“Oh, yeah. That place kept us plenty busy.”
“Ever run into an Indian there name of Indigo Broom?”
“Broom? From the rez? Sure, Broom was right at home.”
“How about Monique Cavanaugh?”
Borkman seemed surprised. “What would a woman like her be doing in a place like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“That lady had class. No way she’d be caught dead in a joint like that.”
“Maybe if she wore a wig and called herself something else?”
“Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know. Forget it.”
“Naw, you asked. Why?”
“The truth is, Cy, that I’m thinking there was some connection between Monique Cavanaugh and Indigo Broom. But they moved in such different circles, I can’t figure out how they would have stumbled onto each other. I thought a place like Jacque’s might have provided the opportunity.”
“A woman like her with a guy like Broom? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t. Forget I said anything.”
Borkman sat quietly for some time sipping his beer. Cork watched a sailboat back from its slip, come around, and head out into the lake under the power of its engine. When it cleared the marina, a sail went up, an explosion of white against the blue of the sky, and the vessel tilted in the grip of the wind and glided east across the water.
“Jesus,” Borkman said. “Oh, Jesus.”
Cork turned on his stool. “What?”
Borkman looked at him, and his eyes were big circles of wonderment.
“What is it, Cy?”
Borkman didn’t answer immediately. Cork could tell he was working through something in his head.
“Your father was a good man,” Borkman finally said, but so softly that Cork had to lean to him. “But he wasn’t a perfect man.”
“What do you mean?”
“Christ, I shouldn’t be telling you this, you of all people.”
“Don’t crap out on me now, Cy.”
“It was decades ago, so I suppose…” Borkman gripped his beer with both hands, as if the mug was all that anchored him. “Look, your father was seeing another woman.”
“What?”
Borkman said, “It wasn’t that he didn’t love your mother. It’s just that sometimes a man, well, you understand.”
“No, Cy, I don’t. Enlighten me.”
“Look, the Vanishings had him all twisted up. He was going crazy. And frankly, your mother was riding him hard, because it looked like her people were the ones being targeted. He wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t particularly eager to go home at night. And, hell, you were being a little shit.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were a teenager, and, hell, teenagers are always difficult. And because the investigation took your dad away a lot those days, I suppose you were the one helping your mother through what she was dealing with and saw mostly her side of things. Anyway, you did nothing but give him grief and push him away, and I got the sense your mother was doing the same. He ended up getting pushed into the arms of a woman.”
“What woman?”
“I didn’t know who it was, but he met her at Jacque’s. And it wasn’t about love, Cork, I can tell you that.”
“What was it about?”
“Look, it happened like this. We got a disturbance call. Your father and me, we both responded, arrived in our cruisers about the same time. A couple of guys in the parking lot were beating the hell out of each other over a woman. A skanky looking thing, a peroxide blonde in a skirt that barely covered her ass. We broke up the fight. Didn’t book anybody, but the woman claimed she was afraid, so your father offered to give her a ride. He was gone a long time, longer than necessary, and when he came back into the department, there was something different about him. The kind of different easy to spot. Wouldn’t look me in the eye. None of my business, so I didn’t push him. We were in the middle of the investigation of the Vanishings, so he was out a lot anyway, but after that, sometimes when he was gone, I figured it had nothing to do with the job.”
“How’d you know?”
“A feeling. I knew your old man pretty well. Anyway, after the Cavanaugh woman disappeared, I didn’t see any more of that behavior from him.”
“And you’re saying what?”
“You were the one who said the Cavanaugh woman could’ve worn a wig and called herself something else. It’s pretty coincidental that after Monique Cavanaugh disappeared, your old man settled back down. And you know as well as I do that coincidence is never coincidence.”
Cork looked outside at the lake and tried to think clearly through a spin of unpleasant images.
Borkman said, “You asked about Monique Cavanaugh and Indigo Broom, so you must know something about her I don’t. Was she the kind of woman who could’ve got her jollies disguising herself and slumming it at Jacque’s? And if she was, was she the kind of woman who’d make your old man the kind of offer he couldn’t refuse?”
Before Cork could answer, his cell phone rang. Sheriff Dross.
“Cork, I wanted to let you know. That bloody fingerprint we found in Lauren Cavanaugh’s boathouse? We finally got a match.”
“Who is it?”
“Hattie Stillday. We just brought her in.”
THIRTY-ONE
Sheriff Marsha Dross looked tired but relieved. She wore her khaki uniform, something she usually did only when she had to face the media and wanted to be certain that the impact of her authority came through in every way possible. Agent Simon Rutledge sat in a chair in a corner of the office. He wore a tan sport coat, white shirt, and yellow tie. The knot on his tie was pulled down a comfortable few inches, and the collar of his shirt was unbuttoned. He was working a Rubik’s Cube and seemed to be paying very little attention to the conversation between Cork and the sheriff.
“When we showed up at her home to interview her, she took one look at us and told us everything,” Dross said. “We brought her back to the department. She refused an attorney and then repeated everything on videotape for us. She seemed happy to get it off her chest.”
“You believe her confession?” Cork sat on the far side of the sheriff’s desk, trying not to pay too much attention to the pounding in his head, which, despite the Tylenol, threatened to crack his skull wide open.
“The evidence is all there,” Dross said. “In the back of her pickup we found a canvas ground cloth with bloodstains on it. She claims she wrapped Cavanaugh’s body in it. Simon’s people are taking it down to Bemidji to analyze the stains. And she certainly knows things about the murder that we haven’t made public.”
“Like what?”
“That Cavanaugh was killed with a thirty-eight.”
“Does she have the weapon?”
“She claims she threw it into the lake.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere along the eastern shoreline, near the rez. She doesn’t remember exactly where.”