Tamarack County: A Novel Part 5

CHAPTER 9.

Ted Green, who was generally referred to as Father Ted by the members of his congregation, opened the front door of the Carter home to Cork and Marsha Dross. He was in his early thirties, tall and slender, with the kind of clean, almost boyish face that made you more than willing to open your heart to him and dump in his lap a whole litany of your worst transgressions. He stepped back to let them in.

"Who is it?" came a harsh old voice from another room.

"You're a saint, Ted," Cork said to the priest.

"He can be a trial," Green replied with a patient smile.

"You told him we were coming?" Dross asked.

"Yes, and I told him I wasn't sure why. Is there anything new on Evelyn?"

"I'm hoping the Judge can help us with that."

"Help you with what?" The Judge stood in the hallway, staring at them as if he were still on the bench and just about to deliver a sentence. For a man with the personality of a bulldozer, he was remarkably small. His face, which had probably been handsome about the time men first walked on the moon, had become an ellipse of dry, wrinkled flesh with two dark eyes peering out like cloves stuck in a desiccated orange. He wore a dressing gown with an ascot, and on his feet were sheepskin slippers. He carried a lit pipe, which he waved about as he talked, spreading an aromatic haze around him in a kind of perverted mimic of Catholic ritual.

"You find Evelyn?" he demanded.

"No, Judge," Dross said.

"Then what are you doing wasting time here? Get out there and find my wife."

"I'd like to ask you a few questions that might help us do that," Dross replied.

"h.e.l.l, I already told you everything I know."

The priest said gently, "They can't help you if you don't let them."

The Judge ignored him and shot at Cork, "What are you doing here?"

"Just trying to give a hand, Ralph." Because he'd never particularly liked how the man operated on the bench, Cork refused to call him by his old t.i.tle.

"You got that private eye license now, don't you? You charging me for this?"

"On the house, Ralph," Cork said.

"Could we sit down?" Dross asked, though it was more a directive than a question.

"In there," the priest replied, indicating the doorway that led to the den.

They took off their coats, and the Judge eyed Dross up and down and said, "You always look so tarted-up on the job?"

"I was having dinner out," Dross told him. She held up her coat. "Where shall I put this?"

"h.e.l.l, drape it on the newel post," he said and walked ahead of them into the den.

Logs were burning in the big fireplace, and the room smelled pleasantly of woodsmoke. The den was clearly the Judge's domain. An enormous variety of hunting trophies hung on the walls-the heads of a p.r.o.nghorn, a mountain sheep, a bison, a prize buck, and some animal so alien to the North Country that Cork had no idea what it might be. Most of these, he understood, the Judge had bagged over the years at a private game preserve in Texas that charged an arm and a leg for the privilege of shooting the wild game they stocked. In one corner hung a mount that was a splay of tom turkey feathers with the beard hanging down like a scalp and, near it, another that held a stuffed northern pike that could've swallowed Jonah. Cork was a hunter and fisherman, but he wasn't a believer in trophies. What you shot or what you reeled in and didn't release, you ate. Any part of the animal that was inedible to you, you fed back to the forest, where it would be feasted on by the creatures the Great Mystery had created for that purpose.

The Judge sat in a huge wing chair that made him seem like a small monarch on a big throne. Dross and the priest sat on the sofa. Cork chose to stand.

"Judge," Dross began without any small talk, "can you tell me where Evelyn was on Tuesday?"

"Tuesday?" He seemed offended to have been asked to remember. "h.e.l.l, I don't recall."

"Does anyone besides Evelyn drive your car?"

"Not unless one of the kids is visiting. And that doesn't happen much."

"So no one except Evelyn drives the car? You're sure about that?"

"Christ, woman, it's my car. I know who drives it."

"Okay, Judge. Think for a moment. Was Evelyn gone at all on Tuesday?"

The Judge squinted awhile, and Cork thought he was looking in one of those foul corners of his brain for a nasty retort, but he finally replied, "Yeah, on Tuesday, she was at St. Agnes most of the day, working with the women's guild to wrap up a bunch of presents to hand out to poor kids or something."

Dross glanced at the priest, who from the expression on his face, was clearly surprised by the Judge's response.

"What time did she leave and when did she return?" Dross asked.

The Judge said, "Before breakfast and was back in time to fix me some dinner."

"So maybe seven a.m. to six p.m.?"

"About that."

"Judge, we looked at your wife's credit card charges, just to be certain you weren't mistaken about the gas tank being filled on Wednesday. We noticed that she'd also filled up the day before at a SuperAmerica in Saint Paul."

"Saint Paul?" The Judge shook his head furiously. "No, there's some kind of mistake."

"We'll check that out, but a.s.suming it's correct, do you have any idea why your wife would have been in the Twin Cities?"

"She wasn't anywhere near the Twin Cities. Like I just told you, she spent the day at church."

"Okay, a.s.suming that's true, who had access to your car and could have made the trip instead? And along that same line, who could have bought gas using your wife's credit card?"

"No one. I'm telling you it's a mistake. She was the only one driving my car, and she was at St. Agnes all day."

Dross said, "Father Green?"

"Several women were there wrapping Christmas gifts for the children at St. Joseph's Home, but Evelyn wasn't among them," the priest said. "At least, I didn't see her myself."

The Judge waved a withered old hand in dismissal. "She was there. You just missed her."

"How can you be so certain?" Dross asked.

"Cuz she told me she was there. That woman knows not to lie to me."

Cork was listening, but he was also slowly walking the room, studying the decor. He'd lived among firearms and weapons most of his life, but except for the inventory of a gun shop or a police station, he'd seldom seen such a large collection of weaponry in a single room. The Judge had two mahogany gun cabinets, one that held ten rifles and the other eight shotguns. In addition, he had a smaller wall-mounted cabinet that displayed a variety of handguns. He was also a collector of knives, and two beautifully carved cherrywood boxes with gla.s.s fronts lay on tables on either side of the fireplace.

"You restless?" the Judge finally asked him.

"Just interested in your collections," Cork replied. "You have some fine-looking pieces here."

"A lot of money tied up in my guns," the Judge said proudly.

"And your knives, too." Cork leaned over one of the boxes. "You have some beautiful old Barlows here. And a mighty fine-looking Green River."

"You know knives?" the Judge asked.

"I know a bit," Cork said. He turned to the Judge. "You've got an empty s.p.a.ce. Looks like one of your knives is missing."

The Judge seemed perturbed. He put his pipe down, rose from his chair, and crossed the room to where Cork stood. "h.e.l.l's bells," he said with what appeared to be genuine alarm. "I've been robbed."

What was missing, he told them, was a bowie knife with an ivory handle and a Damascus steel blade. It had been made by J. R. Cook and had cost him nearly a thousand dollars. Although the gun cases were all secured, the boxes that held his knife collection had no locks. He didn't remember when he'd last looked at them.

"Who would have had access?" Dross asked.

"Besides me, that would be Evelyn. And Irene, the woman who cleans."

"Ralph," the priest said quietly. "Irene Simek no longer works for you. Evelyn told me at church on Sunday that she was hoping to be able to find someone to replace her soon."

"Well, there you go. That woman took it just to spite me because I told her she smelled like a garbage pail that needed emptying. I'd talk to her if I was you."

"We'll do that," Dross said. "But let's consider other possibilities. Do you ever have visitors, Judge?"

He folded his arms across his chest. "People say we live too far out."

"Do you lock your doors at night and when you're gone?"

"My doors are always locked."

Cork said, "Mind if I have a look around for any sign of a break-in?"

"You're not charging me, you said," the Judge reminded him.

"Just consider it being neighborly," Cork said, though he wasn't certain if the Judge understood that term at all.

He checked the windows and external doors on the first level of the house and found no sign that any had been jimmied. He reported this to the others, then asked, "Do you keep an extra house key somewhere, Ralph?"

"In the garage, on a nail by the door to the kitchen."

"Be right back," Cork said.

He went through the kitchen to the garage door, which was secured with a dead bolt. He flipped the dead bolt open and stepped into the attached garage. It was insulated and much warmer than the subzero temperatures outside. He found the nail the Judge had mentioned, hammered into the doorframe, and hanging from it was a key, which Cork presumed was the extra house key. He didn't return to the others immediately but spent a few minutes in the garage, poking about, because that was pretty much the kind of thing he'd been doing for most of his adult life, in and out of uniform. The Carters had only one vehicle, apparently, because the Buick was still in the custody of the Tamarack County Sheriff's Department and the garage was empty. At one end, a face cord of cut wood stood stacked against the wall, probably the supply that fed the fire in the Judge's den. There was a worktable, and above it a big square of Peg-Board from which hand tools hung. Standing upright in a large ceramic urn in one corner were gardening tools-rake, shovel, hoe, and the like. There was a big plastic garbage bin on rollers, a power mower, and a gas-powered electric generator, backup, Cork figured, in the event the Judge lost power, which was not an uncommon occurrence in rural Tamarack County. He checked the windows and also the door that opened onto the backyard and found no sign of forced entry.

He stood a moment, looking the garage over for anything that made his eyes pause. They settled on two ten-gallon gas cans that stood next to the generator. He crossed the garage and lifted them. One was full, the other just over half. A few paces away stood a tall storage cabinet. He strolled to it and opened the doors. Inside were four shelves, filled with containers of oil and brake fluid and power-steering fluid. There were containers of pesticides, garden fertilizers, weed killer. There were terra-cotta pots and a couple of bags of potting soil. What surprised Cork, however, was that the overwhelming odor emanating from the cabinet was the smell of gasoline. The odor seemed to be coming from a few feet of rubber tubing coiled on the top shelf. He leaned close and confirmed this. Then something almost hidden behind the tubing caught his eye. He slid the coil to the left a few inches and spent a long moment staring at what was revealed.

He returned to the den, where Dross and the priest still kept company with the Judge.

"Anything?" Dross asked.

"There's something I think you should see," he replied. "I think you should take a look at this, too, Ralph."

"What is it?" the Judge asked, clearly not excited about budging from his comfortable den with its comfortable fire.

"Evidence, I'd say."

"Of what?" Dross asked.

"I'll let you draw your own conclusions."

They followed him to the garage. At the opened storage cabinet, he stopped and held out his hand toward the top shelf.

"Is that your missing knife, Ralph?"

The Judge took a quick look and said, "Yes, but what the h.e.l.l is it doing out here?" He sounded truly astonished.

"A more interesting question," Cork said, "is whose blood is that on the blade?"

The Judge reached toward the knife, but Dross caught his arm.

"Don't touch it," she ordered. "Ted, would you mind taking the Judge back to his den? I need to make some phone calls."

"h.e.l.l, I'm staying right here," the Judge insisted.

"Ralph," the priest said, "come with me. It'll be all right. She's got a job to do."

He took the Judge's arm and gently tried to turn him away, but the old man shook off his hand.

"I want to see that knife." His words were pitched high and loud.

Cork moved his body between the Judge and the cabinet. "Go back inside, Ralph," he said. He wasn't a particularly tall man, but in his days as a cop, he'd learned to speak with a voice of towering authority. The Judge stared at him, stared out of a face old and withered and suddenly empty of fight. Then the Judge turned away and went back into the house, accompanied by the priest.

Dross reached into her coat and drew out her cell phone. "I'll have Azevedo round up the crime scene team."

Before she punched in a number, Cork said, "Something else, Marsha. That coil of tubing there in front of the knife. It reeks of gas."

"So?"

"Those gas cans next to the generator? One's full, the other about half. Maybe sixteen gallons of fuel in all."

"What are you getting at?"