Purgatory Ridge

“Was Charlie Warren your friend, Harold?” Loomis tried to maintain his stare, but he finally broke and looked down at the glass in his hand.

“Because if he was, they’re saying your friend was responsible for the destruction out at Lindstrom’s, that he botched things, Harold, and he killed himself with his own bomb.”

“Charlie’s dead. What difference does it make what anybody says about him now?”

“He was playing checkers with you that night, wasn’t he? Maybe sharing a drink. Talking over old times. Exchanging war stories. Helping the night get by for both of you. I’m guessing neither of you wanted folks to know. You had a job to worry about, and maybe Charlie figured it wouldn’t look so good, him hanging out at Lindstrom’s, what with all the hullaballoo over logging right now. You know, Harold, it’s pretty understandable.”

Loomis stared at the ice melting into his whiskey.

“I’ll bet it got lonely out there at night.”

Loomis stepped out and let the door swing closed behind him. He walked to the porch railing, took a long drink from his glass, swirled the ice, drank again. He looked out at the night, and when he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “We served in the same unit. After the war, coming home, we never had much to do with one another. Charlie, he had all that business out on the reservation. Me, I went back to my own life. But you get old, Cork. People you got anything in common with pass on. You get lonely. Charlie and me, we bumped into one another sometimes at the VFW. Got to talking about old times. Korea, you know. I liked him. Didn’t matter he was Indian. Didn’t matter to him I was white. Yeah, at the end, he was my friend.”

“He didn’t have anything to do with the bomb. He was just there to play checkers.”

Loomis nodded. “He always left before the guys started showing up for first shift. The other night, I had my rounds to make. We were in the middle of a game. Charlie stayed in the shed while I headed out. I was on the other side of the mill when it happened.” Tears piled up along the rims of his eyes. “I couldn’t do anything. Honest to God, there was nothing I could do.” He shook his head. “They find out about Charlie, I’m out of a job, Cork. I got no pension. I got no way to pay my bills.”

“I have to tell somebody, Harold. I have to tell Wally Schanno. I’m sorry.” Cork felt bad, but there was no way around it. “Look, it doesn’t have to be done tonight. And I’ll see if Schanno can do something about keeping the details confidential. I can’t promise anything.”

Loomis stared down at the old boards of his porch. He seemed dazed. The effect of the whiskey. And a lot more.

“Thanks for your help, Harold.”

Loomis looked at him and a question seemed to surface from somewhere deep in his consciousness. “Why do you care about any of this? You’re not the sheriff anymore.”

“‘Night, Harold.”

Cork left him standing in his doorway, the question unanswered.

13

JOHN LEPERE LEFT HIS SMALL CABIN and walked through pools of moonlight scattered among the trees that separated his place from the big log home on the other side of Grace Cove. He crossed the dry bed of Blueberry Creek that was the property line, then followed the curve of the cove until he came to a narrow sand beach, white in the moonlight. The beach was not a natural feature of the shoreline there. Lindstrom had had it constructed the year before when the log home was built. LePere carefully skirted the sand so that he would leave no tracks. He often trespassed this way. For years, when his was the only dwelling on the cove, he’d walked the shoreline unrestrained by concerns about boundary lines. Although he actually owned only a small parcel of the land, over the years he’d come to think of the cove as his. It was wrong thinking, he knew, but inhabiting the place alone for more than a decade had made it so. Then Lindstrom had come, changed the look of everything. LePere resented the man, his wealth, and his thoughtless trespass on LePere’s life.

He moved onto the grass of the wide lawn, a lake of silver under the full moon, and he slipped into the shadow of a spruce. From the darkness there, he watched the house.

Lights were on in several rooms, upstairs and down. Occasionally, a light would switch off in one room and switch on in another as if someone inside were moving about. It was an illusion. No one was home. LePere had learned over time that the lights were simply part of the rich man’s security system.