Purgatory Ridge

“Doesn’t look like anything was touched upstairs,” Earl said, “but let’s have the likely areas dusted for prints anyway.” He looked up when he reached the bottom of the stairs. “O’Connor,” he said. Then he said, “I’m sorry.”

“How’d they get in?” Cork asked, skipping amenities that meant nothing to him at the moment.

“Back door, Cork,” Ed Larson said. “No sign of forced entry.”

“She never locked the doors before she went to bed,” Lindstrom said. “I told her whenever she was out here alone to keep the doors locked. She never did.”

Agent Mark Owen stepped in from the kitchen, looking pleased. “We’ve got good footprints,” he announced. “Someone stepped in the spilled milk and tracked across the floor. Too big for the boys.”

“All you need now,” Cork said bleakly, “is an idea where to find the shoe that fits it. Got one?”

Owen calmly replied, “It’s a start, Mr. O’Connor.”

“What do we do now?” Lindstrom looked to Earl for an answer.

“I’ve called the FBI office in the Twin Cities,” Earl explained. “They’re sending up a team and the equipment to set up a trap and trace on the phone so that when contact is made, we’ll be ready. The ransom note is already on its way down to the lab in St. Paul. It’ll have priority. In the meantime, we finish processing the scene. We’ll talk to your neighbors and find out if anyone saw anything. Then we wait and see.”

“Do Rose and the kids know?” Schanno asked Cork.

“Rose. She’s waiting by the phone. I’ll have to call her.”

“There’s a phone in my office,” Lindstrom said. “Down the hallway there. It’s a separate line.”

“Okay if I go?” Cork asked Earl. “Want to process the room first?”

“Go ahead. But just use the phone.”

When he was sheriff, Cork had believed that in a frightening situation, the presence of law enforcement was a comforting influence. He looked around him as he headed away from the living room, looked at the people who were going about their jobs, following established procedures, but who, in reality, were just as ignorant as he. Any comfort they offered was at best an illusion. At worst, it was something akin to a prayer for the dead.

25

THEY WERE ON A LOGGING ROAD-an old one, seldom used. Jo knew it from the way the vehicle that transported them dipped and jumped and from how often and hard the man who drove it braked, then slowly maneuvered right or left. Jo imagined the headlights slicing into the dark, glancing off pine trunks, the far end of the beams swallowed by deep night and dense woods. She imagined well because she’d been trying for nearly an hour to track-blindly-where they were headed.

In the runabout out of Grace Cove, she was almost certain they’d headed north. Not far. Ten minutes and the engine had been cut and the bow scraped bottom. The man in the ski mask pulled the tarp away and placed black cloth bags over the heads of Grace and Scott Fitzgerald. Then he took the two of them away. He’d come back immediately for Stevie. “I’ve got nothing to put over your head, boy. So close your eyes. If you open them, I’ll poke ‘em out with my knife.” He’d shown Stevie a vicious-looking blade, and Stevie had clamped his eyes shut tight as clamshells. The man had lifted Stevie and carried him away. When he returned for Jo, he pulled a crumpled red bandanna from his back pocket, snapped it once to clear the crust, folded it, and bound it over her eyes. “Mess with the blindfold and your kid’s history.”

He didn’t immediately take her to the others. She stood for several minutes, listening as he smashed a hole in the hull of the boat, started the engine, set it at idle speed, and sent the runabout back onto the lake. She assumed that in a few minutes it would sink, deep and without a trace.

He led her to a vehicle-a van, she guessed from the way he had her enter. He sat her on the edge, and she felt the rear bumper under her legs. He told her to slide back. After she scooted a couple of feet, she heard a double slam-two doors. He moved to the front, climbed in, and said, “Hold tight.” Which, with her hands bound behind her, was a cruel joke. As the van lurched forward and took a hard right, she tipped over, falling against a large prone form she guessed must have been Grace.