Purgatory Ridge

Lindstrom wheeled. “If you fuck up, if you cause my family to be harmed in any way, I’ll…” He seemed at a loss for a way to finish.

“I understand, Mr. Lindstrom.”

Schanno stepped up next to Cork and put a hand lightly on his shoulder. “Look, Cork, there’s nothing you can do here right now. I imagine Rose and the girls will need you at home.”

“Yeah.”

“Get some sleep if you can.”

“Call me if…”

“I’ll call you.”

Cork started to say something to Karl Lindstrom, but the man was angrily punching at the numbers on his telephone. Cork left quietly.

He stepped out into early sunlight, into air that smelled of evergreen and clean water. An evidence team was canvassing the grounds, looking for cigarette butts, footprints, anything that might have been dropped or thoughtlessly discarded. He walked down to the shoreline of Grace Cove and onto the dock where Lindstrom’s big sailboat sat mirrored in calm water. The trees-mostly red pine and black spruce-walled the inlet, isolating it from the rest of the lake. It was an empty place Karl Lindstrom had chosen for his home. That was exactly what people came here for these days. Escape. Yet Lindstrom had escaped nothing. Something angry seemed to have followed him, something that had divided the county and now threatened what Cork held most dear. Not Lindstrom’s fault, he knew, but he couldn’t help resenting the outsiders that were so rapidly changing the face of all he loved.

He knew he was going to cry. Tears of helplessness, of anger and fear and desperation and despair. He kept his back to the house where the other men might have been watching. When he was done, he walked to his Bronco and headed home.

Rose sat alone at the kitchen table. She was dressed in a beige chenille robe, her road dust-colored hair unbrushed, rosary beads gripped in her right hand. She studied Cork as he stepped in the back door.

Cork walked to the coffeemaker, poured a cup of what Rose had made.

“They called,” he said. “They’re demanding two million dollars.”

Her eyes fluttered as if she’d been struck in the face by a hard, icy wind. “For them all?”

“Of course for them all.”

“They have Jo and Stevie? You’re sure?”

“I’m not sure of anything, Rose.” He sipped his coffee. It was cold. He didn’t care.

“They?” Rose asked.

“What?”

“You said ‘they’ have Stevie and Jo.”

“They. Him. We don’t know.”

The rosary beads clattered softly against the tabletop. Cork walked to the table and sat down. Rose had dark circles under her eyes.

“You look tired,” she said to him. Then she said, “What do we do?”

Cork stared at her. He hadn’t heard in her question any of the fear or hopelessness that threatened his own perspective.

“We start by telling the girls. They should know.”

“All right,” she agreed. “How do we get the two million dollars?” She asked as if she’d been questioning him about fixing the bathroom sink.

“I don’t know. Karl Lindstrom…” He stopped because Lindstrom hadn’t sounded certain, and Cork didn’t want to build a hope that would crumble.

“If Karl Lindstrom can’t?”

“I don’t know, Rose. I just don’t know.”

“All right,” she said.

Through the window, carried on a breeze that barely ruffled the curtains, came the sound of church bells. The morning Angelus was being rung at St. Agnes. Rose listened intently, as if the bells were voices that spoke to her. Cork heard the creak of the old floorboards above him.

“The girls are up,” he said.

“They’ll be getting ready for Mass.” Rose reached across the table and put a hand gently on his. “Maybe you should come.”

Cork hadn’t been to a church service in more than two years. Not since Sam Winter Moon had been killed and Cork had lost his job as sheriff and Jo had asked him to leave the house. He’d felt abandoned in those days-by God and everyone else. Although he envied Rose her strength of conviction and was glad that Jo had seen so carefully to the children’s spiritual upbringing, he couldn’t in good conscience share their belief. He couldn’t remember when last a word directed at God had passed his lips. Still, he believed prayers couldn’t hurt, especially if prayed by those who believed.

“You go and pray for both of us,” he told Rose.

Annie came down first, dressed in a green sleep shirt that reached to her knees and that was embossed in front with the words FIGHTING IRISH. “Where’s Stevie?” she asked. “He’s always watching cartoons by now.”

For the moment, Cork ignored her question. “Is Jenny up?”

“Yeah.” Annie yawned and stretched. “She’s crawling down the stairs now.” She went to the refrigerator, took out a carton of Minute Maid orange juice, and headed toward the cupboard for a glass.

Jenny came in wearing the black workout shorts she usually slept in and a wrinkled, baggy, gray T-shirt. Her white-blond hair was wild from sleep, but her ice-blue eyes-her mother’s eyes, Cork couldn’t help thinking-were wide awake.

“So…” She offered her father a devilish smile. “You and Mom must’ve stayed out at Sam’s Place again last night. You weren’t in bed when I got home, and Aunt Rose was pretty evasive.”