Lightning Strike

by William Kent Krueger

  When they were alone, Liam explained what Cork had told him about the events at Lightning Strike that evening.

  Colleen said, “What are you going to do?”

  “About Cork or Mary Margaret?”

  “Let’s begin with our son.”

  “He needs to be punished of course.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “My father would have taken a strap to me.”

  “You’ve never hit Cork.”

  “How about we begin by grounding him?” Liam said.

  “All right. For how long?”

  “I think a week will do. And how about we have him wash all the dishes after every meal?”

  “For how long?”

  “Until he goes off to college.”

  She smiled. “How about a week?”

  “A week it is.”

  “And Mary Margaret?”

  “She can do the dishes for as long as you want her to.”

  “Liam.”

  “I need to talk to her, alone. I’ll try again tomorrow.”

  “It’s so sad. Star-crossed lovers. When I was a girl, we all had a crush on Big John. He was handsome and sad and solitary. It was tragic to see what the war did to him, the drinking, the violence. Then he became Big John again. I understand what Mary Margaret saw in him. I just wish…”

  “What?” Liam said.

  “That it could be a different world than it is, I guess.”

  Liam put his arms around her and drew her to him. She embraced him and laid her cheek against his chest. “There’s a lot of ugliness sure, Colleen, but I think about you and Cork, and I see so much beauty, too. We’re lucky, you know.”

  Her body fit to his with such a wonderful familiarity that the anger and frustration he’d been feeling left him, and in its place, for one quiet moment, he felt peace descend.

  “Cork has his paper routes,” Colleen said, her cheek still against his chest. “And it’ll just about kill him if he can’t hang out with his friends, and he’d only be underfoot here. What if we hold his punishment to doing all the dishes?”

  “Done,” he replied and lifted her face gently to his and kissed her.

  CHAPTER 26

  Cork slept late the next day. Because he’d thought he would still be out at Lightning Strike, he’d arranged with a kid named Terrance Leonardi to cover his morning paper route. He’d done the same for Leonardi on occasion, and they had an understanding. But Leonardi didn’t always see to his own route very well, and whenever he covered for Cork, there were problems.

  When he came downstairs, the house was empty, but several notes had been laid out on the kitchen table, calls from customers whose newspapers hadn’t been delivered. Cork ate a quick bowl of Cheerios, then took Jackson with him and spent an hour making sure everyone was satisfied. The last paper he dropped went to the Crooked Pine. Ben Svenson met him at the back door, chewing on a smelly cheroot and eyeing him like a criminal. “This is what I get for that big tip I gave you yesterday?” Svenson said. “Crappy service? If I treated my customers this way, I’d be out of business.”

  “The tip wasn’t that big,” Cork mumbled.

  “What did you say?”

  “Said I’m sorry, Mr. Svenson. It won’t happen again.”

  “Better not,” the man said.

  Cork headed home, thinking a person must want a drink pretty bad to get it at the Crooked Pine.

  His mother was home now, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, reading the book Cork had given her as a birthday present, Gifts from the Sea. She was a schoolteacher and her summers were free. She spent a good deal of her time reading, “catching up” she called it, because when school was in session, she was busy every evening with lesson plans and such.

  “I was in Allouette this morning visiting your grandmother,” she explained. “Your father would like to see you. He said you should come to his office this morning.”

  “About last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t I wait until he comes home?”

  “In my experience, Cork, it’s best to get the bad out of the way quickly.”

  “It’s going to be bad?”

  “Not so much,” his mother said. “Go on now. I’ll call and let him know you’re on your way.”

  Cork biked to the courthouse, dreading what was ahead. In the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department, he saw that the door to his father’s office was open, but Ruth Rustad held up a warning hand.

  “He told me to have you wait out here,” she said.

  Cork sat down in a chair at one of the desks the deputies shared. Through the open door of his father’s office, he could hear voices, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He glanced at Mrs. Rustad, who’d become involved in sorting through files in a cabinet, then he moved to a desk that was nearer his father’s office.

  “What was she doing out there?” he heard Cy Borkman say.

  “According to Cork, crying mostly,” Liam O’Connor replied.

  “She went all the way out there to cry?”

  “Cork said it sounded like she was talking to Big John. Or talking to his spirit anyway.”

  “Was she drunk?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Could Cork hear what she was saying?” Joe Meese asked.

  “Apparently telling Big John how much she missed him and that she was sorry. That kind of thing.”

  “So Lightning Strike was where they carried on?”

  “Makes a certain kind of sense,” Cork’s father said. “If they met at Big John’s cabin, someone on the rez might see them. Anywhere else in Tamarack County and they ran the same risk. It’s isolated out there, and for Big John, a tryst under the stars doesn’t seem out of character at all.”

  “Yeah, but what about Mrs. MacDermid? Not exactly a nature girl,” Cy said.

  “On the other hand, what’s a few mosquito bites where true love is concerned?” It sounded as if Joe was warming to the idea.

  “The rich man’s wife and Big John,” Cork’s father said. “How could that pairing possibly have happened?”

  There was a long silence, during which Cork stood up and walked to the doorway. Cy was staring at the ceiling, Joe at the floor, and his father at his hands, which were folded on his desk.

  “What about her Sunfish?” Cork said in a small voice.

  Liam O’Connor looked up from his folded hands and scowled. “How long have you been out there?”

  “Couple of minutes.”

  Joe said, “What’s that about her Sunfish, Cork?”

  “Just a minute, Joe,” his father said. “Cork and I have some business to take care of.”

  “What about the Sunfish?” Cy Borkman said at the sheriff’s back.

  Cork’s father gave his son as stern a look as he could. “We’ll finish our business at home. Right now, come into my office. Sit,” he said and pointed toward an empty chair.

  Cork sat down, awaiting instructions. His father retook his chair behind the desk, sat back, and said, “All right. What’s this about a Sunfish?”

  “You know the boathouse at Glengarrow, where Mr. MacDermid keeps his big motorboat?”

  “More like a yacht,” Cy said. “And that boathouse? You could park a battleship in there.”

  “We know the place,” Cork’s father said. “Go on.”

  “She keeps a Sunfish tied up there.”

  “Sunfish?” Cy said.

  “You know, a little one-person sailboat.”

  “Go on,” his father said.

  “Sometimes when I’m goofing around with Jorge, I see her take the Sunfish out on the lake. Jorge’s mom says it’s the only real freedom Mr. MacDermid allows her. And you know Big John, he was always out on the lake in his canoe.”

  His father frowned but seemed to be thinking this over. “They encounter one another on the lake, each of them alone. Maybe they strike up a conversation. Maybe she has trouble with her boat, and he helps her. Maybe
over time things get more serious. In the end, Big John canoes to Lightning Strike, the woman meets him there in her little sailboat. And nobody’s the wiser.”

  “I suppose it’s a possibility,” Joe said.

  Cork’s father drummed his fingers on his desktop for a few moments, putting elements together. “Okay, we have motive,” he said to himself. “But we need method.” He looked at his deputies. “Suppose it was MacDermid. How is it Big John could let himself be hanged?”

  “Remember his blood alcohol level,” Cy said. “He was drunk as a skunk.”

  “He was twice the size of a normal man,” Cork’s father said. “He had a lot of alcohol in him, but he could still have fought hard.”

  “Drugged maybe,” Joe said. “So he was helpless?”

  “Drugged with what, Joe? Give me an idea.”

  Which, Cork knew, was well within the deputy’s expertise. Before he’d been a lawman, Joe Meese had owned the Rexall Drug Store now owned by the Pfluglemans. He’d become a pharmacist only because his father was a pharmacist, but it wasn’t what Joe really wanted out of life. Cork’s father had often told how, from the moment he first set foot in Aurora, he’d listened to Joe complain that standing behind a counter with a mortar and pestle and doling out cough syrup all day was like a living death. What he wanted was action, to feel alive. What he wanted, had wanted since he was a kid, was to be a cop. When Liam O’Connor was elected sheriff, he finally challenged Joe to get off his ass and get the training. If he did that, a job would be waiting for him. Which was how Joe had come to trade in his white smock for the khaki uniform of the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department.

  “My first thought would be one of the barbiturates,” Joe said. “Phenobarbital, secobarbital, something like that. Easy to come by, and unless a full toxicology is run on the body, no one would suspect a thing. Even then it might not raise an eyebrow. Lots of folks use barbiturates these days. But a good dose would knock him right out. He’d be helpless if someone decided to string him up.”

  “Stringing him up out at Lightning Strike? That would be a hell of a slap to the face of a wife who’s been stepping out on you,” Cy said with a shake of his head.

  “Get him drunk, then drug him. Leave a couple of bottles of liquor at Lightning Strike, and a bunch at Big John’s cabin, and it looks like just another rez suicide,” Joe said.

  “How would MacDermid get hold of a barbiturate?” Liam asked.

  “He’d need a prescription,” Joe said. “Or access to someone who has a prescription.”

  “Old Mrs. MacDermid takes pills to go to sleep at night,” Cork said.

  “How do you know that?” his father asked.

  “Jorge told me. His mother gives them to her. He said they knock her right out.”

  His father sat back and scowled as he thought it through. “I’d like nothing better than to nail MacDermid, but there are some problems. Everyone on the rez believes Big John wasn’t drinking anymore. If that’s true, how did MacDermid get him drunk enough to be able to drug him? I can’t even imagine the two of them sitting down together, let alone sharing a drink. And here’s another fly in the ointment. MacDermid’s got no real meat on his bones. Assuming he somehow drugged Big John, how the hell did he get him out to Lightning Strike and hang him? It would be like trying to haul a drugged buffalo.”

  Joe said, “He had help?”

  “Who?”

  None of them had an answer to that one. His father glanced at Cork in a way that told him he shouldn’t be there, hearing all this. But it was too late now.

  “Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong,” Joe said carefully.

  “What do you mean?” Liam said.

  “Okay, before you tell me I’m crazy, just hear me out. That lighter Manydeeds found, maybe it wasn’t MacDermid who dropped it.”

  Cy scratched his jaw and said, “Then who the hell did?”

  “Maybe his wife. Maybe she had more to do with all this than just, you know…” Joe eyed Cork and seemed to think better of how he was going to end that sentence.

  “Mary Margaret MacDermid?” Cy said. “That little wisp of a thing? I can’t see it.”

  “Look, maybe Big John jilted her. And you know what they say? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Everyone in the room stared at him and Joe said, “Shakespeare, I think.”

  “Jesus, if she was going to kill anybody it’d be that bastard of a husband,” Cy said.

  “Cork, you told me that out at Lightning Strike she kept saying how sorry she was,” his father said.

  “That’s right.”

  “But she never said what she was sorry about?”

  Cork shook his head.

  “If anything could knock a man off the wagon, it’s a woman,” Joe said. “She could have lured him out there, maybe for one last hurrah, a few drinks together, one of them spiked, then when he’s out cold, she drags him over to that maple, puts the rope around his neck, and hauls him up.”

  “A lot of ifs there,” Cork’s father said.

  “Just saying it might be worth considering,” Joe said.

  Cork’s father gave a slow nod. “I need to talk to Mrs. MacDermid alone, without her husband hovering. In the meantime, Joe, check with the BCA and see if you can find out when we might expect the full toxicology report on Big John. Make sure they check for the presence of something like a barbiturate.” He looked at his son. “You’ve been a big help, Cork, but don’t think it gets you off the hook.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Go on home now. We’ve got work to do here.”

  Cork rose and left the room, but as he was walking away, he heard Joe say, “Go easy on him, Liam. He’s a good kid.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that,” his father replied.

  CHAPTER 27

  Liam left immediately after supper and drove to Glengarrow. This time when he rang the bell, Mary Margaret answered. In her hand was a wineglass half filled with some vintage of a deep plum color.

  “Liam?” She was clearly surprised to find him on her doorstep. “Are you looking for Duncan?”

  “Actually, Mary Margaret, it’s you I’d like to talk to. May I come in?”

  She hesitated, and he could see her calculating. Which was a reaction he got mostly from people who had something to hide.

  “Of course,” she finally said, and stepped aside so that he could enter.

  Liam had had occasion to be in the house only once before, a couple of years earlier, following a break-in; someone had jimmied the door to the veranda that overlooked the gardens behind the mansion. Several silver pieces had been stolen and Liam had never been able to nail the burglar. He’d pointed out to the MacDermids that they were lucky the thief—or thieves—had been content with taking what they could from the first floor and leaving unmolested those who slept upstairs. The silver had eventually been traced to a pawnshop in the Twin Cities and returned, but MacDermid continued to speak of the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department as a bunch of witless incompetents, though never within Liam’s hearing.

  The living room was high-ceilinged, with red-brown beams and wood paneling that Liam guessed might be mahogany. The floor was a dark polished wood, and at its center lay a large, ornate Persian rug. The furniture was all leather the color of creamed coffee. The fireplace was surrounded by tiles inlaid with soft brown designs, and above the mantel hung a portrait of Andrew MacDermid, the stern-looking Scotsman who’d built the family fortune. The room felt ancient and suffocating to Liam.

  Mary Margaret asked if he’d like something to drink.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” he told her. “Could we sit down?”

  She wore white capris and a blouse tied around her waist with a pattern that reminded Liam of a bandana. Her dark hair was bound with a white kerchief, red canvas espadrilles on her feet.

  “You look dressed for boating,” Liam noted.

  “Oh,” she said. “I just… it’s just simpler.”

  “I’m going to tell yo
u up front, Mary Margaret, that my son was with his friend Jorge at the carriage house the other evening when you came to Carla for comfort.”

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” She’d done her best with makeup to cover the bruise MacDermid had left on her face, but now she turned more in profile, in a clear attempt to make the bruise even less apparent.

  “Adultery, Mary Margaret, that’s what I’m talking about. Adultery with Big John Manydeeds.”

  All her body language told him she was going to deny it, then everything changed. She seemed to wilt before his eyes. She turned her face to him fully.

  “My version of the scarlet letter,” she said, and lifted her hand to her cheek.

  “Duncan?” Liam said.

  She nodded.

  “Could you go back to the beginning, Mary Margaret?”

  “That would have been shortly after our wedding, when I realized the true nature of the man I married.”

  “I mean with Big John.”

  She put her wineglass down and closed her eyes. When she spoke, it was as if she were watching the scene play across the backs of her lids.

  “I’d taken my sailboat out. There were storm clouds, and I should have known better, but I couldn’t stand to be in this house with that man another moment. When the storm broke, I lost control of the boat. He came out of nowhere with his canoe and brought me safely to shore. We took shelter under some pines and huddled together under a tarp from my Sunfish.” She opened her eyes and looked directly at Liam. “He was everything Duncan was not.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Late May.”

  “The pines where you took shelter, was that at Lightning Strike?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s where you would meet?”

  “It was isolated and beautiful. He told me it was a special place and there was a reason the storm had driven us there.”

  “You always boated to meet him?”

  “Not always. Sometimes I drove. But he always came by canoe.”

  From his pocket, Liam took the silver lighter he’d brought and held it out to her in the palm of his hand. “Look familiar?”