Page 37 of The River We Remember

The Prairie Blooms was the reading group Ruth Coffee had formed years before in her never-ending effort to bring culture to Jewel. She’d named it as a kind of play on the Bloomsbury Group, the fabled collection of English writers and literati that included the likes of Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. The Prairie Blooms met one Sunday evening each month to discuss a book, or collection of poetry, or a play, anything that Ruth Coffee believed would elevate conversation to a level that dealt in Ideals, “with a capital I,” she was fond of saying. It was an honor to be invited by Ruth to join the group. Because of her death, Brody had figured that was the end of the Prairie Blooms.

“Where?” Brody asked.

“We’re hosting. Loretta’s fixing up a special dinner in Ruth’s honor. Wants us all to dress nice.”

Brody said, “I’m pretty busy with this Quinn thing, Sam, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“You going over to the Wagon Wheel anytime today?”

“I could drop by. Why?”

“I’m wondering if you could let Angie know. Loretta tried calling, didn’t get an answer.”

“I’ll do that, Sam. What time?”

“Six-thirty.”

On his desk at the jailhouse, Brody found the manila envelope containing the photographs Wicklow had taken that morning. Graff was right. There were a lot of troubling aspects about the scene, but nothing for which he couldn’t come up with a plausible explanation. When his phone rang, he put the photos down. It was Doc Porter on the other end of the line.

“I figured you’d want to know as soon as possible what I found in Quinn’s autopsy. I can give it to you simple, then I’ll start putting together the official report.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

“It was pretty much what I expected, Brody. That shotgun blast killed him. No water in his lungs, so he was dead before he went into the Alabaster.”

“The shotgun we found out there on Inkpaduta Bend was an eight-gauge. You get pellets out of him?”

“Yep. Not sure they’re eight-gauge. You’d have a better idea of that than me. But they’re big.”

“Any idea how long he was dead before he went into the river?”

“Can’t say.”

“There was a lot of blood on that riverbank. Did he bleed out there, you think?”

“Again, I can’t really say.”

“Was he drunk? Heavily sedated?”

“I’ll have to run tests before I can give you anything on that.”

“How are you going characterize it?”

“Jimmy’s death? I’m just going to say what killed him. Massive trauma from a gunshot wound. The characterization, as you call it, I’ll leave to you.”

“Okay, Doc. Thanks.”

Brody turned his attention to the evidence they’d collected on the Bend and which he’d stored in a couple of lockers. He put on leather gloves and brought out the tackle box and rod, the empty whiskey bottle, the pill bottle, the Coleman lantern, the folded clothing and boots, and the shotgun. The last item he placed on the desk was the silver ring set with a sapphire, which he’d pulled from his own pocket.

He considered the bottle of Seconal first. The date on the prescription was only two weeks earlier, but the bottle was already less than half full. Considering that Quinn often ended up dead to the world on another man’s land, it was a miracle he hadn’t been shot earlier. Maybe the insomnia was a medical condition, Brody considered. Or maybe it was simply the plague of a man with terrible sins weighing on his conscience. That was something Brody could understand.

He put the pill bottle aside and picked up the ring. At the jewelry store, Myron Bennett had looked at it through a loupe and assured him the stone was real. He’d said it probably sold for a couple hundred dollars, maybe a little more, and that it hadn’t come from his own stock of merchandise. He said the size of the ring made him believe it was probably meant for an adolescent or a small woman. Brody set the ring aside.

He studied the shotgun next. It was a beautiful firearm, English-made, double-barreled, with a polished walnut stock. Lots of men in Black Earth County owned shotguns. It was great pheasant-hunting country, with a sizable population of wild turkeys as well. Most of these men owned standard American issues—Remingtons, Marlins, Winchesters—and they hunted with smaller-gauge firearms. For the past twenty-five years, it had been illegal in Minnesota to hunt fowl with an eight-gauge. Leave it to Jimmy Quinn to go shooting with an outlawed British classic.

Brody still had the piece on his desk when the jailhouse door was thrown open and a tempest blew in. The storm had a name: Terence Timothy Quinn. He was Jimmy Quinn’s eldest child, born to Quinn’s first wife, but he hadn’t lived in Black Earth County for years. On those rare occasions when his father begrudgingly mentioned him, Jimmy Quinn had spoken of Terry as an ungrateful son who’d forsaken his duty to the family.

“Dern,” Quinn huffed, offering no other greeting. There was also no acknowledgment of Brody’s position or authority. Jimmy Quinn would have used the title, called him “Sheriff,” but not because the elder Quinn really believed he was subject to the same laws as everyone else. It was a deigning of sorts, as if Brody served not at the will of the rest of Black Earth County but somehow because of Quinn’s own generosity.