Trickster's Point

by William Kent Krueger

  “He didn’t want to be alone?” Camilla looked as if she was on the verge of tears.

  “That’s right.”

  “Was he in great pain, Cork?” Her voice was small and fearful, as if she wasn’t at all certain that she wanted to know the truth.

  And the truth was yes, Jubal had suffered. But what good would it do her to know? So Cork told her, “Not as much as you might expect. He was able to talk much of the time.”

  “What did he talk about?”

  “You, for one.”

  “Me?” Camilla seemed surprised and happy. “What did he say?”

  “He asked me to tell you something. He said he had a lot of regrets, and one of his greatest was that he didn’t treat you better. He asked me to tell you that, although he didn’t show it or tell you often enough, he loved you very much.”

  Which was the absolute truth of what Jubal had said. Cork left it to Camilla to decide the truth of the statements themselves.

  Camilla covered her face with her hands, and the tears came in a flood against her palms. Nick leaned down and put his arm around her shoulders.

  “Did he talk about anything else?” Alex asked as he poured himself another drink from a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue.

  “He did a lot of reminiscing. Life-flashing-before-his-eyes kind of thing. And he talked about dying.”

  Camilla looked up and wiped at her eyes. “Was he afraid?”

  “No.”

  “The greatest adventure of all,” Nick said and lifted his glass as if in a toast.

  “Oh, shut up,” Camilla snapped.

  Her younger brother smiled indulgently. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought I was on the verge of dying?”

  “Do you have any idea how little I care at this moment?”

  “What I’m getting at, Camilla, is that, when you look death in the eye, I mean when it’s right there in front of you, breathing into your face, it’s an extraordinary experience. Did he laugh, Cork?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  Nick nodded, as if that was exactly what he’d expected. “When you’re about to let go for good, there are moments of euphoria,” he said grandly. “I’ve seen it before.”

  Alex didn’t seem to be paying any attention to what his brother was saying. He shook his head and muttered to himself, “What a waste.”

  Cork found it interesting that Alex Jaeger hadn’t characterized Jubal’s death as tragic or devastating or any number of things that might have signaled a deep personal feeling about a terrible loss. He’d said “waste” instead, as if Jubal Little had been nothing to him but a highly valuable commodity.

  “Is there anything else?” Cork asked, more than ready to go, because he was tired—of the day, the circumstances, and especially these people.

  Alex put his drink on the liquor cabinet, crossed the room, and positioned himself threateningly near Cork. He said, “You didn’t kill Jubal?”

  “Why would I?”

  “We all have secrets. Some of them are probably worth killing for.”

  Cork had had enough. “It’s been a rough day,” he said curtly. “I’m tired. I’m going home.”

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” Camilla offered.

  She stood and took his arm as if he was her escort at a ball, and they left the room. Behind him, Cork heard the sound of ice being dropped into a glass.

  Outside, in the charcoal light of that dismal evening, they found Yates standing on the crushed limestone, looking up at the overcast. “Smells like winter,” he said. Then he said, “I miss Texas.” And finally he said, “Do you need me for anything else, Camilla?”

  She shook her head. “Thank you, Kenny.”

  He turned his big, dark face toward Cork, sizing him up, the way he might have appraised an opponent on the gridiron. He looked as if he wanted to say something. Instead, all he said was “Good night,” and left them alone and returned to the house.

  From somewhere above the lake, but too deep in the approach of night to be seen, came the call of geese heading south. It was a sound Cork had heard a thousand times in his life, but at the moment, it struck him as profoundly sad, like the call of someone hopelessly lost and afraid.

  “Camilla, does the name Rhiannon mean anything to you?”

  She thought a moment. “No. Why?”

  “When he was dying, Jubal mentioned it.”

  She shook her head. “The only name that seemed important to him was . . . hers.” She leaned against the driver’s door of his Land Rover, so that Cork couldn’t have left immediately even if he’d wanted to. “Have you talked to her?”

  Cork knew who she meant. “No.”

  “Do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “When you see her, tell her . . .”

  Cork waited. Even in the gathering gloom, the tears that rolled down her cheeks were obvious and the hurt in her eyes unmistakable.

  “Tell her I’m planning an elaborate funeral for Jubal. Everyone will be there. Everyone except her. Tell her that I’m not going to bury him up here either. I’m going to bury him in Saint Paul, next to the plot reserved for me. Tell her that she may have had him in this life, but he’ll be at my side for eternity.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Camilla’s parting comment put Cork in mind of burials, and as he drove away from Jubal Little’s home on Iron Lake, he recalled an incident at Donner Bigby’s funeral.

  After Donner’s death, Cork told the investigators as much of the truth as he could. That he and Jubal had arrived after Bigby was well into his climb up Trickster’s Point. That Bigby had reached the top. That from below they’d watched him disappear from view. That the next thing Cork had heard was Bigby’s scream as he fell. That he didn’t see the fall or what might have caused it. That when they reached him, Bigby was already dead.

  When Cy Borkman asked Cork what they were doing at Trickster’s Point in the first place, Cork told him that they’d come to confront Bigby about what had happened to Winona Crane, but Bigby had fallen before they had a chance to talk to him. Which was mostly true.

  Jubal told the same story. It was uncomplicated, easy for them to stand by, and involved only one outright lie—that they both had stayed on the ground.

  The whole sheriff’s department knew Cork well. His father had led them as sheriff, and they’d watched Cork grow from a baby. Aurora was a small community, and everyone knew Jubal, or at least knew his reputation as a fine athlete and natural leader. And everyone knew the kind of kid Donner Bigby had been, and most folks suspected that he was responsible for the brutal attack on Winona Crane. When it came down to scraping the bedrock of people’s belief, Cork and Jubal were good kids, and providence alone had delivered to Donner Bigby his just deserts.

  Bigby’s father felt differently. Buzz Bigby was a man as huge as the trees he felled, and anyone who’d had occasion to run afoul of him knew there was a good deal in him to fear. Which was exactly the experience Cork had at Donner Bigby’s funeral.

  He didn’t want to go, but his mother insisted. “He was your classmate,” she told him. “And I’ve known his mother all my life. I don’t care what he might have done when he was alive. That’s in God’s hands now.”

  The service was well attended, which surprised Cork. In his mind, the whole world had disliked Donner Bigby. Afterward, those in attendance gathered in the community room in the basement of Zion Lutheran Church for a meal. The room had been set up with a big poster on which were glued photos of Bigby taken as he grew up, and Cork was yet again surprised when he saw visual proof that Donner Bigby might once have been something besides big and mean.

  He recognized Mrs. Bigby from that fateful morning when he and Jubal had come knocking at her door, and as he stood with his mother in the basement, holding a plate of potato salad and sliced ham and black olives, he saw the woman look his way and then maneuver toward him through the large gathering.

  “Hello, Alice,” Cork’s mother greeted her. “I
’m so sorry about Donner.”

  “Thank you, Colleen,” Mrs. Bigby said, then her eyes, blue and fragile as butterflies, settled on Cork. “I understand you stayed with Donner while your friend went for help.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cork replied.

  “Thank you. It’s a comfort knowing that he wasn’t alone.”

  He was dead, Cork thought. Beyond alone. Or maybe as alone as you could ever get.

  She hesitated, then asked, “He didn’t suffer?”

  “No, ma’am, he couldn’t have. The fall killed him instantly.”

  She nodded and looked down. “He was so often . . . unhappy.” She raised her head and stared at her husband on the other side of the big room, where he dominated in the way a redwood might stand out above all other trees. “He believed he had a lot to live up to.”

  Beside Buzz Bigby stood Donner’s kid brother, Lester. He was maybe ten years old, dressed in a dark suit and tie. It was clear he would never be big, not in the way Donner had been. He seemed to have inherited more of his mother’s genes. Cork was glad to see him, to know that the woman had another son. Another chance, maybe.

  Bigby’s father caught sight of his wife and then—Cork’s heart dropped—seemed to recognize Cork. He’d been talking to the Lutheran minister, but he cut off the conversation abruptly. He crossed the room, and the gathering made way before him. Lester trailed behind him like a leaf caught in a strong draft.

  “You,” Mr. Bigby said in a loud voice. “What are you doing here?”

  “I asked him to come with me, Clarence,” Cork’s mother said.

  Alice Bigby put a hand on her husband’s arm and cautioned, “Buzz.”

  He shook her off and drilled Cork with accusing eyes. “There’s something not right about what went on out there. My kid was like a mountain goat. I watched him climb. I don’t understand how he could just fall.”

  “Leave him alone, Buzz,” Alice Bigby said in a low, cold voice.

  Cork looked up into Mr. Bigby’s face. The funeral, the comforting scripture and the kind things that had been said, the poster with so many pictures of Bigs as a child, they’d all worked to haze over Cork’s feelings about the unpleasant kid he’d known Donner Bigby to be. But staring up into that angry, bullying face, Cork saw the Donner Bigby he’d always feared and hated.

  “I don’t understand it either, sir,” Cork managed to reply. “I just know that he did.”

  “You were out there to pick a fight with him, weren’t you?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Buzz, please,” Mrs. Bigby pleaded.

  “I’m going to keep at this kid and the other one,” Bigby snapped at his wife, “until I know the truth.”

  “Clarence,” Cork’s mother said evenly, “I know you’re upset, and so I’m going to overlook your tone and your accusation, but I don’t want you bothering my son about this. Cork’s told everything he knows, and that’s that.” She gave Mrs. Bigby a nod in parting and said, “Alice, I think we’d best be going.”

  Cork glanced at Lester, who was staring up fearfully at the towering figure of his father, and he felt an immeasurable sadness for all the Bigbys, alive and dead.

  They left the church basement, which had grown crypt quiet during Buzz Bigby’s outburst, and went upstairs and out into the bright October afternoon. Cork looked up, and the sunlight blinded him in much the way it had at Trickster’s Point when he’d tried to see what was happening on top of the monolith. He felt sad to the point of tears, although he didn’t actually cry, thinking especially about Donner’s mother, whose suffering seemed great and was not just about the loss of her son. He felt his own mother’s arm around his shoulders, and she said, “He’s always been an angry man, Cork. And now he’s hurting as well. I think you just do your best to forgive him, and leave the rest to God.”

  * * *

  Although he’d told the Jaegers he was headed home, that wasn’t true exactly. Cork had a stop to make first. He headed to the Iron Lake Reservation. As he approached Allouette, he turned west off the main road onto a narrow dirt lane that ran between poplars to a modest house on the lakeshore. He pulled to a stop, got out, and climbed the steps to the porch. Although the house was completely dark and appeared empty, he knocked anyway, waited, then called out, “Winona? It’s Cork O’Connor.”

  He left the porch and walked around to the back, down a worn path to a small dock, where an aluminum boat fitted with an old outboard was moored. Across the lake, which in the growing dark and under the heavy cloud cover had taken on the look of a deep, empty hole, he could see the lights of town. Normally, the glimmer would have warmed his heart because it was a reminder of home, but that night it seemed like a kind of watch fire built against some nebulous threat.

  In Allouette, which felt mostly deserted, he pulled up before an old wooden storefront that had been refurbished. The gray, flaking wood had been sanded and slapped with coats of white paint, and the broken windows had been replaced with new plate glass. Above the door hung a brightly lettered sign: IRON LAKE CENTER FOR NATIVE ART. It was an enterprise owned and operated by Winona and Willie Crane. Like the house Cork had just visited, the center was dark and empty.

  When he drove past the Mocha Moose, however, he saw that he was in luck. At the counter inside the coffee shop, two men stood talking with Sarah LeDuc. One of the men was Isaiah Broom, a member of the Tribal Council and a Shinnob with a long history of activism on behalf of the Native community. His was also a name on the list that Henry Meloux had given Cork, the list of those whom Sam Winter Moon had taught to hunt in the old way. The other man was Winona’s brother, Willie Crane. Cork parked at the curb and killed the engine.

  He didn’t go in immediately but sat for a couple of minutes watching. Sarah LeDuc was the widow of George LeDuc, who’d been an old and good friend to Cork before he was killed by the same people responsible for the death of Cork’s wife. Cork sometimes dropped by the Mocha Moose, and he and Sarah talked in the way of people who shared an understanding others did not. Isaiah Broom, an enormous Shinnob, towered over her. He was nearing fifty and wore his hair in two long braids that hung down his chest. Beside him, Willie Crane seemed fragile. Willie had grown into a tall man, but slender and with a softness in his face and his voice. He still walked with the awkward gait that was one of the legacies of his cerebral palsy, and when he spoke, he spoke carefully in order to be clearly understood. In addition to running the Iron Lake Center for Native Art, he was a well-known wildlife photographer and nature writer.

  The conversation the three friends were involved in was clearly a lively one. Broom’s mouth worked in an exaggerated way, and he threw his arms about dramatically. Sarah put her hands close together, as if framing a picture she was trying to make Broom see. Willie just seemed to listen intently.

  Cork got out of the Land Rover and went inside. The talk stopped immediately, and three faces with shaded skin turned his way.

  “Boozhoo, Dead-eye,” Isaiah Broom said.

  “Not funny, Isaiah.” Cork crossed the floor, where the old wood boards creaked under his weight.

  “Not meant to be. It was spoken with respect.”

  “I didn’t kill Jubal Little.”

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “Don’t mind him, Cork,” Sarah said. “How are you?”

  “I’ve been better. It’s been a tough couple of days.”

  “We were just talking about that,” Sarah said. “I’m sorry. Being with Jubal Little while he died, that had to be awful.”

  “Another body up there, we heard,” Willie said. Although he spoke it carefully, it still sounded something like Nother bauee up ere, weeard.

  “Yeah,” Cork said.

  Sarah pulled a mug from a stack back of the counter, filled it from one of the big urns, and handed it to Cork, who said “Migwech.”

  “Do you know who it was?” she asked.

  “They ID’d the guy. Nobod
y I know. His driver’s license says he’s from Red Wing. Maybe just a hunter. They were still working the scene when I left.”

  “Heard Stephen was there with you,” Broom said. “Grisly sight for a kid to see, I imagine.” There wasn’t much real concern in his voice.

  “He’ll be okay,” Cork said.

  “You must be used to dead bodies by now,” Broom said. “Two in as many days.”

  “Leave him be, Isaiah,” Sarah said.

  “That’s okay.” Cork gave Broom a long, steady look. “Where were you yesterday morning, Isaiah?”

  Broom shrugged. “At home.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “Why would I need witnesses?”

  “Because a long time ago, Sam Winter Moon taught you how to hunt in the old way. I’m thinking that Jubal Little was killed by someone who knew the old way. And it’s clear that you’re not unhappy he’s dead.”

  “Personally, I don’t care one way or the other,” Broom said. “But as a Shinnob, I’m relieved. He might’ve tried to pass himself off as Blackfeet, but that man was no friend to the Native community.”

  “So if I were to mention your name to the sheriff’s investigators as someone who has both the ability and motive, and maybe even had the opportunity, to kill Jubal, you’d have no problem?”

  “Oh, the chimooks would just love that,” Broom said, using unkind Ojibwe slang for whites. “Indians pointing fingers at each other.”

  “Rainy Bisonette told me it was you who brought the news to her and Meloux out on Crow Point. How’d you hear about it?”

  “Maybe the wind told me,” Broom said with an enigmatic grin.

  Sarah said, “Smiley Black’s got a police radio scanner. He came roaring into town spouting the news to everyone in earshot. By the time you and the sheriff’s people got back to Trickster’s Point, pretty much the whole rez knew.”

  “Why are you here?” Willie asked. Whyouere?

  “Actually, I came looking for you, Willie. Mind if we talk a minute? Alone?”

  Cork carried his mug, and they stepped outside. He walked slowly to accommodate Willie’s laborious locomotion. They stood in the light that fell through the window of the Mocha Moose.