Trickster's Point

by William Kent Krueger

  Whatever it was, when Jubal headed south again, Cork could see a healthy difference. It was shortly thereafter that Jubal entered the political arena. He returned to Tamarack County as frequently as possible, always without Camilla—unless he was campaigning—using the excuse of a fishing excursion or simply the need to reconnect with his North Country roots. Until the outing at Trickster’s Point, which had its own purpose, Cork never again allowed Jubal to use a bow hunt as one of his excuses. He refused to be a party to a continuing lie. But whatever it was that Winona gave him in their time together, it was like an elixir that filled Jubal with vigor.

  It was different for Winona. She often disappeared after Jubal left, and when Cork saw her next, she looked withered and drawn. Despite his marriage to a woman he loved deeply, Cork still had a special place in his heart for his first love. He sometimes despised Jubal for all he took from Winona.

  Meloux had once told Cork this about healing: “Sometimes the connection runs one way. You pour your own energy into the sick one, and when it is done, you are empty. It is not always like that, but sometimes. So you have to be careful, because some spirits are so hungry they will devour you.”

  Cork understood only too well that Jubal Little was one of those spirits who, if you allowed him to, would consume you.

  * * *

  He thought about all this as he drove from his confrontation with the Jaegers directly to the Iron Lake Reservation. He stopped at Willie Crane’s cabin, but no one was there. He headed toward Allouette and knocked at Winona’s front door but received no answer. When he reached the town, he found the Iron Lake Center for Native Art open and Willie Crane inside.

  Half of the center was devoted to showing the work of contemporary Indian artists. The other half, which Winona was largely responsible for, was a museum of Ojibwe cultural artifacts. There were beaded bandolier bags, cradleboards, flutes, drums, pipes, moose-hide moccasins, figures carved of wood, baskets woven of reeds or made from birch bark, the shells of snapping turtles used as war shields, ash bows, deer-hide quivers, arrows, and other ornate implements of warfare. Over the past twenty years, Winona had patiently accumulated a wealth of items that showcased Ojibwe ingenuity, spiritual sensibility, and artistic appreciation.

  Willie was behind a display case of Ojibwe jewelry and smaller artifacts, and he looked up with surprise when Cork entered, as if, despite the Open sign on the door, he really wasn’t prepared for visitors.

  “What do you want?” he said. Waouwan?

  “Boozhoo to you, too, Willie.”

  Cork crossed the old wood floor to the counter, which Willie stayed behind as if it were a protective wall.

  “You heard about Isaiah?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Willie answered.

  “You really think he killed Jubal?”

  “Why would he say so if he didn’t?”

  “I can think of a lot of reasons, and your sister’s at the top of the list.”

  Willie bent and rearranged two items in the case. “I don’t understand.”

  “I think that, given the right set of circumstances, Isaiah could have killed Jubal Little, but I don’t think he did. I think he’s covering for Winona.”

  “You’re crazy,” Willie said, still fiddling in the case. The words of his denial had no energy.

  Cork said, “Know what Jubal and your sister talked about their last night together, Willie?”

  “How would I know something like that?”

  “Because I think Winona told you everything. For want of a better word, I think you’ve always been her confessor.”

  Willie finally stood up straight. His face was tawny and tight, and reminded Cork of deer hide stretched for drying.

  “Cork, if you ever cared about Winona and Jubal, you’ll stop asking questions.”

  “What I care about most right now is the truth.”

  “You talk like it’s something you could just wrap your hand around.” Willie’s eyes were hard and dark and shiny and tired. But they weren’t empty. Something flickered in them, and Cork couldn’t tell whether it was fear or anger. “You know the story of the blind men and the elephant? I think that’s the reality of truth. What you understand depends mostly on the perspective you bring to it.”

  “How about you tell me your own perspective, and we’ll see what I understand?”

  Willie shook his head. “It’s not that easy.”

  “Okay, how about I tell you something I believe to be the truth, and then you can give me your perspective? One of the things Jubal confessed to me when he was dying was that he’d said good-bye to Winona forever. He told her it was their last night together. He was cutting her loose.”

  “You see,” Willie said. “Right there. You’re holding only a small part of the elephant.”

  “Jubal kissed her off, after all these years and all she’d done for him. She was pissed. Anybody would be. But the question is, was she pissed enough to kill him?”

  “Hurt isn’t always followed by anger, Cork.”

  “No? What followed Winona’s hurt?”

  “Acceptance.”

  “How very understanding of her.”

  “Jubal was going on the path he was born to, and she always knew that he would have to go alone.”

  “But he wasn’t going to be alone, Willie. His wife was going to be there beside him. Not your sister. In the eyes of the world, Camilla Little would always be the woman behind the great man. A bitter pill to have to swallow.”

  Willie’s jaw worked in a way that made Cork wonder if he was trying to get words out of his twisted mouth or struggling to keep them in.

  “Jubal used people, Willie. He used me, and he used Camilla and the Jaegers, and he used the Ojibwe. I don’t claim to understand the whole dynamic of what was between Winona and him, but what I saw was your sister giving and Jubal taking, and so I can’t help but believe that, in the end, he just used her, too.”

  “She believed that helping Jubal was the path she was born to.”

  To Cork, it sounded as if Willie was trying to defend the indefensible.

  “It wasn’t the one I was born to,” Cork said, “or anyone else, but Jubal sure as hell thought it was so. He walked on all of us to get to that mountaintop of his.”

  Willie seemed to fold, all the strength of his objections crumbling away.

  “So,” Cork went on, “the part of the elephant I’m holding on to right now, Willie, is that Winona had finally had enough of being stepped on, and she went out to Trickster’s Point to put an arrow in Jubal’s heart. And now she’s gone into hiding, and I think you know where.”

  Willie didn’t deny it.

  “Do her and yourself a favor. Tell her that I want to talk to her. But if she won’t, tell her to see Henry Meloux. Will you do that?”

  Willie thought it over and nodded. But he said, as if he knew it was absolutely the truth, the whole elephant, “She didn’t kill Jubal.”

  “I’d love to hear that coming directly from her.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Willie promised.

  Cork got into his Land Rover, which was parked outside the center, and sat a moment, thinking. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever actually believed Winona had killed Jubal, but from all his years in law enforcement, one of the things he understood was that most investigations primarily involved eliminating possibilities. Although he had nothing concrete to go on, he was having difficulty buying her guilt. For one thing, there was Willie’s absolute belief in her innocence, which had seemed sincere. Although Willie loved his sister and would probably say or do anything to protect her, there were a couple of other considerations that seemed to Cork to bolster Willie’s position. The first was the dead man on the ridge. He couldn’t see Winona in league with a chimook, nor did he see her as capable of that kind of cold-blooded killing. The other was Meloux’s assertion that the other side of love wasn’t hate, it was fear. Winona might have killed Jubal out of hate or anger, but fear? The only thing Winona Cra
ne had to be afraid of was a life without Jubal Little in it.

  So, unless something new arose to change his mind, Cork was willing to take her off his list of suspects. For the time being.

  Which left two possibilities: Isaiah Broom, who’d already copped to the crimes, and Lester Bigby, who’d done nothing but blow smoke in response to all of Cork’s questions. If Broom hadn’t so willingly given himself over to the sheriff’s people, Cork would have suspected him more, odd as that seemed. But he tended to agree with Phil Holter that Broom had a hidden agenda. Maybe he was looking for a public forum, risky as that was. Or maybe he believed that Winona had killed Jubal and the John Doe on the ridge, and love compelled him to the sacrifice of himself. At any rate, Broom didn’t top Cork’s list. That slot was still reserved for Lester Bigby.

  CHAPTER 34

  Cork was deep in thought when he was startled back into the moment by a knock on the window of his door. He turned, surprised but very pleased to see Rainy Bisonette smiling at him through the glass. He rolled the window down.

  “I called to you,” she said. “You seemed to be in another world.”

  “A lot on my mind,” he apologized.

  “I just came into town to do a little shopping at LeDuc’s store. Do you have time for some coffee at the Mocha Moose?”

  “For you, I’ll make time.”

  He got out, and together they walked to the little shop. There were a couple of other Shinnobs at tables drinking coffee and eating some of Sarah LeDuc’s locally famous cowboy cookies. Sarah, who was full-blood Ojibwe, appreciated the irony of that situation, and she was fond of saying that, when she made the cookie batter, she just wished John Wayne was still alive so he could see an Indian woman beating cowboys. Cork greeted the other customers with a raised hand and said “Boozhoo” to Sarah, and he and Rainy got their coffee and a cookie to split and sat at a table near the window.

  “So, is it true?” Rainy asked. “Isaiah Broom confessed to killing Jubal Little?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that what you’re thinking about so deeply?”

  “No.”

  “Because you believe he did it? Case closed?”

  “I don’t think he killed Jubal. I think he’s covering for Winona Crane.”

  “You believe Winona killed Jubal?” She seemed utterly amazed.

  He explained to her briefly the history of Winona Crane and Jubal Little, two sides of the same leaf, a complicated connection that included an abiding love and, in the end, rejection and hurt. “The wrath of a woman scorned,” Cork finished.

  “What a load of crap,” Rainy said and took a bite of the cookie.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ve decided, too. But I think Isaiah Broom believes it. He’s been in love with Winona since we were all kids. I think maybe he believes this is his chance to prove his love for her, a love greater than anything Jubal ever gave to her.”

  “Love,” she said, picking up on the word. “After you left this morning, Uncle Henry and I talked about Jubal Little’s killing. He says he believes you’ll discover that Little was killed because of love.”

  “I thought so, too, but like I said, I don’t think Winona did it, or Isaiah.”

  “Not romantic love, necessarily. Love of money, love of power, love of territory, love of people. Uncle Henry says that more often than not we kill to protect the things we love. We kill to hold on to them.” She drank her coffee and looked at Cork over the cup rim, her dark eyes gently probing his face. “So, who has something to protect?”

  Only one name came to Cork at the moment. The last guy left on his short list of suspects. Lester Bigby.

  “Do you really think Bigby could have killed Jubal Little?” she asked, after he’d explained.

  “The question of the day,” he said. “He certainly has something to protect. That resort development. It’s clear he’s lied about where he was the day Jubal was killed. And I’ve been thinking about the John Doe on the ridge. A white guy. I don’t see Isaiah Broom or Winona Crane throwing in with a chimook. But Lester Bigby might.”

  “Or one of his investors,” Rainy offered.

  Cork didn’t want to think about that. It opened up a whole new list of suspects. And he still had no idea who Rhiannon was or what part she played in all this and why she was important and threatening enough to put Cork and everyone he loved in imminent danger.

  Rainy said, “You told me that a lot of what you do is just turn over rocks to see what’s there. What rocks are left to turn over, Cork?”

  “What I really ought to do is track down Winona. It would be best if I could talk to her in person. But I keep hoping she’ll come out of hiding on her own. Even if she doesn’t talk to me, maybe she’ll go to Henry.”

  “And then you’ll pump my uncle for answers.” It was a statement, not a judgment.

  “Henry?” Cork laughed. “I could put your uncle on the rack and tear his arms out of their sockets, and he still wouldn’t tell me something he didn’t want me to know.”

  They left together, and he walked Rainy to her Jeep. She would drive back toward Crow Point, park on an old logging road that ended a couple of miles from her cabin, and walk the rest of the way from there, a Duluth pack full of supplies on her back.

  “I’d love to have you come home with me,” she told him as they stood together under the heavy overcast.

  He shook his head. “Miles to go before I sleep.”

  She put her hand to his face. Her palm was warm against his cold cheek. “You could use a vacation.”

  “What I need is a good long lie-down in your arms. And a few more answers.”

  He kissed her and stood watching as she drove away.

  Then he turned back to all the miles still ahead of him before he slept.

  CHAPTER 35

  The bullet hole in his windshield reminded Cork of a spider with a dozen legs too many, and as he drove back toward Aurora the wind blew through, cold and with an eerie whistle. He thought about the shot Nick Jaeger had fired at him. To protect his sister, Nick had said. To protect something he loved.

  What was it that the person who’d murdered Jubal had been protecting? What was it they loved enough to kill for, twice? What did Lester Bigby love that much? His investment? His father? Or was it his brother, an old love whose loss had lain festering in his heart for decades and then exploded in a tragic mess? Or maybe it wasn’t just one of these things but all of them together, braided in a thick rope of confused emotions that bound him to an inevitable end.

  An inevitable end. The phrase sounded familiar to Cork, but why? Then he remembered. He realized those had been Jubal’s words, or nearly, spoken on the day that Cork had put in place the final stone in the wall that had been building between them for years. They’d been said in the late spring, just after Jubal had publicly announced his intention to run for governor and put forward his platform.

  Politics, from the beginning, had agreed with Jubal Little. He was a natural leader, and even men and women who’d been in the political arena far longer than he found themselves falling in behind him. The mix of his message—fiscal conservatism and social responsibility—found a following in Washington, among centrists on both sides of the aisle, not just because Jubal spoke his platform so well but because of the way he conducted himself, with a Teddy Roosevelt kind of diplomacy. He was charming as hell, but in his eyes, his voice, his bearing, he carried a club, the threat of someone who knew how to wield power, the understanding that he was not a man to be crossed.

  From the isolation of the deep woods that surrounded Aurora, Minnesota, Cork had watched his friend’s rise. And although from the outside Jubal seemed unchanged, something on the inside, Cork knew, was being transformed. The seed for what Jubal was becoming had always been there, but it had been nourished by circumstance, and the vision and tending of Winona Crane, and the money and ambition of the Jaegers. Cork wasn’t certain that Jubal really believed in any ideals, believed in anything he’d have sacrificed his li
fe for. What Jubal believed in was the rightness of his own being. He believed himself to be the chosen one, and nobody and nothing could stand in the way of his destiny.

  But Cork had tried to do just that. In spring, when he’d heard Jubal’s gubernatorial platform and, like many Ojibwe and residents of the Arrowhead, had felt stunned and betrayed, he’d summoned his friend north with a cryptic threat. They’d gone fishing, an excuse for them to be alone because Cork had insisted on it, in order to get away from the reporters and the photographers. Jubal’s people had spun it as an outing with the candidate’s oldest friend. Cork had thought, Whatever.

  On Iron Lake, far from the eyes and ears of the public, Cork had laid it out.

  “I don’t understand what you’re doing, Jubal. You’re selling out the Ojibwe. You’re selling out the North Country.”

  “No, I’m buying back Minnesota,” Jubal replied, casting easily and watching his lure plop into the mirror that was the lake that day.

  “Sulfide mining? That’s part of the price tag? Jubal, are you crazy?”

  “I’ve looked at the impact studies. It can be done safely.”

  “On paper maybe. Have you read the reports from the areas where it’s been tried? Ecological disasters, Jubal.”

  “You got a nibble,” Jubal said, nodding toward Cork’s line.

  “To hell with the fishing.” Cork threw down his rod. It hit the bottom of the boat with a sound like a thin bone cracking. “And the casinos? You build those and it’ll be just like in the old days when white men shot all the buffalo.”

  “The studies show that there’s plenty of interest to support both state-run casinos and Indian gaming. Your vision is far too narrow, Cork,” Jubal said, as if lecturing a schoolboy. “You think of Tamarack County, I think of all of Minnesota. Like so many shortsighted people, you want to have things but without sacrifice. You need someone like me to make the hard decisions, the ones you can’t make on your own, the decisions about who gets what and how. What you need, and everyone like you, is someone who’s willing to do what you can’t bring yourself to do.”