Trickster's Point

by William Kent Krueger

  The sun was brilliant that day, and Jubal, against the sky, slowly reeling in his line, looked absolutely imperious.

  “Christ,” Cork said. “Who are you, Jubal? I don’t know you anymore.”

  Jubal leveled on him a look that put ice water in Cork’s blood. “Did you ever? Really?” He held Cork’s gaze, a cobra mesmerizing his prey, then he said, “Why are we out here, Cork? What is it you have to say to me?”

  “Politics have changed you, Jubal.”

  “Politics bring out both the best and the worst in people. And you want to know something? Sometimes they’re the same thing.”

  “You have an answer for everything, don’t you? Well how about this? I know your secrets.”

  Jubal visibly relaxed, as if, with everything in the open, he understood his enemy and was confident that he was equal to the challenge.

  “Secrets? You mean me and Winona?”

  “That’s one.”

  Jubal shrugged. “It would be inconvenient if the media found out about my friendship with Winona, but not fatal to my campaign. Camilla’s always known and understood. You said secrets. What else?”

  Cork picked up the final stone and mortared it into place. “Trickster’s Point.”

  Jubal didn’t seem surprised. “A long time ago. And you have no proof.”

  “I don’t need to prove anything. An accusation of murder would be enough in itself, I imagine.”

  “I could always say that you were the one who pushed Donner Bigby to his death.”

  “Of course you could. But then you’d be guilty of covering up a murder. Almost as horrific to voters, I imagine. Either way, it would kill you politically.”

  Jubal had gradually reeled in the last of his line. The lure came out of the lake, a walleye flicker shad, shiny in the sunlight, water falling from the barbs into a quiet so profound that Cork could hear the dull patter of the drops on the boat gunwale. Jubal carefully laid down his rod and said, “Blackmail?”

  “You told me once that in politics it’s called ‘leverage.’”

  Jubal looked toward the shore, toward the gathering of homes and shops and schools that formed Aurora. Sam’s Place was visible, small against the broad scatter of the town. And Cork was wondering if Jubal might be thinking of Sam Winter Moon, who’d taught them both important lessons about stalking, and about killing deer, and ultimately, about what it was to be a decent man in a difficult world. Cork thought Sam might be disappointed that he’d stalked and attacked Jubal in such a cowardly way, but it was done, and he waited.

  Jubal finally turned his gaze on Cork, who found himself startled by what he beheld. It was as if Jubal’s size had grown suddenly even more remarkable, as if the shadow he cast had tripled and turned unfathomably dark and had swallowed Cork whole.

  “I’ve warned you before,” Jubal said. “Never try to take something from me. I won’t warn you again. You can’t beat me. You never could. If you try, I won’t be responsible for what happens. Your end is your own doing.”

  “My end?”

  “Your end is inevitable. One way or another, you yield.”

  “I’m not backing down, Jubal.”

  “In that case,” Jubal said with a slight shrug, “I’ll have to break you.”

  He stated it simply, as if it were a minor fact of life, as if he and Cork had no history, as if they’d never loved each other as brothers.

  Cork, who’d always given in to Jubal, sometimes out of friendship and sometimes out of fear, stood his ground and said, “Bring it on.”

  * * *

  Outside Allouette, after he’d left Rainy, Cork pulled into Winona’s drive and parked at her house. Although he risked being seen, he wanted another look inside, this time in daylight and without Camilla Little distracting him with screams.

  He disconnected his cell phone from the car charger and slipped it into the little holster on his belt. He got out and checked the garage. Empty. He knocked on the front door. No answer. He went inside, where the heat was on, but only enough to keep the cold at bay. He wandered to the kitchen and discovered that the broken glass from the frame Camilla had shattered the night before had been cleaned up. In the bedroom, he found the bed neatly made. In the bathroom, there were clean towels hanging on the rack and the bloodied towels in the hamper were gone. It was clear to him that Winona Crane had returned, but she wasn’t there now. He wondered why she’d come back, and why she’d run again.

  Then his eyes fell on the little table beside the claw-footed tub, with its candle and the portable CD player and the single CD case, all of which he’d seen the night before. Now he saw something he’d overlooked in the dark. He picked up the plastic CD case, which was empty. Along the edge, someone—Winona probably—had put a little strip of white tape and had written the title of the disc the case held: Fleetwood Mac. Cork lifted the top of the portable player. The CD was inside. He picked it up and read the label, the list of the tunes he remembered well: “Monday Morning,” “Warm Ways,” “Blue Letter.” At the fourth song, he stopped scanning. “Rhiannon.”

  It was no coincidence. He was holding a key. He knew it absolutely. But he had no idea what door it opened. What was the connection between Rhiannon and Winona and Jubal? And why was it, apparently, such a deadly one?

  He’d only just begun to consider this when his cell phone chirped. He pulled it from the little holster on his belt. Caller ID told him it was Lester Bigby.

  “O’Connor, will you meet me?” Bigby asked as soon as Cork answered.

  “Where?”

  “At my resort complex. Something I want to say to you.”

  “You can’t tell me over the phone?”

  “You want to know who killed Jubal Little, you’ll come.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Cork said.

  Bigby hung up without a word of good-bye.

  CHAPTER 36

  The Crown Lake Resort was ten miles southwest of Aurora, nestled among rugged hills whose slopes were thick with pine trees and spruce and stands of aspens and birch. The shoreline was undeveloped because it had, for a very long time, belonged to the Arrowhead Mining Corporation. The mine, one of the smaller open pits on the Iron Range, had shut down operations more than a dozen years earlier, but Arrowhead Mining had held on to the property, until Lester Bigby made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. The resort had the lake all to itself. Which would have been perfect, except that, within the last year, a Canadian corporation had purchased mineral rights to land two miles east, from which they hoped to be given permission to extract base ore—copper-nickel and platinum. Sulfide mining would be the extraction process. Several streams ran through the mine area and emptied into Crown Lake. If the environmental watchdogs were right, the mining would eventually turn the water of the lake to sulfuric acid.

  Cork drove his Land Rover down the single paved road, which had been built at the behest and expense of Lester Bigby. The road ended near the lakeshore, where an area had been cleared and preliminary construction on some buildings had begun. There was no activity at the moment, had been none for some time, not since news of the possibility of nearby sulfide mining had become public.

  Lester Bigby’s Karmann Ghia was parked in tall, dead grass ten yards from the lake. Bigby sat on a big slab of gray rock that jutted into the lake. Cork parked next to the little car, got out, and walked onto the slab. Bigby had his back to Cork and was staring at the lake. Cork crossed the flat rock, which was tilted at a slight angle toward the water. As soon as he came abreast of Bigby, Cork saw the firearm in Bigby’s right hand. Ruger, his mind told him without being prodded, .22 caliber.

  “Beautiful, don’t you think?” Bigby said.

  “Lovely,” Cork replied, not taking his eyes off the Ruger.

  “You ski?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. But a lot of people in Minnesota do. That slope over there would have held one of the best runs in the state.”

  “Would have?”

&nb
sp; “It’s not going to happen. Ever.” He nudged the barrel of the handgun in Cork’s direction. “Sit down.” An order, not an invitation.

  Cork sat. The clouds hung heavy over the hills and the lake. There was a slight breeze across the water, a cool November wind that already presaged winter, and Cork felt the chill of it against his face. The other chill he felt came from the threat in Bigby’s hand.

  “What are you going to leave your kids, O’Connor?”

  “A lot of good memories, and Sam’s Place,” he said without hesitation.

  Bigby nodded. “Me, I was going to leave my son this. Do you know what I have to leave him now? Nothing. I’ve lost everything.”

  “Jubal’s dead. The polls are saying our governor will be re-elected. Champion of the environment.”

  “As long as there’s money to be made in the ground up here, the risk will always be there. If it wasn’t Jubal Little, it would have been someone else. Those people, they always find a way to get what they want.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “All my promised backers have pulled out. I put another mortgage on my house. The third. Sold all my stocks and bonds a while ago. Borrowed against my life insurance. None of it enough to save this dream. You want to know what I was doing on Saturday? I spent the day out here, planning for it to be my last day on earth. I was going to kill myself. I knew I couldn’t do it at home and have Emily and Lance find me there. I couldn’t do that to them. In the end, I couldn’t do it at all. Coward. Just like my father always said.”

  “I don’t think so,” Cork offered.

  “You don’t know me,” Bigby shot back with sudden viciousness.

  “I know your father, and you’re nothing like him.”

  “Is that so? You’re ready to believe I killed Jubal Little.” He looked at Cork with a kind of grim curiosity. “Why exactly do you think I would do that?”

  “Because of the sulfide mining.”

  “I’d kill myself over that, not someone else.”

  “I also thought maybe it might have something to do with wanting your father’s approval. For some sons, that would be important enough to kill for.”

  Bigby laughed, a bitter sound. “Christ, are you barking up the wrong tree. My father’s a cruel man. He was cruel to my mother. He was cruel to me. And he was cruel to Donner. I grew up knowing what people thought of my brother, but I loved him. He stood up to my father, stood between Buzz and my mother, between Buzz and me. When Donner died, there was no one to stand up for us. Hell, if I killed anybody it would be my old man.”

  “I also thought maybe it was because of Donner.”

  Bigby looked confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “Your father blamed Jubal for Donner’s death.”

  “He blamed you, too.”

  “My point, more or less. By putting an arrow into Jubal Little and making it look like I did it, you’d kill two birds with one stone.”

  “You give me more credit for planning than I’m capable of.”

  “It’s been a tough investigation. Any port in a storm,” Cork said, putting a little smile on his face while still eyeing the barrel of the Ruger.

  “You think it’s funny? You sent cops to my house. My wife was there, and my son, and I had to explain to them why the police came into our home. My family looked at me as if they didn’t know me. You have any idea how that feels?”

  “Did you tell them about Saturday?”

  “I haven’t told them anything about this mess. I don’t want my son thinking of me like I think of my father.”

  “I’m sure you don’t have to worry about that, Lester.”

  “For a man who’s clearly screwed up in his thinking, you seem awfully sure.”

  Cork decided it was time to take the bull by the horns. “You told me you knew who killed Jubal Little. Is that true, or was it just a way to get me here? Are you planning on shooting me?”

  Bigby studied the gun. “I’ve thought about it. Still thinking about it. And still thinking maybe I’ll shoot myself as well. Take us both out in a blaze of glory.”

  “Let me tell you something, Lester. I lost my father when I was thirteen. No matter what mistakes he might have made in his life, I’d have forgiven him anything to have him alive and with me again. Think about Lance. Do you want him to see you as your father does, just a coward? And worse, a murderer? Or do you want him to think of you as a man who failed in a resort enterprise but picked himself up and went on?”

  “Just shut up,” Bigby said.

  He looked away, stared across the lake, which was long and narrow. At the far end, clouds darker than before had begun to mount over the trees that lined the shore. Snow clouds, Cork thought. A darkness that was the reflection of what was coming from the west slid toward them across the water as if it was something huge and alive and hungry.

  “Fuck it,” Bigby finally said and heaved the Ruger far out into the lake.

  For a long time after that, he didn’t move. Nor did Cork. They both stared at the water, which rolled under the breeze, as if disturbed by the breath of what was coming, the cold exhalation of some great, invisible spirit.

  Bigby spoke. “Now let me tell you something, O’Connor. I hate bow hunting. I always have. I hate the idea of killing a living thing just because I can.”

  “Why do you do it then?”

  “It used to be because I had to. My father made me. Then it was because my friends bow-hunted. Now I do it sometimes with clients. But you want to know the real reason? Because from the time I was small, I had this wonderful fantasy. Every time I was out, I fantasized putting an arrow in my father’s heart. When I go out now, I usually go alone because I love the quiet and the solitude. If you’d really done your homework, you’d know that I never come back with a deer. But I still have that fantasy about putting an arrow through Buzz Bigby’s heart.” He leveled a cold, dark look on Cork. “I remember watching you choke my father in the parking lot in front of the Black Duck. I was sitting in the truck. The cab smelled like spilled beer. It always did. I remember you suddenly stopped, otherwise you might have killed my old man that day.”

  Cork remembered, too.

  Bigby got up from the rock. “Stand up,” he said.

  Cork rose and faced him. Without warning, Bigby swung. Cork turned instinctively, but not quickly enough to avoid the blow completely. Bigby’s fist caught him squarely in the left ear, and Cork stumbled and fell back onto the rock. Bigby stood over him, rubbing the sore knuckles of his right hand.

  “That’s for bringing me and my family into all this crap. You have a knack, O’Connor, for doing what you think is right, but in the end, it’s all wrong. My old man should’ve died that day, saved all of us a lot of grief. But you screwed up. You want to know who killed Jubal Little? I’ll tell you. It was some guy who actually knew how to get things done right.”

  Bigby headed back to his Karmann Ghia. From where he sat on the rock with his ear ringing, Cork watched as the man pulled away, drove up the solitary road, and was lost in the trees.

  CHAPTER 37

  Aside from the cowboy cookie he’d had in Allouette, Cork had eaten nothing that day since the biscuits he’d shared in the morning with Rainy and Henry. It was a little after two o’clock when he drove away from Crown Lake, and he was famished. He was also sliding into a despondent place. He seemed no closer to understanding who’d killed Jubal than he’d been during those three long hours while he watched the man die. He still had no idea who the hell Rhiannon was or what she might have to do with Jubal’s death. And he was kicking himself for having dragged Lester Bigby, an innocent man, into the mess. His ear ached from the blow Bigby had landed, but he figured it was a pain he deserved. The weather was no help. As he made his way toward Aurora, snow began to spit against his windshield. He thought after he got food in his stomach, he might rebound a little, so he headed home.

  If he was looking for sympathy there, he didn’t find it. He found Stephen in a rotten mood.

/>   In the instructions he’d left on the kitchen table that morning, he’d given Stephen permission to stay home from school another day. He’d indicated they should all stay close to the house, and not open Sam’s Place until he okayed it. When he pulled into the drive, he saw Stephen playing with Waaboo and Trixie in the backyard. His grandson didn’t notice him; Waaboo was too busy trying to catch on his tongue the flakes drifting out of the sky, a precipitation not nearly heavy enough yet to be called a snowfall. But Stephen saw Cork and gave him a long, hard look.

  Jenny was in the kitchen, working on her laptop.

  “They should be inside,” Cork snapped. “I left instructions.”

  Jenny slid the sheet he’d left across the table where he could see it. “Your instructions were to stay close to home. They’re in the backyard. Can’t get much closer to home.”

  “I meant—” Cork began.

  “We’re not mind readers,” Jenny shot back.

  “Sorry,” Cork said. “Bad day. Where’s Cy?”

  “He went to Pflugleman’s to get some NyQuil. He’s coming down with a cold, he thinks. He promised to be right back.”

  From the refrigerator, Cork pulled a plate of cold fried chicken and a bottle of Leinie’s. He grabbed a napkin from the holder on the counter and sat at the table with Jenny. “What are you working on?”

  “Another short story.”

  “When are you going to start a novel?”

  “When I’m ready.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.”

  Jenny closed her laptop. “That’s okay. Just a little testy. I feel like I’m caged in here. Any progress?”

  “Not much.” Cork took a bite of a chicken leg and through the window watched Waaboo and Stephen lick snowflakes from the air. “What’s his story?” Cork asked. “When I drove up, he looked at me like I was a rat bringing the plague.”

  “He’s pissed at you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  Jenny shrugged. “Ask him.”