Trickster's Point

by William Kent Krueger

  Willie’s words were more tortured than Cork could ever recall, and he had to strain to understand them. “He never loved her. He only needed her. He took and never gave back. He took everything from her, and then he took her life. She cut her wrists in the bathtub, but it was Jubal Little who killed her just as sure as if he’d put the knife in her hand.”

  “You found her?”

  “She called me. I’d never heard her so upset. I told her I’d be there. I told her I’d take care of her. But I was too late.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cork said. And he was. He felt sorrow in every cell of his heart.

  Willie stared at the floor. “I suppose I always knew this was how it would end. She always said Jubal would have to leave her someday. ‘For the mountaintop,’ she would say. As if that was all her life was about, sacrificing for Jubal Little.”

  “Where is she?”

  Willie gestured vaguely toward the main road, beyond which the woods began and ran north almost unbroken to Canada. “I buried her in a beautiful place. She will become the flowers and wild grass and trees.”

  Cork sat forward, nearer to Willie, rested his arms on his knees, and said quietly, “I have to ask you about Jubal. Why the arrow? Was it to throw the blame on me?”

  “An accident of circumstance,” Willie said, shaking his head. “I stole Isaiah’s bow and some of his arrows. He never locks his doors.”

  “Isaiah taught you to shoot?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he knew it was you who killed Jubal Little. He was covering for you, not for Winona.”

  “All my life, he’s been my friend. I would never have let them prosecute him for what I did.”

  “How did you know we’d be at Trickster’s Point?”

  “Winona. When she called me, she was rambling, all over the place, not making much sense, but it was one of the things she said.”

  “And you decided to kill him. Revenge?”

  Again he shook his head. “Justice. He killed Winona. He was going to betray the Anishinaabeg and Mother Earth. I killed him before he could do these things.”

  We kill to protect what we love, Cork thought. And sometimes in the name of justice.

  “Tell me about the man on the ridge,” he said.

  Willie seemed puzzled at that. “I went early to get there ahead of you. I found his trail when I came up the back of the ridge, and I followed it.”

  “Just a hunter in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Cork said. “So you killed him?”

  “No. Not just a hunter. Or not a hunter of deer anyway. He was hunting you.”

  That made Cork sit up. “Me? How do you know that?”

  “I came up the ridge quietly. God bless Sam Winter Moon and all he taught me. The hunter didn’t see me. He was lying on the ground, sighting his rifle. You and Jubal had just landed your canoe. Jubal had walked away, but you were still on the shore. Easy for me to see that it wasn’t Jubal the man was taking a bead on.”

  “Me?” Cork said, trying to make sense of it.

  “I’d brought three arrows that Isaiah had made. I grabbed one, nocked it, and got ready to shoot if I had to. When I was maybe thirty feet away, I called to him. He was on his stomach, and he rolled to his back, sat up, and brought his rifle with him. He didn’t pause, not for an instant. He jammed the rifle butt to his shoulder, and it was clear he was going to shoot me. So I let the arrow fly.”

  “You killed him instantly,” Cork said. “A perfect shot.”

  “I didn’t think of it that way. I thought of it as a necessary shot. And a tragic one.” He looked sad and troubled. “I discovered that killing takes two lives. The moment it was done, my life, as I knew it, was gone.” He took a breath and finished. “There was no turning back, so I went ahead with what I’d come there to do.”

  Willie closed his eyes and breathed deeply. When he looked again at Cork, he seemed resigned. “You’re going to tell them the truth?”

  “Yes, Willie. But I want to tell them the whole truth.”

  “The whole truth?”

  “Rhiannon,” Cork said.

  Willie didn’t look at all surprised, but he said nothing.

  “When I asked you about the name Rhiannon, you lied. You knew all of Winona’s secrets, and Rhiannon was one. I want the truth.”

  Willie sagged, as if what Cork asked had drained him of any strength that remained. “There was a child,” he said at last.

  “Winona and Jubal?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “A dozen years ago. Nona became pregnant just before Jubal left for his first term as a congressman.”

  “Did Jubal know?”

  “Not at first. Nona didn’t want him to. She said he had enough to worry about.”

  “They’d been lovers for years without a pregnancy. How did it happen?”

  “Nona had always been careful in her timing. She knew her body. But Jubal didn’t plan on coming back to Aurora for a very long time. He wanted to solidify his position in Washington, and she was sad and desperate and a little careless before he left. When she realized she was pregnant, she thought about aborting the child but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She went full term.”

  “I don’t remember any word of this on the rez.”

  “As soon as she began to show, she went into seclusion at my cabin. She was always disappearing, so no one thought anything of it.”

  “And she had the baby?”

  “She delivered, yes.”

  “Where?”

  “In my bedroom.”

  “What happened?”

  “She didn’t want a doctor. She didn’t want anything official to be known about the child. So she planned on doing it on her own. She read everything she could and took care of herself. I don’t think I ever saw her so happy. She had a name for the baby. Rhiannon.” Willie smiled sadly. “She loved Stevie Nicks, and she loved that song.”

  “What happened to Rhiannon?”

  “Before her time, Nona began to experience a lot of pain. She was almost forty, and I thought maybe it was because she was older than most women with their first pregnancy. I wanted her to see a doctor. She refused. I was worried. I finally called Jubal in Washington. He dropped everything and came out immediately. She went into labor before he got here. I was with her. I’d read the books, too. But things weren’t going like in the books. By the time Jubal arrived it was over.”

  “She’d delivered Rhiannon?”

  “Yes. But the baby was stillborn. I don’t know why.”

  “Oh, Willie. I’m sorry.”

  “They grieved together. Hell, I grieved, too. Then we buried her.”

  “Where?”

  “Out there.” Willie again gestured toward the forests that ran to Canada. “In a beautiful spot where no one would ever find her. Three nights ago, I laid Nona beside her.”

  “Who else knew about Rhiannon?”

  “No one. It was a well-kept secret, Cork. I don’t know who else could know.”

  “Someone knows, Willie. He threatened me, anonymously.”

  “I swear, Cork, I don’t know.”

  Cork felt the weight of that particular concern settle once more on his tired shoulders. “Okay, will you do me a favor? For the time being, when the sheriff’s people question you, don’t say anything about Rhiannon.”

  “All right, Cork. But will you do me a favor in return?”

  “What is it?”

  “Give me a little time before you turn me in. I need to get things in order.”

  “I can do that, Willie.”

  Cork took one final look around the house where Winona Crane had lived her life according to a purpose she’d accepted long ago but, judging from the evidence she’d left behind, had never fully understood, a life she had made sacrifices for that hadn’t, as far as Cork could see, brought her any happiness. He’d loved her once, loved her with all the ardor and ache of a young man’s heart, and because of that, he had, in a sense, loved her alwa
ys. Yet, as he drove off, leaving Willie to mourn her alone, Cork was very glad his own life had gone a different way and without her.

  CHAPTER 40

  A mile after he left Winona’s house, the headlights appeared in Cork’s rearview mirror. He noted them, then went back to his thinking.

  He considered Jubal Little. He’d loved Jubal once, loved him as a brother, but it had, in actuality, been so brief a time. Had he really known Jubal then? He thought not, because Jubal hadn’t known himself, any more than Cork understood who he was. Their roads had diverged, and they’d gone in different directions, become different kinds of men. Cork had created a family. Jubal had created a following. Cork had lived pretty much in anonymity in the small world of Tamarack County, and had been happy there. Jubal had lived in the spotlight, but had he been happy? All the evidence indicated no. Jubal had spent a good deal of his life chasing greatness, that mountaintop Winona had seen in her vision so very long ago. And what had it brought him in the end except regret? When they were children, Cork had envied Jubal. But he envied him no more.

  The headlights behind him had approached, coming dangerously near, casting a blinding glare in Cork’s mirrors. The road was empty. It was never heavily trafficked and at night it was particularly abandoned. But it was winding, and Cork kept his speed steady, thinking the vehicle would pass on the next straightaway. When the opportunity came, the vehicle shot around his Land Rover, and Cork saw the Escalade that belonged to Kenny Yates pass in a blur of shiny silver metal. It pulled ahead and swerved back into the right-hand lane directly in front of Cork, way too close. The taillights immediately bloomed red, and the Escalade began to slow, forcing Cork to slow with it. What the hell was Yates up to? Cork had no idea, but he didn’t like this aggressiveness. It felt threatening. Felt, he realized, much like the call he’d received from the voice of the Devil on that same stretch of road, a manufactured voice meant as disguise. Low, gravelly, male. It could easily have been Yates.

  The Escalade slowed to a stop on the empty highway, and Cork brought the Land Rover to a halt behind it. A moment passed. The door of the Escalade opened, and Yates stepped out. He wore a black leather jacket. His hands were in his pockets. He stood still, as if waiting for Cork to meet him.

  Cork thought, Ah, hell, and got out. He approached the big man, the football player turned bodyguard, and kept his eyes on the pockets that hid Yates’s hands. He stopped ten feet away.

  “What’s with the road rage, Kenny?” he asked.

  “Road rage?” In the glare of Cork’s headlights, the big man’s eyes were white orbs drilled at the centers with fathomless holes. “I just wanted a word with you before this whole thing goes any further.”

  “A word? You could have called me on my cell phone.”

  “Tried. Got nothing.”

  Which could have been true, because during his talk with Willie Crane, Cork had turned his cell phone off.

  “How’d you know I was out here?”

  “Tailed you from town.”

  “You wanted to talk to me, why didn’t you do it before this?”

  “Had to work myself up for it.”

  Which didn’t sound encouraging to Cork. He thought that if Yates pulled a gun from his coat—maybe that Beretta he’d offered Cork earlier—he’d dash behind the Escalade and head for the darkness of the woods that lined the road. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was something.

  “Okay, you’ve got me now,” Cork said.

  “What’s the word?”

  “Rhiannon,” Yates said. Only he didn’t say the word in a normal way. He used the voice of the Devil. He studied Cork and seemed confused at Cork’s lack of surprise. “You knew it was me?”

  Cork didn’t answer that one. Instead he said simply, “Why, Kenny?”

  “What do you know about Rhiannon?”

  “Everything.”

  Yates nodded, as if what he already suspected had just been confirmed. His shoulders sagged, but his hands stayed in his pockets. “That night you first met with the Jaegers, after you left, I heard Camilla ask her brothers about the name. She said you’d run it by her. I panicked, thought you were onto Jubal’s dirty little secret.”

  “You knew?”

  “I’ve worked for the Littles for nearly five years. Each of those years, on the second day of October, Jubal got shitfaced. He’d have me drive him out into the country somewhere, always some isolated rural place, and he’d go off alone with a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and drink himself into a stupor. If he didn’t go far enough, I’d hear him wailing something awful. Eventually I’d gather him up and bring him home.”

  “He told you about Rhiannon?”

  “He confessed to me once, like I was a priest or something. Told me how he should have been there, how he should have made certain that little child had the right care, how he’d buried her in the woods, unbaptized, her grave unmarked. He asked me to pray for him.”

  “Did he remember telling you these things?”

  “Never. Jubal liked his Kentucky bourbon, but I never saw him that drunk except on that one day every year. Jubal shouldered a shitload of guilt, but his little baby, she was more than he could bear.”

  “Why the threats, Kenny? Jubal’s dead. The truth can’t hurt him.”

  “Not him. Camilla. Folks, they’d understand a man having another woman on the side, forget about it eventually. Happens all the time. But what he did with that poor baby, nobody’s going to forget or forgive. Jubal’s gone, but Camilla’d have to live with the way people looked at her, married to a man like that.”

  We kill to protect the things we love, Cork thought.

  “Why are you telling me this, Kenny?”

  Yates slowly withdrew his hands from his pockets. Cork tensed, then was relieved to see that they were empty.

  “Because I didn’t know you before. What I know now is that you’re a decent man, and I don’t want you worrying about your family. I’m ashamed of what I did to you. So go on and do whatever you’ve got to do. Bring charges, tell Camilla the truth, it’s up to you.”

  “I ought to just coldcock you.”

  “You go right ahead.” Yates braced but made no move to protect himself.

  Cork said, “But I guess I understand.”

  Yates relaxed. “Hoped you would. So, you going to tell her?”

  “I don’t know, Kenny. What good would it do? Jubal’s dead. Winona’s dead. Seems best to let that secret die with them.”

  “See? Knew I could trust you to do the right thing.”

  “I don’t know that it’s right. But it’s something I can live with.”

  Yates walked across the distance that had separated them and put out his big hand. “Been a pleasure getting to know you.”

  Cork took the offered hand. “Likewise.”

  Yates nodded toward the Land Rover. “I’ll let you get on with things now. I’m guessing you still have places to go. And me, I need to get back to Camilla.”

  When Yates left, Cork stood alone on the highway, relieved. He called home, told Jenny that Cy’s tour of duty was over, and that the danger was past. He didn’t explain, just said, “I think we’re nearing the end of the road on this one.”

  “Home late?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’ll leave a light on,” she promised.

  CHAPTER 41

  Cork had seen optical illusions created in such a way that, when you looked at the image, at first you saw one thing, but if you stared at it long enough, or from a different angle, you saw another image entirely. After he left Kenny Yates, as he drove back into Aurora, he realized that’s how it was with what had occurred at Trickster’s Point.

  He turned on his cell phone, called ahead to the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department, and made a suggestion to Ed Larson. When he arrived, he found Larson, Sheriff Marsha Dross, and BCA Agent Phil Holter gathered in Dross’s office.

  “Well?” he asked as he headed to the chair they’d left empty for him.


  “You were right,” Larson replied. “The other set of prints on the flyer we took from the John Doe’s car belonged to Jubal Little. How did you know?”

  Cork took off his leather jacket, hung it on the chair back, and sat down. “I realized we were all looking at the man on the ridge as if he and whoever murdered Jubal were connected. When Stephen first suggested that possibility, it seemed natural. The killer and his backup. To have two men up there with no relationship to each other seemed too enormous a coincidence. But coincidence it was. When I understood that, I understood things in a different way, although largely because I knew something no one else did.”

  “And that was?” Holter said, obviously wanting to be able to write off as nonsense whatever it was Cork was going to say.

  “That when Jubal was eighteen, he murdered someone.”

  This clearly hit them all with shocking effect. Their stares went owl-eye huge, and they seemed dumbfounded. So Cork told them what had happened at Trickster’s Point the day Donner Bigby died.

  When Cork finished, Holter asked, “You knew all along Little had killed that kid?”

  “Not when it happened. I bought the story Jubal told me. Years later, he told me the truth. And not long ago, I threatened to use what I knew against him.” He turned to Dross. “You asked me what Jubal and I argued about the morning before he died. That was it. Jubal pretty much demanded to know if I still planned to use Donner Bigby against him. I told him that if he won the election and went ahead with the mining and the casinos, I would. He tried to argue me out of it. I wouldn’t budge. He repeated something he’d said to me once before. My end was my own doing. I didn’t understand then, but it’s obvious to me now. He’d arranged to have me silenced.”

  “You really believe that?” Holter asked.

  “Jubal died thinking I’d shot that arrow into his heart. He recognized my fletching pattern. He thought I’d done it deliberately. I didn’t try to argue with him, what was the point? At the end, he told me, with a grudging kind of respect, that I’d finally bested him. Bested him in what way, I had no idea. Now I get it. He thought that somehow I knew he was planning to kill me, and I simply struck first. It was what he would have done in my place.”