Mercy Falls

by William Kent Krueger

  Maybe everyone needed their heart broken once. Maybe it had been that kind of hurt that helped her appreciate Cork from the beginning. From their very first meeting in Chicago.

  It was spring. She still lived on South Harper Avenue in Hyde Park in the apartment where several months before she’d shared her nights with Ben. She came home from working late in the D’Angelo Law Library to find that her place had been broken into and she’d been robbed of her stereo and television. She called the police. A uniformed patrolman responded. Officer Corcoran O’Connor.

  He filled out an incident report, then he spent a while looking over her apartment inside and out. Finally he sat down with her.

  “I’ve got to be honest with you. There’s very little chance of recovering your stolen property. No serial numbers, almost impossible to trace. But I’d like to make some recommendations for the future. First of all, I’d get a better lock on your front door.”

  “He didn’t come in the front door. He came through the window.”

  “I understand. But almost anybody could break in through the front door if they were so inclined, so I’d get a good dead bolt. Now, about the windows. I think you should put bars on them.”

  “I don’t relish the idea of living in a jail,” she said.

  “Ever been in jail?”

  “No.”

  “It won’t feel like a jail, I promise. I understand you object to having to barricade yourself, but that’s the reality of your situation. In a way, you’re lucky. This time, they only stole from you. Next time, they might be after something different.”

  “As in rape.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I don’t know that I can afford bars on the windows,” she said.

  “You don’t need them on all your windows. I’ve checked around back. You’re on the second floor, so you’re fine there. But in front, with the porch and that elm, you’re vulnerable. Really, your landlord ought to be the one who puts them on. If you get flack from him, I know where you can get them at a reasonable price.” He cleared his throat. “And I’d be glad to install them.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Please stop calling me ma’am. And why would you do that?”

  “I know you volunteer your time helping people who can’t afford a lawyer. I’ve seen you in the storefront office on Calumet.”

  “Yes.”

  “You do it, I’d guess, because you believe it’s the right thing to do. Considering your situation here, I just think it’s the right thing to do.”

  She studied him. He looked a little older than she, maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven. His hair was red-brown, shorter than she preferred on a man, but that was probably a dictate of the job. He wasn’t handsome, not like Ben Jacoby or many of the others she’d been with, but there was a sincerity in his face, in his words, in the sound of his voice, that was attractive.

  “That’s it?” she asked with a sharp edge of skepticism. “You’d do that without expecting something in return?”

  He capped his pen and scratched his nose with it. “You cook?”

  Halfway through the ninety minutes that Marty Goldman had allotted for the tour, Phillip took them out to a long, grassy point on which nothing had been built. Lake Michigan lay to the east, a stretch of blue that looked as enormous as an ocean. Several miles south, clear in the crisp air of late morning, rose the Chicago skyline, as beautiful as any city Jo had ever seen.

  Jenny stared at it for a long time. “Now I know what Dorothy felt like when she saw Oz.”

  “This is where I come when I need to get away,” Phillip said.

  “You like it here?” Jenny asked.

  “It’s my favorite spot.”

  “No, I mean do you like Northwestern?”

  There was a breeze off the lake with a slight chill to it. Jenny hugged herself, and Phillip, without making anything of it, moved to block the wind.

  “I wanted to go to school in Boulder,” he said. “I love to ski.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “This was my father’s preference.”

  “That’s the only reason? I’d never go somewhere just because my father wanted me to.”

  “Lucky you,” he said coldly, and turned back toward campus. “We should be going.”

  They stopped at the student union. Jo ordered a latte. Phillip did the same. Jenny didn’t usually drink coffee, but she ordered a latte as well. They sat at a table for a few minutes.

  “What’s your major?” Jenny asked.

  “Pre-law.”

  “You want to be a lawyer?”

  “My father wants me to be a lawyer.”

  “What do you want to be?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Because you’re going to be a lawyer like your father wants.”

  “He pays the bills.”

  “I don’t know,” Jenny said. “To me, that sounds like a recipe for an unhappy life.”

  “You’re a lawyer,” Phillip said to Jo. “Do you like it?”

  She didn’t remember telling him that she was an attorney, but maybe it had come up in his conversation with Jenny and she’d just missed it.

  “Yes, I do,” she replied.

  “I’ve never known a happy lawyer,” he said. “We should be getting back.”

  At the door to the admissions office, he stopped. “This is as far as I go. I have a class to get to.”

  “Thank you, Phillip,” Jenny said. “We really appreciate your time.” She shook his hand.

  “Look,” he said, “I apologize if I seemed rude. I’m a little stressed these days.”

  “You were great,” Jenny said.

  “Yeah, well, good luck. If Northwestern is really what you want, I hope you get it. Nice to meet you,” he said to Jo.

  Inside, Marty Goldman’s secretary asked them to wait a few minutes. Mr. Goldman was still with someone.

  “How did you like the campus?” she asked. She was a small black woman who spoke with a slight Jamaican accent.

  “It’s beautiful,” Jenny said.

  “Isn’t it? And your guide?”

  “He was fine.”

  “Good. He’s not one of our usual group. He was a special request, as I understand it. His father, I believe. You must be friends of the family.”

  “And what family would that be?” Jo asked.

  “Why, the Jacobys, of course.”

  31

  CORK PASSED MUCH of the morning going over the record of the calls made to and from Eddie Jacoby’s cell phone in the days before his death, and also the record of his hotel phone. Jacoby spent a lot of time with a receiver pressed to his ear. It fit the image Cork had of the man, the kind who drove his SUV with one hand and constantly worked his cell phone with the other.

  In the afternoon, he attacked the paperwork that had piled up. The budget was a huge concern. The investigations, which required an uncomfortable amount of overtime, were eating up officer hours and resources. He knew he was going to have to go to the Board of Commissioners, explain the deficit that was developing, and ask for additional money. Christ, he’d always hated that part of the job.

  Shortly after the three o’clock shift change, Ed Larson came into his office. Like everyone these days, he looked tired. Behind his wire-rims, his eyes rode puffy bags of skin and seemed to be sinking gradually deeper into his face. He still dressed neatly and held himself erect.

  “Got a minute?” he asked.

  Cork looked at his watch. “Not much more than that. I have a session with Faith Gray this afternoon. I’ve already missed one appointment. She’s threatened that if I miss another, she’ll require a temporary suspension. The regs, you know.”

  “I was just wondering if you’ve had a chance to look over Jacoby’s phone records.”

  “Yeah.” Cork picked up the document. “Several interesting items.”

  “I thought so, too. Particularly that call from the pay phone at the North Star Bar on th
e night he was murdered.”

  “You’re thinking Lizzie?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  Cork arched his spine and worked his fists into the tight muscles in his lower back. He wouldn’t have minded another session with Dina and her magic feet. “We need to be careful,” he said, grimacing. “We know Jacoby visited the North Star, but we don’t have anything that connects him solidly to the girl.”

  “She was certainly looking for him.”

  “We don’t know that she found him.”

  “The bruises.”

  “Fineday says she fell.”

  “And he went charging out of the bar after she came home from that ‘fall.’ I’m betting he wasn’t headed to a movie. It had to do with Jacoby. We both know that.”

  “We can speculate, but we don’t really know.” Cork settled back with a sigh. “They’re afraid of something, it’s clear. I’d love to know what she was running from when she ran to Stone.”

  “From her father?”

  “Maybe. But why? He’s a hard man, sure, but he’d never lay a finger on her.”

  From beyond Cork’s door came the squawk of the radio in Dispatch and Patsy’s voice responding.

  “Another thing about these phone records,” Cork said. “Not a single call to his wife or from her.”

  “So?”

  “If you were gone from Alice for a week, wouldn’t you call?”

  “Sure.”

  “So why didn’t Jacoby? And why didn’t she call him? I’m just wondering if we ought to look at that marriage. It’s an old adage but a good one that murder begins at home.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out.” Larson adjusted his glasses and tapped the phone records in his hand. “He may not have talked to his wife, but Jacoby sure talked to a lot of other people. His office in Elmhurst. New York. Las Vegas. And where exactly is Kenosha, Wisconsin?”

  “South of Milwaukee, on Lake Michigan. May be a casino there.”

  “Makes sense,” Larson said. “He also made a lot of calls to members of the Reservation Business Committee. Have you had a chance to talk to them?”

  “Nobody at length. But I will. I know Lizzie looks good for this right now, but we need to keep checking all the possibilities. Have you been able to get anything on Eddie Jacoby’s background?”

  Larson took a notepad from his pocket. “I spoke with his boss at Starlight, a guy named Clayton. He said Jacoby’d been with them less than a year. I had the sense he wasn’t going to be with them much longer.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He wasn’t representing Starlight well. Securing a contract with the Iron Lake Ojibwe was important for his career with the company.”

  “If he was dealing with Stone, he had to be desperate.”

  “Clayton said he hired him as a favor to Jacoby’s brother. I asked about his employment record. He worked a string of jobs before Starlight, none very long.”

  “Dina told me he was into moviemaking for a while. Porn.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. Was he still into it when he was murdered?”

  Cork shook his head. “Lost all his money, apparently.”

  “I spoke at length with his family before they left. Jacoby was married, two kids. Lived in Lake Forest not far from his father. He wasn’t an easy son or sibling, I gather.”

  “Anything specific?”

  “According to them, only minor scrapes with the law, nothing serious.”

  “You ask them about substance abuse?”

  “Considering what we found in the glove box of his SUV, it was one of the first questions I asked. They claimed it was a surprise to them.”

  “A surprise? I doubt he was just experimenting.”

  “So did I. I checked for any criminal record. Nothing in Illinois. I called the Lake Forest police. They gave me nothing. But I can’t help thinking that for a guy with an appetite for drugs and beating up prostitutes, he seems to have a suspiciously clean record.”

  “Maybe the Jacoby money has something to do with that. And maybe we need to check on him through a less official channel. I have a friend, a guy named Boomer Grabowski. We worked out of the same division when we were cops in Chicago. Boomer’s a private investigator now, a good one. I think I ought to give him a call, see what he can dig up on Eddie Jacoby. Hell, on all the Jacobys. It’ll cost us, but the budget’s already shot.”

  “If you think it’ll help. And you’re the one who has to beg the Board of Commissioners for more money.”

  There was a knock at the open door. It was Patsy.

  “Call for Ed.”

  “Put it through in here,” Larson said.

  A moment later, Cork’s phone rang.

  “Captain Larson,” Ed said. He listened. “I see.” He glanced at Cork, and something flared in his usual cool blue eyes. He took a pen from the desktop and jotted a couple of notes on the back of the top sheet of Jacoby’s phone record. “You’re certain?” He nodded at the answer. “I appreciate it. Thank you very much.” He hung up.

  “What is it?” Cork said.

  “BCA’s been helping us run the prints we took from the inside of Jacoby’s SUV. Got an interesting match on one of them.”

  “No kidding. Who?”

  “Lizzie Fineday.”

  They rendezvoused at the opening to the narrow dirt road off County 17 that led to Stone’s cabin. Cork and Larson had come in the same vehicle, the Pathfinder. Morgan and Pender had been patrolling the eastern roads of Tamarack County and had been dispatched to accompany. Dina Willner was there, too.

  “Stone’s going to see us coming a long way off. That’s all right. We have a suspect, and so a lawful reason to be here. He shouldn’t give us any resistance,” Cork said. “If he does, we take him down right away, cuff him, book him for interfering with the execution of a lawful order. Morgan, Pender, that’ll be your responsibility. Ed and I will conduct the search and apprehension of Lizzie Fineday. And, Dina, you’re here by invitation, and I’d like you to stay well back.” He lifted the back door of the Pathfinder and brought out a dark blue Kevlar vest with SHERIFF’S DEPT. printed in white letters across the back. He tossed it to her. “Wear this.”

  She caught it and put it on.

  “Everybody else armored up? Then let’s roll,” he said.

  It was late afternoon, the air still, the woods quiet. They drove through a thick stand of aspen that smelled of leaves fallen, dried, crumbling to dust. Breaking from the trees, they followed the shoreline of the narrow lake. Sun glinted off the water in piercing arrows of light. At the far end, wood smoke rose from Stone’s cabin, straight and white as a feather. Behind it, like a prison wall, stood the gray ridge. Cork led the procession, his window down. There was no way to move quickly enough to surprise Stone. Cork couldn’t help thinking of the raid on the farmhouse in Carlton County, how badly things had ended. You never knew. That was the hell of it: even with routine procedures, things could go wrong. You tried to be careful, to consider all the options, choose the best approach, but so much was out of your hands, beyond your control. In the end, you made your choice and went in hoping. Praying never hurt, either.

  “Movement in front of the cabin,” Larson said. He lifted a pair of Leitz binoculars to his eyes. “Stone.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Waving, it looks like.”

  “At who?”

  “Nobody I can see. Toward the ridge. Now he’s stopped. He’s looking this way. Son of a gun. He’s waving at us.”

  “Us?”

  “Looks that way. Wait.”

  They kept moving, getting closer. Larson finally lowered the field glasses and laughed quietly.

  “What?” Cork said.

  “He’s not waving. He’s casting. He’s got a fly rod in his hand.”

  They rounded the north end of the lake and climbed a rise to the cabin. Stone stood in front of his place, fifteen yards from the chopping block. He held the rod in his right hand and, with a deft s
nap of his wrist, flicked the line out again and again toward the chopping block. At his feet lay a zippered canvas bag long enough and wide enough to accommodate several rods fitted with reels. He paid no attention to the approaching vehicles.

  Cork pulled up behind Stone’s Land Rover, which was parked in the shade of a paper birch. He got out and Larson did, too. The deputies halted farther back and exited their cruisers. Dina stayed in her Accord as Cork had asked.

  “Afternoon, Byron,” Cork said.

  “Sheriff.” Stone watched the thread of fishing line sail out. The end touched almost dead center on top of the chopping block. He wore olive jeans, a long-sleeved wool shirt also green but of a lighter shade, with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his powerful muscles. His black hair was tied back with a folded bandanna of gold and green. “Looks like D-day. What’s with all the troops?”

  “We’re here for Lizzie.”

  “Too late. She’s already gone.”

  “Where?”

  “Search me. I went into Allouette after lunch. When I came back, she was gone.”

  “Did someone come to get her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  “Same reason she came, I suppose. It suited her.”

  Stone whipped his arm back and the line arced through the air, catching the sunlight along its whole length so that for an instant it appeared to glow as if electric.

  “Byron, I have an order authorizing me to pick up and detain Elizabeth Fineday for questioning in connection with the murder of Edward Jacoby. That order authorizes me to search your property for Lizzie.”

  “Be my guest. Mind if I keep working on my technique?”

  “Morgan, Pender,” Cork said. “Keep him company while Captain Larson and I have a look inside.”

  “Sure thing, Sheriff,” Morgan replied.

  Cork saw that Dina had left her car and was making her way to the back of the deputies’ cruisers, keeping them between herself and any threat Stone might pose. He wondered what she was up to.

  He held the screen door open for Larson, who went into the cabin first. Cork had been inside twice before, once with ATF and a couple years later with DEA. The place looked as spotless now as it had on the other two occasions. Once the casino allotments began to be distributed to the enrolled members of the band, some Iron Lake Ojibwe had gone a little crazy, packing their homes to the rafters with all manner of junk, feeding appetites generated by the sudden wealth. Stone continued to live simply. The Land Rover outside was his only obvious extravagance.