Not taking her eyes off him, she seeks a foothold farther down, somewhere out of his reach, but she cannot feel her toes. Finally, she risks a glance below her. In that instant, Scorpio’s hand locks around her wrist.
“Got you.”
He’s strong, his grip powerful. He drags her kicking up the face of the rock. She struggles, screams as he wraps his arms around her. The dog dances back from the edge, barking crazily. Scorpio’s breath smells of tobacco and coffee, but there’s another smell coming off him, familiar and revolting. The musk odor of his sex.
“Oh, little darling,” he croons, “am I going to make you pay.”
She puts all her desperation, all her remaining strength, into one last effort, a violent twist that breaks her loose, sends her tumbling backward over the cliff.
The world spins. First there is blue sky, then white water, then blue sky again. She closes her eyes and spreads her arms. Suddenly she isn’t falling but flying. The wind streams across her skin. Her held breath fills her like a smooth balloon. She is weightless.
For one glorious moment in her short, unhappy life, she is absolutely free.
• • •
Meloux would finish gently, pointing out, perhaps, that the fall of the smallest robin is known to the spirits of the earth, that no death goes unnoticed or unmourned, that the river has simply been waiting, and like a mother she has opened wide her arms.
Published 2007
* * *
At Henry Meloux’s request, Cork O’Connor embarks on a search for the son the old man has never seen. The immediate result is an attempt on Henry’s life. As Cork and the ancient Mide continue the search, the story of Henry’s remarkable life is revealed. This is a novel about the sacrifices we make in the name of love and is my absolute favorite in the series.
* * *
CHARACTERS INTRODUCED
SEAN PFLUGLEMAN: Jenny O’Connor’s boyfriend, a college student and aspiring poet.
TRIXIE POLLARD: A woman in her sixties, a former investigator for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who likes her Canadian ale.
HENRY (HANK) WELLINGTON: Henry Meloux’s incredibly wealthy and very reclusive long-lost son.
AN EXCERPT FROM THUNDER BAY
The promise, as I remember it, happened this way.
A warm August morning, early. Wally Schanno’s already waiting at the landing. His truck’s parked in the lot, his boat’s in the water. He’s drinking coffee from a red thermos big as a fireplug.
Iron Lake is glass. East, it mirrors the peach-colored dawn. West, it still reflects the hard bruise of night. Tall pines, dark in the early morning light, make a black ragged frame around the water.
The dock’s old, weathered, the wood gone fuzzy, flaking gray. The boards sag under my weight, groan a little.
“Coffee?” Schanno offers.
I shake my head, toss my gear into his boat. “Let’s fish.”
We’re far north of Aurora, Minnesota. Among the trees on the shoreline, an occasional light glimmers from one of the cabins hidden there. Schanno motors slowly toward a spot off a rocky point where the bottom falls away quickly. Cuts the engine. Sorts through his tackle box. Pulls out a pearl white minnow flash, a decent clear-water lure for walleye. Clips it on his line. Casts.
Me, I choose a smoky Twister Tail and add a little fish scent. Half a minute after Schanno’s, my lure hits the water.
August isn’t the best time to fish. For one thing, the bugs are awful. Also, the water near the surface is often too warm. The big fish—walleye and bass—dive deep, seeking cooler currents. Unless you use sonar, they can be impossible to locate. There are shallows near a half-submerged log off to the north where something smaller—perch or crappies—might be feeding. But I’ve already guessed that fishing isn’t what’s on Schanno’s mind.
The afternoon before, he’d come to Sam’s Place, the burger joint I own on Iron Lake. He’d leaned in the window and asked for a chocolate shake. I couldn’t remember the last time Schanno had actually ordered something from me. He stood with the big Sweetheart cup in his hand, not sipping from the straw, not saying anything, but not leaving either. His wife, Arletta, had died a few months before. A victim of Alzheimer’s, she’d succumbed to a massive stroke. She’d been a fine woman, a teacher. Both my daughters, Jenny and Anne, had passed through her third-grade classroom years before. Loved her. Everybody did. Schanno’s children had moved far away, to Bethesda, Maryland, and Seattle, Washington. Arletta’s death left Wally alone in the house he’d shared with her for over forty years. He’d begun to hang around Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler for hours, drinking coffee, talking with the regulars, other men who’d lost wives, jobs, direction. He walked the streets of town and stood staring a long time at window displays. He was well into his sixties, a big man—shoes specially made from the Red Wing factory—with a strong build, hands like an orangutan. A couple of years earlier, because of Arletta’s illness, he’d retired as sheriff of Tamarack County, which was a job I’d held twice myself. Some men, idle time suits them. Others, it’s a death sentence. Wally Schanno looked like a man condemned.
When he suggested we go fishing in the morning, I’d said sure.
Now we’re alone on the lake—me, Schanno, and a couple of loons fifty yards to our right diving for breakfast. The sun creeps above the trees. Suddenly everything has color. We breathe in the scent of evergreen and clean water and the faint fish odor coming from the bottom of Schanno’s boat. Half an hour and we haven’t said a word. The only sounds are the sizzle of line as we cast, the plop of the lures hitting water, and the occasional cry of the loons.
I’m happy to be there on that August morning. Happy to be fishing, although I hold no hope of catching anything. Happy to be sharing the boat and the moment with a man like Schanno.
“Heard you got yourself a PI license,” Schanno says.
I wind my reel smoothly, jerking the rod back occasionally to make the lure dart in the water like a little fish. There aren’t any walleyes to fool, but it’s what you do when you’re fishing.
“Yep,” I reply.
“Gonna hang out a shingle or something?”
The line as I draw it in leaves the smallest of wakes on the glassy surface, dark wrinkles crawling across the reflected sky. “I haven’t decided.”
“Figure there’s enough business to support a PI here?”
He asks this without looking at me, pretending to watch his line.
“Guess I’ll find out,” I tell him.
“Not happy running Sam’s Place?”
“I like it fine. But I’m closed all winter. Need something to keep me occupied and out of mischief.”
“What’s Jo think?” Talking about my wife.
“So long as I don’t put on a badge again, she’s happy.”
Schanno says, “I feel like I’m dying, Cork.”
“Are you sick?”
“No, no.” He’s quick to wave off my concern. “I’m bored. Bored to death. I’m too old for law enforcement, too young for a rocking chair.”
“They’re always hiring security at the casino.”
Shakes his head. “Sit-on-your-ass kind of job. Not for me.”
“What exactly are you asking, Wally?”
“Just that if something, you know, comes your way that you need help with, something you can’t handle on your own, well, maybe you’ll think about giving me a call.”
“You don’t have a license.”
“I could get one. Or just make me a consultant. Hell, I’ll do it for free.”
The sun’s shooting fire at us across the water. Another boat has appeared half a mile south. The loons take off, flapping north.
“Tell you what, Wally. Anything comes my way I think you could help me with, I promise I’ll let you know.”
He looks satisfied. In fact, he looks damn happy.
We both change lures and make a dozen more casts without a bite. Another boat appears.
“The lake’s getting cro
wded,” I say. “How ’bout we call it and have some breakfast at the Broiler.”
“On me,” Schanno offers, beaming.
We reel in our lines. Head back toward the landing. Feeling pretty good.
Nights when I cannot sleep and the demons of my past come to torment me, the promise I made to Wally Schanno that fine August morning is always among them.
Published 2008
* * *
The murder of the leader of a Native gang pulls Cork into a battle between Ojibwe warriors, young and old, and outside forces bent on establishing a drug trade on the Iron Lake Reservation. For me, this is a rumination on why violence continues in our own culture and in so many others.
* * *
CHARACTERS INTRODUCED
WILL KINGBIRD: A retired military man of Ojibwe heritage, who, before he resettled in Aurora, Minnesota, thought he was through with war forever.
LUCINDA KINGBIRD: Latina wife of Will Kingbird, a woman with a great, embracing heart.
ULY KINGBIRD: Teenage son of Will and Lucinda Kingbird, a youth terribly confused as he confronts his looming manhood.
BUCK REINHARDT: A tree-cutting contractor and one very bitter, very dangerous man.
ELISE REINHARDT: Buck Reinhardt’s disillusioned, alcohol-swilling second wife.
TOM BLESSING: A member of an Ojibwe gang called the Red Boyz.
AN EXCERPT FROM RED KNIFE
The words on the note folded around the check in his wallet read: Here’s $500. A retainer. I need your help. See me today. The note and the money were from Alexander Kingbird, although it was signed Kakaik, which was the name of an Ojibwe war chief. It meant Hawk.
Five hundred dollars was a pretty sound enticement, but Cork O’Connor would have gone for nothing, just to satisfy his curiosity. Although the note didn’t mention Kingbird’s situation, it was easy to read between the lines. In Tamarack County, unless you were stupid or dead you knew that Alexander Kingbird and the Red Boyz were in trouble. How exactly, Cork wondered, did Kingbird think he could help?
Kingbird and his wife, Rayette, lived on the Iron Lake Reservation. Their home was a nice prefab, constructed to look like a log cabin and set back a hundred yards off the road, behind a stand of red pines. A narrow gravel lane cut straight through the trees to the house. As Cork drove up, his headlights swung across a shiny black Silverado parked in front. He knew it belonged to Tom Blessing, Kingbird’s second-in-command. It was Blessing who’d delivered the note that afternoon.
And it was Blessing who opened the door when Cork knocked.
“About time,” Blessing said.
He wasn’t much more than a kid, twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Long black hair falling freely down his back. Tall, lean, tense. He reminded Cork of a sapling that in the old days might have been used for a rabbit snare: delicately balanced, ready to snap.
“The note said today. It’s still today, Tom,” Cork said.
“My name’s Waubishash.”
Each of the Red Boyz, on joining the gang, took the name of an Ojibwe war chief.
“Let him in.” The order was delivered from behind Blessing, from inside the house.
Blessing stepped back and Cork walked in.
Alexander Kingbird stood on the far side of his living room. “Thank you for coming.”
He was twenty-five, by most standards still a young man, but his eyes weren’t young at all. They were as brown as rich earth and, like earth, they were old. He wore his hair in two long braids tied at the end with strips of rawhide, each hung with an owl feather. A white scar ran from the corner of his right eye to the lobe of his ear. Cork had heard it happened in a knife fight while he was a guest of the California penal system.
Kingbird glanced at Blessing. “You can go.”
Blessing shook his head. “Until this is over, you shouldn’t be alone.”
“Are you planning to shoot me, Mr. O’Connor?”
“I hadn’t thought of it, but I may be the only guy in this county who hasn’t.”
Kingbird smiled. “I’ll be fine, Waubishash. Go on.”
Blessing hesitated. Maybe he was working on an argument; if so, he couldn’t quite put it together. He finally nodded, turned, and left. A minute later, Cork heard the Silverado’s big engine turn over, followed by the sound of the tires on gravel. Everything got quiet then, except for a baby cooing in a back room and the low, loving murmur of a woman in response.
“Mind taking your shoes off?” Kingbird said. “New carpet and Rayette’s kind of particular about keeping it clean.”
“No problem.” Cork slipped his Salomons off and set them beside a pair of Red Wing boots and a pair of women’s Skechers, which were on a mat next to the door.
“Sit down,” Kingbird said.
Cork took a comfortable-looking easy chair upholstered in dark green. Kingbird sat on the sofa.
“You know why you’re here?” he said to Cork.
“Instead of twenty questions, why don’t you just tell me.”
“Buck Reinhardt wants me dead.”
“You blame him?”
“I’m not responsible for his daughter dying.”
“No, but you’re hiding the man who is.”
“And you know this how?”
“Popular speculation. And he’s one of the Red Boyz.”
“I want to talk to Reinhardt.”
“Why?”
Kingbird sat tall. He wore a green T-shirt, military issue it looked like. On his forearm was a tattoo. A bulldog—the Marine Corps devil dog—with USMC below.
“I have a daughter of my own,” he said. His eyes moved a hair to the right, in the direction from which the cooing had come. “I understand how he feels.”
“I don’t think you do. Your daughter is still alive.”
“My daughter will also never use drugs.”
“In that, I wish you luck.”
“Reinhardt and some of his men threatened one of my Red Boyz yesterday. He needs to understand that anything he does—to me or any of the Red Boyz—will be answered in kind. I’ve seen wars, O’Connor. It’s easier to stop them before they get started.”
“Then give him what he wants. Give him the man responsible for his daughter’s death. Give him Lonnie Thunder.”
The suggestion seemed to have no effect on Kingbird. “Will you arrange a meeting?”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re not just another white man. You’ve got some Ojibwe blood in your veins. Also, you used to be sheriff around here and I figure that gives you a certain standing. And—” he held up a card, one of the business cards Cork routinely tacked to bulletin boards around Aurora “—it’s how you earn your living.”
“How do I know, and how can Buck be sure, that you won’t just shoot him as soon as he shows up?”
“Let him name the place and the time. You’ll be there to observe and to maintain the peace.”
“Five hundred dollars isn’t nearly enough to get me to step between blazing guns.”
“I’ll be unarmed. You make sure Reinhardt is, too. And the five hundred dollars is a retainer. When this meeting is done, you’ll have another five hundred.”
Rayette Kingbird strolled into the room carrying her child. Misty had been born six months earlier. When Alexander Kingbird looked at his wife and his daughter, his face softened.
Cork stood up. “Evening, Rayette.”
“Cork.”
“Bedtime for Misty?”
She smiled. She was full-blood Ojibwe. Her life before Kingbird had been hard. Abandoned by her mother and raised by her grandparents, she’d been into every kind of trouble imaginable. When Cork was sheriff of Tamarack County, he’d picked her up a few times, juvenile offenses. She’d skipped childhood through no fault of her own and he’d thought that any youth she might have had had been squeezed out long ago. Then she met Kingbird and married him and things changed. She looked young and she looked happy.
“Past bedtime,” she said. “She wants a kiss fro
m her daddy.”
Rayette held the baby out and Kingbird took his daughter. He nuzzled her neck. She gurgled. He kissed her forehead. She squirmed. “Night, little turtle,” he said. He handed her back to his wife.
Rayette left with the child. Kingbird looked after them a moment, then turned to Cork.
“We’ve named her Misty, but her real name is Tomorrow. Every child’s name is Tomorrow. You, me, Buck Reinhardt, we’re Yesterday. Kristi Reinhardt shouldn’t have died. No child’s life should be cut short of tomorrow.”
“Nice sentiment, Alex, but what are you going to offer Buck? What do I tell him that will make him agree to meet you?”
He ignored the fact that Cork had used his given name, not the one he’d taken as a member of the Red Boyz. He said, “Tell him he will have justice. Tell him I give my word.”
Published 2009
* * *
A week before Thanksgiving, Cork’s wife, Jo, is among those on a charter flight that disappears in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming during a terrible snowstorm. Cork joins the official search and races to locate the downed plane before the bitter winter cold can take its toll. Although he doesn’t realize it, some involved in the search are willing to kill to be certain the aircraft and those aboard it are never found.
* * *
CHARACTERS INTRODUCED
HUGH PARMER: A wealthy Texas businessman whose heart is as big as his bank account.
JON RUDE: A Wyoming rancher, part-time helicopter pilot, full-time family man.
DIANE RUDE: Wife of Jon Rude, of Italian descent, and one great cook.
The World of Cork O'Connor Page 4