Purgatory Ridge

by William Kent Krueger

  “We’re trying to find some folks that may be lost,” the deputy said.

  “Well, you’re looking in the wrong place. Only people out this way are me ‘n’ that big log home over there. We all keep pretty much to ourselves, ‘n’ we like it that way. Tha’s why we live out here.” He looked at them pointedly, to let them know his privacy had been invaded enough.

  “I thought you gave up the drinking, John,” the deputy said. She said it as if it concerned her.

  “I gave up drinking lotsa times. What the hell business is it of yours anyway?”

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. LePere,” the man in the suit said.

  They left.

  He’d seen lights the rest of the night. Around the big house. Down at the shoreline. In the morning before he left for work, he heard dogs in the woods between his place and Lindstrom’s. He hadn’t slept at all despite the bit of whiskey he’d drunk in order to make a good show. He hadn’t taken his morning swim. He’d showered, shaved, dressed for his shift at the casino and gone to work as usual.

  But he felt watched. Bridger had predicted that, too. Told him not to let it get to him. It was natural. As if Bridger did this sort of thing all the time.

  John Sailor LePere went about his routine as naturally as possible, complaining of a terrible hangover every chance he got. Although it was Sunday morning, the casino was still doing a brisk business. LePere wasn’t a particularly religious man, but there seemed something unsettling about a world in which so many people gambled on a day that was supposed to be kept holy. A commandment was being shattered, yet there seemed no punishment. God, John LePere had decided long ago, was asleep at the wheel. For a brief moment, he thought about his share of the ransom money—one million dollars. It was not money he would gamble away. It was to purchase justice, another thing that God, in his carelessness, had overlooked.

  28

  SHE HAD A SENSE OF MORNING. Of light. Of air moving as day pushed out the night. She heard birds, too, and that was a dead giveaway of dawn.

  She was past aching. Or she hurt so much and in so many places now that she couldn’t separate what hurt from what didn’t. Her back, she was certain, had begun to fester from the splinters wedged under skin when her captor had forced her down the square post.

  All night, she’d heard the van come and go. She’d decided there was no one watching when the man who’d brought them was gone. Whenever the van drove away, she’d felt along the ragged post, hoping to find a way to nick an edge of the tape, to begin the work of freeing herself.

  She’d heard the others moving, shifting, making noises of discomfort. However, Stevie hadn’t made a sound at all, and that worried her.

  Fear had passed. What moved in to replace it was anger, a hatred that festered like the splinters on her back. The bastards. She wanted to get her hands free, to fill them with something big and deadly to smash the heads of the men who would hurt her child. She couldn’t fathom why God would let this happen.

  A little moan came from somewhere in front of her and to her right. Was it Stevie? She tried to speak, to offer her son some comfort, but words couldn’t pass her taped lips, and the sound came out an unintelligible mumble, frightening even to her. God, she wanted to speak to him, and to have him reply, just to know that he was all right. She thought of the night before, when she’d put him to sleep with a song. How wonderful and simple that had been.

  Jo began to hum, thinking the words in her head.

  Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John, Brother John? Morning bells are ringing. Morning bells are ringing. Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.

  She stopped, hoping for a response that didn’t come. Oh, God, please let him answer. Let his little heart be strong.

  She tried again. Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John, Brother John?

  Now she heard the resonance of another voice, but it wasn’t Stevie’s. It was Grace, who hummed with Jo, Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing. Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.

  The two women paused. Once again, only a terrible, silent waiting filled the cabin.

  Then she heard a smaller voice humming. Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John, Brother John?

  It was Scott. Grace joined him, and Jo’s voice became a part of the music, too.

  Morning bells are ringing. Morning bells are ringing. Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong.

  To hum was liberating, to fill the cabin with the nearest thing to talk they could achieve. They went through the round once again, Jo praying that she would hear Stevie. But at the end, he was still silent. A moment passed. Then a high little hum, like an echo of the round’s final line, reached her—Ding, dang, dong. Ding, dang, dong—and her heart leaped. Stevie was with her, and he knew she was with him. It was so small a triumph, yet she found herself overwhelmed and weeping. She began the round again, and four voices joined in a sound Jo believed the angels would have envied.

  The birds had been singing for a couple of hours before the van returned again. Jo could hear it a long way off, the undercarriage rattling as it bounced over what she still assumed was an old logging road. Her stomach tightened. The man was so vile. The van stopped; a door opened and closed; the morning fell quiet. For two minutes there was not another sound. Then he was next to her. He spoke no words, just warmed her cheek with his foul breathing. She’d have spit at him if her mouth hadn’t been taped. He made a sound, a tiny snort as if he’d decided something. And his breath was no longer there.

  “Oh, ho. What’s this? Looks like somebody didn’t listen when I talked. Hmmm. And you didn’t even get very far. A lot of work for very little. And for what it will cost you.”

  Jo heard a muffled cry. Grace. No, she wanted to scream, but the tape constrained her to a pitiful wail. She struggled against the ropes that bound her to the post. It was a vain effort, but Christ, she couldn’t just listen. What was he doing? Oh God, she didn’t want to think.

  Above the sound of Grace’s crying another sound slowly rose. The bastard must have heard it, too, because he stopped his punishment and seemed to be listening. It was an engine. Above them. In the sky. The man moved quickly away and outside.

  The plane sounded low and slow as if searching.

  Oh, please find us.

  It was directly overhead now. Jo wondered if the cabin was hidden among trees, or was it in a clearing?

  Let us be in a clearing, please, God.

  The engine seemed to hesitate. Jo held her breath. The plane kept moving, flying north, and she knew then that it hadn’t been looking for them, that it was simply passing overhead, probably on its way to help fight one of the fires still burning in the Boundary Waters. She slumped back, feeling lost and abandoned.

  He was among them again. She could smell him, an odor of sweat and whiskey and tobacco. “You and me have some unfinished business, Grace. But it will have to wait.” Jo heard him leave; then his voice came back to them from outside the cabin. “Just relax. Enjoy the hospitality.” And he laughed all the way to his van.

  The air felt dead still after he’d gone. Even the birds seemed to have fallen silent. The only sound Jo could hear was the quiet weeping of Grace Fitzgerald.

  29

  THE AFTERNOON WAS SWELTERING. The air conditioner in the Bronco had broken. Cork figured the condenser was probably shot. He drove toward Grace Cove with the ninety-plus heat blasting at him through the open windows. Where the road to the cove split from the county highway, Deputy Gil Singer had been stationed to bar access to all but law enforcement. He wasn’t especially busy, and in Cork’s thinking that was good. The media hadn’t got hold of the story yet. But they would. Somehow, they always did. The longer they stayed out of it, Cork thought, the better.

  Gil Singer waved him to a stop, but only to say, “Sorry about Jo and your boy. We’ll get the bastard; don’t worry.”

  Cork knew the deputy was just blowing smoke. Schanno had said he’d call when, and if, he had anything more
to offer, and Schanno hadn’t called. Still, Cork appreciated the deputy’s sentiment. Even a little false hope seemed better than none.

  Lindstrom’s big log home was at the center of an enormous amount of energy. In addition to the cars from the sheriff’s department, the state patrol, the BCA, and the FBI, there was a Jimmy that belonged to the U.S. Border Patrol. A good number of uniforms were combing the shoreline of the lake, and others moved through the woods. A float plane—a Forest Service De Haviland Beaver—sat on the water of the cove. Seeing all this, Cork was amazed the media was still in the dark.

  Inside Lindstrom’s place, the air conditioning seemed to have been cranked to the max. Lindstrom was nowhere to be seen. A tall man in a starched white shirt and tie was talking on a cell phone. At one point, he said, “No, Governor, that won’t be necessary.” Schanno, Agent Earl, Lucky Knudsen, Special Agent Margaret Kay, and a couple of FBI agents whose names Cork didn’t remember stood around the large mahogany dining-room table looking at a map spread between them. They were so intent they didn’t notice Cork.

  A toilet flushed down a hallway. A moment later, Lindstrom stepped into the living room. He walked slowly, slumped a bit, looking exhausted. He spotted Cork and gave him a grim nod.

  “Did you talk with the Fitzgerald Shipping people?” Cork asked.

  “I talked.”

  “And?”

  At the table, the discussion stopped as Schanno and the others turned to listen to the men whose families were at the heart of the trouble.

  “They’re considering.”

  “Considering?” Anger cut along Cork’s nerves, made his muscles tense.

  “Very sympathetic, of course,” Lindstrom said bitterly. “But there’s no mechanism that allows for the kind of cash outlay we need. I tried Len Notto at Aurora First National and Jon Lynott at First Fidelity. They’re somewhere in the Boundary Waters. Together. Some kind of annual thing they do. I’ve got a call in to a friend of mine at Chicago City Bank. I even tried an old school buddy whose family’s loaded with railroad money. The problem is it’s Sunday. Nobody’s reachable. If I could just get back to this bastard and convince him nothing can be done until tomorrow.” He closed his eyes a moment, then he sat down in a big leather chair and leaned forward in a defeated way. “I don’t know what else to do now.”

  Cork moved toward the men at the table. He saw that the map on the polished mahogany was of Tamarack County, the huge blue of Iron Lake almost dead center. “What do you have?” he asked Schanno. “Anything?”

  “Not much.” Schanno sounded truly sorry. “After the dogs came up blank this morning, we tried the border patrol. Those guys can track a ghost across concrete. They found nothing. We’re still checking the woods, but I’m pretty sure we won’t find anything. The good part of that is that everything indicates this Eco-Warrior took them all and he kept them all.”

  Cork understood the implication. His wife and son were alive, not left dead somewhere, discarded like excess baggage. He appreciated it, the real hope it offered.

  Agent Kay said, “We’re fairly certain they were taken by boat. That probably means Eco-Warrior approached on water and took them the same way. We’ve got officers searching the shoreline for any evidence he might have left behind.”

  “The footprints Agent Owen lifted from the kitchen floor. Anything there?” Cork asked.

  “A Vibram sole. Only about a million of those in Minnesota.”

  “What about the call from the public phone outside Harland Liquors?”

  Kay shook her head. “It was too early for any witnesses to be around. We took fingerprints, but I doubt they’ll give us anything.”

  “How about the notes he’s left?” Cork looked at Agent Earl of the BCA. The man seemed uncomfortable.

  There was quiet around the table. Then Lindstrom said from the other room, “Jesus, just tell him.”

  Earl put his hands on the polished mahogany and leaned on them heavily. “The note that lured Mr. Lindstrom to the marina. Do you remember what it said?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “It began, ‘We are all dead men.’ When the crime lab ran it through the computer, they got a hit.”

  “A hit?”

  “It matches text. The Bible. Exodus. Chapter twelve, verse thirty-three. The lament of the Egyptians after their firstborn are killed. This may be an indication that kidnapping the boy was what Eco-Warrior had in mind from the very beginning.” He gave a brief, apologetic shrug. “If only we’d known a little sooner.”

  “Why would he try to kill Karl if he intended to kidnap his family for ransom?” Cork asked.

  “The bomb went off before Mr. Lindstrom was in any real danger. We believe it was remotely detonated, to make us think he was the target.”

  “Because?”

  Schanno fielded that one. “To focus all of our attention on Karl last night when he spoke at the Quetico. Left damn little law enforcement around to interfere with the plans out here. It appears he played us like trout on a line, Cork. Money was probably what he was after all along.”

  “At least it appears that way at the moment,” Kay added.

  Cork moved closer to the map. “Taken by boat. Any idea where?”

  “Iron Lake’s a big body of water,” Special Agent Kay said.

  “What do you think?” Cork asked Schanno.

  “If I were Eco-Warrior and wanted to get them off the lake without being seen, I’d take them up north, maybe all the way to North Arm. A lot of sheltered coves there where they could be unloaded without anyone seeing.”

  “A long way to go in the dark,” Cork said.

  “There’s that,” Schanno agreed.

  Cork looked to Agent Earl. “Any guesses?”

  “Maybe a private cabin on the lake. With its own dock.”

  “Lots of those,” Cork said.

  “Exactly.”

  “How about you?” he asked Kay.

  “I don’t think they’ve gone far. Too many people to move without being seen.”

  “There are lots of back roads up here. You can drive miles without seeing a living soul,” Cork told her. He looked again at the map. “Have you talked to John LePere?”

  “Last night,” Earl said. “He was drunk. Claimed he didn’t see anything.”

  “Drunk?”

  “I gathered that’s not unusual.”

  “I thought he’d given up the booze,” Cork said. “You check his place?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just thinking, if Karl’s family was EcoWarrior’s target all along, he probably had this house under surveillance for a while. LePere’s place would be good for that.”

  “We checked all we could without a warrant,” Earl said.

  “Fuck the warrant,” Cork snapped. “The lives of my wife and my son are at stake here. And his.” He drilled a finger through the cool air at Lindstrom.

  “Cork.” Schanno spoke evenly. “You know we can’t just waltz in wherever we want, much as we’d like to sometimes.”

  “Then get a warrant.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” Schanno promised.

  Cork glared at the map. “What about the old landing on the rez?”

  “Where’s that?” Kay asked.

  “Here.” Cork put his finger on the map. “About two miles north, just inside the rez. It doesn’t show on recent maps, like this one. The Iron Lake Ojibwe were the only ones who ever used it, but nobody goes there anymore since they built the new docks and landing in Alouette. A boat could still be put in there, and be taken out, and probably nobody around to see it.”

  “Get someone on it,” Kay said to Schanno.

  “I was just going to do that,” Schanno said. Irritation grated his voice.

  Cork stood a moment not knowing exactly what to do next, what to do with his anger, his frustration. He saw that Lindstrom had settled back in the big chair and closed his eyes again. Cork wondered if he’d slept at all.

  “What if we can’t get the ransom
money?” he asked the men at the table quietly.

  “It’s like I’ve already said, O’Connor,” Kay replied. “Paying the ransom is a guarantee of nothing.”

  “And if we give them nothing,” Cork shot back, “what does that guarantee?”

  Kay said, “We’re doing our best.”

  Cork left the table. Schanno, who’d gone to send an officer up to the old landing, met Cork halfway across the living room. “Where are you going?”

  “Home, I guess.”

  “I’ll keep you posted,” Schanno promised.

  “Thanks.” Cork looked at Lindstrom and saw the deep despair on his face. It was like looking into a mirror, and he didn’t need to say a word.

  Heading up the road away from Grace Cove, Cork had to swerve quickly to avoid an old pickup with a camper shell that swung fast around a blind curve and almost into his path. He caught a glimpse of the driver and he recognized John LePere. In the rearview mirror, he watched the pickup turn off the paved road and onto the rutted dirt and gravel that led to the only other cabin on the cove. He considered LePere, a man he’d often dealt with when he was sheriff. Like Cork, LePere was of mixed heritage. Although LePere kept to himself and seemed to have no friends in Aurora, Cork knew some of the man’s history. He’d survived the sinking of an ore carrier many years before. The only survivor, Cork believed. And hadn’t his brother been among the men lost in that tragedy? No wonder he drank. He made his home on Iron Lake now, but Cork thought he still had a place on Lake Superior, somewhere around Purgatory Ridge.

  He wondered how thoroughly LePere had been questioned. Although the man had seen nothing the night of the kidnapping, perhaps he’d seen something before, someone on the cove who didn’t belong there, someone watching the big house.

  Let it go, Cork told himself. It was no good second-guessing. There was nothing but anguish in doubting the work of all those officers gathered around Lindstrom’s table.

  But what if they’d missed something? In every investigation, there was some error.

  Cork whipped a U-turn and followed where the pickup had gone.