Purgatory Ridge

by William Kent Krueger

  Cork didn’t offer her any solace. He walked away and quickly left through the back door. He could smell rain in the air, a wet, dusty scent. He felt the wind that swept in over Grace Cove, and when the lightning flashed, he could see the black, restless water. He hurried across the lawn. As he entered the woods between LePere’s cabin and Lindstrom’s home, he felt the first fat drops hit his face.

  It was raining heavily by the time he’d stumbled out of the woods. The wind had become a powerful force, shoving the drops nearly horizontal. Cork hustled into his Bronco and started the engine. His wet clothes steamed the windshield, and as he wiped the glass clear with his hand, Lindstrom opened the passenger-side door and got in.

  “Let’s go get our families,” the man said.

  Cork shoved the Bronco into first gear, hit the accelerator, and headed it for the north shore of Lake Superior.

  45

  “STEVIE!” Jo yelled toward LePere’s little house. “Turn the light off! He’s coming back!”

  It was only one light, and it shone east, away from where the narrow lane approached the cove. Still, in all that darkness, it seemed to blaze.

  “The light, Stevie. He’ll see the light! Turn it off!” She was shouting so hard it made her throat raw. God, couldn’t he hear her?

  The grumble of the engine and the rattle of the undercarriage were audible. If she shouted anymore, she was afraid Bridger might hear. But she had to risk it. Just as she opened her mouth to scream again, the light died. Jo watched for Stevie’s little body to emerge from the dark of the house. He never came. The van parked in the yard. The door opened. The interior light blinked on. Jo saw Bridger slide out, then reach back. He pulled out what looked like a big canvas mailbag. He glanced her way, and Jo shrank back from the window. Bridger headed toward the house.

  “Oh, Stevie,” she said, quietly and desperately.

  The light in the house came on. Through the window, Jo could see Bridger moving about inside.

  “What’s he doing?” LePere asked.

  “I can’t tell.”

  Grace was beside her. “Can you see Stevie?”

  “No.”

  “Then he’s hiding,” Grace assured her. “Jo, he’s a smart little boy and he’s hiding.”

  The front door opened, and a blade of light from inside slashed across the yard. Bridger stood silhouetted in the doorway. Jo watched as he lifted his arm to check the gun he held in his hand. He cast a long, black shadow before him, and when he stepped forward, the shadow touched the fish house wall.

  “He’s coming,” Jo cried in a whisper.

  “Behind the door,” LePere said. “Everybody behind the door.” He hefted the splintered two-by-four he’d broken earlier trying to wedge apart the bars.

  Jo huddled with Grace and Scott. LePere stood before the door with the board raised, ready to swing. Jo was breathing hard and fast, so loud she was afraid Bridger could hear. Lightning ran across the sky and lit the inside of the fish house with brief, startling flashes. Mixed with the thunder that followed was the crunch of Bridger’s boots on the gravel as he came. There was a deadly quiet as he paused at the door. Jo heard the jingle of keys as he searched for the right one. She held her breath. And a cell phone rang.

  “Yeah?” Bridger said from the other side of the door. “No, I just got here.” He was silent, probably listening. “Look, I told you. It’s all set.”

  Jo felt Grace tense and wrap her arms more tightly around Scott.

  “All right, all right. I’ll check. How long before you’re here?”

  LePere adjusted his stance and his grip on the board.

  “Jesus, relax. Everything will be fine.”

  Bridger was quiet for a while. Jo figured the phone call was finished. She waited for the sound of the lock being released. It didn’t come. Bridger simply walked away. Jo rushed to the window and stood on the crate.

  “He’s gone down to the boat dock,” she reported. “He’s getting on one of the boats.”

  “Where’s your boy?” LePere asked.

  As Jo peered at the house, she saw a small form edge through the front door and slip into the dark away from the porch. A moment later, Stevie was at the fish house.

  “Which key?” he called softly through the door.

  “It’s the only silver one on the ring,” LePere said.

  “It’s hard to see.”

  Jo could hear her little boy’s voice choked with fear. “You’re doing fine, Stevie,” she told him, trying to keep her own voice calm. “Just fine.”

  The lock rattled. The door opened. Jo flung her arms around her son and thought it had never felt so good to hold him.

  “We’ve got to go,” LePere said. “To my truck.”

  Thunder rolled out of the clouds that spilled over the Sawtooth Mountains. The first drops of rain splatted against Jo’s cheek as she ran with the others away from the fish house. A strong wind came with the storm, and as the lightning etched a stark black-and-white image of the cove, Jo saw the water churning. She also saw Bridger on the deck of one of the boats. She prayed he didn’t see them.

  LePere opened the door of his truck. “Damn. He took the key.”

  “Isn’t there an extra somewhere?” Grace asked.

  “In the house. But he may have taken that one, too. Let’s just get out of here.” LePere dug into the glove compartment and brought out a flashlight. “Come on. Up the road.”

  He led the way, Grace and Scott right behind him, Jo and Stevie bringing up the rear. Rain had begun to fall heavily and the wind drove it into their faces. They hurried along the narrow lane that skirted the cove. Jo held Stevie’s hand. Her heart beat wildly, and she dared to let herself feel real hope. They were almost free.

  LePere stopped abruptly.

  “What is it?” Grace called above the wind and rain.

  Jo didn’t have to ask. She’d seen it, too. Another set of headlights winding through the poplars, coming down to the cove from the highway. She remembered Bridger’s phone conversation. Whoever he was expecting had arrived. She leaned to LePere and shouted, “We can hide in the trees until they’ve passed, then go up to the highway and flag someone down.”

  He shook his head, flinging rain from the end of his nose. “No one’s on the road at this hour. And it’s the first place Bridger will look.”

  “Then we hide in the trees until morning.”

  “That’s the second place he’ll look, and there aren’t enough trees to hide us until morning.”

  The headlights frosted the trees at the nearest curve. In only a moment, they would shine fully on the place where Jo and the others stood.

  “This way,” LePere hollered.

  He started through the trees, leading the way toward the dark, hard cliffs of Purgatory Ridge.

  46

  THE STORM MOVED EAST toward Lake Superior, and Cork moved with it, following State Highway 1 as it twisted and curled around the southern end of the Sawtooth Mountains. The whole North Woods was receiving its first significant rainfall in many months. Dust—gathered deep along the shoulders of the road—turned to mud and washed across the pavement in a thin, slippery coating that made the drive treacherous. The wheels drifted around sharp curves as Cork pushed his old Bronco dangerously fast. In the flashes of lightning, he caught glimpses of Lindstrom beside him. Although the man was tight-jawed and held to the dashboard with a desperate grip, he said not a word to Cork about slowing down.

  “You carrying your Colt? The one you had at the marina,” Cork asked.

  In answer, Lindstrom reached to his belt and brought out the firearm. He held it toward the windshield so that Cork could see it without taking his eyes off the road. “What about you?”

  “In the glove compartment,” Cork directed him. “My revolver.”

  Like Lindstrom’s handgun, Cork’s Smith & Wesson .38 police special was something handed down from father to son, something he trusted.

  “I keep the cartridges separate. In my tackle box
in back. Mind loading it for me?” Cork asked.

  Lindstrom pulled the handgun from the glove compartment and climbed over the seat. Cork heard him rattling in the tackle box. Lindstrom started to return to the front, but the Bronco swung hard around a curve and he fell against the back door.

  “I’ll just stay put back here,” he said.

  Cork heard him release the cylinder and begin to feed in the rounds.

  They drove mostly in silence. Cork’s mind was occupied with the business he’d trained it for in his two decades as a cop—putting the pieces of a puzzle in place. The more he considered, the more everything came together, so that the holes became fewer and were more obvious to him.

  A few miles outside of Finland, he broke the quiet inside the Bronco. “When you talked with the kidnapper, Karl, why didn’t you ever mention your son’s diabetes?”

  “Not my son. My wife’s son. He refused to let me adopt him.” He slapped the full cylinder into place. “What good would it have done, saying something about the boy’s weakness?”

  Weakness? Cork thought.

  “A man like LePere wouldn’t care,” Lindstrom added.

  “Apparently, he cared enough to risk everything breaking into the rez clinic for insulin. You know, that’s something I can’t quite figure. If he was so concerned about keeping Scott alive, why would he be so quick now to rush to murder? It’s almost as if there are two minds at work here.”

  “A man like LePere, he could be schizoid for all we know. Hell, he lost his whole family to Lake Superior—father, mother, brother. Something like that’s bound to snap anybody’s mind.”

  His father, his mother, and his brother? Cork had been acquainted with John LePere for many years, and this was more specific information than he’d ever learned about the man. How was it that Lindstrom knew?

  Cork fell back into a meditative silence for a few miles. When he glanced into the rearview mirror, he saw Lindstrom sighting down the barrel of the .38.

  “Nice heft,” Lindstrom said. “You pretty good with it?”

  “I generally hit what I’m aiming at.”

  They moved ahead of the storm, just beyond the edge of the rain. They passed through an open area where the wind kicked dust across the road and shoved against the Bronco. Cork held the wheel steady.

  “At the marina,” he said over his shoulder, “when Earl questioned you about your military service, you told him you couldn’t talk about what you did. Does that mean naval intelligence?”

  “Naval intelligence,” Lindstrom confirmed. “Why do you ask?”

  “I was just thinking. You’ve been well trained in gathering information.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing.”

  But it wasn’t nothing. Because Cork was thinking about Lindstrom’s building a home in a place where his only neighbor was a man who had every reason in the world to hate the Fitzgerald name. It seemed to indicate a terrible lapse in reconnoitering. On the other hand, maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was evidence of something else entirely. Something cold and abominable.

  “Nothing?” Lindstrom said quietly. “O’Connor, I’ve observed how your mind works. You don’t ask a question for no reason.”

  Cork heard the click of the hammer on the .38 as it was drawn back and cocked. In the next instant, he felt the cool metal of the muzzle against the back of his head.

  “You know what I think? I think you’ve just about got it all put together.”

  Cork pulled the Bronco to a stop in Illgen City at the junction with State Highway 61. City was a misnomer for the intersection. There were only a couple of visible structures, a hotel and a café, and neither showed any sign of life at that hour. The highways were deserted. The swipe of the wipers and the drum of the rain on the roof were the only sounds. Cork made no move to continue the drive.

  “You and LePere?” he asked.

  “LePere’s in this, but not the way you think. Or the way he thinks.” Lindstrom waited a moment. “You’re dead already, O’Connor. I can do it here and now, or we can keep going. I’m figuring you might want to see your family one last time before you all die.”

  “They’re alive?”

  “About as much as you are.”

  Cork made the turn and kept on going. Whenever lightning crackled over the lake, he could see the angry crash of waves against the rocks along the shoreline. “She was going to divorce you, wasn’t she?” he said. “That’s why she wanted to talk to Jo professionally.”

  Lindstrom gave a slight laugh. “It only dawned on her recently. Me, I’ve seen it coming for a long time.”

  “And in a divorce, because of the prenup, you get nothing.”

  “I insisted on the prenup. It was such a selfless gesture that she insisted on making me her beneficiary—after the boy, of course. With both of them dead, I get everything. Over thirty million dollars, O’Connor. Now there’s a motive. But, you know, nobody’s even going to look my way. It was just a kidnapping gone terribly wrong. Eventually, all the signs would point to LePere, but he’d have vanished, dropped off the face of the earth along with my dear wife and her son. And now you and yours.” Lindstrom gave Cork’s head a little push with the barrel of the .38. “You figured LePere out too soon. Your mistake.”

  The muzzle stopped kissing the back of Cork’s head. Cork heard Lindstrom tapping a number into his cell phone.

  “Are the boats ready to go?” Lindstrom fell silent, listening. “Get them ready now.” He paused, then spoke again with fire in his voice, “God damn it. Get down to those boats and check everything out. We don’t have a lot of time, and I don’t want any slipups.” He shot out an impatient puff of air. “Ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Just have the boats ready when we pull up, got me?” He shoved the cell phone back into his pocket.

  “You know,” Cork said. “As a matter of standard procedure, they’re going to check the record of all calls made to and from that phone tonight.”

  Lindstrom laughed. “Different phone, O’Connor. Different account. I’ve thought of everything. I’ve been planning this for a very long time.”

  They were passing through Beaver Bay, a gathering of a few businesses along the road. On occasion, Cork had eaten at the inn there. Good pie. But the inn was dark now, and empty, and offered him nothing.

  “You built that house on Grace Cove purposely to goad LePere.”

  “Stroke of genius,” Lindstrom said. Once again, he’d nestled the barrel of the police special against Cork’s skull. “I stumbled across a magazine article from a few years ago. LePere’s whole sad story. And bingo. The idea came to me in a flash. Built the house. Got LePere into position. And then you know what? Fate gave me a helping hand. Eco-Warrior. What a great smoke screen.”

  They were approaching Purgatory Ridge. In the flash of lightning, Cork saw huge waves surge against talus at the foot of the cliff and shatter there. A moment later, the Bronco entered a long, brightly lit tunnel through the ridge.

  “When they find you gone, they’ll ask questions,” Cork said.

  “I’ll be back before anyone ever misses me. Slow down,” Lindstrom said. “As I understand it, the turn’s just ahead on the left.”

  Despite the heavy rain, Cork spotted the access road as soon as they were out of the tunnel. He pulled the Bronco off the highway and followed a narrow gravel lane through a wooded area. Where the road broke from the trees, it began a curve around a tiny cove. Up ahead, the headlights of the Bronco illuminated a small house perched near the water’s edge.

  “Park next to that pickup,” Lindstrom instructed him. “Give me the keys,” he said after they’d stopped. “Pass them to me slowly over your shoulder.” He emphasized Cork’s predicament with a little tap of the gun barrel. Cork did as he’d been asked.

  Lindstrom got out first. He used the .38 to wave Cork out after him. As Cork stepped from the Bronco, a man he’d never seen before emerged from the night and the rain.

  “The boats?” Lindstrom asked.

  “D
idn’t I say I’d have them ready?” the man replied.

  “It’s when you’re almost home that you relax your guard and make mistakes.”

  “From one of your fucking Annapolis textbooks?”

  Lindstrom looked about. “Where are the others?”

  “Locked in that old fish house.” He pointed toward a building twenty or thirty yards from the house.

  “Time for a tearful reunion, O’Connor. Let’s go.”

  The stranger led the way. As he reached the door of the fish house, he stopped dead and said, “Fuck me.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s unlocked.” The man shoved the door open. “They’re gone. Son of a bitch.”

  “How long?”

  “Do I look like Kreskin? How the hell should I know?”

  “You didn’t check them when you came back from the ransom drop?”

  “I was just about to when you called and insisted I get the fucking boats ready.” He kicked the side of the fish house. “You’re so damned anal.”

  “Wait.” Lindstrom peered hard across the cove toward Purgatory Ridge. “What’s that?”

  Cork looked, too, and saw a long, slender beam of light moving along the face of the cliff, low and near the water.

  “They’re trying to make it to the far side of the ridge,” the stranger said.

  “All right. Take the van and go around to cut them off on the other side. I’ll move up on them from behind.”

  “What about him?”

  Lindstrom looked at Cork. “End of the line, O’Connor.”

  Although he knew it was probably useless, Cork broke away and ran toward the cove, shouting as loud as he could, “Jo, look out! They’re coming!”

  That was all he had time to say before Lindstrom pulled the trigger of the .38.

  47

  AT A SCENIC TURNOUT on Highway 61, a mile south of Purgatory Ridge, the Minnesota Geologic Society had long ago placed a marker bearing a metal plaque that explained the great rock formation. Over the years, John LePere had read the inscription many times.

  Millions of years ago, the basalt rock that formed the north shore had been laid down by massive lava flows. Eons of weathering and glacial scouring had chiseled at the shoreline, eventually cutting it back almost to the foot of the Sawtooth range. However, rills of nearly impervious rhyolite overlay the basalt in several places. Long after the softer surrounding stone had been eroded away, those rhyolite rills continued to stand against the elements, often as solitary formations that seemed out of place. The top of Purgatory Ridge was two hundred seventy-seven feet above Lake Superior. The formation was nearly a quarter mile wide. Although composed of one of the most obdurate of minerals, the ridge had not escaped the ravages of time. Thousands of winters, thousands of cycles of freeze and thaw, hundreds of thousands of harsh, battering storms had left their mark on the ridge, the cumulative effect visible in the talus—great blocks of stone broken from the sheer walls—that lay in a formidable jumble along the base of the cliffs. Someday, the marker predicted, perhaps a million years hence, the ridge would no longer exist.