Tamarack County

by William Kent Krueger

  “How did you get here from Thunder Bay?”

  “My son,” Meloux replied.

  “Hank? He’s here?”

  “With your daughter and her friend in the waiting area. I wanted to see you and Stephen by myself.”

  The old man walked to Stephen’s bedside. He laid his hand on the white sheet where it covered Stephen’s heart. Cork’s son and the old Mide shared a special bond. Many times over the years, Meloux had worked to help heal wounds that life had delivered to Stephen, both physical and spiritual, and recently, under Meloux’s guidance, Stephen had undertaken the first learning steps in becoming, like Meloux, a member of the Grand Medicine Society.

  “It’s bad,” Cork said. “Stephen still has a bullet in him, pressing against his spinal cord. They need to operate, but he’s too unstable at the moment. He died, Henry, and they brought him back.”

  “But not all the way. He still stands with one foot on the Path of Souls.” Meloux turned back to Cork. “Would you leave him with me? Alone?”

  “What are you going to do, Henry?”

  “Talk to him.”

  “You think he can hear you?”

  “We will see.” Meloux looked at him deeply with those dark eyes that could pierce a man’s soul. “I’ve come to help, Corcoran O’Connor. I’ve come to help you all, if you will let me.”

  Cork had held himself together because he had to, because Annie and Jenny and Stephen needed him to be strong. But Meloux was here now, and Cork knew exactly what his old friend and mentor was saying to him. Meloux may have been old—God alone knew his exact age—but inside he was still the strongest man Cork had ever known. On more than one occasion, he’d saved Cork’s life and, more times than Cork could remember, had salvaged his spirit. For the first time since Stephen had been shot, Cork finally allowed himself to feel the full depth of his own fear and pain and confusion, and tears welled up and spilled down his cheeks.

  “I let him go out there alone, Henry,” Cork confessed. “I should have been there with him. I could have kept this from happening.”

  Meloux stepped to him. “This was not your doing, Corcoran O’Connor. If you throw yourself onto the fire of guilt, it will be a useless sacrifice. We do not know, any of us, the Great Mystery’s purpose in this. But purpose there is.” He put his old hand gently to Cork’s chest. “You have a good heart, here, a strong heart. Of all that you have given to your son, that is the greatest gift. Trust your heart and Stephen’s.” He smiled in such a reassuring way that Cork couldn’t help but believe him. “And trust me, Corcoran O’Connor.”

  So full of gratitude he could barely speak, Cork said, “Migwech, Henry. Chi migwech.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Hank Wellington, Meloux’s son, was a wealthy man, and rather famous in Canada. He’d been lost to his father for most of both their lives, but a few years earlier, because of Cork, they’d found each other. Wellington was in his seventies and still a handsome man. You could see the father in the face of the son—the broad nose, the prominent bone structure, the eyes that were dark and intelligent and compassionate.

  After their greetings, Cork asked, “How did Henry hear about Stephen?”

  “He didn’t,” Wellington replied. “We didn’t find out until we arrived in Aurora.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “My father had a vision. I didn’t have a choice. I’m sorry for all this trouble, Cork.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Where’s my father now?”

  “Henry wanted to be alone with Stephen.”

  Wellington glanced at Anne, who was sitting with Skye on the waiting room couch. “Your daughter filled me in on most of what I didn’t know. If there’s anything I can do to help, you’ve got it.”

  “When I figure out what that is, Hank, I’ll let you know. Look, I need coffee. You want some?”

  “From a vending machine, or the real stuff?”

  “At this time of night, we’ll be lucky if the vending machine isn’t asleep.”

  “I’ll pass, thanks.”

  “Annie, Skye? Want some coffee?”

  They shook their heads in unison, and Cork turned to leave. Before he’d taken a step, Marsha Dross walked in. She was still wearing her parka, and the shoulders were dusted with snow. She was carrying a large envelope. Her eyes immediately settled on the man she didn’t know.

  Cork introduced her to Wellington and explained his presence.

  “Meloux’s here?” she said.

  “With Stephen, at the moment.”

  It was clear that she had a purpose in coming, and she wasted no time. She opened the envelope she’d brought and drew out an eight-by-ten photograph, which she handed to Anne.

  “Do you recognize that man?” she asked.

  Anne studied the photo, then said, “He’s the one. He shot Stephen.”

  Cork reached out, and Anne gave him the picture. It was a blowup of a standard mug shot, a police booking photograph. The man didn’t look particularly criminal. He had thin hair, which was cut very short, showing a lot of scalp. His cheeks were puffy, suggesting that he carried a little extra weight. The photo was black and white, so the irises of his eyes had no color, but they were clear, which suggested pale blue. The man stood against a height chart that measured him at five feet ten inches. Cork placed him in his early thirties. The most dramatic feature was a large mole on the guy’s cheek, just left of his nose. Cork knew he was looking at the man who, more than a month ago, had sat in the casino bar, eyed Stella Daychild in a way that scared her, then followed her home to the rez.

  “Frogg?” he asked Dross.

  “Yes. It’s from his last booking, almost eight years ago.”

  “Anything on him since they let him out of Stillwater?”

  “No. At least not that we’ve found so far. No violations or arrests in Minnesota.”

  “Does he own a registered vehicle?”

  “A nineteen ninety-five Ford Ranger. Green.”

  “Driver’s license address?”

  “DMV has him in an apartment building in Duluth. Pender’s on his way down there now. He’s already in touch with Duluth PD. We’ve got him, Cork.”

  “When he’s in cuffs, you’ve got him,” Cork said. Then he said, “Thanks, Marsha.”

  “I’m heading back to the department. I’ve got a couch there with my name on it. When I hear from Pender”—she paused and gave Cork a tired smile—“that he’s got Frogg in cuffs, I’ll let you know.” She took the photograph and returned it to the envelope. “Mr. Wellingon, ladies,” she said in parting, turned, and left.

  When she’d gone, Cork said, “About that coffee. Still no takers?”

  He got a cup from the cafeteria, which was closed except for the vending machines. It was pretty bad brew, but it was hot and caffeinated.

  When he returned to the waiting room, Meloux was there. The old Mide looked at him calmly and said, “Stephen would like to see you.”

  * * *

  He’d come up from a place of dreaming. And there was Meloux, bending over him, and he thought he must still be in a dream.

  “Stephen,” the old Mide said. “It is good to see you.”

  “Henry?” The word came out a weak croak.

  “You have been on a journey. But I think you are coming home now.”

  “What . . . ?” He couldn’t manage a full question.

  “What happened? You faced our majimanidoo.”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t remember.”

  “That is not important now.”

  Stephen closed his eyes, opened them, and found that Meloux was still there. “It was bright. I heard you call my name.”

  “The path you were on is a good one, Stephen.” The old man put his hand gently, reassuringly on Stephen’s shoulder. “A good one. But I think it was not your time. I am glad you heard me.”

  Stephen tried to turn his head, but something restrained him. He moved his eyes over what he could see from where he lay, al
l of it white and sterile looking. “Hospital?”

  “Yes.”

  Then he remembered something, something frightening. “Annie?”

  “She is fine, Stephen. She is with your father and her friend. Would you like to see them?”

  Stephen closed his eyes. When he opened them next, his father was beside the bed, and behind him were Anne and Skye.

  “Hey, guy,” his father said gently. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Tired. Confused.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Stephen’s eyes drifted to Anne. “You’re okay?”

  She stepped up next to her father. “Yeah. How about you?”

  He tried to smile, but couldn’t tell if he’d succeeded. “Never better. Still not real sure of things.”

  A stranger came into Stephen’s field of vision, a woman dressed all in white, who said, “I need everyone out of here.”

  His father said, “We’ll be back, Stephen.”

  Anne bent and kissed his cheek. “God heard our prayers,” she whispered.

  “Hallelujah,” Stephen said and knew the smile he gave her this time was successful. “Dad, could I talk to you for a minute? Alone?”

  “Sure.” Although the others left, the nurse remained until his father said to her, “Just for a minute, please.”

  The nurse nodded and vanished.

  When they were completely alone, his father leaned close to him and said, “What is it, guy?”

  “I didn’t want to say anything while Annie and Skye were here.”

  “Say what?”

  Stephen looked up into his father’s eyes and tried not to sound too afraid. “I can’t feel my legs.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Although the hospitalist had arranged for an airlift to Duluth, the weather had turned lousy, bringing heavy snow and a fierce wind. Stephen went by ambulance instead. Cork, Anne, and Jenny followed in the Land Rover. Skye had volunteered to stay behind with Waaboo, who was still asleep in his bed in the house on Gooseberry Lane. Deputy Weber was at the house as well, continuing protective duty. But he wasn’t alone. When Cork had returned home briefly to deliver Skye and to pick up Jenny, he’d found the Studemeyer brothers parked on the street in their truck. As Cork approached them, Wes rolled down his window, letting loose a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  “What’s up?” Cork asked.

  “Heard about that bastard going after your boy, Cork. Heard that he’s still out there somewhere, and that he might be looking to take a shot at one of your other kids. Figured it might be helpful if we made a show of force here, make him think twice about trying something else.”

  Cork took the glove off his right hand and reached through the open window to shake Wes’s hand. “Much obliged,” he said.

  “What’s the word on Stephen?” Randy asked from the other side.

  “They’re taking him to Duluth this morning. They’ll operate on him there. The situation’s a little delicate.”

  “Bullet in his spine, we heard. Tough. Look, you just worry about your boy, okay?” Wes said. “Don’t worry about things back here. We got it covered.”

  “You know there’s a deputy inside my house.”

  “Think of us as backup. Now go on and see to that boy.”

  The night was black, the snowfall steady, the wind was tricky. The ambulance wasn’t able to make the kind of speed Cork would have preferred, but better to arrive safely, he knew, than not at all. He drove carefully, just far enough behind so that the ambulance’s flashing lights were never lost in the curtain of blowing snow. Anne sat with him in front, Jenny in the backseat. They didn’t talk much. Fifteen minutes before they arrived at the hospital, the snow ended. It stopped as suddenly as if someone had turned off a switch, and the wind died with it.

  They pulled into the hospital’s parking lot, where a plow had just begun clearing away the new snow. It had been a long drive, and once inside the hospital, Cork hit the first men’s room he came to. He’d finished washing his hands and was drying them under a blower when he got a call from Dross on his cell phone.

  “Pender and Duluth PD just completed their visit to Frogg’s apartment,” she told him. “The place was empty. They talked to the building manager. Frogg only lived there a couple of months. Probably just long enough to get a driver’s license mailed to him. Left no forwarding address. You know what you said to me about not really having him until we have him in cuffs? You were right.”

  “Being right doesn’t give me a lot of satisfaction at the moment, Marsha.”

  “We’ll keep on it. We’ll find him,” she promised.

  Cork thought about the Studemeyer brothers standing post outside his house. He felt an additional measure of security in their generous presence and was grateful to call a place like Tamarack County home.

  Once again they found themselves in a waiting room. They’d been there an hour before the surgeon came in to speak to them. Dr. Lillian Buckley was a small woman with grayed hair and slender, graceful hands. She told them that additional X-rays and a CT scan had been done and that she felt confident about removing the bullet.

  “He has no feeling in his legs,” Cork said.

  Dr. Buckley nodded. “That’s typical in cases of spinal shock. It may be that once we remove the bullet, the feeling will eventually return.” The next part was spoken evenly but with a clear sense of the enormity of the words. “It’s also possible that more permanent damage has already been done.”

  “Which means?”

  “In a worst-case scenario, your son may never walk again. But we won’t know the full extent of his injuries until after we operate.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “He’s being prepped right now.”

  The surgeon had indicated that because the procedure was particularly delicate, it would take time. Stephen had been in the operating room for ninety minutes when Cork’s cell phone rang again. Once again, it was Dross.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “They’re still working on him,” Cork said.

  He stood at a window facing east across the frozen expanse of Lake Superior. The snow had ended, and the sun had risen just above the horizon, looking ineffectual behind a haze of clouds.

  “We’ve learned something I thought you might want to know,” Dross said.

  “What is it?”

  “Azevedo just finished interviewing the Carters’ last housekeeper, Irene Simek. Azevedo showed her a photo of Frogg. She recognized him, said he worked as a handyman for the Carters last fall. Raked leaves, stacked firewood, helped Mrs. Carter prepare her gardens for the winter. According to Irene, he and the Judge’s wife got on well together.”

  “So he probably had lots of access to their home.”

  “Exactly. He could easily have taken the key they kept in the garage and had a duplicate made, come back when they were gone, and taken the Judge’s knife from his case. Or he could even have gone inside on some excuse—to use the bathroom, maybe—and taken the knife then.”

  “How’d he happen to be their handyman?”

  “Apparently he showed up at their door one day in early fall and told them he was new to town. Told them his name was Walter Friend. He was trying to start a lawn service and offered to take care of the leaves in their yard for free. If they liked his work, he’d be happy to do any odd jobs they needed, including snow removal in the winter. His rate was way below what anyone else charged.”

  “And for good reason,” Cork said. “All he was looking for was an in. And I’m betting he was always paid in cash. What would he do with a check written to Walter Friend? So what did Irene think of him?”

  “Pleasant enough guy. A good worker. Didn’t steal the Carters blind, as far as she could see. She didn’t have much interaction with him, but whenever she did he was respectful.”

  “Salt of the earth,” Cork said bitterly. “Was he still working for the Carters when Irene left their employment?”

  “No, which didn’t
surprise her. Nobody worked for the Carters very long. Eventually, the Judge drove everyone away.” For a long moment, Dross was quiet on her end. “If retribution was what Frogg was really after, why wait until Christmas?”

  Cork turned from the window and walked the length of the waiting room. Jenny and Anne had gone down to the cafeteria for some breakfast, and he was alone. There was a framed painting on one of the walls, a surreal watercolor of Duluth harbor, with the lift bridge represented by a swash of black.

  “If your speculation about his motive is correct, that he wanted to take away what was of greatest value to his victims,” Cork said, thinking it through out loud, “then he needed to know his target. That’s why he spent time with the Carters. When he had what he wanted, an understanding that Evelyn was pretty much all that stood between her husband and the locked unit of a nursing home, he was done with the ruse. But he needed to be sure that he separated himself from any connection with the Carters and whatever action he eventually took. So he waited. He’s a man with a long prison history, a man used to patience. In the meantime, he found out all he could about Ray Jay and about me, and figured how to make us pay.”

  Dross said, “When he discovers that he didn’t succeed in taking Stephen out of your life, he might try again, Cork. Or he might try something with Anne or Jenny or Waaboo.”

  Cork stared at the black splash that represented the bridge. “Then we have to find him,” he said. “We have to find him now.”

  * * *

  Warden Gilman took his call right away. When Cork explained what he needed, she said she’d have it for him as soon as possible. The Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department had kept her fully informed about Stephen’s situation, and she asked how it was going. He told her they were still operating.

  His daughters returned. Breakfast seemed to have refreshed them. They told their father that he should eat, too, and if anything occurred, they’d let him know. He was hungry, and he was tired, and he took their advice.

  He’d just stepped from the elevator on his way to the cafeteria when his cell phone rang. It was Gilman.

  “Aside from his attorney, Frogg had only one visitor in all the time he was here,” Gilman told him. “His mother. She visited him two or three times a year. Her name is Alva Brickman.”