Tamarack County

by William Kent Krueger

  Cork cut to the chase. “You got no cooperation from Hancock?”

  “He stonewalled us.”

  “Any sign of Frogg’s presence?”

  “Nothing on the outside of the property. Hancock never let us in the door. We’ll need a warrant for that, and we’ve got no evidence at the moment that would get us one.”

  “How tough were you in your questioning?”

  “I didn’t hit him with a rubber hose, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Did you get any sense if he was lying?”

  “I think lying is so second nature to that guy he wouldn’t recognize the truth if it put a finger up his nose. So no, I didn’t get a sense that he was trying to hide anything with particular regard to his cousin.”

  Dross said, “Okay, where does that leave us?”

  Azevedo replied, “Kovac will keep an eye out for Frogg’s pickup, have his guys cruise by Hancock’s place regularly to see if they spot anything. Beyond that, not much we can do at the moment.”

  The deputy looked tired. Dross looked tired. It had been a long day for both of them. Hell, several long days since Evelyn Carter first went missing. Cork understood they were doing their best. It just wasn’t good enough.

  He said, “Can you give me directions to Hancock’s place?”

  “What for?” Dross asked warily.

  “One thing we can do is keep surveillance on the place. If Frogg is staying there, he’ll show up sooner or later.”

  “That’s what you’re planning? Just to stake out the place?”

  “That’s what I’m planning,” Cork said.

  Azevedo glanced at Dross, who considered a moment, then slid a piece of paper and a pencil toward him across her desk. The deputy wrote down the directions and handed them to Cork.

  “Long night ahead,” Dross said.

  Cork stood up. “Maybe not so long as you think.”

  * * *

  Eustis Hancock’s place was a run-down mobile home that sat back in the woods a mile west of Babbitt. Cork parked his Land Rover at the side of the road a hundred yards from the entrance to the lane that ran to the house and hoofed it in from there. He had with him a baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger, which he’d presented to Anne on her sixteenth birthday when she was deep into softball and hoping like crazy to play for Notre Dame someday. He’d have preferred a firearm, but he didn’t own a firearm anymore, had given them up when he realized how profoundly braided with violence his life had become. Yet here he was again, only too ready to do violence. He decided not to think about that now.

  The snow was coming down steadily. In that cold, it was dry and light as ash and, once on the ground, drifted easily in the push of the wind. Like something alive, it flowed around Cork’s boots as he stood near a corrugated metal shed twenty yards from the mobile home. A black Blazer was parked in the front of the shed, and near it lay an assortment of rusted auto parts—fenders, hoods, doors. There were a couple of ATVs. Cork was surprised not to see a snowmobile but thought maybe it was in the shed. He checked his watch. Eight-ten. As good a time as any.

  He climbed the steps to the door of the mobile home. He held the ball bat at his side and a little behind him, so that it would be blocked from the view of the opened doorway and also from the window nearest the door. He knocked. A moment later, the curtain over the window was drawn aside, and then the door lock clicked open.

  The man who filled the doorway was a gorilla. A very unhappy gorilla, judging from his greeting.

  “Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want?”

  Cork didn’t bother answering. He brought the ball bat up, grasped it with both hands, and drove the end of it as hard as he could into the man’s solar plexus. The big gorilla heaved a deep, retching cough and doubled over. Cork clipped the side of his head with the bat, and the man went down. Cork stepped around him into the home, grabbed him by the collar of his flannel shirt, and pulled him inside, away from the door, which he closed. Hancock lay on the floor struggling to breathe. Cork pulled a roll of silver duct tape from the pocket of his parka, rolled Hancock facedown, and taped his hands behind his back. Then he straddled him, slid the shaft of the ball bat under Hancock’s neck, and drew it up against his throat until the man’s legs kicked desperately.

  “Where’s Walter Frogg?” Cork said.

  The man tried to speak, but it was all gargle.

  Cork eased the pressure from the bat. “Where’s Frogg?”

  “Don’t know,” the gorilla rasped.

  Cork pulled the bat tight again, and the man’s body jerked spasmodically. Cork released the pressure just a little.

  “Still don’t know?”

  “Not here,” Hancock managed.

  “But you know where.”

  “Not sure. He was staying here for a while. Three, four days ago, he borrowed my Polaris. Hasn’t come back.”

  “Where would he go?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Cork gave the ball bat a tug.

  “Maybe my cabin,” Hancock gasped.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Tamarack County. On the White Iron River.”

  “Be more specific.”

  “Becker Road. Where the North Star Trail crosses.”

  Cork knew the area. A few miles west of Aurora. “What’s it for, the cabin?”

  “Hunting, fishing. Was my old man’s. Now it’s mine.”

  “Frogg knows about it?”

  “Yeah. We used to hang out there, get high, you know. Still use it sometimes, but not much.”

  “What’s the fire number?”

  Every rural address in Tamarack County had a designated fire number that was posted on a sign at the entrance to the property and that would allow easy identification in the event of an emergency.

  Hancock gave him the number.

  Cork said, “You have a cell phone?”

  “What?”

  “A cell phone.” Cork drew the bat against his throat.

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s in my pocket. Right side.”

  Cork dug in the pocket of the man’s jeans and came up with the phone and a set of car keys. He stood, dropped the phone on the floor, and brought the heel of his boot down on it.

  “Ah, shit, man,” Hancock said.

  “I’m taking the keys to your Blazer. I assume that’s your Blazer out front.”

  “Yeah, that’s my Blazer,” Hancock said, in a way that told Cork he was resigned to his fate.

  “Where’s the other key?”

  “What?”

  “Everybody keeps an extra key. Where’s yours?”

  When Hancock didn’t answer immediately, Cork tapped the back of his head lightly with the end of the bat.

  “On a nail in the wall next to the refrigerator.”

  Cork found it. He returned to the living room and said, “I’ll mail these to you tomorrow. You need something in the meantime, a walk to town’ll do you good.” With the toe of his boot, he nudged the fat around the man’s middle.

  “What about the tape on my wrists?” Hancock said.

  “Once I’m gone, you’ll figure a way to cut yourself free.”

  “Who are you?” Hancock asked as Cork turned to leave.

  “The guy who won’t be so nice the next time.”

  CHAPTER 43

  By the time the Land Rover was crawling along Becker Road back in Tamarack County, three inches of new snow had accumulated on the ground and more was falling heavily. There were no tire tracks to follow, and pushing through the storm in the dark, Cork had nothing except the mounds of old plowed snow at the edge of the road to guide him. He leaned forward, his attention focused intensely at the periphery of his headlights so that he wouldn’t miss the mounted black rectangle with the fire number for Eustis Hancock’s cabin. As it turned out, he needn’t have worried. The only sign next to a recently plowed access bore the number Cork had been searching for.

  The lane led off to the right, into a heavy stand of mixed ever
green. Cork knew the general area pretty well, and knew that the stand of timber was backed up against the White Iron River, not more than a hundred yards distant. He couldn’t see any lights among the trees, but that could have been simply because of the heavy curtaining of the snowfall. There were no recent tire tracks, so Frogg was either still inside, or gone and had not yet returned. Cork couldn’t take the chance that Frogg might come back and spot the tracks of the Land Rover, so he drove another quarter mile, until he came to a place where a section of the North Star, a snowmobile trail, crossed the road. He pulled the Land Rover onto the trail and into the cover of the trees. He took his Maglite from the glove box, got out, locked the doors, and started back toward Hancock’s cabin.

  He kept to the side of the road, hoping his boot tracks wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone traveling in the storm. When he came to the access to Hancock’s place, he leaped the mound of plowed snow at the side of the road and began to wade through the drifts to keep from leaving any sign of his presence on the access lane.

  He came to a small clearing and knew the cabin had to be near. He still saw no lights, but he killed the beam of the Maglite and went forward slowly, blindly. In the dark, he almost ran headlong into the structure. He walked around it carefully, came to the front, risked the light, found a beaten trail to the door, which he followed with the beam away from the cabin twenty yards until the light illuminated the green pickup with the mounted plow blade in front and a snowmobile trailer on the hitch in back.

  Frogg was there. In the cabin. Asleep, maybe, because there was no light on that Cork could see. He was tempted to burst in and take the man, but the cold voice of reason told him to be patient. He retraced his steps into the cover of the timber and called Dross on his cell phone.

  * * *

  She came with three deputies—Azevedo, Pender, and Bronson, all members of her Critical Incident Response Team. Cork had arranged to meet her on Becker Road, where the access to Hancock’s cabin split off. Azevedo and Pender brought snowmobiles, just in case. They parked their vehicles at the side of the road, left the parking lights on to provide some illumination, got out, and gathered. They wore body armor. Pender and Bronson carried Mossbergs. Azevedo held a Stinger one-man battering ram. Dross gave instructions. She, Azevedo, and Bronson would take the front door. Pender would position himself in back, in case the man made a run for it that way.

  “And I just stand by and watch?” Cork asked.

  “We take it from here,” Dross said.

  “Mind if I follow at a reasonable distance?”

  The wind had increased, and the snow now came at a sharp slant out of the west. Cork turned and put his back against the shove of the storm. Dross, when she looked at him, had to squeeze her eyes nearly shut against the wind and snow, and it made her look a little like a mole about to tunnel.

  “I want you to stay here,” she said. “When we have Frogg, you can come in then.”

  “You lose him—”

  “We won’t,” she said.

  That cold voice of reason in his head told Cork that he’d done his part. He’d located Frogg. Now it was time to let the hunters bring him down. It wasn’t easy, but he nodded his assent.

  They moved down the access toward Hancock’s cabin, disappearing one by one as if eaten by the storm. Cork stayed where he’d promised he would, although everything inside him was taut with an urgency to act. If he’d still smoked and had a cigarette handy, he would have lit up. As it was, he paced.

  He found himself thinking about Cecil LaPointe and how the man held no enmity toward Cork and the others who’d had a hand in putting him behind bars for all those years. LaPointe believed they’d simply played the parts they were always meant to play in shaping his life. Cork wondered about Walter Frogg. Was he always meant to play this part in Stephen’s life and Evelyn Carter’s? He envied LaPointe’s certainty and his serenity, because at the moment, Cork was certain of nothing and what filled him was a rage that precluded any hope of peace.

  Two minutes. Three. He heard nothing. After five minutes, he began to rethink his promise.

  Then he heard a shot, a single shot, a crack that split the sound of the storm. And then it was only wind again, rushing past him with a liquid hush.

  He waited, which took all the control he had. Several minutes later, a figure appeared before him, as if disgorged by the night.

  “We broke in,” Azevedo said. “He’s been there, but he’s not there now. The sheriff wants you.”

  “What was the shot?”

  “Something moved when we were inside the cabin. A raccoon. Bronson nailed it.”

  Cork followed the deputy to the cabin, where fingers of flashlight beam were poking around inside. As he entered, he saw the splintering of the door that had been accomplished with the battering ram. It was a one-room cabin, rustic as hell—an old, scarred table, two wooden chairs, a bunk, a sink and counter. No electricity, but there was a woodstove against one wall and a Coleman gas lantern sat on the table. Outside somewhere, Cork figured, there’d be an outhouse. The place smelled old, smelled ignored and rotting. It also smelled of cordite—Bronson’s shot—and Cork saw a little mound of dark gray fur in one corner.

  “Well, it’s a roof over his head, I suppose,” Dross said.

  She stood at the center of the cabin, the beam of her light on a big canvas travel bag sitting on a sleeping bag that had been spread out on the bunk. The room was cold, though not so cold as the night outside.

  “The stove’s still warm,” she added.

  Cork said, “Where is he?”

  “Pender found snowmobile tracks leading onto the river. Frogg is out, but he’ll be back.”

  “Not if he sees all these flashlights,” Cork said.

  Dross said, “Bronson’s down on the ice, watching for him. We’ll be ready.”

  Cork went to the window that overlooked the White Iron River. It was too dark to see the ice. “I’ve been thinking about Evelyn Carter,” he said.

  “What about her?” Dross replied.

  “We found her car on the Old Babbitt Road, not far from the Vermilion trailhead. That trail connects with the North Star Trail, which crosses Becker Road a quarter mile north of here. I’m thinking that the night Evelyn went missing, Frogg intercepted her on her way home, killed her, dumped her body somewhere. He drove her Buick out to the Old Babbitt Road, siphoned the gas, and walked to his snowmobile, which he’d left at the trailhead. Probably drove the sled back to wherever he intercepted her, which was also where he’d parked his pickup and the snowmobile trailer. Then he hightailed it here to wait and see if we bought his scheme.”

  Dross thought it over and gave a slight nod. “She knew him well. If he waved her down, she would have stopped.” She thought some more. “And we didn’t find any blood in her car, so he probably killed her and dumped her body wherever he stopped her.”

  “Had to be off the road where he wouldn’t readily be seen by passing motorists,” Cork prodded. “All the roads out to her place are pretty well traveled.”

  Dross looked at him and understanding dawned in her eyes. “You think he stopped her in that long driveway that leads up to her house.”

  Cork said, “We’ve been looking in the wrong places. Exactly what Frogg wanted.”

  “We’re in the right place now,” Dross said.

  “When he comes back, you ought to have your snowmobiles off their trailers and ready to roll, just in case,” Cork said.

  Dross said, “Pender, get the sleds.”

  “If you won’t let me help apprehend him, I can at least help with that,” Cork said.

  Azevedo gave Cork the key to the snowmobile he’d hauled, and Cork followed Pender back to Becker Road. Pender had used a trailer to bring his sled, and he had it unloaded pretty quickly. Azevedo had brought the other snowmobile in the bed of his Tacoma pickup and had used a trifold aluminum ramp to get it there. Cork was still setting up the ramp when Pender sped down the access back toward Hancock’s ca
bin. Cork finally got the ramp secured and tried to start the engine. It was an old Arctic Cat and reluctant, in that cold, to kick over. Eventually, he got it idling, gave it a couple of minutes, then backed it down the ramp. He decided to give it a few more minutes to warm up before revving it and joining the others.

  He turned his back to the wind and thought about Frogg, worried about where the man had gone. He used his cell to call the house on Gooseberry Lane. Anne answered and told him everything was fine there. She asked when he’d be home and when they’d be going back to Duluth to be with Stephen.

  He told her, “Soon, honey, real soon. Is Deputy Mercer there?”

  She gave him over to the deputy.

  Cork knew that Dross had let Ken Mercer in on the situation with Frogg, and had cautioned him to say nothing to Cork’s family until they had the man in custody.

  “Frogg isn’t at the cabin,” Cork told the deputy. “As nearly as we can tell, he’s taken off on a snowmobile. God knows where. You keep a sharp eye out, understand?”

  “Ten-four, Cork,” Mercer said. “You’ll keep me informed?”

  “I will,” he said. “And, Ken?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He slid the phone back into its holster on his belt and was just about to mount the idling Arctic Cat when he heard something, a distant, familiar whine above the rush of the wind. It was a sound that in the North Country in winter was as ubiquitous as the buzz of mosquitoes in summer. A snowmobile was speeding toward him on Becker Road.

  CHAPTER 44

  The little machine came from the west, from the place where the North Star Trail crossed Becker Road. The night and the heavily falling snow were like a wall, and Cork couldn’t see the snowmobile yet. He stood beside the Arctic Cat, trying to will his eyes to pierce the veil, struggling to construct a plan if it was Frogg who materialized.

  The snowmobile appeared, skimming over the powder that covered Becker Road, its headlights diffused by the snowfall. As soon as it came in sight of the vehicles parked at the access to Hancock’s cabin, whoever was driving brought the sled to a halt. Cork hadn’t turned on the lights of the Arctic Cat yet. He pressed himself against the Tacoma’s rear bumper, trying to keep from being seen, waiting for the other snowmobile to make its next move. For ten seconds, the driver sat considering the situation, then suddenly cut a sharp U-turn on the road and tunneled back into the storm like a badger into its hole. Cork leaped onto the Arctic Cat and shot off in pursuit.