It was Willie Crane who brought them together again. It happened in the spring.
Cork worked third-shift patrol, the late shift, and had just arrived home at eight a.m., ready to get some shut-eye, when his telephone rang.
“O’Connor,” he answered.
“Hello, Cork. It’s Willie Crane.” LoCor. IsWillieCrane.
“Willie? My God, it’s been forever. How are you?”
“Okay. I’m in Chicago. I was wondering if I could see you.”
It had been a long time since Cork had heard his voice, but in the interim, Willie had improved his speech a little, and Cork had no trouble understanding the words.
“Sure, Willie. How long are you in town?”
“Not long, I hope. It kind of depends on you.”
“Why?”
“When we talk, you’ll understand. It’s important. It’s about Winona.”
“What about her?”
“I’d rather talk in person.”
“All right. How about breakfast right now?”
Willie was staying at the Congress Hotel on Michigan Avenue, and Cork met him there. He still walked with the shuffling gait Cork remembered well, but even that seemed to have improved a little. They sat at a table near a window that looked east toward Grant Park. Cork hadn’t seen Willie in almost six years. Winona’s brother had grown tall and lean and handsome. Cork had heard that Willie was making a name for himself as a wildlife photographer and a nature writer. Anyone looking at Willie who didn’t know him would have been surprised. But from very early, Cork had seen the strength that was at the heart of Willie Crane.
“I hear you’re doing well,” Cork told him. Willie looked surprised, and Cork explained, “The rez telegraph reaches all the way to Chicago.”
“I’ve worked hard. And I love what I do. You, too, I bet. I’m not surprised at all that you’re a cop. Just that you’re a cop here.”
“My father’s family are all from Chicago, Willie, and a lot of them are cops. It’s not Aurora, but it feels comfortable to me.”
“I hear you’ve met someone.”
Willie was talking about Jo McKenzie, a law student at the University of Chicago, whom Cork had met on a routine burglary call and had fallen for. It was serious, although they weren’t talking marriage yet. He was amazed that Willie knew.
Willie apparently saw his surprise and grinned. “The rez telegraph.”
“What about Winona?” Cork finally said.
Willie’s aspect turned grave. “She’s in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Serious. She’s in Oregon, hooked up with some people who aren’t good people, and I need to get her away from them.”
“What do you mean ‘not good people’?”
“For one thing, the man she’s with abuses her.”
“Beats her?”
“That. And other things, I’m sure.”
“Why doesn’t she leave him?” Which was a natural question, although Cork had been on plenty of domestic disturbance calls in which the woman, clearly abused, refused to leave her abuser.
“At this point, I believe that, even if she wanted to, she couldn’t. He won’t let her.”
“She’s being held against her will? That’s kidnapping. The Oregon authorities should be involved, Willie.”
“It would be hard to prove, and there’s another reason the authorities shouldn’t be involved. These people she’s with, they grow marijuana for a living. It’s a pretty big operation.”
“And you’re afraid of what might happen to her because of her part in that?”
“It would just be better if we could get her away on our own.”
“Ah,” Cork said, suddenly getting it. “You want me to help you rescue Winona.”
“I can’t do it alone,” Willie said.
“Just you and me? My guess is that, if those people are involved in drug trafficking, they’re armed. And even if we got to her, there’s no guarantee she’d leave with us.”
“Jubal Little,” Willie replied.
“What?”
“She would leave if Jubal asked her to.”
“Jubal and her, that was a long time ago, Willie.”
“Henry Meloux told me once that they’re like two halves of a broken stone,” Willie said. “The last time I saw her, all she talked about was Jubal. To her, it’s like yesterday.”
“I don’t know.”
“Please.”
“I haven’t spoken to him in years.”
Out of college, Jubal Little had been drafted by the Los Angeles Rams. He was on their roster for two seasons, but his style, which network commentators tended to characterize as “undisciplined,” relied enormously on his ability to scramble and make something out of a broken play. He had trouble working within the rigid professional system, and he’d been cut. He was picked up by the Denver Broncos but lasted only a season. The Kansas City Chiefs gave him a shot, but there, too, he’d proved a disappointment, and after two years of mostly sitting on the bench, he’d been let go. No one had shown any interest in him since. Cork wasn’t even certain where Jubal was living at the moment.
“I don’t know what else to do, who else to ask,” Willie said.
Cork looked at his watch. “Tell you what. Hang tight in your hotel room today. I’ll see if I can track down a telephone number for Jubal, and if I’m lucky, we’ll give him a call.”
Willie looked relieved and grateful. He reached out and took Cork’s hand. “Henry Meloux asked me to tell you something. He said, ‘Remind Corcoran O’Connor that I named him well.’ I don’t know what that means.”
“Henry gave me my Ojibwe name,” Cork said. “Mikiinak.”
“Snapping turtle?”
Cork shrugged. “Tenacious, I think, is his point.”
Willie thought about it. “And dangerous. A big snapper can take your finger right off. Thank you, Cork.”
He didn’t exactly go by the book, but Cork got the private telephone number for Jubal Little, who was living in Durango, Colorado. The La Plata County deputy Cork connected with told him Jubal worked for a company that custom-built expensive log homes.
“Yeah, this is Jube.”
Jube? Cork wondered. When did that happen?
“Jubal, this is Cork O’Connor.”
There was a long pause, then, “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“God’s truth. It’s Cork.”
“Well, son of a gun. Where are you? Chicago still? Last we talked, you were going to try to get yourself into a cop’s uniform.”
“Yeah, still in Chicago. And, yeah, I got the uniform.”
“No kidding. I could’ve told you fifteen years ago that’s exactly what you’d end up doing. You always were the poster child for truth, justice, and the American way.” Jubal laughed and asked, “What’s this about?”
Cork explained the situation, and Jubal said nothing the whole time. For a while after he’d finished, Cork heard only the hiss of the static across the long distance.
Then Jubal said, “When do we leave?”
CHAPTER 21
A lthough Cork had often watched Jubal Little play football on the television screen, in the flesh, his old friend was startling to behold. Jubal had grown. Not just in height but also in mass. His football career had dictated that he create a body that could take brutal beatings week after week, pounding from men as big as rodeo bulls. And a magnificent body it was, broad and towering. But there was something that diminished his presence, an air of uncertainty, of defeat that Cork had never seen in him when they were kids. In high school in Aurora, when Jubal walked the halls between classes, the sea of bodies would part for him. It was subtle, but now Cork thought he saw in Jubal’s eyes a look of desperation, the look of the lost.
They used Willie’s American Express Gold Card and rented a Jeep at the Portland airport, then drove east down the Columbia River Gorge. It was early April, and Cork had never seen air so gray or mist so viscous. He had a
sense of mountains rising up almost from the roadside, but a hundred yards above him, everything was swallowed by cloud and drizzle. The great river on their left looked as cold as water could get without becoming ice. On their right, waterfall after waterfall unspooled long, loose threads of liquid that hung down the face of wet black rock. It seemed like a world in which moss and rot reigned.
They passed through Hood River, a dismal-looking little town squatting among the hills. They had breakfast, and Jubal flirted with the waitress, a pleasant woman who easily told him her name was Johanna Sisu. He asked, “So, Johanna, when will we see the sun?”
She laughed, didn’t bother to look at her watch, but simply nodded instead toward the calendar on the wall. “ ’Nother month, give or take a week.”
Cork and Willie tipped her well. Jubal left her with only the golden memory of his smile.
Twenty miles later, they hit The Dalles and turned south into great hills that were soft and green with winter wheat. At Madras, they veered east again and eventually entered a desolate area of plateaus and canyons carved out of thick layers of old lava flow.
“The Great Oregon Desert,” Willie said. ThGreOrgnDeser.
“You came out here alone?” Jubal asked, clearly astonished.
“I go everywhere alone.”
There was no resentment in Willie’s voice, but the statement saddened Cork. As kids, Willie and Winona had been inseparable, and her leaving must have been a terrible blow.
“What have you been up to, Willie?” Jubal asked.
“School mostly. I got my B.A. from the U of M in the Twin Cities, then did graduate work at Yale.”
“Yale?” Jubal said. “You went to Yale?”
“For a while. I missed the North Country and came home after a year. I have a studio near Allouette now, but I go all over doing shoots for magazines.”
“Willie’s work has been in National Geographic, ” Cork said. He was driving, with Jubal riding shotgun. Willie was in back.
“ National Geographic? I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Jubal said. “My hat’s off to you, Willie.”
“I’ve been lucky.”
Cork knew there was more than luck involved. There was something at the heart of Willie Crane immeasurably strong and immensely admirable. He’d seen it sometimes, great adversity shaping great character. It could work the other way as well, killing everything in the human spirit. What made the difference, maybe only Kitchimanidoo or God alone knew.
“You’ve done pretty good, too,” Willie said to Jubal. “I’ve watched you play on television. But you didn’t play last year.”
“I couldn’t find an offense where I felt I fit in,” Jubal said, with a note of defensiveness. “I’m in talks with the Dallas organization. I expect to hear from the Cowboys any day now.”
“What are you doing in the meantime?”
“A friend of mine, guy I know from my days with the Broncos, he and I build luxury mountain homes.”
Which, as Cork understood it from his discussion with the La Plata deputy, was an exaggeration at best. But he said nothing.
They reached a river called the John Day and then drove through a small town called Furlough, which wasn’t much more than a grid of a dozen streets lined with cottonwoods, a grocery store, two bars, and a gas station, everything dusty-looking. A few miles beyond, they turned onto a dirt road that followed a rocky creek, and they began to climb in altitude. After five miles or so, Willie said, “Stop at the crest of this hill ahead.”
Cork did as he’d been instructed. Beyond the rise lay a little valley, and beyond the valley rose blue mountains capped with snow. A stream ran the length of the valley, and on both sides of the stream grew orchards. In the middle of the orchards was a big white house and outbuildings.
They got out of the Jeep, stood on the dirt road, and studied the scene below them. A cool wind blew at their backs. In that high desert place, the air smelled of fresh sage.
“A man named Spenser McMurphy started this as a sheep ranch in the eighteen hundreds,” Willie said. “A couple of generations later, it became what they refer to out here as a fruit ranch. It’s owned by the McMurphys, three brothers. The oldest is Crandall. He’s maybe forty, a bachelor, unattached. Middle brother is Caleb. Late thirties, married, has one son, a teenager named Beckett. Youngest brother is Cole. He’s a few years older than Winona, and he’s the one she’s with. They all live communally in that one big house.”
“Crandall McMurphy?” Cork asked. “Isn’t that the guy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?”
“That’s Randle,” Willie said. “But McMurphy went to college with Kesey and they were both wrestlers. Folks in Furlough are positive that Kesey based the character in his book on Crandall. Both of them, I guess, are sly and more than a little crazy. From what I understand, they’re all a rough bunch.”
“You told me they were heavily involved in drugs,” Cork said.
Willie nodded. “The orchard’s just a cover. They have several marijuana grows along the creek down the valley.”
“You learned this just by asking around?” Cork was frankly amazed.
“No. I tracked them when I was here last week. It’s planting season, and they’ve been busy getting the grows ready.”
“How long has Winona been with them?” Jubal asked.
“She came here a little over a year ago.”
“Came from where?”
“San Francisco. She was living on the streets.”
“Homeless?” Jubal said, obviously dismayed.
“She preferred to be called a free spirit.”
“You’ve seen her since she left Aurora?” Cork asked.
“Only once, a few years ago. She agreed to meet me when I flew to the Bay Area for an exhibit of my photographs.”
Cork said, “How’d it go? The meeting, I mean.”
“Awful. She was so lost. I begged her to come home, but she refused. I think she felt ashamed of what she’d become. She was into drugs, panhandling on the streets. Maybe worse. The one thing she agreed to was to let me send her money. Which I did. It was never much, but she wrote me that it helped, and she was grateful. Then she wrote me that she’d hooked up with a guy named Cole McMurphy and was moving to Furlough. I haven’t heard from her since.”
“Did you still send letters and money?”
“Yes, but I don’t know if she got them.”
“Have you tried to talk to her here?”
“I never got the chance. I had to ask around in Furlough to even find this place, and word got back pretty fast to the McMurphy brothers. Crandall and Cole came looking for me. If I didn’t talk so funny or walk so badly, they might have got physical with me. Folks tend to write me off. All they did was warn me not to try to see Winona.”
“And if you did?” Jubal asked.
“It wouldn’t go well for me, or for Winona. They weren’t bluffing. When I was here last week, I spent three full days just watching that place down there. I saw how Winona gets treated. The other woman, too. It’s not good.”
Darkness swept over Jubal. He turned his back to the valley and slammed his fist on the hood of the Jeep. “My fault,” he said. “Goddamn it, it’s all my fault. She’d never have left Tamarack County except for me.”
Willie didn’t argue, but Cork said, “Blame gets us nowhere, Jubal. We’ve got to figure out how to get her away from there.”
“We just go in and take her,” Jubal declared.
Willie shook his head. “We would be trespassing, and it would be kidnapping. They have guns, and folks around here are pretty isolated and tight. I’m guessing the local authorities have some idea of what the McMurphys are up to but don’t care, or maybe they’re being paid off. If push came to shove, we’d be taking the bigger risk. Besides, I have another idea.”
Jubal drew himself up, huge and angry, and said, “Let’s hear it.”
At dusk Cork and Jubal went to the store in Furlough. They left Willie behind because he didn’t want to
take a chance on being recognized in town. They bought cold cuts, cheese, bread, and soft drinks. They also bought a big thermos and filled it with hot coffee. When they came back, Willie directed them to a jumble of rocks a mile from the orchards, but still high in the hills above the valley. They parked the Jeep where it couldn’t be seen from the road and hunkered down to wait for morning.
The sky was clear and the night was cold. The moon rose late, full and ice white over the valley. Cork slept fitfully in the front passenger seat of the Jeep. Willie dozed behind the wheel, and Jubal took up the whole of the backseat. Cork woke often and several times heard the cry of coyotes in the hills around them. Near morning, he woke again and couldn’t go back to sleep. He took the thermos, slipped away, and climbed up to the flat top of one of the rocks that hid the Jeep. Below him, the orchards formed an irregular darkness against the moonlit wild grass that filled the valley. It reminded him of a huge bruise on a patch of pale skin. The white house, iridescent in the brilliant moonlight, dominated the middle of all that darkness. Somewhere inside, Winona slept. He poured coffee into the thermos cup and, while he sipped the tepid brew, tried to imagine what she was like now after all she’d been through. He thought about Stockholm syndrome, and wondered if, despite all they would be risking for her, Winona would actually agree to let them take her away. If she refused, what could they do?
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