Trickster's Point co-11

by William Kent Krueger

  “She deserves answers,” he said.

  His shoulders dropped, and Cork could tell that Willie had failed to convince her.

  “It’s all right,” Willie said, as if soothing a child. “It’s all right, Nona. I’ll explain.”

  He hung up the phone and faced them.

  “She’s afraid.”

  “Of me?” Camilla asked.

  “Of everything. She gets this way.”

  It was true. Cork had seen it, especially whenever Jubal had been with her and then left. Sometimes Winona would disappear for weeks, and Willie was the only one who saw her. In those times, Willie took care of her completely.

  “I’m sorry,” Willie said to Camilla. “A wasted trip.”

  With great admiration, Camilla looked at the photographs on the cabin walls and offered Willie Crane the most cordial of smiles. “I don’t think so. And thank you for trying.”

  Willie stood in the doorway as they left, silhouetted alone against the light inside the cabin in exactly the way he’d been when they arrived.

  “Well,” Camilla said quietly, when they were in the Land Rover, “I guess that’s that.”

  “Not necessarily.” Cork started the engine.

  She turned to him, her face a dim, sickly green from the illumination of the dash lights. “What do you mean?”

  “We came to see Winona Crane. We’re going to see Winona Crane.”

  He pulled away from the cabin and offered her no further explanation.

  Winona lived in the house that had been her grandmother’s. It was a small thing of weathered gray clapboard, one story, which Cork had been in only once in all those years, and that was on the day Jubal had threatened to kill her. By the time Winona returned from the outside world, her grandmother was dead, and Winona lived in the house alone. Willie had offered to live there with her for company, but she preferred her privacy. Cork figured that her lifelong consort with Jubal Little was probably a major factor.

  As he threaded his way among the trees along the drive off the main road, Cork could see already that the house was dark. He’d hoped to find a light on, a sign that Winona was in hiding there.

  “What is this place?” Camilla asked when Cork parked and killed the engine.

  “Winona’s house.”

  She studied it a long time. In the starless night and without any ambient light, Cork couldn’t see her face but could imagine her reaction. This was where her husband, time and again, had slept with another woman.

  “No one’s home,” she said.

  “It looks that way, doesn’t it?” Cork opened his door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “No one locks their doors on the rez.”

  “You’re just going to walk inside?”

  “I’ll knock first. It’s the polite thing to do.”

  He reached across Camilla to the glove box, popped it open, and pulled a flashlight from inside. He got out, and after a moment, Camilla followed. They climbed the steps, and Cork knocked, then knocked again. He tried the knob and swung the door open.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” Camilla said, holding back.

  “After you’ve done it a few times, you get used to it,” Cork said.

  Camilla gave him a puzzled, and not very pleasant, look.

  Inside, the beam of the flashlight swept across the tiny living room, which looked pretty much the same as when Cork had seen it years before. Lots of icons and artifacts and images from other religious traditions. Framed photographs on the walls, all clearly shot by her brother. Simple, comfortable furniture. He continued through the small dining area to the kitchen.

  “What are you looking for?” Camilla asked.

  “I was hoping for Winona. But I’ll take anything that might give me a clue to where she’s hiding.”

  “And that would be?”

  “I’m hoping I’ll know when I see it.”

  “Why don’t you just turn on a light?”

  “Might bring someone from the road. I’d rather nobody caught us in here like this.”

  “Duh,” Camilla said.

  It was so pedestrian a response from so grand a lady that it made Cork laugh. He ran the light over the floor, the table, the counters, the walls.

  Camilla said, “Wait. There.”

  Her hand entered the beam, and a bright, white finger with a dark red nail pointed at a piece of stationery framed and hanging on the wall. She reached for the frame, a thin construction of honey-colored pine with a clear glass covering the paper, and pulled it from the hook where it hung. On the paper inside was a poem, handwritten. Camilla read it silently and said, “That son of a bitch.”

  “May I?” Cork took the frame from her. It held a love poem titled simply “To Winona.” Cork read it. Although his own knowledge of poetry didn’t extend much beyond Robert Frost, he thought it was a little sentimental and not very original. But he supposed a woman might be flattered to be the subject of a poem, even a bad one.

  “He gave that poem to me on our wedding night,” Camilla said bitterly. “Only it was my name at the top of the page. Christ, he couldn’t even give that little bit of himself just to me.”

  She grabbed the frame from Cork and threw it to the floor, where the glass covering shattered.

  “I’m leaving,” she announced.

  “Hold on, Camilla. There are a couple more rooms I want to check.”

  “I’ll wait for you in the car.” She spun away and took a step.

  “There might be animals out there.”

  She stopped. “You’re just trying to scare me.”

  “Just alerting you. On the rez, bears and coyotes and even wolves aren’t uncommon. Just make sure you go straight to my Land Rover and lock the doors.”

  She hesitated, clearly weighing her options, and finally decided in favor of what might threaten her outside over what she might have to face if she stayed inside with Cork. She disappeared, stomping away in the direction they’d come. Cork heard the front door open and slam closed. He figured it was probably for the best, because the next room he wanted to check was Winona’s bedroom, and God alone knew how Camilla might react at the sight of the bed where so much infidelity had taken place.

  He found the bed unmade, the sheets a rumpled mess. Each of the two pillows still held a clear indentation where a head had lain. Otherwise, the room was clean and neat. Cork discovered nothing of interest there and continued on to the final room of the house, the bathroom.

  Although Winona tended to clutter her home with religious and spiritual knickknacks, she was essentially a good housekeeper. The bathroom, like the other rooms, was spotless. Cork swung the flashlight across the top of the small vanity, opened the cabinet, checked the shelves where the towels and washcloths lay neatly folded. On a small, low table next to the tub sat a big candle, a compact CD player, and a single plastic CD case. He remembered how his wife, Jo, used to love to relax at the end of a long day with a bath, a candle, and soft music. There was a wicker hamper next to the door. He lifted the lid. What was inside surprised him. Several towels lay thrown there, all of them deeply stained red. He touched the topmost towel. The red was crusted. He turned and ran the beam of the flashlight more carefully over the small room. When the light fell on the floor beneath the claw-footed bathtub, Cork caught another glimpse of crimson.

  He knelt and looked more closely. It was a thin rivulet, a few inches long. He touched it and confirmed that it had long ago dried. He swept the whole area under the tub with the light but could see nothing more. He went down on his hands and knees and carefully examined the rest of the bathroom floor, which was hardwood. In a tiny seam where the old wood had shrunk and separated, he found another gathering of what appeared to him to be dried blood.

  He stood up and considered, and what he thought was that someone had bled here, bled quite a lot, and then someone-a different someone? — had tried to clean up all that blood. Whether for the sake of cleanliness or to get rid of evidence he didn’t know.


  A scream came from outside, and Cork spun, thinking, in that instant, that he’d warned Camilla against the wrong kinds of animals. He ran through the house, out the door, and found Camilla in the Land Rover with the doors locked. When she saw him, she lowered her window.

  “Someone,” she said. “There.” She pointed to the side of the garage, and Cork shot the beam of his flashlight in that direction. It illuminated the garbage bin, and a fat raccoon with his little paws full of fish bones. His eyes glittered in the light, and he stared at them as if they, not he, were the intruders.

  “Sorry,” Camilla said.

  “That’s all right.” Cork decided his visit to the house was at an end for the moment. He slid into the driver’s seat.

  Camilla asked, “Well?”

  He considered telling her what he’d found but, because he didn’t know yet what it meant, decided discretion was best.

  “Nothing,” he replied.

  When they arrived back at the courthouse, the Escalade wasn’t the only vehicle waiting for them. A gray Mercedes SUV had parked behind it. Cork pulled to the curb under the streetlamp in front of the Escalade and got out. As he walked to the passenger side to open the door for Camilla, Yates left his vehicle, and two figures emerged from the Mercedes. They all converged on Cork.

  Nick Jaeger held back a discreet distance, but Alex thrust his face to within inches of Cork’s. “Jesus Christ, O’Connor, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Before Cork had a chance to respond, Camilla Little stepped out and said, “I asked him to do me a favor, Alex. He was just honoring my request.”

  Yates, who stood very near to her, said, “Sorry, Mrs. Little. They just showed up.”

  “That’s okay, Kenny.”

  Alex forgot about being upset for a moment. “You saw her?”

  “No,” Camilla replied. Then added, “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “We’ll discuss it, but not here.” He turned his attention to Cork again. In the harsh light of the streetlamp, the scar lines on his face were like worms embedded under the skin. “After what happened to you this afternoon, I can’t believe you’d put my sister at risk this way. And you”-to Yates-“you’re supposed to protect her.”

  “I’m also supposed to respect her wishes.”

  “In this situation, that kind of respect could have got her killed.”

  “She’s your sister. You try arguing with her.”

  “And you try finding a job after I fire you.”

  “With all due respect, I work for the Littles.”

  Alex ignored the remark and addressed his sister once again: “You’re coming with us. We have things to talk about.”

  He tried to take hold of Camilla, but Yates clamped a huge and powerful hand on his arm, cutting short the man’s reach.

  “Is that what you want, Mrs. Little?” Yates said.

  “It’s fine, Kenny.”

  Yates released his grip on Alex Jaeger’s arm but with reluctance, it was clear. He stood beside Cork, watching silently as Camilla Little was taken away by her brothers. Cork glanced at his face and saw concern there. And something more, maybe?

  “She’ll be okay,” Cork said. “They’re family.”

  Yates seemed unimpressed. “Jubal hired me to protect her from the crazies out there. You ask me, what she most needs protecting from is that family of hers. Crazy as peach orchard pigs.”

  “Peach orchard pigs? What’s that mean, Kenny?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Just something we say in Texas.”

  “Jubal married into that family with his eyes wide open.”

  “Yeah, I asked him once why he put up with their smug white liberalism and their relentless political maneuvering. He told me that when he played professional ball, even though he didn’t particularly like some of his teammates, he understood that the only way he’d ever make it to the Super Bowl was playing on a team.”

  “The Super Bowl?”

  “A metaphor,” Yates said and looked at Cork as if he were an idiot. “For the presidency. Jubal had his sights set on the White House.” Yates stared down the street, where the taillights of the Mercedes were like two eyes glaring at him from the dark. “She’d have made a hell of a First Lady,” he said.

  He arrived home in the late dark. The patio door was locked, so Cork used his key to come in through the side door. He crept into the kitchen, and Trixie got up from where she lay sleeping under the dining room table and came to greet him.

  “Hey, girl,” he said quietly and petted her with one hand while she licked his other.

  The house was dark except for a single lamp in the living room, where he found Cy Borkman snoring on the sofa, a crocheted afghan thrown over him. He shook his friend gently, and Borkman awoke.

  “I’ll take the next watch, Cy,” Cork said. “Thanks, buddy.”

  Borkman, a big man, particularly around his middle, yawned and stretched and eased himself up. “Everything go okay?”

  “Yeah, Cy. Just fine. And it helped not worrying about my family.”

  “You need me again, you just call.”

  “I will, Cy. Thanks.”

  Borkman took his jacket from the coat tree near the front door and left.

  Upstairs, a soft crying began. Cork heard steps in the hallway and then Jenny’s voice gently offering comfort. In a minute, the house was quiet once more. He caught again the sound of Jenny’s light tread in the hallway, but instead of entering her bedroom, she came downstairs.

  “Hi, kiddo.” Cork spoke softly so that he wouldn’t startle her.

  “I thought I heard you come in. Did Cy go home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s a good man. Waaboo loves him.”

  “Waaboo loves everyone.”

  “Long day,” she said. “Any luck?”

  “Luck?”

  “Clearing your name. Getting yourself out from under the cloud of suspicion.”

  Cork gave her a brief smile. “You sound like a writer of bad mystery stories. Let’s go into the kitchen, and I’ll fill you in.”

  He pulled the curtain over the sink and turned on the hood light above the stove, intentionally keeping the room dimly lit. He poured himself a glass of milk, took a couple of chocolate chip cookies from the cookie jar, and sat with his daughter at the kitchen table.

  “Rainy called,” she told him. “She and Henry heard about the deer slug through your windshield. She was worried. She tried your cell, but you didn’t answer.”

  Cork pulled his phone from the holder on his belt. “Damn battery’s dead. You told her I’m all right?”

  “Yes, but she’s still worried. We all are, Dad.”

  “It’s too late to call her now. I’ll check in with her in the morning.”

  “So,” Jenny said. “Fill me in.”

  He did. Told her everything, including his suspicions concerning Bigby and Broom.

  “Do you really think that either of those men could have killed Jubal Little?” she asked when he’d finished.

  Cork took a long drink of his milk and, with the back of his hand, wiped the residue from his upper lip. “Remember when we found Waaboo? You were ready to kill to protect him. I think either Lester or Isaiah could have killed Jubal if what they wanted to protect was important enough to them.”

  “Isaiah and Indian casinos?”

  “Couple that with a lifelong love of Winona Crane, and maybe so.”

  “And you really think Lester Bigby would kill to protect his investments?”

  “Again, couple that with a deep desire to raise his esteem in his father’s eyes, and maybe so. And one more thing to keep in mind about them both. Neither of them would shed a tear if I went to prison for the deed.”

  “I don’t buy that,” Jenny said. “I don’t think either of them killed Jubal Little.”

  “You think I did it, then?”

  “Don’t joke about this.”

  He sat back and studied her. In the weak ligh
t, with her hair the color of a moonbeam on a dark lake and her eyes like chips of blue glacial ice, she reminded him of her mother. He’d often sat with Jo in just this way, discussing a case that had him puzzled. He still missed her, still felt the ache of her loss, but the current of life had carried him on to a new place, and he’d discovered that he could be happy there, too.

  “I found blood at Winona Crane’s house,” he said.

  “Somebody was hurt?”

  “Looks like. Probably not Winona. She talked with Willie tonight and didn’t say anything to him about it, at least while I was there.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “Maybe nothing. I don’t know.”

  “So,” Jenny said. “What now?”

  “I’ve turned over all the rocks I can think of. Now, I guess, we wait.”

  “For what?”

  “To see if anything crawls out.”

  “Coming from you, that sounds awfully passive.”

  “The truth is I don’t know what else to do, except hope that tomorrow something breaks.”

  As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened.

  CHAPTER 31

  He rose early, long before the media might arrive at his door, dressed, put a note on the kitchen table explaining things to Jenny and Stephen, and left the house. He didn’t call Borkman; the guy needed his sleep. He hoped the early hour was reasonable protection for his family, and he planned to be back before it got too late.

  Another November overcast had moved in, and Cork drove under a sky still inky from night and promising nothing better than a day capped with clouds the color of despair.

  He’d awakened that morning with an uncomfortable thought, a thought about Winona Crane, and he needed to talk it over with Henry Meloux. The morning was cool, almost cold. Before starting down the path to Crow Point, he zipped his leather jacket up to his chin, pulled his gloves on, and settled a red stocking cap over his ears.

  Half an hour later, he broke from the trees and saw, against the gray sky that backed the meadow, smoke vining upward from both Meloux’s cabin and Rainy’s. The meadow grass was long and dry, the color of apple cider. Against the walls of the two small cabins, cords of split wood lay stacked, banked in anticipation of a winter just over the horizon. The wood made the walls look unnaturally thick, and the image reminded Cork of those wild animals who, in the fall, grew their coats huge to protect them from the brutal cold that was to come. Behind the branches of the bare aspens along the shoreline, Iron Lake was a great slab of fractured gray slate. The only sound was the cry of the crows that perennially used the trees as a rookery and, in that way, had given the point its name.