Trickster's Point co-11

by William Kent Krueger

  “She’d delivered Rhiannon?”

  “Yes. But the baby was stillborn. I don’t know why.”

  “Oh, Willie. I’m sorry.”

  “They grieved together. Hell, I grieved, too. Then we buried her.”

  “Where?”

  “Out there.” Willie again gestured toward the forests that ran to Canada. “In a beautiful spot where no one would ever find her. Three nights ago, I laid Nona beside her.”

  “Who else knew about Rhiannon?”

  “No one. It was a well-kept secret, Cork. I don’t know who else could know.”

  “Someone knows, Willie. He threatened me, anonymously.”

  “I swear, Cork, I don’t know.”

  Cork felt the weight of that particular concern settle once more on his tired shoulders. “Okay, will you do me a favor? For the time being, when the sheriff’s people question you, don’t say anything about Rhiannon.”

  “All right, Cork. But will you do me a favor in return?”

  “What is it?”

  “Give me a little time before you turn me in. I need to get things in order.”

  “I can do that, Willie.”

  Cork took one final look around the house where Winona Crane had lived her life according to a purpose she’d accepted long ago but, judging from the evidence she’d left behind, had never fully understood, a life she had made sacrifices for that hadn’t, as far as Cork could see, brought her any happiness. He’d loved her once, loved her with all the ardor and ache of a young man’s heart, and because of that, he had, in a sense, loved her always. Yet, as he drove off, leaving Willie to mourn her alone, Cork was very glad his own life had gone a different way and without her.

  CHAPTER 40

  A mile after he left Winona’s house, the headlights appeared in Cork’s rearview mirror. He noted them, then went back to his thinking.

  He considered Jubal Little. He’d loved Jubal once, loved him as a brother, but it had, in actuality, been so brief a time. Had he really known Jubal then? He thought not, because Jubal hadn’t known himself, any more than Cork understood who he was. Their roads had diverged, and they’d gone in different directions, become different kinds of men. Cork had created a family. Jubal had created a following. Cork had lived pretty much in anonymity in the small world of Tamarack County, and had been happy there. Jubal had lived in the spotlight, but had he been happy? All the evidence indicated no. Jubal had spent a good deal of his life chasing greatness, that mountaintop Winona had seen in her vision so very long ago. And what had it brought him in the end except regret? When they were children, Cork had envied Jubal. But he envied him no more.

  The headlights behind him had approached, coming dangerously near, casting a blinding glare in Cork’s mirrors. The road was empty. It was never heavily trafficked and at night it was particularly abandoned. But it was winding, and Cork kept his speed steady, thinking the vehicle would pass on the next straightaway. When the opportunity came, the vehicle shot around his Land Rover, and Cork saw the Escalade that belonged to Kenny Yates pass in a blur of shiny silver metal. It pulled ahead and swerved back into the right-hand lane directly in front of Cork, way too close. The taillights immediately bloomed red, and the Escalade began to slow, forcing Cork to slow with it. What the hell was Yates up to? Cork had no idea, but he didn’t like this aggressiveness. It felt threatening. Felt, he realized, much like the call he’d received from the voice of the Devil on that same stretch of road, a manufactured voice meant as disguise. Low, gravelly, male. It could easily have been Yates.

  The Escalade slowed to a stop on the empty highway, and Cork brought the Land Rover to a halt behind it. A moment passed. The door of the Escalade opened, and Yates stepped out. He wore a black leather jacket. His hands were in his pockets. He stood still, as if waiting for Cork to meet him.

  Cork thought, Ah, hell, and got out. He approached the big man, the football player turned bodyguard, and kept his eyes on the pockets that hid Yates’s hands. He stopped ten feet away.

  “What’s with the road rage, Kenny?” he asked.

  “Road rage?” In the glare of Cork’s headlights, the big man’s eyes were white orbs drilled at the centers with fathomless holes. “I just wanted a word with you before this whole thing goes any further.”

  “A word? You could have called me on my cell phone.”

  “Tried. Got nothing.”

  Which could have been true, because during his talk with Willie Crane, Cork had turned his cell phone off.

  “How’d you know I was out here?”

  “Tailed you from town.”

  “You wanted to talk to me, why didn’t you do it before this?”

  “Had to work myself up for it.”

  Which didn’t sound encouraging to Cork. He thought that if Yates pulled a gun from his coat-maybe that Beretta he’d offered Cork earlier-he’d dash behind the Escalade and head for the darkness of the woods that lined the road. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was something.

  “Okay, you’ve got me now,” Cork said.

  “What’s the word?”

  “Rhiannon,” Yates said. Only he didn’t say the word in a normal way. He used the voice of the Devil. He studied Cork and seemed confused at Cork’s lack of surprise. “You knew it was me?”

  Cork didn’t answer that one. Instead he said simply, “Why, Kenny?”

  “What do you know about Rhiannon?”

  “Everything.”

  Yates nodded, as if what he already suspected had just been confirmed. His shoulders sagged, but his hands stayed in his pockets. “That night you first met with the Jaegers, after you left, I heard Camilla ask her brothers about the name. She said you’d run it by her. I panicked, thought you were onto Jubal’s dirty little secret.”

  “You knew?”

  “I’ve worked for the Littles for nearly five years. Each of those years, on the second day of October, Jubal got shitfaced. He’d have me drive him out into the country somewhere, always some isolated rural place, and he’d go off alone with a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and drink himself into a stupor. If he didn’t go far enough, I’d hear him wailing something awful. Eventually I’d gather him up and bring him home.”

  “He told you about Rhiannon?”

  “He confessed to me once, like I was a priest or something. Told me how he should have been there, how he should have made certain that little child had the right care, how he’d buried her in the woods, unbaptized, her grave unmarked. He asked me to pray for him.”

  “Did he remember telling you these things?”

  “Never. Jubal liked his Kentucky bourbon, but I never saw him that drunk except on that one day every year. Jubal shouldered a shitload of guilt, but his little baby, she was more than he could bear.”

  “Why the threats, Kenny? Jubal’s dead. The truth can’t hurt him.”

  “Not him. Camilla. Folks, they’d understand a man having another woman on the side, forget about it eventually. Happens all the time. But what he did with that poor baby, nobody’s going to forget or forgive. Jubal’s gone, but Camilla’d have to live with the way people looked at her, married to a man like that.”

  We kill to protect the things we love, Cork thought.

  “Why are you telling me this, Kenny?”

  Yates slowly withdrew his hands from his pockets. Cork tensed, then was relieved to see that they were empty.

  “Because I didn’t know you before. What I know now is that you’re a decent man, and I don’t want you worrying about your family. I’m ashamed of what I did to you. So go on and do whatever you’ve got to do. Bring charges, tell Camilla the truth, it’s up to you.”

  “I ought to just coldcock you.”

  “You go right ahead.” Yates braced but made no move to protect himself.

  Cork said, “But I guess I understand.”

  Yates relaxed. “Hoped you would. So, you going to tell her?”

  “I don’t know, Kenny. What good would it do? Jubal’s dead. Winona’s dead. Se
ems best to let that secret die with them.”

  “See? Knew I could trust you to do the right thing.”

  “I don’t know that it’s right. But it’s something I can live with.”

  Yates walked across the distance that had separated them and put out his big hand. “Been a pleasure getting to know you.”

  Cork took the offered hand. “Likewise.”

  Yates nodded toward the Land Rover. “I’ll let you get on with things now. I’m guessing you still have places to go. And me, I need to get back to Camilla.”

  When Yates left, Cork stood alone on the highway, relieved. He called home, told Jenny that Cy’s tour of duty was over, and that the danger was past. He didn’t explain, just said, “I think we’re nearing the end of the road on this one.”

  “Home late?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’ll leave a light on,” she promised.

  CHAPTER 41

  C ork had seen optical illusions created in such a way that, when you looked at the image, at first you saw one thing, but if you stared at it long enough, or from a different angle, you saw another image entirely. After he left Kenny Yates, as he drove back into Aurora, he realized that’s how it was with what had occurred at Trickster’s Point.

  He turned on his cell phone, called ahead to the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department, and made a suggestion to Ed Larson. When he arrived, he found Larson, Sheriff Marsha Dross, and BCA Agent Phil Holter gathered in Dross’s office.

  “Well?” he asked as he headed to the chair they’d left empty for him.

  “You were right,” Larson replied. “The other set of prints on the flyer we took from the John Doe’s car belonged to Jubal Little. How did you know?”

  Cork took off his leather jacket, hung it on the chair back, and sat down. “I realized we were all looking at the man on the ridge as if he and whoever murdered Jubal were connected. When Stephen first suggested that possibility, it seemed natural. The killer and his backup. To have two men up there with no relationship to each other seemed too enormous a coincidence. But coincidence it was. When I understood that, I understood things in a different way, although largely because I knew something no one else did.”

  “And that was?” Holter said, obviously wanting to be able to write off as nonsense whatever it was Cork was going to say.

  “That when Jubal was eighteen, he murdered someone.”

  This clearly hit them all with shocking effect. Their stares went owl-eye huge, and they seemed dumbfounded. So Cork told them what had happened at Trickster’s Point the day Donner Bigby died.

  When Cork finished, Holter asked, “You knew all along Little had killed that kid?”

  “Not when it happened. I bought the story Jubal told me. Years later, he told me the truth. And not long ago, I threatened to use what I knew against him.” He turned to Dross. “You asked me what Jubal and I argued about the morning before he died. That was it. Jubal pretty much demanded to know if I still planned to use Donner Bigby against him. I told him that if he won the election and went ahead with the mining and the casinos, I would. He tried to argue me out of it. I wouldn’t budge. He repeated something he’d said to me once before. My end was my own doing. I didn’t understand then, but it’s obvious to me now. He’d arranged to have me silenced.”

  “You really believe that?” Holter asked.

  “Jubal died thinking I’d shot that arrow into his heart. He recognized my fletching pattern. He thought I’d done it deliberately. I didn’t try to argue with him, what was the point? At the end, he told me, with a grudging kind of respect, that I’d finally bested him. Bested him in what way, I had no idea. Now I get it. He thought that somehow I knew he was planning to kill me, and I simply struck first. It was what he would have done in my place.”

  Holter said, “You’re saying that he arranged for the John Doe to kill you and gave him your flyer so that the guy would know what you looked like? Is that it?”

  “Jubal chose Trickster’s Point. He told me he wanted to go back where it all began, to make our peace there, with each other and with the past. He said Winona had advised him it would be a good thing to do. Do you remember, Ed, when you interviewed me at the start of all this, and I told you that what I was hunting wasn’t deer but Jubal Little?”

  “I remember.”

  “I thought maybe if we made peace, I’d find the old Jubal, or what was left of him. But it had been a trap all along. Jubal figured, and rightly so, that we’d be alone out there. Even though I’d be hard to miss, I’m guessing that flyer with my picture on it was just Jubal making sure nothing got screwed up.”

  “A hell of a lot of speculation,” Holter said dismissively. “No proof of anything.”

  “If we knew the true identity of our John Doe, we might be able to prove a connection,” Dross offered.

  “Do you have a photo of him?” Cork asked.

  “Lots from the crime scene,” Larson replied.

  “I have an idea,” Cork told them.

  Holter gave him a dismal look. “Why does that not surprise me?”

  When Kenny Yates showed Cork and Larson in, the Jaegers were gathered in the den. They all had drinks in their hands, and there was a nice fire crackling away in the fireplace. The room carried the pleasant, comforting scent of woodsmoke, yet the way the Jaegers eyed their visitors was anything but comfortable.

  “Thank you, Kenny,” Camilla said.

  “You’re welcome.” Yates turned to leave.

  “I’d like you to stick around, Kenny,” Cork said. “I’m hoping you might be able to help me out here.”

  Yates looked surprised, then looked to Camilla Little, who nodded her assent.

  Alex Jaeger said, “What exactly is it that you think we can do for you?”

  Ed Larson stood next to the chair where Camilla sat. He said, “In most homicides, we find that the perpetrator and the victim are acquainted. The motive tends to be something personal between them. I’d like you all to take a look at the photograph of the man killed on the ridge above Trickster’s Point the same day Mrs. Little’s husband was killed. I’d like to know if you recognize him, if he might have been someone Mr. Little was acquainted with.”

  Larson handed the photo to Camilla first. She studied it and shook her head.

  Alex was next, and he did the same. “Never saw him before.”

  Larson took the photograph to Nick, who was finishing off a glass of what looked like scotch on the rocks. He put the drink down, took the photograph, eyed it carefully, and said, “Son of a bitch.”

  “You know him?” Larson asked.

  “He looks different dead, but I’d swear it’s Chet Carlson.”

  “Carlson?” Yates said. “Let me see that picture.” He crossed to where Larson stood with Nick Jaeger, took the photograph, glanced at it, and said, “That’s him all right.”

  “Who was Chet Carlson?” Larson asked.

  “A linebacker for Kansas City when Jubal quarterbacked for them,” Yates explained. “He wasn’t in the league very long. Mean mother. Some guys, they played for the love of the sport or maybe for the money. Carlson, he played to get his licks in. Loved doing damage on the field. I heard that after he left football he signed on with that mercenary company.”

  “Blackwater?”

  “Blackwater. That’s it. Didn’t surprise me in the least that he’d go into a line of work where it’s always open season on human beings.”

  “What about you?” Larson said to Nick. “How do you know him?”

  “He used to hunt with Jubal and me sometimes. I didn’t care for him at all. Like Kenny says, the guy was all about hurting things. I finally told Jubal I wouldn’t go on any more hunts if Carlson was going to be a part of them.”

  “Good shot?” Cork asked.

  “With the right equipment, anybody can be a good shot,” Nick said. “He never joined any of the hunts when Jubal and I shot muzzle-loaders and black powder, so not a pure hunter. But with a Marlin and a go
od scope, he could put a bullet where it had to go for a kill shot.”

  “I don’t understand,” Camilla said. “Why would he be involved in killing Jubal?”

  “He wasn’t,” Cork said.

  “He was supposed to kill me.”

  He explained his reasoning, and when he’d finished, the room was dead still.

  “Doesn’t make a lick of sense,” Alex finally blustered. “How would Jubal have explained you getting shot?”

  Cork shrugged. “Hunting accident, maybe, but not his doing. All he had with him was a bow and a few arrows. So a stray shot from some careless hunter, who either didn’t know the damage he’d done or vanished because of it. Probably another reason Jubal chose Trickster’s Point, all the incidents of accidental hunting deaths out there. He believed he could sell ice to Eskimos, so I’m sure he figured that whatever he said people would buy it.”

  “Carlson’s a loose end,” Larson pointed out. “And kind of a loose cannon, it sounds like. Seems to me a dangerous man for Little to bring into something like this and just hope he’d keep quiet.”

  Cork looked toward Nick. “If I were Jubal, I’d plan on another hunting accident, maybe somewhere in the wilds of Canada where there’d be no witnesses. Or maybe he’d just report that they got separated out there and lost and Carlson was never found. What do you think, Nick? Things like that happen, don’t they?”

  Nick’s face clouded, and he said vaguely, “I’ve heard.”

  “It’s all speculation, of course,” Cork went on. “Jubal took the answers with him when he walked the Path of Souls.”

  Alex shook his head fiercely. “His fingerprints on a sheet of paper. That’s all you have. Proves nothing.”

  “Not yet,” Larson said. “But it’s a beginning, Mr. Jaeger. And I’m going to make sure that we find out where it leads.”

  Camilla’s hands lay folded in her lap, and her eyes rested there, as if holding them in place. She didn’t look up when she spoke. “I’m sorry, Cork.”