Desolation Mountain

by William Kent Krueger

  “Alex Quaker is here keeping a lid on things.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “Had a long conversation this evening. His story is that it’s the Lexington Brigade.”

  “We’ve suspected that some of the threats Olympia received came from the brigade.”

  “So when he puts it out there, it’ll be a story that will carry weight, a good diversion.”

  “You don’t buy it?”

  “There are things about it I like. If it is the brigade and they do have some membership up here, that might explain the disappearance of the Indians. The locals might have the kind of information that would make it possible for them to locate and grab these folks.” Bo thought for a few moments. “And there’ve been reports of white poachers on the reservation. Could be the brigade scoping out the territory.”

  “It could be anybody scoping out the territory, even Gerard’s people. Bo, is it possible Gerard was behind the setup tonight?”

  “With Gerard, anything is possible. But I don’t know how getting O’Connor out of the picture would benefit him. It could be someone on the rez who doesn’t want him asking questions. And there are still players involved in this that I haven’t identified yet.”

  “Players?”

  “O’Connor wrote down a bunch of numbers from government plates out at the airport where NTSB is running their investigation. They were all vehicles from a pool, no agency prefixes. I have a friend looking into who checked them out from the pool. That might prove enlightening.”

  At the other end, she sighed. “I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll ever know the truth. There’s so much smoke.”

  “I’ll do my best to clear it away, I promise.”

  “I know.”

  The odor of Gerard’s cigar still lingered in the air. Bo moved to the far end of the deck, where the scent of evergreen was strong. “Gerard knows I’m working for the senator’s family.”

  “How?”

  “I told him, but it was clear the news came as no surprise. Surveillance of some kind, probably. He might even have somebody on the inside on your end. You be careful.”

  “I will.”

  Bo breathed in the scent of pine, which made him feel oddly refreshed, even hopeful. “When will he be arriving for the memorial service?”

  “The day after tomorrow.”

  “He’s kept a low profile during all this.”

  “When we have answers, he’ll speak out. You know that.”

  “And you’ll be right there beside him.”

  “That’s where I belong.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “Is that all for tonight?”

  “No rest for the wicked. Still a little cleanup work to do.”

  When the call had ended, he returned in the dark to the wooded point where he’d sequestered his kayak and paddled to the island offshore from Gerard’s command center. He downloaded the most recent recording. Back at his cabin, when he listened, he was more convinced than ever that Gerard wasn’t behind the setup that night. In what was clearly a conference between Gerard and a couple of his top people, the suggestion arose of salting the audience with their own men. Gerard nixed that, giving Bo a compliment: “One good man is all I need there.”

  Gerard was a piece of work, one Bo had never been able to pin down completely. It was clear the man appreciated his abilities, but Bo also understood that if Gerard had to, he’d feed an operative, any operative, to the wolves. The game they were all playing was deadly, and it had no rules.

  CHAPTER 36

  * * *

  They’d gathered around the fire ring on Crow Point. The air was still, the moon on the rise, midnight sapphires sparkling on the surface of Iron Lake, only a stone’s throw away. Waaboo slept on a blanket on the ground, his little arm thrown over the old dog, Trixie, who wasn’t asleep but lay blinking in the firelight.

  “Thank God for that vest.” Rainy sat close beside Cork, her fingers laced in his and resting on his thigh. He felt her concern in the intensity of her grip. “No more heroics, promise me.”

  “Nothing heroic about it. I just walked into a setup.”

  “And you,” Jenny said to Stephen. “What were you thinking?”

  “That I might be more useful there than sitting around here.” His voice remained sullen.

  “From now on,” Cork said, “nobody acts alone. We’re in this together. Clear?” He’d addressed his remarks to them all, but his eyes were on Stephen.

  “It wasn’t Tom Blessing,” Daniel said. “I’d stake my life on it.”

  “I think you’re right. But that probably means Tom’s in the same boat as the Hukaris and the Loves, and what boat that is God only knows. There’s a clock ticking in my head. I’m thinking that if we don’t we get some answers soon, Phil and Sue and Tom and the Loves are . . .” He couldn’t quite bring himself to finish, to say the word. Dead.

  Leah Duling sat next to Henry Meloux, who had said almost nothing since he’d asked for the fire to be built. When Leah had offered a mild objection—“It’s late, Henry”—the old Mide had replied, “We are in the dark, and fire illuminates.” Now she asked, “Do you sense death?”

  The old man looked toward the dark where the forest lay beyond the firelight. “Something is here. It is huge and it is evil and it is meant for killing. That is what I sense.”

  “The monster at Stephen’s back?” Jenny asked.

  But Cork was also remembering that Waaboo had had a nightmare of a many-headed monster.

  Trixie stood suddenly and eyed the gap in the outcrops where the path from Meloux’s cabin came through. In the firelight, the rocks quivered red-orange, the gap between them murky black. The dog gave a low, menacing growl. Cork freed himself from Rainy’s grip and stood. Daniel rose, too, reaching for the sidearm holstered at his waist.

  What stumbled into sight surprised the hell out of Cork, probably out of them all. Ned Love stood illuminated in the firelight, supporting the weight of his nephew Monkey, whose jacket was black with old blood.

  * * *

  “We’re on the dock,” Ned explained, “just getting into the canoe to cross Little Bass for some hunting. Cyrus sets up a ruckus like I ain’t heard from him in a long while. Then the shot comes, takes out Cyrus. The next shot catches Monkey. I spot two men at the cabin, get my rifle to my shoulder, squeeze off a couple of rounds. I drag Monkey into the canoe and paddle like hell for the far side of the lake. Had to leave Cyrus behind. Near broke my heart.”

  They were in Meloux’s cabin, Monkey Love on the bunk, where the old Mide and Rainy tended to him. They’d opened his shirt to expose the bullet’s entry wound.

  “I tried to clean that best I could,” Ned said. “Put some moss on it, but I knew it needed better looking after. Why I brought Monkey here.”

  “The wound looks clean, Ned,” Rainy said. “That moss was a good idea. But Monkey’s lost a lot of blood. We need to get him to the hospital.”

  “Nope. In a hospital bed, Monkey’d be like a fish in a barrel.”

  “Did you get a look at them?” Cork asked.

  “Not a good enough look.”

  “Two of them, you say?”

  “That’s all I saw. Could’ve been more, I suppose. But if there was, they weren’t shooting.”

  “Two,” Cork said. He glanced at Daniel. “Your poachers?”

  “Could be.”

  “Or the guys who did this,” Stephen said, pointing to his stitched cheek.

  “That bullet’s still in Monkey’s shoulder,” Rainy said. “Ned, we really have to get him to the hospital.”

  “Ain’t going to happen.”

  “Who knows what damage that bullet’s done?”

  “I put him in that hospital, I got a feelin’ he ain’t coming out.”

  “Ned—”

  “Remove his shirt,” Meloux said.

  Rainy made no move to comply. “Why?”

  “Remove his shirt and you will see.”

  With Ned’s help, Rainy stripped o
ff the bloodstained shirt. Monkey Love’s torso was like a human game of tic-tac-toe, long scars crisscrossing his skin.

  “What happened to him?” Rainy asked.

  “Prison fights, mostly,” Ned Love replied. “He didn’t do so well inside.”

  “Turn him over,” Meloux said.

  Monkey, who’d seemed only vaguely aware of things since his arrival, gave a long, painful groan with the repositioning. Like his chest, his back was remarkable for the number of scars it bore. Meloux sat on the bunk and ran his hand lightly over Monkey’s back near the right shoulder blade.

  “There,” he said. “Feel it, Niece?”

  Rainy touched where Meloux had indicated. “The bullet.”

  “We will take it out.”

  “Uncle Henry, a procedure like that should be done in an operating room.”

  “You have cut human beings before.”

  “Minor things. This is way beyond my capability.”

  “You will not do it?”

  “I can’t, ethically.”

  “Fetch my knife, Leah,” the old Mide said.

  Rainy’s dark brown eyes grew huge with surprise and concern. “You’re not going to cut it out, are you?”

  “I have cut out bullets before.”

  “I’m not even going to ask about that, but it had to have been in a time when those hands of yours didn’t shake.”

  “I’ll cut it out,” Cork offered.

  “No.” Meloux was firm. “This is work for a healer.” He looked to Ned Love. “You are his uncle, his closest family. What do you wish?”

  “He ain’t going to a hospital. He’s been sliced up before, and not by anyone who gave a hoot about him. He’ll survive another cut or two.”

  “What about all that lost blood?” Rainy said.

  “He is not the first human being to lose blood to a wound. When the bullet is out, if the wound stays clean, his body will make more blood in time.”

  “Uncle Henry—” she began but once again was cut off.

  “I will take the bullet out,” Meloux said.

  “No.” Rainy turned to Leah. “My medical bag is in your cabin. Could you bring it to me? And, Stephen, I’ll need clean towels, lots of them. Go with Leah.”

  As a public health nurse, Rainy made all manner of calls on the rez, and she always brought her medical bag. She did the same, Cork knew, whenever she visited her centenarian great-uncle on Crow Point. She was a woman always prepared. Now she closed her eyes and steeled herself for what was ahead.

  * * *

  When it was over and Monkey was resting, Rainy said, “I’m going to get some air.”

  She went outside into the night, and Cork started after her.

  “She needs to be alone, Corcoran O’Connor,” Meloux advised.

  Cork had seldom argued with Meloux, but he said, “I should be with her.”

  “To tell her that she is a fine healer, that she is loved, that you understand the difficulty in what she has done? Do you think she does not know these things?”

  “To comfort her, Henry.”

  “The comfort of a healer is the healed. Give her the honor of her time alone with herself.”

  It was hard accepting the advice of the old Mide, but Cork lowered himself back into his chair.

  “Who were they?” Ned asked. “Them men who shot my nephew.”

  “We don’t know,” Daniel replied. “But we think we know what they were after. We think they’re looking for the flight recorder from the plane that crashed.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  “They call it a black box, Ned, but it’s really orange.”

  “Orange?” Ned Love squinched up his face. “A little orange box? I know where it is.”

  Cork sat suddenly erect in his chair. “You picked it up?”

  “Nope, just know where it is. Would have told somebody if I’d known they were looking for it, but we got shoved away from that crash so quick. And nobody came around later to ask us. Then those guys showed up and started shooting.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In the woods by the bog where the plane came down.”

  “People have been over that area a hundred times, Ned. How come they haven’t found it?”

  “Them searchers, I’m guessing they were looking at the ground. Me, I hunt squirrels, so I look up.”

  CHAPTER 37

  * * *

  He woke and lay in his sleeping bag, which he’d unrolled in the tall grass of the meadow on Crow Point. The moon was full and, like a ravenous god, had devoured the stars around it. The two cabins nearby were dark, everyone inside asleep. The breeze was out of the southwest, soft and unseasonably warm. The grass stalks around him swayed, and he could hear the voice of that gentle wind whispering to him. He didn’t hear the menace Henry Meloux seemed to have heard the spirits speak. To Stephen, the sound was a hopeful crooning: Soon, soon, soon.

  It was the vision that had awakened him, the same visitation played out in the same way. His inability to understand its meaning had eaten at him, an acid on his soul. But tonight was different. Tonight there was promise. In the wind. In the voice. In the way the tall grass yielded.

  He heard the creak of the door on Henry Meloux’s cabin, watched as the old man came his way, bent ever so slightly, like the grass. In the moonlight, the old man was silver.

  Without a word or an acknowledgment of his presence, Henry sat beside him. It was as if, to the old Mide, Stephen was just another of the wild things that grew tall in the meadow.

  “It’s coming.” Stephen spoke in a whisper no louder than the voice of the wind.

  “The great evil?” the old man said.

  “The meaning of the vision.”

  “Ah.”

  Stephen sat up. The upper half of the sleeping bag fell to his waist. He wore a long-sleeved T-shirt, which was enough to keep him comfortable in that fall night. Henry had put on his old mackinaw.

  “There’s more than evil out there,” Stephen said. “There’s promise. The flight recorder Ned Love saw lodged up in a tree, that was the egg falling from the eagle. I think the full meaning of the vision is unfolding.”

  Not far away, the grass shifted suddenly as something darted through it, an animal who believed there was safety in the night.

  “It’s been hard, Henry. This knowing and not knowing.”

  “What in life is not hard, Stephen O’Connor?”

  There was another creaking door, this time from Leah Duling’s cabin. Rainy stepped into the moonlight and crossed the meadow. She was barefoot but wore sweatpants and a light jacket. She sat on the other side of Stephen. The gray-white streak in her long black hair gleamed like a vein of silver.

  “You were amazing with Monkey Love,” Stephen told her.

  “I was scared shitless.”

  “Your hands did not shake, Niece,” the old Mide said. “Not once.”

  “My heart was doing a tango, Uncle Henry.”

  “Jameson Love has a spirit of stumbling luck. This wounding is not the last scar he will bear in his life, I think.”

  Another voice spoke, and a ghost-white figure appeared beside them. “Monkey’s luck may be on the clumsy side, but that spirit of his has got leather in it. My nephew’s tough.”

  “You scared me, Ned,” Rainy said. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

  “I learned a long time ago hunting that if I make noise, my supper runs away.” He sat beside Rainy. “Thank you for what you done for Monkey tonight. Chi migwech.”

  “He’s resting well?”

  “Whatever it was Henry here gave him to drink put him out good. Don’t know how I’m gonna repay you.”

  Stephen didn’t say it, but he was thinking that the black box was payment enough.

  Ned turned to him. “Your dad told me maybe the same guys who shot Monkey gave you that face.”

  Stephen touched the stitches on his cheek. “Maybe.”

  “What do they want with that recorder?”

&nb
sp; “We think they want to hide the truth of what caused the plane to crash.”

  “Monkey said it was flying all crooked when it came down this side of Desolation Mountain, like a sick bird.”

  “Did it look like it had been hit with something?” Stephen asked, thinking of his vision and the boy with the powerful bow.

  “Monkey didn’t say nuthin’ about that.”

  A subtle cough announced another arrival.

  “Couldn’t sleep, Cork?” Rainy asked.

  “Guess I’m not the only one.” Cork plopped down beside her. “I called Bo Thorson. He’ll be ready first thing in the morning. We’ll be going after that flight recorder, although I didn’t tell him that. Best to keep it quiet for the moment.”

  “The egg that dropped from the eagle,” Stephen said.

  “That seems pretty clear,” his father agreed. “Anything else becoming clear?”

  “Not yet, but I think it will. I’m going with you tomorrow.”

  Cork shook his head. “I’ve got another mission for you. I want you to head into Allouette and bring Ned’s sister out to Crow Point.”

  “Beulah?” Ned said.

  “She’s been worried about you and Monkey.”

  “Monkey, maybe. She never had much use for me.”

  “We may need to build another cabin, Corcoran O’Connor,” Henry said.

  They all rose and drifted back to their beds and their blankets, leaving Stephen alone again. He lay under the watchful eye of the moon, thinking about his vision, about the full meaning slowly revealing itself, which was good, except for one thing. The vision always ended with a beast at his back so terrible he couldn’t force himself to turn and look at it. Even awake, the idea of facing that monster terrified him.

  * * *

  In the early hours of the morning, long before sunrise, Cork left Crow Point, in the company of Daniel English and Ned Love. Cork had arranged to meet Bo Thorson outside Allouette, though over the phone he hadn’t explained why. From there, they’d go to Ned Love’s cabin, then walk to the bog where the plane crashed. The site was still closed to the public and periodically patrolled. He was hoping to slip in and out at first light without being spotted.