“I’ve been around hunters all my life. I’m fine with a rifle.”
“Okay, how about this? None of us goes out without a firearm. And Ren and Charlie don’t go out unescorted.”
“Oh, they’ll love that,” Dina said, hitting the brew switch.
“They’d rather deal with a hungry cougar alone?”
Jewell pulled clean mugs from the cupboard. “I’ll talk to them. They’ll be okay. What about those boot prints?”
“It could be simply a curious troll, but we should probably assume the worst,” Cork said.
Jewell set the mugs on the counter near the coffeemaker. “The worst, you mean, being that the guys who murdered Charlie’s father are looking for Charlie?”
“That would be it.”
“Could it be someone who’s after you, Cork?” Jewell asked.
“If they knew I was here, I’d be dead already.”
“So okay, it’s about Charlie.” Jewell frowned. “What are they after?”
The coffeemaker burbled. Dina folded her arms and stared at the floor. Cork tapped the tabletop with the tip of his cane. No one had a word to offer in answer.
Charlie threw herself onto Ren’s unmade bed and rammed a pillow over her face. “Those guys are such assholes.”
“Charlie.”
She lifted the pillow and saw his expression. “Dude, you look like somebody just threatened to cut off your ‘nads.”
“I don’t think Stash’s accident was an accident.”
“Huh?”
He began to pace, moving from the door to his desk to the window, then retracing his steps as he spelled out the connections.
“I’ve been thinking about it all the way back from Marquette. I think somebody hit Stash on purpose. I think they were trying to kill him.”
“Stash?” She looked at him as if he were crazy. “What for?”
“Because they thought he was me.”
“Dude, are you tripping?”
“Just shut up and listen.” He stopped, and his hands formed a frame as if creating a window for her to see through clearly. “We spot this body floating down the Copper River, right? That night you and me go looking for it. There’s a boat down there and the people on it are looking for something, too. Then you, in your brilliance, holler at it, and they get a good look at you.”
“My butt.”
“You, too. You even said something about the body, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“Next thing we know, they’re chasing us. At the shelter, when I was rolling the spliff, I left the cigar box on the ground with Stash’s name in it. That same night they came to your place looking for you, but your dad wouldn’t tell them anything. They…you know.” He paused a moment, then rushed on. “The next day they go after Stash, thinking he was the one with you that night. Charlie, they’re afraid because they think we saw the body.”
“That’s what this is all about?”
“I think so.”
Charlie stared at him, then a deep sadness came into her eyes. “Ren.”
“What?”
“My father. He knew I was sleeping in the truck outside, but he wouldn’t tell them. Oh Jesus.” She looked away.
“Yeah,” Ren said, understanding. “He sure had his problems, Charlie, but he loved you.”
She was quiet awhile. “What do we do?”
Ren chewed on his lip, then shrugged and nodded toward the bedroom door. “We should tell them.”
Charlie looked skeptical. “What can they do?”
“We have to trust somebody.” He looked from her to the door. “And, Charlie, they have guns.”
27
Jewell had an eclectic collection of mugs. The one she held was white, with TOWANDA! printed across it in red. Dina drank from a blue Best Mom In The World cup. Cork had a red mug with The older I get the better I was emblazoned in gold. He looked up when Ren and Charlie marched in. From their deliberate stride he could tell that they had something important to say.
Ren stood in front with Charlie to his left. He squared his shoulders. Charlie buried her hands in her pockets, and her eyes seemed interested in everything except the adults.
Ren said, “There’s something we should tell you.”
Jewell nodded seriously. “We’re listening.”
Ren proceeded to lay out to them a bizarre-sounding scenario that included a body floating down the Copper River, a midnight search along the lakeshore, a mysterious boat, a childish mooning, followed by a pursuit up the trail along the river. The story ended with a cigar box containing marijuana left where it might easily have been discovered.
“You get high?” Jewell asked at the end.
“Sometimes,” Ren admitted.
“Oh Jesus.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“How long?”
Ren shrugged, then shook his head. “A while.”
“Jewell, I know it’s an important issue and you and Ren need to talk about it,” Cork said, “but there’s a more pressing concern here. Is someone trying to kill these kids, and if they are, why?”
Jewell drilled her son with her dark eyes. “We will talk.” She transferred her stern look to Charlie. “And you, too.”
They sat at the dining table, and Cork walked Ren through everything again, double-checking each point with Charlie to be certain they were in agreement about the circumstances.
“You saw the body?” Cork said.
“No,” Ren replied. “Stash-I mean Stuart-did. We kidded him, but he was sure.”
“Did you actually see anything?”
“Maybe. But I thought it was, like, a log or something, you know?”
“Charlie?”
The girl shook her head. “I didn’t see anything.”
“You were high? All of you?”
They nodded together.
“All right, tell me about this boat.”
Ren and Charlie exchanged a blank look. “It was just a boat,” the boy said.
“How big?”
“Not very.”
“Thirty feet? Twenty? Ten?”
“Maybe twenty.”
“Charlie?”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said.
“Think.”
For ten seconds the girl stared at the empty fireplace. “It was just a regular powerboat, nothing special. A good engine, though. Maybe ninety horse.”
“You know engines?”
“I know a lot of things.”
“Did your father know anybody with a boat? Fishing buddies, maybe?”
“They all fish. A lot of ‘em have boats.”
“Can you give us some names?”
She looked irritated, as if it were a pain to have to think. “I don’t know. Joe Otto. Skip Hakala. Calvin Stokely sometimes borrows his brother’s boat. Then there’s Pat Murphy. There’s Roadkill-”
“Roadkill?”
“His name’s Rodney, but they call him Roadkill.”
“Sounds like he had a lot of friends.”
“Duh. He lived here his whole life.”
Cork looked at Jewell. “You know any of these guys?”
“Most of them.”
“Anyone who might be the kind of guy who’d do what someone did to Charlie’s father?”
“When they’re drunk, all of ‘em,” Charlie spit out.
Jewell said, “Max wasn’t particular about the company he kept. But I’d have to say that of them all, Calvin Stokely’s always been the scariest. When we were kids, anything particularly cruel happened around here without knowing exactly who did it, Calvin Stokely’s name popped pretty quick to people’s lips. His folks lived off the grid.”
“Off the grid?” Ren said. “What’s that, Mom?”
“It’s when someone tries to live a life that’s not documented by the government. No Social Security, no taxes, that kind of thing.”
“Like survivalists?” Ren said.
“Not exactly. But they were hard people. Hard on their kids for s
ure: Calvin and his brother, Isaac. Isaac’s older. He went off to the Army young. When he came back on leave, he found Calvin and his mother beat up pretty bad and got into a fight with his father, who tried to shoot him with a shotgun. I guess Isaac’s military training tipped the scales in his favor. It was the father they buried. Court ruled it a justifiable homicide and Isaac went back to the service. Calvin stayed, but it would have been fine with me if he hadn’t. I know he’s not to blame for what happened to him when he was a kid, but honestly, when I see him in town I try to avoid him. Even after all these years he still gives me the creeps.”
Dina leaned on the table and cupped her coffee mug with both hands. “The men who killed Charlie’s father weren’t necessarily his buddies. I’m willing to bet a lot of people in Bodine know who Charlie is. She doesn’t exactly blend into the woodwork.”
“But we’re all thinking it’s somebody local, right?” Cork said.
“Local,” Dina concurred.
“If it is about the body in the river, what is it about the body?” Cork went on. “Why go after kids who may have seen it?”
Jewell sat back, turning her mug slowly in her hand. “The body in the river, it’s probably the same one that washed up in Bodine?”
“Hard to believe there’d be two corpses,” Cork replied.
Dina frowned, thinking. “What could it be about the dead girl that would make someone come after Charlie and Stuart?”
Cork said, “It would be helpful if we knew who she was.”
Ren looked at Charlie.
“We do,” he said. “Tell them, Charlie.”
Cork listened along with the others as Charlie told them about Sara Wolf, the girl from Providence House. When she was finished, he said, “It’s time you talked to the sheriff’s people.”
“No.” Charlie backed away. “I’ll run away. I will.”
Cork spoke quietly but firmly. “Somebody killed your father. The same people may have killed this girl. And they’re probably responsible for your friend lying all torn up in a hospital bed. If that’s true, they’re after you, too. The sooner the investigators know all this, the better the chances of identifying these guys and putting them away.”
She spoke over Ren’s shoulder. “I don’t like police. I won’t talk to them.”
Cork looked to his cousin for help. “Jewell?”
Jewell took a breath and tried. “Charlie-”
“No!”
“I think Charlie’s right,” Dina said. “What we have are a series of events, none of which are connected except by proximity, circumstance, and speculation. At the moment, the sheriff’s people strongly suspect that Charlie might be responsible for her father’s death. If she goes to them with the story she’s told us, they’re going to hold her, question her, and because she ran once already, they’ll probably find a way to keep her in custody.” She eyeballed Jewell, then Cork. “You want that for her?”
“The dead girl may have family who are worried,” Cork said.
“Yeah, and monkeys fly out my butt,” Charlie tossed in. “She was in a homeless shelter. You think she’d be there if she had a choice? You think anybody would?”
“The police need to know who she is,” Cork persisted.
Dina shrugged. “Maybe they already do.” She glanced at Jewell. “That constable friend of yours. You think you could find out from him?”
“I can try.”
“Ned, it’s Jewell DuBois.”
“Jewell.” He sounded surprised and pleased. He also sounded distant and fuzzy.
“Are you in your office?” she asked.
“No. I’m at Fry Ahearn’s place. Goats got out again. We’re rounding them up. When I’m out of the office, I forward the calls to my cell. What’s up?”
“Ren and I just came back from Marquette. We went to see Stuart Gullickson at the hospital.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s not out of the woods yet.”
“Poor kid.” There was a disturbance, a grunt, the clunk of heavy wood. “Sorry, Jewell. Just putting the gate back in place.” He was breathing hard. “You know, I do an assembly every year at their school, talking to them about safety issues. Skateboarding in the street in the dark. Jesus. I might as well have been talking to the wall.”
“Ned, Ren’s pretty upset about all this. Charlie’s father dead, Charlie gone, Stuart in the hospital from a hit-and-run. Then there’s that girl they pulled from the lake. Have they identified her yet?”
“Yeah, they have.”
“Really? Who is she?”
“I can’t tell you that, Jewell.”
“Would the Marquette sheriff’s people tell me?”
“I doubt it. Last I heard, they were still working on notifying next of kin. Why would you need to know anyway?”
“Just concerned, Ned. Is it somebody I would recognize, or Ren?”
“It’s nobody from around here, I can tell you that much.” He was quiet a moment. Jewell could hear the bleat of goats in the background. “Say, you haven’t heard from Charlie, have you?”
“No,” she replied.
“And you’d tell me if you had?”
“Thanks for your help, Ned.”
She ended the call and turned to the others. “They know who she is.”
Charlie looked relieved. “So I don’t have to talk to them?”
“Not yet, anyway,” Dina said.
“She’s still a material witness,” Cork pointed out.
Dina gave a brief nod. “Before she talks to Olafsson-”
“Olafsson?” Jewell asked.
“The sheriff’s investigator,” Dina clarified. “Before she talks to him, it would be helpful to know how a girl from Providence House ended up in the Copper River. What’s the connection? If they understand that, they’d be more inclined to believe Charlie and less likely to put her in custody.”
“There’s no guarantee,” Cork said.
“We play the odds. What do you say?”
“Let me guess,” Cork said. “You have a strategy for this.”
Dina smiled demurely. “As a matter of fact, I have. How’s that leg?”
28
Jewell drove with Dina beside her and Charlie in back. They left Bodine and took the potholed county highway toward Marquette. The road was still wet from the rain the night before. In those stretches where the old asphalt tunneled through stands of deciduous trees, russet and gold leaves spattered the road. Jewell kept her eye on Charlie in the rearview mirror. The girl hunkered down in her seat, quiet, staring out the window as sunlight and shadow exploded against her face. Occasionally she brought her hand up and idly fingered the line of rings and studs that marked the piercings of her left ear, or she scratched the stubble on her head, the emerging ghost of her lost hair.
Charlie had shaved her head over football. When classes began in September, she sought a spot on the eighth-grade flag football team. She was firmly told that football was a boys’ sport. Her response-“Bullshit. Girls can compete just as good”-had earned her a reprimand from the principal. To prove her point, she’d goaded the coach, Mr. Morrow, who also taught earth science, into pitting her against his fastest players in a forty-yard dash. She’d beaten them all by a mile, after which Mr. Morrow explained once again that the issue wasn’t her ability but her gender. If she’d had money or connections, she might have filed some kind of discrimination suit. Instead, she’d protested in her own way: sacrificing her hair. She’d done it with Ren’s help. In his defense afterward, Ren had explained to Jewell that Charlie was hell-bent on doing it anyway and more than willing to go it alone. He’d helped only because he didn’t want her to hurt herself with the razor.
Her protest got her suspended for two days. For a while the whole incident was a hot topic of conversation in Bodine. Gary Johnson had written a fine editorial supporting Charlie’s position, but it didn’t change a thing.
Although Jewell often worried about the young woman, she also knew that there
was an extraordinary depth to Charlie’s strength, which was good because coming into this world she’d been given little else to help her along.
Dina Willner was busy writing in a small notepad.
“What are you doing?” Jewell asked.
“Preparing an interview, making notes on the questions I want to be sure to ask. I can fly by the seat of my pants when I have to, but I prefer to go in prepared.”
Jewell nodded, liking the way this woman operated. “How is it you know my cousin?”
Dina glanced up from the page. Jewell saw that her green eyes held a guarded look. “We worked on a case together in Minnesota.”
“The Jacoby murder, right? The one in Aurora.”
“That’s the one.”
“He trusts you.”
From the rear, Charlie said, “He likes you.”
Dina twisted around in her seat. “What?”
Charlie kept her eyes on the scenery out the window and spoke in a matter-of-fact way, as if it were something anybody could see and probably everybody had. “The way he looks at you. And the way you look at him, it’s the same. You like him back.”
“He’s married.”
“Big whoop.” The girl crossed her arms, then said more darkly, “Ren likes you, too. Must be the boobs.”
“That’s enough, Charlie,” Jewell snapped.
“I’m just trying to figure why guys like her.”
“There are lots of reasons to like people of the opposite sex besides physical attraction.”
“Yeah?” Charlie leveled her gaze on Dina, who was still turned toward her. “So what is it you like about the gimp?”
Dina replied calmly, “This is not a conversation I’m going to have with you.”
“Fine.” Under her breath, Charlie whispered, “ Bitch. ”
Jewell braked and pulled to the side of the road. “That calls for an apology. Now.”
Charlie stared out the window and offered a grumbled “Sorry.”
“If you’re going to do this with us, Charlie, you’re going to be civil, understood?” Jewell said.
“Yeah.”
“What?”
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