Copper River co-6

by William Kent Krueger

  He rounded a bend a quarter mile from the old mine and came alongside a place where the river ran flat and smooth and everything was quiet. From far behind him came the sound of something heavy hitting the ground in a tremendous crackle of the brittle leaves that blanketed the trail. He held his breath. The only sound then was the soft gurgle of the river. He swung around. His flashlight beam created a tunnel thirty or forty yards long in which he saw nothing but empty trail. He flipped the light off and stood another minute, listening intently, focusing all his senses on the enormous circle of black at whose center he stood.

  His father had once told him that although an artist might work in images on paper or canvas, good artists were in touch with all their senses and knew how to use them creatively.

  Ren focused and tried to touch the skin of the night, to hear the night breathing, to catch its scent. He opened his mouth and let the taste of the night lie on his tongue. What he sensed was that he was not alone. As if to prove the truth of his conclusion, his ears picked up the delicate crumble of desiccated leaves as something again moved toward him on the trail.

  He spun, hit the switch on the flashlight, and sprinted upriver. Ahead of him, the beam bounced wildly. Several times he stumbled and almost fell headlong. His footfalls and the noise of his own heavy breathing deafened him to sound at his back, and he ran with the certainty that any moment the cougar would pounce and its razor teeth would slice into his neck. He thought that if he could only make it to the old mine, he could use his club to keep the cougar at bay. Maybe Charlie’s presence there would help discourage an attack.

  He reached the place along the river below the mine and began to scramble up the steep slope. He was feeding on adrenaline, moving like a mountain goat, using the stick in his right hand to propel himself upward. He reached the wild blackberry thicket that masked the entrance. Falling to his belly, he wormed his way into the small passage that he and Charlie had fashioned through the bramble. On the other side, he swung the flashlight beam into the mine.

  In the light lay a circle of ash and char from a fire, a mound of leaves that had probably served as a bed, several candy bar wrappers, and an empty pint container of Nestle’s chocolate milk. Charlie was nowhere to be seen.

  But Ren was not alone. At his back, he heard the rattle of loose stones on the slope. He turned, set the flashlight down with the beam aimed at the opening to the passage. He gripped the club hard with both hands. The blackberry thicket shivered. Ren drew the club back like a batter preparing to receive a fastball. He kept his eyes on the end of the narrow passage, a ragged arch in the thicket. He held his breath and waited.

  What emerged was a monster, a creature with huge eyes.

  Then Ren realized that the eyes were goggles and the monster was Dina Willner. She put up a hand to block the beam.

  “You’re blinding me, Ren. Turn the light off for a minute.”

  He switched off the flashlight. In the dark he heard her silky rustlings.

  “Okay,” she said. “Give us some light again.”

  In the illumination, he saw that she’d removed her goggles. She wore camouflage fatigues.

  “Where’s Charlie?” she asked, peering into the mine.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I thought for sure she’d be here.”

  “This is where she hid before, isn’t it?”

  She reached into the pocket of her fatigue pants and pulled out a small cyclinder, a mini Maglite. She used it to scan the tunnel back of the entrance.

  “Looks completely blocked,” she said.

  “It is. How did you follow me?”

  She dangled the goggles. “Night vision. I’m worried about Charlie, too. I was pretty sure you knew where she was and would go to her. I put these under the sofa and after you left I followed.”

  “I should have known you weren’t really asleep,” Ren said. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I almost wasn’t. I took a bad spill on the trail back there and you almost got away from me.”

  “I thought you were the cougar.”

  “That wasn’t smart, leaving at night without protection, Ren, but I understand. I brought this.” She reached to her belt under her jacket and drew out a big handgun. Again she swung her Maglite toward the jumble of rock and rotted beam a dozen feet in from the mine entrance that barred further entry. “So if she’s not here, where would she be?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly.

  She knelt and picked up a bit of the ash and char and rubbed it between her fingers. “This is old.”

  Ren said, “This was the safest place. She should have come here. Unless…” He stopped short of speaking his fear.

  “Unless someone intercepted her,” Dina finished for him. She stood up and put a comforting arm around his shoulders. “You know the Odyssey? The story of Odysseus?”

  “Yeah,” Ren said. He’d read a Classics Illustrated version. He thought the part about the Cyclops especially was way cool.

  “Odysseus survived everything the gods threw at him because of his cunning. He was a very smart guy. That’s Charlie, Ren. She’s very cunning. So I think there’s another explanation for why she’s not here.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. And when we see her, she’ll tell us what it is. Come on. We should both get back.”

  Dina led the way along the Copper River Trail. Behind her, Ren watched with admiration how gracefully she moved. In that, she reminded him a lot of Charlie.

  42

  W hen the cabin door opened, Cork woke up and rolled over in his bunk. Dina walked in carrying a tray covered with a white cloth napkin.

  “Breakfast in bed?” Cork said, easing himself upright.

  Dina put the tray on the table and pulled away the napkin, revealing a plate of two eggs over easy, four strips of bacon, two slices of very dark toast, a small glass of orange juice, and a cup of black coffee. “Eat hearty,” she said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  He swung his legs out of the bunk and put his feet on the cold floorboards. He’d slept in a gray T-shirt and gray gym shorts, courtesy of Jewell. Like all the clothing she’d loaned him, they’d once been worn by her husband, Daniel. The night before, she’d also supplied him with a pair of clean jeans, a flannel shirt, boxers, and thick socks, all taken folded from the boxes of clothing stacked in the closet. Cork put on the socks and stood up slowly.

  Dina pulled out a chair for herself at the table. “How’s the leg this morning?”

  “It would be better without holes in it, but I can manage.” He limped over and appreciatively eyed the contents of the tray. “Looks like a condemned man’s last meal.” He sat down, flapped the napkin onto his lap, and took a sip of the juice. “What are we up to today?”

  “Trespassing,” Dina said.

  While he ate, Dina explained about the night’s events.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Charlie’s a smart kid. Very savvy. I don’t really think she was intercepted on her way to the mine, but I’d like to make certain. If there’s the slightest chance this Stokely got his hands on her…” She didn’t complete that thought.

  Cork sipped his coffee. “What did you have in mind?”

  “We’re going to the Copper River Club the same way you and Ren did. We’re going to check out Stokely’s cabin.”

  “You and me?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “What about Jewell and Ren?”

  “She didn’t want him missing any more school, and she needed to go to work.”

  “They’re both gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Seven-thirty. Jewell said we could use the ATV.”

  “Does she know what you’re planning?”

  “Not exactly. I thought it best to keep this between you and me.”

  “How do we find the cabin?” he asked.

  “I talked to Ren about that. He said to follow the river from where you two en
countered Calvin Stokely yesterday. It’s a couple of miles farther on, up a small rise overlooking the river.”

  Cork picked up the last strip of bacon. “Stokely’ll hear us coming.”

  “He’ll hear you coming,” she said.

  “I’m the diversion while you slip into the cabin?”

  “You catch on quick. One of the things I like about you.”

  In half an hour, he was dressed and ready to go. He slipped the Beretta Tomcat into an ankle holster Dina supplied him. Dina took her Glock and a knapsack she said belonged to Ren. The night before, Jewell had put stitches in Cork’s opened wound. He wasn’t worried about bleeding, but he’d been over the terrain they were about to travel and knew the cost to him in pain. He considered taking a Vicodin but finally decided against it. He needed to be sharp.

  The morning was damp and overcast, the temperature in the midforties. There was a dreary feel to the woods, a dismal quiet. Dina drove the ATV; Cork held on behind, shouldering the knapsack. The narrow Killbelly Marsh Trail was a stream of gold leaves wet with dew. At the river, Dina turned west and they went upstream. On this gray morning, the water reflected a slate sky. She stopped a few minutes later and pointed up the hillside to their right.

  “The mine where Charlie hid is up there,” she said. “Behind all that brush. Wait here.”

  Dina swung herself off the ATV and hiked quickly up the slope. She disappeared behind a thicket and emerged again a moment later. Back at the ATV she said, “Still empty.” She restarted the engine and shot ahead.

  In less than fifteen minutes, they reached the creek that marked the boundary of the Copper River Club. Dina stopped again and dismounted.

  “Give me the knapsack,” she said.

  Cork handed it over and she took out a couple of the Motorola walkie-talkies he recognized had come from the resort. She gave one to Cork, kept one herself. She also took out a compact pair of Leitz field glasses in a case with a belt clip.

  “Ren said the cabin’s a couple miles up the river from here. Give me half an hour,” she told Cork. “I’ll raise you on the radio when I’m in position and have the place scoped out, then you come roaring in-I mean loud. If you have to, lead him on a merry chase. Just get him away from the cabin.”

  “Yesterday he had a rifle,” Cork reminded her.

  “Then keep your head down, cowboy.”

  She turned and began a steady lope along the river’s edge in the direction of Stokely’s cabin. She was wearing the camouflage fatigues in autumn color. She quickly blended with the foliage and in a minute he couldn’t see her anymore.

  He gave her thirty minutes but didn’t hear anything on the Motorola. The problem might have been interference, or distance, or a malfunction of the units themselves. He wondered if he should be worried about Dina, but dismissed that concern. He gave her an extra five minutes, then decided it was time to move, regardless. He gunned the ATV and headed onto Copper River Club property.

  He followed a faint but definite path that shadowed the river. Cork, a hunter all his life and used to tracking, spotted the thinning of the underbrush that indicated occasional foot traffic. He figured it was the patrol route for the security personnel. After a mile and a half, the trail veered suddenly north away from the river. Cork held up, puzzled. He decided that Stokely was probably the reason: the patrol route steered clear of his cabin to preserve his privacy. He gave the ATV gas and kept heading west, moving carefully through the undergrowth, following the river.

  He’d fully expected to be intercepted. Several times he gunned the ATV for no reason other than noise. When he finally broke from the trees into a long clearing, he still hadn’t seen a soul. A narrow, rutted dirt road split the clearing. At the south end that overlooked the river stood a small A-frame cabin and three outbuildings. The cabin appeared to be deserted, with no vehicles in sight. In a fenced area between two of the outbuildings, a big dog was barking up a storm.

  Cork scanned the woods and saw no sign of Dina, which was what he expected. She was there somewhere, watching. He drove the ATV onto the dirt road and turned toward the cabin. A dozen yards from the front door, he killed the engine, swung his sore leg over the seat, and dismounted. In its high-fenced kennel, the dog, a black and tan German shepherd, was doing everything it could short of pole-vaulting to get at Cork. It dashed back and forth, occasionally hurling itself against the chain links in a frenzy of snapping and snarling. Although the fence looked plenty sturdy, Cork was glad to have the Tomcat strapped to his ankle.

  He knocked on the cabin door and waited. He tried to peek in a window but the shades and curtains were tightly drawn. Moving to the garage, he peered through a pane and saw that it was empty inside. He approached the kennel. The German shepherd went into a whole other universe of agitation, sending out a spray of saliva and foam as it slammed into the fence. Cork was a little concerned that it might actually harm itself.

  The next building was a wood shop, locked. Through the window on the door, Cork saw lathes, planes, saws, work-tables, and a floor covered with sawdust and shavings. The last building was a small smokehouse.

  He faced the cabin again. It was clear that Stokely was not currently in residence.

  He felt a presence at his back.

  “Nada?” Dina said.

  He shook his head. “No Stokely, no Charlie, no nothing.”

  “There is something,” she said. “Out there in the woods. See what you think.”

  She led him a short distance into the trees and pointed toward an area of bare ground. Cork saw what interested her. He knelt, grimacing at the pain that shot through his leg, and he carefully studied the prints.

  “The cougar,” he said.

  “The night Stokely wounded it?”

  Cork shook his head. “That was a couple of days ago. I’d say these tracks are more recent, within the last twenty-four hours.” He reached out and Dina helped him up. He looked from the tracks toward the cabin, barely visible through the foliage. “This close to a barking dog and a man who’s already put a bullet in it, that animal has to be crazy or desperately hungry.”

  “Was it after the dog, maybe?”

  “Even if you were hungry, would you think that dog was an easy meal? Maybe it was after garbage.”

  “I don’t see a garbage can out here,” she said.

  Cork eyed the line of the tracks, which seemed to head toward an opening in the woods a short distance away. He limped in that direction with Dina at his side. They stepped into another clearing, nearly circular and much smaller than the one that held Stokely’s buildings. This one was only forty or fifty feet in diameter. It was filled with tall grass and wild-flowers gone yellow with the season. The ground was uneven, and the ground cover was unevenly rich, surprisingly thick and lush in places. On the far side, loose soil lay thrown about in scattered splashes, the result of an animal’s furious digging. Cork saw a shallow trough scraped in the earth. He crossed the clearing with Dina, and they stood over the hole.

  “Oh God,” Dina said. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Black with rot, ragged from the feeding of the cougar, it was nonetheless clearly a human leg, bare and attached to a body still mostly buried.

  Cork turned away, sickened as he understood the reason for the uneven earth and lush undergrowth in that terrible hidden place.

  43

  A t noon the overcast began to break and by two o’clock the sun was nailed to a sky so blue and pure it was almost heartbreaking. The state police working in the tiny clearing cast shadows across the holes they dug and their words to one another were spoken in the hushed tones of men still not quite able to comprehend the brutal enormity before them. There were a dozen vehicles parked along the dirt road leading to Stokely’s cabin. Some were state, others county. Ned Hodder’s Cherokee was there, and that’s where Cork and Dina sat. For too long now, they’d watched the body bags come out of the clearing.

  Despite the number of people on the scene, a somber quiet hung ove
r everything. Someone from the sheriff’s department had tranquilized the German shepherd in the kennel, who’d gone berserk when all the vehicles rolled up. Hodder said the dog’s name was Snatch.

  Dina smoked a cigarette she’d bummed from one of the troopers.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” Cork had said.

  “I don’t,” she’d replied, and they spoke no more about it.

  They’d been interviewed separately by the state investigators, had given their statements, and were free to go. Neither of them was ready. Cork still felt stunned, as if he’d been hit between the eyes with a big mallet. He’d seen bad things in his time, but nothing compared to this.

  Hodder walked toward them from where he’d been conversing with one of the investigators. He leaned against the side of the Cherokee, folded his arms across his chest, and stared east where Bodine lay a few miles on the other side of all those thick, autumn-fired hardwood trees.

  “Children,” he said. “They’re all children. Fourteen, fifteen years old. Mostly girls. Some of the graves are several years old. So far, the most recent looks to be a couple of weeks. That’s the one the cougar messed with.” He let his arms fall uselessly. “God, how did this happen?”

  “We abandoned them,” Dina said. She threw the butt of her cigarette onto the road, where it smoldered, white smoke against dun-colored dirt. “Cats, dogs, we spay or neuter, but people we let procreate with blithe abandon, people who have no business bringing children into this world. When those kids become desperate we don’t see them, don’t hear them. As long as they’re not haunting our block, staring hopelessly into our windows, we can pretend they don’t exist or worse, that whatever horror they deal with they’ve brought on themselves. They’re not our children. They’re not even like our children. Believe me, this is something I know about.”

  Cork rubbed his leg, which was hot and throbbing. He hadn’t done himself any favors that day.

  “Sara Wolf was Ojibwe,” he said. “Born to The People. It used to be, in a village everyone watched out for the children. Blood ties, clans, those things didn’t matter. Now…” He looked up at the sky and sighed. “It feels like everything everywhere is falling apart.”