Copper River co-6

by William Kent Krueger

  “Ned keeps a tractor in there and other stuff for working in the orchard. Ladders, props, pruning things. He doesn’t use them much anymore.”

  “Let’s check the garage first,” he said to Dina. “I’d like to know if Calvin Stokely’s truck is in there.”

  “I’ll go,” she said. “You cover.”

  Cork took the handgun from his ankle holster, slipped behind an apple tree, and waved Dina forward. Jewell stayed back, thinking how horrible this was, coming at Ned as if he were the enemy. It felt so wrong. Dina dashed across the backyard to the side of the garage, which couldn’t be seen from the house. She edged her way to a window and peeked in. She turned back and gave her head an exaggerated shake. Cork pointed toward the shed. Dina went to the corner of the garage and peered carefully at the house for a full minute, watching, Jewell supposed, for movement at a window, an opening door. Then Dina sprinted for the shed. She stood on tiptoe and peered through a dusty window. Again she gave her head a shake. She pointed toward the house.

  “Okay,” Cork said over his shoulder to Jewell, “now we check the house. You should stay here.”

  “Oh, no,” Jewell said. “I’m coming with you.”

  “All right, then. Let’s go.”

  Jewell ran hard, passed Cork, and joined Dina at the side of the house, breathless. Cork was several seconds behind.

  “You okay?” Dina asked him in a whisper.

  “I know what that wounded cougar must feel like,” he said, grimacing.

  “Back door or front?” Dina said.

  “Back.”

  They crept there together. Cork opened the screen and tried the door.

  “Locked,” he whispered.

  Dina urged him gently aside, reached into an inside pocket of her jacket, and pulled out a small leather case. She took out a couple of items that looked to Jewell like dentist’s tools. She worked on the lock a moment and swung the door open.

  Cork put his lips to Jewell’s ear. “Stay here,” he said softly. “When we’re sure it’s clear, we’ll call you in, okay?”

  The house swallowed them without a sound.

  Outside, Jewell felt suddenly alone and vulnerable. The idea of being afraid of Ned Hodder was alien, yet that’s what she felt. Did she even know Ned anymore? When was the last time they’d had a meaningful conversation? Why had he written a poem about her? How could she have missed so much?

  On the road beyond the orchard, a car passed. Jewell heard the sound of the engine mount, plateau, diminish as it sped on.

  After that, everything was distressingly quiet. She watched a hawk circle above the orchard, then curve away without a stroke of wing.

  Another car approached on the road. This one didn’t pass. The sound of the engine simply died.

  What did that mean? Jewell wondered in a panic. What should she do? Shout to Cork and Dina? Where were they? They’d been inside too long, she was sure. Something was wrong. She looked toward the empty drive that wound through the orchard, expecting any moment for Ned to appear. She was a sitting duck, she realized.

  She turned to run for the orchard and bumped smack into Ned Hodder. He caught her in his arms. She struggled to break free and stumbled back.

  “Jewell?” His boyish face held a look of absolute bewilderment. “What are you doing here?”

  “We…I…just…” Her eyes bounced toward the house.

  Ned followed them. “That’s Dina Willner’s Pathfinder parked on the road. Is she inside?” He spoke in a deep, menacing tone that Jewell had never heard from him before.

  “Ned, listen-” Jewell tried.

  He didn’t listen. His face had turned an angry red, and he stormed toward the back door just as Dina stepped out.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.

  “Looking for Charlie,” Dina said calmly.

  That stopped him. “Charlie?” He looked at her with the same befuddlement that had been there when he first found Jewell. “Here?”

  “Ned, please listen,” Jewell said. She put her hand gently on his arm, but he shook it off. “We were thinking,” she struggled on, trying for the right words, “that there might be more people involved than just Stokely and Bell.”

  “And you naturally thought of me,” he threw back bitterly. “How flattering.”

  Cork came into sight now, too. He stepped from the house and stood beside Dina.

  “You, too? I should have guessed. Find anything interesting?”

  “Stokely didn’t kill Bell,” Dina explained.

  “Hell, I know that,” Ned said. “In a few minutes you would have, too.”

  “What do you mean?” Jewell asked.

  “I tore my shirt at the lumberyard,” he said, turning so that Jewell saw the rip. “I was coming back here to put on another one and to call you guys. I think I’ve got a suspect.”

  “Who?” Cork said.

  Ned didn’t reply immediately. He turned on Jewell. “You think I had Charlie? How could you believe I’d do something like that, Jewell? And all those kids buried up there? Do you really think I’m capable of that kind of butchery? Jesus, after all these years you don’t even know me.”

  “Ned, I’m sorry. I didn’t think…all this is so confusing and scary…”

  “Am I scary? Is that why you don’t talk to me? Don’t look at me on the street? Am I some kind of monster to you?”

  “No, Ned, no. It’s not that. I’m just not ready-”

  “Have I pushed you? Have I pressured you?”

  “No, no. You’ve been nothing but sweet.”

  “Then why this?” He waved toward Cork and Dina and the opened door.

  “It was us,” Dina answered. “Jewell defended you down the line. We overruled her objections.”

  “What made you think I might be involved?”

  Dina carefully laid out for him their reasoning. At the end, she said, “You’re a good cop. I’m betting you’d have done the same.”

  “I wouldn’t break into someone’s house.”

  “Even if you believed you might be saving Charlie?” she asked.

  Jewell thought he softened a little, though he still kept his distance from her.

  Cork spoke up. “You said you had a suspect.”

  “Yeah.” The late-afternoon sun was in his eyes and he turned so that he didn’t have to squint. “I got to thinking after I dropped you all off. Like you, I figured from what Wes said that Stokely probably didn’t kill Bell. There might be a lot of reasons someone would put a bullet in him, but for my money it was all about those buried kids. So if Stokely didn’t do it, who did? I went back to thinking about twenty years ago, too, thinking like you that if Tommy Messinger and Calvin and Del were all involved in that girl’s murder, there was a good chance someone else might have been with them.”

  Jewell said, “I looked at the team photo, Ned. I couldn’t see anyone else still here except for you and Calvin and Del.”

  “The guy I’m thinking of wasn’t on the team, Jewell. At least not that year. Who was Tom Messinger’s best friend, do you remember? The same guy who spoke at his funeral and who wrote that long editorial the Courier published, pleading for understanding about what Tommy had done and about his suicide. It was very moving and persuasive, as I recall.”

  Jewell felt as if the sky had suddenly opened. “Gary Johnson.”

  “Johnson,” Ned said. “He couldn’t play football that year because he broke his leg in August. He fell from a ladder while he was working for my father here in the orchard, remember?”

  “And he was in a cast through most of the season,” Jewell added.

  “Right.”

  “I thought he was an all-American at Michigan,” Dina said.

  “A walk-on,” Hodder replied. “He had to prove himself because the scouts had nothing to look at. But he was at every game with the team that year, and he was at the banquet in Marquette and at the private party afterward. If he wasn’t in the car with Tom Messinger, I don’t kno
w who else it could have been.”

  Jewell said, “He’s been out at the cabins, very interested in Charlie. He said it was because it was news.”

  “More likely he was desperate to get his hands on Charlie,” Dina threw in. “But since he couldn’t, and he knew that things were coming apart, I’ll bet he decided to get rid of his slimy partners and sever his connection, let it all go down on them.”

  Jewell said quietly, “This is Gary we’re talking about.”

  Dina gave her a brutally cold stare. “If you have a better idea, let’s hear it. If not, we need to move and find Charlie.”

  “What do we do?” Jewell said.

  “We should take all this to Olafsson or the state investigators,” Hodder suggested.

  “That doesn’t help Charlie if Johnson has her,” Dina said. “I prefer the direct approach. Where does he live?”

  “You tried the direct approach here,” Hodder pointed out. “Haven’t you trespassed enough?”

  “Look, if we’re wrong, it’s embarrassing and we’ll apologize. But what if we’re not wrong? What’s he doing to her now even as we stand here?”

  Jewell said, “Gary’s got a home on Lake Superior a few miles south of town.”

  Hodder nodded. “He’s probably there now. I stopped by the Courier office yesterday afternoon to talk to him, but they told me he’d gone home sick. I tried again this morning and got the same story.”

  “Hiding?” Dina suggested.

  “Let’s find out,” Cork said.

  45

  I t had been a hard day for Ren. Although his mother insisted he miss no more school, he wasn’t able to concentrate. At lunch when Amber Kennedy dropped her notebook beside the table where he was eating and bent to pick it up giving him a clear view down her blouse, he barely noticed. His worry about Charlie consumed him.

  He ditched his afternoon classes and searched for her. He tried her father’s trailer, then in a moment of brilliant deduction thought about the abandoned lumberyard next door. She wasn’t there, either. He checked the old freight warehouse on the harbor that had most of the windows broken out and pigeon droppings spotting the concrete floor. No Charlie. The only other possibility he could think of was that she’d broken into one of the summer cabins on the lake or along the river, but there were way too many to check them all.

  He stopped at the Farber House and Mrs. Taylor let him use the phone to call home. No one answered. He left a message saying he was hanging out in town for a while, and not to worry. He’d be home in time for dinner.

  He went to the picnic shelter where he’d got high with Stash and Charlie and where all the trouble had begun. He sat on the table and watched the river sweeping past in striations of white and black water.

  Where was Charlie?

  He’d been worried before, only to find that she’d taken care of herself just fine. He shouldn’t be worried now, he tried to tell himself, but he couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling. Everything important in his life seemed to have changed or be changing. His father dead. His mother lost in grieving. Charlie getting weird. Bodine suddenly a scary place. He wished he could go back and stop time, freeze everything in place. He longed for it all to be comfortable and familiar, like the ground under his feet.

  He finally got up, followed the Copper River to the old mine, and checked it again. Empty.

  It was late when he started home. The Huron Mountains were eating the sun. The woods were full of long shadows. Far to the east, a few feathery clouds were already tinted with the glow of sunset. His mother was probably home from work, making dinner. She’d be worried. Still, he walked slowly, weighted. By the time he reached the Killbelly Marsh Trail, the sun had gone down and the path he followed was a tunnel of cool blue light. He turned off the trail and headed through the trees toward the cabins, past the shot-up car behind the shed. His mother’s Blazer was parked in front of Thor’s Lodge, but the Pathfinder was gone. Ren stepped inside the cabin and found it empty. The evening light through the windows illuminated the place with a steely grayness. Ren sensed something was wrong and wondered if an emergency had pulled the adults away. He left the door open and hurried to the kitchen, hoping for a note.

  He found it on the counter, anchored in place by the toaster:

  Ren,

  Gone for a while. Cork and Dina are with me.

  Back soon.

  Love,

  Mom

  For a moment, he felt relieved.

  Then he felt a draft of air on his neck as something moved in the room behind him.

  “Hello there, Ren,” said a deep, unfriendly voice at his back.

  46

  T hey turned off the highway south of town onto a narrow paved drive that wound through a grove of alders. Sunset was near and they plunged into deep shadows. On a curve still out of sight of Gary Johnson’s house, Ned Hodder, who led the way, braked to a slow stop. He got out and waited for the others to join him.

  When they all stood together, he said, “It’s a couple hundred yards around this curve. A one-story ranch. Attached garage on the north. There’s maybe fifty yards of clear ground between the trees and the house on all sides, except for the backyard. That sits on a little cliff that drops straight down into the lake.”

  “Let’s come at it from the north,” Cork suggested. “We can use the garage to hide our approach. Check it for Stokely’s truck, too.”

  “We need someone to cover the house while we’re doing that,” Hodder said. He looked at Dina who had her Glock already out. “You okay with that?”

  “If I’m covering from any kind of distance, I’d rather use my rifle.”

  She opened the tailgate of the Pathfinder, spent half a minute, and returned with a Ruger. 44 and the walkie-talkies from the resort. She gave one unit to Cork and kept the other for herself.

  “You any good?” Hodder said, indicating the carbine.

  “She’s good,” Cork told him. “Believe me.”

  Ned went back to his vehicle and lifted a shotgun from the trunk. Cork recognized a Mossberg twelve-gauge, a popular law enforcement firearm. Hodder shook his head. “I can’t remember the last time I had to pull this thing out for anything but cleaning.”

  “If you’re not going to use your Glock, Dina, you mind if I do?” Cork said.

  She gave it over, along with an extra clip.

  “Get yourself in a good position,” Hodder instructed Dina-needlessly, Cork knew. “Jewell, you stay close to her, okay?”

  “Use that Motorola,” Dina said. “Let us know what’s going on.”

  “Will do,” Cork replied.

  Hodder headed into the alders, Cork right behind him. They walked carefully, conscious of the quiet and everything they did that broke it. They took five minutes to work their way to a place north of the house, where the garage would block any view of their approach. Cork let Dina know they were in position and ready to move.

  They could see the whole of the backyard clearly, a neat square of lawn with only a few random autumn leaves lying unraked on the grass. Trees edged the yard to the north and south, but to the east it opened toward the lake, which in the waning light was a stretch of calm water the blue-black color of a new bruise. Above the lake hung a few wisps of pink cloud, scars on the pale blue body of the sky.

  “Check the garage first, see if Stokely’s truck is there?” Cork said.

  Hodder nodded. Together they slipped from the trees and dashed across the yard. Cork’s leg was a howl of pain, but it held up and he reached the garage only a moment behind Hodder. He leaned against the side and put his weight on his good leg. The constable crept to the front of the garage and peered through the windows that ran in a row across the broad door. He turned back and gave Cork a thumbs-up. Stokely’s truck was there.

  “What now?” Hodder said.

  “Let’s see if we can pinpoint their location inside.”

  They eased along the wall to the back of the house and around the corner. They ducked under several
windows where the curtains were drawn, then came to one that was clear. Cork could see kitchen cabinets and the glow of a light deeper in the house.

  “Ever been inside before?” he whispered to Hodder.

  “Couple of times. Kitchen opens onto the dining area. Living room’s just beyond that.”

  Cork hesitated, then risked a peek through the window. The kitchen was dark as was the dining area beyond. In a dim lake of light in the living room, Johnson sat in an easy chair facing the television. The TV set was on, but the screen was an empty blue.

  “Johnson,” Cork said, “but no Stokely. The curtains on the other dining room wall are open. Maybe I can get a better look from there.”

  Cork made his way to the far side of the house. The angle through that window was better and he saw most of the living room. He also saw Calvin Stokely.

  “Well?” Hodder said when Cork returned.

  “Stokely’s with him.”

  “Armed?”

  “Dead. He’s lying on the living room floor in a pool of blood.”

  Hodder squinted. “Jesus.”

  “Johnson’s armed. Just sitting there staring at a blank television screen holding a handgun. Your jurisdiction. How do we play it?”

  Hodder looked at Cork and at the kitchen window, his uncertainty clear in his face.

  “Keep an eye on him,” he finally said. “I’ll try the back door. If he moves, you’ve got to let me know.”

  “Will do.”

  Hodder took his time with the screen door, which opened without a sound. He turned the knob on the inside door and inched his way into the kitchen. Cork watched him move to a place where he could observe Johnson for himself. Hodder signaled Cork inside and raised his Mossberg to the ready. Cork slipped through the kitchen door, the Glock in the grip of his right hand. The air in the house carried the thick, sweet smell of blood.

  Johnson didn’t move, didn’t seem at all aware of their presence. Still as a stump, he stared at the blue television screen.

  Hodder barked, “Police! Drop the weapon, Gary!”

  Like a man in a dream, Johnson slowly turned his head. His face was slack, his eyes distant.