Red Knife

by William Kent Krueger

  “I think my husband does not care how I feel.”

  “Have you talked with him about this?”

  “No.”

  “Has he abused you, Luci?”

  “Never.”

  “Is there something that’s precipitated your decision? Is he involved with someone else, or are you?”

  Lucinda hesitated. “Involved?”

  “An affair.”

  Lucinda considered this and finally said, “No.”

  “Do you love him?”

  This she didn’t know how to explain, but she knew she had to try.

  “I was sixteen years old when we met. I had a cousin who was a marine. He introduced us. Will was so handsome, so respectful, so full of bravado. He is the only man I have ever had. I have followed him around the world. I have given him sons. I have tried always to respect him.” She stared deeply into the soft blue of the other woman’s eyes. “Is that love?”

  Jo reached across the desk and took Lucinda’s hands in her own. “Oh, Luci, there’s so much that’s good in that. Are you sure you want to leave him?”

  Lucinda looked into the other woman’s face and saw compassion there and she felt something like gentle fingers reach into her heart and slowly tug it open. She began to cry, softly at first, then huge sobs that shook her whole body. Jo came to her and embraced her and all the grief that Lucinda had been holding back with her denials flooded out.

  “My boy, my Alejandro, gone,” she wailed, rocking in Jo’s arms. “And Rayette, bonita Rayette. All gone, all gone. Oh, God. Oh, Mother Mary, please help me.” She wept and wept and at one point drew away and tried to explain. “Will never cries. He does not understand. It is weakness to him.”

  “You go right ahead,” Jo said, stroking Lucinda’s hair. “Cry all you want, all you need to.”

  “I should have done something, protected my Alejandro. I should have stood up to Will.”

  “Luci, what happened isn’t your fault. You can’t blame yourself.”

  “If only I had done more for my little boy. My Alejandro. My poor little Alejandro.”

  Lucinda wept until she felt as if she’d touched the bottom of her grief, a place she’d been afraid to go. When the tears finally subsided, Jo reached to a box of Kleenex on her desk and drew out several tissues and handed them over.

  “Sometimes, Luci, when something tragic happens to a couple, it sends them spinning off in frightening directions, away from each other, full of blame, recrimination, guilt. Hasty, regretful decisions can result. Before you make a final decision about your marriage, would you be willing to talk to someone? I could recommend some very good counselors.”

  Lucinda shook her head. “I’m afraid now. Afraid for Uly and for Misty. They should know they are loved. Children need that. With Will, they will never know. I need to protect them. I need to make sure they know they are precious.” She began to cry again, but quietly this time. “Alejandro . . . maybe if Will had been different with him . . . maybe he would still be alive. Maybe none of these awful things would have happened.”

  “You blame Will for what happened?”

  Lucinda wiped her eyes with one of the tissues Jo had given her. “I know it’s not fair. But I can’t help feeling that Will drove Alejandro away. I do not want that for Ulysses or Misty.”

  “Luci,” Jo said in a careful voice, “it’s my understanding that the instructions Alexander and Rayette left direct that you and Will together be Misty’s guardians. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Leaving Will now could be a problem.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll have to look into the matter, but there could be some dispute over who would be awarded custody of Misty. If you separate, it may become the court’s responsibility to decide.”

  “You mean Will would raise them?”

  “I’m only saying that who raises them could be in dispute. Let me do some checking, and in the meantime, would you consider talking with someone about your relationship with Will? If these issues can be worked out without the dissolution of your marriage, wouldn’t you rather that?”

  “I suppose I could speak with Father Ted.”

  “That would be a good beginning. But if you decide in the end that separating from Will is what you want to do, I’ll help you do that.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jo touched Lucinda’s cheek with her palm. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I am now.”

  They walked together from the office, and in the hall they hugged.

  “There’s a way through all this, Luci. I’ll do my best to help you find it.”

  “You are a good friend,” Lucinda said.

  She left feeling not so alone nor so afraid, holding in her heart the warm hope her good friend had given her.

  THIRTY-ONE

  By the time Cork finally rolled out of bed, the sun was already high and the dew had long ago evaporated from the grass. He scratched all the usual places and began making coffee. While the old Hamilton Beach on the counter was doing its thing, Cork showered, shaved, and brushed his teeth. He was just buttoning his blue denim shirt when there was a knock at the door. He opened up and found George LeDuc standing in the shade of Sam’s Place, looking like a man carrying a gorilla on his shoulders.

  “Perfect timing, George. Coffee’s ready.” Cork stood aside and let his friend in. He poured cups of java for them both, then they sat at the table while a slender finger of sunlight came through the east window and nudged their shadows across the floor.

  “You heard about Buck Reinhardt?” Cork said.

  “The news ran through the rez like a man on fire.” LeDuc sipped his coffee. “Whoa.”

  “I like it strong,” Cork said.

  “Strong? You could strip varnish with this.”

  “Did you drop by just to insult my coffee, George?”

  “Fanny Blessing’s house burned down last night. Burned to the ground.”

  “Is Fanny okay?”

  “She wasn’t there. She was feeding quarters into a slot machine at the casino when it happened. Came home around four A.M. and the place was gone.”

  “How about Tom?”

  “Spent the night at his girlfriend’s. Didn’t know about it until this morning.”

  Cork shook his head. He wasn’t fond of the Blessings, either Fanny or her son, but this was a shame. “Burned to the ground, you say.”

  “It’s so far from everything else around it and it was the middle of the night. Nobody noticed.”

  “Any idea how it started?”

  “The fire inspector’s out there right now. But I have a guess.” LeDuc sipped his coffee and made a face. “First, this. I’ve been authorized by the tribal council to hire you.”

  “For what?”

  “If I hire you, what we talk about here is confidential, right? Privileged?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then tell me you’ll take the job.”

  “How can I? I don’t even know what the job is.”

  “Here’s a retainer.” LeDuc pulled a check from his pocket and handed it across the table to Cork.

  “Five thousand dollars?”

  “Are you hired?”

  “All right, I’m hired. Just tell me what’s so confidential.”

  “This morning about two thirty, a couple of guys in ski masks broke into the Decouteau’s place, dragged Rennie outside, and beat the crap out of him. Rennie’s one of the Red Boyz, you know.”

  “I know. Did they beat him up on general principle or was there a specific reason?”

  “They wanted to know where Tom Blessing was. And Lonnie Thunder.”

  “Did he tell them?”

  “He didn’t know anything about Thunder, and he swears he kept his mouth shut about Tom Blessing and his girlfriend. Probably true since, as of this morning, Blessing is fine and dandy. Pissed off, of course.”

  “Has Decouteau talked to the sheriff?”

  “
He doesn’t want to have anything to do with the law. The Red Boyz are saying they’ll take care of things.”

  “Christ.”

  “Exactly.” LeDuc stared down at his coffee, as if trying to decide whether another sip was worth it. “You don’t suppose it was just a coincidence that the Blessing house burned?”

  “Yeah, and pigs fly out my butt.” Cork finished his coffee and headed back for more. “With Alex Kingbird gone, Blessing leads the Red Boyz. Makes him a good target. Three men, you say?”

  “That’s the word.”

  “White?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Figures.”

  “You got an idea?”

  “I might.” Cork stood at the counter, full in the sunlight. He could tell the day was going to be a warm one. “George, I really think the sheriff ought to know about Rennie Decouteau.”

  LeDuc pushed his coffee away for good. “No offense meant here, Cork, but the sheriff hasn’t exactly been Wonder Woman in taking care of things lately.”

  “She’s had a lot to take care of. Look, George, what is it precisely you want me to accomplish?”

  “We want to know who killed the Kingbirds. We want to know where Lonnie Thunder is. We want to know who beat up Rennie Decouteau. And we want to know who burned down the Blessings’ place.”

  “What about who killed Buck Reinhardt?”

  “We don’t care about Buck. There are more than a few Shinnobs would give a medal to the guy who shot him.” LeDuc stood up, preparing to leave. “I’m thinking hiring you is what might be called a convergence of common interests. I’d guess the sheriff wouldn’t mind at all if she knew you were working the rez. I know you got a rock in your shoe name of Lonnie Thunder that you’d be happy to get rid of. And the council’s concerned that if we don’t get some answers soon, we’ll have scared people, red and white, hauling out their hunting rifles and looking to shoot something other than whitetails.”

  “A lot of what you’re asking is what I’ve been doing anyway, George. So what’s the five grand for?”

  “Anything you find out, you come to us with it first. We decide what the authorities know. The truth is, there’s a lot of concern about how all this is going to affect the casino. We don’t want folks staying away because they hear there’s some kind of Indian war going on.”

  “So a lot of this comes down to worrying about money.”

  LeDuc nodded at the check lying on the table. “Is that going to be enough? If you need more, don’t be shy about saying so.”

  Cork shrugged. “What’s a nice coffin cost these days?”

  Cork found Enos Minot and Ari Ostrowsky standing at the edge of the square of char and ash that had been the Blessing house. Minot was one of Marsha Dross’s deputies. Ostrowsky was a volunteer fireman. Together, they were the Tamarack County Fire Investigation Unit, an entity Cork had created when he was sheriff. Both men had completed training with the National Fire Academy, the Minnesota State Fire Marshal, and the Minnesota BCA. They were both small and complemented each other well. Enos was laid-back and thoughtful. Ari was like a sheepdog, running around the scene trying to shepherd all the disparate elements into a cohesive and understandable whole. They loved their job.

  Cork parked his Bronco on the road and walked toward the two men, who were conferring over clipboards.

  “Enos, Ari,” he greeted them.

  “Hey, Cork,” Ari said with an eager and affable grin. “What brings you out here?”

  “Working for the Iron Lake Ojibwe, Ari. This is the rez, and they’re concerned. You guys got any idea what happened here?”

  Enos shook his head. He was mostly bald, and in the warm, late-morning sunlight, his bare scalp glistened with a thin sheen of sweat. “This will be a tough one, Cork. The structure’s almost totally destroyed. Gonna be a bear trying to pinpoint the origin of the fire. If we just had some wall left standing . . .” He shook his head again.

  Ari, who wore a Minnesota Twins cap, waved off his partner’s concern. “We’ll get to the bottom of it once we’re able to move in there and start sifting. Still too many hot spots.”

  “Any way to tell the time the fire started?” Cork asked.

  Enos nodded. “When we interviewed Ms. Blessing, she indicated she returned from the casino about four thirty A.M. The place was still burning but the walls had already collapsed. At most, we think, the fire started a couple hours earlier.”

  “So, around two thirty?”

  “That’s in the ballpark,” Ari said.

  “Was Fanny the one who reported it?”

  “Yeah. Called from a neighbor’s house a couple of miles down the road.”

  “How was she?”

  Enos ran his hand over the top of his head, then wiped the sweat on his pants leg. “By the time we got here and had a chance to interview her, she’d calmed down. I heard that earlier she was pretty hysterical.”

  “Know where she is?”

  “Went to stay with a relative. A cousin, I think. I’ve got the name and address if you want it.”

  “Thanks, we’ll see. Has her son been around?”

  “Tom?” Enos pointed toward the old gas station across the road. Parked in the shade of a willow on the east side of the derelict structure was Tom Blessing’s Silverado. “He’s been there watching us most of the morning. We interviewed him. He claimed he was at his girlfriend’s house all night. Sheriff’s going to follow up on that.”

  Ari bent and picked up a charred piece of wood that blackened his fingers. “Nobody even noticed. The yin and the yang of this beautiful isolation.”

  “I’m going to talk to Tom,” Cork said. “You guys sticking around for a while?”

  “Yeah. We haven’t been able to get to the heart of things yet,” Enos said. “And the investigator for the insurance company’s on his way up from Duluth. Want to be here when he arrives.”

  “Thanks, guys.”

  “You betcha, Cork,” Ari said. The men turned their attention back to their clipboards.

  Cork headed toward the old derelict gas station across the road. It looked much the same as it had when the photographer from National Geographic had immortalized it in the pages of that publication. Though the accompanying article had been about the problems of the rez, to Cork the old gas station was a different kind of symbol. He saw something admirable in it, something that spoke of tenacity, of endurance in the face of neglect and all the other elements that worked to break it down. In a way, it was like the spirit of the Ojibwe.

  In the shade of the willow, Tom Blessing lowered his window.

  “Boozhoo, Tom,” Cork said in greeting.

  “Waubishash,” Blessing said, reiterating the name he’d taken as one of the Red Boyz. He wore sunglasses and stared at Cork from behind the big black lenses.

  “I’m sorry about your mother’s house.”

  “Not as sorry as she is,” Blessing said.

  “I heard about Rennie Decouteau. How’s he doing?”

  “His name is Kaybayosay. And he’s been better.”

  “I heard the Red Boyz are considering a response.”

  The dark lenses of Blessing’s sunglasses reflected the burned-down house. “News to me. The Red Boyz got nothing on their minds but being law-abiding citizens.”

  “Any idea who beat up Decouteau?”

  “I told you, his name is Kaybayosay.”

  “Fine. Any idea who messed him up?”

  “Same piece of shit who did this, don’t you think? Came looking for me here, didn’t find me, took it out on my mother’s house, then grabbed Kaybayosay and took it out on him.”

  Cork had to admit it seemed like a reasonable read of the incidents. “Look, Tom—”

  “Waubishash.”

  “As hard as it’s going to be to restrain yourself and the Red Boyz, nothing’s gained by going off half-cocked. Let the sheriff’s people do their work. They’ll get to the bottom of things.”

  Blessing gave a derisive laugh. “Right.”
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br />   “How long you figure on staying here?”

  “Longer’n you, I imagine.” Blessing crossed his arms and went back to staring across the road.

  Blessing was right. There wasn’t anything more for Cork to do there. He went back to his Bronco and left.

  Yellow Lake was fifteen miles southwest of Aurora. It was only slightly smaller than the county seat and had its own police force. The police shared a building with the volunteer fire department, which was located on a corner across the street from a lakefront park. The view was lovely: green grass; blue water; dark pines; and a sky full of clouds, like angels’ breath on a cold morning.

  Dave Reinhardt was seated at his desk, leaning over an opened manila folder, head bowed. He wore his khaki uniform. When Cork came in from off the street, Reinhardt jerked upright, as if he’d been napping, and he quickly slid a desk drawer closed.

  “Paperwork used to put me to sleep, too, Dave. That and late nights.” Cork walked across the little office and into the reek of whiskey.

  Reinhardt picked up a Bic pen that had been lying on the papers in the open folder. He began tapping the desktop with the point of the pen. “What can I do for you, Cork?”

  “For starters, you can stop trying to appease your father.”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea what that’s supposed to mean.”

  “No? You have any idea what the word ‘Ojibwe’ means?”

  “Like I give a flying fuck.”

  “Loosely translated, it means to pucker up. Now, a lot of Shinnobs accept the theory that the name came from the way the Ojibwe sew their moccasins, with a little pucker to the stitch.”

  “Is this going somewhere?”

  “There’s another theory. This one holds that the Ojibwe got their name because they used to roast their enemies slowly over a fire until they puckered up. The point is this, Dave. Any more Shinnob houses get burned down, any more Shinnobs get worked over, I’ll tell the Red Boyz who to look up. And I just might tell them about the old way of dealing with an enemy, if they don’t already know.”

  “You’re talking riddles I got no answer for, O’Connor.”

  Cork leaned his hands on the desk and bent toward Reinhardt. “Dave, don’t become Buck. With all due respect, those are shoes not worth filling.”