Red Knife

by William Kent Krueger

  “Hard on you, I meant.”

  “It sucks, but that’s the way it is.”

  “Who’s pitching in your place?”

  “Meg Greeley.”

  “She won’t last more than four innings.”

  “Kris Evans will relieve her. She’ll bring the game home just fine.”

  “I’ll try to be there.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m proud of you, you know that, don’t you?”

  She stared at the hard morning blue of the lake and didn’t meet his eyes. “Thanks.” She turned toward Grant Park, south beyond the vacant field. “Let’s finish the run.”

  At ten A.M. Cork was parked in the driveway of the burned-down Blessing home. He’d been waiting fifteen minutes when he saw Tom Blessing’s Silverado coming from the south. Blessing hit the crossroads, took a right, and half a minute later, pulled up behind Cork’s Bronco. They both got out.

  “Boozhoo, Tom. Beautiful morning, huh?”

  “This better be good, O’Connor.”

  “Good, I don’t know. Necessary, definitely.”

  “You said you knew something about the fire.”

  “I’ve got a confession, Tom. I lied.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You tell me.”

  Cork turned back to his Bronco, opened the back door, and pulled out Lonnie Thunder’s license plate: RedStud. He handed it to Blessing, who stared at it, and then darted a look toward the old gas station across the road.

  “His Xterra is still there, Tom, although he’s not. But you know that.”

  “This doesn’t prove anything.” Blessing flung the plate into the ruins of the house as if he were throwing a Frisbee. It landed with a clatter and a small puff of ash.

  “It makes a pretty good case for aiding and abetting.”

  “Big deal.”

  “Maybe a good case for murder as well.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Thunder’s dead, Tom. Did you kill him?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Or did Kakaik?”

  “What makes you think he’s dead?”

  “Because on the rez you can’t get around for very long without someone spotting you. Nobody’s seen Thunder in a while.”

  “He split. He knew he was fucked if he stayed, so he left.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Couple of days ago.”

  “How? His Xterra is still here.”

  “Got a ride.”

  “Who with?”

  “One of the Red Boyz.”

  “Which one?”

  “Fuck you. I don’t have to answer your questions.”

  Blessing turned away, ready to leave, but he stopped when he saw the line of vehicles coming down the road from the west.

  “Maybe you don’t have to answer my questions, but I think you’re going to want to answer theirs.”

  The vehicles—half a dozen dusty SUVs and pickups—turned into the drive and blocked any hope Blessing might have had for an escape. George LeDuc led the procession in his Blazer. Chet Everywind was with him. When they got out, Everywind was cradling his deer rifle. The others, Ojibwe all, left their vehicles and sauntered over, putting Blessing at the center of a ring of men and rifles.

  Blessing’s eyes swung right and left. “What is this?”

  LeDuc spoke. “Cork stopped by my place this morning, Tom, and we had a long talk. After that, I spoke to a few of the others here. We decided to form our own gang. We call ourselves the Red Menz ’cause we’re a little older and a little wiser.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The truth, Tom. Just the truth.”

  “Going to beat it out of me?” Blessing tried to laugh, but it came out feebly.

  “We thought we might go about it another way.”

  LeDuc nodded and two of the men—Jack Gagnon and Dennis McDougall—grabbed Blessing’s arms. They were both big men, but it didn’t matter. Blessing didn’t put up a struggle. He kept his eyes on LeDuc, while the men bound his outstretched arms to the grill of his Silverado.

  “Lester,” LeDuc said, “get your stuff.”

  Lester Neadeau was a master plumber. He went to his truck and came back with a propane torch and a flint striker.

  LeDuc said, “I’m going to ask you some questions, Tom—”

  “My name is Waubishash.”

  “First question: What happened to Lonnie Thunder?”

  “Fuck you.”

  LeDuc signaled Neadeau, who opened the valve on the torch, and sparked a flame with the striker.

  “You’ve been branded before, Tom. This shouldn’t be much different. Jack, Dennis, let’s see some red skin.”

  The two men tore open Blessing’s shirt, exposing his hairless chest.

  “Lester,” LeDuc said.

  Neadeau stepped up to Blessing and moved the torch toward the young man’s bared chest. The sharp blue tongue of flame licked Blessing’s skin. Blessing screamed and Neadeau stepped back.

  “You brought violence to the rez,” LeDuc said. “You brought fear, you brought dishonor—”

  “We brought power,” Blessing cried.

  “Power? Hooking the Reinhardt girl on dope is power? Using our own girls in the way Thunder did was power?”

  “We didn’t hook the chimook girl,” he said, using the unflattering Ojibwe slang for white people. “She was already deep into meth. And it was Lonnie who used those girls, not the Red Boyz.”

  “He’s one of you.”

  “He wasn’t.”

  Cork said, “Wasn’t? Don’t you mean isn’t?”

  “What happened to Lonnie Thunder?” LeDuc said again.

  Blessing refused to reply. LeDuc nodded to Neadeau, who started the torch toward Blessing’s chest.

  “He’s dead,” Blessing said, a second before the flame connected.

  “Who killed him?”

  “He killed himself.”

  “Sure he did. Lester, a little more flame.”

  “I’m not lying,” Blessing said. “Kakaik gave him a choice. He could kill himself or Kakaik would do it for him.”

  “Why did Kingbird want him dead?”

  “He didn’t want him dead, but it was the only way. Lonnie stole drugs from the Red Boyz. He traded them for sex with the Reinhardt girl and used them to get what he wanted from those others. He didn’t know how to walk the path of the warrior and he jeopardized us all. He wouldn’t turn himself in and he threatened he’d tell everything he knew about the Red Boyz if Kakaik tried to turn him over. Killing him was the only answer.”

  “So he killed himself?” LeDuc looked unconvinced. “How?”

  “Kakaik offered him a choice, gun or knife. The gun had one bullet in it. We were all there, all the Red Boyz. Lonnie knew he was a dead man. He took the knife and cut his own throat.”

  “While you all stood there and watched?” LeDuc’s position shifted and his face dropped into shadow. “Watching a man die—a cousin—that’s not an easy thing.”

  Blessing looked full into the sun, but he didn’t blink. “When he died, I had more respect for him than any time when he was alive. He finally acted like a warrior.”

  “What did you do with his body?”

  “Threw it in a bog.”

  LeDuc glanced at Cork. Cork said, “Who killed Kingbird?”

  “If I tell you, I’m a dead man.”

  Cork moved close to Blessing and leaned near the man’s face. “It was the Latin Lords, wasn’t it, Tom?” From the look in Blessing’s eyes, he could tell that he’d hit the mark. “Was it about the drugs?”

  Blessing was silent. The wind picked up suddenly, and the smell of char and ash from the burned ruins blew over them all. Against the hard blue sky, a hawk rode the current, its wings slicing the air like knife blades.

  “They killed him because Kakaik was no longer one of them,” Blessing said. “He was one of us.”

  Cork said, “The Lords sent him out her
e to help control the drug traffic, didn’t they? To deal with the competition and extend the pipeline. That’s why he created the Red Boyz. But in the end, his loyalty was here, with you.”

  Blessing gave a nod. “He wanted to end the drug connection. He thought it weakened us, dishonored us.”

  “And the Latin Lords weren’t happy?”

  “They sent men to talk to him.”

  “Talk?”

  “We spent Saturday afternoon with them, Kakaik and me. I thought there was an understanding. I thought they left. Then they came to me the next morning, after Kakaik was killed. They said I was the head of the Red Boyz now, like it was something that was theirs to offer.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Two.”

  “Their names?”

  “Manny Ortega and Joey Estevez.”

  “You knew them before?”

  “Ortega’s the Latin Lord we always deal with. He’s like a businessman. Comes in from Chicago. Estevez comes with him, brings muscle. He was trained by Los Zetas, the assassins of the Mexican cartels. He’s death in a pair of lizard-skin boots.”

  “An enforcer. How’d they get here?”

  “The way they always do. In a floatplane.”

  “That landed at Black Duck Lake?” Cork said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Isolated. And let me guess, the drugs are warehoused somewhere out there? They deliver and you distribute?”

  Blessing nodded.

  “Where?”

  “All over, but mostly little places no bigger than a fart, kind of towns people think of as safe.”

  “Good money in it?”

  “You got no idea.”

  “But Kakaik was going to end the deal, so the Latin Lords killed him and put you in charge.”

  “They said if I got any ideas like Kakaik had, I’d end up the same way. They said wouldn’t I rather be rich and alive.”

  “You shot at me and my son and pretended to be Thunder. Why?”

  “I didn’t shoot at you. If I shot at you, you’d be dead. I just shot. I was trying to scare you off. I didn’t want you poking around on the rez. I figured it was safe putting the blame on a dead man.”

  “What about Reinhardt? Why shoot at him?”

  “I was hoping to put a little fear in him, too. And, hell, that was just the kind of stupid thing Lonnie would do.”

  He was probably right, Cork thought. “The Red Boyz have anything to do with the shooting in the Buzz Saw parking lot?”

  “That wasn’t us,” Blessing replied.

  Cork nodded. For the moment, he’d let it lie. “You said the Latin Lords come in a floatplane. How do they get around from there?”

  “They keep a Tahoe parked at the warehouse.”

  “You have any proof it was these men who killed Kakaik and Rayette?”

  “I know it was Estevez. He was always looking at Kakaik like he’d love to cut him into little pieces because Kakaik wasn’t afraid of him.”

  “The sheriff’s people are going to want proof.”

  “Sheriff’s people?” LeDuc said. “This is rez business.”

  “Hold on, George,” Cork began.

  LeDuc cut him off. “You believe he’s telling the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then Shinnobs will handle this.”

  “It’s too big, too dangerous.”

  “I’m not giving you a choice.” LeDuc squared himself in front of Cork. “In this, you are Anishinaabe or you are white. You can’t be both.”

  LeDuc’s face could have been cut from sandstone and his eyes carved from agates. He and Cork were old friends, but in this business LeDuc was ogichidaa, protector of his people and their land. Cork understood this, but for him it was not a question of being Shinnob or white. It was a concern that arose from an ingrained and deeply felt respect for the law, something as much a part of who he was as the color of his skin or the mixed blood that ran through his veins.

  “If we try to handle this on our own, George, and it goes south, the consequences could be enormous,” he argued quietly. “Good men here could be killed. Or just as bad, they could become murderers.”

  “A man who kills a murderer is not himself one.”

  “That’s not how the law will look at it, George.”

  “White man’s law. This is our land, and our laws decided things here a long time before white people came.” LeDuc was not angry, but his voice had the sharp edge of a honed knife. “Go now or stay. The choice is yours, Cork. If you go, you go without shame. But if you stay, you are one of us and you are with us in whatever we decide. I will discuss this no more.”

  Cork turned from LeDuc and studied the faces around him. He knew these men, respected them, and would have been proud to stand with them. He knew no better than they did the end of this affair. There was enormous risk involved and these men were prepared to accept it. Cork knew that stepping back was the safe thing to do. But he also knew that he could not.

  “Anishinaabe indaaw,” he said to LeDuc. I am Anishinaabe. I am one of The People.

  LeDuc gave a nod, almost imperceptible, and it was done.

  Cork faced Blessing again. “If you wanted to talk to these men, they’d come in on the floatplane and dock where the Tahoe is parked?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What if they thought you were going to be as difficult to deal with as Kakaik?”

  Blessing stared at Cork, then his eyes moved across all the other men who were present. “It would get ugly.”

  LeDuc said, “It’s already ugly.”

  He reached to his belt and drew out a hunting knife that was sheathed there. He walked to Blessing and held the blade up. Sunlight skated along the edge. He reached out and cut the bonds that held Blessing to the Silverado’s grill. Blessing shot his right hand toward the place where Neadeau’s torch had burned him, but stopped short of touching the wound. He stood tall before the others.

  LeDuc said, “We’re all one people, Waubishash, and our enemy is the same. We should fight together, don’t you think?”

  Blessing held still, caught in the intensity of LeDuc’s eyes. Then he nodded and said, “I’ll make sure the sons of bitches come.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Will came home in the late afternoon. He walked in the door without a word about where he’d been, hung his jacket in the closet, and spoke with his back to Lucinda, who was on the floor entertaining Misty with a rubber pig that squeaked. “Where’s Ulysses? He was supposed to wash your car, but it’s still covered with dust.”

  “He’s at Darrell Gallagher’s house. They’re playing some kind of video game. He said he might be there until late.”

  Will left the closet and headed toward the kitchen. He would not look at Lucinda. “Gallagher,” he said. “I don’t like the feel I get from that kid.”

  “Uly says he writes poetry.”

  “Hitler wrote poetry.”

  “Uly says he feels sorry for him. The boy is lonely. He has no friends except for Uly.”

  “There’s usually a good reason someone has no friends.”

  She watched him walk away from her. “Will, I know what you did.”

  That stopped him. In the doorway to the kitchen, he turned and stared at her.

  “I know you killed Buck Reinhardt,” she said.

  “Reinhardt’s dead?”

  His surprise seemed so genuine that Lucinda suddenly doubted all the horrible conclusions she’d come to.

  “Two nights ago, the night you left,” she told him. “He was shot with a rifle from a distance.”

  “A night shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think I did this?”

  “I went to your shop yesterday morning. You weren’t there, and the Dragunov was missing.”

  “The Dragunov? Jesus.” He quickly returned to the closet and grabbed his jacket.

  “Will?”

  “Not now, Luci.”

  He hurried out the door and was gone again.
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  The baby smiled and reached for the pig, but Lucinda barely noticed. She was thinking about Will and his surprise at the news about Reinhardt. Perhaps he did not kill the man. She was so ready to feel relief. She didn’t know for sure where he’d been, but that was not unusual. As always, she had her suspicions.

  The Blue Jays won the regional playoff game in a dramatic finish. One run down, bottom of the seventh and final inning, Cara Haines hit a double to right field that brought two Blue Jays across home plate. Stevie sat with Cork in the stands, and they both went crazy, along with the rest of the home crowd. They waited for Annie behind the bleachers, and she came with her teammates, who were headed to the locker room. She said a bunch of the girls were going out to celebrate; she’d probably be home late. Cork told her to have a good time.

  It was almost six thirty when Cork and Stevie walked back to the Bronco in the school parking lot. “We could go home and I could fix up something to eat, or we could go to the Broiler and have some fried chicken. What do you say, buddy?”

  Stevie grinned. “No-brainer, Dad.”

  “Let’s call your mom, see if she’ll join us.”

  He tried her work number, but the line was busy. He tried again when they pulled into the Broiler parking lot. This time she answered.

  “I was on the phone with Lucinda Kingbird,” she explained. “Will’s being held in the jail.”

  “What for?”

  “He confessed to the murder of Buck Reinhardt. I’m on my way over to the sheriff’s office now.”

  “Do you want me there?”

  “I can’t imagine what for, but I’ll want to talk to you later, I’m sure. Don’t go out of cell phone range, okay?”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Oh, Cork? How’d they do? The Blue Jays?”

  “Just a second.” He handed the phone to Stevie. “Your mom wants to know how your sister’s team did.”

  Stevie took the phone. “Kicked butt,” he told her.

  Will looked so tired Lucinda wanted to weep. Hold him and weep.

  “Thanks, Cy,” Jo O’Connor said to the deputy who’d brought Will in.

  “Let me know when you’re ready to leave.” The deputy tapped the buzzer on the wall next to the door to make sure she knew how to summon him, then he stepped outside.

  “Oh, Will.” Lucinda reached across the table, but he pulled his hands away and dropped them into his lap.