The William Kent Krueger Collection #4

by William Kent Krueger

  Because the metals were contained in sulfide ore, the technique for extracting them was called sulfide mining. Environmentalists claimed the mining of this ore would create mountains of sulfide tailings that were exposed to the elements. When sulfide mixes with air and water, the result is sulfuric acid, which would inevitably leach into the groundwater, polluting the pristine lakes and streams of the region. This had already been the case in other areas where sulfide mining had been allowed, and a lot of folks in the Arrowhead believed that looming on the horizon was yet another instance of the earth suffering horribly for the benefit of industry.

  On the other side of the coin, the new mines represented the possibility of a rebound in the depressed economy of the region. This meant jobs in an area where, for too long, they’d been far too rare, and also much-needed tax revenues for the state as a whole. Because the mining companies were full of assurances that the new technologies would allow safe, nonpolluting extraction—they had all kinds of reports and charts to prove it—a great many people in the Arrowhead, and in Minnesota in general, welcomed the prospect.

  In his gubernatorial campaign, Jubal Little had talked about the need for sacrifice in order to make Minnesota self-sustaining. He’d strongly supported opening the North Country to additional mining. He never spoke of this as sacrifice but couched it in terms of responsibility and risk. It would be his responsibility as governor to ensure that mine companies kept their promises. And what small risk there might be to the Arrowhead was outweighed by the great benefit to the state as a whole. This was in direct contrast to the position of the incumbent, a man of liberal leanings who’d made environmental protection one of his top priorities but who’d been ineffectual in all his efforts to revitalize the state’s stagnating economy.

  Jubal’s argument about exploiting Minnesota’s mineral potential was the same kind of argument he’d made about the casinos. Responsibility and risk.

  Politically, Jubal characterized himself as socially progressive and fiscally conservative. But his politics had mattered a good deal less than his image. He was tall and good-looking. Confident, charming, self-assured. He could be winningly self-effacing. But more than anything else, he offered the image of a man who, like a great frontier scout, knew the way ahead was fraught with danger, but if you followed him, he’d absolutely get you to the promised land. In all the darkness of economic uncertainty, he offered voters the hope of light, and they flew to him like moths.

  Not Cork. And not the Ojibwe. And not, he knew, Lester Bigby.

  “As I understand it, Lester, construction of that resort of yours ground to a halt last summer. All because Jubal Little pledged to open the area to sulfide mining if he was elected. Crown Lake is just a few miles downstream from the site where that Canadian company intends to begin mining as soon as they get approval, which Jubal’s election would pretty much have assured. You stood to lose a lot of money.”

  “I’ve lost money before,” Bigby said.

  “This would have been on a huge scale. And probably a lot of other folks you talked into investing in your company stood to lose their shirts, too.”

  “And your point is?”

  “Somebody killed Jubal Little, killed him before he had a chance to make good on his campaign promises. I’m just thinking you had a lot of reason to want him dead.”

  Bigby seemed actually amused at this thought. He smiled and said, “Jesus, you think I killed Little?”

  “You bow-hunt. You’ve got yourself a good Bear Carnage as I understand it.”

  Bigby saw that Cork wasn’t joking, and the smile dropped from his lips. “You really think I killed Jubal Little.”

  “I think you had good reason to want him dead.”

  “Wanting somebody dead and killing him are at two different ends of the stick, O’Connor. Are you saying that everybody you want dead you’ve killed?”

  “Where were you on Saturday, Lester?”

  Bigby opened his mouth to answer, then stopped. “Hell, I don’t have to tell you.”

  “You’ll have to tell the sheriff.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a hunter with a fine new compound bow, and you have a pretty good reason to have wanted Little dead, and your wife believes you were visiting your father, and your father says you weren’t. At the very least, you have some explaining to do. And if the sheriff questions you about all this, word is going to spread, and whether you like it or not, people are going to start talking about you and wondering. I just thought I might be able to save you and your family some embarrassment.”

  “You talked to my wife and my father?” Bigby’s fine-featured face took on a stern look that was somehow still delicate.

  “I spent some time with both of them earlier today.”

  “You drag my family into this, O’Connor, and I’ll destroy you.”

  “Your family doesn’t have to be dragged in, Lester. All you have to do is tell me where you were on Saturday.”

  “Who the hell are you to be asking me questions?” He’d raised his voice above the general hubbub of the Broiler, and other voices grew quiet; eyes swung his way. Bigby noticed and spoke more softly. “You’re not the law around here anymore. Just who the hell do you think you are?”

  “I’m the guy somebody’s trying to frame for Jubal Little’s death, and I’m not just going to sit around and let that happen, Lester. Where were you Saturday?”

  “You don’t know me at all, O’Connor. I’d never kill anybody over money.”

  Cork leaned closer and said, “Maybe it wasn’t just about money.”

  Bigby’s eyes once again gave him away, and Cork knew he’d touched a nerve. Bigby sat up a little straighter and brought out a confused look, but he was a beat too late. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your father’s always blamed Jubal and me for your brother’s death.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “In some people, that kind of wound never heals. You know, when I was sheriff, I never encountered your father without him making some comment about how I couldn’t hide behind a badge forever. We both knew exactly what he was talking about.”

  “And yet here you are,” Bigby said. “Alive and well.”

  “Yeah, here I am the prime suspect in Jubal Little’s death. Exactly the kind of situation that would warm the cockles of your father’s heart.” Cork sat back. “You love your father, Lester?”

  “I’m not going to answer that, or any more of your questions.”

  “See, I think he would be a hard man to love. But I also think that one thing we seek most as men is the approval of our fathers. It seems to me that goes a long way to explaining everything from why Alexander the Great felt compelled to conquer the world to why George W. Bush led us into Iraq. And maybe it even explains why the son of Buzz Bigby would kill Jubal Little.”

  “That’s such bullshit.”

  “Is it? Easy enough to disprove. Just tell me where you were on Saturday.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Cork made ready to leave. “I’ll give you a while to think about it, Lester. But if I haven’t heard from you by the end of the day, next time you’re questioned, it’ll be by the badges investigating Jubal Little’s death.”

  Cork walked away. But he couldn’t help feeling a tingle in his back, as if the point of an arrow was about to bury itself there.

  CHAPTER 26

  When Cork left Lester Bigby, he drove directly to the Iron Lake Reservation. The afternoon had turned remarkably warm, especially considering the spitting snow and sleet of only a couple of days earlier. The sky was the soft blue of a baby blanket, and the sun, already well past its zenith, put a fire to everything so that the forest and the lake and even the pavement of the road itself seemed to pulsate with electric vitality.

  He pulled into Allouette and saw Isaiah Broom’s pickup parked next to Willie Crane’s Jeep in front of the Iron Lake Center for Native Art. The door to the establishment was just
opening, and both men were coming out. Cork drove past them and watched as they ambled down to the Mocha Moose and went inside. He made a U-turn and parked on the street across from the coffee shop. Broom and Crane stood at the counter while Sarah LeDuc made them something to drink, then they sat at a table near the front window, leaned toward each other, and appeared to talk in the way of intimate friends.

  The roads that led to friendship were, Cork knew, as numerous as those in a Rand McNally atlas, but the underlying construct was always the same: a true sharing of self with another, a deep and vulnerable trusting. In the case of Isaiah Broom and Willie Crane, the friendship had begun in childhood, a connection between two boys painfully awkward in their own ways and filled with a terrible sense of isolation. Willie’s situation was obvious, his difficult gait and tortured speech. Isaiah Broom’s problems were less so but, in their way, just as challenging. His father had never been around, and his mother had dropped out of the picture when Isaiah was still a small child. Like Willie and Winona Crane, he’d been taken care of by a laundry list of relatives. He was a big kid, but unlike Jubal Little, whose size and physical ability were proportionally equal, Isaiah Broom was hopelessly uncoordinated. He lived in a body that seemed beyond his control, and perhaps even his comprehension. Cork had seen him sit for long periods of time staring at his big, meaty limbs as if they totally confounded him. Willie Crane, on the other hand, seemed determined to rise above the limitations of the body he’d been given, and although every word he spoke was a struggle and every step he took a battle, he faced the challenge of his life with the heart of a warrior. Probably more than anyone else on the Iron Lake Reservation, he understood what the clumsy, bearish Isaiah Broom was up against.

  But maybe most important in their relationship was the fact that, when they were kids, Willie Crane had saved Isaiah Broom’s life. It had happened this way.

  It was early summer. They were fishing on Iron Lake, in an old aluminum rowboat Broom had borrowed from one of his uncles. They’d rowed out a good half mile from shore and cast their lines off an island called Gull, where legend had it, a monster muskie dubbed Old Flint liked to feed. They were eleven years old. Broom had the bulk of a kid several years older. Willie was small and slender, but strong because he exercised constantly to compensate for his weak, sometimes spastic, left side. They’d been out maybe an hour when the storm came up. It blew in from nowhere, a huge, angry bluster, wind and rain and lightning that shoved the lake into a rage of whitecaps. They tried to make it back to the old dock in Allouette, each boy bent over an oar, pulling for dear life, but the boat began taking on water, wave after wave, and the vessel grew more sluggish and their arms more tired as the waterline crept toward the tops of the gunwales.

  They were still fifty yards out when the boat swamped completely, and they took to the water. They swam for shore. That is, Willie swam for shore. Broom didn’t know how to swim. He flailed, arms like great tree limbs beating the water, throwing up sprays of desperate white in the troughs between the waves. Willie went back for him. Broom reached out, grasping wildly in his panic, but Willie stayed away. The oars from the boat had lifted from their locks and were easily riding the wild undulations of the lake. Willie latched on to one of them and shoved it toward his friend. Broom grabbed it, and Willie shouted for him to hold on. He swam them both near enough to shore that his feet found bottom, but by then Broom had taken in so much water and was so exhausted that the oar slipped from his hands and his body slid below the surface. Willie dived after him, wrapped his hands around fistfuls of Broom’s T-shirt, and dragged him to solid ground. He dropped him in the wash of the waves and saw that the boy’s chest had ceased to rise and fall. He cocked Broom’s head back, locked his lips against Broom’s blue lips, and breathed life back into his friend.

  It was a remarkable story, but when the Aurora Sentinel reported the incident, a lot of white folks in Tamarack County refused to believe it, refused to accept that the Indian kid they sometimes spotted limping down Center Street, and who was incomprehensible when he tried to talk, could have performed such a physical feat. But Cork believed it. He believed it because he knew the heart within Willie Crane, and he believed it because he knew that friendship, true friendship, was the stuff of miracles.

  Cork got out of his Land Rover and headed into the Mocha Moose. Except for Broom and Crane and Sarah LeDuc, the coffee shop was empty. There was music playing over the sound system, and Cork recognized the flute work of Bill Miller. Sarah smiled from behind the counter and greeted Cork with “Boozhoo.”

  “Boozhoo, Sarah. Quiet today,” he said.

  “Monday afternoon. Always quiet. Can I get you something?”

  “A small dark roast.”

  “Regular or decaf?”

  “Regular. Never understood the point of drinking coffee without caffeine in it. Like drinking nonalcoholic beer.”

  Broom and Crane had been talking before he came in, but with his appearance, they’d lapsed into a watchful silence.

  Cork got his coffee and paid. Then he strolled to the table where the two men sat. “I was just on my way over to your place, Isaiah. Mind if I sit down?”

  “Heard the cops tossed your house this morning,” Broom said.

  Though uninvited, Cork pulled a chair from another table and joined the men. “They were respectful,” he said.

  “Find what they were looking for?”

  “You’ll have to ask them, Isaiah. I left before they finished.”

  “You okay?” Willie asked. U-k?

  “I feel like I’m in a vise at the moment, Willie, and the jaws are closing. Thanks for asking.”

  Willie said, “I should get back to the business. Unless you want to talk to me, too.”

  “No, it’s Isaiah I came to see.”

  “All right.” He nodded to Broom. “Seven?”

  “I’ll be there,” Broom said.

  Willie scooted his chair from the table. He got up and limped out, the sound of his gait like uneven drumbeats on the old wooden floorboards.

  “Seven?” Cork asked.

  “Tribal Council’s holding a meeting to talk about this sulfide mining thing,” Broom replied. “Some guy from that mining company is gonna try to convince us they’ll tear up the earth safely. Kinda like Custer saying all he really wanted to do was have tea with Sitting Bull. What did you want to see me about?” He lifted his mug, sipped his coffee, and his dark eyes watched Cork closely.

  “I asked you yesterday where you were on Saturday. You treated it like a joke. It’s no joke, Isaiah. Where were you?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Sam Winter Moon taught me how to hunt in the old way. He taught a lot of Shinnobs, including you. He also taught me how to make my own arrows, which is something I still do. I know that you do, too.”

  “Yeah, what of it?”

  “Do you splice your fletches?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the pattern?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Sam made his arrows using two different colors of fletching, red and green. They were round-back, with a left-wing offset. When I asked him why he used that pattern, he told me it was out of respect for the man who’d taught him. Cat-Eye Jimmy LeClair. When Cat-Eye died, Sam began using his pattern as a sign of respect and to preserve his memory. When Sam died, I began making my arrows using Sam’s pattern, for the same reason. Respect and memory. I’m just wondering if you might have done the same thing. What fletching pattern do you use?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Humor me and just answer the question.”

  “I feel like a rabbit looking at a snare here, O’Connor, so I think I’m going to keep that information to myself.” Broom glanced at the clock on the wall. “And we’re finished talking here. I’ve got to see somebody in Yellow Lake about a tree they want me to carve.” He stood up and turned away to drop his mug off with Sarah as he left.

  Cork watched him
go.

  Broom was a good Shinnob in every way. Unlike Lester Bigby, whose emotions were tattooed all over his face, Broom gave away nothing. But all that meant to Cork was that he’d have to keep digging.

  * * *

  After he left Allouette, Cork drove east on a road that wound for nearly two miles through a mix of marsh and popple. He came to a dirt track that split off to the right and that was marked with a sign, beautifully carved and lacquered, and into which were wood-burned the words CHAINSAW ART. He drove a short stretch, into a clearing, and pulled to a stop in front of the home of Isaiah Broom. It was a cabin of Broom’s own design and construct, not large but sturdy, built of honey-colored pine. Next to it stood another structure, almost as large but of flat-board construction, which, Cork knew, served Broom as both garage and studio.

  Over the years, Isaiah Broom had tried his hand at a lot of occupations, mostly associated with heavy labor. He’d logged timber in his early years, worked on road crews laying down steaming asphalt in summer, when the days were straight out of a pressure cooker, mopped hospital floors, and finally settled on tree and stump removal. Mostly, he’d eked out a living, and what was left after he’d fed and clothed himself (never very well) he’d spent in advocacy on behalf of his people. He was known on the rez as a rabble-rouser. He considered himself a skin’s skin. He could quote at length Russell Means and Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt, Chief Joseph and Black Elk, James Welch and Sherman Alexie. He’d been on the Trail of Broken Treaties in 1972, which had culminated in the taking of the BIA office in Washington, D.C. He’d twice marched across the continent in support of the sovereign rights of indigenous people, first in 1978, on what the American Indian Movement called the Longest Walk, and again thirty years later, on the Longest Walk 2. Whatever else he might think of Isaiah Broom, Cork respected the man’s dedication to the principles he advocated.