The William Kent Krueger Collection #4

by William Kent Krueger

  “Drunk?” This was news to Cork. “How would you know that?”

  “Something the Border Patrol agent, John Berglund, noted when he finished tracking that day.”

  “Did he write up a report?”

  “Just some notes.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  “Be my guest. But don’t let Holter know I’m doing this.”

  Larson took one of the manila folders from a small stack on his desk, thumbed through some papers inside, and came up with three pages torn from a small wire-bound notebook. He handed them to Cork and said, “Take your coat off and have a seat.”

  It was late afternoon, darkening already from both the gloom of the overcast and the early sunsets that came with the season. Snowflakes kissed the windows of Larson’s office and melted and formed trickles down the glass. Larson had his desk light on, and between that and the soft gray illumination that still sifted through the windowpanes, Cork could see well enough to read.

  The words on the lined paper were in ink, ballpoint probably, written neatly. They indicated directions, distances, topography, ground conditions, weather. They elucidated the particulars of the signs that Berglund had found and followed. Cork read the description of the two sets of tracks, with special interest in the set made by what Berglund, in his notes, referred to as the “unsub,” the unknown subject in the investigation, the killer, who’d come up from the lake, shadowed the John Doe to the ridge, and returned the same way when he finished what he’d come there for. Berglund had noted that often the footprints seemed askew, as if the person who’d made them was stumbling, unsteady in his gait, a little drunk perhaps.

  Cork handed the notes back.

  “Anything?” Larson asked.

  “Nothing,” Cork lied.

  But in his head he was thinking, Not drunk. Just someone trying to protect the things he loves.

  * * *

  It was dark by the time Cork pulled up the drive to Winona Crane’s place. Willie’s modified Jeep was parked there. A dim light shone inside the house, and Cork saw a shadow cross a window. He parked his Land Rover, got out, climbed the front steps, and knocked at the door. A few moments later, Willie Crane stood in the open doorway, looking at him with surprise, then with irritation.

  “What do you want now?” he asked. Whayouwannow?

  “May I come in?”

  “What for?”

  “I’ve been looking for you. Went to your cabin and then to the Native Art center in Allouette. I’d like to talk to you and Winona.”

  “She’s not here.”

  “I figured that. So I’d like to talk to you about where I think she is.” He waited a moment, then added, “Please.”

  Willie relented and stepped back to let him pass. They stood in the living room, surrounded by all the evidence of Winona Crane’s search for . . . what? Truth? Peace of mind? Love?

  “I came to apologize,” Cork said.

  “What for?”

  “For leaning on you so hard in a difficult time.”

  “Apology accepted.” It was obvious that, for Willie, the matter was ended, and he was just fine with Cork leaving.

  Cork’s cell phone rang. Without looking at the incoming call, he turned the unit off. In what was ahead, he didn’t want any disturbance.

  He walked toward a framed photograph on the wall, a magnificent shot of a moose, standing in the shallows of a wilderness lake at sunset with red fingers of sunlight stretched across the sky above, as if the hand of God had reached out in benediction.

  “You’re a remarkable guy, Willie. I’ve always admired you. There’s nothing the rest of us can do that you can’t. I still remember when you saved Isaiah Broom from drowning. That was amazing.” Cork idly scratched the back of his neck and turned casually toward Willie. “You sure proved Sam Winter Moon wrong.”

  Willie stood with his back to a wall where one of Winona’s exotic icons hung, a ceramic mask, a grotesque-looking thing with a mouth stretched in a huge, ruby-lipped oval, a silent scream of pain or maybe terror. What god it represented or what religious sensibility Cork hadn’t the faintest idea, but it eyed him wildly over Willie’s left shoulder and made Cork even more uncomfortable with what lay ahead.

  “What do you mean?” Willie asked.

  “Sam taught me and Jubal and your sister to hunt in the old way, but not you. He must have figured you couldn’t handle it.”

  “He offered to teach me, but I had no interest in killing anything.”

  “He must have taught you to track though. You sure know how to stalk an animal with a camera.” Cork nodded toward the photograph of the moose at sunset.

  “He taught me,” Willie admitted.

  “So. Was it Winona who taught you how to shoot an arrow? Or was that your good friend Isaiah Broom?”

  Willie frowned at him but didn’t reply.

  “The man who killed the chimook on the ridge above Trickster’s Point and then killed Jubal Little left an odd trail,” Cork explained. “The tracks were a bit awkward. The official thinking in the investigation is that the killer had been drinking to build his courage. Maybe. But if you ask me, it would be awfully hard for a drunk man to stalk anything quietly. So I’ve been thinking about a different kind of man. About a man who’s walked a little awkwardly all his life and who knows how to compensate. About a man who, despite all the challenges against him, can stalk wild animals and get close enough for remarkable photographs.”

  Willie was as speechless as the screaming mask at his back.

  “I’m willing to bet that, when I tell the sheriff’s investigators to compare your fingerprints with those on the arrow through the John Doe’s eye, they’ll get a match. I don’t know how you acquired the skill, Willie, but I’m sure you can shoot a hunting arrow as well as I can. Hell, from what I’ve seen of you over all these years, I’m willing to bet you can probably shoot better.”

  “Why are you here?” Willie finally asked.

  “Believe it or not,” Cork replied, “it’s love that brings me.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Willie said, “I need to sit down.” Ineedasidon. He dropped into an easy chair, collapsed there like an emptied sack.

  Cork sat on the small sofa, facing him. “I have to ask you some questions, Willie.”

  “Ask,” Willie said in a dead voice.

  “I found blood in the bathroom. It’s Winona’s blood, isn’t it?”

  Willie looked at Cork a long time and finally nodded.

  Cork said, “At first, I figured maybe she’d been hurt, but not too badly since you talked to her last night while Camilla Little and I were at your cabin, and she didn’t say anything. But I’ve been thinking about that call. You made it. I heard only your end of the conversation. It could have been anybody on the other end of the line. Or nobody.” Cork waited a couple of breaths, then said, “Winona tried to kill herself, didn’t she, Willie? Cut her wrists, am I right?”

  Willie made no response, neither spoke nor gestured, just sat like a stunned man, mute and staring.

  “She’s gone, just like after all the other times Jubal left her,” Cork went on. “Only this time, Jubal left her for good. And I’m thinking, Willie, that this time Winona may be gone for good.”

  Willie didn’t respond immediately. First he studied Cork, who summoned everything Ojibwe in him and did his best to present an unreadable face. Then Willie’s eyes swept the room slowly, taking in all the odd things Winona had gathered over the years, all the exotic talismans. When his gaze finally returned to Cork, his expression was so full of grief that it was heartbreaking.

  Willie’s words were more tortured than Cork could ever recall, and he had to strain to understand them. “He never loved her. He only needed her. He took and never gave back. He took everything from her, and then he took her life. She cut her wrists in the bathtub, but it was Jubal Little who killed her just as sure as if he’d put the knife in her hand.”

  “You found her?”

  “She
called me. I’d never heard her so upset. I told her I’d be there. I told her I’d take care of her. But I was too late.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cork said. And he was. He felt sorrow in every cell of his heart.

  Willie stared at the floor. “I suppose I always knew this was how it would end. She always said Jubal would have to leave her someday. ‘For the mountaintop,’ she would say. As if that was all her life was about, sacrificing for Jubal Little.”

  “Where is she?”

  Willie gestured vaguely toward the main road, beyond which the woods began and ran north almost unbroken to Canada. “I buried her in a beautiful place. She will become the flowers and wild grass and trees.”

  Cork sat forward, nearer to Willie, rested his arms on his knees, and said quietly, “I have to ask you about Jubal. Why the arrow? Was it to throw the blame on me?”

  “An accident of circumstance,” Willie said, shaking his head. “I stole Isaiah’s bow and some of his arrows. He never locks his doors.”

  “Isaiah taught you to shoot?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he knew it was you who killed Jubal Little. He was covering for you, not for Winona.”

  “All my life, he’s been my friend. I would never have let them prosecute him for what I did.”

  “How did you know we’d be at Trickster’s Point?”

  “Winona. When she called me, she was rambling, all over the place, not making much sense, but it was one of the things she said.”

  “And you decided to kill him. Revenge?”

  Again he shook his head. “Justice. He killed Winona. He was going to betray the Anishinaabeg and Mother Earth. I killed him before he could do these things.”

  We kill to protect what we love, Cork thought. And sometimes in the name of justice.

  “Tell me about the man on the ridge,” he said.

  Willie seemed puzzled at that. “I went early to get there ahead of you. I found his trail when I came up the back of the ridge, and I followed it.”

  “Just a hunter in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Cork said. “So you killed him?”

  “No. Not just a hunter. Or not a hunter of deer anyway. He was hunting you.”

  That made Cork sit up. “Me? How do you know that?”

  “I came up the ridge quietly. God bless Sam Winter Moon and all he taught me. The hunter didn’t see me. He was lying on the ground, sighting his rifle. You and Jubal had just landed your canoe. Jubal had walked away, but you were still on the shore. Easy for me to see that it wasn’t Jubal the man was taking a bead on.”

  “Me?” Cork said, trying to make sense of it.

  “I’d brought three arrows that Isaiah had made. I grabbed one, nocked it, and got ready to shoot if I had to. When I was maybe thirty feet away, I called to him. He was on his stomach, and he rolled to his back, sat up, and brought his rifle with him. He didn’t pause, not for an instant. He jammed the rifle butt to his shoulder, and it was clear he was going to shoot me. So I let the arrow fly.”

  “You killed him instantly,” Cork said. “A perfect shot.”

  “I didn’t think of it that way. I thought of it as a necessary shot. And a tragic one.” He looked sad and troubled. “I discovered that killing takes two lives. The moment it was done, my life, as I knew it, was gone.” He took a breath and finished. “There was no turning back, so I went ahead with what I’d come there to do.”

  Willie closed his eyes and breathed deeply. When he looked again at Cork, he seemed resigned. “You’re going to tell them the truth?”

  “Yes, Willie. But I want to tell them the whole truth.”

  “The whole truth?”

  “Rhiannon,” Cork said.

  Willie didn’t look at all surprised, but he said nothing.

  “When I asked you about the name Rhiannon, you lied. You knew all of Winona’s secrets, and Rhiannon was one. I want the truth.”

  Willie sagged, as if what Cork asked had drained him of any strength that remained. “There was a child,” he said at last.

  “Winona and Jubal?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “A dozen years ago. Nona became pregnant just before Jubal left for his first term as a congressman.”

  “Did Jubal know?”

  “Not at first. Nona didn’t want him to. She said he had enough to worry about.”

  “They’d been lovers for years without a pregnancy. How did it happen?”

  “Nona had always been careful in her timing. She knew her body. But Jubal didn’t plan on coming back to Aurora for a very long time. He wanted to solidify his position in Washington, and she was sad and desperate and a little careless before he left. When she realized she was pregnant, she thought about aborting the child but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She went full term.”

  “I don’t remember any word of this on the rez.”

  “As soon as she began to show, she went into seclusion at my cabin. She was always disappearing, so no one thought anything of it.”

  “And she had the baby?”

  “She delivered, yes.”

  “Where?”

  “In my bedroom.”

  “What happened?”

  “She didn’t want a doctor. She didn’t want anything official to be known about the child. So she planned on doing it on her own. She read everything she could and took care of herself. I don’t think I ever saw her so happy. She had a name for the baby. Rhiannon.” Willie smiled sadly. “She loved Stevie Nicks, and she loved that song.”

  “What happened to Rhiannon?”

  “Before her time, Nona began to experience a lot of pain. She was almost forty, and I thought maybe it was because she was older than most women with their first pregnancy. I wanted her to see a doctor. She refused. I was worried. I finally called Jubal in Washington. He dropped everything and came out immediately. She went into labor before he got here. I was with her. I’d read the books, too. But things weren’t going like in the books. By the time Jubal arrived it was over.”

  “She’d delivered Rhiannon?”

  “Yes. But the baby was stillborn. I don’t know why.”

  “Oh, Willie. I’m sorry.”

  “They grieved together. Hell, I grieved, too. Then we buried her.”

  “Where?”

  “Out there.” Willie again gestured toward the forests that ran to Canada. “In a beautiful spot where no one would ever find her. Three nights ago, I laid Nona beside her.”

  “Who else knew about Rhiannon?”

  “No one. It was a well-kept secret, Cork. I don’t know who else could know.”

  “Someone knows, Willie. He threatened me, anonymously.”

  “I swear, Cork, I don’t know.”

  Cork felt the weight of that particular concern settle once more on his tired shoulders. “Okay, will you do me a favor? For the time being, when the sheriff’s people question you, don’t say anything about Rhiannon.”

  “All right, Cork. But will you do me a favor in return?”

  “What is it?”

  “Give me a little time before you turn me in. I need to get things in order.”

  “I can do that, Willie.”

  Cork took one final look around the house where Winona Crane had lived her life according to a purpose she’d accepted long ago but, judging from the evidence she’d left behind, had never fully understood, a life she had made sacrifices for that hadn’t, as far as Cork could see, brought her any happiness. He’d loved her once, loved her with all the ardor and ache of a young man’s heart, and because of that, he had, in a sense, loved her always. Yet, as he drove off, leaving Willie to mourn her alone, Cork was very glad his own life had gone a different way and without her.

  CHAPTER 40

  A mile after he left Winona’s house, the headlights appeared in Cork’s rearview mirror. He noted them, then went back to his thinking.

  He considered Jubal Little. He’d loved Jubal once, loved him as a brother, but it had, in actuality, been
so brief a time. Had he really known Jubal then? He thought not, because Jubal hadn’t known himself, any more than Cork understood who he was. Their roads had diverged, and they’d gone in different directions, become different kinds of men. Cork had created a family. Jubal had created a following. Cork had lived pretty much in anonymity in the small world of Tamarack County, and had been happy there. Jubal had lived in the spotlight, but had he been happy? All the evidence indicated no. Jubal had spent a good deal of his life chasing greatness, that mountaintop Winona had seen in her vision so very long ago. And what had it brought him in the end except regret? When they were children, Cork had envied Jubal. But he envied him no more.

  The headlights behind him had approached, coming dangerously near, casting a blinding glare in Cork’s mirrors. The road was empty. It was never heavily trafficked and at night it was particularly abandoned. But it was winding, and Cork kept his speed steady, thinking the vehicle would pass on the next straightaway. When the opportunity came, the vehicle shot around his Land Rover, and Cork saw the Escalade that belonged to Kenny Yates pass in a blur of shiny silver metal. It pulled ahead and swerved back into the right-hand lane directly in front of Cork, way too close. The taillights immediately bloomed red, and the Escalade began to slow, forcing Cork to slow with it. What the hell was Yates up to? Cork had no idea, but he didn’t like this aggressiveness. It felt threatening. Felt, he realized, much like the call he’d received from the voice of the Devil on that same stretch of road, a manufactured voice meant as disguise. Low, gravelly, male. It could easily have been Yates.

  The Escalade slowed to a stop on the empty highway, and Cork brought the Land Rover to a halt behind it. A moment passed. The door of the Escalade opened, and Yates stepped out. He wore a black leather jacket. His hands were in his pockets. He stood still, as if waiting for Cork to meet him.

  Cork thought, Ah, hell, and got out. He approached the big man, the football player turned bodyguard, and kept his eyes on the pockets that hid Yates’s hands. He stopped ten feet away.