Lightning Strike

by William Kent Krueger

  “It’s a deal,” he said.

  CHAPTER 51

  The Crooked Pine opened at eleven A.M. When Ben Svenson turned on the neon Hamm’s Beer light in the window and unlocked, Liam and Joe Meese were inside the door even before the man had a chance to take two steps back toward the bar. Svenson turned and blinked at the glare of morning sunlight that burst in along with the two men. “What the—?”

  “Morning, Ben,” Liam said. “We need to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  Svenson opened his arms wide toward the empty bar. “I’ve got a business to open here, Sheriff.”

  “Won’t take long,” Liam said.

  Svenson looked unhappy, but then again he usually did.

  “I gotta get the register set up. You boys have a seat.”

  Svenson went behind the bar and Liam and Joe took stools.

  Liam said, “The Ojibwe girl who died out at Moose Lake, you knew her, right?”

  “Knew her? Wouldn’t say that. She hung around for a while till I ran her off. Hitting up customers, trying to cadge drinks, spare change, cigarettes.”

  “Pretty desperate kid, do you think?”

  “Probably. Hell, she was Indian and a runaway.”

  “Did she look hungry?”

  “Looked thin, I guess.”

  “Did she ever offer you anything in exchange for alcohol or food or maybe spare change?”

  “Offer me anything?” Svenson glanced up from the opened register drawer, then mustered a dramatic look of shock. “Like sex?”

  “Like sex.”

  “Sheriff, you got me all wrong if you think I’d do anything like that.”

  “I wasn’t accusing you, Ben. Just asking if she offered.”

  “No, hell no. No way.”

  “All right. Any idea if she hit on any customers in that way?”

  “I suppose she could have.”

  “Any of them ever say anything to you?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Didn’t complain?”

  “Well, come to think of it, maybe a few.”

  “Anyone in particular you remember?”

  “That was a while ago now. Couldn’t give you a name.”

  “How long would you say she hung around here before you ran her off?”

  “How the hell should I know. A day or two or three, I don’t know.”

  “Got any Four Roses?”

  “What?”

  “Four Roses. The whiskey Duncan MacDermid used to be so fond of. Him and Big John Manydeeds.”

  “Sure.” He reached to the liquor shelf that ran the length of the wall in back of the bar and pulled down a bottle. “Care for a shot, boys? On the house.”

  “On duty, Ben. Do you keep much of that in stock?”

  “Some. As much as I keep anything, I suppose.”

  “I’m wondering if I could see the receipts for say the last couple of months of your purchases of Four Roses.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “You told Deputy Meese here that you bought a couple of cases for Duncan MacDermid recently. You told him MacDermid liked to give it out to his mine supervisors.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So, I’m just asking if I could see the receipt for that liquor. I assume someone signed for it. If not MacDermid, then his wife or one of his people at the mine?”

  “Hell, you want me to drop everything and go on a scavenger hunt through all my receipts for the last couple of months.”

  “That’s exactly what I want, Ben.”

  “No way I can do that right now, Sheriff. Like I said, I got a business to run.”

  Liam looked around the empty bar. “Not much business at the moment. But I’ll tell you what. Just hand over all your receipts to Joe here. He’ll sit at a table and go through them himself.”

  “Look, sometimes I’m not as careful as I should be with my record keeping, okay? I don’t even know if I’ve got that receipt. You could go through the whole damn pile, and it could end up just a waste of your time.”

  “You have the time to waste, don’t you, Joe?”

  “Nothing on my docket the rest of the morning, Sheriff.”

  “Hell’s bells,” Svenson said, but made no move to get the receipts.

  “Two more questions for you, Ben, before I leave you and Deputy Meese to sort through those receipts. Here’s the first one. Were you a Boy Scout?”

  “What?”

  “Were you a Boy Scout, here in Aurora?”

  “Yeah.”

  For a man who wasn’t doing much behind his bar, Svenson was sweating up a storm.

  Liam said, “Here’s my second question: How does a man drink a case of Four Roses without leaving any fingerprints on the bottles?”

  * * *

  Doctor David Svenson smiled at Liam as he came up the hallway from one of the examining rooms. An old woman accompanied him. Liam knew her. Astrid Lankinen. She was nearly deaf and had the disposition of a badger. She was a woman with a whole list of complaints, mostly about what people in her neighborhood should not be doing after dark, which she regularly called in to the Sheriff’s Department. In her arms, she cradled a cat, gray and with mysterious and unfriendly blue eyes. When they reached the reception area, Doctor Dave said, “Roosevelt should be just fine, Astrid. Sharon will help you with the bill.”

  The woman buried her old, pinched face in the deep fur of her cat and whispered a couple of endearments, then walked to the front desk without acknowledging Liam at all.

  “Any luck with that list I gave your deputy?” the vet asked.

  “Nothing so far, Dave.”

  “He wasn’t clear on why he needed it. What’s up?”

  “There was a break-in at the stables out in Brandywine. Some pentobarbital was stolen. We’re just doing some tracking.”

  “Well, glad I could help.”

  “Could I ask you a hypothetical question?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “What would happen to a man if he were shot with a tranquilizer dart?”

  Doctor Dave laughed. “What?”

  “Like I said, just a hypothetical question.”

  “Whoever shot the dart would be in big trouble, I can tell you that.”

  “But it would be possible, right? And it wouldn’t necessarily kill him.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Just one more question, Dave. Were you a Boy Scout?”

  CHAPTER 52

  When his mother drove to Allouette to fetch Grandma Dilsey so they could pick the last of the season’s blueberries, Cork rode along. The whole way, he laid out his case, explaining to her what he wanted to do and why. She told him that she believed it was an exercise in futility and that she wasn’t at all on board with him going into the Boundary Waters without an adult along. But Grandma Dilsey, when she heard about it, had a different take.

  “Ask me, and I’d say Big John’s spirit has been guiding him, Colleen. Who are we to stand in the way of such a big spirit? And what harm can it do?”

  His mother argued a bit more but in the end, couldn’t stand against both Cork and his grandmother, and she finally gave her permission, but only if, as his father had insisted, Billy Downwind and Jorge went with him.

  He spent an hour tracking down Billy, who, it turned out, was helping his uncle put a new oil pump in Oscar Manydeeds’s pieced-together pickup.

  “Boozhoo, Cork,” Billy said, His hands were covered in black grease, but he was grinning ear to ear.

  Manydeeds lifted his head from the bowels of the truck. His face was streaked with grease in a way that reminded Cork of war paint. “What’s up, little sheriff?”

  Cork explained what he intended to do, then said, “I need to find out where exactly Mr. Kingfisher and Mr. Bright found the girl’s body.”

  “Just ask ’em,” Manydeeds said. Then he seemed to understand Cork’s hesitancy. “I’ll go with you.”

  He poured gas from a gallon container over his hands and over Bill
y’s, and the two mechanics used a dirty rag to wipe away a good deal of the caked grease. Manydeeds led the way to an old trailer, which stood on the north edge of the little community. As they approached, a dog hidden in the high grass of the yard leaped to its feet and set up a furious barking. Manydeeds seemed not surprised at all, and simply stood waiting, as if for something he knew would happen.

  The door of the trailer opened, and in the entry was Sherman Kingfisher, a broad-chested man with a face that in its color and with its multitude of scars seemed hacked from the trunk of a cedar. He eyed the three arrivals without comment, but to his dog he said, “Ondaas, Animikee.”

  Cork wasn’t at all fluent in the language of his ancestors, but he knew that what the man had said was, “Come here, Thunder.” And because of the racket the dog had been making, he understood the reason for its name.

  Oscar Manydeeds conversed with Kingfisher in Ojibwemowin. Cork understood almost none of it. Finally, Kingfisher leveled a hard look at Cork and said, “She was floatin’ not far off Eagle Point. Know where that is?”

  Cork said he did.

  “Doesn’t mean that’s where she went into the water. There’s current there, flowing out of an underground spring north of the point, so she coulda gone in somewhere up that way, I suppose.”

  Cork waited to see if Kingfisher had more to say. He didn’t. Cork said, “Migwech. Chi migwech.”

  Kingfisher looked at Manydeeds and said, “Joining us for poker tomorrow night?”

  “I’ll be there,” Manydeeds said. “Bringing my lucky rabbit’s foot.”

  Kingfisher finally cracked a smile. “You’ll need the whole damn rabbit, the way you play.”

  Back at the pickup truck, Manydeeds said to his nephew, “Guessing you’d rather go with Cork than muck around here.”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “Okay?”

  “Give you a lift back to town?” Manydeeds asked Cork.

  Cork explained that he’d arranged that with his mother.

  Manydeeds said to his nephew, “Let your mom know what you’re up to.”

  “Could you do that?” Billy said. “We gotta go right away.”

  Manydeeds gave a wave of his hand and said, “Baamaapii,” which meant “Until later.”

  * * *

  Once in Aurora, the boys headed straight to Glengarrow in search of Jorge. No one answered Cork’s knock at the door on the second story of the carriage house. He could see Nicholas Skinner’s red Thunderbird parked before the big house and thought that maybe Jorge and his mother were inside with Mrs. MacDermid and the lawyer.

  Jorge answered the bell and put a finger to his lips. “She’s going to sell,” he said in a whisper and waved them in.

  The adults were in the expansive living room. Nick Skinner sat next to Mrs. MacDermid, hunched forward over a bunch of legal documents that lay on a coffee table made from a great slab of some polished stone. Jorge’s mother hovered in the background near a serving table that held a delicate teapot and teacups. She glanced at her son when he appeared with his friends and gave her head a little shake. Jorge stopped where he was, with Cork and Billy at his back.

  “And this,” Nick Skinner was saying, as he slid a document toward Mrs. MacDermid, “is the agreement that authorizes me to act as your agent in the sale and in the disposition of all holdings here at Glengarrow.”

  “Where will she go?” Cork whispered into Jorge’s ear.

  Jorge put a finger to his lips and signaled the two boys to follow him. They returned to the huge entryway, where Cork asked a different question: “Where will you go?”

  “She told Mr. Skinner she wanted to sell everything, but that we were to be allowed to live in the carriage house free of charge for as long as we want.”

  “You can do that?” Cork said.

  Jorge shrugged. “I guess. Nick said he would write it into whatever deal he made for the property.”

  “That’s great,” Cork said.

  “I don’t know,” Jorge said. “Mom’s still out of a job.”

  “Will she marry Mr. Skinner?”

  Instead of answering, Jorge said, “What are you guys doing here?”

  Cork explained his plan to find the place on Moose Lake where the girl had been killed.

  “It’s a big lake,” Jorge said.

  “We’ve got an idea where to begin,” Billy said. “You in?”

  “I have to clear it with my mom. How long you going to be out there?”

  “My dad says no more than one night. We’ll leave right after we’ve delivered our papers this afternoon.”

  “Wait here.” Jorge headed back toward the living room. When he returned a few minutes later, his mother was with him and so was Mr. Skinner, carrying a shiny leather briefcase.

  “Hey, guys,” the lawyer said.

  “Is it true, Mr. Skinner?” Cork asked.

  “What?”

  “Mrs. MacDermid is selling Glengarrow?”

  “It’s true. In my opinion, it’s the best thing she can do. She needs to get away from here and start over.” He said it gravely, then he smiled. “So, I understand you guys are planning an overnighter at Moose Lake.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lots of lakes in Tamarack County easier to get to. What’s so interesting about Moose Lake?”

  “Not a lot of people go there, so we pretty much have the place to ourselves.” It was lame, Cork knew, but he saw no reason to give away their true purpose to Mr. Skinner. Then he said to Jorge’s mother, “Is it okay if Jorge goes with us?”

  “Please, Mom,” Jorge said.

  “It is such a big wilderness,” she replied.

  “We’ve been to Moose Lake with our Scout troop lots of times,” Cork said. “We won’t get lost. And my dad’s okay with it.”

  “Please, Mom,” Jorge said again. “It’s just one night. Please.”

  She studied her son a long while, then put her hand to his cheek. “Go. But you be careful.”

  “I will,” Jorge said.

  Cork said, “Come on, guys. We’ve got papers to deliver first.”

  CHAPTER 53

  Liam rang the bell and waited. He could hear music drifting through the screen door, but it seemed a bit distant. He rang again and still got no answer. He left the porch, circled the house, and came to a gate in a privacy fence of cedarwood planks. The music, at the moment Neil Sedaka singing “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” came from the backyard on the other side of the fence. Most folks in Aurora, if they wanted some privacy, used lilac hedges. But the big house, the privacy fence, the red Cadillac in the driveway made it clear that Doctor Dave had money. His vet practice was pretty lucrative, Liam figured. And maybe he’d made some savvy investments as well.

  Liam opened the gate. Moira Svenson reclined in a chaise lounge. Next to her was a little table on which sat a tall glass containing ice, some red concoction, a white straw, and a little blue paper umbrella. A black transistor radio lay next to the glass. Moira wore a yellow polka-dot bikini, just like in the song, and a yellow straw hat with a wide brim that shaded her face. He could tell by the sheen on her skin that she’d oiled herself. Or maybe it was simply a thin layer of sweat. She was leafing idly through a copy of Life.

  “Moira?” he called, but not too loud, hoping not to startle her.

  She turned her head and gazed at him without apparent surprise.

  “Liam,” she said lazily. “Or is it Sheriff, since you’re in uniform?”

  “I rang the doorbell. No one answered.”

  “I heard it. I thought you were the Fuller Brush man. Or one of those dreadful people with some religious tract.”

  “I wanted to talk to you for a few minutes.” He approached her and stood beside the chaise lounge. “I just spoke with Dave. At the clinic.”

  “Did he smell of dog? He always smells of dog.” She gazed up at him, her eyes no longer shaded by the brim of her hat, and she squinted a little, the corners of both eyes showing tiny crow’s-feet. “I’d ask you to sit
but there’s just this.” She touched the arm of her chair. Then she patted the green cushion at the edge of her thigh. “You can sit here, if you like.”

  “Thanks, no. I’ll stand.” He could smell the coconut scent of whatever she’d used to oil herself. It was not unpleasant at all. The station she was listening to on her transistor radio eased into the soft chords of “Blue Velvet.”

  Moira shaded her eyes and looked up at the sun. “It’s hot out here. Shall we… take this inside?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned off the radio, picked up her drink, and led the way through French doors into the dining room. Compared to the bright sun in the backyard, the house seemed dark and was much cooler.

  “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Thanks, no.”

  “Not even a Coke?”

  “I’m fine, Moira. This shouldn’t take long.”

  “Oh?” She put her transistor radio and her drink on the mahogany dining room table, then took off her big hat and shook her hair so that it fell loose over her shoulders. “Liam O’Connor,” she said and smiled at him. “That’s a fine Irish name. Did you know that my maiden name is O’Malley?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Moira Mary O’Malley. Now there’s a name with a lilt to it, don’t you think? But what do I do? I marry a Swede. A rather cold race, if you ask me. Compared to us Irish at any rate.” When Liam didn’t respond, she said, “Svenson. Mrs. David Svenson. Sounds cold. Dead fish cold.” She picked up her drink and put her lips around the straw and lifted her eyes to Liam and took a long sip. She lowered her drink, ran her index finger with its polished red nail slowly around the rim of the glass. “I voted for you last November.”

  “I appreciate your confidence. I need to ask you a question, Moira.”

  “I’m all ears, Sheriff.”

  “Was your husband gone the weekend after the Fourth of July?”

  She gave a little sniff of disdain. “He took off on his annual fishing expedition with the other two Musketeers.”

  “Musketeers?’

  “That’s what they call themselves. Him and his brother and the other one. The Three Musketeers.”