Tamarack County: A Novel Part 22

"Pender's in charge of the department, but Azevedo's got the lead in the Evelyn Carter investigation. He's checking out everyone on the list the Judge gave us of people who've had access to the Carters' home recently, from the Schwan's route man to the propane delivery guy."

"Long list?"

"No, but with the Judge the way he is now, we can't be sure it's complete." She breathed deeply and shook her head. "If we're really dealing with a homicide here and the Judge isn't the perp, then somebody had access to that house. And if this is about Cecil LaPointe, then it's somebody with a connection to him. One plus one, right? Should be easy."

"If LaPointe talks," Cork said. "Big if."

Dross reached up and pulled the visor down to block the low, glaring sun. "I didn't know Roy Arneson. By the time you brought me into the department, he'd already retired and was spending most of his time in Arizona. What was he like?"

"Roy was all about Roy."

"Good cop?"

"Mostly all politician. Knew what it took to look good in voters' eyes and was more concerned with that than running the department. His big strength was that he knew enough to get out of the way and let his officers do their jobs. Then, of course, he'd take full credit for whatever we did. When Karyn Bowen was murdered, he was facing a tough reelection in the fall because Tom Spinoza, who was chief of police in Yellow Lake back in those days, had already announced that he'd be running against Roy. Spinoza was personable, a Vietnam vet, lots of experience in law enforcement. Roy was just a few years shy of retirement age. So he was worried. Sewing up the Bowen murder case was a big boost to his campaign. And it would probably have been a game breaker if it turned out that we'd arrested and prosecuted an innocent man. So a lot was at stake in LaPointe's conviction."

"Important enough to him to play dumb about Wakemup's story?"

"Apparently so, if everything Ray Jay says is true."

"And the Judge?"

"You got me there. He's always been a son of a b.i.t.c.h, but that's hardly an explanation for such a huge miscarriage of justice. So . . ." Cork shrugged.

"What about Sullivan Becker?"

Cork laughed. "Sully always had his eye on bigger things. Prosecuting LaPointe got him that job offer in Dade County. When you think about it, it was an open and shut case. I mean, h.e.l.l, LaPointe confessed. But Sully played it big, played it smart, got the headlines, and it got him a ticket out of frigid Minnesota."

"So with Becker and Arneson, it was all about ambition, and with the Judge it was-what?-the whim of a son of a b.i.t.c.h?"

"As good an explanation as any. Maybe after we talk to LaPointe we'll know more." Cork lifted his coffee cup in the direction of the road ahead. "Truck stop coming up. Mind pulling in?"

"Coffee kicking in already?"

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

He spent a few minutes in the men's room. When he came out, Dross was on her cell phone.

"Yes," she said. "I understand. We'll be there at two, as planned. And thank you. I appreciate your help."

Cork buckled in, and Dross set her cell phone down on the seat between them.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned," she said in amazement.

"What is it?"

She stared at him, a look in her eyes as if she'd just been hit with a stun gun. "That was Terry Gilman, the warden at Stillwater Prison."

"What did she want?"

"She was informed of our visit and the reason, and it got her to thinking. She checked the record of the visitors LaPointe has had recently. And guess what."

She waited as if she really expected him to hazard a guess.

"Got me," he finally replied.

"His last visitor was Evelyn Carter, two days before she disappeared."

CHAPTER 29.

When Anne opened the door to Rainy's cabin, Stephen wasn't sure how to read her face, there seemed such a broad range of emotion reflected there. Surprise, dismay, anxiety. Even anger? He missed the old Anne, the ease of her smile, the soft pillow of her acceptance. The woman standing before him was someone different, someone, it seemed to him, afraid. And that had never been Anne. Skye Edwards, he believed, was to blame. But he didn't say that. He said, "Mind if I come in for a few minutes?"

She moved aside, and he stepped in. She closed the door against the sweep of cold air that came with his entry. She had a fire going in Rainy's woodstove, and the room felt cozy. There were some books stacked on the stand beside the bed. He didn't know if Anne had put them there, or if Rainy had left them. It was an austere room, similar to the way he imagined a nun's or monk's cell might be furnished.

"Would you like to take your coat off?" Anne asked with a note of politeness that made Stephen feel even more like a stranger.

"Yeah, I guess. Thanks."

She took it from him and laid it on the narrow bed.

"Would you like to sit down?" She held out a hand toward one of the two empty chairs at the small table in the center of the cabin.

Stephen sat, and after a long moment of consideration, Anne did, too. There was a quiet in the room that should have felt familiar. When Meloux was on Crow Point, Stephen often spent time with the old Mide, and part of being with Meloux was feeling comfortable with silence. The quiet in Rainy's cabin was different. It felt oppressive to him.

"How's your hand?" Anne asked.

He'd removed the gauze. His knuckles looked bruised, and they hurt a little when he made a fist, but it was a pain he could live with. In answer to her question, he simply shrugged.

"Jenny told me what you saw, Stephen," Anne finally said. "If you're wondering whether you misinterpreted it, you didn't. You probably don't understand. The truth is I'm not sure I do either."

"Does it mean you're not going to join the order?"

"I don't know what it means. That's one of the big reasons I came here. I have a lot to figure out."

"Do you love her?"

She'd been looking at the floor, but now she raised her eyes and looked at Stephen like a woman in a daze. "I think so."

"That pretty much seals it, doesn't it? How can you join the sisters now?"

"People don't become nuns or monks or priests because they have nothing to give up, Stephen, nothing to lose. It's a question of calling. I'm trying to figure out here what my calling is."

"I thought you were happy about joining the sisters. Now you seem so, I don't know, confused."

"I am confused."

"Skye did this."

"No, Stephen. Skye just woke me up to something about myself I'd never looked at before. She's helped me make sense of a lot of emotions that I didn't understand. I'm grateful to her for that. I just . . ." She appeared lost again. "I just don't know what to do with this understanding."

Stephen looked away. The sunlight through the south window threw an oblong box on the cabin floor. The top of the box touched the pile of wood next to the stove, and Stephen watched a spider crawl from under one of the logs into the light and sit there, as if warming itself. He thought it was odd to see a spider in the cabin in winter; it seemed so out of place, out of time, and he stared at it, as if mesmerized.

"Stephen?" His sister's voice brought his eyes up to her face, and he found that she was smiling, gently. "I'm still Annie, you know? I hope you still love me."

"Shoot," he said. "Of course, I do. I just-I just want you happy, that's all."

"I think that's what I want, too. And I'm trying to figure out how to get there." She folded her hands on the table. "Does Dad know?"

"I haven't said anything, and I don't think Jenny has either. Are you wondering if it'll matter to him? Because it won't. He's Dad and he loves you."

"Oh, Stephen, I don't know anymore what might matter and what won't. But . . ." She stared at the stack of logs by the stove and seemed to be studying the spider that still sat in the sunlight there. "I don't want to disappoint him."

"You know what Dad would say? He'd say you have to do what you have to do, and the people who love you will understand."

She laughed, and it felt so good to Stephen to hear that sound. "I'm glad you came," she said. "I'm really glad we're talking."

"That was only part of the reason I'm here," Stephen told her.

"What's the other part?"

"I want to do a sweat."

"Today?" Her eyes shot toward the north window, where the pane was laced with ice crystals. "It's got to be zero out there."

"Two below when I left Aurora."

"Can you even get a fire going at two below?"

"I could if I had some help."

"Where are you planning to do this sweat?"

Stephen waved toward the east. "The frame is still up from the sweat lodge we helped Henry build last spring at the edge of the lake. I brought tarps from home, and I know Henry keeps blankets in his cabin."

"What about the rocks for the sweat?"

"The Grandfathers? He keeps those with the blankets."

"Why is it so important that you do a sweat now, today?"

"I had a dream, Annie. It seemed a lot like the vision Henry had, the one he told me about on the phone the other day. Someone, or maybe something, was watching our house. It didn't go on long enough for me to see it clearly. If it was a vision, and if it's a warning of some kind, I want to try to get a better handle on it. I'm hoping a sweat might do the trick."

"You understand these things better than I do, but how will the sweat help?"

"I need to be cleansed. The truth is," he confessed, "I've been holding on to a lot of negative stuff because of Skye and . . . well . . . you."

"I'm sorry."

"That's okay. It's my stuff to deal with. But I think it might be getting in the way of seeing this vision clearly. I figured if Henry was here, he'd have me do a sweat."

"I'll be glad to do whatever I can to help."

He grinned. "Believe me, there's plenty."

The frame of the sweat lodge stood at the edge of Iron Lake, a hundred yards east of Rainy's cabin, behind a stand of aspen, half buried in snow. Stephen had brought two snow shovels, and he and Anne spent an hour clearing the frame all the way down to the frozen earth. They also cleared an area nearby in which Stephen intended to build the fire that would warm the mishoomisag, the Grandfathers, stones that would heat the lodge for the sweat. They carried wood from the stack that had been piled against Rainy's cabin, and Stephen built the fire. While it blazed, they covered the frame with the tarps he'd hauled in on the Bearcat. They brought the blankets from Meloux's cabin, and the Grandfathers, and also a pitchfork, which Meloux used to handle the stones after they'd been heated.

When there were good, hot coals, Stephen laid a number of the stones on them, then he said, "Let's go back to Meloux's cabin. He has sage there. We'll smudge, then I'll begin the sweat."

"It's lunchtime," Anne said. "Want to eat first?"

"I'm fasting. But you go ahead."

Anne shook her head. "I'll eat later."

Meloux kept many herbs in a cedar box under his bunk. Stephen pulled the box into the light and took out a bundle of dried sage the Mide had tied with a hemp string. He put the bundle on top of Meloux's woodstove, untied the string, and lit the loose sage with a kitchen match. He waved the smoke over himself, and Anne did the same. He said a prayer: "Great Spirit, cleanse my heart and mind. If there's some truth that you want me to see, take away the fog from my thinking. Help me walk the path ahead without anger or fear, and with a clear, unblinking eye. You are the weaver, and I am a thread. Help me accept your design, whatever that may be."

When he finished, Anne whispered softly, "Amen."

As they left Meloux's cabin, Stephen grabbed a small pot from a set of cookware hanging on hooks in the wall. Anne gave him a questioning glance.

"To melt snow for water," he explained. "To make the steam in the lodge."

The stones were superheated by the time they returned to the fire. Stephen used the pitchfork to lift them out of the coals, one by one. He'd broken a branch from a small pine tree, and he asked Anne to use it to sweep the embers from each stone before he cradled it on the tines into the shallow pit at the center of the lodge. When it was done, all the stones were in place, he dropped the flap over the entrance. In the meantime, Anne had filled the pot with snow and put it on the fire.

From one of the pockets of his coat, Stephen pulled out a small pouch filled with tobacco. He took a pinch of the tobacco and dropped it into the fire both as an offering and so that the smoke would carry his prayers upward.

"I'm on my own for a while," he said to Anne. "You can go on back to Rainy's cabin and have some lunch while I do the first round of sweating."

"When do you want me back?"

"Give me forty minutes."

"You'll be okay?"

"I'll be fine."

She kissed his cheek. "Safe journey," she said and left him.

Stephen took off his coat, shirt, shoes and socks, and pants and stood before the entrance to the lodge, dressed only in his T-shirt and boxers. He took the pot of water from the fire and lifted the flap over the entrance. Earlier, he'd laid a blanket inside, on the opposite side of the lodge. He slipped in and crawled clockwise until he reached the blanket, where he sat down. The stones had heated the small area intensely. He raised the pot, poured the melted snow onto the Grandfathers, and the steam rose up and filled the air around him.