Tamarack County: A Novel Part 8

"Yeah, Al Abramson."

"A good man."

"And a good lawyer. He said it sounded very much like the kind of question one might ask a suspect. Was the Judge a suspect? And if so, what, in my mind, made him so?"

"Did you tell him you thought the Judge was feeding you a lot of bulls.h.i.t and that in itself was reason enough?"

She smiled. Although she wore no makeup, she was still, in her straightforward way, attractive. She was wearing her uniform, something she rarely did. He figured she was going to do a lot of official investigating that day and wanted the force of her authority evident.

"So, where do you go from here?" he asked.

She looked at her watch. "The Judge's daughter arrived this morning. I've already spoken with her on the phone and asked if she'd mind coming in today so that I could talk to her about her mother and our investigation."

"She said yes?"

"In a heartbeat. She seems a good deal more worried about Evelyn than her father is."

The mug Dross had given him was almost empty. Cork stared at the last mouthful, which was full of grounds. "I believe Ralph's the kind of man who, given the right circ.u.mstances, might kill his wife, but we come back to motive." He gave her a questioning look, to which she offered only a shrug in reply. "We also have the issue of how that feeble old goat would even be able to manage siphoning the gas tank and hauling around the heavy cans."

"Maybe he had help."

"Who?"

She said in a voice that was a very good imitation of the Judge, "I don't know."

Cork laughed and stood up. "After you've talked to Justine, will you let me know what you found out, if anything?"

"All right. And you'll let me know how your snowmobile expedition goes, okay?"

He drove to the reservation of the Iron Lake Ojibwe and parked at the deserted marina. He backed the snowmobile off the trailer and headed out onto the frozen lake toward the Loons, a little more than a mile distant. The sun off the snow was a blinding hammer, and Cork wore his tinted goggles against the glare. The temperature was double digits below zero and expected to rise only a few degrees that day. It was pretty typical weather in the North Country in the dead of winter, and Cork loved it. He loved how the deep cold cleaned the air and how everything he looked at seemed more clearly defined. In summer, the heat and the humidity that often accompanied it made things seem to melt into one another like the images of an oil painting in which the colors had run. In winter, a cold winter especially, each thing brought into being by G.o.d or the Great Mystery or Kitchimanidoo or whatever you chose to call the force of creation stood out separately from every other thing in an almost mystical way. Half a mile out, he looked toward the sh.o.r.eline southeast and found the break in the birch trees that marked the trail to the Daychilds' old prefab home. Half a minute later, he was following the tracks that he and whoever had killed the dog had left going to and from the Loons the night before. He quickly arrived at the place where the dog killer's snowmobile had come and gone, and he set his Bearcat into that track and followed southwest toward the open lake and Aurora.

Long before the details of the far sh.o.r.eline became clear to him, he could see smoke from the chimneys of town rising straight into the air like erect white feathers pressed against the powdery blue sky. As he drew nearer, a small village of ice fishing houses appeared on the lake. He figured the track of the dog killer's snowmobile would head through that gathering and be lost among the maze of tracks left by other snowmobiles. To his surprise, however, the killer's track veered north and stayed well clear of the fishing shanties. Cork wondered if the killer had been concerned about being seen and identified, even in the dead of night. He followed the track easily for a few more minutes, drawing very near to the western sh.o.r.e of Iron Lake a couple of miles north of town. There the killer had entered an area crisscrossed by dozens of other snowmobiles, and the track became impossible to follow. But that area in itself was interesting, because it was near the mouth of the White Iron River. Although it was not the safest route, the broad river was often used by snowmobilers to access the lake. The system of snowmobile trails in Tamarack County was like a spiderweb with threads reaching into every corner of the county, even the most remote. Many of those threads crossed the White Iron River. Whoever had killed the Daychilds' dog could have come from just about anywhere.

It didn't leave Cork with much except that he was almost certain the killer was, as Stella Daychild had said, a chimook. And because the killer had come a distance and gone out of his way to avoid being seen, the killing of the dog had not been just a random act of violence. Someone wanted to punish the Daychilds or to send them a terrible and frightening message. Cork thought about the guy Stella had described, the one she believed had followed her to the rez from the casino, the man with a mole like a fly on his cheek. She'd said that just his look had been enough to make her nervous. Whoever he was, was he the kind of man who, for whatever reason, would behead a dog that was too trusting for its own good?

But in the way he'd trained himself to think over a lifetime of looking beyond the obvious, Cork wondered if it was something else. Maybe Stella Daychild knew more than she was telling. Maybe, in fact, she'd made up the man from the casino because he would deflect Cork from poking his nose somewhere she didn't want it poked. People had played him that way before. So as much as he wanted to trust that the Daychilds had been up front with him, he held in the back of his mind a measure of healthy doubt.

He turned his snowmobile, intending to head back to Allouette, but, instead of going there directly, veered far to the north. He traveled at an even thirty-five miles an hour, cutting across frozen, open lake, weaving between islands, and after fifteen minutes, he'd reached his destination.

Crow Point was a finger of land fringed with aspen trees. Most of it was meadowland, with two cabins set in the wild gra.s.s near the end of the point. One cabin belonged to Henry Meloux, the ancient Ojibwe Mide, who had been to Cork a mentor, a spiritual adviser, a surrogate father, and always a friend. The other cabin belonged to Rainy Bisonette, Meloux's great-niece, a public nurse who'd come two years earlier to help the old man through illness. She'd stayed on beyond that time of need, both because she hoped to learn Meloux's secrets of healing and because she and Cork had fallen in love. On Crow Point, there was neither electricity nor running water. It was a tough existence, but Rainy, like her great-uncle, had found that the benefits outweighed the difficulties.

Cork guided his snowmobile to a stop in front of Rainy's cabin and killed the engine. Wood, cut and split for burning, stood neatly stacked against the cabin's south wall. The woodpile wore a covering of snow that made it look like a great animal, humped and hibernating in the cabin's lee. Snow lay drifted three feet deep against the door.

He remembered the day Rainy and Meloux had left Crow Point. They'd gone together, near the end of October. Cork had ridden his Bearcat out to help haul baggage to Rainy's truck, which was parked at the nearest access, a gravel county road a mile and a half east. Nearly a foot of snow already lay on the ground.

"No lock," he'd said, looking at the door Rainy had just closed behind her.

"Uncle Henry says that locks are like fear. They're an invitation to violation. An open door is a different kind of invitation."

Coming from anyone else, the statement might have sounded naive, but Cork knew Meloux well and knew that the old man spoke only truth. If it hadn't been truth before Meloux spoke, it became so afterward.

Rainy looked away from him, toward where her great-uncle stood gazing across the lake, which was already frozen, though not solidly enough yet to support traffic, human or otherwise.

"Five months is a long time," she said. "I know he'll be with family, but it'll still be tough on him. He hasn't been away from Crow Point for any significant period of time in sixty years."

"Five months," Cork said. "Then you'll be back, too?"

She didn't answer immediately, nor did she look at him. "I can't promise," she said at last. "I'll stay with Peter as long as he needs me." She was speaking of her son.

She hadn't put on her stocking cap yet, and her hair hung long over the shoulders of her red parka. A single strip of white ran through her black tresses. Rainy was full-blood Anishinaabe, Lac Courte Oreilles Band, out of Wisconsin. Her skin was a soft tan color, her cheeks high and proud. Her hands were rough from the work necessary to live in that remote place, but their touch had given Cork enormous pleasure in the time he'd been with her.

"You'll call?" he said. "Often?"

"I'll call," she said. She turned her eyes to him, eyes the color of cherrywood. "Cork, I don't know what's ahead for Peter. Or for me. Or for us. I don't want to make promises I can't keep, and I don't want that from you either."

"What does that mean? Because it sounds to me like a diplomatic ending."

"Not an ending." Her eyes shone, tears in the gray light. "Maybe a test."

"Of what?"

"What love is made of." She put her hand, gloved in soft deer hide, to his cheek. "While I'm gone, however long that is, live your life as you have to. Because, Cork, that's what I'll be doing."

He had no idea what that meant, but he hadn't pressed her. When she left Tamarack County, Rainy had delivered her great-uncle to Meloux's son, Hank Wellington, who'd met them in Duluth and had taken his father with him back to Thunder Bay for the worst of the winter months. The old man hadn't been at all certain about this. With great reluctance, however, he'd accepted that at ninety-something he could no longer make it on his own through the kind of winter that usually came to the North Country. Rainy had gone home to Hayward, Wisconsin, and from there to Tucson, Arizona, where her son now lived, a kid struggling once again in his fight against both alcohol and the siren call of drugs.

In the quiet of the windless day, as he sat in front of Rainy's deserted cabin, Cork heard only the sound of the crows using the aspen trees as a roost. The place felt abandoned, hopelessly empty of anything welcoming. He started the engine of his snowmobile and headed back toward Allouette.

He turned his Land Rover off the highway onto the lane that led up to the prefab where Stella and Marlee Daychild lived. The Toyota 4Runner was gone, but Cork parked and knocked on the door anyway, expecting to find no one home. He was mistaken. Stella opened up. She stood behind the storm door, holding a mug in one hand and her robe closed with the other.

"You look cold," she said. "Come on in." She stepped back to let Cork enter.

He expected to see the residual signs of Stephen's overnighter there, blankets rumpled on the sofa, maybe, or cereal bowls left on the coffee table, the kind of thoughtlessness he was constantly after Stephen about. To his surprise, the house looked impressively neat, no indication at all of the kind of sloppiness Cork, in his own experience raising three teenagers, had come to expect of them.

As if reading his mind, Stella said, "Marlee. That girl's a human vacuum cleaner. Can't drop a cigarette b.u.t.t in an ashtray without her sweeping it up three seconds later. Adult child of an alcoholic," she added, lifting her coffee mug in a mock toast to herself. "Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, c.o.ke, tea, hot chocolate, spring water? I've got it all. Except for the booze now."

"Thanks, Stella, I'm fine."

"Have a seat," she offered.

Cork sat on the sofa. Stella took the swivel rocker. The robe she wore came only to midthigh. Below that she had on red wool socks. Between the hem of her robe and the tops of her wool socks, a lot of bare leg showed. She looked as if she hadn't been up that long, her hair still mussed from where her head lay on her pillow, no makeup, tired eyes. Cork found himself remarking silently on how lovely she was. In the next moment, he found himself thinking, You just miss the company of a woman, that's all it is. Even so, he had to be careful not to stare at Stella's long, bare, slender legs.

"I followed the track of the snowmobile," he told her.

"And?"

"It led to where the White Iron River feeds into the lake."

"And that means?"

"That the guy could have come from just about anywhere in Tamarack County, but probably not from the rez."

"Didn't we already figure that?"

"It's always good to confirm a theory. You're sure you don't have any idea who you might have p.i.s.sed off?"

"When it happens, I let it go right away. No use dwelling on something like that. But what about the guy who followed me from the casino?"

"Green pickup, mole on his cheek? Have you seen him since?"

"No."

"Any idea why he might have taken a particular interest in you?"

"Only the usual interest when it comes to a female bartender."

"Okay, so we keep him in mind." He hesitated, then went on. "Stella, this isn't meant to pry into your personal life, but have you been seeing anybody lately?"

"You mean like dating?" She laughed, but there was a bitter edge to it. "I gave up men when I gave up booze. The two seemed to go together in my mind. In the end, both of them always left me feeling pretty bad about myself." She sipped her coffee. "So you do think it was something personal directed at me?"

"That, or maybe someone trying to make a point to Marlee."

"Marlee? That girl's as good as I was bad. And the only guy she's seeing is Stephen. You have any idea how different my life would've been if I'd dated guys like Stephen?"

Cork figured that, given her tough childhood, it would have taken a lot more than dating the right guy to make a difference in Stella's life. But he admired that she'd turned things around, that she'd worked very hard to do her best for her children.

"What about Dexter?" she said.

"What about him?"

"Is he-I mean his body-still out there?"

"I haven't moved him, so yeah, I guess." He saw the concern on her face. "I'll take care of it. What would you like me to do with him?"

"Could you just, I don't know, bag him up and leave him somewhere out of sight? I'm going to have to tell Ray Jay that his dog's dead. I'm not looking forward to that, let me tell you. I'll let him decide what he wants to do. By the way, did you find his head?"

"No."

"Why the h.e.l.l would someone kill a sweet dog like Dexter and steal his head? Are you sure it wasn't some kind of Satanic cult or something?"

"You know any Satanists?"

She smiled again, this time with genuine humor. "Only people that make me feel like h.e.l.l sometimes. Does that count?"

CHAPTER 13.

Stephen looked up from the television when his father walked in. "Were you able to track him?" he asked.

His father said, "Only so far, then I lost his trail."

Stephen had been watching a basketball game, Notre Dame playing St. John's, hoping Anne, who loved the Fighting Irish, might be tempted to come out of hiding upstairs and watch with him.

Stephen hit mute. "Where?"

"Where the White Iron River feeds into the lake. A lot of tracks there, all mixed up." His father sat on the sofa. From the coffee table, he picked up the bag of Cheetos Stephen had been munching on, grabbed a fistful for himself, and put the bag back down.

"Did you find Dexter's head?" Stephen asked.

"Nope."

"What did you do with his body?"

His father licked the yellow Cheeto residue from his fingers. "Put it in a big trash bag and put the bag in the Daychilds' utility shed. The dog belonged to Stella's brother, and he's just about to finish up a sixty-day stretch at the county jail. When he's out, he can decide what he wants to do with the body."

Stephen scooped a handful of Cheetos from the bag and fed them into his mouth one by one. "Doesn't make sense, Dad, that kind of cruelty."

"When we know who did it, we'll understand more. Where are Jenny and Waaboo?"

"They took Trixie and went sledding."

His father nodded toward the television screen. "Who's winning?"

"Notre Dame."

"Does Annie know?"

"I told her. She wasn't interested."

His father shook his head and said quietly to himself, "d.a.m.n." The ring tone on his cell phone chimed, and he pulled it from the holster on his belt. He glanced at the number on the display, said, "It's Marsha. I gotta take this." He got up from the sofa and went into the kitchen.

Stephen could hear an occasional question on his father's end, but mostly there was just the silence of listening.

"I'll be right over," his father said, then called toward the living room, "Gotta go," and Stephen was alone again.

He considered going back to watching the basketball game, but his heart wasn't in it. He thought about calling Gordy Hudacek and maybe playing some video games. Finally he settled for texting Marlee.

Where RU?