Boundary Waters (16 page)

She went back to bed and slept fitfully until the clock radio clicked on at six
A.M.
Outside, the morning was still black, and against the windowpane, a light rain fell. She thought about Cork in the Boundary Waters, about the rainy times she’d spent there with him and the children. In the tent all day, playing games—twenty questions, spades—reading aloud or quietly to themselves, telling stories. Somehow they’d managed never to be bored.

Cork didn’t have the luxury this outing of riding out the rain in a tent. All of them who’d gone, Louis included, had a driving purpose that would propel them onward. Her anger flared again as she thought of the men who’d used their power over Stormy to induce Louis to lead them. She was determined to bring an action on behalf of Sarah Two Knives when it was all over. The law wasn’t perfect, but anytime those who had the power to twist it did so, it grew more grotesque. With all its flaws, the law was still something she had faith in. She’d been a part of making it work, and she believed, as strongly as she believed anything, that in the end it was one of the few powerful weapons available to common people.

Jo heard Rose lumbering down the stairs to the kitchen to begin breakfast preparations, and she threw back the covers and went to wake the kids.

Her car was the first in the lot of the Aurora Professional Building. She used her key and let herself in. She hit the lights, illuminating the hallway that was long and empty. The odor of wet wool hung in the air and she recalled that the carpeting had been cleaned over the weekend. She felt a little guilty walking to her office because her feet left wet tracks on the carpet. Jo turned on the lights, hung her coat, and set her briefcase temporarily on her secretary’s desk. The cold, wet morning had made her desperate for coffee. She took the pot from the coffeemaker and went to the women’s restroom down the hall to fill it with tap water. Coming back, she saw that hers were no longer the only wet footprints on the carpet. Several more sets trampled her own, and between them ran four deep, mysterious grooves. They all led to her office.

A white-haired man sat in a wheelchair facing her as she entered. The thin hands that held the arms of the chair trembled violently. Although his head wobbled a bit, he eyed Jo steadily. Two men flanked him, standing respectfully with their hands folded in front of them. They all wore dark, tasteful suits.

“Good morning, Mrs. O’Connor,” the white-haired man greeted her. Coming from such a shaky body, his voice was surprisingly clear and strong. “My name is Vincent Benedetti. I believe we should talk.”

Whether it was simply the surprise of finding strangers in her office so early or something about the strangers themselves, Jo wasn’t sure, but she didn’t like the situation or the feeling that gripped her gut.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

“Appointment?” One of the standing men—a huge, broad-shouldered guy with blond hair and an idiotic smirk on his face—gave a horsey laugh.

“Hush, Joey.” The white-haired man studied her eyes. “You’re afraid. Someone told you to be afraid of Benedetti.”

The door was open at her back. Jo calmly turned and closed it. “I’m not afraid, Mr. Benedetti. Should I be?”

“Of me, no. I’ve come a very long way and I’m very tired. I’m here to save your husband’s ass.”

Jo moved to the coffee machine so that he wouldn’t see her surprise. She emptied the pot of water into the reservoir, then faced Benedetti. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Husbands have secrets,” he said. He looked at her dead on, like an animal he had in his sights. “I know you understand that.”

Suddenly, she wanted only to be rid of them. “What exactly can I do for you?”

“It’s what we can do for each other, Mrs. O’Connor.” The white-haired man motioned with his head and the big blond guy moved the wheelchair nearer Jo so that Benedetti spoke to her as if in strictest confidence. “I have information that will help save your husband’s life. In return, you’ll help save my daughter.”

“Your daughter? Do I know your daughter?”

“Everyone knows my daughter. Her name is Shiloh.”

Except for the fact that the man regarded her as seriously as an undertaker, she might have assumed he was joking. “Am I understanding you correctly? You claim to be the father of Shiloh—
the
Shiloh—the country singer?”

“I just said that, didn’t I?” he replied with annoyance.

“I’m sorry if I seem a little slow on the uptake here, Mr. Benedetti, but that’s quite a claim.”

Benedetti reached inside his suit coat and brought out a shiny leather wallet, from which he extracted a photograph. He handed the photo to Jo. The picture was of a little girl, maybe eighteen months old, in a pretty white dress, posed in a photographer’s studio. “Read the back.”

Vince—Our little girl. She’s walking up a storm. Has my hair and skin, your eyes and temper. Marais.

She studied the photograph, then looked at the white-haired man. Despite the trembling in his body, she thought she could detect in his eyes the same insolence she’d seen in the eyes of the woman in the video. She handed the photo back.

“Does she know?”

He shook his head. “Marais never told her. As far as Shiloh’s concerned, Willie Raye is her father.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“Promises. To Marais. To my wife, Theresa.”

“She knew? Your wife knew?”

“Oh, yeah. I never understood how, but she knew. She threatened to leave me for good if I ever tried to do anything about Shiloh. After Marais was murdered, it seemed best just to let Raye take that little girl back to Nashville. He’s queer as a purple dog, but there are worse kinds of fathers.”

“What does all this have to do with my husband?” Jo asked.

Benedetti waved forward one of the men at his side. The man was good-looking in an obvious sort of way. Dark brown hair, curly and expertly razor cut. A strong jaw. A beauty mark on his right cheek. A diamond stud in his left ear. He wore an emerald tie that matched his eyes perfectly. Green eyes. Confident. She’d been aware of his eyes. They’d followed her every move. Men often watched her that way. Even when they respected her abilities, spoke to her as a colleague, their eyes were hiking up her skirt.

“My son, Angelo,” Benedetti explained to her. “Tell her, Angelo.”

“Your husband went into the Boundary Waters yesterday, Ms. O’Connor,” Angelo Benedetti informed her. “He was accompanied by several men. Two of them your husband believes to be agents of the FBI. They’re not.”

“No?”

The coffee machine gurgled suddenly at her back and Jo jerked, startled. At the same moment, the office door opened and Fran, her secretary, came in. Fran halted abruptly, surprised at the gathering, and glanced at her watch.

“It’s okay, Fran,” Jo said. “An early unscheduled conference. We were just moving to my office. Would you do me a favor? When the coffee’s done, bring some in for us?”

“Sure, Jo.”

“Gentlemen, if you’ll follow me.”

Jo led the way into her office. It was a large room lined with shelves of books and dominated by a big cherrywood desk that she’d brought with her from Chicago. The desk had been in storage during Jo’s first two years in Aurora as she struggled to establish a practice. In those years, she worked out of her small office in the house on Gooseberry Lane. She was the first female attorney ever to hang a shingle in Tamarack County, and it had taken a long time to become something more to the people of Aurora than Cork O’Connor’s wife. She’d made a name for herself by taking impossible cases, cases no one else wanted—those of the Anishinaabe, for example. Her success in court gave her the professional recognition she sought, but she still felt as if she were waiting for some door in the town to open for her that maybe never would.

“Would you care to sit down?” With a gesture, she offered chairs to the two standing men. They declined and remained at Vincent Benedetti’s side like palace guards. Jo sat at her desk and leaned forward. “You said the men who are with my husband aren’t FBI.”

“That’s right,” Angelo Benedetti said.

“Who are they, then? And why are they out there?”

“One of them, Dwight Sloane, is a big man with the California State Police. The other, Virgil Grimes, calls himself a security consultant. Both men were involved in the investigation of the Marais Grand murder fifteen years ago.”

“Involved in what way?”

Angelo Benedetti tugged the cuffs of his shirt into place. “Grimes was one of the detectives in charge of the investigation for the Palm Springs Police Department. Sloane investigated on behalf of the state. There is one legitimate agent of the FBI here in Aurora. His name is Booker T. Harris. He’s out of the Los Angeles field office. Fifteen years ago, Harris represented the FBI in the murder investigation.”

He tilted his head slightly to one side and gave her a moment to consider. It was a gesture that struck her as calculated, disingenuous, something he might use on women after he’d propositioned them.

“If you don’t believe me,” he said simply, “check it out. And while you’re at it, check with the FBI on the official status of this investigation. You’ll find that there is no official investigation, Ms. O’Connor. Booker T. Harris, the only legitimate representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is officially on personal leave.”

“These men are out to cover their asses,” Vincent Benedetti broke in. “I’d bet my own ass they were paid off when they investigated Marais’s murder. Now they’re running scared that Shiloh might have remembered something that will finger them.”

“Paid off by whom?”

Benedetti began to cough, a fit that racked his withered body. Angelo drew a clean white handkerchief from his coat pocket and stuffed it into his father’s hand. Vincent Benedetti shoved it over his face as if it were a mask.

“Paid off by whom?” Jo asked when the coughing was well past.

“Marais was smart. She always told me she’d cultivated friends in high places.” He managed a smile.

“What’s so funny?”

“Marais didn’t have friends. Everyone was just a step on a ladder to her.”

“Do you know who any of these people in high places were?”

“She was careful never to mention names. They were all men, of course.”

“Marais Grand was an opportunist?”

Benedetti smiled again and nodded. Whether it was approval or simply an uncontrollable muscle twitch, Jo couldn’t say. “A lot of people would have said
tramp,
but I never thought of her that way. She was a very talented woman in a business full of very talented people. She used all of her assets to ensure her success. I never faulted her for that.” He dabbed at his lips with the handkerchief and studied the crumpled linen with interest. “Men are most vulnerable when you inflate both their egos and their dicks. A hard truth, but she accepted it.”

Under other circumstances, Jo would have nailed him on that one, but their business was about something else. “You’re saying you believe one of these . . . friends . . . murdered her.”

“Or had her murdered.”

“And paid off the police who investigated.”

“That’s what I’m saying, yes.”

“Who, exactly?”

The old man’s eyes closed a moment. His son leaned to him. “You okay, Pop?”

“Just tired.”

A light tap came at the door, and Fran entered carrying a tray with a coffee server and several cups. She put them on a small table near the desk.

“Thanks a lot, Fran.”

“You’re welcome, Jo. Anything else?”

“Not at the moment.”

After Fran had gone, Jo offered coffee, but only Angelo Benedetti took her up on it. As she handed him the cup, his hand brushed hers and he smiled pleasantly. Perfect teeth. Of course.

“I have a theory about who’s guilty, Mrs. O’Connor, but I don’t want to go into it. All I want is to get your husband some help so he can bring my daughter out safely.”

“I’d rather you go into it,” Jo said, stirring cream into her own coffee. “I’d rather have all the facts. Or whatever.”

“My father’s tired, Ms. O’Connor,” Angelo Benedetti began.

Vincent Benedetti held up his hand. “No, no it’s all right. A fair request. I only ask that you keep an open mind.”

Jo sat back down. “It’s wide open and waiting.”

“The FBI agent—Booker T. Harris—has a brother. I didn’t know this when Marais was murdered. The information didn’t come to me until we knew Harris was out here and I had him looked into thoroughly. His brother is Nathan Jackson. You know the name?”

Jo knew it. Attorney general for the state of California. Nationally known crusader for civil rights. Jo had heard him talk at an ABA conference in Chicago. Splendid speaker. Inspiring. A handsome man, too. And if the national press was correct, he was the top choice for the Democratic nomination in the next gubernatorial election.

“Why different last names?” she asked.

“Their mother was widowed and remarried. They have different fathers.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“When Marais was first negotiating with the television people, she was subpoenaed to appear before the Williams Commission. You remember it?”

“Vaguely. Investigated corruption in the entertainment industry, I believe.”

“Exactly. Marais was called to testify because of her rumored connection with me. Rumored.” He seemed to find that funny and gave a wheezy laugh before he went on. “She was afraid that if she appeared, the television people would back off. She got to somebody inside. Her name was dropped from the witness list. You have any idea who the chief counsel for the Williams Commission was?”

“Nathan Jackson?”

“Bright girl.”

Jo sipped her coffee. The caffeine didn’t seem as necessary as it had when she’d first arrived. She felt wide awake. “You’re trying to tell me that Nathan Jackson had Marais Grand killed to keep her quiet about that?”

“No, I think Marais was trying to squeeze him again for something else. Just before she died, she borrowed a substantial sum of money from me to set up a recording company. Ozark Records. She swore she could get a sweet deal—tax breaks, business incentives—because she was Indian and she had this connection inside that would make sure things happened for her. Jackson was in his first term as attorney general. I think something went sour, Marais made threats, and Jackson had her killed.”