Copper River (32 page)

“The signs must have been there. We just didn’t see them. Maybe we didn’t want to see them.”

Cork hobbled to her and put his arm around her. “Ren will be home from school in a little while. You need to get yourself together for him.”

“Do you have tea?” Dina asked.

“In the cupboard to the left of the sink,” Jewell replied.

“Jewell, the police are doing everything they can,” Cork said.

She pressed a hand to her forehead. “There’s got to be something more.”

In a few minutes, the kettle began to whistle. As Dina was pouring boiling water into cups, she said, “We could hit the roads ourselves, see if we spot his vehicle. According to Ned, Stokely drives a Dodge Ram pickup with a camper shell. Any idea what color, Jewell?”

A look of horror slowly twisted Jewell’s face. “Oh God, no.”

“What is it?” Cork said.

“I saw him. I saw him last night. He drove past Ned’s office when we were there with Charlie. Why didn’t I think of it then?”

Dina came quickly from the kitchen. “When we were there with Charlie, you said? So it was before she ran?”

“Yes. Before.”

Dina’s mouth settled into a grim line. “This changes things. We’d better let Ned know.” She pulled out her cell phone. “What’s his number?” Jewell gave it and she punched it in. “Ned? It’s Dina Willner.” She listened a moment. “Okay…. Look….” She explained the situation. “I know, I know…. Yeah, we’ll be here.” She ended the call.

“So?” Cork said.

“He just checked the trailer. Nothing. He’s going to call the state police out at the Copper River Club and let them know about Stokely’s truck last night, then he’ll check the lumberyard and head back to his office.”

“And we’ll do what?” Jewell asked. “Just sit here doing nothing? I don’t think so.”

“I’m right there with you,” Dina said.

In his chair, Cork shifted his weight to his right butt cheek, hoping to relieve some of the discomfort in his left leg. “And what is it you intend to do exactly? Where do you start?”

“I don’t know,” Jewell shot back.

“All right, here’s something to think about, something that’s been rolling around in my head for a little while,” Cork said. “Hodder—and maybe the investigators, too—believe Stokely’s a likely suspect for the murder of Delmar Bell. I don’t think so.”

Dina crossed a leg over her knee and leaned toward him, looking intrigued. “Why?”

“The timing doesn’t work. Yesterday I heard Olafsson say the TOD—time of death—on Bell was between three-thirty and four. If the gate log is correct, Stokely left the Copper River Club at three-thirty. It’s a good forty-five minutes to Marquette. Unless he flew, Stokely wouldn’t have made it in time to kill Bell.”

“So Calvin didn’t kill Del,” Jewell said. “So what?”

“So who did?” Cork said.

“What does it matter?”

“It matters,” Dina said. Understanding blossomed in her green eyes. “It matters because it means Bell and Stokely weren’t in it alone.”

“There are others?” Jewell looked fearful, momentarily defeated. “God, who?”

“That’s what we have to figure out,” Cork replied. “If Stokely’s disappeared, maybe it’s because somebody’s hiding him.”

“Or he’s hiding from somebody so they won’t take care of him like they took care of Bell,” Dina said.

“Or they’ve already taken care of him like they took care of Bell,” Cork added.

“What about Charlie?” Jewell asked.

“I don’t know,” Cork said. “But if we understand who else is involved, we might stand a better chance of finding her. Let’s backtrack a little. You suspected Stokely and Bell in the first place because of the murder of the runaway girl twenty years ago. You told me Ned described a football celebration of some kind, followed by drinking at a cabin somewhere. The kid who confessed to killing her picked her up on the way home. Maybe Bell and Stokely were with him and had a hand in it. That was your thinking, right?”

“Yes,” Jewell said.

“So far, it seems pretty reasonable, especially in light of everything that’s happened since we started asking questions. But what if there was someone else with them that night?”

“Who?”

“That’s what I’m asking you. Let’s figure a normal car, big, strapping football players. Four, maybe five could have fit in comfortably. Bell, Stokely, Messinger, and one or two more. Who could the extras have been? Start with an assumption that they were football players on the championship team. Add that it’s somebody who still lives in the area. And finally somebody able to come and go at the Copper River Club without raising a lot of suspicion.”

Dina said, “That’s why you asked the guard at the gate about Stokely’s visitors.”

“The state police will get around to asking the same question.”

“He said Stokely didn’t have visitors,” Dina pointed out. Then she looked at Jewell. “Was his brother, Isaac, on the team?”

“No, he graduated several years before. He was long gone to the military by then.”

Cork asked, “Who else is still around who was on the team?”

Jewell closed her eyes to think, but it was Dina who answered. “Ned Hodder.”

“It’s not Ned,” Jewell said sharply. “I’d know.”

“Give me another name, then,” Cork told her.

“I can’t think,” Jewell said a little desperately.

“You have a high school yearbook?” Dina asked.

“Yes.”

“Get it. Maybe it’ll help.”

Jewell went up to her bedroom and came back down carrying a big yearbook that said
Bobcats
in green across the front. She sat on the sofa and flipped through the pages. “Here,” she said. “The football team photo.”

The photograph was pretty standard yearbook fare: the whole team suited in their gear and seated on the bleachers of the football field, coaches standing on either side. Jewell’s finger went slowly over the list of names below. It went all the way to the end without stopping.

“Well?” Dina said.

“Calvin, Del, and Ned,” she said, defeated.

“Hodder visits the Copper River Club regularly. He wouldn’t raise a lot of suspicion,” Cork pointed out.

“Yesterday when we went to see him, he wasn’t at his office,” Dina added. “We called him, and he said he was checking on a break-in outside of town. He could have been on his way back from killing Bell.”

“Not Ned,” Jewell said again, but with less conviction.

“I like the guy, too, Jewell,” Cork told her. “And I wouldn’t mind being wrong. But for Charlie’s sake we need to check it out. Where does he live?”

“His family’s always had a place southwest of town, an orchard. Ned lives there alone.”

“Dina and I will go.”

“I’m going, too,” Jewell said. “If it’s Ned, I want to know right away.”

“What about Ren?” Dina asked. “Won’t he be home from school pretty soon?”

“With the hours I work, he almost always comes home to an empty house. I’ll leave him a note. He’ll be fine.”

“What if he’s heard about Stokely’s secret cemetery?”

“I don’t think he has. Gary Johnson wasn’t even up there. If our local newsman doesn’t know yet, nobody else does.”

Cork bent and withdrew the Beretta from the holster still strapped to his ankle. He checked the clip. Dina did the same with her Glock.

“Oh Christ,” Jewell said. “You’re not going to shoot him.”

“Are you with us?” Dina asked.

Jewell took a deep breath. “Yes.”

D
ina parked her Pathfinder on the side of the road at the edge of the orchard. They couldn’t see the house, which was deep in the trees.

“If Stokely’s there,” Cork explained, “we don’t want him to spot us coming. We’ll approach through the trees. Jewell, maybe you should stay here. Things could get tricky.”

“I’m going with you,” Jewell said.

“Then you need to do exactly as we say.”

Jewell nodded. She was scared. The whole situation, all the horrible possibilities, terrified her. But she absolutely didn’t want to be left behind.

They closed their doors quietly and crept into the orchard, circling carefully toward the back of the house. Ned’s father, who’d been a lawyer, had kept up the orchard as a hobby, and as a teenager Jewell had spent many fall afternoons hired—along with other of Ned’s friends—to harvest the fruit, which the Hodders sold from a roadside stand. The apples were Northern Spy and McIntosh, still Jewell’s favorite varieties. Ned had often lamented his own inability to keep the orchard in shape, but he was alone in the house and busy with his duties as constable, so the fruit simply fell to the ground. This late in the season, most of the apples had already fallen, and the rotting fruit filled the orchard with a vinegary smell.

As soon as they could see the house, they paused, hidden in the trees.

“I don’t see a vehicle anywhere,” Dina said.

“Garage?” Cork pointed toward a small structure just east of the house.

Jewell nodded.

He indicated the other outbuilding. “Equipment shed?”

“Ned keeps a tractor in there and other stuff for working in the orchard. Ladders, props, pruning things. He doesn’t use them much anymore.”

“Let’s check the garage first,” he said to Dina. “I’d like to know if Calvin Stokely’s truck is in there.”

“I’ll go,” she said. “You cover.”

Cork took the handgun from his ankle holster, slipped behind an apple tree, and waved Dina forward. Jewell stayed back, thinking how horrible this was, coming at Ned as if he were the enemy. It felt so wrong. Dina dashed across the backyard to the side of the garage, which couldn’t be seen from the house. She edged her way to a window and peeked in. She turned back and gave her head an exaggerated shake. Cork pointed toward the shed. Dina went to the corner of the garage and peered carefully at the house for a full minute, watching, Jewell supposed, for movement at a window, an opening door. Then Dina sprinted for the shed. She stood on tiptoe and peered through a dusty window. Again she gave her head a shake. She pointed toward the house.

“Okay,” Cork said over his shoulder to Jewell, “now we check the house. You should stay here.”

“Oh, no,” Jewell said. “I’m coming with you.”

“All right, then. Let’s go.”

Jewell ran hard, passed Cork, and joined Dina at the side of the house, breathless. Cork was several seconds behind.

“You okay?” Dina asked him in a whisper.

“I know what that wounded cougar must feel like,” he said, grimacing.

“Back door or front?” Dina said.

“Back.”

They crept there together. Cork opened the screen and tried the door.

“Locked,” he whispered.

Dina urged him gently aside, reached into an inside pocket of her jacket, and pulled out a small leather case. She took out a couple of items that looked to Jewell like dentist’s tools. She worked on the lock a moment and swung the door open.

Cork put his lips to Jewell’s ear. “Stay here,” he said softly. “When we’re sure it’s clear, we’ll call you in, okay?”

The house swallowed them without a sound.

Outside, Jewell felt suddenly alone and vulnerable. The idea of being afraid of Ned Hodder was alien, yet that’s what she felt. Did she even know Ned anymore? When was the last time they’d had a meaningful conversation? Why had he written a poem about her? How could she have missed so much?

On the road beyond the orchard, a car passed. Jewell heard the sound of the engine mount, plateau, diminish as it sped on.

After that, everything was distressingly quiet. She watched a hawk circle above the orchard, then curve away without a stroke of wing.

Another car approached on the road. This one didn’t pass. The sound of the engine simply died.

What did that mean? Jewell wondered in a panic. What should she do? Shout to Cork and Dina? Where were they? They’d been inside too long, she was sure. Something was wrong. She looked toward the empty drive that wound through the orchard, expecting any moment for Ned to appear. She was a sitting duck, she realized.

She turned to run for the orchard and bumped smack into Ned Hodder. He caught her in his arms. She struggled to break free and stumbled back.

“Jewell?” His boyish face held a look of absolute bewilderment. “What are you doing here?”

“We…I…just…” Her eyes bounced toward the house.

Ned followed them. “That’s Dina Willner’s Pathfinder parked on the road. Is she inside?” He spoke in a deep, menacing tone that Jewell had never heard from him before.

“Ned, listen—” Jewell tried.

He didn’t listen. His face had turned an angry red, and he stormed toward the back door just as Dina stepped out.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.

“Looking for Charlie,” Dina said calmly.

That stopped him. “Charlie?” He looked at her with the same befuddlement that had been there when he first found Jewell. “Here?”

“Ned, please listen,” Jewell said. She put her hand gently on his arm, but he shook it off. “We were thinking,” she struggled on, trying for the right words, “that there might be more people involved than just Stokely and Bell.”

“And you naturally thought of me,” he threw back bitterly. “How flattering.”

Cork came into sight now, too. He stepped from the house and stood beside Dina.

“You, too? I should have guessed. Find anything interesting?”

“Stokely didn’t kill Bell,” Dina explained.

“Hell, I know that,” Ned said. “In a few minutes you would have, too.”

“What do you mean?” Jewell asked.

“I tore my shirt at the lumberyard,” he said, turning so that Jewell saw the rip. “I was coming back here to put on another one and to call you guys. I think I’ve got a suspect.”

“Who?” Cork said.

Ned didn’t reply immediately. He turned on Jewell. “You think I had Charlie? How could you believe I’d do something like that, Jewell? And all those kids buried up there? Do you really think I’m capable of that kind of butchery? Jesus, after all these years you don’t even know me.”

“Ned, I’m sorry. I didn’t think…all this is so confusing and scary….”

“Am I scary? Is that why you don’t talk to me? Don’t look at me on the street? Am I some kind of monster to you?”

“No, Ned, no. It’s not that. I’m just not ready—”

“Have I pushed you? Have I pressured you?”

“No, no. You’ve been nothing but sweet.”

“Then why this?” He waved toward Cork and Dina and the opened door.

“It was us,” Dina answered. “Jewell defended you down the line. We overruled her objections.”

“What made you think I might be involved?”

Dina carefully laid out for him their reasoning. At the end, she said, “You’re a good cop. I’m betting you’d have done the same.”

“I wouldn’t break into someone’s house.”

“Even if you believed you might be saving Charlie?” she asked.

Jewell thought he softened a little, though he still kept his distance from her.

Cork spoke up. “You said you had a suspect.”

“Yeah.” The late-afternoon sun was in his eyes and he turned so that he didn’t have to squint. “I got to thinking after I dropped you all off. Like you, I figured from what Wes said that Stokely probably didn’t kill Bell. There might be a lot of reasons someone would put a bullet in him, but for my money it was all about those buried kids. So if Stokely didn’t do it, who did? I went back to thinking about twenty years ago, too, thinking like you that if Tommy Messinger and Calvin and Del were all involved in that girl’s murder, there was a good chance someone else might have been with them.”

Jewell said, “I looked at the team photo, Ned. I couldn’t see anyone else still here except for you and Calvin and Del.”

“The guy I’m thinking of wasn’t on the team, Jewell. At least not that year. Who was Tom Messinger’s best friend, do you remember? The same guy who spoke at his funeral and who wrote that long editorial the
Courier
published, pleading for understanding about what Tommy had done and about his suicide. It was very moving and persuasive, as I recall.”

Jewell felt as if the sky had suddenly opened. “Gary Johnson.”

“Johnson,” Ned said. “He couldn’t play football that year because he broke his leg in August. He fell from a ladder while he was working for my father here in the orchard, remember?”

“And he was in a cast through most of the season,” Jewell added.

“Right.”

“I thought he was an all-American at Michigan,” Dina said.

“A walk-on,” Hodder replied. “He had to prove himself because the scouts had nothing to look at. But he was at every game with the team that year, and he was at the banquet in Marquette and at the private party afterward. If he wasn’t in the car with Tom Messinger, I don’t know who else it could have been.”

Jewell said, “He’s been out at the cabins, very interested in Charlie. He said it was because it was news.”

“More likely he was desperate to get his hands on Charlie,” Dina threw in. “But since he couldn’t, and he knew that things were coming apart, I’ll bet he decided to get rid of his slimy partners and sever his connection, let it all go down on them.”

Jewell said quietly, “This is Gary we’re talking about.”

Dina gave her a brutally cold stare. “If you have a better idea, let’s hear it. If not, we need to move and find Charlie.”

“What do we do?” Jewell said.

“We should take all this to Olafsson or the state investigators,” Hodder suggested.

“That doesn’t help Charlie if Johnson has her,” Dina said. “I prefer the direct approach. Where does he live?”

“You tried the direct approach here,” Hodder pointed out. “Haven’t you trespassed enough?”

“Look, if we’re wrong, it’s embarrassing and we’ll apologize. But what if we’re not wrong? What’s he doing to her now even as we stand here?”

Jewell said, “Gary’s got a home on Lake Superior a few miles south of town.”

Hodder nodded. “He’s probably there now. I stopped by the
Courier
office yesterday afternoon to talk to him, but they told me he’d gone home sick. I tried again this morning and got the same story.”

“Hiding?” Dina suggested.

“Let’s find out,” Cork said.