Mercy Falls (16 page)

“Lizzie,” Cork called to her, “I’d like you to step out into the sunlight so we can see you clearly. Do you understand?”

She didn’t react immediately, but eventually she took a step forward into the light.

“Are you feeling all right?” Cork said.

She carefully drew the hair away from her eyes and nodded slowly.

“You see?” Stone said.

“If you come with us, I promise nobody’s going to hurt you.”

“Nobody’s going to hurt her here,” Stone said, then called out, “Lizzie, you want to go with these folks, you go.”

She blinked in the bright sunlight but she did not move.

Fineday gripped the tire iron and cocked his arms like a batter in the box. “Stone, you fucking son of a bitch.”

“Will Fineday,” Cork said, “you’ve been asked to vacate this man’s property. You’ll do that or I’ll arrest you for trespassing.”

“He’s got my daughter, goddamn it.”

“Your daughter is here of her own volition. You heard her as clear as I did. Let it go, Will. Leave her be.”

“Lizzie,” he tried one last time, but his daughter turned away and went back into the cabin.

“Come on, Will,” Cork said. “You need to leave. We all do.”

Fineday stormed to his truck and sped down the narrow lane.

“I’m looking for a way to come back, Stone,” Cork said.

“You find it, I’ll be here.” Stone lifted his ax and went back to chopping wood.

In the Pathfinder, Dina said, “Prison tattoos?”

She was speaking of the designs on Stone’s upper arms and chest.

“Yeah,” Cork said. “Inked them himself. The feather on each arm recalls the eagle feathers on a warrior’s shield. The bear over his heart is because he’s Makwa, a member of the bear clan.”

“I’m sure I saw a thunderbird, too.”

“You did. Bineshii. Thunderbird was one of the six original beings that came out of the sea to live with the Anishinaabeg. Unfortunately, every Shinnob that Bineshii looked at died, so Thunderbird was sent back to the sea.”

“A Shinnob-killer. Interesting choice for a tattoo.”

“Isn’t it?”

Fineday was waiting for them where the road met the county highway. He stood with his legs spread, the long scar that cleaved his sandstone-colored face white as jagged lightning.

“He hurts her, and he’s not the only one I’ll come after,” he said as Cork got out of the Pathfinder.

“At the moment, Will, the law’s on his side.”

“The white man’s law. When did it work for me?”

“What’s she running from? What’s she afraid of? Help me with that and I can take her away from Stone.”

“She’s running from nothing.”

“She just likes Stone’s company, is that it?”

“I’ll get her myself.”

“He’ll be watching for you. And think about this. You try something, it’s not only Stone you’ll have to deal with, it’ll be me as well. Wouldn’t you rather have me on your side?”

“Fuck you,
chimook
.”

Fineday spun away, climbed into his truck, and slammed the door.

“I’ll be around to talk to you again, Will, you can bank on it. In the meantime, stay away from Stone.”

Fineday sped off, kicking up a tail of dust and gravel.

“Did he call you a schmuck?”

“Chi-mook,”
Cork said, enunciating each syllable. “Ojibwe slang for white man. Not complimentary.”

“But you’re part Ojibwe. Doesn’t that count?”

“When people are pissed at me, I’m not Ojibwe enough for the Ojibwes, and not white enough for the whites,” Cork said.

J
O HAD SPENT
the day calling clients, judges, rearranging court dates, appointments. Everyone understood, she told Cork. She’d washed clothes, packed, helped the girls and Stevie get ready to travel. Cork promised to call the high school and Stevie’s teacher and explain the children’s absence.

Dinner was a subdued affair: ham and cheese sandwiches, Campbell’s tomato soup, chips. They talked quietly about Chicago, seeing Rose and Mal, visiting Northwestern and maybe Notre Dame. No one said a word about the dynamite in the Bronco. Afterward, they played a game of Clue. Stevie won, although Cork and probably everyone else knew a couple of turns earlier that it was Mrs. White in the study with the candlestick.

Cork read to Stevie, something he enjoyed doing. The book was Hatchet, about a boy lost in the wilderness who uses his own wiles and strength of character to make his way back to safety. Stevie’s dark brown Ojibwe eyes locked on the ceiling as he imagined the scenes painted by the words, saw the story playing out in his mind. Eventually, his eyelids began to flicker, and when they’d closed for good, Cork kissed him good night on his forehead and turned out the light.

As he came downstairs, there was a knock at the front door. Cy Borkmann.

“Just wanted to let you know that we’ll have someone posted out on the street all night,” Cy told him.

“I never authorized that,” Cork said.

“Nothing needs authorization. We’re all off-duty. Just wanted to make sure everything here is secure until your family’s off safe and sound.”

Jo came to Cork’s side and said, “Thank you, Cy. And please thank the others for us.”

He smiled a little shyly. “Sure. Look, you all sleep well, okay?” He tipped his ball cap and lumbered down the front steps toward the curb where his truck was parked.

With Stevie in bed, the girls probed Cork for information on the dynamite and the rez shooting. He wished he could offer them something substantial—anything—but he admitted he had nothing.

It was after ten when he got the call from Simon Rutledge.

“I’m at the sheriff’s office in Carlton. I’ve been down here all day. I think I might have something. My cohort in St. Paul called me, and guess who just happened to visit Lydell Cramer at the hospital yesterday. His sister. It seemed a big coincidence that each of her last visits preceded a threat to your safety, so I decided to reconnoiter her farmhouse. There’s a good-sized barn, but there aren’t any animals around. I watched a couple of guys go in and out of that barn all day long, one of them always sporting what appeared to be an assault rifle. I did some checking with the police in Moose Lake and found out Lydell’s sister lives with a guy name of Harmon LaRusse.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Exactly. Turns out the Carlton County Sheriff’s Department has a big file on him. On Cramer’s sister, too, and the other guy out there whose name is Carl Berger, an ex-con with a pretty long history of drugs and violence. Sheriff’s investigators have had them under surveillance for a while, after a neighbor complained he’d been threatened. An IR thermal scan of the barn showed a lot of heat. Which might have been understandable if there’d been livestock inside.”

“An indoor marijuana operation.”

“Bingo. A big one. That’s why I’m at the Carlton County sheriff’s office right now. For the last couple of months, they’ve been putting together everything they need for a good bust. They’ve been holding off, thinking they might be able to intercept a sale. When I explained my concern about a possible connection with your incident on the rez, they agreed to go ahead ASAP. They’re hoping for a no-knock first thing in the morning, if you’d care to be here.”

“Got a go time yet?”

“Not until they’re sure they’ve secured the warrant. Want me to call?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Simon. Good work.”

“That’s why I get the big bucks.”

Cork hung up and turned to find Jo watching him. “What’s up?”

He told her.

“You think this woman and Moose LaRusse might be responsible for the shooting and the bomb?”

“It’s certainly a possibility we can’t ignore.”

“Oh God, I hope it’s them and that you get them.”

“I still want you away from here until we’re sure. Besides, the girls are looking forward to visiting college campuses.”

She put her arms around him, pressed her cheek to his chest. “I hate leaving, thinking you might still be in danger.”

“I’ll be fine. I
am
fine.”

He locked the doors, checked the windows, turned out the downstairs lights, and briefly moved aside a curtain. Out front, Cy Borkmann sat in his truck drinking coffee from his big silver thermos. Upstairs, Cork looked in on his daughters, who were in their rooms, in bed but not yet asleep. He talked with each of them awhile, kissed them good night, then went to his own room, where quietly and rather gently he and Jo made love. For a long time after that, he lay with his wife in his arms. They’d never finished their talk about her past with Ben Jacoby, but at the moment it didn’t matter. Cork knew that despite every threatening thing, past and present, he was the luckiest man on earth.

I
N THE EARLY
morning shortly before sunrise, Jo drove toward a blood-red streak of sky, carrying away in her Camry everything that was most important to Cork.

After they’d gone, he approached Howard Morgan’s Explorer, parked at the curb where Borkmann’s truck had been the night before.

Morgan stepped out and stretched. “So they’re off,” he said.

“Thanks, Howard.”

“No problem. Good to see them go. Safer, I mean.”

“I know what you mean. Be glad to fix you some breakfast.”

“Thanks, but I’ve been thinking for the last couple hours about a stack of blueberry pancakes at the Broiler. Then I got a bed that’s calling my name.”

Cork went back inside, pulled down a bowl from the cupboard, shook in some raisin bran. He was just about to pour in some milk when Rutledge called.

They waited in an oak grove a quarter mile north of the farmhouse. Four cruisers, an unmarked Suburban, twelve deputies, two DEA agents, Undersheriff Jeff McGruder, and Sheriff Roy Killen. Cork and Rutledge were there, too. The sheriff’s people wore midnight blue Kevlar vests and camouflage outfits. A couple of the deputies smoked. They all watched the sheriff as he held the field glasses level on the farmhouse. They should have gone in before this—they all knew it—but Killen had decided to wait. The problem was the mist.

The farmhouse was an old white structure with paint flaking off in leprous patches, a sagging front porch, and a satellite dish on the roof. Across the yard stood the barn, in far better shape than the house and painted a new dark red. Cork had been told that there were empty animal pens, but he couldn’t see them because of the mist.

The buildings stood a quarter mile off the road, in a field long fallow, full of thistle and timothy gone yellow in the dry of late autumn. The mist did not quite touch the ground and reached only a couple of dozen feet into the air, so that everything about the scene seemed to exist in colored layers. Far away were the yellow grass, the gray mist, the blue sky. Nearer, the russet oak leaves, the midnight blue vests, the camouflage outfits. Enclosing it all was the waiting.

Killen didn’t like the idea of going in with the mist still thick. He couldn’t see the farmhouse yard at all. Someone looking out a second-floor window could spot the cruisers coming and take up a hidden position in the yard. He didn’t want to risk his people. Better, he’d decided, to let the mist burn off. So they waited.

Traffic picked up on the rural highway that ran past the oak grove, many of the cars heading to a small white church built among Norway pines just visible in the distance. Around the church, the mist had already vanished, but it still hung thick over the fields and the farmhouse and the red barn.

After a while, Killen spoke to McGruder and the two DEA agents, then approached Cork and Rutledge.

Killen was near sixty, with freckles across his forehead and age spots on the back of his hands, retirement not many years away. “I don’t know what it is with this fog but we wait much longer and the whole damn world’s going to know we’re here,” he said. “We’re going in. You two stay back. This is our business.”

He went to his deputies, who’d stopped talking and had thrown down their cigarettes when they heard what Killen had said to Cork and Rutledge.

“All right, let’s do it. Just like we talked about, boys. Quick and simple. Everybody do their job.”

They moved to the cruisers, and as the doors shut, popping like muted gunfire, Cork heard the bell in the little church steeple to the north begin to ring, clear notes that carried far in the morning air.

An unmarked Suburban went first. It stopped at the chained gate that blocked the access to the farmhouse. A deputy leaped out, split the chain with a bolt cutter, swung the gate wide. A couple of seconds later the cruisers sped through, hauling ass down the dirt lane, disappearing into the gray mist.

The dogs had already given the bust away. They began to bark as soon as the cruisers turned off the highway. Cork and Rutledge, staying far back on the lane as they’d been instructed, heard the dogs going crazy as the mist ate the cars. A few moments later, gunfire erupted. From the rapid crack of the first weapon, Cork knew it was a heavy automatic of some kind. Shotgun blasts boomed from a second-floor window, something Cork and Rutledge could see above the top of the mist, and immediately the boards around the window frame exploded in chips and splinters as the deputies returned fire.

Rutledge drew his sidearm. “I can’t just stand here and do nothing.”

“If you’re thinking of going into that mist, Simon, I’ve got to tell you it’s a bad idea. Way too confusing. Your Glock’ll be no good at a distance, anyway.”

“I have to do something,” Rutledge said. He swung out of the vehicle and ran.

Cork jumped out, too, calling after him, “Simon!” but the BCA agent had already vanished into the mist. “Shit,” he said. He popped the tailgate open and pulled his Remington from its cradle. He grabbed several slugs, jacked five into the chamber, stuffed a few more into the pocket of his windbreaker. He stood by the Pathfinder, resisting the temptation to move forward, although every impulse pushed him in that direction. He waited, as Killen had told him to do, while the gunfire became sporadic and the sound of the automatic weapon ceased.

The mist had begun to lift, ragged white fingers reaching toward the sky, then evaporating. The long grass of the fields became clearer by the moment. Cork glimpsed a slender figure sprinting from the farmhouse, a figure with long, dark hair, wearing a yellow sweatshirt, carrying a rifle, and making hard for the south end of the field.

He got on the radio, tried to raise Killen or McGruder, got no answer. He left the Pathfinder and gave chase.

The mist was spotty, heavy in some places, almost gone in others. The long grass was still wet with dew and slapped at the cuffs of his khakis. He cut at an angle he calculated would bring him to the fleeing figure somewhere near the fence at the end of the field. Behind him, the gunfire had ceased completely.

Barbed wire edged the field. When Cork reached the fence, he saw that the figure had stopped. The rifle lay against the wire as the figure bent and spread the strands to slip through. Thirty yards back, Cork went prone in the tall grass, put the stock of his shotgun to his shoulder, and sighted. The mist still lingered between Cork and the fence, but the yellow sweatshirt made an easy target.

“Police,” Cork shouted. “Raise your hands.”

The figure let go of the strands, surprised. A hand shot toward the rifle.

Cork hollered, “Don’t touch the weapon.”

The figure ignored him, swung back, and pulled off a round that went high and wide.

“O’Connor,” Rutledge shouted from somewhere behind Cork.

The figure at the fence corrected its aim, pointed the barrel above the place where Cork lay, and sighted toward Rutledge’s voice.

Cork fired. The figure took half a step back into the fence, then crumpled to the ground, leaving an arm snagged on the wire, raised as if in surrender.

Lydell Cramer’s sister and Harmon LaRusse were killed in the exchange of gunfire at the farmhouse. The dogs, too. The man in the mist whom Cork had shot, Carl Berger, was taken to the hospital in Moose Lake, where he was listed in serious condition and in no shape to be questioned. Rutledge had no doubt that these people were involved in the rez shooting because, in addition to the marijuana operation in the barn and nearly a kilo of cocaine and a sizable stash of crystal meth in one of the farmhouse bedrooms, the sheriff’s people found a cache of weapons that included a Savage 110GXP3 fitted with a Leupold scope. Rutledge sent the firearm to the BCA for a ballistics comparison.

It was going on two o’clock when Cork rolled into his parking space at the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department in Aurora. A little more than eight hours had passed since he’d said good-bye to Jo and the children, but it felt like days. He was bone tired, and the relief that came with finding the rifle that had probably been used in the shooting at the Tibodeau cabin was tempered by the memory of two bodies lying together in the front hallway of the farmhouse in a pool of their mixed blood. They’d made the choices that had brought them to that end, but always in the stillness after violent killing there was a hollowness inside Cork that held no sense of victory or justice or right, only the empty absolute of death.

Ed Larson joined him in his office, along with Dina Willner. The windows were open to a quiet Sunday afternoon. A slight breeze out of the southwest kept the skies fair and the temperature pleasant. Beyond the little park that Cork could see through his window, the bell tower of Zion Lutheran was etched like a white tattoo against the body of the town.

“When will we know for sure?” Larson asked.

“Simon said he’d pull strings to get the ballistics done ASAP, so maybe tomorrow or the next day.” Cork sat forward, rubbed his lower back. He opened the top right drawer of his desk, pulled out a bottle of ibuprofen, and tapped out four tablets.

“Let me get you some water for that,” Dina said. She went out and came back with a paper cup filled from the cooler in the common area.

“Thanks.” Cork popped the tablets in his mouth and swallowed them down with the cold water.

“Headache?” Larson asked.

“Back,” Cork said. “Wrenched it when I dropped to a firing position out there in the field.”

Larson glanced at Dina. “We might have something that’ll make you feel better. Something on the Jacoby killing.”

“Yeah? What?”

“Tell him your part first, Dina.”

Willner wore a tight black sweater and formfitting black jeans that Cork figured she had to grease herself down to slide into. She looked good and fresh, as if she’d had plenty of sleep, something Cork envied.

“I went to the North Star Bar last night,” she began.

“Another session with the push-up bra?” Cork broke in.

She ignored him. “I talked with a dumpy guy behind the bar, name was Leonard. He told me that on the night Jacoby was murdered, Lizzie Fineday was out but came back in around midnight beat up bad. Her father took her upstairs, then came down a short time later and went out, moving like a man on a mission. He wasn’t back for closing, so Leonard had to do it by himself, which he says is unusual. Fineday always insists on closing.”

“You got all this with a push-up bra? I may have to start wearing one.”

Larson piped in. “I finally caught up with the night clerk at the Four Seasons. He told me that around eight or nine on the evening Jacoby was killed, Lizzie Fineday came into the hotel looking for him. He wasn’t there, so she left a note.”

“He didn’t happen to see what the note said?”

“No such luck. But Jacoby comes in around eleven, gets the note, heads right back out.”

“Think it’s enough to bring her in?”

“It’s thin,” Larson said. “Especially since we’ll have to go through Stone to get to her. But that’s not all.”

He nodded to Willner, who brought from her purse a little Baggie containing several cigarette butts.

“I did some Dumpster diving late last night,” she said. “When I was in the bar the other night, I’d noticed that Lizzie chain-smokes. In the Dumpster, I found a bag of trash that had some mail with her name on it, and these cigarette butts. Doesn’t absolutely mean they’re Lizzie’s, but her father doesn’t smoke, and even if he did I doubt he’d be wearing lipstick, so it’s a good bet they’re hers. We’re sending one of these and one of the hair samples taken from Jacoby’s SUV for a DNA match.”

“That’ll take time.”

Dina shook her head. “We’re not sending it to your BCA lab. We’re using a private lab in Chicago. Flying it out this afternoon. We can have the comparison in forty-eight hours.”

Cork looked at Larson. “You okay with this, Ed?”

“It might not stand up in court, but if it is a match, it’ll give us plenty for a probable cause pickup and hold. It’ll get us past Stone.”

“Lou Jacoby’ll foot the bill?”

“Of course. And he’s supplying the transport. Tony’s already in the air on his way here. ETA in about an hour.”

“Jacoby’s private jet? We’ll have to get down to Duluth for that.”

Dina shook her head. “He’s going to land at the local landing strip.”

“The jet?”

“A small plane.”

“All right,” Cork said. Then to Larson: “You ever connect with Arlo Knuth?”

“Not yet. Every briefing I ask the watch to keep their eyes peeled for him, check all the usual places. Nothing so far.”

“You know Arlo. He can make himself scarce when he wants to.”

“But why would he want to? That’s what I’m wondering.”

“You don’t really think he had anything to do with Jacoby’s murder, do you?”

“No, but I’m thinking he might have seen something that scared him into hiding. I’d like to know what.”

“Stay on it.”

“You know I will.”

With the cigarette butt and the hair sample in an evidence envelope that had been sealed and signed by Ed Larson, Cork drove Dina toward the county airfield, which was located in the little community of Flax on Lake Margery, three miles south of Aurora.

Flax consisted of a few private cabins, a combination restaurant and gift store called the Cozy Caribou Café, and a small gas station with a garage and mechanic, all situated within hailing distance of the lake and the airstrip. Cork parked near the café, and they got out and wandered toward the airfield. It was a simple affair, a single landing strip, a small control tower, several corrugated buildings that housed the local planes. The sky was blue and almost cloudless—a perfect sky for flying, Cork thought.

“So, you think Lizzie Fineday was with Eddie at Mercy Falls?” Dina said.

“Sure looks that way.”

“Do you think she killed him?”

“If she was doped up and freaked out, I suppose I could see it.”

“Know what I think? It was her old man. He went ballistic when he saw what Eddie had done, went to Mercy Falls, and killed him.”