Tamarack County (13 page)

Outside Dross crossed her arms and said, “As nearly as I can tell, whoever was driving that truck did nothing illegal. It was Marlee’s reaction that caused the accident, pure and simple. I’m not sure there’s even a law that says the other driver had to stop and render assistance. Most folks would try to do something, of course, but some people just panic. And as for the pickup actually following them with some sinister intention, Stephen’s offered me nothing concrete to really pin that down.”

Cork said, “A green pickup truck followed Stella home.”

“A month ago,” Dross said. “Do you know how many green pickup trucks are on the roads in Tamarack County? And that it followed her was only Stella’s perception. If someone was stalking her, or Marlee, wouldn’t there be more evidence, more incidents?”

“She gets followed, Dexter gets killed, Marlee gets run off the road. How many more ‘incidents’ do you need, Marsha?”

Dross rubbed a patch of red skin high on her cheek that looked to Cork as if it were chapped by all the bitter cold she’d had to endure lately. “If it weren’t for the mutilated dog, I wouldn’t pursue this at all. I’ve got my hands full with Evelyn Carter. But I’m going to put Pender on it, and have him follow up on the truck description, vague though it is. At the moment, that’s the best I can do.”

Cork said, “I understand. And you understand, I hope, that I came close to losing my son today, and if there’s a chance that the driver of that muddy green truck really did intend harm, I’m going to track that bastard down.”

She nodded. “If Pender comes up with anything, I’ll let you know.”

They were both quiet. Down the hallway, an aide pushed a man in a wheelchair that squeaked like a mouse caught in a trap.

“Anything more on Evelyn Carter?” Cork asked.

“The blood on the knife was her type, A-negative. Fairly rare. But we won’t get DNA confirmation for some time. The Judge appears to be losing it, by the way. His wife’s disappearance
seems to have sent him over some edge. His daughter’s at her wit’s end. At the moment, your priest appears to be the only one able to handle him.”

“Real, do you think? Or is he putting something on because he’s concerned that we found the knife in his garage?”

“His daughter believes it’s no charade. But she also believes pretty strongly that he could have killed her mother.”

“How long before you get his phone records?”

“I’m hoping we’ll have them before the day’s out.”

“Maybe they’ll tell you more,” Cork said.

“I’ll let you know. If you find out anything about that muddy pickup, you’ll pass it along?”

“Deal,” Cork said.

They parted ways, and Cork returned to the waiting room. In a few minutes, Marlee was wheeled back from the CT scan, and then taken to a room for observation overnight. Across the left side of her face spread a long, sallow discoloration that would soon darken to a plum color. She looked pretty ragged. She wasn’t in a mood to talk, at least to Cork and Stephen. They went to the cafeteria and waited while Stella spent another hour with her daughter. When Stephen had first called his father, Cork had swung by the casino to pick Stella up on his way to the hospital. He’d also committed to supplying her with a ride home.

It was early dark, and they sat in the small cafeteria, Cork drinking bad coffee and Stephen sipping on a cup of watery-looking hot chocolate. Stephen was quiet, deep in thought. Cork was deep into his own thoughts, trying to figure out how he might track down the owner of a pale green, mud-spattered pickup.

Stephen broke the silence. “Henry called.”

“Meloux? When?”

“Late this morning.”

“Anything wrong?”

“No. Well, yes, in a way. He’s been having a troubling dream. He wanted to make sure we were all right.”

“This troubling dream, we’re in it?”

“Yeah, again in a way. Henry says in his dream he sees something evil in the shadows. A
majimanidoo
.”

“What’s this devil doing?”

“Watching our house. I asked him if the dream was about us or maybe about someone important to us. You know, I was thinking about Dexter and the Daychilds. He said it might be. And then this happens. Dad, I think Meloux’s dream was trying to warn us against whoever’s doing these things to Marlee and her mom.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Yeah. He told me I should dream, too.”

“Can you?” Cork knew his son, in whom the blood of his Ojibwe ancestors was strong, had experienced visions before. In fact, a full decade before it came to pass, Stephen had foreseen his mother’s death, and had been, in part, responsible for solving the mystery surrounding it. So Cork believed absolutely in his son’s unusual ability. The question was could Stephen summon a vision at will.

Stephen looked weighted by the idea, but he said, “I’ll try.” He sipped his watery-looking hot chocolate. “Oh, by the way, Henry said that Annie could use his cabin while he’s gone.”

“Why does she need his cabin?”

Stephen’s expression changed to one tinged with guilt. “I should let her tell you.”

“You don’t have to,” Cork said. His coffee was tasting worse by the moment. “Whatever she’s dealing with, it’s clear she wants to deal with it alone. I suppose Meloux’s cabin is as good a place as any. It’s served him well all these years anyway. Did she say when she wants to go out?”

“Tomorrow,” Stephen said.

“After church?”

Then Stephen looked really troubled. “She doesn’t go to church anymore.”

“Christ,” Cork said, wondering what in the hell could have happened to so change the direction of his daughter’s life. He looked at Stephen, and it was clear that his son wondered the same thing and, like his father, didn’t have a clue.

I
t was hard dark by the time Cork dropped Stephen at home. Jenny and Anne hustled their brother inside, worrying over him like a couple of old hens. Cork told them he’d be back as soon as he’d taken Stella Daychild to her place on the rez.

They drove south out of Aurora. When they’d left the lights of town behind them, Stella opened her purse, a small black thing, fumbled out a cigarette, and wedged it between her lips. She jammed the pack back into her purse. Without fishing, her fingers emerged holding a white Bic lighter, which she brought to the tip of her cigarette. She paused in the instant before her thumb struck a flame.

“Mind?” she said.

Normally he would have, but this wasn’t a normal circumstance. “Go ahead,” he said and opened the ashtray between them.

In the dark inside the Land Rover, the little flame seemed to explode and lit Stella’s face in harsh, wavering yellow. Cork glanced at her and saw the mascara bleeding down her left cheek, the lines of worry that fanned out from the corner of her eye like the tines on a garden rake. No one was pretty in pain.

“How’re you doing?” he asked.

“Look at me. How do you think I’m doing? Really shitty.”

She dropped the lighter into her purse and snapped it shut.
Then she stared out her window, blowing smoke against the glass, clouding the inches between her and the darkness on the other side.

“She’ll be all right,” Cork said.

He felt her eyes bore into him. “Do you know who that psycho was or why he went after her?”

“Not yet.”

“Then Marlee’s not all right.” This time her lips shot the cloud of smoke in his direction.

After that, Cork didn’t feel inclined to offer any more comfort, and they drove for a long time in silence.

Stella finished her cigarette, ground out the ember in the ashtray, said more to herself than to Cork, “I still have to figure out how I’m going to tell Ray Jay about Dexter.”

“You think he hasn’t heard? He’s in the county jail, Stella, not on Mars.”

She laid her head back against the seat, and her voice grew weary. “He’s always been quiet and kept to himself. But ever since he went public a couple of years ago and confessed all that crap about Cecil LaPointe, he’s isolated himself even more. Marlee and me, we’re just about the only people he talks to, and when he does, he doesn’t really open up.” She looked out the window again and said softly, “Shit. It’ll just about kill him.”

Cork pulled off the highway and onto the ruts in the snow that led to the Daychild place. When he drew up before the house, there were no lights on inside.

“I thought someone was going to be here with you,” Cork said.

“My uncle, Shorty.”

“Where is he?”

“Hell, who knows?”

The night was clear, and the moon was up, a lopsided waxing toward half. The line of trees that edged the little clearing cast faint, ragged shadows across the snow in a way that
reminded Cork of the teeth of a predator. Not just any predator, though. It made him think of the mythic cannibal ogre of Ojibwe myth, the Windigo. He thought about the
majimanidoo
Meloux had reported seeing in his dreams. The flimsy prefab, a BIA-built structure decades old, sat in the middle of the clearing and seemed to offer no protection at all.

“It’s not a good idea for you to be here alone,” Cork said. “Can I take you somewhere else?”

“There’s nowhere else I want to be right now.”

“I’m not going to leave you here alone.”

She didn’t bother arguing, just opened her door, got out, and started toward the house.

Cork let her walk a dozen steps, then swore softly to himself, killed the engine, unbuckled his seat belt, and slid from the Land Rover.

The sound of the car door shutting made Stella turn. She watched Cork approach, her face in the moonlight a black and white mask of shadow and skin that gave no hint of emotion.

“You don’t have to stay,” she said.

He opened his hands to the emptiness around them. “Yeah, I do.”

Stella thought about it, gave a little shake of her head, and walked up the steps. Inside she turned on the lights, shed her coat, and threw it across the nearest chair back. She tugged off her black, heeled boots, left them tumbled near the doormat, and headed toward the kitchen. Cork took off his parka and hung it on the coat tree near the door. He unlaced his boots, removed them, and set them on a mat next to the coat tree, where someone—probably Marlee—had put it for just that purpose. He heard the refrigerator door open, heard the clank of glass against glass, and half a minute later, Stella returned carrying two opened bottles of spring water.

“I don’t have any Leinenkugel’s.” It sounded like an apology, though just barely.

“What makes you think I like Leinie’s?”

“I’ve served you a few times at the casino. It’s the kind of thing you remember when you tend bar.”

A mirror hung on the wall behind Cork, and Stella caught sight of herself in the glass. “Oh, Jesus, that can’t be me.” She put her bottle of water down on the end table next to the sofa. “Back in a minute.”

It was actually ten, and in that time, Cork drank half his water. He also took a good look around him and thought about a couple of things. One was a feature in Stella’s home that surprised him. There were bookshelves, lots of them, all jammed with texts across a wide range of subjects—history, philosophy, psychology, literature. He knew Marlee was a smart kid, but this level and breadth of interest amazed him. He found himself considering the possibility that it wasn’t only Marlee who read, and he remembered Stella’s comment to him the night before, that men who stared at her weren’t interested in the fact that there was more to her than met the eye.

He also studied the house itself and was concerned at how flimsy a structure it really was and about all the ways someone could break into it. He puzzled over why they might want to do that and wondered, for the umpteenth time, if there was something that Stella or Marlee knew but wasn’t telling. When Stella returned, she’d cleaned all the makeup from her face and brushed her hair. Although she was clearly tired, she looked collected and focused. And, he couldn’t help noticing, attractive in a very natural way.

“I think you should call someone,” he suggested.

“I’ll be all right.” She dropped onto the sofa. “I still have to figure how to get my car out of that damn lake.”

“Leonard Kingbird. He winches two or three vehicles out every year, ice fishermen with more enthusiasm than sense.”

He watched Stella sip her water. She’d changed out of the clothes she’d worn to work, the tight black top that hugged her breasts, the black slacks that showed off the nice curves below her waist. She had on a soft green turtleneck, faded jeans, and white socks.

“Got a way to get to work in the meantime?” he asked.

“I’ll figure it out,” she said. And he knew she would. She’d been figuring her way around adversity all her life.

“Stella, you’re right,” he said.

She looked at him, her brown eyes large with question. “About what?”

“That Marlee isn’t safe until we know who was driving that truck. You’re not safe either. We need to decide what to do about that.”

“We?”

“You asked me to help, remember? I’m not backing out. I have a personal stake in this now, too.”

“Stephen,” she said with a little nod. “He’s like you, you know.” She smiled, glanced down, almost shyly. “He wouldn’t leave Marlee.”

Cork was sitting in an easy chair on the other side of the coffee table. He set his bottle of water on the table and leaned toward her. “If I’m going to help you, you have to trust me, Stella.”

She seemed puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“Someone killed Dexter to send you a pretty brutal message. And then they went after Marlee. This kind of thing doesn’t happen out of the blue.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

He thought about Charles Devine and knew she was right. But Devine was an isolated case, a crime of opportunity. Someone had planned to kill Dexter, and someone had followed and harassed Marlee. There was motive in what might seem like madness.

“You’re absolutely certain that you don’t know any reason someone would be targeting you?” he asked.

“I told you I don’t. Look, Cork, this trust thing has to go both ways.”

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re right. What about Marlee?”

“What about her?”