Cork found an office off the living room. Bookshelves lined one of the walls. If the books there were any indication, Stilwell was a man of broad taste. The volumes were organized alphabetically by author, Heidegger between Hammett and Hemingway, Plato next to Proust, Steinbeck followed by Stendhal. There was a standing four-drawer file cabinet, but Cork found only personal files inside—tax documents, insurance information, papers related to Stilwell’s home and his mortgage. He booted the computer on the desk and was confronted with the same situation he’d encountered at the man’s business office: He needed a password.
He went upstairs. Two bedrooms and a full bath. One bedroom was clearly a guest room. In the other, the closet and dresser were full of clothing and there was a book on the nightstand—Staggerford—with a cloth bookmark slipped in midway. Cork checked the usual places, but found nothing related to the case he was interested in.
The final place he checked was the basement, which was unfinished and in which Stilwell stored nothing.
In the end, Cork stood for a long time in the living room of a clean, orderly house with a dead bird in a cage and an owner missing for a week. He was almost certain the man was dead and anything he’d left behind that would have helped point toward the reason and toward his killers had been removed. He had a clear sense that there was an enormous and brutal force at work, something ruthlessly efficient and certainly to be feared. And he had to assume they knew about him.
He left the way he’d entered, through the back door. He went around in front and walked to the house next door, where he’d seen the woman with the garbage bag. He rang the bell and waited. Thirty seconds later, she opened up.
“Good afternoon,” he said with the most pleasant smile he could offer. “My name’s Cork O’Connor. I’m a private investigator, a friend of Steve Stilwell’s. I’m wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions.”
“About Steve? Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”
She was a plump woman in her early fifties, with wispy red hair and green eyes that held a sudden worried look. She wore a red sweater with an embroidered moose in the center that seemed to be sliding down the ample slope of her breasts.
“Why do you say that?” Cork asked.
“He hasn’t been home for days and I’ve been worried about Binky.”
“Binky?”
“His canary. A sweet little thing. Usually when Steve’s gone, he gives me a key and asks me to feed Binky. Not this time. So I’ve been worried, about him and about Binky.”
“When was the last time you saw Steve?”
“He came back about a week ago from some work he was doing in Wyoming. He stopped by to get his key from me, and he brought me a spoon from Yellowstone to thank me. I collect spoons, you see. He was around that night, but I haven’t seen him since.”
“Have you seen anyone else at his house?”
“No. Well . . .” One side of her face squeezed up as she considered her next words.
“What?”
“I probably should have called the police or somebody,” she said with obvious regret. “Three, or maybe it was four, nights ago I let Iago out. My cat,” she explained. “It was like eleven o’clock. I wasn’t wearing much, and I turned out all the lights first so nobody would see me in my undies, and then I opened the back door for Iago. He likes to prowl at night. Well, I could have sworn that when I did that, I saw someone slipping inside Steve’s back door. It was dark, so I couldn’t be sure. And I figured it was probably Steve anyway. But I haven’t seen him since he got back from Wyoming so, yesterday I knocked on his door and tried to peek in his windows. I’ve actually been thinking about calling the police or something to make sure he’s okay over there. But he’s a private investigator and all, so I was afraid maybe that would be too nosy, you know?”
“I understand.”
“You’re a friend, right? And a PI?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you could call the police, then?”
“Sure.”
“Will you let me know when you find out what’s going on?”
“I’ll do that. Thank you for your time.”
“He’s such a nice man.”
“Indeed,” Cork said and walked away.
TWENTY-THREE
He’d called Liz Burns on his cell phone, and when he arrived she and Becca Bodine had their jackets on. They went out the back way to a path that wound through a wall of sand to the beach beyond. The sun was out, but they zipped their jackets against the cold wind screaming off the lake. The waves rose like white-maned lions and roared as they came ashore. Burns looked back to where her home was visible above the top of the dunes.
“Far enough?” she asked.
“Let’s keep walking,” Cork said.
“You haven’t explained what this is about.”
“It’s about the noise of the waves and the sound of the wind and how that might keep us from being overheard.”
“By whom?”
“They,” Cork said. “Whoever they are.”
“The ones who killed Sandy?” Becca asked.
“Yes, them. They’ve been very thorough so far. It’s hard to believe they’d be sloppy now. It’s quite possible that they’ve tapped Liz’s phone, maybe bugged her house. Yours, too, for that matter, Becca. Maybe mine by now.”
The sun was at their backs, well into its descent, and it gave no warmth. Beside them, the broad, frigid body of Superior fumed and spit. Ahead, the sandy finger of Park Point stretched beyond the limit of their seeing. They were alone on the beach.
“You said you had a son, Becca. Where is he?” Cork asked.
“With my sister in Hayward.”
“It might be a good idea if he stayed there for a while, and you stayed with Liz.”
“Why?”
“It might keep him from ending up as collateral damage.”
“Do you really think these people would go that far?” Burns asked.
“As nearly as I can tell, they’ve killed seven, maybe eight people already. Why would they stop now?”
“But what are they after?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Cork watched a gull negotiate the bitter wind and alight on the beach a dozen yards away. It snatched something from the sand and took off again. The wind kicked it, but the gull reeled, recovered, and soared away.
“Stilwell went down to Rice Lake to have a look at Sandy’s offices and his records. He called after he’d been to the airport to ask about the VCR at Becca’s place. And after that you didn’t hear from him again. Is that right?”
“Yes,” Burns said.
“Did Stilwell stay in Rice Lake during his investigation?”
Burns nodded. “He told me he’d checked in to a hotel and would probably be there overnight.”
“When you didn’t hear from him, did you call the hotel?”
Becca leaped in. “I called Rolfe Amundsen. He’s the chief of police in Rice Lake. Sandy knew him pretty well. I asked him to look into it. He did and told us that Mr. Stilwell had checked in to the Best Western and checked out the next day.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Can you think of anything else that might help?”
Both women looked at each other, then at Cork, and it was clear they’d told him everything.
“You’re still going to Rice Lake tomorrow?” Burns said.
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t we bring in the authorities or something?” Becca said.
“And tell them what? Our suspicions? I was a cop for a long time, Becca. Even if they’re sympathetic, there’s nothing at the moment they can do. Truth is, if I were on the other side listening to the story we’d tell, I’d file it away as a good one to share with the rest of the guys at the bar after shift’s over.” Cork stopped and looked at the long thread of empty beach. “Until we have something of substance, we’re on our own.”
Burns turned and looked behind them. “My house
might be bugged. I feel like I’ve been violated.”
“Don’t talk about any of this in the house,” Cork cautioned. “Don’t talk on your home phone or your cell about this.”
“How do we communicate with you?” Burns asked.
“I’ll call when I get to Rice Lake to let you know I’m all right. If something’s wrong, I’ll use a code word. Ikode.”
“Ikode?”
Becca smiled. “It’s Ojibwe. It means ‘fire.’ ”
Cork said, “Do you have a key to Sandy’s airport office, Becca?”
“No, but there’s a set in the top drawer of the desk in his home office. It’s on a key ring marked ‘Hangar.’ ”
“How do I get into your house?”
“There’s a key on a hook under the back steps.”
“Aren’t you concerned about your safety, Cork?” Burns asked.
“Sure. But I have an advantage over Steve Stilwell. I know there’s a bogeyman in the shadows.”
They headed back to Burns’s house, and while she prepared hot coffee for them, Cork took a quick look for listening devices that might have been planted. Considering the care that had been taken in this affair so far, he didn’t really believe he’d find anything. It would take, he figured, an electronic sweep to locate whatever bug they’d planted, if indeed they’d hidden one there. At this point, there was nothing he could be certain of.
They drank the coffee, and they talked awkwardly of small, inconsequential things. When Cork left, the two women walked with him to his Bronco and bid him good-bye and Godspeed. In his rearview mirror as he headed away, he saw Liz Burns put her arm around Becca Bodine, and they turned and walked together toward her house. A moment later they were gone from his sight.
TWENTY-FOUR
It was late afternoon when he returned to Aurora. He stopped at Sam’s Place and checked in with Judy Madsen. She told him it had been a good day. Things had slowed a bit and they were doing fine. If he needed her to, she could handle closing. Cork kissed her cheek and told her she was the best, and she told him back that a kiss was fine but making her a partner was better. He said they’d talk. Soon.
In the back of Sam’s Place, he unlocked the door to the cellar and went down. From an upright locker near the boiler, he took a handheld RF detector—a bug sweeper—and a phone tap detector. This was equipment he’d purchased nearly a year ago during an investigation he’d done for the Chippewa Grand Casino.
He swept that part of Sam’s Place he used for his office and found no evidence of a bug. He checked the phone line. Nothing there. He told Judy he was heading off, and when he thanked her again, she said, “How soon is soon?”
At home, Cork found a note on the kitchen counter from Stephen saying that he was having dinner at Gordy Hudacek’s house, okay? He’d be home by nine. Cork called Stephen’s cell and told his son that he was back from Duluth, and, yes, he’d expect to see him at nine. He used the next hour to sweep his house for bugs and to check his own phone line. As nearly as he could tell, everything was clean. There were four possibilities: The people behind all this didn’t particularly care about bugging him; they hadn’t had time to bug him; the bugs they’d used were too sophisticated for his sweep equipment to detect; or he was mistaken in all his assumptions about what was going on. Finally he called Hugh Parmer and arranged to meet him at the bar in the Four Seasons.
Parmer was waiting when Cork arrived, and the two men took a table near one of the windows that overlooked Iron Lake. Cork ordered a Leinenkugel’s Dark. Parmer ordered a Cutty Sark and water.
“I need a favor from you, Hugh,” Cork said. “A pretty big one.”
“Name it.”
“I’d like you to fly Stephen to Evanston, Illinois, in the morning.”
“I can do that. Care to tell me why?”
“His aunt and uncle live there. I want him to stay with them for a while. I want him out of harm’s way.”
“Things are that bad?”
“They might be. I don’t want to take a chance.”
“Mind if I ask what’s going on?”
Cork explained what he’d seen on the tape the night before, after Parmer had left. He told him about his day in Duluth and his growing concern that there was something solid in the conspiracy theory the two women had proposed to him. He said, “These people probably won’t hesitate to kill again to cover whatever it is they’ve been up to.”
“Which is what?”
Their drinks came, and Cork waited until the waitress was gone to go on. “I don’t know yet, Hugh. But I’m going to do a lot of digging, see if I can uncover a nest of scorpions. If that happens, I don’t want Stephen anywhere near me.”
“I understand. I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have some backup with you, though.”
“You’re probably right, but I work alone.”
“After I drop Stephen off, it might be a good idea for me to fly to that regional airport in Rice Lake and meet you there.”
“This isn’t your business, Hugh.”
“It is if I make it my business.”
“This is a different kind of business from land development.”
“I hunt deer and elk in the White Mountains of Arizona. I’ve hunted caribou in Alaska and gazelle in Africa. I know my way around firearms, Cork. And I wasn’t always a land developer. I started as a ranch hand, an honest-to-God cowboy. You got any idea what kind of mettle that takes?”
“I’m not questioning your mettle, Hugh.”
“And don’t give me a lot of crap about feeling responsible if I’m hurt. A man chooses, and the consequences are on his own shoulders and no one else’s. And just think about what kind of backup I’d provide, Cork. Hell, there’s nothing in this world I can’t afford to buy if we need it.”
“Then why not buy me backup trained in this kind of thing?”
Parmer turned his head and looked away, an odd move for a man who’d have no trouble spitting in the devil’s eye. He nodded, as if he was having a discussion with himself. Finally he looked at Cork and said, “Sometimes when a man gets too good at something, like buying land and putting things on it and making a lot of money in the process, what he does begins to lose its value to him. It’s too easy. That’s one of the reasons I took such an interest in the development here in Aurora. You were an obstacle. You stood in my way. That happens very seldom, and the old excitement kicked in. What you and I planned here for Iron Lake is something I’m proud of, really proud, because it could have been easy and ruinous, but your damn stubbornness, your love for this place, shaped the vision into something that will add to the beauty, not destroy it. At least, that’s how I think of the project. My life is too simple these days, Cork, too easy. And for a long time, it’s been all about me. I’d like to help because it feels important and because I care about the outcome. And also because it makes me feel alive. If you want me to hire backup instead, I will. I have excellent security people. But I feel up to the job and I’d like to do it.”
The man was lean and hard and earnest. He’d come from common stock and risen out of the West Texas dust. He was clear-eyed about the contradictions of human nature and probably understood that inside the best of people there was always a war going on between the light and the dark, and that in anyone the tide of battle could shift at any moment, which meant trust was a dangerous thing. Parmer, Cork figured, would know when to trust. It didn’t hurt at all that he could buy half of Minnesota if it came to that.
“All right,” Cork said. “But you do as I say. Will that be a problem?”
Parmer grinned. “Not at all.”
Back at home, Cork called Rose. She answered in a voice pinched with concern.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
“Actually, no. Mal is in the hospital.”
“Is it serious?”
“He’s had a mild heart attack.”
“Oh my God.”
“He’s all right,” she said emphatically. “In church this morning
, he complained of being short of breath and then of discomfort in his chest. He didn’t want to make a fuss, but I insisted we go to the emergency room. They diagnosed him there. He’s fine, really. They’re keeping him overnight for observation, but he should be all right to come home tomorrow.”
“Are you doing okay, Rose?”
“The worst was over before we really even knew what was going on. So, yes, I’m okay. We’ll need to take a look at all the contributing circumstances and make some changes in our lives, I think. Mal has been driving himself lately. So the first order of business will be for him to slow down. I’m going to sit on him if I have to.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No, Cork. And please don’t think about coming down here to help. Mal wouldn’t hear of it, and you’ve got plenty to keep you busy up there.”
“You’ll keep us posted?”
“Of course. I would have called, but I had my hands full.” She paused. “But you called me. Was there something you wanted to talk about?”
“No, Rose. Just . . . keeping in touch.”
They talked a minute or two more. Rose indicated she would call Jenny and Annie to let them know.
He hung up, aware that the option of sending Stephen to safety in Evanston was no longer available. He walked to the kitchen, stared out the window over the sink, and thought hard. The possibility that came to him was one he couldn’t arrange over the phone. It would require some travel, and he had less than two hours of daylight left. He wrote a note to Stephen, then hurried to his Bronco and drove north out of town.
A light shone through the window of Meloux’s cabin. Against the thin blue of the twilight sky, a thread of smoke rose up from the stovepipe that jutted from the cabin roof. The evening was still, and, except for the sound of Cork’s footfalls on the well-worn path through the meadow, Crow Point was quiet. As he approached the cabin, Cork heard Walleye begin to bark inside. A moment later, the door opened and Meloux stepped out. Along with him came the succulent smell of hot stew.
“Anin, Corcoran O’Connor.” The old man greeted him without any hint of surprise.
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