Heaven's Keep

by William Kent Krueger

  “Did he ask anything else?”

  “Yeah, what I thought of Sandy. And he also asked if there was any bad blood between Sandy and anyone around here.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I liked Sandy. He was good people. And that, as far as I know, nobody here had it in for him. Of course, Sandy was Chippewa, and some folks, well, they’ve got ideas about Indians.”

  “Anybody like that that you’d be able to put a name to?”

  The chief made a brief show of thinking. “Nope, can’t say that I can.”

  “Thanks, Chief.”

  “Welcome. What do you fellas plan on doing while you’re here?”

  “As much as possible, we’re going to try to do exactly what Stilwell did.”

  “I’d appreciate you keeping me apprised.”

  “We’ll do that,” Cork promised.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Becca Bodine had called ahead, and when Cork arrived at the Rice Lake Regional Airport, he was expected. He showed ID at the contact counter for the airport’s fixed base operator, or FBO, the primary charter company, clearly a much larger enterprise than Bodine’s one-man operation. He was given the key code to get the Navigator through the security gate and into the hangar area. From the outside, the hangar was unimposing, simply a moderate structure of corrugated steel painted a dull tan. Inside, perhaps because it was empty, it felt enormous and abandoned, like a high school gym long after the last game of a losing season. Overhead, exposed girders supported fluorescent lights. Through dusty windows, the midday sun cast dun-colored rhomboids onto the bare concrete floor. Metal cabinets lined the walls, and there were stacks of cardboard boxes labeled to indicate supplies. The air was cool and smelled unpleasantly of engines and the fuel and lubricants of engines.

  In a far corner, Sandy Bodine had established his simple office. There was a large desk of gray metal with an overhead work light and a rolling chair. On the desk sat a big tin can wrapped in orange construction paper decorated with a child’s drawings. The can held pencils, pens, and a ruler. The desk was shoved against a wall where two photographs hung. One was a framed family portrait: Bodine, Becca, and their son. The other was a large poster of a prop jet suspended in blue sky with the green earth far below. To the left of the desk stood a metal bookcase whose shelves were filled with aeronautical publications and rolled maps. To the right was a file cabinet that was a twin to the one in Bodine’s home office.

  Cork handed Parmer the key ring. “I’m guessing that little key is for the file cabinet. See what you can find.”

  “And I’m looking for what?”

  “Pull anything on the Canadian charter a couple of years ago. And of course anything on the Wyoming flight. Other than that, anything that strikes you as odd.”

  “Okay. What are you going to do?”

  “I have an idea why Stilwell asked Becca Bodine about a VCR. I’m going to check it out.”

  Parmer headed to the file cabinet and Cork began a slow search of the hangar. He walked along the walls, inspecting the stacks of cardboard boxes, checking under shelves and behind cabinets. He was moving along the final wall when he found what he’d been hoping for—cable wire concealed behind one of the tall cabinets. The wire ran up the wall to an industrial clock and appeared, at first glance, to be the clock’s power cord. Cork braced himself and shoved the cabinet away from the wall. The cord entered the cabinet through a dime-size hole drilled through the metal backing. The cabinet door was secured with a padlock.

  “Hugh,” he called across the empty hangar. “Toss me that key ring.”

  Parmer sent it sailing with a fine throw, and Cork snagged it midair. He quickly flipped through the keys until he found the one that fit the padlock. When he opened the cabinet door, he said, “Eureka.”

  “What is it?” Parmer called to him.

  “Exactly what I suspected. A security camera, a time-lapse VCR, and tapes.”

  Parmer joined him. He had two file folders. “The Canadian charter. And the Wyoming flight,” he said.

  Cork checked the VCR for a tape. The machine was empty. He looked at the shelf above, which held a row of tape cassettes, each marked with the dates during which the recordings had been made.

  Parmer scanned the hangar. “Where’s the camera?”

  “Disguised as the wall clock,” Cork said. “The dates on these cassettes indicate that each tape was created over a considerable period. It’s a motion-sensitive security system. The clock camera only operates when it detects movement.”

  “There’s no tape in the VCR,” Parmer pointed out.

  “Exactly,” Cork said. “Bodine wouldn’t have left without activating his security camera, so the question is what happened to the final security tape. My guess is that Stilwell is the answer. He took the tape and headed to the Bodines’ house, where he knew he could find a VCR and a television to view what happened in the hangar the morning Bodine flew out.”

  “Why not do that here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t feel safe here. With good reason apparently.”

  “Is that what got Stilwell killed?”

  “Could be.”

  “Why? What was on the tape?”

  “I’m not sure. But maybe it was an image of the man who killed Bodine. Maybe it even captured the killing.”

  “You think he was killed here?”

  “The first stop on that Wyoming charter was at the Aurora Regional Airport. It makes sense that whoever flew the plane flew it from the beginning, from right here in Rice Lake. If they wanted to get Bodine out of the picture without being seen, this hangar would be a good place to do that. And if they were careless and that wall clock did a good job of disguising itself, they might have been captured on film doing whatever it is that they did here.”

  “A lot of speculation.”

  “Got a better thought?” When Parmer didn’t offer him anything, Cork said, “Let me see those folders.” He checked the information on the Wyoming flight. “No contract here either,” he said.

  “What about the Canadian charter?” Parmer asked.

  Cork leafed through the documents in that folder but didn’t find anything that raised a concern. “From what Bodine’s wife told me, her husband was in a temporary financial bind. It’s possible the Canadian charter had to do with something illegal, quick money. Smuggling would be a good guess. Cigarettes, maybe, which are a big black-market item because of the tax in Canada. But I’m seeing only this one flight, and that seems pretty small potatoes for the kind of murder we’re talking about with the Wyoming charter. I think there’s something bigger at stake.” He handed Parmer the folders to put back, then he continued his search of the hangar, poking into cabinets that weren’t locked, looking into tool chests, finding nothing that seemed of any help.

  “What next?” Parmer asked.

  “If Bodine was killed here, whoever killed him had to get onto the airfield. Let’s have a talk with the people in the office.”

  Because it was a security issue, the FBO contact who’d given him the key code sent him to speak with Gage Williams, the airport manager.

  Cork knocked on the manager’s door, and a firm business voice on the other side instructed him to come in.

  Gage, he discovered, was a woman. She sat at her desk and eyed him over her reading glasses. Before her on the desk lay blueprints. She wore a white blouse with its long sleeves rolled back to her elbows. “Yes?” she said.

  Cork introduced himself and Parmer. Gage Williams took off her glasses and used them to point toward a couple of chairs.

  “I heard you were coming. We seem to have a regular stream of PIs through here lately. Did Becca fire the other guy?”

  “He’s out of the picture.”

  She folded her hands on the blueprints. “What can I do for you?”

  “You can help us figure out how a man who might have wanted Sandy Bodine dead could have gotten onto the airfield and into Bodine’s hangar.”


  She didn’t move for several seconds. “You’re not kidding.”

  “Not at all.” Cork explained to her everything that had brought him to his conclusion.

  “That’s a hell of a story,” she said when he’d finished. “I’ve got to tell you, it’s not easy to buy.”

  “Humor us for a moment. If a man wanted to kill Bodine and fly his plane out, how could he get onto the airfield? Could he simply sneak on?”

  “That would be extremely difficult. Since 9/11 we’ve tightened things up pretty good. We have PIDS now.”

  “PIDS?” Parmer said.

  “Perimeter intrusion detection system,” Cork said.

  “There are security cameras everywhere,” Williams said. “They feed directly into the Barron County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “How closely monitored are they?”

  “That I can’t answer. But really, it would be difficult to sneak onto the field without being spotted.” She sat back and toyed with her glasses. “Unless.”

  “What?” Cork said.

  “I’m not sure I should be encouraging you, because, like I said, your story sounds pretty crazy. But if I wanted to get onto the field without raising suspicion, I’d simply fly in.”

  “Explain that,” Cork said.

  “We’re a small regional airport. We don’t have a control tower. Planes can land here anytime, day or night. If they’re small enough, we don’t even log them in or charge a landing fee. Unless they want to tie down overnight, we don’t even keep a record of them. Conceivably a small plane could land in the dead of night and take off without us noticing.”

  Cork liked the idea, but there was a problem. “No record would exist.”

  “Not technically. But if they taxied anywhere near the terminal here, one of our security cameras should have picked them up.”

  “Any way we could look at the security tapes from the night before Bodine’s last flight?”

  “Actually, we use disks now, but sure. Wait here.”

  She left the office, was gone a few minutes, and came back with a disk, which she inserted into her computer. “This should contain the time frame we’re interested in.”

  She turned her monitor so that Cork and Parmer could see the image, too, and she began to scan quickly through what the security cameras had caught. It wasn’t difficult finding what they wanted. There was nothing to see except empty tarmac for almost the entire period. But at 3:45 A.M., a small plane touched down and taxied past the terminal toward the charter hangars. It disappeared for a few minutes, returned, taxied back to the runway, and took off.

  Williams said, “Now let’s see what happened when it disappeared from the terminal cameras.” She worked the mouse and, with a couple of additional keystrokes, brought up a view of the charter hangars.

  The video image confirmed all Cork’s suspicions. The plane taxied to the hangar area and paused for a few moments. A solitary figure quickly exited from the passenger side and slipped into the shadow of Bodine’s hangar. The plane turned back for its return to the tarmac.

  “Son of a gun,” Williams said. “You were right.”

  “Any way to ID that plane?” Cork asked.

  “Sure.” She backed up the image and froze it as the figure was disembarking. “There, see that number on the tail? That’s the plane’s registration. That’s all we need.” She accessed the Internet and went to the FAA’s aircraft registry site. In a few more moments, she smiled broadly, tapped the monitor with her finger, and said, “Voilà.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  They stood in the airport parking lot, eyeing the western horizon. A thick mass of poisonous-looking green cloud had completely swallowed the sun. A fierce wind had risen, and Cork could feel the energy of a storm about to descend.

  “That sky looks pretty sick,” he said. “Could be hail.”

  Parmer put his hand on the rented Navigator. “It would be a shame to have this beauty assaulted.”

  “Let’s pull into Bodine’s hangar and see what develops.”

  At the security gate, they keyed in the code again and headed for Bodine’s hangar. After he’d unlocked them, Cork retracted the big doors and Parmer drove the Navigator inside. They stood at the entrance, looking out at the airstrip, which lay empty under the threatening sky. The wind howled at the hangar, and the roof rattled as if it were about to be peeled away. Dust and grit peppered the walls with a sound like a rain of BBs.

  The plane that Gage Williams had identified was a Cessna 400, Wyoming registration, owned by a company named Geotech West, which listed an address in Casper.

  “Geotech West,” Cork said, as much to himself as to Parmer. “Who the hell is Geotech West?”

  “Let’s find out,” Parmer said.

  He went to the Navigator and took something from the briefcase in the backseat. When he returned, Cork saw that he was holding a BlackBerry.

  “The world at my fingertips,” Parmer said. “Let’s see what the world has to say about Geotech West.”

  At that same moment, a deafening roar commenced around them. Outside, hail the diameter of nickels began to hit the pavement and bounce like spit on a griddle. The hammering on the hangar drowned out any hope of conversation. Lightning slashed across the sky above the airfield, and the whole scene became an ice-white tableau. In almost the same instant, an explosion of thunder made the concrete under Cork’s feet quiver. Within a few minutes, hail completely covered the ground. Within five minutes, the hailstorm ended, as suddenly as it had begun. Rain followed, falling in sheets blown nearly horizontal by the wind.

  Cork said, “Will that thing still work in this storm?”

  “We’ll see,” Parmer said.

  “While you do that, I’m going to have another look around.”

  As he had earlier, Cork prowled the interior perimeter of the hangar, looking more carefully this time in every chest and crate and cabinet and barrel. A lot of what he saw he couldn’t identify, tools and technical plane parts mostly. Near Bodine’s corner office, he lifted the lid on a metal barrel and found an enormous supply of cloth rags. He pulled out handfuls and dropped them on the floor, thinking there might be something hidden deep in the barrel, but he reached bottom without hitting the jackpot. He began picking up the rags and stuffing them back in, then he stopped. In his hand was a wad of rags that weren’t at all clean.

  “Hey, Cork,” Parmer called. “You might want to take a look at this.”

  “And you might want to take a look at this,” Cork called back.

  They met in the middle of the hangar, Cork with the soiled rags in his hands and Parmer, in a way, with the world in his.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Parmer asked, staring at the wadded rags.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s not strawberry jam.”

  “Christ, there’s a lot of blood. Where’d you find those?”

  “Stuffed in a barrel.”

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose, that Bodine cut himself.”

  “Severed an artery is more like it.”

  “It could be that these were used to clean up after he was killed. Or after Stilwell was killed. Maybe to wipe the hangar floor.” Cork nodded toward the BlackBerry cradled in Parmer’s palm. “What did you find?”

  Parmer held the tiny screen toward Cork so that he could see the Internet display. “Geotech West advertises itself as a mineral exploration outfit.” Parmer used his stylus to access another screen. “Here it says it’s a subsidiary of Longmont Venture Partners. If we bring up Longmont”—and he did—“you can see that it’s a company with a number of holdings, all dealing with mining and mineral technology. Now”—and he manipulated the screen again—“Longmont is a division of Fortrell, Inc., which has diversified interests. It owns a number of other companies. Wireless Technologies, Prism Optical, Realm-McCrae Development, Sanderson Aggregate, Alloy and—”

  “Wait,” Cork said. “Go back. Did you say Realm-McCrae Development?”


  “Yes.”

  “Realm-McCrae. I know that name.” Cork thought a moment but couldn’t get a solid hold on the slippery memory. “Damn, I’m sure I know that name.”

  “Let’s look a little deeper,” Parmer said, working the BlackBerry. “Current Realm-McCrae projects include a housing subdivision in . . . wait a minute. I’ll bet this is it. Says here they’re working with the Arapahos in Wyoming to build a big resort casino.”

  “That’s it! There’s our connection, Hugh.”

  “Why would these people want Sandy Bodine dead?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t Bodine who was the target.”

  “Who then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Parmer’s stomach let out a long, mean growl. “Look, Cork, I hate to get basic on you, but we haven’t eaten all day. I could use some food. Could we discuss this over a good steak and some beer?”

  “I don’t see why not. I think we’re finished here for the moment.”

  “What are you going to do with those bloody rags?”

  “Hold on to them. I don’t know that they prove anything in and of themselves, but I’m not going to leave them here.”

  “Is that tampering with evidence?”

  “You want to risk them being gone when we come back?” Cork said. He found a paper bag and put the rags inside. He set the bag on the backseat of Parmer’s Navigator. Parmer pulled out of the hangar and into the rain. Cork closed and locked the hangar door and dashed to the SUV.

  They ended up at the restaurant of a local country club, a nice place called Turtleback. They were given a table next to a long row of windows that overlooked the golf course. Far beyond that, rising on the other side of Rice Lake, lay the Blue Hills.

  “Why do they call them the Blue Hills?” Parmer asked their waitress, a friendly woman who was probably someone’s grandmother.

  “There’s often a blue haze that hangs over them,” the woman said.

  “What causes the haze?”

  “Got me.” She smiled.

  Cork ordered a Leinenkugel’s Creamy Dark.

  “Good beer?” Parmer asked.