Heaven's Keep

by William Kent Krueger

  Cork checked in with the county sheriff’s office and got the location of the accident. It was an hour west of Casper on the road to Hot Springs and easy to spot. The highway had been chiseled along a cliff face, and on the south side there was very little shoulder and a precipitous drop-off. A new section of guardrail had been put up to replace the portion damaged in the accident. Cork and Parmer stood on the edge looking down a steep slope that was punctuated with sharp rocks, prickly pear cactus, and squat clumps of sagebrush. At the bottom lay a dry wash that appeared to be full of dust as white as chalk. A huge boulder there was blackened along one side, evidence of fire.

  “Wonder what she found that got her killed,” Cork said.

  “If we’re lucky, we’ll find it, too.”

  “And if we’re luckier we won’t end up down there afterward.”

  They checked in at the Excelsior Hotel in Hot Springs, then drove west. It was getting late. The sun had set behind the mountains ahead of them, but there was still plenty of light, and in the valley where Jon Rude had his ranch, the spring grass looked blue in the twilight. They turned onto the gravel drive and drove up to the house. Cork saw Rude’s daughter, Anna, standing at the pasture fence, in deep communion with a horse on the other side. He and Parmer got out and walked to the girl.

  “Hello, Anna. Remember me?”

  She eyed him intently and nodded. “You’re the man Daddy helped look for your wife.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you find her?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  She studied his face in the twilight. “Are you sad?” Her own face seemed prepared to be sad with him.

  “Sometimes I am, Anna. But mostly I’m puzzled right now, and I need to talk to your father.”

  “He’s in the back with my mom.” She pointed toward the yard behind the house.

  “Is this your horse?” Parmer asked the girl. The bay kept poking its nose between the slats of the fence to nuzzle Anna’s hand.

  “Yes. His name is Brownie.”

  “I have a horse, too,” Parmer said. “Her name is Lullabye.”

  “Do you get to ride her?”

  “Oh, yes. We ride a lot together.”

  “Me and Brownie do, too, but only when my mom or dad can come. I can’t ride him alone.”

  “You will someday,” Parmer said.

  “When I’m bigger.”

  “When you’re bigger,” Parmer agreed with a serious nod.

  They left Anna and Brownie at the fence and walked to the backyard. They found Jon and Diane Rude staking out the contours of a large garden. A power tiller stood silent but ready. Rude carried a hammer and a bundle of wooden stakes. Diane had a big ball of string. When Rude spotted Cork, he dropped his bundle of stakes and came striding across the lawn. “My God, Cork. What a surprise.”

  “Jon, this my friend Hugh Parmer. Hugh, Jon Rude. And the lovely vision with her hands full of string is his wife, Diane.”

  Parmer shook hands with the couple and offered pleasantries.

  Rude hung the hammer through a loop on the utility belt he wore. “Why didn’t you let us know you were coming?”

  “Came up kind of quick, Jon,” Cork said.

  “Are you hungry?” Diane asked. “There’s chicken and a good marinara sauce still warm in the kitchen.”

  “As a matter of fact, I could eat,” Cork said. “Hugh, Diane’s an extraordinary cook.”

  “Jon made dinner tonight,” she said. “A man of many talents, my husband.”

  “Come on in,” Rude said, waving them toward the house. “And while you eat, we can talk about what brings you back to our neck of the woods. Pleasure, I hope.”

  Cork said, “We’ll talk.”

  Anna played in the living room with a bunch of her stuffed animals, carrying on her end of a lively conversation. In the dining room, over a plate of good food, Cork explained why he was there.

  “Jesus,” Rude said when he’d heard it all. He sat back. “Jesus.” He looked from one man to the other. “You’re serious?”

  “Never more so,” Cork said.

  “You really believe that somebody posing as this Bodine flew the plane and landed it somewhere?”

  “That’s what I believe.”

  Diane poured Cork another cup of coffee. “Landed it where?” she asked.

  “That’s what I’m hoping your husband can tell me.”

  “Me?” Rude looked confused.

  Cork spooned a little sugar into his coffee and stirred. “In Will Pope’s vision, the eagle landed in a long box and was covered by a white blanket. We figured it to be Baby’s Cradle. But what if it wasn’t? What if we interpreted the vision wrong?”

  “You really believed old Will?”

  “I believed him.”

  “Truth is, so did I,” Rude confessed.

  “Okay, so you know this country from the air as well as any man, I’d guess. Where else could you land a plane?”

  “There are a few private airstrips.”

  “Where would they be?”

  “Let me get some maps.”

  “First say good night to your daughter,” Diane told him. “I’m putting Anna to bed.”

  The girl came in and kissed her father. She said a cordial good night to Cork and Parmer, and then followed her mother to the back of the house.

  For the next half hour, Rude guided the two men along the topography east of the Wyoming Rockies, where the land was a pastiche of rugged buttes, alkali flats, dry gulches, grassy hills, and broad river valleys full of agriculture. He marked the airstrips he knew of but acknowledged they were dealing with a huge area and he probably didn’t know them all.

  “How about this?” Cork suggested. “What if we drew a line created from two points? The first would be where the plane dropped off radar and the second where those snowmobilers reported hearing it fly overhead. We extend the line east and take a look at what the nearest strips along it would be.”

  “As good as anything,” Rude agreed.

  When they’d done this, they found the estimated line of flight would have taken the plane southeast of the Washakie Wilderness, well north of the Owl Creek Reservation and the town of Hot Springs, across the badlands south of the Bighorns, and, if it could have flown that far, well into the empty grasslands of Thunder Basin. There were three private airstrips that Rude had marked near enough to this line to make them of interest.

  “Okay. Those are the airstrips we consider checking. Where else could that plane have landed?”

  “For a safe landing with a turboprop like a King Air, you’d need a hard, flat surface at least twelve hundred feet long.”

  “Any salt flats around here that might work?”

  “No, but we’ve got some alkali flats east of Shoshoni that might fill the bill.” He put his finger on a spot well to the south of the line they’d drawn on the map.

  Cork shook his head. “Doesn’t feel right. Too far to fly. What’s the land up here like?” He tapped the map east of the Washakie Wilderness.

  “Some ranchland. Some gas and oil development. But if there’s a flat enough stretch with few enough rocks to land a King Air safely, I don’t know it.”

  “What if they turned north?”

  “Meeteetse and Cody up that way. Comparatively speaking, lots of folks.”

  “South?”

  “The Owl Creek Reservation. And almost no people to speak of.”

  “Any private landing strips?”

  “Only one that I know of. Belongs to Lame Nightwind.”

  Cork saw the connection immediately and sat back. “Jesus.”

  In that same moment, Rude had the same realization. His eyes narrowed in dark understanding, and he said, “Your Indian pilot.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Let’s not rush to judgment,” Cork cautioned. In his years as a cop, he’d seen often enough the mess that could result from leaping to conclusions.

  “But it fits,” Rude said.

  �
�Okay, what’s his motive?”

  “Whoa, hold on a moment,” Parmer said. “Who’s this Nightwind?”

  “The pilot who guided us into the mountains when we were looking for Jo’s plane,” Cork said. “He’s Arapaho.”

  “What’s he like? Is he a man who could do this kind of thing?”

  “He seemed decent enough when he helped us search Baby’s Cradle,” Cork said and looked to Rude.

  Rude sat back and considered. “Lame’s got secrets, no doubt about it, but then who doesn’t? He was gone for a lot of years. People say that he’s been all over the world. Rumors have him as CIA or Special Forces. Some folks believe he was involved with the drug cartels. Others say the mob. Or smuggling or a mercenary. Lame never talks about his past, so who knows? Depending on what you believe, he’s either Robin Hood or the bogeyman.”

  “What’s the bogeyman side?” Parmer asked.

  “We had a pretty bad drug problem a few years ago,” Rude said. “When Ellyn Grant came back, the problem was huge. Mexican dealers had established themselves on the rez by marrying Arapaho women, and they used the rez as a depot to distribute every illegal substance under the sun. We didn’t have the resources to fight back. Hell, nobody had jobs, and a lot of Arapaho got sucked into dealing because the money was good. Those who weren’t dealing were getting high on the merchandise. Not much Andy No Voice or the DEA could do about it because it was a family thing and nobody would talk. Ellyn took on the drug dealers and she won, but probably she couldn’t have done it without Lame Nightwind. See, what happened was the Mexican dealers simply started disappearing. Here one day, gone the next, one by one, and those that left never came back. It’s possible they returned to where they came from, but that’s not what most people on the rez think. Popular speculation is that Nightwind was turning them into coyote food somewhere out in the vast emptiness of the rez where no one would ever find their bones. The authorities didn’t go looking for them and the dealers who didn’t just disappear got so spooked they cut and ran.”

  “So you think he’s quite capable of killing?”

  “He can be dangerous, I’m sure of that, but I don’t think of him as a bad man. As far as killing goes, I’d guess he’s plenty capable provided the reason is compelling enough.”

  “So what would his motive have been?” Cork asked.

  Parmer said, “We’ve already figured this is about the Yellowstone casino, haven’t we?”

  “I can suggest a motive.”

  Cork turned and found Diane standing at his back. She’d come in silently from putting Anna to bed. How long she’d been standing there he couldn’t say.

  “What motive?” he said.

  “Love.” She walked to the table and stood beside her husband with her hand affectionately on his shoulder. “Lame Nightwind is in love with Ellyn Grant.”

  Cork’s eyes jumped from Diane to her husband. “True?”

  Rude shrugged. “Gossip.”

  “I volunteer two days a week at the Singing Water Shelter in Red Hawk,” Diane said. “According to the women there, Lame has always been in love with Ellyn, all the way back to when they were kids.”

  “Is she in love with him?” Cork asked.

  “I don’t know. But her husband was a man nearly old enough to be her grandfather, so if not love, maybe something more physical.”

  Rude said, “I suppose there could be something between her and Nightwind, though I’ve never seen it.”

  “This is a big, empty territory, Jon,” Diane pointed out. “If you were careful, it wouldn’t be hard to carry on an affair without being observed.”

  Rude glanced up at his wife. “You seem to have given this a lot of thought. Should I be worried?”

  She laughed. “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

  Rude shook his head. “Grant and Nightwind? I don’t know.”

  “Men can be dense.” Diane patted his head affectionately.

  “Even if there’s something between them,” Rude went on, “I’d say he’s second in her affection, well behind the Arapaho people. She really does see herself as a kind of savior here.”

  “How do you mean?” Cork asked.

  “After she took care of the drug situation, she wanted to tackle the poverty of the rez. Edgar Little Bear argued for opening the land to the oil and gas companies. Hell, they’ve been eyeing the Arapaho holdings for years. Ellyn was opposed. Not just opposed, she was furious. She was sure the mineral exploration would destroy the land. When she couldn’t get Little Bear to budge, she married him and moved him in ways that words couldn’t. That’s how she got him behind the Blue Sky Casino.”

  “Sacrificed herself for the sake of the Arapaho, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Little Bear wasn’t exactly a prize catch. We all respected him enormously, but like Diane said, he was one pretty tough old piece of jerky.”

  “And his breath could have knocked over a buffalo,” Diane added.

  “Everyone on the rez understood what she was doing, probably even Edgar,” Rude said. “He knew he was getting himself a hell of a bargain.”

  “So Nightwind loves Ellyn Grant, and maybe he’d do anything for her. And Ellyn Grant loves the Arapaho and would do anything for them. How does the disappearance of the charter help either of them?” Cork asked.

  They lapsed into another thoughtful silence. Finally Rude said, “The Gateway Grand Casino up at Yellowstone.”

  “How?”

  “Edgar Little Bear didn’t like the idea of the casino at all. A few weeks before he disappeared, I went to a meeting of the tribal council where they discussed the Yellowstone plan. Little Bear asked me to be there and to talk to the council about my gambling problem. After I spoke, he told the council he knew a lot of other people with the same problem, white and Indian. He was afraid the casino was damaging the spirit of the Owl Creek Arapaho. He thought a bigger operation would only create a bigger problem. He pointed out that the Blue Sky Casino wasn’t exactly bringing in the flood of revenue Ellyn had promised, and he was afraid that this project, if it failed, it would ruin the reservation.”

  “How did Ellyn respond?”

  “With all kinds of charts and graphs and projections that promised we’d end up richer than God.”

  “Sounds persuasive.”

  “It was. But you didn’t know Edgar Little Bear. He was a great presence. People looked up to him. The council listened. Their big concern was the money. And Little Bear offered a solution. He proposed once again that the Arapaho begin talking with the oil and gas interests.”

  “How did that go over?”

  “The council was willing to consider it, but Ellyn hit the war-path. Which didn’t seem to bother Little Bear, so I figured they’d already discussed this between them. She argued that the companies would rape the land, but Little Bear was sure that, with proper oversight, the Arapaho could make sure that didn’t happen. He talked about available new technology and a new sensitivity to the environment. I don’t know about the Ojibwe, Cork, but the Arapaho consider things long and carefully before making any decisions. The plane disappeared before the council took up discussion again. When they did and the conversation finally ended many weeks later, Ellyn Grant had persuaded the council to support the Gateway Grand Casino.”

  “Which might not have happened if Little Bear had been around?” Cork said.

  “Exactly.”

  Parmer said, “Maybe it’s not one or the other. Maybe it’s both love and politics. With Little Bear out of the picture, the way is clear for Nightwind and Grant to proceed with their relationship and for the casino project to go forward.”

  “But why such a complicated plan to get rid of Little Bear?” Cork said.

  “Because if Edgar had just disappeared, everyone would have looked immediately at Lame Nightwind and Ellyn Grant, and Ellyn would have lost all her credibility to lead,” Rude said. “But if it’s the weather that was responsible and a whole plane full of people disappeared along with him, th
en nobody suspects a thing.”

  “It works,” Cork agreed. “In theory. But we still have no proof. If we could just tie Nightwind to the missing plane.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Rude said. “I’ve been thinking about Will Pope’s vision. He saw the eagle descend from the sky and glide into a box, where it was covered with a white blanket, right? What if the box was an airplane hangar and the white blanket was the snow on the roof?”

  “Does Nightwind have a hangar along with his private airstrip?” Cork asked.

  Rude smiled. “He does indeed.”

  “Can you draw me a map that’ll take me there?”

  “I’ll take you there myself.”

  “No, from this point on you stay clear of us. Things could get difficult, Jon.”

  “That doesn’t worry me.”

  Cork said, “Maybe not, but I’ll bet Diane doesn’t like the idea.”

  Rude looked up at his wife, who said, “If Cork really needs you, I won’t stand in your way. But I’d prefer to know you’re safe. I’d like Anna to grow up with a father.” She didn’t smile, and Cork understood that everything she said was true.

  Rude spent a long moment weighing his response, then gave a nod. “All right.”

  When they returned to their hotel, the desk clerk signaled to them as they passed. She was a woman of Indian descent, India of the subcontinent. She wore a smart blue suit and had an ornamental spot in the middle of her forehead. She smiled and handed Cork a note.

  “The sheriff was here earlier. He asked me to give this to you.”

  “Thank you.” Cork opened the note. It said, “Call me. Kosmo.” He’d written both his office phone and his cell phone number.

  Upstairs in the room that, for safety’s sake, he and Parmer had decided to share, Cork called the Owl Creek County sheriff. Because it was late, he tried the cell phone first.

  “Kosmo.”

  From the background sound, the harsh music of casino slots, Cork knew where the man was.

  “This is Cork O’Connor.”

  “Heard you were in town. I’d like to have a talk with you first thing in the morning, O’Connor.”