It was a chilly morning. In protected coves, the surface of Iron Lake was covered with a languorous mist. Russet leaves hung on the branches of the oaks. The tamaracks, brilliant yellow, seemed like plumes of fire exploding from the dark ground that edged the marshes. Normally, Cork would have reveled in the beauty of the woods, but as he sipped his coffee he was deep in thought, not only baffled over who’d want him dead, but wondering if Ed Larson would find anything useful at the Tibodeau cabin.
The deputies, Howard Morgan and Nate Schilling, knew he was coming, and they both stepped from the cruiser as he drew up and parked behind them. They looked tired, as though they’d had enough of sitting all night trying to fight sleep, as though they’d probably had enough of each other, too. He hauled out the other coffees he’d bought and the granola bars and offered them to his men.
“The java’s probably a little cool by now, but it’s pure caffeine. And take your pick of the bars.”
“Thanks,” Morgan said. He was the older of the two deputies, a seven-year veteran of the force and of Duluth PD before that. He was an easygoing sort, and Cork liked him.
The hill cast a shadow across the road. The sun would be a long time in reaching the hollow, hours before it drove out the cold that lay along the bottom. When the men breathed and when they spoke, clouds of vapor escaped their lips.
“Bos said everything was quiet last night.”
“That’s right, Sheriff.” Schilling took a bite of a peanut butter–chocolate chip granola bar and followed it with a slug of coffee. Although he’d completed his schooling and training almost two years before, he was still considered a rookie. Usually, he had a little rose in his cheeks, but he looked pretty sallow at the moment.
“Nobody curious drop by?”
“Nobody we could see anyway,” Schilling said. “After the floodlights got packed up, it was pretty dark. Could have been someone watching from the trees, I suppose.”
“You suppose?” Morgan laughed so hard coffee dribbled out his nostrils.
“What’s that all about?” Cork said.
“Nothing, Sheriff. Not a thing,” Schilling said.
“Like hell. Cork, he was so scared somebody was taking a bead on us that he spent the whole night on the floor of the cruiser.” Morgan wiped his nose with the sleeve of his uniform.
“Morgan, you asshole. It wasn’t like that, Sheriff.”
“You both wore your armor the entire watch?”
“Absolutely,” Schilling said.
Cork figured it was a good thing Morgan was sporting his Kevlar vest, because if Schilling’s eyes had been bullets they’d have blown holes all the way through him.
He stared at the dark side of the hill, where snakes of mist coiled and uncoiled among the pine trees along the base. “I’m going up, see what things look like on top.”
“You’re not waiting for Captain Larson?” Schilling said. When he saw Cork’s face, he added, “I just meant that he’s on his way. We got word from Bos just before you came.”
“Hey, Einstein, the sheriff’s got a radio,” Morgan said.
“Oh, right.”
“Just let him know where I am,” Cork said.
He walked fifty yards down the road to the place where, the day before, he and Pender and the state trooper named Fitzhugh had begun maneuvering up the hill, moving under the cover of trees and exposed outcroppings, working their way carefully toward the rocks where the sniper had been. He wasn’t wearing his uniform now. He’d put on old jeans, a forest green wool shirt with a quilted lining, and his Timberland boots. His badge was pinned on his gun belt next to his .38. And he wore a Kevlar vest.
The night had not been cold enough for frost, but the hillside was covered with dew, and his boots slipped on the wet rocks and wild grass. The top of the hill was maybe two hundred feet above the road. He was breathing hard by the time he reached the crown, puffing out clouds like an old steam engine. He hoped this was due mostly to the lack of sleep, but he was concerned that his age might also be an issue. He wasn’t far from turning the corner on half a century, and although he was an avid jogger, he knew that age eventually caught up with everyone, even the swiftest runner.
Cork walked along the spine of the hill a hundred yards south to the jumble of rocks where they’d found the shell casings. The thin topsoil there had completely eroded away, exposing gray gneiss beneath that had been fractured by aeons of freeze and thaw. There were sharp edges to the rocks, and the shooter had covered his position with a bedding of pine needles. It was among the needles that Cork had found the shell casings the night before.
The road down the hollow took a right turn and followed a deep furrow just to the south where a thread of water called Tick Creek ran. North, the narrow access to the Tibodeau cabin was clear all the way to where it branched off the main road. Wooded hills stretched away in every direction. Pressing down above it all was the great blue palm of the sky. The shooter had chosen well, a vantage from which he could clearly see not just the cabin but also the approach of anyone traveling the road from the north or south.
He looked down at the pine-needle bed in the rocks and was puzzled.
The shooter had been careful in so many respects. Knowing Lucy and Eli’s schedule. Calling from the cabin, then wiping away all traces of his or her presence. Choosing a position that was excellent not only because of its vantage but also because it lay on solid rock where no footprints would be left. So why did he ignore the shell casings? They were crumbs on an otherwise empty plate, impossible to miss. Had the shooter simply overlooked them? Or been suddenly rushed, worried by the sound of the sirens as Pender and Borkmann approached, and fled without taking the time for the last details?
Cork considered the dead dogs. He thought it likely they were killed first, then the shooter or the accomplice made the call and climbed the hill, probably the same way he’d come. Did the accomplice come, too? How did they leave? Cork walked toward the back side of the hill where the night before it had been too dark to go. The slope was gentler there, with more soil and long tufts of wild oats beneath the aspen trees. About fifty yards from the shooter’s rocks, Cork found a spot where the incline increased suddenly and where some of the ground cover had been disturbed by a sliding shoe or boot. A few feet farther down was a scar in the soil where a whole bunch of oat stalks had been pulled completely out, as if someone had grabbed them in an attempt to prevent a fall. Below that, the bushes had been broken by the weight of a large object, perhaps a tumbling body. The shooter, or someone with the shooter, had taken a nasty spill.
Cork picked his way down the back side of the hill and reached the bed of Tick Creek. Fall had been dry, and this late in the season there was only a small trickle of water crawling along the bottom. A couple of hundred yards to the south, the creek crossed the road. That was the direction from which Pender had come the day before with his lights flashing and his siren screaming. Cork didn’t think the shooter would have fled that way. North was different. Before it intersected County 23 a half mile distant, Tick Creek curved sharply away from the turnoff to the Tibodeau cabin, so that a cop coming from that direction would see nothing of the creek. Cork turned north. The banks were high and formidably steep from the cut of floodwaters that came with the snowmelt each spring, and they were crowned with a thick growth of brush and popple. Someone on foot could have climbed out, but not a vehicle. In a few minutes, Cork reached the bridge at County Road 23. The structure was made of creosote-soaked wood with a web of rusted iron railing along either side and decorated with painted graffiti. In the soft dirt of the narrow shoulder at the east end of the bridge, Cork found recent tire tracks.
Larson watched Cork approach on foot. “I thought you were up there.” He pointed toward the hilltop.
Cork said, “I walked down the other side and around the hill.”
“You needed the exercise?” came a voice behind him.
Cork smiled and turned as BCA agent Simon Rutledge stepped from the cabin.
Rutledge spoke like Jimmy Stewart, with a little catch in his throat and a naively honest tone that you had to love. He was in his midforties, an unimposing man with thinning red hair and a hopelessly boyish smile, but his appearance and demeanor belied a tough spirit. Cork had watched Rutledge question suspects. He never browbeat, never bullied. He offered them his sympathy, bestowed on them his neighborly smile, opened his arms to them, and, after he got their trust, almost always got their confession. Simon Rutledge was so good that whenever he interviewed a suspect, other agents referred to it as “Simonizing.”
“How’s it hanging, Cork?” Rutledge said. The two men shook hands.
“I’ve had better days.”
“Bet you have. Where you been?”
Cork nodded toward the hilltop. “Our shooter left the back way. I found tire tracks at the bridge over Tick Creek on County Twenty-three. They’ll photograph well, and I’ll bet if we’re careful we can get a good cast made.”
“Mack,” Rutledge called to one of his BCA evidence team who was digging in the ground in front of the Tibodeau cabin. He gave the agent directions to the bridge over Tick Creek. “Check out the tire tracks…” He glanced at Cork.
“East side, south shoulder.”
“You heard him. Get good photos, and I’ll be there in a bit to help with casting.”
“On my way.” Mack put his shovel down and headed for his state car.
“You take a look at the cabin?” Cork asked Rutledge.
“Yeah. But I know Ed did a good job on it, so I wasn’t expecting much. I was just thinking of going up top to have a look where our shooter camped out. You see anything while you were up there?”
“I didn’t look hard. Mostly I was thinking.”
“Wondering who wants you dead?” Rutledge flashed a slightly diminished version of his smile but it still produced dimples. “I had a talk with Ed, and he’s got a point about you being the target. You need to be thinking seriously about who’d want you in their gun sight.”
“Any time you bust someone, deep down they want to bust you back,” Cork said.
“Not everybody’s got the balls for that. The question for you is who does?”
Two of Cork’s deputies were helping the BCA people dig in front of the cabin. They put a shovelful into a metal sieve, sifted, tossed out rocks and other detritus, then repeated the process. They were looking for the round that hit Marsha Dross. Cork hoped they’d find it and that it would prove good for a ballistics analysis.
Rutledge walked to his car, an unremarkable blue Cavalier, and brought back an evidence bag that held the two shell casings Cork had found the night before. “Remington .357, packed with a hundred fifty grains, I’d say. Probably fired from something like a Savage One-ten. That would be my firearm of choice, anyway.”
“Why? That’s a game rifle,” Cork said.
“With a good scope, one of those babies could make Barney Fife into an effective assassin. And up here, a Savage One-ten is as common as a snowmobile. Wouldn’t raise any eyebrows like a more sophisticated sniper weapon might.”
“You’re saying it could be anyone,” Cork said.
“Those tracks you found at the bridge might help narrow things a bit.” Rutledge looked at Cork wistfully. “So?”
“So what?”
“Who wants you dead?”
6
CORK DROVE THE Pathfinder back to Aurora and parked in the lot of the community hospital. He checked at the reception desk, then walked to Intensive Care, where Marsha Dross had been moved. It was breakfast time for the patients, and the smell of institutional food that filled the hallways reminded Cork that he hadn’t eaten that morning. He should have been hungry, but he wasn’t.
He found Frank Dross sitting in a chair outside Marsha’s room. Marsha’s father, a widower, was a retired cop from Rochester, Minnesota. Like his daughter, he was tall and not what you would call good looking. He had a long nose, gray eyes, and gray hair neatly parted on the right side. He wore a black knit shirt and tan Haggar slacks with an expandable waist that was, in fact, expanded over a small paunch. Cork had met him several times and liked the man.
Dross stood. “Sheriff.” He shook Cork’s hand.
“How’re you doing, Frank?”
“Better, now that I know Marsha’s out of danger. They tell me you saved her life.”
Saved her life? Maybe he’d kept her from dying in the dirt in front of the Tibodeau cabin, but he’d also been responsible, in a way, for the bullet that put her there.
“Do you know why yet?” Frank asked.
“We’re working on that. How is she this morning?”
“Officially, she’s listed in guarded condition. They got her hooked up to all kinds of monitors, but she’ll be fine.”
“Fine?” Charlie Annala came from Marsha’s room. He didn’t appear to be any happier with Cork this morning than he’d been last night. “Because of that bullet, she may never be able to have kids. We may never have kids. You call that fine?” He wore the same clothing as the night before. He hadn’t shaved, and from his smell it was clear he hadn’t showered, either. The skin seemed to hang on his face like heavy dough, and his bloodshot eyes looked fractured. “And the hell of it is, nobody can tell me why.”
“Sometimes, Charlie, just being a cop is reason enough for people to hate you.” Frank put a hand on his shoulder. “In the sixties, seventies, they called us pigs. It’s not a job that gets a lot of respect. I told Marsha it wouldn’t be easy, but it was what she wanted to do. It was always what she wanted to do.” Frank gave Charlie a gentle pat. “It can be tough, being in love with a cop.”
“Is she allowed visitors?” Cork asked.
“One at a time,” Frank said.
“Mind if I go in?”
Charlie opened his mouth, about to object, but Frank said, “Sure. Keep it short, though, okay?”
The curtain was partially drawn. Cork walked to the end of the bed. An IV needle plugged into Marsha’s right forearm fed a clear liquid into her body. She was hooked to a heart monitor and a machine that tracked her respiration as well. She lay with her head deeply imbedded in a pillow, the skin of her cheeks a bloodless white. Even so, she managed a smile when she saw Cork.
“Hi,” she said.
“How are you feeling?”
She beckoned him nearer. He walked along the side and took the hand she offered.
“Drugged,” she said. “Not feeling much.” She squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”
“Any time.”
She shifted a little, tried to rise, but gave up. “The investigation?”
Cork looked out the window, which faced east. The hospital was on a small rise at the edge of town, and Iron Lake was visible beyond a line of birch trees that were like white scratches against the blue water.
“We’re getting somewhere,” he said. “We’ve got shell casings, and I’m sure we’ll get a bullet for ballistics. We’ve got tire tracks, too.”
“A suspect?”
“We’re working on that.”
“Eli and Lucy?”
“They weren’t anywhere near the cabin last night.”
She nodded faintly. “I’ve been thinking. You and me in our uniforms, in bad light, we probably don’t look all that different. I think somebody knew you’d answer that call.”
“I’ve been thinking that, too,” Cork said. “We’ll get him, Marsha.”
“Him? A woman called in the complaint.”
She was a good, smart cop. Even in her drugged state, she’d been putting the pieces together.
“Him, her, them. We’re going to do our jobs and we’re going to get them.”
“You better.” She smiled weakly and gave his fingers another squeeze.
“Rest,” he said.
She nodded, closed her eyes, and let go of his hand.
It was clear to everyone—even Marsha, full of drugs—that Cork was the one the sniper had meant to take out. As he drove away from the hospita
l with the sunlight sliding off his windshield, he thought about the question Simon Rutledge had posed: Who wants you dead?
They’d talked about it for a bit at the Tibodeau cabin, gone over a few possibilities. Only one seemed plausible. The raid on the meth lab outside Yellow Lake had gone down in July, just two weeks after Cork took over as sheriff. He’d had very little to do with the investigation, but the bust resulted in a tragic afternoon for a family of criminals. Two men, brothers, Lydell and Axel Cramer, were inside an old Airstream trailer parked next to their rural home when Cork’s people arrived and pounded on the door. The chemicals used to make methamphetamine were volatile. It was dangerous business. The two brothers had panicked. There was an explosion, and flames engulfed the trailer. One man stumbled out, his clothing on fire. Cy Borkmann wrestled him down and rolled him in the grass until the flames were extinguished. The man was Lydell Cramer. His little brother Axel never made it out. Lydell was airlifted to St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul, where he awaited trial while recovering from third-degree burns over most of his body. He didn’t talk much, but when he did it was all about getting even with “the pig-fucking cops” who’d killed his brother.
They’d kicked around the idea of Lydell Cramer and decided it was worth looking into.
Patsy, who was on duty in Dispatch, radioed Cork and told him Jo had requested he call her at her office. Instead of calling, he drove straight over.
The Aurora Professional Building was a newer, single-story brick construction on the west side of town. Cork pulled into the lot and went inside. He passed the offices of David Spender, DDS, and Francis Kennilworth, CPA. He came to Jo’s office and went inside. The anteroom was empty, and the door to Jo’s inner office was closed. A sign sat propped on the desk: BACK IN 5 MINUTES. HAVE A SEAT. Which probably meant that Jo’s secretary had gone for coffee, and Jo was with a client. Cork was just about to sit down and wait when the inner office door swung open and a man stepped out. Cork had met him only once before, and he hadn’t liked him.
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