Willie seemed to fold, all the strength of his objections crumbling away.
“So,” Cork went on, “the part of the elephant I’m holding on to right now, Willie, is that Winona had finally had enough of being stepped on, and she went out to Trickster’s Point to put an arrow in Jubal’s heart. And now she’s gone into hiding, and I think you know where.”
Willie didn’t deny it.
“Do her and yourself a favor. Tell her that I want to talk to her. But if she won’t, tell her to see Henry Meloux. Will you do that?”
Willie thought it over and nodded. But he said, as if he knew it was absolutely the truth, the whole elephant, “She didn’t kill Jubal.”
“I’d love to hear that coming directly from her.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Willie promised.
Cork got into his Land Rover, which was parked outside the center, and sat a moment, thinking. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever actually believed Winona had killed Jubal, but from all his years in law enforcement, one of the things he understood was that most investigations primarily involved eliminating possibilities. Although he had nothing concrete to go on, he was having difficulty buying her guilt. For one thing, there was Willie’s absolute belief in her innocence, which had seemed sincere. Although Willie loved his sister and would probably say or do anything to protect her, there were a couple of other considerations that seemed to Cork to bolster Willie’s position. The first was the dead man on the ridge. He couldn’t see Winona in league with a chimook, nor did he see her as capable of that kind of cold-blooded killing. The other was Meloux’s assertion that the other side of love wasn’t hate, it was fear. Winona might have killed Jubal out of hate or anger, but fear? The only thing Winona Crane had to be afraid of was a life without Jubal Little in it.
So, unless something new arose to change his mind, Cork was willing to take her off his list of suspects. For the time being.
Which left two possibilities: Isaiah Broom, who’d already copped to the crimes, and Lester Bigby, who’d done nothing but blow smoke in response to all of Cork’s questions. If Broom hadn’t so willingly given himself over to the sheriff’s people, Cork would have suspected him more, odd as that seemed. But he tended to agree with Phil Holter that Broom had a hidden agenda. Maybe he was looking for a public forum, risky as that was. Or maybe he believed that Winona had killed Jubal and the John Doe on the ridge, and love compelled him to the sacrifice of himself. At any rate, Broom didn’t top Cork’s list. That slot was still reserved for Lester Bigby.
CHAPTER 34
Cork was deep in thought when he was startled back into the moment by a knock on the window of his door. He turned, surprised but very pleased to see Rainy Bisonette smiling at him through the glass. He rolled the window down.
“I called to you,” she said. “You seemed to be in another world.”
“A lot on my mind,” he apologized.
“I just came into town to do a little shopping at LeDuc’s store. Do you have time for some coffee at the Mocha Moose?”
“For you, I’ll make time.”
He got out, and together they walked to the little shop. There were a couple of other Shinnobs at tables drinking coffee and eating some of Sarah LeDuc’s locally famous cowboy cookies. Sarah, who was full-blood Ojibwe, appreciated the irony of that situation, and she was fond of saying that, when she made the cookie batter, she just wished John Wayne was still alive so he could see an Indian woman beating cowboys. Cork greeted the other customers with a raised hand and said “Boozhoo” to Sarah, and he and Rainy got their coffee and a cookie to split and sat at a table near the window.
“So, is it true?” Rainy asked. “Isaiah Broom confessed to killing Jubal Little?”
“Yes.”
“Is that what you’re thinking about so deeply?”
“No.”
“Because you believe he did it? Case closed?”
“I don’t think he killed Jubal. I think he’s covering for Winona Crane.”
“You believe Winona killed Jubal?” She seemed utterly amazed.
He explained to her briefly the history of Winona Crane and Jubal Little, two sides of the same leaf, a complicated connection that included an abiding love and, in the end, rejection and hurt. “The wrath of a woman scorned,” Cork finished.
“What a load of crap,” Rainy said and took a bite of the cookie.
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve decided, too. But I think Isaiah Broom believes it. He’s been in love with Winona since we were all kids. I think maybe he believes this is his chance to prove his love for her, a love greater than anything Jubal ever gave to her.”
“Love,” she said, picking up on the word. “After you left this morning, Uncle Henry and I talked about Jubal Little’s killing. He says he believes you’ll discover that Little was killed because of love.”
“I thought so, too, but like I said, I don’t think Winona did it, or Isaiah.”
“Not romantic love, necessarily. Love of money, love of power, love of territory, love of people. Uncle Henry says that more often than not we kill to protect the things we love. We kill to hold on to them.” She drank her coffee and looked at Cork over the cup rim, her dark eyes gently probing his face. “So, who has something to protect?”
Only one name came to Cork at the moment. The last guy left on his short list of suspects. Lester Bigby.
“Do you really think Bigby could have killed Jubal Little?” she asked, after he’d explained.
“The question of the day,” he said. “He certainly has something to protect. That resort development. It’s clear he’s lied about where he was the day Jubal was killed. And I’ve been thinking about the John Doe on the ridge. A white guy. I don’t see Isaiah Broom or Winona Crane throwing in with a chimook. But Lester Bigby might.”
“Or one of his investors,” Rainy offered.
Cork didn’t want to think about that. It opened up a whole new list of suspects. And he still had no idea who Rhiannon was or what part she played in all this and why she was important and threatening enough to put Cork and everyone he loved in imminent danger.
Rainy said, “You told me that a lot of what you do is just turn over rocks to see what’s there. What rocks are left to turn over, Cork?”
“What I really ought to do is track down Winona. It would be best if I could talk to her in person. But I keep hoping she’ll come out of hiding on her own. Even if she doesn’t talk to me, maybe she’ll go to Henry.”
“And then you’ll pump my uncle for answers.” It was a statement, not a judgment.
“Henry?” Cork laughed. “I could put your uncle on the rack and tear his arms out of their sockets, and he still wouldn’t tell me something he didn’t want me to know.”
They left together, and he walked Rainy to her Jeep. She would drive back toward Crow Point, park on an old logging road that ended a couple of miles from her cabin, and walk the rest of the way from there, a Duluth pack full of supplies on her back.
“I’d love to have you come home with me,” she told him as they stood together under the heavy overcast.
He shook his head. “Miles to go before I sleep.”
She put her hand to his face. Her palm was warm against his cold cheek. “You could use a vacation.”
“What I need is a good long lie-down in your arms. And a few more answers.”
He kissed her and stood watching as she drove away.
Then he turned back to all the miles still ahead of him before he slept.
CHAPTER 35
The bullet hole in his windshield reminded Cork of a spider with a dozen legs too many, and as he drove back toward Aurora the wind blew through, cold and with an eerie whistle. He thought about the shot Nick Jaeger had fired at him. To protect his sister, Nick had said. To protect something he loved.
What was it that the person who’d murdered Jubal had been protecting? What was it they loved enough to kill for, twice? What did Lester Bigby love that much? His investment? His fa
ther? Or was it his brother, an old love whose loss had lain festering in his heart for decades and then exploded in a tragic mess? Or maybe it wasn’t just one of these things but all of them together, braided in a thick rope of confused emotions that bound him to an inevitable end.
An inevitable end. The phrase sounded familiar to Cork, but why? Then he remembered. He realized those had been Jubal’s words, or nearly, spoken on the day that Cork had put in place the final stone in the wall that had been building between them for years. They’d been said in the late spring, just after Jubal had publicly announced his intention to run for governor and put forward his platform.
Politics, from the beginning, had agreed with Jubal Little. He was a natural leader, and even men and women who’d been in the political arena far longer than he found themselves falling in behind him. The mix of his message-fiscal conservatism and social responsibility-found a following in Washington, among centrists on both sides of the aisle, not just because Jubal spoke his platform so well but because of the way he conducted himself, with a Teddy Roosevelt kind of diplomacy. He was charming as hell, but in his eyes, his voice, his bearing, he carried a club, the threat of someone who knew how to wield power, the understanding that he was not a man to be crossed.
From the isolation of the deep woods that surrounded Aurora, Minnesota, Cork had watched his friend’s rise. And although from the outside Jubal seemed unchanged, something on the inside, Cork knew, was being transformed. The seed for what Jubal was becoming had always been there, but it had been nourished by circumstance, and the vision and tending of Winona Crane, and the money and ambition of the Jaegers. Cork wasn’t certain that Jubal really believed in any ideals, believed in anything he’d have sacrificed his life for. What Jubal believed in was the rightness of his own being. He believed himself to be the chosen one, and nobody and nothing could stand in the way of his destiny.
But Cork had tried to do just that. In spring, when he’d heard Jubal’s gubernatorial platform and, like many Ojibwe and residents of the Arrowhead, had felt stunned and betrayed, he’d summoned his friend north with a cryptic threat. They’d gone fishing, an excuse for them to be alone because Cork had insisted on it, in order to get away from the reporters and the photographers. Jubal’s people had spun it as an outing with the candidate’s oldest friend. Cork had thought, Whatever.
On Iron Lake, far from the eyes and ears of the public, Cork had laid it out.
“I don’t understand what you’re doing, Jubal. You’re selling out the Ojibwe. You’re selling out the North Country.”
“No, I’m buying back Minnesota,” Jubal replied, casting easily and watching his lure plop into the mirror that was the lake that day.
“Sulfide mining? That’s part of the price tag? Jubal, are you crazy?”
“I’ve looked at the impact studies. It can be done safely.”
“On paper maybe. Have you read the reports from the areas where it’s been tried? Ecological disasters, Jubal.”
“You got a nibble,” Jubal said, nodding toward Cork’s line.
“To hell with the fishing.” Cork threw down his rod. It hit the bottom of the boat with a sound like a thin bone cracking. “And the casinos? You build those and it’ll be just like in the old days when white men shot all the buffalo.”
“The studies show that there’s plenty of interest to support both state-run casinos and Indian gaming. Your vision is far too narrow, Cork,” Jubal said, as if lecturing a schoolboy. “You think of Tamarack County, I think of all of Minnesota. Like so many shortsighted people, you want to have things but without sacrifice. You need someone like me to make the hard decisions, the ones you can’t make on your own, the decisions about who gets what and how. What you need, and everyone like you, is someone who’s willing to do what you can’t bring yourself to do.”
The sun was brilliant that day, and Jubal, against the sky, slowly reeling in his line, looked absolutely imperious.
“Christ,” Cork said. “Who are you, Jubal? I don’t know you anymore.”
Jubal leveled on him a look that put ice water in Cork’s blood. “Did you ever? Really?” He held Cork’s gaze, a cobra mesmerizing his prey, then he said, “Why are we out here, Cork? What is it you have to say to me?”
“Politics have changed you, Jubal.”
“Politics bring out both the best and the worst in people. And you want to know something? Sometimes they’re the same thing.”
“You have an answer for everything, don’t you? Well how about this? I know your secrets.”
Jubal visibly relaxed, as if, with everything in the open, he understood his enemy and was confident that he was equal to the challenge.
“Secrets? You mean me and Winona?”
“That’s one.”
Jubal shrugged. “It would be inconvenient if the media found out about my friendship with Winona, but not fatal to my campaign. Camilla’s always known and understood. You said secrets. What else?”
Cork picked up the final stone and mortared it into place. “Trickster’s Point.”
Jubal didn’t seem surprised. “A long time ago. And you have no proof.”
“I don’t need to prove anything. An accusation of murder would be enough in itself, I imagine.”
“I could always say that you were the one who pushed Donner Bigby to his death.”
“Of course you could. But then you’d be guilty of covering up a murder. Almost as horrific to voters, I imagine. Either way, it would kill you politically.”
Jubal had gradually reeled in the last of his line. The lure came out of the lake, a walleye flicker shad, shiny in the sunlight, water falling from the barbs into a quiet so profound that Cork could hear the dull patter of the drops on the boat gunwale. Jubal carefully laid down his rod and said, “Blackmail?”
“You told me once that in politics it’s called ‘leverage.’”
Jubal looked toward the shore, toward the gathering of homes and shops and schools that formed Aurora. Sam’s Place was visible, small against the broad scatter of the town. And Cork was wondering if Jubal might be thinking of Sam Winter Moon, who’d taught them both important lessons about stalking, and about killing deer, and ultimately, about what it was to be a decent man in a difficult world. Cork thought Sam might be disappointed that he’d stalked and attacked Jubal in such a cowardly way, but it was done, and he waited.
Jubal finally turned his gaze on Cork, who found himself startled by what he beheld. It was as if Jubal’s size had grown suddenly even more remarkable, as if the shadow he cast had tripled and turned unfathomably dark and had swallowed Cork whole.
“I’ve warned you before,” Jubal said. “Never try to take something from me. I won’t warn you again. You can’t beat me. You never could. If you try, I won’t be responsible for what happens. Your end is your own doing.”
“My end?”
“Your end is inevitable. One way or another, you yield.”
“I’m not backing down, Jubal.”
“In that case,” Jubal said with a slight shrug, “I’ll have to break you.”
He stated it simply, as if it were a minor fact of life, as if he and Cork had no history, as if they’d never loved each other as brothers.
Cork, who’d always given in to Jubal, sometimes out of friendship and sometimes out of fear, stood his ground and said, “Bring it on.”
Outside Allouette, after he’d left Rainy, Cork pulled into Winona’s drive and parked at her house. Although he risked being seen, he wanted another look inside, this time in daylight and without Camilla Little distracting him with screams.
He disconnected his cell phone from the car charger and slipped it into the little holster on his belt. He got out and checked the garage. Empty. He knocked on the front door. No answer. He went inside, where the heat was on, but only enough to keep the cold at bay. He wandered to the kitchen and discovered that the broken glass from the frame Camilla had shattered the night before had been cleaned up. In the bedroom, he found t
he bed neatly made. In the bathroom, there were clean towels hanging on the rack and the bloodied towels in the hamper were gone. It was clear to him that Winona Crane had returned, but she wasn’t there now. He wondered why she’d come back, and why she’d run again.
Then his eyes fell on the little table beside the claw-footed tub, with its candle and the portable CD player and the single CD case, all of which he’d seen the night before. Now he saw something he’d overlooked in the dark. He picked up the plastic CD case, which was empty. Along the edge, someone-Winona probably-had put a little strip of white tape and had written the title of the disc the case held: Fleetwood Mac. Cork lifted the top of the portable player. The CD was inside. He picked it up and read the label, the list of the tunes he remembered well: “Monday Morning,” “Warm Ways,” “Blue Letter.” At the fourth song, he stopped scanning. “Rhiannon.”
It was no coincidence. He was holding a key. He knew it absolutely. But he had no idea what door it opened. What was the connection between Rhiannon and Winona and Jubal? And why was it, apparently, such a deadly one?
He’d only just begun to consider this when his cell phone chirped. He pulled it from the little holster on his belt. Caller ID told him it was Lester Bigby.
“O’Connor, will you meet me?” Bigby asked as soon as Cork answered.
“Where?”
“At my resort complex. Something I want to say to you.”
“You can’t tell me over the phone?”
“You want to know who killed Jubal Little, you’ll come.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Cork said.
Bigby hung up without a word of good-bye.
CHAPTER 36
The Crown Lake Resort was ten miles southwest of Aurora, nestled among rugged hills whose slopes were thick with pine trees and spruce and stands of aspens and birch. The shoreline was undeveloped because it had, for a very long time, belonged to the Arrowhead Mining Corporation. The mine, one of the smaller open pits on the Iron Range, had shut down operations more than a dozen years earlier, but Arrowhead Mining had held on to the property, until Lester Bigby made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. The resort had the lake all to itself. Which would have been perfect, except that, within the last year, a Canadian corporation had purchased mineral rights to land two miles east, from which they hoped to be given permission to extract base ore-copper-nickel and platinum. Sulfide mining would be the extraction process. Several streams ran through the mine area and emptied into Crown Lake. If the environmental watchdogs were right, the mining would eventually turn the water of the lake to sulfuric acid.
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