Copper River co-6

by William Kent Krueger

  “Gary’s got a Pulitzer,” she said.

  Dina looked at him skeptically. “For publishing the Marquette County Courier?”

  “I returned to Bodine five years ago to take over the paper when my father died. For ten years before that I was a correspondent for the New York Times. Covered Desert Storm, then Africa. I’ve been in more firefights than most combat soldiers, Ms. Willner. Wounded twice. Care to see the scars?”

  “I’ll pass,” she said.

  “One more thing.”

  They all waited. Mr. Johnson swung his eyes toward Ren and Charlie.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said seriously. “I’m pretty fond of you all.” He nodded in parting and started toward the door. “If I hear anything I think you ought to know, I’ll tell you, okay?”

  “Thanks, Gary.”

  “All this in Bodine.” He shook his head.

  “Know what this reminds me of?” Ren’s mother said as he opened the door. “Tom Messinger.”

  He stood a moment looking out at the afternoon. “Another sad chapter in the history of Bodine.” He closed the door behind him.

  Cork watched until Mr. Johnson drove away, then he turned to Jewell. “A Pulitzer prize? Jesus, did I underestimate him. And who’s this Tom Messinger?”

  “The boogeyman,” Ren said.

  “Don’t, Ren,” Jewell said. “Tom was no monster. He was just a kid who did something…incomprehensible.”

  “What?” Cork asked.

  “It was more than twenty years ago,” Jewell said. “Ancient history.”

  “I’d like to hear it.”

  “A girl was found in Lake Superior just south of town. She turned out to be a runaway. Murdered. For a while it didn’t appear that it would be solved. Then Tom Messinger hung himself in his mother’s basement. There was a note in his pocket confessing to the murder. It was tough on everybody in Bodine. Tom was a decent kid. We all liked him. He quarter-backed the football team, was looking at a full scholarship to his choice of schools. It was so bizarre.”

  “How’d it happen? Any idea?”

  “It was right after the Bobcats won the championship that year.”

  “According to the sign at the edge of town, the only year,” Dina said.

  “So you can imagine it was a big deal around here,” Jewell went on. “The Lion’s Club threw a team banquet at the Ramada in Marquette. I was supposed to go. I’d been dating Ned, but we broke up. Anyway, after the banquet a bunch of the guys went to a cabin one of the parents owned and they had a party of their own, with alcohol, grass, whatever. As nearly as anyone can figure, when Tom was driving home from the party, he picked up the girl, who was probably hitchhiking. Exactly what happened after that only Tom knew for sure. He killed himself over it. Devastated his mother. The whole town, actually. It was a terrible shock.”

  Ren said, “If you go to the football field at midnight on Halloween and say his name three times his ghost is supposed to appear.”

  “Ren,” his mother said, casting a cold eye his way.

  “That’s what everybody says.” He suddenly remembered something. “Hey, we know where Sara Wolf’s body came from.”

  Dina looked at Cork. “Is that true?”

  He smoothed the sheet over his legs. “I think we have an interesting speculation. Go ahead, Ren. You tell them.”

  Ren waited, savoring their anticipation. “The Copper River Club.” He saw the consternation in their faces. “We figured it’s the only place upriver where someone could drop the body easily.”

  “The Copper River Club?”

  It was clear to Ren that Dina had no idea what he was talking about. He explained, “It’s a big private area in the Huron Mountains where only really rich people can go. We tried to get up there to have a look but Mr. Stokely stopped us.”

  “Stokely?” his mother said, scowling. “Isaac or Calvin?”

  “Calvin.”

  “I don’t know what the connection might be between the girl and the folks up there,” Cork put in, “but I think it’s worth checking.”

  Ren saw a dark dawning on his mother’s face.

  “I think I know what the connection might be. Delmar Bell.”

  “Delmar Bell?” Cork asked.

  Dina said, “The handyman at Providence House.”

  “He and Calvin Stokely have been best friends since they were kids,” Jewell said. “And for a long time they partnered driving semis cross-country. I’ve never seen Calvin’s place, but I understand he has a cabin on Copper River Club property, right on the river itself.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Ren said. “It’s spooky.”

  Cork said, “You know these men, Jewell. Think they’re capable of doing this kind of thing?”

  From the expression on her face, Ren could easily believe his mother was in real pain. “I’ve never dealt with this kind of thing,” she replied. “I would’ve thought it took a monster, somebody whose face you could look at and see the horror they’re capable of. I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

  Cork turned his attention to Charlie. “You’ve got to talk to the police now. They need to know.”

  “No way.” She stiffened against the wall. “I’m not talking to anybody.”

  “What about Constable Hodder?” Ren said. “You know him. He’s all right.”

  She didn’t reply.

  Ren’s mother said, “You won’t be alone, Charlie. We’ll be there with you the whole way, promise.”

  Charlie folded her arms across her chest. “They’ll put me in juvenile detention. I’ve been there and I hate it. I hate cops.”

  “I’m a cop,” Cork said.

  “You’re a gimp,” she shot back.

  Cork didn’t seem to mind. He went on: “Charlie, I know you’re scared. But if the guys who did these things-to your father, to Sara Wolf, to your buddy Stuart-are going to be stopped, the police have to know what you know. Do you see that?”

  “I don’t have to tell ‘em,” Charlie shot back. “Can’t somebody else?”

  “It would be best coming from you,” he said evenly.

  “I won’t do it.”

  “What if…” Jewell began.

  They all looked at her.

  “What if I talked to Ned, told him what we know, and he was the one who took it to the Marquette sheriff’s people? If you were the sheriff’s investigator, Cork, how would you respond?”

  “The first thing I’d want to do is talk to Charlie and Ren myself.”

  “But if you couldn’t?”

  “I’d certainly look into things.”

  “There,” Charlie said, satisfied.

  Cork didn’t seem happy with this, but he finally nodded. “You’ll talk to the constable, Jewell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mind if I go along?” Dina asked. “I might be able to make a few salient suggestions.”

  “All right,” Ren’s mother replied. She looked at Cork. “You’ll be okay here?”

  “Between Ren and me, we can handle Charlie, I think.”

  He tossed Charlie a kidding smile. In return, she offered him a defiant glare.

  36

  J ewell was at least six inches taller than Dina Willner. She’d coped with the loss of her husband and was raising her son alone. Generally speaking, she thought of herself as a capable woman. Yet, there was something about being with Dina that made her feel as if they could walk into hell together and have tea with the Devil without breaking a sweat.

  “Thanks,” she said as she guided the Blazer onto the main road into Bodine.

  “What for?” Dina replied.

  “Being here. Doing this. A lot more than you bargained for, I know.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Jewell glanced at the other woman. “You and Cork, do you go way back?”

  “A couple of weeks is all.”

  “Why are you helping him like this?”

  “It’s a tangle of personal and professional reasons. Some unfinished
business.”

  Jewell wondered if Cork was the personal or professional part.

  “Do you have family back in Chicago?”

  “Someone who’s waiting for me, you mean? Not even a cat.”

  “Not even a cat?”

  Jewell thought about that, considered what it would be like to come home every night to an empty apartment, to a silence broken only by the soft clatter of her own existence. Sometimes at the end of a long day when she walked into the cabin and found that Ren and his friends had left a mess in the kitchen or the living room and she heard the sound of their roughhousing in Ren’s room, she would think how pleasant it might be to have the place to herself, as clean and quiet as she’d left it that morning. But that thought always evaporated in Ren’s presence when she asked him about his day and he shared with her the precious treasure that was his life.

  Dina shook her head. “It’s not what you think.”

  “What?”

  “You’re thinking, Lonely life, wasted life, something like that. Family and children, that’s where it’s at, right?”

  She started to deny it, but Dina had spoken the truth. Jewell said instead, “My life’s different, that’s all.”

  “No.” Dina looked at her pointedly, green eyes like jade knife blades. “You were thinking better. ” She turned back to the road ahead. “I could remind you about all the pain you’ve gone through as a result of the choices you’ve made-a lost husband, and I’ll bet you lose a lot of sleep over Ren-but what would be the point except to defend my own choices. My life is my life, yours is yours. End of discussion.”

  Jewell offered, “It feels to me like I’m not the one you’re trying to convince.”

  “Look, I like what I do, and what I do requires a particular kind of life. I need to be able to be gone at a moment’s notice without worrying about who I’m leaving behind, even if it’s only a cat.”

  They were quiet as they approached the bridge over the Copper River.

  “I had a snake once, a constrictor,” Dina said in a softer tone. “I got it because if I needed to be gone, I could feed it a mouse and it would be fine for several days.”

  “What happened?”

  “I found that I was coming home to a creature I didn’t particularly like, I couldn’t talk to, felt cold to my touch, and that I got a rise out of only when it wanted something from me. I realized the snake was just like my ex-husband.”

  She turned to Jewell and gave a little shrug. They laughed as they crossed the bridge and entered Bodine.

  Ned Hodder’s office was empty and locked. In the window was a permanent sign giving a number to call if anyone needed assistance. Jewell punched in the number on her cell phone. Ned answered. The signal was weak, his voice choppy.

  “Constable Hodder.”

  Jewell told him where they were and that they needed to talk.

  “I’m south of town on the lake, checking on a possible break-in at a summer cottage. But everything looks fine to me. So wait right there. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

  True to his word, he swung his Cherokee onto Harbor Avenue a quarter hour later and opened his office. He walked to his desk, where a cheap wire-bound notebook lay open. He quickly closed it and slipped it into the top desk drawer. Besides his own chair, which was an old wooden affair on wheels that squeaked whenever they rolled, there was only one other chair available. “Wait here.” He went through the metal door at his back.

  Dina walked around the desk and looked at the drawer where Ned had stowed his notebook. “What was that he put away so quickly? From the guilty look on his face, you’d have thought it was drugs.”

  “Poetry, probably.”

  A surprised smile appeared on Dina’s lips. “Your constable writes poetry? Is he any good?”

  “I don’t know. He never lets anybody see it. He thinks we don’t know but everybody does.”

  “That’s kind of sweet.”

  “He’s a sweet guy.”

  Dina sat on the edge of the desk. “Known him long?”

  “All my life. We even dated in high school.”

  “Didn’t work out?”

  “After graduation we went our own ways. I met my husband, Ned met his wife.”

  “He’s married?”

  “A widower.”

  Dina shook her head. “A sweet guy who writes poetry and is available. What’s wrong with this picture?”

  Ned returned with a folding chair. He waited until the women were seated, then sat down himself. He crossed his arms on his desktop and leaned toward Jewell, his big brown eyes full of interest.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  Jewell glanced at Dina who nodded her approval that they proceed.

  “We have an idea about how all the horrible things that have been happening here might be connected. Max’s death, the girl in the lake, Stuart Gullickson.”

  Ned sat back with a puzzled look on his face. “Connected? All those things? This I gotta hear.”

  “I need a promise from you first.”

  He shrugged. “Run it by me and we’ll see.”

  “Charlie’s involved, but she doesn’t want to talk to the police.”

  “Charlie’s okay? Thank God.”

  “We want to keep her out of it as long as we can.”

  Ned opened his hands, as if accepting the deal. “That’s fine by me, but this is really way outside my jurisdiction.” His eyes swung from Jewell to Dina. “Why are you telling me? What is it you think I can do?”

  Dina said, “You know the investigator. Talk to him, let him know the facts, point him in the right direction.”

  Ned rubbed a finger across his lips in contemplation. “I can try. So that’s the whole deal? I pass the word along to Terry Olafsson but keep Charlie out of it.”

  “That’s the deal.”

  “You have my word.” He leaned forward again, his face full of anticipation. “Talk to me.”

  Jewell told him what Charlie and Ren had related: Stuart seeing the body in the river; the late-night search along the shoreline of Superior; the encounter with the mystery boat; and Charlie’s experience at the trailer when the men killed her father.

  Ned interrupted. “But it was Stuart who saw the body, not Charlie or Ren?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How do you know anything was really there-that it wasn’t just a trick of the light or something?”

  “Because the body showed up in the harbor here the next day.”

  “ A body did. That doesn’t mean it had anything to do with whatever it was that Stuart, who I’m sure was stoned out of his head, may or may not have seen.”

  “It comes together when you connect all the dots,” Dina said.

  “Okay.” He raised his hands to slow things down a little. “Suppose the kids did see a body in the river- the body, why would anyone want them dead for that?”

  “Because the river is the key,” Dina replied.

  Ned looked confused.

  Jewell stepped in to help. “They don’t want anyone to know that the girl’s body came down the river, Ned, because that would point directly to them.”

  “Directly to who?” he said with a note of exasperation. “There’s no one on the river. Outside town, there’s almost no way to get to the river except along the trail or farther up at the Copper River Club.” As he said those last words, an understanding seemed to dawn in him, and he looked concerned. “You’re not saying…what? Some rich guys killed that girl and dumped her in the river?”

  Jewell said, “The connection’s not through money, Ned. The dead girl was living at Providence House.”

  “In Marquette?”

  “That’s right. Delmar Bell works at Providence House.”

  “So?”

  “Who’s his best friend, Ned?”

  “Calvin Stokely.” Ned’s eyebrows met for a few moments as he put together the information and the insinuation. “Jesus, you’re not saying Bell and Stokely did this, a
re you?”

  “All I’m saying at this point is that the only connection we’ve found so far between the girl, Bodine, and the Copper River runs through Delmar and Calvin.”

  “Why would they do something like this?”

  “We’re not accusing them of anything at this point,” Dina said, “but the circumstantial connections are certainly there, and at the moment that’s all we have. So maybe it’s time to start asking this Bell and Stokely some questions.”

  “Olafsson seemed to think the girl’s death might have been suicide,” Ned argued.

  Jewell shook her head. “We’ve spent the day talking to people who knew her, Ned. It wasn’t suicide.”

  He locked his hands behind his head, as if his skull were too full now and he was afraid it would split open. “Del and Calvin. Those two have always been creepy. But I can’t just walk up to Olafsson and say, ‘Take a look at these guys. They’re creepy.’ ”

  “It’s possible he already has pieces of the puzzle you don’t know about and when you give him what we’ve given you, it may all fit. I think you ought to try, Ned. Please,” Jewell added on a softer note.

  “Let me see if I can set something up.” He picked up his phone and punched speed dial. He waited. Outside, the sky had grown hazy and the light in the room had dimmed a bit. “Terry, it’s Ned Hodder. Give me a call when you can. It’s important.”

  He hung up. “Voice mail. Let me try something else.” He punched the buttons on the phone and a moment later said, “Yeah, Roberta, it’s Ned Hodder in Bodine. How’re you doing?” He listened, laughed lightly. “I know. Must be a full moon. Listen, I’m trying to reach Terry Olafsson but only getting his voice mail. Any idea where he might be? Uh-huh…uh-huh…okay…Yeah, I’d appreciate that, thanks.” He set the phone in its cradle. “He’s in court right now. Roberta’ll page him, have him give me a buzz when he can.”

  Dina put her hand on the desk and Ned looked her way. “This Stokely who has the cabin on the river,” she said. “Any chance of seeing his place? Maybe seeing him?”

  “Why?”

  “Curiosity. Don’t you have it?”

  The question appeared to catch him off guard and he seemed uncertain whether it had been a jab at his professionalism.

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked warily.