“I’m supposed to take your word for that?”
“Not just my word, Daniel’s, too. He seems to have taken a liking to her.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“The money for the girl. That was our original deal.”
“So it was.”
“Give me the phone, Dyson. Do it now. Don’t make me wait.”
“Any frickin’ time now, guys,” I said.
“Something’s wrong,” Daniel repeated.
Please, please, please, my inner voice chanted.
The lights came on, five of them in an arch arranged from one end of the clearing to the other. I was right about the Target Field reference—you could play baseball under them.
“This is the ATF,” a man shouted over a megaphone. “You’re surrounded.”
There was something else about dropping weapons and raising hands. By then I had Jill turned around and we were both running, hand in hand, toward the dock. She was in bare feet, yet that didn’t seem to slow her down.
Guns were being fired. Single shots and full automatics. I heard someone shout, “Don’t hit the girl.”
The wooden dock groaned under our feet. We had to duck our heads to avoid being decapitated by the wing of the seaplane. When we reached the end of the dock we jumped in. The water was deep. We didn’t touch bottom. I held tight to Jill’s hand while I kicked my legs toward the surface. We both came up gasping for breath. I was facing the lake. In the distance I could see the lights of two boats that had not been there before. They were coming fast.
I turned toward the shore. The scene in the clearing was chaotic. Two of the Mexicans were down. The third henchman and his boss were standing rigid, their hands locked behind their heads. Men dressed in windbreakers emblazoned with the initials ATF pushed them to their knees and clasped their arms behind their backs with handcuffs.
I could not see Brand and Daniel, and then I did. Somehow they had managed to reach the wooden shed. The far side of the shack was on fire—I have no idea how that happened. Brand was inside the shed; Daniel had taken cover behind the near wall. They were both firing on the ATF agents with assault rifles. They had attempted to escape into the woods, but the agents had blocked their path.
I pulled Jill to me, wrapped an arm under her shoulders, and swam with one hand to the end of the dock—it never even occurred to me to ask if she could swim. We grabbed hold of the piling. I positioned myself so that my body was between her and the clearing.
The fire grew until the far side of the shack was engulfed in flame. I wanted to warn the agents about the aviation fuel inside, only I knew they wouldn’t hear me—the roar from the two speedboat engines was so loud I couldn’t even hear myself. As it turned out, the agents didn’t need a warning. I realized that when one of them jumped into the cab of the pickup truck. I whispered a “thank you” to no one in particular that I had left the key in the ignition. The agent started up the truck and drove across the clearing, pulling the trailer and pontoon boat with it.
Moving the vehicles exposed Brand and Daniel to additional gunfire. Brand was the first to fall. Daniel was hit, yet he managed to keep his feet. He leaned against the wall of the shack. He looked out toward the lake. It seemed to me that he was staring directly at Jill when the aviation fuel ignited.
The words formed in my head—The Jabberwock with eyes of flame, came whiffling through the tulgey wood—yet I couldn’t manage to say them out loud.
* * *
Jill sat in Brand’s canvas chair, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Someone had built up the fire, and she was staring into it. Her hair had dried some, yet it was still matted to her head. Her eyes were swollen from the crying she had done. I sat next to her and held her hand. I had been holding it for nearly two hours. I just didn’t want to let her go.
The volunteer fire department had come and gone. There hadn’t been much for them to do except wet the ground and extinguish all the embers they found. After the barrels had exploded, the fire burned off all the aviation fuel. A few trees had gone up with it, yet not as many as you’d think before the fire died out on its own.
The Mexicans were on their way to the Cities along with their weapons. The serial numbers of the guns proved that they belonged to a batch the ATF had lost in Operation Fast and Furious. There were only four of them, and Bullert seemed disappointed until his people searched the Mexicans’ seaplane. Apparently they had enough ordnance on board to arm the entire population of Orr. The seaplane was licensed to an address near Thunder Bay, Ontario. Bullert conveyed that happy bit of news over the phone to his people in Washington, D.C. It was a pleasant conversation. When he finished he smiled broadly and announced he was going to Canada in the morning.
“Good for you,” I said.
Meanwhile, his people searched the pontoon boat. They found the money all safe and sound, but not the bomb.
“Where is it?” Bullert asked. The woman I knew as Carolyn Rooney stood next to him. “We searched the pontoon from one end to the other.”
“Where’s what?” I asked.
“The bomb?”
“What bomb?”
“You’re telling me there was no bomb?”
“Nice bluff,” Rooney said. “Very nice.”
“Half a bluff,” I said. “There is a second bomb, it’s just not on the boat.”
“Where is it?” Bullert asked again.
“There’s a shed near Lake Cody that’s used by Deputies Eugene James and Allen Williams. Inside, you’ll find an IED made with half a block of C-4 that you should be able to trace to our Mexican friends. When you apply for the search warrant you can tell the judge you’re acting on personal observations by a credible confidential informant who has provided reliable information to the government in the past.”
“Is that true?” Rooney asked.
“Does it matter? Oh, and if you look carefully, you’ll find evidence of other crimes as well.”
Bullert was smiling. “I have to tell you, McKenzie, this isn’t the way I imagined things would go, but damn”—he patted my shoulder—“great job.”
“We were lucky. Lucky that you understood what I meant when I told Daniel to strap on his sneakers.”
“Sneakers?” Jill asked.
“We placed a GPS transmitter in the sneakers David Skarda was wearing when he escaped custody,” Bullert said. “That’s how we were able to track his movements, how we were able to track McKenzie once he put them on. It told us where he was going. I’m sorry it took so long to get into position.”
“McKenzie,” Jill said. “Is that your real name?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You’re an informant, a spy for the ATF?”
“Yes.”
“Helping Dave, that was a lie, then.”
“Yes.”
“All the time acting like you were our friend, that was a lie, too. It’s all been a lie.”
“Not all.”
She stared at the fire some more. I released her hand—I thought she would want me to—yet she continued to hold mine.
“We need to get you home,” I said. “Everyone must be worried sick.”
“I’ll get you a car,” Bullert said. He walked off. Rooney followed him.
“McKenzie?” Jill asked.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“When he … when the man said to give him the phone or he would … he would kill me—were you going to give him the phone, give it to him even though he said he was going to kill you? If the police didn’t come, would you have given him the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
A moment later, Bullert reappeared.
“I have a car,” he said. “Carolyn will drive. She’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“Thank you,” I said.
When I rose from my chair, Jillian rose from hers. The blanket slipped from her shoulders, revealing her damp nightgown. She released my hand to pull it back around her. When she finished, she exte
nded her hand to me. I took it gladly. She smiled. It was bright and warm, and I thought that after everything I’d done to her and her family for Jill to give me that smile—it was like the first time I went to confession at St. Mark’s Catholic Church when I was a kid. I felt saved.
We turned to walk toward the car. I stopped when I saw a shadow emerge from the forest near the mouth of the road.
“Who’s that?” I spoke loud enough that the agents were spooked; hands flew to the butts of handguns.
“It’s me,” the shadow replied.
I recognized him when he came closer to the fire.
“Fenelon?” I asked. I had completely forgotten about him. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve come to surrender.”
“Surrender?” Bullert asked.
“Surrender for what?” I asked.
“For what I’ve done.”
“What have you done, Brian? What have you done that falls under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives?”
“I betrayed you.”
“From how your face looks, I can hardly blame you.”
“I tried, I tried—they kept hitting me…”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“Whatever you’ve done, it had nothing to do with us,” Bullert said. “That’s between you and McKenzie.”
“I have no complaints,” I told him.
Fenelon’s mouth fell open and his eyes widened like a poor student trying to comprehend the A on his term paper.
“C’mon, Brian,” I said. “We’ll take you home.”
Jill squeezed my hand and leaned in until her head was resting against my shoulder.
“I was right, what I said before,” she told me. “You are a big softy.”
JUST SO YOU KNOW
Sunday morning I drove up to Ely. Nina had wanted to tag along, but I figured it was one of those trips I’d best take alone. I was surprised by how understanding she had become after I got past the explanation of why I called Shelby instead of her. I also explained that Shelby had been wrong when she suggested that I wanted to marry my best friend’s wife and since I couldn’t, I vowed not to marry anyone.
“That might have been so once, but it hasn’t been true for four years, nine months, and seventeen days,” I said.
“And what happened four years, nine months, and seventeen days ago?” Nina asked.
“I met you.”
That seemed to make her happy; Bobby, not so much. He was furious that I had made Shelby my moll—those were his words, not mine—although his attitude mellowed somewhat when Nina said that Shelby could keep the dress.
Even though it was out of the way, I stopped at the Chocolate Moose to buy a couple of strawberry-rhubarb pies before swinging back down toward Krueger. I was driving my Audi S5 partly because it was such a sweet ride and partly because the county sheriff’s department still hadn’t released my Jeep Cherokee. Apparently the sheriff wanted to arrest someone —anyone—for the armed robbery of the Mesabi Security Company’s remote vault, the fact it was a front for an ATF sting be damned. Phone calls were being made, however, and I knew nothing would come of it.
I also knew I would find the Iron Range Bandits at the cabin on Lake Carl, although I wasn’t sure I should call them that anymore. They were sitting on the redwood deck looking both pleased and forlorn, an odd combination, yet fitting, all things considered. They heard me climbing the stairs. Skarda made it clear that I wasn’t welcome.
“You sure?” I asked. “I brought pie.”
Jill hopped up from the picnic table and crossed the deck. Her arms circled my shoulders and she kissed my cheek. It was difficult to return the hug because I was carrying the pies in one hand and an envelope and newspaper in the other. From his expression, that was just fine with Roy.
“I never thanked you for saving my life,” Jill said.
“You thanked me so many times I lost track,” I said.
She hugged me some more as Roy crossed the deck.
“I’m grateful for what you did, Dyson,” Roy said. “On the other hand, you’re the one who put her in danger, so I don’t know what to think about it.”
“He didn’t put me in danger, John Brand did,” Jill told him. “And his name is McKenzie. Rushmore McKenzie.”
I didn’t know how pretty my name was until she spoke it.
Jill led me by the arm to the table. I set the boxes containing the pies on top of it. “I’ll get plates and forks,” she said, and disappeared into the cabin.
The old man was sitting in his customary spot at the head of the table. Josie, Skarda, Liz, Jimmy, and Claire were gathered around it. Roy remained by the door to the cabin as if he were guarding it. No one else seemed to have anything to say, so I asked, “Have you seen the newspaper?”
I dropped a copy of the Sunday Duluth News Tribune in front of them. They leaned in to take a look. There was a story beneath the fold. The headline read:
DEPUTIES ACCUSED OF ARMED ROBBERY, SUSPECTED OF BEING IRON RANGE BANDITS
Liz took up the paper and read aloud.
Two county deputies implicated in a scheme to smuggle illegal weapons across the Canadian border are now also suspects in a series of unsolved armed robberies that occurred throughout the Iron Range in the past year.
According to a government spokesman, a search of a storage unit owned by Deputy Eugene James and Deputy Allen Williams produced sacks of receipts and checks that were taken during a daring daylight robbery of a grocery store in Silver Bay, MN.
At the time, authorities claimed the robbery was the work of a group known as the Iron Range Bandits that had committed at least a half-dozen crimes throughout the region.
The storage unit also contained vehicles and merchandise valued at over $100,000.
The deputies admitted that the unit belonged to them, sources say. However, they could not explain the presence of the stolen sacks, nor could they produce evidence that proved ownership of the rest of the unit’s contents.
“Apprehending the Iron Range Bandits and putting an end to their crime spree is a big win,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney James R. Finnegan. “It shows what we can accomplish when federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies cooperate with each other.”
It was during an initial search of the same storage unit that agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives discovered explosive devices that linked the deputies to a Mexican cartel that was attempting to sell stolen weapons to criminal organizations inside the U.S.
The arrest of James and Williams comes on the heels of a raid by a joint task force of ATF agents and Royal Canadian Mounted Policemen on a seaplane base in Thunder Bay, Ontario, that resulted in the apprehension of a dozen Mexican nationals and the confiscation of 392 firearms.
“What does this mean?” Jimmy asked.
“It means someone else is taking the fall for your crimes,” I said. I glanced at Josie. “I told you I’d get the bastards.”
She didn’t reply; didn’t even look me in the eye.
“You framed them?” the old man asked.
“You have to admit there’s a certain poetic irony to it.”
“How?”
“Remember the bags of checks and receipts we had after the Silver Bay job?” Josie said. She was speaking to her father and not to me. “Dyson put them in their shed.”
“McKenzie,” I said.
“You really are a spy for the ATF,” Claire said.
“Was a spy.”
“Not a criminal mastermind.”
“Just a gifted amateur.”
“What about Dave?” Liz Skarda asked.
“Dave’s coming with me.”
Skarda nodded his head even as he squeezed his wife’s hand, a despondent expression in his face. “I told you, honey,” he said. “I have to pay for my crimes.”
“Oh, stop being so melodramatic,” I said. “The charges against you for robbing the music festival in Grand Rapids have been
dropped.”
“What?”
“Turns out the evidence against you was obtained illegally and is inadmissible in court.”
“Really?”
“It came as a surprise to the Itasca County prosecutor, too. You still have to face charges for your daring escape from justice, but Deputy Ken Olson is prepared to testify that I forced you to go with me at gunpoint, so … Just keep your mouth shut. You think that’s possible? Don’t say anything until you talk to your lawyer.”
“I don’t have a lawyer.”
“Your lawyer is named G. K. Bonalay. She’ll meet us in Grand Rapids.”
“Wait a minute.” This time Josie actually was speaking to me. “G. K. Bonalay is the one who just bought this lake cabin from the stockbroker’s estate—I got a six percent commission. That’s why we’re here—to clean up the place before the new owner arrives.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that.”
I handed the envelope to Claire. She opened it slowly as if she expected to find something nasty inside.
“This is…” she said.
“It’s a purchase agreement,” I said. “The deed will be in the mail in a few days. Consider it a wedding gift.”
“You’re giving us the cabin?” Jimmy said. It was both a question and an announcement.
“You guys were guilty of trespassing,” I said. “Now you’re not.”
Everyone seemed happy to see me after that—well, except for Josie. Jill emerged from the cabin carrying a tray loaded with paper plates, silverware, a pitcher of lemonade, and several beers. I nearly choked—it was Summit Ale. We ate and drank and chatted. The Bandits all swore to God above that they were done with outlawing, even the old man, who quietly thanked me when no one was looking for keeping his secret. After a while, I made my good-byes and led Skarda to the Audi. He asked if I stole it. I told him no. He seemed disappointed. Josie appeared before we had a chance to climb into the car. She asked Skarda to take a walk. I told him to make it a short walk.
“So, all’s well that ends well,” Josie said.
The Last Kind Word Page 27
