Red Knife

by William Kent Krueger

“He did not ask for my advice. But he did bring Obwandiyag here. Now there was a man full of fear. The white girl had died, the fault, Kakaik said, of Obwandiyag. He hoped I could help Obwandiyag find courage, find purity of spirit, find the warrior’s heart.”

  “Did you?”

  “Obwandiyag did not want my help. He left before I could do anything for him. I did not see him again.”

  “Kingbird was hiding him, trying to protect him, I suppose. Did he give you any idea where?”

  The old man put his cup on the table. “Is it Obwandiyag you’re hunting or the truth about Kakaik?”

  “I think they might lie along the same path.”

  The Mide nodded. “There is hope for you yet, Corcoran O’Connor. I do not have an answer for you. But I have advice, if you would like it.”

  “I’d appreciate it, Henry.”

  “I would take a hawk’s-eye view of the situation.”

  Cork waited. “That’s it?”

  “That is all I have to offer. Unless you would like more coffee.”

  Cork stood up, and Meloux after him. Walleye worked his way to his feet and padded to the table.

  “Migwech, Henry,” Cork said, thanking the old man. At the door, he paused. “A hawk’s-eye view?”

  Meloux shrugged. “It is a place to begin.”

  SIXTEEN

  Lucinda often walked to the Gun Sight, bringing lunch to her husband, and to Uly as well on those occasional days when he helped his father there. She enjoyed the stroll through Aurora. That Monday, she thought it would be a good idea for both herself and Misty to get out for a while. Well-meaning people were calling and stopping by and although Lucinda was grateful, she was also weary of having to respond to their concern.

  The sky was overcast but didn’t seem to threaten rain. Lucinda settled Misty in the stroller, made certain the baby was warm enough, and set off.

  Having to care for the baby full-time wasn’t difficult for Lucinda. In truth, it gave her a sense of purpose she hadn’t felt since Uly had become a teenager and pulled away, retreating into himself in the way teenagers did. A baby was a good deal of work, but a baby let you know you were needed. And the needs were so simple really, and so blessedly direct. You fed her when she was hungry, changed her diaper when she was wet or soiled, held her when she was fussy, smiled at her when she gazed up at you with her eyes full of wonder. God never took, she’d always tried to believe, without also giving. Alejandro and Rayette had been taken, but little Misty had been spared and put into Lucinda’s keeping.

  Will’s shop was on Oak Street. Before he bought the building, the place had belonged to a florist. Whenever she first walked in, Lucinda thought she caught the faint fragrance of roses, but the scent vanished immediately, replaced by the acrid odor of the solvents Will used to clean polymer weapons.

  Her husband knew firearms. He was also an expert with that other elegant instrument of warfare, the knife. He was a dealer, with a clientele of collectors worldwide. He was also an expert gunsmith and was often engaged in making something that was of custom design. They had saved carefully all their lives, and with his marine pension they easily had enough to live on. His need to work had nothing to do with finances. In a way, Lucinda believed, it kept him connected with the military life, which was the life he knew best.

  He was in the back room when she pushed the buzzer. For security, he kept the door locked. There was a sign above the buzzer button that read PUSH FOR ENTRY. Will had a camera mounted outside and positioned in a way that let him see who was at his door. She heard the reply buzz and the lock release and she rolled the stroller inside.

  “Back here!” he called.

  At the front of the shop were rifles, shotguns, and handguns mounted in display cases behind security glass. Arrayed in the long glass counter on which his cash register sat were the knives he carried. Near the door stood a three-by-three-foot polished maple board that rested on a tripod. Will had affixed shelves to the board, on which he displayed a selection of some of the components he used in his work: barrels, actions, frames, slides, stocks, grips. The shop front wasn’t an area that he’d created to feel particularly warm and welcoming. It had a Spartan, utilitarian sensibility.

  She went through the open door behind the counter and into the back of the shop, where Will stood at one of his workbenches. He had several rifles laid out before him. When Lucinda came in, he left the bench and met her near the door.

  “Thanks.”

  He took the Tupperware container she handed him, but didn’t open it. She never ate lunch with him, only brought his food. In the afternoon or evening when he came home, he would hand her the empty Tupperware to wash. Music came softly from a CD player on a shelf, Neil Young’s Harvest, one of his favorites. When he was young and courting her, he had played the guitar. They would take a picnic lunch to one of the beaches and he would sing to her and strum. He hadn’t touched a guitar in years.

  “It’s quiet,” she said. Often when she came, he was dealing with a customer.

  “I didn’t want to see anyone today,” he said.

  “Misty didn’t cry at all this morning.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You want her to cry, Luci?”

  “I thought she would miss her mother.”

  “You feed her, change her, hold her. What would Rayette do that you don’t?”

  “I’m not her mother, Will.”

  “You are now.”

  “If I was Rayette, I wouldn’t want her to forget me.”

  “She’s only six months old, Luci. She doesn’t understand about mothers. She understands wet and dry, hungry and full.”

  “There’s more to a mother than that, Will.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s coming from you now.”

  She looked behind him at the table where he’d just been working and where three rifles lay. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “A Winchester Stealth, a Weatherby TRR, a Dragunov. These are very powerful rifles, Will. Sniper rifles.”

  “What do you know about rifles?”

  “When you talk to me, do you think I don’t listen? What are you doing with these rifles?”

  “I have a buyer.”

  There were many things her husband was, but a good liar he was not.

  “Six months ago,” she said, “you sold a very expensive Robar Elite shotgun to Buck Reinhardt.”

  “So?”

  “I know you think he killed Alejandro and Rayette. You told me as much last night.”

  “Go home, Luci. Take the baby and go home.”

  “Alejandro and Rayette are dead. Nothing we do can bring them back.”

  “Go home.”

  “We have to think of Misty now, Will. I will try to be her mother, but you must be her father. You have to be there for her, Will. You have to be there for us.”

  “Go home.”

  This time it was an order, and she understood that he was finished with listening. Whatever she said now, he would not hear.

  She turned and started away.

  “Luci.”

  She glanced back.

  “Thank you for bringing me lunch.”

  There was so much more she wanted to do, for Will, for Uly, for Misty, for them all, but she felt powerless.

  She caught Father Ted as he was crossing the yard between St. Agnes and the rectory. He wasn’t a priest who wore a cassock or a clerical shirt or a collar on an everyday basis. He’d visited the day before to express his sympathy and offer his help, and he’d looked priestly then, but today he was wearing a blue denim long-sleeved shirt and jeans.

  “Father Ted,” Lucinda called out to him.

  He turned and smiled. “Lucinda.” Misty was asleep in the stroller and Lucinda took her time reaching the priest. When he looked at her closely, he seemed gravely concerned. “Is everything all right?”

  “May I talk to you?” she said.

&nb
sp; “Of course. Shall we go into my office?”

  “Thank you.”

  They went together into the wing that housed the church offices and the education classrooms. The priest unlocked the door. The building was empty. She liked the quiet, the emptiness that was not really emptiness, she knew, because the church and every part of it was filled with the Holy Spirit. The young priest stopped at the front desk and picked up some mail.

  “How is the baby?”

  “She is doing well, Father. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “It’s almost as if she doesn’t even miss her mother.”

  “In a way, that strikes me as a blessing.”

  “For her, yes. But I think of poor Rayette. Her little girl will never know her, probably never even think of her as her mother.”

  “You can help her with that. You can make sure she knows who her mother was and that Rayette loved her deeply.”

  “I will try, Father.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No.” Lucinda thought for a moment, not certain how to approach her real concern. “Father, what is the duty of a wife toward her husband?”

  The priest put down the mail and lines appeared on his brow as he considered. “I would say it’s to love him, to respect him, to support him, to create and raise a family with him, to help as he strives in his service to God and the Church. If we look at scripture, Ephesians tells us that a wife should respect and obey her husband.”

  “What if a wife is afraid of something?”

  “Afraid of her husband?”

  “No, no. Afraid for him.”

  “Then I think she does all that she can to help him.”

  “What if he doesn’t want her help?”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “I’m sorry, Father, I can’t.”

  “Well then, this is what I think. But, Lucinda, it’s only what I think, not necessarily advice. I think sometimes people don’t really know what they want, but I’ve never seen a situation where giving a loving hand was a mistake.” The lines on his young brow deepened and he leaned toward her confidentially. “Is there something you want to tell me, something I might be able to help with?”

  “No, Father. It’s all right. Thank you.” Misty was awake and had begun to fuss in her stroller. Hungry, Lucinda thought. “I should get home.”

  “All right, then. I’ll see you on Wednesday for the service and burial.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  She left the church. On the sidewalk that ran along the street, she glanced back. Through his office window, behind the reflection of that cloudy day, the priest was watching.

  When she arrived home, she heard voices coming from Uly’s bedroom. Her son had stayed home from school that day, something she’d insisted on, although Will had pressed for Uly to proceed with life as usual. It was rare that Will gave in to her, but in this she’d prevailed. She took Misty from the stroller and as she headed to the baby’s room, she stopped and knocked on her son’s door. He didn’t answer, and she knocked again, louder, and called, “Uly?”

  He opened the door and looked at her without speaking, looked at her as if she was an unwelcome stranger.

  “I thought I heard you talking to someone,” she said.

  Lucinda saw that the chair at Uly’s computer desk was occupied. From the clothing the visitor wore—all black—and the black-dyed hair, she knew immediately that it was Darrell Gallagher, a boy Uly hung out with a lot these days. Darrell didn’t acknowledge her, didn’t even look away from the computer screen, where he was probably surfing the Internet. He and Uly spent a good deal of time on the Internet, communicating with people in cyberspace. She wished Uly would spend more time with real people in real space.

  “I was just chilling with Darrell,” he said.

  “Why isn’t he in school?”

  “He took the day off to keep me company, okay?”

  “Yes. Of course.” She tried to think of it as a nice thing for a friend to do.

  Uly smiled at the baby. “How’s Misty doing?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Hey there, chiquita.” He gently stroked the baby’s cheek. “Later, Mom.” He closed the bedroom door against her.

  SEVENTEEN

  After his talk with Meloux, Cork stopped at the sheriff’s department, but neither Marsha Dross, Ed Larson, nor Simon Rutledge was there. He left word for the sheriff to call him on his cell, then he turned to the chore he’d meant to do that day before the Kingbird killings had grabbed his attention.

  He had closed Sam’s Place the week after Halloween. November was always a grim month. The fall colors vanished. The stands of maple, oak, birch, and poplar lost their brilliance and became stark and bare. The days were blustery and overcast. The lake was gray, agitated, and empty. The flow of customers to Sam’s Place dried to a trickle. He’d put plywood over the serving windows and hung a sign that read: THANKS FOR YOUR BUSINESS. SEE YOU NEXT SPRING. He’d tipped the picnic table against the big pine beside the lake, turned off the gas to the grill, emptied and shut down the freezer for the winter. That part of the old Quonset hut devoted to the food-service business was abandoned. The other part of the building Cork kept heated and continued to use as the office for his fledgling business as a private investigator. He was the only PI in Tamarack County and the three counties that adjoined it. His first case had involved finding Henry Meloux’s son. Despite the fact that the job had, in the end, cost several lives, business afterward had been surprisingly brisk. Wilred Brynofurson, head of security at Aurora Community College, had hired him to investigate one of their environmental engineers, suspected in the theft of several computers and video projectors. His work resulted in clearing the suspect and uncovering the true culprit, the assistant director of Technology Services, a man with a serious gambling problem. He’d also done surveillance for an insurance company on a plaintiff suing for a debilitating back injury sustained when his car collided with a plumber’s truck. Cork had videotaped the guy, who lived in Eveleth, climbing like a monkey all over his roof, taking down strings of Christmas lights. That one hadn’t been a challenge at all. He’d served subpoenas, located a couple of bail jumpers, and tracked down Rolf and Olivia Nordstrom’s daughter who’d dropped out of her first year at Augsburg College and then dropped out of sight. (After spending one day on campus, he found her living with her boyfriend—a street juggler and sometimes bar bouncer—in a crash pad on the West Bank. He didn’t convince her to return to college or Aurora, didn’t even try, but he did get her to promise to call her worried parents, which she did.)

  Except for the work he’d done for Henry Meloux, which had been more a favor than an assignment, his PI work so far hadn’t been particularly difficult. Neither had it been dangerous, and that was important. It kept Jo happy. She liked that he no longer had a job that required a Kevlar vest as part of his standard equipment.

  He was on his stepladder, reattaching a corner of the SAM’S PLACE sign that had worked loose in the winter winds, when he spotted Ed Larson’s cruiser turn onto the gravel access that led to the Quonset hut. He set his hammer down and watched as Larson brought the cruiser over the Burlington Northern tracks and parked in the lot. Larson got out, Simon Rutledge with him.

  “Think you’ll have ’er ready for fishing opener?” Larson asked as they approached.

  “Provided I don’t keep getting interrupted.”

  “Marsha asked us to stop by, find out if you learned anything from Meloux.”

  Cork looked down at his visitors. “In his way, he offered what he could.”

  “Which was?”

  “Take a hawk’s-eye view.”

  Larson stared up at him. “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Does he know where Thunder is?”

  “I don’t think so,” Cork said. “If he did, he probably would have come right out and told me.”

  “Take a hawk’s-eye view? Is that a clue of s
ome kind?”

  “I think it’s more a suggestion on how to approach the problem.”

  “But you have no idea what he meant by it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Big help.” Larson squinted up at Cork, blinking behind his glasses. “Marsha says you stepped back from the investigation. What’s up with that?”

  “Other priorities, Ed.” Cork tapped the side of the Quonset hut.

  “Right. Fishing opener and all.” Larson looked down at the gravel, then back up. “We just finished canvassing Kingbird’s neighbors.”

  “And they told you they didn’t see anything, right?”

  “Right.” Larson’s skepticism was obvious.

  “They weren’t playing games with you, Ed. Marvin LaPoint lost most of his hearing in Vietnam. When he sleeps, Mindy says it’s like a freight train going through the house. She wears earplugs in bed. They’re not late-night people, so they were probably sleeping when the Kingbirds were killed and wouldn’t have heard anything. On the other side of the Kingbirds, the closest neighbors would be Blakeley and Gene Beatty. They usually spend Saturday nights with Blakeley’s cousins in Biwabik. Big poker game, goes on all night. Blakeley and Gene usually sleep over.”

  “That’s good to know. I thought maybe we were just being stonewalled. We also talked to a few of the Red Boyz.”

  “Who?”

  “Tom Blessing, Daniel Hart, and Elgin Manypenny.”

  “And you got a shitload of attitude and nothing else.”

  Larson put a foot on the ladder, as if he were thinking of climbing up beside Cork. “Marsha likes Reinhardt for the murders. Doesn’t buy his alibi. What do you think?”

  “The alibi’s thin, the motive isn’t. Same’s true for Elise.”

  “I don’t know. Tough believing that a woman—a mother yet—could be that brutal. Tape up two people, back-shoot them. Speaking of which, we got prints off the duct tape. Rayette’s were all over the strips used on her husband, but the tape on her wrists was clean. We’re thinking the killer had Rayette tape Alexander, and then he—or she—taped Rayette and wore gloves while they did it.”

  Rutledge spoke up for the first time. “I sent the tape to the BCA lab in Bemidji this morning to see if there’s something we can get from fibers or anything else the roll of tape might have come into contact with before it was used for the murders.”