Red Knife

by William Kent Krueger

  “A tough shot,” Dross said, eyeing the rise from where she stood near Reinhardt’s truck. “Lighting’s not great, parking lot’s full, a lot of interference.”

  Ed Larson, who was standing next to her watching his team finish with the crime scene, said, “With a scope and a steady hand, about anybody who knows how to handle a rifle could make the shot.”

  Dross shook her head. “Killing a man, that’s not a cakewalk. Takes a lot of determination.”

  “Scared people do it all the time,” Larson said, “and then wonder how the hell it happened.”

  Dross turned from the rise and looked at her investigator. “Do you really think it was fear that killed Buck Reinhardt?”

  Cork, who’d been leaning against the tailgate of Reinhardt’s truck with his arms crossed and his mind working on the incident, asked, “Witnesses see anything?”

  “Nobody we’ve interviewed so far,” Larson said. “The shots were fired, Buck went down, and everybody scrambled for cover. They all agreed where the shots had come from, but that’s about all they’ve been able to tell us.”

  Cork came away from the truck. “Shots? He was hit only once.”

  “A second round was fired after he went down. Burrowed into the asphalt beside his body. We dug that one out.”

  “Whoever it was knew enough about Buck to know he’d be at the Buzz Saw tonight. They just took up their position and waited,” Cork said.

  “Who knew about Buck?” Dross asked.

  Cork shrugged. “Just about anybody who’d spent five minutes asking. Wasn’t any secret he did most of his drinking here. And he drank a lot.”

  They all turned and watched as Reinhardt’s covered body was lifted onto a gurney and wheeled to the ambulance. The small crowd that had gathered around the entrance to the Buzz Saw watched, too. A minute later, with no flashing of lights or other fanfare, the ambulance pulled away.

  “Does Elise know?” Cork asked.

  Marsha said, “I sent Cy Borkman and he broke the news.”

  “How’d she take it?”

  “According to Cy, with a little water and on the rocks.”

  “What about Brittany Young?”

  “Pretty shaken up. One of her friends took her home.”

  In the woods on the rise, deputies were going over the area with halogen beams. Occasionally, a bright flash indicated that the scene was being documented with the department’s digital camera. BCA agent Simon Rutledge emerged from the pine trees, looked both ways, then crossed the highway.

  “Anything?” Dross asked.

  Rutledge grinned and held up a plastic evidence bag. “Found the place in the pine needles where our shooter laid down to wait, and we got a shell casing. No tracks or anything else yet.”

  “Nobody saw the shooter leave the woods?” Cork asked.

  “Nope,” Larson replied.

  “Hiked out probably,” Rutledge said. “What’s the nearest road?”

  “That would be Lowell Lake Road, about half a mile that way.” Dross pointed north, up the highway.

  Rutledge said, “Any houses there? Anyone who might have seen a car sitting along the side of the road?”

  Dross shook her head. “That stretch is deserted.”

  “Still, you may want to get someone over there to look for tire impressions from a vehicle parked on the shoulder.”

  Larson got on his walkie-talkie and raised Deputy Pender, who was on the wooded rise. He explained what he wanted and told Pender to take one of the other deputies with him.

  A red pickup slowed on the highway in order to pull into the parking lot. It was stopped by Deputy Minot, who had instructions not to let anyone in. After an exchange between deputy and driver, the pickup came ahead and parked in an empty slot near the door to the Buzz Saw. Dave Reinhardt got out and walked toward his father’s truck.

  “Where is he?” he said.

  “His body’s already gone, Dave,” Dross replied. “The autopsy’ll be done first thing in the morning.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  Dross explained what she knew.

  Reinhardt stood with his hands clenched at his sides. “Red Boyz,” he said.

  “We’ve got nothing at the moment that points toward anyone, Dave. There’s still a lot of groundwork to do.”

  Reinhardt looked at her. In the light of the parking lot lamp, his face was white and hard, like new plaster. “Are you blind or just stupid, Marsha?”

  Dross said evenly, “It seems to me the stupid thing would be to rush to judgment.”

  “Hey, Dave!” Cal Richards broke from the crowd at the door to the Buzz Saw. He slipped under the crime scene tape and came toward Reinhardt. He was still wearing the coveralls he’d had on when the shots had been fired at Buck earlier in the day. He looked stunned. Or drunk. Most probably some of both. “The shits, man. He’s buying you a drink one minute, the next minute his head’s all over the parking lot. Jesus.”

  “Mr. Richards, you need to step back behind the tape,” Dross said.

  Richards gave her a screw you look and made no move to comply.

  “I’ll be happy to have a deputy escort you,” Dross said.

  “All right, all right.” Richards lifted his hands to stave off her move. “Dave, let me buy you a drink?”

  Dave Reinhardt said, “I’ll be there in a minute, Cal.”

  Richards turned, ducked under the tape, and returned to the bar.

  “What are you going to do?” Reinhardt asked. The question was directed at Dross.

  “Conduct a thorough investigation that will end in a lawful arrest, Dave.”

  “Just like you’ve arrested Lonnie Thunder for killing Kristi? And how about the Kingbirds? Got any leads there? Your investigations have all the speed of a car with square wheels, Marsha.”

  “There’s a lot going on, Dave. We’re doing the best we can.”

  “Yeah, right.” He stood a few seconds more, looking at his father’s truck, looking at the asphalt that had been chalked with an outline of Buck’s body. “Fuck,” he said and followed Richards to the bar.

  “He’s right,” Dross said. “We’re getting nowhere.”

  They all looked at her. Finally Larson said, “Okay, so what now?”

  “Let’s finish up here. Wrap up the interviews, pull it to a close on the rise, see if Pender has come up with any impressions on Lowell Lake Road. Then let’s go back to the office, do the paperwork, go home, and try to get some sleep. We’ll start on it all again first thing in the morning.”

  Rutledge raised his hand, as if he were in geography class. “Marsha, you mind if I drop in on Elise Reinhardt, keep her company in her grief?”

  “Kind of late, isn’t it?” Ed Larson said.

  Rutledge gave a little shrug. “She told me this afternoon that she seldom goes to bed before two. She said she drinks until she can’t keep her eyes open, otherwise all she sees when she lies down is her daughter’s face. I think she could use a little sympathetic company.”

  Dross said, “Simon, I’m so tired I wouldn’t care if you painted yourself yellow and pretended to be a taxi.”

  “Then I’ll see you all in the morning.”

  He left them and headed toward his Cherokee, which was parked at the far end of the lot.

  Ed Larson frowned. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s taking advantage of a woman in a vulnerable position.”

  “Elise vulnerable?” Dross laughed. “Yeah, like a Brink’s armored car. I’m sure he’s got something besides her grief on his mind. You headed home, Cork?”

  “I think I’ll buy Dave Reinhardt a drink first.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She turned to Larson and they walked away, talking quietly.

  Inside the Buzz Saw, the shooting seemed to have had an energizing effect. Though it was late, nearing one A.M., the place was still jumping. Cork spotted Reinhardt and Cal Richards sitting together on stools at the bar. Reinhardt already had three empty shot glasses in front
of him, and as Cork watched, another patron came up to Dave, offered his condolences, and signaled the bartender to give the man a round. Cork waited until Reinhardt and Richards were alone again, then he took the stool next to Buck’s son.

  “Just want to say I’m sorry, Dave.”

  Reinhardt, who sat hunched forward over his line of empty glasses, glanced his way.

  Cork lifted a hand to signal for a drink. “Everybody knows Buck could be a son of a bitch—”

  “Hell,” Cal Richards broke in from Dave’s other side, “he took pride in being a son of a bitch.”

  “But he was still your father,” Cork went on, “and I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thanks.” Reinhardt said it grudgingly.

  Jack Sellers, who was tending bar, brought three glasses of whatever scotch it was Reinhardt and Richards were drinking. Cork handed him a twenty and told him to keep the change.

  “You know if anybody’s told Elise?” Reinhardt said.

  “Cy Borkman broke the news,” Cork told him.

  “How’d she take it?”

  “Pretty well from what I understand.”

  “I’ll bet. Probably proposed a toast.” He picked up the drink Cork had bought him and downed it.

  “I get the impression Buck hadn’t been particularly husbandly toward her of late.”

  “Hell, Buck never worried about being anything to anybody,” Cal Richards said, after gulping his own drink. “He was just fine with who he was.”

  A rattlesnake’s just fine being a rattlesnake, Cork thought, but that doesn’t mean you want to cozy up to it.

  “Buck was a rare one,” he said instead.

  Reinhardt nodded in agreement. “A man spends sixty years on this earth, there ought to be somebody sheds a tear when he’s gone. He could be a mean old bastard, sure, but he was my father, goddamn it.”

  Cork picked up his own glass, but held off drinking. “Fathers can be hard to please.”

  “I remember your old man,” Reinhardt said. “He didn’t seem too bad.”

  “I lost him to a bullet, too.”

  “That’s right, I remember. Sorry.”

  “Long time ago, Dave. It passes.”

  Reinhardt stared at the line of empty glasses. “I tried so hard to do something he’d be proud of. Too late now.”

  Cal Richards said, “I know something you could do.”

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Get the prick that shot him.”

  Cork leaned to the side and looked across Reinhardt’s back at Richards. “You got any idea who that might be, Cal? ’Cause the sheriff would love to know.”

  “You’re a cop, Dave,” Richards went on, unperturbed. “That’s what cops do, figure shit out. Hell, you couldn’t do any worse than that bitch who’s wearing the badge.”

  Cork said, “Cal, anybody ever tell you that you’ve got all the charm of a gas station toilet?”

  “Fuck you, O’Connor.”

  Reinhardt’s fist hit the bar. “I know who did it. The Red Boyz.”

  “You don’t know that, Dave,” Cork said. “And even if it was one of the Red Boyz, which one? Let Marsha and her people handle this.”

  Richards said, low and seductive, “Show that bitch, Dave, and make your old man proud at the same time.”

  Jack Sellers came down the bar. “Last call, boys.”

  “One for the road, Dave?” Richards said. “On me.”

  “Sure, why not?”

  Sellers eyed Cork, who declined with a shake of his head.

  People had begun to stand and put on their coats and slowly make their way toward the front door. Sellers brought two final shots and set them in front of Dave Reinhardt and Cal Richards.

  Richards lifted his glass. “Here’s to Buck, and to finding the goddamn coward son of a bitch who sent him to his reward.”

  Both men tilted their heads and threw the shots down their throats. Reinhardt fumbled with his wallet, pulled out a twenty, slipped it across the bar, and slid his butt off the stool.

  “I don’t think you’re in any condition to drive, Dave,” Cork said.

  Richards, who’d had a lot to drink himself but seemed at the moment to be handling it better, said, “I’ll see he gets home.”

  Cork watched them join the slow, steady exodus, then he got up as well and called it a night.

  THIRTY

  The baby’s crying, Mom.”

  Lucinda opened her eyes. Uly stood beside the sofa, in his pajamas, his eyes barely open, his hair wild from sleep. Lucinda stirred and realized she was under a blanket, the blue one she kept in the hall closet.

  “How did this get here?” she asked, trying to come fully awake.

  “I put it over you when I got in last night. You looked cold.”

  “Thank you, Ulysses.” She sat up and rubbed her eyes.

  “Want me to get Misty?”

  “I’ll take care of her.”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “At the shop. He slept there last night, I imagine.”

  “At the shop.” Uly looked at her as if he knew it was a lie, because it had been one of the lies over the years. Sleeping at the shop. Along with: Gone to the Twin Cities to deliver a custom order. Or: He went to a gun show. Before that, when Will was still in the Marine Corps, it was much easier. She would simply tell the boys that their father was on special-duty assignment for a few days. “Whatever,” Uly said, and shuffled back to his room and to bed.

  It was early, although already well past dawn. Beyond the living room picture window, long morning shadows fell across grass still wet with dew. The birds were going crazy in the trees. In Alejandro’s old bedroom, the baby cried for her first feeding and changing of the day.

  Lucinda threw back the blanket and rose to her life.

  After she’d taken care of Misty and brewed coffee for herself, she tried calling the shop. No answer. Of course. She wondered why she even bothered. After her own breakfast of oatmeal and half a grapefruit, she went to the bedroom she shared with Will, and she opened the top dresser drawer. Inside was a cedar case the size of a small loaf of bread that Lucinda proceeded to open. The case contained the medals and ribbons Will had received during his service as a marine—Purple Heart, Vietnam Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Combat Action ribbons, Good Conduct Medal, Drill Instructor ribbon, Presidential Unit citations, Kuwait Liberation Medal—as well as his dog tags and an extra set of keys to the shop. Lucinda took out the dog tags, wrote down the last four digits of his social security number, then put everything back into the case except the keys to the shop. She bundled up little Misty and secured her in the car seat, got behind the wheel of her Saturn, and drove to Will’s shop. His van wasn’t there, but she parked at the curb anyway and walked to the door.

  Through the shop window, she could see that inside everything was dark. No surprise. She rang the buzzer but got no response. She used the key to unlock the door. As soon as she was inside, she reached out to key in the disarm code—the last four digits of Will’s social security number—on the alarm pad beside the door, but she was surprised to see that the alarm was already disengaged. This was unheard of because Will was more than just careful about locking up and turning on the alarm; with a shop full of firearms, he was maniacal about security. There were bars on the windows. The door had been special ordered and the lock carefully chosen for strength. A camera monitored the doorway day and night.

  “Will?” she called toward the rear of the shop.

  Receiving no answer, she returned to the car and disengaged the car seat, Misty still buckled inside. She went back into the shop and set the car seat on the counter. She used another key to unlock the door to the back room. Before she entered, she hesitated, aware that she was about to trespass on Will’s sanctuary. Finally she eased the door open and groped for the light switch on the wall. The shop was suddenly illuminated. No Will. No cot. Only the air full of the mixed smells of gun oil and cutting oil and solvent, the rows of shelvin
g neatly stacked with cardboard boxes that held components for the firearms Will constructed, and the floor and the work areas clean, the way Will always left them. Except for the emptiness of her heart and a profound determination that came to her out of the silence of that room, Lucinda was alone.

  When she arrived for work that Thursday morning at the Aurora Professional Building, Jo O’Connor found Lucinda in the waiting area of her office.

  “Luci?”

  Fran Cooper, Jo’s secretary, smiled from her desk and said pleasantly, “I explained to Ms. Kingbird that you had a full agenda today and I’d be happy to schedule her for an appointment as soon as you had an opening.”

  “I asked to wait,” Lucinda said. She didn’t want to get the secretary, who’d been kind to her, in any trouble.

  “That’s fine, Fran. Shall we go into my office, Luci?”

  “Thank you.”

  It was nice inside. Warm, civilized, Lucinda decided. Not like Will’s shop, full of bits and pieces of cold metal that created instruments of death. Here there were only books. And two plants that were well cared for. And a chair for her to sit in. And on the other side of the desk, a woman who was willing to listen.

  “Would you like some coffee, Lucinda?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “How is little Misty?”

  “She’s well. Ulysses is watching her for me. He’s very good with her.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  Lucinda looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. They were old hands, she thought, dried and cracked now because, with the baby, she was always washing them. She felt old, like her hands. Old and lost and frightened.

  “I want to leave my husband,” she said in almost a whisper.

  She glanced up and was relieved to see that Jo didn’t seem shocked or disappointed.

  “Is there a particular reason?” Jo asked.

  “I have lived for twenty-six years with a man I do not know. I know his voice, his walk, his smell. But his heart, his mind?” She shook her head.

  “Does Will know how you feel?”