Lightning Strike

by William Kent Krueger

  “The other one?”

  “The lawyer. What’s his name?”

  “Nick Skinner?”

  “That’s him. Buddies since they were kids. Musketeers? More like Mouseketeers, if you ask me.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  “I never pay any attention. All I care about is that for a while I don’t have him around here smelling of dog. On the other hand, he usually comes back from his expeditions smelling of fish.”

  “Did he smell of fish this time?”

  “As a matter of fact, no. And he came back early, after only a day or so. I figured the fishing must have been bad this year. I’d planned a big backyard party in his absence, but he made me cancel it.”

  “Did he seem different to you when he came back?”

  “Different?”

  “Upset. Nervous. Difficulty sleeping.”

  “We sleep in different rooms, Sheriff. He has his bedroom and I have mine and I have no idea how he sleeps. Now, may I ask you a question? It’s rather personal.”

  “You can always ask.”

  She took a step nearer to him and looked seductively into his eyes. “I’ve heard that policemen use sex as a way to deal with the stress of their job. Is that true?”

  “I can’t answer for policemen in general.”

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t.”

  “I take pleasure in my family, Moira. My wife and my son. They provide me all the solace and stress relief I need.”

  Her face changed. Her whole body for that matter. She stepped back. “Lucky you, Liam.” She said this with such sincerity and sadness that he felt moved beyond pity.

  “You’ve been helpful, Moira. Thank you.”

  * * *

  As Liam headed to the county courthouse, he thought about Mrs. David Svenson. Moira Mary O’Malley. He wondered if she’d married a different man, would she be a different woman? Was it her marriage that had shaped her into such a needful human being? He thought about Colleen. Sometimes they butted heads, and later would laughingly blame it on the fiery Irish blood that flowed in their veins. But Colleen also had Ojibwe blood in her, and despite all the angry fire she sometimes summoned, she could also be quiet and soothing, able to spread over them both a profound sense of calm and deep contentment. He tried to imagine sleeping in a separate bed, and it left him feeling sad and lonely. And in that moment, he was profoundly grateful for his marriage and all that had come to him because of it.

  He’d radioed ahead, and when he arrived at the Sheriff’s Department, Deputy Joe Meese was waiting for him.

  “Where’s Cy?” Liam asked.

  “Still up in the county clerk’s office, looking for what you wanted.”

  They stepped into Liam’s office, he closed the door, and they sat down.

  “What did you find at the Crooked Pine?” Liam asked.

  Joe set a slip of paper on the desk. “A receipt for the purchase of two cases of Four Roses from a distributor in Duluth. The purchase was made in person, signed by Ben Svenson himself, and the date matches the general timing of Manydeeds’s killing. There was no receipt confirming Svenson’s sale of the cases to anyone else.”

  “What did he have to say about that?”

  “Poor record keeping. But get this. I talked to the barmaid, Sylvia Jonsdottir. She told me a different story than her boss about his relationship with Louise LaRose. Apparently, Svenson was much friendlier with her than he let on. And get this. Svenson was gone for three days about the time Manydeeds was killed. He had his backup bartender running things.”

  Cy Borkman knocked on the door and joined them.

  “Did you find anything upstairs?” Liam asked him.

  “Just like you thought, Sheriff. That hotel plan Skinner’s been pushing? He paid a lot for the land. I mean a lot. But except for the architectural drawings, that’s as far as the project’s gone.”

  “And MacDermid’s the reason for the holdup?” Liam asked.

  “His name’s not on any of the documents, but if you ask me, it’s sure his handwriting all over every denial for some permit or other by the county.”

  “Why would MacDermid interfere?”

  “Got me,” Cy said. “But if I was Nick Skinner, I’d be ready to kill the man.”

  Liam took a couple of minutes to fill him in on what Joe had discovered at the Crooked Pine, then told them both about his conversation with Doctor Dave’s wife. Then he said, “I ran into Skinner just before MacDermid was killed, and he told me he couldn’t vouch for MacDermid being at the guest cottage while someone was killing Big John Manydeeds. It seems pretty clear why now. The Three Musketeers were off in the woods, hoping to have a good time with Louise LaRose.”

  “And something went wrong out there,” Joe said.

  “And Manydeeds saw it?” Cy said.

  “Or saw enough that they thought they had to kill him,” Liam said. “I’m not sure why they waited to ambush him on Spider Creek. But it would be easy enough for the three of them to cart his body to Lightning Strike and set up a fake suicide.”

  “Makes sense,” Joe said.

  “But a lot of holes in the story that still need filling,” Liam said. “I think I should bring in Doctor Dave.”

  “And question him?” Cy said.

  “Or, as we used to say when I was a cop in Chicago, sweat him.”

  CHAPTER 54

  Iron Lake was divided into two halves. From a great height, it would have looked like the impression a man’s buttocks might have made if he’d sat in soft mud. In fact, the Ojibwe told the story of the trickster spirit Nanaboozhoo falling from the sky and landing unceremoniously in exactly that position, forming the two, almost equally rounded impressions that had filled with water to form the lake. The northeastern section lay entirely inside the reservation. It took the boys nearly two hours to canoe from Aurora to the mouth of Spider Creek.

  They entered the stream and paddled the O’Connors’ Old Town canoe through the channels that spiderwebbed the marsh. All around them rose cattails and bulrushes and tamaracks. In the open areas, they passed through duckweed and waterlilies and spatterdock, and startled a couple of herons, who took flight, their long bodies graceful against the blue sky. It was quite late but still hot, and the boys swatted mosquitoes and blackflies and talked little.

  The sun had dropped near the horizon and the shadows of the pines were long and broad by the time they finally reached the place where the water of Spider Creek spilled from Moose Lake. It flowed out in a series of small cascades, which required them to leave the stream and portage the canoe a hundred yards up a path to the lake. They shouldered their packs and lifted the canoe over their heads. Cork took the bow end, cradling the gunnels on the palms of his hands. Jorge took the stern. Billy walked ahead carrying the paddles.

  The path veered south a bit, away from the rocky cascades, and the ground became mushy from drainage. Near the top of the portage, only a dozen yards from the lake, Billy stopped and bent down to study the path.

  “Somebody’s been here. Not long ago,” he said.

  “How do you know?” Jorge asked.

  “Footprints.” Billy pointed at the soft ground ahead of them. “The prints are still clear and still wet. Not much different from mine, see?”

  “Bigger though,” Cork said. “Not Boy Scouts. Ojibwe?”

  “Hard to tell. We’ll probably spot ’em on the lake, then we can see for sure.”

  They finished the portage and set the canoe in the water of Moose Lake. They were on a narrow, rocky inlet, but a quarter of a mile east, the lake opened up, and the boys could see its broad blue expanse stretching for miles. Billy took the bow, Cork the stern, and Jorge sat in the middle with the packs. Cork shoved them off, and they began down the inlet with green pines walling them in on either side, the sun descending at their backs, and before them Naabe-Mooz, waiting to be explored.

  * * *

  Liam caught Sharon Crane, Doctor Dave’s assistant, just as she was leaving t
he North Star Veterinary Clinic. Her Ford Galaxy was the only car in the lot.

  “Doctor Svenson went home a couple of hours ago,” she told him. She looked past him toward her Galaxy, and it was clear to Liam that she wanted to be off. Saturday night, and she probably had a big evening planned. “He got a phone call from his brother and left.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “He didn’t. He just said to cancel the rest of his appointments.”

  Liam returned to his cruiser and radioed for Cy Borkman to pick up Ben Svenson at the Crooked Pine and for Joe Meese to locate Nick Skinner and bring him in, too. Then he headed to the house with the cedarwood privacy fence.

  * * *

  Where the inlet opened onto the broad waters of Moose Lake, Billy signaled Cork to pull to shore at a rocky finger of land called Eagle Point. Cork knew it was the first place on the lake where someone might camp, the easiest to reach if you didn’t want to go out onto the big water. He’d made camp there a few times with Billy and Big John, though Billy’s uncle usually preferred to go much farther onto Naabe-Mooz because the inlet was like a main road, and anyone coming onto or off the lake had to pass there. Big John preferred one of the more isolated spots on almost any of the islands. But the truth was that when they’d camped on the point, they almost never saw anyone. If they did, it was usually someone they knew from the rez, whom Big John would invite to join them.

  Billy disembarked first, stepping gingerly from the bow onto a flat, gray slab of stone. He knelt and steadied the canoe as the others got out, and then the boys together slid the tip of the canoe carefully onto the stone to secure it while they explored the point.

  From the jumble of rocks along the waterline, Eagle Point rose ten feet above the lake and flattened out in a clear, grassy space approximately ten yards in diameter. It was edged with a cluster of aspen whose white trunks stood as straight as the pickets of a fence. At the center of this small clearing lay a circle ringed with stone and filled with ash and char from past fires. The boys spread out and walked the campsite slowly.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Jorge said.

  “Anything out of place,” Cork said.

  The light was fading, and the boys hunched close to the ground. Jorge found a bottle opener, but it was so rusted that they figured it had been there much longer than a few weeks. Still, Cork put it in his pocket because you never knew. Near the tree line, Billy found brass casings from three spent rifle cartridges. Grass had grown around them and they were filled with dirt. So, like the rusted bottle opener, the boys figured they’d been there a good long while. Still, Cork collected them.

  When they were satisfied that there was nothing more that might be useful at Eagle Point, Cork said, “Okay, now to Pine Island. We can camp there.”

  Jorge looked at the sky. “It’ll be close to dark by the time we hit Pine Island. Why don’t we make camp here? Get started first thing in the morning.”

  “Pine Island’s only twenty minutes away,” Cork said.

  “I’m tired,” Jorge said. “And I’m hungry.”

  Billy said, “He’s right. We can get an early start tomorrow.”

  Cork gave in because the truth was that he was tired, too. It had been a long day for them all. And by the time they set up camp and got a fire going to cook some supper, it would be late.

  They emptied the canoe of their gear and tipped it on the rocks so that it was secure for the night. They hadn’t brought a tent, only a tarp for a lean-to in case of rain. They rolled their sleeping bags out on the grass and gathered wood for the fire. Cork cut shavings while Billy gathered dried pine needles and Jorge began to clear the char and ash from earlier fires, pushing the charcoal pieces toward the stones around the edge of the ring.

  “What’s this?” he said.

  He held up a charred piece of fabric adorned with bright beads, some of which had partially melted.

  “That’s beadwork,” Billy said. “Maybe from a shawl or a purse or a blouse.”

  Then Billy looked straight at Cork and said, “Louise LaRose?”

  * * *

  Liam could hear the loud music and the raised, angry voices long before he rang the Svensons’ front doorbell. The voices stopped, but the music continued to blast. A moment later, the veterinarian appeared behind the screen door. He looked frazzled.

  “Evening, Sheriff.” He glanced back over his shoulder, then managed to find a polite but tentative smile to put on his face. “Were we being a bit too loud for the neighbors?”

  “It’s not that, Dave. I’d like to talk to you though.”

  The veterinarian ran a hand along his jaw and shook his head. “Not a good time, I’m afraid.”

  “And I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”

  From somewhere deeper in the house, Moira’s voice lifted high above the blare of the music. “What’d he do? Rob a bank?”

  “Couldn’t this wait?” Doctor Dave said.

  “No. And we can talk here, but it might be quieter at my office.”

  “Come on in, Sheriff,” Moira called with drunken abandon. “The party’s just getting started.”

  Doctor Dave weighed his choices and finally said, “Your office it is.”

  CHAPTER 55

  “What were they doing in the fire?” Jorge asked.

  The boys had raked their fingers through the burned remains in the fire ring and had found another piece of the partially burned, beaded fabric.

  “Maybe whoever killed her was trying to get rid of the evidence.” Cork had emptied the paper bag in which he’d packed four Snickers bars and now he put the charred pieces of fabric inside. “We’ll take them back to my dad. He’ll know what to do with them.”

  They built their fire for the evening, and Cork said, “I brought dehydrated eggs and Spam. And some biscuits. I’ll need water for the eggs.”

  Billy volunteered to get the water and Cork gave him the pot from his Boy Scout mess kit. Because night was almost upon them, he gave his friend a flashlight as well. A dirt path sloped along the tree line from the campsite down to the shore, an easier access to the lake than trying to negotiate the rocks where the boys had landed and stowed their canoe. Billy started down the path, and Cork began taking the food from his pack.

  “She was here,” Jorge said, in a hushed voice. “This is where it happened.”

  Cork looked at the darkening campsite and at the great blackening body of the lake. The moon was not yet up, but a dome of moonglow showed where it would soon rise. The evening was still, the woods around them silent, the sense of something tragic palpable in the air.

  “Yeah,” Cork said, his voice hushed, too. “Think she had any idea what might happen?”

  “She wouldn’t have come if she did,” Jorge said. “She must have trusted whoever she came with.”

  “Or she was just really desperate.” Cork tried to imagine that level of desperation, but it was beyond him. His life had always been safe, always comfortable, always protected.

  “Hey, guys!” Billy called from the lake. “Get over here!”

  They found him bending far out above the water, the beam of his flashlight prying among the rocks just below the surface.

  “What’s up?” Cork asked.

  “Look.” Billy pointed.

  Cork watched him sweep the beam of the flashlight across a dark crevice among the rocks beneath the surface of the water half a dozen feet from the shore. “What?” he said. “I don’t see anything.”

  “There!” Billy jabbed the flashlight as if it were a stick he was using to poke into the crevice.

  Cork saw it then, a flash of reflected light, a glimpse of gold.

  “I can’t reach it from here,” Billy said.

  “Hold the light steady,” Jorge said. He kicked off his sneakers, pulled off his socks, rolled up his pant legs, and prepared to step into the lake.

  The submerged rocks were sharp and slippery, and Cork cautioned, “Careful.”

  Jor
ge stepped gingerly, but even so, his foot turned and he went down with a splash. “Crap!” he yelled and tried to push himself up. Down he went again. This time Cork put out a hand and helped bring him upright.

  “Can you reach it?” Billy asked.

  Jorge bent slowly, still holding on to Cork’s steadying hand, dug between the rocks, and came up with something, which he held under the beam of Billy’s flashlight. “A necklace?”

  “Kind of big for a necklace,” Cork said.

  It was a thick gold chain on which hung a gold medallion: an eagle with its wings spread, standing atop a globe, which was superimposed over an anchor.

  “Marine Corps,” Jorge said. “Eagle, globe, and anchor. My mom has a pin like that. My dad gave it to her.”

  “What’s it doing here?” Billy said.

  “Chain’s broken,” Jorge said. “Must’ve fallen off somebody.”

  All three boys exchanged knowing glances. It was Cork who spoke the words. “Her murderer.”

  * * *

  Liam let the veterinarian sit alone in his office for half an hour before he and Joe Meese joined him. By then, Doctor Dave was already looking nervous and sweating profusely.

  “Pentobarbital,” Liam said. “I appreciate the list you gave my deputy of the folks around here who use it.”

  “No problem,” Doctor Dave said.

  Liam sat behind his desk with the veterinarian in a chair on the other side. Joe Meese leaned against the closed door behind Doctor Dave. Cy Borkman hadn’t yet returned from his assignment to locate Nicholas Skinner.

  “But you left one person off that list,” Liam said.

  “Oh?”

  “Probably the one person in Tamarack County who uses it the most.”

  The vet waited. Liam didn’t say anything. Finally the vet said, “Oh, you must mean me.”

  “You,” Liam said.

  “Well, of course. I just naturally assumed you understood that.”

  “If you wanted to put an animal to sleep, but not kill it, how would you do that, Dave?”