Heaven's keep

TWENTY-ONE

When Cork pulled off I-35 in Duluth and drove through the Canal Park district the next day, the sun was directly above him, glaring down from between sheets of starch-white cloud. He headed past Grandma’s Saloon, across the Lift Bridge, and onto Park Point. Half a mile farther, he pulled into the driveway of the home that belonged to Liz Burns. It was a nice piece of property, a two-story of modern design with an unobstructed view of the vast, frigid blue that was Lake Superior. He parked his old Bronco behind a red Taurus with Wisconsin plates and stepped out into a stiff, cold wind that swept off the lake. He reached back inside for his jacket.

Burns greeted him at the door. She was wearing a maroon sweater, tight white slacks, and a tentative smile. “Thank you for coming, Cork.”

Inside, the house was expensively furnished, mostly in shades of white set off with blue curtains that were the color of Lake Superior on a good day. Becca Bodine sat in a white, overstuffed chair. She held a glass full of a dark liquid cubed with ice. She eyed Cork warily as he entered the room, which Cork thought was good. In the business on which they were about to embark, caution would be an absolute necessity.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Burns asked from behind him.

“No, thanks.”

Burns sat on the sofa. Cork took a wing chair to her left. Becca Bodine set her glass on a coaster on the coffee table. The tabletop was glass. On a shelf visible beneath was a large book with a lovely cover photo of the Aerial Lift Bridge and Park Point. The book was titled Duluth: Gem of the Freshwater Sea. Cork laid the videotape from the Casper bar on the tabletop next to Becca Bodine’s drink.

“I stand by what I said yesterday,” he began. “Everything suspicious you saw on this tape could be the result of wanting to see something suspicious. I can’t imagine it would be convincing to anyone else.”

“So why are you here?” the Bodine woman said.

“Because I made some phone calls to colleagues in my line who know your investigator, Steve Stilwell. They told me he’s not the kind of guy to go on a bender and leave a client high and dry. According to them, he’s not the kind of guy to go on a bender, period.”

“I tried to tell you that yesterday,” Burns said.

“How good an investigator would I be if I just took your word? But there’s another reason I’m here. I saw something on the videotape that you didn’t, something that can’t be explained away.”

“And what’s that?” Burns asked.

“The man at the bar doesn’t drink.”

“What are you talking about? We’ve seen the tape. He drinks like a fish.”

“He does a good job of making it seem that way. But if you look closely, you can see that he pours the drink inside his shirt. You have a VCR handy?”

“In the den.”

“Let’s go have a look.”

He followed Burns and Becca Bodine into another beautifully done room. A flat-screen television took up much of one wall. Beneath it, housed in a mahogany cabinet, was a VCR-DVD player. Burns turned on the screen, popped the tape into the player, and joined the others standing a dozen feet from the enormous screen. She pressed buttons on the remote, and the by now familiar jerky black-and-white image appeared, much enlarged. They stood in the quiet of the den, watching the silent movements of the man purported to be Sandy Bodine.

“May I have the remote?” Cork asked.

“Sure.” Burns handed it over.

Cork fast-forwarded. “It takes a while before he gets careless and the camera catches what he’s up to. Here.” The bartender had just brought him another round and turned away. As the man at the bar bent to drink, Cork used the remote to slow the action. “Watch carefully,” he said.

The man brought the glass gradually to his lips, then tilted it a split second before it connected. The glass emptied, but clearly not into his mouth.

“Oh, God,” Burns said, and a huge smile broke across her face. “Oh, sweet God.”

“Where is it going?” Becca Bodine asked.

“Could be something as simple as a hot water bottle that he’s taped to his chest,” Cork replied. “Though it’s probably a little more sophisticated than that. He leaves to go to the men’s room several times during the video. It could be that he uses the opportunity to empty what he’s collected.”

“Why?” asked Bodine.

“Because he wants to appear drunk without being drunk.”

“But the taxi driver had to pull over so this guy could puke,” Burns said.

Cork shrugged. “Finger down his throat.”

“He wants to appear drunk without being drunk,” Becca said. She frowned, thinking. “So he’d be in good shape to fly the plane the next day?”

“While having given the impression that he was in no shape to be piloting,” Cork finished for her.

“Which brings us back to Becca’s question,” Burns said. “Why?”

“Mind if we go back into the other room?” Cork said. “This could take a while to sort out.”

Burns ejected the tape and they returned to the living room. Outside, the wind had picked up, and through the long dining room windows, Cork saw the waves of Lake Superior breaking blue-white and furious along the yellow beach.

“I could use a beer,” Burns said. “Anyone else?”

“I’ll have one,” Cork said.

“I keep a nice variety on hand.”

“Leinie’s?”

“Coming up. More Pepsi, Becca?”

“No, thanks.”

Burns vanished into the kitchen, and Cork heard a refrigerator door open and close. He turned his attention to Becca Bodine, who was staring toward the long windows and the whitecaps of the lake beyond.

“You never doubted him?” Cork said.

Her face was Ojibwe-skin the color of wet sand, high cheeks, a broad nose, eyes like dark almonds. Those eyes drifted toward him, and she looked troubled for a moment, then confessed, “All the time. But I knew that was my weakness. I knew that if it was the other way around, Sandy would have believed in me no matter what the evidence.”

Burns returned with two opened bottles, and they sat down again. For a moment, they drank quietly and Cork could hear the wind pressing against the house. One of the starch-white clouds blew across the sun, and the light through the windows turned gray and all the white in the house looked sullied.

“Why?” Burns said.

Cork cradled his beer in both hands. The bottle was like ice. “I’ve been thinking about that all night. The possibilities are just about endless, so we need to narrow things down. Did Stilwell give you any report on the progress of his investigation?”

“No, which isn’t unusual. He usually touches base only when he has a question or when he has something significant to give me.”

“Okay. So maybe we can assume that, before he disappeared, he hadn’t found anything he felt ready to share with you. You say he disappeared after he visited Sandy’s office at the Rice Lake airport?”

“Yes.”

“So maybe he found something there.”

“He called me,” Becca said. “From Sandy’s hangar. He told me he wanted to check Sandy’s home office and he asked if I had a VCR at my place.”

“Did he say why he wanted the VCR?”

“No.”

“Did he go to your house?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” She saw Cork’s questioning look. “These days I spend a lot of my time at my sister’s home near Hayward. It’s hard being alone, raising a son. I try to be around family whenever I can.”

“I understand,” Cork said. “So he called your cell?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hear from him again?”

“No.”

“What time did he call?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nine o’clock.”

“P.M.?”

“Yes.”

“So you have no idea if he went to your house?”

She shook her head. “But I told him where I keep a key hidden so he could let himself in.”

“A VCR,” Cork said. He scratched his neck and thought a moment. “He had a copy of this surveillance tape, right?”

“Yes. He said he’d watched it several times, but he never mentioned anything about seeing what you saw.”

Cork rolled all this around for a moment and still didn’t know what it meant. He looked at Becca. “Was there any reason someone might have wanted your husband dead?”

She seemed taken aback. “Sandy? No.”

“Take a minute to think about it. Did he have enemies? Did he have associates that you didn’t particularly care for, guys who maybe scared you a little? Were there clients in his charter business that he seemed circumspect about?”

“What do you mean?”

Cork shrugged. “A pilot flies his own plane, he can carry any cargo, human or otherwise, that will bring him a profit.”

“You mean like drugs,” she said coldly.

“Anything that needs to be carried under the radar.”

“Sandy wouldn’t do that.”

“It may be that someone killed him, Becca. If that’s true, there has to be a reason.”

“Not his business,” she said.

“All right. What about his personal life? He was a recovering alcoholic. Anything there we need to think about?”

“I told you, he stopped drinking years ago.”

“No skeletons in the closet?”

“No.”

“You don’t need to answer so fast.”

“You don’t need to accuse him.”

“Easy, Becca,” Burns said. “He’s just asking questions.”

“I don’t like his questions.”

“Or is it that you don’t like the answers?” Cork said.

“You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?” Becca said.

“What is it you’re not telling me?”

“Fuck you.”

“That doesn’t get us anywhere.”

She glared at him. He sipped his beer and waited.

She sat back and looked away. “Most of his business was flying Indians to powwows and other gatherings around the country. But a while back he flew a job for some Canadians, across the border. Afterward he was-I don’t know… quiet. Maybe scared. He didn’t talk about it, but I wondered.”

“How long ago?”

“A couple of years. The business wasn’t doing well.”

“Any dealings with them since?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Any speculation about the nature of what it was that he was paid to transport?”

“No.”

“Any names?”

“No.”

“Where did your husband keep his records?”

“Two places. His office in our home and his office at his hangar at the Rice Lake Regional Airport.”

“You continue to keep his office at the airport?”

“Yes. Sandy had a yearly lease, and because of the FAA investigation and the lawsuit, it’s just been easier for me to leave everything as it was.”

“Has anyone handled the records since the plane disappeared?”

“The FAA investigators made copies of a lot of things.”

Burns said, “And the attorneys for all the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The originals should all still be there.”

“Okay,” Cork said. He sipped his beer. “There are other possibilities to consider. Most don’t have to do with Sandy.”

“What are they?” Burns said.

“There were six passengers on that plane. Maybe it was about one of them.”

“Which one?”

“Got me.” He reached for one of the coasters on the coffee table, put it in front of him, and set his beer down. “I’ve been thinking, what do we know about the people on that plane? With the exception of my wife, they were all Indian. So maybe it’s something about being Indian. They were all tribal leaders. Anybody who knows tribal politics understands how contentious it can be. So maybe it was that. They were on their way to a conference in Seattle where a number of difficult topics related to mutual rez problems were going to be discussed and some resolutions hashed out. Maybe that was it. Or maybe someone just had a grudge against one of them and acted on it. I could go on.”

“How do we figure out which it is?”

“Mostly we ask questions and try to eliminate possibilities.” Cork reached out and picked up his beer, but he didn’t drink. “One of the things that’s clear is this: Whoever is behind it knew about the charter flight, about Sandy, and put together a pretty damn good plan to impersonate him. So that’s a place to start. Becca, do you know who arranged the flight?”

“No.”

“Would it be in his records?”

“I’m sure it would be. He was meticulous.”

“I’d like to check his home office. And can you give me access to his office at the regional airport down there?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. Tomorrow I’ll drive to Rice Lake and have a look.” Cork drank from the beer that had begun to warm in his hand. “Now, there’s something else we need to discuss, and this is a little scary.”

Burns said, “Steve Stilwell.”

“That’s right. I think we need to assume the worst. Someone took him out of the picture.”

“They killed him?” Becca said.

“That would be my guess.”

“Isn’t it possible they just bought his silence?”

“Then he’d have stuck around and lied to you, told you he didn’t find anything. And buying his silence is risky. He might decide to talk a blue streak to authorities later. I think he found something or he was getting close to finding something and they killed him. Which means they know you’re looking into things.”

“And that you’re helping?”

“Maybe.”

“Who’s they? And should we be worried for our safety, too?”

“At the moment we don’t know who these people are. I can’t imagine that they’re going to kill us outright. Too suspicious. If they decide to act, they’ll figure a way, like they did with the plane, to get rid of us and make it look like it wasn’t murder.”

“Like what?” Burns said.

“How do you heat this house? Natural gas?”

“Yes.”

“Then a gas explosion. Or a drained brake line on your car. Or carbon monoxide poisoning while you sleep. For guys who know what they’re doing-and it sure as hell looks as if they do-the list is probably endless.”

The women shot a glance at each other and the eyes of one mirrored the concern in those of the other.

“What do we do?” Burns asked.

“Whoever we’re dealing with probably won’t take any action until they believe we’ve found something that’ll make the right people listen. In the meantime, I’m guessing that I’ll be the guy they dog.”

“Cork, we didn’t mean to get you involved this way,” Burns said.

“No? What way did you have in mind?” He smiled briefly, then he said, “I lost someone I loved, too. And if there’s a human hand responsible, I’ve got to know. Stilwell operated out of Duluth, right, Liz?”

She nodded. “He’s got an office in Canal Park.”

“You know where he lived?”

“I can find out. Just a minute.” She got up and vanished down the white tunnel of the hallway toward the den.

Becca stared into the Pepsi in her glass. The ice cubes had melted. She spoke without looking at Cork. “My husband was murdered, wasn’t he?”

“I think he was probably dead before that plane lifted off from the airport in Rice Lake.”

“I figured he was somewhere in those mountains in Wyoming. But his body is probably closer to home, don’t you think?” Still she couldn’t look at him.

“Yes, that’s what I think.”

“Do you think…” She bowed her head, as if immeasurably weary. “Do you think you can find him?”

“I don’t know. I’ll try.”

Finally she looked at him, and he saw in her dark eyes a sad determination. “I want to know what happened. No matter how terrible, I want to know.”

“I understand,” he said.

She got up, walked to one of the long windows, and stared at the angry lake.

Liz Burns returned with a slip of paper on which she’d written Stilwell’s office and home addresses. She also brought a small handgun, a North American Arms. 25 Guardian.

“I had a stalker once, a client who developed an unhealthy attachment to me. I bought this for protection.”

“Know how to use it?” Cork asked.

“I fired at the range a few times after I got it. But that was a while ago.”

“I’d visit the range again,” Cork said. He looked toward Becca Bodine, who was still at the window, staring at the lake. “Becca, do you have anything to protect yourself, should it come to that?”

She spoke with her back to him. “Sandy was a hunter. We have a cabinet full of rifles.”

“And you know how to shoot?”

“Yes.” She turned toward him, and her eyes were as turbulent as the lake behind her. “And I’d love the chance to prove it.”