Boundary waters

12

At Grandview, Willie Raye opened the door to Cork’s Bronco and stepped in.

“Morning,” he said cheerfully.

“Tell me about Vincent Benedetti,” Cork said.

Raye looked startled. “Benedetti? Why do you want to know about him? ” The last word was full of poison.

Cork explained his morning meeting.

“Don’t ever trust a Benedetti,” Raye said. He stared at the trees that isolated his cabin and worked his jaw as if he were chewing on something old and bitter. “I never knew for sure if it was him who killed Marais. But if he wanted her dead, he knew how to get it done.”

“What do you know about him?”

“I haven’t seen him in years. Not since-well, not since Marais’s funeral. The bastard had the gall to be there, looking innocent as a lamb,” Raye said. “Man like that,” he added in an acid Ozark twang, “got hisself a cast-iron soul and a shithole for a heart.”

Wendell Two Knives’ mobile home sat on a patch of green lawn that rolled gently down to the reflection of blue sky that was Iron Lake. Under the windows were flower boxes that held red geraniums still in full bloom. The whole place was surrounded by birch trees, trunks white as icicles, leaves gold as freshly minted doubloons.

The note Cork had left the night before was still taped to Wendell’s door. Cork knocked, but Wendell didn’t answer. He crossed the lawn to the big corrugated shed that Wendell used as a garage and peered in at a window. He beckoned Willie Raye over.

“Wendell drives a Dodge Ram pickup,” Cork said. “Pickup’s gone. But take a gander at what’s sitting in its place.”

The floor of the shed was covered with fragments of birch bark, and the shed itself was full of tools that Wendell used in the building of birch-bark canoes, an art he’d practiced his entire life. Mallets, wood chisels, buckets, sawhorses, brushes-all hung on racks or sat on benches. In the center was a cleared area large enough for a truck to park. Instead of Wendell’s truck, a small red sports car sat there, highlighted in a long shaft of sunlight that came through the window on the far side of the shed. A coating of dust dulled the sheen of the car’s finish.

“Shiloh loves sports cars,” Raye said.

Cork walked around to the back of the shed where there stood a canoe rack with spaces for four canoes. Only one space was filled.

“What do you think?” Raye asked.

“I think he’s gone for a while.”

“To Shiloh?”

“Let’s hope so. Come on.”

“Where to?” Raye asked as he followed Cork to the Bronco.

“To Stormy Two Knives. He’s the only other person I can think of who might know where that is.”

Two miles up the road, just beyond the far outskirts of Allouette, Cork pulled into the drive of a small log home set among white pines growing in planted rows. A sign posted beside the drive advertised firewood for sale. Next to the house, a woman stood at a clothesline, her arms lifted, holding a wet sheet. A slight northwesterly breeze had picked up and the ends of the hung linen ruffled leisurely. The woman finished pinning the corner of the sheet to the line with a clothesphi, then shielded her eyes against the sun as she watched the two men approach.

“Anin, Sarah,” Cork greeted her.

“Anin, Cork.” Her reply was polite, but not warm. She was a small woman in her early thirties with high cheeks and dark red hair that she wore long. She had on Nikes, neatly creased jeans, and a blue denim shirt. Her attention glanced off Raye, then quickly settled again on Cork.

“I’m looking for Wendell,” Cork explained. “We stopped by his place, but he’s not home.”

Something cloudy passed briefly across her face. “You’d better talk to Stormy.”

“That’s what I figured, too. Where can I find him?”

“Him and Louis are cutting firewood. On the old logging road at the bridge over Widow’s Creek.”

“Thanks, Sarah.”

“I’m not saying he’ll talk to you, Cork,” she cautioned.

“I understand.”

As they pulled back onto the road, Raye asked, “Why wouldn’t he talk to you?”

Cork turned east out of Allouette and began to follow a dirt road that cut through thick forest. “Stormy’s got a temper,” he explained. “A few years ago he got into a fight, killed a man. Afterward, he panicked and ran. Holed up in a shack up north on Iron Lake, threatened to shoot anyone who tried to come near him. The sheriff talked his way in and convinced Stormy to give himself up. Assured him he’d get a fair trial. As it turned out, he didn’t. Stormy spent five years in the prison at Stillwater.”

“That still doesn’t explain why he wouldn’t talk to you.”

Cork pulled across an old wooden bridge over a small creek and stopped behind a dusty blue Ford Ranger parked at the side of the road. “I was the sheriff.”

The biting whine of a chainsaw chewed through the stillness of the woods near the creek. Cork followed the sound until he came to an area where a number of big dying firs stood brown among the other evergreens. Several trees had already been felled, their dry branches splintered against the ground. Stormy Two Knives was moving swiftly down one of the horizontal trunks, a big yellow McCulloch in his gloved hands, carving away the limbs and slicing the trunk into sections. The air smelled of oil and gas and sawdust. A boy of ten followed on the ground gathering the debris into piles. The boy noticed them first.

Cork waited in a big patch of sunlight until Stormy Two Knives cut the motor of the chainsaw and lifted his safety goggles. Two Knives saw the boy looking, and he looked, too. He stepped off the fallen tree.

“Anin, Stormy,” Cork said. “Anin, Louis,” he said to the boy.

Two Knives set down the chainsaw. He took off the ball cap he was wearing and shook his head vigorously. Sweat flew off him like a dog shaking dry after a bath. “You don’t have to pretend the Indian shit with me, O’Connor.”

“Anin,” Louis Two Knives said.

His father shot him a stern look.

Stormy Two Knives was slightly smaller than Cork but outweighed him by fifty pounds. He stood hunched a little forward from overdeveloped back muscles, a characteristic of men who’d cut timber most of their lives. In the years he’d been in prison, Two Knives had used his time to develop the rest of his body as well. His chest was massive. The sleeves of his plaid flannel shirt were rolled back, revealing sinewy arms. But prison had also developed something else in Two Knives, and it showed in the coldness of his dark eyes.

“Sarah told us you’d be here. I need to talk to you, Stormy.”

“I’m busy.”

“It’s important. It’s about your uncle.”

Two Knives reached down to where a thermos sat on a stump. He poured cold water into the thermos cup and took a drink. He offered the cup to his son.

“Wendell? What about him?”

“Have you seen him lately?”

“Why?”

“It’s important I talk to him.”

“Haven’t seen him.”

Louis Two Knives handed the thermos cup back to this father. “He’s in the Boundary Waters.”

“Louis,” Stormy Two Knives snapped.

“He’s been gone a long time,” the boy continued, ignoring the hard look from his father.

“Stormy,” Cork said. “He may be in trouble.”

“The only trouble an Indian is ever in is with the law. Has my uncle done something?”

“He guided a woman into the Boundary Waters. We think somebody may want to hurt her, and they might try to use Wendell to get to her.”

“We?” Two Knives coldly scrutinized Arkansas Willie Raye, looking directly into his eyes, an unusual thing for an Ojibwe. But prison had changed Stormy Two Knives in a lot of ways. “I know you.”

“Call me Arkansas Willie,” Raye said. He thrust a hand out, but Two Knives only looked at it.

“Used to watch you on TV,” Stormy Two Knives said. “Didn’t know you were still alive.” He turned his attention back to Cork. “I don’t know anything about my uncle.”

“Stormy, this woman’s life may be at stake. Your uncle’s, too.”

“My uncle can take care of himself.”

“I’ve been told he goes in and out of the Boundary Waters frequently. I think he must take supplies to this woman. Louis says he’s been gone a long time. That makes me worried.”

“Look, what do you care, O’Connor? You’re not the sheriff anymore. You don’t make the laws around here.”

“I never did, Stormy.”

“Like I said,” Two Knives went on, lifting his chainsaw, “I’m busy. Hand me that bar tool, Louis. I want to tighten this chain.”

“I’ll pay you,” Willie Raye said.

Two Knives paused. “How much?”

“A thousand dollars.”

“We get an allotment from the casino profits now.” He hefted the saw and plucked at the chain to gauge the tension. “You can take your thousand dollars and shove it up your ass.”

Willie Raye moved forward a step. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m just plumb scared, Stormy. I got me a little girl out there, lost as a blind kitten in a kennel full of hounds. I’d give my left nut just to know she’s okay. A man loses his family, doesn’t matter what else he’s got. He’s got nuthin’. There’s no reason you should help me. No reason on earth. Except you’re the only one who can.”

Stormy Two Knives stared at him. “You her father?”

“I’m her father.”

Two Knives’ face was impassive as he stood considering. Louis reached out and touched his father’s arm. Two Knives bent down and the boy whispered.

In the quiet, Cork heard the crack and pop of twigs as someone approached from the direction of the old logging road. In a moment, Booker T. Harris and Dwight Sloane appeared. They walked to where Cork and Raye stood and Harris addressed Stormy Two Knives.

“Is your name Hector Two Knives?”

The skin around Two Knives’ eyes went tight as old leather. “Everyone calls me Stormy. Except cops.”

“Is that your Ranger parked out there?”

“That’s my Ranger.”

“Mr. Two Knives,” Harris said, taking a pair of handcuffs from his coat pocket, “you’re under arrest.”