Boundary waters

40

Angelo Benedetti carried his father into cabin 7 at the Quetico. When the trembling, white-haired man had been ensconced in a leather easy chair, Booker T. Harris stepped toward him. Harris’s hands were clasped behind his back as if they’d been cuffed, and his face glistened with the sweat of a worried man.

“One of my men is dead out there. I want to know why.”

Nathan Jackson, who’d stood at the long glass windows that overlooked the lake, fuming silently, threw his hands up in exasperation. “For God sake, Booker, you know why. The son of a bitch is afraid Shiloh’s going to help nail his fucking ass for Marais’s murder.”

“Are we back to that?” Benedetti said. “I thought we were done with it.”

Jackson started across the room. “I’m not done until I’ve put you in the gas chamber.”

“Back off, Nathan.”

Harris reached out to grasp his brother’s shoulder, but Jackson pulled loose.

“The hell I’m going to back off.”

Benedetti furiously motioned to his son. “Get me out of here, Angelo. This place stinks of bullshit.”

“You’re going nowhere.” Jackson lurched toward the quivering man in the leather chair, but Angelo Benedetti thrust himself between them, chest to chest with Jackson. Harris grabbed his brother and yanked him back.

“Nathan, for Christ’s sake, use your head. Let me handle this.”

Jackson wrestled free and glared at Harris. “Oh, yeah. No problem, brother. Go right ahead. Handle it like you’ve handled everything else here. Got one man killed already and God only knows what’s happened to the others out there. Doing a stellar job, Booker. Downtown Saturday night.”

A small earthquake seemed to pass through Booker Harris, and whatever had held him in check collapsed.

“Fine,” he hollered. “Fine. You want to kill the man, you go right ahead. You’ve been throwing other people’s asses in jail for years-time maybe you had a visit there yourself. For thirty years, you’ve been dead set on undoing the good things I’ve done for you. So go ahead, throw it all away. And while you’re at it, you can double-kiss my ass, little brother.”

“Fuck you,” Jackson said.

“Yeah, and fuck you right back.” Harris slammed his hand down on the coffee table. The coffee cups jumped like startled little men. “I told you to stay away. God damn it, I told you I’d handle this. I’m going to let you in on something, Mr. Next Governor of the Golden State. I don’t know what all this is about out here, but I sure as hell know it ain’t got nuthin’ to do with Marais Grand.”

Nathan Jackson froze. He looked hard at his brother’s face until Harris guiltily turned away. “How do you know that. Booker?”

Jo, who’d stood back silently taking in all the sound and the fury, said quietly, “Because he’s always known who killed her.”

The men in the room-Schanno, the Benedettis, Jackson, Metcalf, and finally Harris-turned their full and amazed attention to Jo. She was a little amazed herself. But suddenly, it had all made sense.

Vincent Benedetti grabbed his son’s sleeve. “What am I missing here? Angelo, do you know what’s going on?”

“Hang on a second, Pop. I think we’re about to find out. Go on, Ms. O’Connor.”

“You all thought this was about men, about the two of you. But it was really about women, wasn’t it. Agent Harris?”

“What are you talking about?” Benedetti complained. “Speak plain.”

“Pop, will you just give her a chance?”

Jo moved closer to the leather chair from which Benedetti eyed her irritably. “You said your affair with Marais Grand began shortly after she came to perform at your casino. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“And your wife threatened to leave you when she found out?”

“That’s right.”

“In fact, you said she threatened to kill you if you ever cheated on her with Marais Grand again.”

Benedetti shrugged. “She had a temper.”

“You ended that affair. But you had another fling with Marais Grand, shortly before she left for Nashville, and Marais claimed that Shiloh was the result.”

“So?”

“Did your wife know about the second affair?”

“Hell, Theresa knew about everything. I don’t know how. It was lucky for everybody Marais went to Nashville.”

Jo went on, “When Marais came back with little Shiloh and the tabloids were stirring up rumors of the old flame’s being rekindled, how did your wife react?”

Benedetti said, as if it were only natural, “She went berserk. I told her it was all lies.”

“But she didn’t believe you.”

“Who could blame her?”

“The night Marais Grand was killed, you were in Los Angeles. There were witnesses.” Jo looked up at the younger Benedetti. “What about you? Where were you that night?”

“Me? On a houseboat on Lake Mead with Joey and his folks. He’d just graduated from high school.”

“What about your mother?”

He thought a moment. “She stayed home, I guess. She was pretty upset back in those days. Didn’t go much of anywhere except to St. Lucia to light candles and pray.”

“Then she was alone?”

“I guess.”

“What are you getting at?” Vincent Benedetti sounded as if his patience was nearly exhausted.

“Angelo told me yesterday about a meeting between your wife and Agent Harris that took place in St. Lucia shortly after Marais Grand was killed.”

“In St. Lucia?” He glared at Harris. “She never told me.”

“There was a reason for that,” Jo said. “And there was a reason Agent Harris never looked officially in her direction during the homicide investigation. Think about it a moment. Wouldn’t an irate wife be a reasonable suspect in the killing of a woman reputed to be her husband’s lover?”

Everyone looked at Harris. He faced them like a man before a firing squad.

Jo said to him, “You must have had something pretty solid on her before you met her that day.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Do you deny you spoke with Theresa Benedetti in the church?”

“I was involved in a homicide investigation.”

“In a church?” Nathan Jackson cried. “Bullshit, Booker. Look at me. I said look at me, God damn it.” He studied his brother’s face, then his own face opened up in horror. “My God. Oh, my God. It’s true.” He looked as if he were going to fell over. “Why, Booker?”

“Why? Because you’re my brother. Because I’ve spent my whole life covering your ass, Nathan. It just came naturally.” He turned away from Jackson and bent to a table where the coffee server and cups had been set out. He poured coffee, took a sip, and seemed disappointed. “Cold,” he said. He put the cup down and looked at Jo. “We grew up in Watts, Ms. O’Connor. A lot of people never make it out of Watts, and a lot of those who do never look back. We were lucky, Nathan and me. We had a mother-she was a seventh-grade history teacher-who believed fiercely in ideals and in us. Dwight, he was lucky, too. When his own mother abandoned him, we took him in. Mom raised him like her own.” Harris glanced at his brother. “Christ, she believed in you, Nathan. Believed you were destined for greatness. Believed you could do something for black people. Dwight and me, we grew up covering your thoughtless antics. Covering you for her sake. Feels like we’ve been fighting a rear-guard action all our lives. You surely do know how to talk the talk. And you even do a damn good job of making it look like you walk the walk. But I know you, brother. And I know you got all the substance of a soap bubble. You want to know why we did it? I’ll tell you. Family, that’s why. In the end, that’s all that matters. Not ideas-they change. Not justice-hell, I don’t even know what that is. Family, Nathan. In the end, family’s all that abides.”

“What did you have on Theresa Benedetti?” Jo asked.

Harris took a deep breath and plunged in. “MURs for starters. Phone records. A call had been placed to Marais Grand from the Benedetti residence a few hours before she was killed. I knew Benedetti was in L.A. at the time. A little investigation made it clear that Mrs. Benedetti had been home alone that night. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.”

“Why did you approach her in church?” Jo asked.

“I wanted the meeting in private and in a place where the truth might matter to her.”

“I don’t like the way this is going,” Vincent Benedetti said.

Jo ignored him. “What did you say to her?”

“I told her about the phone call. I told her it seemed an odd thing that Marais Grand had been killed but the little girl, who was a potential witness, hadn’t been harmed. I told her I thought it was touching, something a mother might have done. I told her I wouldn’t blame a woman for trying to keep her family together, whatever it took. I also told her we had a bloody fingerprint pulled from the girl’s closet door.”

“Did she confess to killing Marais Grand?”

“She claimed it was in self-defense. I told myself that, in a way, it probably was. She also revealed to me that her husband had fathered Shiloh.”

“Did that surprise you?”

“Yes. I knew Nathan believed Shiloh was his daughter.”

“You struck a deal with Theresa Benedetti, didn’t you? Silence for silence.”

He nodded. “If she guaranteed that her husband would never say a word about the child, never lay a claim to Shiloh, I’d make sure the investigation didn’t touch her. She was safe.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Nathan Jackson whispered.

“I did it to save your political ass, Nathan. I was sure if you knew that Benedetti believed the child was his, if he made any claim to her, you’d spill everything. Son of a bitch, you were on your way. You had it all ahead of you. You had looks, brains, a golden tongue, and more luck than any man had a right to. But I knew you, and I knew you’d throw it all away to lay your own claim to that child.” He gave his brother a cold look. “So yeah, I crossed the line. Kept everything clean, kept your name from ever coming up. Like I’d done a hundred times before. And I’d have done it again, here. All you had to do was stay away and let me handle this.”

“What about the other men involved in the investigation?” Jo went on. “Dwight Sloane, Grimes, Mr. Metcalf over there? They would have known, wouldn’t they?”

Harris nodded. “They knew.”

“I understand Dwight Sloane.” Jo looked toward Metcalf. “What did it take for you?”

Metcalf offered her only an enigmatic smile.

“The promise of a better salary than they’d ever have as cops,” Harris answered for him. “As consultants, the business that comes their way from the state and the feds has been more than generous. Dwight and I have seen to that.”

“I didn’t know,” Nathan Jackson said, as if pleading his case to Jo.

Harris shook his head angrily. “No, you only chose not to see.”

Vincent Benedetti wore a strange expression, somewhere between confusion and amusement. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying my wife, my Theresa, killed Marais?” The idea seemed to take hold and not displease him especially. “She had the guts for it, God rest her soul.”

Nathan Jackson sat down. “All these years,” he said, but he didn’t go on.

The fire in the room crackled and no one spoke. Hard silence, Jo had observed, often followed hard truths.

Harris walked to the window and stared out at the lake, an icy blue in the sunlight. “It’s beautiful out there,” he finally said. “God’s country. How does the saying go? Where God builds a church, the Devil builds a chapel.”

The telephone rang. Metcalf answered it. “Sheriff Schanno, it’s for you.”

Wally Schanno took the phone and said, “Yeah?” He listened a moment, said, “I’ll be there,” and hung up.

“What is it?” Jo asked when she saw the dark countenance of his face.

Schanno said, “They’ve found another body.”

A big man, the word finally came. Caucasian. Thirty to thirty-five years of age. Shaved head. Dressed in camouflage military fatigues. Three gunshot wounds hi the upper torso.

It wasn’t Cork or Louis or Stormy. Not any of the men who’d gone into the Boundary Waters together to look for Shiloh.

Harris accompanied a sheriff’s deputy in the helicopter. Two hours later, they were back, the body delivered to the morgue at Aurora Community Hospital, where it kept company with the corpse of Virgil Grimes. Harris had a full set of fingerprints that Metcalf relayed via the computer to the Los Angeles field office. In the meantime, Wally Schanno had ordered the search-and-rescue teams to head to Wilderness Lake with all due speed. He requested the U.S. Forest Service have their De Havilland Beaver begin flying over the lake where it would be joined soon by the helicopter.

It was early afternoon. Jo knew there was nothing more she could do at that point. She told Schanno she was heading to the Iron Lake Reservation to talk to Sarah Two Knives.

First, she stopped by the house on Gooseberry Lane. She’d called Rose early that morning when she knew the first body wasn’t Cork. Now the children were all at school. The house smelled of baking bread. So normal. But at the moment, nothing felt normal to Jo. Dead men were being hauled out of the Boundary Waters hike cut wood. Cork and Louis and Stormy were still unaccounted for.

“My God,” Rose gasped when Jo told her the situation. “No wonder you look like hell. Does Sarah know?”

“I’m on my way there now.”

“She may already have heard something,” Rose said cautiously. “Word’s leaked out about the man they found this morning. People have been calling all day to see if I know something.”

“I hope nobody’s said anything to the kids. Listen, Rose, if they ask, just let them know their dad’s all right.”

“Is he?” Rose asked.

“It’s what they should hear right now,” Jo said. She sat down in a kitchen chair, feeling quite weak.

“Have you eaten?”

“Not a bite all day.”

“Let me put something together. A sandwich, at least.” Rose pulled out bread, roast beef, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, and mayonnaise and went to work. “It’s a good sign in a way, isn’t it?”

“What?” Jo asked.

“That the man they just found isn’t one of… the good guys.”

“I honestly don’t know what it means, Rose.” She laid her head in her hands. “I never thought I’d be happy to see a dead man, but twice now I’ve been almost ecstatic when they brought out the bodies and neither of them was Cork. I suppose that’s wrong.”

“That’s just human. Let it go. Here.” She handed Jo the sandwich in a Baggie. “I don’t suppose we should plan on you for dinner.”

“No.” She stood up and gave her sister a hug. Rose smelled of the baking bread, and Jo wished she could take that smell with her wherever she went. “Thanks for covering here on the home front.”

Rose smiled sympathetically. “I’ve got it easy. You have to tell Sarah Two Knives that it looks like her son and husband have stumbled into hell.”