Copper River

27

Jewell had an eclectic collection of mugs. The one she held was white, with TOWANDA! printed across it in red. Dina drank from a blue Best Mom In The World cup. Cork had a red mug with The older I get the better I was emblazoned in gold. He looked up when Ren and Charlie marched in. From their deliberate stride he could tell that they had something important to say.

Ren stood in front with Charlie to his left. He squared his shoulders. Charlie buried her hands in her pockets, and her eyes seemed interested in everything except the adults.

Ren said, “There’s something we should tell you.”

Jewell nodded seriously. “We’re listening.”

Ren proceeded to lay out to them a bizarre-sounding scenario that included a body floating down the Copper River, a midnight search along the lakeshore, a mysterious boat, a childish mooning, followed by a pursuit up the trail along the river. The story ended with a cigar box containing marijuana left where it might easily have been discovered.

“You get high?” Jewell asked at the end.

“Sometimes,” Ren admitted.

“Oh Jesus.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“How long?”

Ren shrugged, then shook his head. “A while.”

“Jewell, I know it’s an important issue and you and Ren need to talk about it,” Cork said, “but there’s a more pressing concern here. Is someone trying to kill these kids, and if they are, why?”

Jewell drilled her son with her dark eyes. “We will talk.” She transferred her stern look to Charlie. “And you, too.”

They sat at the dining table, and Cork walked Ren through everything again, double-checking each point with Charlie to be certain they were in agreement about the circumstances.

“You saw the body?” Cork said.

“No,” Ren replied. “Stash-I mean Stuart-did. We kidded him, but he was sure.”

“Did you actually see anything?”

“Maybe. But I thought it was, like, a log or something, you know?”

“Charlie?”

The girl shook her head. “I didn’t see anything.”

“You were high? All of you?”

They nodded together.

“All right, tell me about this boat.”

Ren and Charlie exchanged a blank look. “It was just a boat,” the boy said.

“How big?”

“Not very.”

“Thirty feet? Twenty? Ten?”

“Maybe twenty.”

“Charlie?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said.

“Think.”

For ten seconds the girl stared at the empty fireplace. “It was just a regular powerboat, nothing special. A good engine, though. Maybe ninety horse.”

“You know engines?”

“I know a lot of things.”

“Did your father know anybody with a boat? Fishing buddies, maybe?”

“They all fish. A lot of ‘em have boats.”

“Can you give us some names?”

She looked irritated, as if it were a pain to have to think. “I don’t know. Joe Otto. Skip Hakala. Calvin Stokely sometimes borrows his brother’s boat. Then there’s Pat Murphy. There’s Roadkill-”

“Roadkill?”

“His name’s Rodney, but they call him Roadkill.”

“Sounds like he had a lot of friends.”

“Duh. He lived here his whole life.”

Cork looked at Jewell. “You know any of these guys?”

“Most of them.”

“Anyone who might be the kind of guy who’d do what someone did to Charlie’s father?”

“When they’re drunk, all of ‘em,” Charlie spit out.

Jewell said, “Max wasn’t particular about the company he kept. But I’d have to say that of them all, Calvin Stokely’s always been the scariest. When we were kids, anything particularly cruel happened around here without knowing exactly who did it, Calvin Stokely’s name popped pretty quick to people’s lips. His folks lived off the grid.”

“Off the grid?” Ren said. “What’s that, Mom?”

“It’s when someone tries to live a life that’s not documented by the government. No Social Security, no taxes, that kind of thing.”

“Like survivalists?” Ren said.

“Not exactly. But they were hard people. Hard on their kids for sure: Calvin and his brother, Isaac. Isaac’s older. He went off to the Army young. When he came back on leave, he found Calvin and his mother beat up pretty bad and got into a fight with his father, who tried to shoot him with a shotgun. I guess Isaac’s military training tipped the scales in his favor. It was the father they buried. Court ruled it a justifiable homicide and Isaac went back to the service. Calvin stayed, but it would have been fine with me if he hadn’t. I know he’s not to blame for what happened to him when he was a kid, but honestly, when I see him in town I try to avoid him. Even after all these years he still gives me the creeps.”

Dina leaned on the table and cupped her coffee mug with both hands. “The men who killed Charlie’s father weren’t necessarily his buddies. I’m willing to bet a lot of people in Bodine know who Charlie is. She doesn’t exactly blend into the woodwork.”

“But we’re all thinking it’s somebody local, right?” Cork said.

“Local,” Dina concurred.

“If it is about the body in the river, what is it about the body?” Cork went on. “Why go after kids who may have seen it?”

Jewell sat back, turning her mug slowly in her hand. “The body in the river, it’s probably the same one that washed up in Bodine?”

“Hard to believe there’d be two corpses,” Cork replied.

Dina frowned, thinking. “What could it be about the dead girl that would make someone come after Charlie and Stuart?”

Cork said, “It would be helpful if we knew who she was.”

Ren looked at Charlie.

“We do,” he said. “Tell them, Charlie.”

Cork listened along with the others as Charlie told them about Sara Wolf, the girl from Providence House. When she was finished, he said, “It’s time you talked to the sheriff’s people.”

“No.” Charlie backed away. “I’ll run away. I will.”

Cork spoke quietly but firmly. “Somebody killed your father. The same people may have killed this girl. And they’re probably responsible for your friend lying all torn up in a hospital bed. If that’s true, they’re after you, too. The sooner the investigators know all this, the better the chances of identifying these guys and putting them away.”

She spoke over Ren’s shoulder. “I don’t like police. I won’t talk to them.”

Cork looked to his cousin for help. “Jewell?”

Jewell took a breath and tried. “Charlie-”

“No!”

“I think Charlie’s right,” Dina said. “What we have are a series of events, none of which are connected except by proximity, circumstance, and speculation. At the moment, the sheriff’s people strongly suspect that Charlie might be responsible for her father’s death. If she goes to them with the story she’s told us, they’re going to hold her, question her, and because she ran once already, they’ll probably find a way to keep her in custody.” She eyeballed Jewell, then Cork. “You want that for her?”

“The dead girl may have family who are worried,” Cork said.

“Yeah, and monkeys fly out my butt,” Charlie tossed in. “She was in a homeless shelter. You think she’d be there if she had a choice? You think anybody would?”

“The police need to know who she is,” Cork persisted.

Dina shrugged. “Maybe they already do.” She glanced at Jewell. “That constable friend of yours. You think you could find out from him?”

“I can try.”

“Ned, it’s Jewell DuBois.”

“Jewell.” He sounded surprised and pleased. He also sounded distant and fuzzy.

“Are you in your office?” she asked.

“No. I’m at Fry Ahearn’s place. Goats got out again. We’re rounding them up. When I’m out of the office, I forward the calls to my cell. What’s up?”

“Ren and I just came back from Marquette. We went to see Stuart Gullickson at the hospital.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s not out of the woods yet.”

“Poor kid.” There was a disturbance, a grunt, the clunk of heavy wood. “Sorry, Jewell. Just putting the gate back in place.” He was breathing hard. “You know, I do an assembly every year at their school, talking to them about safety issues. Skateboarding in the street in the dark. Jesus. I might as well have been talking to the wall.”

“Ned, Ren’s pretty upset about all this. Charlie’s father dead, Charlie gone, Stuart in the hospital from a hit-and-run. Then there’s that girl they pulled from the lake. Have they identified her yet?”

“Yeah, they have.”

“Really? Who is she?”

“I can’t tell you that, Jewell.”

“Would the Marquette sheriff’s people tell me?”

“I doubt it. Last I heard, they were still working on notifying next of kin. Why would you need to know anyway?”

“Just concerned, Ned. Is it somebody I would recognize, or Ren?”

“It’s nobody from around here, I can tell you that much.” He was quiet a moment. Jewell could hear the bleat of goats in the background. “Say, you haven’t heard from Charlie, have you?”

“No,” she replied.

“And you’d tell me if you had?”

“Thanks for your help, Ned.”

She ended the call and turned to the others. “They know who she is.”

Charlie looked relieved. “So I don’t have to talk to them?”

“Not yet, anyway,” Dina said.

“She’s still a material witness,” Cork pointed out.

Dina gave a brief nod. “Before she talks to Olafsson-”

“Olafsson?” Jewell asked.

“The sheriff’s investigator,” Dina clarified. “Before she talks to him, it would be helpful to know how a girl from Providence House ended up in the Copper River. What’s the connection? If they understand that, they’d be more inclined to believe Charlie and less likely to put her in custody.”

“There’s no guarantee,” Cork said.

“We play the odds. What do you say?”

“Let me guess,” Cork said. “You have a strategy for this.”

Dina smiled demurely. “As a matter of fact, I have. How’s that leg?”