Red knife

SEVENTEEN

After his talk with Meloux, Cork stopped at the sheriff’s department, but neither Marsha Dross, Ed Larson, nor Simon Rutledge was there. He left word for the sheriff to call him on his cell, then he turned to the chore he’d meant to do that day before the Kingbird killings had grabbed his attention.

He had closed Sam’s Place the week after Halloween. November was always a grim month. The fall colors vanished. The stands of maple, oak, birch, and poplar lost their brilliance and became stark and bare. The days were blustery and overcast. The lake was gray, agitated, and empty. The flow of customers to Sam’s Place dried to a trickle. He’d put plywood over the serving windows and hung a sign that read: THANKS FOR YOUR BUSINESS. SEE YOU NEXT SPRING. He’d tipped the picnic table against the big pine beside the lake, turned off the gas to the grill, emptied and shut down the freezer for the winter. That part of the old Quonset hut devoted to the food-service business was abandoned. The other part of the building Cork kept heated and continued to use as the office for his fledgling business as a private investigator. He was the only PI in Tamarack County and the three counties that adjoined it. His first case had involved finding Henry Meloux’s son. Despite the fact that the job had, in the end, cost several lives, business afterward had been surprisingly brisk. Wilred Brynofurson, head of security at Aurora Community College, had hired him to investigate one of their environmental engineers, suspected in the theft of several computers and video projectors. His work resulted in clearing the suspect and uncovering the true culprit, the assistant director of Technology Services, a man with a serious gambling problem. He’d also done surveillance for an insurance company on a plaintiff suing for a debilitating back injury sustained when his car collided with a plumber’s truck. Cork had videotaped the guy, who lived in Eveleth, climbing like a monkey all over his roof, taking down strings of Christmas lights. That one hadn’t been a challenge at all. He’d served subpoenas, located a couple of bail jumpers, and tracked down Rolf and Olivia Nordstrom’s daughter who’d dropped out of her first year at Augsburg College and then dropped out of sight. (After spending one day on campus, he found her living with her boyfriend-a street juggler and sometimes bar bouncer-in a crash pad on the West Bank. He didn’t convince her to return to college or Aurora, didn’t even try, but he did get her to promise to call her worried parents, which she did.)

Except for the work he’d done for Henry Meloux, which had been more a favor than an assignment, his PI work so far hadn’t been particularly difficult. Neither had it been dangerous, and that was important. It kept Jo happy. She liked that he no longer had a job that required a Kevlar vest as part of his standard equipment.

He was on his stepladder, reattaching a corner of the SAM’S PLACE sign that had worked loose in the winter winds, when he spotted Ed Larson’s cruiser turn onto the gravel access that led to the Quonset hut. He set his hammer down and watched as Larson brought the cruiser over the Burlington Northern tracks and parked in the lot. Larson got out, Simon Rutledge with him.

“Think you’ll have ’er ready for fishing opener?” Larson asked as they approached.

“Provided I don’t keep getting interrupted.”

“Marsha asked us to stop by, find out if you learned anything from Meloux.”

Cork looked down at his visitors. “In his way, he offered what he could.”

“Which was?”

“Take a hawk’s-eye view.”

Larson stared up at him. “I don’t get it.”

“Neither do I.”

“Does he know where Thunder is?”

“I don’t think so,” Cork said. “If he did, he probably would have come right out and told me.”

“Take a hawk’s-eye view? Is that a clue of some kind?”

“I think it’s more a suggestion on how to approach the problem.”

“But you have no idea what he meant by it?”

“Nope.”

“Big help.” Larson squinted up at Cork, blinking behind his glasses. “Marsha says you stepped back from the investigation. What’s up with that?”

“Other priorities, Ed.” Cork tapped the side of the Quonset hut.

“Right. Fishing opener and all.” Larson looked down at the gravel, then back up. “We just finished canvassing Kingbird’s neighbors.”

“And they told you they didn’t see anything, right?”

“Right.” Larson’s skepticism was obvious.

“They weren’t playing games with you, Ed. Marvin LaPoint lost most of his hearing in Vietnam. When he sleeps, Mindy says it’s like a freight train going through the house. She wears earplugs in bed. They’re not late-night people, so they were probably sleeping when the Kingbirds were killed and wouldn’t have heard anything. On the other side of the Kingbirds, the closest neighbors would be Blakeley and Gene Beatty. They usually spend Saturday nights with Blakeley’s cousins in Biwabik. Big poker game, goes on all night. Blakeley and Gene usually sleep over.”

“That’s good to know. I thought maybe we were just being stonewalled. We also talked to a few of the Red Boyz.”

“Who?”

“Tom Blessing, Daniel Hart, and Elgin Manypenny.”

“And you got a shitload of attitude and nothing else.”

Larson put a foot on the ladder, as if he were thinking of climbing up beside Cork. “Marsha likes Reinhardt for the murders. Doesn’t buy his alibi. What do you think?”

“The alibi’s thin, the motive isn’t. Same’s true for Elise.”

“I don’t know. Tough believing that a woman-a mother yet-could be that brutal. Tape up two people, back-shoot them. Speaking of which, we got prints off the duct tape. Rayette’s were all over the strips used on her husband, but the tape on her wrists was clean. We’re thinking the killer had Rayette tape Alexander, and then he-or she-taped Rayette and wore gloves while they did it.”

Rutledge spoke up for the first time. “I sent the tape to the BCA lab in Bemidji this morning to see if there’s something we can get from fibers or anything else the roll of tape might have come into contact with before it was used for the murders.”

Larson said, “Me, I don’t like either of the Reinhardts for this. Too brutal. And stupid. Buck’s a lot of things, but stupid’s not one of them. And he’d have to know that the Red Boyz wouldn’t let something like that go unanswered. It’s no wonder he’s carrying these days.”

“So who’s at the top of your list, Ed?”

“Seems to me this has all the earmarks of a drug hit. I spoke with Gordon Wingaard, our DEA guy down in the Cities, on the phone a little while ago. He’s inclined to believe the same thing.”

“Who did the hit?”

“Some things we know. Some things we can only speculate about. This is what we know. In California, Kingbird became a member of the Latin Lords, a gang with strong ties to the cartels across the border. The Latin Lords are a big part of the Mexican pipeline that funnels drugs to the Midwest. DEA has been aware for some time that the Lords have been using reservations as depots. Sovereign territory, for one thing. And on the reservation, so much gets tied up with family connections that people don’t talk to the law. DEA has had an eye on the Red Boyz, hoping to intercept shipments, but they haven’t been able to come up with anything, probably because the Red Boyz know ways on and off the reservation that none of the rest of us do.”

“That’s the speculation part?” Cork asked.

“DEA also speculates that the Red Boyz have been able to thin the ranks of the competition in the North Country through a disciplined campaign of intimidation.”

“And so this might be the competition fighting back?”

“DEA certainly likes that possibility. They’re talking to people they know, and they’ve promised to keep us in the loop.”

Cork studied his loose sign a moment, looked up at the thick cloud cover, then dropped his gaze back to the men below. “I don’t want to complicate your speculation, but there’s another possibility I think you ought to consider.”

“Yeah?” Larson said. “What’s that?”

“Lonnie Thunder.”

“I’m listening.”

“According to Meloux, Thunder was running scared after Kristi’s death. Kingbird took him to see Henry, hoping Meloux could help him find some courage.”

“Like the Wizard of Oz,” Rutledge threw in.

“Only Thunder didn’t stick around long enough for the wizard to give him anything. I’m thinking that if Thunder was in a panic and afraid Kingbird was going to turn him in, he might have been desperate enough for what happened out there.”

Rutledge nodded as if he liked the idea. “Which makes it even more incumbent upon us to find him.”

“Yeah, well, good luck.”

“The sheriff’s a little ticked at you, Cork,” Rutledge said. “She feels like you deserted her. Me, I think I can understand. Must be tough.”

“What’s that?”

“Being in the middle. Not the law, but not quite quit of it either. Situation like this Kingbird incident, with your Ojibwe friends on one side and a lot of your white friends on the other. Easier, I’m sure, just to step away and let go of any investment in the outcome. Still…” He shook his head in a troubled way. “I’d guess that’s hard to do when you’re watching it all play out in your own backyard.” He started to turn, as if to head back to the cruiser, but offered what seemed to be a sincere afterthought. “Listen, would you like us to keep you apprised of our investigation?”

Cork said, “No.”

“All right then.” Rutledge walked away.

“Take ’er easy, Cork.” Larson joined the BCA agent at the cruiser.

Cork watched them drive off under the gray overcast that had threatened rain all day but had not delivered. He turned back to his work, picked up his hammer, and pounded the next nail as if it was all that held the world together.