Red knife

SIX

You could have had a deputy do this,” Cork said as they drove south along Iron Lake in the sheriff’s cruiser.

“I wanted to talk to you myself,” Dross said. “Ever since Kristi Reinhardt died, I’ve been worried something like this would happen.”

“Still no luck locating Lonnie Thunder?”

“The people who could help live on the rez-and you know how much they like white folks in uniforms.”

“A lot of them wouldn’t mind one bit if you arrested Thunder.”

“No one’s come forward to tell me where he is.”

During the third year of his first term as sheriff, Cork had hired Marsha Dross as the first female law enforcement officer in Tamarack County. She was approximately his height and not too dissimilar in build. One evening nearly two years earlier, in the soft light of dusk, a sniper had mistaken her for Cork and put a bullet into her. She’d survived, but the damage had killed any hope she might have had of ever conceiving a child. She wasn’t married-the shooting had ended her engagement to a man who desperately wanted children-there were no prospects on the horizon, and Cork didn’t know if the question of marriage and children was one she even pondered much these days.

“Taking a lot of crap lately from a righteous and outraged citizenry?” he asked.

She gave a snort that passed for a laugh. “You see Hell Hanover’s editorial in this week’s Sentinel?”

She was referring to Helmuth Hanover, publisher of the area’s weekly newspaper. Anyone who’d ever been the target of one of his venomous printed diatribes pretty much figured that he was in league with the devil. Hence, the name by which he was generally known: Hell.

“Yeah. And come to think of it, you do resemble Barney Fife with a bra.”

Dross rounded the southern end of the lake and began to head north, up the eastern shoreline toward the rez.

“Makes you feel any better,” Cork said, “Hanover took a lot of shots at me when I wore the badge.”

“Hanover’s an ass, but he’s reflecting a pretty significant sentiment. This Red Boyz horseshit’s got everybody pissed. It’s bringing out the bigot in people.”

“You think it’s horseshit?” Cork asked.

“Don’t you?”

“There’s stuff I disagree with, but I can understand the reasoning.”

“You’re not going to give me a sociology lecture about poverty, are you? Because with the casino, every Ojibwe in the county is getting a nice chunk of change now.”

“That’s not exactly true and you know it. But it’s not about money. The Red Boyz are all young, a lot of them raised by parents who weren’t much more than kids themselves and didn’t give them any sense of who they are or what they could be. All they know is that they’re Indian and looked down on, generally speaking. A brotherhood is one way for them to find some self-esteem, to belong to something that makes them feel important, especially a brotherhood with its roots in Ojibwe ethics.”

“Ethics? The Red Boyz? The ethics of thugs maybe.”

“The Red Boyz stand pretty firm against drugs and alcohol. They don’t use and they do everything they can to discourage it on the rez. Bet if you tracked the numbers, you’d find that since Kingbird organized the Red Boyz, arrests for drug use and related crimes in this county have gone way down.”

“I do track them and you’re right. But”-she held up a cautionary finger-“that doesn’t mean there’s no crime going on. The Red Boyz all drive nice, new, big vehicles, and I can almost guarantee they didn’t pay for them with what they get from the distribution of the casino revenues. DEA’s convinced the Red Boyz operate a narcotics depot on the rez. They warehouse the merchandise and distribute it all over the Midwest.”

“Where other people’s children buy it.”

“Exactly.”

“I told you there’s stuff I didn’t agree with. That’s some of the stuff.”

“What else don’t you agree with?”

“It’s a charismatic organization. Its strength depends too much on Kingbird’s influence. He was the one who gave it direction, who set the guidelines.”

“Guidelines? You think Lonnie Thunder was operating under guidelines, Cork? You ought to see the videos he made.”

“I don’t know what to make of Thunder.”

“Kingbird’s gone now, so what’ll the Red Boyz do?”

“I wish I could say there was somebody capable of stepping in to fill his shoes. Tom Blessing was basically his right hand, but Tom’s no Alexander Kingbird. Things could easily fall apart, get real messy.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, this whole situation getting out of hand. I’d feel a lot better if I had Lonnie Thunder in custody. That might go a long way toward pacifying everybody.” She gave him a sidelong glance.

“This is what you wanted to talk to me about?”

She kept her eyes on the road ahead. “You’re part Ojibwe. People on the rez trust you.”

“Trust me more than they trust you anyway. It’s a situational kind of thing. For a lot of Shinnobs, I’m still way too white.”

“Cork, I don’t have a single deputy with a drop of Ojibwe blood in him.”

“No one to creep around the rez and snoop unnoticed? No one to go looking for Lonnie Thunder? That’s what you want me to do?”

“That’s where I was headed, more or less.”

“I would do this why? For the sake of friendship or some other sentimental crap?”

“There’s something you need to see at Kingbird’s place.”

Captain Ed Larson headed up major-crimes investigation in Tamarack County. He was midfifties, a tall, studious-looking man who wore wire-rims and preferred button-down oxford shirts and suede bucks. When Dross and Cork arrived at the Kingbird home, Larson was out front deep in conversation with Agent Simon Rutledge from the Bemidji office of the BCA, the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Cork knew Rutledge well. He liked the man and respected his abilities.

Rutledge seemed surprised to see him. “Cork?”

“Hey, Simon.” He shook the agent’s hand, then Larson’s. “Morning, Ed.”

Larson appraised Cork’s attire: sport coat, white shirt, tie. “Church?”

“I snatched him after the service,” Dross said. She exchanged a handshake with the BCA agent. “Thanks for coming, Simon.”

Rutledge wasn’t an imposing figure. A couple of inches under six feet, he had reddish thinning hair and a hopelessly boyish smile. He was, however, one of the most effective interrogators Cork had ever worked with. It was his style, full of sympathy and very winning. Cork had seen him coax confessions out of suspects whose lips were sealed with distrust, anger, contempt. People in the cop business who knew Rutledge called his style of interrogation “Simonizing.”

“You don’t mind me asking, what’s O’Connor doing here?” Rutledge said to Dross. “No offense, Cork.”

“None taken.”

“I asked him here in a consulting capacity. Have you had a chance to look things over?”

“Ed walked me through the scene. Your team’s doing a good job.”

“What do you guys think?” Dross asked.

Larson nodded toward the garage. “We found blood on the grass over there. Isolated and, as far as we can tell, not related to the shootings themselves. Kingbird had a head wound. Somebody clubbed him pretty good. A lot of bleeding but not much swelling, so looks as if it happened just prior to the killing.”

Dross glanced at Cork. “How was he last night?”

“Nobody had clubbed him when I left.”

Rutledge looked confused. “You were here last night, Cork?”

“We’ll get to that in a minute, Simon,” Dross said. “Go on, Ed.”

“What it looks like is that Kingbird came outside and was assaulted near the garage. My guess would be that he was drawn out. But he was careful. He left the doors locked behind him. Whoever it was who assaulted him had to break into the house through the door to the utility room. I imagine they were after Rayette. She was probably a witness. Or maybe the assailant had planned all along to make her a victim.”

“Any 911 calls?” Cork asked.

Larson shook his head. “The phone line was cut. And we’re too far out for a cell to be able to pick up a signal.”

“Lucinda Kingbird found the bodies, is that right?”

Larson nodded.

“Where is she?”

“Deputy Minot took her home.”

“How was she doing?”

He shrugged. “Soldier’s wife. While I interviewed her, she didn’t shed a tear, just worried about the baby.”

Rutledge squinted at Cork. “The suspense is killing me.”

“Suspense?” Cork said.

“I’m dying to know what you were doing out here last night.”

Cork explained the circumstances.

“Buck Reinhardt,” Ed Larson said, as if it made perfect sense.

“I know about the Reinhardt girl’s death,” Rutledge said. “Tell me about her father. Is he the kind of man who could do something like this?”

Dross considered his question. “You have a daughter, Simon. If you believed someone was responsible for her death, think you might be capable of something like this?”

Rutledge glanced at Cork. “You said you didn’t find him last night.”

“That’s right.”

Larson took off his wire-rims and carefully cleaned the lenses with a white handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. “When I’m finished here, I’ll head over to the Reinhardt place, interview Buck.”

“Might be a good idea if I went along,” Rutledge suggested. “You talk to Reinhardt, I’ll talk to his wife, see if we get the same story.”

“Who else should we be talking to?” Dross asked.

Larson said, “DEA’s convinced the Red Boyz are deep into the drug trade. Cold-blooded executions and drugs pretty much go hand in hand.”

“Match made in hell,” Dross said. “Call DEA, Ed. Run this by them.”

“What about the Red Boyz themselves?” Rutledge said. “Is it possible there’s a power struggle going on or some kind of ideological rift, anything that might have led to this?”

They all looked to Cork.

He held up his hands defensively. “It’s not like there’s a pipeline that runs between me and the Red Boyz. Don’t forget, I hauled some of them in as juveniles.”

“You know their families,” Dross said.

“I’ll do what I can, okay?”

Larson slipped his wire-rims back on. “Marsha, did you tell Cork about the business at the back of the house?”

“What business?” Cork said.

“It’s what I wanted to show you.” Dross turned and led the way.

They walked carefully through the yard, along a path Larson’s people had marked for entry and egress from the scene. In the high grass beyond the mowed edge of the backyard, deputies were still working. The bodies of Alexander and Rayette Kingbird were gone, but the long green blades of wild grass were still splashed with spatters of dark red.

“Tom Conklin’s already at Nelson’s,” Dross said, speaking of the man contracted as medical examiner for the county. He did his autopsies in one of the prep rooms in the basement of Nelson’s Funeral Home. “He seemed pretty eager to get started. Turn around, Cork.”

Cork turned and looked back at the house. “Jesus. Is that what I think it is?”

“We’ve taken samples,” Larson said. “We’ll have them analyzed to be certain. But, yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s blood.”

Across the wall of the house, painted in large, ragged letters each a foot high and dried now to the color of old rust were the words DED BOYZ.