Tamarack County

CHAPTER 25

For dinner, Stella Daychild heated up a couple of cans of Campbell’s tomato soup, made some grilled cheese sandwiches with Velveeta, and opened a bag of Old Dutch potato chips. For dessert, she offered Oreo cookies and vanilla ice cream, but Cork passed on that and settled for a cup of strong black coffee.

Marlee ate with them but seemed tired through the whole meal and said very little. When it was over, she laid herself down on the sofa, turned on the television, and was soon sound asleep.

“The painkillers,” Stella explained. “She’ll be dead to the world for hours.”

Stella wore a tight black sweater and tight indigo jeans. The whole evening, Cork had had trouble keeping his eyes off her, which made him uncomfortable on two counts. First of all, he didn’t think of himself as a guy who ogled women; and second, there was Rainy. He didn’t know what was going on with him, exactly, though loneliness was a part of it. Hormones, too, probably. And could it be, he wondered, that he was looking for a little salve to ease the sting of what felt to him like abandonment by Rainy?

Stella wasn’t oblivious to his interest. Carrying the dinner plates to the kitchen, she smiled back when she caught him eyeing her.

Cork did his best to keep things professional, and once Marlee was asleep, he turned the conversation to the issues at hand.

“How has Ray Jay been since all that hullabaloo about the Cecil LaPointe case?” he asked.

Stella shrugged. “The truth is I don’t see much of him. We didn’t grow up close. He keeps to himself. If he didn’t have Dexter, he . . .” She hesitated, decided not to complete that thought. “I guess the answer is that, as far as I could see, he was fine.”

“No threats that you know of?”

“If I knew about them, I would have told you by now.” She was about to sip from her coffee mug when she seemed to understand the thrust of his questioning. “You think someone killed Dexter because of what Ray Jay did twenty years ago?”

“Everything happens for a reason. When it’s an extraordinary sort of happening, you’re willing to look at extraordinary reasons. The LaPointe case may be an old one, but two years ago it got a new twist. So it’s something to think about.”

“Who’d even care?”

“Cecil LaPointe, for one.”

“But he says he did it. He killed that girl. And he says he’s okay with being in prison for it.”

“What a man says isn’t always the truth. In my experience, it’s what he does that counts.”

“You think he killed Dexter? Because of what Ray Jay did twenty years ago?”

“It’s the only connection that I can see at the moment.”

“But Cecil LaPointe is still in prison.”

“So obviously it wasn’t him. If he’s behind it, he had some help.”

“Who?”

“There’s something I haven’t told you, something I learned today from Carson Manydeeds. He’s pretty sure he saw the guy who left Dexter’s head in Ray Jay’s apartment. He didn’t get a clear look at him but did see that he was driving a pickup.”

Her eyes shot fire. “A green pickup?”

“Carson couldn’t say. What I do know about LaPointe is that he’s got no family here. His mother was from White Earth and his father was a Cree from somewhere in Canada. Quebec, I think. He had dual citizenship, as I recall.”

“Indians have trucks, and we’re less than a day’s drive from White Earth,” Stella pointed out.

“Okay, it’s possible this guy is some relation. But I remember that during the entire trial, LaPointe never had any family in the courtroom. The man you saw at the casino bar, the one you think followed you to the rez, did he look like a Shinnob?”

She shook her head. “But a lot of Shinnobs I know don’t look Indian at all.” She thought a moment. “Can you talk to Cecil LaPointe?”

“I tried two years ago, when all hell was breaking loose over Ray Jay’s confession. He wouldn’t see me. Wouldn’t see anyone.”

“But if he is responsible, why? Why would he say he’s guilty and then try to get back at Ray Jay?”

“Do you think Ray Jay lied when he told his version of what happened that night?” Cork asked.

“Well, no. But Ray Jay never said he saw who killed the girl, only that he suspected it was Harmon.”

“Do you think your older brother was capable of murder?”

Stella frowned, and a small dimple appeared between her brows as she considered the question. “I remember when Harmon was drinking he sometimes went into uncontrollable rages. And from what Ray Jay said, it sounds like there was plenty of drinking going on. And other things.”

“Did you know Cecil LaPointe?”

“No. But I have a feeling I know White Eagle.”

She got up, went down the hallway, and came back with a book in her hand, which she laid on the table near Cork. The title was The Wisdom of White Eagle. Cork knew the book well. It had been written nearly a decade earlier by Cecil LaPointe, who claimed that he channeled a spirit named White Eagle. The book was an examination of the spiritual path as elucidated by that spirit. It had created a kind of sensation when it came out-a book about the freedom of the soul written by a man incarcerated, for all intents and purposes, for the rest of his life, and based on wisdom handed down from another plane of existence. White Eagle Societies had sprung up all over the country, cutting across cultural boundaries. They’d been especially popular among prison populations. The man Cork had known as Otter LaPointe had become a guru of sorts.

“Have you read this?” Stella asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you think the man who wrote this is a murderer?”

“If you believe LaPointe, he didn’t write it. He simply transcribed it.”

Stella rolled her eyes. “You sound like a lawyer.”

“Life changes us,” Cork said. “LaPointe’s probably not the same man he was twenty years ago, but that doesn’t mean he’s not still capable of murder.”

“And I thought I was cynical,” she said.

“It’s not cynicism. It’s healthy skepticism.”

“Whatever.” She slid the book away, so there was nothing between them, and she leaned toward him, leaned very near. “If what you’re thinking is true, there’s something I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?”

“Why me and Marlee and Dexter? Why not just wait until Ray Jay gets out of jail and do something to him then?”

It was a good question, one for which Cork didn’t have an answer, and he told her so. She looked scared, and he reached across the table, took her hands in his, and said, “It’s going to be all right, Stella. I promise I’ll make sure that you’re safe until this is all finished.”

She gazed at his hands folded over hers, and when she looked up at him next, she’d changed, changed so subtly and in so many ways that Cork couldn’t have put a finger on any one specifically, but he felt the difference as surely as he might have sensed a shift in the air that told him new weather was about to appear on the horizon.

“Do you trust intuitions?” she asked.

“I don’t discount them,” he answered.

“Good, because I have a feeling about something.”

His mouth had gone a little dry. “What?”

“That you didn’t come here just to protect Marlee and me.”

“I didn’t?”

“No.” She looked deeply into his eyes, and her voice became velvet. “My intuition tells me that you came here looking for something.”

“And what would that be?”

“Are you lonely sometimes, Cork?”

“Sometimes. Isn’t everybody?” It was a coy response, because he knew what she meant, knew exactly. And so he said, “You think I’m looking for company on a cold, lonely night? You think that’s really why I came?”

“I hope that’s part of it.”

She was right. If he tried to tell himself that he hadn’t been thinking about Stella since that lost moment the night before, he’d be a liar. The truth was that he did feel alone and empty these days, and it seemed to him forever since anyone had made him feel wanted.

Stella stood and came around the table and took his hands and drew him up from his chair. The look in her eyes, animal and knowing, made him ache in the deepest part of himself. “Come to my bedroom, Cork. You won’t feel lonely there, I promise.”

He glanced toward the living room sofa. “What about Marlee?”

“Those painkillers put her out for hours.”

The television was still on, showing a commercial that involved a woman working in her garden. The camera suddenly focused on her hands, and Cork had a fleeting image of Rainy Bisonette. Not all of Rainy, only her hands, callused and filled with the flowers and plants she used in making her medicines and teas.

“Don’t worry about Rainy,” Stella said, as if she’d read his thought.

He turned his face back to her. She put her palm, impossibly soft, against his cheek, and from the delicate skin of her wrist came the same scent he’d smelled the night before in that moment he’d been certain would never come again, the scent of some exotic flower he could almost name.

“This isn’t about anything except tonight, I promise,” she whispered.

She kissed him, and afterward, for a long time that night, in the delicious dark of her bedroom, he was lost.