Tamarack County

CHAPTER 34

“It happened during the prison riot,” LaPointe said. “That was before Warden Gilman came, during the days we were double-bunked here.”

“Double-bunked?” Dross said.

Gilman explained: “One of the state’s budget shortfall periods. As a cost-saving measure, two of the private penal facilities were closed and the inmates were transferred here and to the prison in Saint Cloud. Normally, we have one inmate per cell. In order to accommodate the influx, the wardens had to put two inmates to a cell. Double bunking. It crowded everyone. Another thing our brilliant legislature did was cut funding for most of the work and educational programs for the prison population, so we had lots of angry guys with lots of idle time on their hands. The final straw was that our personnel budget was also slashed, so we had to lay off guards, and those who remained were terribly overworked. It was a perfect recipe for disaster.”

LaPointe said, “Men without much hope and with nothing to do but stew in the juice of their own hatred. A blind man could have seen what was coming.”

“What about this man who loves you?” Cork said.

“My old bunkmate,” LaPointe said.

“Frogg?” Warden Gilman asked.

“Frogg,” LaPointe confirmed.

“You’re saying Walter Frogg loves you?” Gilman seemed surprised.

“Where love is concerned, Walter is a man whose whole life has been a desert. He thirsts for it and has no idea how to find it.”

“But he found it in you apparently,” Cork said.

LaPointe smiled. “I offered him what I offer everyone, the world according to White Eagle. It was water in his desert.”

“You also saved his life, Cecil,” Gilman pointed out. “So in addition to believing that he loves you, he probably also believes he owes you. Pretty strong motivations, if you ask me.”

“Frog? Like the little pond creature?” Cork asked. “That’s really someone’s name?”

“Two g’s on the end,” Gilman said. “But it must have been hell for him on the playground.”

“Tell us about this Walter Frogg,” Cork said to the warden.

Gilman crossed her arms and shook her head. “In his own eyes, the most persecuted man ever. He’s been in trouble with the law most of his life, and to hear him tell it, it’s all because of lies told against him, because of personal vendettas by law enforcement and prosecutors and judges. He’s been convicted of forgery, tax evasion, welfare fraud. But that’s not what landed him in Stillwater. What put him here were terroristic acts against the people who’d been involved in his earlier prosecutions. He sliced up dead animals and placed them on the doorstep of Ramsey County’s prosecuting attorney. He threatened the children of the judge in one of his cases. He’s slashed tires, smashed windows with cinder blocks and iron pipes, made threatening phone calls, planted fake bombs. His actions caused a judge and a prosecutor to withdraw from his case because of fear of retaliation. He eventually pleaded guilty to thirteen counts of terroristic threats and was sentenced to seven years. As soon as he got here, he began trying to withdraw his plea, claiming he’d been coerced into confessing, that the prosecution had threatened him with a forty-year sentence.

“Inside Stillwater, he was a consummate con man,” Gilman continued. “He played everyone-other inmates, the guards, me. We kept an eye on him, often for his own safety. In prison, you’re conning the cons, and that can get you killed.”

“How did he happen to end up in LaPointe’s cell?” Dross asked.

“Random assignment,” Gilman replied.

LaPointe shook his head. “The official view. Me, I’d say it was the work of the Great Mystery.”

“How so?”

“Nothing in life is random, Sheriff. Frogg came to me for a reason.”

“What reason?”

“For me, a test of my beliefs, I think. He was one of the most difficult human beings I’ve ever dealt with. That’s saying a lot when you live in a prison.”

“What made him so difficult?”

LaPointe didn’t answer at first. It was clear that he was close to the edge of exhaustion. If the man’s knowledge and understanding weren’t absolutely essential, Cork would have called an end to this interview. He found himself feeling deep gratitude toward Cecil LaPointe, who twenty years earlier, he’d helped send to this hell made of stone.

At last, LaPointe seemed to have gathered enough strength, and he went on. “Walter was angry, blameful, paranoid, conniving, smart, and he was my companion day and night. I couldn’t escape him. He talked constantly. Every moment I spent with him, he challenged me to practice what White Eagle teaches, which is acceptance.”

“What did he talk about?” Dross asked.

“His cases, all the wrongs done him by lawyers, judges, prosecutors, cops. Whenever he vented that way, I was simply quiet. Eventually he’d move on to other things, and I’d join him in the conversation. He liked flowers, so we talked about flowers. He liked old movies, so we talked about old movies. He had some ideas about writing books, so we talked about the books he might write someday.”

“You didn’t talk about White Eagle?”

“He sometimes asked, and I would answer, and he would say, ‘Bullshit.’ We left it at that.”

“When he talked about the wrongs done him, did he try to convince you of the rightness of his position?”

“He didn’t. I think that was because he was absolutely convinced of it himself. He talked about those things as if he was giving a history lesson-this happened and then this and this is why.”

“Was he delusional?”

“I would say no, but he was desperate, in so many ways.”

“Desperate for love, you said,” Cork pointed out. “Which he found in you. How did that happen?”

“It was the prison riot that finally cracked his heart open,” LaPointe said. “A lot of inmates saw the chaos during that time as an opportunity for payback, especially guys who belonged to gangs. Walter had pissed off the Aryan Brotherhood, and during the riot, they came for him. I intervened, talked to the inmate who ran the Brotherhood. He gave the order to leave Walter alone.”

“What did you say to him?” Dross asked.

“I White Eagled him,” LaPointe said with a slight smile. “I touched what was common in both our hearts. A violent man is still a man, still human. I spoke to the best of what was human in him. Or more accurately, I channeled White Eagle. I was just the streambed. White Eagle was the water that helped cool the heat of all that anger.”

“And you believe Frogg loved you for this?”

“He was different afterward. He never said it to me outright. I think he didn’t know how to handle that kind of emotion, and it confused him. And then Ray Jay Wakemup came to see me, and his story became public. I think Walter’s perception about being so persecuted got all mixed up together with this love that he couldn’t express, and he seemed to become tormented in a different way. His last promise to me when he was released was that he’d find a way to repay me. I may be wrong, but I think that may have been the nearest he’s ever come to telling someone he loved them.”

Again, LaPointe had to stop to catch his breath. He struggled and wheezed, and Cork found his own chest constricting in empathetic response. Eventually LaPointe was able to continue, but in a voice that was more and more a whisper. “I’m not saying that’s really what’s at the heart of his actions, if he is, in fact, responsible for what’s happened in Tamarack County. But love and vengeance, it seems to me, are often two sides of the same sword.”

“When was Frogg released?” Cork asked.

“Six months ago,” Gilman said.

“And a month later, Sullivan Becker goes down to a hit-and-run and loses his legs,” Dross said.

“Something everyone blames on organized crime,” Cork added.

“And then Judge Carter loses his wife, who’s the only thing that stands between the Judge and the locked unit of a care facility. And it’s made to look like the Judge himself might be responsible. And finally Ray Jay Wakemup, who kept quiet and let an innocent man go to jail, loses his best friend and maybe his best hope for sobriety. It all makes a certain kind of crazy sense. Frogg pays the debt he believes he owes Mr. LaPointe, here, out of love or whatever, and at the same time satisfies that twisted sense of retribution against a system that has consistently persecuted him. And he does it all in ways he thinks are cunning enough that no one could ever trace them back to him.”

“I can buy all this, but what about Marlee Daychild?” Cork said. “Why would Frogg go after Marlee if he’s already made Ray Jay pay for his silence by killing Dexter?”

LaPointe looked at Cork with a calm understanding. “Who was in charge of the investigation that landed me here?”

Cork said, “Me. But I never knew about Ray Jay. I didn’t know until he told his story to the press. I made that clear every time the media brought the question up.”

“That doesn’t mean Walter believes you,” LaPointe said. “He might very well think you’re lying, in the way he believes that everyone connected with the law lies.”

It took Cork only a millisecond to understand what LaPointe was saying. “Frogg wasn’t after Marlee,” he said, thinking out loud. “He was after Stephen.” He looked toward Gilman and tried to keep his voice calm. “I need a phone. I have to call Tamarack County.”