Tamarack County

CHAPTER 42

Skye had Waaboo bathed and in his pajamas when the O’Connors walked in the door.

“Mommy,” he cried and ran to Jenny’s waiting arms.

She lifted him and nuzzled his neck and said, “Did you and Skye have fun today?”

“We pwayed,” he said.

“You prayed?”

“No, pwayed. We pwayed wif Bart.”

Skye held up the stuffed orangutan. “All day.”

“Make him talk, Aunt Skye,” Waaboo said.

And she did. A wonderful monkey voice that had Waaboo laughing with delight.

Jenny thanked Skye, and Deputy Reese Weber, who was still on duty, and took her son upstairs to put him to bed.

“Any trouble?” Cork asked Weber.

“Except for Bart there, who’s a little bit of a rogue, everything’s been real quiet.”

“I made sandwiches for the gentlemen in the truck out front,” Skye said. “I used all your bologna. I hope that was okay.”

“If I’d had prime rib, I would have insisted they eat it,” Cork said. “I’ll go out in a minute and thank them myself. Isn’t it about time for a shift change, Reese?”

“Marsha called a few minutes ago. Ken Mercer is on his way to relieve me.”

“You go on back to the department. We’ll be fine until Ken gets here. Thanks, Reese. Thanks a million.”

“No trouble. Skye, you were a pleasure.” The deputy gave her a broad smile as he prepared and then departed.

“I can throw together some chili for dinner,” Anne said. “Any takers?”

“I could eat,” Cork replied. “But first I’m going out to see the Studemeyer brothers.”

As he descended the front porch steps, Cork could hear John Mellencamp blasting on the radio in the cab of the pickup. The windows were a little fogged, but when he looked inside he could see that both men were sleeping. He tapped on the glass, and they woke up. Wes lowered his window. The smell of beer and cigarettes rolled out from inside. Not much heat came with it, and both men sat bundled in their heavy parkas.

“You guys are off duty,” Cork said. “Go on home, get warm, and get some sleep. And next Saturday you’re coming to dinner here. I’ll grill you a couple of the juiciest steaks you ever ate.”

“How’s the boy?”

“He’ll be fine,” Cork said.

“Glad to hear that. Any more word on the bastard who shot him?”

“I’m just about to check in with the sheriff on that.”

“You need anything,” Randy said from the other side, but through a yawn, “you let us know.”

“I’m much obliged,” Cork said.

The Studemeyer brothers took off. Cork stood in the cold and felt the first flakes of the predicted snow light on his face. He looked up into the darkness of the night and the clouds, then stared down Gooseberry Lane, which was illuminated by streetlights, then at his house, which at the moment, held everything that was precious to him.

He would not let the threat go on any longer. He spoke to the darkness.

“Tonight,” he said, as if striking some kind of bargain. “Tonight, whatever it takes.”

He listened, but heard in reply only the sweep of the wind that was blowing in the next storm. Even so, he believed that something had changed. He sensed a deepening of the dark that had nothing to do with the night or the storm, a hardening that had nothing to do with the freezing cold.

He’d no sooner returned to the house than Dross called him on his cell phone.

“Azevedo’s back from Babbitt,” she told him.

“Anything?”

“Nothing helpful.”

“Is George still with you at the department?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Anne and Skye were working together in the kitchen. The place already smelled of frying hamburger and onions and garlic and cumin.

“Ken Mercer should be here any minute,” he told them. “I’m heading over to the sheriff’s department.”

“How long will you be gone?” Anne asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What about dinner?”

“Save me some chili. I’ll eat when I get back.”

He turned away, ignoring the look she gave him, trying not to see in it the plea to be reasonable. He had not forgotten Meloux’s advice about letting go of anger for the sake of clarity in the hunt. Anger wasn’t what drove him now. It was something he didn’t know a name for, a force that overrode hunger and the need for sleep and any feeling of emotion. He was the blade of the guillotine. He was the lead in the executioner’s bullet.

Azevedo was with Dross in her office. Cork joined them and Azevedo gave his report. He’d talked with Joe Kovac, chief of police in Babbitt. Frogg’s cousin, Eustis Hancock, was a troublemaker, always on Kovac’s radar. Hancock had done hard time, and a lawman’s badge didn’t mean much to him. The chief had insisted on going along on the interview. Azevedo admitted that he was grateful for the backup.

Cork cut to the chase. “You got no cooperation from Hancock?”

“He stonewalled us.”

“Any sign of Frogg’s presence?”

“Nothing on the outside of the property. Hancock never let us in the door. We’ll need a warrant for that, and we’ve got no evidence at the moment that would get us one.”

“How tough were you in your questioning?”

“I didn’t hit him with a rubber hose, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Did you get any sense if he was lying?”

“I think lying is so second nature to that guy he wouldn’t recognize the truth if it put a finger up his nose. So no, I didn’t get a sense that he was trying to hide anything with particular regard to his cousin.”

Dross said, “Okay, where does that leave us?”

Azevedo replied, “Kovac will keep an eye out for Frogg’s pickup, have his guys cruise by Hancock’s place regularly to see if they spot anything. Beyond that, not much we can do at the moment.”

The deputy looked tired. Dross looked tired. It had been a long day for both of them. Hell, several long days since Evelyn Carter first went missing. Cork understood they were doing their best. It just wasn’t good enough.

He said, “Can you give me directions to Hancock’s place?”

“What for?” Dross asked warily.

“One thing we can do is keep surveillance on the place. If Frogg is staying there, he’ll show up sooner or later.”

“That’s what you’re planning? Just to stake out the place?”

“That’s what I’m planning,” Cork said.

Azevedo glanced at Dross, who considered a moment, then slid a piece of paper and a pencil toward him across her desk. The deputy wrote down the directions and handed them to Cork.

“Long night ahead,” Dross said.

Cork stood up. “Maybe not so long as you think.”

* * *

Eustis Hancock’s place was a run-down mobile home that sat back in the woods a mile west of Babbitt. Cork parked his Land Rover at the side of the road a hundred yards from the entrance to the lane that ran to the house and hoofed it in from there. He had with him a baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger, which he’d presented to Anne on her sixteenth birthday when she was deep into softball and hoping like crazy to play for Notre Dame someday. He’d have preferred a firearm, but he didn’t own a firearm anymore, had given them up when he realized how profoundly braided with violence his life had become. Yet here he was again, only too ready to do violence. He decided not to think about that now.

The snow was coming down steadily. In that cold, it was dry and light as ash and, once on the ground, drifted easily in the push of the wind. Like something alive, it flowed around Cork’s boots as he stood near a corrugated metal shed twenty yards from the mobile home. A black Blazer was parked in the front of the shed, and near it lay an assortment of rusted auto parts-fenders, hoods, doors. There were a couple of ATVs. Cork was surprised not to see a snowmobile but thought maybe it was in the shed. He checked his watch. Eight-ten. As good a time as any.

He climbed the steps to the door of the mobile home. He held the ball bat at his side and a little behind him, so that it would be blocked from the view of the opened doorway and also from the window nearest the door. He knocked. A moment later, the curtain over the window was drawn aside, and then the door lock clicked open.

The man who filled the doorway was a gorilla. A very unhappy gorilla, judging from his greeting.

“Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want?”

Cork didn’t bother answering. He brought the ball bat up, grasped it with both hands, and drove the end of it as hard as he could into the man’s solar plexus. The big gorilla heaved a deep, retching cough and doubled over. Cork clipped the side of his head with the bat, and the man went down. Cork stepped around him into the home, grabbed him by the collar of his flannel shirt, and pulled him inside, away from the door, which he closed. Hancock lay on the floor struggling to breathe. Cork pulled a roll of silver duct tape from the pocket of his parka, rolled Hancock facedown, and taped his hands behind his back. Then he straddled him, slid the shaft of the ball bat under Hancock’s neck, and drew it up against his throat until the man’s legs kicked desperately.

“Where’s Walter Frogg?” Cork said.

The man tried to speak, but it was all gargle.

Cork eased the pressure from the bat. “Where’s Frogg?”

“Don’t know,” the gorilla rasped.

Cork pulled the bat tight again, and the man’s body jerked spasmodically. Cork released the pressure just a little.

“Still don’t know?”

“Not here,” Hancock managed.

“But you know where.”

“Not sure. He was staying here for a while. Three, four days ago, he borrowed my Polaris. Hasn’t come back.”

“Where would he go?”

“Don’t know.”

Cork gave the ball bat a tug.

“Maybe my cabin,” Hancock gasped.

“Where’s that?”

“Tamarack County. On the White Iron River.”

“Be more specific.”

“Becker Road. Where the North Star Trail crosses.”

Cork knew the area. A few miles west of Aurora. “What’s it for, the cabin?”

“Hunting, fishing. Was my old man’s. Now it’s mine.”

“Frogg knows about it?”

“Yeah. We used to hang out there, get high, you know. Still use it sometimes, but not much.”

“What’s the fire number?”

Every rural address in Tamarack County had a designated fire number that was posted on a sign at the entrance to the property and that would allow easy identification in the event of an emergency.

Hancock gave him the number.

Cork said, “You have a cell phone?”

“What?”

“A cell phone.” Cork drew the bat against his throat.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s in my pocket. Right side.”

Cork dug in the pocket of the man’s jeans and came up with the phone and a set of car keys. He stood, dropped the phone on the floor, and brought the heel of his boot down on it.

“Ah, shit, man,” Hancock said.

“I’m taking the keys to your Blazer. I assume that’s your Blazer out front.”

“Yeah, that’s my Blazer,” Hancock said, in a way that told Cork he was resigned to his fate.

“Where’s the other key?”

“What?”

“Everybody keeps an extra key. Where’s yours?”

When Hancock didn’t answer immediately, Cork tapped the back of his head lightly with the end of the bat.

“On a nail in the wall next to the refrigerator.”

Cork found it. He returned to the living room and said, “I’ll mail these to you tomorrow. You need something in the meantime, a walk to town’ll do you good.” With the toe of his boot, he nudged the fat around the man’s middle.

“What about the tape on my wrists?” Hancock said.

“Once I’m gone, you’ll figure a way to cut yourself free.”

“Who are you?” Hancock asked as Cork turned to leave.

“The guy who won’t be so nice the next time.”