Thunder Bay

FORTY-EIGHT

I woke to Schanno pounding at my door. The sun was up, already high. A cool breeze lifted the curtains on the window. I figured I’d opened my eyes to a good day.

“We’re waiting for you downstairs,” Schanno said when I swung the door wide. He was dressed in clean khakis and a white short-sleeved shirt with a button-down collar. He looked very Ivy League and refreshed.

“We? Meloux’s up, too?”

“He says he never went back to sleep after you left him alone with Wellington. He spent the night talking with his son, then reading Maria’s journals.” Schanno’s face held a look of warm affection. “He’s something, that guy. Wellington’s brother is here, by the way.”

“Rupert?”

“Does he have another I don’t know about? Yeah, Rupert. And Benning’s fixing us up some breakfast, so get your ass down there, son. Time’s a wasting.”

I splashed my face with cold water, ran a toothbrush across my teeth, threw on the clothes I’d worn the night before, and joined the others downstairs. They were gathered in the shade of the umbrella table on the rear deck, drinking coffee that smelled like it came from caffeine heaven.

“Mr. Wellington,” I greeted Rupert, who accepted the hand I offered. “This is a surprise.”

“Mr. O’Connor,” he responded cordially. He wore jeans, a light blue polo shirt, and expensive Gore-Tex hiking boots. He appeared tired, especially around the eyes.

Meloux sat next to his son. I thought he’d look happy, but in the Ojibwe way, his face betrayed no emotion.

“Sit down, Cork.” Henry Wellington indicated the empty chair. “Would you like some coffee?” He poured me a cup from the white ceramic pot on the table. “Breakfast should be ready soon.”

“You flew up?” I asked Rupert. I used my cup hand to wave toward the floatplane tethered to the dock.

“I did.”

Henry Wellington flicked a deerfly from the table. “In his younger days, Rupert was quite a bush pilot.”

Rupert shrugged off the compliment. “It didn’t compare with being an honest-to-god war hero like Hank, but it had its moments.”

“When are you going to let go of that, Rupert? How many times do I have to tell you I don’t feel any glory in what I did.”

“Right,” Rupert said. He gave his brother a little smile, tight-lipped and unpleasant.

“Let’s not get into any of that sibling stuff in front of guests, all right?”

“Sibling?” Rupert’s tone was one of mock surprise. “We have different mothers. And according to your mother’s journals, we have different fathers as well.”

“Come on, Rupert, we’re brothers. We were raised that way.”

Rupert shot him an obviously angry look. “You knew, what, forty years ago that my father wasn’t your father? When exactly did you plan on telling me? A deathbed confession?”

Wellington took a deep breath. “I didn’t see any reason to tell you. What difference would it have made?”

“You always made decisions without talking to me.”

“I’m ten years older than you. Sometimes decisions had to be made, and you simply didn’t know enough to be able to contribute.”

“Do you think I know enough now?”

“I would never have turned the reins of Northern Mining over to you if I didn’t think so.”

“Northern Mining,” Rupert snarled. “Do you ever read the correspondence I send? Do you even care?”

“I’m finished with that part of my life.”

“Right. You live the pure life of the ascetic now. How utterly noble. So tell me, since you’ve stepped back from any responsibility for the company, do I get to make the decision about what to do with the information Mr. Meloux has offered us about Dad?”

“I think what we do is obvious, don’t you?”

“Enlighten me.”

“I think, at the very least, there’s a lot of restitution to be made.”

“Restitution?” Rupert seemed genuinely surprised. “To whom?”

“For starters, the families of the two men who died up there at the ruins of the old cabin. And we need to check the documentation on mineral rights to be certain Leonard didn’t actually jump a claim.”

“Ancient crimes, Hank. It’s like giving the descendants of African slaves restitution for what was done to their ancestors. It solves nothing. It absolves no one. But, hell, it’s easy for you to propose, I suppose, considering that Leonard Wellington wasn’t your father. Think of me for just a moment, Hank. For once, think of someone besides yourself.”

“You’re proposing what? That we ignore the truth and go on as if nothing ever happened?”

“Hank, how do you know that what he’s said is true? You told me not half an hour ago that there’s nothing in your mother’s journals that corroborates what he accuses Dad of doing.”

“I didn’t tell you everything, Rupert. Yesterday, he showed me irrefutable, fourteen-carat proof. Look, I understand that this is going to be hard, especially for you, but we don’t have a choice. I mean, these men here, they all know the truth. Even if I agreed with you, what would you propose to do about them?”

Rupert swung his eyes slyly across Schanno and me. “It’s my firm belief, gentlemen, that everyone has a price. Am I correct?”

It was Schanno who broke the embarrassed silence that followed. “You may know business, Mr. Wellington, but you’re no judge of men.”

Rupert settled his gaze on me. “He speaks for you?”

“He took the words right out of my mouth,” I said.

“Very well.” He offered that unpleasant smile again. “I think you’re about to find I’m not such a terrible judge of men after all, Mr. Schanno.” He lifted his hand and gave a little wave toward the house.

Benning stepped out, and he wasn’t alone. Dougherty was with him. They didn’t bring us breakfast. They carried a couple of high-caliber automatics.

“Dougherty?” Wellington said.

“He flew up with me,” Rupert said. “I dropped him off on the other side of the point before I taxied here. He hiked in.”

Wellington addressed Benning and Dougherty. “What’s the idea with the weapons?”

“You’ll have to ask the other Mr. Wellington,” Benning replied.

“I’m asking you.”

“As their employer?” Rupert laughed. “I told you everyone has a price, Hank. I bought these men from you a long time ago. Morrissey, too. In fact, they haven’t really worked for you since almost the beginning.”

Wellington again addressed the two men from Manitou Island. “Is that true?”

Benning shrugged. “He says shoot, we shoot. Nothing personal.”

Wellington faced his brother. “And are you going to say ‘Shoot’?”

Rupert drummed his fingers on the table, as if considering. “Maybe not. We’ll see.”

I was trying to figure out a move, some way of distracting Benning and Dougherty. Without obviously turning my head, I checked the field of fire from the deck. If one of us was able to make it to the ground and run for cover, could he reach the woods without being cut down by the automatics?

Rupert laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Wellington asked.

“You thought all those years that you were protecting me from the truth. Hell, Hank, I learned the same time you did that we had different fathers. You told me you didn’t read your mother’s journals until after my father died. Well, your mother wasn’t the only one who kept a journal. My father started his as a way of recording his prospecting expeditions, but he ended up including just about everything in his life. After he died, I found them in his personal safe. All these years, I’ve actually known more than you because not only did I know he wasn’t your father, I also knew about what happened at that cabin in the hills. Those journals your mother wrote? My father read them, or at least one of them. When Carlos Lima was in the hospital dying, Maria left the journal out and open. Leonard took a look, read about the Negro, and went back north where he did what he had to do to get what he wanted.”

I saw a look of relief cross Meloux’s face. An important question had finally been answered. From his hospital bed, he’d told me Maria’s beauty was a knife. Now he knew the truth.

“And so you sent Morrissey to take care of Meloux,” I said to Rupert Wellington.

“You can understand it’s not a story I’d like people to know. It’s not just that there are legal ramifications that could shake Northern Mining, but the entire legacy of my father would be rather horribly sullied.” He drilled his brother with a sudden, angry look. “You never cared for him, Hank. You made that clear. Me, I loved my old man.”

Henry Wellington shook his head sadly. “Enough to kill for him?”

“Love and money, Hank. What else is there of importance?”

I thought it was time for a desperation punch here. “Other people know Meloux’s story,” I said.

He dismissed it with a quick wave. “The ramblings of an old man who had no proof. And who, by the way, won’t be around to defend his claims.”

“How do you intend to work that?” Schanno asked in a rather disinterested tone.

“You, O’Connor, and the Indian will just disappear. There are so many lakes up here, nobody’ll find your vehicle or your bodies. As for Hank, well, everyone knows how bizarre his behavior has become. His suicide, when it’s discovered, won’t be a great surprise.”

“My children know the truth about me, Rupert.”

The younger Wellington grinned coyly. “The perception of family is unreliably altered by love.”

“The police will look at you very hard,” I pointed out.

“At this very moment,” Rupert replied, “I’m being seen at the wheel of my sailboat as I glide out of the marina in Thunder Bay for a day on the lake. I took a lesson from you, Hank, and found myself a man who impersonates me quite well. I’ve used him successfully on several occasions.”

“A lot of risk,” I said.

He gave a philosophical shrug. “‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp; else what’s a heaven for,’ right?”

“I thought I knew you, Rupert,” Wellington said.

“You’ve always been too wrapped up in yourself to see anyone else clearly, Hank. All the headlines, all that glory. When I was a kid and you came home from Korea, I wished some MiG had shot you down in flames.”

His older brother looked amazed and disturbed. “I didn’t realize.”

“And then you handed the business over to me. Do you have any idea how often I’ve heard ‘Henry didn’t do it that way’? I could live in your shadow, Hank. I’ve done it all my life. But I won’t let you destroy my father.”

I’d calculated that I might be able to jump the deck rail and zigzag my way to the trees. If Benning and Dougherty were good with their weapons, they’d nail me before I was halfway there, but I figured if I didn’t try something, we were all dead anyway.

Schanno beat me to it. He wrapped his enormous hands around the table and heaved it in the direction of Benning and Dougherty so that the big umbrella blocked their view for an instant. He vaulted the rail and hit the ground running. He cut one way, then another, and the automatics opened up, sewing a jagged stitch across the yard. I saw Schanno falter, and I knew he’d been hit.

Just as I tensed to launch myself at the two men, the pop of a rifle came from the woods beyond Schanno. The glass of the sliding deck door exploded. Benning and Dougherty dove through the empty door frame toward safety, inside the house. Rupert Wellington was right behind them.

The shots kept coming, chunking into the logs, shattering glass inside the house. For a man of ninety-plus years, Henry Meloux moved remarkably fast. He was down the steps and hightailing it for the woods in the opposite direction Schanno had gone. It was a good move because it would divide the attention and the fire of the men with the automatics. Henry Wellington was at his heels. Me, I went after Schanno, who was crawling toward the cover of the pines.

Benning and Dougherty returned fire into the woods. Their bullets clipped branches and sent splintery sprays of bark flying as they raked the area where the shots seemed to have originated. That gave me the chance to grab Schanno, help him to his feet, and both of us reached the cover of the woods, where we flattened ourselves in the underbrush.

“Keep moving, Wally,” I said.

He tried but couldn’t go far.

“Where are you hit?”

“Leg,” he said, clutching his right thigh.

Blood wormed between his fingers, and I took a look. The bullet had gone cleanly through his leg, leaving two holes, entrance and exit. He was bleeding badly, but it wasn’t pulsing, so I didn’t think an artery had been clipped. I took my shirt off, tore it in half, and made two compresses, one for each hole. I still had on the drab green T-shirt I’d put on underneath that morning.

“Hold those in place,” I told him.

I slipped my belt off and wrapped it around his leg so that it covered the compresses. I pulled the belt as tight as I could and looped it in a knot to hold it.

“Don’t move,” I said.

“Where are you going?”

“To find out who saved our asses.”

“We’re saved?” Somehow, Schanno managed a smile.

I kept close to the ground and worked my way north, away from the lake. The shots from Benning and Dougherty had become intermittent. The shots from the woods had ceased altogether. I wondered about that. I also wondered about Meloux and Henry Wellington.

In the undergrowth, thirty yards from where Schanno and I had taken cover, I spotted a booted foot sticking out from behind a fallen log. I approached carefully. What I found nearly broke my heart.

Trinky Pollard lay on a bed of brown pine needles, staring up at the canopy of branches high above us. Next to her was a carbine. The rifle butt was splashed with blood. The blood had come from a bullet hole torn through Trinky’s fine, slender throat. I knelt and felt for a pulse, but I knew in my heart it was hopeless. A round from the house chunked into the trunk of the nearest pine and I flinched in reflex.

How she had managed to get there, I couldn’t begin to guess. Somehow, she’d found a way to cover our backs and had paid an awful price for saving our lives.

Two more rounds popped from the house and snipped off branches far to my right. They were firing wildly. That one of their rounds had found Trinky Pollard was pure blind luck on their part.

I grabbed Trinky’s carbine and dug in her pockets, where I found two extra clips. I aimed at the doorway of the deck and pulled off three rounds in rapid succession. I loped to Schanno and handed him the weapon and the clips. He frowned at the blood, still wet on the stock.

“Where’d you get this?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you later. I want you to use it to keep them occupied.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going to get my rifle from the Bronco. If these guys are bright, they’re going to divide up and go hunting pretty soon. We need to even the odds.”

“Whatever you say.” Schanno propped himself against the trunk of a pine, laid his cheek against the carbine stock, aimed through the underbrush, and fired.

I took off and circled toward the front of the big house. At the edge of the yard, I paused, eyeing the couple hundred feet of open ground that lay between me and my old Bronco. I didn’t want to get caught out there, but I didn’t have a lot of choices. I finally committed to a mad dash, keeping the Bronco between me and the front porch. I pressed myself against the passenger side. The metal was heating up in the morning sun, and I felt it, warm, through the back of my T-shirt. I reached around to grasp the handle of the rear door.

That’s when I heard the front door of the house open. I ducked, but not before I saw Benning and Rupert Wellington step onto the porch. Wellington held a weapon, a scoped rifle. I dropped to the ground and flattened myself on the gravel of the drive. I could see the bottom of the porch steps. I watched the feet of the two men descend and saw them separate. Benning dashed for the woods that hid Schanno. Wellington headed in the direction his brother and Meloux had gone.

After they left, I slipped into my Bronco and pulled my Winchester from its zippered bag. I grabbed a box of cartridges from the toolbox where I’d stored them. Quickly, I fed several rounds into the rifle and put a handful in my pocket. I started for the woods, after Benning. At the back of the house, Dougherty and Schanno were still exchanging fire. Schanno thought he was keeping them busy. Dougherty knew the score better, knew that Schanno was about to be hit from the flank. I had to get to Benning fast.

I caught a glimpse of him creeping his way toward the lake. The deep layer of pine needles under our feet deadened the sound of our movement. I saw Benning pause and study the ground. I realized he’d found Trinky’s body. It confused him, delayed him in his mission, and gave me an opportunity to get myself set. It wasn’t a difficult shot, and I didn’t hesitate to take it. My rifle cracked; the recoil kicked my shoulder; Benning dropped like a boneless man. I ran to the spot. He’d fallen a few feet from Trinky, where he lay facedown while tendrils of bright red blood crawled into the brown needles. I took his automatic, which turned out to be a 9 millimeter SIG-Sauer with a full clip. I returned to the front of the house. Leaving my rifle at the door, I slipped inside with the SIG. From the back came the pop of Dougherty’s automatic. I worked my way through the rooms and peered around a corner at the sliding deck door. Dougherty stood with his back to the wall. A couple of seconds later, he swung through the glassless opening and pulled off a round in Schanno’s direction. Before he could turn back, I put myself in a firing stance with the SIG and aimed at his torso.

“Drop your weapon, Dougherty!” I shouted.

His head swiveled. He stood frozen, caught in a moment of indecision. Then he spun, bringing his own weapon around to fire.

He bucked forward before either of us got off a shot and he fell to the floor. A dark red stain bloomed low on the back of his shirt. Schanno, I thought. Dougherty, in the moment he stood wavering, had presented a fine target for the carbine, and Schanno hadn’t wasted the opportunity.

Dougherty groaned. I crossed the room and took his weapon. If I’d had time, I would have tried to do something for him, but Rupert Wellington was outside, bent on killing his brother and Meloux.

I stuffed the SIG into my belt and retrieved my rifle from the front porch.

Then I went hunting.