Trickster's Point

CHAPTER 9

B y the time Cork broke from the woods on his return from Crow Point, the drizzle had ended, but it left a damp chill in the air. A white Dodge pickup was parked behind Cork’s Land Rover, and a figure stood waiting there. It took Cork only a moment to recognize Sheriff Marsha Dross. She wasn’t dressed in her department uniform. She wore jeans and a sage-colored turtleneck under a suede jacket. She’d dropped the tailgate and had set a big steel thermos of coffee at the edge of the pickup bed. She was drinking from the thermos cup as Cork approached.

“Got me under constant surveillance now?” he asked.

She held the cup near her mouth, and the coffee sent steamy tendrils up against her lips. She blew to cool it. “I just came to tell you that I got a call from the governor early this morning. He requested that I allow the BCA to be involved in the investigation of Jubal Little’s death.”

She was talking about the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the division of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety that functioned, in many ways, very much like the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Cork had worked often with their agents over the years, both when he wore the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department uniform and afterward.

“Want coffee?” Dross asked. She poured some into a bright red mug she’d clearly brought for just this purpose and handed it to Cork.

“How’d you know where to find me?” he asked.

“I stopped by your house. Jenny told me. How are Henry and Rainy?”

“Worried.” Cork sipped the coffee. Dross liked her brew strong, which was just fine with him. On that cold, gray morning, it seemed to warm him all the way to his toenails.

“As well they should be. This is serious, Cork. You’re going to be in the media spotlight, at least here in Minnesota. It would be national news except for the collapse of that dam in Colorado, so you may have got a break in an odd but sad way.”

“Dam break?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“I’ve been on Crow Point since yesterday.”

“Big dam broke last night in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado. Floodwater swept down a canyon, wiped out several towns. The death toll is estimated in the hundreds. It’s a huge catastrophe. Jubal Little may be news in Minnesota, but he’s not front page anywhere else.”

That was the kind of luck that didn’t leave Cork feeling any better.

Dross went on. “When I talked to the governor, he asked for the details of Little’s death. I gave them to him as we know them, and told him it looked like a hunting accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident, Marsha.”

“I know, and it’s too bad. Because it was your arrow in his heart, Cork.” Dross watched his face for a reaction. “You didn’t tell us that when we questioned you yesterday.”

“I knew you’d find out soon enough. And once you knew, you might be reluctant to let me go.”

“Your fingerprints and Jubal’s are the only ones on that arrow. Did you shoot it?”

Cork laid his cup on the bed of the pickup and turned fully to the sheriff. “Do you think I did?”

Dross, implacable for a moment, held his gaze, then said, “You know as well as I do that anyone is capable of anything under the right circumstances.”

“Even cold-blooded murder?”

“Is that what it was?”

“You didn’t answer my question. Do you really think I shot that arrow?”

Dross reached into her cup, plucked something from the surface of the coffee, and looked at it closely. “Tick,” she said with amazement. “I thought they’d all be long dead by now.” She flicked it away and gave Cork the same scrutinizing look she’d just given the bug. “Three hours, Cork. You waited three hours before going to get help.”

“I didn’t go to get help, Marsha. Like I told you yesterday, Jubal was beyond help when I left him.”

“My point, more or less.”

“I stayed because he asked me to stay.”

“Going might have saved him.”

“Or left him to die alone. He didn’t want to go that way. We finished here?” Cork tossed the rest of his coffee onto the ground in a gesture of irritation.

“I haven’t answered your question yet,” she said.

“I figured you weren’t going to.”

“Anyone who knows you wouldn’t believe that you killed Jubal Little, Cork. But there’s going to be a lot of pressure on us to come up with someone, and right now, we’ve got no one else to consider. So for a while, as far as the media’s concerned, you’re the bull’s-eye. It’ll be rough.” Dross poured herself a little more coffee, and the steam crawled over the rim as if the cup were a tiny witch’s cauldron. “How could someone have got one of your arrows?”

“I don’t know, Marsha. I’m working on that one.”

“My first guess would be that it’s someone who knows you well.”

“Sobering thought,” Cork replied, but it was exactly what he thought, too. “Marsha, does the name Rhiannon mean anything to you?”

She squinted, thought. “Nope. Should it?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Is it important?”

“Probably not.”

Dross glanced at her watch. “Ed and I are holding a press conference in an hour. We’ll be announcing that the BCA’s been asked to help with the investigation, and we’ll introduce Agent Phil Holter, who’s been tapped to lead the BCA team. We’re still calling it a hunting accident, but that won’t matter. By noon, you’re going to be big news, and everything we do in this case is going to be watched, and whatever passes between us after that will be official.” She reached out a hand. “Good luck, Cork.”

She sounded like someone sending a man off to war.

When he hit the outskirts of Aurora, Cork called home on his cell phone. Stephen answered.

“There are some cars and vans parked outside,” he told his father. “They’ve knocked on the door, and the phone’s rung a few times.”

“You haven’t talked to any of them?”

“Like you told us, Dad, we’ve kept our mouths shut.”

“All right. I’m going to park on Willow Street and come in the back way.”

He passed Gooseberry Lane and glanced down the street where he’d lived quietly for most of his life. If he’d been asked, he could have recited the history of every house on his block and the lineage of most of the families who occupied them. The street wasn’t crowded the way he’d feared, but he saw a couple of vans topped with broadcast antennae and, despite the drizzle, lots of people milling about on the sidewalk in front of his house. He went a block farther and turned onto Willow Street, where he parked. He walked to the Quayles’ house, whose backyard abutted his own. He cut through the side yard and along a line of bare lilac bushes. Few people in Aurora had fences, and he crossed onto his property without difficulty. He hustled through the yard, across his patio, and to the back door, angry that he had to enter his own home like some kind of thief but grateful that he hadn’t been spotted. Stephen had been watching for him and had the door open.

“Baa-baa,” Waaboo cried when he saw his grandfather come in. He dropped the stuffed alligator he’d been holding, ran across the dining room, and wrapped his arms around Cork’s leg. Cork bent, lifted his grandson, and swung him around so that Waaboo laughed with delight. It was the best sound Cork had heard that day.

Jenny stepped from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, and Trixie padded along behind her. The dog came to Cork, her tail wagging briskly in welcome, and Cork bent and ruffed her fur. Waaboo reached down to grab at an ear, but Trixie, who was used to the child, slipped away and sat on her haunches well out of reach.

“Any trouble?” Jenny asked.

“I don’t think anybody saw me,” he said.

“We’ve kept the curtains closed, but-” She was cut off by the insistent ring of the phone. She strolled to the stand beside the staircase and checked caller ID. “Them,” she said simply.

Cork put Waaboo down, and the toddler went immediately for Trixie. Then Cork strode to a front window and drew the curtain aside just enough to see out. He’d have been happier seeing no one, but at least it wasn’t a media feeding frenzy. He thought of the dead in Colorado, and knew that the national media, like hungry crows, would flock to the bigger kill. He turned back to his children. “Sam’s Place?”

“Judy opened this morning,” Jenny said. “I talked to her a few minutes ago. There were a couple of enterprising reporters waiting, hoping, I guess, that you or one of us might show up.”

Cork said, “Maybe I ought to hold a press conference there. We could sell a ton of burgers afterward.”

“Seriously, Dad, what are you going to do?” Stephen pressed him.

“The first thing is head back to Trickster’s Point.”

“What for?”

“Maybe I can find something Marsha’s people couldn’t.”

“Like what?”

“I’m hoping I’ll know it when I see it. I left our canoe, so I need to pick that up anyway.”

“Can I go?” Stephen asked.

“You’re on the schedule at Sam’s Place at noon,” Jenny reminded him.

“I’ll call Gordy, get him to cover for me. Okay, Dad?”

Cork thought it over and agreed. There was no reason Stephen couldn’t go along, and it would get him away from the craziness that was going to be their lives for a while now. Cork wished he could get them all away while he dealt with the situation, but he wasn’t sure how to do that or if they’d even go.

“You and our little guy will be all right?” he asked Jenny.

“I think we’ll go to Sam’s Place and spend the day. Maybe by this evening the vultures will have flown.”

“If you need me, call my cell. I won’t get a signal up at Trickster’s Point, but leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m in range.”

While Stephen got himself ready, Cork made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, wrapped them, and put them in a knapsack along with some bottled water. When everything was ready, he kissed Jenny good-bye and gave Waaboo a big, gentle hug.

“Take care of your mommy,” he instructed seriously.

Waaboo said happily, “Bye-bye, Baa-baa.”