Copper River (17 page)

In a minute, Ren’s mother came from Ned Hodder’s office. Even though she knew that it wasn’t Charlie’s body the police had pulled from the lake, she still looked plenty worried.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Where?”

She looked at her watch. “Let’s see if we catch Charlie at Providence House.”

J
ewell called to let Cork know the dead girl wasn’t Charlie and to say she and Ren were headed back to Marquette.

Cork hobbled from the phone to the sofa. He caught sight of Ren’s sketchbook sitting on an end table where the boy in his haste had dropped it.

“He likes you, you know,” he said, easing himself onto a cushion.

Dina turned from the window where she’d been watching what blew past the cabin on the wind. “Who?”

“Ren.”

“He’s a nice kid.”

“No, I mean he’s quite fetched with you.”

“ ‘Fetched?’ ”

“In my neck of the woods we still use that word. Means—”

“I know what it means. You’re crazy, though. To him, I’m an old lady.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Great. All the good men are gay, married, or under fifteen.” She swept a few strands of hair from her face. The day had been so busy that she hadn’t had a chance to do much with it, but she still looked good. “I need some coffee. Want some?”

“I’d take a cup if you made it.”

He sat back and listened to the wind sweep around the cabin like a great flood around a small island. He felt marooned, out of touch with the world beyond the old resort. He also felt helpless. Although he’d proved to himself that he could get around despite his wounded leg, the reality was that he had nowhere to go, no way to move toward resolving everything that threatened.

Which got him to thinking about the issues that were unresolved. Not all of them looked hopeless. His people, the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department, were closing in on Lou Jacoby’s daughter-in-law, Gabriella, and her brother, Tony Salguero, for the murder of Gabriella’s husband. The case wasn’t nailed down yet, but everything was in place. The Winnetka police had good leads connecting Salguero with the murder of the other Jacoby son, Ben. Not enough for an arrest, but they were pushing hard in that direction. These were positive things.

There was another issue, however, that was nothing but a deep well of rage. Cork had worked at keeping himself from thinking about it, because whenever he did, he started to go ballistic.

The man who’d raped Jo.

Man? Hardly that. An angry rich kid who’d assumed Jo was something she wasn’t—Ben Jacoby’s lover. He’d used Jo to lash out at the man he hated—his father. Cork had that much figured, but knowing the motivation didn’t blunt the horror of the act or its effect. He couldn’t think about the young man, whom he’d never seen, without imagining his fists breaking the bones of the rich kid’s face, his knuckles covered in the rich kid’s blood.

“You okay?”

At the feel of Dina’s hand on his arm, he looked up.

“I’ve been talking but you haven’t heard a word, Cork. For a minute there you looked like you were staring down a cobra. Are you all right?”

He heard the wind again, felt the soft cushion of the sofa, the lingering touch of her hand, smelled the aroma of the freshly ground coffee beans, and he came back to the moment.

“I don’t like this waiting,” he said.

She smiled. “You’d make a terrible PI.”

“What time is it?”

“Four-ten. Fifteen minutes later than the last time you asked.” She headed back to the kitchen. “You ask me, you need to talk to your family.”

“I’d love to hear their voices, but until this thing with Lou Jacoby is settled I won’t risk it. ‘An eye for an eye,’ he said to me. I don’t want him even thinking about my family. I’m afraid if he knows I’m in communication with them in any way, he might use them as leverage.”

“Threaten them?”

“Exactly.” He laid his head against the sofa back. “Maybe I should just head down there and kill him, eliminate the risk.”

He heard the clatter of cups on the countertop, the gurgle of coffee being poured. Dina came to his side a moment later and handed him a full cup.

“Go down there?” she said. “With that leg? I doubt it. And let me clue you in to something else. You’re a lot of things that probably aren’t good, but a cold-blooded killer you’re not.”

She went back to the kitchen for her own cup, then returned to the window.

“What things?” Cork said.

“Huh?”

“You said I was a lot of things that aren’t good. What things?”

She looked back at him and rolled her eyes.

Later, she stood at the open door. Beyond her the sky was going dark. The wind blew straight out of the north now, and a cool breeze came through the door screen. Dina was working on her third cup of coffee. She’d be up all night, Cork figured.

“Mind if I ask you a question?” he said.

She kept her back to him and shrugged.

“What was your childhood like?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Why do you want to know?”

“Something you said this afternoon made me wonder.”

She turned back to the darkening sky. “I didn’t have a childhood. My mother was an alcoholic. I took care of her. Until I wised up and left.”

“When was that?”

“When I got tired of everything, including her boyfriends pawing at me. About Charlie’s age.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Relatives first. It didn’t take me long to realize where my mother’s problems came from. Then I was on the streets for a while.”

“Harsh,” he said.

“Reality check.”

“And you got yourself together?”

“Not without help. A social worker. Marcia Kaufmann. A smart woman with a dry sense of humor and a big heart. She helped me get a place to live, finish school. She worked with me until I was off to college. Sometimes you’re born into the wrong people’s lives. If you’re lucky, you stumble into the right ones.”

Cork heard the sound of Jewell’s Blazer.

“Here they come,” Dina said.

A couple of minutes later, Ren walked in. His mother was a few steps behind.

“Well?” Cork asked.

The boy shook his head and looked down at the floor. “She wasn’t there.”

D
eath visited Ren that night. It came in the form of a girl with a body blue as lake ice. Her hair drifted behind her, lifting just a little now and then as if caught in a dreamy current. She opened her mouth and spoke to him, words that later he wouldn’t recall. She pointed at him in an accusing way, and the tattooed snake on her arm came alive. It crawled down her skin and hung from her wrist for a second before dropping to the ground, where it slithered toward him. He tried to back away, but his feet were sunk deep in black mud, cemented there. Broad, chestnut-colored bands marked the snake, and Ren thought,
Copperhead,
and panicked because he knew it was deadly. Thinking, too, in the middle of his fear,
Odd,
because there were no copperheads in the U.P. of Michigan. Thinking finally as the snake wriggled across the surface of the mud and coiled to strike,
Dreaming
…

And he woke.

It was raining, a steady downpour. The wind was still up and drove the rain against the windows so that the panes, as Ren stared at them from his bed, seemed to weep.

Although he’d dreamed of the dead girl in the lake, it was Charlie on his mind when he woke.

“Dead,” he whispered, out loud and hopelessly. “Oh Jesus, she’s dead.”

He stared at the ceiling and he wondered what that meant, to be dead.

His father had been murdered fifteen hundred miles away. He was just gone. He became the emptiness of the cabin, and that’s how Ren had thought of death. Emptiness. A grabbing at air. A conversation stopped in mid-sentence. A body from which the soul had simply departed. He’d learned in church that the soul could go to different places: heaven, hell, purgatory, limbo. His grandfather had told him the Ojibwe believed the dead traveled west on the Path of Souls to a beautiful place.

But that was after. What about the slide into death? What about the dying?

Until he saw Charlie’s father on the floor in a puddle of blood and brain, he’d never before thought about what his own father might have felt. His father, he realized, must have died in much the same way. Did he know what was happening? Did it hurt? Was he scared?

The girl in the lake, what did she feel? She was just a kid, like Ren. He’d been in the lake before, but only for moments at a time because the water was so cold, so painfully cold. Suicide, the constable had said. That seemed terribly lonely, to feel all that pain, to sink alone into the darkness with the light still above you, to know that you were about to die.

And Charlie? What about her?

He’d begun to cry, softly, because he didn’t want his mother to hear. He didn’t mind crying when he was alone. It felt good. Sometimes it was the only way to let out everything that he kept squeezed inside.

A thump at his window startled him. Something had hit the screen. A pinecone blown by the wind? He waited. The thump came again, sharp and deliberate.

The night and the rain made everything outside impenetrable. He threw the covers back and crept across the room. He reached the window just as a fist came out of the dark and rapped on the screen. He lifted the pane.

“Charlie?” he called hopefully.

He received no response.

Then Charlie’s voice: “Let me in, asshole. I’m freezing.”

He hurried through the dark cabin to the front door and opened it. He stood on the porch waiting for Charlie to appear. Finally she slipped around the corner of the cabin and dashed toward Ren.

As she reached the first porch step, a flashlight beam burst over her. The source came from somewhere behind Ren, from the direction of the other cabins. Charlie tried to stop, to halt her momentum in mid-stride and backpedal. Her feet slid in the mud. She managed a difficult spin and began to sprint toward the trees that marked the boundary of the woods that edged the resort. The flashlight followed at a dead run.

Ren leaped from the porch and brought up the rear of the chase.

Shit
. Someone had been waiting, someone who knew that Charlie would eventually come to the old resort as she’d often done in the past. Ren’s heart galloped. His feet were bare, and although the cold of the ground penetrated his soles like icy needles, he hardly noticed. The rain instantly soaked his pajamas and the material clung to his skin. He held to one hope: that Charlie, the fastest runner in Bodine Middle School, would not be caught.

His hope collapsed when he saw the flashlight hit the ground as Charlie was tackled twenty yards ahead of him. He lowered his head to run faster, not knowing at all what he’d do to help his friend, knowing only that he had to try.

Then he heard a familiar voice come from the black shape that sat on top of Charlie, pinning her to the ground.

“Charlene Miller,” Dina Willner said. “Or am I crazy?”

When Dina brought her in, the girl smelled like roadkill. Jewell ran a hot bath and gave her a sweatshirt and sweatpants to wear afterward. Charlie sat on the sofa near the leaping flames of the fire Ren had laid in the fireplace. The flare and shadow that the fire created on her face gave her a restless, jumpy appearance. She drank hot chocolate and refused to look at Dina.

Jewell fixed her a ham sandwich and gave her some Fritos. Charlie tore into the food.

Ren, who’d put on jeans and a flannel shirt, sat beside her on the sofa. Cork could see the boy’s eyes were shining with delight. Every so often, Ren floated his hand toward Charlie as if to touch her, to be certain she was real, but he always drew up shy.

While the girl was bathing, Ren had asked Dina how she knew Charlie would come.

Dina had put on dry clothes—a lime green sweater and dark jeans—and she stood near the fire as it spread across the logs. “People are pretty predictable, Ren. I figured she was hiding and hungry and you were her best hope for food and safety. If she was afraid of being seen, she’d come at night. I just posted myself to watch your cabin and I waited.”

Cork thought about all the coffee she’d drunk that afternoon. He realized she’d been planning her stakeout even then.

“How did you know she was alive?” Ren asked.

“I wanted her to be, Ren. That’s all.”

She’d smiled at him across the room and Cork saw a flush of the boy’s face that had nothing to do with the heat of the fire.

When she’d eaten her fill, Charlie stared at the flames leaping toward the chimney. It was Jewell who eventually began the asking. She spoke gently, as if coaxing a skittish animal.

“Where have you been, Charlie?”

The girl didn’t answer.

“Can you tell us what happened?”

She gripped her cup of hot chocolate and a visible quiver ran the length of her body. “They killed him,” she said.

“Yes, Charlie, we know.”

Outside, the wind and rain pummeled the cabin, but in that room except for the pop and crackle of the fire, it was quiet.

Charlie leaned forward. The sofa creaked. “I saw him. I saw him and I ran away.”

The sullen look had vanished, and her face had gone slack, dazed.

“Did you see who did it, Charlie?”

She gave a faint shake of her head. “I got home. He was still awake, still drinking. I didn’t want to be there with him, so I told him I was going to spend the night in the truck. I do that sometimes when he’s drunk. I went out there and went to sleep. Then somebody came. I heard car doors closing, and when I peeked out, some guys were heading toward the front door. I figured they were, you know, drinking buddies. A little bit later I heard them all yelling. I got out and went to one of the windows and listened. I didn’t even want to go in there.”

“Sure, Charlie. Of course.”

“I heard stuff breaking and some more yelling. I couldn’t hear a lot of what they were saying but it sounded like they wanted him to tell where something was and he wouldn’t. Then it got real still. A minute later the front door opened. I hid in the bushes and waited until they drove off.”

Her gaze shifted from the hot chocolate to the fire. Jewell didn’t press her. In a minute, Charlie continued.

“I went in. Everything was a mess. I didn’t see him. I went to my bedroom. The light was on. I saw his feet. I thought at first he was drunk, passed out. Then I saw the rest of him.”

Her shoulders began to quake and in a moment her whole body was shaking. Jewell crossed to her quickly, took the cup from her hand and set it on the floor. She put her arms around Charlie and let the girl weep into her shoulder.

Jewell whispered, “Why didn’t you come here?”

“I was afraid.”

“Where were you, Charlie?”

The girl shook her head and wouldn’t say.

Cork said quietly, “Did you hear what it was the men wanted?”

“No.”

Jewell pulled back from the girl slightly and looked into Charlie’s face. “You’re safe here, okay? Totally safe. Oh, sweetheart, you look so tired. I’ll make up the bed in the guest room for you. Ren, will you get some clean linen?”

Ren nodded obediently. His eyes never left his friend.

When everything was settled—Charlie and Ren in bed—Cork, Jewell, and Dina stepped onto the front porch so they could talk without being overheard. The wind was strong around them, and a cold spray of rain occasionally blew over them.

“Those men wanted something,” Cork said. “They wanted it badly enough to kill Charlie’s father. Do you have any idea what it might have been, Jewell? Was Max Miller into drugs? Using? Selling? Or heavy into gambling, maybe?”

Jewell wore a hooded gray sweatshirt. Though it was lined with fleece, she hugged herself against the damp cold. “I don’t know. He drank, but that’s all I was aware of.”

Cork leaned against the wall to give his leg a rest. “It could simply have been drunks arguing and things got out of hand. I’ve seen it before. People die over stupid things, kill for something as simple as the refusal to share a bottle of booze.” He waited a beat, then offered what he suspected would be an unpopular opinion. “She needs to talk to the sheriff’s people.”

“No way am I going to turn that girl over to the police,” Jewell snapped.

“Look, Jewell, if you keep her here and they find out, you could be charged with interfering in a felony investigation. That’s serious.”

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

“I agree,” Dina said. “She’s in no shape to talk to anyone right now. And, Cork, you know what they’ll do.”

Jewell looked from Dina to Cork. “What?”

“It’s not a sure thing, but they’ll probably take her into custody,” Cork said. “Just to hold on to her. She ran once. They’ll view her as a flight risk.”

“I absolutely won’t allow that,” Jewell declared.

Cork shrugged. “Even if you let her stay here, there’s no guarantee she won’t bolt.”

“I think right now she’ll sleep. She needs it.”

“All right,” Cork said. “It’s your decision. But there’s one more thing to consider.”

A gust of wind hit him so hard he almost fell over.

“What if it wasn’t drunks arguing?” he went on. “If they were after something they thought Charlie’s father had, they may wonder if Charlie knows where it is, and they’ll be looking for her. If it was important enough to kill a man over, they probably wouldn’t balk at killing a girl. Or anyone who stands in their way, for that matter.”

Although he couldn’t see her face clearly in the dark, Jewell’s silence told him much.

“We’ll talk about it some more tomorrow,” she said at last. “I’m tired.”

Dina said, “It might be a good idea if I slept on your couch tonight, Jewell. Just to be on the safe side.”

“Fine. I’ll get the linen and see you inside.”

Jewell opened the door and a wedge of warm light cut into the rainy night. Then it was gone.

“I hate being the voice of reason,” Cork said, speaking mostly to himself.

Dina put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good cop, Cork, but sometimes it gets in the way of being a compassionate human being. Good night.”