Purgatory Ridge (20 page)

“Where are you parked?” Jo asked.

“Out back.”

“I’d like to see it, yes.”

They walked together through the darkening hallways to the back door that was unguarded now. When they reached the Explorer, Lindstrom plucked from the windshield a folded sheet of paper that had been stuffed under the wiper blade. As he read the note, the color drained from his face. He looked at his watch.

“What is it, Karl?” Cork asked.

“Nothing. It’s nothing. Listen, Jo, I’ll get you that document later, all right?”

“Sure, Karl.”

Lindstrom waited. It was clear he wanted them to move away.

“I’ll give you a lift to your car,” Cork offered to Jo.

He turned and headed to his Bronco. When Jo was beside him in the passenger seat, he backed the Bronco out and started it away slowly, watching Lindstrom in his mirror. Jo was watching, too. Lindstrom took an old leather briefcase from the Explorer, opened it, and reached inside. He drew something out and his hand went toward his waist under his sports coat. Then he slammed the door closed and started walking briskly across the football field behind the school.

“Did you see?” Jo asked.

“Yes.”

Lindstrom had shoved a handgun into his belt.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“You know as much as I do.” Cork turned off the engine and reached for the door handle.

“Where are you going?”

“After Karl. I don’t know what was in that note, but it wasn’t good news.”

Jo grabbed his arm. “Cork, this isn’t your responsibility. This is for Wally Schanno to worry about. Get Wally or one of his deputies. Please.”

Lindstrom was halfway across the field. Cork knew if he delayed much longer, Lindstrom would be gone—wherever it was he was going.

“All right.” He drove to the front of the building. No one was left outside. All the cars except Jo’s Tercel were gone. The front lawn was as vacant as it usually was on a summer evening.

“Jo, I have to go.”

“Why?”

Cork looked at her. She was right. There was no reason for him to do this. He was a man who flipped hamburgers now. Except everything in him was shoving him after Lindstrom.

“Go,” she finally said angrily, and grabbed the door handle. “Just go if you feel you have to.” She got out and slammed the door shut. “But if you find yourself in the middle of something—”

Cork didn’t wait for her to finish. He raced the Bronco to the parking area behind the school. Lindstrom was just vanishing into a line of maple trees that edged the field behind the bleachers. Beyond the maple trees was Lake Shore Drive, and beyond the drive lay Iron Lake.

When Cork stepped out of the trees, he saw Lindstrom a hundred yards south, heading toward the marina. It was after eight. The sun sat on the western edge of Aurora looking tired as a bloodshot eye ready to close. Lindstrom moved quickly through the long shadows of the maples that lined the street. Every so often, he scanned the lake. He reached the bait shop at the marina, stopped, and stood staring at the docks where rows of sailboats and motor launches were moored.

Most boats had come in. A few persistent fishermen lingered far out on the water. The marina was empty. The bait shop had closed. As he approached, Cork saw Lindstrom take the paper from his pocket, read it again, then glance at his watch.

“Karl?”

Lindstrom jumped and his hand shot toward his belt under his sports coat. “Christ, O’Connor. What are you doing here?”

“You looked to me like a man with trouble on his hands. I thought maybe I could help.”

“You can’t, okay? Just go somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

Cork nodded at the paper clenched in Lindstrom’s fist. “What’s in the note, Karl?”

“Just go away, O’Connor. Now.” Lindstrom eyed his watch again.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake—here.” Lindstrom shoved the note at him.

It had been made from words and letters cut out of a newspaper and pasted onto a blank sheet of typing paper.

We are all dead men. Unless we talk. Take a boat ride on the
Matador
. Dock 3. Marina. 8:15. Meet you middle of the lake.

Eco-Warrior

“Now will you just get out of here?” Lindstrom pleaded. “I don’t want to scare him away.”

“You’re not really going to walk into this, are you, Karl?”

“I’m not afraid.” Although it was obvious he was.

“Karl, this is crazy.”

“If there’s really a chance to put an end to all this, I’m not going to pass it up.”

“Whoever this Eco-Warrior is, he’s already killed once.”

“Everyone agrees that was an accident.”

“Look, Karl, if he really wants to end it, the way to do that is to give himself up.”

“You sound like a cop.”

“I think like a cop. And I’m thinking this is a setup. Maybe you are, too, and that’s why you brought the hardware you stuck in your belt.”

“It’s licensed.”

“Fine. Wonderful. It’s licensed. And you’ve got it with you because you don’t trust this situation either. Use your head, for Christ’s sake.”

“Shut up, O’Connor. Just shut up.” He tipped his wrist and glanced at his watch. “It’s almost eight-fifteen. I’m going.”

Lindstrom started away, but Cork reached out to restrain him.

“Karl, it feels all wrong. Look.” He waved his hand over the deserted marina. “Where is he?”

“Out on the lake. That’s why I’m taking a boat ride.”

“Maybe. And maybe this is all just a way of getting you out here alone. If he wants an easy target, that’s exactly what you’re giving him.”

“Listen, O’Connor, if this really does have a chance of ending the violence and I turn away, how do you think I’m going to feel? How would you feel? You want to know the truth? I’m scared shitless. But I’ve got to know. You understand?”

He pulled away from Cork and walked to the dock third distant from the bait shop. The dock jutted thirty or forty yards into the lake and nearly every slip on both sides was filled with a vessel. Lindstrom, as he stood a moment in the red light of the setting sun, cast an elongated shadow across the boards in front of him. He put his hand at his waist inside his coat, and he walked forward.

Cork scanned the marina, trying to see everything—all three docks, all the moored boats. The long angle of the sunlight created so many shadowed enclaves that there were a hundred places for a man to hide. A slight breeze blew across the lake, and the boats rocked gently, creating the illusion of movement on every deck.

Lindstrom walked slowly, looking carefully right and left, reading the names painted on the bows of the vessels, seeking the one called
Matador
. Cork glanced at his watch. The hands were just now touching eight-fifteen. He realized Lindstrom’s watch was running fast by a couple of minutes.

He shouted, “Karl!”

Lindstrom paused halfway down the dock and turned back.

The explosion blew a small sailboat at the end of the dock into a blur of smoke and fragments. The other boats
there shoved back and tugged at their moorings like nervous ponies. Splintered board rained down on the marina, peppering the water and Cork. Lindstrom was down.

Cork ran to dock 3 where Lindstrom lay on his back, not moving. When Cork reached him, he saw that Lindstrom’s eyes were open and he was staring up at the sky.

“Am I dead?” he asked.

Cork shook his head. “Are you hurt?”

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“Hurt.” Cork mouthed the word and felt his own body in pantomime.

“I don’t know.” Lindstrom tried to rise, but Cork kept him down.

“Stay there.” Cork gestured with his hands. Then he put an imaginary phone to his ear. “I’m going to call you in. We’ll have some paramedics here in no time.”

“Huh?”

“Stay.”

Cork raced back to the bait shop and used the pay phone outside it to call the sheriff’s office. By the time he’d returned to Lindstrom, he heard the sirens already wailing.

H
IGHWAY
M
AINTENANCE BROUGHT OVER BARRICADES
, and Schanno’s men set up a perimeter, blocking access to the marina. Even so, deputies Gil Singer and Cy Borkmann were having a hell of a time keeping the crowd back.

“I want every off-duty officer brought in,” the sheriff instructed Deputy Marsha Dross. “And get some floodlights. It’s going to be dark soon.”

Agents Owen and Earl were out at the end of dock 3, looking at the water where only the mast of the
Matador
jutted above the surface. Captain Ed Larson, who headed up all the criminal investigations for the sheriff’s department, was talking with Jack Beagan, the harbormaster.

Karl Lindstrom sat on the front seat of Wally Schanno’s Land Cruiser drinking coffee from a disposable cup. He’d been treated by the paramedics for minor lacerations—splinters—but aside from a bit of quivering in his hand as he sipped his coffee, he seemed just fine.

Jo stood apart, observing everything darkly. She’d arrived after the sheriff’s people and before the ambulance. As soon as she’d made sure Cork was all right, she turned stony and moved away from him. She hadn’t said, “I told you so,” but the sentiment came off her anyway, strong as garlic.

Cork was scanning the crowd. In the murk of twilight, the red-and-white flash from the lights atop the sheriff’s department cruisers added to the chaotic, jittery feel of all those people pressed against the barricades. Cork recognized a lot of the faces. The understandably curious. He also saw Joan of Arc of the Redwoods leaning on her cane, shoulder to shoulder with Isaiah Broom. And Hell Hanover was giving Gil Singer a hard time, trying his best to work his way onto the scene. The cameras that had captured the news conference on the steps of the middle school were set up and rolling. Cork knew a circus when he saw one. And
he was glad that for right now, it was Schanno who had to play ringmaster.

A pickup truck marked
TAMARACK COUNTY SEARCH AND RESCUE
nosed through the crowd. Gil Singer pulled aside a barricade and let it through. When it had been parked, Agent Owen began pulling diving gear from the back.

Earl left the dock and approached the Land Cruiser. Schanno, when he saw him coming, stepped to the Land Cruiser, too.

“Is your partner going to need a hand?” the sheriff asked.

“Mark’s fine. He’d prefer to go over the area under the dock himself. He knows best what he’s looking for.” Earl leaned an arm on the open door of the Land Cruiser. He wore a white shirt that looked freshly ironed and a blue tie that was tightly knotted. “How are you feeling, Mr. Lindstrom?”

“I’ve been better.”

Earl looked to the sheriff. “You’ll be taking him down to the department for a complete statement?”

“When he’s ready.”

Ed Larson called out, “Wally?” He beckoned the sheriff with a wave of his hand and Schanno headed over.

“Mind if I ask you a few questions?” Agent Earl asked Lindstrom. He pulled a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket, then offered one to Lindstrom.

“I don’t smoke.”

“O’Connor?”

“Gave them up.”

Earl shrugged and lit his cigarette with a lighter. “Mr. Lindstrom, you said the note was left on the windshield of your vehicle at the school.”

“That’s right.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t there before you parked?”

“I’d have seen it.”

“Probably. But sometimes people drive with parking tickets on their windshield and don’t seem to notice. I’ve done it myself.”

“It wasn’t there.”

Earl turned to Cork. “You parked next to Mr. Lindstrom, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you see the note?”

“No.”

“Could it have been there and you just didn’t notice?”

“It’s possible. But I’m more inclined to believe someone put it there when that firecracker went off. It was a good diversion.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” Earl took a long, meditative draw on his cigarette. “Why did you park in back, Mr. O’Connor?”

“It’s okay to call me Cork. No room out front.”

“Ah. Sure. And according to your statement, you followed Mr. Lindstrom because you thought he might be in some trouble. What made you think that?”

“The way he looked when he read the note. And I saw him take a handgun from his briefcase.”

“If you thought there might be trouble, especially trouble involving the possible use of a firearm, why didn’t you alert the sheriff?”

“Wally and his men were already gone by then.”

“Of course. Mind if I take a look at that firearm of yours, Mr. Lindstrom?”

The handgun was sitting on the seat beside him. Lindstrom handed it to Agent Earl, who dropped his cigarette on the pavement and ground it out.

“Colt Commander forty-five. Nice piece.”

“It was the sidearm I carried as an officer in the navy.”

“Not standard military issue,” Earl observed.

The weapon had a satin nickel finish and a walnut grip inlaid with gold initials.

“My father gave it to me when I graduated from Annapolis.”

Earl released the magazine and inspected it. He sniffed the barrel. “Me, I was just a grunt. A kid in the mud in Korea. How about you? What did you do in the service?”

“Things I’m not allowed to talk about, actually. What does this have to do with what happened here tonight?”

“Nothing. Just shooting the breeze.” He slipped the magazine back in. “One round is missing. And it’s been fired recently.”

“I fired a test round this afternoon.”

“You were expecting trouble?”

“One of the important lessons I learned in the service was to anticipate and be prepared for all contingencies. May I have my gun back?”

“Of course.” He handed it over. “This particular incident seems to have been directed at you personally. Do you know anyone who’d have reason to want to harm you? Anyone who might have a grudge against you, or a deep animosity?”

“Who doesn’t these days?”

Earl grinned, politely. “After you read the note, why did you choose to walk to the marina rather than take your vehicle?”

Lindstrom shrugged. “It’s not far from the school. And—I don’t know—I guess I thought I might be able to check the lay of the land, so to speak.”