Red Knife (15 page)

W
ednesday morning Cork was up at first light and at the house on Gooseberry Lane before anyone was stirring. He shook Annie gently awake and asked if she wanted to run with him. In ten minutes, she was dressed and ready to go. They jogged to Grant Park to warm up, stretched there, then began the real business. They followed the shoreline of Iron Lake past the old ironworks and Sam’s Place, turned inland, and headed up to North Point. They turned around at the end of the peninsula in front of the old Parrant estate, then backtracked to Oak Street, headed west to the high school, and finally home. It wasn’t a long run, only eight miles.

Five years earlier, Cork had entered his first marathon. Eighteen months ago he’d taken a bullet in his left thigh. He wasn’t a young man. Rebounding fully took him longer than he’d expected. He was back in the rhythm now and glad of it. Annie, who was in marvelous shape, could have danced rings around him while they ran, but she held back. He appreciated that she seemed to enjoy his company.

The sun was well above the trees, the day warming up nicely when they walked into the kitchen. Jo was pouring herself a cup of freshly brewed coffee. A box of Froot Loops stood on the kitchen table near a bowl that was empty except for a spoonful of milk and a few soggy cereal bits. Cork grabbed a glass from the cupboard and went to the sink to run himself a cold drink of water.

“Thanks for the run, Dad,” Annie said.

“Anytime.”

She went up to shower, and Cork took a mug from the cupboard and filled it with coffee. “Where’s Stevie?”

“Upstairs running a comb through his hair. He’s not exactly happy about going back to school today.” She dropped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster. “And you’re not exactly not going to the Kingbird funeral today. Whatever that means.”

“What it means is that I’ll be observing, but not close enough to be observed.”

“You’ll be out on the rez, then. Alone?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Do me a favor, will you? Call me when you go and call me again as soon as you’re back in cell phone range, just to let me know you’re okay.”

“I will, I promise.” He finished his coffee and ran water in the cup to rinse it out. “I’ll be home for dinner.”

The toast popped up, but Jo ignored it. She moved close to him and took his face in her hands. “I know it must seem sometimes that I want you to change, but I don’t, Cork. I love who you are. It’s just that it’s so hard worrying about you.”

“I wish I could tell you to stop worrying.”

“Like asking me not to breathe.” She kissed him and let him go. “Take care of yourself, cowboy.”

The funeral was scheduled for noon. Two hours before it began, Cork was on the ridge above the old mission, his Bronco parked out of sight among the trees below. He had his Leitz binoculars and, just in case, his Remington. He was dressed in sage-colored jeans and a green flannel shirt. He wore a dun-colored ball cap with
LEINENKUGEL’S
across the crown. The sun was high at his back. The clearing below was a field of tall grass full of wildflowers just beginning to blossom. At its center stood the old mission building, white as a block of ice.

As he waited for things to begin, Cork thought about his discussion with Marsha Dross at the ruined ironworks the night before. She said she was hammering at Reinhardt’s alibi. Cork had awakened that morning with an idea about Reinhardt. Depending on how things went with Thunder today, he’d decided he might have a crack himself at breaking Reinhardt’s story.

Half an hour before noon, he spotted a glint of sunlight off glass or metal on a hilltop on the far side of the clearing. He’d chosen his own position on the ridge knowing that, with the sun behind him, there’d be no reflecting light to give him away. The hill on the other side faced east, directly into the morning sun. And the sunlight had given something away.

Cork shifted his position and used his knees to steady his binoculars. He studied the locus of the reflection for several minutes. The glint from the hilltop came and went. More and more, Cork was convinced it came from someone who, like him, was observing the mission with field glasses.

When the first of the vehicles appeared in the distance on Mission Road, he turned his attention back to the clearing. It was the priest’s car. Not far behind were the Kingbirds. The vehicles continued to come and people parked around the mission and spilled out. Mostly they were Shinnobs from the reservation. Cork recognized many of the Red Boyz. George and Sarah LeDuc were there, as were many of the tribal council members. Cork figured they’d come not so much for Kingbird, who’d been seen as a troublemaker, as for Rayette. There were easily a hundred people present. Lonnie Thunder was not among them.

The small mission was clearly not large enough for the gathering, so Father Ted held the service in the meadow. He was assisted by Ben and Kevin Olson, two altar boys whose mother was full-blood Ojibwe. Uly Kingbird played the guitar. Because the day was so still, Cork could hear the playing and the voices of the mourners when they sang “Amazing Grace” and “Morning Has Broken.” A few people stepped forward to speak, but none of the Red Boyz. Cork knew that if Alexander Kingbird were alive, he’d have spoken eloquently. Tom Blessing, to whom the duty should have fallen, remained silent.

When it was finished, the people drifted back to their vehicles and began to depart, all heading toward Allouette, where a postfuneral meal was being served at the community center. Only one vehicle did not follow the others. Tom Blessing’s black Silverado headed the other way. A mile beyond the clearing, Mission Road turned east toward the Sawbill Mountains and wove its way through miles of uninhabited bog country.

Cork lifted his binoculars to the hill on the far side of the clearing. The reflection had vanished.

Cork kept his distance. He didn’t have to worry about losing Blessing. The spring melt—what little there was that year—had left the lowlying areas soggy, but the red dirt and gravel roads were dry and dusty. Cork followed the choking cloud kicked up by the big tires on Blessing’s Silverado. Technically, they were still on Mission Road, though once it passed beyond the mission itself, the Iron Lake Ojibwe called it
ginebig,
which meant snake. The road curled and twisted, following the contours of the hills. It shadowed, more or less, the southern edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Between the hills lay marsh and treacherous bogs edged with tamaracks, white cedars, and black-ash trees. Cork had driven the road in summer when swarms of mosquitoes often formed a gray, shifting fog in the marshy areas. The soggy ground and the mosquitoes made this region unattractive for habitation, and there were no resorts or summer cabins along the way. The road had been cut for logging, and the logging had been done in the winter, when there were no mosquitoes and the ground was frozen hard. It dead-ended far short of the Sawbills and was maintained only because it offered access to two remote entry points for the BWCAW. If Thunder wanted to hide where no one would look for him, he’d chosen a pretty good place.

Cork suddenly realized that he’d broken from the ghost of dust that had hung over the road in Blessing’s wake. He pulled to a stop, glanced back, and saw no side access where Blessing could have turned off. He continued another fifty yards until he found a stretch of dry, solid ground off the road that was shielded by a stand of tall sumac. He parked the Bronco out of sight, then walked back. He located the crush of undergrowth that marked the place where Blessing had left the road, and he discovered a blind of brush that had been built to hide the trail Blessing had followed. As he stood before the blind, he heard the approaching growl of another engine and the crunch of gravel under tires. He didn’t have time to get back to his Bronco. Instead, he ran to the other side of the road where he threw himself down among cattails that edged a small marsh.

Half a minute later, a red pickup appeared. As soon as it broke from the dust, it stopped. Cork couldn’t see the driver. He heard a door slam and figured whoever it was, they were doing exactly what he had done and were looking for the place where Blessing had turned. He peered carefully through the wall of cattails and saw the figure study the trail Blessing had followed into the trees. When Cork realized who it was, he stood up.

“Dave!”

Reinhardt turned and Cork saw that the man was carrying. Dave Reinhardt had the weapon up and in a two-handed grip in an instant. He didn’t fire, but he also didn’t lower the weapon. He stared at Cork, looking surprised and unhappy.

“What are you doing here?” Reinhardt said.

“Same as you, I imagine. Trying to find Thunder.”

Reinhardt holstered his handgun and Cork crossed the road.

“Was that you on the east side of the clearing?” Cork asked.

Reinhardt was dressed in khakis, a brown sweater, dark blue running shoes, a brown ball cap. “You spotted me?” He looked pained.

“The reflection off your field glasses.”

“Where were you?”

“The ridge west of the mission.”

“You saw Blessing take off and you followed him?”

“Yeah. Didn’t realize you were behind me.”

“I didn’t realize you were ahead. I thought all that dust was Blessing’s.” He swung a hand toward the trail behind the blind. “Where do you figure he’s headed?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got a good map though.”

Reinhardt followed Cork to the Bronco, parked beyond the sumac. Before heading to observe the funeral, Cork had grabbed a topographical map of the area. He took it from the glove box and spread it on the Bronco’s hood. Reinhardt looked over his shoulder.

“I figure we’re here.” Cork tapped the map with his finger. “Half a mile north is Black Duck Lake, just this side of the Boundary Waters. If I were Thunder and I wanted to be somewhere that would give me a quick back-door escape, I’d choose a place like Black Duck Lake. A fifty-rod portage puts him on the Myrtle Flowage, inside the wilderness area. Hard to follow him there.”

“Half a mile,” Reinhardt said. “Ten minutes on foot, and he wouldn’t hear us coming.”

“You’re reading my mind, Dave.”

Reinhardt parked his pickup truck next to the Bronco behind the sumac. Cork took his binoculars and Remington and the two men followed where Blessing had gone. Cork would have preferred to stay off the trail, but on either side were bogs where an unwary step could put a man in the relentless grip of quicksandlike muck. They walked without speaking, not even a whisper, and watched the woods ahead.

They hadn’t gone far when they heard the sound of the Silverado returning. They scrambled off the trail and dropped behind the trunk of a fallen cedar. In a moment, Blessing’s truck appeared, Blessing alone in the cab. The Silverado passed them and disappeared among the trees as it headed back toward the road. They waited until it was well out of sight, then crept back onto the trail. Reinhardt nodded in the direction of Black Duck Lake, signaling to Cork that he thought they should continue. Cork nodded his agreement and they moved on.

Several hundred yards farther, the trail ended at a small log structure. Just beyond it was the blue of the open sky above Black Duck Lake. The log structure wasn’t exactly a cabin. It was small and square, maybe eight feet on each side. There was no chimney or stovepipe, not even any windows, just a door. Cork thought maybe it was an old trapper shelter. It didn’t look like the kind of place anyone would want to stay permanently, but if you were Lonnie Thunder it might be a reasonable spot to hide while you considered your next move.

Cork put four cartridges into the Remington’s magazine and jacked one into the chamber. Together, he and Reinhardt approached the closed door. Reinhardt put his ear to the weathered wood. From inside came a sound loud enough that Cork heard it, too: the rattle of paper being crumpled. Reinhardt drew his handgun and reached for the knob, an antique-looking thing of dirty white porcelain. He exchanged a look with Cork, then flung the door open and they rushed inside. Sunlight shot in with them, throwing their shadows long across the dirt floor. From a dark corner came a desperate scramble. Cork spun left just in time to see the tail end of a chipmunk disappear through a hole in the chinking between the logs. He did a three-sixty, a full-circle survey of the room. There were empty beer cans and empty cans of Hormel chili and Vienna sausages. There were empty potato chip bags and candy bar wrappers. There was the smell of disuse, of desiccation, of stale beer. But there was no Lonnie Thunder.

From the corner where the chipmunk had scampered away came the glint of cellophane. Cork looked closer and saw an empty package of Double Stuf Oreos. The dirt floor was full of boot prints, but it was impossible to tell how recently they’d been made.

“Somebody’s been living here,” Reinhardt said.

“Probably Thunder. No sleeping bag or blankets. Looks like he’s cleared out.”

Cork stepped outside. Near the lake, he found a fire ring. The ash and char were cold.

Reinhardt joined him and said, “Blessing must’ve been expecting that his cousin would be here. Maybe it means Thunder’ll be back.”

Cork eyed the small lake. “I think he hasn’t been here in a while.”

“Then why did Blessing come?”

“Maybe this was the last place he knew his cousin had been. I get the feeling Thunder doesn’t trust anybody now.”