Red Knife (2 page)

T
he words on the note folded around the check in his wallet read:
Here’s $500. A retainer. I need your help. See me today.
The note and the money were from Alexander Kingbird, although it was signed
Kakaik,
which was the name of an Ojibwe war chief. It meant Hawk.

Five hundred dollars was a pretty sound enticement, but Cork O’Connor would have gone for nothing, just to satisfy his curiosity. Although the note didn’t mention Kingbird’s situation, it was easy to read between the lines. In Tamarack County, unless you were stupid or dead you knew that Alexander Kingbird and the Red Boyz were in trouble. How exactly, Cork wondered, did Kingbird think he could help?

Kingbird and his wife, Rayette, lived on the Iron Lake Reservation. Their home was a nice prefab, constructed to look like a log cabin and set back a hundred yards off the road, behind a stand of red pines. A narrow gravel lane cut straight through the trees to the house. As Cork drove up, his headlights swung across a shiny black Silverado parked in front. He knew it belonged to Tom Blessing, Kingbird’s second-in-command. It was Blessing who’d delivered the note that afternoon.

And it was Blessing who opened the door when Cork knocked.

“About time,” Blessing said.

He wasn’t much more than a kid, twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Long black hair falling freely down his back. Tall, lean, tense. He reminded Cork of a sapling that in the old days might have been used for a rabbit snare: delicately balanced, ready to snap.

“The note said today. It’s still today, Tom,” Cork said.

“My name’s Waubishash.”

Each of the Red Boyz, on joining the gang, took the name of an Ojibwe war chief.

“Let him in.” The order was delivered from behind Blessing, from inside the house.

Blessing stepped back and Cork walked in.

Alexander Kingbird stood on the far side of his living room. “Thank you for coming.”

He was twenty-five, by most standards still a young man, but his eyes weren’t young at all. They were as brown as rich earth and, like earth, they were old. He wore his hair in two long braids tied at the end with strips of rawhide, each hung with an owl feather. A white scar ran from the corner of his right eye to the lobe of his ear. Cork had heard it happened in a knife fight while he was a guest of the California penal system.

Kingbird glanced at Blessing. “You can go.”

Blessing shook his head. “Until this is over, you shouldn’t be alone.”

“Are you planning to shoot me, Mr. O’Connor?”

“I hadn’t thought of it, but I may be the only guy in this county who hasn’t.”

Kingbird smiled. “I’ll be fine, Waubishash. Go on.”

Blessing hesitated. Maybe he was working on an argument; if so, he couldn’t quite put it together. He finally nodded, turned, and left. A minute later, Cork heard the Silverado’s big engine turn over, followed by the sound of the tires on gravel. Everything got quiet then, except for a baby cooing in a back room and the low, loving murmur of a woman in response.

“Mind taking your shoes off?” Kingbird said. “New carpet and Rayette’s kind of particular about keeping it clean.”

“No problem.” Cork slipped his Salomons off and set them beside a pair of Red Wing boots and a pair of women’s Skechers, which were on a mat next to the door.

“Sit down,” Kingbird said.

Cork took a comfortable-looking easy chair upholstered in dark green. Kingbird sat on the sofa.

“You know why you’re here?” he said to Cork.

“Instead of twenty questions, why don’t you just tell me.”

“Buck Reinhardt wants me dead.”

“You blame him?”

“I’m not responsible for his daughter dying.”

“No, but you’re hiding the man who is.”

“And you know this how?”

“Popular speculation. And he’s one of the Red Boyz.”

“I want to talk to Reinhardt.”

“Why?”

Kingbird sat tall. He wore a green T-shirt, military issue it looked like. On his forearm was a tattoo. A bulldog—the Marine Corps devil dog—with
USMC
below.

“I have a daughter of my own,” he said. His eyes moved a hair to the right, in the direction from which the cooing had come. “I understand how he feels.”

“I don’t think you do. Your daughter is still alive.”

“My daughter will also never use drugs.”

“In that, I wish you luck.”

“Reinhardt and some of his men threatened one of my Red Boyz yesterday. He needs to understand that anything he does—to me or any of the Red Boyz—will be answered in kind. I’ve seen wars, O’Connor. It’s easier to stop them before they get started.”

“Then give him what he wants. Give him the man responsible for his daughter’s death. Give him Lonnie Thunder.”

The suggestion seemed to have no effect on Kingbird. “Will you arrange a meeting?”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re not just another white man. You’ve got some Ojibwe blood in your veins. Also, you used to be sheriff around here and I figure that gives you a certain standing. And—” He held up a card, one of the business cards Cork routinely tacked to bulletin boards around Aurora. “—it’s how you earn your living.”

“How do I know, and how can Buck be sure, that you won’t just shoot him as soon as he shows up?”

“Let him name the place and the time. You’ll be there to observe and to maintain the peace.”

“Five hundred dollars isn’t nearly enough to get me to step between blazing guns.”

“I’ll be unarmed. You make sure Reinhardt is, too. And the five hundred dollars is a retainer. When this meeting is done, you’ll have another five hundred.”

Rayette Kingbird strolled into the room carrying her child. Misty had been born six months earlier. When Alexander Kingbird looked at his wife and his daughter, his face softened.

Cork stood up. “Evening, Rayette.”

“Cork.”

“Bedtime for Misty?”

She smiled. She was full-blood Ojibwe. Her life before Kingbird had been hard. Abandoned by her mother and raised by her grandparents, she’d been into every kind of trouble imaginable. When Cork was sheriff of Tamarack County, he’d picked her up a few times, juvenile offenses. She’d skipped childhood through no fault of her own and he’d thought that any youth she might have had had been squeezed out long ago. Then she met Kingbird and married him and things changed. She looked young and she looked happy.

“Past bedtime,” she said. “She wants a kiss from her daddy.”

Rayette held the baby out and Kingbird took his daughter. He nuzzled her neck. She gurgled. He kissed her forehead. She squirmed. “Night, little turtle,” he said. He handed her back to his wife.

Rayette left with the child. Kingbird looked after them a moment, then turned to Cork.

“We’ve named her Misty, but her real name is Tomorrow. Every child’s name is Tomorrow. You, me, Buck Reinhardt, we’re Yesterday. Kristi Reinhardt shouldn’t have died. No child’s life should be cut short of tomorrow.”

“Nice sentiment, Alex, but what are you going to offer Buck? What do I tell him that will make him agree to meet you?”

He ignored the fact that Cork had used his given name, not the one he’d taken as a member of the Red Boyz. He said, “Tell him he will have justice. Tell him I give my word.”

B
uck Reinhardt was a son of a bitch and he’d be the first to tell you so. He could be mean, selfish, bullying, insensitive, and offensive, and grin at you the whole while. It was nothing personal; he was that way with everyone. Everyone except his daughter Kristi. Her he’d done his best to spoil rotten.

Kristi was the only child born from Buck’s second marriage. His first wife was dead and the children from that marriage were all adults. Most of them had fled to the four winds to escape their father. With Kristi, it seemed that Buck Reinhardt was determined not to make the same mistakes he’d made before. He went on making mistakes; they were just different ones.

Reinhardt built a place on Skinner Lake five miles west of Aurora, where he had the area pretty much to himself. There was public access on the far side, but it wasn’t often used because the lake was shallow and if you were a fisherman looking for the big ones, you wouldn’t find them in Skinner.

Cork turned onto the narrow gravel road that skirted the lake and wove his way through a fine stand of sugar maples that Reinhardt tapped each year. The man may have been a bona fide bastard, but he boiled down a great maple syrup, which he gave away in small bottles as gifts at Christmas. Cork could see the lights of the house through the trees and again where they reflected off the black water of the lake. It was a big, sprawling place, begun small and added onto over several decades as Reinhardt’s growing fortune allowed. He’d done all the work himself; the house ended up as quirky as the man whose mind had conceived it. There was no eye to a unifying design. Buck Reinhardt built whatever suited his fancy at the moment he picked up saw and hammer. It had started as a one-bedroom cabin, but over the years had grown into a multitude of additions put together side by side or on top of one another. In the end, it resembled nothing quite so much as the random construction a child might create with a handful of building blocks. It wasn’t ugly exactly. It was certainly unusual, and very big, especially now that Buck and Elise, his second wife, lived there alone.

Cork parked in the drive and climbed the steps of the front porch, which overlooked the lake. The porch light was on. It was early May, too soon for moths. Another three or four weeks and they’d be swarming around the light. He knocked. Almost immediately the door opened.

Elise Reinhardt was younger than Cork by several years, early forties somewhere. Reinhardt had met her while she was carting cocktails in the bar of a four-star resort near Grand Rapids. Shortly after that, the first Mrs. Reinhardt moved out and six months later was dead of pancreatic cancer. Within a year, Buck had married again.

Elise Reinhardt was a strong woman. Any woman who’d marry an old piece of tough leather like Buck Reinhardt had to be. She was an attractive, blond, blue-eyed, big-boned Swede whose maiden name was Lindstrom. Although she was no longer a young woman, she kept herself in shape and knew how to look good. Men in Aurora noticed. Reinhardt liked that about his wife, liked that men looked at her. He often said as much. Said, too, that he’d kill her if he ever caught her looking back, but only said that part after he’d had too many boilermakers.

When she opened the door, she wasn’t at all the woman who’d catch a man’s eye. Her own eyes were tired and puffy, her face plain, her skin sallow, her lips set in a snarl. She was a woman in mourning and she wore her grief with an awful fury.

“What?” she said.

“Sorry to bother you, Elise. I’m looking for Buck.”

“Look somewhere else. He’s not here.”

“Any idea where I might find him?”

“Like I could give a good goddamn.” She took a couple of seconds and pulled herself together. “Try the Buzz Saw. He’s probably getting shit faced with the boys. He does that a lot these days.”

The truth was that Buck had always done that a lot. Reinhardt owned a tree-trimming business. He’d secured a number of lucrative contracts with power and telephone companies to keep the lines clear of limbs, and he had a dozen crews operating throughout the North Country. He didn’t pay all that much, but in an area where the iron mines had mostly closed and logging wasn’t what it used to be, Reinhardt was a decent employer. If you worked for Buck, you never missed a paycheck, never got called on the carpet for a sexist or racist slur, and never, when you went drinking with him, paid for your own booze.

“Thanks. If I miss him, mind telling him I want to talk? It’s important.”

“What about?” Elise said.

Cork couldn’t see any reason to hold back. “Alex Kingbird wants to meet with him.”

Elise looked dumbfounded. “What could he possibly have to say to my husband?”

“He claims he has something to offer Buck.”

“Yeah, what? His heart at the end of a sharp stick?”

“I think it would be a good idea for your husband to hear him out.”

“You’d have to hog-tie Buck to get him in the same room with Kingbird.”

“Tell him I’ll drop by again after church tomorrow morning.”

“Buck doesn’t go to church anymore.”

“I do. Round noon okay?”

Her lips went tight and she stared at him. Finally she said, “I’ll tell him.”

“Elise, I’m sorry about Kristi.”

She nailed him with her ice blue eyes. “No, deep inside you’re just so damn happy it wasn’t your daughter.”

He wasn’t going to argue the point. In a way, she was right.

“I’ll see Buck tomorrow.”

“Lucky fucking you,” she said and slammed the door.

T
he Buzz Saw stood along Highway 2, a few miles south of Aurora in a little unincorporated municipality called Durham. There was a big neon sign on the roof that appeared to spin like a ripsaw blade. The parking lot was less than half full when Cork pulled in. He didn’t see Reinhardt’s truck, which was hard to miss because of the rack of floodlights mounted on the cab. Buck claimed he needed the lights for whenever the tree trimming went late and things got dark. Most people suspected the real reason was that Reinhardt shined deer. On the door on either side of the cab was a big image of a green tree with
REINHARDT TREE TRIMMING
printed boldly in black below.

It was Saturday night, but things at the Buzz Saw weren’t buzzing. That was because it was early May, still several weeks away from the onslaught of summer tourists. A few tables were full, but mostly the customers had scattered themselves around the big barroom in singles or pairs. When they weren’t talking, they were listening to Mitch Sokol and the Stoned Rangers belt out an ear-splitting mix of electric bluegrass and country rock. Ropes of blue cigarette smoke coiled up everywhere, and the air was a choking mix of that, the odor of spilled beer, and the aroma of deep fry.

Cork stood just inside the front door for a minute, looking the place over. He saw a lot of folks he knew, but he didn’t see Buck Reinhardt or anyone who worked for the man. He shook a few hands as he made his way to the bar, where Seneca Peterson was tending that night. She was midtwenties, statuesque, sported a silver stud in one nostril and a ring through her lower lip, and had close-cropped hair that was a striking mix of jet black and cotton candy pink. Cork had known her since she was a baby, when the only pink on her was the natural tone of her skin. She’d been baptized at St. Agnes, made her First Communion there, had sung in the choir, and even once played Mary in the yearly Christmas pageant. Now she was tending bar, with a stud in her nose and a tattoo crawling up the back of her neck like a green spider.

“Hey, Sen,” Cork shouted above Sokol and the Rangers.

She stepped up and wiped the bar in front of him. “What’ll you have, hon?”

“Leinenkugel’s Dark.”

“One Leinie’s coming up.”

She brought him the draw.

“Seen Buck Reinhardt tonight?” he asked.

“Yeah. Left a while ago. Pissed.”

“Why?”

“I cut him off.”

“He’d had too many?”

She shook her head. “Mostly he was shooting his mouth off. You know Buck.”

“What was his gripe?”

“About what you’d expect given what happened to Kristi. Lot of talk about f’ing Indians.”

“Red Boyz?”

“That, sure. But f’ing Indians in general. A lot of my customers have some Ojibwe blood in them. I don’t need Buck Reinhardt getting everyone riled up.”

“He left easy?”

“I’d say so.”

“Doesn’t sound like Buck.”

“The Green Giant and Turner escorted him out.” She was talking about Derek Green, the bouncer at the door, and the bar manager, both more gorilla than man.

“Was he alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Drunk would you say?”

“I’ve seen him way worse. Mostly he was”—she thought a moment and scratched at the stud in her nose—“belligerent. Hell, who can blame him? But I told him he had to do his drinking and his bitching somewhere else.”

“Any idea where he might have headed?”

“If he was going in the general direction of home, the next logical stop would be Tanner’s on the Lake.”

He left her a five as a tip—he liked the idea that she’d kicked Reinhardt out for badmouthing the Ojibwe—and headed to Tanner’s. Reinhardt wasn’t there either and hadn’t been. Cork tried the Silver Horse, the Chippewa Grand Casino bar, and finally the bar at the Four Seasons, all with the same result. It was a quarter of eleven by then. He didn’t want to call Reinhardt’s house and risk disturbing Elise. He stood on the empty deck in back of the Four Seasons, looking at the spray of the Milky Way above Iron Lake. The temperature was in the low fifties, not bad for that time of year. He had on a light jacket but a good flannel shirt would have done as well. Up the shoreline, the lights of Aurora were like stars fallen to earth. The night was still and quiet. It would have been a pleasure to stand there awhile longer taking in the stillness, the stars, the air that smelled of apple-wood smoke from the fireplace in the Four Seasons’s lounge. He decided to call it a night and head home. He would hit Reinhardt’s place first thing after Mass in the morning. That would give Buck a chance to recover a little if he was hungover. He was a son of a bitch sober. Hungover, he just might get it in his head to take a chainsaw to Cork.

Corcoran O’Connor lived in an old two-story frame house on an old residential street in Aurora called Gooseberry Lane. Lights were still on downstairs when he parked in the drive. Inside, he found his wife, Jo, on the sofa watching a video. Nine-year-old Stevie was asleep with his feet on his mother’s lap. Jo didn’t get up when Cork came in, but Trixie, the family mutt, jumped up from where she’d been lying and came bounding toward him with her tail wagging a blue streak.

“Nice someone’s glad to see me,” Cork said. He patted Trixie and kissed the top of Jo’s head. “What are you watching?”

“The last few minutes of
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
” Cork had introduced his son to the old comic duo, and Stevie loved them, though Jo wasn’t a particular fan. “Took you a long time. How’d it go with Alex Kingbird?”

“Let’s talk in the kitchen.”

She gently maneuvered herself from under her son and left him sleeping soundly on the sofa. In the kitchen, she plucked a couple of chocolate chip cookies from the jar on the counter, gave one to Cork, and they sat down at the table.

“So tell me,” she said.

“He wants to meet with Buck Reinhardt.”

“Whatever for?”

“To avert a war, he says. He thinks the shooting’s about to begin.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Buck to haul out the firepower. What’s Kingbird offering to entice him to a meeting?”

“Justice.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”

“Justice.” She frowned, bit into her cookie, and looked thoughtful.

Kristi Reinhardt had been eighteen when she died. She’d been one of those girls life had drenched in promise. A stunning beauty with hair the color of dark honey. Smart, athletic, a talented swimmer and diver. She was also reckless and a thrill seeker, traits she got from Buck. She had a fondness for motorcycles and for the kind of guys who rode them. It was one of those guys, a biker named Aaron “Crunch” Bergman, who’d introduced her to meth. When it became clear she had a drug problem, Buck and Elise sent her to Hazelden, the renowned treatment facility near the Twin Cities. She came home clean, but within a couple of months of returning to Aurora, Kristi died while under the influence of the drug. It had happened during a late-night party at the park above Mercy Falls. According to witnesses—other kids present—she’d poised herself at the lip of the rocky ledge on top of the falls, as if she was preparing to dive in one of her competitions. No one thought she’d do it. It was never clear whether she’d fallen or had actually dived. She hit the pool at the bottom of the falls headfirst. The pool was shallow. She smashed her skull on a rock two feet below the surface and died instantly.

In his statement to sheriff’s investigators, Eric Neiburg, one of the kids at the party, said that he’d seen Kristi smoking ice: crystal meth. She’d told him that she got it from an Indian—Lonnie Thunder—in exchange for oral sex. When sheriff’s deputies executed a search warrant for the trailer on the reservation where Thunder lived, they found meth and they found photographs of Kristi Reinhardt that would make any parent’s blood run cold. They also found photographs and videos that Thunder had made of Ojibwe girls, some of them minors. They didn’t find Thunder. He’d vanished. The general speculation was that he was hiding somewhere on the reservation, protected by the Red Boyz. Buck Reinhardt had made it clear that he was holding Alex Kingbird personally responsible.

“You don’t think he’s going to turn Lonnie Thunder over to Buck?” Jo asked.

“So Buck can skin him alive? I don’t think so.”

“Will Buck agree to meet?”

Cork finished his cookie. “Want some milk?”

“No, thanks.”

He got a tumbler from the cupboard, went to the refrigerator, and pulled out a half-gallon carton of Land O’ Lakes 2 percent. “I tried to track him down. Hit half a dozen bars, no luck.”

“Ah, that’s why you’re so late and smell like an ashtray.”

He put the milk back in the fridge and sat down again. “Where’s Annie?”

“She went to the movies with Cara Haines.”

Cork gulped his milk. “I’m bushed.”

“What about Buck?”

“He’s a lot older than me and drunk. I’ll bet he’s bushed, too.”

“I mean when will you talk to him?”

“Tomorrow after church. Figure I’ll catch him while he’s still a little groggy. That way if he tries to shoot me, his aim’ll be off.”

She looked troubled and reached across the table and put her hand over his. “I don’t like the idea of you in the middle of this, sweetheart. Buck Reinhardt has always been a little crazy. Who knows what losing Kristi could drive him to do? And if Alex Kingbird is really dealing drugs, god, I don’t want you anywhere near them when they meet.”

“Kingbird gave his word to come unarmed. I’ll work the same promise out of Buck or it won’t happen.”

“His word? You’d take his word? And Buck’s?”

“Look, I’ll figure something out, Jo.” He eased his hand free.

She sat back, unhappy. “This is serious, Cork.”

“I know, believe me. But I think Kingbird’s right. Unless somebody does something, all hell could break loose around here. He’s trying to do something and he’s asked me to help. What can I say?”

“Are you getting paid for this?”

“Five Franklins up front and another five when the meeting goes down.”

She drilled him with her cold blue eyes. “What kind of casket can I possibly get with that?”