* * *
He arrived home in the late dark. The patio door was locked, so Cork used his key to come in through the side door. He crept into the kitchen, and Trixie got up from where she lay sleeping under the dining room table and came to greet him.
“Hey, girl,” he said quietly and petted her with one hand while she licked his other.
The house was dark except for a single lamp in the living room, where he found Cy Borkman snoring on the sofa, a crocheted afghan thrown over him. He shook his friend gently, and Borkman awoke.
“I’ll take the next watch, Cy,” Cork said. “Thanks, buddy.”
Borkman, a big man, particularly around his middle, yawned and stretched and eased himself up. “Everything go okay?”
“Yeah, Cy. Just fine. And it helped not worrying about my family.”
“You need me again, you just call.”
“I will, Cy. Thanks.”
Borkman took his jacket from the coat tree near the front door and left.
Upstairs, a soft crying began. Cork heard steps in the hallway and then Jenny’s voice gently offering comfort. In a minute, the house was quiet once more. He caught again the sound of Jenny’s light tread in the hallway, but instead of entering her bedroom, she came downstairs.
“Hi, kiddo.” Cork spoke softly so that he wouldn’t startle her.
“I thought I heard you come in. Did Cy go home?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s a good man. Waaboo loves him.”
“Waaboo loves everyone.”
“Long day,” she said. “Any luck?”
“Luck?”
“Clearing your name. Getting yourself out from under the cloud of suspicion.”
Cork gave her a brief smile. “You sound like a writer of bad mystery stories. Let’s go into the kitchen, and I’ll fill you in.”
He pulled the curtain over the sink and turned on the hood light above the stove, intentionally keeping the room dimly lit. He poured himself a glass of milk, took a couple of chocolate chip cookies from the cookie jar, and sat with his daughter at the kitchen table.
“Rainy called,” she told him. “She and Henry heard about the deer slug through your windshield. She was worried. She tried your cell, but you didn’t answer.”
Cork pulled his phone from the holder on his belt. “Damn battery’s dead. You told her I’m all right?”
“Yes, but she’s still worried. We all are, Dad.”
“It’s too late to call her now. I’ll check in with her in the morning.”
“So,” Jenny said. “Fill me in.”
He did. Told her everything, including his suspicions concerning Bigby and Broom.
“Do you really think that either of those men could have killed Jubal Little?” she asked when he’d finished.
Cork took a long drink of his milk and, with the back of his hand, wiped the residue from his upper lip. “Remember when we found Waaboo? You were ready to kill to protect him. I think either Lester or Isaiah could have killed Jubal if what they wanted to protect was important enough to them.”
“Isaiah and Indian casinos?”
“Couple that with a lifelong love of Winona Crane, and maybe so.”
“And you really think Lester Bigby would kill to protect his investments?”
“Again, couple that with a deep desire to raise his esteem in his father’s eyes, and maybe so. And one more thing to keep in mind about them both. Neither of them would shed a tear if I went to prison for the deed.”
“I don’t buy that,” Jenny said. “I don’t think either of them killed Jubal Little.”
“You think I did it, then?”
“Don’t joke about this.”
He sat back and studied her. In the weak light, with her hair the color of a moonbeam on a dark lake and her eyes like chips of blue glacial ice, she reminded him of her mother. He’d often sat with Jo in just this way, discussing a case that had him puzzled. He still missed her, still felt the ache of her loss, but the current of life had carried him on to a new place, and he’d discovered that he could be happy there, too.
“I found blood at Winona Crane’s house,” he said.
“Somebody was hurt?”
“Looks like. Probably not Winona. She talked with Willie tonight and didn’t say anything to him about it, at least while I was there.”
“What do you think it means?”
“Maybe nothing. I don’t know.”
“So,” Jenny said. “What now?”
“I’ve turned over all the rocks I can think of. Now, I guess, we wait.”
“For what?”
“To see if anything crawls out.”
“Coming from you, that sounds awfully passive.”
“The truth is I don’t know what else to do, except hope that tomorrow something breaks.”
As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened.
CHAPTER 31
He rose early, long before the media might arrive at his door, dressed, put a note on the kitchen table explaining things to Jenny and Stephen, and left the house. He didn’t call Borkman; the guy needed his sleep. He hoped the early hour was reasonable protection for his family, and he planned to be back before it got too late.
Another November overcast had moved in, and Cork drove under a sky still inky from night and promising nothing better than a day capped with clouds the color of despair.
He’d awakened that morning with an uncomfortable thought, a thought about Winona Crane, and he needed to talk it over with Henry Meloux. The morning was cool, almost cold. Before starting down the path to Crow Point, he zipped his leather jacket up to his chin, pulled his gloves on, and settled a red stocking cap over his ears.
Half an hour later, he broke from the trees and saw, against the gray sky that backed the meadow, smoke vining upward from both Meloux’s cabin and Rainy’s. The meadow grass was long and dry, the color of apple cider. Against the walls of the two small cabins, cords of split wood lay stacked, banked in anticipation of a winter just over the horizon. The wood made the walls look unnaturally thick, and the image reminded Cork of those wild animals who, in the fall, grew their coats huge to protect them from the brutal cold that was to come. Behind the branches of the bare aspens along the shoreline, Iron Lake was a great slab of fractured gray slate. The only sound was the cry of the crows that perennially used the trees as a rookery and, in that way, had given the point its name.
He headed to Rainy’s cabin first. He knocked; she didn’t answer. He went on to Meloux’s, where he found them both having breakfast. Rainy gave him a kiss, then gave him coffee and offered to fix him something to eat. He settled for a couple of hot biscuits with homemade blueberry jam.
When they’d finished their meal, Meloux sat back in his old birchwood chair. He appeared well rested and refreshed, something Cork envied.
“You look like an animal of burden, Corcoran O’Connor, given too much to carry.”
“Are you going to tell us about the bullet through your windshield, Cork?” Although she tried to speak casually, there was a note of irritation in Rainy’s voice.
“Jenny told me you called. Sorry, Rainy. The battery on my cell phone was dead.”
“It could have been you instead of that battery,” she replied.
“Niece,” Meloux said gently. “He did not come for a scolding.” His eyes, brown as old pennies, settled expectantly on Cork.
“Henry, I want to talk to you about Winona Crane and Jubal Little.”
“Then talk.”
“If I told you I thought that she might have killed Jubal Little, would you say I was crazy?”
“Crazy is trying to tickle a bull moose, Corcoran O’Connor. I would not say you are crazy.”
“Winona loved Jubal, and I know Jubal loved her. But I’m wondering if it was the other side of love that might have made her kill him.”
Rainy said, “You think that, in the end, she hated Jubal?”
Cork shook his head and nodded toward Meloux.
“Your uncle once told me that the other side of love isn’t hate but fear. Here’s the deal, Henry. In those three hours I spent with him before he died, Jubal told me a lot of things he clearly wanted to get off his chest. Some of it I’ve told the sheriff’s people, but some I’ve kept to myself. One of the things Jubal told me was that he came north this time to tell Winona good-bye for good. He said he’d made a decision never to see her again.”
“Why?” Rainy asked.
“She’d become a liability to him.”
“He was preparing to reach the mountaintop,” Meloux said.
“You know about Winona’s vision?” Cork asked.
“It came to her here, long ago.”
“After Donner Bigby died, when you worked to heal her?”
“And Jubal Little. They both needed healing, but there was more to it than just that. There was something unusual about them. They were two pieces of the same broken stone. Winona had the vision then.”
“What was the vision?” Rainy asked.
Cork said, “She saw Jubal alone on a mountaintop, holding the sun and moon in his hands, and the stars singing around his head.”
“Did you tell her what the vision meant, Uncle Henry?”
Meloux shook his head. “It was her vision. She believed she knew what it meant. Who was I to say she was right or she was wrong?”
“What did she think it meant?”
“That Jubal Little was destined for greatness. That he would have to achieve it alone.”
Cork said, “So when she ran away from Aurora right after that, she was somehow trying to fulfill the vision?”
“Maybe,” Meloux allowed. “Or maybe it is simply a hard thing to accept that someone you love will someday abandon you.”
“But her vision wasn’t fulfilled,” Rainy pointed out. “Jubal Little died before he reached the top.”
The old man shrugged. “A vision is not necessarily what will be. It is more like a light showing the way toward what could be. And sometimes it is a warning.”
Meloux’s old dog, Walleye, got up from the corner of the cabin where he’d been lying with his head cradled on his paws. He came to the table, to Rainy, who scratched his head. Then she frowned at Cork. “What did you mean when you said that Winona had become a liability to Jubal?”
“He was going to be in the public eye in such a way that everything he did would be watched. His relationship with Winona would be too risky. If it’s true that he had his eye ultimately on the presidency—and knowing Jubal, that’s exactly where his ambition would push him—he had to make sure that he appeared to be squeaky clean.”
Rainy didn’t look convinced. “If all her life Winona’s known that Jubal would have to abandon her, for the mountaintop, as you put it, why believe that she killed him just as he was poising himself to get there?”
On his fingers, Cork counted off the reasons. “One: Sam Winter Moon taught her to bow-hunt and still-stalk. Two: She knows the area around Trickster’s Point well. And three: I tend to agree with the guy who said that hell has no fury like a woman scorned.”
“I’m going to ignore for the moment the sexist nature of that last comment and repeat what Uncle Henry told you, that hate isn’t the other side of love. That would be fear. So if Winona Crane killed Jubal Little, what was she afraid of?”
Cork shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m really just thinking out loud.”
Meloux put an old hand in the center of the table, his fingers spread like the points of a star. “Does your heart, Corcoran O’Connor, agree with the way your head is trying to lead you?”
“No,” Cork had to admit. He sat back, feeling defeated again. “I’m flailing here, Henry.”
“Did you come hoping for advice? Or did you come hoping for something else?”
“I was wondering if you might be willing to talk to Winona.”
Meloux fell silent as he considered Cork’s request. Walleye circled the table and nudged his old head under the Mide’s right hand, and Meloux idly stroked the dog’s yellow fur.
“If she comes to me, I will talk to her,” he finally agreed. “But my purpose will be to help her spirit heal, if that is what she wants, not to help you put her in the hands of the police.”
“Fair enough, Henry,” Cork said, and he rose to leave. “Migwech.”
Rainy walked him across the meadow to where the trail entered the trees. Morning had arrived fully, but because clouds sealed the entire dome of the sky, there was no sun.
“Do you think you can convince Winona to talk to Uncle Henry?” she asked.
“If I can find her. She’s gone into hiding again.”
She smiled at him and reached out to touch his cheek. “Do you know what Uncle Henry says about you?”
“No, tell me.”
“He says you’re like a dog who can’t remember where he’s buried his bone. You just keep digging until you find it.”
“Pretty pathetic, huh?”
“I don’t think so at all.”
She kissed him just as his cell phone began to ring. He pulled it from his belt holder and saw that it was Ed Larson calling.
“This is Cork. What’s up, Ed?”
Larson said, “You might want to come down to the sheriff’s department, Cork. We just brought in Isaiah Broom. Holter’s insisting we arrest him for the murder of Jubal Little.”
CHAPTER 32
“We showed up at his door,” Holter said. “Captain Larson and myself. We wanted to get to him early, but just to talk to him. He took one look at us and said, ‘I killed him.’ It was that simple.”
That simple, Cork thought. He wanted to say, Come on, Holter, nothing’s that simple, but he held his tongue.
They sat in the office of Sheriff Marsha Dross. They all had mugs of coffee, and someone had put a plate of doughnut holes on Dross’s desk. Nobody was eating them. Cork thought the feel in the room was different from the excitement that should have been there if they really believed they were going to be able to close the case.
“Have you questioned him yet?”
Larson shook his head. “He asked to have his attorney present.”
Cork saw the dismal look on Holter’s face. “Wouldn’t happen to be Leon Papakee, would it, Agent Holter?” he asked.
“It is,” the BCA agent replied coolly. “He’s on his way. Should be here soon.”
“So what do you think?” Cork asked of them all in general.
Dross said, “We’re reserving judgment, but we’d be interested in what you think.”
Cork lifted his mug. The smell of the coffee was good and strong, and he figured Dross had made it herself. He sipped and considered the question, then replied, “I think Broom is the kind of man who could have done this kind of thing, but I don’t think he’s the kind of man who would hand himself over to you gift-wrapped.”
Holter said, “Unless he plans to use this whole tragic situation as a political forum of some kind.”
“I could see him doing that,” Cork said. “What about Lester Bigby?”
Holter looked surprised at the apparent jump in topic. “What about him?”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Yes. He wasn’t happy about it, but he was cooperative. He showed us his hunting bow, his arrows. Very nice, but very commercial. Nothing homemade. Nothing like the arrow that killed Jubal Little.”
“As I explained to you once before, Agent Holter, I don’t lock my doors. I still think he could have taken one of mine.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Did you get his fingerprints to match against the ones on the arrow that killed your John Doe on the ridge?”
“I didn’t believe it to be necessary at this point.”
“Did you at least ask him where he was last Saturday?”
“We did. He was out all day, at that resort property of his on Crown Lake.”
“Interesting. He told his wife he was going to spend the day with his father.”
&nb
sp; “Time enough for both, I suppose.”
“His father says he wasn’t there at all.”
“Look, what difference does it make? We have in custody the man who admits to the murder.”
“Yeah, a guy who normally wouldn’t say boo to the cops, and without even being prompted insists, ‘Cuff me.’ You really buy that, Holter?”
“Jesus, O’Connor. You were the one who suggested we take a good look at Broom. Now you’re saying we made a mistake? Give me a break.”
Larson intervened evenly. “For now, it’s the best lead we have, Cork. We’re not going to send an innocent man to jail, you know that.”
“Do I? I was looking pretty good to you there for a while.”
“Maybe you still are,” Larson said. “Go on home. We’ll be in touch.”
Cork stood up to leave. As he put his half-empty coffee mug on Dross’s desk, the sheriff asked, “Just for the sake of argument, why would Broom lie about something like this?”
Love, Cork wanted to tell her. Instead he said, “Maybe it’s like Holter says. Isaiah’s got some political points to make, and he just wants the spotlight.”
“Risky,” Dross said.
“If you’re born Indian, your whole life is about risk,” Cork replied, and he left.
* * *
As he’d been doing for some time now, he’d parked his Land Rover a couple of blocks away so that he could slip into and out of the sheriff’s department without the media spotting him. When he got there this time, however, he saw that he’d been found out. A silver Escalade was parked behind the Land Rover, and as Cork approached, Kenny Yates stepped out. He wore a sanded calfskin leather jacket and leather gloves. Although it was overcast, he had on an expensive pair of shades.
“The Jaegers would like to see you,” he said, blocking Cork’s way.
“Fine, but I have a couple of things I need to do first.”
“They would prefer that you come right now.”