Trickster's Point

  The day was overcast and wet and cool. They followed a rutted dirt road over bogland where the tamaracks were gold and stood out like lit torches. They wove through birch stands barren of leaves, with bone white trunks and branches. Sam Winter Moon suddenly braked to a complete stop, then backed up. He swung his pickup onto the grass at the side of the road and, without a word, got out. Cork and Jubal got out, too, and followed. Sam walked down a little spur of road, almost invisible beneath the tall overgrowth of weeds. Cork saw what his own eyes had missed initially but Sam’s had not, an outline where the passage of tires had crushed down the weeds. They came to a black pickup, a newer model, parked behind a thicket of wild blackberry that made it invisible from the road.

  Sam said quietly, “Know any skins on the rez who can afford a new pickup?” He walked carefully around the vehicle, studying the ground. “This way,” he said and began to follow the trail left by those who’d come in the truck.

  Cork realized that Jubal was carrying his bow and quiver of arrows, which he must have pulled from the bed of Sam’s pickup when they got out. Since it wasn’t deer they were hunting at the moment, Cork wasn’t sure why Jubal had done this, but he quickly forgot about it as he became intent on reading the signs of the trail. Wherever the ground was soft and bare of cover, three distinct sets of tracks were visible. Two sets were large—men. One was much smaller—a child. They followed nearly a mile, up a ridge, and as they approached the crest, they heard voices ahead. Cork and Jubal looked toward Sam, who nodded for them to keep moving toward the noise. In a couple of minutes, they came to a meadow full of wild grass and sumac, with three figures at the center, dressed in camouflage and standing over a killed white-tail buck. Cork recognized them immediately: Donner Bigby; his little brother, Lester; and their father, an enormous and brutal-looking man whose name was Clarence but whom everyone called Buzz because of his logging work with chain saws. Bigs and his father held compound bows. Lester, who was maybe eight or nine at the time, held a hunting knife. The blade looked huge in his small hand. He was crying.

  “I don’t want to cut him, Daddy,” Lester said.

  “Your brother and me did all the work of bringing him down,” his father said. “The least you can do is help us dress him.”

  “Make a man out of you,” Bigs said with a laugh.

  “I don’t want to,” Lester cried. He looked down at the deer.

  “I don’t want him to be dead.”

  “He’s not Bambi, for Christ’s sake,” Bigs said.

  “Cut him open like I told you,” their father said.

  But Lester just stood there, crying. Buzz Bigby grabbed the knife from his son’s hand and slapped the boy across the face. Lester tumbled to the ground.

  “Hey, Pop, leave him alone,” Donner said.

  “You want some of this?” Bigby held up the open palm with which he’d sent Lester sprawling.

  Donner lowered his eyes and didn’t reply.

  Bigby looked down at his younger son and spit. “Shut up and be a man, or the next thing I give you will be the toe of my boot.”

  Lester retreated in a crawl but finally brought himself under control, and the sobs subsided.

  “Stand up.”

  He did as he was told. His father handed him the knife. The boy took it and knelt beside the deer.

  Cork and Jubal and Sam had hidden themselves among the birch at the edge of the meadow. Sam whispered, “Stay here.”

  He left the tree cover and walked toward the Bigbys. “Anin,” he cried out in Ojibwe greeting.

  Buzz Bigby swung around to face him, and Cork saw that he brought his bow to the ready. Bigs, seeing his father’s response, did the same, and went a step further. He drew an arrow from his quiver and nocked it on his bowstring.

  “What do you want?” the elder Bigby said.

  “Thing is this. You’re on Indian land, but you don’t look very Indian to me.” Sam had halted a dozen steps away from the Bigbys. “It’s against the law for you to hunt on our land.”

  “Hell, you got more deer’n you’ll ever need to feed yourselves,” Bigby said.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Well, here’s my point,” Bigby said. “Me and my boys are gonna take this buck back to my truck, and we’re gonna haul it home, and we’re gonna mount them antlers on my wall, and there ain’t a thing in the world you’re gonna be able to do to stop us. What do you say to that?”

  Jubal drew an arrow from his quiver and laid the shaft over the arrow rest and fit the nock into the bowstring. Cork wanted to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. Would he really shoot Bigs or Mr. Bigby or Lester?

  Sam said, “If you do that, I’ll report you to the sheriff.”

  “He’s white. Think he’ll care about what goes on out here?”

  “I haven’t finished. I’ll also report you to Rusty Benay. He’s the game warden in these parts, and he’s half Indian. He’ll see to it that you never get another deer license, or any kind of license for that matter.”

  “He can’t do that,” Bigby said, but not with certainty.

  “Is this deer worth that chance?” Sam replied.

  Bigby weighed his response, and while he did, Donner slowly edged away from the others, as if to clear himself a space in order to send an arrow into Sam Winter Moon if necessary. In that same time, Jubal raised his own bow, drew back the string, and sighted.

  “Jesus, Jubal,” Cork whispered. “Put it down.”

  If he heard, Jubal gave no indication. He held the bow steady, as if it were only an inanimate target he was aiming at, not Donner Bigby’s heart.

  Cork became abnormally aware of everything around him. The smell of wet tree bark, the kiss of the autumn air against his face, the look of the clouds running like gray wolves across the sky, the feel of the very ground through the soles of his boots, the easy breathing of Jubal Little, the metal taste in his own mouth. He would experience this hypersensitivity several times over the years to come, usually in a situation when a human life was at stake.

  He thought of tackling Jubal but was afraid that a move like that might cause the arrow to be fired accidentally.

  In the blink of an eye, Cork made his decision. He stepped from the trees and called out, “Hey, Sam, we were wondering where you went. Me and the guys.” He walked to the center of the clearing, where all the eyes had turned his way. “Hey, Bigs,” he said easily. “Hello, Mr. Bigby. Hey, Lester.” He looked down at the deer, as if only just becoming aware of it. “You know, you can’t keep that buck. We’re on reservation land here. But the elders, they’ll be grateful for all the jerky and deer sausage we’ll be able to make from it. Thanks a lot. Or as the Ojibwe say, migwech. I’ll go get the other guys, and we can take it from here.”

  He spoke fast and friendly, as if he and the Bigbys were pals. And he smiled easily, though his heart was kicking like a mule.

  Buzz Bigby took his measure and finally nodded. He looked at Sam. “The buck’s yours. Come on, boys, let’s pack it in.”

  The Bigbys left, returning the way they’d come. Cork wondered if Jubal would make his presence known to them, but when he looked where Jubal had been, he could see nothing. Jubal appeared again once the Bigbys were well and truly gone. He’d returned the arrow to his quiver. He walked to the center of the clearing and stood with Cork and Sam, looking at the great buck that Bigs and his father had brought down. There were two arrows in the animal. Cork could tell from the line of blood across the wild grass that the buck had run here after being hit, had fallen, and died. But it probably hadn’t run far, because both arrows had been well-placed heart shots.

  “Let’s dress him,” Sam said.

  Jubal said with satisfaction, “Bigs and his old man are going home empty-handed today.”

  “No,” Sam said. “They’ll take the memory of this day home, and they’ll feed on it a lot longer than they would’ve fed on the meat of this deer, and it’ll always taste bitter to them. My advice? Around the Big
bys, you guys watch yourselves.”

  CHAPTER 9

  By the time Cork broke from the woods on his return from Crow Point, the drizzle had ended, but it left a damp chill in the air. A white Dodge pickup was parked behind Cork’s Land Rover, and a figure stood waiting there. It took Cork only a moment to recognize Sheriff Marsha Dross. She wasn’t dressed in her department uniform. She wore jeans and a sage-colored turtleneck under a suede jacket. She’d dropped the tailgate and had set a big steel thermos of coffee at the edge of the pickup bed. She was drinking from the thermos cup as Cork approached.

  “Got me under constant surveillance now?” he asked.

  She held the cup near her mouth, and the coffee sent steamy tendrils up against her lips. She blew to cool it. “I just came to tell you that I got a call from the governor early this morning. He requested that I allow the BCA to be involved in the investigation of Jubal Little’s death.”

  She was talking about the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the division of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety that functioned, in many ways, very much like the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Cork had worked often with their agents over the years, both when he wore the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department uniform and afterward.

  “Want coffee?” Dross asked. She poured some into a bright red mug she’d clearly brought for just this purpose and handed it to Cork.

  “How’d you know where to find me?” he asked.

  “I stopped by your house. Jenny told me. How are Henry and Rainy?”

  “Worried.” Cork sipped the coffee. Dross liked her brew strong, which was just fine with him. On that cold, gray morning, it seemed to warm him all the way to his toenails.

  “As well they should be. This is serious, Cork. You’re going to be in the media spotlight, at least here in Minnesota. It would be national news except for the collapse of that dam in Colorado, so you may have got a break in an odd but sad way.”

  “Dam break?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “I’ve been on Crow Point since yesterday.”

  “Big dam broke last night in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado. Floodwater swept down a canyon, wiped out several towns. The death toll is estimated in the hundreds. It’s a huge catastrophe. Jubal Little may be news in Minnesota, but he’s not front page anywhere else.”

  That was the kind of luck that didn’t leave Cork feeling any better.

  Dross went on. “When I talked to the governor, he asked for the details of Little’s death. I gave them to him as we know them, and told him it looked like a hunting accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident, Marsha.”

  “I know, and it’s too bad. Because it was your arrow in his heart, Cork.” Dross watched his face for a reaction. “You didn’t tell us that when we questioned you yesterday.”

  “I knew you’d find out soon enough. And once you knew, you might be reluctant to let me go.”

  “Your fingerprints and Jubal’s are the only ones on that arrow. Did you shoot it?”

  Cork laid his cup on the bed of the pickup and turned fully to the sheriff. “Do you think I did?”

  Dross, implacable for a moment, held his gaze, then said, “You know as well as I do that anyone is capable of anything under the right circumstances.”

  “Even cold-blooded murder?”

  “Is that what it was?”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Do you really think I shot that arrow?”

  Dross reached into her cup, plucked something from the surface of the coffee, and looked at it closely. “Tick,” she said with amazement. “I thought they’d all be long dead by now.” She flicked it away and gave Cork the same scrutinizing look she’d just given the bug. “Three hours, Cork. You waited three hours before going to get help.”

  “I didn’t go to get help, Marsha. Like I told you yesterday, Jubal was beyond help when I left him.”

  “My point, more or less.”

  “I stayed because he asked me to stay.”

  “Going might have saved him.”

  “Or left him to die alone. He didn’t want to go that way. We finished here?” Cork tossed the rest of his coffee onto the ground in a gesture of irritation.

  “I haven’t answered your question yet,” she said.

  “I figured you weren’t going to.”

  “Anyone who knows you wouldn’t believe that you killed Jubal Little, Cork. But there’s going to be a lot of pressure on us to come up with someone, and right now, we’ve got no one else to consider. So for a while, as far as the media’s concerned, you’re the bull’s-eye. It’ll be rough.” Dross poured herself a little more coffee, and the steam crawled over the rim as if the cup were a tiny witch’s cauldron. “How could someone have got one of your arrows?”

  “I don’t know, Marsha. I’m working on that one.”

  “My first guess would be that it’s someone who knows you well.”

  “Sobering thought,” Cork replied, but it was exactly what he thought, too. “Marsha, does the name Rhiannon mean anything to you?”

  She squinted, thought. “Nope. Should it?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Probably not.”

  Dross glanced at her watch. “Ed and I are holding a press conference in an hour. We’ll be announcing that the BCA’s been asked to help with the investigation, and we’ll introduce Agent Phil Holter, who’s been tapped to lead the BCA team. We’re still calling it a hunting accident, but that won’t matter. By noon, you’re going to be big news, and everything we do in this case is going to be watched, and whatever passes between us after that will be official.” She reached out a hand. “Good luck, Cork.”

  She sounded like someone sending a man off to war.

  * * *

  When he hit the outskirts of Aurora, Cork called home on his cell phone. Stephen answered.

  “There are some cars and vans parked outside,” he told his father. “They’ve knocked on the door, and the phone’s rung a few times.”

  “You haven’t talked to any of them?”

  “Like you told us, Dad, we’ve kept our mouths shut.”

  “All right. I’m going to park on Willow Street and come in the back way.”

  He passed Gooseberry Lane and glanced down the street where he’d lived quietly for most of his life. If he’d been asked, he could have recited the history of every house on his block and the lineage of most of the families who occupied them. The street wasn’t crowded the way he’d feared, but he saw a couple of vans topped with broadcast antennae and, despite the drizzle, lots of people milling about on the sidewalk in front of his house. He went a block farther and turned onto Willow Street, where he parked. He walked to the Quayles’ house, whose backyard abutted his own. He cut through the side yard and along a line of bare lilac bushes. Few people in Aurora had fences, and he crossed onto his property without difficulty. He hustled through the yard, across his patio, and to the back door, angry that he had to enter his own home like some kind of thief but grateful that he hadn’t been spotted. Stephen had been watching for him and had the door open.

  “Baa-baa,” Waaboo cried when he saw his grandfather come in. He dropped the stuffed alligator he’d been holding, ran across the dining room, and wrapped his arms around Cork’s leg. Cork bent, lifted his grandson, and swung him around so that Waaboo laughed with delight. It was the best sound Cork had heard that day.

  Jenny stepped from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, and Trixie padded along behind her. The dog came to Cork, her tail wagging briskly in welcome, and Cork bent and ruffed her fur. Waaboo reached down to grab at an ear, but Trixie, who was used to the child, slipped away and sat on her haunches well out of reach.

  “Any trouble?” Jenny asked.

  “I don’t think anybody saw me,” he said.

  “We’ve kept the curtains closed, but—” She was cut off by the insistent ring of the phone. She strolled to the stand beside the stai
rcase and checked caller ID. “Them,” she said simply.

  Cork put Waaboo down, and the toddler went immediately for Trixie. Then Cork strode to a front window and drew the curtain aside just enough to see out. He’d have been happier seeing no one, but at least it wasn’t a media feeding frenzy. He thought of the dead in Colorado, and knew that the national media, like hungry crows, would flock to the bigger kill. He turned back to his children. “Sam’s Place?”

  “Judy opened this morning,” Jenny said. “I talked to her a few minutes ago. There were a couple of enterprising reporters waiting, hoping, I guess, that you or one of us might show up.”

  Cork said, “Maybe I ought to hold a press conference there. We could sell a ton of burgers afterward.”

  “Seriously, Dad, what are you going to do?” Stephen pressed him.

  “The first thing is head back to Trickster’s Point.”

  “What for?”

  “Maybe I can find something Marsha’s people couldn’t.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m hoping I’ll know it when I see it. I left our canoe, so I need to pick that up anyway.”

  “Can I go?” Stephen asked.

  “You’re on the schedule at Sam’s Place at noon,” Jenny reminded him.

  “I’ll call Gordy, get him to cover for me. Okay, Dad?”

  Cork thought it over and agreed. There was no reason Stephen couldn’t go along, and it would get him away from the craziness that was going to be their lives for a while now. Cork wished he could get them all away while he dealt with the situation, but he wasn’t sure how to do that or if they’d even go.

  “You and our little guy will be all right?” he asked Jenny.

  “I think we’ll go to Sam’s Place and spend the day. Maybe by this evening the vultures will have flown.”