Tamarack County

  Stephen stood before the door, feeling all the foulness on the other side, both compelled and repelled, paralyzed by those competing impulses. Then he heard at his back the voice of Henry Meloux speak clearly and calmly: “This is your way. Open your heart to the other side of that door.”

  The struggle ceased. Stephen reached out, turned the iron knob, which was as cold as a chunk of ice, and swung the door wide. For a moment, he stood in a blinding light, blinking against the intensity of the glare. He heard the growling and saw a dark figure silhouetted against the light, approaching. The figure was the size of a normal man, but as it neared, Stephen saw that the eyes were like burning coals, the same eyes he’d seen in the face of the majimanidoo in his vision the night before. In another moment, he could make out the face clearly, the face of a normal man, the face of a stranger.

  Stephen spoke. “Who are you?”

  In reply, the stranger said simply, “Welcome to the light.”

  Stephen came out of the vision, found himself in the dark of the sweat lodge, feeling the air cooling around him, understanding that this round of the sweat was finished but uncertain of the meaning of what he’d seen. He left his blanket and began to crawl clockwise toward the flap that hung over the entrance. As he reached out to push it aside, the flap was drawn away and sunlight blasted into the lodge and into Stephen’s eyes, blinding him momentarily.

  “Come out,” someone ordered, a voice familiar to Stephen. He’d heard it only moments before, in his vision.

  He crawled out and stood up, blinking against the sunlight, which shot directly into his eyes. He saw the form of a man silhouetted against the light. A moment later, he could make out the face, the same face he’d just seen in his vision, the face of a man he did not know.

  What Stephen saw now that he had not seen in the vision was the large handgun the man held pointed at his heart.

  “Who are you?” Stephen asked.

  The stranger smiled and said to him, “Welcome to the light.”

  CHAPTER 34

  “It happened during the prison riot,” LaPointe said. “That was before Warden Gilman came, during the days we were double-bunked here.”

  “Double-bunked?” Dross said.

  Gilman explained: “One of the state’s budget shortfall periods. As a cost-saving measure, two of the private penal facilities were closed and the inmates were transferred here and to the prison in Saint Cloud. Normally, we have one inmate per cell. In order to accommodate the influx, the wardens had to put two inmates to a cell. Double bunking. It crowded everyone. Another thing our brilliant legislature did was cut funding for most of the work and educational programs for the prison population, so we had lots of angry guys with lots of idle time on their hands. The final straw was that our personnel budget was also slashed, so we had to lay off guards, and those who remained were terribly overworked. It was a perfect recipe for disaster.”

  LaPointe said, “Men without much hope and with nothing to do but stew in the juice of their own hatred. A blind man could have seen what was coming.”

  “What about this man who loves you?” Cork said.

  “My old bunkmate,” LaPointe said.

  “Frogg?” Warden Gilman asked.

  “Frogg,” LaPointe confirmed.

  “You’re saying Walter Frogg loves you?” Gilman seemed surprised.

  “Where love is concerned, Walter is a man whose whole life has been a desert. He thirsts for it and has no idea how to find it.”

  “But he found it in you apparently,” Cork said.

  LaPointe smiled. “I offered him what I offer everyone, the world according to White Eagle. It was water in his desert.”

  “You also saved his life, Cecil,” Gilman pointed out. “So in addition to believing that he loves you, he probably also believes he owes you. Pretty strong motivations, if you ask me.”

  “Frog? Like the little pond creature?” Cork asked. “That’s really someone’s name?”

  “Two g’s on the end,” Gilman said. “But it must have been hell for him on the playground.”

  “Tell us about this Walter Frogg,” Cork said to the warden.

  Gilman crossed her arms and shook her head. “In his own eyes, the most persecuted man ever. He’s been in trouble with the law most of his life, and to hear him tell it, it’s all because of lies told against him, because of personal vendettas by law enforcement and prosecutors and judges. He’s been convicted of forgery, tax evasion, welfare fraud. But that’s not what landed him in Stillwater. What put him here were terroristic acts against the people who’d been involved in his earlier prosecutions. He sliced up dead animals and placed them on the doorstep of Ramsey County’s prosecuting attorney. He threatened the children of the judge in one of his cases. He’s slashed tires, smashed windows with cinder blocks and iron pipes, made threatening phone calls, planted fake bombs. His actions caused a judge and a prosecutor to withdraw from his case because of fear of retaliation. He eventually pleaded guilty to thirteen counts of terroristic threats and was sentenced to seven years. As soon as he got here, he began trying to withdraw his plea, claiming he’d been coerced into confessing, that the prosecution had threatened him with a forty-year sentence.

  “Inside Stillwater, he was a consummate con man,” Gilman continued. “He played everyone—other inmates, the guards, me. We kept an eye on him, often for his own safety. In prison, you’re conning the cons, and that can get you killed.”

  “How did he happen to end up in LaPointe’s cell?” Dross asked.

  “Random assignment,” Gilman replied.

  LaPointe shook his head. “The official view. Me, I’d say it was the work of the Great Mystery.”

  “How so?”

  “Nothing in life is random, Sheriff. Frogg came to me for a reason.”

  “What reason?”

  “For me, a test of my beliefs, I think. He was one of the most difficult human beings I’ve ever dealt with. That’s saying a lot when you live in a prison.”

  “What made him so difficult?”

  LaPointe didn’t answer at first. It was clear that he was close to the edge of exhaustion. If the man’s knowledge and understanding weren’t absolutely essential, Cork would have called an end to this interview. He found himself feeling deep gratitude toward Cecil LaPointe, who twenty years earlier, he’d helped send to this hell made of stone.

  At last, LaPointe seemed to have gathered enough strength, and he went on. “Walter was angry, blameful, paranoid, conniving, smart, and he was my companion day and night. I couldn’t escape him. He talked constantly. Every moment I spent with him, he challenged me to practice what White Eagle teaches, which is acceptance.”

  “What did he talk about?” Dross asked.

  “His cases, all the wrongs done him by lawyers, judges, prosecutors, cops. Whenever he vented that way, I was simply quiet. Eventually he’d move on to other things, and I’d join him in the conversation. He liked flowers, so we talked about flowers. He liked old movies, so we talked about old movies. He had some ideas about writing books, so we talked about the books he might write someday.”

  “You didn’t talk about White Eagle?”

  “He sometimes asked, and I would answer, and he would say, ‘Bullshit.’ We left it at that.”

  “When he talked about the wrongs done him, did he try to convince you of the rightness of his position?”

  “He didn’t. I think that was because he was absolutely convinced of it himself. He talked about those things as if he was giving a history lesson—this happened and then this and this is why.”

  “Was he delusional?”

  “I would say no, but he was desperate, in so many ways.”

  “Desperate for love, you said,” Cork pointed out. “Which he found in you. How did that happen?”

  “It was the prison riot that finally cracked his heart open,” LaPointe said. “A lot of inmates saw the chaos during that time as an opportunity for payback, especially guys who belonged to gangs. Wa
lter had pissed off the Aryan Brotherhood, and during the riot, they came for him. I intervened, talked to the inmate who ran the Brotherhood. He gave the order to leave Walter alone.”

  “What did you say to him?” Dross asked.

  “I White Eagled him,” LaPointe said with a slight smile. “I touched what was common in both our hearts. A violent man is still a man, still human. I spoke to the best of what was human in him. Or more accurately, I channeled White Eagle. I was just the streambed. White Eagle was the water that helped cool the heat of all that anger.”

  “And you believe Frogg loved you for this?”

  “He was different afterward. He never said it to me outright. I think he didn’t know how to handle that kind of emotion, and it confused him. And then Ray Jay Wakemup came to see me, and his story became public. I think Walter’s perception about being so persecuted got all mixed up together with this love that he couldn’t express, and he seemed to become tormented in a different way. His last promise to me when he was released was that he’d find a way to repay me. I may be wrong, but I think that may have been the nearest he’s ever come to telling someone he loved them.”

  Again, LaPointe had to stop to catch his breath. He struggled and wheezed, and Cork found his own chest constricting in empathetic response. Eventually LaPointe was able to continue, but in a voice that was more and more a whisper. “I’m not saying that’s really what’s at the heart of his actions, if he is, in fact, responsible for what’s happened in Tamarack County. But love and vengeance, it seems to me, are often two sides of the same sword.”

  “When was Frogg released?” Cork asked.

  “Six months ago,” Gilman said.

  “And a month later, Sullivan Becker goes down to a hit-and-run and loses his legs,” Dross said.

  “Something everyone blames on organized crime,” Cork added.

  “And then Judge Carter loses his wife, who’s the only thing that stands between the Judge and the locked unit of a care facility. And it’s made to look like the Judge himself might be responsible. And finally Ray Jay Wakemup, who kept quiet and let an innocent man go to jail, loses his best friend and maybe his best hope for sobriety. It all makes a certain kind of crazy sense. Frogg pays the debt he believes he owes Mr. LaPointe, here, out of love or whatever, and at the same time satisfies that twisted sense of retribution against a system that has consistently persecuted him. And he does it all in ways he thinks are cunning enough that no one could ever trace them back to him.”

  “I can buy all this, but what about Marlee Daychild?” Cork said. “Why would Frogg go after Marlee if he’s already made Ray Jay pay for his silence by killing Dexter?”

  LaPointe looked at Cork with a calm understanding. “Who was in charge of the investigation that landed me here?”

  Cork said, “Me. But I never knew about Ray Jay. I didn’t know until he told his story to the press. I made that clear every time the media brought the question up.”

  “That doesn’t mean Walter believes you,” LaPointe said. “He might very well think you’re lying, in the way he believes that everyone connected with the law lies.”

  It took Cork only a millisecond to understand what LaPointe was saying. “Frogg wasn’t after Marlee,” he said, thinking out loud. “He was after Stephen.” He looked toward Gilman and tried to keep his voice calm. “I need a phone. I have to call Tamarack County.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Stephen looked at the gun, then up into the face of the stranger. He thought he should have been afraid, but he wasn’t. A strange calm had settled over him. “Who are you?”

  “A pawn of justice, kid. In your way, so are you. Now, why don’t you just walk on down to the lake for another refreshing dip.”

  “I’ve seen you before,” Stephen said.

  The stranger considered that a moment. “In my pickup, just before you and your girlfriend hit the ice.”

  “No. In visions.”

  “Visions?” That seemed to amuse him. “Where? There in your sweat lodge?”

  “And before.”

  “Well then, all this should come as no surprise.”

  “What I didn’t see was why,” Stephen said.

  “Why?” While the stranger thought about his reply, he used his empty left hand to tug his dark green stocking cap over a bit of exposed ear on that side.

  Stephen figured the man to be between thirty and forty years old. Not big or brutal looking or remarkable in any way. He looked strong, though, the build of a guy who pumped iron. He had a long, thin face and reddish hair that stuck out below the edge of the stocking cap. There was a large mole on his left cheek that looked like a fly had come to rest. His eyes were light blue, nothing like the burning coals Stephen had seen in his visions.

  “Why?” the man repeated. Now his eyes changed, and Stephen saw the red-hot anger that had made the irises of the majimanidoo in his visions glow. “Because your father put an innocent man in jail. Because your father took away his freedom. Because your father owes that man.”

  “And I pay the debt?” Stephen felt the icy air sucking all the heat from his wet skin.

  “Smart boy. Now move on down to the lake.” The man waved the barrel toward the open water at the mouth of Half-Mile Creek.

  “No.” Stephen said it without hesitation or consideration.

  That seemed to catch the stranger by surprise. He looked confused about his next move.

  The ground around the sweat lodge was frozen rock hard. Stephen could feel the ice of the earth trying to attach itself to the skin of his bare soles, the way a dog’s tongue might stick to a fire hydrant licked in the dead of winter. He shifted his feet, but it didn’t help much. The sun, bright as it was, might just as well have been a picture of a sun for all the warmth it delivered. A crow, one of the few birds that didn’t desert the North Country in the bitter winters, flew to a nearby aspen and perched on a leafless limb. It began cawing, a harsh sound that pierced the still air again and again, like a pick jabbing at ice.

  The sound annoyed the stranger. He glanced away from Stephen and lifted his free hand, waved it at the bird, and hollered, “Shoo! Get outta here!”

  The bird didn’t move. Nor did Stephen.

  “Tell you what,” the stranger said. “You go on down to the lake right now and there’s no reason your sister has to be a part of this. No reason she has to be harmed. So long as you do as I say, this stays between you and me. You’ve got my word.”

  Stephen hadn’t thought about Anne. Whatever the stranger planned to do, Stephen wanted his sister left out of it.

  “You’ve got no time to think about it, kid,” the man said. “Do as I say or I’ll shoot you dead right here, then I’ll shoot your sister. The choice is yours.”

  When it was put that way, Stephen didn’t have a choice. He said, “All right.”

  They walked together, Stephen in front and the stranger at his back. The angle of the sun made their shadows seem to walk with them, mute witnesses to an execution. The crow went on with his cawing, a long, bitter complaint, and Stephen wondered if that was going to be the last sound he would hear in this life. He was grateful that he wasn’t afraid and he thought that probably this was the point of the visions, to prepare him for death at the hands of this majimanidoo, this angry stranger.

  His body had begun to shiver violently. He’d been out of the lodge a long time. The muscles of his feet were starting to cramp from the cold. His brain was becoming thick, his thinking a little fuzzy. A sign of hypothermia, he understood. When he reached the edge of the open water, he hesitated.

  “Go on in,” the stranger said.

  “And then what?” Stephen’s voice came out cracked and stuttering, the result of the cold, which was eating into him, into his muscle, his brain. He kept his eyes on the silvery surface of the open water.

  “I won’t shoot you, if that’s what you’re wondering,” the stranger said.

  “You want me to freeze to death?”

  “I need this to
look like an accident. It’ll be quick, I imagine. And I’m told it’s warm at the end. You get in there now, before your sister comes back.”

  Which was the leverage the stranger held.

  Stephen waded in. The first time, his skin and body had been superheated in the sweat, and that had been a brief buffer against the cold of the water. This time his body had cooled, and the lake became a huge hand that squeezed him and gave pain everywhere it touched. He could barely catch his breath, and it felt as if his heart might explode, but he kept moving.

  When he was up to his waist, he turned. He was going to say something, wasn’t he? To the stranger? He couldn’t remember what. His overlong exposure to the cold air and now to the icy water was making his thinking slushy. The stranger stood on the shoreline, watching. Over his shoulder on the branch of the bare aspen tree, the crow also watched.

  And behind them both, up where the meadow would be green in summer and full of wildflowers, Anne watched, too.

  Stephen heard her call his name. And he saw the stranger turn toward her, the gun in his hand.

  Stephen summoned all the strength and clarity left to him and shouted, “Run, Annie! Run!”

  The stranger spun back to him, the gun barrel leveled.

  Although Stephen felt immediately the hammer blows of the bullets as they hit his chest, he never heard the shots.

  CHAPTER 36

  When Stephen didn’t answer his cell phone, Cork tried calling Anne. She didn’t answer either. Next he tried Jenny at home. No luck there. He finally got a response when he called Jenny’s cell phone. She picked up almost immediately.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Sure. What’s wrong?”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the Pinewood Broiler. Waaboo, Skye, and I are having a little afternoon snack here.”