Copper River

  The old man simply raised his fork in farewell.

  They stepped once more into the night. A truck drove by slowly, the street lamps reflecting off the mirror of the dark windows. Jewell couldn’t make out the driver, didn’t even try, though later she’d think a lot about this moment.

  “Okay, food,” Dina said. “That’s one problem solved. I still think we ought to consider doing something about Charlie.”

  “If you’ve got an idea that doesn’t involve kidnapping or interfering with a lawful investigation, I’d love to hear it,” Cork said.

  As they stood on the sidewalk in front of Kitty’s, the door to the constable’s office banged open and Charlie burst out. She sprinted across the street and dashed into an alley. A moment later the deputy rushed out. She looked at Jewell and the others.

  “Did you see her?”

  Jewell didn’t answer.

  “The alley,” Cork said, pointing. “But you’ll never catch her.”

  “Gotta try,” the deputy said, and gave chase.

  In the quiet after, Ren appeared. “Did she make it?”

  “At the rate she was going, she’s halfway to Chicago by now,” Cork replied. He glanced at Dina. “You could have caught her.”

  “No way was I going to stop that girl,” Dina said.

  “What happened?” Jewell asked Ren.

  He stared toward the dark alley where Charlie had vanished. “The lady was like reading something she found in Constable Hodder’s desk. She wasn’t paying any attention and Charlie just ran. It was easy.”

  Cork said, “I’d hate to be in her shoes when Olafsson gets back.”

  “Should we be worried about Charlie?” Ren asked.

  “She did a pretty good job of taking care of herself before,” Dina said.

  Ren considered that and finally nodded.

  “No use standing out here,” Jewell said. “Let’s get inside.”

  In Ned’s office, she crossed to his desk and found the top drawer pulled out. Lying open inside was the wire-bound notebook. She understood that the deputy had been reading Ned’s poetry. Maybe bored or maybe looking for something else, the deputy had opened the drawer and there it was. The handwriting was small, precise. The poem was untitled. Jewell was tempted to read it but hated the thought of trespassing on Ned’s privacy. Although the deputy was ignorant of the importance of the notebook, Jewell understood only too well. She started to close it, but as the pages flipped, her eye caught a title she couldn’t let pass:

  For Jewell

  That beauty which to itself is hid—

  the sun not risen,

  the moon behind a lid

  of cloud—

  She shut the notebook without reading further, thinking with a flutter in her stomach, Beauty? Me?

  She eased the drawer closed.

  Less than an hour later, Olafsson returned. Deputy Baylor—Flo—had come back from her pursuit empty-handed and had made the call that clearly she dreaded. She had explained over the phone what happened and it was clear from her silence and her grim face the tone of Olafsson’s response. When he strode into the office, he gave her a withering look, but said nothing.

  “What happened at the Copper River Club?” Jewell asked.

  “Didn’t get past the gate,” he answered. “No legal reason to compel them. That Stokely, he’s one tough son of a bitch.”

  “I imagine they pay him pretty well for it,” Ned said. He sat down and sniffed the white bag on his desk. “Smells good.”

  “Dinner,” Jewell said. “From Kitty’s. There’s a cheeseburger left in there, and some fries. You’re welcome to it.”

  “Great. I’m hungry. Split it with you, Terry?”

  Olafsson dismissed the offer with a surly wave.

  “What are you going to do now?” Cork asked.

  “Except for his friendship with Delmar Bell,” Olafsson said, “nothing I’ve been told so far connects Calvin Stokely to anything. And except for possibly the Rohypnol, nothing at the moment connects Bell with the girl’s death. It’s all speculation. Until I have something concrete, there’s not much I can do. With those people up at the Copper River Club, I’m going to need to be on real firm legal ground every step of the way.” He rubbed the back of his neck and eyed Ren. “You have any idea where Charlene might have gone?”

  Ren looked down and shook his head.

  Olafsson turned to Jewell. “She was at your place today, right?”

  “Yes, but I doubt she’ll head back there.”

  “Hodder, you mind checking that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Flo and I’ll have a look at her father’s trailer on our way back to Marquette.”

  Before he left, Olafsson had one last try at Ren. “Son,” he said in what sounded like his most officious voice, “if you know where your friend is and you don’t tell me, it could be very bad for you.”

  “Leaning on him awfully hard, aren’t you, Detective?” Cork said. “He already told you he didn’t know.”

  He gave them all a parting squint. “I’ll see what I can do about talking to this Calvin Stokely tomorrow. In the meantime, you hear from Charlene Miller, I expect to be told. Am I clear?”

  When Olafsson and the deputy had gone, Ned said, “He’s not a bad guy. And he’s dealing with a lot right now.”

  “Is there any reason to stay?” Jewell asked.

  Ned shook his head. “Guess not. I’ll come along to your place, check it out for Charlie.”

  “If she’s there, you’ll what? Turn her over to Olafsson so he can lock her up in juvenile hall?” Dina said.

  “Her safety’s the issue,” Ned told her.

  “If we find her, I guarantee her safety,” Dina said.

  Ned looked truly apologetic. “I wish I could say that’s good enough. Let’s go, folks.”

  He turned the lights out as they went together into the night.

  41

  Ren didn’t sleep. He lay awake thinking, worrying, the weight of so much concern pressing on his chest. There was Stash, almost dead because of him. And Charlie, alone and on the run again. And he’d lied to the Marquette policeman, and later to his mother and Cork and Dina when they’d questioned him about where Charlie might be hiding. He was in trouble—the man named Olafsson had made that clear—and it was only going to get worse.

  An hour after he heard his mother go to bed and Dina lie down on the sofa in the living room, where she insisted on sleeping to help protect them, he threw back the covers and dressed in the dark. He folded a blanket and put it in a knapsack he pulled from his closet. From under his bed, he took a package of bologna and what was left of a loaf of bread, which he’d sneaked from the kitchen earlier that night, and he put these in the knapsack, too. It wasn’t gourmet but it would keep Charlie from starving. He grabbed a flashlight from his desk drawer and tugged his jacket on. He opened his bedroom door and listened. He could hear Dina making small snoring noises as she slept. As quietly as he’d ever moved, he crept past her, turned the dead bolt, and eased the front door open. A moment later, he’d slipped into the night.

  Clouds had rolled in obscuring the moon. The night was tar black. Ren couldn’t even see the ground at his feet. He switched the flashlight on and headed toward the Killbelly Marsh Trail. He moved quickly, afraid that his mother or Dina, if they woke, might look out and see the beam, and understand. He’d lied to them already; if his mother called to him, he didn’t want to compound his sin with disobedience, though he would if it came to that. Charlie needed him.

  The night wasn’t only dark; it was dead still. The crunch of autumn leaves thundered under his boots. Whenever he stepped on a fallen branch, the dry snap was like a gunshot. To anything in the woods that might be interested, his presence was being broadly announced.

  Black trees walled the narrow corridor of the trail. Whenever Ren heard a sound and swung the beam right or left, the trunks seemed to leap at him. The sounds, he told himself, were only part of the normal noise of
night, the scurrying of small critters for whom sundown meant safety from predators. It was no different from that night after his father died when he’d forced himself to stay in the woods in order to overcome his fear of the dark.

  But that night a year ago there had been no hungry, wounded cougar to worry about. Too late, Ren realized he should have brought something along to discourage the big cat if they met. He spent a few minutes scouring the woods near the trail for a broken-off branch suitable to use as a club.

  Well before he reached the Copper River he heard the rush of fast water. When he joined the main trail, he turned west toward the Hurons and made his way along the rocky bank. He remembered the scat Cork had found, and the speculation that because the animal was wounded it used the trail.

  Please, God, he prayed silently, don’t let it be here.

  He’d been on the Copper River Trail hundreds of times over the years, and if anybody had asked him he would have said he could walk it blindfolded. Stumbling along in the dark with only the thin, wobbly finger of the Coleman beam pointing the way, he realized what a dumb boast that would have been. At night, everything felt different—or this night, anyway, with so much hidden by the dark and with every clumsy step giving him away. He knew deep down how lame the stick in his right hand would be if the cougar caught his scent and was desperate to feed.

  What moved him forward step by faltering step was thinking that Charlie had faced the same problems making her way to the one place she believed was safe.

  He rounded a bend a quarter mile from the old mine and came alongside a place where the river ran flat and smooth and everything was quiet. From far behind him came the sound of something heavy hitting the ground in a tremendous crackle of the brittle leaves that blanketed the trail. He held his breath. The only sound then was the soft gurgle of the river. He swung around. His flashlight beam created a tunnel thirty or forty yards long in which he saw nothing but empty trail. He flipped the light off and stood another minute, listening intently, focusing all his senses on the enormous circle of black at whose center he stood.

  His father had once told him that although an artist might work in images on paper or canvas, good artists were in touch with all their senses and knew how to use them creatively.

  Ren focused and tried to touch the skin of the night, to hear the night breathing, to catch its scent. He opened his mouth and let the taste of the night lie on his tongue. What he sensed was that he was not alone. As if to prove the truth of his conclusion, his ears picked up the delicate crumble of desiccated leaves as something again moved toward him on the trail.

  He spun, hit the switch on the flashlight, and sprinted upriver. Ahead of him, the beam bounced wildly. Several times he stumbled and almost fell headlong. His footfalls and the noise of his own heavy breathing deafened him to sound at his back, and he ran with the certainty that any moment the cougar would pounce and its razor teeth would slice into his neck. He thought that if he could only make it to the old mine, he could use his club to keep the cougar at bay. Maybe Charlie’s presence there would help discourage an attack.

  He reached the place along the river below the mine and began to scramble up the steep slope. He was feeding on adrenaline, moving like a mountain goat, using the stick in his right hand to propel himself upward. He reached the wild blackberry thicket that masked the entrance. Falling to his belly, he wormed his way into the small passage that he and Charlie had fashioned through the bramble. On the other side, he swung the flashlight beam into the mine.

  In the light lay a circle of ash and char from a fire, a mound of leaves that had probably served as a bed, several candy bar wrappers, and an empty pint container of Nestlé’s chocolate milk. Charlie was nowhere to be seen.

  But Ren was not alone. At his back, he heard the rattle of loose stones on the slope. He turned, set the flashlight down with the beam aimed at the opening to the passage. He gripped the club hard with both hands. The blackberry thicket shivered. Ren drew the club back like a batter preparing to receive a fastball. He kept his eyes on the end of the narrow passage, a ragged arch in the thicket. He held his breath and waited.

  What emerged was a monster, a creature with huge eyes.

  Then Ren realized that the eyes were goggles and the monster was Dina Willner. She put up a hand to block the beam.

  “You’re blinding me, Ren. Turn the light off for a minute.”

  He switched off the flashlight. In the dark he heard her silky rustlings.

  “Okay,” she said. “Give us some light again.”

  In the illumination, he saw that she’d removed her goggles. She wore camouflage fatigues.

  “Where’s Charlie?” she asked, peering into the mine.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I thought for sure she’d be here.”

  “This is where she hid before, isn’t it?”

  She reached into the pocket of her fatigue pants and pulled out a small cyclinder, a mini Maglite. She used it to scan the tunnel back of the entrance.

  “Looks completely blocked,” she said.

  “It is. How did you follow me?”

  She dangled the goggles. “Night vision. I’m worried about Charlie, too. I was pretty sure you knew where she was and would go to her. I put these under the sofa and after you left I followed.”

  “I should have known you weren’t really asleep,” Ren said. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I almost wasn’t. I took a bad spill on the trail back there and you almost got away from me.”

  “I thought you were the cougar.”

  “That wasn’t smart, leaving at night without protection, Ren, but I understand. I brought this.” She reached to her belt under her jacket and drew out a big handgun. Again she swung her Maglite toward the jumble of rock and rotted beam a dozen feet in from the mine entrance that barred further entry. “So if she’s not here, where would she be?”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly.

  She knelt and picked up a bit of the ash and char and rubbed it between her fingers. “This is old.”

  Ren said, “This was the safest place. She should have come here. Unless …” He stopped short of speaking his fear.

  “Unless someone intercepted her,” Dina finished for him. She stood up and put a comforting arm around his shoulders. “You know the Odyssey? The story of Odysseus?”

  “Yeah,” Ren said. He’d read a Classics Illustrated version. He thought the part about the Cyclops especially was way cool.

  “Odysseus survived everything the gods threw at him because of his cunning. He was a very smart guy. That’s Charlie, Ren. She’s very cunning. So I think there’s another explanation for why she’s not here.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. And when we see her, she’ll tell us what it is. Come on. We should both get back.”

  Dina led the way along the Copper River Trail. Behind her, Ren watched with admiration how gracefully she moved. In that, she reminded him a lot of Charlie.

  42

  When the cabin door opened, Cork woke up and rolled over in his bunk. Dina walked in carrying a tray covered with a white cloth napkin.

  “Breakfast in bed?” Cork said, easing himself upright.

  Dina put the tray on the table and pulled away the napkin, revealing a plate of two eggs over easy, four strips of bacon, two slices of very dark toast, a small glass of orange juice, and a cup of black coffee. “Eat hearty,” she said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  He swung his legs out of the bunk and put his feet on the cold floorboards. He’d slept in a gray T-shirt and gray gym shorts, courtesy of Jewell. Like all the clothing she’d loaned him, they’d once been worn by her husband, Daniel. The night before, she’d also supplied him with a pair of clean jeans, a flannel shirt, boxers, and thick socks, all taken folded from the boxes of clothing stacked in the closet. Cork put on the socks and stood up slowly.

  Dina pulled out a chair for herself at the table. “How’s the leg this morning?”
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  “It would be better without holes in it, but I can manage.” He limped over and appreciatively eyed the contents of the tray. “Looks like a condemned man’s last meal.” He sat down, flapped the napkin onto his lap, and took a sip of the juice. “What are we up to today?”

  “Trespassing,” Dina said.

  While he ate, Dina explained about the night’s events.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Charlie’s a smart kid. Very savvy. I don’t really think she was intercepted on her way to the mine, but I’d like to make certain. If there’s the slightest chance this Stokely got his hands on her…” She didn’t complete that thought.

  Cork sipped his coffee. “What did you have in mind?”

  “We’re going to the Copper River Club the same way you and Ren did. We’re going to check out Stokely’s cabin.”

  “You and me?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “What about Jewell and Ren?”

  “She didn’t want him missing any more school, and she needed to go to work.”

  “They’re both gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Seven-thirty. Jewell said we could use the ATV.”

  “Does she know what you’re planning?”

  “Not exactly. I thought it best to keep this between you and me.”

  “How do we find the cabin?” he asked.

  “I talked to Ren about that. He said to follow the river from where you two encountered Calvin Stokely yesterday. It’s a couple of miles farther on, up a small rise overlooking the river.”

  Cork picked up the last strip of bacon. “Stokely’ll hear us coming.”

  “He’ll hear you coming,” she said.

  “I’m the diversion while you slip into the cabin?”

  “You catch on quick. One of the things I like about you.”

  In half an hour, he was dressed and ready to go. He slipped the Beretta Tomcat into an ankle holster Dina supplied him. Dina took her Glock and a knapsack she said belonged to Ren. The night before, Jewell had put stitches in Cork’s opened wound. He wasn’t worried about bleeding, but he’d been over the terrain they were about to travel and knew the cost to him in pain. He considered taking a Vicodin but finally decided against it. He needed to be sharp.