Copper River

  “Why didn’t you just go to the police, Gary?” Hodder said.

  “Because everyone would know what I am. A monster just like Bell and Stokely.”

  “You’re no monster, Gary.” Jewell tried to move toward him, to reach out and comfort him, but Hodder kept her back.

  Johnson stood slumped over, his enormous shoulders rounded in shame. “I don’t feel human, Jewell. Not anymore. Maybe never since that night. Tommy had the right idea. I thought I could do what he did, only it turns out I don’t have the courage. I’ve been sitting here for hours. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  Cork asked, “Did either of them talk about Isaac Stokely being involved?”

  “Just them.”

  “Did they say anything about Charlie?” Dina asked.

  “Bell did. Said they went looking for her at Max’s place. They killed him when he wouldn’t tell them where she was. Bell said he had a lot of ideas about what he’d do to Charlie when he got hold of her.”

  “He didn’t get hold of her?”

  “Didn’t sound like it. Why? She’s with you, isn’t she?”

  “She ran away last night. Nobody’s seen her since,” Dina replied. “What time did Calvin Stokely get here?”

  He thought about it. “Maybe eight o’clock or nine. He took his time getting here after I called. I figured he’d been drinking in a bar somewhere, eh. I could smell it on him.”

  “And he didn’t say anything about Charlie?”

  He shook his head. “Our exchange was brief, then I shot him. I just kept pulling the trigger, I wanted him dead so bad.”

  Hodder laid a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going back to my office, Gary. I’m going to hold you there and call the Marquette Sheriff’s Department.”

  Johnson nodded and let himself be taken.

  Cork said, “I’ll meet you guys outside. I want to check Stokely’s truck.” He didn’t have to add that he was looking for Charlie’s body.

  He went through the door between the kitchen and the garage and turned on the light. The place was neat. Johnson’s dusty Jeep was parked next to Stokely’s big Dodge Ram. He found Stokely’s keys in the ignition. He unlocked the tailgate but hesitated before lifting the rear window of the camper shell.

  When he stepped from the house, the others were waiting, their shadowed faces tensed for the worst.

  “Nothing,” he said, to their great relief. “No Charlie.”

  As they walked to their vehicles, Cork breathed deeply the autumn-scented air, cool off the lake, cleansing his nose and mouth and throat of the death smell that filled the house. He thought about Charlie and believed there was still plenty of room for hope.

  Hodder put Johnson in the back of his Cherokee, and the newspaperman sat there, bent forward a little like a wilted plant.

  “I’ve got to take care of this,” the constable told the others. “One possibility with Charlie is that she’s broken into a summer cabin and is hiding. After I turn Gary over, I’ll make a swing and check all the ones I think are likely. Terry Olafsson’s going to want to talk to you, so make yourselves available.”

  “Ned.” Jewell moved close to him. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. This is all so crazy, Jewell.”

  “When things are settled, I’d love to sit down over dinner and talk.”

  “I’d like that, too.”

  He smiled briefly, then turned to his duty.

  “Good man, that,” Cork noted as the Cherokee pulled away.

  “I know,” Jewell said. She let out a deep breath. “Ren’s probably worried. We should get home. Who knows, maybe Charlie’s showed up.”

  Dina’s cell phone chirped. She pulled it from the purse she’d left in the Pathfinder.

  “Willner,” she answered. While she listened, her face darkened. “Okay, Kenny. Thanks.” She looked at Cork. “Lou Jacoby’s passed a message to you through my people. He says, ‘Eye for an eye. Son for a son.’”

  For a long, stunned moment, Cork couldn’t breathe. “He’s going after Stevie,” he finally said. “The bastard’s going after my son. Give me that phone.”

  Cork punched in the number for Rose and Mal at the duplex in Evanston. Jo answered.

  “Cork?” she said. Her voice was flooded with relief. “You’re all right.”

  “Jo, where’s Stevie? Is he there with you?”

  “He went with Rose and the girls to a movie. I hoped it might get their minds off worrying about you for a while. Why?”

  “Which movie? Where?”

  “Cork, what’s going on?”

  “Do you know which movie theater, Jo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get him out and get him home. Then you and the kids lock yourselves in Rose’s place until I get there. Do you understand?”

  “What is it?”

  “Lou Jacoby might try to hurt Stevie because he can’t get to me.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Find him, and when you’re back at the duplex, call me.” He gave her Dina’s cell phone number. “Get our son, Jo.”

  He ended the call.

  “What’s Jacoby’s number?” he asked Dina, who would know because she’d worked for Jacoby in the past. He punched in the number she gave him. An old, modulated voice answered, which Cork recognized as Evers, the houseman.

  “Give me Jacoby,” Cork said.

  “Mr. Jacoby is unavailable.”

  “Tell him it’s O’Connor. He’ll make himself available.”

  “I’m sorry, sir—”

  “Tell him, Evers. Tell him I’m coming and I’m going to kill him. And if you don’t tell him, I’m going to kill you, too.”

  “Cork, let me.” Dina spoke firmly and held out her hand. “Evers will listen to me.”

  He slapped the phone into her palm.

  “Evers, it’s Dina Willner. Lou will want to talk to us.” She listened a moment. “Thank you.” She gave Cork the cell phone.

  He waited, a fire raging in his gut, climbing into his chest, burning his throat. Then Jacoby spoke at the other end. “I’m listening.”

  “Listen good, you son of a bitch. You touch my son, I’ll not only kill you, I’ll kill everything you ever loved.”

  “Everything I love is already dead, O’Connor. You saw to that.”

  “It wasn’t me, you blind fuck. It was your daughter-in-law and Salguero. The cops are ready to cuff them both. Leave my son out of this.”

  “You can make that happen. You know what I want.”

  “I’m on my way, all right. I’m coming down from Marquette, Michigan. Give me that time and I’ll give you me. I swear it.”

  The line went silent, but Cork knew Jacoby was still there.

  “You have until morning,” Jacoby said. He hung up.

  Cork made one more call, this one to Boomer Grabowski, a friend and ex-cop in Chicago, a guy as tough as they came. Boomer told him no sweat. He’d get up to Evanston right away, stay with the family until Cork got there. Did Cork want any help dealing with Jacoby?

  “Thanks, Boomer. I’ll take care of him myself.”

  “What’s the plan?” Dina asked.

  “Jacoby gave me until morning,” Cork said. “We get Jewell back to the cabins, then I’m leaving.”

  “I’m sorry, Cork,” Jewell said.

  “Let’s just go.”

  He limped to the Pathfinder, saying a silent prayer. At the same time, he imagined himself pumping round after round into Lou Jacoby until that withered old body lay good and dead in a lake of its own warm blood.

  47

  Ren hung by his arms from a tree branch. His wrists had been duct-taped together, then he’d been lifted and hung up like a side of beef. A strip of tape sealed his mouth.

  “Insurance,” the man had said in the cabin. He tried to sound friendly and he smiled a lot, but the gun in his hand spoke differently to Ren.

  “Where’s O’Connor gone?” he’d asked.

  Ren told him he didn’t know.

&nb
sp; “Any idea when he’ll be back?”

  Ren shook his head.

  That was when the man produced the roll of duct tape. “Relax, kid, you’re just my insurance if things go south.”

  He’d marched Ren outside into the trees, hung him up, and sealed his mouth. He had already set up a scoped rifle on a tripod low to the ground, the barrel pointed toward the cabins. He lay down, checked the scope, and made an adjustment. Then he sat up and looked no more at Ren.

  He wasn’t anything like Ren had imagined a hit man to be. He had a bald spot on the top of his head over which he’d combed a few strands of mouse-brown hair. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles that he slipped to the top of his head whenever he sighted through the scope. He was dressed in a brown corduroy sport coat with a tan turtleneck beneath, blue jeans, white sneakers. From a stained white paper bag near his feet came the smell of barbecued meat.

  It was twilight now. Through the branches directly above him stripped half bare by the storm the night before, Ren saw the faint gleam of an emerging star. The woods were a murk of tree trunks and low brush gone gray or black in the failing light, still and indistinct as images in an underdeveloped photograph.

  Ren’s shoulders and arms ached from the hanging weight of his body, but he tried to ignore the pain and think if there was some way to warn Cork and the others. Because there was nothing else he could do, he tried kicking, hoping to break free of the branch. His legs struck at empty air and the effort only made his shoulders hurt even more. He considered the quiet of the evening, the dreadful calm, and thought hopelessly how easy it was going to be to hear the cars coming up the lane. Occasionally from the woods around them came the rustling of a squirrel scampering among the fallen leaves beneath the undergrowth. At first the sounds had startled the man, but he quickly learned to ignore them.

  In a while came the distant whir of a vehicle on the main road, the engine winding down. Someone was coming. The man moved to a prone position, his eye to the rifle scope. Ren tried to think what he could do. He decided when the others drove up, he’d make the loudest sound he could behind the seal of the tape and maybe, just maybe, they would hear and be warned. The man would probably get mad and do something horrible to Ren, but he’d take that chance.

  Amid the stillness all around him, he suddenly saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Had he been looking straight on in the dim light, he might have missed it. He swung his gaze left. For a few moments he didn’t see anything. Had he been mistaken? Then he spotted the soundless slide of something large, pale, and horizontal against the vertical darkness of a tree trunk. Only a second of motion, then nothing. Ren strained to see clearly, but the mottled shading in the woods made it difficult to distinguish anything.

  Motion again, a brief creeping movement, and now Ren recognized the stalking behavior of a cat. He discerned the outline of the cougar moving stealthily—creep, pause, creep—toward the man, whose attention was on the cabin and who had no idea of the danger at his back.

  What Ren understood from the reading he’d done after he first discovered the animal’s tracks was that cougars preferred to attack from behind, allowing their prey to pass where they crouched before pouncing. Attacking a man was unusual, but this was a desperate beast, hungry, maybe half-crazed because it had been wounded by Calvin Stokely.

  Then Ren had another thought. Maybe the cat wasn’t coming for the man. Maybe the cat was interested in the easy meal hanging from the tree.

  He held his breath, felt the terrible ache of his shoulders, the kicking of his heart. He hung directly between the beast and the man, and Ren couldn’t tell which of them was the prey. He wanted to close his eyes to keep from seeing what he couldn’t stop—the long claws, the deadly teeth—but he couldn’t force his eyelids closed. He hung there powerless, damned to see the end as it came.

  48

  Dina turned the Pathfinder onto the rutted lane leading to the cabins. Ahead was a long stretch of gray growing dimmer as the daylight faded. She switched on her headlights, and immediately a figure leaped from the trees.

  Dina braked and said, “Charlie?”

  The girl rushed to the vehicle. Dina opened the door.

  “Ren,” Charlie gasped. “He’s got Ren.”

  “Who’s got Ren?” Jewell said from the passenger side.

  Charlie caught her breath. “I don’t know. A stranger. A dude. He came after you guys left. He was, like, hiding in the woods.”

  “How do you know that?” Dina asked.

  “I was hiding, too, watching for Ren to come home. After you left, this dude comes out of the trees. He’s got a gun. He’s all, like, creeping around, checking everything out. He looks in Thor’s Lodge, then Cork’s cabin. Then he checks out the car behind the shed with all the bullet holes in it. Finally he goes back to the trees and waits and when Ren comes home he follows him, brings him out, and hangs him up in the woods.”

  Jewell leaned across Dina. “Is Ren okay?”

  “Yeah, when I sneaked away he was. But we have to get him back.”

  “You don’t know this guy?” Dina said.

  “No.”

  Dina looked confused. “Gary didn’t say anything about anybody else.”

  “Maybe this isn’t about the kids,” Cork said from the backseat. “Maybe this is about me.”

  “The hit?” Dina thought it over and nodded.

  Jewell stared desperately down the lane. “Ren,” she said fearfully.

  Cork swung his door open and clambered out. “Jewell, get on your cell phone and call Hodder. Tell him the situation. Charlie, can you show us where this man has Ren?”

  “Sure.”

  Dina was out, too, and checking her carbine.

  “I’m coming,” Jewell said, climbing out her side.

  Cork took her by the shoulders firmly. “You have to stay here, Jewell. When Hodder shows up, or anybody else, they need to understand the situation. They can’t come barreling in. Dina’s going to give you one of the Motorolas. When we know what’s going on, we’ll contact you. You have to do this. You have to do it for Ren.”

  “I can’t just wait here.”

  “I know how hard that is, but you have to. Dina and I do this for a living. We’re good at it. We’ll get Ren back safely, Jewell, I promise you.”

  He could see how torn she was and he understood completely. Finally she nodded and said, “All right.”

  She reached for her cell phone. He reached for the Glock Dina had given him earlier.

  Cork and Dina followed Charlie. They cut through the woods west of the lane until they came to the Kill-belly Marsh Trail. Charlie moved quickly—too quickly for safety, Cork thought. Dina must have thought so, too, because she touched the girl’s shoulder and spoke close to her ear. After that, Charlie led the way more cautiously.

  A quarter mile up the trail, she stopped and pointed toward the trees that hid the cabins. “A hundred yards in,” she whispered.

  Dina nodded and whispered back, “We’ll take it from here.”

  Charlie shook her head vigorously and started ahead. Cork reached out to stop her but was too late. Dina held up her hands in frustration, which was all she could do, because any verbal objection now, any undue disturbance, might alert the man who’d taken Ren. There was nothing but to follow Charlie.

  Cork brought up the rear, his wounded leg ready to buckle. He concentrated all his efforts on moving the leg forward, carrying him carefully and quietly toward Ren. They had no plan, which was a problem, but there was no time for planning. The light was fading and dark was the worst enemy of all. They had to rely on Charlie to guide them, and then they would have to improvise. In this, he trusted Dina. At that moment, there was no one he would rather have as a partner.

  Charlie raised her hand and stopped. Her head turned slowly right, then left. Had she made an error? Were they off track? Charlie turned to them, a pained expression on her face. She was uncertain.

  They were near where the trees edged the old resort. If
the man’s plan had been to shoot Cork, then he’d probably set himself up just inside the tree line. This was a delicate moment. They were close enough to give themselves away easily, but still not certain of the exact location of Ren.

  He touched Dina’s shoulder and pointed for her to move right. He indicated he would go left. She nodded and signaled for Charlie to come with her. They separated and crept away twenty yards, then waited. Cork slipped left the same distance. On his signal, they moved forward again. With luck, he hoped Ren and his captor would be caught somewhere between them. Cork walked on the outside of his soles, an old stalking technique he’d learned hunting that allowed him to move silently. All his senses were focused on the woods around him as he sought to pick up anything out of place. A trickle of sweat crawled down his face like a spider. Suddenly he walked into the unmistakable aroma of barbecued meat. There was almost no wind, just enough to carry the tangy scent. From which direction? He bent and cracked open a milkweed pod, plucked a piece of fluff from inside, let it go. The fluff drifted lazily northwest. The man and his barbecue were somewhere southeast. Cork adjusted his line and crept ahead.

  Ten seconds later the silence around him was shattered by a scream that was followed by a thrashing in the underbrush and the grunting of a desperate struggle. Cork abandoned stealth and rushed ahead, afraid for Ren.

  In the dim evening light, Cork stumbled onto a nightmarish scene. On the ground a man wrestled to free himself from the grip of a cougar, whose powerful jaws were locked on the back of his neck. The man flailed and screamed, but the cougar, larger and heavier, held tight. A few yards away Ren hung from the branch of a tree, his wrists high above his head, his feet just inches off the ground, his eyes wide as he watched the horror of the attack.

  Cork swung the Glock toward the struggle on the ground, but the two figures were so tightly enmeshed, he couldn’t risk a shot.

  Dina and Charlie appeared beside Ren. Dina sighted down the barrel of her carbine but didn’t fire.

  The cougar, intent on its kill, hadn’t seen the others arrive. Cork raised his Glock and fired into the air, hoping to distract the beast, to startle it into breaking off its attack. The cougar spun, teeth bared.