Copper River

  After the introductions were made, Dina said, “I’d like to stay with Ren while you interview him.”

  “You an attorney?”

  “Like I said, his aunt. I’m just concerned.”

  Olafsson said, “Where’s his folks?”

  “My father’s dead,” Ren jumped in, irked that the detective was ignoring him. “And my mother’s a veterinarian. She’s out on a call and we can’t reach her.”

  Olafsson looked toward Constable Hodder for confirmation.

  Hodder nodded. “Just like Ren says.”

  They stood beside the constable’s Cherokee. Marquette Sheriff’s people went in and out of the trailer home. “Crime scene technicians, right?” Ren asked Dina.

  She winked at him and gave a nod. Then she added, “See that guy?”

  A tall, balding man wearing a white shirt and black slacks and carrying a medical bag stepped from a blue sedan and walked toward the trailer.

  “Coroner?” Ren guessed.

  “Or medical examiner,” she replied.

  Ren was grateful for Dina’s observations. They kept him from thinking too much about what was inside the trailer or what might have become of Charlie.

  “Any reason the boy needs an adult with him while we talk?” Olafsson said.

  “Any reason he can’t have one?” Dina replied.

  With a slight nod, Olafsson gave in. “All right.” He took out a small notepad and focused on Ren. “How’d you find the body, son?”

  “I just walked in and there it was.”

  “Walked in? The door was open?”

  “Yes.”

  “Both doors?”

  “The inside one was already open. I just opened the screen.”

  “Anyone tell you to come in?”

  “No.”

  “Is it your custom to walk into a house uninvited?”

  “I was worried about Charlie.”

  “Charlie?”

  “Charlene Miller,” Hodder clarified. “The dead man’s daughter.”

  “And why were you worried about her, son?”

  “Her father drinks sometimes. When he does he gets scary. He was drinking last night.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “Charlie told me.”

  “You saw her last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give me a time.”

  “I don’t know. A little after midnight, maybe.”

  “Where?”

  “We were down at the lake.”

  “What were you doing at the lake at midnight?”

  “Charlie’s dad was drinking and she didn’t want to go home until she was sure he’d passed out. We were just hanging.”

  “She went home when?”

  “Like I said, a little after midnight.” Ren thought a moment. “That’s when she left me, anyway. I guess I don’t know for sure that she went home.”

  “Did she seem upset, angry?”

  “Not when she left.”

  “What time did you get here this morning?”

  “Around ten.”

  “Why’d you come?”

  “I had a kolache for her. Sometimes she doesn’t eat right.” Ren looked down at the gravel under his feet. “The truth is I just wanted to make sure she was okay.”

  “You opened the screen door and went in. Then what?”

  “Everything was a mess, worse than usual. I went back to her room and I saw, like, this stuff on the wall. The blood and all. I was afraid it was Charlie. I thought he’d hurt her. Then I saw him on the floor.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I got out of there as fast as I could.”

  “And went straight to the constable?”

  “No. I went home first.”

  “Why home and not to Constable Hodder?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Do you know where Charlene—Charlie—is?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any idea where she might be?”

  Ren hesitated. “No.”

  “But you do know the girl pretty well?”

  “We’re friends.”

  “I don’t know Charlie myself, but I just got off the phone with some folks in the juvenile division who do, son,” Olafsson said. “One thing they told me about Charlie, she has a temper. And they told me about her father and how he treated her sometimes.”

  “So?” Ren didn’t like the feel of the detective’s words.

  “You saw the baseball bat beside the body?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know who the bat belongs to?”

  “It’s Charlie’s.”

  “That’s right. Charlie’s. I want to ask you something, son, and I want you to answer me as honestly as you can. Will you do that?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Do you think Charlie could have done this to her father?”

  Dina stepped in. Ren appreciated how firm and cool she seemed. “I don’t think that’s an appropriate question, Detective.”

  “I’m just asking for an informed opinion.”

  “Of a fourteen-year-old boy? About a murder? That’s low and you know it.”

  “It’s okay,” Ren said quickly. He looked at Detective Sergeant Olafsson steadily. “She couldn’t. He was a bastard sometimes, but she loved him. She wouldn’t do something like … like in there.”

  Olafsson nodded, scowled a little. “I understand you live in the woods, a resort, with your mother. That right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You ever see a small animal, a rabbit, say, trapped in a corner? Even a rabbit can get vicious when it’s threatened.”

  Dina said, “He’s not the jury, Detective. And you’re not the prosecutor. No need to convince him of anything.”

  Olafsson looked at her, and Ren saw his jaw tighten. “You certainly seem to think you know your way around the law, Ms. Walport. What is it you do?”

  “I watch a lot of television. Cop shows. You’d be surprised what you can pick up.”

  Although a smile played briefly across the detective’s lips, it didn’t seem friendly. The way he started to look at Dina, as if she were a steak sizzling on a grill, didn’t sit well with Ren, either.

  Olafsson returned his attention to Ren. “Did you touch anything or move anything while you were in the trailer, son?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Olafsson seemed to be waiting for Ren to reconsider. With his silence, Ren held his ground.

  “All right, then. I guess that’s it for now.”

  Hodder said, “Okay if I take these folks back to town?”

  “I suppose. We may want to talk to the boy later.” He glowered at Ren. “No trips out of town for a while, okay?”

  Ren nodded.

  “I want you back here right away, Ned,” Olafsson added. “We need to go over the vic’s friends, acquaintances, drinking buddies, girlfriends. Whatever you can tell me.”

  “I’ll be back in ten.”

  Olafsson strode toward the trailer home.

  They piled into the Cherokee. Hodder backed out and headed north into town.

  Dina spoke toward the windshield. “You know Olafsson?”

  “I’ve worked with him before. Never a murder investigation. He’s not what I’d call a warm man, but he’s thorough. And fair.”

  Ren said, “He sounded like he thought Charlie did it.”

  “He’s got to consider that possibility,” Hodder replied. He turned onto Lake Street. Lake Superior stretched away on the right, the great old homes of Bodine rose on the left. “Everybody knows Charlie’s a firecracker. When she goes off, well…”

  Hodder sounded like a policeman now, and Ren didn’t like it.

  “I’d like to talk to your mother about all this. When she gets home today, have her give me a call, okay?”

  Ren held off answering.

  “Okay?”

  “Ok
ay,” he mumbled.

  “How’re you doing?” Hodder asked, sounding more like a normal guy. A guy who might actually care about what had happened to Charlie.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I hope it goes without saying, Ren, that if you hear from Charlie, you’ll let me know.”

  Ren stared out the window at the houses sweeping by. They were just coming up on Amber Kennedy’s place. He thought about the shining feeling he’d had when he rode past on his way to Charlie’s. How was it possible to feel that good and this lousy in the same morning?

  13

  Cork lived in an old, well-kept two-story clapboard house. The front porch had a swing. A huge elm that was older than Cork shaded the front yard. The house was on Gooseberry Lane in Aurora, Minnesota. He’d grown up in that town and had chosen it as the place to raise his family. Its rhythms were as natural to him as the pulse of his own blood.

  Aurora was hundreds of miles away. At the moment it seemed even farther, on the other side of a barrier that was more than just miles. It was a barrier of experience, the result of monstrous events that could not be undone or forgotten.

  He lay on the bunk in his cabin, helpless against despair.

  His wife had been drugged by Lou Jacoby’s grandson, an angry young man who then raped her. Cork pictured Jo with her ice-blond hair all wild as it had been the morning after that terrible night. He saw again her dazed face, her eyes blinking like fireflies as she stared at the gun in his hand, then at the water of a swimming pool turned red with a dead man’s blood.

  In Cork’s anguished thinking, the whole earth was a vast hunting ground, and you were either predator or prey. Killing was the answer. Killing the man who’d spilled his rage into Jo. Killing the men who’d put a bullet through his leg. Killing Lou Jacoby, the son of a bitch who’d set it all in motion.

  “Damn!” He realized that the Beretta that Dina had given him in Evanston was still in the glove box of his car. If the men who’d attacked him in Kenosha showed up now, he had no way to protect himself.

  He pulled the sheet away and swung his legs off the bunk. He gathered himself, stood, and took a step.

  “Oh, shit,” he groaned, then took another.

  His shoes sat beside the door. They were brown Rockports, the left one stained dark with blood. He gritted his teeth, knelt, and scooped them up. Outside, he plopped down on the cabin steps and tugged them onto his sockless feet. He looked toward the end of the lane where his car was parked behind the big shed. It seemed like a long way.

  In addition to Thor’s Lodge, the resort had six rental cabins staggered along either side of a central dirt access with enough room between each cabin to allow a vehicle to park. They were all the same design, one large square central room that functioned as a sitting area, kitchen, and sleeping quarters. Each cabin also had a small bathroom with a shower stall. The cabins had bunks and were typically rented by hikers or hunters or snowmobilers. Summers when Cork had visited with his mother, the cabins had been well maintained by Jewell’s father. Now there were signs of neglect. Spiderwebs in the window wells. Fallen branches and evergreen cones littering the ground. Brittle weeds creeping around the cabin steps. In such an environment, the wild things—coons and squirrels and snakes—would eventually make their homes.

  So much had been left undone because Jewell didn’t care, and because Ren, for all his fine qualities, was yet a boy. The work had been his father’s, and his father was gone for good.

  Cork picked up a long, thick branch that had fallen to the ground next to his cabin. Although a little crooked, it seemed sturdy enough for a walking stick. He started for the shed.

  The sky was a flawless blue, the air dead still, the late morning only just now crawling out from under the chill of the night before. The hardwoods were in full autumn glory and the Huron Mountains were like a stormy sea caught fire.

  Getting to the shed took a toll. The makeshift walking stick helped a little, but the torture of his leg sucked at Cork’s strength, gobbled his energy. Twice he stopped to rest on the steps of other cabins.

  During the second rest he heard a scream break from the woods south of the cabins. He scanned the tree line but saw nothing unusual. The scream came again, farther west. This time Cork realized exactly what it was. The cry of a big cat. Ren’s cougar. Circling.

  Cork had lived in the Northwoods most of his life. He understood the behavior of many of the animals of that habitat. Although he knew very little about cougars specifically, he was pretty certain of one thing: Like most wild animals, they were loath to approach humans or the dwellings of humans. Yet, here was a cat, a fierce hunter, deep in the territory of men.

  “So what are you doing here?” he whispered toward the woods.

  He put his weight on the walking stick and pushed himself up. Keeping an eye to the trees, he gimped his way to the shot-up Dart and reached for the door handle. He was startled to see recent scratches on the finish, four lines that ran from the driver’s side window down the door, spaced just right to have been put there by the claws of a big wild cat. He opened the door, and the smell of the blood poured out: his blood. He clicked the glove box latch and snatched the Beretta Tomcat. As he popped the clip to check the cartridges, the cougar screamed again.

  With the rosewood grip of the pistol solidly in his palm, he felt less vulnerable. That didn’t mean safe. Was it the smell of the blood that had attracted the wild cat? What did it take to stop a hungry cougar? He wasn’t just concerned about his own safety. He was also thinking what a tragedy it would be if he were, in fact, forced to shoot the animal.

  He started back to his cabin. As he neared Thor’s Lodge he heard the phone ring inside, and he thought maybe Jewell had finally got the message to call. He limped up the stairs, found the door unlocked, and went in. By the time he reached the phone, the ringing had stopped. Caller ID informed him that it had, in fact, been Jewell calling from her cell phone. He punched in her number.

  “Ren?” she answered.

  “It’s Cork.”

  “Where’s Ren? I got a message there was an emergency of some kind.” Her voice came to him across a sea of static.

  “He’s all right, Jewell. It’s Charlie. Or rather her father. He’s dead.”

  “Max dead? How?”

  “According to Ren, he was beat to death.”

  “How would Ren know that?”

  Cork explained. Every so often, because of the poor reception, he had to repeat himself. While he spoke, he gradually became aware of a sound from the rear of the cabin. A scratching.

  “I’m on my way now,” Jewell said. “I’m heading to Max Miller’s place.”

  “If they show up back here, I’ll call you.”

  He set the phone in the cradle and listened carefully. The sound had stopped. Quietly he hobbled toward the back rooms. He hadn’t been inside Thor’s Lodge in decades. It seemed more modern than he remembered—new appliances, fixtures—but it held the same feel of a place built with careful hands, an eye to the beauty of small detail, and a respect for the spirit of each rock in the foundation and every log in the walls and rafters. The two bedrooms in back were separated by a bathroom. To the right was Ren’s room, easy to tell from the Spider-Man poster on the wall. The room on the left had been the guest room where Cork’s mother stayed. Upstairs was a master bedroom and a large loft area where Cork, when he visited all those years ago, had slept on a cot.

  Standing in the narrow hallway, he heard it again, the scratching. It came from the back wall of Ren’s room. Cork had left his walking stick on the porch. Using the bureau, the desk, and finally the post of Ren’s bed to support himself, he laboriously made his way to the window where the curtains were closed. As he’d started across the room, he’d stepped on a board that gave a sharp creak, announcing his presence, and the scratching abruptly died. Now he stood at the window, the Beretta tight in his grasp, his ear cocked toward the wall as he listened intently for a sound that didn’t return. He reached out wit
h his empty hand and slowly parted the curtains.

  A red squirrel clinging to the screen glared at him belligerently. After the bravado of a Mexican standoff, the little creature broke his stare, leaped to the ground, scampered to the nearest tree, and scrambled up the trunk.

  14

  Ren returned on his ATV in a cloud of dust and with the engine roaring, enough racket, Cork figured, to scare off even a hungry cougar. The boy stopped in front of the cabin and dismounted. He climbed the steps, his face heavy with so much concern for one so young.

  Cork stood at the door. “Where’s Dina?”

  “Coming in her own car.”

  Ren stepped past him into the cabin.

  “Your mother called,” Cork told him. “She’s on her way to Bodine. Why don’t you let her know you’re here?”

  The boy nodded. He didn’t seem eager to talk. As Ren picked up the phone, Cork heard another engine, much quieter than that of the ATV. He stepped outside. His leg throbbed, and he sat down and watched as Dina pulled up in a red Pathfinder.

  “How’d it go?” he asked.

  She sat beside him on the steps. “He was dead all right. Marquette County Sheriff’s people are working the scene.”

  “What happened? Any way to tell?”

  Dina rubbed her eyes in a tired way. “Hodder found him lying on Charlie’s bedroom floor. Like Ren said, somebody had bashed his head in with a ball bat. The bat belongs to Charlie.”

  “Where is she?”

  “AWOL.”

  “They think she did it?”

  “At the moment, they don’t have another suspect.”

  “Ren’s pretty quiet.”

  “A lot to process.”

  “Jewell’s on her way.”

  “I could use some coffee and a bite to eat. Think your cousin would care if I helped myself to something inside?”

  “Are you kidding? You just guided Ren through a tough situation. I don’t imagine she’d begrudge you anything. But then, I’m not exactly on her good side at the moment.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  Ren had gone to his room and closed the door. Dina found the coffee and started some dripping. She opened the refrigerator, pulled out a block of cheddar and what was left of a carton of eggs. Cork sat at the table, took the weight off his bum leg, and watched her prepare to scramble eggs and cheese in a small frying pan.