Purgatory Ridge

“Okay, everybody, listen up. You’re going to be here a while, so you might as well get used to the idea. Someone’s going to be outside all the time watching you. Try anything and you’ll be sorry.” He chuckled. “Oh, hell, you’re probably already sorry. But believe me, I can make you a lot sorrier. Moms, if you want your sonny boys left in one piece, you don’t do anything but sit unless I tell you otherwise. I don’t want you to make a sound, not even so much as a squeak. And, boys, if you get any ideas about playing heroes, if you try anything, I’ve got a knife the size of your arm and I’ll use it to slice your mothers’ tits right off.”

  Everything fell quiet. Jo listened intently. The dirt floor let him move silently and she couldn’t hear him. She anticipated his touch again, but it never came. There wasn’t a sound, not even Stevie crying, and that worried her. She wanted to hear him, to know that her son was all right. Or as right as he could be, given the circumstances. Outside, the engine of a vehicle turned over and caught. Jo couldn’t tell if it was the van that had brought them. Maybe another vehicle had been there, waiting. He’d said someone would be watching them. She heard the bump and rattle of the undercarriage and the growl of the engine growing distant. In a few minutes, she heard nothing at all.

  Her back, riddled with splinters, was on fire. Her shoulders ached from the way her arms were pinned behind her. She was filled with disgust thinking of the filth of his handkerchief across her face. She thought of trying to call out to Stevie, but if someone were watching it might get them all hurt. If it were only she, Jo would have fought to free herself. But there were others who could suffer from what she did. The man with the ski mask and the gun had bound her in many ways.

  She heard a sound, very soft, to her right. She cocked her head and listened. It came again, a faint rustle, a scurry of tiny claws across wood. Some small animal had joined them. Jo knew it was probably something on the order of a ground squirrel. She wasn’t worried about a creature that moved on four little legs. In those woods, the only animal that terrified her walked on two.

  26

  THE CALL CAME AT SIX A.M. By then the FBI had arranged with the phone company for a trap and trace, and they’d set up equipment to record the conversation. Lindstrom put the call on the speaker.

  “Karl Lindstrom,” he answered.

  “Listen carefully, Lindstrom. I want two million dollars for the woman and the boy. In hundreds, nonconsecutive, not new. And none of that invisible powder shit. You have twenty-four hours to get the money. I’ll call tomorrow, same time, with instructions.”

  “Two million? I can’t get that kind of money in twenty-four hours. It’s Sunday, for God’s sake.”

  “Twenty-four hours.”

  “I want to talk to my wife and son. I want to know they’re all right.”

  “How ‘bout I just send you a finger? Or maybe I do a little impromptu plastic surgery on that honker of hers. Send you the leftovers. Twenty-four hours, Lindstrom.”

  Cork whispered quickly, “Are Jo and Stevie with him?”

  It was too late. The line clicked, buzzed, and the voice was gone.

  “Did we get a trace?” Schanno asked.

  “Just a minute.” Special Agent Margaret Kay of the FBI held up a cautionary finger. She stared at another FBI agent, Arnie Gooden, who was one of the resident agents out of Duluth. Gooden held a cellular telephone to his ear.

  “Got it,” Gooden said a moment later. “Pay phone. Harland Liquors, County Road 11.”

  “You know where that is?” Special Agent Kay asked Wally Schanno.

  “Near Yellow Lake,” Schanno replied. “It’ll take fifteen minutes to get a cruiser there.”

  “Is anyone at the liquor store you could call?”

  “They’re closed Sundays.”

  “He’ll be gone by the time your men get there,” Kay said. “But he may have left evidence behind, or maybe somebody saw him.” She turned to Agent Gooden. “Did you hear that voice?”

  Gooden nodded. “Electronic mask of some kind.”

  BCA Agent David Earl, who stood near the window, said, “We’ll get the tape down to the lab in St. Paul right away, see if we can get anything from it.”

  “Can you get the money?” Cork asked Lindstrom.

  Karl Lindstrom gave Cork a desperate look. “You think I keep that kind of cash around here? In a cookie jar, maybe?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Karl.”

  Lindstrom sat down, not by choice, it appeared. His legs just buckled. “Two million dollars. I don’t have that kind of cash anywhere. Everything I have is tied up in that damn mill. Even if it weren’t, I couldn’t get at it until tomorrow at the earliest. Christ, it’s Sunday.”

  “What about your wife?” Cork asked. His own legs weren’t feeling too steady, and he needed badly to hear something that offered hope.

  Lindstrom shook his head. “Prenup. I can’t touch her money. Jesus. And I was the one who insisted on the goddamn thing.”

  “Mr. Lindstrom,” Agent Kay said, approaching him. “Even if you had the money and gave it, that would be no guarantee of the safety of your wife and son.”

  Lindstrom looked up at her.

  “Meeting a kidnapper’s demands seldom results in the safe return of those who’ve been taken.”

  Agent Kay had come from the Minneapolis office with a cadre of other agents. Some of the agents were at Lindstrom’s. Some were at the sheriff’s department, where the FBI had established an operations and communications center. Special Agent Kay was a tall, large-boned woman with hands that reminded Cork of catchers’ mitts. She painted her nails a delicate pink. She wore tan slacks, a beige blouse, brown flats. She had, she’d informed them earlier, supervised investigation in nearly two dozen kidnap cases.

  Now Cork asked, “Have you ever been involved in a kidnap for ransom?”

  “No,” she admitted. “But I do know the statistics.”

  Lindstrom stared at her. “Do you really think I care about the money? My God, if they asked for ten million, I’d give it to them if there was even the slightest chance of getting my family back safely.” Lindstrom’s eyes burned into her. “You’ve been here all night and I haven’t heard one good suggestion from you so far.”

  “The state crime lab in St. Paul is working on the ransom note even as we speak. We’ll make sure the tape of the call is analyzed immediately. I’ve communicated with Quantico and they’re working up a profile of the kidnapper. With the help of Agent Earl and your sheriff, Schanno, we’ve already arranged to put under surveillance a number of likely suspects.”

  “Like who?” Lindstrom challenged.

  “I’d rather not say specifically. If we end up needing to negotiate for the return of your families, we have a trained negotiator who can be here in person within an hour.”

  “Do you have any idea where my wife and boy are?” Lindstrom asked.

  “No, Mr. Lindstrom, I do not.”

  “Or who has them or how to get them back?”

  Her answer was to say nothing.

  “See? You people are almost worse than no help at all.” Lindstrom stood up and headed toward the telephone. “I’m going to call Tom Conklin.”

  “Who?” Kay asked.

  “Chairman of the board of Fitzgerald Shipping Company. My wife’s family sold the business, but Grace is still on the board. Maybe Conklin can help me get the ransom money.”

  “Do what you feel you have to, Mr. Lindstrom. We’ll do what we need to as well.”

  Lindstrom wheeled. “If you fuck up, if you cause my family to be harmed in any way, I’ll…” He seemed at a loss for a way to finish.

  “I understand, Mr. Lindstrom.”

  Schanno stepped up next to Cork and put a hand lightly on his shoulder. “Look, Cork, there’s nothing you can do here right now. I imagine Rose and the girls will need you at home.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get some sleep if you can.”

  “Call me if…”

  “I’ll call you.”
/>
  Cork started to say something to Karl Lindstrom, but the man was angrily punching at the numbers on his telephone. Cork left quietly.

  He stepped out into early sunlight, into air that smelled of evergreen and clean water. An evidence team was canvassing the grounds, looking for cigarette butts, footprints, anything that might have been dropped or thoughtlessly discarded. He walked down to the shoreline of Grace Cove and onto the dock where Lindstrom’s big sailboat sat mirrored in calm water. The trees—mostly red pine and black spruce—walled the inlet, isolating it from the rest of the lake. It was an empty place Karl Lindstrom had chosen for his home. That was exactly what people came here for these days. Escape. Yet Lindstrom had escaped nothing. Something angry seemed to have followed him, something that had divided the county and now threatened what Cork held most dear. Not Lindstrom’s fault, he knew, but he couldn’t help resenting the outsiders that were so rapidly changing the face of all he loved.

  He knew he was going to cry. Tears of helplessness, of anger and fear and desperation and despair. He kept his back to the house where the other men might have been watching. When he was done, he walked to his Bronco and headed home.

  Rose sat alone at the kitchen table. She was dressed in a beige chenille robe, her road dust-colored hair unbrushed, rosary beads gripped in her right hand. She studied Cork as he stepped in the back door.

  Cork walked to the coffeemaker, poured a cup of what Rose had made.

  “They called,” he said. “They’re demanding two million dollars.”

  Her eyes fluttered as if she’d been struck in the face by a hard, icy wind. “For them all?”

  “Of course for them all.”

  “They have Jo and Stevie? You’re sure?”

  “I’m not sure of anything, Rose.” He sipped his coffee. It was cold. He didn’t care.

  “They?” Rose asked.

  “What?”

  “You said ‘they’ have Stevie and Jo.”

  “They. Him. We don’t know.”

  The rosary beads clattered softly against the tabletop. Cork walked to the table and sat down. Rose had dark circles under her eyes.

  “You look tired,” she said to him. Then she said, “What do we do?”

  Cork stared at her. He hadn’t heard in her question any of the fear or hopelessness that threatened his own perspective.

  “We start by telling the girls. They should know.”

  “All right,” she agreed. “How do we get the two million dollars?” She asked as if she’d been questioning him about fixing the bathroom sink.

  “I don’t know. Karl Lindstrom…” He stopped because Lindstrom hadn’t sounded certain, and Cork didn’t want to build a hope that would crumble.

  “If Karl Lindstrom can’t?”

  “I don’t know, Rose. I just don’t know.”

  “All right,” she said.

  Through the window, carried on a breeze that barely ruffled the curtains, came the sound of church bells. The morning Angelus was being rung at St. Agnes. Rose listened intently, as if the bells were voices that spoke to her. Cork heard the creak of the old floorboards above him.

  “The girls are up,” he said.

  “They’ll be getting ready for Mass.” Rose reached across the table and put a hand gently on his. “Maybe you should come.”

  Cork hadn’t been to a church service in more than two years. Not since Sam Winter Moon had been killed and Cork had lost his job as sheriff and Jo had asked him to leave the house. He’d felt abandoned in those days—by God and everyone else. Although he envied Rose her strength of conviction and was glad that Jo had seen so carefully to the children’s spiritual upbringing, he couldn’t in good conscience share their belief. He couldn’t remember when last a word directed at God had passed his lips. Still, he believed prayers couldn’t hurt, especially if prayed by those who believed.

  “You go and pray for both of us,” he told Rose.

  Annie came down first, dressed in a green sleep shirt that reached to her knees and that was embossed in front with the words FIGHTING IRISH. “Where’s Stevie?” she asked. “He’s always watching cartoons by now.”

  For the moment, Cork ignored her question. “Is Jenny up?”

  “Yeah.” Annie yawned and stretched. “She’s crawling down the stairs now.” She went to the refrigerator, took out a carton of Minute Maid orange juice, and headed toward the cupboard for a glass.

  Jenny came in wearing the black workout shorts she usually slept in and a wrinkled, baggy, gray T-shirt. Her white-blond hair was wild from sleep, but her ice-blue eyes—her mother’s eyes, Cork couldn’t help thinking—were wide awake.

  “So…” She offered her father a devilish smile. “You and Mom must’ve stayed out at Sam’s Place again last night. You weren’t in bed when I got home, and Aunt Rose was pretty evasive.”

  “Sit down, Jen,” Cork said. “You, too, Annie.”

  The girls looked at their father a moment, then exchanged a glance between them. Cork hated seeing the dark veil that dropped over both their faces. They did as he asked, sat at the kitchen table. They eyed their aunt and saw there, too, something worrisome.

  “Is somebody—like—dead?” Jenny asked, not seriously.

  “Just listen a moment.”

  A dark understanding seemed to come to Jenny. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Yeah,” Annie added. “And Stevie?”

  Cork didn’t know how to tell them any way but outright. “They’ve been kidnapped.”

  “Right.” Jenny laughed. When her father didn’t, she asked, “That was a joke, wasn’t it?”

  “No joke, Jen.”

  “Kidnapped?” Either the word or the context seemed incomprehensible to Annie. “How? When?”

  “Last night. At Grace Fitzgerald’s home. From the note that was left, it’s pretty clear that Ms. Fitzgerald and her son were the targets. Your mother and Stevie were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “They’re okay?”

  Cork couldn’t tell if Jenny was insisting or asking, but he replied firmly, “Yes.”

  Annie still looked puzzled. “How do we get them back?”

  “Mr. Lindstrom is working on putting together the money the kidnappers have asked for.” He avoided using the word demanded.

  “How much?”

  “Two million dollars.”

  “He has it, right?”

  “He’ll get it, Jen.”

  Her eyes took on an unfocused look and moved slowly away from her father. She stared out the kitchen window. Annie looked down at the tabletop.

  “You okay?” he asked them both.

  “It’s not fair,” Jenny said, under her breath. Cork reached out to take her hand, but she drew away. Her eyes seemed full of accusation. “Everything was good again. Everything was finally right again. How could you let this happen?”

  “We’ll get through this,” Cork said. “We’ll get them back, I promise.” He stood up and stepped toward her, wanting to take her in his arms, to give her the only comfort he could, but she shoved him away.

  “How can you make a promise like that? You’re not the sheriff anymore. What can you do?”

  “Jenny—” Rose began, a soft admonition in her voice.

  Jenny stormed from the kitchen, leaving behind her a question that cut to the heart of the matter as quickly and cleanly as a butcher’s knife.

  Annie put herself in her father’s arms. “What can you do?” she echoed, holding to him desperately, her voice choked with tears.

  He laid his cheek against her hair. “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.” Rose stood up decisively. “I’m going to do what I always do on Sunday mornings. I’m going to church. And I’m going to pray my heart out.”

  Annie looked up at her father.

  Cork offered her the best he could. “For now, that’s about all anyone can do.”

  27

  THEY HAD COME TO HIS CABIN I
N THE NIGHT, just as Bridger predicted they would. Knocked on his door. Politely at first, then with a firm and heavy fist.

  “Sheriff’s department, Mr. LePere,” they’d said to identify themselves. Two of them. A woman in a deputy’s uniform and a man in a suit. He’d seen the woman before, at the sheriff’s office in the days when he was routinely hauled in for drunk and disorderly. She recognized him, too. He saw it in her face when she caught the whiskey smell on his breath and saw the nearly empty fifth in his hand, most of which he’d poured down the sink hours ago.

  “Yeah?” he said, feigning both drunkenness and anger. “Wha’ the hell do you want? I may be drunk, but I’m drunk in my own house. There’s no law against that so far as I know.”

  “Just to ask you a few questions,” the woman said.

  He swayed a bit as he stood in the open doorway. “Like what?”

  “Have you been home all evening?” the man in the suit asked.

  “Who’re you?”

  “Agent Earl. Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.” He flashed an ID. LePere had caught the odor of cigarette smoke wafting off his clothing. “Have you been here all evening?”

  “All evening,” LePere said. “Me ‘n’ ol’ Cutty ‘n’ Clint Eastwood.” He stepped back, stumbling just a little, so that they could see the television and the video playing on the screen—The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

  “Did you happen to look outside at all?” the deputy asked.

  “Maybe I glanced now ‘n’ then.”

  “Did you notice any activity on the lake?”

  “Can’t see the lake from here. Only the cove.”

  “Did you see anything on the cove?”

  “Loons, maybe.”

  “No boats?” the man asked.

  “Boats, I’d’ve noticed. ‘Less it was dark.”

  “How about on the road?” the man asked. “Did you see any vehicles moving along the road to the cove?”

  LePere eyed the man as if he were a simpleton, and he lifted the hand in which he held the scotch bottle and pointed into the dark behind the intruders. “You take a look back there. Can you see the road? Hell, too many trees to see anything, even if I was looking. And I wasn’t. Say, what’s all this about, anyway?”