Purgatory Ridge

  Schanno poked a thumb north. “Found Charlie’s truck parked in the woods half a mile that way. I had the medical examiner compare his dental records with the victim’s teeth.”

  “Do you have any idea why Charlie Warren would have been here, Mr. Lindstrom?” Jo asked.

  “You mean besides blowing up my mill?”

  “I wouldn’t make accusations at this point,” Jo cautioned. “You didn’t know Charlie Warren.”

  “Right.” Lindstrom gave her a sour look. “The only time I ever spoke with him, he told me basically I was about to stick my financial dick into Grandmother Earth, and if I did, he would see to it that it got cut off.”

  “Charlie Warren was outspoken,” Jo said, “but he wasn’t a violent man.”

  “Then you tell me what he was doing out here, Ms. O’Connor.”

  Cork asked Schanno, “Did you talk with the night watchman?”

  “At length,” Schanno replied. “He makes his rounds every hour. Carries a key that has to be turned in alarm boxes at various locations. He was about halfway through, on the far side of the mill, when the blast occurred.”

  Lindstrom said, “Harold Loomis’s job is to prevent vandalism and major theft. This is a big mill. It wouldn’t be hard for one man to climb the fence and hide himself.”

  “Did you check the perimeter of the fence?” Cork asked.

  Schanno nodded. “Nothing conclusive. Ground’s too hard for prints.”

  Jo asked, “Has the medical examiner determined the cause of death?”

  “Asphyxiation. Then he burned.”

  “Trapped in the explosion,” Cork guessed.

  Schanno gestured vaguely in the direction of the debris. “When that LP tank went, it demolished the shed instantly. Whatever he was doing inside, Charlie was caught.”

  “For Christ’s sake, he was watching the truck where he’d planted his damn bomb,” Lindstrom said.

  Cork gave him a hard stare. “I know it looks pretty bad, but anybody who knew Charlie Warren wouldn’t believe for an instant he’d do something like this.”

  Jo changed the subject. “Have you told Charlie’s daughter, Wally?”

  “I sent Marsha Dross out before I called you.”

  “That brings up an interesting question, Sheriff,” Lindstrom said. “Why did you call Ms. O’Connor?”

  “Jo’s the attorney for the Iron Lake Ojibwe,” Schanno answered with an obvious effort at patience. “I also called George LeDuc. I believed these people had a right to know this particular development.”

  “Okay.” Lindstrom seemed to accept it, although not happily. “Then what about him?” He jabbed a finger at Cork. “What’s he doing here? Unless you’re allowing him privileges in some ex officio capacity, he’s got no business here.”

  Schanno didn’t seem to have an answer for that one. He said, “Look, Karl, it’s been a long day for you. I suggest you head on home and get some rest.”

  “I’ve got a cot in my office. I have no intention of leaving here tonight.”

  Schanno looked at Cork and Jo. “Maybe it’s time you left.”

  For the moment, Cork ignored him and watched the legs under the burned chassis grow into the whole body of a man who stood up and came toward them. He was a lanky fellow with an affable smile and a dark, receding hairline. He wore a short-sleeved denim shirt and jeans, both smudged heavily by soot.

  “Cork, Jo,” Schanno said, “this is Agent Mark Owen. He’s an expert on arson and explosives. Agent Owen, Cork and Jo O’Connor.”

  “FBI?” Cork asked.

  “BCA,” Agent Owen replied.

  Cork glanced around. “I thought you guys were going to bring up your mobile crime lab.”

  Owen pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped his dirty palm before offering his hand in greeting, first to Jo, then to Cork. “Multiple homicide in Goodhue County last night. The last twenty-four hours in this state have been a bitch.”

  Cork’s attention was grabbed by a man walking toward them from the shed where several deputies were still carefully sifting the blackened debris. Cork put him at just over sixty; he was of medium height and build and had gray hair. He wore a gray suit and tie, a neat figure amid all the chaos of the mill yard. He moved with the air of a man in no particular hurry.

  “This is Agent David Earl,” Schanno said, when the man had reached them. “Agent Earl, Jo and Cork O’Connor.”

  They shook hands.

  “Are you BCA, too?” Cork asked.

  “That’s right.” He took a pack of Marlboros from the pocket of his suit coat and tapped out a cigarette that he lit with a silver lighter. He blew a flourish of smoke and considered Cork. “O’Connor. I knew a sheriff up here, must be nearly forty years ago. His name was O’Connor, too.”

  “My father.”

  “A good man, as I recall. You in law enforcement?”

  “He used to have my job,” Schanno said.

  Earl smiled and shrugged as if to say, Politics. “What do you do now?”

  “I—uh—I run a hamburger stand.”

  “And you’re here because?” He looked to Schanno for an answer.

  “Chauffeur,” Cork replied quickly. “For my wife. She represents the Iron Lake Ojibwe.”

  Earl shifted his gaze to Jo. “It must be the Warren fellow brings you here. Tragic business.”

  “Do you have any idea how the explosion happened?” Jo asked.

  “Some. Sheriff?”

  “Go ahead,” Schanno said. “The whole county’ll know soon enough anyway.”

  With the hand that held his cigarette, Earl gestured, giving his partner Owen the floor.

  Owen finished wiping the soot from his hands, then stuffed the rag in the back pocket of his jeans. “We’re still gathering evidence, of course, but I’ll tell you what I suspect. It was a low-order explosive, smokeless powder, probably, encased in a steel pipe. The igniter was simple. A timer, probably a cheap clock, connected to a battery—my guess would be a nine-volt cell—wired to a camera flashbulb with the protective glass removed. The clock hits the right time, completes the circuit, battery fires up the flashbulb, the heat from the filament wire ignites the powder, and boom.” As he’d warmed to his subject, one he was obviously passionate about, his hands had begun to create pictures in the air to illustrate his words. “Now, normally a bomb of this kind would produce mostly fragmentation. But this bomb had something special. I think the pipe was coated with a chemical, a flammable gelatin or maybe even model airplane glue, which is quite flammable. The chemical ignited in the explosion so that the fragments, as they dispersed, were burning. At least one of these burning fragments sheared a valve on the LP tank, ignited the escaping gas, and that’s when the really destructive explosion occurred.”

  “Don’t let Mark fool you,” Earl said with a slight smile. He tapped the ash from his cigarette. “He’s not as smart as he seems. Same MO’s been used in several other bombings recently in Vermont, Washington State, and California. Heavy equipment was the target in those incidents, as well.”

  “You’re not saying it’s the same person?” Lindstrom said.

  “Not necessarily,” Owen replied. “The device is simple enough, really, that a high school student with access to the materials and the Internet could have made it.”

  “There’s someplace on the Internet that explains how to build bombs?” Jo asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Owen replied. “The Army of the Earth that the caller this morning mentioned. It’s the most militant of the environmental groups. It maintains a Web site with exactly the kind of information necessary to construct the device I’ve described.”

  “Great,” Cork said. “It could be anyone from sixteen to sixty.”

  Earl dropped his cigarette to the ground and used the toe of his shoe to put out the ember. He took in the destruction of the shed and mill yard. “I really hate the Internet.”

  “The gelatin or airplane glue or whatever is a new addition,” Owen went on. “It??
?s got to make you wonder if part of the purpose here might have been to start some fires. This is, after all, a lumber mill. A lot could be destroyed. Still, I don’t think the device was meant to hurt anybody.”

  “Why?” Jo asked.

  “Look at the timing.”

  “You mean detonation when Harold Loomis was farthest from the blast,” Jo said in clarification.

  “Technically speaking, it wasn’t a detonation,” Owen said. “It was a deflagration. A slower form of explosion.”

  “By a whole thousandth of a second,” Earl said. “Mark loves to show off.”

  Owen smiled boyishly. “Just keeping the record straight, Dave. I wish we’d been able to question Mr. Loomis immediately. It would have been best to test his hands and clothing for residue.”

  “You don’t suspect Loomis of doing this?!” Lindstrom seemed on the edge of outrage.

  In a reasonable tone, Earl said, “It would have been good to be able to eliminate him completely as a suspect, that’s all.”

  “Does that mean you don’t think Charlie Warren was responsible for this?” Jo asked.

  Schanno answered, “It means we don’t really know what happened, and we’ve got to consider all the possibilities.”

  “Not Harold Loomis,” Lindstrom insisted.

  “Look, Karl,” Schanno said, “even taking into account his age, Loomis seems to have observed very little and remembered even less.”

  Lindstrom looked as if he’d hit some kind of wall. “I don’t get it. I’m threatened. My mill is attacked. Outside that gate are a lot of people who aren’t sorry in the least that this has happened. But here you are, questioning my employees. Christ, is this the way justice works in Minnesota now?” He didn’t wait for an answer but turned and stomped across the yard toward the mill offices.

  “We should be going,” Jo said. “Wally, I appreciate the call.”

  “We’ve all got to live together here, Jo,” Schanno replied.

  It was nearing dark when they left. The protestors had called it a day. The road in front of the mill was empty. Cork and Jo were quiet for much of the drive into Aurora. As they neared the first traffic light, Jo asked, “What would Charlie Warren have been doing there?”

  “Anyone’s guess at this point,” Cork replied.

  “Karl Lindstrom seems so ready to believe it was Charlie who planted that bomb.”

  “Given the way things look, if I didn’t know Charlie, I’d probably suspect him. Karl doesn’t know the Anishinaabe people except as someone on the other side of this logging issue. And he’s under a lot of pressure.”

  The light turned green and Cork drove on. The street lamps were just starting to flicker on. In Knudsen Park, a game of softball was already being played under stadium lights.

  “You grant Lindstrom a lot,” Jo observed.

  “I don’t have any reason not to. I don’t represent anybody.”

  Jo watched the softballers and said quietly, “Lindstrom was right about one thing. You shouldn’t be involved in this.”

  “Aurora’s a small town. Everyone’s involved in this.”

  “Not the way you are.” She looked at him. It was too dark for him to see her face clearly. “You shouldn’t have been there tonight. Even Wally Schanno couldn’t defend that one.”

  They were quiet the rest of the way home. Stevie was still up and Cork volunteered to put him to bed. He read for a few minutes—James and the Giant Peach—but Stevie was so tired he was asleep after one page. Cork turned on the night-light and turned off the lamp. He stood a while looking out the window. Stevie’s breathing was soft and steady at his back. Through the branches of the elm tree in the backyard, a gentle wind blew, the breathing of the night. The dark air smelled of smoke, of the distant fires. Cork left the room. As he headed down the hallway, he heard Jo and the girls talking downstairs. There was a moment of soft laughter. He got himself ready for bed and lay on top of the covers. He thought about that morning, the moment he’d opened his arms to Jo and they were about to make love. It seemed like a long time ago. He felt more tired than one day should have made him. He waited. Jo didn’t come up. At last, he fell asleep, so deeply he didn’t know if she ever came to bed.

  8

  LEPERE HAD STRONG, HOT COFFEE in a metal thermos, and he handed the thermos to Wesley Bridger as the man got into the truck.

  “You look like hell,” LePere said.

  Bridger steadied his hands and poured coffee. “I’ll be fine. It’s this getting up before the goddamn birds.”

  “It’s the whiskey before bed.”

  “Fuck you, Mom.”

  Bridger bent to his coffee as LePere kicked his old pickup into gear and took off. Coffee splashed down the front of Bridger’s shirt.

  “What the hell’re you doing?”

  LePere smiled at the road ahead that was just beginning to glow with morning sunlight. “Hot shower.”

  Despite the coffee, Bridger slept most of the way. After an hour, LePere hit Illgen City and turned south onto Minnesota State Highway 61. On his right, the hills that formed the southern tip of the Sawtooth Mountains were bathed in the gold of a beautiful morning light. From the base of the Sawtooths, Lake Superior spread east, dark blue water running unbroken to the horizon where it fused with the softer blue of the sky.

  Clear day, LePere thought. Perfect for the dive. Bridger shifted, opened his eyes, blinked at the sun that struck him full in the face.

  “Hungry?” LePere asked.

  “Toast, maybe. Soak up some of that battery acid you call coffee.”

  They stopped at a small restaurant in Beaver Bay. LePere ordered two eggs over easy, hash browns, wheat toast, a side of ham, and orange juice. Bridger rubbed his face with his hands and scratched at his grizzled jaw as the waitress, a young woman with patient brown eyes, stood with her pen poised over her order pad.

  “Ah, hell,” Bridger finally said. “Gimme a stack of cakes, bacon, coupla eggs scrambled. You got home fries here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gimme some of them, too.”

  “We’re diving,” LePere reminded him. “If you eat all that, you won’t need weights.”

  Bridger scowled at him, then at the waitress. “And coffee. Lots of it.”

  The restaurant was filling up. A few locals, it seemed to LePere, and a lot of tourists. A family—man, woman, boy—stepped in and waited to be seated. They were only a few feet from where LePere and Bridger sat by a window.

  “Can we go swimming in the lake?” the boy asked.

  “No way, Randy,” his father replied. “The water’s too cold. It’s so cold, in fact, that the bodies of drowned people don’t float to the surface. Lake Superior, son, doesn’t give up its dead.”

  “Stuart,” his wife admonished.

  “Why?” the boy asked.

  Ignoring the look from his wife, Stuart replied, “As a body decomposes, gases form inside it that make it float. It fills up like a balloon. But the water here is so cold, bodies don’t decompose. They just lie there on the bottom of that big lake—”

  “That’s enough, Stuart.”

  “They say,” he went on, “that at night when the moon is very bright and the water very still, you can look down and see all the dead dancing along the bottom.” He gave his hands a ghostly flutter.

  “That’s enough.” This time it was LePere who spoke.

  Stuart stared at him, surprised. A smile tried to come to his lips, hoping the unhappy, powerful-looking man at the table was only joking.

  “I was just…” he started to explain. He ended simply: “Sorry.”

  The family stood silently until they were seated. LePere sat looking out the window toward the lake that burned with a silver fire under the morning sun.

  When the check came after breakfast, Bridger said, “Mind catching it?”

  LePere dug for his wallet. “Luck didn’t change, huh?”

  “Went down to Black Bear Casino last night. Thought a different location might he
lp. It didn’t.”

  “Maybe if you stopped mixing cards and alcohol,” LePere suggested.

  “Just buy the damn breakfast, okay? The least you could do. I didn’t get out of bed this morning for my own amusement.”

  LePere dropped a couple of bucks for a tip and paid at the register. As he stepped outside, he saw Stuart watching him from the window. Stuart looked quickly away.

  Breakfast had awakened Wesley Bridger. He walked briskly to LePere’s truck, then stood shaking his head at the old blue Dodge pickup with its homemade camper shell.

  “How long you had this rust bucket?”

  “Eleven years now.” LePere climbed in.

  “Time for a new one,” Bridger said, opening the passenger door. “But then, cleaning toilets won’t exactly cover monthly payments.”

  LePere pulled the truck onto the highway and continued south out of Beaver Bay.

  Bridger reached for the radio and found a country station. He crossed his arms and settled back. “Those casinos really rake it in. Christ, middle of nowhere and the parking lot’s always full, day or night. They must haul in a million bucks a day.” He eyed LePere. “And you don’t get one red cent?”

  “Like I told you before, each casino is operated by a specific band.” LePere checked his mirror and passed a slow-moving Buick with an old woman at the wheel. “The Chippewa Grand Casino is operated by the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe. To get an allotment, you have to be an enrolled member of that band. My mother was a Cree from Canada.”

  “Even so, you’d think with all that bread there’d be enough to spread it around to every Indian in the state. The hell with that band stuff.” Bridger’s foot tapped along to Reba McEntire. “You’re thinking, I suppose, that at least they gave you a job. Big deal. Cleaning the crap off toilet seats.”

  “I know where this is leading.”

  “All I’m saying is that no matter how you look at it, you’re owed big time by somebody.”

  “And that’s why you’ve come up with this new harebrained scheme. Because I’m owed big time.”

  “No, I came up with it because the very idea of holding a million bucks in my hand makes my dick stiff.”