“I’m partial to it. It’s a local brew.”
“I’ll have one, too,” Parmer said.
While they waited for their drinks to arrive, Cork stared out the window, which was streaked with rain. The golf course was empty, and the Blue Hills were a vague suggestion behind the blur of the downpour.
“So what are you thinking?” Parmer asked.
“I’ve been going over in my mind the passenger list for Bodine’s charter.”
“Who were they?”
“George LeDuc, tribal chair of the Iron Lake Ojibwe. Bob Tall Grass, chair of the RBC for the Northern Cheyenne—”
“RBC?”
“Reservation Business Committee. An organization responsible for bringing business to the rez and overseeing the operations. Many reservations have something like it. Scott No Day, who was also on the plane, was responsible for that for the Eastern Shoshone.”
“Okay, who else?”
“Edgar Little Bear, tribal chairman for the Owl Creek Arapaho. Oliver Washington, who was a Northern Cheyenne and also an attorney. And, of course, Jo and the pilot.”
“Where were they going?”
“Seattle. To the annual conference of the National Congress of American Indians.”
“Was there a reason they were traveling together?”
“They were all part of a committee that was supposed to deliver a report, something about the feasibility of an intertribal agency that would regulate Indian gaming. They met in Casper to go over the presentation, which Jo had prepared for them. Gaming is a huge issue in the Indian community. For a lot of reservations, it’s the promise of a cold drink of water at the end of a long economic drought. But it doesn’t always pan out that way. And among Indians, as among whites, the issue of the morality of gambling is a hot one. There are strong voices on both sides.”
“Economic relief versus spiritual corruption?”
“Not just spiritual. The real corruption that can come with a casino is well known and well documented. I think that was one of the concerns the committee was going to address.”
“Any idea what the report said?”
“I got the feeling from Jo that it wasn’t anything particularly controversial.”
“Still, is it possible someone didn’t want the report delivered?”
“I suppose. But, hell, it was just a report and probably some recommendations. The Indian community moves pretty slowly on everything. Seems unlikely the presentation was something you’d kill a whole plane full of people over.”
Their waitress delivered their beers. There were two additional bottles of Leinenkugel’s Dark on her tray.
“I appreciate that you think of me as a two-fisted drinker,” Cork said, “but at the moment, one beer’ll do me fine.”
The waitress laughed. “These are for those gentlemen over there.” She indicated two men at another table.
“I admire their taste,” Cork said.
She bent down confidentially. “They asked me for a recommendation, something local. I got the idea from you.” She winked at him and headed away to deliver the remaining two beers. When she returned, she took their order and hustled toward the kitchen.
Cork sat back in his chair and sipped from his bottle. “What do Geotech West, Longmont Venture Partners, Fortrell, Inc., and Realm-McCrae have to do with this?”
“Quite simply, development is a way to launder money.”
“How?”
“You know those Russian dolls, the ones where one doll fits inside another, which fits inside another, and so on? It’s a structure often used in this business to disguise the source of investment money. So Geotech is owned by Longmont, which along with Realm-McCrae is a subsidiary of Fortrell. I’m guessing that isn’t the end of this little doll game, but if we were able to get to the end, we might find someone who’d rather not have it known he’s investing in a casino. I know a lot of people who know people. Why don’t I make some calls tonight, see what I can uncover?”
Cork took a long draw on his beer. He could smell barbecue from the kitchen, and it made his mouth water. He put his bottle down. “One of the things I’m still wondering is who set up the charter flight.”
“Without Bodine’s records, is there any way you could find out?”
“Maybe George LeDuc said something to his wife. It wouldn’t hurt to ask.”
Parmer looked toward the restaurant door. “Think we’re in the clear?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were worried we’d been followed.”
“I’m still worried,” Cork said. “I’ll be worried until I have all the answers and all the evidence and put it into the hands of a cop I trust.”
“You could be worried for quite a while.”
Cork shook his head. “It’s always a question of finding a thread to tug, then things usually unravel quickly. And, Hugh, we’ve found our thread.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Rain still fell heavily as they pulled onto U.S. 53 and headed north through Wisconsin toward Duluth. The food had been good and the day had been long and Cork was tired. He figured Parmer had to be pretty beat himself, and he’d offered to drive. The tires rolled over wet pavement with a constant hiss, and the wipers swept across the glass with a hypnotic slap, slap, slap. To keep them both awake, Parmer talked about poker tournaments he’d played in. He was an entertaining raconteur, and despite the odds against, Cork stayed awake too.
They were nearing Superior when a car approached from behind and drew alongside to pass. The road had been mostly empty, and Cork glanced at the vehicle. Through the dark and the rain, it wasn’t easy to see clearly. Even so, Cork thought he recognized the man in the passenger seat, one of the two men from Turtleback to whom the waitress had recommended and then delivered the Leinenkugel’s Dark. The car slipped ahead of them, eased into their lane, and continued to pull away. Cork thought about mentioning it to Parmer, but his companion was deep into a story about a smoky backroom game in a Houston country club and Cork hated to interrupt. They approached a bridge over the Amnicon River. Parmer was saying, “This guy had a tell you could see from outer space.”
Later, Cork would recall what occurred next in harsh detail, as if it had happened in an excruciating dream in which time flowed like chilled honey.
First came the report, sharp in the way of a gunshot, except that the source was Parmer’s Navigator itself, from the undercarriage up front. Next, the Navigator veered right and the beam of the headlights blasted across the guardrail at the south end of the bridge. The vehicle struck and the guardrail exploded. The headlights tunneled into the vast black of empty air, then slowly, dreamily, arced downward and puddled against the raging brown of the rain-swollen river. The circle of light contracted as the Navigator plunged and then hit dead center, like an arrow trued on a bull’s-eye. The impact triggered the air bags. The slug to Cork’s face knocked him nearly unconscious. Vaguely, he felt the river slap the Navigator sideways and the current snatch it roughly and shove it downstream. He knew he was cold and he knew he was wet and even on the edge of unconsciousness he understood what that meant.
He fumbled with his seat restraint. When he’d freed himself, he turned to Parmer, who lay slumped to the side. The river continued to invade the compartment, and the water had reached their waists. Cork released Parmer’s seat belt, wrapped his arms around the man, and pulled him to the driver’s side. He locked Parmer in a cross-chest grip and reached for the door handle. At that same moment, the Navigator slammed into something and came to a sudden halt. Cork tried the door. It wouldn’t budge. He realized the current had wedged the vehicle against a fallen pine, which blocked his exit.
Water foamed around his chest as he maneuvered Parmer and himself to the other side of the Navigator. He tried to open the passenger’s door, but the press of the river was far too powerful. He positioned Parmer against the seat back, stretched his own legs across the man’s body, and kicked at the door window. It was awkward and the effort was
further complicated by the rising water, but at last the window broke outward. The river rushed in. Cork muscled past Parmer and through the window. He reached back, gripped his companion’s shirt in both hands, and hauled Parmer from the vehicle. Immediately the river grabbed them.
Cork clutched a fistful of Parmer’s shirt in one hand and used his other to grasp at the branches of the fallen pine. His hand found a hold, but the rage of water continued to pull on him. The branch served as a pivot, however, and the force of the current swung him around. He entered an eddy behind the breakwater formed by both the pine and the body of the Navigator, where the power of the river was significantly weakened. Cork’s feet found bottom. He steadied himself and hoisted Parmer onto the trunk of the fallen pine. He climbed up beside his companion and looked back at the bridge. A vehicle stood parked at the shattered guardrail. The beam of a flashlight shot along the course of the river and found Cork and Parmer. It held on them a long moment.
“Hey, you all right down there?”
“Yeah.”
“Hold tight, buddy. I got the state patrol on my cell. They’re on their way.”
Cork called Liz Burns from the emergency room of St. Mary’s Hospital in Superior, Wisconsin, where the EMTs had brought him and Parmer.
“Hugh insisted he was fine,” Cork said into the pay phone. “The EMTs and the officers were just as insistent that we both get checked out.”
“You’re okay?” Burns said. “Both of you?”
“Not even any broken bones. We were lucky. But we could use a lift.”
“We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Uh, Liz, we could also use some dry clothes. Do you have anything?”
“I’ll find something.”
She brought Becca Bodine with her, and she brought sweat suits. One set was turquoise, the other pink. Cork and Parmer did rock, paper, scissors. Cork won. Parmer wore pink. The sweat suits, though roomy for Burns, didn’t fit either man well, and Cork was glad when they left the hospital and the odd stares behind.
They drove back to Burns’s place on Park Point, and when they were all inside, Burns said, “Let me throw those wet clothes in the dryer.”
Becca said, “And I could make coffee.”
“Great, I’d take a cup,” Parmer said.
“Then we need to talk,” Burns said.
Cork ached all over. They’d given him Tylenol 3 at the ER, but that only dulled the pain. Parmer was moving gingerly, too.
“No business for old men, Hugh,” Cork said and offered a thin smile.
A few minutes later, they sat in the living room, sipping coffee from mugs. The rain had subsided, but Cork could still hear the angry crash of waves beyond the dunes. It was a sound much more pleasant to his ears than the mad rush of water he’d encountered in the swollen Amnicon River.
Burns said, “It wasn’t an accident, was it?”
“It was certainly supposed to look that way,” Cork replied.
“What did you tell the police?”
“A tire blew and I lost control. When they haul the Navigator out of the river, we’ll see if we can tell what really happened. My guess is an explosive charge detonated by a signal sent from the car that passed us.”
“You told me and Becca yesterday that something like this might happen,” Burns said.
“Do we want to talk about this here?” Becca asked. She swept her hand across the room, reminding them that the place could be bugged.
“Hell, I don’t care if they’re listening,” Cork said. “My guess is that they already know what we found in Rice Lake. That’s why they tried to take us out.”
Burns bent forward. “What did you find at Rice Lake?”
Cork explained about the record of the Geotech West flight and the thread they’d followed to Longmont Venture Partners, Fortrell, Inc., Realm-McCrae, and the casino development in Wyoming.
Parmer said, “Before I lost my cell phone in the river, I managed to make some calls to people I know who are tracking down the principal players in Fortrell, Inc.”
“I don’t understand what any of this has to do with why they killed my husband,” Becca said.
Cork put his mug on the coffee table and leaned toward her. “Becca, I’m almost certain it was about something else and Sandy was just one of the people who had to be eliminated for these bastards to get whatever it was they wanted.”
“Christ,” Burns said. “Collateral damage.”
Becca cupped her hands around her mug as if she was cold. “What happened to the plane?”
“I suppose it could still have simply crashed in the storm,” Burns said.
Cork shook his head. “I don’t think so. They went to a lot of trouble to get their man at the controls. I think they never had any intention of that plane arriving in Seattle. I think they went somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
The sound of the waves outside came through the windows with a shush, like a mother quieting a child.
“Does that mean,” Becca said, so softly it was barely audible and so near to hope it was heartbreaking, “that they might not be dead?”
Cork glanced at Parmer, who looked tired beyond measure. “Becca,” he began carefully, “we found something at the hangar today. It was a bunch of soiled rags stuffed in a barrel. I believe they’d been used to clean up a lot of blood. I’m telling you this so that you know everything we know. What exactly those rags mean, I can’t say. But if I had to guess, it would be that Sandy was taken out of the picture in his hangar before his King Air ever left the ground. I think there was a videotape of the attack and Stilwell found it. That’s why he was killed. This is all speculation, but it’s what I think.”
Becca’s face was hard and her dark eyes sharp. “Once I knew it wasn’t him on the tape, I knew in my heart he was dead.”
Burns asked, “What about the others on the plane?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t imagine why the people we’re dealing with would have kept them alive.”
“We still come back to the question of what happened to them and to the plane,” Parmer pointed out.
Cork said, “After the plane went missing, an old Arapaho named Will Pope claimed he’d had a vision. He said he saw an eagle glide to earth and land in a box, where it was covered by a white blanket. It’s possible the vision was about the plane. We checked what seemed to be the most logical location based on the information he gave us, and we found nothing. I’m wondering if we interpreted his vision correctly.”
“What do you mean?” Burns said.
“I’m not sure. But maybe if I talk to the right people, I might have a better idea.”
“Where do you find these people?”
Cork picked up his mug and blew away the steam before he sipped. “Mostly in Wyoming.”
Becca was staying in one of the guest rooms. Cork insisted that Hugh Parmer take the other. Burns brought out a set of sheets, a blanket, and a pillow, and made up a bed for Cork on the sofa. After the others had gone to their rooms, she spent some time in the bathroom, then came out to where Cork stood at one of the big windows that faced the lake. He’d turned out the lamp. The storm had long ago passed, and the moon had risen out of Superior, a gibbous moon bright enough to turn the sand dunes white as snow. The moonlight filled the living room with a luminous glow. Burns came and stood beside him. He could smell the good, clean fragrance of the soap she’d used to wash her face for the night. Her hair was long and brushed full and fell elegantly over her white robe. She reached into the pocket of her robe and brought out her final offering of the night.
Cork looked at the Guardian in her hand. It wasn’t at all a large weapon, and it was attractive in a way, with a beautiful wood-grain grip and a barrel that reflected a ghostly silver light. He shook his head. “No thanks.”
“If they’ve been listening, they might come for us all,” she said.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
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“Because when I was at the ER, I called a bunch of people and told them my suspicions, and if anything were to happen here, there would be at least a dozen good folks keeping the fire of this investigation alive. Whoever’s behind this, the one thing they don’t want is to bring a lot of attention and heat down on themselves. They blew one opportunity tonight. I think the next one will be carefully thought out and far from here.”
“And it will be you they target.”
“Probably.”
“Then shouldn’t you be armed and ready?”
“Ready, yes.”
She leaned her shoulder against the window glass and stared up into his face. “You were sheriff once. Didn’t you carry a gun then?”
“I did.”
“But something happened?”
“Yeah, something happened. I got tired of the weight.”
She held out the Guardian. “It’s so light you’ll barely notice it.”
“Not the kind of weight I was talking about.”
She sighed and pocketed the firearm. “I know.” She pushed gently away from the window. “I suppose I should go to bed.”
Cork said, “If you want to stick around, it’s fine by me. I’m too wired to sleep. And I wouldn’t mind the company.”
She stayed.
“You and Becca, friends long?” he asked.
“We go way back. We met when we were going to school in Madison. We remained in touch, remained friends. When the whole mess with Sandy came up, she asked for my help.”
They were quiet for a while.
“Big house,” Cork finally said.
“Big for just me, you mean.”
“Nope. Big, period.”
She laughed softly. “Sorry. It’s a line I get sometimes. Men—or some men, I should say—seem to think there’s something wrong with a woman liking to be alone.”
“I figure it’s something that depends a lot on what you’re used to.”
She thought about that. “Becca has a hard time being alone in her house in Rice Lake.”
“Two places I get lonely,” Cork said. “My wife had an office in our house. It’s still hard to be in there sometimes.”