“I’d like to look at your collection of tabloids,” Jo told her.
“You hate those.”
“That’s true. But they might tell me a few things that I need to know right now.”
Every week when she did the shopping, Rose bought at least one of the gossip rags that screamed headlines at the checkout stand. She was furtive about it and read them alone at night. Jo could hear the rocker in the attic room squeaking back and forth as Rose turned page after page of miracles, magic, and mud. Upstairs, Rose opened a cabinet Cork had built into the attic room wall. There were half a dozen stacks of tabloids. Rose gave Jo an apologetic little smile.
“I’m not sure what you’re looking for,” she said
“Something recent. About Shiloh.”
“Oh. Here.”
Rose pulled one of the papers off a stack to the right and handed it to Jo. The headline, over an awful picture of the woman named Shiloh, read $10,000 REWARD! Jo skimmed the article.
“Thanks, Rose.” She handed the tabloid back.
“There’s an interesting piece in there about a woman in Albuquerque who sees the image of the Virgin Mary in her swimming pool.”
“I’ll skip it, thanks. I’ve got what I need.”
She heard the phone ring downstairs. A moment later, Jenny called up, “Telephone, Mom. It’s Sheriff Schanno.”
Jo took the call in her bedroom.
“Jo, I got your message,” Schanno said. “What can I do for you?”
“You can start off by telling me why you stood by and let those federal bullies force Louis Two Knives into leading them into the Boundary Waters.”
“I didn’t just stand by,” Schanno said. “It was a done deal by the time I heard about it.”
“Damn it, Wally, how could you let it happen? A boy, for Christ’s sake, exposed to God knows what dangers.”
“Hold on, Jo. Cork’s with him.”
“That’s another thing. What’s Cork doing out there? He doesn’t carry a badge anymore.”
“It’s the way things played out. The way Cork wanted it.”
“You’re the sheriff here, Wally. What happens in this county is up to you.”
“Look, Jo, in the first place, no crime has been committed here. And I don’t have any jurisdiction in a federal investigation. The FBI is in charge, and there’s not a thing any of us can do about that. Now, those men are in communication by radio. If we need to, we can get a float plane out to them in less than an hour, bring ’em all in. I swear to you, Jo, I’m not going to let anything happen to that boy, or anybody else out there.”
They were both quiet. Jo heard the television in the background at Schanno’s end of the line. The evening news out of Duluth.
“Whenever I hear something, I’ll pass it on to you. I’ll let you know everything I know,” Schanno offered. “How’s that?”
“Deal,” Jo said.
“All right, then. Good night, Jo.”
“’Night, Wally.”
Downstairs, Jo took a flashlight from a kitchen drawer and went back outside. She headed to the shadows where the lilac hedge cornered toward the drive and she searched the ground with the light. She didn’t know what she expected to find, if anything. But so much was uncertain now, she wanted to settle it in her own mind. The ground yielded nothing, but the hedge itself was a different matter. She found a ragged area of broken branches that looked as if someone had pushed hurriedly through. Maybe to escape as the women had come from the house earlier? Not the action of a befuddled old neighbor.
Although the big wind had died, there was still a light breeze out of the northwest, cold and with a wet feel to it. Fallen leaves skittered across the cement of the drive, making a sound like the scrape of bones. Jo was concerned, and she was angry. Why hadn’t Cork told her things? Why hadn’t he trusted her? How could he stand by and let Louis and Stormy be taken that way?
It didn’t make sense.
No more sense than someone’s lurking in the shadows outside her house.
She felt herself shiver. And as quickly as she could, she headed back inside.
22
THE RAIN BEGAN AROUND MIDNIGHT, a steady drizzle so fine it fell without a sound. With the moon and stars obliterated, the darkness was profound. Cork could make out the three tents but almost nothing outside the triangle they formed. He sat with his back against the hull of an overturned Prospector, the careless gurgle of the Little Moose behind him. He’d changed his clothing, dressing himself against the rain and the damp cold that came with it. Put on thermals, wool pants and sweater, a rain slicker. On his head was settled an old wool felt hat with a broad brim. The rain gathered along the brim and funneled to a constant drip an inch beyond his nose.
He wanted a cigarette in the worst way. Instead, he’d taken to chewing on a pine twig. It wasn’t the same thing.
He’d been thinking about the jacket he’d thrown back into the lake. About how that action went against everything he’d been trained to do when he was an officer of the law. About how he’d believed for a long time in the need to gather evidence at all costs. To be inordinately cautious at crime scenes. To be painstaking in his efforts to uncover truth. But it was a funny thing. Holding that bloodstained jacket in his hand, he’d known that although it was probably evidence, it had absolutely nothing to do with the truth.
He heard the zipper sizzle down the front of the tent he shared with Arkansas Willie Raye. Raye—or a black form Cork assumed to be Raye—emerged and stood up.
“Cork?” Arkansas Willie kept his voice to a whisper.
“Over here.”
Willie Raye turned and peered hard in Cork’s direction. “Sumbitch,” he whispered. “Like the inside of Jonah’s whale.”
“Straight ahead,” Cork told him. “Three or four steps.”
Raye trusted him, and three paces toward Cork he gave a little “oh.” He sat down next to Cork and he, too, lay back against the canoe hull.
“Been raining long?” he asked.
“An hour or so. Can’t sleep?”
“Naw.” Raye looked up toward a sky he couldn’t see. “Think it’ll keep up?”
“Yeah, I think.”
Raye sat quietly. The drizzle gathered on the branches of the pines above them and formed drops that fell and hit the canoe like nervous fingers drumming erratically.
“You know, Cork, I’m having a hard time believing it was Stormy Two Knives killed Grimes. He just doesn’t seem like a cold-blooded killer to me. I mean, just look at the way he cares for his boy.”
“I don’t believe it for a moment,” Cork said.
“Then—” Arkansas Willie stared out at the dark around them.
“That’s right,” Cork said.
Willie Raye took a good long breath, let it out slow. “Leastways, whoever’s out there is blind as us.”
“I wish that were true, Willie. Whoever it is out there, they’ve got an infrared scope on that rifle they took from Grimes. We’re so clear to them we might as well be wearing neon bull’s-eyes.”
Willie Raye drew his legs up as if to shield his chest.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“You tell me.”
“Benedetti?”
“More likely, someone in his pay.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time he hired someone to do his dirty work,” Raye said with a nasty little snarl.
“Marais?”
“The police could never prove it, but if it wasn’t him, then the earth’s flat and Robert E. Lee was a goddamn Yankee spy.”
Cork felt Raye shiver against the hull of the canoe as if he were freezing cold.
“Why don’t they do something?” Arkansas Willie asked.
Cork spit out shreds of the aromatic pine twig. “I’ve been thinking about that. They could have picked us all off out there at the landing. Or any time since. I don’t think they want us dead. I think they just want to keep us from communicating with Aurora. I think they mean to isolate us out here, t
o keep anyone from knowing our exact location.”
“Why?”
“Because they need us. Or they need Louis anyway. They don’t know where Shiloh is either. They want us to lead them to her.”
Cork focused intensely on the dark, trying so hard and deliberately to see a thing he couldn’t that his eyes burned with little flashes like lightning. He relaxed.
“Like I said, they could have picked us off any time they wanted, easy as shooting bottles off a rail. But since they haven’t, I’m thinking they won’t do anything more until we’ve found Shiloh.”
“You think Shiloh’s safe for now?”
Cork imagined the look of hope that must have lit Arkansas Willie’s face.
“I hope so, Willie,” he replied. “I hope so for you and for her and for that man under those rocks out there.”
A splash at their backs caused them both to bolt upright. Cork had his .38 in his hand, and he used the canoe to brace his arms as he aimed into the darkness in the direction of the Little Moose. He listened and heard the trumpet of a great blast of air.
“Christ, what is it?” Raye asked.
Cork drew in his .38. “It’s what the river’s named for, Willie. A moose.”
Willie Raye started laughing, trying hard to keep the sound to himself. Cork laughed a little, too.
“You should be getting some sleep,” Cork suggested. “You worked hard out there today. Handled yourself well. You swing a mean paddle.”
“You mean for an old coot,” Raye said, settling once again against the canoe. Then he added, “And a queer.”
“I mean period.”
“You don’t care, then?”
It wasn’t an apology, Cork understood. Raye was just making sure it was a settled thing.
“Your life,” Cork shrugged.
Arkansas Willie spoke as if the weariness of the day was suddenly overwhelming him. “It didn’t used to be.”
“Mind if I ask you a question?”
“Shoot,” Raye said.
“Did you love Marais?”
“Not that way.” Arkansas Willie snapped a twig, and Cork could make out in dark profile that he, too, was chewing on a bit of pine. “We were friends. The best. The only. The marriage, well, that was something that helped us both out of a pickle. You see, we were negotiating this TV deal. Standard entertainment contracts back then contained a morals clause. It was the studio or network or record label’s out if you embarrassed them by behaving badly. There were rumors about me, always had been. But I was careful, so that’s all they were, rumors. Marais, now she really went and stepped in a pile of pig shit. Got herself pregnant just before we were going to sign. She refused to consider an abortion. There was a lot of Catholic in her even though she tried to deny it. We decided getting married was the perfect solution. We became a good television couple.”
“You’re not Shiloh’s father.” Cork stated the obvious because he’d been caught so off guard.
“Biological, no. But I raised her like she was my own. Her real father couldn’t love her any more than I do.”
“Do you know who her real—sorry—biological father is?”
“Marais would never say. It was the era of free love, you know, and Marais was just about as free as they came that way. Jesus,” Raye said with a sigh. “Shiloh’s like her in so many ways. I mean,” he went on quickly, “headstrong. Beautiful. But a streak in her mean as a wild pig when she doesn’t get her way. Between running Ozark Records and raising that child, I had my hands full. Hell, I tried everything—nannies, nuns, boarding schools. Shiloh went through ’em like a cannonball through a cornfield. I finally figured getting her into the business was at least a way of channeling all that energy. She had talent, even more than her mother. Cut her first album for Ozark when she was fifteen. Went platinum. After that, she was, well, I guess she was beyond me. We’ve been—estranged—for a few years now.”
The dark shape of Arkansas Willie Raye bent forward as the man hugged his knees. Cork understood how it felt to be separated from what you loved, from what had helped define who and what you were. It was the worst kind of loneliness.
Willie Raye spoke again. “I was surprised when I started getting Shiloh’s letters from this place. Pleased me no end. She sounded so—I don’t know—so peaceful with herself finally. Like she’d found something here I couldn’t give her. I always wondered if maybe a real father would have done better.”
“All fathers make mistakes, Willie. And I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts all good fathers lose sleep wondering if they’re doing it right.”
“Yeah?” Raye thought about it. “Probably.”
A bit of wind rose up, only a moment’s worth, but it shook the branches enough to make it feel like a heavy rain was falling. When it had passed, Raye said, “So what happens when we find her?”
“Don’t worry about that, Willie,” Cork assured him. “I’ve got a trick or two up my sleeve. Go on and get some sleep if you can. We’ve still got a ways to go tomorrow.”
Raye left him and crawled back into the tent. Cork sat then, chewing hard on the pine twig.
A trick or two up my sleeve, he thought. Sure, and monkeys fly out my butt.
23
AT TWELVE FIFTY-SIX A.M., Jo O’Connor finally gave up on the idea of sleep. For hours she’d been awake worrying about Louis and Stormy and Sarah Two Knives. And about Cork. As an attorney, she was used to dealing with worry by sinking herself completely into the facts of a situation. Her strength lay in her ability to scrutinize circumstances from every angle and to anticipate the moves of an opponent. But she didn’t have facts and she didn’t know her opponent, and all she was left with was the worry.
She got out of bed, threw on a robe, went downstairs, and made herself a cup of chamomile tea, one of the few things she knew how to do in a kitchen without risking disaster. She turned on the television to the cable country music station and sat watching, hoping to see Shiloh, the woman all the fuss in the Boundary Waters was about. She knew the Aurora legends of the woman’s mother—Marais Grand, local girl who’d hit it big, who’d run (it was rumored) with the mob, and who’d met a brutal and mysterious death that had (perhaps) been witnessed by her daughter.
Before Jo’s cup of tea was half finished, a Shiloh video came on. It featured the young woman singing a lively, sassy country tune in which she warned a no-good truck-lovin’, beer-drinkin’, dog-smellin’, lietellin’, heart-breakin’, run-around man to “. . . keep away from my bed cuz I’m warnin’ you, honey, the sheet’s gonna hit the fan.” Jo found herself liking Shiloh, at least the Shiloh in the video. The woman was attractive in an unusual way. She seemed an amalgam of strange genetic blendings. Her hair, long and black and snapping about like a whip as she turned defiantly away from her cheatin’ man, might have adorned any woman on the Iron Lake reservation. Her face was exotic rather than beautiful. A long slender nose saddled with nostrils that flared broadly, like little wings on the spine of a tiny bird. There was something electric about the eyes, such anger and insolence that Jo thought the young woman was either a superb actress or had truly felt, as most women ultimately did, the utter betrayal of love. The color of Shiloh’s skin seemed to vary with the lighting. In the shadows of a room with an unmade bed, her skin was dark as an almond. But when she stepped outside, abandoning the old house and the man who’d walked all over her heart, her face danced in sunlight and glowed with a color that reminded Jo of the sky at sunset when summer fires burned the forests and everything was bathed in a smoky red-brown hue.
The song at the center of the video wasn’t deep, but Jo liked its simple sensibility and it made her wonder a little if she’d missed something by ignoring country music for most of her life.
She went back to bed and slept fitfully until the clock radio clicked on at six A.M. Outside, the morning was still black, and against the windowpane, a light rain fell. She thought about Cork in the Boundary Waters, about the rainy times she’d spent there with him and the
children. In the tent all day, playing games—twenty questions, spades—reading aloud or quietly to themselves, telling stories. Somehow they’d managed never to be bored.
Cork didn’t have the luxury this outing of riding out the rain in a tent. All of them who’d gone, Louis included, had a driving purpose that would propel them onward. Her anger flared again as she thought of the men who’d used their power over Stormy to induce Louis to lead them. She was determined to bring an action on behalf of Sarah Two Knives when it was all over. The law wasn’t perfect, but anytime those who had the power to twist it did so, it grew more grotesque. With all its flaws, the law was still something she had faith in. She’d been a part of making it work, and she believed, as strongly as she believed anything, that in the end it was one of the few powerful weapons available to common people.
Jo heard Rose lumbering down the stairs to the kitchen to begin breakfast preparations, and she threw back the covers and went to wake the kids.
Her car was the first in the lot of the Aurora Professional Building. She used her key and let herself in. She hit the lights, illuminating the hallway that was long and empty. The odor of wet wool hung in the air and she recalled that the carpeting had been cleaned over the weekend. She felt a little guilty walking to her office because her feet left wet tracks on the carpet. Jo turned on the lights, hung her coat, and set her briefcase temporarily on her secretary’s desk. The cold, wet morning had made her desperate for coffee. She took the pot from the coffeemaker and went to the women’s restroom down the hall to fill it with tap water. Coming back, she saw that hers were no longer the only wet footprints on the carpet. Several more sets trampled her own, and between them ran four deep, mysterious grooves. They all led to her office.
A white-haired man sat in a wheelchair facing her as she entered. The thin hands that held the arms of the chair trembled violently. Although his head wobbled a bit, he eyed Jo steadily. Two men flanked him, standing respectfully with their hands folded in front of them. They all wore dark, tasteful suits.
“Good morning, Mrs. O’Connor,” the white-haired man greeted her. Coming from such a shaky body, his voice was surprisingly clear and strong. “My name is Vincent Benedetti. I believe we should talk.”