Mercy Falls

  “She told you she didn’t kill Jacoby?”

  “Until I came back from Mercy Falls, she didn’t even know he was dead.”

  “You believed her?”

  “Yeah, I believed her.”

  “Did you do anything at Mercy Falls?”

  “Like what?”

  “Interfere with the scene.”

  Fineday studied the sky. “Maybe I wiped the door handles clean.”

  “‘Maybe’?”

  “I didn’t want Lizzie’s fingerprints there, okay? I picked up some beer bottles that might have had her prints on them.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nothing, I swear.”

  “If you’d told me all this before, it might’ve saved a lot of trouble, Will.”

  Fineday’s hard brown eyes leveled on him. “If you were full-blood or at least not a cop, maybe you’d understand.” He looked toward the cabin. “Where are they?”

  “We think Stone went north, into the woods.”

  “He knows the Boundary Waters better than anyone.” Fineday’s eyes traveled over the ridge that lay between the cabin and everything beyond. “He took her with him, didn’t he?”

  “Maybe.”

  “When I find him, I’ll tear out his goddamned heart.”

  “Cork,” Larson called from the cabin. “Something here you’ve got to see.”

  Cork walked to where Larson and Dina Willner awaited him at the door. “What is it?”

  “Follow me.”

  Larson led the way to the bedroom and stepped over the door that lay on the floor, torn off its hinges. He leaned over the bed and pointed toward an indentation in the pillow.

  Cork took a step and saw what Larson meant. A large-caliber rifle bullet had been carefully placed in the center of the pillow.

  “Jacketed round,” Cork said. “Just like the ones fired at the Tibodeau cabin.”

  “It didn’t get there by accident,” Dina said.

  Larson glanced at Cork. “What do you think it means?”

  Cork crossed to the back window, pulled aside the curtain, shielded the glass so that he could see beyond the reflection of the room light. He stared out at the black silhouette of the ridge.

  “It means we’ve got a long night ahead.”

  34

  MAL AND THE children had gone to bed, but Rose was waiting up when Jo got home. There was a low fire under the kettle on the stove and two mugs on the kitchen table, each with a bag of Sleepytime tea hung over the lip.

  Rose turned up the flame under the kettle. “Have a good evening?”

  “A weird evening.”

  “You can tell me all about it in a minute. First you need to call Cork.”

  “He called?”

  “Yes. Not long after you left.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Rose looked a little puzzled by Jo’s concern. “That you went out for a drink with Ben Jacoby. What is it, Jo?”

  “Let me call Cork, then we’ll talk.”

  She tried him at home and got voice mail. She called the sheriff’s office and Bos told her Cork was on a call. Routine.

  “Routine?” Jo said. “It’s almost ten o’clock, Bos.”

  “I can radio and let him know you called. Want a call back?”

  “Yes. Please. As soon as he can.”

  “Sure thing. Miss him, do you?”

  “Like crazy.”

  “I’ll let him know.”

  When Jo returned to the kitchen, the kettle was just starting to whistle. Rose poured hot water into the mugs and sat down at the table with her sister. All their lives, long before Jo met Cork, before Rose fell in love with Mal, it had been like this, the two sisters and tea. In the places their mother, an army nurse whom they called the Captain, had dragged them, the desolate bases, the bleak military housing. None of that mattered because they’d had the comfort of their love for each other, embodied in late night cups of tea and talk.

  “All right,” Rose said. “What don’t I know about Ben Jacoby?”

  Jo told her the whole story.

  “And I thought I knew everything about you.” Rose sipped her tea. “But your relationship with him was a long time ago.”

  “I thought so, too. Then I saw him in Aurora, Rose, and for just a little while all the old feelings, I don’t know, tried to come back.”

  “And?”

  “I let myself feel them. And I realized absolutely there was room only for Cork in my life.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “For Ben it’s been different, all these years.”

  “He’s carried a torch?”

  “That’s what he says. I need to talk to Cork as soon as possible. God only knows what he must be thinking.”

  Stevie wandered into the kitchen looking half asleep. “I had a bad dream.”

  “Well, come on, big guy, let’s get you back into bed.” Jo took his hand. “Thanks for the company, Rose. You know I miss you in Aurora.”

  “I miss you, too. If Cork calls…?”

  “Wake me.”

  She led Stevie back to bed, got ready herself, and slipped under the covers. She tried to stay awake, waiting for Cork’s call. Finally, sleep overtook her.

  The call she was waiting for never came.

  35

  AT FIRST LIGHT, the tracking dogs began sniffing the area around Stone’s cabin. Stone’s scent was everywhere, but the scent of Lizzie Fineday led straight through the trees, over the ridge that backed the cabin, to Bruno Lake. It was the first in a series of lakes that led deep into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

  The dogs halted briefly at a large dock on the southeastern shore of the lake, deep in the shadow of the ridge. Cork and the others stood at the end of the dock, breathing hard from the fast hike over the ridge, puffing out clouds of vapor into the cold, damp air above Bruno Lake while the dogs went on, working the ground along the shoreline.

  “What do you make of it?” Rutledge asked.

  “Big dock,” Cork said. “There’s no access to Bruno except on foot or by canoe. Not the kind of traffic that would require a dock. I think this is for floatplanes.”

  “For trafficking?” Larson said.

  “That would sure be my guess.” Cork briefed Rutledge on the investigations his department had conducted earlier with the ATF and the DEA. “We never saw any sign of smuggling, probably because this ridge provides perfect cover. You can’t see the lake except from the air, and I’ll bet the ridge blocks the sound of a plane engine.”

  The sun had risen enough to fire the far shoreline, and the mist on the water there looked like steam coming from a cauldron. In a stand of gnarled cedars fifty yards down the shore, one of the dogs began barking furiously.

  Rutledge looked toward the cedars. “What’s all that ruckus about?”

  As if in answer, Deputy Schilling called from the trees, “Cork, something here you ought to see.”

  “What?”

  “Looks like a grave.”

  A faint trail had already been broken through the brush along the shore. Cork followed and near the end climbed over a fallen and rotting pine. He stepped into the cedars whose smell was sharp in the morning air. Orville Gratz, who’d brought the dogs, had pulled his hound back. The animal sat on its haunches, tongue hanging out, looking where Schilling looked, at a mound of rocks that had been piled in the middle of the cedars. The mound was two feet wide and five feet long, and looked as if it hadn’t been there very long.

  “Lancelot followed the girl’s scent here,” Gratz said. He didn’t sound thrilled with the discovery.

  Cork said to Schilling, “Get Cy over here with the Polaroid.”

  For a minute, no one spoke. The other dogs were still moving along the shoreline, their barks punctuating the silence in the cedars. Then Rutledge said quietly, “The son of a bitch.”

  Schilling brought Borkmann and the Polaroid.

  “We need shots of that rock pile, Cy,” Cork said.

/>   Borkmann was still sweating from the exertion of the climb over the ridge, but he positioned himself and shot from several angles.

  “All right, let’s see what’s under there,” Cork said.

  He approached the stones, bent, and began removing them carefully, piling them behind him. Rutledge joined him. Within a few minutes, they’d cleared the rocks away and had exposed a small area of newly dug earth. It was only a few feet long, however, much too small to accommodate a body fully laid out. Cork and Rutledge dug in the dirt with their hands, slowly clearing a shallow basin. A flash of blue appeared. Cork remembered that the last time he’d seen Lizzie Fineday in front of Stone’s cabin, blinking in the sun, she’d been wearing a sweater that same shade of blue. As they removed the soil, the sweater was revealed, but that was all. It quickly became clear that the indentation had been scooped only deep enough to hold Lizzie’s sweater. Below that, the ground was undisturbed. Rutledge stood up, the cardigan sweater hanging from his hand, rumpled and dirty.

  “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “There’s something in the pocket,” Cork said.

  “Anybody got a glove?”

  “Here.” Schilling handed him one, leather.

  Rutledge put it on and removed a folded slip of paper from the sweater pocket. He opened it. Cork looked over his shoulder and saw what was written.

  48 hours.

  “Mean anything?” Rutledge asked.

  Cork wiped his palms on his khakis and looked at his nails, which were packed with black dirt. He pulled his walkie-talkie from his belt and called to Howard Morgan, who was at Stone’s cabin, and told him to send Will Fineday down to the lake. He turned to Gratz. “Did you bring Pook?”

  “You betcha. Nestor’s got him.” He waved toward the sound of the other dogs.

  “Bring her to the dock. You know what we need to do.”

  “Yah,” Gratz said. “Come on, Lancelot.”

  Rutledge watched the man and dog trot away. “What now?”

  “Pook’s an air scent dog,” Cork said. He turned and started out of the cedars. “Gratz’ll take him onto the lake. If Stone dumped Lizzie’s body in the water, Pook might be able to locate her.”

  “And if he didn’t dump her there?”

  “We keep looking.”

  The mist vanished. Where sunlight struck the lake the clear water turned gold. Under the dock, the lake bottom was a jumble of dark stones; nearer the surface a school of minnows darted, moving together like a shadow creature.

  For two hours, Orville Gratz had crisscrossed the lake in a canoe with Pook, but the dog hadn’t caught Lizzie’s scent. The other two dogs had sniffed the entire shoreline of Bruno Lake without success. Cork stood on the dock looking north where the Cutthroat River fed toward Sugar Bowl Lake and the other lakes beyond. He chewed on a ham sandwich, one of a couple dozen he’d ordered brought out to feed the searchers, along with coffee and water. Everything had to be carted over the ridge.

  “I don’t get it,” Rutledge said. He sat on the dock, running his hand through the crystal clear water. “This place is so remote, how could Stone manage a serious smuggling operation? The planes fly everything in fine, but it has to be moved out of here on foot or by canoe.”

  “For a hundred years, the Voyageurs moved millions of dollars of goods through here that way. Helped build a few fortunes,” Cork said.

  “Why did Stone do it?” Dina Willner asked. She stood near him, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “From what I understand, he has plenty of money coming from the distribution of the casino profits.”

  “It’s not about the money,” Will Fineday said.

  “No?” Rutledge said. “What, then?”

  “Fuck you,” Fineday said.

  Rutledge looked surprised by the response.

  “No,” Fineday said. “That’s what it’s about. Everything he does is just a way of saying fuck you. To me, to you, to his people. He doesn’t need anybody, doesn’t want anybody. To him, we’re all weak, like sick animals to be preyed on.” Fineday strode to the end of the dock and stood between Cork and Dina. “On the rez, some people call him majimanidoo. A bad spirit. A devil.” He followed Cork’s gaze north toward the mouth of the Cutthroat. “They’re right.”

  Larson came down the trail from the ridge.

  “What’s the word from the plane?” Cork asked.

  He’d arranged for a Forest Service DeHavilland to fly over the area and look for anyone in a canoe on the lakes or along the Cutthroat. The nearest official access to the wilderness was ten miles west. It was late in the season and few permits were being issued, so anyone in a canoe would be suspect.

  “Nothing. They didn’t see a blessed soul.”

  “Got the map, Ed?”

  “Right here.”

  Larson unfolded a topographical map of the region for four hundred square miles. “The dogs are getting nowhere. The search plane’s a bust. What do you think?”

  “He moved fast,” Cork said.

  “Does he still have the girl?”

  “If he’d left her at the bottom of the lake, Pook would probably have picked that up. I think Stone’s still got her,” Cork said.

  Rutledge ran his hand through the water, making ripples that were edged with gold. He eyed Fineday. “Did she go willingly?”

  Fineday didn’t look at him. His own eyes were glued to the north. “You don’t say no to Stone.” He rubbed the long scar on his face as if the old wound still hurt him. “Why would he take her? He doesn’t care about her. She’d only get in his way.”

  “He has reason,” Cork said. “Somehow it goes back to that cartridge on the pillow and the sweater in the ground.”

  Rutledge glanced up. “Why wouldn’t he just make a beeline to Canada? He could be there by tomorrow.”

  “When he gets to Canada, where is he?” Cork said. “No better off, and he knows it.”

  “We could wait him out. Put a watch on every wilderness access. Make sure every police and sheriff’s department’s on the lookout. I know what you said about him being able to stay in there forever, but that was before he took the girl.”

  “Maybe that’s why he took Lizzie,” Cork said. “With the girl, he can’t stay in there long, and he knows we know it.”

  “I don’t get it,” Dina said.

  “She’s a liability. He can’t afford to keep her. It’s like that hourglass in The Wizard of Oz. As soon as the sand runs out, Dorothy dies. I think that’s what the note in her pocket was about. Forty-eight hours. He’ll keep her for forty-eight hours. He knows we won’t wait him out. He knows we have to try to find Lizzie before her time’s up.”

  “He wants us to go after him?” Rutledge said.

  “I think that’s why he left the cartridge. He wanted it clear that he was the one who’d fired the shots at the Tibodeau cabin. Maybe he figured we were already on the road to figuring that out for ourselves. But he makes the declaration, he maintains control. I don’t think he’s trying to escape. I think he wants us to follow him into his territory. It’s like Will says. ‘Fuck you.’”

  “Seems a stretch to me,” Rutledge said.

  “It’s the kind of man Stone is. He’d get off pitting his power against ours.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Cork tossed the crust of his sandwich into the lake, and a moment later the bread disappeared in a flash of shiny green scales and a splash of silver water. “I’m going to give him what he wants. I’m going in after him.”

  Rutledge scratched the top of his head. His face looked puzzled and he spent a minute fishing through his hair. He studied something he’d pinched between his fingers. “Damn. I thought tick season was over.” He flicked the critter into the lake and shook himself. “Feels like they’re crawling all over me now. Look, I don’t like the idea of anyone going in, Cork.”

  “I don’t like it either, Simon, but I don’t see any way around it.” Cork pulled the walkie-talkie from its holster on his belt. “Morga
n. Over.”

  “Morgan here.”

  “Howard, I want you to get some gear together for a trip into the woods. Enough for three men for two days.”

  “One canoe?”

  Fineday said, “I’m going with you.”

  Cork started to shake his head, but he could see the determination on the man’s face. He understood how he’d feel if it was his daughter out there.

  “Make it two canoes and four men. I want everything ready to go by”—he looked at his watch—“oh four hundred.”

  “Ten-four. I’m on it.”

  “You’re really going in?” Dina said.

  “Yeah. But I think Simon has a good idea. We should put a watch on all the nearest accesses and float Stone’s photo everywhere. Contact the provincial police in Ontario, too. Let them know Stone may be headed their way.”

  Rutledge still looked skeptical. “You think you can find him?”

  “No.” Cork turned away from the lake and started for the ridge. “But I know a man who can.”

  36

  JO’S FIRST OFFICIAL date with Cork had begun at the Lincoln Park Zoo. It had ended at Rocky’s on the lakeshore, where Cork picked up a sack of fried shrimp and french fries, which they ate while sipping beer and watching Lake Michigan slide into the deep blue ink of evening. In between, she found a man who was funny, gentle, smart, who came from a small town in Minnesota and had somehow managed, despite the awful things he’d seen as a cop on the South Side, to retain a belief in simple human dignity.

  “You’re a good cop?” she’d asked in jest.

  “Depends on the situation. I try to be a good man first. Sometimes that might make me look like a bad cop, but I don’t think of myself that way. You don’t have to be a hard-ass to be in control of a tough situation. Connection, that’s what I try for. Maybe it’s because I’m part Ojibwe. Connection is very important.”

  “Ojibwe?” It sounded exotic, exciting.

  “Or Anishinaabe. Some people call us Chippewa, but that’s really the white man’s bastardization of Ojibwe. Most Shinnobs I know aren’t fond of the name.”