get away by himself and play his music and think.”
“I wanted to talk to him.”
Good, she thought, with a brief sense of hope. Uly needs to talk.
“He left the damn garage door open again,” Will said.
She turned and glared at her husband. “Did you love him?” The words came out before she’d even thought them; if she’d thought first, she might not have spoken. She stared into his eyes, those dark Ojibwe windows that he never let her see through.
“What?”
“Did you love Alejandro?”
“He was my son.”
“You barely spoke to him in the last two years.”
“We said what needed saying. We understood each other.”
“Do you think he loved you?”
“He respected me. That’s more important. Why talk about this now, today?”
Yes, why? The worst possible time to talk about what could not be changed.
But she pressed on. “He came to me once when he was twelve. It was when you were stationed at Lejeune. He asked me, ‘Mama, does God love me?’ And I said of course he loves you. And he asked, ‘Does God love Uly?’ And I said yes, very much. And he asked, ‘Does God love Papa?’ And I said God loves everybody. And he looked at me with such disappointment in his young eyes and he said, ‘Then it doesn’t mean anything, does it.’ And he walked away.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“I don’t know. He never brought it up again.”
“Why would you think of that now?”
“It’s not just now. I’ve thought about it from time to time. I always intended to ask him someday what he meant. Now it’s too late.” She hadn’t looked away from his face. She almost never focused on him this way. It made him uncomfortable to be watched. “Will, who killed them?”
“Who do you think? Buck Reinhardt, that’s who.”
“What do we do?”
“We wait to see what the sheriff does.”
“And then?”
He got up and rinsed his cup at the sink. “I’m hungry, Luci.”
He was finished talking about this. She knew that no matter what she said now, the discussion was over.
“Come back and sit down,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll fix you something.”
He kept his back to her. “You’ll eat, too?”
She took his cup and put it in the dishwasher. “It’s not good to eat alone,” she said and turned her mind to the meal.
TEN
In addition to being the elected tribal chairman of the Iron Lake Ojibwe, George LeDuc was a successful businessman. He ran the general store in Allouette, the larger of the two communities on the rez. He was in his early seventies, a bear of a man with hair gone gray, but still plenty of vigor in him, enough to have fathered, a couple of years earlier, a daughter of whom he was magnificently proud.
His wife, Sarah, was half his age and had plenty of energy herself. She’d convinced LeDuc to have an addition built onto the store, and she’d put in a little coffee shop she called the Moose Mocha. It had done well, become a gathering place for folks on the rez and also for whites using the new marina and boat-launch facility that the tribe had built at the edge of town, on Iron Lake.
The store was closed on Sundays, but the Moose Mocha was open and doing a good business when Cork walked in. Sarah was behind the counter, steaming milk for a latte. Sarah’s sister Gloria was at the register. LeDuc was nowhere in sight.
Cork approached the counter. “ Boozhoo, Sarah. George around?”
She peeked from behind the big stainless-steel coffee machine and smiled. “In back, taking out the garbage.” She had to speak loudly, above the hiss of the steam. When the sound stopped, she said more quietly and with great concern, “We heard about Alex and Rayette. It’s all anybody’s talking about. What a tragedy.” She carefully poured the steamed milk into a cup containing espresso. “We heard you were out there, too.”
“For a little while,” Cork said.
She paused in spooning foam onto the surface of the drink and her face contorted, as if she was in pain. “Shot in the back, we heard, like it was a hit or something. Is that true?”
“It appears that way.”
She was a plain woman but her dark eyes were beautiful and when she was happy there was a sparkle to them, as if they were full of stars. It was her eyes, LeDuc often said, that had won him over. They didn’t sparkle now. “Drugs?” she asked.
“That’s one of the possibilities.”
LeDuc came in from the back. “Cork! Thought I heard your voice.”
Sarah handed the latte to her sister and turned to her husband. “He says it’s true, George.”
“What’s true?”
“About the Kingbirds. Shot in the back.”
LeDuc’s face showed all the emotion of a sandstone wall. “I’ve called a council meeting for tomorrow.”
“Got a few minutes free, George?” Cork said.
“Okay?” he asked his wife.
“Go on,” she said.
They stepped outside into the warm late afternoon. Across the street stood the new community center where the tribal council met. It also housed a free clinic, a number of the reservation business offices, a gymnasium, and a recreation room. LeDuc said, “I’m listening.”
“George, I’m looking for Lonnie Thunder.”
“I haven’t heard anything. Talked to his father a couple of days ago. Ike says he hasn’t seen Lonnie in a while, but that’s not unusual. He’s probably hiding. Hell, Buck Reinhardt’s running around loose out there. I was Lonnie Thunder, I’d hide.” He looked past Cork, at Iron Lake, which was visible through a stand of oaks, its surface satin blue. “Think it was Reinhardt killed the Kingbirds?”
“If I was sheriff, he’d be at the top of my list. But I’m thinking there are other possibilities.”
“Some folks around here are saying it was because of drugs.”
“Maybe. I’d like to talk to Lonnie Thunder about the shootings.”
“Why Thunder?”
“I spoke with Kingbird last night. He wanted me to arrange a meeting with him and Reinhardt.”
“Kingbird and Reinhardt? I’d like to’ve had a ringside seat for that. What was he thinking a meeting would accomplish?”
“He told me he was going to offer Buck justice.”
LeDuc chewed on that. “Any idea what he meant?”
“It might be that he was considering giving Thunder over to the sheriff.”
“And Thunder got wind of it and killed him and Rayette?” He didn’t look convinced.
“Maybe he didn’t start out thinking he’d kill Kingbird, it just ended up that way. Things got out of hand.”
“Maybe. Nobody ever accused Lonnie Thunder of having any sense.” The lines around LeDuc’s eyes went deep and he was quiet. “I was Kingbird, I’d have given Thunder over without a second thought. Everybody on the rez knows about those videos, knows what he was up to with those young girls. Any of us got our hands on him, believe me, we’d deliver a little Ojibwe justice before we turned him in.” He shook his head. “I can’t understand him protecting Thunder. Kingbird was smart. There was a lot to admire about him. A few weeks ago he came into the
