“At the moment, I don’t have anything that contradicts them.”
“Try this on for size.”
He explained about not seeing Reinhardt on the road to Skinner Lake the night of the murders. She didn’t seem impressed.
“It’s possible you just missed him,” she said. “It was dark.”
“That roof rack of lights is hard to miss.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” she said dully.
She’d pulled back on him, probably disappointed that the help he’d promised wouldn’t be coming. Maybe even more than a little disappointed.
“One more thing,” he said before getting up to leave. “Just something else to consider. I’d been thinking that if Elise lied, it was done to protect Buck. But it’s also possible that it’s Buck who’s lying to protect Elise. She’s no stranger to firearms, and she has access to that arsenal Buck keeps. Lord knows she had just as much motivation as he did. She could have gone out to Kingbird’s place as soon as I left.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind, too.”
Deputy Borkman poked his head in the office. “Coffee’s ready, Sheriff.”
Cork stood up. “I’ll pass on the coffee, Marsha.”
Dross stayed seated and watched without comment as he left the room.
He drove down Oak Street heading north, out of town. As he passed the Pinewood Broiler, he glanced at the parking lot and saw Buck Reinhardt’s truck alongside a couple of company trucks. He should have let it go, just kept on driving. Not only had he promised to step back from the aftermath of the Kingbird killings, what he was contemplating at the moment-pressing Buck Reinhardt for answers-was none of his business at all.
On the other hand, he still hadn’t had his morning coffee.
“Hey, Cork.” Johnny Papp, who owned the Broiler, greeted him from behind the counter with one of his cordial Greek smiles.
“How’s it going, Johnny?”
“I’d complain, but it never does any good. Coffee?”
“Thanks.”
“Menu?”
“Just the coffee.”
Johnny turned away and headed into the kitchen.
It looked as if there were two or three of Reinhardt’s crews having breakfast that morning, two full tables of men with T-shirts bearing the Reinhardt logo. Cal Richards, father of Allan Richards, the kid Annie had said was giving Uly Kingbird such a hard time, was among them. He was a man difficult to miss. His arms were covered with enough tattoos so that, at a distance, he appeared to have the skin of an alligator. He’d been employed for a good many years by the county to do its tree trimming, but he’d been fired for cussing out his supervisor one too many times. Buck had hired him the next day.
Dave Reinhardt sat beside his father. Dave was in uniform, the Yellow Lake Police Department patch on his right shoulder. He was talking low and hard to his father, but Buck wasn’t paying any attention. Buck’s eyes were full of Cork.
Reinhardt was in his midsixties. There was a story that had floated around Aurora since Cork was a kid, about when Reinhardt was a young man working for a logging outfit contracting for Weyerhaeuser. The story was that Buck could lift a McCulloch chainsaw in each hand and attack a trunk from two directions at once, so that he felled a tree in half the time it took anyone else. As a kid, Cork had believed it. When he was older, as a result of his summers in college during which he logged timber to earn tuition money, he realized how ridiculous the story was. He figured Reinhardt had started it and kept it going. He didn’t doubt, however, that Buck had the strength and the balls to give it a try. Reinhardt still had the body of a man twenty years younger. His hair was white and he wore it in a long ponytail. He was handsome, knew it, and was an incurable-often offensive-flirt.
Buck Reinhardt stood up. His son put a hand on his arm, but the man shook it off. He reached Cork at the same time that Johnny Papp returned with the coffeepot.
“Put his breakfast on my tab, Johnny,” Reinhardt said.
“Just having coffee, Buck,” Cork told him.
“A man ought to start the day with more’n that.”
“I had breakfast at home.”
“But no coffee?”
“Not today.”
“Something interrupt?”
“Not really.”
“I thought maybe, like some of us, you had a son of a bitch pounding on your door at all hours, bothering your wife.”
There were other folks eating breakfast. They’d been carrying on their own conversations, but as Reinhardt’s voice rose, the other voices fell silent.
Reinhardt wore an unbuttoned shirt with the sleeves cut away and the tail hanging out of his pants. Cork nodded toward the gun belt visible across Reinhardt’s waist. “What’s with the hardware, Buck? Planning on shooting your scrambled eggs if they try to make a break for it? Or do you carry all the time these days?”
Reinhardt swept his shirttail back, revealing a strong side holster that nestled what looked to be a Glock, maybe a 19.
“I do when I think some crazy Indian might get it in his head to take a shot at me.”
“Probably a lot of folks besides the Ojibwe wouldn’t mind doing that, Buck.”
Reinhardt let his shirttail fall back into place. “Why are you sniffing around my house, O’Connor? What are you after?”
“Mostly I wanted to be sure you knew that before he died, Alex Kingbird asked me to arrange a meeting between you and him.”
“Elise told me. Said you didn’t tell her what for.”
“He felt bad about what happened to Kristi. He wanted to make things right.”
“All he had to do was give me Lonnie Thunder.”
“That may have been exactly what he had in mind.”
“Lot of fucking good that does me now.”
“I just thought you might want to know.”
“That Kingbird’s dead doesn’t bother me at all. If I had a whiskey right now, I’d drink to the son of a bitch who killed him. That he died before he could give me Thunder, now that’s a pisser. And, listen, I don’t appreciate you going around telling people I’ve been lying about that night.”
“I never said you were lying, Buck. Only said I didn’t see you on the road you should’ve been on.”
Dave Reinhardt left the table and walked to the counter. “Take it easy, Dad.”
“Fuck if I will. This man’s harassing me and my family.”
“I don’t think it’s gone that far,” the younger Reinhardt said.
“You taking his side?”
“I’m just advising a little restraint here, Dad.”
“Or what? You’ll arrest me?” Buck laughed cruelly. “You don’t have jurisdiction, Davy. And though it grieves me to say so, boy, you don’t have the balls neither.”
Buck spun away and returned to the table. “Come on, boys,” he said. “Time’s a wastin’ and we got trees beggin’ to be trimmed.”
He dropped a fistful of greenbacks on the table and led the way out, his crew following without complaint or comment. His son watched him go, then turned to Cork.
“He doesn’t mean most of what he says. Buck’s ninety percent bluster.”
“And ten percent bullshit. Doesn’t leave much for a person to cozy up to, does it, Dave?”
Reinhardt said nothing more. He headed outside, following where his father had gone. Cork turned back to the counter. “Johnny, mind putting this coffee in a cup to go?”
