entered the tiny clearing.
The man looked up, startled.
“Who are you?” Cork demanded.
“Officer John Berglund. U.S. Border Patrol.” He reached inside his vest and brought out ID. “Who are you?”
“Cork O’Connor.”
Berglund, who’d looked grim and official until then, smiled, as if the name was not unfamiliar to him. He appeared to be in his late fifties, medium height and weight, black-rimmed glasses, a friendly face. But there was something penetrating about his eyes, as if he knew things about you that you’d rather nobody knew. He offered his hand.
Cork hesitated in accepting the offer. “What are you doing here?”
“Sheriff Dross asked me to come out and look things over.”
That explained a good deal. In law enforcement circles, the agents of the Border Patrol were legendary for their tracking ability. Cork finally shook the man’s hand, but by then Berglund was more interested in the dead guy at Cork’s back.
“What’s going on?” the agent asked. It was a true question, no hint of an accusation.
“Found him here like this,” Cork replied.
Berglund walked to the corpse, knelt, and while he studied it, said, “I saw evidence of several people climbing that ridge. I imagine you were one of them.”
“And my son,” Cork replied. “When we found the body, I sent him back to call the sheriff’s department.”
“This man’s been dead quite a while. Think he came up the ridge, too?”
“My guess would be no.”
“What, then? A hunter who found himself at the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“If he’s a hunter,” Cork said, “where’s his blaze orange?”
Minnesota law required that anyone not hunting from a stand wear blaze orange clothing above the waist as a safety precaution.
Berglund thought a moment. “Maybe already got his limit and was poaching?”
“Maybe. What exactly did Sheriff Dross ask you to do?”
Berglund stood up and scanned the ground around him. “Pretty much the same thing you’re probably here to do. She said she believed you weren’t responsible for Little’s death, and she wanted me to see if I could find any trace of someone else out here, someone you wouldn’t necessarily have seen. She said she thought her people had done a good job with the crime scene itself, but she wanted me to look a little farther afield.”
Marsha, God bless her, Cork thought.
Berglund began to walk slowly to the east, moving among the aspens, following the crown of the ridge, eyes sweeping earth covered with aspen leaves that had fallen in the weeks before and were soggy from the rain. He went out about fifty yards, then returned.
“Two men came in this way,” he said. “Only one went back.”
“Did they come together?”
“Can’t tell.”
“Think you can follow the trail far enough to figure out how they approached Trickster’s Point?”
“As I understand it, there’s just the one Forest Service trail, and that’s the one I took from the trailhead back at the county road. Saw evidence of foot traffic along the way, but nothing that appeared recent. How’d you get here?”
“Canoed across the lake. It’s the shortest route.”
Berglund nodded. “We might be able to assume that this man and whoever killed him both approached the area in a way that assured they wouldn’t be seen.”
“Can you confirm it?”
Berglund considered. “I guess I can try. You want in on this?”
Cork shook his head. “I’m going to stay with the body, make sure it isn’t disturbed.”
Berglund shrugged as if to say “Whatever,” turned his back, and began to move east along the ridge crown, his nose aimed toward the ground like that of a bloodhound.
Once again, Cork was left alone with the dead and in spitting distance of Trickster’s Point.
The first time he’d been in that situation, he was just shy of seventeen. Not much older than Stephen was now.
It was early October, deep into football season. The Aurora High Wolves were at the top of their division that year, taken there mostly by the strong arm and reliable leadership of Jubal Little. Talk of a state title was on everyone’s lips. But no team is built entirely on one man, and that year there were several fine players, among them Cork O’Connor, who was a junior and played end, and Donner Bigby-Bigs-in his senior year, at fullback. Between Jubal and Bigs there was no love lost. Since that first meeting in Grant Park when Jubal had stepped in to thwart Bigby’s cruelty toward Willie Crane, there’d been a kind of charge building between them, like a summer storm you knew was on the way, inevitable, and even though it was still beyond the horizon, you could feel the buzz of the electricity everywhere around you. On the football field, Jubal was all business and didn’t appear to let his own feelings toward Bigs get in the way of what was best for the team. Bigs wasn’t so magnanimous; when a pass went awry or a play call was questionable, he was given to deriding his quarterback. If Donner Bigby hadn’t been an unstoppable locomotive in the backfield, his mouth might have got him benched for much of the season.
The homecoming game that year was against the Virginia High School Blue Devils, a team whose win record was only one game back of Aurora’s. It was played in a downpour, on a field that was more mud than grass. The wet conditions seriously hampered both Jubal’s accuracy in passing and his receivers’ ability to hold on to the ball. So the game was played mostly on the ground and was dominated by the rhino charges of Donner Bigby. As the fourth quarter neared its end, the score was tied at 13–13. The Blue Devils had the ball and had pushed deep into Wolves territory. The drive stalled on the twenty-two-yard line, and the Blue Devils lined up for a field goal attempt. The kick went wide to the right. All that remained was for the Wolves to run out the clock-five or six running plays, or three and a good long punt-and the game would end in a tie, with Aurora’s lead in the division secure.
In the huddle, Jubal Little called a fullback sweep right. The play was good for a short gain. He called a gut left. Bigs plowed ahead for four yards on that one. The team huddled. Their jerseys, once a glorious white and gold, were the color of pig slop and hung wet and heavy against their pads. Their bare legs and arms were so mud- crusted that you couldn’t see the color of their skin or the bruising there. The air was chill, and their huffed breaths clouded the center of the circle that their bodies, shoulder pad against shoulder pad, had formed.
Jubal looked them over. His eyes were the color of his muddied uniform, and the whites of them, under the glare of the field lights, seemed to glow. He said, “You want to settle for a tie? Or do you want to beat these bastards?”
“I want to grind their nuts under my cleats,” Bigs said without hesitation. “Just give me the ball.”
“We all together on this?” Jubal asked his teammates.
“Yeah,” they said and “You bet.”
Jubal’s eyes fell on Cork. “If I get it to you, can you hold on to it?”
“What are you doing?” Bigby said.
Cork’s heart was stomping around in his chest, and he couldn’t swallow, nor could he speak. But he could still move, and he gave Jubal a decisive nod.
“Little, I’m telling you-” Bigs began.
“Ends, five and out. Quick right fake, on two,” Jubal called. “Let’s go.”
They broke from the huddle. Cork saw the Blue Devils crowding the line of scrimmage, expecting a run, but their safeties were in a prevent formation, defending against the long pass. The area between, as Jubal had probably expected, was wide open. Cork set himself on the line, drier of mouth than he’d ever remembered. Jubal crouched under center and called out the count. The ball was snapped, and Cork gave a quick head fake to the end who guarded him, then broke toward the sideline. He looked back over his right shoulder, just in time to see the ball spiral toward him with a grace he would never forget. He opened his palms like cradles, and then it was in his hands, and he wrapped his arms around it and locked it against his chest and turned up-field. He saw the two safeties moving to intercept him and could sense, galloping hard at his back, the end who, for a fateful fraction of a
