They headed back inside, and as soon as they rejoined the officers, Holter said, “I’d like you to come down to the sheriff’s department, O’Connor. I have a few questions I want to ask you.”
“Mind if I check in with my family first?”
“No, go right ahead.” Holter glanced at Papakee. “You’ll be accompanying your client, I imagine.”
“From here on, consider us joined at the hip, Phil.”
Holter gave a nod, almost dapper, as if welcoming the challenge of Papakee in the mix. He signaled to the agent who’d been standing in the driveway, and the man returned to his boxing of potential evidence.
Ed Larson said to Cork and Papakee, “We’ll see you down at the department, gentlemen,” then he and Holter left.
Inside the house, Cork found Jenny, Stephen, and Waaboo in the kitchen with Sheriff Marsha Dross. Dross had Waaboo on her lap. When Cork walked in, she looked up, and the smile that had been there dropped away.
“Hello, Cork,” she said.
Beyond the doorway that opened onto the rest of the house, Cork saw uniforms moving in the hallway that led to his office, and up the stairs that led to the bedrooms.
“Morning, Marsha.”
He worked at keeping his voice neutral. It was her job, he told himself, the job he’d once done and that he’d taught her to do. In her shoes, he’d have been forced to carry out the lawful search warrant. He might even have sat with the suspect’s grandchild on his lap. Still, the whole thing stuck in his craw.
“Everyone cooperating?” His eyes went to Jenny and Stephen.
“Everything’s fine, Dad.” Jenny smiled, pretty reasonably given the circumstances.
“Yeah,” Stephen agreed, though he didn’t really sound agreeable at all. “Except we still don’t know what they’re looking for or why they’re taking all our computer stuff.”
“They must have good reason, Stephen, or Judge Eide wouldn’t have signed the search warrant,” Cork told him.
“You mean like evidence that you had something to do with killing Mr. Little?”
“Is that it, Marsha?” Cork asked.
Dross handed Waaboo back to Jenny, scooted her chair from the table, and stood up. She spoke carefully. “I’m sure your father has told you that a lot of police investigation is done in order to eliminate possibilities. Nothing would please me more, Stephen, than to eliminate the possibility that your father was involved.”
“So that’s what you’re doing? Trying to prove he’s innocent?”
“What we’re doing is gathering evidence. It won’t be for us to determine anyone’s guilt or innocence. That’s what juries are for.”
Stephen looked as if he was about to argue, but Cork cut him off. “I need to go down to the sheriff’s department for a little while. You guys do everything you’re asked, okay?”
“Sure,” Stephen said, but it was clear he had his reservations.
Cork sat in the interview room where Larson had questioned him following Jubal Little’s death. Larson was there again, but this time it was Agent Phil Holter asking the questions, while Larson sat silent in a corner. Leon Papakee was there as well. Holter had stalled awhile in the beginning, and Cork wondered if Larson had insisted that he hold off until Dross returned from the house on Gooseberry Lane and could observe from the adjoining room where the proceedings were being recorded.
“So,” Holter continued, pressing Cork about the man he and Stephen had found dead on the ridge above Trickster’s Point, “you’d never seen that man before you stumbled on his body?”
“That’s right.”
“But you’ve seen this before.”
From an evidence envelope, Holter pulled a familiar flyer that had the name of Cork’s one-man security firm. It contained a listing of the kinds of jobs he would do. And contact information. In the lower right-hand corner there was a photograph of Cork that made him look like the kind of guy who not only would be able to see to your investigative needs but also could be relied on to keep to himself the secrets he might learn about you in the process. Cork had been pretty happy with that particular shot.
“Sure. I had those printed years ago, when I first hung out my shingle as a P.I.”
“What about this?”
Holter turned the flyer over. Printed on the other side was a contour map of the area around Trickster’s Point, taken from a U.S. Forest Service website. Below the map were instructions on how to find the logging road where the man ID’d as William Graham Chester had parked his vehicle, and the easiest route from there to the ridge overlooking Trickster’s Point.
“We found this in the glove box of Chester’s rental. It has your fingerprints, Chester’s fingerprints, and a set of prints we haven’t identified yet.”
“I put those flyers up all over Tamarack County. In every bar and Laundromat and grocery store with a bulletin board. Anybody could have got hold of this.”
Holter returned the flyer to the evidence envelope and frowned a moment, deep in thought. “You’ve told us that you and Little canoed from that landing on the eastern end of Lake Nanaboozhoo to Trickster’s Point. Is that still your story?”
“Agent Holter, we’re not happy with that particular phrasing. The word story suggests invention. What my client has told you is the truth.”
“I’m just wondering, Counselor, if maybe your client didn’t drop Little at Trickster’s Point and then paddle down the shoreline a mile or so.”
Cork said, “You mean to the landing spot Officer Berglund from the Border Patrol found, where someone walked in and joined the dead man? That wasn’t me, Holter. Jubal and I landed together.”
“And then split up? Was that a usual procedure when you hunted together?”
“Sometimes we’d separate because it gave us a better chance of coming across a deer trail to follow. Once we’d found something, we’d hook back up and hunt together. But on Saturday, we didn’t really split up. Jubal just went ahead of me while I stowed the paddles with the canoe.” Cork shifted in his chair and looked toward Larson, who’d been silent so far. “Have you followed up on this William Chester? Do you know anything about him?”
Larson spoke toward the ceiling light that masked the recording equipment. “Would you turn everything off, please.”
Dross’s voice came disembodied into the room. “You want us to stop recording?”
“Yes.” Then Larson said quietly to Papakee, “Counselor, I’d like to speak with your client for a few minutes, alone and off the record.”
“I don’t think-” Papakee began.
Cork cut him off. “I’m okay with it, Leon.”
“Hell, I’m not,” Holter blurted.
“You can lodge a complaint with Sheriff Dross if you’d like, Phil, but I’m going to talk with Cork, and I’m going to talk with him alone.”
Papakee gave Cork a clear look of warning, then shrugged and said, “I’ll be outside.”
Holter said, “You rural guys, you fuck everything up.”
Larson said, “Out, Agent Holter. I’ll let you know when you can come back in.”
When they were alone, Larson said, “William Graham Chester is a phony name. The driver’s license was a fake. Our guy’s still a John Doe.”
“What about the registration on the vehicle he drove out there?” Cork asked.
“A rental. He used a bogus credit card. We’ve run his fingerprints through AFIS. Nothing. This guy seems professional, and good enough that he’s been able to stay below the legal radar.” Larson shook his head. “Off the record, I think you’re being set up, Cork. But there may be some hope. We got prints off the arrow that killed the John Doe. They’re not yours.”
“But you don’t have a match on those either?”
“Not yet. They definitely don’t belong to anyone we’re currently looking at.” Larson took off his glasses, leaned to Cork confidentially, and said in a low voice, “Do you have any idea who would want Jubal dead and who would want you to take the fall for it?”
