bowl of chicken wild rice soup and a cup of coffee at the Mocha Moose. He glanced at the headline on that day’s copy of the Duluth News Tribune, which had been left on one of the tables. The dam collapse was the lead. The death toll in Colorado was rising dramatically. The pictures of the towns in the canyon below the dam were devastating, all rubble and mud. Jubal Little was still front-page news, but his death, which was still officially being called a hunting accident, had taken a backseat to the greater loss. Cork wondered how Jubal would have felt about that.
He called home and talked with Jenny and then with Cy Borkman, who was breathing hard from wrestling with little Waaboo. “It’s under control here, Cork,” Cy told him, wheezing a bit. “No reporters. No visible threats. But I’m not leaving until I see you walk in the door.”
“Thanks, Cy. I owe you.”
“It’s what friends do,” Cy said.
A simple understanding, Cork thought, but one that Jubal Little had forgotten long ago.
He left the Mocha Moose. It was dark outside. The moon was up in the eastern sky, and the air was cool and damp enough that he could see the silver clouds his breath made when he exhaled. As he opened the door of his Land Rover, his cell phone rang.
“Hello, Cork. This is Camilla Little. I need your help. I want to talk to Winona Crane.”
CHAPTER 29
The Escalade was parked in front of the Tamarack County courthouse. When Cork pulled up behind it, Kenny Yates stepped from the driver’s side to meet him. The man was dressed in black and, under the streetlamp, looked like the kind of huge form that might emerge from the closet in a child’s nightmare.
“Couldn’t do this at Jubal’s place?” Cork asked.
“I just drive,” Yates said. “I don’t ask.”
He opened the back door, Camilla Little swung her long legs into the light on the street, and Yates offered his hand to help her out. She seemed unsteady, maybe a little drunk.
“Thank you, Kenny.”
“No problem.” Yates spoke in a voice that was gentle and assuring.
Cork walked her to the passenger side of his Land Rover and helped her in. As he came back around, he saw that Yates had moved forward to study the hole in the windshield.
“We heard about this,” Yates said.
Cork didn’t ask how they’d heard. He figured the Jaegers were probably keyed in to every aspect of the investigation, through one of Holter’s people or someone in the sheriff’s department. There weren’t many doors that money and political power couldn’t open.
“I told Mrs. Little that I’m real uncomfortable with this,” Yates said. “I’d like to follow you, if that’s all right.”
Cork shook his head. “Where we’re going, I’d rather go alone.”
Yates reached inside his leather jacket and drew out a small handgun, a Beretta Tomcat. He held it out toward Cork. “Jubal told me you don’t carry. I’d rather you did on this trip.”
Once again Cork gave his head a shake. “We’ll be fine.”
The pupils of Yates’s eyes were as dark as bullet holes. “Anything happens to her, I’ll hold you personally responsible.”
“That’ll make two of us,” Cork said.
“I’ll be waiting right here,” Yates told him.
“We may be a while.”
“I said I’ll be waiting.”
Cork got into his Land Rover and drove away.
Camilla stared ahead, offering him mostly profile, lit by streetlamps, in light, then in shadow. Her hands lay clasped on her lap in a way that made it clear to Cork how pensive she was. That and her silence. Which he didn’t mind. It was, after all, Winona Crane to whom she wanted to speak.
In his own mind, he remarked again on what a lovely woman she was, in a grand and stately way. She’d been raised in the political arena, trained in the etiquette of diplomacy and the nuance of statesmanship. She’d attended National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., along with the daughters of presidents and diplomats. For college she’d chosen Mills, and law school at Stanford, specializing in environmental issues. She’d been an attorney for the Nature Conservancy when she met Jubal Little at that cancer fund-raiser in Saint Paul. She had, as Jubal once told Cork, a brain, a body, and a beautifully broad view of the world. Which meant, apparently, that she understood about Winona Crane.
Jubal had also told Cork, on more than one occasion, that it was she who’d chosen him. Or more likely the Jaeger family who’d chosen him for her. He was big. He was handsome. He was articulate. He was Indian. And he was beloved. He was made to run for politics.
And the Jaegers were just the family to groom him for it.
Senator Arnold Jaeger desperately wanted a son to follow in his political footsteps. Except for the unfortunate legacy of his time aboard the USS Cole — a face that could have scared a badger-Alex Jaeger, with his military credentials, his political savvy, and his deep hunger to be a player in that world, would have been the perfect choice. His brother, Nick, wasn’t an option. He’d rather have been hunting polar bear or musk ox in Canada’s Northwest Territories than beating the bushes for votes in a congressional district. And Camilla, for all her intelligence, beauty, and legal knowledge, lacked an element that her father considered essential in being ultimately successful in the national political arena: a penis. Jubal had told Cork that Jaeger was fond of saying, “There will never be, in my lifetime, a woman elected to the White House. It’s unfair, yes, but it’s the truth. No matter how liberal they say they are, most voters, in the end, believe it takes balls to run this country.” So when his daughter began to be seen with Jubal Little, Senator Jaeger put a bull’s-eye on Jubal’s back and, in the end, bagged the man who would carry forward the Jaeger political flag.
Jubal won his first election-U.S. representative from the district that included Tamarack County, in which he maintained his official residence-by a landslide. He bought a luxurious town house in Georgetown. Camilla was usually in D.C., where she had a huge circle of friends from her childhood, or in the Twin Cities, where she had family. When Jubal came north to Tamarack County, unless he was campaigning, he came alone. It was always put out officially that he was up north to relax, to fish, to hunt, to enjoy the solitude of the great Northwoods. The truth, which Cork and very few others knew, was that, more often than not, he came because of Winona Crane.
“Does she know I’m coming?” Camilla asked.
“I called her brother. He relayed the message. Sure you want to do this?”
She looked ahead, into the dark of the long road to the rez. “I have to do this.”
Willie Crane’s cabin was lit from inside. Cork parked, the cabin door opened, and Willie stood silhouetted against the light. When Cork escorted Camilla to him, Willie said, with as much graciousness as his twisted speech would allow, “Boozhoo, Mrs. Little.” Bz’yooMizLil.
“Boozhoo,” she replied naturally. “Thank you for allowing me to come.”
Willie stepped back and let them in.
Every time Cork visited Willie Crane he was struck nearly dumb with wonder at the beauty of the photographs that hung on the walls. The wildlife shots were particularly amazing. Willie, with his clumsy gait, had somehow managed to photograph animals who spooked if you were within a mile of them and you breathed too hard. He caught them in poses so relaxed and so integrally a part of their surroundings that they might have existed in a world where humans or other predators never intruded. And maybe, in a way, that was true, at least as far as humans were concerned, because Willie Crane went deep in the Northwoods, far from any roads, to do much of his shooting. Cork figured that, in order to move such a distance and to do it quietly enough that he didn’t scare away the animal life, Willie had to walk agonizingly slow. But he also figured that, if Willie’s life had taught him anything, it was probably the virtue of patience.
Camilla scanned the cabin, and Cork could tell she was uncomfortable. Or maybe just nervous at the prospect
