Rhiannon was or what part she played in all this and why she was important and threatening enough to put Cork and everyone he loved in imminent danger.
Rainy said, “You told me that a lot of what you do is just turn over rocks to see what’s there. What rocks are left to turn over, Cork?”
“What I really ought to do is track down Winona. It would be best if I could talk to her in person. But I keep hoping she’ll come out of hiding on her own. Even if she doesn’t talk to me, maybe she’ll go to Henry.”
“And then you’ll pump my uncle for answers.” It was a statement, not a judgment.
“Henry?” Cork laughed. “I could put your uncle on the rack and tear his arms out of their sockets, and he still wouldn’t tell me something he didn’t want me to know.”
They left together, and he walked Rainy to her Jeep. She would drive back toward Crow Point, park on an old logging road that ended a couple of miles from her cabin, and walk the rest of the way from there, a Duluth pack full of supplies on her back.
“I’d love to have you come home with me,” she told him as they stood together under the heavy overcast.
He shook his head. “Miles to go before I sleep.”
She put her hand to his face. Her palm was warm against his cold cheek. “You could use a vacation.”
“What I need is a good long lie-down in your arms. And a few more answers.”
He kissed her and stood watching as she drove away.
Then he turned back to all the miles still ahead of him before he slept.
CHAPTER 35
The bullet hole in his windshield reminded Cork of a spider with a dozen legs too many, and as he drove back toward Aurora the wind blew through, cold and with an eerie whistle. He thought about the shot Nick Jaeger had fired at him. To protect his sister, Nick had said. To protect something he loved.
What was it that the person who’d murdered Jubal had been protecting? What was it they loved enough to kill for, twice? What did Lester Bigby love that much? His investment? His father? Or was it his brother, an old love whose loss had lain festering in his heart for decades and then exploded in a tragic mess? Or maybe it wasn’t just one of these things but all of them together, braided in a thick rope of confused emotions that bound him to an inevitable end.
An inevitable end. The phrase sounded familiar to Cork, but why? Then he remembered. He realized those had been Jubal’s words, or nearly, spoken on the day that Cork had put in place the final stone in the wall that had been building between them for years. They’d been said in the late spring, just after Jubal had publicly announced his intention to run for governor and put forward his platform.
Politics, from the beginning, had agreed with Jubal Little. He was a natural leader, and even men and women who’d been in the political arena far longer than he found themselves falling in behind him. The mix of his message- fiscal conservatism and social responsibility-found a following in Washington, among centrists on both sides of the aisle, not just because Jubal spoke his platform so well but because of the way he conducted himself, with a Teddy Roosevelt kind of diplomacy. He was charming as hell, but in his eyes, his voice, his bearing, he carried a club, the threat of someone who knew how to wield power, the understanding that he was not a man to be crossed.
From the isolation of the deep woods that surrounded Aurora, Minnesota, Cork had watched his friend’s rise. And although from the outside Jubal seemed unchanged, something on the inside, Cork knew, was being transformed. The seed for what Jubal was becoming had always been there, but it had been nourished by circumstance, and the vision and tending of Winona Crane, and the money and ambition of the Jaegers. Cork wasn’t certain that Jubal really believed in any ideals, believed in anything he’d have sacrificed his life for. What Jubal believed in was the rightness of his own being. He believed himself to be the chosen one, and nobody and nothing could stand in the way of his destiny.
But Cork had tried to do just that. In spring, when he’d heard Jubal’s gubernatorial platform and, like many Ojibwe and residents of the Arrowhead, had felt stunned and betrayed, he’d summoned his friend north with a cryptic threat. They’d gone fishing, an excuse for them to be alone because Cork had insisted on it, in order to get away from the reporters and the photographers. Jubal’s people had spun it as an outing with the candidate’s oldest friend. Cork had thought, Whatever.
On Iron Lake, far from the eyes and ears of the public, Cork had laid it out.
“I don’t understand what you’re doing, Jubal. You’re selling out the Ojibwe. You’re selling out the North Country.”
“No, I’m buying back Minnesota,” Jubal replied, casting easily and watching his lure plop into the mirror that was the lake that day.
“Sulfide mining? That’s part of the price tag? Jubal, are you crazy?”
“I’ve looked at the impact studies. It can be done safely.”
“On paper maybe. Have you read the reports from the areas where it’s been tried? Ecological disasters, Jubal.”
“You got a nibble,” Jubal said, nodding toward Cork’s line.
“To hell with the fishing.” Cork threw down his rod. It hit the bottom of the boat with a sound like a thin bone cracking. “And the casinos? You build those and it’ll be just like in the old days when white men shot all the buffalo.”
“The studies show that there’s plenty of interest to support both state-run casinos and Indian gaming. Your vision is far too narrow, Cork,” Jubal said, as if lecturing a schoolboy. “You think of Tamarack County, I think of all of Minnesota. Like so many shortsighted people, you want to have things but without sacrifice. You need someone like me to make the hard decisions, the ones you can’t make on your own, the decisions about who gets what and how. What you need, and everyone like you, is someone who’s willing to do what you can’t bring yourself to do.”
The sun was brilliant that day, and Jubal, against the sky, slowly reeling in his line, looked absolutely imperious.
“Christ,” Cork said. “Who are you, Jubal? I don’t know you anymore.”
Jubal leveled on him a look that put ice water in Cork’s blood. “Did you ever? Really?” He held Cork’s gaze, a cobra mesmerizing his prey, then he said, “Why are we out here, Cork? What is it you have to say to me?”
“Politics have changed you, Jubal.”
“Politics bring out both the best and the worst in people. And you want to know something? Sometimes they’re the same thing.”
“You have an answer for everything, don’t you? Well how about this? I know your secrets.”
Jubal visibly relaxed, as if, with everything in the open, he understood his enemy and was confident that he was equal to the challenge.
“Secrets? You mean me and Winona?”
“That’s one.”
Jubal shrugged. “It would be inconvenient if the media found out about my friendship with Winona, but not fatal to my campaign. Camilla’s always known and understood. You said secrets. What else?”
Cork picked up the final stone and mortared it into place. “Trickster’s Point.”
Jubal didn’t seem surprised. “A long time ago. And you have no proof.”
“I don’t need to prove anything. An accusation of murder would be enough in itself, I imagine.”
“I could always say that you were the one who pushed Donner Bigby to his death.”
“Of course you could. But then you’d be guilty of covering up a murder. Almost as horrific to voters, I imagine. Either way, it would kill you politically.”
Jubal had gradually reeled in the last of his line. The lure came out of the lake, a walleye flicker shad, shiny in the sunlight, water falling from the barbs into a quiet so profound that Cork could hear the dull patter of the drops on the boat gunwale. Jubal carefully laid down his rod and said, “Blackmail?”
“You told me once that in politics it’s called ‘leverage.’”
Jubal looked toward the shore, toward the gathering of homes and shops and schools that formed Aurora. Sam’s Place was visible, small against the broad scatter of the town. And Cork was wondering if Jubal might be
