thinking of Sam Winter Moon, who’d taught them both important lessons about stalking, and about killing deer, and ultimately, about what it was to be a decent man in a difficult world. Cork thought Sam might be disappointed that he’d stalked and attacked Jubal in such a cowardly way, but it was done, and he waited.
Jubal finally turned his gaze on Cork, who found himself startled by what he beheld. It was as if Jubal’s size had grown suddenly even more remarkable, as if the shadow he cast had tripled and turned unfathomably dark and had swallowed Cork whole.
“I’ve warned you before,” Jubal said. “Never try to take something from me. I won’t warn you again. You can’t beat me. You never could. If you try, I won’t be responsible for what happens. Your end is your own doing.”
“My end?”
“Your end is inevitable. One way or another, you yield.”
“I’m not backing down, Jubal.”
“In that case,” Jubal said with a slight shrug, “I’ll have to break you.”
He stated it simply, as if it were a minor fact of life, as if he and Cork had no history, as if they’d never loved each other as brothers.
Cork, who’d always given in to Jubal, sometimes out of friendship and sometimes out of fear, stood his ground and said, “Bring it on.”
Outside Allouette, after he’d left Rainy, Cork pulled into Winona’s drive and parked at her house. Although he risked being seen, he wanted another look inside, this time in daylight and without Camilla Little distracting him with screams.
He disconnected his cell phone from the car charger and slipped it into the little holster on his belt. He got out and checked the garage. Empty. He knocked on the front door. No answer. He went inside, where the heat was on, but only enough to keep the cold at bay. He wandered to the kitchen and discovered that the broken glass from the frame Camilla had shattered the night before had been cleaned up. In the bedroom, he found the bed neatly made. In the bathroom, there were clean towels hanging on the rack and the bloodied towels in the hamper were gone. It was clear to him that Winona Crane had returned, but she wasn’t there now. He wondered why she’d come back, and why she’d run again.
Then his eyes fell on the little table beside the claw-footed tub, with its candle and the portable CD player and the single CD case, all of which he’d seen the night before. Now he saw something he’d overlooked in the dark. He picked up the plastic CD case, which was empty. Along the edge, someone-Winona probably-had put a little strip of white tape and had written the title of the disc the case held: Fleetwood Mac. Cork lifted the top of the portable player. The CD was inside. He picked it up and read the label, the list of the tunes he remembered well: “Monday Morning,” “Warm Ways,” “Blue Letter.” At the fourth song, he stopped scanning. “Rhiannon.”
It was no coincidence. He was holding a key. He knew it absolutely. But he had no idea what door it opened. What was the connection between Rhiannon and Winona and Jubal? And why was it, apparently, such a deadly one?
He’d only just begun to consider this when his cell phone chirped. He pulled it from the little holster on his belt. Caller ID told him it was Lester Bigby.
“O’Connor, will you meet me?” Bigby asked as soon as Cork answered.
“Where?”
“At my resort complex. Something I want to say to you.”
“You can’t tell me over the phone?”
“You want to know who killed Jubal Little, you’ll come.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Cork said.
Bigby hung up without a word of good-bye.
CHAPTER 36
The Crown Lake Resort was ten miles southwest of Aurora, nestled among rugged hills whose slopes were thick with pine trees and spruce and stands of aspens and birch. The shoreline was undeveloped because it had, for a very long time, belonged to the Arrowhead Mining Corporation. The mine, one of the smaller open pits on the Iron Range, had shut down operations more than a dozen years earlier, but Arrowhead Mining had held on to the property, until Lester Bigby made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. The resort had the lake all to itself. Which would have been perfect, except that, within the last year, a Canadian corporation had purchased mineral rights to land two miles east, from which they hoped to be given permission to extract base ore-copper-nickel and platinum. Sulfide mining would be the extraction process. Several streams ran through the mine area and emptied into Crown Lake. If the environmental watchdogs were right, the mining would eventually turn the water of the lake to sulfuric acid.
Cork drove his Land Rover down the single paved road, which had been built at the behest and expense of Lester Bigby. The road ended near the lakeshore, where an area had been cleared and preliminary construction on some buildings had begun. There was no activity at the moment, had been none for some time, not since news of the possibility of nearby sulfide mining had become public.
Lester Bigby’s Karmann Ghia was parked in tall, dead grass ten yards from the lake. Bigby sat on a big slab of gray rock that jutted into the lake. Cork parked next to the little car, got out, and walked onto the slab. Bigby had his back to Cork and was staring at the lake. Cork crossed the flat rock, which was tilted at a slight angle toward the water. As soon as he came abreast of Bigby, Cork saw the firearm in Bigby’s right hand. Ruger, his mind told him without being prodded, 22 caliber.
“Beautiful, don’t you think?” Bigby said.
“Lovely,” Cork replied, not taking his eyes off the Ruger.
“You ski?”
“No.”
“Me neither. But a lot of people in Minnesota do. That slope over there would have held one of the best runs in the state.”
“Would have?”
“It’s not going to happen. Ever.” He nudged the barrel of the handgun in Cork’s direction. “Sit down.” An order, not an invitation.
Cork sat. The clouds hung heavy over the hills and the lake. There was a slight breeze across the water, a cool November wind that already presaged winter, and Cork felt the chill of it against his face. The other chill he felt came from the threat in Bigby’s hand.
“What are you going to leave your kids, O’Connor?”
“A lot of good memories, and Sam’s Place,” he said without hesitation.
Bigby nodded. “Me, I was going to leave my son this. Do you know what I have to leave him now? Nothing. I’ve lost everything.”
“Jubal’s dead. The polls are saying our governor will be re-elected. Champion of the environment.”
“As long as there’s money to be made in the ground up here, the risk will always be there. If it wasn’t Jubal Little, it would have been someone else. Those people, they always find a way to get what they want.”
“I’m sorry.”
“All my promised backers have pulled out. I put another mortgage on my house. The third. Sold all my stocks and bonds a while ago. Borrowed against my life insurance. None of it enough to save this dream. You want to know what I was doing on Saturday? I spent the day out here, planning for it to be my last day on earth. I was going to kill myself. I knew I couldn’t do it at home and have Emily and Lance find me there. I couldn’t do that to them. In the end, I couldn’t do it at all. Coward. Just like my father always said.”
“I don’t think so,” Cork offered.
“You don’t know me,” Bigby shot back with sudden viciousness.
“I know your father, and you’re nothing like him.”
“Is that so? You’re ready to believe I killed Jubal Little.” He looked at Cork with a kind of grim curiosity. “Why
