Willie stood with his back to a wall where one of Winona’s exotic icons hung, a ceramic mask, a grotesque- looking thing with a mouth stretched in a huge, ruby-lipped oval, a silent scream of pain or maybe terror. What god it represented or what religious sensibility Cork hadn’t the faintest idea, but it eyed him wildly over Willie’s left shoulder and made Cork even more uncomfortable with what lay ahead.
“What do you mean?” Willie asked.
“Sam taught me and Jubal and your sister to hunt in the old way, but not you. He must have figured you couldn’t handle it.”
“He offered to teach me, but I had no interest in killing anything.”
“He must have taught you to track though. You sure know how to stalk an animal with a camera.” Cork nodded toward the photograph of the moose at sunset.
“He taught me,” Willie admitted.
“So. Was it Winona who taught you how to shoot an arrow? Or was that your good friend Isaiah Broom?”
Willie frowned at him but didn’t reply.
“The man who killed the chimook on the ridge above Trickster’s Point and then killed Jubal Little left an odd trail,” Cork explained. “The tracks were a bit awkward. The official thinking in the investigation is that the killer had been drinking to build his courage. Maybe. But if you ask me, it would be awfully hard for a drunk man to stalk anything quietly. So I’ve been thinking about a different kind of man. About a man who’s walked a little awkwardly all his life and who knows how to compensate. About a man who, despite all the challenges against him, can stalk wild animals and get close enough for remarkable photographs.”
Willie was as speechless as the screaming mask at his back.
“I’m willing to bet that, when I tell the sheriff’s investigators to compare your fingerprints with those on the arrow through the John Doe’s eye, they’ll get a match. I don’t know how you acquired the skill, Willie, but I’m sure you can shoot a hunting arrow as well as I can. Hell, from what I’ve seen of you over all these years, I’m willing to bet you can probably shoot better.”
“Why are you here?” Willie finally asked.
“Believe it or not,” Cork replied, “it’s love that brings me.”
CHAPTER 39
Willie said, “I need to sit down.” Ineedasidon. He dropped into an easy chair, collapsed there like an emptied sack.
Cork sat on the small sofa, facing him. “I have to ask you some questions, Willie.”
“Ask,” Willie said in a dead voice.
“I found blood in the bathroom. It’s Winona’s blood, isn’t it?”
Willie looked at Cork a long time and finally nodded.
Cork said, “At first, I figured maybe she’d been hurt, but not too badly since you talked to her last night while Camilla Little and I were at your cabin, and she didn’t say anything. But I’ve been thinking about that call. You made it. I heard only your end of the conversation. It could have been anybody on the other end of the line. Or nobody.” Cork waited a couple of breaths, then said, “Winona tried to kill herself, didn’t she, Willie? Cut her wrists, am I right?”
Willie made no response, neither spoke nor gestured, just sat like a stunned man, mute and staring.
“She’s gone, just like after all the other times Jubal left her,” Cork went on. “Only this time, Jubal left her for good. And I’m thinking, Willie, that this time Winona may be gone for good.”
Willie didn’t respond immediately. First he studied Cork, who summoned everything Ojibwe in him and did his best to present an unreadable face. Then Willie’s eyes swept the room slowly, taking in all the odd things Winona had gathered over the years, all the exotic talismans. When his gaze finally returned to Cork, his expression was so full of grief that it was heartbreaking.
Willie’s words were more tortured than Cork could ever recall, and he had to strain to understand them. “He never loved her. He only needed her. He took and never gave back. He took everything from her, and then he took her life. She cut her wrists in the bathtub, but it was Jubal Little who killed her just as sure as if he’d put the knife in her hand.”
“You found her?”
“She called me. I’d never heard her so upset. I told her I’d be there. I told her I’d take care of her. But I was too late.”
“I’m sorry,” Cork said. And he was. He felt sorrow in every cell of his heart.
Willie stared at the floor. “I suppose I always knew this was how it would end. She always said Jubal would have to leave her someday. ‘For the mountaintop,’ she would say. As if that was all her life was about, sacrificing for Jubal Little.”
“Where is she?”
Willie gestured vaguely toward the main road, beyond which the woods began and ran north almost unbroken to Canada. “I buried her in a beautiful place. She will become the flowers and wild grass and trees.”
Cork sat forward, nearer to Willie, rested his arms on his knees, and said quietly, “I have to ask you about Jubal. Why the arrow? Was it to throw the blame on me?”
“An accident of circumstance,” Willie said, shaking his head. “I stole Isaiah’s bow and some of his arrows. He never locks his doors.”
“Isaiah taught you to shoot?”
“Yes.”
“So he knew it was you who killed Jubal Little. He was covering for you, not for Winona.”
“All my life, he’s been my friend. I would never have let them prosecute him for what I did.”
“How did you know we’d be at Trickster’s Point?”
“Winona. When she called me, she was rambling, all over the place, not making much sense, but it was one of the things she said.”
“And you decided to kill him. Revenge?”
Again he shook his head. “Justice. He killed Winona. He was going to betray the Anishinaabeg and Mother Earth. I killed him before he could do these things.”
We kill to protect what we love, Cork thought. And sometimes in the name of justice.
“Tell me about the man on the ridge,” he said.
Willie seemed puzzled at that. “I went early to get there ahead of you. I found his trail when I came up the back of the ridge, and I followed it.”
“Just a hunter in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Cork said. “So you killed him?”
“No. Not just a hunter. Or not a hunter of deer anyway. He was hunting you.”
That made Cork sit up. “Me? How do you know that?”
“I came up the ridge quietly. God bless Sam Winter Moon and all he taught me. The hunter didn’t see me. He was lying on the ground, sighting his rifle. You and Jubal had just landed your canoe. Jubal had walked away, but you were still on the shore. Easy for me to see that it wasn’t Jubal the man was taking a bead on.”
“Me?” Cork said, trying to make sense of it.
“I’d brought three arrows that Isaiah had made. I grabbed one, nocked it, and got ready to shoot if I had to. When I was maybe thirty feet away, I called to him. He was on his stomach, and he rolled to his back, sat up, and brought his rifle with him. He didn’t pause, not for an instant. He jammed the rifle butt to his shoulder, and it was clear he was going to shoot me. So I let the arrow fly.”
“You killed him instantly,” Cork said. “A perfect shot.”
“I didn’t think of it that way. I thought of it as a necessary shot. And a tragic one.” He looked sad and troubled. “I discovered that killing takes two lives. The moment it was done, my life, as I knew it, was gone.” He took a breath and finished. “There was no turning back, so I went ahead with what I’d come there to do.”
Willie closed his eyes and breathed deeply. When he looked again at Cork, he seemed resigned. “You’re going to tell them the truth?”
