“Had to work myself up for it.”
Which didn’t sound encouraging to Cork. He thought that if Yates pulled a gun from his coat-maybe that Beretta he’d offered Cork earlier-he’d dash behind the Escalade and head for the darkness of the woods that lined the road. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was something.
“Okay, you’ve got me now,” Cork said.
“What’s the word?”
“Rhiannon,” Yates said. Only he didn’t say the word in a normal way. He used the voice of the Devil. He studied Cork and seemed confused at Cork’s lack of surprise. “You knew it was me?”
Cork didn’t answer that one. Instead he said simply, “Why, Kenny?”
“What do you know about Rhiannon?”
“Everything.”
Yates nodded, as if what he already suspected had just been confirmed. His shoulders sagged, but his hands stayed in his pockets. “That night you first met with the Jaegers, after you left, I heard Camilla ask her brothers about the name. She said you’d run it by her. I panicked, thought you were onto Jubal’s dirty little secret.”
“You knew?”
“I’ve worked for the Littles for nearly five years. Each of those years, on the second day of October, Jubal got shitfaced. He’d have me drive him out into the country somewhere, always some isolated rural place, and he’d go off alone with a bottle of Kentucky bourbon and drink himself into a stupor. If he didn’t go far enough, I’d hear him wailing something awful. Eventually I’d gather him up and bring him home.”
“He told you about Rhiannon?”
“He confessed to me once, like I was a priest or something. Told me how he should have been there, how he should have made certain that little child had the right care, how he’d buried her in the woods, unbaptized, her grave unmarked. He asked me to pray for him.”
“Did he remember telling you these things?”
“Never. Jubal liked his Kentucky bourbon, but I never saw him that drunk except on that one day every year. Jubal shouldered a shitload of guilt, but his little baby, she was more than he could bear.”
“Why the threats, Kenny? Jubal’s dead. The truth can’t hurt him.”
“Not him. Camilla. Folks, they’d understand a man having another woman on the side, forget about it eventually. Happens all the time. But what he did with that poor baby, nobody’s going to forget or forgive. Jubal’s gone, but Camilla’d have to live with the way people looked at her, married to a man like that.”
We kill to protect the things we love, Cork thought.
“Why are you telling me this, Kenny?”
Yates slowly withdrew his hands from his pockets. Cork tensed, then was relieved to see that they were empty.
“Because I didn’t know you before. What I know now is that you’re a decent man, and I don’t want you worrying about your family. I’m ashamed of what I did to you. So go on and do whatever you’ve got to do. Bring charges, tell Camilla the truth, it’s up to you.”
“I ought to just coldcock you.”
“You go right ahead.” Yates braced but made no move to protect himself.
Cork said, “But I guess I understand.”
Yates relaxed. “Hoped you would. So, you going to tell her?”
“I don’t know, Kenny. What good would it do? Jubal’s dead. Winona’s dead. Seems best to let that secret die with them.”
“See? Knew I could trust you to do the right thing.”
“I don’t know that it’s right. But it’s something I can live with.”
Yates walked across the distance that had separated them and put out his big hand. “Been a pleasure getting to know you.”
Cork took the offered hand. “Likewise.”
Yates nodded toward the Land Rover. “I’ll let you get on with things now. I’m guessing you still have places to go. And me, I need to get back to Camilla.”
When Yates left, Cork stood alone on the highway, relieved. He called home, told Jenny that Cy’s tour of duty was over, and that the danger was past. He didn’t explain, just said, “I think we’re nearing the end of the road on this one.”
“Home late?”
“Probably.”
“I’ll leave a light on,” she promised.
CHAPTER 41
C ork had seen optical illusions created in such a way that, when you looked at the image, at first you saw one thing, but if you stared at it long enough, or from a different angle, you saw another image entirely. After he left Kenny Yates, as he drove back into Aurora, he realized that’s how it was with what had occurred at Trickster’s Point.
He turned on his cell phone, called ahead to the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department, and made a suggestion to Ed Larson. When he arrived, he found Larson, Sheriff Marsha Dross, and BCA Agent Phil Holter gathered in Dross’s office.
“Well?” he asked as he headed to the chair they’d left empty for him.
“You were right,” Larson replied. “The other set of prints on the flyer we took from the John Doe’s car belonged to Jubal Little. How did you know?”
Cork took off his leather jacket, hung it on the chair back, and sat down. “I realized we were all looking at the man on the ridge as if he and whoever murdered Jubal were connected. When Stephen first suggested that possibility, it seemed natural. The killer and his backup. To have two men up there with no relationship to each other seemed too enormous a coincidence. But coincidence it was. When I understood that, I understood things in a different way, although largely because I knew something no one else did.”
“And that was?” Holter said, obviously wanting to be able to write off as nonsense whatever it was Cork was going to say.
“That when Jubal was eighteen, he murdered someone.”
This clearly hit them all with shocking effect. Their stares went owl-eye huge, and they seemed dumbfounded. So Cork told them what had happened at Trickster’s Point the day Donner Bigby died.
When Cork finished, Holter asked, “You knew all along Little had killed that kid?”
“Not when it happened. I bought the story Jubal told me. Years later, he told me the truth. And not long ago, I threatened to use what I knew against him.” He turned to Dross. “You asked me what Jubal and I argued about the morning before he died. That was it. Jubal pretty much demanded to know if I still planned to use Donner Bigby against him. I told him that if he won the election and went ahead with the mining and the casinos, I would. He tried to argue me out of it. I wouldn’t budge. He repeated something he’d said to me once before. My end was my own doing. I didn’t understand then, but it’s obvious to me now. He’d arranged to have me silenced.”
“You really believe that?” Holter asked.
“Jubal died thinking I’d shot that arrow into his heart. He recognized my fletching pattern. He thought I’d done it deliberately. I didn’t try to argue with him, what was the point? At the end, he told me, with a grudging kind of respect, that I’d finally bested him. Bested him in what way, I had no idea. Now I get it. He thought that somehow I knew he was planning to kill me, and I simply struck first. It was what he would have done in my place.”
Holter said, “You’re saying that he arranged for the John Doe to kill you and gave him your flyer so that the guy would know what you looked like? Is that it?”
“Jubal chose Trickster’s Point. He told me he wanted to go back where it all began, to make our peace there, with each other and with the past. He said Winona had advised him it would be a good thing to do. Do you remember, Ed, when you interviewed me at the start of all this, and I told you that what I was hunting wasn’t deer
