“So?”
“If you were gone from Alice for a week, wouldn’t you call?”
“Sure.”
“So why didn’t Jacoby? And why didn’t she call him? I’m just wondering if we ought to look at that marriage. It’s an old adage but a good one that murder begins at home.”
“I’ll see what I can find out.” Larson adjusted his glasses and tapped the phone records in his hand. “He may not have talked to his wife, but Jacoby sure talked to a lot of other people. His office in Elmhurst. New York. Las Vegas. And where exactly is Kenosha, Wisconsin?”
“South of Milwaukee, on Lake Michigan. May be a casino there.”
“Makes sense,” Larson said. “He also made a lot of calls to members of the Reservation Business Committee. Have you had a chance to talk to them?”
“Nobody at length. But I will. I know Lizzie looks good for this right now, but we need to keep checking all the possibilities. Have you been able to get anything on Eddie Jacoby’s background?”
Larson took a notepad from his pocket. “I spoke with his boss at Starlight, a guy named Clayton. He said Jacoby’d been with them less than a year. I had the sense he wasn’t going to be with them much longer.”
“Why’s that?”
“He wasn’t representing Starlight well. Securing a contract with the Iron Lake Ojibwe was important for his career with the company.”
“If he was dealing with Stone, he had to be desperate.”
“Clayton said he hired him as a favor to Jacoby’s brother. I asked about his employment record. He worked a string of jobs before Starlight, none very long.”
“Dina told me he was into moviemaking for a while. Porn.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. Was he still into it when he was murdered?”
Cork shook his head. “Lost all his money, apparently.”
“I spoke at length with his family before they left. Jacoby was married, two kids. Lived in Lake Forest not far from his father. He wasn’t an easy son or sibling, I gather.”
“Anything specific?”
“According to them, only minor scrapes with the law, nothing serious.”
“You ask them about substance abuse?”
“Considering what we found in the glove box of his SUV, it was one of the first questions I asked. They claimed it was a surprise to them.”
“A surprise? I doubt he was just experimenting.”
“So did I. I checked for any criminal record. Nothing in Illinois. I called the Lake Forest police. They gave me nothing. But I can’t help thinking that for a guy with an appetite for drugs and beating up prostitutes, he seems to have a suspiciously clean record.”
“Maybe the Jacoby money has something to do with that. And maybe we need to check on him through a less official channel. I have a friend, a guy named Boomer Grabowski. We worked out of the same division when we were cops in Chicago. Boomer’s a private investigator now, a good one. I think I ought to give him a call, see what he can dig up on Eddie Jacoby. Hell, on all the Jacobys. It’ll cost us, but the budget’s already shot.”
“If you think it’ll help. And you’re the one who has to beg the Board of Commissioners for more money.”
There was a knock at the open door. It was Patsy.
“Call for Ed.”
“Put it through in here,” Larson said.
A moment later, Cork’s phone rang.
“Captain Larson,” Ed said. He listened. “I see.” He glanced at Cork, and something flared in his usual cool blue eyes. He took a pen from the desktop and jotted a couple of notes on the back of the top sheet of Jacoby’s phone record. “You’re certain?” He nodded at the answer. “I appreciate it. Thank you very much.” He hung up.
“What is it?” Cork said.
“BCA’s been helping us run the prints we took from the inside of Jacoby’s SUV. Got an interesting match on one of them.”
“No kidding. Who?”
“Lizzie Fineday.”
They rendezvoused at the opening to the narrow dirt road off County 17 that led to Stone’s cabin. Cork and Larson had come in the same vehicle, the Pathfinder. Morgan and Pender had been patrolling the eastern roads of Tamarack County and had been dispatched to accompany. Dina Willner was there, too.
“Stone’s going to see us coming a long way off. That’s all right. We have a suspect, and so a lawful reason to be here. He shouldn’t give us any resistance,” Cork said. “If he does, we take him down right away, cuff him, book him for interfering with the execution of a lawful order. Morgan, Pender, that’ll be your responsibility. Ed and I will conduct the search and apprehension of Lizzie Fineday. And, Dina, you’re here by invitation, and I’d like you to stay well back.” He lifted the back door of the Pathfinder and brought out a dark blue Kevlar vest with SHERIFF’S DEPT. printed in white letters across the back. He tossed it to her. “Wear this.”
She caught it and put it on.
“Everybody else armored up? Then let’s roll,” he said.
It was late afternoon, the air still, the woods quiet. They drove through a thick stand of aspen that smelled of leaves fallen, dried, crumbling to dust. Breaking from the trees, they followed the shoreline of the narrow lake. Sun glinted off the water in piercing arrows of light. At the far end, wood smoke rose from Stone’s cabin, straight and white as a feather. Behind it, like a prison wall, stood the gray ridge. Cork led the procession, his window down. There was no way to move quickly enough to surprise Stone. Cork couldn’t help thinking of the raid on the farmhouse in Carlton County, how badly things had ended. You never knew. That was the hell of it: even with routine procedures, things could go wrong. You tried to be careful, to consider all the options, choose the best approach, but so much was out of your hands, beyond your control. In the end, you made your choice and went in hoping. Praying never hurt, either.
“Movement in front of the cabin,” Larson said. He lifted a pair of Leitz binoculars to his eyes. “Stone.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Waving, it looks like.”
“At who?”
“Nobody I can see. Toward the ridge. Now he’s stopped. He’s looking this way. Son of a gun. He’s waving at us.”
“Us?”
“Looks that way. Wait.”
They kept moving, getting closer. Larson finally lowered the field glasses and laughed quietly.
“What?” Cork said.
“He’s not waving. He’s casting. He’s got a fly rod in his hand.”
They rounded the north end of the lake and climbed a rise to the cabin. Stone stood in front of his place, fifteen yards from the chopping block. He held the rod in his right hand and, with a deft snap of his wrist, flicked the line out again and again toward the chopping block. At his feet lay a zippered canvas bag long enough and wide enough to accommodate several rods fitted with reels. He paid no attention to the approaching vehicles.
Cork pulled up behind Stone’s Land Rover, which was parked in the shade of a paper birch. He got out and Larson did, too. The deputies halted farther back and exited their cruisers. Dina stayed in her Accord as Cork had asked.
“Afternoon, Byron,” Cork said.
“Sheriff.” Stone watched the thread of fishing line sail out. The end touched almost dead center on top of the chopping block. He wore olive jeans, a long-sleeved wool shirt also green but of a lighter shade, with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his powerful muscles. His black hair was tied back with a folded bandanna of gold and green. “Looks like D-day. What’s with all the troops?”
“We’re here for Lizzie.”
