35
At first light, the tracking dogs began sniffing the area around Stone’s cabin. Stone’s scent was everywhere, but the scent of Lizzie Fineday led straight through the trees, over the ridge that backed the cabin, to Bruno Lake. It was the first in a series of lakes that led deep into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
The dogs halted briefly at a large dock on the southeastern shore of the lake, deep in the shadow of the ridge. Cork and the others stood at the end of the dock, breathing hard from the fast hike over the ridge, puffing out clouds of vapor into the cold, damp air above Bruno Lake while the dogs went on, working the ground along the shoreline.
“What do you make of it?” Rutledge asked.
“Big dock,” Cork said. “There’s no access to Bruno except on foot or by canoe. Not the kind of traffic that would require a dock. I think this is for floatplanes.”
“For trafficking?” Larson said.
“That would sure be my guess.” Cork briefed Rutledge on the investigations his department had conducted earlier with the ATF and the DEA. “We never saw any sign of smuggling, probably because this ridge provides perfect cover. You can’t see the lake except from the air, and I’ll bet the ridge blocks the sound of a plane engine.”
The sun had risen enough to fire the far shoreline, and the mist on the water there looked like steam coming from a cauldron. In a stand of gnarled cedars fifty yards down the shore, one of the dogs began barking furiously.
Rutledge looked toward the cedars. “What’s all that ruckus about?”
As if in answer, Deputy Schilling called from the trees, “Cork, something here you ought to see.”
“What?”
“Looks like a grave.”
A faint trail had already been broken through the brush along the shore. Cork followed and near the end climbed over a fallen and rotting pine. He stepped into the cedars whose smell was sharp in the morning air. Orville Gratz, who’d brought the dogs, had pulled his hound back. The animal sat on its haunches, tongue hanging out, looking where Schilling looked, at a mound of rocks that had been piled in the middle of the cedars. The mound was two feet wide and five feet long, and looked as if it hadn’t been there very long.
“Lancelot followed the girl’s scent here,” Gratz said. He didn’t sound thrilled with the discovery.
Cork said to Schilling, “Get Cy over here with the Polaroid.”
For a minute, no one spoke. The other dogs were still moving along the shoreline, their barks punctuating the silence in the cedars. Then Rutledge said quietly, “The son of a bitch.”
Schilling brought Borkmann and the Polaroid.
“We need shots of that rock pile, Cy,” Cork said.
Borkmann was still sweating from the exertion of the climb over the ridge, but he positioned himself and shot from several angles.
“All right, let’s see what’s under there,” Cork said.
He approached the stones, bent, and began removing them carefully, piling them behind him. Rutledge joined him. Within a few minutes, they’d cleared the rocks away and had exposed a small area of newly dug earth. It was only a few feet long, however, much too small to accommodate a body fully laid out. Cork and Rutledge dug in the dirt with their hands, slowly clearing a shallow basin. A flash of blue appeared. Cork remembered that the last time he’d seen Lizzie Fineday in front of Stone’s cabin, blinking in the sun, she’d been wearing a sweater that same shade of blue. As they removed the soil, the sweater was revealed, but that was all. It quickly became clear that the indentation had been scooped only deep enough to hold Lizzie’s sweater. Below that, the ground was undisturbed. Rutledge stood up, the cardigan sweater hanging from his hand, rumpled and dirty.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“There’s something in the pocket,” Cork said.
“Anybody got a glove?”
“Here.” Schilling handed him one, leather.
Rutledge put it on and removed a folded slip of paper from the sweater pocket. He opened it. Cork looked over his shoulder and saw what was written.
48 hours.
“Mean anything?” Rutledge asked.
Cork wiped his palms on his khakis and looked at his nails, which were packed with black dirt. He pulled his walkie-talkie from his belt and called to Howard Morgan, who was at Stone’s cabin, and told him to send Will Fineday down to the lake. He turned to Gratz. “Did you bring Pook?”
“You betcha. Nestor’s got him.” He waved toward the sound of the other dogs.
“Bring her to the dock. You know what we need to do.”
“Yah,” Gratz said. “Come on, Lancelot.”
Rutledge watched the man and dog trot away. “What now?”
“Pook’s an air scent dog,” Cork said. He turned and started out of the cedars. “Gratz’ll take him onto the lake. If Stone dumped Lizzie’s body in the water, Pook might be able to locate her.”
“And if he didn’t dump her there?”
“We keep looking.”
The mist vanished. Where sunlight struck the lake the clear water turned gold. Under the dock, the lake bottom was a jumble of dark stones; nearer the surface a school of minnows darted, moving together like a shadow creature.
For two hours, Orville Gratz had crisscrossed the lake in a canoe with Pook, but the dog hadn’t caught Lizzie’s scent. The other two dogs had sniffed the entire shoreline of Bruno Lake without success. Cork stood on the dock looking north where the Cutthroat River fed toward Sugar Bowl Lake and the other lakes beyond. He chewed on a ham sandwich, one of a couple dozen he’d ordered brought out to feed the searchers, along with coffee and water. Everything had to be carted over the ridge.
“I don’t get it,” Rutledge said. He sat on the dock, running his hand through the crystal clear water. “This place is so remote, how could Stone manage a serious smuggling operation? The planes fly everything in fine, but it has to be moved out of here on foot or by canoe.”
“For a hundred years, the Voyageurs moved millions of dollars of goods through here that way. Helped build a few fortunes,” Cork said.
“Why did Stone do it?” Dina Willner asked. She stood near him, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “From what I understand, he has plenty of money coming from the distribution of the casino profits.”
“It’s not about the money,” Will Fineday said.
“No?” Rutledge said. “What, then?”
“Fuck you,” Fineday said.
Rutledge looked surprised by the response.
“No,” Fineday said. “That’s what it’s about. Everything he does is just a way of saying fuck you. To me, to you, to his people. He doesn’t need anybody, doesn’t want anybody. To him, we’re all weak, like sick animals to be preyed on.” Fineday strode to the end of the dock and stood between Cork and Dina. “On the rez, some people call him majimanidoo. A bad spirit. A devil.” He followed Cork’s gaze north toward the mouth of the Cutthroat. “They’re right.”
Larson came down the trail from the ridge.
“What’s the word from the plane?” Cork asked.
He’d arranged for a Forest Service DeHavilland to fly over the area and look for anyone in a canoe on the lakes or along the Cutthroat. The nearest official access to the wilderness was ten miles west. It was late in the season and few permits were being issued, so anyone in a canoe would be suspect.
“Nothing. They didn’t see a blessed soul.”
“Got the map, Ed?”
“Right here.”
Larson unfolded a topographical map of the region for four hundred square miles. “The dogs are getting
