nowhere. The search plane’s a bust. What do you think?”
“He moved fast,” Cork said.
“Does he still have the girl?”
“If he’d left her at the bottom of the lake, Pook would probably have picked that up. I think Stone’s still got her,” Cork said.
Rutledge ran his hand through the water, making ripples that were edged with gold. He eyed Fineday. “Did she go willingly?”
Fineday didn’t look at him. His own eyes were glued to the north. “You don’t say no to Stone.” He rubbed the long scar on his face as if the old wound still hurt him. “Why would he take her? He doesn’t care about her. She’d only get in his way.”
“He has reason,” Cork said. “Somehow it goes back to that cartridge on the pillow and the sweater in the ground.”
Rutledge glanced up. “Why wouldn’t he just make a beeline to Canada? He could be there by tomorrow.”
“When he gets to Canada, where is he?” Cork said. “No better off, and he knows it.”
“We could wait him out. Put a watch on every wilderness access. Make sure every police and sheriff’s department’s on the lookout. I know what you said about him being able to stay in there forever, but that was before he took the girl.”
“Maybe that’s why he took Lizzie,” Cork said. “With the girl, he can’t stay in there long, and he knows we know it.”
“I don’t get it,” Dina said.
“She’s a liability. He can’t afford to keep her. It’s like that hourglass in The Wizard of Oz. As soon as the sand runs out, Dorothy dies. I think that’s what the note in her pocket was about. Forty-eight hours. He’ll keep her for forty-eight hours. He knows we won’t wait him out. He knows we have to try to find Lizzie before her time’s up.”
“He wants us to go after him?” Rutledge said.
“I think that’s why he left the cartridge. He wanted it clear that he was the one who’d fired the shots at the Tibodeau cabin. Maybe he figured we were already on the road to figuring that out for ourselves. But he makes the declaration, he maintains control. I don’t think he’s trying to escape. I think he wants us to follow him into his territory. It’s like Will says. ‘Fuck you.’”
“Seems a stretch to me,” Rutledge said.
“It’s the kind of man Stone is. He’d get off pitting his power against ours.”
“What are you going to do?”
Cork tossed the crust of his sandwich into the lake, and a moment later the bread disappeared in a flash of shiny green scales and a splash of silver water. “I’m going to give him what he wants. I’m going in after him.”
Rutledge scratched the top of his head. His face looked puzzled and he spent a minute fishing through his hair. He studied something he’d pinched between his fingers. “Damn. I thought tick season was over.” He flicked the critter into the lake and shook himself. “Feels like they’re crawling all over me now. Look, I don’t like the idea of anyone going in, Cork.”
“I don’t like it either, Simon, but I don’t see any way around it.” Cork pulled the walkie-talkie from its holster on his belt. “Morgan. Over.”
“Morgan here.”
“Howard, I want you to get some gear together for a trip into the woods. Enough for three men for two days.”
“One canoe?”
Fineday said, “I’m going with you.”
Cork started to shake his head, but he could see the determination on the man’s face. He understood how he’d feel if it was his daughter out there.
“Make it two canoes and four men. I want everything ready to go by”-he looked at his watch-“oh four hundred.”
“Ten-four. I’m on it.”
“You’re really going in?” Dina said.
“Yeah. But I think Simon has a good idea. We should put a watch on all the nearest accesses and float Stone’s photo everywhere. Contact the provincial police in Ontario, too. Let them know Stone may be headed their way.”
Rutledge still looked skeptical. “You think you can find him?”
“No.” Cork turned away from the lake and started for the ridge. “But I know a man who can.”
36
Jo’s first official date with Cork had begun at the Lincoln Park Zoo. It had ended at Rocky’s on the lakeshore, where Cork picked up a sack of fried shrimp and french fries, which they ate while sipping beer and watching Lake Michigan slide into the deep blue ink of evening. In between, she found a man who was funny, gentle, smart, who came from a small town in Minnesota and had somehow managed, despite the awful things he’d seen as a cop on the South Side, to retain a belief in simple human dignity.
“You’re a good cop?” she’d asked in jest.
“Depends on the situation. I try to be a good man first. Sometimes that might make me look like a bad cop, but I don’t think of myself that way. You don’t have to be a hard-ass to be in control of a tough situation. Connection, that’s what I try for. Maybe it’s because I’m part Ojibwe. Connection is very important.”
“Ojibwe?” It sounded exotic, exciting.
“Or Anishinaabe. Some people call us Chippewa, but that’s really the white man’s bastardization of Ojibwe. Most Shinnobs I know aren’t fond of the name.”
“Connection,” she said. “Are we connecting?”
“I think we are.”
“Then why haven’t you kissed me?”
He smiled, as if amused by her boldness. “When I was twelve and my father sat me down to talk about the birds and the bees, one of the things he said to me was, ‘Cork, always let the woman make the first move.’”
“Was it a good piece of advice?”
“Do you want me to kiss you?”
“Very much.”
“Then it was excellent advice.”
Through all the years, the hardships, even when they both stood at the painful edge of abandoning their marriage, she’d never forgotten that kiss or the promise it held for her.
As arranged, Rae Bly was waiting for Jo at the sea lion pool near the zoo entrance. She was so engrossed in watching the animals cavort that she didn’t notice Jo, who finally touched her on the shoulder.
“Here you are,” Rae exclaimed with a broad smile. “And these are your children?”
Jo introduced them and Rose, then sent them along saying she would meet them at the primate house in an hour.
Ben’s sister wore sunglasses and a white cap with a bill that shaded her face. She carried a purse and also a long canister that hung by a strap over her shoulder. “A lovely family, Jo.”
“Thanks.”
Rae waved toward a bench in the shade of a tree. “Shall we sit down?” When they were seated, she put down the canister, reached into her purse, and pulled out a silver cigarette case. She held it open toward Jo.
“I don’t smoke.”
“You used to. Pretty heavily, as I recall.”
“I quit when I became pregnant with Jenny.”
