already closed. A good crowd was still visible through the windows of Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler, and the air on Center Street was full of the tantalizing aroma of fried food. In front of the display window of Lost Lake Outfitters, against the buttery glow of a neon sign, stood old Alf Pedersen, who’d started the outfitting company fifty years earlier. Alf knew the most beautiful and fragile parts of the Boundary Waters, the great wilderness area north of Aurora, and although he’d guided hundreds of tourists in, he kept those places secret. In the next block, the door of Wolf Den Books and Gifts opened and a plank of light fell across the sidewalk as Naomi Pierce stepped out to close up. He couldn’t hear it, but Cork knew that the opening of the door had caused a small bell above the threshold to jingle. He thought about the show that had been on television at the hospital. He didn’t know whose reality that was, but his own reality lay in the details of this place, his hometown, details an outsider might not even notice. A tinkling bell, a familiar silhouette, the comfortable and alluring smell of deep-fry.
There was another reality for him as well. It was grounded in a maple leaf of blood on Marsha’s uniform, the sound of glass shattered by a bullet capable of exploding his head like a melon, and the long, terrifying moments when he’d scrambled desperately to make sense of the absolutely senseless.
“You okay?” Jo asked.
“Yeah, I guess,” he answered.
She accompanied him into the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department. Bos Swain, who’d relieved Patsy as dispatcher, buzzed them through the security door.
Bos was short for Boston, which was the name by which Henrietta Swain was known. As a young woman, she’d dreamed of going to college, specifically to Boston College, for reasons which she’d never divulged. Instead, she’d married her high school sweetheart, who went off to Vietnam and came back messed up psychologically. Bos had worked to support them and the two girls who were born to them, and although she never went to college herself, she sent both girls east, one to Barnard and the other to Boston College. When the girls were gone, she divorced her first husband and remarried, a good man named Tim Johnson who had a solid job stringing wire for the phone company. Although she didn’t need to work to support herself anymore, she kept on as a dispatcher, drawing a county paycheck every two weeks, which she deposited in trust funds for her grandchildren’s education. She was a fleshy woman, unusually good-humored, but the events of that evening had put her in a somber mood.
“I thought you were going to the hospital,” she said to Cork in a scolding tone.
“I just came from there.”
“How’s Marsha?”
“Still in surgery when I left. Thanks for coming early so Patsy could be there.”
“She seemed to be holding up real good, but I know it’s tough for her. How’s Charlie taking it?”
“Hard.”
“Well, sure.” She eyed his uniform and shook her head. “Jo, you ought to take him home so he can change those clothes. He’s not exactly a walking advertisement for law enforcement.”
Cork said, “I want to listen to the recording of the call that came from the Tibodeau cabin.”
“Lucy’s call?”
“That’s what I want to know. Lucy claims it wasn’t her.”
Bos went to the Dispatch area, where the radio, at the moment, was silent. The public contact phone was linked to two different recording systems. The first recorded date, time, and the number of the phone from which the call had been made. The other system was a Sony automatic telephone tape recorder. It wasn’t top-of-the- line-it had actually been donated to the department by the Chippewa Grand Casino when they’d upgraded to a digital recorder voice bank that fed directly into a computer-but it was a workhorse of a unit. Bos rewound the tape to the call that had purportedly come from Lucy. She played it, and they all listened. Then she played it again.
Patsy: Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department.
The caller: I’m telling you, if you don’t get somebody out here, I’m going to kill the son of a bitch.
Patsy: Who is this?
The caller: Lucy Tibodeau.
Patsy: Where are you, Lucy?
The caller: At my goddamn cabin. And I’m telling you, you better get someone out here pronto, or I swear I’ll kill him.
Patsy: Kill who?
The caller: That son of a bitch husband of mine.
Patsy: Eli?
The caller: You think I got another husband stashed in the woodpile, sweetie? Well, I wish to god I did, ’cuz the one I got ain’t worth a bucket of warm spit.
Patsy: Where is Eli?
The caller: Outside, pounding on the door, hollering to let him in.
Patsy: You just stay put, Lucy. Take a few deep breaths. We’ll have someone out there right away.
The caller: I’m warning you, the sheriff better get here real fast, he wants to avoid bloodshed.
Patsy: He’s on his way, Lucy. You just relax, and don’t you let that husband of yours rankle you, understand?
The caller: I ain’t making any promises.
The caller hung up.
Jo was the first to respond. “If someone’s trying to sound like Lucy, they did a pretty fair job.”
Bos nodded. “If I hadn’t been leery, I’d have been fooled. I can see why Patsy didn’t give it a second thought. Whoever it is, she’s got Lucy’s speech down pat. But it’s someone younger, I’d say.”
Cork had Bos play the tape once more. “Hear that?” he said, midway through.
“What?”
“Rewind it a bit.” He waited. “Listen.” He held up a finger, then dropped it suddenly. “Now. Did you hear it? A door closing in the background.”
“Somebody came in?” Bos said.
“Or went out.” Jo looked at Cork. “Either way, she wasn’t alone.”
“Pull that tape, Bos. We’ll give it to BCA to analyze.”
He went into his office and made the call to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension office in Bemidji, explained the situation to the voice mail, then pulled out the clean uniform he kept in the closet. When he stepped back into the department common area, Jo looked at the uniform.
“You’re not coming home,” she said.
“No. I’ll shower downstairs, change, and then I’m going back out to the rez.”
“I wish you’d come home. You’ve got people who can handle the investigation.”
“I need to be there. Don’t wait up.”
She kissed him and he could feel her restraint, her irritation.
“Be careful,” she said, and left.
As he showered, he was conscious of his wound. The local anesthetic was wearing off, and a dull ache crept in behind it. He put on the clean uniform and went back upstairs.
“I’m taking my Bronco,” he told Bos. “Let Ed know I’m on my way.”
“You really ought to get a radio in that vehicle.”
He started for the door, but Bos called him back.
“Sheriff?”
He turned around.
“Somebody lured you out there.”
“It looks that way.”
“They wanted you dead. Or maybe Marsha.”
“That’s generally the reason they use bullets.”
“My point is this,” she said. “They didn’t succeed. Does that mean they’ll try again?”
4
