Griffin interrupted, “Hear him out, Broker.” Broker relented, raised his hands, gloved palms open, let them fall.
“Okay, then,” Nygard said. “Griffin and I are thinking you and me should take a drive, fill you in on some background about Jimmy Klumpe and Cassie Bodine. Might help you manage this situation better.”
Broker nodded. “Uh-huh. This teacher at the school cautioned me about ‘rubbing up against the local soap opera.’ Is this what you’re getting at?”
“I guess,” Nygard said. Then he turned and walked back up the trail.
Broker looked at Griffin. “You two are in cahoots.”
“Yep,” Griffin said. He plucked the bunny off the ski pole and thrust it in his parka pocket. “Somebody’s got to sew this up so Kit don’t notice. That wouldn’t be you or Nina.” He pulled the pole from the snow and handed it to Broker. They walked back toward the house. Nygard went through the garage and got in his truck, started the engine.
“So what’s Nygard know about me?” Broker asked, placing the ski pole with its twin in the garage.
“Ask him,” Griffin said,
“You think he can smooth over all this bullshit?”
“Yep.”
“Hey, Griffin, somebody broke into my house-”
“You assume.”
“Bullshit. This guy had a plan. He took my kid’s toy, then he took the cat. Shit, man; there’s tracks leading off the deck into the woods, doubled back.” Broker flung his arm toward the trail behind them. “I spent an hour working out his pattern. He came in on skis, through the woods. Yesterday afternoon there was all kinds of folks coming down that trail on skis.”
“On skis, huh? You sure?” Griffin stopped, thought a moment, then turned deliberately. “Maybe you’re a little stressed right now and not thinking too clearly. In the scheme of things, this really where you want to make a stand? Defend your homestead, put down roots, plant a garden?” He puffed on his smoke, looked away. “Ain’t why you’re here. Hell, man. I can get you another cat. You go on with Nygard. I’ll hang back, keep an eye on the house.”
Broker ducked into the kitchen, kissed Kit good night, and told Nina he was going into town with Harry. She protested mildly when he took her fresh carafe of coffee and three travel mugs. He left her heating water for another pot and staring at
Griffin took his cup of coffee and parked his Jeep down the road. Broker got in Nygard’s Ranger and doled out coffee as Nygard drove up 12, away from town, continued north, and shifted the Ranger into four-wheel drive as they went beyond where the snowplow had stopped. They followed a single set of tire tracks dwindling in a foot of snow. Soon it was pitch black, no yard lights, just a light snow sparkling in the high beams. Nygard slowed as a doe and two fawns meandered across the road.
“Jack Pine Barrens, big fire in here, oh, twenty years ago,” Nygard said, waving his hand at the darkness. “Hardly anybody lives up here anymore.” After another three minutes, Nygard addressed the silence in the Ranger. “Okay. The way you put Jimmy on his ass got my attention. So I called Griffin, and then I called this copper in St.-”
“Who?” Broker asked.
“Jack Grieve, sergeant in narcotics. We met when I went through the academy. We keep in touch. He comes up summers to fish. Stays with me.”
“I know Jack,” Broker said. “Good no-bullshit cop.”
“Asked him if he knew of a Phil Broker,” Nygard continued. “‘Why do you ask?’ Jack says. Got him staying in my county, I says.” Nygard turned and looked directly at Broker for emphasis. “‘Won’t get anything direct from me about Broker,’ Jack says. Fair enough. How ’bout indirect, I says. ‘But that would be gossip,’ Jack says.” Nygard paused to sip his coffee. Waited.
Broker accepted Nygard’s workmanlike preamble. “So we’re off the record,” he said.
Nygard grunted affirmatively. “Hell, man; we’re driving into the Washichu. Pretty soon we’ll be clear off
“You mind if I smoke?” Broker asked, pulling out his cigars.
“Crack the window,” Nygard said. He probed his pocket and withdrew a toothpick, which he held in his fingers like a cigarette before putting it between his lips.
Broker dialed down the window several inches, lit the rough wrap, and waited.
Now Nygard was direct. “Basically Jack said you were always more an adventurer than a cop. Paid your dues in St. Paul, made sergeant fast, and developed a real taste for undercover work. Then you worked a deal with BCA. And here Jack says something happened. A supervisor made a mistake; let you take the bit in your teeth, go too deep, and stay there. You got out eight years ago. Married this heavy-duty lady in the Army. Rumor is, every once in a while, you do things that don’t get written down. For the feds. Got this little resort up on Lake Superior. But Jack says that ain’t really where you get your money.”
“That it?” Broker said, staring ahead, rolling the cigar across his mouth.
“Yeah, except Jack said to give you a lot of room. Said the rumors put you and your wife smack in the middle of whatever really happened at the Prairie Island Nuclear Plant last July. ’Nuff said.”
Now the darkness crowded in closer to the road. The spindly jack-pine muskeg gave way to thicker pines and ghostly stands of birch. They drove through a tunnel of overhanging branches.
Broker stared into the darkness. “Years ago we’d come up here and hunt. Bunch of young cops. When Griffin first bought the old place on the lake. Great place for whitetails, nobody else around. Hardly any shots on opener except us. But…” His voice trailed off.
“Spooky,” Nygard said.
“Yeah.”
Nygard rolled his toothpick across his lips. “A few Indians come here around this time of year, tap the paper birches. And not many of them…”
Abruptly he pointed into the high beams. “There, on the right. See him?”
Broker caught a fleeting impression of the large gray wolf before it danced back into the trees.
“There’s two packs in here now; got the woods divided up. Maybe thirty animals.” He settled back. “Any rate, Indians got a story about these woods. Two early settlers thought they found gold nuggets in a stream and set to fighting and eventually shot each other. Turned out to be fool’s gold. A Sioux hunting party found the dying men. According to the story, even both gut-shot, they were still struggling over a bag of rocks. The Sioux considered it so strange that men would kill for stones they named the place Washichu, which became their terms for whites.”
Broker nodded. “Means something like ‘unnatural,’ doesn’t it?”
“Exactly,” Nygard said. “Got so only one family lived up here, the Bodines. Cassie’s family lived on a farm deeper in. Her cousins lived on another farmstead right up here. Where we’re headed.” He slowed as the forest on the passenger side thinned into an overgrown field. He turned into a drifted-over road. When the snow breasted his front bumper, he stopped, backed up and put the Ranger in neutral, set the emergency brake, and left the high beams on. He glanced at Broker. “Hope those are good boots. We gotta walk.”
They got out, and Nygard switched on a heavy-duty flashlight.
Plodding through knee-deep drifts, they outdistanced the headlights, and up ahead, the swinging motion of Nygard’s torch illuminated the carcasses of old cars, cast-off debris of all kinds. Then they came upon piles of fresh wreckage; scorched wood siding, shingles, a blackened, half-burned mattress and bedsprings clotted with snow.
The light hit a snarl of yellow tape flapping in the night, and webbed orange plastic emergency fence strung on a perimeter of engineer stakes.
Thirty feet ahead, a sign blocked the road: “Hazardous Waste Site. Keep Out. Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.”
Chapter Twenty-two
