“It’s the way things played out. The way Cork wanted it.”
“You’re the sheriff here, Wally. What happens in this county is up to you.”
“Look, Jo, in the first place, no crime has been committed here. And I don’t have any jurisdiction in a federal investigation. The FBI is in charge, and there’s not a thing any of us can do about that. Now, those men are in communication by radio. If we need to, we can get a float plane out to them in less than an hour, bring ’em all in. I swear to you, Jo, I’m not going to let anything happen to that boy, or anybody else out there.”
They were both quiet. Jo heard the television in the background at Schanno’s end of the line. The evening news out of Duluth.
“Whenever I hear something, I’ll pass it on to you. I’ll let you know everything I know,” Schanno offered. “How’s that?”
“Deal,” Jo said.
“All right, then. Good night, Jo.”
“?Night, Wally.”
Downstairs, Jo took a flashlight from a kitchen drawer and went back outside. She headed to the shadows where the lilac hedge cornered toward the drive and she searched the ground with the light. She didn’t know what she expected to find, if anything. But so much was uncertain now, she wanted to settle it in her own mind. The ground yielded nothing, but the hedge itself was a different matter. She found a ragged area of broken branches that looked as if someone had pushed hurriedly through. Maybe to escape as the women had come from the house earlier? Not the action of a befuddled old neighbor.
Although the big wind had died, there was still a light breeze out of the northwest, cold and with a wet feel to it. Fallen leaves skittered across the cement of the drive, making a sound like the scrape of bones. Jo was concerned, and she was angry. Why hadn’t Cork told her things? Why hadn’t he trusted her? How could he stand by and let Louis and Stormy be taken that way?
It didn’t make sense.
No more sense than someone’s lurking in the shadows outside her house.
She felt herself shiver. And as quickly as she could, she headed back inside.
22
The rain began around midnight, a steady drizzle so fine it fell without a sound. With the moon and stars obliterated, the darkness was profound. Cork could make out the three tents but almost nothing outside the triangle they formed. He sat with his back against the hull of an overturned Prospector, the careless gurgle of the Little Moose behind him. He’d changed his clothing, dressing himself against the rain and the damp cold that came with it. Put on thermals, wool pants and sweater, a rain slicker. On his head was settled an old wool felt hat with a broad brim. The rain gathered along the brim and funneled to a constant drip an inch beyond his nose.
He wanted a cigarette in the worst way. Instead, he’d taken to chewing on a pine twig. It wasn’t the same thing.
He’d been thinking about the jacket he’d thrown back into the lake. About how that action went against everything he’d been trained to do when he was an officer of the law. About how he’d believed for a long time in the need to gather evidence at all costs. To be inordinately cautious at crime scenes. To be painstaking in his efforts to uncover truth. But it was a funny thing. Holding that bloodstained jacket in his hand, he’d known that although it was probably evidence, it had absolutely nothing to do with the truth.
He heard the zipper sizzle down the front of the tent he shared with Arkansas Willie Raye. Raye-or a black form Cork assumed to be Raye-emerged and stood up.
“Cork?” Arkansas Willie kept his voice to a whisper.
“Over here.”
Willie Raye turned and peered hard in Cork’s direction. “Sumbitch,” he whispered. “Like the inside of Jonah’s whale.”
“Straight ahead,” Cork told him. “Three or four steps.”
Raye trusted him, and three paces toward Cork he gave a little “oh.” He sat down next to Cork and he, too, lay back against the canoe hull.
“Been raining long?” he asked.
“An hour or so. Can’t sleep?”
“Naw.” Raye looked up toward a sky he couldn’t see. “Think it’ll keep up?”
“Yeah, I think.”
Raye sat quietly. The drizzle gathered on the branches of the pines above them and formed drops that fell and hit the canoe like nervous fingers drumming erratically.
“You know, Cork, I’m having a hard time believing it was Stormy Two Knives killed Grimes. He just doesn’t seem like a cold-blooded killer to me. I mean, just look at the way he cares for his boy.”
“I don’t believe it for a moment,” Cork said.
“Then-” Arkansas Willie stared out at the dark around them.
“That’s right,” Cork said.
Willie Raye took a good long breath, let it out slow. “Leastways, whoever’s out there is blind as us.”
“I wish that were true, Willie. Whoever it is out there, they’ve got an infrared scope on that rifle they took from Grimes. We’re so clear to them we might as well be wearing neon bull’s-eyes.”
Willie Raye drew his legs up as if to shield his chest.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“You tell me.”
“Benedetti?”
“More likely, someone in his pay.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time he hired someone to do his dirty work,” Raye said with a nasty little snarl.
“Marais?”
“The police could never prove it, but if it wasn’t him, then the earth’s flat and Robert E. Lee was a goddamn Yankee spy.”
Cork felt Raye shiver against the hull of the canoe as if he were freezing cold.
“Why don’t they do something?” Arkansas Willie asked.
Cork spit out shreds of the aromatic pine twig. “I’ve been thinking about that. They could have picked us all off out there at the landing. Or any time since. I don’t think they want us dead. I think they just want to keep us from communicating with Aurora. I think they mean to isolate us out here, to keep anyone from knowing our exact location.”
“Why?”
“Because they need us. Or they need Louis anyway. They don’t know where Shiloh is either. They want us to lead them to her.”
Cork focused intensely on the dark, trying so hard and deliberately to see a thing he couldn’t that his eyes burned with little flashes like lightning. He relaxed.
“Like I said, they could have picked us off any time they wanted, easy as shooting bottles off a rail. But since they haven’t, I’m thinking they won’t do anything more until we’ve found Shiloh.”
“You think Shiloh’s safe for now?”
Cork imagined the look of hope that must have lit Arkansas Willie’s face.
“I hope so, Willie,” he replied. “I hope so for you and for her and for that man under those rocks out there.”
A splash at their backs caused them both to bolt upright. Cork had his. 38 in his hand, and he used the canoe to brace his arms as he aimed into the darkness in the direction of the Little Moose. He listened and heard the trumpet of a great blast of air.
“Christ, what is it?” Raye asked.
Cork drew in his. 38. “It’s what the river’s named for, Willie. A moose.”
Willie Raye started laughing, trying hard to keep the sound to himself. Cork laughed a little, too.
