Booker T. Harris stepped closer, but cautiously and with an eye on the younger Benedetti. “None of what you just said was in any of your official statements to the police.”
Vincent Benedetti laid his head against the back of the chair. He took a deep breath. “Back then, I was doing my best to protect my daughter. I knew you cops had jack shit on me. Little Shiloh was in a bad enough way as it was. What? Was I going to add to her troubles by dragging her through the circus of paternity hearings? Besides, my wife, Theresa, threatened to leave me if I said a word about Shiloh.”
Jackson paced a little, collecting himself, considering. Then he turned again on Benedetti. “Marais loved me. She told me she was afraid of you, afraid that if you ever found out how she really felt about you, you’d hurt her bad.”
“She was afraid of no one. She loved no one-except herself and her daughter.” Benedetti sighed, sounding tired of the whole exchange. “She used you like a carpet sweeper to clean up her messes. She told you whatever you wanted to hear.”
“That’s a lie.”
“We’re getting nowhere,” Jo broke in. She turned to Nathan Jackson. “Do you really care about the woman out there?”
He looked shocked. “Of course I do.”
“And you?” she said to Benedetti. “You really want her out alive?”
“I’d die for that girl,” he replied.
“All right.” Jo held up a finger as if asking the men to follow her in her train of thought. “Let’s assume for the moment, just for the sake of getting somewhere, that neither of you was responsible for the murder of Marais Grand or for what’s happening here now. The question is, if not you, then who?”
Both men appeared to be a little startled by the concept and it took a while before they stopped glaring at one another and the anger between them seemed to dissolve. Benedetti stared thoughtfully at the wooden beams above him. Nathan Jackson slid his hands into his pockets and turned toward the long windows to gaze at the gray outside. Harris put a finger to his lips and tapped lightly. Metcalf put a new log on the fire, and the bark burned quickly with a sound like someone was crumbling wrapping paper.
“It would have to be a professional in Shiloh’s case,” Harris finally said.
Jackson turned back to listen.
Harris went on. “The murder of Elizabeth Dobson was a clean job. Professional. Not a shred of evidence left to trace him.”
“And the shrink,” Vincent Benedetti said. “Whoever torched the shrink and her records knew his business.”
Jackson looked from one to the other. “Same person, you think?”
“Maybe two,” Angelo Benedetti offered. “Working together. Different talents, covering one another.”
Harris looked toward Metcalf, who’d sat the whole time at the table that held all the electronic equipment. “Feed what we know to the computer at the L.A. field office. See what you come up with.”
Metcalf moved to his laptop.
“Angelo and I will make some inquiries of our own,” Benedetti said.
Jackson squared himself in front of the chair that contained Vincent Benedetti. “I’ve held you responsible for Marais’s murder for fifteen years. For Shiloh’s sake, I’m willing to reconsider. But I’m not letting go yet.”
“There’s an old Sicilian saying,” Benedetti replied. “A man who drinks the wine he’s made never tastes a bitter glass.?Maybe we’ve both been drinking our own wine too long.” He leaned toward Angelo and said, “Take me out.”
Angelo Benedetti gathered his father in his arms. Schanno lifted the crutches and opened the door. Jo followed them all out. Joey had the black Lincoln running, warm and waiting. He held the back door open and helped Benedetti settle his father. Then he popped the trunk for Schanno.
“I’ll be at my office,” Jo told Angelo Benedetti. “Or at home. Call me if you find out anything.”
“I will.” He looked back at the cabin. “You didn’t buy that, did you?”
“All I want is to get to the truth, Mr. Benedetti. I’m trying to keep an open mind.”
He looked disappointed in her. “I’ll be in touch.”
Schanno stood with Jo as the Lincoln pulled away. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Wally. I get the feeling truth and lies are all jumbled up like a ball of snakes here.”
“I know what you mean. Look, I’ve got to get back to my office, oversee the search-and-rescue. The men should be at Embarrass Lake pretty soon. What about you?”
“I’m going back to my office for a while, then out to see Sarah Two Knives. I think she should know what’s going on.”
“Do you know what’s going on?”
Jo eyed the cabin and saw that Harris was watching through the bunds. “Does anyone?”
33
Late afternoon was on them when Louis lifted his hand and said, “She’s up there.”
The men feathered their paddles and stared through the mist at a ridge backed by the vague dark shape of forested hills. Cork had been in and out of the Boundary Waters his entire life. He’d never before felt menace in the land, but he felt it now as he looked at the shoreline, trying to pierce the gray veil, trying to divine what might be awaiting them when they landed.
“There’s a stream,” Louis said. “About a quarter of a mile back is another lake, a real small one.”
Cork took out the map and studied it. “I don’t see anything indicated here.”
“Uncle Wendell said you’d never find Nikidin on a map. He said it was protected.”
“Protected,” Sloane said. “By what?”
“Manidoonsag,” Louis replied. “Little spirits.”
Cork pulled ahead. “I’ll go in first. If things look okay, I’ll signal you.”
“I should go first,” Sloane said from the canoe he shared with Arkansas Willie.
“And I’m not going to wait here.” Willie Raye was firm. “Every minute is important. Now that we’re this close, let’s just go.”
“Not until we know what we’re walking into,” Cork told him. “A few hours ago, a man nearly killed us all. I don’t want something like that again. All of you stay until I signal it’s safe.”
A lot of years as sheriff had given Cork a voice of authority that emerged now and again of its own accord. It brooked no argument.
“We’ll do what the man says,” Sloane told Raye. He gave Cork a thumbs-up.
No one said anything further as Cork veered away from them.
Cork had his. 38 out and ready as he approached the shore. He saw the small stream Louis had spoken of, and he heard the bubble of the water as it tumbled over a scattering of smooth stones near its mouth. There was hardly any other sound. No birds. No wind. Only the susurrus of the water as the canoe glided through and the scrape of the bow against the shore. He was out of the canoe quickly, like a marine on a beachhead, and he crouched low, scanning the trees near the water. Nothing showed itself. Nothing moved. He spotted a trail that shadowed the stream and he made quickly for the cover of the brush there.
A quarter mile inland, Louis had said, was the lake where Shiloh would be. Cork moved down the trail a few yards at a time, stopping to listen, to check the deep woods around him. He came to a place at the edge of the stream where the bed of pine needles was cleared to mud. The mud was full of tracks-deer, raccoon, rabbit, squirrel-animals who’d come there to drink. There were other tracks. Ridged boot soles. Cork knelt and studied them carefully. Two distinct sets: one small enough to be a woman’s; the other, larger, deeper, though not as huge as might have been made by the man who’d ambushed them that morning. The distance between strides was not great. Whoever had made them didn’t seem in any great hurry. He couldn’t tell if the two people had traveled that way together or if the woman had been followed.
A rush of movement to his right brought him around quickly. He had his. 38 leveled belly high into the trees. He froze in that readied position, his whole body tuned to his senses, watching, listening. He saw only the deep,
