“Milton. Paradise Lost.” With Shiloh’s help, Angelo Benedetti had eased into a sitting position, his back against the trailer wall. Seeing Jo’s surprise, he managed a faint smile. “Minor in English lit at UNLV.”
Cork went to Benedetti and checked the wound. It was high on the right shoulder, clean entry and exit. “Small caliber, and the angle was just right. Seems to have missed almost everything, including bone. You’re pretty lucky.”
Benedetti laid his head back. Even with his California tan, his face looked pale. Shiloh held his hand. “I never had a little sister to protect before,” he told her. “All things considered, it pretty much sucks.”
Shiloh kissed the top of his head. “Thanks.”
“Get some towels to press against those wounds, Jo,” Cork said. He went to check on Raye.
Arkansas Willie tried to stand as Cork approached, but he cried out and flopped back to the floor. His face contorted and he howled, “Christ, the son of a bitch shattered everything.”
“Best thing you could do for yourself now, Willie, is stay there and stay quiet. Shiloh, think you can make sure he does that?”
“My pleasure.” She took the knife she’d dropped into the pocket of Wendell’s jeans, opened the blade, and stood over Arkansas Willie Raye. “I have a whole lifetime of reasons, Willie. All I need is one more,” she threatened.
Cork moved to the doorway of the trailer home just as Jo returned with the towels. “Where are you going, Cork?” She knelt and opened Benedetti’s shirt and pressed a towel to his wound.
“Wendell keeps a rifle in the shed.”
“You’re not going after that man, are you? You don’t have to do that. Cork, you’re not the sheriff anymore.” She seemed torn between tending Benedetti and rising to hold back Cork.
Cork stared in the direction Charon/Milwaukee had disappeared. There was only the empty drive leading through the bared birches toward the main road.
“He killed Wendell and he killed Dwight Sloane,” Cork said to her over his shoulder.
“And he killed Libbie and two men who were only trying to help me,” Shiloh added. She looked at Cork as if she understood him perfectly.
“You all stay here and lock the door after me,” he told them. “The sheriff’s people should be on their way. Althea Bolls went into Allouette to phone them.”
“Cork-”
He heard her call to him, but it was too late. He was out the door and moving swiftly toward the shed.
He found the tall cabinet and inside the rifle-a Remington 700 ADL bolt action. As Stormy had said, the cartridges were in an old Quaker Oat container: 3006, 180-grain bronze point, enough power to bring down a small bear. Cork pulled out half a dozen and fed them into the magazine, worked the bolt-not an easy thing with his injured shoulder-and chambered a round. Then he headed outside, where he stood a moment in the sunlight, considering.
The man had disappeared down the drive toward the road. That made sense. To have reached the trailer as quickly as they had, he and Arkansas Willie must have driven a vehicle of some kind, probably one Charon/Milwaukee had left somewhere they could easily reach when they came out of the Boundary Waters. And now it would be parked somewhere hidden from the road but accessible. Not toward Allouette. Too great a chance of being seen. More likely the other direction, somewhere south along the shore of Iron Lake.
Cork recalled that a quarter mile south of Wendell’s trailer was an old boat launch. It was seldom used anymore because proceeds from the casino had allowed the Iron Lake Anishinaabe to develop a fine park just north of Allouette that included new launch facilities. The old boat launch still showed on maps, but hardly anyone ever used it. It would be a good place to stash a vehicle.
Cork circled Wendell’s shed, moved past the empty canoe racks, and headed quickly into the cool shadow of the trees that bordered Wendell’s yard, thinking, He’ll be watching the road. He’ll be looking for me to come from the road. But I’ll take him from the cover of the trees.
He carried the rifle with his right hand only. Although he attempted to keep his left side as immobile as possible, every step was like twisting a knife in his shoulder. He tried to formulate a plan as he went, keeping his mind on his calculation rather than his pain. All he could come up with, however, was to reach the launch before the man drove away. In the back of his mind, he knew that even if he missed Charon/Milwaukee, the man would have a hard time making a clean getaway in Tamarack County. The main roads were few, and as soon as Schanno got word, he’d lock those roads up tight using his own men and the state highway patrol.
That brought Cork to a sudden stop.
Charon/Milwaukee had been ahead of him in his thinking all along. Some of that was Arkansas Willie’s doing, but more, it was because the man anticipated well. He knew his adversaries and knew how they thought. He’d know the roads would be watched closely and that his description would be out over every police radio in northern Minnesota. He wouldn’t risk the roads.
Then a detail flashed into Cork’s thinking. As hed moved past the canoe racks at Wendell’s shed, he’d noted, without really thinking about it, that the rack was empty. When he’d been there two days ago with Arkansas Willie, there’d been one canoe left.
For a man like Charon/Milwaukee, a man who knew how to survive in the wild, heading into the protection of the great North Woods was a perfect choice. Within a few days, he could be across the border into Canada. Or ease his way west or south until he was beyond whatever net the law had thrown across the roadways to snag him.
Cork turned toward the wide, sparkling blue of Iron Lake.
The shoreline near Wendell’s place was a ragged edging of small, rocky inlets dotted with pines. Stepping quietly, his rifle readied, Cork made his way to the water. He paused a moment, listening. The lake was calm, lapping very gently at the rocks. Just north of where he stood, in the direction of Wendell’s trailer, rose a big slab of gray rock about the size of a pickup truck. From the other side came the almost imperceptible bass note of a canoe hull tapped lightly with a paddle. Cork eased to the rock, and around it, until he saw Charon/Milwaukee leaning over the canoe. The man stood bent, caught in a netting of shadow cast over him by the branches of a big red pine. He appeared to be securing a pack under the stern thwart. Cork stepped up behind the trunk of the red pine and leaned himself against it to help his left arm support the weight of the rifle as he brought it to bear. A fire raged in his shoulder. He prayed he wouldn’t have to hold the rifle that way for long.
“Put your hands on your head and don’t turn around.”
The man paused. “O’Connor,” he said, as if Cork were not unexpected at all.
“Hands on your head. Now.”
Charon/Milwaukee complied, pressing his palms to the back of his head.
“Turn around slowly.”
As the man came around, Cork could see he wore an affable grin. “I guess I should have killed you.”
“With your left hand, using only your thumb and index finger, take your weapon from its holster and drop it on the ground.”
When the handgun lay flopped on a bed of pine needles, Cork asked, “That’s Willie’s twenty-two. Where’s your weapon? The automatic. What was it? A Sig Sauer?”
“In the pack.” He gestured with a jerk of his head toward the canoe behind him.
“Sure it is.”
“Care to frisk me?” Charon/Milwaukee gave a very small, very real laugh. “A little tough holding that rifle. And with a bum shoulder.”
“We’re going back to the trailer.”
“You’ll be dead before we get there.”
A slight wind made the water roll and the bow of the canoe went up and down like a little head nodding in agreement.
“You make the tiniest move and I’ll shoot you,” Cork warned.
“How quickly can you swing that rifle and aim with a dislocated shoulder?” Charon/Milwaukee asked. “That’s a bolt action. You’ll be lucky if you even get one good shot, because I’ll be moving. I can imagine the pain you’re in, O’Connor. The pain’s already eaten into your normal ability to aim, to react. It would be the same for any man.” He lifted his hands from his head, only a few inches, a gesture of reasonability. “Look, you’ve fought a better battle than anyone I’ve faced in a very long time. Let’s call it a truce, you and me. Go back to your wife. I’ll fade away into
