“It’s possible he already has pieces of the puzzle you don’t know about and when you give him what we’ve given you, it may all fit. I think you ought to try, Ned. Please,” Jewell added on a softer note.
“Let me see if I can set something up.” He picked up his phone and punched speed dial. He waited. Outside, the sky had grown hazy and the light in the room had dimmed a bit. “Terry, it’s Ned Hodder. Give me a call when you can. It’s important.”
He hung up. “Voice mail. Let me try something else.” He punched the buttons on the phone and a moment later said, “Yeah, Roberta, it’s Ned Hodder in Bodine. How’re you doing?” He listened, laughed lightly. “I know. Must be a full moon. Listen, I’m trying to reach Terry Olafsson but only getting his voice mail. Any idea where he might be? Uh-huh…uh-huh…okay…Yeah, I’d appreciate that, thanks.” He set the phone in its cradle. “He’s in court right now. Roberta’ll page him, have him give me a buzz when he can.”
Dina put her hand on the desk and Ned looked her way. “This Stokely who has the cabin on the river,” she said. “Any chance of seeing his place? Maybe seeing him?”
“Why?”
“Curiosity. Don’t you have it?”
The question appeared to catch him off guard and he seemed uncertain whether it had been a jab at his professionalism.
“What did you have in mind?” he asked warily.
“Do you ever have access to this Copper River Club?”
“I get up there maybe once a week.”
“So it wouldn’t be unusual for you to show up?”
“No. But look, I’m not going to go mucking around in someone else’s investigation.”
“Who said anything about mucking? I’d just like to know the lay of the land. Is that possible?”
Ned stared at the phone a long time as if willing it to ring. Finally he looked up at Dina and said, “Why not?”
37
C harlie lay facedown on Ren’s bed, sobbing quietly into a pillow. Ren stood near the closed door, hands clenched deep in his pockets, watching with miserable helplessness. He wasn’t used to such raw emotion from Charlie unless it was anger, which he knew how to handle. He could rise to her fits of rage. He’d done it all his life. This was different. Charlie was different. She’d seemed to change almost overnight from his best friend into a person of mystifying moods.
“Are you okay?” he ventured.
“No.” The pillow muffled the word.
“Do you need anything?”
She shook her head.
“Can I do something?”
She rolled over, wiping at her eyes with her knuckles. She looked fragile, which was a little disconcerting to Ren, who’d always thought of her as tough as a snapping turtle.
“She didn’t have anybody, Ren. And neither do I.”
“Who, Charlie? Who didn’t have anybody?”
“Sara. Nobody to, you know, watch out for her. Nobody to care if she was safe or worry about her being grabbed off the street or whatever. I don’t want to be like that, Ren. I want somebody to care about me.”
“I care.”
“Yeah, right.” She rolled back over and returned to her sobbing.
Crying like this was the worst thing she’d ever done to him. He’d rather she’d slug him. In desperation, he went to the closet and pulled out his Nike shoe box. He sat on the bed beside her and opened the box.
“Charlie, look. I’ve never shown this stuff to anybody.”
She lifted her head, saw what he held, considered it while she hiccuped a couple of times, then sat up. “What is it?”
“It’s kind of like a treasure chest. I put all the stuff in here that I want to keep forever. Like this, see?” He picked up the stone he’d found on the shore of Lake Superior and cradled it in the palm of his hand. “See the figure there? What’s it look like?”
She took it from him and held it near her face. “A wolf?”
“I’m Wolf clan. I just found it. I think I was supposed to find it.”
She handed him the stone, and he put it back in the box and reached for something else. “Recognize this?”
“Yeah. That’s the cast you made of the cougar track.”
“It’s pretty awesome, huh?”
Her eyes returned to the box, and Ren saw what she was looking at. He lifted it out.
“Know what that is?” he asked.
“It’s just a resin bag. What’s it doing in there?”
“Summer before last, you threw it at Skip Hogarth just before you tore into him on the ball field.”
She seemed confused. “Why do you have it?”
“I don’t know. It was just lying there after everybody walked off, so I picked it up. It reminds me of you, kind of. You really like baseball and you’re not afraid to bust somebody’s lip who needs to have a lip busted. And…”
“Yeah?”
“Well…sometimes when I’m alone here and I’m feeling kind of empty and sad, I take it out and hold it and it’s like you’re here, too, and I feel better, you know?”
“Seriously?”
“Totally. And look here.” Ren pulled out a marble, a cat’s-eye boulder with an amber-colored heart. “You remember this?”
Charlie stared at it and a smile slowly crossed her lips. “Smackdown.”
Ren nodded. “Smackdown. The granddaddy of all boulders. I won it from you three years ago. Man, that was a great game of marbles that day.”
“We haven’t shot marbles in forever,” she said, sounding a little sad.
“You got bored with it, remember? But I kept Smackdown. I think it was the only time I ever beat you at anything.” He put the marble back in the box. “Charlie, as long as I’m around, you’ll never be alone, I promise.”
She looked at him with eyes like warm cocoa. “Really?” she whispered.
“I mean,” he said, staring into the box as if suddenly mesmerized by what was there, “you’re like my sister or something.”
She sat back just a little. “Sister?”
“That’s right.”
“Sister,” she said.
She was still holding the resin bag. The next thing Ren knew it caromed off his face. Charlie bounced from the bed and stomped out of the room, leaving him feeling like a doofus: clueless, stupid, and alone.
Cork was sitting on the sofa giving his leg a rest when the girl came from Ren’s room and stormed toward the front door.
“Where are you going?” he asked, hoping he wouldn’t have to get up and chase her, because he couldn’t.
“Out.”
“Not alone you’re not.” He used his best cop broach-no-dissent voice.
“Bite me,” she replied, pulled the door open, and was gone.
Cork struggled to his feet as Ren walked in looking downcast. “What did you say to her?” Cork asked. He hobbled to the front door where he caught sight of Charlie, who’d stopped next to a hemlock tree and was hitting it
