glanced at the cabin. “I can’t go in there. I can’t even be aware of someone going in there.”
“Maybe it’s time you left,” Cork suggested.
“I think I’ve seen everything here I want to see.”
After Earl had gone, Cork tried the back door of the cabin. As he expected, it was locked. He returned to his Bronco and took a heavy-handled screwdriver and a pair of cotton gloves from the tool kit he kept in back. He put the gloves on and used the handle of the screwdriver to break a pane in the back-door window. It was simple, then, to reach in and undo the lock on the door handle.
LePere’s place surprised him. In his experience, bachelors were generally sloppy housekeepers, especially if they were heavy drinkers. LePere kept a clean home. Cork wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for. Whatever it was, the tidy kitchen-where not even a crumb lay on the counter-seemed unpromising. He stepped into the main room. It was furnished sparely, in the way of a man who seldom had to accommodate visitors. An easy chair with a standing lamp for reading, a small dining table with two chairs, a Franklin stove, a four-shelf bookcase-full. A tasteful, braided area rug in shades of brown covered the old floorboards in front of the stove. On the walls, LePere had hung several framed photographs, all black and white. Cork checked the only bedroom, went through LePere’s small closet and chest of drawers. In the bathroom, he looked inside a little Hoover portable washer. Back in the living room, he stood a while, hoping to be struck by something that felt out of place, but nothing hit him. He crossed to the nearest photograph on the wall. It was of a man and boy standing in front of a cabin under construction. Written in white in the lower right-hand corner were the words SYLVAN COVE, 1971. The boy looked to Cork to be a very young John LePere. He assumed the man, who had his arm proudly around the boy’s shoulders, was LePere’s father.
Cork moved to the next mounted photograph. A teenage John LePere stood on a dock alongside a boy a few years younger. Behind them lay a curve of silver-gray water backed by a huge ridge of solid, dark rock. The boys were smiling broadly. In the corner, in white, had been written PURGATORY COVE, 1979.
The photograph that hung nearest the stove showed John LePere in a peacoat and wearing a watch cap. He stood in a crow’s nest, his hand shielding his eyes, as if he were intent on scanning the horizon. On the mast below him was a gigantic letter F illuminated by huge electric bulbs. In the corner of the photograph, the penned explanation read “When the radar fails. Teasdale, 1985.” A grin played across LePere’s face, and it was clear he was clowning for the camera. Cork knew LePere’s tragic history-sole survivor of the wreck that took the lives of the rest of the crew on the Teasdale. He tried to place the year, and believed it probably wasn’t long after the picture had been taken. He considered for a moment what the big lighted F on the mast below LePere might be all about, but he quickly let go of his wondering because it had nothing to do with the reason he was in the cabin.
He went over everything once more, and once more he came up empty-handed. He left the cabin by the same door he’d entered. Outside, the sun was resting on the tops of the trees along the western shore of the cove. Cork checked his watch. Eight-thirty. In another hour, the kidnappers would call, and what now seemed like the only hope for saving Jo and Stevie and Grace and Scott would present itself.
39
JOHN LEPERE CAME OUT of a dream of his father holding him tightly. His father’s clothes smelled of fish, a smell LePere loved. When he opened his eyes, he found that he was inside the old fish house and he was bound with rope. The air was hot and close and filled with a fish odor that ghosted up from every board.
“He’s coming to.” It was a woman’s voice.
His eyes focused in the dim light, and he saw that the two women and their sons were watching him. “What happened?”
“Your friend,” the Fitzgerald woman said bitterly.
LePere remembered everything up until coming into the fish house. “He knocked me cold?”
“He hit you with a big flashlight,” the O’Connor woman explained. “We were afraid you might be dead.”
The back of his head hurt. He tried to wiggle free of his bonds, but the rope was so tight that it bit painfully into his muscles and cut off the circulation so that his hands were numb. He was hog-tied, several coils looped around his arms and chest, his hands pulled behind him and secured to his bound ankles.
“How long have I been out?” he asked.
“Two or three hours,” Jo O’Connor replied.
LePere looked toward the door. “Has he been back?”
“No. He took a bunch of things from the shelves that he apparently thought we might try to use to escape, and he left. We haven’t seen him since.”
“Did he say anything?”
The Fitzgerald woman gave a short, unhappy laugh. “He looked down at you and said something about landing a bigmouth bass. Who is he?”
LePere hesitated before he said, “His name is Bridger.” Between the stuffy air and the rope that squeezed his chest, he could barely breathe. “It’s hot in here.”
“Your friend Bridger shut all the windows,” Grace Fitzgerald told him. “I guess he was afraid we might scream and be heard.”
“There’s no one to hear you out here,” LePere said.
The sound of gravel underfoot came from just outside the door, and then the rattle of the lock being undone. Wesley Bridger stepped inside and switched on the light. “Back among the living, Chief?” He held a filet knife in a gloved hand. LePere recognized the knife as one from the kitchen in his cabin on Iron Lake.
“What’s going on, Wes?”
“Just dropping a few more crumbs for the cops to follow.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You never did. And that’s been the beauty all along.” Bridger looked everyone in the fish house over carefully. “Who goes under the blade of old Doc Bridger? Let me see.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” LePere demanded.
“Just following the plan. Mine, not yours.” He laughed when he saw the look on LePere’s face. “You look so lost, Chief. Let me explain a few things.” He grabbed an old wooden crate, turned it over, and sat down. He tugged the glove off his left hand and tested the tip of the filet knife against his thumb. When he’d easily drawn blood, he smiled and wiped the blade clean on his pants. “Chief, it never was what it seemed. That wreck you’re so goddamned interested in was never anything to me except a door to your trust.”
“What was so important about my trust?”
“Two million dollars.” Bridger opened his arms toward the women and the boys. “See, Chief, I knew about you and the Teasdale. And there you were, right across the cove from the last of the Fitzgeralds. All I had to do was stir up the hate that was bubbling inside you.”
“It was a lie, all that about the Teasdale being sabotaged?”
“Not all of it. I did help sink a Libyan freighter. So I suppose the Teasdale could have been sabotaged in the same way, but it really didn’t matter. I gave you what you wanted, someone to blame for all your misery. Oh, and by the way, it was me who destroyed all your equipment here. I needed you to be desperate enough to agree to help me.”
“There never was a boat watching us when we dived?”
“It’s been my experience that if you tell someone the grass is full of snakes, even a crooked stick looks dangerous.” A mock sadness came into his voice. “And now, the unkindest cut of all. You were always going to die, Chief. Just like them.” He nodded toward the others. “You see, the only way for two people to keep a secret is if one of them is dead.” Bridger stood up. “Time to spill a little blood.”
“No,” LePere said.
Bridger laughed. “Relax. I want only a little blood. The cops will look your way eventually, and I need enough blood to let them know you brought your hostages here. What happened to the women and children after that”-he shrugged-“will always be a mystery. So… who will it be?”
“Take my blood,” Grace Fitzgerald said.
“Ah, you saw me looking at young Scotty there, didn’t you? I wish I’d had a mother like you. Maybe I’d have
