Mercy Falls (5 page)

“They wanted you dead. Or maybe Marsha.”

“That’s generally the reason they use bullets.”

“My point is this,” she said. “They didn’t succeed. Does that mean they’ll try again?”

F
LOODLIGHTS LIT THE
hollow with an unnatural glare, and the poplar trees around the Tibodeau cabin looked like a crowd of gawkers gone white with shock. Cork pulled up behind Cy Borkmann’s cruiser and got out.

Ed Larson stood in the doorway of the cabin. He wasn’t wearing the latex gloves anymore and looked as if he’d gathered evidence and was weighing the meaning. Or at least, that’s what Cork hoped his look meant.

“Where’s Lucy?” Cork asked.

“She and Eli went into Allouette to stay with his uncle. We took statements from both of them. They were pretty broken up over the dogs.”

Cork glanced inside the cabin. “So, what did you find?”

Larson adjusted his wire-rims, not a good sign. Then he said, “Well,” which nailed the coffin shut.

“Nothing?” Cork said.

“Not down here. Whoever it was, they actually wiped out the tracks leading back to the woodpile where they threw the dogs. Looks like they used a pine branch or something. I took prints off the phone, but I’m betting they’re just latents from Eli and Lucy. Nothing on the shell casings you found earlier. We pulled the slugs out of the Land Cruiser but they’re too mashed up to be of any use for ballistics. We’re still looking for the round that went through Marsha. Doing a quadrant search of the ground surface right now, then I’ll have the guys start digging. Come morning, we’ll go over every inch of the hilltop where the shooter was. We bagged the dogs. If you think it’ll be of any value, we can have them autopsied.”

Duane Pender, who was working on the search of the ground, hollered.

“What is it?” Larson said.

Pender picked up something and held it up in the light. “It’s a bell. A little jingly Christmas bell.”

Larson walked carefully to the deputy and took the bell from him. It was a silver ball with a little metal bead inside that jingled when the ball moved. “It’s new. Not dirty, so it hasn’t been on the ground long. What do you make of it, Cork?”

Cork walked over. “Could be from a Christmas ornament.”

“In October?”

“Or maybe from a jingle dress.”

“A what?”

“For ceremonial dances. It may be nothing, but make a note of where you found it, Duane, and put it in a bag.”

Larson followed him back to the cabin door. “Any word on Marsha?”

“She was still in surgery when I left the hospital.”

“You don’t look too good yourself.”

Cork slumped against the door frame. The lights for the search were bright in his eyes, and he turned his face from them. “I keep trying to figure all this.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Larson said quietly. “Someone went to a lot of trouble to get you out here. Think about it, Cork. The call comes from the rez. Since you’ve taken over as sheriff, the old policy of you responding to most of the calls from out here is back in place. Marsha’s driving the Land Cruiser. She’s your height, more or less. She’s wearing a cap. The sun’s down, the whole hollow here is in shade. The shooter assumes it’s you who gets out and he fires.”

“Or she fires,” Cork said.

“She?”

“I listened to the tape of the call when I was back at the department. It was a woman doing a pretty good job of sounding like Lucy.”

Larson considered it while he scratched the silver bristle of his hair. “Whoever, they knew what they were doing. Two dead dogs, tracks erased, a well-chosen vantage point from which to fire.”

“Why didn’t he…she…set up a crossfire?” Cork said.

“That probably means the number of people involved is limited. Maybe just the shooter. Or the shooter and the woman he used to get you out here.”

“A lot of speculation,” Cork said.

“Without a lot of hard evidence to go on, you’ve got to begin your thinking somewhere. I’m guessing it’s someone who knows the rez. They knew that Lucy and Eli would be gone, anyway. They were pretty sure it would be you who’d respond. Cork, this wasn’t some sort of random violence. It was well planned and you were the target.”

Borkmann strolled over. In the glare, his bulk cast a huge shadow before him. “We still got two men on that hill.”

The moon wasn’t up yet, but it was on the rise. “Might as well bring them down,” Cork said. “I don’t think we’ll have to worry any more tonight. Maybe we should all call it a night. What do you think, Ed? Come back in the morning? BCA’ll be here then. In the meantime, we can post a couple of men to keep the scene secure, and we’ll send everyone else home. That bullet you’re hoping to dig out of the ground’ll still be there tomorrow.”

“Cork?” Borkmann called from his cruiser. “Just got word from Patsy via Bos. Marsha’s out of surgery and doing well.”

Cork felt something begin to break inside him, a wall behind which an ocean of emotion was at risk of flooding through.

Ed put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll take care of getting things packed up here. You go on home and get some rest. We’ll have a go at it again tomorrow.”

He went back to the department and filled out an incident report, then stopped by the hospital one last time. Patsy had gone, but he found Charlie Annala asleep on the sofa in the waiting area of the recovery room. Someone had put a thin blanket over him. Shortly after midnight, Cork headed home.

By the time he turned onto Gooseberry Lane, the moon had risen high in the sky, a waxing gibbous moon, a silver teardrop on the cheek of night. His home was an old two-story frame affair with a wonderful front porch and a big elm in the yard. The whole town knew it as the O’Connor place. With the exception of college and a few years when he was a cop in Chicago, he’d lived in that house his whole life. In a way, it contained his life. He stood on the lawn a few moments, in the shadow the elm cast in the moonlight, trying to draw to himself the feel of all that was familiar. A light in his bedroom upstairs told him Jo had waited up for him. A soft glow drizzled through the window of his son’s room, Stevie’s night-light. His daughters’ rooms were on the backside of the house, but it was late and a school night and he figured they would be asleep by now. He listened to the creak of the chains on their metal hooks as the porch swing rocked slowly in the breeze. He put his hand against the rough bark of the big tree that was as old as he and took in the dry smell of autumn.

Jo had left a light on in the living room so that he wouldn’t walk into a dark house. He turned it off and headed upstairs, where he checked the children’s rooms. Stevie was snoring softly. Jenny lay asleep with the headphones of her Discman still over her ears. Annie’s pillow was over her head, and her right leg was off the bed. Cork took a moment and carefully settled her back in.

In his own room, he found Jo sitting up but asleep, a manila file folder open on her lap; her reading glasses had slipped to the end of her nose. She was a lawyer and she often brought her work to bed, one way or another. Cork decided not to wake her. He wasn’t quite ready for sleep yet, anyway. Too much going on inside.

He went back downstairs and stood in the dark living room, feeling oddly alien in the quiet of the house, as if he’d been gone a long time and had lost touch with the details that created the mosaic of a normal day. He felt adrift, stranded in a place he didn’t quite know or understand.

In the kitchen, he latched onto the cookie jar, an icon of familiarity. It was Ernie from
Sesame Street
, and it had been in the O’Connor house for more than a decade. Cork dipped into Ernie’s head and brought out a chocolate chip cookie, which he put on the kitchen table while he took a glass tumbler from the cupboard next to the sink. From the refrigerator, he grabbed a plastic gallon jug of milk and filled the tumbler halfway.

As he turned back to the refrigerator, the shatter of glass exploded the quiet of the kitchen. He hit the floor, let go of the jug, reached automatically for his .38. He scrambled across the linoleum and pressed his back to the cabinet doors below the sink, clutching his gun.
One of the windows?
he wondered. But a quick glance told him no bullet had come through any of the panes.

Then he saw the broken tumbler on the floor, the puddle of milk around the shards, and he realized he’d knocked the glass off the table. A simple accident due to his own carelessness, a small incident in a day full of enormous event. Still, it felt as if something had finally snapped inside him, the cord that had kept him from taking a long fall.

Finally alone, he drew his legs up, laid his arms across his knees, cradled his head, and with a violent quaking gave himself up to the dark emotions—terror, rage, regret—that had stalked him all night.

B
OSTON WAS STILL
on duty when Cork rolled in at first light.

She glanced at her watch. “You didn’t sleep much,” she said. “And you don’t mind me saying so, you still look like hell.”

“What’s the word from Morgan and Schilling?” he asked, referring to the two deputies who’d been posted overnight at the Tibodeau cabin.

“Checked in every hour; nothing to report.”

Cork poured himself some coffee from the pot in the common area before going to his office. He spent a few minutes typing a memo on his computer, printed thirty copies, and handed them to the dispatcher. Bos lifted the top copy, read it, and looked up.

“Everybody wears armor on duty now?”

“No exceptions,” Cork said. “I want this memo posted on the board and I want every deputy to check off with initials so I know they’ve read it.” He handed her another sheet on which he’d printed some instructions. “Give this to Cy when he comes in. I want him to brief everyone about last night. Duty assignments remain the same except for Larson’s evidence team, who’ll be out at the cabin. I’m taking a cruiser and heading to the rez.”

She eyed him with maternal concern but said nothing.

He drove a Pathfinder that had been confiscated in a raid on a meth lab near Yellow Lake in August. It had since been fitted with a radio and was now an official part of the vehicle pool. He’d taken only a couple of sips of the coffee he’d poured himself earlier, so he stopped at the all night Food ’N Fuel and bought three coffees and several granola bars.

As he headed north out of town, a red sun inched above the ragged tree line on the far side of Iron Lake. In an autumn in which the whole earth had seemed the color of a raw wound, the water itself appeared to be a well of blood. Cork couldn’t look at it without thinking of all the blood that had soaked the blouse of Marsha Dross’s uniform. As much as possible he kept his eyes on the road and considered the question of who might want him dead.

He’d been sheriff of Tamarack County before, for a period of seven years. Things had happened near the end of that tenure, terrible things that had torn him apart and nearly shattered his family as well. His badge had been taken from him. He’d spent the next three years running Sam’s Place and putting himself back together. Over time he’d begun to feel whole again and to believe that his life still had promise. In those first seven years as sheriff, he’d been responsible for a lot of people going to jail. On many occasions, he’d been threatened with reprisal, idle threats for the most part. Or so he’d thought.

Still, that was old business. Retribution was usually born of rage, and rage generally lost its heat over time. So an old grudge, while possible, didn’t feel like a solid thread.

It was a chilly morning. In protected coves, the surface of Iron Lake was covered with a languorous mist. Russet leaves hung on the branches of the oaks. The tamaracks, brilliant yellow, seemed like plumes of fire exploding from the dark ground that edged the marshes. Normally, Cork would have reveled in the beauty of the woods, but as he sipped his coffee he was deep in thought, not only baffled over who’d want him dead, but wondering if Ed Larson would find anything useful at the Tibodeau cabin.

The deputies, Howard Morgan and Nate Schilling, knew he was coming, and they both stepped from the cruiser as he drew up and parked behind them. They looked tired, as though they’d had enough of sitting all night trying to fight sleep, as though they’d probably had enough of each other, too. He hauled out the other coffees he’d bought and the granola bars and offered them to his men.

“The java’s probably a little cool by now, but it’s pure caffeine. And take your pick of the bars.”

“Thanks,” Morgan said. He was the older of the two deputies, a seven-year veteran of the force and of Duluth PD before that. He was an easygoing sort, and Cork liked him.

The hill cast a shadow across the road. The sun would be a long time in reaching the hollow, hours before it drove out the cold that lay along the bottom. When the men breathed and when they spoke, clouds of vapor escaped their lips.

“Bos said everything was quiet last night.”

“That’s right, Sheriff.” Schilling took a bite of a peanut butter–chocolate chip granola bar and followed it with a slug of coffee. Although he’d completed his schooling and training almost two years before, he was still considered a rookie. Usually, he had a little rose in his cheeks, but he looked pretty sallow at the moment.

“Nobody curious drop by?”

“Nobody we could see anyway,” Schilling said. “After the floodlights got packed up, it was pretty dark. Could have been someone watching from the trees, I suppose.”

“You suppose?” Morgan laughed so hard coffee dribbled out his nostrils.

“What’s that all about?” Cork said.

“Nothing, Sheriff. Not a thing,” Schilling said.

“Like hell. Cork, he was so scared somebody was taking a bead on us that he spent the whole night on the floor of the cruiser.” Morgan wiped his nose with the sleeve of his uniform.

“Morgan, you asshole. It wasn’t like that, Sheriff.”

“You both wore your armor the entire watch?”

“Absolutely,” Schilling said.

Cork figured it was a good thing Morgan was sporting his Kevlar vest, because if Schilling’s eyes had been bullets they’d have blown holes all the way through him.

He stared at the dark side of the hill, where snakes of mist coiled and uncoiled among the pine trees along the base. “I’m going up, see what things look like on top.”

“You’re not waiting for Captain Larson?” Schilling said. When he saw Cork’s face, he added, “I just meant that he’s on his way. We got word from Bos just before you came.”

“Hey, Einstein, the sheriff’s got a radio,” Morgan said.

“Oh, right.”

“Just let him know where I am,” Cork said.

He walked fifty yards down the road to the place where, the day before, he and Pender and the state trooper named Fitzhugh had begun maneuvering up the hill, moving under the cover of trees and exposed outcroppings, working their way carefully toward the rocks where the sniper had been. He wasn’t wearing his uniform now. He’d put on old jeans, a forest green wool shirt with a quilted lining, and his Timberland boots. His badge was pinned on his gun belt next to his .38. And he wore a Kevlar vest.

The night had not been cold enough for frost, but the hillside was covered with dew, and his boots slipped on the wet rocks and wild grass. The top of the hill was maybe two hundred feet above the road. He was breathing hard by the time he reached the crown, puffing out clouds like an old steam engine. He hoped this was due mostly to the lack of sleep, but he was concerned that his age might also be an issue. He wasn’t far from turning the corner on half a century, and although he was an avid jogger, he knew that age eventually caught up with everyone, even the swiftest runner.

Cork walked along the spine of the hill a hundred yards south to the jumble of rocks where they’d found the shell casings. The thin topsoil there had completely eroded away, exposing gray gneiss beneath that had been fractured by aeons of freeze and thaw. There were sharp edges to the rocks, and the shooter had covered his position with a bedding of pine needles. It was among the needles that Cork had found the shell casings the night before.

The road down the hollow took a right turn and followed a deep furrow just to the south where a thread of water called Tick Creek ran. North, the narrow access to the Tibodeau cabin was clear all the way to where it branched off the main road. Wooded hills stretched away in every direction. Pressing down above it all was the great blue palm of the sky. The shooter had chosen well, a vantage from which he could clearly see not just the cabin but also the approach of anyone traveling the road from the north or south.

He looked down at the pine-needle bed in the rocks and was puzzled.

The shooter had been careful in so many respects. Knowing Lucy and Eli’s schedule. Calling from the cabin, then wiping away all traces of his or her presence. Choosing a position that was excellent not only because of its vantage but also because it lay on solid rock where no footprints would be left. So why did he ignore the shell casings? They were crumbs on an otherwise empty plate, impossible to miss. Had the shooter simply overlooked them? Or been suddenly rushed, worried by the sound of the sirens as Pender and Borkmann approached, and fled without taking the time for the last details?

Cork considered the dead dogs. He thought it likely they were killed first, then the shooter or the accomplice made the call and climbed the hill, probably the same way he’d come. Did the accomplice come, too? How did they leave? Cork walked toward the back side of the hill where the night before it had been too dark to go. The slope was gentler there, with more soil and long tufts of wild oats beneath the aspen trees. About fifty yards from the shooter’s rocks, Cork found a spot where the incline increased suddenly and where some of the ground cover had been disturbed by a sliding shoe or boot. A few feet farther down was a scar in the soil where a whole bunch of oat stalks had been pulled completely out, as if someone had grabbed them in an attempt to prevent a fall. Below that, the bushes had been broken by the weight of a large object, perhaps a tumbling body. The shooter, or someone with the shooter, had taken a nasty spill.

Cork picked his way down the back side of the hill and reached the bed of Tick Creek. Fall had been dry, and this late in the season there was only a small trickle of water crawling along the bottom. A couple of hundred yards to the south, the creek crossed the road. That was the direction from which Pender had come the day before with his lights flashing and his siren screaming. Cork didn’t think the shooter would have fled that way. North was different. Before it intersected County 23 a half mile distant, Tick Creek curved sharply away from the turnoff to the Tibodeau cabin, so that a cop coming from that direction would see nothing of the creek. Cork turned north. The banks were high and formidably steep from the cut of floodwaters that came with the snowmelt each spring, and they were crowned with a thick growth of brush and popple. Someone on foot could have climbed out, but not a vehicle. In a few minutes, Cork reached the bridge at County Road 23. The structure was made of creosote-soaked wood with a web of rusted iron railing along either side and decorated with painted graffiti. In the soft dirt of the narrow shoulder at the east end of the bridge, Cork found recent tire tracks.

Larson watched Cork approach on foot. “I thought you were up there.” He pointed toward the hilltop.

Cork said, “I walked down the other side and around the hill.”

“You needed the exercise?” came a voice behind him.

Cork smiled and turned as BCA agent Simon Rutledge stepped from the cabin.

Rutledge spoke like Jimmy Stewart, with a little catch in his throat and a naively honest tone that you had to love. He was in his midforties, an unimposing man with thinning red hair and a hopelessly boyish smile, but his appearance and demeanor belied a tough spirit. Cork had watched Rutledge question suspects. He never browbeat, never bullied. He offered them his sympathy, bestowed on them his neighborly smile, opened his arms to them, and, after he got their trust, almost always got their confession. Simon Rutledge was so good that whenever he interviewed a suspect, other agents referred to it as “Simonizing.”

“How’s it hanging, Cork?” Rutledge said. The two men shook hands.

“I’ve had better days.”

“Bet you have. Where you been?”

Cork nodded toward the hilltop. “Our shooter left the back way. I found tire tracks at the bridge over Tick Creek on County Twenty-three. They’ll photograph well, and I’ll bet if we’re careful we can get a good cast made.”

“Mack,” Rutledge called to one of his BCA evidence team who was digging in the ground in front of the Tibodeau cabin. He gave the agent directions to the bridge over Tick Creek. “Check out the tire tracks…” He glanced at Cork.

“East side, south shoulder.”

“You heard him. Get good photos, and I’ll be there in a bit to help with casting.”

“On my way.” Mack put his shovel down and headed for his state car.

“You take a look at the cabin?” Cork asked Rutledge.

“Yeah. But I know Ed did a good job on it, so I wasn’t expecting much. I was just thinking of going up top to have a look where our shooter camped out. You see anything while you were up there?”

“I didn’t look hard. Mostly I was thinking.”

“Wondering who wants you dead?” Rutledge flashed a slightly diminished version of his smile but it still produced dimples. “I had a talk with Ed, and he’s got a point about you being the target. You need to be thinking seriously about who’d want you in their gun sight.”

“Any time you bust someone, deep down they want to bust you back,” Cork said.

“Not everybody’s got the balls for that. The question for you is who does?”

Two of Cork’s deputies were helping the BCA people dig in front of the cabin. They put a shovelful into a metal sieve, sifted, tossed out rocks and other detritus, then repeated the process. They were looking for the round that hit Marsha Dross. Cork hoped they’d find it and that it would prove good for a ballistics analysis.

Rutledge walked to his car, an unremarkable blue Cavalier, and brought back an evidence bag that held the two shell casings Cork had found the night before. “Remington .357, packed with a hundred fifty grains, I’d say. Probably fired from something like a Savage One-ten. That would be my firearm of choice, anyway.”

“Why? That’s a game rifle,” Cork said.

“With a good scope, one of those babies could make Barney Fife into an effective assassin. And up here, a Savage One-ten is as common as a snowmobile. Wouldn’t raise any eyebrows like a more sophisticated sniper weapon might.”

“You’re saying it could be anyone,” Cork said.

“Those tracks you found at the bridge might help narrow things a bit.” Rutledge looked at Cork wistfully. “So?”

“So what?”