Red Knife (18 page)

“What else did she say?”

“Dad, don’t answer any more questions,” Dave said. “Marsha, this is inappropriate. My father shouldn’t be giving statements that could be used against Elise.”

Buck turned on his son. “Don’t be telling me what I can and can’t say. I think she killed the redskins. There. How’s that for a statement?”

“Jesus,” Dave said.

“Fuck you, boy. You had it in you, it’d be you asking the questions instead of some skirt.”

Dave Reinhardt grabbed his father by the shirt collar and shoved him against the side of Buck’s pickup. “That mouth is going to get you killed one of these days. And you know what, Dad? I’m going to turn cartwheels on your coffin.” He let go. “I’m out of here. You’re on your own.” He stomped toward his cruiser.

Buck watched him go, then straightened his shirt and laughed. “Finally the boy’s got some balls.”

A few more minutes of questioning and it became apparent that neither Reinhardt nor his crew had anything more to offer. As they parted, Dross said, “Buck, I highly advise that you stay close to home for a while, until we get a better handle on this whole situation.”

“Piss on the Red Boyz,” he responded. “I got me a bodyguard.” He tapped the Glock holstered on his hip. “Come on, boys. Let’s call it a day.”

Reinhardt and the other men got into their trucks. Cork crossed the highway with Dross, Larson, and Borkman. They watched the trucks take off and head toward Aurora.

Dross said, “You better get on back to the office, Cy, and do the paperwork. I’ll be there shortly.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Borkman slid his large bulk behind the wheel of his cruiser, turned around on the asphalt, and followed where the other two vehicles had gone.

“A dark SUV,” Larson said. “Not much to go on.”

Cork said, “Lonnie Thunder drives a dark green Xterra.”

Dross shook her head. “Why would Thunder go after Buck? Doesn’t really get him anything.”

“He’s not operating in a predictable way,” Cork said. “Too scared to think straight, maybe.”

“I’d love to have him behind bars, take him out of this whole equation.” Dross looked where the sun had set, leaving only a red glow above the trees, as if from a distant fire. “What I’d really love is to be on vacation in Aruba. Come on, Ed. We’ve got paperwork.”

After the others left, Cork stood a moment in the gathering dark. It was quiet on the long straight stretch of empty highway that burrowed through the pines. He wished he believed the quiet would last.

O
nce they’d left the community center in Allouette where the postfuneral gathering had been held, Will, Lucinda, and Ulysses had exchanged no more than a dozen words in the car. At home, Will changed his clothes and said he was going to the shop. Uly headed out “to hang with Darrell for a while.” Lucinda was left alone with the baby, who’d been unusually quiet all day. She laid Misty in the carrier, which she sat on the kitchen table so the baby could see her as she worked. Lucinda spoke constantly to her granddaughter, fully realizing that the infant had no way of understanding. But babies needed the sound of a loving voice. And for Lucinda, too, the sound of a voice, even if it was her own, was comforting.

For years Lucinda had often suffered long hours of silence, with no one to talk to. When her boys were young, things had been different. Alejandro had been an adventurer, exploring the territory of every new posting, every new home. He would report to her what he’d discovered. He talked about his school, his teachers, his classmates. He made friends easily and he told her about their houses and their families. In this way, he kept her connected to his life. Uly was quieter and the things he told her seemed more like secrets he was sharing. She felt special being allowed into his private world this way. As they’d grown, however, the boys had changed. They’d become increasingly like their father, and more and more they closed themselves off from her. Maybe it was that way with all boys as they stumbled through adolescence. She didn’t know. She often wondered how different things would have been if she’d had daughters.

Although none of them would be hungry soon—they’d eaten after the funeral—she set about making tamales. She knew that preparing a meal would keep her grounded. Once a month or so, Will drove her to Duluth where she bought corn husks and other foodstuffs at a market that specialized in Latino goods. Tamales had been one of Alejandro’s favorites, a dish he often requested on his birthday. She didn’t think about this consciously as she began, but in the middle of everything, the realization of what she was doing hit her and she almost cried. Almost. As she had since the beginning, she took her grief and shoved it deep inside, telling herself that the man buried this day was not the brave boy who loved tamales. That boy had left her years before. As for Rayette, Lucinda simply refused to allow herself to think about her at the moment. Force of will. A practiced soldier’s wife.

When Will came home, the dining room table was set. Misty was sleeping in her crib in her new room. Uly was in his bedroom with the door closed. It was dark outside. Crickets chorused through the open windows, their chirring coming in on a warm spring breeze. Will washed up, knocked on Uly’s door, and they all sat down at the table. No one commented on the tamales.

Near the end of the meal, Will said, “I heard someone took a couple of shots at Buck Reinhardt.” They were the first words he’d spoken since saying grace.

“Did they hit him?” Uly asked.

Will stuffed the last forkful of tamale in his mouth. “Missed.”

“Maybe they were just trying to scare him,” Lucinda said.

Will looked at her as if she was stupid. “What would be the point? You scare someone to keep them from doing something you don’t want them to do. Reinhardt’s already killed Alex. No way to keep him from doing that now.”

“You think it was the Red Boyz?” Uly said.

“That’s what I think.” Will shook his head. “Screwups. Bunch of screwups. Alexander didn’t teach them anything useful.”

“Like what? How to kill a man?” Lucinda was suddenly full of fury, a deep anger that seemed to come from nowhere and that spilled out at her husband. “Why would anyone want to teach that? Why doesn’t someone teach how to live together without killing? Now that would be useful.”

She threw her napkin on the table, grabbed her plate, and took it to the sink. At her back, neither her husband nor son said a word. She stood staring out the window into the dark where the crickets, in their way, kept up a lively conversation.

“Yes,” Will said quietly. “How to kill a man.”

She heard his chair slide across the carpet as he moved back from the table, then she heard him walk from the room. She looked over her shoulder. Uly was staring after him.

Annie was at her computer when the message from Uly Kingbird appeared on her screen.

r u there

yes,
she typed back.

meet me at st agnes…important

when

15 minutes

ok

The May night was warm. There was no moon yet and Annie walked in and out of the darkness between the islands of light under the streetlamps. She loved spring in Minnesota. It was never a long season. Winter left reluctantly and summer usually came immediately after and with a vengeance that included mosquitoes and blackflies. But for a couple of weeks in May, everything felt new and clean and hopeful. This feeling was just one more treasure Annie wanted to lock away in her heart when she left Aurora for college.

Uly was already sitting on the steps in front of St. Agnes. There was a little light above the entrance that was always on at night, as if inviting the lost to come inside, though the doors were actually locked. Uly sat on his shadow. He looked up when he heard Annie approach. She sat down next to him.

“Thanks,” he said.

“It’s not a big deal. What’s up?”

Uly had a small stone, which he nervously juggled in his right hand as he spoke. “I’m going to do something.”

“Okay. What?”

The stone went up and came down. “Do you believe in hell?”

“You mean like with the devil and all that?”

“I’m not talking about some cartoon devil with a tail and a pitchfork. I mean a place where you’re in eternal torment, where nothing will ever get better.”

“I don’t believe there’s anything like that after we die, Uly, but I think for a lot of people that’s their life.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” He held the stone in his hand and stared at it. “You told me once that you wanted to be a nun.”

“I used to. I don’t know anymore.”

“There’s nothing I ever wanted to be. Except dead, sometimes.”

“Don’t say that, Uly. What about your music? You’ve got so much talent. More than anybody else I know.” She shifted and faced him with her whole body. “Look, it’s just this place, these people, Uly. Once you graduate and leave Aurora, the world’ll be full of possibility.”

“Alex left and came back and they killed him.”

“You’re not Alex.”

He finally threw the stone. Annie heard it hit the pavement and bounce away. “Sometimes I wish I was. He had guts.” He stood up, shoved his hands into his pockets, and stared hard where he’d thrown the stone. “Nuns pray for people.”

“It’s one of the things they do.”

“Pray for me, Annie.”

She stood up. They both cast shadows that lay on the church steps like small animals, black and huddled. “You’re scaring me, Uly.”

A sad smile appeared on his face. “Me? Scaring somebody? That’s a switch.” He looked away, into the night. “Look, I’ve gotta go. Something I’ve gotta do.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No. I need to be alone now.” He hurried away, as if he was already late for whatever it was that was calling him.

“I’ll do it, Uly!”

He stopped and turned back. “Do what?”

“I’ll pray for you.”

He thought about that and nodded gratefully. Then he left, and she watched him move swiftly through the islands of light until finally the darkness took him altogether. She sat down on the steps of St. Agnes, bowed her head, and kept her promise.

Will came into the baby’s room, where Lucinda sat in a rocking chair, feeding Misty a bottle of formula. “I’m going back to the shop,” he told her.

“Now?”

“I won’t be able to sleep anyway. Maybe if I get tired I’ll lie down on the cot there. Don’t worry if I don’t come home till late.”

“All right,” she said, because she knew whatever she said it wouldn’t matter. Will was going and that was that.

After he left, she rocked Misty and sang to her softly. When the baby was asleep, Lucinda laid her in the crib and went to the big picture window, in the living room, that looked out over the front yard. She was watching for Uly, who’d headed off earlier, borrowing her car, saying he was going to the library, though she didn’t believe it for a minute. She was worried about him. She’d always been worried about him, worried that he would break under the weight of all his father laid on him. Will was usually clear about what he expected of his sons. He was good at laying down the law. He wasn’t good at forgiving when the law was breeched. And he was a complete failure at letting his sons know when he was proud of them. It must have seemed to Alejandro and Ulysses that he had never been. Which wasn’t true. He simply didn’t know how to tell them so.

She lay down on the sofa, and without realizing it, she drifted off. She woke to a distant scream and thought at first that Misty had awakened. Then she realized the sound was coming from sirens racing through Aurora. Like a bad dream they faded away and the soothing
chirr
of the crickets returned and once again she slept.

W
hen the phone rang, Cork was asleep in the bunk at Sam’s Place. Over the years, particularly in the days when he was sheriff of Tamarack County, he’d become accustomed to being hauled out of bed at god-awful hours, and he was awake instantly and across the dark room to the telephone.

“O’Connor,” he said.

“Cork, it’s Bos.” Bos Swain, one of the dispatchers for the sheriff’s department. “The sheriff asked me to call. She figured you’d want to know. Buck Reinhardt’s been shot. He’s dead.”

Homicide was always startling news, yet as he dressed to head out to the scene, Cork found himself thinking,
Of course.

Buck Reinhardt had been killed at 10:35
P.M.
as he left the Buzz Saw and made his way across the parking lot toward his truck. He was shot once in the head with a high-caliber bullet fired, witnesses said, from a wooded rise on the other side of the highway, a distance of approximately seventy-five yards.

“A tough shot,” Dross said, eyeing the rise from where she stood near Reinhardt’s truck. “Lighting’s not great, parking lot’s full, a lot of interference.”

Ed Larson, who was standing next to her watching his team finish with the crime scene, said, “With a scope and a steady hand, about anybody who knows how to handle a rifle could make the shot.”

Dross shook her head. “Killing a man, that’s not a cakewalk. Takes a lot of determination.”

“Scared people do it all the time,” Larson said, “and then wonder how the hell it happened.”

Dross turned from the rise and looked at her investigator. “Do you really think it was fear that killed Buck Reinhardt?”

Cork, who’d been leaning against the tailgate of Reinhardt’s truck with his arms crossed and his mind working on the incident, asked, “Witnesses see anything?”

“Nobody we’ve interviewed so far,” Larson said. “The shots were fired, Buck went down, and everybody scrambled for cover. They all agreed where the shots had come from, but that’s about all they’ve been able to tell us.”

Cork came away from the truck. “Shots? He was hit only once.”

“A second round was fired after he went down. Burrowed into the asphalt beside his body. We dug that one out.”

“Whoever it was knew enough about Buck to know he’d be at the Buzz Saw tonight. They just took up their position and waited,” Cork said.

“Who knew about Buck?” Dross asked.

Cork shrugged. “Just about anybody who’d spent five minutes asking. Wasn’t any secret he did most of his drinking here. And he drank a lot.”

They all turned and watched as Reinhardt’s covered body was lifted onto a gurney and wheeled to the ambulance. The small crowd that had gathered around the entrance to the Buzz Saw watched, too. A minute later, with no flashing of lights or other fanfare, the ambulance pulled away.

“Does Elise know?” Cork asked.

Marsha said, “I sent Cy Borkman and he broke the news.”

“How’d she take it?”

“According to Cy, with a little water and on the rocks.”

“What about Brittany Young?”

“Pretty shaken up. One of her friends took her home.”

In the woods on the rise, deputies were going over the area with halogen beams. Occasionally, a bright flash indicated that the scene was being documented with the department’s digital camera. BCA agent Simon Rutledge emerged from the pine trees, looked both ways, then crossed the highway.

“Anything?” Dross asked.

Rutledge grinned and held up a plastic evidence bag. “Found the place in the pine needles where our shooter laid down to wait, and we got a shell casing. No tracks or anything else yet.”

“Nobody saw the shooter leave the woods?” Cork asked.

“Nope,” Larson replied.

“Hiked out probably,” Rutledge said. “What’s the nearest road?”

“That would be Lowell Lake Road, about half a mile that way.” Dross pointed north, up the highway.

Rutledge said, “Any houses there? Anyone who might have seen a car sitting along the side of the road?”

Dross shook her head. “That stretch is deserted.”

“Still, you may want to get someone over there to look for tire impressions from a vehicle parked on the shoulder.”

Larson got on his walkie-talkie and raised Deputy Pender, who was on the wooded rise. He explained what he wanted and told Pender to take one of the other deputies with him.

A red pickup slowed on the highway in order to pull into the parking lot. It was stopped by Deputy Minot, who had instructions not to let anyone in. After an exchange between deputy and driver, the pickup came ahead and parked in an empty slot near the door to the Buzz Saw. Dave Reinhardt got out and walked toward his father’s truck.

“Where is he?” he said.

“His body’s already gone, Dave,” Dross replied. “The autopsy’ll be done first thing in the morning.”

“How’d it happen?”

Dross explained what she knew.

Reinhardt stood with his hands clenched at his sides. “Red Boyz,” he said.

“We’ve got nothing at the moment that points toward anyone, Dave. There’s still a lot of groundwork to do.”

Reinhardt looked at her. In the light of the parking lot lamp, his face was white and hard, like new plaster. “Are you blind or just stupid, Marsha?”

Dross said evenly, “It seems to me the stupid thing would be to rush to judgment.”

“Hey, Dave!” Cal Richards broke from the crowd at the door to the Buzz Saw. He slipped under the crime scene tape and came toward Reinhardt. He was still wearing the coveralls he’d had on when the shots had been fired at Buck earlier in the day. He looked stunned. Or drunk. Most probably some of both. “The shits, man. He’s buying you a drink one minute, the next minute his head’s all over the parking lot. Jesus.”

“Mr. Richards, you need to step back behind the tape,” Dross said.

Richards gave her a
screw you
look and made no move to comply.

“I’ll be happy to have a deputy escort you,” Dross said.

“All right, all right.” Richards lifted his hands to stave off her move. “Dave, let me buy you a drink?”

Dave Reinhardt said, “I’ll be there in a minute, Cal.”

Richards turned, ducked under the tape, and returned to the bar.

“What are you going to do?” Reinhardt asked. The question was directed at Dross.

“Conduct a thorough investigation that will end in a lawful arrest, Dave.”

“Just like you’ve arrested Lonnie Thunder for killing Kristi? And how about the Kingbirds? Got any leads there? Your investigations have all the speed of a car with square wheels, Marsha.”

“There’s a lot going on, Dave. We’re doing the best we can.”

“Yeah, right.” He stood a few seconds more, looking at his father’s truck, looking at the asphalt that had been chalked with an outline of Buck’s body. “Fuck,” he said and followed Richards to the bar.

“He’s right,” Dross said. “We’re getting nowhere.”

They all looked at her. Finally Larson said, “Okay, so what now?”

“Let’s finish up here. Wrap up the interviews, pull it to a close on the rise, see if Pender has come up with any impressions on Lowell Lake Road. Then let’s go back to the office, do the paperwork, go home, and try to get some sleep. We’ll start on it all again first thing in the morning.”

Rutledge raised his hand, as if he were in geography class. “Marsha, you mind if I drop in on Elise Reinhardt, keep her company in her grief?”

“Kind of late, isn’t it?” Ed Larson said.

Rutledge gave a little shrug. “She told me this afternoon that she seldom goes to bed before two. She said she drinks until she can’t keep her eyes open, otherwise all she sees when she lies down is her daughter’s face. I think she could use a little sympathetic company.”

Dross said, “Simon, I’m so tired I wouldn’t care if you painted yourself yellow and pretended to be a taxi.”

“Then I’ll see you all in the morning.”

He left them and headed toward his Cherokee, which was parked at the far end of the lot.

Ed Larson frowned. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s taking advantage of a woman in a vulnerable position.”

“Elise vulnerable?” Dross laughed. “Yeah, like a Brink’s armored car. I’m sure he’s got something besides her grief on his mind. You headed home, Cork?”

“I think I’ll buy Dave Reinhardt a drink first.”

“Suit yourself.”

She turned to Larson and they walked away, talking quietly.

Inside the Buzz Saw, the shooting seemed to have had an energizing effect. Though it was late, nearing one
A.M.,
the place was still jumping. Cork spotted Reinhardt and Cal Richards sitting together on stools at the bar. Reinhardt already had three empty shot glasses in front of him, and as Cork watched, another patron came up to Dave, offered his condolences, and signaled the bartender to give the man a round. Cork waited until Reinhardt and Richards were alone again, then he took the stool next to Buck’s son.

“Just want to say I’m sorry, Dave.”

Reinhardt, who sat hunched forward over his line of empty glasses, glanced his way.

Cork lifted a hand to signal for a drink. “Everybody knows Buck could be a son of a bitch—”

“Hell,” Cal Richards broke in from Dave’s other side, “he took pride in being a son of a bitch.”

“But he was still your father,” Cork went on, “and I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.” Reinhardt said it grudgingly.

Jack Sellers, who was tending bar, brought three glasses of whatever scotch it was Reinhardt and Richards were drinking. Cork handed him a twenty and told him to keep the change.

“You know if anybody’s told Elise?” Reinhardt said.

“Cy Borkman broke the news,” Cork told him.

“How’d she take it?”

“Pretty well from what I understand.”

“I’ll bet. Probably proposed a toast.” He picked up the drink Cork had bought him and downed it.

“I get the impression Buck hadn’t been particularly husbandly toward her of late.”

“Hell, Buck never worried about being anything to anybody,” Cal Richards said, after gulping his own drink. “He was just fine with who he was.”

A rattlesnake’s just fine being a rattlesnake
, Cork thought,
but that doesn’t mean you want to cozy up to it.

“Buck was a rare one,” he said instead.

Reinhardt nodded in agreement. “A man spends sixty years on this earth, there ought to be somebody sheds a tear when he’s gone. He could be a mean old bastard, sure, but he was my father, goddamn it.”

Cork picked up his own glass, but held off drinking. “Fathers can be hard to please.”

“I remember your old man,” Reinhardt said. “He didn’t seem too bad.”

“I lost him to a bullet, too.”

“That’s right, I remember. Sorry.”

“Long time ago, Dave. It passes.”

Reinhardt stared at the line of empty glasses. “I tried so hard to do something he’d be proud of. Too late now.”

Cal Richards said, “I know something you could do.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Get the prick that shot him.”

Cork leaned to the side and looked across Reinhardt’s back at Richards. “You got any idea who that might be, Cal? ’Cause the sheriff would love to know.”

“You’re a cop, Dave,” Richards went on, unperturbed. “That’s what cops do, figure shit out. Hell, you couldn’t do any worse than that bitch who’s wearing the badge.”

Cork said, “Cal, anybody ever tell you that you’ve got all the charm of a gas station toilet?”

“Fuck you, O’Connor.”

Reinhardt’s fist hit the bar. “I know who did it. The Red Boyz.”

“You
don’t
know that, Dave,” Cork said. “And even if it was one of the Red Boyz, which one? Let Marsha and her people handle this.”

Richards said, low and seductive, “Show that bitch, Dave, and make your old man proud at the same time.”

Jack Sellers came down the bar. “Last call, boys.”

“One for the road, Dave?” Richards said. “On me.”

“Sure, why not?”

Sellers eyed Cork, who declined with a shake of his head.

People had begun to stand and put on their coats and slowly make their way toward the front door. Sellers brought two final shots and set them in front of Dave Reinhardt and Cal Richards.

Richards lifted his glass. “Here’s to Buck, and to finding the goddamn coward son of a bitch who sent him to his reward.”

Both men tilted their heads and threw the shots down their throats. Reinhardt fumbled with his wallet, pulled out a twenty, slipped it across the bar, and slid his butt off the stool.

“I don’t think you’re in any condition to drive, Dave,” Cork said.

Richards, who’d had a lot to drink himself but seemed at the moment to be handling it better, said, “I’ll see he gets home.”