Vermilion Drift (31 page)

“I wouldn’t go spreading rumors about my family if I was you, O’Connor.”

“See, right there, that’s the point.”

“What point?”

“I can’t think of anybody who’d care what I said about Indigo Broom except you. And I know you were no fan of the man. So the only thing that makes sense to me is that you’re trying to protect your family and your family’s name. You don’t want it associated with the kinds of things your uncle did. Considering the monster he was, if I was you, I wouldn’t want that either. Family’s important, Isaiah, and should be protected. I get that.”

Broom’s hands drew themselves into fists. “Get out of here, O’Connor.”

“So the first thing I want to say is that my head’s all right, and, all things considered, there’s no need for you to apologize.” Cork gave him a quick smile, then went on. “Now we come to the part that’s more troublesome. I just had a long talk with Jesse St. Onge. I know you put him up to the graffiti in the mine. I know you showed him the way in and you cut through the wall in the Vermilion Drift and led him to the place you wanted him to put his throw up.”

“His what?”

Cork laughed. “Yeah, sounds funny, doesn’t it? His art, Isaiah. Except that it wasn’t really his art. It was yours. Exactly the same design that was on the threatening notes a bunch of folks in Tamarack County got. You sent those notes.”

Broom’s fists relaxed, then balled again, and Cork wondered if the man was aware at all of his body language.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Broom said.

“Oh, I’m certain you do. And when Jesse tells his story to the sheriff’s people, they’ll be certain, too. The thing I don’t understand is why you killed Lauren Cavanaugh.”

“I killed Lauren Cavanaugh? What the hell are you talking about?” Now his hands went limp, as if they’d just let go of something.

“The second set of notes. The ones you sent to Haddad’s wife and put on the windshield of Genie Kufus’s car and stuck to Max Cavanaugh’s door with a hunting knife. See, whoever wrote that second set of notes knew Lauren Cavanaugh was dead. That was something known only to the authorities and to those of us on the inside. And, of course, the killer.”

“Second set of notes? Look, O’Connor, I don’t know anything about a second set of notes. Yeah, I went into the mine with Jesse and we put up the warning. And, yeah, I sent some threats to Haddad and Cavanaugh and that Kufus woman. Just to scare them. But I didn’t have anything to do with those other notes you’re talking about. And I sure as hell had nothing to do with killing Lauren Cavanaugh. Why would I kill her? I didn’t even know her. My only concern in all this is to keep nuclear waste away from our land, to protect Grandmother Earth.”

“Where did you get the font you used for the notes?”

“Off the Internet. You can get any damn thing off the Internet.”

“Mind showing me?”

Broom looked at Cork as if the request was crazy.

“The police will be asking you to do the same thing, Isaiah, after Jesse talks to them. If I get a jump on things, maybe I can help protect your family’s name.”

Broom eyed Cork, made a sound like he’d just forced something odious down his throat, and turned to his house. Cork followed him inside.

Broom was a man who’d never married, and his place showed no evidence of a woman’s influence. It was cluttered with papers and magazines. Broom subscribed to a lot of publications across a broad
spectrum of interests.
American Indian Culture and Research Journal. American Indian Quarterly. Anishnabeg Mom-Weh Newsletter. The New Yorker. The Wall Street Journal. Time. Mother Jones. National Geographic
. And others sitting in stacks around the living room and dining area. The floor hadn’t been swept since the Ice Age, and from the mess he could see through the doorway to the kitchen, Cork was very glad Broom would never invite him to lunch.

Broom went to a desk in a corner of the living room where a computer tower and monitor and DSL modem had been set. On a cart next to the desk was an ink-jet printer. He plopped down in the desk chair and brought the machine out of hibernation. With a couple of clicks of his mouse, he was on the Internet. Cork watched over Broom’s shoulder as he hit the drop-down box in Google search, checked his search history, found a website with the URL
http://www.eyepoppingfonts.com
, and clicked on it. Once the website came up, Broom navigated quickly to the font called From Hell.

“There.” He shoved away from the desk.

“You did that pretty quickly,” Cork said.

“Any idiot could do it quickly,” Broom said, then gave Cork a cold look and added, “Even you.”

They went back outside and stood near the sculpture, which was barely begun and showed no sign yet of what it would become. Cork touched the rough-cut wood. “What’s it going to be, Isaiah? An eagle?”

“Animikii.”
A thunderbird. “What happens now?”

“You’ll get a visit from the sheriff’s people, I imagine. But it would probably be best if you visited them. It would look better. And you’d also have high ground for any activist statements you might want to throw in. But take a lawyer with you.”

Broom bent and lifted his chain saw. His face was like the wood of the sculpture, hard to read.

“Isaiah, there’s no way I can keep your uncle’s name out of this. We both know what he did.”

Broom gave the chain saw cord a yank. The roar of the motor would eat anything more Cork might have had to say, so he simply turned and left.

I
t was midday and hot under a cloudless sky when Blessing dropped Cork and Trixie back at the house on Gooseberry Lane. Cork tethered his dog to her doghouse and prepared to head to the sheriff’s office to report what he’d learned. He was two steps from his Land Rover when Simon Rutledge drove up in his state car, parked in the driveway, and got out. He was wearing a gray sport coat and blue shirt, no tie. In his right hand he held a six-pack of cold Leinenkugel’s.

“Got a minute or twelve?” Rutledge asked, lifting the beer toward Cork as enticement.

“Depends on what you’ve got on your mind, Simon.”

“Beer. What else do you need to know?”

Cork waved him to the front porch, and the two men settled in the swing. Rutledge handed Cork a bottle, then took one for himself. They unscrewed the caps and sat for a minute, letting the brew wash their throats.

“Nothing better than a cold beer on a hot summer afternoon,” Rutledge said.

“Agreed.”

Two boys of maybe ten or eleven rode by on bicycles, carrying tennis rackets, heading, Cork figured, to the courts in Grant Park.

“You know, tomorrow’s my son’s birthday,” Rutledge said.

“Yeah? How old?”

“Thirteen.”

“Teenager. Tough times ahead.”

“He’s a good kid. I’m not worried. I’d love to be there.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Because we’re close to an end here. I can feel it. I don’t want to leave until I know we can shut the lid on this one.”

“This isn’t just one thing, Simon. It’s a whole bunch of things.”

“Yeah, but they’re all tied together somehow, Cork. And you know what?” He laid his arm on the back of the swing and gave Cork a long look. “I think you’ve got an idea how.”

Cork smiled despite himself. “Gonna Simonize me?”

“I was kind of hoping the alcohol might loosen your tongue.”

Cork laughed. He heard Trixie barking and said, “Be right back, Simon.” He went through the house and out the patio door to where he’d tethered Trixie. He freed her, and she followed him eagerly to the front porch. She jumped on the porch swing beside Rutledge and nuzzled his hand.

“You spend a lot of time with this dog,” Rutledge noted.

“Nobody else around to see to her these days. Same goes for me.” Cork sat on the swing, so that Trixie was between him and Rutledge. He patted her head gently. “This isn’t exactly how I’d envisioned spending my time once the nest was empty, Simon. I figured Jo and me, we’d do the things we were always talking about doing. She wanted to spend a month in Italy, rent a villa in Tuscany, you know? Me, I never had much interest in Italy, but if that’s what she wanted.” Trixie looked up at him with affectionate brown eyes. “What do you say, girl? Want to go chase some Italian rabbits one of these days?” He glanced at Rutledge and apologized. “Sorry. Off topic.”

“No problem,” Rutledge said quietly.

Cork told him much of what he’d learned that day, including his speculation that someone other than Hattie Stillday had killed Lauren Cavanaugh. He kept Ophelia’s name out of it. For the time being.

“Okay,” Rutledge said, nodding tentatively. “So who did kill Cavanaugh? What about Broom?”

“He’s copped to the graffiti and to the first notes but swears he had nothing to do with the murder or the second round of notes. If he’s telling the truth, then someone else sent them.”

“You believe him?”

“I do, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been fooled.”

“Okay, if not him, then who?”

Cork sipped his beer and stared at the shadow on his lawn cast by the big elm. “I’ve been thinking about the timing of Lauren Cavanaugh’s murder. Someone visited her after Hattie left and before she returned, and that person probably killed her. So was this person’s visit an unfortunate accident? Or did this person know an opportunity existed and took it?”

“How would they know?”

“A couple of possibilities. Either they responded to the shot fired by Hattie or they came because Lauren Cavanaugh called them.”

“Maybe she had another appointment that evening?” Rutledge offered.

“I don’t think so. According to Ophelia, she was all set to spend the night with Huff, but he crapped out on her.”

“So,” Rutledge said, clearly skeptical, “you’re saying she’d been grazed by a bullet and was still looking for someone to sleep with?”

“More probably someone to take care of her, to bind her wound, to sympathize.”

“Who would that be?”

“Didn’t Ed say that the last call from her cell phone was made a little after eleven?”

“That’s right,” Rutledge replied.

“Do you know who she called?”

He shook his head. “We can phone Ed and find out. But what about the possibility that someone heard the shot and used the opportunity?”

“It would most likely have been someone at the center, but the center was empty that night. All the staff had gone home, and the new residents didn’t come until the next day.”

Rutledge thought it over. “All right. What say we find out who she called before she died?” He set his bottle on the porch and pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his sport coat. He tapped in a number, put the phone to his ear, and waited. “Ed. Simon here. A question for you. Who did Lauren Cavanaugh call the night she died?” He listened.
“Uh-huh. That’s it? Just the one call, you’re sure? Thanks, Ed.” Rutledge slipped the phone back into his coat pocket. He reached down, picked up his beer, and took a long draw.

“So?” Cork said.

Rutledge ran the beer around in his mouth, then swallowed. He looked at Cork and said, “Her brother.”

D
ross sat at her desk, listening, her face unreadable. Larson leaned against a wall, arms crossed, expression neutral.

“Think about it,” Cork said. “It fits. The second round of threats referenced his sister’s death. He was the only one outside of our investigators who knew that his sister was among the bodies in the Vermilion Drift.”

“Why the second round of threatening notes?” Larson asked.

“To throw us off, maybe. Make it look like her death was about the mine stuff, not about—hell, whatever it was about.”

“What was it about?” Dross said.

“I don’t know. I do know that he was bleeding money to support his sister and the Northern Lights Center.”

“Money?” Larson said. “You really think he’d kill his sister over money? He’s a very rich man, Cork. And I suspect anything he loses to the center is simply a tax write-off.”

Dross got up, walked to a window, and stood looking out with her hands clasped at the small of her back. “You found the second
We die. U die
. notes shoved under the Kufus woman’s windshield wiper and pinned to Cavanaugh’s door. How did he do that, with the woman there?”

“Slipped away from the dock while she was swimming in the cove,” Cork said. “Maybe he went inside, ostensibly to get drinks or to use the head, and he did it then. It wouldn’t have been that difficult. If we can get a look at his computer, we can check to see if he’s accessed the website for the From Hell font. That would be pretty damning.”

Larson shook his head. “Not necessarily. He could simply have wanted to check it out for himself once he knew where the font had come from. At least that’s how I’d argue it if I were his attorney.”

“We have to walk carefully here,” Dross said, not turning from the window.

“We come back to why,” Larson said. “Why would a man kill his sister?”

Simon Rutledge, who’d been sitting quietly, said, “In many of the homicide investigations I’ve been involved in, Ed, it’s ended up being about family.”

“There’s a big problem with thinking of Cavanaugh as a suspect,” Larson responded. “He was at a reception for Genie Kufus and her team the night his sister was killed.”

“You confirmed that with Kufus and the others?”

“Not Kufus, but Lou Haddad, who was there, too.”

“The reception was at the Four Seasons?” Cork asked.

“Yeah.”

“Which is five minutes from the center. Is it possible Max left and came back? Said he was going out for a smoke or something?”

Larson said, “I’d have to look at my notes. But I’ve got to tell you, it feels like a stretch.”

“Did you ask him about that final call from his sister?”

“Of course. He said she often called at the end of a day, just to talk. They were close. The phone records bear that out.”

“She said nothing about being shot?”

“I think he would have mentioned that, don’t you?”

“I agree with Ed, Cork,” Dross said. She faced them. “We need something substantial, and, until we have it, I’m not going to harass Max Cavanaugh.” She rubbed her forehead in a tired way. “You’ll have to bring me more.”