William Krueger: Red knife

She stepped up and wiped the bar in front of him. “What’ll you have, hon?”

“Leinenkugel’s Dark.”

“One Leinie’s coming up.”

She brought him the draw.

“Seen Buck Reinhardt tonight?” he asked.

“Yeah. Left a while ago. Pissed.”

“Why?”

“I cut him off.”

“He’d had too many?”

She shook her head. “Mostly he was shooting his mouth off. You know Buck.”

“What was his gripe?”

“About what you’d expect given what happened to Kristi. Lot of talk about f’ing Indians.”

“Red Boyz?”

“That, sure. But f’ing Indians in general. A lot of my customers have some Ojibwe blood in them. I don’t need Buck Reinhardt getting everyone riled up.”

“He left easy?”

“I’d say so.”

“Doesn’t sound like Buck.”

“The Green Giant and Turner escorted him out.” She was talking about Derek Green, the bouncer at the door, and the bar manager, both more gorilla than man.

“Was he alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Drunk would you say?”

“I’ve seen him way worse. Mostly he was”-she thought a moment and scratched at the stud in her nose-“belligerent. Hell, who can blame him? But I told him he had to do his drinking and his bitching somewhere else.”

“Any idea where he might have headed?”

“If he was going in the general direction of home, the next logical stop would be Tanner’s on the Lake.”

He left her a five as a tip-he liked the idea that she’d kicked Reinhardt out for badmouthing the Ojibwe-and headed to Tanner’s. Reinhardt wasn’t there either and hadn’t been. Cork tried the Silver Horse, the Chippewa Grand Casino bar, and finally the bar at the Four Seasons, all with the same result. It was a quarter of eleven by then. He didn’t want to call Reinhardt’s house and risk disturbing Elise. He stood on the empty deck in back of the Four Seasons, looking at the spray of the Milky Way above Iron Lake. The temperature was in the low fifties, not bad for that time of year. He had on a light jacket but a good flannel shirt would have done as well. Up the shoreline, the lights of Aurora were like stars fallen to earth. The night was still and quiet. It would have been a pleasure to stand there awhile longer taking in the stillness, the stars, the air that smelled of apple-wood smoke from the fireplace in the Four Seasons’s lounge. He decided to call it a night and head home. He would hit Reinhardt’s place first thing after Mass in the morning. That would give Buck a chance to recover a little if he was hungover. He was a son of a bitch sober. Hungover, he just might get it in his head to take a chainsaw to Cork.

Corcoran O’Connor lived in an old two-story frame house on an old residential street in Aurora called Gooseberry Lane. Lights were still on downstairs when he parked in the drive. Inside, he found his wife, Jo, on the sofa watching a video. Nine-year-old Stevie was asleep with his feet on his mother’s lap. Jo didn’t get up when Cork came in, but Trixie, the family mutt, jumped up from where she’d been lying and came bounding toward him with her tail wagging a blue streak.

“Nice someone’s glad to see me,” Cork said. He patted Trixie and kissed the top of Jo’s head. “What are you watching?”

“The last few minutes of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. ” Cork had introduced his son to the old comic duo, and Stevie loved them, though Jo wasn’t a particular fan. “Took you a long time. How’d it go with Alex Kingbird?”

“Let’s talk in the kitchen.”

She gently maneuvered herself from under her son and left him sleeping soundly on the sofa. In the kitchen, she plucked a couple of chocolate chip cookies from the jar on the counter, gave one to Cork, and they sat down at the table.

“So tell me,” she said.

“He wants to meet with Buck Reinhardt.”

“Whatever for?”

“To avert a war, he says. He thinks the shooting’s about to begin.”

“I wouldn’t put it past Buck to haul out the firepower. What’s Kingbird offering to entice him to a meeting?”

“Justice.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”

“Justice.” She frowned, bit into her cookie, and looked thoughtful.

Kristi Reinhardt had been eighteen when she died. She’d been one of those girls life had drenched in promise. A stunning beauty with hair the color of dark honey. Smart, athletic, a talented swimmer and diver. She was also reckless and a thrill seeker, traits she got from Buck. She had a fondness for motorcycles and for the kind of guys who rode them. It was one of those guys, a biker named Aaron “Crunch” Bergman, who’d introduced her to meth. When it became clear she had a drug problem, Buck and Elise sent her to Hazelden, the renowned treatment facility near the Twin Cities. She came home clean, but within a couple of months of returning to Aurora, Kristi died while under the influence of the drug. It had happened during a late-night party at the park above Mercy Falls. According to witnesses-other kids present-she’d poised herself at the lip of the rocky ledge on top of the falls, as if she was preparing to dive in one of her competitions. No one thought she’d do it. It was never clear whether she’d fallen or had actually dived. She hit the pool at the bottom of the falls headfirst. The pool was shallow. She smashed her skull on a rock two feet below the surface and died instantly.

In his statement to sheriff’s investigators, Eric Neiburg, one of the kids at the party, said that he’d seen Kristi smoking ice: crystal meth. She’d told him that she got it from an Indian-Lonnie Thunder-in exchange for oral sex. When sheriff’s deputies executed a search warrant for the trailer on the reservation where Thunder lived, they found meth and they found photographs of Kristi Reinhardt that would make any parent’s blood run cold. They also found photographs and videos that Thunder had made of Ojibwe girls, some of them minors. They didn’t find Thunder. He’d vanished. The general speculation was that he was hiding somewhere on the reservation, protected by the Red Boyz. Buck Reinhardt had made it clear that he was holding Alex Kingbird personally responsible.

“You don’t think he’s going to turn Lonnie Thunder over to Buck?” Jo asked.

“So Buck can skin him alive? I don’t think so.”

“Will Buck agree to meet?”

Cork finished his cookie. “Want some milk?”

“No, thanks.”

He got a tumbler from the cupboard, went to the refrigerator, and pulled out a half-gallon carton of Land O’ Lakes 2 percent. “I tried to track him down. Hit half a dozen bars, no luck.”

“Ah, that’s why you’re so late and smell like an ashtray.”

He put the milk back in the fridge and sat down again. “Where’s Annie?”

“She went to the movies with Cara Haines.”

Cork gulped his milk. “I’m bushed.”

“What about Buck?”

“He’s a lot older than me and drunk. I’ll bet he’s bushed, too.”

“I mean when will you talk to him?”

“Tomorrow after church. Figure I’ll catch him while he’s still a little groggy. That way if he tries to shoot me, his aim’ll be off.”

She looked troubled and reached across the table and put her hand over his. “I don’t like the idea of you in the middle of this, sweetheart. Buck Reinhardt has always been a little crazy. Who knows what losing Kristi could drive him to do? And if Alex Kingbird is really dealing drugs, god, I don’t want you anywhere near them when they meet.”

“Kingbird gave his word to come unarmed. I’ll work the same promise out of Buck or it won’t happen.”

“His word? You’d take his word? And Buck’s?”

“Look, I’ll figure something out, Jo.” He eased his hand free.