William Krueger: Red knife

“Any 911 calls?” Cork asked.

Larson shook his head. “The phone line was cut. And we’re too far out for a cell to be able to pick up a signal.”

“Lucinda Kingbird found the bodies, is that right?”

Larson nodded.

“Where is she?”

“Deputy Minot took her home.”

“How was she doing?”

He shrugged. “Soldier’s wife. While I interviewed her, she didn’t shed a tear, just worried about the baby.”

Rutledge squinted at Cork. “The suspense is killing me.”

“Suspense?” Cork said.

“I’m dying to know what you were doing out here last night.”

Cork explained the circumstances.

“Buck Reinhardt,” Ed Larson said, as if it made perfect sense.

“I know about the Reinhardt girl’s death,” Rutledge said. “Tell me about her father. Is he the kind of man who could do something like this?”

Dross considered his question. “You have a daughter, Simon. If you believed someone was responsible for her death, think you might be capable of something like this?”

Rutledge glanced at Cork. “You said you didn’t find him last night.”

“That’s right.”

Larson took off his wire-rims and carefully cleaned the lenses with a white handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. “When I’m finished here, I’ll head over to the Reinhardt place, interview Buck.”

“Might be a good idea if I went along,” Rutledge suggested. “You talk to Reinhardt, I’ll talk to his wife, see if we get the same story.”

“Who else should we be talking to?” Dross asked.

Larson said, “DEA’s convinced the Red Boyz are deep into the drug trade. Cold-blooded executions and drugs pretty much go hand in hand.”

“Match made in hell,” Dross said. “Call DEA, Ed. Run this by them.”

“What about the Red Boyz themselves?” Rutledge said. “Is it possible there’s a power struggle going on or some kind of ideological rift, anything that might have led to this?”

They all looked to Cork.

He held up his hands defensively. “It’s not like there’s a pipeline that runs between me and the Red Boyz. Don’t forget, I hauled some of them in as juveniles.”

“You know their families,” Dross said.

“I’ll do what I can, okay?”

Larson slipped his wire-rims back on. “Marsha, did you tell Cork about the business at the back of the house?”

“What business?” Cork said.

“It’s what I wanted to show you.” Dross turned and led the way.

They walked carefully through the yard, along a path Larson’s people had marked for entry and egress from the scene. In the high grass beyond the mowed edge of the backyard, deputies were still working. The bodies of Alexander and Rayette Kingbird were gone, but the long green blades of wild grass were still splashed with spatters of dark red.

“Tom Conklin’s already at Nelson’s,” Dross said, speaking of the man contracted as medical examiner for the county. He did his autopsies in one of the prep rooms in the basement of Nelson’s Funeral Home. “He seemed pretty eager to get started. Turn around, Cork.”

Cork turned and looked back at the house. “Jesus. Is that what I think it is?”

“We’ve taken samples,” Larson said. “We’ll have them analyzed to be certain. But, yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s blood.”

Across the wall of the house, painted in large, ragged letters each a foot high and dried now to the color of old rust were the words DED BOYZ.

A nnie O’Connor had learned how to cook from the best. For the first fifteen years of her life, most meals at the O’Connor house were prepared by her mother’s sister, Aunt Rose. Rose was a cook with an outstanding reputation, and Annie was an apt pupil. Though she preferred sports to most domestic pursuits, cooking appealed to Annie’s sense of order and, in a way, her enjoyment of competition. Since Aunt Rose had left-married and gone to Chicago-Annie regularly took a turn preparing the evening meal. Her father’s schedule was erratic, especially since he’d started his sideline business as a private investigator. He wasn’t an inspired cook, preferring to stick with the staples: mac and cheese, hot dogs, chili, sometimes a passable meat loaf. And once Sam’s Place opened for the season, he wouldn’t be home most evenings until very late. Her mother often worked long hours at her law office and had always been a cook with a reputation for disasters in the kitchen. Although she had improved some since Aunt Rose left, the truth was that almost everyone in the family preferred Annie’s cooking, and Annie liked being the best at things.

Sunday dinner was always at one. That afternoon the main dish was pot roast, simple but succulent, and the smell of it filled the house. Annie and her mother worked together in the kitchen, both agreeing that Annie was in charge. Stevie’s job was to set the table. It was all a familiar pattern, yet that day felt anything but usual to Annie. Before he’d gone out to the reservation with the sheriff that morning after church, her father shared with them what had happened to the Kingbirds, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the tragedy.

She knew Rayette Kingbird mostly from visiting with her at St. Agnes. She’d liked Rayette, liked that at first glance she appeared to be a hard woman but in fact was quite kind and very sensible when you got to know her. Alex Kingbird she knew only a little. She’d seen him around town with Rayette. They’d stopped together at Sam’s Place a few times for burgers and shakes. He was quiet, but he seemed to laugh often when he was talking with Rayette. Annie knew the stories about him: kicked out of the marines, an L.A. gang member, prison time, and the Red Boyz. What she saw was a man who seemed to be a good husband and a good father, someone in love with his wife and his child.

She knew Ulysses Kingbird best. Again, this was through the St. Agnes connection, where music brought them together. At school, he didn’t fit in anywhere. He wasn’t a brain. He wasn’t a jock. He wasn’t a preppie or a stoner. Despite his musical talent, he didn’t hang with the band geeks or the artsy kids. Mostly he was quiet and tried to disappear. Moving down the hallway at school, he reminded her of a piece of driftwood floating, purposeless, down a river.

He might have been successful at being overlooked if it hadn’t been for the fact that his brother was Alexander Kingbird, head of the Red Boyz. As a result, kids at school hit on Uly for drugs. Teachers made assumptions about him. His asshole classmates-and there were a lot of assholes-tormented him with insults. Since Kristi Reinhardt had died, things had become worse. Uly might never have come right out and said anything, but the music connected him and Annie in a powerful way. When they got together to practice the songs Uly had arranged for Sunday’s service, Annie sometimes got him to talk. Not a lot, but through the crack in the door that opened, Annie saw much.

Uly’s biggest problem, it seemed to her, was that his father was Will Kingbird. Him, she didn’t like at all. Mostly she saw him at Mass, where he sat so stiffly he looked as if he’d been carved out of the pew itself. He made her think of the old Louisville Slugger her parents had given her when she started playing softball: hard and perfectly capable of delivering a good, solid smack. Mrs. Kingbird often seemed to have a wary look on her face, and though Uly never talked about abuse, it made Annie wonder.

Her father came home a few minutes before the potatoes were done. He went upstairs to wash his hands. When he came back down, everything was on the table and ready.

At first the conversation was about Jenny, Annie’s older sister who was nearing the end of her first year of college at the University of Iowa, and who’d called to check in, as she always did, after the family came home from church. But Annie was dying to know what exactly had happened at the Kingbird place. Her father didn’t want to talk about it, except to say that it was true, Rayette and Alexander Kingbird were dead. They’d been shot.