William Krueger - Boundary waters

“Why?”

“Come on, Cork. The feds filled you in on that part. Shiloh’s shrink helped her remember things about the night her mother was killed.” Benedetti held up his hands in easy guilt. “It’s not hard to find these things out. Cops are civil servants and terribly underpaid.”

“Why isn’t your father here taking care of this business himself?”

“He’s not a well man. The flight here was hard on him. He’s resting. But my words are his.”

Cork looked straight into Benedetti’s eyes. They were green with flecks of gold. Women no doubt found them compelling. “Elizabeth Dobson was probably killed because someone wanted the letters she’d received from Shiloh. Some more letters from Shiloh were stolen last night.”

Benedetti didn’t flinch at all. “I’m not going to lie to you, Cork. Yeah, I know people who know how to steal. I know people who can set fires that look like accidents. I know people who kill as easily as you or I brush our teeth. But then, so does the FBI.”

Cork looked away from Benedetti, watched the placid morning surface of Iron Lake glide past. “Why should I believe you?”

Benedetti folded his hands to his lips as if he were praying. In the moment of silence inside the big Lincoln, Cork heard the snap of bubble gum from Joey up front.

“I hear you’re that rare bird, Cork-an honest man.

They say you have Integrity. If the FBI goes into those woods after Shiloh, she won’t come out alive. You’re her only hope as far as I can see. Even if you don’t believe me, what harm can it do to help her?”

“Help her how?”

“Go in and bring her out before the FBI can get to her. That’s all. No other strings attached. If you do this, my father will pay you fifty thousand dollars.”

“Fifty thousand dollars.” Cork let his surprise show. “What’s his interest?”

“If Shiloh does remember who killed her mother,” Benedetti said, “my father wants to know the name.”

“There’s one problem. I don’t know where she is,” Cork said.

Benedetti lifted his hand as if to silence Cork’s objection. “If everything I’ve heard about you is true, you will.” He reached under his sweater and drew out a card from the pocket of his shirt. “Joey, a pen.”

Joey handed a gold ballpoint over the seat. Benedetti wrote on the back of the card, then handed the card to Cork. On one side was a lithographed purple parrot in a gold cage and under it Angelo Benedetti’s name. On the other side, Benedetti had written a telephone number.

“My cell phone,” he said. “Call me when you know something.”

They’d returned to the place where Cork had entered the Lincoln. Joey stopped the car.

“Like I told you,” Benedetti said. “You make sure Shiloh comes out safely and my father will be very grateful. Joey, is my old man grateful or what?”

“His gratitude is boundless,” Joey confirmed. “You should take the money,” he advised, grinning over the seat at Cork. “Keep Angelo’s old man happy. Cuz when he ain’t, he’s one mean son of a bitch.”

Cork noticed that this time Benedetti didn’t tell Joey to shut up.

“Tell your father to keep his money. Whatever I do, I do for my own reasons.” Cork opened the car door and stepped out.

Benedetti leaned out after. “I’ve been as straight with you as I’ve ever been with any man. Help Shiloh. Please.”

The door closed. The big Lincoln pulled away.

Cork started running again, back toward Sam’s Place. He’d told Meloux things became clearer to him when he ran. But the way the situation stood now, he could run all the way to the fucking moon and everything would still be a mess.

At Grandview, Willie Raye opened the door to Cork’s Bronco and stepped in.

“Morning,” he said cheerfully.

“Tell me about Vincent Benedetti,” Cork said.

Raye looked startled. “Benedetti? Why do you want to know about him? ” The last word was full of poison.

Cork explained his morning meeting.

“Don’t ever trust a Benedetti,” Raye said. He stared at the trees that isolated his cabin and worked his jaw as if he were chewing on something old and bitter. “I never knew for sure if it was him who killed Marais. But if he wanted her dead, he knew how to get it done.”

“What do you know about him?”

“I haven’t seen him in years. Not since-well, not since Marais’s funeral. The bastard had the gall to be there, looking innocent as a lamb,” Raye said. “Man like that,” he added in an acid Ozark twang, “got hisself a cast-iron soul and a shithole for a heart.”

Wendell Two Knives’ mobile home sat on a patch of green lawn that rolled gently down to the reflection of blue sky that was Iron Lake. Under the windows were flower boxes that held red geraniums still in full bloom. The whole place was surrounded by birch trees, trunks white as icicles, leaves gold as freshly minted doubloons.

The note Cork had left the night before was still taped to Wendell’s door. Cork knocked, but Wendell didn’t answer. He crossed the lawn to the big corrugated shed that Wendell used as a garage and peered in at a window. He beckoned Willie Raye over.

“Wendell drives a Dodge Ram pickup,” Cork said. “Pickup’s gone. But take a gander at what’s sitting in its place.”

The floor of the shed was covered with fragments of birch bark, and the shed itself was full of tools that Wendell used in the building of birch-bark canoes, an art he’d practiced his entire life. Mallets, wood chisels, buckets, sawhorses, brushes-all hung on racks or sat on benches. In the center was a cleared area large enough for a truck to park. Instead of Wendell’s truck, a small red sports car sat there, highlighted in a long shaft of sunlight that came through the window on the far side of the shed. A coating of dust dulled the sheen of the car’s finish.

“Shiloh loves sports cars,” Raye said.

Cork walked around to the back of the shed where there stood a canoe rack with spaces for four canoes. Only one space was filled.

“What do you think?” Raye asked.

“I think he’s gone for a while.”

“To Shiloh?”

“Let’s hope so. Come on.”

“Where to?” Raye asked as he followed Cork to the Bronco.

“To Stormy Two Knives. He’s the only other person I can think of who might know where that is.”

Two miles up the road, just beyond the far outskirts of Allouette, Cork pulled into the drive of a small log home set among white pines growing in planted rows. A sign posted beside the drive advertised firewood for sale. Next to the house, a woman stood at a clothesline, her arms lifted, holding a wet sheet. A slight northwesterly breeze had picked up and the ends of the hung linen ruffled leisurely. The woman finished pinning the corner of the sheet to the line with a clothesphi, then shielded her eyes against the sun as she watched the two men approach.

“Anin, Sarah,” Cork greeted her.

“Anin, Cork.” Her reply was polite, but not warm. She was a small woman in her early thirties with high cheeks and dark red hair that she wore long. She had on Nikes, neatly creased jeans, and a blue denim shirt. Her attention glanced off Raye, then quickly settled again on Cork.

“I’m looking for Wendell,” Cork explained. “We stopped by his place, but he’s not home.”

Something cloudy passed briefly across her face. “You’d better talk to Stormy.”

“That’s what I figured, too. Where can I find him?”

“Him and Louis are cutting firewood. On the old logging road at the bridge over Widow’s Creek.”

“Thanks, Sarah.”

“I’m not saying he’ll talk to you, Cork,” she cautioned.

“I understand.”