William Krueger - Boundary waters

Cork had once told her that in his opinion most murders occurred for one of three reasons-fear, anger, or greed. She wasn’t entirely certain she agreed with him, but for the sake of argument, she decided to start there.

If fear was the motive, what was there about Shiloh that would generate enough fear in someone to drive them to murder, not once but several times? Benedetti and Jackson had believed it was a fear of the memories Shiloh’s therapist had dredged up. That would have explained everything nicely, including the death of the therapist. The only problem was that they all now knew the truth of the murder of Marais Grand. With Theresa Benedetti dead, there seemed nothing significant left to fear about that incident.

So maybe fear wasn’t the motive. What about anger, then?

She dismissed it almost immediately. Anger was an emotion of the moment, a flare of destructive passion. Everything about the current situation felt too well planned, too carefully executed. For the time being at least, she would put aside the consideration of anger.

Which left Jo, as she entered Aurora, wondering about greed.

She made a stop at her office. Fran had left a stack of phone messages and notes on her desk, most dealing with rescheduled appointments. Jo glanced over them but couldn’t make herself concentrate. She called the sheriff’s office. Deputy Marsha Dross answered and told her Schanno wanted her to call the cabin at the Quetico. She gave Jo the number. Metcalf answered when Jo called. She asked to speak with Schanno.

“I think you should come over. Now. Interesting news,” Schanno said.

They were all at the Quetico. Harris, Jackson, Metcalf, Schanno, and the two Benedettis. The place smelled of fried food. On the table sat a nearly empty tub of broasted chicken from the Pinewood Broiler and a greasy sack of fries.

Harris wiped his mouth with a napkin when Jo walked in. “Ms. O’Connor, we have some information.” He sounded more cautious than Wally Schanno had on the phone.

“Here.” Angelo Benedetti stepped forward to help her with her coat.

“What have I been missing?”

“An information exchange,” Jackson said. He held a bottle of Leinenkugel beer in his hand. “We’ve come a distance.”

“What kind of information?”

“The name of the man we found in the Boundary Waters, for starters,” Harris replied. “Have a seat.” He waved his hand toward an empty wing chair near the fire. When Jo was seated, he went on. “The prints match those of a man known as Papa Bear. Real name’s Albert Lowell Bearman. He’s a former marine, saw action in Grenada and the Gulf War. Since then, he’s gone into business for himself. Soldier of fortune kind of thing. As nearly as we can tell, he’s been involved in insurrections in Africa and South America. Now he’s plying his skills domestically.”

“I made some calls as soon as we knew his name,” Angelo Benedetti explained. “This guy’s not our kind. He’s got no loyalty except to himself. No family ethic, no accountability. He’s more the kind the government would use.” He gave a cordial nod to Harris, who paid him no heed. “Still, people I know know about him. He usually works alone, but the word is he’s out on a big contract and he’s teamed with a guy nobody knows from nobody except he calls himself Milwaukee.”

“We checked out this Milwaukee,” Harris broke in. “Nothing on the NCIC computer about a man with that name or using that alias. In any event, it appears that somebody has put a contract out on Shiloh. The question is why.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Harris said. “I think we’ve been wearing blinders that have kept us looking too much at the past. Maybe this has nothing to do with the past and everything to do with the future.”

Jackson looked at his brother, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“Oh, but I do,” Jo said. She eyed Harris. “Because I’ve been thinking along those lines myself. I think it would be very interesting to know who would benefit financially from Shiloh’s death.”

Harris cocked a finger at her and fired off an imaginary round. “Bull’s-eye.”

Jackson squinted a moment, rolling things around in his head. Then the light came on in the attic. “Oh.”

“Family usually benefits, don’t they?” Vincent Benedetti said. “She doesn’t have any family she knows about except Arkansas Willie Raye.”

Jo tapped her fingernail on the arm of her chair as she considered this information. “Raye owns Ozark Records, is that correct?”

“No,” Benedetti replied. “Shiloh owns the company. He just runs it. When I loaned Marais the money to start Ozark, I insisted that Shiloh be the sole beneficiary should Marais die. I wanted my daughter well taken care of. It turned out Marais was way ahead of me on that. But when Marais died. Raye did become executor of the estate and took charge of running Ozark Records. He’s done a good job, I gotta give him that. Built the best label in the industry, they tell me. But Shiloh owns it all.”

“If Arkansas Willie Raye is Shiloh’s beneficiary, I’d say you have a pretty good motive. But how would Raye contact a man like Papa Bear?”

“I can answer that,” Metcalf said, “if you’ll step over here a minute, Ms. O’Connor.”

Jo walked to the table and looked over Metcalf’s shoulder as his fingers flew across the keys of his laptop. He accessed the Internet and went to a bookmark called Papa Bear’s Lair. A moment later, a home page appeared complete with a cozy photo of Papa Bear himself-a huge man with a shaved head, dressed in military fatigues, holding an assault rifle in his hands, and sporting a wicked combat knife hung from his belt. The header on the text read DISCREET ENFORCEMENT. I’M SO DAMN GOOD IT’S SCARY. His resume read like a ticket through hell, with time spent in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, and Bosnia. Foreign and domestic service, the text indicated. Every reasonable offer considered. The final page of the web site was an e-mail form readers could use to communicate with Papa Bear.

“Hired over the ’net?” Jo said.

“Or at least this was where contact was probably initially made.”

“It’s legal?” She looked at Jackson.

“Not much governance over what’s on the Internet,” Jackson said.

“Arkansas Willie Raye.” All the muscles on Vincent Benedetti’s body seemed to ripple-whether from anger or disease was hard to tell. “I’ll tear his heart out.”

“You don’t know for certain that he’s responsible,” Jo warned. “It’s only speculation at this point.”

“Fucking good speculation.” Benedetti narrowed his eyes on her. “I hate lawyers. But you, I like.”

Harris said, “I’ll get someone working on a check of Raye. It seems as reasonable a lead as any.”

“What good does it do us?” Jo asked. “We still don’t know what’s going on out there. Has there been any more word?”

“It’s dark now,” Schanno said. “The search plane’s landed, but the helicopter’s still in the air, looking for campfires, anything. Mostly we wait now until morning. The good thing is this: If the information from Benedetti’s contacts is accurate, we have only Raye and one other man to worry about out there. The odds are getting better.”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Harris said. He held up a rolled copy of a tabloid, chewed and ragged as an old bone. “Tomorrow this piece of shit that calls itself a newspaper hits the stands with a front-page story about Shiloh. Every asshole who’s got nothing better to do will be up here making this a hell of a lot harder than it already is.”

“There are going to be reporters. What are you going to tell them?” Vincent Benedetti asked Nathan Jackson.