William Krueger - Boundary waters

“It was dislocated for only half the way.”

Raye butted in. “Let’s get on with what we came here for and get out.”

“Angelo Benedetti told you the truth,” Jo said. Cork was amazed how calm she sounded. “Killing us does no good now. Everyone’s looking in your direction, Willie. And those men in the Boundary Waters know about you. You have no alibi.”

“Shut up.” Raye jabbed the gun at her.

“Is that true?” The man called Charon focused on Jo so intensely she felt as if her thoughts were being pierced.

“You must be Milwaukee,” she said.

“Son of a gun.” Milwaukee looked at Arkansas Willie wistfully. “I do believe they’re on to you.”

“No evidence,” Raye said hastily. “This gun is untraceable. I go back into the woods, who’s to say I wasn’t lost out there the whole time?”

“Don’t do this, Willie,” Shiloh said. “Good people are going to suffer.”

Milwaukee looked at her and it appeared as if a smile almost touched his lips. “I thought going out there would be a picnic. I was wrong about you. And I’m not often wrong.”

With his pistol, Raye frantically motioned toward Shiloh, who still knelt beside the fallen Angelo Benedetti. “Everyone over there.”

No one moved.

“Do it,” Milwaukee said. There was death in his voice, deep and empty as a waiting grave. “This man’s paid for the game. We play the cards however he deals them.” He leveled his automatic at Jo’s heart.

Cork stepped next to Jo and stood with his shoulder pressed against hers. He tried to think what he could say that would alter the trajectory of that moment. But his mouth was dry and his voice was caught somewhere between his intention and his tongue, and all he could do was stand there as the barrel moved toward him like a compass needle that had found north and the man called Charon and Milwaukee poised himself on the edge of an act that would send them all plummeting into unknowable dark.

“Shoot him,” Raye shrieked.

Milwaukee hesitated.

“I said shoot him, you chickenshit bastard. Or I will.”

Raye swung his own gun toward Cork.

Milwaukee lashed out faster than Cork had ever seen a man move. He grabbed Arkansas Willie’s arm and twisted it at an unnatural angle so that the gun dropped from his hand. Then he delivered a sharp, precise kick to the side of Raye’s right knee and the bone or cartilage gave an audible pop. Raye crumpled to the floor. Milwaukee did all this without the barrel of the automatic he held veering in the slightest degree from its dead-on aim at Cork’s heart.

Arkansas Willie clutched his knee and stared up at Charon/Milwaukee with pain and anger and disbelief. “Are you fucking crazy?”

“I won’t take disrespect from any man.”

“It’s broken,” Raye whined.

“Consider yourself lucky.”

“I paid you.”

“Tell you what,” he said. “When I see you in hell, we’ll talk about a refund.”

In no more time than it took to strike a match, everything had changed. Cork looked at the hard brown eyes and wondered what it was that made the man kill or decide not to. It didn’t matter. If Cork had to live forever not knowing why, he could do that.

“You think you’re out of this?” Raye screamed. “You think you can just walk away? They know who you are.”

“No, they only know a name. I have lots of those.”

Milwaukee bent and picked up the pistol Raye had let fall to the floor. As he straightened, he noted the consternation in the eyes of Cork and the others. “I prefer to let you live,” he said simply. He backed toward the door and stepped outside into the sunlight. He looked up, squinting, then into the dark of the trailer. “?Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.?” He turned and, as if he’d walked through a doorway into another dimension, vanished.

“What was that all about?” Jo asked.

“Milton. Paradise Lost.” With Shiloh’s help, Angelo Benedetti had eased into a sitting position, his back against the trailer wall. Seeing Jo’s surprise, he managed a faint smile. “Minor in English lit at UNLV.”

Cork went to Benedetti and checked the wound. It was high on the right shoulder, clean entry and exit. “Small caliber, and the angle was just right. Seems to have missed almost everything, including bone. You’re pretty lucky.”

Benedetti laid his head back. Even with his California tan, his face looked pale. Shiloh held his hand. “I never had a little sister to protect before,” he told her. “All things considered, it pretty much sucks.”

Shiloh kissed the top of his head. “Thanks.”

“Get some towels to press against those wounds, Jo,” Cork said. He went to check on Raye.

Arkansas Willie tried to stand as Cork approached, but he cried out and flopped back to the floor. His face contorted and he howled, “Christ, the son of a bitch shattered everything.”

“Best thing you could do for yourself now, Willie, is stay there and stay quiet. Shiloh, think you can make sure he does that?”

“My pleasure.” She took the knife she’d dropped into the pocket of Wendell’s jeans, opened the blade, and stood over Arkansas Willie Raye. “I have a whole lifetime of reasons, Willie. All I need is one more,” she threatened.

Cork moved to the doorway of the trailer home just as Jo returned with the towels. “Where are you going, Cork?” She knelt and opened Benedetti’s shirt and pressed a towel to his wound.

“Wendell keeps a rifle in the shed.”

“You’re not going after that man, are you? You don’t have to do that. Cork, you’re not the sheriff anymore.” She seemed torn between tending Benedetti and rising to hold back Cork.

Cork stared in the direction Charon/Milwaukee had disappeared. There was only the empty drive leading through the bared birches toward the main road.

“He killed Wendell and he killed Dwight Sloane,” Cork said to her over his shoulder.

“And he killed Libbie and two men who were only trying to help me,” Shiloh added. She looked at Cork as if she understood him perfectly.

“You all stay here and lock the door after me,” he told them. “The sheriff’s people should be on their way. Althea Bolls went into Allouette to phone them.”

“Cork-”

He heard her call to him, but it was too late. He was out the door and moving swiftly toward the shed.

He found the tall cabinet and inside the rifle-a Remington 700 ADL bolt action. As Stormy had said, the cartridges were in an old Quaker Oat container: 3006, 180-grain bronze point, enough power to bring down a small bear. Cork pulled out half a dozen and fed them into the magazine, worked the bolt-not an easy thing with his injured shoulder-and chambered a round. Then he headed outside, where he stood a moment in the sunlight, considering.

The man had disappeared down the drive toward the road. That made sense. To have reached the trailer as quickly as they had, he and Arkansas Willie must have driven a vehicle of some kind, probably one Charon/Milwaukee had left somewhere they could easily reach when they came out of the Boundary Waters. And now it would be parked somewhere hidden from the road but accessible. Not toward Allouette. Too great a chance of being seen. More likely the other direction, somewhere south along the shore of Iron Lake.

Cork recalled that a quarter mile south of Wendell’s trailer was an old boat launch. It was seldom used anymore because proceeds from the casino had allowed the Iron Lake Anishinaabe to develop a fine park just north of Allouette that included new launch facilities. The old boat launch still showed on maps, but hardly anyone ever used it. It would be a good place to stash a vehicle.

Cork circled Wendell’s shed, moved past the empty canoe racks, and headed quickly into the cool shadow of the trees that bordered Wendell’s yard, thinking, He’ll be watching the road. He’ll be looking for me to come from the road. But I’ll take him from the cover of the trees.