William Krueger: Mercy Falls

Still, that was old business. Retribution was usually born of rage, and rage generally lost its heat over time. So an old grudge, while possible, didn’t feel like a solid thread.

It was a chilly morning. In protected coves, the surface of Iron Lake was covered with a languorous mist. Russet leaves hung on the branches of the oaks. The tamaracks, brilliant yellow, seemed like plumes of fire exploding from the dark ground that edged the marshes. Normally, Cork would have reveled in the beauty of the woods, but as he sipped his coffee he was deep in thought, not only baffled over who’d want him dead, but wondering if Ed Larson would find anything useful at the Tibodeau cabin.

The deputies, Howard Morgan and Nate Schilling, knew he was coming, and they both stepped from the cruiser as he drew up and parked behind them. They looked tired, as though they’d had enough of sitting all night trying to fight sleep, as though they’d probably had enough of each other, too. He hauled out the other coffees he’d bought and the granola bars and offered them to his men.

“The java’s probably a little cool by now, but it’s pure caffeine. And take your pick of the bars.”

“Thanks,” Morgan said. He was the older of the two deputies, a seven-year veteran of the force and of Duluth PD before that. He was an easygoing sort, and Cork liked him.

The hill cast a shadow across the road. The sun would be a long time in reaching the hollow, hours before it drove out the cold that lay along the bottom. When the men breathed and when they spoke, clouds of vapor escaped their lips.

“Bos said everything was quiet last night.”

“That’s right, Sheriff.” Schilling took a bite of a peanut butter-chocolate chip granola bar and followed it with a slug of coffee. Although he’d completed his schooling and training almost two years before, he was still considered a rookie. Usually, he had a little rose in his cheeks, but he looked pretty sallow at the moment.

“Nobody curious drop by?”

“Nobody we could see anyway,” Schilling said. “After the floodlights got packed up, it was pretty dark. Could have been someone watching from the trees, I suppose.”

“You suppose?” Morgan laughed so hard coffee dribbled out his nostrils.

“What’s that all about?” Cork said.

“Nothing, Sheriff. Not a thing,” Schilling said.

“Like hell. Cork, he was so scared somebody was taking a bead on us that he spent the whole night on the floor of the cruiser.” Morgan wiped his nose with the sleeve of his uniform.

“Morgan, you asshole. It wasn’t like that, Sheriff.”

“You both wore your armor the entire watch?”

“Absolutely,” Schilling said.

Cork figured it was a good thing Morgan was sporting his Kevlar vest, because if Schilling’s eyes had been bullets they’d have blown holes all the way through him.

He stared at the dark side of the hill, where snakes of mist coiled and uncoiled among the pine trees along the base. “I’m going up, see what things look like on top.”

“You’re not waiting for Captain Larson?” Schilling said. When he saw Cork’s face, he added, “I just meant that he’s on his way. We got word from Bos just before you came.”

“Hey, Einstein, the sheriff’s got a radio,” Morgan said.

“Oh, right.”

“Just let him know where I am,” Cork said.

He walked fifty yards down the road to the place where, the day before, he and Pender and the state trooper named Fitzhugh had begun maneuvering up the hill, moving under the cover of trees and exposed outcroppings, working their way carefully toward the rocks where the sniper had been. He wasn’t wearing his uniform now. He’d put on old jeans, a forest green wool shirt with a quilted lining, and his Timberland boots. His badge was pinned on his gun belt next to his.

And he wore a Kevlar vest.

The night had not been cold enough for frost, but the hillside was covered with dew, and his boots slipped on the wet rocks and wild grass. The top of the hill was maybe two hundred feet above the road. He was breathing hard by the time he reached the crown, puffing out clouds like an old steam engine. He hoped this was due mostly to the lack of sleep, but he was concerned that his age might also be an issue. He wasn’t far from turning the corner on half a century, and although he was an avid jogger, he knew that age eventually caught up with everyone, even the swiftest runner.

Cork walked along the spine of the hill a hundred yards south to the jumble of rocks where they’d found the shell casings. The thin topsoil there had completely eroded away, exposing gray gneiss beneath that had been fractured by aeons of freeze and thaw. There were sharp edges to the rocks, and the shooter had covered his position with a bedding of pine needles. It was among the needles that Cork had found the shell casings the night before.

The road down the hollow took a right turn and followed a deep furrow just to the south where a thread of water called Tick Creek ran. North, the narrow access to the Tibodeau cabin was clear all the way to where it branched off the main road. Wooded hills stretched away in every direction. Pressing down above it all was the great blue palm of the sky. The shooter had chosen well, a vantage from which he could clearly see not just the cabin but also the approach of anyone traveling the road from the north or south.

He looked down at the pine-needle bed in the rocks and was puzzled.

The shooter had been careful in so many respects. Knowing Lucy and Eli’s schedule. Calling from the cabin, then wiping away all traces of his or her presence. Choosing a position that was excellent not only because of its vantage but also because it lay on solid rock where no footprints would be left. So why did he ignore the shell casings? They were crumbs on an otherwise empty plate, impossible to miss. Had the shooter simply overlooked them? Or been suddenly rushed, worried by the sound of the sirens as Pender and Borkmann approached, and fled without taking the time for the last details?

Cork considered the dead dogs. He thought it likely they were killed first, then the shooter or the accomplice made the call and climbed the hill, probably the same way he’d come. Did the accomplice come, too? How did they leave? Cork walked toward the back side of the hill where the night before it had been too dark to go. The slope was gentler there, with more soil and long tufts of wild oats beneath the aspen trees. About fifty yards from the shooter’s rocks, Cork found a spot where the incline increased suddenly and where some of the ground cover had been disturbed by a sliding shoe or boot. A few feet farther down was a scar in the soil where a whole bunch of oat stalks had been pulled completely out, as if someone had grabbed them in an attempt to prevent a fall. Below that, the bushes had been broken by the weight of a large object, perhaps a tumbling body. The shooter, or someone with the shooter, had taken a nasty spill.

Cork picked his way down the back side of the hill and reached the bed of Tick Creek. Fall had been dry, and this late in the season there was only a small trickle of water crawling along the bottom. A couple of hundred yards to the south, the creek crossed the road. That was the direction from which Pender had come the day before with his lights flashing and his siren screaming. Cork didn’t think the shooter would have fled that way. North was different. Before it intersected County 23 a half mile distant, Tick Creek curved sharply away from the turnoff to the Tibodeau cabin, so that a cop coming from that direction would see nothing of the creek. Cork turned north. The banks were high and formidably steep from the cut of floodwaters that came with the snowmelt each spring, and they were crowned with a thick growth of brush and popple. Someone on foot could have climbed out, but not a vehicle. In a few minutes, Cork reached the bridge at County Road 23. The structure was made of creosote-soaked wood with a web of rusted iron railing along either side and decorated with painted graffiti. In the soft dirt of the narrow shoulder at the east end of the bridge, Cork found recent tire tracks.