William Krueger - Copper River

“I’ve got something for you,” he said. He handed her a rolled page from his sketchbook.

Looking over her shoulder, Cork saw that it was the drawing Ren had done of a cougar with Dina’s face. The boy had managed to make her seem mythic, a creature both wild and lovely. Cork thought Ren had captured her spirit beautifully.

Dina looked down and her face grew soft in a way Cork had not seen before. “It’s the nicest gift anyone’s ever given me, Ren.”

Charlie, who was standing beside Ren, said, “Most of the time he’s pretty lame. But once in a while he gets it right.”

Dina kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

“Oh Jesus. Now he’s never going to wash his face.” Charlie laughed and playfully punched Ren’s arm.

Cork signaled Hodder away from the others and spoke to him quietly. “Ned, I’m worried about someone else showing up before I’ve taken care of Jacoby. Also, this place will be crawling with reporters by tomorrow.”

“Until I get the word from you that things are squared, I’m not leaving here,” Hodder replied. “I may not carry a handgun, but I’m good with a rifle, believe me. And I’ve got a part-time deputy constable I’ll call in to help. We’ll keep things covered, and I’ll give Jewell a hand dealing with reporters.”

“Thanks.”

Hodder offered him an easy smile. “I’m not doing this for your peace of mind.”

“That makes it even better.” They shook hands.

Cork spent a few final moments in the porch light with Jewell and Ren. Their three shadows stretched away and merged into one form just this side of the dark.

“You have a long way to go,” she said, and hugged him. “I’ll be praying.”

Cork turned to Ren and laid his hand the young man’s shoulder. “Take care of yourself.”

“You, too.”

Cork got into the Pathfinder. Dina drove down the bumpy lane and turned onto the main road. The moon was up, the sleepless eye of night. As they crossed the bridge over the Copper River, Cork stared at the water, a long sweep of silver that ran to the great lake. The river had carried the body of the dead girl far, carried it right under the noses of Ren and his friends. An accident? There was spirit in all things, Cork believed, knowledge in every molecule of creation. Nothing ever went truly unnoticed, from the fall of a single leaf to the death of a child.

“Long night ahead,” Dina observed.

“God willing, we’ll find daylight at the end,” Cork replied.

He settled back and closed his eyes to rest and to plan.

The call came when they were south of Green Bay, in the dead of night. It was Captain Ed Larson calling from Aurora, Minnesota. Dina gave the phone to Cork. Larson told him that Gabriella Jacoby, Lou Jacoby’s daughter-in-law, had been picked up by the Winnetka police and questioned about the death of her husband. They had a lot on her and she’d rolled over and given them her brother, Tony Salguero. She claimed he planned the whole thing and that he was the one who killed Jacoby’s other son, Ben. The Winnetka police were looking for Salguero. He’d disappeared.

“Anybody tell Lou Jacoby this?”

“He knows.”

“Thanks, Ed.”

Cork ended the call.

“So,” Dina said, “that’s it?” She looked straight ahead, eyeing the highway, black and empty in the headlights. Nothing in her voice gave away what she might be thinking.

“No, that’s not it.” Cork tossed the cell phone into the Pathfinder’s glove box. “I want to see Lou Jacoby. I want to get right up in his face.”

Dina shot him a look that might have been approval. “Whatever you say.”

A little before seven A.M., they stopped a hundred yards south of Jacoby’s estate on the shoreline in the exclusive community of Lake Forest. The predawn sky above Lake Michigan was streaked with veins of angry red. They got out and began to walk. The air was cool and still and smelled of autumn and the lake. Their shoes crunched on the loose gravel at the edge of the road with a sound like someone chewing ice. They passed through the front gate onto the circular drive. Jacoby’s house looked like an Italian villa. The windows were dark.

“Motion sensors?” Cork asked quietly.

Dina shook her head. “Not outside. Security system is all internal.”

She led the way to the rear corner, where Cork could see the back lawn, big as a polo field, stretching down to a tall hedge. Beyond the hedge lay Lake Michigan reflecting the red dawn. Dina stopped at a door on the side of the house and took from her jacket the pouch with her picklocks.

“Will you trip the alarm?” Cork asked.

“Relax. I designed the system for him.”

They were inside quickly, staring at a large kitchen hung with enough pots and pans and shiny cooking utensils that it could have served a fine restaurant. Dina tapped a code into the alarm box beside the door. She signaled for Cork to follow her.

They crept down a labyrinth of hallways and rooms and up a narrow set of stairs at the far end of the house, and came out onto a long corridor with doors opening off either side. Dina moved to the first door on the left. She reached down and carefully turned the knob. The door slid open silently. She stepped in.

They found themselves in an anteroom that opened onto an enormous bedroom. The place smelled heavily of cigar smoke. The drapes in the anteroom were drawn against the dawn, but the bedroom was lit with the fire of a sun about to rise. Dina stepped silently through the far door. She turned to her right and spoke. “Up early, Lou.”

Cork heard Jacoby reply without surprise, “No, Dina. I’m just not sleeping these days. I thought you were with…” He paused as Cork limped into the room. “…O’Connor.”

Lou Jacoby stood framed against the window. He wore a dressing gown and slippers, and smoke rose from a lit cigar in his right hand. He was nearing eighty. In the light through the window-the only light in the room-he looked pale and hard, more like the plaster cast of a man.

“Our business is finished,” the old man said.

“You put a contract out on me,” Cork replied.

Jacoby waved it off. “That’s been taken care of.”

“An eye for an eye, you said. You threatened my boy. Another kid I’m fond of was kidnapped by someone looking to collect on that half-million-dollar bounty you put on my head. A lot of other innocent people stood to get hurt.”

Jacoby looked unimpressed. “And you’re here to what?”

“Maybe start by beating the living shit out of you,” Cork said.

“Bloody an old man?” Jacoby opened his arms in invitation.

“I told you it wasn’t me who killed your son,” Cork spit out.

Jacoby almost laughed. “And I was supposed to take your word for it? Hell, I know my garbageman better than I know you.”

“How does it feel having to accept that it was family killing family-your family? And by the way, Salguero’s disappeared. Doesn’t that leave your coffer of vengeance a little empty?”

Jacoby lifted his cigar, took a draw, and said through the smoke, “Does it?”

Dina gave a short, hollow laugh. “They’ll never find Tony Salguero, will they, Lou? You had him taken care of.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jacoby said.

“There’s still Gabriella,” Cork pointed out. “With a good lawyer-”

“She’ll use the lawyer I pay for,” Jacoby said. “And he’ll make sure she rots in prison.”

Jacoby moved away from the window to the side of the great bed. He reached out and pressed a button on the wall.

“And her two boys?” Dina looked at the old man with a kind of sickened awe. “You’ll take them from her, won’t you, Lou?”