William Krueger - Tamarack County

Stella seemed to be taking the current situation rather well, although she drew on her cigarette a little more frequently than was probably necessary.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“Has anybody threatened you lately?” Cork replied.

“No.”

“You piss anybody off?”

“Not that I know of.”

“How have your dealings with the folks on the rez been?”

“Okay. Nobody’s threatened to cut off Dexter’s head anyway. You think it was a Shinnob who did this?”

“Honestly, no.”

“Somebody just getting their perverted jollies?”

“I don’t think that either. I followed his tracks from where he left Dexter. They went out to the Loons. He’d left his snowmobile there. Probably didn’t want to alert you or Marlee to his coming. He headed back in the direction of Aurora.”

“A chimook ?” she said, using the slang, and slightly unkind, Ojibwe term for white people. She blew smoke, a furious billow this time. “I get hit on at the casino bar a lot. I handle most of them pretty well. My livelihood depends on it. But every so often a guy won’t take no. Then I have to get serious. Sometimes I have security escort him out. When he leaves, he leaves pissed. Once in a great while, one of these guys is waiting for me when I get off at the end of a shift.”

This concerned Cork a lot and went beyond what had happened to Dexter. It was the kind of thing that, when he was sheriff, he would have wanted to know. It was about vulnerability, and everything in him cried out to protect. “What do you do when that happens?”

“I talk tough. And I have pepper spray. Do you really think this all might be because of something like that?”

“Best not to discount anything at this point. Whoever it was, he planned it. He knew where you live, knew that you have a dog. It seems most likely that Dexter was killed to send you a message or maybe to punish you. Again, that brings us back to someone off the rez. If it was a Shinnob, he’d have known the dog belonged to Ray Jay and not to you.”

Stella straightened up, and Cork watched her eyes narrow as she went someplace deep in her thinking. “There was a guy,” she said finally. “Maybe a month ago. Came into the bar one night, and there was this look in his eyes. Not drunk. I know drunk. This was different. Intense in a really creepy way. He sat at a table by himself, but his eyes never left me. Whenever he wanted a drink, instead of asking one of the waitresses, he came right up to the bar so he could order directly from me. He drank Maker’s Mark, neat.”

“Did he say anything?”

“No. Not really. But that look creeped me out plenty. And then when I got off that night, someone followed me. All the way from the casino out to the rez.”

“The guy?”

“That’s what I figured. I didn’t want him knowing where I live, so I went into Allouette and stopped for some gas. He drove by, disappeared. I waited, but he didn’t come back. I drove home fast, and you better believe I locked all the doors.”

“What did he look like?”

“Thinning red hair. Medium height. Big, though, in his upper body, like he worked out or something. I remember he had a mole on his cheek, right here.” She pointed to a spot just to the left of her nose. “Looked like a fly had landed.”

“What kind of vehicle?”

“A pickup truck.”

“Color?”

“Maybe green, but I wouldn’t swear to it.”

“License plate?”

She shook her head. “So I have a stalker now? Great. When he finds out Dexter wasn’t my dog, you think he’ll do something else? Maybe something worse?”

“We don’t know it was that guy. And whoever it was, maybe they’ll consider it done, whatever point they were trying to make.” Or, Cork hoped, would think it too risky now to try something else.

“And if it’s not done?”

“Any of your male relatives willing to hang out at your place for a while?”

“I could tap a cousin or an uncle, I suppose.”

“Until I have a better handle on things, that’s what I’d suggest.”

“You’re staying on this?” She seemed surprised but not at all displeased.

“Tomorrow when it’s light, I’ll see if I can follow the trail of that snowmobile, find out where it leads.”

She stepped to the porch rail, leaned her arms on it, and looked toward the woods and the vulture moon. “Jesus, what am I going to tell Ray Jay?”

“Ray Jay?”

“His dog. We’re just watching Dexter while Ray Jay does his sixty days as a guest of the Tamarack County Jail.”

“Another DWI?”

She shook her head. “He’s been sober almost two years. Probation violation. They caught him poaching.”

“If you’d like, I could ask the sheriff’s people to look into this.”

“No. Like you said, it’s probably done. Just some guy being really shitty and cruel.”

She turned to him. Although it was bitter cold out, she hadn’t buttoned her coat. Under it, she was dressed for her work tending bar at the casino. She wore a tight black sweater and, around her neck, a long gold chain that lay nestled in the valley between her breasts. She had on black slacks that snugged her narrow waist and hugged the admirable curve of her hips.

She caught him looking and said, as if disappointed, “Like what you see?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. And he was. “You probably get stared at a lot.”

“What bothers me is that there’s so much more to me. But guys who stare don’t care about that.”

Cork had never thought of himself as that kind of guy, but here he was, caught dead to rights. It troubled him, and Stella must have seen that on his face.

“It’s okay,” she said, her voice softened. “Forget it.” She snubbed out her cigarette, threw the butt into the snow of the yard, and said, “I’m cold. What say we go back inside before they worry about us?”

Cork held the door for her and followed her into the house. “Time to go, Stephen,” he said.

“I think I should stay,” Stephen replied. “At least until Stella can get someone else to come.”

“I’d feel safer, Mom,” Marlee chimed in.

Cork could see the look of pleasure that put on his son’s face.

“Would it be all right, Cork?” Stella asked. “He can sleep on the sofa. And by tomorrow, I’ll have some family coverage.”

What could he say? It made sense, yet it also worried him.

“Okay, but any sign of trouble, you call me, understand?” he cautioned.

“I understand,” Stephen said.

“No heroics.”

“Dad.”

“All right. Give me the keys to Jenny’s Subaru. I’ll drive it home and leave you the Land Rover. I’ll need it first thing in the morning.”

“Ten-four,” Stephen said. And he gave his dad the kind of smile he usually reserved for an equal and a friend.

Outside, Cork started the Subaru, but he didn’t leave immediately. He sat for a little while thinking about Stephen and Marlee, and remembering the first girl he’d been crazy about. Her name had been Winona Crane, and although Cork had tried his best to win her, she’d given her heart instead to Cork’s best friend. In the end, nothing good had come of it. Cork had hoped that Stephen, when he fell in love, might have an easier, more normal, experience. But given the way things were shaping up at the moment, that prospect looked pretty bleak.

On the way back to Aurora, Cork called Marsha Dross on his cell phone. She was still at the Judge’s house.

“We’ve taken blood samples from the knife blade. They’re already on their way to the BCA lab in Bemidji. We also took prints from the knife handle and from the tubing and the gas cans. We dusted the whole garage basically. We’re also dusting her car.”