William Krueger - Tamarack County

Stephen nodded and felt himself yanked to his feet. He stayed upright, although with some difficulty, and watched two big men-hell, they were gorillas-pick up Marlee and carry her off the ice toward a black crew-cab pickup parked at the edge of the lake. He stumbled after them. They laid Marlee on the backseat and covered her with a green wool blanket.

“Call 911, Wes,” said the man whose voice Stephen had heard first. He spoke through a brown beard stained with tobacco juice. “Tell ’em we’ll meet ’em at the junction with Highway One. Tell ’em five minutes.”

“Squeeze in, kid,” the man named Wes said. He nodded toward the backseat where Marlee lay. “It’s warm in the truck.” Then he whipped a cell phone from the pocket of his jeans and punched in three numbers.

According to Wes and Randy Studemeyer, they were on their way back from visiting a friend on the rez, Jackie LeTourneau. They said they’d come around the bend and had seen the vehicle on the ice. It was already starting to break through when they pulled to the side of the road and did “what, hell, anybody’d do.” No, they hadn’t seen the green, mud-spattered pickup that Stephen had said was the cause of Marlee’s panicked driving. When they arrived, the road was empty.

Cork knew the Studemeyer brothers and figured it was likely that their visit to the Iron Lake Reservation had nothing to do with LeTourneau and everything to do with ice fishing in an area of the lake reserved, through treaty rights, solely for use by the Ojibwe. But he didn’t bother challenging their story. He was just immensely grateful that the guys who’d come upon the scene had been two men whose genes had possibly been mixed with the DNA of mountain gorillas, two men who didn’t think twice about putting themselves at risk doing something that Cork wasn’t sure “hell, anybody’d do,” two bushy-faced men who, from the icy maw of the hungry lake, had plucked alive his son and Marlee Daychild. He told them that as long as there was a bar in town that tapped a keg, the beer was on him. He’d make sure every barkeep in Aurora knew this.

Sheriff Marsha Dross also questioned the Studemeyer brothers and also chose not to challenge their story of the reason for their visit to the rez. She let them go with her personal thanks, and the two men left the Aurora Community Hospital, heading, Cork figured, to a local saloon to take him up on his offer.

Stephen sat in the waiting area of the emergency room. Stella Daychild sat beside him. They both looked beat to hell. Stephen’s hand was wrapped in gauze. In shattering the window, he hadn’t broken anything, but there’d been some laceration and bruising. He’d been given pain medication, but Cork could tell that the injury still hurt him pretty bad, although Stephen said nothing about it.

They were doing a CT scan of Marlee’s head. She’d regained consciousness in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. She had feeling everywhere-mostly pain-and could move all her fingers and toes, but the ER doctor, a young Egyptian-looking gentleman named Moussa, wanted to be certain there hadn’t been a serious brain injury. Stephen hadn’t been allowed to see her yet, and he sat staring at the hospital floor tiles, idly rubbing his bandaged right hand with his good left hand. His father had brought him a dry change of clothing-jeans, a red T-shirt, a hooded black sweatshirt, clean underwear, socks, a pair of beat-up Reeboks. He’d also brought Stephen’s old leather jacket, which wasn’t as warm as the parka that had been soaked in the lake, but it was better than nothing.

Dross dragged a blue vinyl waiting room chair close to Stella and sat down.

“It appears that whoever killed your dog may be intent on doing more serious harm, Ms. Daychild.”

Stella said quietly, “Duh.”

“Does the description of the truck that followed your daughter and Stephen ring any bells for you? Does it sound familiar at all?”

Stella laid her head back against the waiting room wall. “An old mud-spattered pickup. Jesus, that sounds like most of the trucks on the rez.”

“Stephen says it was pale green,” Cork told her.

Stella’s eyes lit up. “Green? A green pickup? Like the one that followed me to the rez?”

Dross said, “Tell me about that.”

Stella repeated the story she’d told Cork, of the man with the mole on his cheek and the crazy look in his eyes and the truck that had tailed her a month earlier.

“But nothing’s happened in the meantime?” Dross said.

“Yeah. Dexter got his head cut off.”

“I mean nothing specifically connecting you with the man at the casino or the green pickup.”

Stella said, “Not until today.”

Dross shifted her attention to Stephen for a moment. “And you didn’t get a license plate number?”

Stephen squeezed his lips together, a gesture, Cork knew, of frustration with himself. “No. But that’s because the front plate was blocked by a plow blade.”

“And you didn’t get a good look at the person who was driving?”

Stephen shook his head. “The sun on the windshield was kind of blinding.”

“You didn’t see it before you got onto County Sixteen, heading toward Allouette?”

Stephen hesitated a fraction of a second, and Cork wondered what that pause, though barely noticeable, was all about. “No,” Stephen said.

“Is it possible,” Dross began, “that what happened with your dog wasn’t about you, Ms. Daychild, but about Marlee?”

“What do you mean?”

“Teenagers’ emotions run high. Has Marlee recently broken off a relationship with someone?”

“No. At least, not that I know of.” She looked at Stephen. “Has she?”

Stephen considered a moment, a deeply serious look on his face. Finally he shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“Why would someone have followed me if this was about Marlee all along?”

The waiting room door opened, and a nurse stepped in. She glanced around the room. Whoever she was seeking, it wasn’t one of them. She turned and left.

“Stephen, I want you to think over very carefully what I’m about to say. All right?” Dross said.

“Sure.”

“Are you certain the truck was actually following you? That that was the intention of the driver? And even if it was, was the accident actually caused by anything the driver did? Did the driver take aggressive action to make Marlee go off the road onto the ice?”

Stephen seemed to do as she asked, mulled over her questions awhile before offering anything in response. When he did, he said, “The truck was following us. I know that for sure. Marlee slowed down to let it pass, but it wouldn’t.” His eyes spent another few seconds crawling the wall on the other side of the room, then skated across the floor. “But did it cause the accident? I guess I’d have to say we went off the road because Marlee freaked and hit the gas and right after that we skidded on road ice.”

“What difference does it make?” Stella said. “The creep was on her tail. And when the kids went off the road, what does he do? He gets the hell out of there, leaves them to drown in the lake. Looks pretty cut and dried to me.”

“I know it looks that way,” Dross said. “I’m just trying to examine the incident from every possible angle, so that we don’t overlook anything.”

“Right,” Stella said without conviction.

Dross said, “Cork, could I talk to you outside?”

He’d been standing, leaning against the wall. Now he pushed himself away and walked ahead of the sheriff through the door and into the hallway.

Outside Dross crossed her arms and said, “As nearly as I can tell, whoever was driving that truck did nothing illegal. It was Marlee’s reaction that caused the accident, pure and simple. I’m not sure there’s even a law that says the other driver had to stop and render assistance. Most folks would try to do something, of course, but some people just panic. And as for the pickup actually following them with some sinister intention, Stephen’s offered me nothing concrete to really pin that down.”