William Krueger: Tamarack County

The man who filled the doorway was a gorilla. A very unhappy gorilla, judging from his greeting.

“Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you want?”

Cork didn’t bother answering. He brought the ball bat up, grasped it with both hands, and drove the end of it as hard as he could into the man’s solar plexus. The big gorilla heaved a deep, retching cough and doubled over. Cork clipped the side of his head with the bat, and the man went down. Cork stepped around him into the home, grabbed him by the collar of his flannel shirt, and pulled him inside, away from the door, which he closed. Hancock lay on the floor struggling to breathe. Cork pulled a roll of silver duct tape from the pocket of his parka, rolled Hancock facedown, and taped his hands behind his back. Then he straddled him, slid the shaft of the ball bat under Hancock’s neck, and drew it up against his throat until the man’s legs kicked desperately.

“Where’s Walter Frogg?” Cork said.

The man tried to speak, but it was all gargle.

Cork eased the pressure from the bat. “Where’s Frogg?”

“Don’t know,” the gorilla rasped.

Cork pulled the bat tight again, and the man’s body jerked spasmodically. Cork released the pressure just a little.

“Still don’t know?”

“Not here,” Hancock managed.

“But you know where.”

“Not sure. He was staying here for a while. Three, four days ago, he borrowed my Polaris. Hasn’t come back.”

“Where would he go?”

“Don’t know.”

Cork gave the ball bat a tug.

“Maybe my cabin,” Hancock gasped.

“Where’s that?”

“Tamarack County. On the White Iron River.”

“Be more specific.”

“Becker Road. Where the North Star Trail crosses.”

Cork knew the area. A few miles west of Aurora. “What’s it for, the cabin?”

“Hunting, fishing. Was my old man’s. Now it’s mine.”

“Frogg knows about it?”

“Yeah. We used to hang out there, get high, you know. Still use it sometimes, but not much.”

“What’s the fire number?”

Every rural address in Tamarack County had a designated fire number that was posted on a sign at the entrance to the property and that would allow easy identification in the event of an emergency.

Hancock gave him the number.

Cork said, “You have a cell phone?”

“What?”

“A cell phone.” Cork drew the bat against his throat.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s in my pocket. Right side.”

Cork dug in the pocket of the man’s jeans and came up with the phone and a set of car keys. He stood, dropped the phone on the floor, and brought the heel of his boot down on it.

“Ah, shit, man,” Hancock said.

“I’m taking the keys to your Blazer. I assume that’s your Blazer out front.”

“Yeah, that’s my Blazer,” Hancock said, in a way that told Cork he was resigned to his fate.

“Where’s the other key?”

“What?”

“Everybody keeps an extra key. Where’s yours?”

When Hancock didn’t answer immediately, Cork tapped the back of his head lightly with the end of the bat.

“On a nail in the wall next to the refrigerator.”

Cork found it. He returned to the living room and said, “I’ll mail these to you tomorrow. You need something in the meantime, a walk to town’ll do you good.” With the toe of his boot, he nudged the fat around the man’s middle.

“What about the tape on my wrists?” Hancock said.

“Once I’m gone, you’ll figure a way to cut yourself free.”

“Who are you?” Hancock asked as Cork turned to leave.

“The guy who won’t be so nice the next time.”

By the time the Land Rover was crawling along Becker Road back in Tamarack County, three inches of new snow had accumulated on the ground and more was falling heavily. There were no tire tracks to follow, and pushing through the storm in the dark, Cork had nothing except the mounds of old plowed snow at the edge of the road to guide him. He leaned forward, his attention focused intensely at the periphery of his headlights so that he wouldn’t miss the mounted black rectangle with the fire number for Eustis Hancock’s cabin. As it turned out, he needn’t have worried. The only sign next to a recently plowed access bore the number Cork had been searching for.

The lane led off to the right, into a heavy stand of mixed evergreen. Cork knew the general area pretty well, and knew that the stand of timber was backed up against the White Iron River, not more than a hundred yards distant. He couldn’t see any lights among the trees, but that could have been simply because of the heavy curtaining of the snowfall. There were no recent tire tracks, so Frogg was either still inside, or gone and had not yet returned. Cork couldn’t take the chance that Frogg might come back and spot the tracks of the Land Rover, so he drove another quarter mile, until he came to a place where a section of the North Star, a snowmobile trail, crossed the road. He pulled the Land Rover onto the trail and into the cover of the trees. He took his Maglite from the glove box, got out, locked the doors, and started back toward Hancock’s cabin.

He kept to the side of the road, hoping his boot tracks wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone traveling in the storm. When he came to the access to Hancock’s place, he leaped the mound of plowed snow at the side of the road and began to wade through the drifts to keep from leaving any sign of his presence on the access lane.

He came to a small clearing and knew the cabin had to be near. He still saw no lights, but he killed the beam of the Maglite and went forward slowly, blindly. In the dark, he almost ran headlong into the structure. He walked around it carefully, came to the front, risked the light, found a beaten trail to the door, which he followed with the beam away from the cabin twenty yards until the light illuminated the green pickup with the mounted plow blade in front and a snowmobile trailer on the hitch in back.

Frogg was there. In the cabin. Asleep, maybe, because there was no light on that Cork could see. He was tempted to burst in and take the man, but the cold voice of reason told him to be patient. He retraced his steps into the cover of the timber and called Dross on his cell phone.

* * *

She came with three deputies-Azevedo, Pender, and Bronson, all members of her Critical Incident Response Team. Cork had arranged to meet her on Becker Road, where the access to Hancock’s cabin split off. Azevedo and Pender brought snowmobiles, just in case. They parked their vehicles at the side of the road, left the parking lights on to provide some illumination, got out, and gathered. They wore body armor. Pender and Bronson carried Mossbergs. Azevedo held a Stinger one-man battering ram. Dross gave instructions. She, Azevedo, and Bronson would take the front door. Pender would position himself in back, in case the man made a run for it that way.

“And I just stand by and watch?” Cork asked.

“We take it from here,” Dross said.

“Mind if I follow at a reasonable distance?”

The wind had increased, and the snow now came at a sharp slant out of the west. Cork turned and put his back against the shove of the storm. Dross, when she looked at him, had to squeeze her eyes nearly shut against the wind and snow, and it made her look a little like a mole about to tunnel.

“I want you to stay here,” she said. “When we have Frogg, you can come in then.”

“You lose him-”

“We won’t,” she said.

That cold voice of reason in his head told Cork that he’d done his part. He’d located Frogg. Now it was time to let the hunters bring him down. It wasn’t easy, but he nodded his assent.

They moved down the access toward Hancock’s cabin, disappearing one by one as if eaten by the storm. Cork stayed where he’d promised he would, although everything inside him was taut with an urgency to act. If he’d still smoked and had a cigarette handy, he would have lit up. As it was, he paced.