Mercy Falls co-5 Read online

  “Yes,” Larson said.

  “And it appeared that Eddie put up no struggle, right?”

  “That’s right. High blood alcohol content in his blood and traces of Ecstasy. He was probably pretty high.”

  “Hmmmm,” she said.

  “What is it?” Larson asked.

  “Eddie Jacoby was in terrific physical condition. All the Jacobys are. Even drunk, even high on Ecstasy, even surprised, he’d fight, believe me. Unless…”

  She put a finger to her lips and the men waited.

  “The very first knife wound was the fatal one.”

  Larson thought it over. “That would require a lot of luck on the assailant’s part.”

  “Wouldn’t it,” she said.

  “Or someone who knew where to stick the knife, knew what would kill a man instantly.” He rolled that over in his mind. “Maybe somebody put more thought into this than it might appear at first glance.”

  The men looked at one another, then at Dina.

  “Of course, it could be a jealous husband, as you’ve speculated,” she said. “But he’d have to be one cold, calculating son of a bitch with more restraint than most jealous husbands, in my experience, are capable of.”

  Larson nodded slowly. “So scratch jealous husband.”

  She waited a moment, then offered, “According to the autopsy, the wounds on the body came from a long, slender blade approximately seven inches in length,” she said.

  “Like a fillet knife,” Larson suggested.

  “Or a stiletto,” she said. “So. An isolated rendezvous, prints wiped clean, a postmortem castration. I think we can scratch hysterical woman, even a lucky hysterical woman.”

  “For the moment, let’s assume that Jacoby brought his own drugs and his murder had nothing to do with that,” Cork said. “He’d been working to secure a contract with the RBC. It’s a controversial issue on the rez.” He paused as he realized something, and he looked at Dina. “You already decided this was about Starlight. That’s why you wanted to go with me to the rez.”

  “Given everything we know at the moment, it seemed the best prospect,” she replied.

  Larson said, “What about those cigarette butts and his need for female companionship? Are we going to ignore that?”

  “Maybe he was lured to Mercy Falls,” Dina said.

  Larson nodded. “It would be good to know if he was seen with anybody that night. I’ll check his hotel again and the bars in town. Maybe somebody remembers something.”

  “Sounds good,” Cork said. He moved on to the other investigation. “Anything more on the shooting, Simon?”

  Rutledge shook his head. “We blanked on the tires. But I’ve been thinking. It’s possible we’re dealing with somebody who has a military background. A lot of strategy in the planning and setup. A good position to shoot from. The hardware to do the job. An escape route chosen to keep the shooter away from traffic at the cabin.”

  Cork said, “What about the shell casings he left behind? Not great planning there.”

  “I don’t know. That is puzzling. It’s as if the shooter was distracted from his mission.”

  “The shooter may not have been alone,” Cork said. “The woman who imitated Lucy Tibodeau on the phone may have been with him. Maybe she panicked, and that was the distraction.”

  “I think we’d do well to look for someone with a good knowledge of the Iron Lake Reservation who has a military background and a grudge against you, Cork,” Rutledge said. “Do you know anyone who fits that description?”

  “I could name a few Shinnobs who were Vietnam vets and weren’t happy when I arrested them, but I can’t imagine any of them wanting to kill me for it.”

  “What about a hunter rather than a soldier?” Dina said. “From what I understand reading the incident report, the sniper was two hundred and fifty, maybe three hundred yards from his target. That’s not a difficult distance for a good hunter, especially one with a reasonable rifle and scope. I would imagine hunters in this area are quite used to having to adjust for upslope and downslope shots. And they probably have a good understanding of where to position themselves for maximum effect. Plus,” she went on, “I think there’s a fundamental problem with the military scenario.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Again, just from what I understand reading the report, the sheriff saw a flash of light off the rifle, maybe from the scope, maybe a plate on the rifle stock. A trained sniper would never let that happen. The scope would be hooded and any metal on the stock that might reflect light would be covered. It also seems to me that a trained sniper would have chosen a position on the west side of the hollow, in the shadow of the hill behind the cabin where sunlight in his eyes or on his weapon wouldn’t have been an issue.”

  “A hunter,” Rutledge said, and gave a slight nod. “The problem there is that this is a county full of hunters.”

  She tilted her head. “That is a problem.”

  There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” Cork said.

  It was the dispatcher Patsy Gilman. “I’ve got the flowers, Cork. I’m heading to the hospital.”

  “I’ll be right with you.”

  “I’ll wait,” she said, and closed the door as she left.

  The department had taken up a collection to buy flowers for Marsha Dross. Patsy wanted to deliver them before she had to report for her shift at three o’clock that afternoon. Cork had asked to go along.

  He took his copy of Jacoby’s cell phone records. “After the hospital, I’ll head out to the rez and have a talk with the members of the RBC.”

  “I’d still like to petition mildly that I come with you,” Dina said.

  Cork shook his head. “People on the rez will be reluctant to talk to me as it is. With you along, they wouldn’t say a word.”

  “If you’re going rural, Cork,” Ed Larson said, “wear your vest.”

  Cork wasn’t sure he would. He didn’t want to sit down and talk with people if it appeared that he was dressed for battle. And this trip to the rez would be different from the one he’d made with Marsha Dross. This time, no one knew he was coming.

  18

  The town of Allouette was the political and social center of the Iron Lake Reservation. That didn’t mean there was much to it. A grid of a dozen streets, several still not fully paved. A new community center that housed the tribal offices and a health center. A Mobil gas station and garage owned by Les Standing. The Nanaboozhoo Cafe. And George LeDuc’s store.

  LeDuc’s was a small general store in a clapboard building with scratched wood floors. The shelves held a little of everything, from bread to Band-Aids to bait and tackle. It was also the post office for the rez.

  When Cork stepped in, LeDuc was behind the counter.

  “Boozhoo,” LeDuc called out in greeting.

  “Boozhoo,” Cork called back. “Good to see you, George.” He walked to the counter where LeDuc was preparing the day’s mail for pickup.

  “Good to see you, too. Still alive.” LeDuc grinned. The lines of his face deepened, but there was a vigor in his dark eyes much younger than his seventy years. “How’s your deputy?”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “Everyone on the rez is talking about that shooting.”

  “Anything come up I ought to know about?”

  “Nope. Got us all scratching our heads. Eli Tibodeau, he’s still real broke up over those dogs of his. Seems to me it had to be somebody just plain mean to do that to a couple of dogs. And to shoot Marsha Dross. She’s a good person. Like I said before, I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

  “I’m here about Eddie Jacoby, George.”

  LeDuc bound the mail in a bundle. It was all letters today-a lot of bills being paid, from the look of it. “That guy, he was bad news. Whenever I shook hands with him, I counted my fingers after to make sure I still had ’em all.”

  “From what I’m hearing, the rest of the RBC didn’t feel the same way.”

  “You don’t hav
e to like a man to like what he’s selling.”

  “You think a contract with Starlight Enterprises is a good idea?”

  “Not necessarily with Starlight. But we sure been having trouble with the managers we’ve hired. Russell Blackwater, he stole us blind. Daniel Wadena couldn’t stomach the politics. That guy come up from Mystic Lake, he was just plain incompetent. And now Kirby Hanes has just about everybody at the casino threatening to quit. We could use some good management.”

  “The RBC’s been dragging its feet for months. Suddenly you’re all hot for Starlight. Why the change of heart?”

  “Lots of ways to change a person’s thinking. A sound argument, for one.”

  “Jacoby put one forward?”

  “It was sound. Like I said, we been desperate for good management for a while. But the man himself…” LeDuc shook his head. He reached under the counter and brought out a small canvas bag labeled U.S. MAIL. He put the bundled envelopes inside.

  “Lots of ways to change someone’s thinking, you said. Was money one?” Cork asked.

  “When you’re dealing with a weak person, sure. And there are people on the RBC who might bend pretty easy that way.”

  “Did he try to bribe you?”

  “I don’t bend easy, and everybody out here knows it.”

  “Hear of any arm-twisting?”

  “I heard he tried with Edgar Gillespie.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Edgar wouldn’t say. But with his past, hell, you wouldn’t have to dig too deep to find a little buried garbage.”

  “Jacoby’s been working on this deal for six months. Why all the sudden pressure? Did he lose patience?”

  “He was an impatient man to begin with. Doing things on Indian time really burned him. I was surprised he waited so long to get tough. Edgar probably wasn’t the only one he leaned on.”

  “Where would he get the information he’d need for that kind of leverage? I’m thinking a white man, especially a white man like Jacoby, asking questions on the rez, that would get around.”

  LeDuc’s face was unreadable, but the fact that he didn’t reply was an indication that it was an area he wasn’t willing to explore with Cork.

  “Well someone talked to him.” Cork opened a jar of jerky that sat near the register, pulled out a piece, laid money on the counter, and began to chew. “Going with Starlight or not going with Starlight. You think someone would kill over that?”

  LeDuc took the money, put it in the till. “I had me an uncle who was murdered during the Depression, stabbed to death by a man who wanted his shoes. That tell you anything?”

  Cork had left the records for Jacoby’s cell phone calls in his vehicle. What LeDuc had just said made him want to look at them.

  “ Migwech, George,” he said as he turned to leave. Thanks. “Give my best to Francie.”

  “Tell Jo hello.”

  In the Pathfinder, Cork put his half-eaten jerky strip on the seat and checked the phone records. Several calls had been made to Eddie Jacoby from the North Star Bar. It was the kind of place where men who would kill for a pair of shoes did their drinking.

  The bar stood at a crossroads just south of the rez, surrounded by thick woods and nothing else for miles. The regulars were mostly Shinnobs, although members of other tribal affiliations felt at home there. The common denominator was heritage and hard luck. Occasionally white folks stumbled in, hunters or snowmobilers who didn’t know the lay of the land, but they didn’t stay long. It was an old wood structure, the paint faded, walls spattered with mud churned up by tires spinning in the unpaved lot. The windows were small and crowded with signs advertising the booze inside. Not much light squeezed through, and the North Star was notoriously dark. When Cork opened the door, the smell of liquor greeted him. It wasn’t the kind of place that served food, except for pickled pig’s feet in a big glass jar and fried pork rinds and chips that hung on a rack. If it wasn’t beer or straight whiskey or at most a boilermaker you wanted, you were better off going somewhere else. Coming in from the sunny afternoon outside, Cork had to wait a minute for his eyes to adjust to the dark. It was deadly quiet, which surprised him because there were several pickups in the lot. When he could see again, he realized the silence wasn’t because the place was empty. All eyes were on him and all mouths were shut.

  On the way to the North Star, he’d pulled over and taken a few minutes to change into his uniform, including his Kevlar vest. His. 38 was holstered on his belt. He walked to the bar where Will Fineday, who owned the place, leaned a couple of beefy arms on a surface badly in need of refinishing.

  Fineday had a face straight out of a nightmare. Twenty years earlier, an accident with a hockey stick had nearly cleaved it in half. Although doctors in Canada where the incident occurred repaired the bone and stitched the skin back together, the wound left a jagged scar like a huge fault line across his left cheek, nose, and right eye before it ended halfway up his forehead. He didn’t see at all out of the damaged eye. That was the part of the accident that ended a promising NHL career as a forward with the Maple Leafs. Fineday came back to the rez, used the money from the settlement to buy the bar, and for two decades his freakish face had added a certain timbre to the place. He’d managed to secure the stick that had done the deed, and it hung above the bottles at his back. He’d been known to snatch it down and use the threat of it to end a disturbance or roust an unruly customer.

  “I don’t suppose you want a beer,” Fineday said. His voice was soft for such a hard-looking man.

  “Got somebody to watch the bar, Will?”

  “Why? Arresting me?”

  “We’re going in back to talk for a while.”

  The crack across Fineday’s face lightened as the skin around it grew an irritated red. After a moment, he straightened up and called, “Lizzie!”

  A door in the corner behind him opened and his daughter stepped out.

  Lizzie Fineday was twenty, pretty in a surly way, with long black hair and anger in her eyes. Growing up, she’d been a Walt Disney dream of Pocahontas, a pure beauty. She had a lovely voice, sang at school, at powwows. She’d always wanted to be an actress, but Lizzie had a problem, and the problem was drugs. Cork had begun picking her up when she was barely thirteen. At sixteen, she’d run away, headed for Hollywood. She got as far as Denver, where she was arrested in a raid on a crack house. Her father went to fetch her and he put her in rehab. In the four years since, her record had been better, but Cork knew from the things he heard on the rez that she wasn’t clean, just careful. She was still pretty, but in a damaged, brooding way. At the moment, a large bruise marred her face, a purple shadow along the high bone of her right cheek. Her upper lip was puffy, too. She moved behind her father, and she didn’t look directly at Cork.

  Fineday started toward the open door, but Cork held back.

  “What happened to your face, Lizzie?”

  Her hand went automatically toward the bruise but stopped before she touched it. “Nothing.”

  “Just woke up and there it was?”

  “I fell,” she said, looking at the floor.

  “You fall again, how about letting me know.”

  She didn’t answer, just turned to the sink where beer glasses waited to be washed.

  In the office, with the door closed, Will Fineday sat down at an old desk that was covered with the sports section of several newspapers. He didn’t bother to clear them away.

  “What do you want?” Fineday said. “Someone complain I water down the whiskey?”

  Cork hadn’t been invited to sit, and although there was an empty chair, he remained standing.

  “The name Eddie Jacoby mean anything to you?”

  “The guy who got himself killed at Mercy Falls, right?”

  “You ever see him out here?”

  “Can’t recall.”

  “A pain-in-the-ass white man, Will. You’d recall.”

  “Then I guess I never saw him.”

  “Somebody called h
im from here several times, from your pay phone.”

  “The pay phone’s outside. I don’t see who calls.”

  “How’d Lizzie’s face get bruised?”

  “Like she said, she fell.”

  “Bullshit. You hit her?”

  “I never hit Lizzie. And I’d kill anyone who did.”

  Cork knew this was true. Will Fineday’s wife had died young, and the man had raised his daughter alone. He’d made mistakes, but hitting Lizzie hadn’t been one of them. Although Fineday had a harsh face, his heart, at least where his daughter was concerned, was something else. Cork had accused him only in the hope of jarring something loose.

  “Stone hit her?”

  Cork was referring to a man with whom Lizzie was known to keep company. They slept together-everyone knew it-but no one thought of it as love. Stone wasn’t that kind of man.

  “Like I said, if he hit her, he’d be dead.”

  Cork thought about Lizzie’s weakness for getting high and about the drugs that had been found in Jacoby’s SUV. “Did Eddie Jacoby hit her?”

  “I didn’t kill that man, if that’s where you’re headed. I didn’t even know him.”

  “Mind if I talk to Lizzie?”

  “Yeah. In fact,” Fineday said, pushing himself up, “you’ve done all the talking you’re gonna do here. I don’t want you bothering Lizzie or my customers. You got a warrant or something, fine. Otherwise, I want you out.”

  “Bother your customers?” Cork laughed. “Hell, Will, nothing short of a bazooka’s going to bother them.”

  Fineday went ahead of him out the office door and put himself between Cork and Lizzie. Cork thanked him for his time, gave Lizzie a nod, and started out.

  Just as he reached the exit, someone gave a high squeal behind him and said, “The other white meat.”

  Cork kept right on walking, glad for the feel of the Kevlar against his back.

  19

  Cork had called early in the afternoon to tell Jo he’d be late and not to hold dinner for him. She didn’t feel up to making anything when she got home. When she suggested to the children that they all eat at Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler, she got no argument.