Tamarack County: A Novel Read online

  “Hello, Cork,” she said dryly when he walked in.

  “Hello, Justine. It’s been a while.” He shed his coat, draped it over the back of the office’s unoccupied chair, took a moment to shake her hand, then sat down.

  “I don’t come back to Aurora much these days,” Justine said. “I wish I didn’t have to be here now.”

  “I’m sorry about the circumstances,” he offered.

  “Thank you.”

  Dross said, “I’ve told Justine that we’ve pretty much exhausted our search of the area where we found her mother’s car and that our investigation has taken a turn toward possible foul play in her mother’s disappearance.”

  Cork glanced at Justine. She’d had a couple of days already to deal with the fact that her mother was missing, but he could see from the muscles tensed across the bone of her face that this new turn of events had been especially hard on her.

  “Would you mind telling Cork what you told me?” Dross said.

  Justine looked at him, frowning just a little, the hollows in her cheeks deepening. “I thought you weren’t in law enforcement anymore.”

  “He’s a licensed private investigator now, and he’s agreed to consult on this case,” Dross told her, saying it quickly but casually, as if it was quite an ordinary occurrence in the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department.

  Justine gave a slight shrug of her shoulders, a little gesture of whatever. She said, “My mother was seriously considering leaving my father.”

  “Why?” Cork asked. Although knowing the kind of man the Judge had always been, he understood that it was, in a way, a silly question. “I mean, why now?”

  Justine rubbed one hand over the other, her long fingers idly feeling the prominent knuckles. “I’ve been trying to get her to leave him for years. Devout Catholic that she is, she believes that a marriage is forever. Fine, I’ve always told her. You don’t have to divorce him. Just leave. But she’s spent her life under his thumb. It’s hard for her to change.”

  “So why has she been thinking of leaving now?”

  “It really began when all that crap came out about the LaPointe case years ago. I think it drove home to her what a morally corrupt man my father really is. That’s something I’ve known all my life, but Mom has always made excuses for him.”

  She was talking about a situation that had come to light nearly two years earlier. A man named Cecil LaPointe was serving a forty-year sentence in Minnesota’s Stillwater Prison for the killing of a young woman twenty years earlier. LaPointe was a Shinnob, an Ojibwe, living in Tamarack County. He’d been tried and sentenced in the court of Judge Ralph Carter. It had been a brief but sensational trial. The evidence against LaPointe had been overwhelming. In the end, the deliberation of the jury—all white males—had been swift, LaPointe had been found guilty, and Judge Carter had delivered a sentence of forty years’ imprisonment, the maximum allowable under Minnesota law.

  But nearly two years ago, Ray Jay Wakemup, who’d been little more than a kid at the time of the trial, had come forward with information about the crime, information that had been withheld from the jury and that cast significant doubt on LaPointe’s guilt. Ray Jay claimed that while the trial was under way, he’d shared this information with Judge Ralph Carter and also with the prosecution and the sheriff’s department. Yet none of those officers of the court or officers of the law had bothered to share the information with the defense.

  “When it became public that Dad had been a part of all that—I don’t know what you’d call it, conspiracy against justice, maybe—I phoned Mom. She was terribly upset. I told her to come out and visit, and we could talk it over. It took her a year—she had to work up the courage to tell him she was going on her own—but she finally did last October. When she left to return to Aurora after her visit, I thought she was pretty well set in her decision. But once she got here, well, Dad can be formidable. She was afraid of him, plain and simple, afraid to stand up to him. I had offered to come out, to be with her when she told him. Actually, I begged her to let me come out, and we would tell him together. She agreed to it, tentatively, but asked me to wait until after the holidays. It seemed to her an awful thing to do to him over Christmas.”

  “Do you think he might have known she was seriously considering leaving, even if she’d said nothing to him?” Cork asked.

  “It’s possible. I don’t really know what my father’s capable of these days, mentally. And that’s what got me to thinking about the other thing.”

  “Other thing?”

  “Go ahead,” Dross said. “You can tell him.”

  Justine mindlessly began toying with the gold band on her ring finger. “It’s something that might be important, I don’t know. A long time ago, my mother had an affair, and I don’t think my father ever forgave her.”

  “How do you know this?” Cork asked.

  “She told me during her visit in October.”

  “The first you’d heard of it?”

  “Yes. My parents have always been secretive people. It’s probably not something she would have shared with me, but once that whole LaPointe business came to light, she seemed different, changed, ready to get away from him and begin a new kind of life. It probably also had to do with me being grown now. It was something she could finally share with me woman to woman. You know?”

  Dross nodded, as if she did know.

  “What made you connect that affair with your mother’s disappearance?” Cork asked.

  Justine’s already pinched face seemed to draw in even more, the pupils of her eyes like hard gray nailheads. “My father’s a man who never lets go of a slight against him. I thought that if you coupled Mom’s affair with her intent to leave him, it might have been enough to send him over the edge. And like I said, his thinking and his behavior is sometimes irrational these days. He gets irritated and easily angered. Mom’s had trouble with it and, because of it, trouble keeping help at the house.”

  “Do you know who the affair was with?”

  “That part she wouldn’t tell me.”

  Cork glanced at Dross. “Did you tell her about the knife and gas cans and tubing?”

  “Yes,” Dross said.

  He shifted his focus back to Justine. “Do you think your father might be capable of having done something to your mother?”

  “Something? You mean killed her? Yes. Absolutely.” They waited for her to go on, but that seemed to do it for her. She said, “What will you do now?”

  “We’ll continue our investigation,” Dross said. “There are a lot of possibilities we have to consider. If I need to, can I reach you at your father’s house?”

  “My father’s house?” She seemed shocked at the thought. “I’m not staying there. I’ve booked a room at the Four Seasons. But you can reach me on my cell phone anytime. You have the number.”

  Cork had a thought and said, “Does your father own a cell phone?”

  “No, why would he? He has the landline, and he never goes anywhere. My mother’s the one with a cell phone.” She looked at Dross, appeared drawn and tired and angry. “Is that all?”

  “For the moment.”

  Justine stood up and went to the coat tree, a piece of antique furniture that Marsha Dross had found and refinished and that was part of what gave her office its oddly comfortable feel. She took her coat, a long tan affair with a fur collar, and put it on. “You’ll keep me informed,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Of course.”

  She turned and left, not bothering to close the door behind her.

  Cork allowed a few moments to pass, to be sure that she was really gone, then let out a low whistle. “That’s one bitter woman where her father’s concerned.”

  Dross tapped her desktop with her fingernail. “So we take with a grain of salt her belief that the Judge could have killed her mother?”

  “No, I happen to believe it, too. I’m not saying that he did it, just that he’s capable. And we have a possible motive now.”


  Dross glanced at the open door, then back at Cork. “Why did you ask her if the Judge has a cell phone?”

  “If Ralph Carter killed his wife and got rid of her body somewhere, I think he had to have help. He never leaves the house unless he’s with Evelyn. So how would he arrange it?”

  Dross thought a moment. “The telephone. I’ll request his records.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Stephen sat on the passenger side of the 4Runner’s front seat. Marlee was at the wheel. They were driving around. Just driving. And talking. Marlee was a good talker. Stephen was an adept listener, a natural talent, but it was also an ability that Henry Meloux had encouraged him to nurture.

  At first, Marlee had talked about the play she’d spent the last couple of hours practicing at the high school, You Can’t Take It with You. She had the role of a dancer, “a ditzy dancer” was how she described her character. She told him it was a famous play, a screwball comedy. She said, “You’re going to come, right?”

  He assured her that was his intention.

  They were south of Aurora when Marlee turned onto a back road, only recently plowed. It was unpaved, gravel washboard. She pulled to the side of the road, right up against the mound of plowed snow, and killed the engine. The sun came through the windshield bright and warm. Marlee turned to him, removed her gloves, and unbuttoned her coat.

  “I wanted to thank you,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For everything you did last night. You were wonderful.” She leaned to him and kissed him a very long time.

  When they separated, Stephen smiled and said, “You brought me all the way out here just to thank me?”

  “No. I . . .” She turned her face away and was quiet a moment. Then, as if she’d made an important decision, she looked back at him, looked deeply into his eyes. Her almond irises seemed to contain little flecks of gold. “No,” she said. “I wanted to give you something special.”

  She shed her coat, turned to him fully, and lifted her sweater. She wore a lacy red bra, which cupped two very firm breasts. Stephen sat stupefied as she slid apart the clasp that held her bra together in front, and the red lace parted. What was revealed to him in the brilliant stream of sunlight was nothing short of heaven.

  He started to reach out. “Can I . . . ?”

  She nodded. “Take your gloves off first.”

  In the blink of an eye, he had them off. He reached out and gently touched her left nipple, which had grown hard, then took her whole breast in his hand. It was a sensation like he’d never felt before, both holy and sinful at the same time, dizzyingly surreal and yet he was terribly, wonderfully present, aware of every sensation in that moment, of the softness of her breast and the heat of his palm and the shine of her eyes and the quickness of his breath.

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  And did he ever.

  He had no idea how far things might have gone if the truck hadn’t come along. They both heard it, rattling over the washboard, approaching from the main road. Marlee quickly sat up and pulled her sweater down. Stephen flung himself back against the passenger door, where he tried to look as if nothing had been happening. The truck came abreast but didn’t pause at all. It was spattered with hardened mud, and the side window was so splashed with road spray that Stephen couldn’t see through it with any clarity. He watched it pass and realized, when he saw his breath begin to crystallize on the windshield of Marlee’s car, that it had grown chilly inside the vehicle.

  “Mood spoiler,” Marlee said. She looked over at him, almost shyly. “We should go.”

  “Probably, yeah,” Stephen said, although pretty much everything in him didn’t agree.

  She reached under her sweater and spent a few moments putting her bra back in place. Stephen turned his eyes away, feeling suddenly awkward.

  They were quiet after that. Marlee maneuvered the 4Runner in a U-turn and started back toward the main road. At the junction, she stopped and looked both ways, then, instead of turning toward Aurora, headed in the direction of the rez.

  “Where are you going?” Stephen asked.

  “I was just thinking. Mom’s probably already gone to work. She was going to get a ride with Kit Johnson.”

  “I thought one of your uncles or cousins was going to come and stay with you until we figured out who killed Dexter.”

  “That would be Shorty, my great-uncle. He didn’t show last night, and even if he does tonight, he won’t be there for hours.”

  Stephen didn’t say a word in objection.

  Marlee took County 16, which followed the shoreline of Iron Lake north toward the reservation. Stephen’s whole body tingled. His brain seemed to be sizzling in a delightful but confusing frenzy of electric signals. His mouth was dry. He tried to think of something to say, but everything that came to him seemed senseless and unnecessary.

  Then Marlee said, “Stephen, what color was that truck that went by us?”

  “I didn’t see any truck.”

  “I mean when we were parked.” Her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.

  “I don’t know. Kind of pale green, maybe.”

  “A green pickup truck’s been following us for a while.”

  Stephen turned and looked back. He saw a dirty, mud-crusted truck, and thought Marlee was right. It had a plow blade mounted on the front, and he was pretty sure it was the same vehicle that had passed them when they’d parked on the washboard road. Immediately he thought of Dexter.

  “What do I do?” Marlee asked. Her voice was taut, and Stephen saw her grip tighten on the steering wheel.

  “Just hold it steady. We’ll be in Allouette in ten minutes.”

  Stephen kept himself turned, his eyes on the truck, which had drawn to within a dozen yards of Marlee’s rear bumper. Sunlight hit the truck’s windshield in a way that created a glare, and he couldn’t see the driver.

  “There’s a straightaway coming up,” Marlee said, a little desperately. “Maybe I should slow down. Maybe he just wants to pass.”

  “Okay,” Stephen said. “Just a little, just to see what he does.”

  They came to a long, rare stretch of straight road. Marlee eased up on the accelerator, and the needle of the speedometer crept downward. The truck slowed, too, maintaining its dozen yards of separation.

  “Shit,” Marlee said.

  The next thing Stephen knew, she had hit the gas and he was thrown back against the seat as the 4Runner shot ahead.

  “Easy, Marlee,” he said. “There’s ice on these roads.”

  But she didn’t seem to hear him. Her foot pressed harder on the accelerator, and the speedometer needle rocketed.

  “Jesus, Marlee, slow down.”

  “You want him to kill us?” she said, her voice rising.

  “If he doesn’t, you will. Slow down.”

  But it was too late. Directly ahead of them was a hard curve to the right. Marlee tried to turn the wheel, but the pavement was slick with packed snow frozen hard into a glazed coating. The 4Runner swung sideways and kept going, off the road and into a growth of dead reeds that bordered the lake. When it hit the drag of the reeds, the car flipped, and Stephen saw the world spin. He heard Marlee scream, and her scream mixed with the screaming of metal against ice, and the vehicle was sliding over the frozen surface of Iron Lake. Shards flew against his face, and he didn’t know if it was window glass or grated ice. He closed his eyes, and in a moment, everything stopped, and all Stephen heard then was a terrible, terrible silence.

  His thinking cleared slowly. When it did, he understood that the 4Runner lay on its side. The driver’s door was against the ice and the window glass was gone. Stephen was held in place by his seat belt; otherwise he’d have been lying on top of Marlee. He saw that her eyes were closed, and she wasn’t moving.

  “Marlee?”

  He started to unfasten his seat belt but realized he needed to brace himself first so that he wouldn’t tumble onto her. He settled into a more upright position, firmed his leg agains
t the heater console, grabbed the door handle with his right hand, and with his left, clicked his belt free. He eased himself down so that he knelt against the ice through the empty window of the driver’s door and leaned over Marlee. He touched her gently.

  “Marlee?”

  She didn’t respond, but he could see that she was still breathing. That was a great relief.

  Then he heard a sound that reminded him at first of the high-pitched whine laser weapons made in some sci-fi movies. It was like the 4Runner was the mothership, and laser beams shot out in all directions.

  He knew what it really was, and adrenaline coursed into his bloodstream.

  “Marlee,” he said, desperately. “Marlee, we’ve got to get out of here.”

  Through the empty window under his knee, he saw the spiderweb begin to form across the ice. He reached for Marlee’s seat belt lock and managed to free it a moment before the ice gave. The vehicle tilted forward. The front end, weighted by the engine, dipped into the water first. Somewhere in his frenzied thinking Stephen understood that he shouldn’t move Marlee, that he might do her great harm, but with the gray water already eating the hood he had no other choice.

  He wrapped his arms around her and tried to lift. For a slender woman, she seemed to weigh a ton. He succeeded in getting her into a sitting position, more or less, then looked upward at the blue sky on the other side of the passenger window, which was still intact, and realized that, with the engine off, he had no way to lower the glass. He let Marlee slump a moment, reached up, and tried to unlock the door, but the lock seemed jammed. He braced himself and tried to force the door open, pushing upward with all his strength. Useless. He felt the wet, icy grip of the lake on his boots. He glanced down and saw that Marlee was sitting in water that already covered her legs. He looked up at the window glass, formed a fist with his gloved right hand, drew back, and gave the punch everything he had. The window shattered in a rain of shards. Stephen knocked out the jagged edges. By the time he bent again to Marlee, the water had reached her chest. Her clothing was soaked, and that made her even heavier. He hooked his hands under her arms and tried to haul her up. He’d never lifted anything so heavy.