Meloux sat quietly while the exchange took place. Cork was sorry that he’d let himself trade harsh words with the woman there where Meloux burned cedar to cleanse the anger from the air. He was well aware that the old mide hadn’t asked the woman’s purpose in coming. Meloux probably already knew, in the way he knew so many things. If not, his quiet was simply a sign of the patience that was an aspect of his spirit. Cork, for his part, was dying to know why she, an outsider, had come and who had guided her.
But there were to be no answers. The woman fell silent and Meloux looked at Cork in a way that was as powerful as a shove.
“Migwech, Henry,” Cork said, thanking the old man for his help. He stood up and stepped to Stevie, who lay asleep against Walleye. He lifted his son and started along the path that had led him to Crow Point.
“We fight for the world our children will inherit, Mr. O’Connor,” the woman said at his back.
Cork turned to her. “A noble-sounding justification for almost anything. Always has been.”
Before Cork could move on, Meloux called to him, “I have heard you might be sheriff again.”
“Somebody’s spreading a lot of hooey in this county,” Cork replied.
“Too bad,” the old man said. “I think it would be a good idea.”
“I don’t share your optimism, Henry. But I thank you for the vote of confidence. ‘Night.”
He passed between the rocks and out of the firelight.
An early moon had risen, nearly full. Without it, the dark of the woods would have been impenetrable. As it was, Cork walked in a silver light bright enough to cast shadows. His son was heavy in his arms, but Cork didn’t mind at all. Stevie stirred in his sleep and his cheek brushed Cork’s cheek, soft down against the rough stubble of a day’s growth. Cork thought about the woman and how hard she’d seemed when it came to her son. He knew his own arms could not hold Stevie forever. Someday he would have to let go. He hoped he would be wise enough when that time came to know how to do it and strong enough to let it be done.
As he drove toward Aurora with Stevie asleep on the seat beside him, Cork thought over all that Meloux had told him about Charlie Warren. They were not big things. Probably they were pieces of information that many on the rez knew but, out of respect for Charlie Warren and an understandable distrust of law enforcement, had not shared with the BCA or even with Jo. Meloux thought the information was important, and so Cork considered it carefully.
Charlie Warren was the traditional chief of the Iron Lake Ojibwe, and his voice had always been important in the affairs of the People. He was in his seventies and his health had been failing and lately he’d retired from most politics on the rez. He was a man who often did not sleep at night, and who did not like to be alone with his sleeplessness. What would such a man be doing at Lindstrom’s mill when the bomb went off?
When he put it together that way, Cork thought he might have the answer.
He stopped at the Pinewood Broiler and borrowed Johnny Pap’s phone book to look up an address. Then he drove out to a small clapboard house near the Burlington Northern tracks northwest of town. Stevie slept so soundly that Cork decided not to wake him. He got out of the Bronco quietly and followed the cracked, weedy sidewalk to the front door. The house was mostly dark. Through the blinds, Cork could see a lighted television screen in the front room, and he could hear through the opened window the sound of a baseball game. He pushed the button for the doorbell, but nothing rang inside. He knocked. A moment later the porch light flicked on. Harold Loomis, the night watchman at Lindstrom’s mill, appeared at the door.
“Evening, Harold,” Cork said.
Loomis was a thin man. He was dressed in an undershirt and plaid shorts. He had a full shock of white hair and a nose like a lightbulb that had been screwed into his face. He held a glass filled with amber liquid and ice, and his lightbulb of a nose was pretty well lit.
“What can I do for you, Cork?” He pushed the screen door open.
“I just need an answer to a couple of questions.”
“Sure. If I can give ‘em.”
“You like playing checkers?”
“Yeah.”
“You ever play with Charlie Warren?”
Loomis blinked at him.
“I was just thinking,” Cork went on, “that you and Charlie had a few things in common. Besides checkers. You served in the Korean War, right?”
“What of it?”
“So did Charlie.”
“Lots of guys did.”
“Not so many around here.”
Loomis stared at Cork. His eyes were watery and rimmed with red. It could have been from what was in the glass. Or lack of sleep. Or maybe even from grieving.
“Was Charlie Warren your friend, Harold?” Loomis tried to maintain his stare, but he finally broke and looked down at the glass in his hand.
“Because if he was, they’re saying your friend was responsible for the destruction out at Lindstrom’s, that he botched things, Harold, and he killed himself with his own bomb.”
“Charlie’s dead. What difference does it make what anybody says about him now?”
“He was playing checkers with you that night, wasn’t he? Maybe sharing a drink. Talking over old times. Exchanging war stories. Helping the night get by for both of you. I’m guessing neither of you wanted folks to know. You had a job to worry about, and maybe Charlie figured it wouldn’t look so good, him hanging out at Lindstrom’s, what with all the hullaballoo over logging right now. You know, Harold, it’s pretty understandable.”
Loomis stared at the ice melting into his whiskey.
“I’ll bet it got lonely out there at night.”
Loomis stepped out and let the door swing closed behind him. He walked to the porch railing, took a long drink from his glass, swirled the ice, drank again. He looked out at the night, and when he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “We served in the same unit. After the war, coming home, we never had much to do with one another. Charlie, he had all that business out on the reservation. Me, I went back to my own life. But you get old, Cork. People you got anything in common with pass on. You get lonely. Charlie and me, we bumped into one another sometimes at the VFW. Got to talking about old times. Korea, you know. I liked him. Didn’t matter he was Indian. Didn’t matter to him I was white. Yeah, at the end, he was my friend.”
“He didn’t have anything to do with the bomb. He was just there to play checkers.”
Loomis nodded. “He always left before the guys started showing up for first shift. The other night, I had my rounds to make. We were in the middle of a game. Charlie stayed in the shed while I headed out. I was on the other side of the mill when it happened.” Tears piled up along the rims of his eyes. “I couldn’t do anything. Honest to God, there was nothing I could do.” He shook his head. “They find out about Charlie, I’m out of a job, Cork. I got no pension. I got no way to pay my bills.”
“I have to tell somebody, Harold. I have to tell Wally Schanno. I’m sorry.” Cork felt bad, but there was no way around it. “Look, it doesn’t have to be done tonight. And I’ll see if Schanno can do something about keeping the details confidential. I can’t promise anything.”
Loomis stared down at the old boards of his porch. He seemed dazed. The effect of the whiskey. And a lot more.
“Thanks for your help, Harold.”
Loomis looked at him and a question seemed to surface from somewhere deep in his consciousness. “Why do you care about any of this? You’re not the sheriff anymore.”
“‘Night, Harold.”
Cork left him standing in his doorway, the question unanswered.
13
JOHN LEPERE LEFT HIS SMALL CABIN and walked through pools of moonlight scattered among the trees that separated his place from the big log home on the other side of Grace Cove. He crossed the dry bed of Blueberry Creek that was the property line, then followed the curve of the cove until he came to a narrow sand beach, white in the moonlight. The beach was not a natural feature of the shoreline there. Lindstrom had had it constructed the year before when the log home was built. LePere carefully skirted the sand so that he would leave no tracks. He often trespassed this way. For years, when his was the only dwelling on the cove, he’d walked the shoreline unrestrained by concerns about boundary lines. Although he actually owned only a small parcel of the land, over the years he’d come to think of the cove as his. It was wrong thinking, he knew, but inhabiting the place alone for more than a decade had made it so. Then Lindstrom had come, changed the look of everything. LePere resented the man, his wealth, and his thoughtless trespass on LePere’s life.