“Why?” While the stranger thought about his reply, he used his empty left hand to tug his dark green stocking cap over a bit of exposed ear on that side.
Stephen figured the man to be between thirty and forty years old. Not big or brutal looking or remarkable in any way. He looked strong, though, the build of a guy who pumped iron. He had a long, thin face and reddish hair that stuck out below the edge of the stocking cap. There was a large mole on his left cheek that looked like a fly had come to rest. His eyes were light blue, nothing like the burning coals Stephen had seen in his visions.
“Why?” the man repeated. Now his eyes changed, and Stephen saw the red-hot anger that had made the irises of the majimanidoo in his visions glow. “Because your father put an innocent man in jail. Because your father took away his freedom. Because your father owes that man.”
“And I pay the debt?” Stephen felt the icy air sucking all the heat from his wet skin.
“Smart boy. Now move on down to the lake.” The man waved the barrel toward the open water at the mouth of Half-Mile Creek.
“No.” Stephen said it without hesitation or consideration.
That seemed to catch the stranger by surprise. He looked confused about his next move.
The ground around the sweat lodge was frozen rock hard. Stephen could feel the ice of the earth trying to attach itself to the skin of his bare soles, the way a dog’s tongue might stick to a fire hydrant licked in the dead of winter. He shifted his feet, but it didn’t help much. The sun, bright as it was, might just as well have been a picture of a sun for all the warmth it delivered. A crow, one of the few birds that didn’t desert the North Country in the bitter winters, flew to a nearby aspen and perched on a leafless limb. It began cawing, a harsh sound that pierced the still air again and again, like a pick jabbing at ice.
The sound annoyed the stranger. He glanced away from Stephen and lifted his free hand, waved it at the bird, and hollered, “Shoo! Get outta here!”
The bird didn’t move. Nor did Stephen.
“Tell you what,” the stranger said. “You go on down to the lake right now and there’s no reason your sister has to be a part of this. No reason she has to be harmed. So long as you do as I say, this stays between you and me. You’ve got my word.”
Stephen hadn’t thought about Anne. Whatever the stranger planned to do, Stephen wanted his sister left out of it.
“You’ve got no time to think about it, kid,” the man said. “Do as I say or I’ll shoot you dead right here, then I’ll shoot your sister. The choice is yours.”
When it was put that way, Stephen didn’t have a choice. He said, “All right.”
They walked together, Stephen in front and the stranger at his back. The angle of the sun made their shadows seem to walk with them, mute witnesses to an execution. The crow went on with his cawing, a long, bitter complaint, and Stephen wondered if that was going to be the last sound he would hear in this life. He was grateful that he wasn’t afraid and he thought that probably this was the point of the visions, to prepare him for death at the hands of this majimanidoo, this angry stranger.
His body had begun to shiver violently. He’d been out of the lodge a long time. The muscles of his feet were starting to cramp from the cold. His brain was becoming thick, his thinking a little fuzzy. A sign of hypothermia, he understood. When he reached the edge of the open water, he hesitated.
“Go on in,” the stranger said.
“And then what?” Stephen’s voice came out cracked and stuttering, the result of the cold, which was eating into him, into his muscle, his brain. He kept his eyes on the silvery surface of the open water.
“I won’t shoot you, if that’s what you’re wondering,” the stranger said.
“You want me to freeze to death?”
“I need this to look like an accident. It’ll be quick, I imagine. And I’m told it’s warm at the end. You get in there now, before your sister comes back.”
Which was the leverage the stranger held.
Stephen waded in. The first time, his skin and body had been superheated in the sweat, and that had been a brief buffer against the cold of the water. This time his body had cooled, and the lake became a huge hand that squeezed him and gave pain everywhere it touched. He could barely catch his breath, and it felt as if his heart might explode, but he kept moving.
When he was up to his waist, he turned. He was going to say something, wasn’t he? To the stranger? He couldn’t remember what. His overlong exposure to the cold air and now to the icy water was making his thinking slushy. The stranger stood on the shoreline, watching. Over his shoulder on the branch of the bare aspen tree, the crow also watched.
And behind them both, up where the meadow would be green in summer and full of wildflowers, Anne watched, too.
Stephen heard her call his name. And he saw the stranger turn toward her, the gun in his hand.
Stephen summoned all the strength and clarity left to him and shouted, “Run, Annie! Run!”
The stranger spun back to him, the gun barrel leveled.
Although Stephen felt immediately the hammer blows of the bullets as they hit his chest, he never heard the shots.
CHAPTER 36
When Stephen didn’t answer his cell phone, Cork tried calling Anne. She didn’t answer either. Next he tried Jenny at home. No luck there. He finally got a response when he called Jenny’s cell phone. She picked up almost immediately.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Sure. What’s wrong?”
“Where are you?”
“At the Pinewood Broiler. Waaboo, Skye, and I are having a little afternoon snack here.”
“Have you heard from Annie or Stephen?”
“No. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, I hope. But as quickly as possible I want all of you together at home, okay? Marsha’s sending a deputy to meet you there.”
“And you say nothing’s going on?”
“I think someone may be trying to harm Stephen, and if he can’t get at Stephen, I’m afraid he might go for you or Annie or even Waaboo.”
“Who is he?”
“I’ll explain everything when I’m there with you. Right now, you need to get yourself and Waaboo home, is that clear?”
“We’re on our way, Dad.”
“Marsha and I are heading back to Tamarack County. It’ll take us maybe three hours. In the meantime, if you hear from Annie or Stephen, make them understand they’ve got to get home, too. Okay?”
“I’ve got it. Can Marsha send a deputy out to Crow Point?”
“She already has. Take care of yourself, kiddo, and my grandson.”
“That’s a big ten-four, Dad.”
* * *
They were an hour north of the Twin Cities. Cork hadn’t said a word for a very long time. Finally Dross said, “I know you. You’re beating yourself up. In silence.”
Cork looked out the window at the frozen landscape. “I should have seen the connections.”
“They’re pretty obscure, Cork.”
“You saw them.”
“Not all of them. I didn’t see the connection to you. And you were innocent in the whole affair; there’s no reason you should have seen it either. And there’s another thing, Cork.”
He waited.
She gave him a quick, sidelong glance. “You’ve been emotionally involved in this one. It might be that you just couldn’t see the forest for the trees.”
Which gave him no comfort at all.
His cell phone rang. He checked the display. The call was coming from the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department.
“O’Connor,” he answered.
“This is Azevedo,” the deputy on the other end said. “Cork, there’s been some trouble up on Crow Point.”
“Stephen?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“What’s going on, George?”
Azevedo hesitated, let a beat filled with ominous silence pass, then said, “He’s been shot.”