Authors: William Kent Krueger
She took a final look around. This had been a good place for her, the hidden cabin, just as Wendell had promised when he first invited her to the woods. Although it was small and rugged, with but a single room and no running water, she felt a greater fondness toward it than she did either of the big homes she maintained outside those woods. Like a rough old friend, like Wendell himself, it was a place stripped to the essentials and it had helped her get clear.
She hefted the pack, stepped outside, and closed the door. There was no lock, yet she’d never been afraid.
“Good-bye,” she said, not feeling silly at all in addressing the place. All things had spirit, Wendell had taught her, and this spirit was good. “Thank you.”
She turned and followed the stream to the lake.
The morning sun hadn’t climbed above the gray rock ridge, and the lake lay in cold shade. For most of its length, the water was edged with sheer cliffs. To reach the far end, Shiloh followed a steep trail upward through the pines and boulders to the top of the ridge. The air was crisp and clear. Her hands were already chilled, so she slipped her gloves on and began to climb. The woods were quiet. The sound of her own heavy breathing and the clomp of her booted feet seemed an intrusion. For some reason, the scent of the evergreen was sharper to her than ever, and she wondered if in preparing to leave it all behind, she’d become suddenly aware of how pervasive and wonderful it was. She followed the trail half a mile to the other end of the narrow lake. There, a small gap in the ridge had long ago allowed the stream to flow through freely. Now a jumble of rock debris filled the gap, creating a dam across the stream that had flooded what was once a small canyon. Water seeped through the debris, flowing over rocks that were covered with slippery green algae. On the forest floor far below, the stream gathered itself again and ran another quarter mile until it spilled into a lake so large and so convoluted with islands and wooded points of land that the true far shore was impossible to see. Wherever that shore was, miles lay between it and Shiloh. She remembered canoeing in with Wendell, how for most of a day they’d been on that lake weaving among the islands until she had no sense of where they were going or where they’d been.
The sun hit the great lake with a painful brilliance that made her look away. She turned her gaze back to the little lake Wendell called Nikidin. It was so familiar she wanted to go back, to convince herself to wait a bit longer, to believe that Wendell would come after all. But she’d spent so much time there searching for the truth that she couldn’t lie to herself. Wendell wasn’t coming. God alone knew why, but she was on her own.
Carefully, she began to descend the slick rocks. By the time she reached the bottom of the ridge, she was sweating hard. She dropped her pack and slipped off her gloves and jean jacket. She tied the jacket around her waist by the arms, hefted her pack once again, and followed the stream.
Where the stream spilled into the big lake, the shore was lined with smooth stones. Shiloh put down her pack, went to a thicket of vines not far away, and pulled at the covering to a narrow blind. Inside, a green canoe lay upside down, its gunwales cradled across two logs. Wendell had showed her the canoe so that she could, if she wanted, explore the lake. She’d been so awkward with the paddle and so afraid of getting lost that she’d never gone far. She lifted the bow and raised the canoe as she walked under it. The midthwart was fitted with a padded yoke for ease in portaging. She settled the yoke pads onto her shoulders as she tipped the canoe and balanced the weight to carry it. After she’d put the canoe in the water, she returned for the paddle. She tossed her pack in, shoved off from the shore, and settled herself into the stern.
At water level, all the islands before her created the illusion of a wall across the lake. The sun behind them cast their trees and slopes in shadow so that the wall looked dark and impenetrable. She pulled out the map and studied the line of arrows Wendell had drawn among all the confusing contour lines.
“Too bad you couldn’t have put them right on the water, Wendell. Like in a cartoon.” She surprised herself with a laugh.
Returning the map to the pack, she dug her paddle into the still water.
And so it began.
C
ORK WAS UP AT FIRST LIGHT
, into his sweats, and running. The air was brisk. Frost crisped the grass and the bushes. The sun was red-orange, like a lava flow spilling through the trees along the eastern shore of Iron Lake, and where the flow met the still lake water, the confluence blazed.
He ran north along Center Street, heading toward the outskirts of town. In the early morning, the street was quiet and almost empty. He loved the town in this hour when, like the living thing it was, it slowly woke and showed a face unadorned and innocent, beautiful as a waking child. He passed Lew Knutson delivering Sunday papers from the tailgate of a station wagon driven by his father Karl, and he waved to Cy Borkmann, who was making the rounds in a sheriff’s department cruiser. He passed the garage where Harold Svendsen had worked for years repairing the cars and trucks of Aurora before a massive coronary hit him while he was shoveling snow and put an end to his expert tinkering. The garage sat abandoned for years until a young couple from Des Moines bought it, renovated the building, and turned the place into a shop serving fresh-baked goods, sandwiches, and gourmet coffee. They called it Mark and Edie’s Gas Pump Grill. When Cork was a kid, the air around Harold Svendsen’s garage had been heavy with the smell of drained engine oil, thick and black. Now when he ran past, he was treated to the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee and croissants.
Just at the edge of the old town limits, Cork came to the new Best Western and stopped. The motel complex had been built to accommodate the influx of outsiders coming to Aurora to gamble at the Chippewa Grand Casino. Much of the ground the big motel sat on had once belonged to Ellie Grand. The old house that had stood there had been both her home and her business. When the bulldozers razed the house to make way for the motel, Cork had felt a deep sadness, but who was he to argue with a destiny for the town that profited so many. New tracts for housing had been cleared, moving the edges of Aurora further into the forest. Stores were doing record business. Even Sam’s Place had had an outstanding season. Unfamiliar faces populated the streets every day. Cork was often at a loss to distinguish the tourists and gamblers from the permanent transplants, the growing number of urban escapees with enterprise in their eyes. Aurora had no less than three gourmet coffeehouses now. Even Johnny Pap was serving cappuccino at the Pinewood Broiler.
The old house had been abandoned for years when Ellie Grand bought it. The paint was blistered, flaking away. The boards in most places had weathered to a sun-bleached white. The porch sagged like the back of an old horse with a broken spirit. A lot of the windows were empty of glass. The yard around it had gone over to timothy and thistle.
The work of renovating had been done mostly by Cork’s father and Wendell Two Knives. Cork’s father labored at the urging of his wife, Ellie Grand’s cousin. Wendell, who was the husband of Ellie Grand’s aunt, Lenore, did it for family. In the way of men in those days and in that country, both Cork’s father and Wendell knew about carpentry. They did a bang-up job of helping to create Ellie’s Pie Shop.
Behind the shop, Ellie Grand had planted a huge garden full of raspberry vines, strawberries, pumpkins, rhubarb. Whatever was in season filled her pie crusts. The tourists who returned to Iron Lake every year made Ellie’s Pie Shop part of their annual pilgrimage. Cork had spent a lot of his paper-route money on slices of Ellie Grand’s pie. But he hadn’t gone just for the pie. Like a lot of the other young men in Aurora, he’d gone because Marais worked there behind the counter, helping her mother.
When the young men came around, and sometimes older men, too, Ellie Grand was harsh. How a woman so bitter about men—about anything—could make pies so sweet, Cork couldn’t figure. As far as he knew, there were only two men Ellie Grand didn’t consider cohorts of the devil—his father and Wendell Two Knives. She even distrusted the priest at St. Agnes, Father Kelsey, who, she fiercely maintained, looked at Marais in a way that would make holy water boil.
He remembered a time—he must have been twelve or thirteen because his father was still alive—when he sat at one of the tables while Marais worked the counter. It was late summer. He was eating a piece of strawberry-rhubarb. Marais hummed to herself, hummed beautifully. Cork, as always, tracked her every move. She was fifteen or sixteen then. Straight black hair that hung to her butt. Dark, East Indian princess skin. She wore cutoff jeans and a tight red jersey top. Three young men came into the shop. Tourists, or sons of tourists. Eighteen, nineteen years old. They asked what kind of pie Marais recommended. She offered several good options. They took the blueberry, Cork recalled.
“What do you do when you’re finished here for the day?” the one who gave her the money asked.
“That depends on what my choices are.” She didn’t smile, but Cork was certain there was an invitation in her gold-dust eyes.
“We’ve got a speed boat,” another one said. “Come for a ride.”
“Or a swim,” the third suggested. “Bet you look great in a swimsuit.”
“Oh, I do,” Marais said. She looked him over briefly and added, “Too bad I can’t say the same for you.”
The other two laughed.
The first one pressed her. “So, what do you say?”
She gave them the pie and change. “Got a cigarette?”
“Sure,” the second one said. He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a pack of Marlboros.
He was holding the pack out to Marais when Ellie Grand burst from the kitchen, a pie server gripped murderously in her hand.
“Out,” she cried. “Get out of my shop. All of you.”
“Hey, wait a minute—” the first one began.
Ellie Grand pushed Marais aside and leaned over the counter, the pie server only inches from the heart of the kid who held the cigarettes. “I said get out. And don’t ever let me see you in my shop again.”
They backed away, glanced at Marais, who offered them only slight sympathy with a shrug of her shoulders; and left the shop.
“They only asked if I’d like to go for a boat ride,” Marais explained casually.
“Men always start out asking small, but in the end they want everything.” Ellie Grand aimed the pie server at her daughter. “Don’t you be fooled, Marais. Don’t ever let them use you. You do the using. Understand?”
“Yes, Mama,” Marais said.
When Ellie Grand returned to the kitchen, Marais looked to Cork, laughed silently, rolled her eyes, and said,
“Giiwanaadizi, nishiime.” She’s crazy, little brother.
When Marais Grand had been a star on television, the town council had voted to put up a sign at the town limits declaring it the
HOME OF MARAIS GRAND
. Ten years after her death, when annexed land extended the town limits, the old sign, full of rusted holes from a .22 target pistol, had been removed.
Cork continued his run, veering from Center Street where it became once again the state highway, and following a county road that paralleled the lake. He was a mile or so outside of town when a black Lincoln Town Car drew alongside him and the charcoal-tinted rear window slid silently down.
“O’Connor?”
The man whose face filled the frame of the car window looked to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties. He had thick black hair, a rich man’s tan. His left ear had been pierced, and he wore what appeared to be a diamond stud. Cork had never before set eyes on him.
“Yeah?” Cork put his hands on his hips and stood at the side of the road, breathing hard.
“Mind getting in?” the tanned man said with a smile. He had very white teeth. Although they were unnaturally even, the smile they formed seemed easy and genuine. However, Cork’s mother had taught him early the danger of getting into a stranger’s car. It was a rule that had stood him in good stead for over forty years. He didn’t see a particularly compelling reason to disregard it now.
“I’m in the middle of something here,” he pointed out.
“I’d like to talk to you about Shiloh,” the man said.
That was one pretty compelling reason. Then through the window of the Lincoln, the man aimed a very large handgun right at Cork’s nose. That made two pretty compelling reasons. The door swung open and Cork got in.
The other man in the car, the one behind the wheel, appeared to be in his midthirties, blond, a neck full of more muscle than most people had in their whole bodies. Cork thought he could outrun the big man if he had to, but if the guy ever caught him, he’d take Cork apart like his bones were nothing but soda straws.
The handsome man smiled and put the gun on the seat between them.
“Sorry. This is really a friendly visit,” he said. “I just had to get your full attention. This won’t take long; then you can finish your run.”
“You said you wanted to talk about Shiloh.” Cork glanced at the gun. He could have reached for it easily enough, but he decided he wanted to hear what the man had to say.
“There are some things you need to know. For your own good.” The handsome man tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Take off, Joey. We don’t want to attract attention.”
Good luck,
Cork thought. In Aurora, a Lincoln Town Car would be as inconspicuous as a nun in a G-string.
Joey drove north along the lake.
The man in back was clean-shaven and smelled of a good, subtle aftershave. He wore calfskin boots, tight jeans, a red chamois shirt under a dark green sweater.
“My name is Angelo Benedetti. You probably already know my family’s name. You spoke with the FBI about us? Last night, I believe.”
“And if I did?”
“Then they told you a lot of lies, mostly about my father.”
“Vincent Benedetti?” Cork said. “What kind of lies do you believe they told me?”
“That my father killed Shiloh’s mother. Look, they’ve been after my father, my family, a long time. Isn’t that right, Joey?”