Shadow of the Wolf Tree (39 page)

“That might take a while.”

“I've got plenty of time.”

“I could stay,” she said. “I'm used to being down here.”

“If someone opens the door, they are not going to be happy campers to find one of us. Go talk to the judge, Hoot. Tell her what we found and what we need, and don't let her say no.”

“What if she won't listen to me?”

“Tell Friday, and tell the judge she'll have to personally dig my ass out of here. And leave your fancy hammer if you can get by without it.”

She handed it to him. “Why?”

“Maybe I'll dig for gold,” he said.

69

Baragastan

MONDAY, JUNE 26, 2006

The SureFire had new batteries, and he had a backup supply of four more in his pack. He got up close to the bottom hinge on the door and used his knife to test it. There was a small gap, mostly rusted in. The hinge seemed to be riveted or welded. Weird. The four hinges had six-inch-long pins. Jeske's hammer might work, but the handle wasn't long enough to get good leverage, which left force as the only alternative.

He descended the ladder to search for a rock with some heft, and when he found one, he climbed back up. He had just positioned the pick end on one of the hinges when there was a metallic thump on the other side of the door and it began to screech open. Acting on instinct, he dropped down the ladder into the tunnel below, moved to the first side tunnel, and stepped into it, his heart pounding.
Too damn soon for the cavalry.

He heard whispers but couldn't make out voices or words. Tone, however, was clear:
Somebody was spooked. Then he heard muffled thumps. Footsteps? Somebody coming down the ladder, dropping the last few feet? Why come down here? Someone small enough to get out past the blockage, the way Jeske had gone? Or someone who didn't know there was a blockage? Jesus.

He eased out of his hiding place and advanced back to the ladder. There were two lumps at the base of the ladder.
Bodies!
He moved closer and looked.
Mears and Czuk, with no obvious wounds or marks. And no pulses—bodies not warm. Dead a while. Geez.

He knew he should wait for Jeske and help, but maybe he had an opportunity here. He unholstered his SIG Sauer and climbed the ladder. When he got to the door, it was open.
What the . . . ?
The chances that the two women had died instantaneously and simultaneously of natural causes were nil. There was only one assumption: Someone had killed them and dumped the bodies.

Why leave the door open? In a hurry, not expecting visitors. Or not caring one way or the other—that's possible too. Keep your ass moving.
Now he
really
wished he had his radio.

The door opened into a storeroom, the walls solid rock with worn stone steps leading up. At the top, another door, this one closed, but not locked.
Somebody left in a big-ass hurry.

Had Jeske gotten to the judge yet, and, more important, convinced her to send in the cavalry?
No probable cause issues now.
The bodies he'd found changed all calculations and procedural go-slows. He was in the heart of Art Lake. The mine was illegal and connected to them, bodies dumped in the mine as he stood there.
Slam-dunk.

Slow down,
he reminded himself. He tried the door. From one knee he unlatched it and pushed lightly.
Nothing.
Then he shoved it open violently and went through with his weapon up and ready, his heart pounding.
Still nothing.
He exhaled slowly and looked around. Metal boxes and tools, boxes empty. More stairs to his right, this time made of wood—cedar, aged silver.

And another damn door. It's like a human rabbit warren down here.

Beyond the next door, a sort of living room with bookcases and more rock walls, only these had some wall paneling in places. Old stuff, needing replacement.
Weird.
How many levels had he climbed up, and how many more to go? Jeske's story of Silver Islet flooded his mind: how engineers had taken a ninety-by-ninety-foot slate island and dug straight down hundreds, maybe even thousands of feet. Every time they'd stopped on the way in, she'd talked more about Silver Islet, and he understood. She was afraid, trying to think about something else. He didn't blame her. He was plenty scared too.
You're still under
ground: Keep moving up.

There were windows on the next level, looking down on the pond with the cabins around it.
A storybook scene . . . except for all the dead bodies. Why does someone kill, then dump bodies close to the open bottom door? Closed, it might take forever to find them. Door open, it would take only one person with a flashlight looking down the old ladder. Left open intentionally? He pondered this as he moved. Somebody wants the bodies found and attention diverted, so they can boogie?
In a flash he had a pretty good idea where it would happen.

He pushed through doors and rooms, looking frantically for a door to the outside, and popped onto a stone porch. He was in the main building. He leapt to the grass and side-hopped downhill, trying not to fall on his ass. When he hit flatter ground, he ran hard for the pond's spillway on the east perimeter, and when he got there, he bent over to catch his breath, listening for sounds that would say help was on the way.
Nothing. Still alone.

He looked around on the ground for signs, tracks, anything, but the ground was pancake-dry and hard. He clambered across the spillway and looked down into the stream. No signs in the bottom gravel or mud. Was he ahead of the game suddenly?
Or had he misread the whole damn thing? Shit. Is there another way out of the compound, one I don't know about? Shit, shit,
shit. The property is immense, doofus. Someone can go over or under the fence virtually anywhere.

Heart still racing, he tried deep, slow breathing to get it under control, and a new thought froze him. Mears had told him their security was high-tech.
Monitors, sensors, and alarms in the mine? If so, they know the place has been breached.

A swish of grass interrupted his thoughts. Not a breeze, the weight of a body moving. To his left.

When Pinky Barbeaux suddenly appeared by the spillway, Service was afraid he'd been busted, but the sheriff looked back over his shoulder in the direction he'd come, with panic in his eyes.

“Stay where you are, Pinky.”
How the hell had he gotten away from Kakabeeke?

“Ya bloody fool,” Barbeaux said, snapped erect, shuddered with a shocked look on his face, and fell forward into the creek between the dam proper and the spillway, his blood immediately turning the water red. Pink.
Holy shit—Pinky's blood is pink. What the hell? Stay focused, you jerk. Why did you have to open your mouth. You had time. Whoever got to Pinky knows you're here now. Shit.

He slid down off the dam structure and eased into the cattails, only to bang his shin on something metal. He glanced down.
Canoe painted with cattails.

One minute later he heard the surge of creek water and readied himself as Sven Lidstrom, Frodo the Finn himself, lunged through the cattails for the canoe. When the man got both hands on the vessel, Grady Service struck him on the head, sending him to his knees in the water.

Lidstrom was a small man, but resilient, and he tried to retaliate almost immediately. But Service got the man's arm, twisted it behind him, and dumped him unceremoniously facedown in the swamp, holding him underwater while the man flailed wildly. After a decent interval, he jerked the man out of the water, cuffed him, and threw him in the canoe.

The eco-terrorist turned sweetgrass entrepreneur somehow got to his knees, put his hands above his head, and dove forward.
Should have searched the fucking dam and everything around it,
Service yelled silently as he heard a thump in the distance and felt the canoe sway wildly and the earth under the swamp surge. Seconds later it began to rain debris, and a cloud of red-black dust began to spiral into the sky. Service understood. The mine was gone, and most of the main building with it.

Lidstrom stared up at Grady Service. “No bodies, no evidence.”

“We'll figure something out, asshole.”

“I've got nothing to say until my lawyer gets here.”

“Is your lawyer Gorsline, or Taide Jarvi?”

“Fuck you, pig.”

“Eloquence at its zenith, Frodo.”

When the dust settled from this mess, he was going to call Summer Rose Genova and let her know that her instincts about people needed some serious work. He knew Lidstrom would go mute, had been in the system before, understood the rules of the game.

There was no way to get Lidstrom back over the dam onto Art Lake property alone, and Friday had his radio. He pointed his SIG Sauer at Lidstrom's head, and the man's eyes widened, but he was suddenly grinning. “Do it, dude. It ain't that hard.”

“I know,” Grady Service said. In a career of violent confrontations with violators and criminals, he had never discharged his weapon at one of them. He lifted the barrel past Lidstrom's head and fired two shots into the water. “Frodo, dude, we're gonna have beaucoup company most ricky-tick.”

70

Crystal Falls, Iron County

THURSDAY, JULY 6, 2006

Gorsline had not yet been charged with anything, and remained in custody in Crystal Falls. He had been almost immediately fired by the Van Dalen Foundation for allowing illegal activities to happen on his watch. The foundation wanted to limit damage to its reputation.

Gorsline insisted he did not know Lidstrom, and so far, Lidstrom had not admitted knowing Gorsline.

Zhenya Leukonovich assured Service that a warrant with multiple counts was coming from DOJ, not just to the foundation, but also to Gorsline and other lesser officials. She had already located a fund with nearly $100 million in it, and evidence suggesting the gold ore from Art Lake and the area had been sold to some sort of mob-related fencing operation in New York. Gorsline would do heavy time.

Pinky Barbeaux had been buried quietly. No official DNR or state police honor guard gave him an assist down what the local Ojibwa called the road of souls.

Baraga County's undersheriff was appointed to serve out Barbeaux's term.

Sergeant Sulla Kakabeeke had suffered a bad concussion from Barbeaux's escape. She announced she was retiring, and made a full statement to the prosecutor about everything she knew and had suspected about the late sheriff.

Magahy Macafee and Timbo Magee, the Indiana lovebirds copped to murder two and were given life sentences in Hoosierland.

Lidstrom, aka Frodo the Finn, was awaiting trial on one count of homicide for killing Pinky Barbeaux, and a lot more. His New York trial attorney had made his bones defending Weathermen back in the sixties and seventies.

It was impossible to determine who had killed Penny Provo, Rigel Tahti, Alyssa Mears, Ginny Czuk, or old man Box. The five homicides would be left open and eventually fade to cold cases.

Lidstrom was wrong about evidence. The forensics people found traces of Mears and Czuk, and quickly identified them through DNA. Identities confirmed, there was an outside chance the killings of Czuk and Mears could be pinned on Lidstrom, but this was a long shot at best.

On Monday, Grady Service and Tuesday Friday had driven to Crystal Falls to meet with Gorsline before the feds moved him somewhere for further interrogation.

The Chicago man looked unconcerned. “You know, of course, that Lidstrom put it all on you,” Service said. “The gold was sold to raise cash for the movement, but he says you were the organizer, money manager, sympathizer, and the brains.”

“The man's ego would never allow him to say that.”

“You don't know him, but you know his ego well enough to say that? He's already said it. Somebody will have to pay, counselor. If it were me, I'd plea-bargain here where there's no capital punishment. Once the feds pick up the ball, you'll get the out-of-here needle for sure. The feds loathe losing agents to scumbags.”

Outside the jail Friday said, “You don't know what the heck the feds are planning.”

“Neither does he, and in any event, it doesn't matter. This way we give Gorsline something to think about. We'll do the same with Lidstrom in Marquette.” Lidstrom had been moved a week ago.

“You play dirty,”she said.

“Only on the job,” he replied.

“The two bodies your dog found,” Friday said.

“I'm guessing Washington Lincoln found the gold, and Van Dalen somehow caught wind of it and came north. Van Dalen probably killed Washington Lincoln and Roland Denu, and he may very well have killed Sheriff Petersson, too. But we'll never know for sure. I'm guessing Van Dalen used the gold to launch his empire.”

“So long ago,” Friday said.

“History has a way of popping into the present in strange and unexpected ways,” he said. This would turn out to be a prescient statement.

“Why're we driving north and west when we live north and east?” she asked.

“To see my granddaughter.”

Friday stared at him. “Does this signify something about us?”

“You're the ace detective. Detect.” He shook his head and began to laugh out loud. “Jell-O mode?”

“Let me remind you it's a work day, Detective Service.”

He looked at his watch and smiled. “Won't be in half an hour.”