Boundary Waters (37 page)

“And Shiloh’s therapist, Patricia Sutpen. That was you?” Jo asked.

“Patricia?” Shiloh looked like the wind had been knocked out of her.

“I figured it would focus attention on the past, which I had nothing to do with.”

Raye’s boots thudded heavily as he paced and the whole trailer shook under him. “And that Wendell, hell, that son of a bitch trusted me until we were ’bout halfway out there, then somethin’ happened. Somehow he knew and refused to take me any farther. So he’s dead.”

“No, he’s alive, Willie,” Shiloh said, and she took a fast, angry step nearer. “He’s alive in everything he passed on to others.”

“Shut up and get back.”

Shiloh took another step. “He’ll be alive a long time after you’re gone. He was more a father to me—to a lot of people—than you could ever have been. His concern was never about what I could do for him. That’s what a father should be all about, Willie.”

The gun was trued on her heart. But Willie Raye didn’t fire.

Jo asked, trying to keep her voice quiet with reason, “What do you expect to accomplish here?”

“What do I expect?” The question seemed to stump him. He searched the beige carpet where he’d tracked bits of dried mud. Finally he replied, “What I set out to do in the first place—and then some, looks like.”

The coffeemaker grumbled suddenly and Raye swung his gun that way. When he realized what it was, he smiled and the moment seemed to give him some relief. “When they find your bodies, I’ll be back out in the Boundary Waters, hopelessly lost. Your husband will attest to that, Ms. O’Connor.”

Angelo Benedetti stood up. “The first thing my father ever taught me about gambling was never draw to an inside straight. You’re missing an important card in the middle of the hand you’re holding, Willie.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Angelo Benedetti. Vincent’s kid.”

“So what am I missing, Vincent’s kid?”

“They know about you. My father, the FBI, the sheriff here. They put it all together. You’ve lost the pot, friend.” Benedetti gave his shoulders a shrug as if it were the end of a game they’d all been playing strictly for the fun of it.

“I’m not your friend, you sow-littered wop.”

Raye fired. Angelo Benedetti stumbled back from the impact and toppled over the chair in which he’d been sitting. At the same moment, the door to the trailer flew open. Cork rushed in and threw a blow with his good right arm. He caught Arkansas Willie Raye hard on the side of the head before the man could turn. Raye went down. Jo stomped on Arkansas Willie’s hand, then pried the pistol loose from his fingers. She stood up, breathing hard.

“Oh God, Cork. I’ve never been happier to see anyone in my life.”

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

Cork touched his shoulder gently. Knocking Willie Raye down had hurt. “I could hear him ranting from halfway across the yard. Sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”

Shiloh had moved quickly to Benedetti’s side. “Somebody get a doctor here.”

“I don’t think so.”

Shiloh looked up. A figure had stepped into the doorway, dark against the brilliant sun outside, the face lost in deep shadow. Even so, Shiloh knew who it was—or at least what he called himself.

Charon.

50

^“
P
UT THE GUN BACK ON THE FLOOR
.” The man called Charon motioned with the big automatic he held in his hand. “Do it slowly.”

Jo did as she was instructed. “Who are you?”

He ignored her question and looked down at Arkansas Willie Raye who was gathering himself in an effort to stand. Raye touched his head where Cork’s blow had connected, and he grimaced. “I thought you were going to cover me from the outside.” He eased himself up.

“You’re covered.”

Raye took his pistol from the floor and scowled. He appeared about to speak, but instead, he lashed out and struck Cork on the side of the head with the gun barrel.

The blow turned Cork, wrenched his shoulder, and he cried out. His ear rang afterward, and his jaw felt like Arkansas Willie had hammered a nail through the bone.

“Now you got a mornin’-after headache, too, you son of a bitch. What the hell’re you doin’ here anyway?”

Talking wasn’t easy, but he replied through gritted teeth, “We figured you out, Willie.”

“You’re the one I had pinned down back there at Hell’s Playground.” The man called Charon looked Cork over intently. His eyes were hard brown. There was something old about them, though not particularly wise. “How did you get here?”

“Ran mostly,” Cork replied.

“When you came down the road out there, I saw you holding yourself like you were hurt.”

“Dislocated shoulder.”

The man’s interest deepened and his face seemed to shift as if the very structure beneath had altered. “You ran out of those woods with a dislocated shoulder?”

“It was dislocated for only half the way.”

Raye butted in. “Let’s get on with what we came here for and get out.”

“Angelo Benedetti told you the truth,” Jo said. Cork was amazed how calm she sounded. “Killing us does no good now. Everyone’s looking in your direction, Willie. And those men in the Boundary Waters know about you. You have no alibi.”

“Shut up.” Raye jabbed the gun at her.

“Is that true?” The man called Charon focused on Jo so intensely she felt as if her thoughts were being pierced.

“You must be Milwaukee,” she said.

“Son of a gun.” Milwaukee looked at Arkansas Willie wistfully. “I do believe they’re on to you.”

“No evidence,” Raye said hastily. “This gun is untraceable. I go back into the woods, who’s to say I wasn’t lost out there the whole time?”

“Don’t do this, Willie,” Shiloh said. “Good people are going to suffer.”

Milwaukee looked at her and it appeared as if a smile almost touched his lips. “I thought going out there would be a picnic. I was wrong about you. And I’m not often wrong.”

With his pistol, Raye frantically motioned toward Shiloh, who still knelt beside the fallen Angelo Benedetti. “Everyone over there.”

No one moved.

“Do it,” Milwaukee said. There was death in his voice, deep and empty as a waiting grave. “This man’s paid for the game. We play the cards however he deals them.” He leveled his automatic at Jo’s heart.

Cork stepped next to Jo and stood with his shoulder pressed against hers. He tried to think what he could say that would alter the trajectory of that moment. But his mouth was dry and his voice was caught somewhere between his intention and his tongue, and all he could do was stand there as the barrel moved toward him like a compass needle that had found north and the man called Charon and Milwaukee poised himself on the edge of an act that would send them all plummeting into unknowable dark.

“Shoot him,” Raye shrieked.

Milwaukee hesitated.

“I said shoot him, you chickenshit bastard. Or I will.”

Raye swung his own gun toward Cork.

Milwaukee lashed out faster than Cork had ever seen a man move. He grabbed Arkansas Willie’s arm and twisted it at an unnatural angle so that the gun dropped from his hand. Then he delivered a sharp, precise kick to the side of Raye’s right knee and the bone or cartilage gave an audible pop. Raye crumpled to the floor. Milwaukee did all this without the barrel of the automatic he held veering in the slightest degree from its dead-on aim at Cork’s heart.

Arkansas Willie clutched his knee and stared up at Charon/Milwaukee with pain and anger and disbelief. “Are you fucking crazy?”

“I won’t take disrespect from any man.”

“It’s broken,” Raye whined.

“Consider yourself lucky.”

“I paid you.”

“Tell you what,” he said. “When I see you in hell, we’ll talk about a refund.”

In no more time than it took to strike a match, everything had changed. Cork looked at the hard brown eyes and wondered what it was that made the man kill or decide not to. It didn’t matter. If Cork had to live forever not knowing why, he could do that.

“You think you’re out of this?” Raye screamed. “You think you can just walk away? They know who you are.”

“No, they only know a name. I have lots of those.”

Milwaukee bent and picked up the pistol Raye had let fall to the floor. As he straightened, he noted the consternation in the eyes of Cork and the others. “I prefer to let you live,” he said simply. He backed toward the door and stepped outside into the sunlight. He looked up, squinting, then into the dark of the trailer. “‘Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.’” He turned and, as if he’d walked through a doorway into another dimension, vanished.

“What was that all about?” Jo asked.

“Milton.
Paradise Lost.
” With Shiloh’s help, Angelo Benedetti had eased into a sitting position, his back against the trailer wall. Seeing Jo’s surprise, he managed a faint smile. “Minor in English lit at UNLV.”

Cork went to Benedetti and checked the wound. It was high on the right shoulder, clean entry and exit. “Small caliber, and the angle was just right. Seems to have missed almost everything, including bone. You’re pretty lucky.”

Benedetti laid his head back. Even with his California tan, his face looked pale. Shiloh held his hand. “I never had a little sister to protect before,” he told her. “All things considered, it pretty much sucks.”

Shiloh kissed the top of his head. “Thanks.”

“Get some towels to press against those wounds, Jo,” Cork said. He went to check on Raye.

Arkansas Willie tried to stand as Cork approached, but he cried out and flopped back to the floor. His face contorted and he howled, “Christ, the son of a bitch shattered everything.”

“Best thing you could do for yourself now, Willie, is stay there and stay quiet. Shiloh, think you can make sure he does that?”

“My pleasure.” She took the knife she’d dropped into the pocket of Wendell’s jeans, opened the blade, and stood over Arkansas Willie Raye. “I have a whole lifetime of reasons, Willie. All I need is one more,” she threatened.

Cork moved to the doorway of the trailer home just as Jo returned with the towels. “Where are you going, Cork?” She knelt and opened Benedetti’s shirt and pressed a towel to his wound.

“Wendell keeps a rifle in the shed.”

“You’re not going after that man, are you? You don’t have to do that. Cork, you’re not the sheriff anymore.” She seemed torn between tending Benedetti and rising to hold back Cork.

Cork stared in the direction Charon/Milwaukee had disappeared. There was only the empty drive leading through the bared birches toward the main road.

“He killed Wendell and he killed Dwight Sloane,” Cork said to her over his shoulder.

“And he killed Libbie and two men who were only trying to help me,” Shiloh added. She looked at Cork as if she understood him perfectly.

“You all stay here and lock the door after me,” he told them. “The sheriff’s people should be on their way. Althea Bolls went into Allouette to phone them.”

“Cork—”

He heard her call to him, but it was too late. He was out the door and moving swiftly toward the shed.

He found the tall cabinet and inside the rifle—a Remington 700 ADL bolt action. As Stormy had said, the cartridges were in an old Quaker Oat container: 30-06, 180-grain bronze point, enough power to bring down a small bear. Cork pulled out half a dozen and fed them into the magazine, worked the bolt—not an easy thing with his injured shoulder—and chambered a round. Then he headed outside, where he stood a moment in the sunlight, considering.

The man had disappeared down the drive toward the road. That made sense. To have reached the trailer as quickly as they had, he and Arkansas Willie must have driven a vehicle of some kind, probably one Charon/Milwaukee had left somewhere they could easily reach when they came out of the Boundary Waters. And now it would be parked somewhere hidden from the road but accessible. Not toward Allouette. Too great a chance of being seen. More likely the other direction, somewhere south along the shore of Iron Lake.

Cork recalled that a quarter mile south of Wendell’s trailer was an old boat launch. It was seldom used anymore because proceeds from the casino had allowed the Iron Lake Anishinaabe to develop a fine park just north of Allouette that included new launch facilities. The old boat launch still showed on maps, but hardly anyone ever used it. It would be a good place to stash a vehicle.

Cork circled Wendell’s shed, moved past the empty canoe racks, and headed quickly into the cool shadow of the trees that bordered Wendell’s yard, thinking,
He’ll be watching the road. He’ll be looking for me to come from the road. But I’ll take him from the cover of the trees.

He carried the rifle with his right hand only. Although he attempted to keep his left side as immobile as possible, every step was like twisting a knife in his shoulder. He tried to formulate a plan as he went, keeping his mind on his calculation rather than his pain. All he could come up with, however, was to reach the launch before the man drove away. In the back of his mind, he knew that even if he missed Charon/Milwaukee, the man would have a hard time making a clean getaway in Tamarack County. The main roads were few, and as soon as Schanno got word, he’d lock those roads up tight using his own men and the state highway patrol.

That brought Cork to a sudden stop.

Charon/Milwaukee had been ahead of him in his thinking all along. Some of that was Arkansas Willie’s doing, but more, it was because the man anticipated well. He knew his adversaries and knew how they thought. He’d know the roads would be watched closely and that his description would be out over every police radio in northern Minnesota. He wouldn’t risk the roads.

Then a detail flashed into Cork’s thinking. As he’d moved past the canoe racks at Wendell’s shed, he’d noted, without really thinking about it, that the rack was empty. When he’d been there two days ago with Arkansas Willie, there’d been one canoe left.

For a man like Charon/Milwaukee, a man who knew how to survive in the wild, heading into the protection of the great North Woods was a perfect choice. Within a few days, he could be across the border into Canada. Or ease his way west or south until he was beyond whatever net the law had thrown across the roadways to snag him.