Purgatory Ridge (35 page)

“With you,” LePere replied brusquely. “The
Teasdale
was owned and operated by the Fitzgerald Shipping Company. She was an old carrier, too old. She should have been scrapped long before that last passage.”

“The article says the storm was one of the worst ever on Superior.”

“No other ships were lost.” LePere slapped the remaining newspapers down on the coffee table and leaned toward Grace. “The
Teasdale
had help in its sinking.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Explosives,” LePere said. He grabbed a newspaper and tore away part of a page. He took out his pocket knife and unfolded the blade. “Small charges set in a line across the hull.” He poked a line of holes with the tip of his knife across the piece of newsprint. “Then you wait for a storm, the kind of storm that happens all the time on the Great Lakes in November. And when it comes, you detonate the charges all at the same time.” With the blade, he cut dashes where he’d poked holes. “The waves twist the hull up and down, and eventually, the ship breaks up.” He tore the paper in half along the line he’d made. “And it looks like a terrible accident.”

“That sounds awfully far-fetched,” Grace said.

“Believe me, it’s been done before.”

“But why?”

“Insurance.”

Grace Fitzgerald’s face grew hard. “You’re saying my father or his agents would have conspired to cause a tragedy like this for the insurance money? Obviously, you didn’t know my father, Mr. LePere.”

“I have proof. Hard proof.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I located the wreck. I’ve been diving it, filming the damage to the hull. The proof is there. But someone’s been watching me. A few days ago they tried to kill me. They destroyed all my equipment.”

“And you think it was someone from Fitzgerald Shipping.”

“No one else would have cared.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“Believe it.” LePere stormed from the room and came back with a framed photograph. He nearly threw it at Grace Fitzgerald. She glanced at it, then at LePere. “My brother Billy,” he said. “The last picture I ever took of him. He went down on the
Teasdale
. He was only eighteen years old.”

Grace took a longer, more careful look at the photo. The boy—for he was a boy, long and angular in his face and limbs, with a body that was held awkwardly, as if he hadn’t yet grown into it completely—was smiling. He stood on a small dock, with a cove at his back, and a high, dark wall of rock rising beyond that. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sorry doesn’t bring back the dead.”

She glared up at him. “But money does? I assume that note you left for my husband was a ransom note.”

He snatched the photo from her hand. “I needed the money to continue investigating the wreck, to prove Billy was murdered. That all those men were murdered.”

Grace studied him for a minute, her brown eyes hard, her long nose lifted. “How much are you asking?”

“Two million.”

“My husband will have trouble getting it.”

“Hell, you’re a lot richer than that.”

“I am. But he’s not. And he can’t touch my money. We signed agreements before we married.”

“He’s no pauper.”

“All of his assets are tied up in the mill. On his own, he can’t come up with more than a few hundred thousand.”

“You’re lying.”

“My life is at stake here, Mr. LePere. And my son’s. Why would I lie?”

“Nobody’s going to die.”

“But we know who you are.”

“Yeah.” The anger seemed to wash from him. His shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes a moment. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He stepped to a chair, a bentwood rocker, and sat down. He stared at his brother’s photograph, held delicately in his hands.

“When I was on that raft, something strange happened to me, something I’ve never told anybody about.”

He told them the story of his ordeal on the raft. The huge waves, the freezing water, the fierce bitter wind. The men dying one by one until he alone was left. Then he told them what he’d never told anyone else. “My father came to me. My dead father. He sat on the edge of the raft and told me it wasn’t my time to die. He said he and my mother and Billy were all waiting for me, but it wasn’t my time.” LePere was up now, pacing, the muscles of his face taut with emotion. “I tried to drink that memory away, along with all the other memories about the sinking, but it wouldn’t go. I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t my time, why out of all the good men on that ore boat, I was the only one spared. I spent nearly a dozen years lost in figuring that one out. But I finally did.” He stopped pacing and faced Grace. “I’m supposed to find the truth.”

Jo held up her taped hands. “Was this a part of it?”

He seemed genuinely sorry. “No, things just went… wrong. Look, I want to make a deal.”

“We’re listening,” Jo said.

“Your lives in return for a promise that the wreck of
the
Teasdale
will be fully investigated and that nothing that’s found will be covered up.”

Grace Fitzgerald said, “I promise.”

He ignored her, but he looked steadily at Jo. “I know you. I’ve heard your word is good.”

“I give you my word, John. But you understand, you will be prosecuted. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

He sat again in the rocker. “How does that saying go? Know the truth and the truth will set you free. For a long, long time, I’ve felt like a man in prison. You find the truth and it won’t matter what they do to me. I’ll still be free.”

Grace asked cautiously, “Will you let us go now?”

“I can’t. But soon.”

“Why?” Jo asked. “The other man?”

“He’s not a good man,” Grace said.

LePere nodded his agreement. “But I owe him.”

“And how do you intend to repay him?” Jo asked.

“We go through with the ransom. He takes the money—all of it—and disappears. After he’s gone, I set you free, and I take the rap.”

“I told you, my husband may not be able to raise the ransom.”

“Then we’ll take whatever he can give and that will have to do. For me, it was never about money.”

“What about your partner?”

“I’ll take care of him.”

“Never trust a man who’d hurt a child or a woman.”

“He hurt you?”

“Not me. Grace.”

He gave Grace Fitzgerald a questioning look and she nodded.

“It won’t happen again, I give you my word.”

“Let us go,” Grace tried again. “I promise we—”

LePere didn’t let her finish. He stood up and cut her off, saying, “Your sons will be worried.”

Jo and Grace pushed themselves up from the sofa. LePere opened a kitchen drawer and took out a roll of gray duct tape. “Turn around,” he said to Grace.

“Is that still necessary?” she asked.

He just stared at her. His dark eyes were tired but firm. Grace turned around. He taped her hands and led the two women outside.

The moon pushed their shadows ahead of them across the yard to the fish house. LePere stepped in front and took a moment to fumble the key into the lock. As the door swung wide, Jo thought how like a gaping mouth was the darkened opening, waiting to swallow her again. The moment the thought occurred to her, she was startled to see a small silver tongue flick out from that black mouth and lick at John LePere’s belly. LePere grunted and stepped back. The tongue darted again. This time Jo realized that it was the knife blade, glinting in the light of the moon. She didn’t have a chance to cry out, to move at all before LePere snatched the boy and lifted him off the ground. Boy and man struggled briefly, the knife thrust high above them, the sharp, clean steel fired by moonlight. The blade fell and lay on the ground, still glowing as if white-hot. The boy became a dark, empty sack in the powerful grip of John LePere.

“Let him go,” Grace Fitzgerald cried, for it was Scott whom LePere held.

Then another form shot from the fish house and hit LePere low. The man stumbled but did not go down. The small dark figure attached itself to LePere’s legs and little
grunts escaped as he tried to topple a man nearly two times his height and several times his weight. The boy in LePere’s grasp resumed his own struggle, flailing his arms and legs wildly.

“Stevie,” Jo called out. “It’s all right. Let the man go.”

And Grace ordered, “Scott, stop. He’s not going to hurt us.”

All the parts of John LePere, who seemed to have become many-headed and many-limbed, grew still. He put Scott down and the boy ran to his mother. Stevie let go his hold and he, too, joined his mother. LePere bent forward—slowly, it seemed—and picked up the knife. The blade threw a reflection of moonlight across his eyes. He looked at the boys.

“That was a brave thing to do.”

His left hand went to his stomach. Jo could see a dark staining on his shirt.

“You’re cut,” she said.

He tugged his shirt tail loose from his pants and took a look beneath. “It’s only a nick.” He stepped into the fish house and turned on the light. “Everybody back inside.”

They filed past him. He taped the boys’ hands again, but he didn’t bother to tape their ankles or their mouths. He looked at the shelves of equipment from which Jo had taken the knife.

“There may be something else in there that tempts you. Please don’t. It will be over soon,” he promised. “And you’ll be with your families again.”

“One thing,” Grace said.

“Yes?”

“The other man. Don’t leave us alone with him.”

“I give you my word.”

He put them in the dark and locked the door. Jo listened to his slow step as he crossed the yard to his house, to that place that once had held family for him but never would again.

T
HE SUN WAS JUST RISING
as Cork approached the turnoff to Grace Cove. He’d left Henry Meloux at the cabin on Crow Point less than an hour before. It had been a long night, and warrior though he was, Meloux was an old man and very tired. George LeDuc sat on the passenger’s side of the Bronco. He was nodding, nearly asleep, the night’s labor having taken its toll on him as well. Cork pulled a small prescription bottle from his shirt pocket and popped the tab with his thumb. Using his forearms to manage the steering wheel, he tapped two white tablets into the palm of his hand. He tossed the tablets into his mouth and swallowed them dry. He snapped the lid back on and returned the bottle to his shirt pocket. That would keep him for a while.

Cy Borkmann, a long-time deputy, was posted at the turnoff. He raised his hand and Cork rolled the Bronco to a stop. Borkmann was a portly man with a double chin that quivered like the wattle on a turkey whenever he talked. He stepped to the Bronco and leaned a fleshy arm on Cork’s door. “Hey, Cork. You been home yet?”

“No. Why?”

“Word leaked to the newspeople. They’re all over
Lindstrom’s place, and yours. They’ve been coming since before sunrise. We tried to keep ‘em out, but hell, they come by boat and hiked through the woods and even had a helicopter drop somebody on the back lawn. This is big news. Sheriff finally gave instructions to go ahead and let anybody with a press ID through. They’re liable to swarm all over you soon as you drive up.”

“Thanks for the warning, Cy.”

Cork pulled away. Where the road splintered off toward LePere’s cabin, he turned in.

“What are you doing?” George LeDuc asked.

“I’m going to park out here and walk in. I don’t want to drive into a zoo.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s only five-twenty. Kidnapper’s call is supposed to come at six. We’ve got time.”

He pulled to the side of the road and parked in high weeds. It was LePere’s land, but he didn’t figure the man would mind much now. His privacy had already been shattered. LeDuc followed Cork through the woods, across a dry creek bed, and finally onto the wide lawn that surrounded the big house. As Borkmann had said, the place was a circus. Cameras had been set up to shoot the log home from several angles. Newspeople stood about, talking with one another or trying to talk to the officers posted at every door. Fortunately, no one seemed to take much notice as Cork and George LeDuc made their way across the grass. At the back door, a state trooper blocked their way.

“I’m Cork O’Connor. I’m supposed to be here.”

“May I see some ID, sir?”

Cork showed him a driver’s license.

“And you, sir?” the trooper asked LeDuc.

“He’s with me,” Cork said. “He needs to be here, too.”

The trooper considered George LeDuc, but not for long. A number of reporters were headed their way, and it was clear the trooper had already had enough of the media. “Go ahead.” He stepped aside and let them pass.

The kitchen smelled of breakfast, of sausages, eggs, hash browns, and coffee. Several empty foam containers sat on the table along with a couple of big white sacks with
JOHNNY’S PINEWOOD BROILER
printed boldly across the side. Cork figured Schanno had arranged for it. The Broiler supplied the meals for prisoners at the jail. Although he’d eaten almost nothing since Jo and Stevie had been taken, not even the smell of the Broiler’s good food made him hungry.

The officers were gathered in the living room, awaiting the call. Agent David Earl of the BCA sat in a leather easy chair scribbling in a small notebook. FBI Special Agent Margaret Kay held a cup of coffee in her hand and leaned over the shoulder of Arnie Gooden, who was checking the equipment set up to record the next ransom call. Lucky Knudsen sat with his arms folded, staring, as nearly as Cork could tell, at the rainbows on the dining room wall formed by sunlight that fractured as it passed through the crystals of the chandelier. Wally Schanno was speaking into a walkie-talkie.

“Where have you been?” Schanno asked when he saw Cork. “Cy said you’d come by him a while ago.”

“Did an end run around the media,” Cork said. “I didn’t particularly want to talk to anyone. Looks like all hell’s busted loose.”

“I knew it would sooner or later.” Schanno glanced toward a window where the curtains were open to the front lawn. The craziness that had descended there was clearly visible. “I’ve put them off for a while, but somebody’s
going to have to give them something substantial pretty soon. The whole county knows now anyway. The department’s been flooded with calls, folks claiming they saw everything from Big Foot to Elvis out this way.”