Tamarack County: A Novel Part 25

"What reason?"

"For me, a test of my beliefs, I think. He was one of the most difficult human beings I've ever dealt with. That's saying a lot when you live in a prison."

"What made him so difficult?"

LaPointe didn't answer at first. It was clear that he was close to the edge of exhaustion. If the man's knowledge and understanding weren't absolutely essential, Cork would have called an end to this interview. He found himself feeling deep grat.i.tude toward Cecil LaPointe, who twenty years earlier, he'd helped send to this h.e.l.l made of stone.

At last, LaPointe seemed to have gathered enough strength, and he went on. "Walter was angry, blameful, paranoid, conniving, smart, and he was my companion day and night. I couldn't escape him. He talked constantly. Every moment I spent with him, he challenged me to practice what White Eagle teaches, which is acceptance."

"What did he talk about?" Dross asked.

"His cases, all the wrongs done him by lawyers, judges, prosecutors, cops. Whenever he vented that way, I was simply quiet. Eventually he'd move on to other things, and I'd join him in the conversation. He liked flowers, so we talked about flowers. He liked old movies, so we talked about old movies. He had some ideas about writing books, so we talked about the books he might write someday."

"You didn't talk about White Eagle?"

"He sometimes asked, and I would answer, and he would say, 'Bulls.h.i.+t.' We left it at that."

"When he talked about the wrongs done him, did he try to convince you of the rightness of his position?"

"He didn't. I think that was because he was absolutely convinced of it himself. He talked about those things as if he was giving a history lesson-this happened and then this and this is why."

"Was he delusional?"

"I would say no, but he was desperate, in so many ways."

"Desperate for love, you said," Cork pointed out. "Which he found in you. How did that happen?"

"It was the prison riot that finally cracked his heart open," LaPointe said. "A lot of inmates saw the chaos during that time as an opportunity for payback, especially guys who belonged to gangs. Walter had p.i.s.sed off the Aryan Brotherhood, and during the riot, they came for him. I intervened, talked to the inmate who ran the Brotherhood. He gave the order to leave Walter alone."

"What did you say to him?" Dross asked.

"I White Eagled him," LaPointe said with a slight smile. "I touched what was common in both our hearts. A violent man is still a man, still human. I spoke to the best of what was human in him. Or more accurately, I channeled White Eagle. I was just the streambed. White Eagle was the water that helped cool the heat of all that anger."

"And you believe Frogg loved you for this?"

"He was different afterward. He never said it to me outright. I think he didn't know how to handle that kind of emotion, and it confused him. And then Ray Jay Wakemup came to see me, and his story became public. I think Walter's perception about being so persecuted got all mixed up together with this love that he couldn't express, and he seemed to become tormented in a different way. His last promise to me when he was released was that he'd find a way to repay me. I may be wrong, but I think that may have been the nearest he's ever come to telling someone he loved them."

Again, LaPointe had to stop to catch his breath. He struggled and wheezed, and Cork found his own chest constricting in empathetic response. Eventually LaPointe was able to continue, but in a voice that was more and more a whisper. "I'm not saying that's really what's at the heart of his actions, if he is, in fact, responsible for what's happened in Tamarack County. But love and vengeance, it seems to me, are often two sides of the same sword."

"When was Frogg released?" Cork asked.

"Six months ago," Gilman said.

"And a month later, Sullivan Becker goes down to a hit-and-run and loses his legs," Dross said.

"Something everyone blames on organized crime," Cork added.

"And then Judge Carter loses his wife, who's the only thing that stands between the Judge and the locked unit of a care facility. And it's made to look like the Judge himself might be responsible. And finally Ray Jay Wakemup, who kept quiet and let an innocent man go to jail, loses his best friend and maybe his best hope for sobriety. It all makes a certain kind of crazy sense. Frogg pays the debt he believes he owes Mr. LaPointe, here, out of love or whatever, and at the same time satisfies that twisted sense of retribution against a system that has consistently persecuted him. And he does it all in ways he thinks are cunning enough that no one could ever trace them back to him."

"I can buy all this, but what about Marlee Daychild?" Cork said. "Why would Frogg go after Marlee if he's already made Ray Jay pay for his silence by killing Dexter?"

LaPointe looked at Cork with a calm understanding. "Who was in charge of the investigation that landed me here?"

Cork said, "Me. But I never knew about Ray Jay. I didn't know until he told his story to the press. I made that clear every time the media brought the question up."

"That doesn't mean Walter believes you," LaPointe said. "He might very well think you're lying, in the way he believes that everyone connected with the law lies."

It took Cork only a millisecond to understand what LaPointe was saying. "Frogg wasn't after Marlee," he said, thinking out loud. "He was after Stephen." He looked toward Gilman and tried to keep his voice calm. "I need a phone. I have to call Tamarack County."

CHAPTER 35.

Stephen looked at the gun, then up into the face of the stranger. He thought he should have been afraid, but he wasn't. A strange calm had settled over him. "Who are you?"

"A p.a.w.n of justice, kid. In your way, so are you. Now, why don't you just walk on down to the lake for another refres.h.i.+ng dip."

"I've seen you before," Stephen said.

The stranger considered that a moment. "In my pickup, just before you and your girlfriend hit the ice."

"No. In visions."

"Visions?" That seemed to amuse him. "Where? There in your sweat lodge?"

"And before."

"Well then, all this should come as no surprise."

"What I didn't see was why," Stephen said.

"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 s.h.i.+fted 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 s.h.i.+ver 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 sh.o.r.eline, 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."