Purgatory Ridge

The engine caught this time. He swung the wheel hard to starboard and eased the throttle forward, narrowly missing an arm of dark rock just beneath the surface. He came about fully, nosed the Anne Marie into the wind, and put a safe distance between himself and the island. He idled the engine and checked the boat. Nothing had been damaged. The extra diving gear stowed below hadn’t been touched. He hauled in the buoy and checked the cable. The line had been cut.

He hadn’t seen the white launch, but maybe everything was different now. Maybe they would always use a different boat so he’d never know when they were watching, waiting to have another go at him.

They’d taken his camera. They’d tried to destroy his boat. They were clearly afraid.

Good, he thought, and he found himself smiling. That meant they had something to hide.

He headed the boat home with the wind at his back. It would be a while before he returned. Bridger’s luck had been bad lately and he was low on money. On a janitor’s salary, LePere would have to save carefully for months to put together the cost of a new camera and housing, but he would do it. He would do whatever he had to. They hadn’t stopped him; they’d only delayed the inevitable. Next time he came, he’d be ready to take them down for good.

He reached Purgatory Cove in the early afternoon, eased the Anne Marie up to the dock, and cut the engine. He secured the lines and headed toward shore. When he saw that the door to the fish house was wide open, he made for it quickly, then stood staring at the chaos inside. It looked as if someone had used a sledgehammer and had a field day. The compressor lay in pieces. His diving gear and the equipment and supplies for the Anne Marie had all been damaged or destroyed. Turning toward the small house, he saw that the door there stood open, as well. He hit the porch at a run. Inside, he found the rooms torn apart. The cupboards had been cleared. Drinking glasses and blue crockery plates lay shattered on the floor. In his mother’s room, the bottles had been swept off the top of the bureau and smashed.

They were after nothing. They’d already got the camera and the tape it held. LePere knew this was an attack on him. They’d come to destroy the memories the cabin held for him. His mother’s careful needlepoint had been torn from the walls. The framed wedding photograph of his parents was thrown to the floor where a callous heel had ground the broken glass, shredding the picture that had been the most solid evidence LePere possessed that once, long ago, life had been good and full of promise. In the room he’d shared with Billy, the agate collection had been scattered. Billy’s first baseman’s mitt was gone altogether.

For years, John LePere had lived with loss. He’d endured nightmares that, with each visitation, brought fresh grief. He’d learned to walk among other men as if he were a whole man, too, although he felt hollow inside. As he knelt amid the wreckage of all that had once remained to him of happiness, he let out a howl like an animal in terrible pain. What filled that hollow inside him now was a raging sensibility that felt more beast than human.

He picked the telephone up from the floor. There was still a dial tone. He punched in a number. The phone at the other end rang five times, then the voice message machine kicked in.

“Yeah, this is Bridger. Leave me a message. And make it short, God damn it.”

The line beeped.

“This is LePere. That crazy-ass idea of yours-you still want to do it, I’m in.”

16

FRIDAYS WERE ALWAYS BUSY at Sam’s Place. Because of tourists getting an early start on the weekend, business came heavily from the lake. By midafternoon, Cork had run out of hamburger buns. He left the girls in charge and took off for the IGA SuperValu in Aurora. As he started up the gravel road, he spotted Wally Schanno’s Land Cruiser turn off Center Street and head toward Sam’s Place. Near the Burlington Northern tracks, Schanno waved Cork to a stop and both men got out.

The day was hot and Schanno wore a gray Stetson to shade his face. “Glad I caught you, Cork.”

“What can I do for you, Wally?”

“You can give me the benefit of your thinking. I spoke with Harold Loomis.”

“Then you’re pretty sure Charlie Warren had nothing to do with the bombing?”

“As sure as you are. I’m also pretty sure Loomis had nothing to do with it. He let us search his place. He has a good collection of baseball cards, that’s about it. All of which leaves me without a primary suspect. The BCA agents have a couple of ideas. So do I. I was hoping you might have a few of your own.”

“This kind of thing isn’t my business anymore,” Cork reminded him. “Besides, how would the BCA like it, knowing you were confiding in unauthorized personnel?”

“This is still my investigation. Anyway, I told them I was coming out to talk to you, that because you’re part Ojibwe yourself, you’d probably have an interesting perspective to offer.”

“How about letting me in on the official thinking?”