Tamarack County: A Novel Part 24

Stephen shed the blankets he'd draped about himself, and Anne put them near the fire to heat. He gave her the wool cap and wool socks, and she set these next to the blankets, then she headed away. He took the pan of melted snow, which had been sitting at the edge of the fire, and crawled back into the sweat lodge. He'd left his tobacco pouch on the blanket inside. He took a pinch, sprinkled it over the Grandfathers in an offering, said a prayer to the Great Mystery, doused the stones with water, and let the steam rise up around him. Then he settled in to wait for what might come.

CHAPTER 32.

Cecil LaPointe was sitting up in bed in the prison infirmary. Cork hadn't seen him in more than twenty years, not since the man had been convicted of the murder of Karyn Bowen, sentenced, and transported downstate to Stillwater. What Cork remembered from that time was a young man of average height, raven hair, a handsome Indian face-high cheekbones, prominent nose, irises the color of cherrywood-who'd accepted his punishment with all the emotion of an ice sculpture. The man in the prison infirmary was hollowed, old before his time, his face full of gray shallows, his limbs thin and brittle looking. He breathed with difficulty and with an audible wheeze. Still, there was something in his eyes that was not like his body, a fullness of concentration in the way he watched Cork and Dross and the warden as they entered, something that spoke of a strength not tied to his failing flesh.

"It's been a long time, Cork," LaPointe said.

He extended his hand, and Cork came to his bedside and took it. LaPointe's skin was parchment thin.

"Otter," Cork said. He hadn't meant to use that old moniker, but for some reason it seemed right.

LaPointe smiled. "I haven't been called that in years. I always liked the name. Back then, I thought it fit pretty well."

"Thank you for seeing us," Cork said.

"When the warden explained your situation to me, I couldn't say no." His eyes moved to Dross. "You're the sheriff up there now?"

"Marsha Dross," she said and shook the hand he offered.

"A female sheriff," he said with an approving nod. "Tamarack County has clearly become enlightened. I'd ask you to sit down, but as you can see, our s.p.a.ce here is a little limited. Also, I tire easily, so we'd best do this as quickly as possible."

Cork said, "Mesothelioma, we've been told."

LaPointe nodded. "My father worked in the Thetford mines in Canada. Asbestos. He brought home that poison on his clothing every night. Our house was filled with it. He died fifteen years ago. I'll be joining him soon enough. But you're here to talk about other things."

"You know about what's happened in Tamarack County?"

"I've been told that Evelyn is missing and that a bloodied knife has been found in the garage of her home. Her home and the Judge's."

Cork was surprised that when LaPointe spoke that last name there was no enmity in it.

LaPointe asked, "Do you believe the Judge has harmed her?"

"That's a possibility," Dross replied. "But other things have occurred that make me think something else may be going on."

She explained to LaPointe all the pertinent recent events in Tamarack County. The man listened intently, his brown eyes tired but filled, Cork thought, with genuine concern.

When Dross finished, LaPointe asked, "How can I help you?"

Cork said, "Otter, tell us about Evelyn Carter."

"We were lovers," the man replied without any hesitation. "Briefly. It happened just before I began seeing Karyn Bowen."

"How did it come about?"

"The same way it came about with Karyn. Evelyn brought her car into the garage to be repaired. She may have been fifty, but let me tell you, she looked good behind the wheel. I talked with her, fixed the car, offered her some advice, and tossed her a line. I was a brash kid. I did that a lot in those days. She caught it, and things developed from there. She was such a lonely woman, and I took advantage of that. Still, it was nice for a while, for both of us."

"The Judge knew?" Dross asked.

"I didn't think so. Not then."

"I spoke with the Judge's daughter," Dross said. "She told me that, in fact, her father did know about her mother's affair."

"When I saw Evelyn a few days ago, she told me the same thing."

He coughed, coughed a bit more, then lapsed into a fit of coughing. He held a white washcloth to his mouth and, at the end of the spasm, folded in it whatever his lungs had expelled. He took a long time to get his breath back and to continue.

"Are you all right, Cecil?" the warden asked.

He nodded, managed a faint smile, and said, "Evelyn told me that was why she cut off the affair so abruptly and without ever giving me any idea that the end was coming. She stopped calling, stopped coming by the truck stop. I saw her occasionally after that, maybe driving down the street, but she never looked at me. I figured she'd had the fling with an exotic Indian and was done. When she visited me last week, it was to apologize for having wronged me. She said she was getting ready to leave her husband, to leave Minnesota for good, and she wanted to make amends."

"Wronged you how?"

"For giving the Judge reason to want me here." He indicated the infirmary and, by extension, the prison.

"And reason to ensure that Ray Jay Wakemup never told anyone else the truth about that night with Karyn Bowen," Dross said.

Cork added, "And reason to make certain the parole board never set you free."

"At first," LaPointe said. "Then being released became unnecessary."

"Why?" Cork asked.

"White Eagle began to speak to me. I found my life, found it here behind stone walls and iron bars. For the first time I could ever remember, I felt free. What White Eagle helped me understand is that freedom has nothing to do with walls or bars or chains. It isn't out there. It's here." He raised his hand and touched his forehead. "And it's here." His hand went to his heart. "I came to see that I had purpose, and it was to help those who, like me, would spend their lives looking up at the same small patch of sky every day. With White Eagle's guidance, I've tried to offer another way of responding to life in prison, this prison or any other."

"Prisons not made of stone, you mean," Gilman said.

"See?" LaPointe indicated the warden with a gentle wave of his hand. "You sow the seeds of truth, and you never know where they'll take root."

Cork said, "So you're fine with life here. That's why you've continued to insist that you were guilty of killing Karyn Bowen, even after Wakemup came forward with the truth?"

"No one will ever know the truth of that night, Cork. If I didn't kill that young woman myself, I was certainly guilty of bringing her into the situation. And think about this. If a general turns and runs in the heat of battle, what does that say to those he's led? I have so little time left it doesn't matter to me where I spend it. But it would matter to those who remain behind, incarcerated, and who believe in what I say, who've found hope in what I've pa.s.sed on from White Eagle. I don't want my case revisited. I don't need the kind of freedom a court might offer me."

Dross said, "I'm wondering if the incidents in Tamarack County may be because one of those who believe in you has taken it into his head to avenge you. Is that possible?"

LaPointe looked at her, his brown eyes unblinking. "The spirit of a man long dead speaks to me. Who am I to say something's impossible? But I'll say this. If someone has taken to heart what I try to teach, then the kinds of things going on in Tamarack County shouldn't be part of their actions. I teach acceptance, not revenge. I teach peace, not violence. But I don't control what goes on in the White Eagle Societies all over the country. I never had a part in creating them. They're on their own in how they interpret my teachings and how they respond." This last was spoken with great difficulty. He seemed exhausted and laid his head back against his pillow.

"I think you have what you came for," the warden said. "It's probably best we let Cecil rest."

"Thank you," Dross said to LaPointe.

Cork took the man's hand, preparing to leave. "Thank you, Otter. I'm sorry for the part I played in putting you here. I simply didn't know the truth."

"To blame you for anything would be pointless," LaPointe replied. "Our lives are shaped as they were always meant to be, and everyone we meet has a hand in that work. What you did, you were always meant to do. If you hadn't, I wouldn't be here, and it's been a good place for me. So I thank you."

Cork tried to let go of LaPointe's hand, but the dying man refused to release his grip. Instead, he said, "It seems to me that, in the end, there are very few reasons to kill. The strongest, I think, is love, because it can be twisted in ways unimaginable. There's a man who believes he loves me. A man whose heart is very twisted."

CHAPTER 33.

A sweat was about many things: cleansing, healing, connecting, understanding, accepting. To unfamiliar eyes, it might seem a simple ritual; it was anything but. A good sweat demanded a respect for the nature of the process, which required patience, focus, endurance, and vulnerability. A good sweat could be cathartic and enlightening. A great sweat could be transcendent.

Stephen hoped for a good, enlightening sweat. What he received was, in its way, transcendent.

He'd chanted prayers, sweated until the blanket under him had become drenched, lost track of time, gone into a darkness not of his own making, and had emerged, at last, in a landscape that was alien to his experience. It was a barren, unnatural place, not constructed of earth or even of stone but of concrete. There were no trees, no flowers, no gra.s.s, nothing underfoot but black asphalt and nothing rising around him but gray walls. Above was an empty sky, not just cloudless but bereft of spirit, and that patch of sky was confined within a false horizon created by the gray walls. The air was not the air of Tamarack County, which even in winter, was fragrant with the perfume of pine. What Stephen breathed was the foul odor of pain, fear, distrust, loneliness, and anger. Especially anger.

In all the gray of the walls around him, there was only one door. Stephen walked toward it. He wanted to be out of this odious, alien place, and he hoped that the door would be the way. But as he neared it, he heard a sound from the other side, a low growl that was not like that of a dog or wolf or any other animal he'd ever heard. He was afraid. He stepped back. He wanted to turn away and run. But there was something about the door and what was on the other side that held him, that compelled him to stay. And now it was not just fear he felt. It was pain and distrust and loneliness. And that anger, anger like a great hunger trying to consume him, to suck him into itself, to make him part of it.

Stephen stood before the door, feeling all the foulness on the other side, both compelled and repelled, paralyzed by those competing impulses. Then he heard at his back the voice of Henry Meloux speak clearly and calmly: "This is your way. Open your heart to the other side of that door."

The struggle ceased. Stephen reached out, turned the iron k.n.o.b, which was as cold as a chunk of ice, and swung the door wide. For a moment, he stood in a blinding light, blinking against the intensity of the glare. He heard the growling and saw a dark figure silhouetted against the light, approaching. The figure was the size of a normal man, but as it neared, Stephen saw that the eyes were like burning coals, the same eyes he'd seen in the face of the majimanidoo in his vision the night before. In another moment, he could make out the face clearly, the face of a normal man, the face of a stranger.

Stephen spoke. "Who are you?"

In reply, the stranger said simply, "Welcome to the light."

Stephen came out of the vision, found himself in the dark of the sweat lodge, feeling the air cooling around him, understanding that this round of the sweat was finished but uncertain of the meaning of what he'd seen. He left his blanket and began to crawl clockwise toward the flap that hung over the entrance. As he reached out to push it aside, the flap was drawn away and sunlight blasted into the lodge and into Stephen's eyes, blinding him momentarily.

"Come out," someone ordered, a voice familiar to Stephen. He'd heard it only moments before, in his vision.

He crawled out and stood up, blinking against the sunlight, which shot directly into his eyes. He saw the form of a man silhouetted against the light. A moment later, he could make out the face, the same face he'd just seen in his vision, the face of a man he did not know.

What Stephen saw now that he had not seen in the vision was the large handgun the man held pointed at his heart.

"Who are you?" Stephen asked.

The stranger smiled and said to him, "Welcome to the light."

CHAPTER 34.

"It happened during the prison riot," LaPointe said. "That was before Warden Gilman came, during the days we were double-bunked here."

"Double-bunked?" Dross said.

Gilman explained: "One of the state's budget shortfall periods. As a cost-saving measure, two of the private penal facilities were closed and the inmates were transferred here and to the prison in Saint Cloud. Normally, we have one inmate per cell. In order to accommodate the influx, the wardens had to put two inmates to a cell. Double bunking. It crowded everyone. Another thing our brilliant legislature did was cut funding for most of the work and educational programs for the prison population, so we had lots of angry guys with lots of idle time on their hands. The final straw was that our personnel budget was also slashed, so we had to lay off guards, and those who remained were terribly overworked. It was a perfect recipe for disaster."

LaPointe said, "Men without much hope and with nothing to do but stew in the juice of their own hatred. A blind man could have seen what was coming."

"What about this man who loves you?" Cork said.

"My old bunkmate," LaPointe said.

"Frogg?" Warden Gilman asked.

"Frogg," LaPointe confirmed.

"You're saying Walter Frogg loves you?" Gilman seemed surprised.

"Where love is concerned, Walter is a man whose whole life has been a desert. He thirsts for it and has no idea how to find it."

"But he found it in you apparently," Cork said.

LaPointe smiled. "I offered him what I offer everyone, the world according to White Eagle. It was water in his desert."

"You also saved his life, Cecil," Gilman pointed out. "So in addition to believing that he loves you, he probably also believes he owes you. Pretty strong motivations, if you ask me."

"Frog? Like the little pond creature?" Cork asked. "That's really someone's name?"

"Two g's on the end," Gilman said. "But it must have been h.e.l.l for him on the playground."

"Tell us about this Walter Frogg," Cork said to the warden.

Gilman crossed her arms and shook her head. "In his own eyes, the most persecuted man ever. He's been in trouble with the law most of his life, and to hear him tell it, it's all because of lies told against him, because of personal vendettas by law enforcement and prosecutors and judges. He's been convicted of forgery, tax evasion, welfare fraud. But that's not what landed him in Stillwater. What put him here were terroristic acts against the people who'd been involved in his earlier prosecutions. He sliced up dead animals and placed them on the doorstep of Ramsey County's prosecuting attorney. He threatened the children of the judge in one of his cases. He's slashed tires, smashed windows with cinder blocks and iron pipes, made threatening phone calls, planted fake bombs. His actions caused a judge and a prosecutor to withdraw from his case because of fear of retaliation. He eventually pleaded guilty to thirteen counts of terroristic threats and was sentenced to seven years. As soon as he got here, he began trying to withdraw his plea, claiming he'd been coerced into confessing, that the prosecution had threatened him with a forty-year sentence.

"Inside Stillwater, he was a consummate con man," Gilman continued. "He played everyone-other inmates, the guards, me. We kept an eye on him, often for his own safety. In prison, you're conning the cons, and that can get you killed."

"How did he happen to end up in LaPointe's cell?" Dross asked.

"Random a.s.signment," Gilman replied.

LaPointe shook his head. "The official view. Me, I'd say it was the work of the Great Mystery."

"How so?"

"Nothing in life is random, Sheriff. Frogg came to me for a reason."