Red Knife by William Kent Krueger Page A

to the food-service business was abandoned. The other part of the building Cork kept heated and continued to use as the office for his fledgling business as a private investigator. He was the only PI in Tamarack County and the three counties that adjoined it. His first case had involved finding Henry Meloux’s son. Despite the fact that the job had, in the end, cost several lives, business afterward had been surprisingly brisk. Wilred Brynofurson, head of security at Aurora Community College, had hired him to investigate one of their environmental engineers, suspected in the theft of several computers and video projectors. His work resulted in clearing the suspect and uncovering the true culprit, the assistant director of Technology Services, a man with a serious gambling problem. He’d also done surveillance for an insurance company on a plaintiff suing for a debilitating back injury sustained when his car collided with a plumber’s truck. Cork had videotaped the guy, who lived in Eveleth, climbing like a monkey all over his roof, taking down strings of Christmas lights. That one hadn’t been a challenge at all. He’d served subpoenas, located a couple of bail jumpers, and tracked down Rolf and Olivia Nordstrom’s daughter who’d dropped out of her first year at Augsburg College and then dropped out of sight. (After spending one day on campus, he found her living with her boyfriend—a street juggler and sometimes bar bouncer—in a crash pad on the West Bank. He didn’t convince her to return to college or Aurora, didn’t even try, but he did get her to promise to call her worried parents, which she did.)
    Except for the work he’d done for Henry Meloux, which had been more a favor than an assignment, his PI work so far hadn’t been particularly difficult. Neither had it been dangerous, and that was important. It kept Jo happy. She liked that he no longer had a job that required a Kevlar vest as part of his standard equipment.
    He was on his stepladder, reattaching a corner of the SAM’S PLACE sign that had worked loose in the winter winds, when he spotted Ed Larson’s cruiser turn onto the gravel access that led to the Quonset hut. He set his hammer down and watched as Larson brought the cruiser over the Burlington Northern tracks and parked in the lot. Larson got out, Simon Rutledge with him.
    “Think you’ll have ’er ready for fishing opener?” Larson asked as they approached.
    “Provided I don’t keep getting interrupted.”
    “Marsha asked us to stop by, find out if you learned anything from Meloux.”
    Cork looked down at his visitors. “In his way, he offered what he could.”
    “Which was?”
    “Take a hawk’s-eye view.”
    Larson stared up at him. “I don’t get it.”
    “Neither do I.”
    “Does he know where Thunder is?”
    “I don’t think so,” Cork said. “If he did, he probably would have come right out and told me.”
    “Take a hawk’s-eye view? Is that a clue of some kind?”
    “I think it’s more a suggestion on how to approach the problem.”
    “But you have no idea what he meant by it?”
    “Nope.”
    “Big help.” Larson squinted up at Cork, blinking behind his glasses. “Marsha says you stepped back from the investigation. What’s up with that?”
    “Other priorities, Ed.” Cork tapped the side of the Quonset hut.
    “Right. Fishing opener and all.” Larson looked down at the gravel, then back up. “We just finished canvassing Kingbird’s neighbors.”
    “And they told you they didn’t see anything, right?”
    “Right.” Larson’s skepticism was obvious.
    “They weren’t playing games with you, Ed. Marvin LaPoint lost most of his hearing in Vietnam. When he sleeps, Mindy says it’s like a freight train going through the house. She wears earplugs in bed. They’re not late-night people, so they were probably sleeping when the Kingbirds were killed and wouldn’t have heard anything. On the other side of the Kingbirds, the closest neighbors would be