Trickster's Point by William Kent Krueger Page A

seemed less careful and moved a little ahead of his father. Cork was about to caution him to be more observant when Stephen seemed to grow smaller before his eyes.
    “Dad?”
    “What is it?”
    “Check this out.”
    Stephen had stepped down into a kind of box, a recessed area bounded on all four sides by tall rock. When Cork dropped into the box with him, Stephen pointed toward the stone surface that faced Trickster’s Point.
    “It looks like some kind of scraping, don’t you think?”
    Cork bent and eyed the mark, which stood out white against the charcoal-colored rock. “That’s exactly what it is, Stephen. Maybe from a belt buckle where someone hugged that rock.” Cork took a position and eyed the base of Trickster’s Point where Jubal had fallen. “The logistics are right.” He knelt and scrutinized the ground. “See this?” He put his index finger to a small line of stone particles and dirt pushed against the face of the rock wall opposite the scraped stone. “I’d bet that’s from the shove of a boot as our killer positioned himself.” He stood up and looked at his son with certainty. “Good work, Stephen. You found the place.”
    “Where’d he go from here?”
    Cork scanned the wall right and left, then said, “Where would you go?”
    Stephen studied their surroundings and shook his head. “We’re pretty much blocked in here. Hard to move either way.” He turned and scanned the slope behind them. “There’s a kind of a natural trough up that way. I guess that’s where I’d go.”
    “That’s where I’d go, too. Let’s see what we find.”
    Cork led the way, working slowly toward the top of the ridge, which was backed by the bare limbs of aspens and the gray overcast of the sky. He paused occasionally, pointing out to Stephen additional places where small rocks had clearly been displaced and, near the top of the ridge, a spot where a partial boot print had been left in a rare, thin layer of damp soil.
    “Medium-size foot,” Cork noted. He’d brought a camera that hung in a belt pouch, and he pulled it out. “Probably a common sole type, so it won’t tell us much, but you never know.”
    Cork took some digital shots, then he and Stephen continued to the peak of the slope.
    The line of trees that topped the ridge began a couple of dozen yards back from the edge. The stand was full of undergrowth that had caught and held many of the fallen aspen leaves, so that it presented itself as an impenetrable-looking wall of gold. Cork and Stephen scanned the area at the lip of the ridge, and Cork said, “Well?”
    Stephen squinted at the ground. “Lots of trampling.”
    “Azevedo. One of Ed Larson’s team. I saw him come up.” Cork nodded far to the left of the trail that he and Stephen had followed up the slope. “He didn’t find anything.”
    “The guy who was down there in the rocks came from somewhere.”
    “Exactly,” Cork said. “So where?”
    Stephen stood a moment, looking hard at the stand of trees. “There?” He pointed toward a place where the gold wall seemed to have been breached, where the leaves had been disturbed and had fallen to the ground.
    “My guess, too,” Cork said. “Let’s go.”
    They entered the woods and slowly moved among the aspens.The initial breach opened onto a trail that, because of the disturbance of the leaves among the undergrowth, wasn’t particularly difficult to follow. They paralleled the edge of the ridge for about twenty yards and then came to a place where the trees opened onto a tiny clearing, which offered a broad vista of the lake and shoreline, dominated by Trickster’s Point. As soon as they reached the clearing, they stopped abruptly. Both of them stood stone still, staring at the body splayed at their feet.
    The man lay faceup, with an arrow shaft protruding from his left eye. A scoped deer rifle lay next to him, and his hunter’s cap had been knocked from his head. Cork could see that the arrow had gone clear through his