“Not us. Well, we did, but I’m calling about Lewis. We’ve got him.”
“How?”
“I’m not sure of the details, but Officers Desjardins and Zuppardo are on their way to Crow Point to take him into custody. Apparently Annie was out there. Lewis took a shot at her, but Prophet stopped him before he could do any harm.”
“Christ,” Cork whispered on his end.
Daniel suggested that they meet up in Allouette, and Cork said he and Dross would see them at the tribal police office.
“What’s Lewis got against Cork’s daughter?” Agent Shirley asked.
“I don’t know,” Daniel replied. “But Cork says he’s a buddy of Mathias Paavola, and both men drank at the Howling Wolf. So there’s a thread that ties him to Paavola’s cabin and blueberry patch. A man who would shoot Annie strikes me as the kind of man who could easily do harm to other women as well.”
“Fawn Blacksmith,” Agent Shirley said.
“Or Olivia Hamilton,” Monte said.
“Or Crystal Two Knives,” Daniel said. “Or maybe all three.”
Monte Bonhomme cruised through Aurora at 4:00 P.M. and swung south around Iron Lake. As he turned north toward the reservation, Daniel noted a warning sign that said ROAD WORK AHEAD. They rounded a curve and came immediately to a place where a crew had been doing some repairs. The crew had finished for the day, but a backhoe sat idle off the shoulder, protected by a couple of barricades. Several orange cones directed traffic away from a torn-up section of the highway as it crossed a culvert. Monte slowed and drove around the cones, then hit the gas again and shot toward Allouette.
Fifteen minutes later they parked in front of the new tribal police office, which was a block from the community center. Two other tribal police vehicles were already parked there, along with a cruiser from the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department. Monte, Agent Shirley, and Daniel made their way inside.
Adrian Lewis was in one of the two holding cells. He sat on the bunk, back against the wall, staring into space.
“Nasty bump on his head,” Monte said, standing with the others outside the bars and appraising the man. “We need to get that looked at.”
“We’ll stop by the hospital when I take him into Aurora,” Dross said.
“I think we’d like to have a few questions answered first,” Monte said.
“He hasn’t spoken a word since we cuffed him on Crow Point,” LuJean said.
“Not true,” Zuppardo said. “He called you a slut.”
“Actually, it was Indian slut,” LuJean said.
“He didn’t ask for a phone call?” Daniel said.
“Nope. We’ve got the rifle he used to shoot at your daughter, Cork. It’s a Winchester. Lewis here was shooting with two-seventy Wins. So it’s not the weapon that was used by whoever fired at your grandson this morning.”
“That round was a Remington thirty-aught-six,” Cork said. “We found an empty box of those cartridges in Mathias Paavola’s apartment this afternoon.”
“So, you’re not only drinking buddies,” Dross said through the bars to Lewis. “You’re shooting buddies, too?”
Lewis’s eyes slowly panned all the faces looking at him from outside the cell. Daniel thought he was about to say something vicious, judging from the way his face was twisted, but the man held to silence.
“You blame my daughter for getting you fired,” Cork said. “But she’s not the first woman who harmed you. We know how you got that misshaped ear, Adrian.”
Lewis’s eyes flashed as if lightning had struck his brain. He leaned forward in a menacing way. “They’re all sluts.” He looked at Dross and Desjardins and Agent Shirley. “All of you.”
“Is that why you killed Fawn Blacksmith?” Cork asked.
Lewis once more set his back against the cell wall and lapsed into silence.
“Let me take him now, Monte,” Dross said.
“When you interview him officially, I want to be there.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll let BCA know we’ve got him,” Agent Shirley said. “They’ll want one of theirs present for the questioning, I’m sure. Although they’re still chasing that biker who got away in Fargo.”
“We’ll need statements from everyone on Crow Point,” Monte said. “Daniel, can you let them know and make those arrangements?”
“Will do.”
“All right. He’s all yours, Marsha,” Monte said. “For now.”
Agent Danette Shirley accompanied Marsha Dross in her cruiser, with Adrian Lewis in the backseat, maintaining a sullen silence. Daniel followed in his pickup with Cork riding shotgun. The plan was for Daniel to drive to the house on Gooseberry Lane, drop Cork off, then head out to Crow Point to be with Jenny and Waaboo. With all the focus on Lewis, Daniel hadn’t had time to fill Cork in on what he’d learned in Duluth and at Sizemore School. He took care of that as he drove, explaining about a talented young woman wanting to be loved and a man named Billy Bones, who seemed to have preyed on that need.
Cork listened, then said, “So we don’t really know anything about this Billy Bones.”
“Might be a moot issue. My money’s on Lewis for killing both girls.”
“What about Waaboo?” Cork said. “You think it was Lewis who fired that shot at him this morning?”
“Paavola, I think. That box of Remington cartridges you found in his apartment is pretty damning. And the blueberry patch and the cabin are places Lewis couldn’t have known about except for Paavola. I think they both got spooked when word got out about Waaboo’s connection with the spirit of Fawn Blacksmith, and Paavola tried to do something about that.”
