Red Knife Read Free Page B

her head. “Mostly he was shooting his mouth off. You know Buck.”
    “What was his gripe?”
    “About what you’d expect given what happened to Kristi. Lot of talk about f’ing Indians.”
    “Red Boyz?”
    “That, sure. But f’ing Indians in general. A lot of my customers have some Ojibwe blood in them. I don’t need Buck Reinhardt getting everyone riled up.”
    “He left easy?”
    “I’d say so.”
    “Doesn’t sound like Buck.”
    “The Green Giant and Turner escorted him out.” She was talking about Derek Green, the bouncer at the door, and the bar manager, both more gorilla than man.
    “Was he alone?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Drunk would you say?”
    “I’ve seen him way worse. Mostly he was”—she thought a moment and scratched at the stud in her nose—“belligerent. Hell, who can blame him? But I told him he had to do his drinking and his bitching somewhere else.”
    “Any idea where he might have headed?”
    “If he was going in the general direction of home, the next logical stop would be Tanner’s on the Lake.”
    He left her a five as a tip—he liked the idea that she’d kicked Reinhardt out for badmouthing the Ojibwe—and headed to Tanner’s. Reinhardt wasn’t there either and hadn’t been. Cork tried the Silver Horse, the Chippewa Grand Casino bar, and finally the bar at the Four Seasons, all with the same result. It was a quarter of eleven by then. He didn’t want to call Reinhardt’s house and risk disturbing Elise. He stood on the empty deck in back of the Four Seasons, looking at the spray of the Milky Way above Iron Lake. The temperature was in the low fifties, not bad for that time of year. He had on a light jacket but a good flannel shirt would have done as well. Up the shoreline, the lights of Aurora were like stars fallen to earth. The night was still and quiet. It would have been a pleasure to stand there awhile longer taking in the stillness, the stars, the air that smelled of apple-wood smoke from the fireplace in the Four Seasons’s lounge. He decided to call it a night and head home. He would hit Reinhardt’s place first thing after Mass in the morning. That would give Buck a chance to recover a little if he was hungover. He was a son of a bitch sober. Hungover, he just might get it in his head to take a chainsaw to Cork.
     
    Corcoran O’Connor lived in an old two-story frame house on an old residential street in Aurora called Gooseberry Lane. Lights were still on downstairs when he parked in the drive. Inside, he found his wife, Jo, on the sofa watching a video. Nine-year-old Stevie was asleep with his feet on his mother’s lap. Jo didn’t get up when Cork came in, but Trixie, the family mutt, jumped up from where she’d been lying and came bounding toward him with her tail wagging a blue streak.
    “Nice someone’s glad to see me,” Cork said. He patted Trixie and kissed the top of Jo’s head. “What are you watching?”
    “The last few minutes of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. ” Cork had introduced his son to the old comic duo, and Stevie loved them, though Jo wasn’t a particular fan. “Took you a long time. How’d it go with Alex Kingbird?”
    “Let’s talk in the kitchen.”
    She gently maneuvered herself from under her son and left him sleeping soundly on the sofa. In the kitchen, she plucked a couple of chocolate chip cookies from the jar on the counter, gave one to Cork, and they sat down at the table.
    “So tell me,” she said.
    “He wants to meet with Buck Reinhardt.”
    “Whatever for?”
    “To avert a war, he says. He thinks the shooting’s about to begin.”
    “I wouldn’t put it past Buck to haul out the firepower. What’s Kingbird offering to entice him to a meeting?”
    “Justice.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”
    “Justice.” She frowned, bit into her cookie, and looked thoughtful.
    Kristi Reinhardt had been eighteen when she died. She’d been one of those girls life had