The Last Kind Word Read online

I kept following Skarda’s directions, turning onto a gravel road that became a potted dirt road and finally a long-grass and short-brush path that reminded me of the logging road where we had left the deputy—was it only nine hours ago? The path led to a clearing. In the center of the clearing the Cherokee’s high beams swept over a small cabin. It was rust colored with white trim and supported on pillars of cinder blocks. There was a short flight of stairs that led to a sprawling wooden deck with benches, lawn chairs, a picnic table, and a charcoal grill. The cabin’s sole door opened onto the deck. Skarda had said something about a lake, but I couldn’t see it in the dark. I turned off first the engine and then the headlights. A square of light fell from a cabin window onto the deck, its edges engulfed by the night shadows. I spent a lot of time watching those shadows.

  “Aren’t we going in?” Skarda asked.

  “Shhh,” I said.

  I reached up behind the seat and found the overhead light, sliding the switch so that it wouldn’t go on when I opened the door.

  “What are you doing?” Skarda asked.

  “Shhh,” I said again.

  I opened the driver’s door and slid out, the Glock in my hand, staying as close to the Cherokee as possible. I hugged the frame as I made my way around the SUV to the passenger door. I opened it slowly. It took a few anxious moments to manage it in the dark, but I eventually opened the handcuff that had chained Skarda to the door. I eased him out of the vehicle and then recuffed his hands behind his back.

  “Is that really necessary?” he said. He added an “Oh, geez” when he felt the Glock.

  “Listen up,” I shouted. “I have the muzzle of a nine-millimeter handgun pressed against Dave’s back. Anyone fires a gun, anyone makes a sudden move, anyone does anything at all that I don’t like and I’ll cut his spine in half. Do we understand each other?”

  There was silence, so I shouted again. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” a voice said from the darkness on my right.

  “Yeah, okay,” said a voice on my left.

  I nudged Skarda. “Dave, Dave, Dave,” I said. “After all we’ve been through together, too.”

  “How did you know they were there?”

  “What the hell, man? Did you really think this was my first rodeo?”

  “We’re just being careful.”

  “You had damn well better be careful.” I spoke loudly so Skarda’s crew could hear. “We’re moving to the cabin now. How ’bout we all err on the side of caution, okay?”

  “Okay,” said a voice.

  “Don’t start nothing, won’t be nothing,” said the other.

  “Really,” I said. “You’re talking smack?” I lowered my voice. “Any last words, Dave?”

  “Dammit, Jimmy,” he said. “Don’t screw around.”

  “I won’t,” he said.

  How the hell do you get yourself into these things? my inner voice asked. You should be home watching the Twins on TV.

  Too late now, I told myself.

  “Here we go,” I said out loud.

  I eased Skarda away from the Cherokee and pushed him forward in a straight line toward the square of light. We walked slowly more for fear that I would trip over something than fear itself. I saw nothing, heard only the sound of crickets and wind rustling the leaves of invisible trees. When we reached the deck stairs, I turned so that my back was to the cabin and Skarda was directly in front of me. Together we climbed the wooden planks sideways. When we reached the light at the top of the stairs, I turned Dave so that he was shielding my body while I slid along the wall to the door. I opened the door, backed across the threshold. Once inside, I spun Skarda around so that he was now facing the cabin and I was behind him again. A woman sitting at a small kitchen table caught my eye. She smiled at me, but that was meant only as a distraction. An old man dressed in a Che Guevara T-shirt was standing just inside the doorway. Long hair as gray as roadside slush fell to his shoulders. He was bracing the wooden stock of a 16-gauge double barrel against his shoulder. The business end was pointed at my head.

  “Drop your gun,” he said.

  Instead, I quickly reached up with my empty hand and angled the barrel away so that it was pointing at the wall. At more or less that same time, I used the muzzle of Glock to violently rap the fingers the old man had curled around the shotgun where the stock met the trigger mechanism. He howled in pain, and I pulled the double barrel from his grasp.

  “Damn hippie,” I said.

  The old man folded his fingers into a fist and shoved them under his armpit as if that would somehow ease the pain. Skarda turned toward him.

  “Dad,” he said. There was genuine concern in his voice.

  I brought the Glock up and pointed it at Skarda’s head. The old man moaned and said, “He broke my hand,” and I pointed the gun at him. “Why did you hurt him?” the woman asked, so I pointed the gun at her. She was still sitting at the table, her chair turned so that she could leave it in a hurry. I couldn’t see her hands, so I told her, “Let me see your hands.” She brought them up and rested them on the tabletop. They were empty.

  Skarda went to the old man. His hands were still cuffed behind his back, so there wasn’t much he could do. “Let me see,” he said.

  The old man uncurled his fingers and flexed them cautiously. They might have been bruised—hell, I hoped they were bruised—but they were unbroken.

  “Is he all right?” asked a quiet voice. Only it wasn’t the woman sitting at the table. This voice belonged to a woman who had poked her head around the doorway that led to a room in the back of the cabin.

  “Come into the light,” I said.

  She stepped through the doorway and into the room, moving cautiously as if threatened by life’s sharp edges. She was young, no more than twenty-one I guessed, with golden hair that reached halfway down her back, a fetching figure, and smooth, milky-fresh skin colored with the tint of roses, skin I’ve seen only on northern girls. Yet it was her eyes that I found most remarkable. They were warm and wide open and so honest that meeting them made a fellow regret his long-forgotten sins. She would have been quite beautiful if not for the expression of despair on her face and the bruise under her chin.

  “Are you Josie?” I asked.

  “I’m Josie.” I turned my head toward the woman sitting at the table while keeping the Glock pointed at Skarda and the old man. “What are you going to do?” she asked. Her eyes were tired, and her voice was filled with tension. She was about thirty-five, with hair that didn’t know if it was red or brown. Her face was angular and clean-lined with a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She wasn’t pretty, yet no one would have called her plain.

  “Call your friends into the cabin,” I said. “Tell them to leave their guns outside.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because you’re an adult, not a child playing cops and robbers.” I gestured at the old man. “Because I could have done a lot worse than rapping his knuckles.”

  Josie stood slowly and moved toward the door. When she did, I pulled Skarda backward so that he was standing between me and everyone else in the cabin. I rested the barrel of the shotgun on his shoulder just below his ear and pressed the muzzle of the Glock against his back.

  “Jimmy,” she called. “Roy. Can you hear me? I need you to come into the cabin. Leave your guns on the deck.”

  “Hell w’that.”

  Josie took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and gritted her teeth, giving me the impression of an elementary school teacher slowly counting to ten. “Must you argue all the time, Roy?” she said. “That’s why no one likes you. Everything’s a debate.”

  “People like me.”

  “Get your ass in this cabin right this minute.”

  A moment later I heard heavy footsteps on the deck. The door flew open and Roy stepped into the room. He was tall and clean-shaven, ten years older than Josie, with the furrowed brow of a man who would rather have his car stolen than admit he had forgotten where he parked i
t. He leaned down toward Josie, bringing his face within inches of hers.

  “Don’t talk to me that way,” he hissed.

  “Hey, pal,” I said. He pivoted and looked at me as if he were surprised to find me standing there. I angled the barrel of the shotgun so it was pointed between his eyes. “Stand by the old man and be quiet.”

  His eyes narrowed, and he smiled with soft hostility. “Make me,” he said.

  “What, are you five years old? Get over there.”

  “Do what he says, Roy,” Skarda told him. “I already saw him kill a man today. Shot him three times—”

  “Hey, Dave, hey.” I whacked Skarda’s ear with the barrel of the shotgun. “You didn’t see anything. Did you?”

  Skarda rubbed his ear. “No, I didn’t see anything,” he said.

  “Go stand over there, Roy,” I said.

  Roy moved next to the old man. The young woman joined him there. She set a hand on his arm, a gesture meant to assuage his anger and frustration. He brushed it aside and glared malevolently at her. She backed away.

  “Jimmy,” I said. “You still out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come on in.”

  “You won’t hurt me, will you?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Apparently Jimmy couldn’t think of a good reason, because he entered the cabin and moved to where the young woman was standing. He took her hand and squeezed it.

  “Are you okay, Jills?”

  She cradled his head and rested it against her shoulder. “It’ll be all right, Jims,” she said.

  “It’ll be all right, Jims,” Roy said. The disdain in his voice was unmistakable. “What do you know about it?”

  She looked from Roy to me. Her remarkable eyes darkened and she found a spot on the floor to stare at. Jimmy lifted his head from her shoulder and stood straight, but he did not release her hand.

  “Nothing bad will happen as long as we all keep our heads,” I said. I was still using Skarda as a shield, still balancing the shotgun on his shoulder. “Who are you people?”

  “You know me,” Josie said. “You know my brother. This is my father.” Her gesture swept from the old man to Jimmy and the girl. “These are my cousins Jillian and James Neihart. This is Jill’s husband, Roy Cepek.”

  Now we know where she got the bruise, my inner voice said.

  “What is this?” I asked. “A family reunion? Never mind. All I want to do is get my money and get out of here.”

  “What money?” Roy asked.

  “The fifty thousand dollars that Dave promised to pay if I broke him out of jail.”

  “We don’t have it,” Josie said.

  “You said twenty-five,” Skarda said.

  “All right, I’ll settle for twenty-five,” I said.

  “We don’t have it,” Josie said.

  “Remember what I said about nothing bad happening? We might want to rethink that.”

  “Mr. Dyson—”

  “How much do you have?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I whacked Skarda’s ear again. “Nothing, she said.” He brought his fingers up to soothe his ear, and I whacked them, too. “Nothing,” I repeated.

  “I can explain,” Skarda said.

  “Volatile personality, Dave. Remember? I did warn you.”

  “Nick,” Josie said. “Your name is Nick, right?”

  “Dyson. Just make it Dyson. Let’s not get overly friendly here.”

  “Dyson, we don’t have fifty thousand dollars. We don’t have twenty-five thousand dollars. We don’t even have twenty-five hundred dollars. We’re barely making expenses as it is.”

  “What do you have?”

  Josie stepped forward. “We can give you a place to hide for a while. A place that’s safe and no hard feelings, okay? I mean, we pointed guns at you and you pointed guns at us…”

  “Here? Is this the safe place you’re talking about?”

  “Yes, and—”

  “I’ve seen airport terminals with less traffic.”

  “And tomorrow, tomorrow we can give you some money and show you a place where you can cross over into Canada. That’s where you’re going, isn’t it? Canada?”

  “How much money?”

  “A couple of thousand, anyway. That’s the best we can do.”

  “Where are you going to get it?”

  “We’re going to rob a grocery store in Silver Bay.”

  “A grocery store?”

  “Don’t you know who we are?” Jimmy asked. “We’re the Iron Range Bandits.”

  “What is that? A garage band?”

  “We’re in the news. We’re famous.”

  I suddenly felt very tired. I let the barrel of the shotgun slip off of Skarda’s shoulder and sat at the kitchen table. It was flimsy and wobbled when I leaned against it as if one of its legs were shorter than the others. I set the Glock on top of the table within easy reach and draped the shotgun over my knees.

  “Famous,” I said. “You’re happy about that? God help me, I’m surrounded by amateurs.”

  “What’s wrong with being famous?”

  “What’s your name again? Jimmy?” He nodded. “Jimmy, the last thing you want is to make the evening news. The very last thing you want is a nickname. See, the longer you stay out of jail, the less likely you are to go to jail. City cops, county cops, they have limited resources, only so many investigators. You pull a heist and they’ll be on it like white on rice. They’ll interview witnesses, examine the crime scene, study the film taken by hidden cameras, develop leads, talk to their CIs, check the strip joints and casinos and bars to see who’s throwing money around, inquire at local banks to learn who’s making large cash deposits, question the usual suspects—they’ll do all those things. If after a period of time nothing pans out—well, they’re going to have other crimes to solve, aren’t they? So they’ll redline your case, they’ll rededicate their resources and retask their investigators to the cases they have a better chance of clearing, follow me?”

  Jimmy nodded some more.

  “However, if the media gives you a nickname, ‘Iron Range Bandits Strike Again,’ suddenly you’re a priority. For one thing, you’re making the cops look bad; you’re hurting their professional pride. For another, a chief of police, a county sheriff, they have to run for reelection, right? Catching you helps their chances; letting you get away hurts them. Then there’s the very real possibility that they might just say screw it and ask the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to step in, and they have investigators and resources to burn. No, sir, you do not want a nickname. You have a nickname, they’re never going to stop looking for you.”

  “What do you know about it?” Roy asked.

  “He’s a big-time crook,” Jimmy said. He meant it as a compliment.

  “Yeah, big-time,” I said. “I’m an escaped prisoner hiding out in the North Woods with the frickin’ Waltons. Doesn’t get much bigger than that.”

  Six pairs of eyes regarded me cautiously.

  “Oh, hell,” I said. “It’s not like I have many options. Ms. Skarda, I will take you up on your kind offer.”

  I stood and tucked the Glock back under my belt. I broke open the 16-gauge, removed the two shells, shut it, and handed it to the old man. He took it from my hand as if he were planning to take it whether I liked it or not.

  “Che Guevara,” I said. “Really?”

  “He wasn’t afraid to stand up to the man.”

  “Get a haircut.”

  I handed Josie the key to the handcuffs, and she freed her brother. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged. She was shorter by about a foot, and her head slid beneath his chin. He hugged her back.

  “I was so worried about you,” she said.

  “Have you heard from Liz?”

  Josie squeezed him tighter. “No,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

  “About Liz?”

  “About
everything. You can’t stay here, not in Krueger. Dyson’s right. This is the first place the police will look. Even if they don’t find you, so many people know you up here, can recognize you on the street—anyone can pick up a phone.”

  “Drop a dime,” I said.

  “What?”

  I moved back to the kitchen table. Josie continued to hug her brother, but her eyes followed me.

  “The correct phrase is drop a dime,” I said. “’Course, drop a dime, pick up a phone, it all amounts to the same thing—you can’t trust anyone. Welcome to my world.”

  Josie gave her brother a quick squeeze before releasing him. “Have you eaten?” she asked. “Would you like a sandwich?”

  “I’m starving,” Skarda said.

  Josie moved toward the refrigerator. I took a deep breath while she did and smelled fried everything—you could pull a handful of grease out of the air.

  “Do you live here?” I asked.

  “No one does. We use the cabin as a kind of staging area for our jobs. The only time we talk about our jobs is while we’re here.”

  “When you’re here, who does the cooking?”

  “I do. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Tell me something, Dyson. Why did you help my brother?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “The truth is I was going to leave your brother handcuffed in the back of the squad car with an irate deputy. I took him with me because of the money, because of the fifty thousand he promised.” I wagged a finger in Skarda’s direction. “Don’t think for a minute I’m not still annoyed about that.”

  Josie nodded her head, yet the expression on her face suggested that she wasn’t satisfied with my answer.

  “Ham and cheese okay?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I said.

  While she got out the sandwich fixings, Skarda disappeared through the doorway where Jill had first emerged. I took a look. The front part of the cabin consisted of one large room divided into a kitchen, dining room, and living room. The back had two bedrooms with a bathroom between them. Skarda had stepped into a bedroom with two sets of bunk beds and a large metal locker. The other bedroom had a queen-sized bed and a small dresser. Besides that, the living room area had two sofas that could also be used for sleeping, and I saw a couple of foam mattresses that were meant to be tossed on the floor for additional sleeping space. The cabin was small, yet apparently built by someone who expected a lot of overnight visitors.