Red Knife: A Novel by William Kent Krueger

Author:William Kent Krueger [Krueger, William Kent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Fiction
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2008-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SIX

Three thirty in the afternoon was too early for the drinking crowd at the Buzz Saw. The place was empty of customers when Cork walked in. Faith Hill was on the jukebox. Seneca Peterson was perched on a stool, reading a book that lay open on the bar. She glanced up and, with a disturbed look, watched him approach.

“Sorry, Seneca,” he said, taking the stool next to her. “This’ll only take a minute, then I’m out of your hair.”

He glanced down at the book: We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party.

“Sad and unsettling,” she said.

Cork realized her dour look had nothing to do with him. “Pleasure reading?”

“For a class I’m taking at ACC,” she said, referring to Aurora Community College. “The politics of resistance. The Black Panther movement was well articulated, had admirable goals and able leaders. They just couldn’t fight a whole political, social, and judicial system that was dead set against them.” She marked her place with a paper coaster, slid from the stool, and slipped behind the bar. “What can I get you?”

“A Leinie’s.”

“Original?”

“Dark.”

“Glass?”

“Just the bottle’s fine.”

She popped the cap and brought him the beer, along with a coaster. “Start a tab?”

He put a twenty on the bar and said, “One’ll be enough.” While she went to the register, he took a sip. The beer was ice cold and felt good going down. “Remember the other night when I was in here?”

She set the change in front of him. “Sure. You asked about Buck Reinhardt.”

“I asked where he might have gone after you kicked him out.”

“And I told you if he was going home he’d probably hit Tanner’s on the Lake.”

“I checked. He wasn’t there. He also wasn’t at the Silver Horse, the casino bar, or the Four Seasons.”

“That was the night the Kingbirds were murdered. Now that was truly tragic. I knew Rayette. Liked her.” She leaned on the bar. “And because you couldn’t find him, you think Buck did it.”

“I think in his own mind he had good reason to do it. Do you think he did it?”

She smiled with a secret understanding. “I knew the minute you walked in that you weren’t here for the beer.”

“Really?”

“I’ve never seen you here in the middle of the day. You drink in the evening or at night. What I call dismally responsible.”

“Predictable?”

“That, too.”

“You didn’t answer me. Do you think Buck did it?”

She reached under the bar and brought up an opened pack of American Spirits and a Bic lighter. She tapped out a cigarette and reached for an ashtray. “The day after the murders, a couple of cops came in to talk to me. Captain Larson and a state cop.”

“From the BCA, actually. Simon Rutledge.”

“Yeah. Cute in a family-guy sort of way.” She lit the cigarette and blew smoke out of the side of her mouth, careful to keep it away from Cork. “They asked me about Buck, how drunk was he, was he belligerent, what time did he leave, did he say where he was going.

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