Red Knife by William Kent Krueger Read Free Book Online

replied after a long pause.
    “Was there lots of blood and stuff?”
    “Stephen,” his mother said, “that’s enough.”
    “I was just wondering.” He lingered over his green beans. “Why did they want you there?”
    “Alex and Rayette were Ojibwe. The sheriff thought that because I’m part Ojibwe, I might be able to answer some questions they had.”
    Annie used this as her opening to ask about something that had been on her mind for quite a while. “You and Mr. Kingbird were friends once, right, Dad?”
    “We’re not unfriendly now.”
    “I mean like tight.”
    “We played football together. Because we shared Ojibwe blood, he probably talked to me a little more than other people. Folks saw that as tight, I suppose, but I never really knew him. I don’t think anybody did. He never let anybody that close.”
    Annie said, “I like Uly’s mom better.”
    Her father smiled. “You want to know the truth, so do I.”
    “But she seems, I don’t know, subdued. Like she’s afraid of him.”
    “That might be a cultural issue,” her mother said. “She’s Latina. I believe it’s not unusual to be submissive to your husband, at least in public.”
    “I think Uly’s afraid of him,” Annie said.
    Her father said, “Has he told you that?”
    “Not in so many words. I just get that feeling.”
    Stevie piped in, “Uly sure plays the guitar good.”
    “He’s always seemed a little troubled to me,” her mother said. “Do you ever see him at school, Annie?”
    “He’s only a sophomore, so we don’t have any classes together. But I see him sometimes, yeah. He gets picked on, mostly by guys who’re huge losers and looking for somebody they think might be a bigger loser than them. Allan Richards, for example.”
    “Richards?” Her father looked up from his plate. “That wouldn’t be Cal Richards’s boy, would it?”
    “That’s him.”
    “Cal Richards.” He shook his head. “Now there’s one sick soul. Sounds like the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.”
    “Will you help the sheriff?” Stevie asked.
    “A little bit maybe. I’m going back to the reservation this afternoon to talk to a couple of people.”
    “Oh?” Annie’s mother said. She didn’t sound thrilled.
    “I need to talk to George LeDuc, Jo. And as long as I’m out that way, I might as well drop by the Blessing place and have a word with Tom.”
    “Mom, can Trixie come in?” Stevie asked.
    “Yes, but don’t feed her at the table. I’ve put some scraps aside for her for later.”
    Stevie got up to let the dog in. Annie waited until she thought he couldn’t hear, then asked the question that had most been on her mind.
    “Do the shootings have anything to do with Kristi Reinhardt?”
    “I don’t know, Annie.” Her father stabbed another piece of pot roast, but paused before he put it on his plate. “Buck Reinhardt is a strange man. But, you know, if this is all about his daughter, I can almost understand.”
    He seemed ready to say more, but Stevie came back in with Trixie at his heels, and her father went back to eating.
    What she would remember whenever she thought back on that conversation was the powerful confusion of compassion and anger she saw on her father’s face. That and how much the look scared her.

EIGHT
    T homas Blessing lived with his mother, Fanny, in a one-story frame house that, as long as Cork could remember, had been in desperate need of a new coat of paint. The house was a god-awful purple, something out of a psychedelic nightmare, and Cork had often wondered if one reason Fanny didn’t paint it was that nobody was stupid enough to manufacture the color anymore.
    The house stood near a crossroads on the eastern side of the rez. On the other side of the road stood the abandoned ruins of an old gas station, a gray derelict that stared hollow-eyed at the Blessing place. Several years before, a photographer for National Geographic had shot the old place, and the photo appeared in the publication,