Chapter 32: June's Question

I looked at the knife in Dale's hand and my mind went quiet and cold, the way it does when a thing is too big to feel all at once.

“That is not possible,” I said. “Owen was buried with his knife. It went into the casket with him.”

“No,” Dale said. “It did not. I was at the funeral and I was at the burial and I saw what went into that casket, and the knife was not in it. It was not in the pack records either. I looked.” He turned the knife over. “So I will ask you again. How did your brother’s knife get into the co-op office?”

“I did not put it there.”

“I did not say you did.”

“You did not have to.”

Maeve came and stood beside me. She did not say anything. She just stood there with her hands folded into her shawl and her dark eyes on Dale.

“I am going to take this to the Alpha,” Dale said. “I am going to tell him that a dead man’s knife has turned up in a co-op office where a border-warden keeps her papers, and I am going to let him decide what it means.” He put the knife back in his coat. “I am also going to tell him that his Gamma has been lying to him for two weeks. I do not have the proof of that yet, but I will. I have hunters on the line and a Council investigator in the territory and a wolf in the trees with an arm wound, and one of those three things is going to give me the proof I need by Sunday.” He put his hat on. “Good night, healer. Good night, Wren.”

He went out. The door closed. The pack truck started and went back down the ridge road and the sound of it went away into the snow.

Maeve let out a breath.

“That man,” she said, “is the worst thing this pack has ever produced.”

I went to the trapdoor and lifted it and Elias came up the steps with his face set.

“I heard,” he said.

“Of course you did.”

“The knife was in the co-op office.”

“It was in the drawer of the desk and I did not put it there.” I turned to Maeve. “Who else has a key to the co-op?”

“Harold,” Maeve said. “June. You. And there is a spare on a nail in the loading shed that half the county knows about.” She sat down at the table. “Wren. The knife is a message. He put it there and then he found it in front of witnesses and now he has a thing he can take to Harlan.”

“He did not put it there,” June said.

We all turned.

June was standing by the stove with her arms folded and her face white and her chin out.

“I put it there,” she said.

The kitchen was very quiet.

“You what?” I said.

“I put it there.” June’s voice was steady and her hands were not. “I found it in the tack room. In the box behind the board, under the coat, the night you went to the pack house and I could not sleep and I went down to the co-op and the barn was open.” She looked at me. “I found the coat and the scarf and the knife in the box behind the board and I took the knife and I put it in the desk drawer and I was going to tell you, and then the co-op burned and everything went wrong and I did not know who to tell.”

I sat down slowly.

“June,” I said. “That knife has been in a box in a barn for four months. It is the only thing in this county that ties Dale to the night Owen died. It was safe where it was. Nobody knew it was there. And you took it out and put it in a drawer where Dale could find it.”

“I know,” June said.

“Why?”

“Because I wanted him to be caught!” Her voice went up and then she stopped and put her hand over her mouth and when she took it away her eyes were wet. “I have been sitting in this co-op for two weeks making coffee for a man who killed our brother. I have been saying good morning to him. I have been writing his grain tickets. I wanted him to be caught and I thought if the knife was somewhere it could be found then somebody would find it and somebody would look at it and somebody would put it together.”

I got up and put my arms around her. She stood there stiff for a moment and then she put her face in my shoulder and cried.

“It is all right,” I said. “It is not all right, but we will fix it.”

“I made it worse.”

“You made it worse. And you did it for the right reason.” I pulled back and looked at her. “But you have to tell me everything now. No more half truths. No more hiding things because you think I will be angry. If I am going to keep this family alive until October I need to know where every knife in this county is and who is holding it.”

June wiped her face.

“There is one more thing,” she said.

“Of course there is.”

“I have been going down to the co-op at night,” June said. “Since the fire. I have been going down at night and sitting in the back room with the light off and listening to the yard because I thought if the person who burned it came back I would hear them.” She took a breath. “And two nights ago I heard a truck on the co-op road at two in the morning and it did not stop at the co-op. It went past it and up the mill road.”

“Who was in it?”

“I do not know. It was too dark to see.” She looked at me. “But it came back an hour later and it went toward the pack house and it was going slow, the way a truck goes when it is carrying something heavy in the back.”

Elias came and stood by the table.

“Two nights ago was the night before the new moon,” he said. “The night I ran to the circle. The night the rogues were in the clearing.”

“I know,” June said. “And there is one more thing. The truck had a mark on the door. I could not see it well but I saw it when it went past the co-op light. It was a circle with a line through it.”

Maeve’s head came up.

“The Luna’s mark,” she said.

“Or the founders’ mark,” I said. “They are the same shape. The founders used the old mark and put a line through it, and the Luna’s mark is the circle with two lines. From a distance in the dark you cannot tell the difference.”

“So it could be Dale,” June said. “Or it could be someone else.”

“It could be someone else,” I said. “There is a third person in this county with a truck and a mark on the door and a reason to be on the mill road at two in the morning, and we have been assuming it was Dale the whole time.” I looked at Elias. “You said the blood on the scarf was wolf blood and it was not Dale’s.”

“I said that.”

“And Dale is a wolf. If the blood on his own scarf is not his, then Dale was in that field with another wolf and that wolf bled on the scarf, and the only way a wolf bleeds on a man’s scarf is if the man cut him with something sharp.” I picked up my jacket. “We have been looking at this backwards. Dale is not the only wolf who has been lying to this pack.”

“Then who?” June said.

I put my jacket on and looked at the three of them in the kitchen with the stove ticking and the snow coming down outside.

“I do not know yet,” I said. “But I know where to look. There is a tack room in the pack house barn and a box behind a board and a knife that was taken out of it and a letter that was in the same box. And there is a mill with a false wall and a room under the loft that the founders used for something, and there is a man in this county who has been driving up the mill road at two in the morning with the founders’ mark on his truck.” I looked at Elias. “We go to the mill tomorrow. Before Dale has a chance to go back to the tack room and take the rest of what is in that box.”