Edgewise (22 page)

She called Ned's parents, John and Matilda. Two women from the children's welfare services had picked up Petra and Jamie from school and driven them to Shingle Creek, so that their grandpa and their grandma could take care of them. Matilda said, “Poor kids . . . they've been sobbing their hearts out ever since they got here.” All that Petra and Jamie had been told so far was that their parents had died in a highway accident, and that their little brother was missing—although they had to be prepared for the probability that he was dead too.

As Lily was stirring the soup, a picture of the crushed Explorer was flashed up on the local TV news, but Sammy was sitting with his head resting listlessly on the table, and she was able to reach the remote and switch channels before he saw it.

She had taken the phone off the hook, too, because she guessed that reporters would be calling, as well as friends and well-wishers. This evening they needed nothing but warmth, togetherness and peace.

Tasha appeared in the kitchen doorway. Her cheeks were still blotchy with tears.

“Tasha?”

When she spoke, Tasha's voice was trembly but accusing. “You know what it was, don't you, Mommy? That thing that killed Aunt Agnes and Uncle Ned.”

Sammy took his thumb out of his mouth. “I saw its face. It had
two
faces. It was like a dog. Then it was like a horrible man.”

Lily switched off the soup. “I
do
know what it was, yes. It was trying to stop us from reaching the airport.”

“Is it a ghost?” asked Sammy.

“In a way, yes. A kind of a ghost. When your daddy took you away, we couldn't find you anywhere, so I asked this ghost to go looking for you.”

“You did
what
?”

As simply as she could, she told them about John Shooks and George Iron Walker and Hazawin, and how she had asked them to summon up the Wendigo.

“I don't believe you,” said Tasha. “There's no such thing as a Wendigo. How can there be?”

“Yes, there is, Tasha. You saw it for yourself. You saw what it can do. I'm so sorry for what's happened, you don't have any idea. I wish to the bottom of my heart that I'd never heard about it. Even if I had never been able to find you again, at least your father would still be alive, and so would Aunt Agnes and Uncle Ned and little William.”

“But if it's true—why haven't you told the police?”

“I could. But do you think that they'd believe me? George Iron Walker would say that I was making it all up, and he'd
still
send the Wendigo after us. There's only one way out of this, sweetheart, and that's for me to give him his piece of land.”

Tasha sat down next to Sammy. “It's like having a nightmare,” she said. “I keep thinking that I'm going to wake up and none of it ever happened.”

Sammy declared, “I'm never going to go to sleep, ever again.”

As it was, they all slept until well past eight the next morning. During the night it had been snowing again, and the neighborhood was eerily muffled.

“I'm going to see Philip Kraussman this morning,” said Lily, as she poured out their Lucky Charms. “Bennie might have been too scared to ask him for that land, but I'm not.”

“You're not going to leave us here alone?” asked Tasha.

“I'm not going to leave you alone for a single
second,
sweetheart—not until this is all over.”

Tasha and Sammy were still eating their cereal when the doorbell chimed. Standing on the doorstep stamping their feet were Special Agents Rylance and Kellogg, and Dr. Flaurus, too.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Have you found William?”

“Not yet, I'm afraid,” said Special Agent Rylance. “But the police have more than a hundred officers and deputies out looking for him, as well as who knows how many volunteers. Is it okay if we come in? We asked Dr. Flaurus to come along, in case we need to talk to the kids.”

“Okay. Can I offer you some coffee?”

“No—no, thanks. We really need to discuss one or two things with you. We have to get some kind of perspective on this.”

Lily took them into the living room. “I hope you're not going to take long. Tasha and Sammy are very upset.”

“Well, that's understandable,” said Special Agent Rylance. “But the thing of it is, there have now been four or possibly five deaths associated with you and your children, not to mention the killing of your dog. All of these deaths have been brutal in the extreme, involving violent dismemberment and the disappearance of body parts. Not only that: all of them have occurred in circumstances that are not only inexplicable but—at first sight—downright impossible.”

Special Agent Kellogg tugged off his black knitted hat. “We've had a preliminary report from the State Highway Patrol technicians, and they're of the opinion that the vehicle you were traveling in yesterday was not involved in any kind of moving collision—either with another vehicle, or an animal, or any roadside structure or traffic sign. They said that the damage could only have been caused by something similar to an automobile crusher of the type used in commercial scrap yards.

“Except that your brother-in-law's vehicle was right slapbang in the middle of I-35W, and the nearest commercial scrap yards are in Frogtown, in St. Paul.”

“I don't know what happened,” said Lily. “The vehicle just collapsed.”

“But then there's also the question of the human remains,” said Special Agent Rylance. Lily thought that he was looking very old today, and very tired, with flat, papery wrinkles under his eyes. “I don't want to disturb you by going into too much detail, but your sister and your brother-in-law were taken apart in much the same way as your late husband and the man who was killed at the FLAME office. What little we found of them was strewn along the highway and across nearby fields. We found your sister's left hand caught on a razor-wire fence more than two miles away.”

Lily slowly sat down on the couch. She felt as if she were someone else altogether. “They went through the windshield,” she said, so quietly that Special Agent Rylance had to lean forward and say, “Excuse me?”

“They went through the windshield. That's all I saw.”

“But you'd agree that the way they died bears remarkable similarities to the way your former husband died? And this time we can't even blame seagulls or pelicans for carrying their remains away. Something flew off with them, and I mean
flew
because we found no footprints in the snow around your brother-in-law's vehicle and no footprints or snowmobile tracks across the fields.

“Whatever took 'em, Mrs. Blake, it must have carried them through the air.”

“I can't think what it could have been. A crow, of some kind? I just don't know.”

“A crow,” repeated Special Agent Rylance, clearly unconvinced.

Special Agent Kellogg sat down beside her. “You told the officers on protection duty that you were going shopping to Calhoun Square. Can you explain what you were doing heading southward on I-35W, in the opposite direction?”

“We changed our minds. We decided to go to the Mall of America instead.”

“Okay, then there's one only more thing we want to ask you about. You know that old barn you took us to, at Sibley's End?”

Lily looked at him warily.

“That barn fell down about a week ago. Well, ‘fell down' isn't quite accurate. At first the city council thought it was simply the weight of snow on the roof. But a local conservationist who examined the site said that the building had been literally ripped apart—forcibly disassembled, joint by joint. Said he'd never seen anything like it. There was an article about it in the paper.”

“I don't know what you want me to say.”

Special Agent Rylance said, “All I want to know is: can you think of any way in which these events might be connected? I strongly believe that there
is
a connection. I believe that there's an explanation, too. But right now I'm darned if I know what it could possibly be.”

“I wish I could help you.”

“Yes, Mrs. Blake. I wish you could, too.”

Dr. Flaurus went into the kitchen and spent a few minutes with Tasha and Sammy, but when she came out again she shook her head. “I don't want to push them any further. They've seen more horrible things than most people see in a lifetime. Maybe I can come back in a few days' time.”

“Sure,” said Lily.

The agents left. They said nothing more, but Lily had the uncomfortable feeling that they suspected her of knowing much more than she had been prepared to tell them—which, of course, was true.

She told Tasha and Sammy to put on their sweaters and their coats, and they left the house. The sun had come out, and the snow was so bright that Lily had to put on her sunglasses. She went across the road to tell the protection officers where they were going, and then she climbed into her Rainier and they headed for Edina.

“That woman asked her if we'd seen anything strange,” said Tasha.

“So what did you tell her?”

“I said no, we were too frightened to look.”

“You could have told her the truth.”

“No. She wouldn't have believed us, would she?”

Lily drove through the slushy streets to West Seventy-Seventh and parked outside the maroon brick offices of Kraussman Developments, which stood on the curving corner with Park Lawn Avenue. Inside the reception area, with its glossy marble-effect floor and its potted yuccas, she went up to the receptionist and asked to see Philip Kraussman. “Tell him it's Lily Blake, from Concord Realty. Just a social call, really.”

They sat and waited for twenty minutes on a curvy maroon couch, flicking through magazines and listening to syrupy interpretations of Frank Sinatra hits, until Philip Kraussman came bustling down the stainless-steel staircase. He was a short, bull-headed man with cropped silver hair, a bulbous nose, and a very deep suntan. He was wearing a shiny gray shirt with a shiny red necktie, and gray pants that were two sizes too tight for him.

“Lily! Good to see you! Sorry I kept you waiting!” He grasped her hand and gave her a kiss on both cheeks. “These are your kids?”

“Tasha, Sammy—say hello to Mr. Kraussman.”

“Hi, Tasha! Hi, Sammy! They're great kids! You must be so pleased to have gotten them back.” He took hold of Lily's arm and lowered his voice. “I heard about the circumstances, and you have my condolences for that. Are the FBI any closer to finding out who did it?”

“Not yet. They're not even sure if it was a who or a
what
.”

“You mean some kind of an
animal
attack? Like an alligator?”

“They don't know yet.”

“Well, I'm still very sorry. Listen, I'm so glad you dropped by! But was there anything special you wanted to talk about? I'm pretty pushed for time right now.”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Can you give me just two or three minutes?”

“Okay . . . do you want some coffee? Kids—how about a soda? Nancy? Would you bring these two lovely young people a Dr. Pepper or something?”

Philip Kraussman steered Lily to a couch underneath the staircase. “So . . . what can I do for you?”

“It's Mystery Lake . . .”

“Mystery Lake! You bet! Mystery Lake! That whole development is going to make us a small fortune, believe me. My planners told me this morning that we can probably fit in at least three more units without in any way compromising that ‘superior abode' feeling—subtly raise a couple of sightlines, trim a few inches off a driveway here and there.”

“Well, that's terrific news,” said Lily. “But I've been doing some background research on Mystery Lake.”

“Background research? Meaning what, exactly? Hey—you haven't found any soil pollution, have you? I don't want a repetition of that Boulder Bridge fiasco.”

“No, no. I'm talking about
history
. I wanted to give our potential buyers a feeling of time and heritage . . . I don't know—a feeling of continuity with the past. So many of these prestige communities feel the same, don't they? They're beautifully landscaped, they're very high-quality build; but they're isolated from their surroundings—not so much geographically as socially.”

“Lily—that's why people buy these properties. They
want
to be isolated from their surroundings. Socially, most of all.”

“But Mystery Lake used to be a Sioux encampment before they were all driven south of the river, and it was a very sacred place.”

Philip Kraussman let out a sharp bark of amusement. “Don't tell me it's going to turn out like that
Poltergeist
movie, and all the houses are going to collapse into some ancient Indian burial pit.”

“No—nothing like that. But that spit of land on the western side of the boat marina, where you're going to be constructing the jetty—that was the place where a great Native American god made his appearance and told the Mdewakanton that they would soon lose their lands to the white man. I was thinking that if Kraussman Developments were to donate that spit of land to the Native American community, as a kind of memorial—maybe if you put up some kind of plaque or statue or piece of sculpture—that would give Mystery Lake a real sense of magic.”

“Magic?” Philip Kraussman frowned at Lily as if the word completely baffled him.
“Magic?”

“Absolutely. It would create a fascinating feature on the lake shore, a real talking-point. But more than that, it would make you look like a developer who cares about local people and local culture.”

Philip Kraussman thoughtfully squeezed his nose between finger and thumb.

“No,” he said, at last.

“It would make a really memorable promotion.”

“No, you're wrong. It wouldn't. The kind of people who are going to buy property at Mystery Lake are not at all sympathetic to Native Americans. They associate them with alcoholism, drugs, gaming, and all kinds of antisocial behavior. Apart from that, why should anyone who's just paid two-point-six million dollars want a constant reminder that the original owners of the land on which they're now sitting were forcibly dispossessed, without any compensation, and even
killed
for it? You see, Lily—I
do
know a little local history.”