Edgewise (23 page)

“But surely—”

“I'm sorry, Lily. The whole idea is very bad psychology. Apart from which, Kraussman Developments do not as a matter of principle make donations of any kind to anybody. The only charity which Kraussman Developments supports is Kraussman Developments—which is, me.”

“Philip—I believe that this could do you so much good. You've been thinking of standing for the city council, haven't you?”

Philip Kraussman shook his head. “You can't change my mind, Lily. The answer is no.”

She had promised Tasha and Sammy that she wouldn't leave them, but now she had no choice. She dropped them off three streets away, at the home of one of Tasha's school friends, Maris Halverson, promising to pick them up again by seven
P.M
.

John Shooks was waiting outside her house in his old black Buick, wearing his fur hat and his sunglasses. As she turned into the driveway, he climbed out and approached her.

“Mr. Shooks,” she said.

“Oh, I think you can start calling me John, don't you?”

“All right, then.” She glanced across the street at the protection officers. One of them was reading a newspaper and the other was asleep with his cap over his face.

“Did you get it?” asked Shooks, as she unlocked her front door.

“No. Philip Kraussman is adamant about it. He doesn't make philanthropic donations of any kind and, in particular, he refuses to give that piece of land to the Mdewakanton.

“In that case, Lily, you're in very deep shit.”

She closed the door, went straight through to the living room and opened the whiskey decanter on the bureau. “Do you want one?” she asked him.

“I've never been known to decline a drink. And you know why? Because there's no sure way of telling if it's going to be my last.”

She poured a large tumbler of Jack Daniel's for each of them, and sat in the button-back armchair close to the fire. “So what can I do now?”

Shooks knocked back his whiskey in one gulp. “Okay if I help myself to another? That might be my last, too.”

“Help yourself.” She leaned forward and gave the fire a prod with the poker. “What do you think would happen if I killed him?”

Shooks stopped in mid-pour. “You mean
George
?”

“Yes. Supposing I went after him and shot him?”

“Jesus. I don't know. I guess you'd end up in Shakopee Women's Prison. At least it doesn't have a fence around it, and the food's supposed to be pretty good.”

“I'm asking you if the Wendigo would still come after me.”

“Oh, for sure. You see, George has already honored his promise to the Wendigo by giving him a human sacrifice or three; and so the Wendigo will make darn sure that you honor your promise to George, even if you've blown George's brains out. And if you don't honor it, or
can't
, then you'll have to pay the price. It's a blood thing. A Native American thing. If you say you're going to give something to somebody, then you give it to them, no matter what, even if it's the most precious thing that you possess.”

“Maybe I could offer him an alternative piece of land.”

“Do you have one?”

“Not right now. But my friend Joan Sapke works part-time for the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council. She might be able to suggest someplace else . . . someplace that still has some sacred connotations for the Mdewakanton but doesn't happen to be right in the middle of a multimillion-dollar residential development.”

“I guess you could try. I can't think of anyplace offhand, but you could always suggest it.”

“You mean I should go
talk
to George?”

Shooks gave a one-shouldered shrug. “What other way is there?”

“That man slaughtered my sister and my brother-in-law and my fifteen-month-old nephew. It's as much as I can bear knowing that he's still living and breathing. How can I talk to him?”

“Because you have to.”

There was a very long silence between them. Then Shooks said, “Truly, Lily, you don't have any choice. The Wendigo will come for you, sooner or later, and it'll find you, no matter where you try to run.”

Lily looked up at him. “So—will you come with me?”

“I don't know, Lily. I don't want George to start thinking that I'm a white woman's pet poodle. There's a good chance that I'll need his help again in the future.”

“You'd ask him to raise up the Wendigo again, after everything that's happened?”

“Lily—I'm not a judge and I'm not a jury. I'm simply a guy who facilitates the finding of people that nobody else can find. Everything in life has to be paid for, one way or another.”

“But when you go to George Iron Walker, you know that people are going to get killed!—innocent people, some of them! How can you
live
with yourself?”

“It isn't easy, Lily, believe me. But don't forget how you felt when Jeff took your kids away from you, and those loony tunes from FLAME almost burned you to death. What I do—there's kind of a sort of justice to it, albeit a justice of the tooth-and-claw variety.”

“Oh God,” said Lily. “I really don't know what to do.”

John Shooks looked toward the window. “Snow's stopped. Sun's still shining. I don't mind driving you to Black Crow Valley. That's if you're game to do a deal with the devil.”

When they arrived at George Iron Walker's house, however, there was no sign of him, nor of Hazawin. George's Subaru Forester was parked outside, and its hood was covered in snow, so it obviously hadn't been driven anywhere recently. But when Shooks rapped at the door, there was no reply.

“George! It's John Shooks! Anybody home?”

Still no answer. Shooks turned to Lily and said, “Maybe they're sleeping. Or high. Sometimes they smoke this blood root, so that they can converse with the spirits or something. Makes you kind of horny, too.”

“George!”

Shooks tried the doorhandle, and the door was unlocked. He stepped inside and Lily cautiously followed him. The log fire was still smoldering in the hearth, and there were two half-empty coffee mugs on the table, so wherever George and Hazawin had gone to, they couldn't have been gone for very long.

Shooks went into the kitchen, and then he looked into the bathroom and the bedroom. Then he went back out on to the verandah and hoarsely shouted, “George! Hazawin!” But there was no reply, not even an echo. Only the faintest rustling of the wind among the pine trees, and the furtive dropping of little clumps of snow.

“This is strange,” said Lily. “Where do you think they are?”

“Went for a walk, maybe,” said Shooks.

“A
walk
?”

“Well, you know what George is like. He enjoys, like, communing with nature.”

“Doesn't he have a cell phone?”

“Sure, but I've never known him to answer it.”

They went back inside. “So what do we do now?” asked Lily.

Shooks picked up a half-empty bottle of whiskey from the bureau and read the label. “We could wait, I guess. Or leave him a note, and ask him to contact you.”

“I can't stay too long. Tasha and Sammy are expecting me home.”

“Okay, then. We'll give him thirty minutes, and if he doesn't show by then, we'll head back to the city.” He lifted the whiskey bottle. “Did you ever hear of Old Zebulon bourbon? No, neither did I. Do you want some?”

He went into the kitchen to find himself a glass. As he was coming back, however, Lily thought she heard something: a distant, high-pitched wailing. It was coming from outside somewhere, but the wind was blowing it down the chimney.

“I can never get the measure of that George Iron Walker,” Shooks was saying. “I can't decide if he's slicker than any white man, or more native than any native.”

“Ssh!” said Lily, raising her hand. “Listen!”

Shooks stopped talking and listened, cocking his head to one side. “Sorry . . . I don't hear nothing.”

“No . . . there it is again. Like a small child crying.”

She opened the front door and went out on to the verandah. Although the wind was beginning to rise, she could hear it much more distinctly out here. It was definitely a child. She had the impression that it was coming from the forest off to their right, up the slope where Hazawin had summoned the Wendigo.

“Yeah, I hear it now,” said Shooks, swallowing whiskey. “Mind you—it could be nothing but a raccoon caught in a trap. Raccoons can sound a whole lot like babies, when they're distressed.”

Lily said, “Ssh.” The crying went on and on, with occasional pauses for breath. “That's not a raccoon. That's a child. Not too far away, either.”

Shooks stared at her. “What are you thinking, Lily? You're not thinking the same as I'm thinking, are you?”

“William,”
said Lily.

John Shooks said, “If the Highway Patrol couldn't find your sister's baby in the truck, or anywheres in the vicinity, then I guess it's
possible
the Wendigo took him.”

They were only halfway up the slope toward the forest but already he was seriously out of breath. Lily was ten yards ahead of him, bounding through the knee-deep snow with her arms flailing to keep her balance.

“Question is,” John Shooks panted, “
why
did it take him?”

“To put more pressure on me—that's my guess. George Iron Walker must have known that I'd come back here, if I couldn't give him the land at Mystery Lake.”

They had reached the tree line now. Lily stopped again, and listened, and now there was no question that a child was crying somewhere in the forest, less than a hundred yards away. The crying was quavering and hysterical, interspersed with agonized gasps for breath. Lily was sure it was William.

“William!” she shouted out.
“William!”

“Not too sure it's advisable for us to advertise our presence,” said Shooks, catching up with her.

“He wants that land,” said Lily. “He may put pressure on me, but I don't think he'll hurt me while he still believes I can get it for him.”

“Hmm—glad
you're
so confident about it.”

The crying seemed to be coming from the clearing where Hazawin had laid out her bones and her mirror. Lily pushed her way through the briars and the tangled branches until she came out in the open. The huge rock in the center of the clearing was covered in snow, and there was no sign of a child anywhere. Lily looked up. Above the tops of the pine trees the sky was so intensely blue that it was almost purple.

John Shooks joined her, tugging at a briar that had snagged his sleeve. He circled around the rock, and then he said, “It's stopped.”

He was right. The forest was quiet again.

Lily crossed over to the other side of the clearing and shouted, “William! Can you hear me? It's Lily! Call out if you can hear me!”

Nothing. Only the wind, and the nervous rattling of the branches.

Shooks said, “Could have been a ghost voice. Hazawin can do stuff like that—make you hear things that ain't really there. Kind of like ventriloquistics.”

“William!” Lily persisted. “It's Aunt Lily! Where are you, William?”

Still nothing. Shooks said, “Maybe we'd best get back to the house.”

“William!”

Shooks took hold of her elbow. “Come on, Lily. I don't like this one iota.”

“But we heard him! We both heard him! He must be here!”

“I know we both heard him. But like I say, Hazawin can do things that'll make you believe that day is night or your dead grandpa's talking to you from inside your closet.”

Lily stayed where she was, straining to hear that crying again. She felt desperate. She knew that Shooks was probably right, and that George Iron Walker was tricking her, but she felt so guilty about what had happened to William that she couldn't bear to abandon him a second time, if there was any chance at all that he were here.

“Come on, Lily,” said Shooks, more gently this time.

“All right,” she agreed, and allowed him to take hold of her arm and lead her back around the rock.

As they reached the trees, however, she heard a sharp rustling noise, and then a quick pattering of feet. She turned around, and Shooks turned around, too. There was another rustle, and the crackling of broken branches.

Out of the trees, an enormous brindled wolf appeared, with shaggy fur and luminous yellow eyes. Its long gray tongue was lolling between its teeth, and its breath was smoking. It stood less than thirty feet away from them, staring at them.

“Oh . . . shit,” said Shooks.

Lily heard more branches breaking, off to her right. Another wolf appeared, long and gray; and then another, and another. They came through the trees and stood in a circle, like a gathering of ghosts. Lily guessed that there were more than a dozen of them.

“This is seriously fucking awkward,” Shooks told her.

“You said that wolves didn't attack people.”

“Not so far as anybody knows.”

“What makes you think that these wolves are any different?”

“These wolves set a trap for us, didn't they? What kind of a wolf can do that?”

They waited. Lily's heart was thumping underneath her fur coat. She looked from one wolf to the other, trying to decide if they were going to go for them or not. The wolves kept their distance, endlessly panting,
huh-huh-huh-huh,
but not showing any signs of going away.

“Let's try edging back toward the trees,” Lily suggested.

“Edging?”

“A couple of steps at a time. No sudden moves. If wolves are frightened of humans, if they
really
don't attack people, then we should be okay.”

Shooks pulled a face. “Okay. I guess we can't stay here for the rest of the day.”