Windigo Island (17 page)

“What did you do then?” Jenny asked.

“Hit our spotlight, swung it all over that wild water. She wasn’t anywhere. I screamed at J.B. that we had to find her. I hollered to the other guys belowdecks, and we got to it. We hit the engine and sailed all over that lake in that wind. We never found her.”

“You didn’t notify the Coast Guard?”

“I wanted to, but J.B. forbid it. ‘The scandal,’ he kept saying.”

“She was beaten before she died. Did you know that?” Jenny said.

“Oh, God.” He seemed genuinely devastated. “I didn’t.”

“What happened to Mariah?” Jenny asked.

“Mariah?”

“The other girl.”

“Oh, her. She called herself Candi. When we sailed back to Barker’s Island Marina, some guy met us there and took her away.”

“What did the guy look like?” Cork asked, taking up the questioning for a while.

Wesley shrugged. “Big.”

“Indian?”

“Didn’t look Indian.”

“How was she doing? Mariah?”

“Upset. Real upset.”

“Did she know what happened?”

“Yeah. She was on deck when we were cutting back and forth trying to find her friend.”

“It was J.B. who arranged for the girls, right?”

“Right.”

“And you don’t have any idea who he contacted?”

“No. It’s not the kind of thing I do. Ever.”

“Has J.B. sailed to Duluth before?”

“Every other year for the Grand Superior.”

“So if this is the kind of thing he does, he’s probably done it here before.”

“I don’t know. This was the first time my family was away during the race, the first time he’d invited me on his little pleasure excursion. I didn’t know it was going to be that kind of outing. Honest to God, I didn’t.”

Cork sat back, studied Wesley, then said, “Okay, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to contact your boss and do your level best to get out of John Boone Turner the name of his contact in Duluth who arranged for the girls. And you’re going to do that without tipping him off to what’s going on here. Understand?”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“You’re a smart man, Simon. You’ll think of something. I need that information this afternoon. If you get it, I’ll make sure that when all this is in the hands of the police and breaks to the media—and it will, big-time—you’ll be the one bright spot in the whole shitty mess.”

“You can do that?” His eyes lit up, as if he was treading water in the middle of an empty sea and had suddenly spotted a life raft.

“I can do that,” Cork promised. “But John Boone Turner goes down.”

Wesley took a deep breath, looked away from us, let it out. “This’ll ruin him.”

“A girl’s dead, Simon,” Cork shot back. “She was beaten, and probably she jumped from that sailboat to get away from the man who was beating her. Hell, yes, his life is ruined. And, hell yes, it ought to be. But you? You can still salvage something if you do the right thing now.”

Jenny’s father stood, and she with him. He pulled out his wallet and plucked a card from it, which he laid on the desk. “Call my cell when you have what I need.” Jenny turned to leave, but her father wasn’t quite finished. “If you get cold feet, or if you think there’s some way you might still weasel your way out of this, there isn’t.”

He took from his shirt pocket the small tape recorder they’d purchased at the same time they’d bought the camera.

“I have your full confession on tape, Simon. I own your ass.”

They walked out, leaving Simon Wesley in his office, alone, staring out across the vast blue of Lake Superior and probably seeing nothing on the horizon but the end of his world.

Chapter 30

T
he sun was hot, the day sultry, the tourists on Canal Park Drive as busy and numerous as flies on a carcass. It was Friday afternoon. Only the previous Sunday, Daniel English had come to Tamarack County seeking help, but it seemed to Jenny like a good deal more time had passed than just five days, and she felt, too, that somehow they had all gone a great distance, though they weren’t really far from home and never had been. She missed her son. She missed the routine of Sam’s Place. She missed, in a sad and selfish way, the naïveté of her life in Tamarack County before that week. When they’d all risked their lives for little Waaboozoons, she thought she’d seen the darkest of spirits. But the more she learned about the world that Mariah Arceneaux and Carrie Verga and Raven Duvall were caught up in, the more she realized she was still just standing at the threshold to all the twisted corridors that wound their way through the human heart.

Her father was unusually quiet as they drove back from their meeting with Simon Wesley. His jaw worked and his face was held tense, as if he were chewing on something hard and bitter. She didn’t know what to say. She was thinking they were making headway. Although they still didn’t have Mariah safely in their grasp, they’d answered a lot of questions about her disappearance and knew much of the truth behind Carrie Verga’s death. That seemed like progress. But she watched her father’s hands choking the steering wheel, and she had the feeling she sometimes did
when the sky above Tamarack County filled with clouds that were sick green and she listened for the tornado sirens.

Her father had always been a complicated man who seldom shared what went on deep inside him. Her mother had been the viaduct, the way internal knowledge had flowed from him to his children and from them to him. With her death, that natural channeling had ended, and they’d had to try to create something new. It wasn’t always easy or infallible, and they weren’t always on the same page, but what she realized was that at the heart of it was trust. Trust had always been there. And trust meant love. And love was the wolf to feed. So whatever was going on with her father, she told herself to trust that it was necessary for him, necessary for the way he worked, and she didn’t push or pry.

They hadn’t eaten since breakfast. They bought sandwiches at a deli on the way to the hotel and ate them quickly. At the hotel, they gathered with the others in the room that Jenny shared with Louise, and Cork filled them in on what they’d learned from Wesley.

“You didn’t call the cops on him?” Louise said at the end. She sat on her bed, her back pillowed against the wall, her legs covered with the white bedspread. Her hands were balled into angry fists. “Him or his boss or those other bastards on that boat? You didn’t call the cops on them?”

Jenny’s father stood at the window, dark against the light beyond the glass pane. “We need one more thing from him before he turns himself in,” he said.

“What?” Louise shot back.

“The name of whoever put Carrie and Mariah into the hands of a man like John Boone Turner. That name and a way to contact him. When we have that, I’ll tell Simon Welsey to turn himself in to the police.”

“Turn himself in? How the hell are you going to make him do that?”

“We hold all the cards, Louise. Or at least he believes we do. Most especially, we have his confession captured here.” Cork held up the tape recorder.

“What if he can’t get what you want from Turner?” Daniel asked. He’d turned a chair around and sat with his arms draped across the back. “Worse, suppose he tips off these guys, and they all go underground, including this Windigo.”

“The men on the
Montcalm
won’t run,” Cork said. “They’re too visible. They have lives they can’t just drop and leave. They’ll fight it, but in the end they’ll go down. Windigo?” He cupped his hand like the claw of a raptor. “I’ve almost got him. I can feel it.”

Jenny saw Henry Meloux studying her father. His eyes were dark and intent, but he said nothing.

Her cell phone rang. She checked the display. The call was coming from Nishiime House.

“Jenny, it’s Bea Abbiss. I need you to come here as soon as you can.”

“Just me?”

“Maybe you should all come.”

“What is it?”

“Just come. You’ll understand when you get here.”

“We’re on our way,” Jenny said. “Ten minutes.”

“What is it?” Louise asked. “Is it about Mariah?”

“I don’t know,” Jenny said. “That was Bea Abbiss. She wants us at Nishiime House, all of us. Now.”

They took both vehicles and parked in front of the old brownstone. There was no one at the reception desk. The place felt deserted.

“Bea?” Jenny called into the silence.

They heard the boards on the second floor creak under the weight of someone’s passage. All their heads turned toward the top of the stairway that led up from the reception area. A rhomboid of sunlight from a west-facing window fell on the wall there, pale yellow against the brown paneling. A sudden shadow cut the light in half, and Jenny felt a shiver of terrible anticipation run down her back. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then Gina, the young woman with cotton candy hair and the
long facial scar, appeared. She looked shattered, as if someone had struck her a blow. “Lock the door,” she said.

Daniel stepped back and did just that.

“Up here.” She motioned them to follow.

They went slowly, the stairway difficult for Louise and her peg leg and crutch. Both Daniel and Jenny helped. Cork went ahead. Meloux patiently brought up the rear. The sunlight through the window on the landing was intense, and Jenny found herself blinded as she mounted the stairs. She had no idea what they were walking into, but every indication at this point was that they were about to enter one of those dark corridors of the human heart she was becoming more and more acquainted with. Anishinaabe blood flowed in her veins. She’d been raised a stone’s throw from reservation life, where poverty and violence were so often a normal part of life. And yet, she understood how shielded she’d been from the darkest realities, the kind that drove Mariahs and Carries and Ravens into the arms of men like Windigo and his brother. These were fearful steps she was taking, but she understood this was a journey that, for her, was long overdue.

At the top of the stairway, they turned right down a short, ill-lit corridor, and then they followed the young woman through an open doorway. It was a room with several beds, little more than cots. All the beds were empty save one. On that narrow mattress lay Raven Duvall, a girl now barely recognizable because of the bruising and distortion of her face. Her eyes were closed, and Jenny wasn’t certain if it was voluntary or simply that she couldn’t open them because the sockets were so swollen. Her lips were ragged, lopsided balloons. She was wearing the purple Vikings jersey she’d worn that morning when she’d met them in the rose garden of Erikson Park. The jersey was torn and darkened by what Jenny was certain was blood. Two emotions fought inside her. One was a deep, painful empathy for the battered young woman lying helpless on the bed. The other was a terrible, searing guilt because she knew why Raven was there in that horrible condition.

Bea Abbiss sat in a chair at bedside. In her right hand, she held a folded washcloth that had once been white but was now a mottle of red hues. She said, “Sparkle showed up an hour ago, like this. She was barely able to walk. We got her up here, and then I called you.”

“You’ve called 911,” Daniel said.

She shook her head. “Sparkle wouldn’t let me. She’d have to tell the truth about this, and she doesn’t want to do that.”

Jenny understood. “She’s afraid worse would happen to her.”

Bea nodded. “And her family.”

“Windigo did this?” Cork’s voice was like lava, hot and seething.

Raven’s head moved a little on the pillow, a shake indicating
No.
She managed a whisper: “His brother.”

“She needs medical attention,” Daniel said.

Raven gave a small gasp. “No. They ask questions.” Her deformed lips barely moved. “He’d find me. Hurt me, my family. Kill us, maybe.”

“We could take her to Tamarack County,” Jenny’s father said. “She’d be safe, and we could get someone to look at her there.”

“No-o-o.”
A hiss from Raven, like air escaping.

“I know a place, closer,” Bea said. “A clinic near the Fond du Lac Reservation. They’ve helped us out in the past, discreetly.”

“I can’t see anybody,” Raven moaned. “He’ll find out. If he can’t get me, he’ll go after my family.”

Louise touched Jenny’s arm and said, “Help me down.” She gave Daniel her crutch, and Jenny gave her a hand as she knelt beside Raven. “Sweetie, it’s Louise Arceneaux.” She leaned close and spoke gently. “We’re going to help you. We’re going to keep you safe. And we’re going to keep your family safe, I promise.”

Louise looked up at Cork for confirmation.

He said, “I swear to you, Raven, no one will lay a finger on you again or your family.”

“He’s a good man,” Louise said, as if speaking to a small child. “You can trust him.”

Then Meloux was beside the bed. In a voice that would have calmed an angry sea, he said to Raven, “You are safe now, granddaughter. You are safe. No one will hurt you anymore. No one will hurt your family. This, I promise.” He laid his old hand, steadier than Jenny had seen in a very long time, upon her heart. “Say to me, ‘I am safe.’”

She didn’t respond. She lay still as death, and Jenny wondered if perhaps her ordeal had finally overwhelmed her and she’d passed out.

“Say to me, ‘I am safe,’” Meloux gently repeated.

Jenny saw tears leak from Raven’s swollen eyes. Her chest trembled. She caught her breath. At last she whispered, “I am safe.”

“Say these words to yourself again and again, granddaughter, like a prayer. They are only words to you now. You do not believe them yet, but they are true. As long as we are with you, you will not be harmed. This is my promise. Our promise.”

“And I’ll promise this, too,” Cork said. “The man who did this to you will pay.”

Jenny looked at him. Her father had many faces, most of them shaped and colored by love, because he was a good and loving man. But the face he wore at that moment was like none she’d ever seen before. He meant, Jenny was certain, to offer Raven Duvall some hope of justice, but what she saw there scared her, and she was afraid that if Raven opened her eyes and saw it, too, she might be frightened enough that she would forget the healing mantra Henry Meloux had offered her.

• • •

Bea Abbiss made the call.

Cork’s Explorer had three rows of seats. He folded down the back row into a flat storage area. He took a mattress from one of the cots in Nishiime House, spread it in the empty place he’d created, and dropped a pillow there. Daniel carried Raven down the stairs of the brownstone, cradling her in his strong arms with
great tenderness. He laid her on the mattress carefully, in a way that struck Jenny as deeply caring, and she looked at the big, quiet Shinnob, seeing again his goodness. He was not particularly handsome, yet he was, at that moment, profoundly attractive. Even if he did like Hemingway.

Raven didn’t protest. Either she was too deep into her pain and exhaustion to care or she’d accepted—even if she didn’t necessarily believe them yet—the promises that had been made.

They stood on the street with Bea.

“Find yourself a safe place,” Cork advised her. “Until I’ve dealt with Windigo.”

“You have my number,” she said. “Call me when she’s been seen, okay?”

“That’s a promise,” Jenny replied.

They found the clinic just west of Cloquet, half an hour’s drive from Nishiime House. It wasn’t what Jenny had expected. It sat off the road in a stand of birch trees with its back to the St. Louis River. There were two parts: a nice log home and, next to it, a substantial business-looking structure sided in white aluminum. The sign over the door of the aluminum building read “Rollie’s Large Animal Clinic.” A wisp of a woman in jeans and a blue work shirt met them in the gravel parking lot. She introduced herself as Lenora Downfeather.

“You’re a vet?” Cork said.

“No, that would be my husband, Rollie. I’m a physician’s assistant. I work for health services on the rez. Where’s the girl?”

“Here,” Cork said and lifted the rear hatch on his Explorer.

Lenora Downfeather leaned inside and got right down to business. After a quick preliminary look, she said, “We’ll need a gurney. My husband’s in the clinic. Tell him what you want.”

Daniel went inside and came out with a gurney and another Shinnob, who introduced himself as Roland Downfeather. “Rollie to folks around here,” he said. He wheeled the gurney to the back of the Explorer. “How’s she look, Lennie?”

“We’ll need some X-rays.”

“I’ll get things set up,” Rollie said.

Daniel and Jenny’s father lifted Raven out of the vehicle, onto the gurney, and wheeled her inside. The waiting room, like the parking lot, was empty.

“Rollie cleared his schedule when Bea called,” Lenora explained. “In this kind of situation, we don’t need folks asking questions and spreading the word on the rez telegraph. You all stay here while Rollie and I get the X-rays and I do an examination.”

She wheeled Raven down a short corridor and into a room.

Jenny sat down, and the others took seats as well, all except her father, who prowled the waiting area as if it were a cage.

“What now, Dad?” she asked.

“As soon as we can, we ask Raven where to find the man who did this to her.”

“And go after him?”

“I made her a promise,” Cork said.

What Jenny saw in his eyes was more than a desire to keep a promise. What she saw there looked very much like murder.

It was almost an hour before Rollie Downfeather returned and said that they could talk to Raven now, but to keep it limited in time and to one or two visitors at most. Cork went first, and Jenny said, “I’d like to come, too.”

Her father made no objection.

Lenora met them in the corridor. She explained that despite how bad Raven looked, the X-rays had shown no evidence of broken bones or internal bleeding. She’d given the girl something to help with the pain, which Raven would probably be experiencing for quite a while. She said it would be all right to talk to her but to take it easy.