Windigo Island (2 page)

“Daniel English,” Cork said. “That name’s familiar to me.”

English said, “We’ve met before.”

“Oh?”

“I was ten,” English said. “Visiting Uncle Henry with my mother. You dropped by.”

“Eudora English,” Cork said, remembering. “You were Danny then, and smaller.”

“You were in a sheriff’s uniform and wore a gun. I was afraid of you.”

“The uniform went a while ago. Same with the gun,” Cork told him. “This is my daughter Jenny.”

English hesitated when Cork’s daughter reached out, an awkward move. When he finally took her hand, which was small in his own, he did it with care, as if afraid he might break her fingers.

“Henry’s really your uncle?” Jenny asked. Because on the rez, sometimes familial titles were bestowed though no blood connection was involved. People of a certain age were all cousins, and to them the next generation were uncles or aunts, and above them were grandmothers and grandfathers. To the Ojibwe, traditionally, the community
was
family.

Meloux spoke up to clarify. “He is the son of my sister’s granddaughter.”

“My nephew,” Rainy said.

Cork noted that the clothing English wore was dry, but he could see no rain gear, which made him think that the man had been there awhile, before the storm broke. A good deal of talking had probably gone on, and whatever it was they’d discussed was probably the reason for Rainy’s call. Cork was deeply interested in that reason and in why Rainy’s voice had been so urgent. But the Anishinaabeg never rushed anything, and so he resigned himself to patience.

Rainy poured coffee for the two new visitors, and Meloux suggested they smoke together. From a cupboard, he pulled a cedar box that held a small leather pouch and a pipe that was, Cork knew, carved from stone quarried at a site in southwestern Minnesota sacred to many tribes in the upper Midwest. Henry filled the bowl, but before he lit the tobacco, he took a pinch and made an offering of gratitude to the spirits of each cardinal direction. They passed the pipe and smoked in silence and listened to the rain, and then Henry said, “There is trouble, Corcoran O’Connor. Trouble in my family.”

Chapter 3

H
enry Meloux sat at the table he’d made himself from birchwood long, long ago. Cork sat across from him. The chairs were birchwood, too, also of Meloux’s construction. The old man slid a photograph across the tabletop. Cork lifted and studied it. A shot of a body, a girl’s body, naked except for a pair of pale blue panties. She lay facedown on a rocky shoreline, her torso draped over broken rock. Everything below her waist was in water so clear it obscured nothing. Her arms were thrust out above her, as if she’d clawed her way to that place, crawled as far out of the water as she possibly could before she gave up the ghost. Her dark hair lay splayed across her shoulders and back. There were dark discolorations along her ribs—bruises. She was small. And young. There was no perspective, really, that told Cork her age. He simply sensed it. What he was looking at, he knew, was the body of girl still not quite a woman. Now she would never be.

“Her name,” Daniel English said, “is Carrie Verga. She’s Bad Bluff Chippewa, from near Bayfield in Wisconsin. Ran away from home a year ago. No one’s seen her since. Then last week, her body washed up on a small island in Lake Superior near the Bad Bluff Reservation. Some boys who were out there to paint graffiti found her.”

“I read about that in the
News Tribune
,” Cork said. “Is she family?”

“No,” English replied. “But when she left Bayfield, she didn’t
leave alone. A girl named Mariah Arceneaux went with her. She’s family. My cousin.”

And so kin to both Rainy and Meloux. Cork understood Rainy well, and understood now the urgency in her voice when she’d called him to come to Crow Point. But the ancient Mide was an enigma in so many ways. He was a man whose life was dedicated to the healing of others, yet he’d chosen to spend it in solitude far from any community. People sought him out, but he seldom went seeking others. He had family, but they’d been scattered to the winds long ago. When they were children, he and his two sisters had been taken from the Iron Lake Reservation and forced to go to Indian schools, odd nomenclature for places whose primary purpose was to drive everything Native out of their charges. Meloux had been sent to Flandreau, South Dakota. His sisters went to the government boarding school on the Lac du Flambeau Reservation in Wisconsin. Meloux had simply walked away from the Flandreau school one day and returned to Iron Lake. His sisters had stayed in Wisconsin, married, and created many additional branches in the family tree. As far as Cork knew, Meloux seldom saw them. But Cork also knew that Meloux’s idea of family had nothing to do with blood or tribal affiliation or skin color. Anyone who came to him in need and with an honest heart was kin. Still, looking at the old man’s face, Cork could see nothing there. Not concern, compassion, even interest.

Jenny stared over her father’s shoulder at the photograph. “She’s just a kid.”

“Fourteen now,” English said. “Same age as my cousin.”

“Has anyone heard from your cousin?” Cork asked.

English shook his head.

Cork looked at the photograph again. “How did she die?”

“Drowned. But the medical examiner found heroin in her system.”

“She didn’t OD?”

“No. Her lungs were full of lake water. A drowning.”

“Whose jurisdiction?” Cork asked.

“Bayfield County. The sheriff’s department there is in charge of the investigation. They’re calling it an accidental drowning, saying the heroin was a contributing factor.”

Cork heard the stone in English’s voice. “You don’t buy that.”

“There’s more to it.”

“What would that be?”

“I don’t know. I just know there is.”

“And you know this how?”

“Call it instinct.”

Cork couldn’t keep the smile from his lips. “You’re a cop.”

“Game warden. Wisconsin DNR.”

“Guess my uniform didn’t scare you too much,” Cork said.

Jenny broke in. “So, what exactly are you doing here, Daniel?”

She stood in the gray light that came through the west window of the little cabin, her blond hair damp and dismal-looking.

Daniel English eyed her a long time before answering. “Louise—that’s my mother’s cousin—is all torn up. She asked to see Uncle Henry, but she can’t come to him. She’s diabetic, lost a leg. I’m here to bring my uncle to her. And she would like you to come, too, Cork.”

“Me? Why?” Then Cork understood the reason for Rainy’s call. He shot her an accusing glance.

She gave him a small, helpless shrug. “Family,” she said.

English went on, but not with great enthusiasm, “The authorities have been no help. You were a cop once. You’re a private investigator now. Louise knows about you, knows that you have Ojibwe blood and that Uncle Henry trusts you. She hopes you can find her daughter.” He paused, then added, “Before it’s too late.”

Cork stood and paced a little, considering. On the cabin walls hung items that came from Meloux’s long life: a bearskin, a bow with string made from the skin of a snapping turtle, a deer-prong pipe, a toboggan, other things.

“Do you have a photo of your cousin?” he asked.

From the pocket of his shirt, English pulled a couple of
photographs. He handed one of them to Cork. “That was her seventh-grade class photo, taken a little over a year ago.”

It showed a pretty girl with long black hair, dark eyes, a Mona Lisa–kind of smile that might have been demure or shy. Or maybe it was simply an element unfamiliar to the girl’s face. It was hard to say. She was young. So heartbreakingly young.

“And here’s the other.”

English handed him the second photo. At first glance, Cork would have sworn it was not the same person. This girl’s face was layered in makeup. Her eyelashes were clearly false and absurdly long. The look struck Cork as a harlequin attempt at sexy and alluring, the work of someone who had no real idea of what she was about.

“I got that from her Facebook page,” English said.

Cork handed the photos back. There was a hollow feeling in his gut, the kind he had when he was facing what he suspected was an assignment doomed from the outset.

“I suppose there’s no harm in talking to her mother,” he said. “But I don’t want to give her a lot of false hope. Indian kids run away all the time. You know that, Daniel.”

English nodded. “And if they don’t want to be found, there’s no finding them.”

“But maybe she wants to be found,” Jenny threw in. “Maybe she needs to be found before she ends up in a lake somewhere.”

Rain fell outside, dripping off the roof onto the ground with a relentless drumming. The quiet inside the cabin had become uncomfortable, made so by Jenny’s words, which were really a rejection of any choice but to help.

Meloux finally spoke, and what he said surprised them all. “I will not go.”

Cork looked at him with astonishment and saw the same reaction on the faces of the others in the room.

“I am an old man,” Meloux said. “The mother of this girl is still young. If there is something she wants from me, she will come here to receive it.”

English said, “She has only one leg, Uncle.”

“And I have no patience with guilt that wears the face of grief.”

Cork wasn’t sure he’d ever heard such harsh words from his old friend.

Clearly Rainy hadn’t. “Uncle Henry,” she said, “that’s about as heartless a thing as I’ve ever heard you say.”

Meloux lifted his dark eyes to English and there was nothing in them. The old man was absolutely unreadable. “Tell her this. I will help, but my help comes at a price. She must bring me her daughter’s most precious possession, and she must bring it herself. When she has done this, I will do what I can for her.”

“Uncle Henry—” Rainy began.

“I have said all I am going to say, Niece.”

“Henry,” Jenny said, feeling the rise of heat inside her. “Forget about the girl’s mother. How can you turn your back on the girl herself? She’s just a child.”

“You want to help this girl?” He stared at Jenny with profound disinterest. “You save her.”

Jenny reacted as if the old man had touched her with fire. She looked shocked, and Cork had a sense that her reaction was about more than just the old man’s callous resistance.

“All right,” she said. “All right, then. If you won’t help, I will.”

“It is settled.” The old man stood and went to the doorway. “Now I am going to take a walk.” Without further ado, he stepped into the driving rain, neglecting even to put on a hat or jacket against the downpour.

What he left behind was a stunned silence. Cork, in all the years he’d known the old Mide, had never known him to turn away someone who needed his help.

Daniel English was the first to speak. “I didn’t expect that.”

Jenny went to the opened door and stared at the old man’s back as he walked away. “
Bring me her daughter’s most precious possession.
Who does he think he is? The Wizard of Oz?” She turned to her father, fire in her eyes. “You’re going, right?”

Cork said, “You’re the one who volunteered.”

“Cork,” Rainy said. “Please. This is my family we’re talking about.”

Cork smiled. “Like Oz said to Dorothy, I have every intention of granting your wish. But I’ll do this alone.”

“I’m going with you, Dad.”

“You don’t even know this woman or her girl, Jenny.”

“I told Henry I would go. I’m going.”

“What about Waaboo?” Cork said. “And who’ll mind Sam’s Place?”

“Aunt Rose will be fine with Waaboo. And you know as well as I do that Judy can run Sam’s Place for a couple of days without us.”

“All right,” he said, although he still had his doubts. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning.”

Jenny looked displeased. “You always say the earlier an investigation begins the better.”

“If she’d gone missing yesterday, I’d leap on it today. But she’s been gone a year.”

“Her friend hasn’t been dead a year.”

“A week. So that trail is already cold. This won’t be easy, Jenny. If we’re going to do it, I want to be prepared. We go tomorrow.” To English, he said, “Are you staying here with Henry and Rainy tonight?”

“No, I’ll shoot back home to Wisconsin.”

“Are you free tomorrow?”

“I can make myself free. I’ve got lots of personal leave saved.”

“Let’s plan on meeting somewhere in the morning. You can take us to Mariah’s mother. Talking to her would be a good place to start.”

“What about the sheriff’s people?” Jenny said.

“We’ll talk to them, of course. But I want to start with the family.”

“There’s a café in Bayfield,” English suggested. “It’s in the Bayfield Inn. On Rittenhouse Avenue. Why don’t we meet there?”

“Sounds good. Eight?”

“That’ll work. Thanks, Cork.” He glanced at Jenny. “And thank you.”

Cork and his daughter prepared to leave, but English said he wanted to stick around awhile and talk a bit more with Meloux, if the old man was willing. Cork kissed Rainy good-bye, and he and Jenny put on their ponchos and stepped outside. They began down the path that cut through the meadow on Crow Point. The tall grasses and the wildflowers stood bent under the relentless rain. He caught sight of Meloux standing alone on the shoreline of Iron Lake. The old man seemed small against that vast expanse of gray water and gray sky. To Cork he looked bent, too, burdened like all the other living things on Crow Point by the weight of what had fallen on them that day.

Chapter 4

T
hey walked the long trail back to the county road where Cork had parked his Explorer. The entire way, Jenny held to her silence. Cork didn’t try to break in on whatever internal dialogue she was having. When she was ready, she would tell him exactly what was on her mind. They reached the vehicle, shed their dripping ponchos, and got in. Cork swung a U-turn and headed south back toward Aurora.

The wipers slapped relentlessly at the rain. The tires crunched over wet gravel. Jenny stared out her window and finally said quietly, “Damn.”

“So talk to me,” her father said. “You were pretty emotional back there. What’s going on? Why so invested in this lost girl?”

She didn’t answer right away. The gray fall of the rain seemed to mesmerize her. Finally she said, “Henry’s words.”

“Which words?” He couldn’t remember exactly what the old man had said, but he remembered the look on his daughter’s face, as if she’d been touched by fire.

Jenny was quiet way too long, but Cork was nothing if not a patient man.

“Okay,” she said at last, carefully, “we both know Stephen has visions.”

Cork’s youngest child had, indeed, been visited on occasion by visions, remarkable occurrences that had been confirmed by Henry Meloux.

“All right,” Cork said.

“I know I don’t have the Anishinaabe spirit in me like Stephen does, but ever since we found Waaboo, I’ve been having this dream. It’s so real, Dad, I’ve always believed it was a vision.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’m back there on the island where we found Waaboo and his mother. She’s standing in that destroyed place, among all those shattered trees. You remember her? Just a kid, really. Not much older than this missing girl. She’s looking straight at me, and she says one thing. Only one. She says, ‘You save her.’”

“You save
her
? Not
him
? Not Waaboo?”

“No. She’s very clear. Whoever she’s talking about it’s a
her
.”

“And that’s what Henry said, wasn’t it? ‘You save her.’ It could have been just a coincidence.”

She scowled at him. They both knew that with Henry Meloux coincidence wasn’t likely.

“Okay,” Cork said. “Have you told anybody about this vision, tried to understand what it means?”

“Stephen, because I figured he would understand.”

“What did he say?”

“That when the time was right, the meaning would be clear to me.”

“So now you’re thinking that this vision is about Louise’s girl?”

“I don’t, Dad. But this is the first thing that’s made sense to me. I’d have asked Henry today, but he was such an asshole.” She looked out the window at the persistent storm. “Waaboo’s the child of a child. Vision or no, it breaks my heart to think about any child abandoned.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Because back there you seemed pretty lukewarm about this missing girl.”

“I’ve been involved in this kind of thing my whole life, Jenny. If I’ve learned anything at all, it’s that no matter how hard you try, you can’t save everyone who needs saving. You do your best, but you’re always prepared for the worst.”

“So you keep your heart out of it?”

“No, you just make sure that your head is always out in front. Think of it like a boxer keeping his left up to protect himself until it’s time for that sweet right hook to come into play.”

“Or,” she countered, “think of it like a girl alone somewhere, mistreated and scared and hopeless while people come up with metaphors for not caring.”

Cork pulled onto the paved road that paralleled the western shoreline of Iron Lake. The cabins sheltered among the pines were full of summer people. On a sunny day, these folks would have been on the water or splashing on a beach, but the rain had driven them inside, and the lake was deserted, and Tamarack County felt empty.

“Think of it however you want,” he said. “Just believe that I’ll do my best, okay?”

He felt her ice-blue eyes considering him; then she said, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize, but you have to understand that an investigation like this will probably take time. You may be away from Aurora for a while, away from Waaboo. Since he came to us, you haven’t been gone from him for more than a few hours in any day. Are you okay with that?”

“If it’s what’s necessary. Dad, I’ve never had this sense before that I’m supposed to do a thing, that I’ve been chosen for it. I know you’ve been here before. And I know Stephen has, but not me. I want to honor this. I have to. Do you understand?”

“I do.” He shot her a smile, though one on the grim side. “So tell you what. In this partnership, I’ll be the head, and you be the heart. Deal?”

He offered his hand. Jenny looked at it, then at her father. She returned his smile, one not so grim as his, and accepted his offering.

At Sam’s Place, the power had been restored. Except for Judy Madsen’s blue sedan and Marlee Daychild’s old Toyota 4Runner, the parking lot was still empty. Jenny explained the new situa
tion and asked if Judy felt comfortable taking over for a couple of days.

Judy snapped her fingers. “I could run this place blind and with both hands tied behind my back. You two go off and save the world. We’ll be fine.”

• • •

The house on Gooseberry Lane was an old two-story clapboard construction, well cared for, with a roofed porch across the front and a great elm in the yard. Cork had grown up in this house, and his children, too. If a man could have two hearts and one could exist outside his body, then that house on Gooseberry Lane was Cork’s second heart. Everything he loved was in or had passed through there.

On the way home, the stoplights had come back on, and Cork could see lights in windows. Power had been restored in Tamarack County. But when he and Jenny pulled up to the house, they found that it was still dark. Inside, Waaboo was sound asleep on the living room sofa, clutching a stuffed orangutan he called Bart, one of his favorite toys. He had half a dozen other stuffed animals around him as well. Rose was in the kitchen, forming a meat loaf in a pan. She put a finger to her lips, and they talked quietly.

“He held the flashlight and I read stories to him,” she said. “He drifted off a while ago. I left the lights off. It felt kind of right with the rain outside.”

Rose Thorne was a remarkable human being. When Cork had first known his sister-in-law, she’d been a large, plain-looking, good-hearted woman who read tabloids. She’d helped raise the O’Connor children, and had the idea that when she was no longer needed in that way, she might enter a convent. As that time had approached, she’d had an amazing change of heart. She’d fallen in love with a man who was sliding away from his faith and out of the priesthood. Mal Thorne had, indeed, put aside his collar and his vows, but in a way, Rose had saved his faith. They’d married, and both of them looked at the love they shared as the blessing
God had always intended for them. Rose had slimmed down a good deal, dressed smartly these days, and wore her hair in a fashionable cut. But some things never changed. Her heart was huge, and her love for her sister’s family was depthless.

Rose and Mal now lived in Evanston, Illinois. But that summer, Rose had agreed to return to Aurora and, in a way, to her former life. She took care of Waaboo while Jenny oversaw Sam’s Place and Cork went about his business as a private investigator. She had no children of her own and seemed to relish every moment she had with the little guy. Every other weekend or so, Mal drove up from Evanston for a visit.

In the gray light through the windows, Jenny crossed her arms and leaned against the kitchen counter. “Aunt Rose,” she said, “I need a favor.” She laid out the situation, and it was clear from the look on Rose’s face that she shared Jenny’s concern for the missing girl. Without a moment of hesitation, Jenny’s aunt agreed to give whatever was needed of her.

That night Jenny put Waaboo to bed. Cork stood in the doorway of his grandson’s room and listened while Jenny sat in the rocker with Waaboo on her lap and explained that she would have to be gone for a little while.

“To help find a little girl who’s lost,” she told him.

“Is she scared?” Waaboo asked.

“Would you be scared if you were lost?”

“Not if I had Bart wiff me.” He clutched his stuffed orangutan.

“She doesn’t have Bart. She doesn’t have anyone.”

Waaboo was full-blood Anishinaabe. His hair was black, his eyes like cherrywood. He’d been born with a cleft lip and still bore a small scar where surgery had closed that split. He thought about what Jenny said and asked, “No mommy?”

“Her mommy can’t help her. That’s why she needs me.”

“Aunt Rose will be here?”

“Yes. And I’ll be back very soon.”

“’Kay,” he said, his concerns put to rest. He snuggled more firmly against Jenny. “Tell me a story, Mommy.”

• • •

Later, they sat around the kitchen table—Cork, Jenny, and Rose—and talked about what might be ahead. Trixie, the O’Connors’ mutt, lay in the corner near her food dish, looking bored or tired.

“Do you think she’s still alive, Dad?”

“I don’t know, Jenny. But once you ask yourself that question, you’ve got to do your best to find the answer.”

Jenny held a mug of decaf coffee in her hands. She took a sip and frowned, as if the brew were distasteful. But Cork suspected it was not the coffee that displeased her.

“How do we do that?” she asked.

Cork got up from the table, walked to the coffeemaker on the counter, and poured a little more from the pot into his own mug. The rain had stopped and the clouds had passed, and the darkness beyond the kitchen window was night, plain and simple.

He turned back to the table. “We talk to her family, her friends, her teachers, anyone who knew her. And we do the same for Carrie Verga. We talk to the officers in charge of the investigation of the girl’s death. We talk to anyone who might have some piece of information that leads to another piece of information. And, if we’re lucky, we put the puzzle together that way, piece by piece.”

“That sounds awfully slow,” Jenny said. “Do we have that kind of time?”

“I don’t know. But I also don’t know another way.”

Jenny stared into her mug. “She was only thirteen when she ran away. What was she thinking?”

“You used to run away all the time,” Rose told her gently. “Whenever I scolded you or your mom did or Cork, you’d run away across the street to the O’Loughlins’ house. Sue would let you in and give you milk and cookies, and after a while you’d decide to come back home.”

“That was a different kind of running,” Cork said, returning to his chair at the table. “Kids who really run away are usually running from a bad situation. But most of them, like you, Jenny,
come back eventually. Being alone on the street is incredibly hard. Home is still home, bad as that might be. It’s familiar. For a kid to stay away, the situation has to be really awful.”

“Or someone’s preventing them from going home,” Jenny said.

“That, too.” Cork looked at his watch. “If we’re going to meet Daniel in Bayfield at eight tomorrow morning, we’ll have to get off by four. I’m going to call it a day, get myself ready for bed, pack a few things in an overnight bag.”

“I should do the same,” Jenny said. But she didn’t move.

“You go on, Cork,” Rose said. “Jenny and I have some more talking to do, I think.”

Cork rinsed out his mug and set it on the counter next to the sink. He said good night and headed upstairs, wondering what the two women still had to discuss. He was used to being in the minority in his house and sometimes excluded from the conversations of the women in his life. He didn’t like it, but he had no choice.

He lay in bed that night thinking about Mariah and Carrie Verga and about the families they’d left behind. He didn’t know these people, not yet. He tried not to be disposed against them. But when he wore the badge—in Chicago as a cop and in Tamarack County as a deputy and as Sheriff—he’d seen all too often the horrific results of child abuse. That got him to thinking about Meloux’s statement when Daniel English had asked for his help.
I have no patience with guilt that wears the face of grief.
It sounded callous, but Cork thought he understood. Sometimes the tears that parents shed over their lost children couldn’t be trusted. For some, children were not a blessing but a burden. A child gone was just one less thing to worry about.

Cork hoped that he would discover he was wrong in his thinking. But he fell asleep prepared for the worst.