Windigo Island (7 page)

Chapter 13

T
he table, at least, was clean. Or cleared of debris anyway. There were enough chairs for the adults. The two boys—Denny and Cal—ate on TV trays in their bedroom and played a video game, this one full of the sounds of car racing, muted just a little because Red Arceneaux had threatened to smash the controllers if they didn’t turn the damn sound down. Tobias wasn’t present. Off somewhere, Louise told them, with his friends. When Cork asked about Puck, Arceneaux said his son had come home from working the fishing boat, cleaned up, and gone to listen to a group playing at the Bad Bluff community center that evening. He didn’t know when Puck would be home.

Dinner was macaroni and cheese. The real thing, not from a Kraft box. Arceneaux and Louise had worked on it together. There were canned peas to go with it. Bud Light, Diet Pepsi, and water were the drink choices. They all took water, except Arceneaux, who drank a couple of Buds in the course of things. Louise sat at the head of the table in her wheelchair. She listened closely as Cork and Jenny and Daniel English told what they’d all discovered in that long day. There’d been a change in her since the morning. Cork could see it. She took in everything, absorbed it without reacting. It didn’t seem to Cork a showing of courage; it felt more like fatalism. She didn’t seem shocked or offended when he raised the possibility that Carrie Verga had been drawn into the sex traffic and, because of Mariah’s association with the girl, her potential involvement as well.

Instead she said, “I want to talk to Henry Meloux.”

Jenny said, “You’ve figured out the thing Mariah loves most?”

“No,” Louise said. “But if I go to him, he has to see me.”

Cork said, “When do you want to go?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What about your children?” There was a sharpness to Jenny’s words.

“I’ll watch the kids,“ Arceneaux told her. “They’ll be fine.”

“Tomorrow?” Cork shook his head. “I still have people here I need to talk to.”

“Who?” Arceneaux asked.

“The family of Raven Duvall for one.”

Arceneaux said, “You want to talk to Lindy Duvall, I’ll take you over tonight.”

“I’d like to talk to Puck, too.”

“Him you can find at the community center. The music’ll go on there until late.”

Cork had mixed his peas and macaroni and cheese, something he always did with this particular meal offering. He hadn’t quite finished, but he put down his fork and asked Louise, “Did Mariah ever say anything to you about Carrie’s father, Demetrius Verga?”

Louise said, “She talked about how much stuff he had. What a nice house he lived in and what nice cars he had, the big sailboat. You know, everything we don’t have. That was at first. After a while, she didn’t talk about him at all.”

“Do you know Verga?”

“He dropped Mariah off sometimes after she spent time with Carrie at his place. I never actually met him. Knew his wife. She was Bad Bluff.”

“She died in a boating accident.”

“Drowned. That girl couldn’t swim to save her soul.”

“Carrie drowned, too.”

“So?”

“I’m just thinking that’s quite a coincidence.”

Arceneaux said, “You think her old man had something to do with both those deaths?”

“I’m not saying anything except that I don’t put much stock in coincidence.”

“Maybe he knows something about what’s happened to Mariah?”

“I don’t know that. But he’s another reason I’d like to stick around awhile.”

Louise said, “I want to see Henry Meloux. I have to see him.”

“A day, Dad,” Jenny said quietly. “Mariah’s been gone a year. What difference can another day make?”

On the surface, the argument was sound. But Cork felt like he was getting somewhere in Bad Bluff, and he didn’t want to leave the investigation hanging, even for a day. On the other hand, he wanted something from Meloux, too. So maybe it would be best to return to Tamarack County. For a day.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

Jenny offered to help with the dishes, but Louise said that if they wanted to talk to Lindy Duvall, they should go. She’d make sure things got cleaned up. Cork had his doubts.

Arceneaux rode with English. Cork and Jenny followed in the Explorer. The sun was still up, but just barely. The shadows were long, and the day had a tired feel to it. They passed through Bad Bluff, passed the community center, where the doors were open and Cork could hear bluegrass music coming from inside. He wanted to get back to Puck before things there wrapped up.

They pulled up in front of a duplex that looked like an old BIA construction. The paint was flaking and the grass of the yard needed cutting. But there was no junk despoiling the property. Cork didn’t want to overwhelm Lindy Duvall with a lot of strangers descending on her, so he and Arceneaux approached the house together while Jenny and English stayed in their vehicles. Arceneaux knocked on the door, and it was opened by a kid no more than ten years old.

“Your mama home, Wade?”

The boy had big dark eyes and a mop of black hair and a streak of what looked like chocolate ice cream across his cheek. He shook his head and said, “Unh-uh.”

“Know where she is or when she’ll be back?”

“Unh-uh.”

The television was on inside, and Cork thought he heard
SpongeBob SquarePants,
a cartoon he sometimes watched with Waaboo, which, to his chagrin, he kind of liked. He also heard a baby crying somewhere in the house.

“Anybody here with you?” Cork asked.

“Unh-uh.” The boy squinted at him and asked, “You from the county?”

“No,” Cork said. “Is your sister Raven around?”

“Unh-uh. She never is.”

“Where is she?”

“Dunno.” He gave a little shrug. Inside, the baby went on wailing.

“Is that your little brother or sister I hear?” Cork asked.

“Sister.”

“Sounds like she needs something.”

“She always cries.”

“Could I see her?”

“My mother says not to let strangers in.”

Arceneaux said, “I’m no stranger, Wade.”

The boy thought this over, gave a shrug, and let them pass.

The house was clean, at least compared to the home they’d just left. The furniture was in good shape, the curtains new-looking, the television a big flat-screen. The crying child was in a corner of the living room, holding on to the side of her playpen. Cork thought she was maybe ten or twelve months old. He lifted her and could smell immediately what her problem was.

“What’s her name, Wade?”

“Shannon.”

“Hey, Shannon,” Cork cooed. “We’re going to take care of you. Wade, do you know where your mother keeps her diapers?”

Without a word, the boy disappeared down a hallway and came back a moment later with a disposable Huggie.

“Would you get me a towel, too, and a wet washcloth?”

The boy did, and Cork laid the towel on the carpet, the child atop the towel, and did what needed to be done. By the time he’d finished, Shannon had stopped crying. He gave the dirtied diaper to Wade to put in the garbage. The soiled washcloth he wrapped in the towel and left them both on the floor next to the playpen. He’d only just accomplished all this when they heard the back door open, and a few moments later a woman walked in, carrying a couple of grocery sacks in her arms. She pulled up, startled, and then shot Arceneaux a killing look.

“What the hell’s this all about, Red? Who’s that holding my baby girl?”

“Take it easy, Lindy,” Arceneaux said. “Came to talk to you about Raven. Cork here just helped Wade out a little, changing your daughter’s diaper. That’s the whole of it.”

“You got no right coming in unasked. Wade, you let these men in?”

In the face of his mother’s anger, the boy’s eyes had grown huge, and he’d become mute.

“We invited ourselves in, Ms. Duvall,” Cork said. “Your son did his best to keep us out.”

She pushed between Cork and Arceneaux and brushed past her son on her way to the kitchen. Cork heard the grocery sacks set heavily down, then Lindy Duvall swept back in and whisked her daughter from his arms. She stepped away a safe, protective distance and snapped, “What about Raven?”

“When was the last time you saw her?” Cork asked.

“Who are you? Why do you want to know?”

“He’s a private investigator, Lindy,” Red said. “We asked him to help us find Mariah.”

Tall and tired-looking, she stood studying both men silently. Her hair was long and black and in need of a good brushing. She
was a pretty woman now, but in her youth, which was a good two decades behind her, she’d probably been stunning.

“What’s Raven got to do with that?” she finally asked. She was still guarded, but the anger seemed to have drained.

Cork said, “I have reason to believe that Raven may have been the last person here to see both Carrie Verga and Mariah before they ran away last year. Raven was in Bad Bluff at the time, wasn’t she?”

“She comes, she goes. I don’t keep track.”

“She’s a model, I understand,” Cork said.

“Yes,” Lindy Duvall replied, much too quickly and emphatically.

“In Duluth?”

“I thought this was about the other girls.”

“If it’s true that Raven was the last to see them here, I’d like to find out if she has any idea where they went when they left Bad Bluff. I need to talk to her.”

“I’m sure she doesn’t know.”

“Why?”

“She just doesn’t.” The anger was returning.

“She does pretty well as a model, I understand.”

“What of it?”

“Does she send money home?”

The woman nodded. “She’s good that way.”

The child in her arms had begun to squirm, and she returned Shannon to the playpen. Wade went back to watching SpongeBob.

“Do you know the name of the agency she models for in Duluth?”

“No.” She turned her attention to her daughter, gave Shannon a toy, a plush, purple octopus that, when the child hugged it, played a soft little melody, “London Bridge Is Falling Down.”

“I made a call today to some folks I know in law enforcement, Lindy. I asked them to check on a driver’s license for Raven Duvall. They couldn’t find anything, not here in Wisconsin or in Minnesota. Are you sure she’s working in Duluth?”

“I’m sure.”

“Do you have any recent pictures of Raven, from a photo shoot maybe?”

“No.”

Cork was getting nowhere, and he decided to try a different tack.

“I’ve been told that Raven took Mariah and Carrie Verga with her when she left Bad Bluff to return to Duluth a year ago. Drove off with them in that nice car of hers. Now Carrie’s dead—I’m guessing you know that—and Louise is afraid for Mariah. And rightly so. Is it possible that Raven’s in trouble, Lindy? Is there something we can do to help her, too?”

“No.” She kept her back to the men, leaning over the playpen, squeezing the octopus so that it played its soft little tune. “We’ve talked enough. I want you to go.”

“All right.” Cork pulled one of his cards from his wallet and held it out toward her. “If you think of anything I ought to know, I’d appreciate a call.”

She turned her head, saw the card, considered, and finally accepted it.

“I’m sorry for intruding,” Cork said. “It’s just that Louise is so worried about her little girl. I’m sure you can understand.”

Lindy Duvall gently touched the top of her own daughter’s head, as if in benediction. “Around here,” she said, “they don’t stay little very long.”

“Night, Lindy,” Arceneaux said, and they left the way they’d come.

Chapter 14

T
he community center was a newer, whitewashed cinder-block construction at the edge of a circular, bleacher-flanked field that, Cork figured, was the Bad Bluff powwow ground. The sun had set, and the cool of the lake was like a wave washing the air clean. What light was left in the sky was a thin, powdery blue. Music poured from the open doors of the community center, the same kind of bluegrass that had been playing when they’d passed on their way to the Duvall home. A number of people stood gathered outside the doorway, all smoking cigarettes under the entrance light. English pulled into the parking lot, which was nearly full, and Cork pulled in beside him. Red Arceneaux got out of English’s truck and came over to the Explorer to speak to Cork through the open window.

“You wait here. I’ll go in, find Puck, bring him out.”

Arceneaux walked toward the light and the music.

Daniel English left his truck and came to Jenny’s window. The pale, late evening glow fell on him and softened his broad face. “I heard things didn’t go so well.”

Cork leaned his arms and weight on the steering wheel and studied the amber sky in the west. “Lindy Duvall wasn’t at all inclined to talk about Raven. But we didn’t come away completely empty-handed. I think we know more than we did going in.”

“What do we know?” Jenny asked.

“Lindy was defensive. She knows more than she’s willing to say. Maybe she’s protecting Raven. Maybe she’s just afraid. I’m
not sure which. But Red was right. It was clear we weren’t going to get answers from her. I didn’t want to push her too hard. Not at this point anyway.”

“Maybe Henry?” Jenny suggested.

“Maybe Henry,” Cork agreed. “If he’s willing to come here.”

Arceneaux exited the building, and the gathered smokers made way for him. He looked unhappy as he approached the Explorer. “Puck’s not inside,” he said. “Appears he’s gone off with a couple of friends, down to the campgrounds on the lake. Drinking beer or smoking weed most likely. We can walk from here, if you want.”

Bad Bluff was a small community. The campgrounds turned out to be just north of the casino, which was a stone’s throw from the community center. It was dark enough by then that the halogen lamps of the complex’s parking lot had come on, and they walked in that harsh neon glare.

The campgrounds appeared to be nearly empty. A tent occupied one of the spaces along the lakeshore. A low fire burned in the pit there, but Cork saw no one around it. A few spaces south was an RV with a canopy spread above the site’s picnic table. The lights were on inside the RV, and Cork heard a radio tuned to a ball game. Arceneaux kept walking as if he could sense, even in the gathering dark, exactly where to find his son. And he did.

It was the last site south in the campgrounds. Possibly because it was the site nearest the casino and hotel, it looked barely used. The fire pit contained no char, no ash, no evidence of a recent blaze. Tall grass had grown in the tent pad area. Just beyond, the ground sloped steeply to the lake. Arceneaux stood in the tall grass at the crest of the rise. Below him, a little fire had been kindled on a flat rock jutting into Superior. Three figures sat silhouetted there. A tiny orange spark traveled among them, and Cork caught the unmistakable aroma of burning pot.

“Thought you were going to be listening to music, Puck.” Arceneaux slowly descended a path that was faint in the deepening dark.

“Aw, shit. Busted.” The voice didn’t sound at all concerned.

Arceneaux continued until he was close enough to distinguish faces in the firelight. “George, Connie,” he said.

“Hey, Red.” The voice of a young man.

“Evening, Mr. Arceneaux.” A young woman’s voice.

“The music wasn’t good?” Arceneaux said.

“It was fine, Red. We’re just taking a break.” This came from the first voice that had spoken, which Cork figured belonged to Arceneaux’s son. Cork found it interesting that he addressed his father by his given name. The kid turned, and Cork saw a face cut in half by firelight and the dark. “Who’d you bring with you?”

“Those are the folks I told you about,” Arceneaux replied. “Mind going for a walk with us?”

“I’m kind of occupied here, Red.”

Cork said, “It’ll only take a minute, Puck. And it’s important.”

Puck reached for the joint that was being passed. He took a hit, held it, and blew out the smoke. “Chill, guys. I’ll be back real soon.” He leaned over and kissed the girl, whose hair was gold in the firelight. He stood and climbed the slope.

He was no longer the size and shape that had been the reason for the nickname he’d been given as a child. He was tall and slender and fit. The pupils of his eyes were large and dark. His hair was as black as a starless night. He wore a clean white T-shirt and clean jeans and new-looking, neon red, high-top sneakers. Although he’d worked a fishing boat all day, he didn’t smell of fish. He smelled of smoke, both wood and weed. He studied Cork, then English, and finally Jenny. He said “Hey” to them all in general.

“Boozhoo,”
Cork replied.

Puck said, “Right.”

“Mind if we take a little walk? Not long, I promise,” Cork told him.

“This is about Mariah?”

“It’s about Mariah.”

He gave a
whatever
shrug and said, “Lead the way.”

They didn’t walk far, just enough to be out of hearing range
from the kids still by the fire, or anyone else who might be interested in listening to their conversation.

“So what do you want to know?” Puck asked when they stopped. He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and stood tall, with his chest out.

“Tell me about her,” Cork said.

“Hell, I’m guessing everyone in Bad Bluff’s already told you about Mariah. What do you want from me that you didn’t get from them?”

“What did you think of her?”

“I liked her,” Puck replied without hesitation. “She was a good kid.”

“Any idea why she ran away?”

“Yeah.”

Cork waited, then waited some more.

Jenny broke the silence. “She was a good kid, then she changed. Do you know what I mean, Puck?”

“I know exactly what you mean. When Red and me came here, Mariah was just a kid. Really pretty, you know, but a kid. Then, like you say, she changed. Started wearing all kinds of makeup, dressing slutty, trying to look older. I told her it wasn’t her. She told me it wasn’t any of my business.”

“When did that change happen?”

“A while before she ran off.”

“What changed in her life?”

“She began hanging with Carrie Verga for one thing.”

“What did you think of Carrie?” Cork asked.

“Trouble.”

“How so?”

“Like a festering boil. She kept it all in, whatever was bothering her, but you could see it was going to blow up sooner or later.”

“You’re pretty sensitive to that kind of thing, are you?” Cork said.

“That’s how I spent my life, mister.”

“What do you mean?” Jenny asked.

The young man looked at his father, those dark eyes bottomless. He spoke in a flat voice. “Being Indian’s never been much of a leg up for me. I don’t go in for all that powwow and drums and spirits in the lake shit. The truth is that this is a white man’s world. If you’re going to succeed, it’s going to be on the white man’s terms. I got that a long time ago.

“When my dad was in prison, the county placed me with a foster family. White people. Very religious. I was their salvation project. They used to lock me in a closet. Never beat me. That’s something a social worker or somebody at a clinic could see. But they’d hold off feeding me for a while and beat me in other ways. In the name of God and for the sake of my eternal soul. You know what? I learned to play along. I learned to say whatever it took to get out of that closet, to get fed, to get clothed. I learned that it’s a white man’s world and the only God is the white man’s God. I learned to take all that crap they dished out with a smile, because one day I was going to be better than them. Richer than them. I was going to beat them at their own game. So I know about keeping stuff inside and what to look for. I saw it in Carrie Verga, in spades.”

Daniel English spoke up for the first time. “How’re you going to beat them at their own game, Puck?”

“I’ve been working my ass off, saving money for college,” the young man told him. “I’m going to UW–Superior in the fall. I’m going to major in business. You know who Dave Anderson is?”

“The Dave Anderson who started up Famous Dave’s barbecue?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He’s Ojibwe. I’m going to make it like he did. Do the white man’s thing in the white man’s world.”

“With a white man’s heart?” English asked.

Puck said, “The white man’s got no heart. And that’s his secret.”

Cork was afraid of losing the kid to his bitterness. To bring the conversation back to what was necessary he said, “Carrie and Mariah may have run off with the help of another girl. Raven Duvall. You know her?”

“I didn’t really know her, just knew about her from what Ma
riah said. Drove a nice car. A model down in Duluth or the Twin Cities. Somewhere.”

“Is that when the changes you talked about seeing in Mariah occurred?”

“Naw, that happened before. In fact, she got better after she started hanging with Raven. I figured Raven, being a model and all, maybe showed her how to use makeup and how to dress nice, but not slutty.”

“Know where we can find Raven?”

“Nope. Haven’t seen her since Mariah took off.”

“Puck,” Jenny said carefully, “what do you think of Mariah’s brother, Toby?”

“Worthless, that one. And if you’re looking for reasons why Mariah might have run off, you should talk to him.”

“Why?”

“Because he was hitting on her, him and those worthless shits he hangs out with.”

“Hitting on his own sister?” Jenny said.

Puck gave her a long look. “Welcome to the party. I threatened to beat the crap out of him if he didn’t lay off her.”

“Did it work?”

“She ran away,” Puck said. Then he addressed Cork: “I’ve been thinking about Carrie, about her washing up on Windigo Island after all this time. That hump of rock out there’s too far to swim to, especially in this cold lake water, and it’s too small to party on.”

“And?” Cork encouraged.

“One thing I know because of the work I do: you want to get rid of something, you take it out and drop it in the lake.”

“You think somebody dumped Carrie in Lake Superior?”

“Every day we go out on the fishing boat, I see lots of other boats out there. Big sailboats, big powerboats, yachts, you know? Belong to guys from the Twin Cities, Chicago, places like that. Lots of money. I run across them sometimes when we come into dock. A lot of them seem to me like the kind of people who’d buy
something, use it awhile, and when they’re tired of it, they just throw it away. Worth thinking about, you know. We done here?”

Cork said, “If we wanted to talk to you again, Puck, would that be all right?”

Arceneaux said, “He’ll talk to you.”

Puck shook his head. “You’re just like a white man, Red. Always trying to tell me what to do.” To Cork he said, “You really think you can find Mariah, I’ll talk some more. But I don’t know anything I haven’t already told you. See you around.”

The young man turned, and as he walked toward the little fire where his friends were waiting, his back was lit with the dull glow of the casino neon.

Arceneaux watched him go, his face stone. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

They dropped Arceneaux at his sister’s house, returned to the hotel, and went to the casino bar for a beer and to talk things over. Daniel English reported that the big Shinnob had said almost nothing on the way home.

“Like hauling a rock. A big, heavy rock,” he said.

“A lot on his shoulders.” Cork sipped the Leinie’s that the barmaid had brought him. His mind was working fast and hard. “I keep thinking about something Puck said. People throw things from their boats when they’re done with them.”

“You think that’s what happened to Carrie Verga?” Jenny asked. She’d ordered a Diet Coke, but it sat untouched on the table in front of her.

“I’ve been trying to figure how someone might operate a prostitution business from up here. There are half a dozen marinas on the Bayfield Peninsula. It seems to me that catering to the men who dock their expensive boats here wouldn’t be a bad way to go about it.”

“So,” Jenny said, “assuming circumstances had forced Carrie to be a part of something like that, then what? The john just got tired of her and threw her overboard?”

“In that kind of situation, anything’s possible. Who knows
what might have happened? But Kitchigami’s an ideal place to drop a body. That lake almost never gives up its dead.”

“It gave up Carrie,” Jenny pointed out.

English said, “I suppose prostitution might work in season, but it’s a short season up here. What about the rest of the year? Things slow to a crawl, I imagine. And we come back to the question of how Carrie could continue to be here and not be seen.”

Cork lifted his beer. “I’m still working on that.”

It was late when they climbed the stairs to their rooms. English said good night and closed his door. In their own room, Jenny went to the window and looked at the black water of the lake.

Cork joined her and spoke to her reflection in the glass. “How come you didn’t tell Daniel that you’re a writer?”

Jenny said, “The first question people ask you is, Have you published? Like that’s the be-all and end-all.”

“You asked him what he read, and he was honest. Couple of those guys I never even heard of.”

“Hemingway, Dad. He likes Hemingway.”

Whatever that meant. Cork wasn’t a writer, and had never been much of a reader, and so had no idea. He said, “I’m going for a walk.”

Jenny turned from her window reflection. “Not tired?”

“A lot of snarls in my thinking. If I go to bed now, I’ll just lie there trying to pull them apart. Better if I walk. I won’t keep you awake that way.”

“I won’t be lying down for a while. Aunt Rose promised to call before she went to bed and give me an update on her day with Waaboo.”