Vermilion Drift

TWENTY-THREE

Max Cavanaugh agreed to see him, and, at 9:30 the next morning, Cork was shown into Cavanaugh’s very large office by an administrative assistant, a young man whose round glasses made him look like Harry Potter. Cork shook hands with Cavanaugh, who turned to Harry Potter and said, to Cork’s great amusement, “Coffee for both of us, Harry.”

“Is that really his name?” Cork asked after the young man had left.

Cavanaugh shook his head. “It’s Howie, but no one calls him that. He’s okay with the Potter thing. Sit down.”

They took cush chairs near the window, which overlooked the great red wound that was the Ladyslipper Mine. Cork began with a condolence, sympathy over the news that Cavanaugh’s mother was one of the bodies found in the Vermilion Drift.

“It was a long time ago,” Cavanaugh replied. “But it does answer a question left hanging in the air all my life.”

“What do you remember about your mother?” Cork asked.

“Not much. I was only five when she disappeared.” He caught and quickly edited himself. “When she was murdered.”

“Do you have any early impressions?”

“Of course. But why are you asking?”

“I’m just trying to build a profile of all the women involved in the Vanishings. The more we know about the victims, the better chance we have of understanding the crime.” He wasn’t proud of himself, stringing Max along this way, but he also knew he couldn’t simply blurt his suspicions.

Cavanaugh thought a moment. “She was beautiful. Smart. Vivacious.”

Which were things people said about her, but was that the way a five-year-old would have remembered her?

“Was she an attentive mother?” Cork asked.

“Attentive?”

“Do you have a lot of memories of doing things with her?”

“Not really. But as I said, I was only five. And she was a very active woman in community affairs.”

“That was certainly true in Aurora. What about before you moved here?”

“I don’t remember anything before Aurora.”

“Your parents lived in New York City after they were married, is that right?”

“My father was an attorney for the Great North office there. It’s where I was born, and Lauren. When my grandfather became ill, we moved back here.”

“What about after your mother’s disappearance? Where did you go?”

“My father returned to New York City and raised us there.”

“And turned management of Great North over to others?”

“Yes, it ceased being the family-run operation my grandfather had hoped to continue. It wasn’t at all a bad decision. From New York, my father helped expand Great North into a global concern.”

“Why New York City? Couldn’t he have accomplished the same thing here?”

“Although he was born on the Range, he didn’t really feel at home here. He was a city guy at heart.”

“What about you, Max? You’ve worked mines in India, South Africa, Australia, Germany, Chile. You feel at home here?”

“The truth is I never feel at home anywhere except in a mine. I love the work of mining, Cork. It’s a battle of sorts, and involves all kinds of strategy to get the rock to release what it holds. Done well, it’s an art.”

“From what you’ve told me, you don’t spend much time in the pit these days,” Cork pointed out. “Why’d you come back here to take an office job? I mean why now?”

“The economy,” he said with a shrug. “It’s lousy, and making this mine profitable-hell, making any mine on the Range profitable these days-is a challenge, but it’s one I’m good at. Second, when I learned that the DOE was interested in Vermilion One, I figured I wanted to be here to oversee that process personally. Honestly, I felt I had an obligation to do what I could to discourage the government. The Range has been good to my family. And I feel my family has an obligation to the people here. I don’t want what we created with Vermilion One to end up the death of this place or these people. Literally.”

“What about your sister?”

“What about her?”

“Did she love mining?”

Cavanaugh looked surprised at the question. “She knew absolutely nothing about mining.”

“But as nearly as I can tell, she followed you everywhere, to every mine location, and finally here. Any particular reason?”

“We were close all our lives,” Cavanaugh said. “Neither of us were married, and really we only had each other.”

It was a closeness that seemed more than a little unusual to Cork, but he let it go.

“Did your father ever talk about your mother?”

“No. At least not that I recall.”

“Did that trouble you?”

“Why should it?”

“No reason. Did he remarry?”

“No.”

“He was still a young man, relatively speaking, when he lost your mother, yet he went the rest of his life without marrying again. Any reason that you’re aware of?”

There was a knock at the door, and Harry Potter returned with coffee: two white mugs on a tray with a small container of cream, a little bowl of sugar, some packets of Splenda, two spoons, and a couple of napkins.

“Thank you, Harry,” Cavanaugh said, and the young man left.

Cavanaugh handed Cork a mug, then stirred cream and sugar into his own coffee.

“What do you know about my father, Cork?”

“I’m beginning to think not enough.”

“For starters, he wasn’t exactly the son my grandfather wanted.”

“Why not?”

Cavanaugh sipped his coffee, then said casually, “For one thing, he was homosexual.”

Cork didn’t bother to hide his surprise.

“I’m not telling you any secrets. Most people who knew him in later life were well aware of it. But he hid it well in his early years here. Hell, he probably didn’t even acknowledge it to himself then. The war broke out and he enlisted, and after that he went to college, Yale and then Harvard Law, and by that time his life and what he was willing to accept had changed, I guess. New York City was a reasonable place to be gay in the fifties. But he still needed a good cover for the sake of business and my grandfather. My mother gave him that cover.”

“She knew?”

“Of course.”

“But they had children.”

“To keep the families happy and at bay and to maintain the facade.”

“Did you always know?”

“No. They had separate bedrooms, but I was a kid then, and what did I know? They also had very separate lives, but I don’t suppose that was unusual either. My father was a good man, Cork, and a good father. He loved Lauren and me tremendously.”

“And your mother?”

“Love wasn’t at all what their relationship was about.”

“I meant did she love you.”

“I think we were like expensive vases in the living room, something for people to look at and admire, part of a perfect life. Or the image of a perfect life.”

“But it wasn’t perfect?”

“What I remember wasn’t awful. It was just”-he thought a moment-“a vacancy. Air where a mother should have been. But why all these questions about my parents? That’s ancient history. What about Lauren? Shouldn’t you be asking questions that will solve her murder?”

“Your mother and your sister were killed with the same weapon. That would tend to suggest they were killed by the same person. So, if we could solve the earlier murder we might solve your sister’s murder as well. Theoretically.”

Cork didn’t necessarily believe his own logic, but he hoped it sounded plausible and would keep Cavanaugh answering the questions that concerned him most at the moment.

“Do you have any family memorabilia from that period?” Cork asked. “Photographs, letters, journals?”

“What good would that do?”

“I won’t know until I’ve had a chance to see the things,” Cork replied.

“No,” Cavanaugh said firmly. “Nothing.”

“What about from the time before your folks moved here?”

“Not then either.”

“After?”

Cavanaugh said, “I have some things in storage at home. I suppose I can look and see what’s there.”

“So these would be items your father kept after your mother disappeared?”

“That’s right.”

“He kept nothing from before that, from his time in Aurora and all the earlier places?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Wedding photos?”

“I told you, nothing.”

“Even though it wasn’t a marriage in the usual sense, Max, doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

Cavanaugh considered Cork’s question and appeared to be surprised. “You know, I never thought about it. Or if I did, I suppose I just figured that it was all too painful and he simply wanted to forget.”

“So he never talked about her and you never asked?”

Cavanaugh folded his arms on his desk and leaned toward Cork. “My father was in the war, World War Two. Whenever I asked him if he’d killed any Germans, he would always reply, ‘I shot at a lot of them.’ It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it. Whenever I asked him about my mother, he’d say, ‘Why try to remember what’s best forgotten?’ In its way, it was, I suppose, the same response.” Cavanaugh sat back and said with a sigh, “I’ll look through the things I have and see what I can come up with, all right?”

“I’d appreciate it, thanks.” Cork put his mug down. He realized he hadn’t taken a single sip. “Max, your sister’s death has opened a lot of wounds. I’m sorry that it seems like all I do is pour in salt.”

Cavanaugh turned away, swiveling in his chair, and stared out the window toward the great wound that bled iron. He was quiet a long time, and Cork realized it was because he simply couldn’t speak. The weight of Cavanaugh’s sadness was undeniable, as if every breath the man exhaled filled the room with suffocating grief.

“You want to know the truth, Cork?” His voice broke as he spoke. “I feel as empty as that hole out there. I didn’t know anything could hurt so much.”

“I understand, Max. My own experience has been that, as cliche as it sounds, time will help you heal.”

Cavanaugh swung back to him. “First I need to know who killed her. Then I can start healing.”

Millie Joseph sat in her wheelchair on the porch of the Nokomis Home with a lap blanket spread across her knees. From there, she could see much of Allouette, the town where she’d lived all of her eighty years, and beyond Allouette the wide, cool blue of Iron Lake, sparkling under the noonday sun. The air was full of the scent of late-blooming lilac, and Millie Joseph looked perfectly content and seemed absolutely delighted to see him.

“It’s been a long time, Corkie.” Like Hattie Stillday, she called him by the nickname all his mother’s friends had used.

Only two days, Cork thought, but it was obvious that his last visit wasn’t there at all in the perfectly clear sky of her memory.

“Millie, I’d like to ask you some questions about my mother’s journals and about the people on the reservation many years ago.”

“When I was a child, the government didn’t want us to speak our own language here. Did you know that, Corkie? But your grandmother said hogwash. And she taught Ojibwemowin to the children in her school. Your grandmother was a strong woman.”

“Yes. And a woman much loved.” Cork leaned against the porch rail. “Someone cut out pages from my mother’s journals, Millie. Do you know who?”

“Oh, Corkie, I know I should have looked at everything she gave me, but I never had the time. If something’s missing, well, I suppose it was your mother’s doing. Everybody’s got things in their past they don’t want folks to know, don’t you suppose?”

“I suppose,” Cork agreed. “Millie, was there someone on the reservation when you were a young woman who was not so well loved? Someone you were warned against?”

“Mr. Windigo,” she said darkly and without hesitation. “Oh, I used to be scared of him. We were always warned about Mr. Windigo.”

She was speaking, Cork assumed, of the creature out of Ojibwe myth. In the stories the Ojibwe told, the Windigo was a cannibal giant with a heart of ice. It had once been a man but had become a monster that loved to feast on the flesh of the unwary-children especially. It was often used in much the same way white people employed the bogeyman, to frighten children into obedience.

“Was there a man or a woman that people on the rez stayed away from?”

“We didn’t like everyone, but we were all Shinnobs and neighbors and got along. Some people were afraid of Henry Meloux. They called him a witch. The government doctors tried to tell us that. Henry a witch,” she said with a dismissive laugh.

Meloux. He knew he should be talking with Henry, but his old friend had made it clear that Cork was on his own.

“And Mr. Windigo, of course,” the old woman added. “There were all kind of stories about Mr. Windigo snatching kids.”

“When Fawn disappeared, did my mother or my aunt talk to you?”

“Your mother always talked to me.”

“Did she talk about Fawn?”

“Of course.” Millie Joseph smoothed her lap blanket. “And she talked about Mr. Windigo.”

“Did she think the Windigo had something to do with the Vanishings?”

“She knew he did.”

Cork was confused. Why would his mother blame a mythic beast for a real disappearance?

“She was awfully sad, your mother. Your aunt, too. We all were. And scared, because who would be next?”

“But the next to vanish was a white woman. And she was the last.”

“Oh, we were all very happy about that.”

“That the white woman vanished?”

“That she was the last Mr. Windigo took.”

“Did you know her, the white woman the Windigo took?”

“Sure. From St. Agnes.”

“Did you know her well?”

“Not well, no.”

“What did you think of her?”

“She was rich.” Which clearly was not a good thing to Millie Joseph. “Your mother knew her better.”

“What did my mother think of her?”

“Your mother used to say that she was a woman like a snowshoe rabbit. In the winter, she would be white, in the summer dark.”

“What did she mean?”

“A woman who was two women, I guess.”

And one was light and one was dark, Cork thought.

“After the white woman vanished, what did my mother say?”

Millie thought awhile and her hands twitched. “Why, I don’t think she said anything, except what the rest of us said. That it was good Mr. Windigo wasn’t lurking around the rez anymore.”

An old pickup cruised past on the street and the driver, Ben Cassidy, lifted his hand and called out, “Boozhoo, Millie! Cork!”

She waved back and said, “We found his truck.”

“Whose truck?”

“Mr. Windigo. We found it half-sunk in a bog way south on the rez.”

“The Windigo drove a truck.”

“You keep saying ‘the Windigo.’ I’m not talking about the Windigo. I’m talking about Mr. Windigo.”

“He was a man?”

“Of course he was a man. His name was Indigo. That’s how he got the name we called him.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He was tall and thin like a broomstick. Had eyes like black fire. Whenever he looked at me, I burned and got cold at the same time. I didn’t like that man.”

“Was Indigo his only name?”

“No, he had a last name. It was perfect for him, because it was exactly what he looked like, a broomstick. His name was Indigo Broom.”