Die a Stranger

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Summer ended. The warm days disappeared and I saw the first flakes of snow carried by the wind on a cold afternoon in early September. A doctor in Sault Ste. Marie took the stitches out of my face, and he told me that unless I had some plastic surgery, I’d forever have a scar on my cheek. I told him I’d think about the surgery, but I knew I’d never do it. I guess in my heart I really wanted that scar. I wanted it to always remind me of what happened that summer. I wanted to see it every time I looked in the mirror, and feel it under my fingers every night when I washed my face before I went to bed.

That scar was a reminder of the secret I would keep for as long as I lived.

Chief Benally came to my cabin one more time. He had found out about Vinnie’s father, long after he ever got the chance to meet him. He knew the general story, he knew that Lou had been arrested. He knew that I had gotten him out and that soon after that, he and Buck had both disappeared. I answered every question I could, until I got to what actually had happened that night. Then I had nothing more to say. I had no knowledge of where they might have gone, or if they had even left together.

It was a lie of omission, of course. I hated the lie and I hated that I was able to tell the lie. But no matter how many times he asked me the same question, he always got the same answer.

I told the same lie to Vinnie. He started making some plans about going down to Chicago to look for Buck, but I think he knew it was hopeless. I think he knew that Buck was dead, and maybe, just maybe, he was able to figure out what his father had done for him. If he did, then maybe he also knew that I knew the same thing, or at least suspected it. Either way, he hasn’t pressed me on it.

Somehow, we’re still good. We have breakfast together at the Glasgow and sometimes dinner if he doesn’t have a shift at the casino. He is still my best friend and I would lay my life on the line again for him, no matter what. I know he’d do the same for me. It’s the one thing that helps me to sleep at night.

And yes, he still lives in his cabin. He didn’t move into his mother’s house. He still goes to the reservation, whether it’s to go to work or to see his sisters and nieces and nephews.

For me, it’s a different story. When I have to go to Sault Ste. Marie now, it means going down to the highway and taking that flat monotonous stretch all the way across the hayfields. I don’t take Lakeshore Drive anymore. It’s the road that follows the shoreline of Whitefish Bay and it’s my favorite road in the world, but to get to it you have to drive through the reservation. It has been made clear to me that if I am found on their land, certain members of the Bay Mills Indian Community will make me very sorry for this mistake.

It’s not that Chief Benally would pull me over and give me a cheap speeding ticket. That’s not the kind of game he would play.

No, I’m thinking more about Henry Carrick and what he said to me the night he came out to find me at the Glasgow Inn. He knew I had gotten Lou out of the holding cell that night. Hell, he was right there to see me do it. He didn’t even bother asking me if Lou was involved in Buck’s disappearance. So I didn’t have to tell the lie again. He just made his promise to me about the consequences of setting foot on the rez, and then he left.

Someday I’ll try him out. I think I’d actually like to see how much he means it. But for now, I can’t afford the trouble. I can’t afford to take my eyes off Vinnie LeBlanc for one minute. Not yet. Not until I’m sure that Corvo isn’t on his way up from Chicago.

I have a gun now. I have a well-earned hatred of the things, and my last gun had ended up on the bottom of Lake Superior, but I went down to the gun shop and picked up a Glock G21. I’m a former cop and I still carry a PI license, even if I seldom use it. So I had no problem getting a carry permit. I wear it in a shoulder holster during the day, whether I’m tacking plastic onto the windows of the cabins, or splitting firewood, or sitting by the fireplace at the Glasgow.

At night I keep it close to my bed. I watch the road and I listen.

That’s the part that Henry Carrick doesn’t get. Henry Carrick and Mary LeBlanc and Regina LeBlanc and every other member of the tribe, they just don’t understand that Vinnie doesn’t live on their reservation anymore.

He lives on mine.