Vermilion Drift

TWELVE

Cork found Marsha Dross in her office at the sheriff’s department. She looked ragged at the edges, and it was clear she hadn’t slept much. She cradled a cup of coffee and eyed him over the rim as he sat down on the other side of her desk. It was a lovely morning, and her office windows were open. Cork could hear a cardinal calling in the maple tree outside. Sunlight plunged through the eastern window like a gold sword stuck in the floor.

“All right,” he said. “Count me in.”

She put her coffee down. “In?”

“I’ll consult on the case. I’ll interview anyone on the rez you’d like me to interview. I’ll also interview anyone else I think might be able to help. I’ll keep you apprised of everything I learn. But I want something in return.”

“And that would be?”

“I want to know everything you know about the bodies in the Vermilion Drift.”

“Everything I know now?”

“Now and as it’s revealed.”

“Full access to everything?”

“That’s the deal.”

She frowned, thinking. “All right. But I want two more things from you.”

“Name them.”

“First of all absolute silence. Whatever you learn on the reservation, whatever you learn from me, it stays between us.”

Cork opened his mouth to say fine, but she held up her hand.

“I know you, Cork. I know that being part Ojibwe sometimes pulls you in a direction counter to the interests of this department. I have to believe absolutely that in this you’re with me. You understand?”

“I understand. And the second thing?”

“Everything you find out that pertains to the case you share with me. You don’t hold anything back. You don’t protect anyone. This goes right back to my concern about your Ojibwe ties.”

Dross was right. This had been a problem in the past, and so Cork had to think before he answered.

“It’s a deal,” he finally said. “What do you know about the bodies so far?”

“Not much. We got all the skeletal remains bagged and they’ve been taken to the BCA lab in Bemidji. Agent Upchurch is working on them now. The preliminary autopsy report on Lauren Cavanaugh indicates death from a single gunshot wound to the chest. The bullet pierced her heart. Luckily, it stayed in the body, and wasn’t badly deformed, so Simon’s people can run ballistics on it.”

“Any indication of sexual assault?”

“No.”

“Okay, go on.”

“One of the skeletons also shows evidence of a gunshot wound, probable cause of death.”

“What evidence?”

“Agent Upchurch found a bullet lodged in the spine,” Dross replied. “She’s not able at the moment to say anything about the other victims. Our crime scene techs did a good job of clearing the area. We have clothing fabric still intact. We’ll get good dental impressions. If some of the remains are from the Vanishings, we’ll know.”

“Time of death for Lauren Cavanaugh?”

“Tom Conklin’s put that at approximately a week ago. He’s still trying to nail it down more specifically. The last recorded call on the victim’s cell phone was Sunday night at eleven-eleven P.M. Nobody’s seen her since that night. In their canvass of the neighborhood, one of Ed’s guys talked to Brian Kretsch.”

“Lives in that sprawling house across the road from the Parrant estate, right?” Cork asked.

“That’s him,” Dross said. “He recalled hearing squealing tires a little before midnight. Odd, because North Point Road is usually so quiet. He was just locking up for the night and looked out his picture window, but he was too late to see anything. We haven’t found anyone who saw Lauren Cavanaugh the next day or anytime after. So at the moment, we’re operating on the theory that she was killed that Sunday night sometime after eleven-eleven P.M. and before midnight.”

“Did Kretsch hear a shot?”

“Nope. Apparently he was watching a Jackie Chan DVD. Lots of gunplay and explosions, I guess.”

“What about the two bodies we can’t account for, what do we know about them?”

“Not much. You seem to think they’re Ojibwe. Any way you can be certain?”

“I’m headed out to check on that now. What about you?”

“At the moment, I’m trying to keep a lid on what we’ve found. I’d like to get a few more answers before we have the media hopping all over this.”

“All right.” He stood up and started out.

“Cork?” Dross called.

He turned back. She had pushed away from her desk, and the sun through the window had settled on her lap like a sleepy yellow dog. She was as fine a woman as he’d ever known and as skilled a cop as he’d ever worked with. “It’s good to have you on the team again,” she said.

He nodded, and, though he didn’t tell her so, he liked being there.

Cork broke from the thick pine of the Superior National Forest and stepped onto Crow Point. On the far side of the meadow, smoke rose from the stovepipe atop the cabin of Henry Meloux, and even at a distance Cork could smell cinnamon and baking dough, which made him realize he was hungry. He had no idea what the old man was cooking up, but whatever it was, he knew Meloux would share, and his mouth watered in anticipation.

Crow Point was an isolated finger of land that poked into Iron Lake many miles north of Aurora. Meloux lived there alone, his only companion an old yellow mutt named Walleye. He had no running water, no electricity, and did his business in an outhouse thirty yards from the cabin. He was a member of the Grand Medicine Society, one of the Midewiwin, a Mide. He was old, well past ninety. He’d been a friend as far back as Cork had memory. Twice Meloux had saved his life. On more occasions than Cork could recall, Meloux had advised him in a way that untwisted a knot Cork could not undo himself. Meloux offered this gift to many people, not just to Cork, and not just to the Ojibwe.

It had been a long winter and a cool spring. The green of the poplars and birch that edged the shoreline of Crow Point was so new it was still thin and pale. Many of the wildflowers that should have been in bold color were only just now peeking out from the tall meadow grass. Under the warm morning sun of that June day, Cork threaded his way along the narrow path to the cabin door, drawn both by his desire to talk with his old friend and by the tantalizing aroma wafting from the cabin. He knocked and was surprised when the door opened, for it was not Meloux’s face that appeared there.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Right back at you,” the woman in the doorway said.

“Where’s Henry?”

“Who wants to know?”

“My name’s Cork O’Connor. Henry’s a friend.”

She looked him up and down and seemed disappointed. She appeared to be Cork’s age, more or less. Her hair was long and black but with a wide gray streak running through like a glacial stream. White flour smudged her left cheek, and, as she stood there, she wiped flour from her hands with a dish towel. She might have been pretty, Cork decided, if she’d smiled, even a little.

“So you’re the famous Cork O’Connor,” she said.

“I don’t know about famous.”

“I’ve been hearing stories about you for years from my uncle.”

“That would be Henry?”

“He’s my great-uncle actually. My grandmother’s brother.”

“You must be Rainy Bisonette. I’ve heard about you, too.” But not from Henry. Other people on the rez with relatives who were Lac Court Oreilles in Wisconsin talked about her. “You’re visiting?”

“Learning.”

“The way of the Midewiwin?”

She didn’t deny this, but neither did she confirm it.

“Is Henry here?”

“Not at the moment. But he’s expecting you.”

This didn’t surprise Cork. Meloux had a way of knowing these things. Over all the years of their friendship, Cork had come to take it for granted.

“He’s waiting for you,” she said.

“Where?”

“I don’t really know. He said to tell you to follow the blood. Do you understand what that means?”

“I think so.”

He looked past her into Meloux’s one-room cabin. “Smells good.”

“Enjoy your visit,” she said, stepped back inside, and closed the door.

Cork returned the way he’d come, through the long meadow and into the pines, and soon came to a small stream that flowed west toward Iron Lake. Because of its color, white folks called it Wine Creek, but the Ojibwe called it Miskwi, which meant “blood.” He turned east and followed upstream. It took him only a little while to see that he was on the right track. He found the imprint of a dog’s paw in the soft earth at the edge of the stream. It was a recent print he suspected had been left by Walleye, pausing to lap from the cool water. For nearly half an hour more he shadowed the creek, finally squeezing through a narrow cleft in a rock ridge and emerging into a clearing that lay in the bottom of a natural bowl formed by rugged hills.

Though it had no real name, Cork thought of it as Blood Hollow.

A remarkable event had taken place there several years earlier. A young man accused of murder, a man named Solemn Winter Moon, had received a vision of Jesus. Although many people knew about the vision, only Meloux and Cork knew the location of its occurrence, a remarkable place, filled with an abundance of wildflowers, which were much larger and bolder in color than those on Crow Point and which Meloux often gathered for the healings he offered.

The old Mide was there all right. Cork spotted him sitting next to the stream near the center of the hollow, his back against a tree stump, almost invisible amid the tall grass and the flowers. His eyes were closed as if in sleep, and he didn’t seem to be aware of Cork’s approach. Walleye lay at his side, his forepaws pillowing his old yellow head.

“I’ve been expecting you,” Meloux said without opening his eyes. “Sit down.” He sounded irritated, as if Cork had missed an appointment.

Cork did as he’d been told, but for a minute or more Meloux seemed to pay him no heed. Finally the old Mide opened his eyes and, much to Cork’s relief, smiled. Cork pulled out the tobacco pouch he’d brought as an offering. He gave it to Meloux, who opened it, pinched tobacco from inside, sprinkled a little to the four corners of the earth, and then let some fall in the center. From a pocket of his overalls, he pulled a book of matches and a small pipe carved of red stone. He filled the pipe, struck a flame, set an ember burning, and drew on the pipe stem. He passed the pipe to Cork. They sat a long time in this way, smoking silently.

Meloux’s hair was long and white and fine as spider silk. His face looked as if it held a line for every year he’d lived. His eyes were warm and inviting, little brown suns. He wore a blue denim shirt, old denim overalls, and moccasins he’d sewn himself. He wore no hat, and the breeze in the hollow ran through his hair. The long white filaments quivered and glowed as if electrified. Cork noticed that the old man’s hands, whenever they held the pipe to his lips, trembled, something Cork had never seen before, and though he mentioned nothing to his friend, he was concerned.

Finally Meloux said, “Isaiah Broom has you in his sights.”

“Isaiah and I have been exchanging fire since we were kids.”

“An angry wind, that man. From a child.”

“Has he ever come to you asking help?”

Meloux shook his head. “His anger blinds him.”

Walleye lifted his head briefly, blinked at them, then went back to resting.

“When he was a boy too young to remember, he was brought to me,” Meloux said. “His father was dead in Korea, his mother gone in the night. He was a child abandoned and wrapped in a blanket of pain. I tried to help him, but he was not ready for what I offered. In his anger, he has been a strong voice for The People. So maybe that was what was meant for him all along.”

“Henry,” Cork said, changing the subject, “I had a vision today.”

The old man looked at him closely. “Your face is troubled.”

Cork described the blood running from the house across the lawn of the Parrant estate. “It’s the second vision I’ve had there, Henry. The second disturbing one.”

Meloux’s eyes took in the sky. “Everything is alive, Corcoran O’Connor. And everything alive can become ill. That is a diseased place, I think.”

“Can it infect those who live there?”

“That is the nature of disease.”

Cork thought about Ophelia Stillday working at the center, and the situation concerned him.

“This vision is not the cause of the trouble I see in your face,” Meloux said.

“No, there’s something else.”

Cork told him about the grisly discovery in the Vermilion Drift. “If it’s the Vanishings, Henry, then two of the unidentified bodies are definitely Ojibwe. One of the others is probably Monique Cavanaugh. But that leaves two we don’t know about. I’m wondering if there were any other disappearances of women from the rez back then. Someone gone but never reported.”

“Not all The People love this land, Corcoran O’Connor. There have always been those who abandon it, and sometimes they do not say a word to anyone. They just go.”

“That’s not an answer, Henry.”

The old man looked down where his hands quivered on his lap. “Talk to Millie Joseph.”

“Because her memory is better than yours?”

“Because you are a man who is happy asking questions and she is a woman happy to answer. Go to Millie. Ask questions. It will make you both happy.”

“Henry, did you know about the wildcat mine pit sunk on rez land?”

“There’s not much about this reservation I do not know.”

“Who else knew?”

“A long time ago, probably many. Now?” He gave a shrug.

“Henry-”

“It is time you talk to Millie Joseph.”

It was clear to Cork that was all Meloux was going to say on the subject. He stood up to leave. “By the way, I met Rainy. She says she’s here to learn from you.”

“That’s not the only reason she’s here,” the old man said unhappily.

Cork glanced toward Meloux’s trembling hands. “You’ll get back to your cabin okay?”

“Walleye and me, we’ll take our time. That is something we both still know how to do well.”

“Migwech, Henry,” Cork said. It meant “thank you.”

Cork started away through the tall meadow grass, but Meloux called his name and he turned back.

“I will say one thing, and then I will say no more.” The sun was behind the old man, and his face lay in shadow. “Your father was one of those who knew about that pit. Your father knew there was another way into that mine.”