“Let it go,” Cork said. “My choice.”
The tall man returned. “Cheval won’t be getting out of jail today, but maybe first thing in the morning.”
“So what do we do?” the kid said.
“Keep going. If someone comes looking for these two, the farther we are from Raspberry Lake the better.”
They loaded the canoes, shoved off, and headed north. As he paddled, Cork thought, Aaron. Uncle Aaron. And the woman’s alias is Mrs. Gray. He didn’t have any idea at the moment what to do with these pieces of information, but he understood that everything you knew about your enemy was important.
CHAPTER 22
“Two canoes,” Daniel English said. He knelt near the others. “The line where the gunwale lay is fainter over here, but you can see it. Whoever they were, they came and went in two canoes.”
“Two canoes?” Sheriff Marsha Dross looked across the lake where the water sparkled under the midday sun. “Where are they then?”
Stephen said, “Dad and Lindsay Harris spent the night over there.” He pointed toward the campsite on the mainland. “Then they must have come here.”
“And either stumbled onto someone, or someone was waiting for them,” Dross said.
It was hard for Rainy to look where the blood soaked the ground, but it was also hard not to. Whose blood? she wondered. And she prayed, Not Cork’s.
“Bud Bowers flew the whole lake before he came to get you,” Daniel said. “No sign of them.”
“He also flew over the portages north and south and over the lakes at either end,” Stephen said. “Nothing.”
“My sister couldn’t just vanish into thin air,” Trevor Harris insisted.
They all looked at him silently, because that’s exactly what had happened to his grandfather.
“I mean,” Trevor said, “Cork was with her. He would have protected her, right?”
And again they were all silent and were careful not to look at the great staining of blood.
“Why?” Trevor said angrily. “Why would anyone want my sister?”
“Maybe it was Cork they wanted,” Dross said.
But she didn’t say it with any conviction, and Rainy understood why. The connection between the missing man and Cork was ancient and tenuous. The powerful connection was between the missing man and his now missing granddaughter.
Dross’s walkie-talkie crackled.
“You there, Sheriff?”
“Dross here. Go ahead, George.”
“I’ve gone over the campsite pretty thoroughly. It’s just like the family said. Nothing out of order here. Nothing disturbed.”
“Ten-four, George. Why don’t you bring the boat over and we’ll do a search of the island.”
“Roger, Sheriff.”
“What’s the use of searching the island?” Trevor said. “They’re not here.”
“We need to be sure,” Dross said.
She means, Rainy thought, we need to be sure there are no bodies.
Deputy Azevedo came across the water in a yellow inflatable raft that the floatplane had dropped when it brought the two law enforcement officers out to Raspberry Lake an hour earlier. Almost immediately afterward, Bowers had taken off again to fly over some of the other nearby lakes on the off chance he’d spot Cork and the young woman. When the deputy had joined them, they divided themselves into three groups. Dross and Azevedo took the south side of the island, Daniel and Trevor took the north, and Rainy and Stephen moved through the middle. The day had grown warm, at least compared to the cold of the night before. The island was silent in the way of the Northwoods in winter, when the birds had migrated and so many of the animals had gone into their dark, protected places to hibernate. The only sounds were the crack and scrape of their own passage as they broke through the underbrush, and the occasional cry of a startled crow, a bird that never left the North Country and was crafty enough to survive the harshest of winters.
They’re not here, Rainy thought. I would feel it if they were. And I would feel it if Cork had left his spirit here.
As if in echo, Stephen said, “We won’t find them on this island.”
“We have to be certain,” Rainy said.
“But you know we won’t.”
He glanced at her, and she felt the way she sometimes felt when her great-uncle looked at her, as if he could see all the way down to her soul. There was something unique in Stephen, and everyone knew it. Some people, the lucky ones, were born with a certainty about the path they were meant to follow. Stephen was one of these. He believed he was born destined to be Mide. Her, she’d stumbled so many times in her life, and then she’d found Crow Point and Henry. And finally Cork.
“They’re gone,” Stephen said. “We should be trying to figure out where instead of wasting time here.”
“Henry’s advice would be to stop looking and open ourselves to what’s already in front of us.”
They’d come to the wall of gray rock. Rainy studied the climb, trying to decide if they should attempt it. But Stephen started up without hesitation.
“Wait for me,” Rainy called.
They climbed carefully and were at the top in a few minutes. Rainy stood breathing hard from the effort, taking in the view: the horseshoe of azure water, the roll of the tree-blanketed hills, the winter sun, a dull yellow in a broad sky of stunning blue. A breeze came from the west and ran along the top of the rise, carrying with it the sharp scent of evergreen.
“It’s beautiful up here,” Rainy said.
“Raspberry’s not on one of the more popular routes through the Boundary Waters,” Stephen said. “It doesn’t give access to many other lakes. Those who know it love it, though.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Only once, a long time ago. But I have a photographer friend who comes here sometimes just to shoot this view.” He turned and began to walk the length of the ridge.
They ran into Daniel and Trevor coming from the other direction.
“Anything?” Daniel asked.
Stephen shook his head. “You?”
“Only this.” Daniel held out his hand. Cupped in his palm were some bits of orange peel. “There’s still some fragrance to them. They weren’t left that long ago.”
“Someone was up here,” Stephen said.
“My sister and Cork?” Trevor offered hopefully.
“Maybe.” Daniel’s almond eyes took in the clear 360-degree vista the ridge afforded them. “But I’m thinking that if I wanted to be certain I spotted your sister and Cork when they hit the lake, this is where I’d park myself to watch.”
And so we come back to why, Rainy thought.
“Yo,” Dross called up to them. She and Deputy Azevedo stood at the base of the wall below, craning their necks to look up to where Rainy and the others stood. “Anything?”
“Litter,” Daniel called back. “Someone was up here not long ago, but they’re gone now.”
“Come on down then,” Dross said. “We need to figure what next.”
CHAPTER 23
They followed a twisting course. Without a map, Cork had only the most general sense of where they were in the Boundary Waters. The lake they paddled at the moment didn’t look familiar. Or rather, looked like so many of the other lakes he’d canoed over the years that he couldn’t say if it was one he’d been on before. He kept an eye out for landmarks that might give him an idea of his exact location, but every cliff face, every island, every shoreline seemed familiar and at the same time strange.
Sometimes he could hear a little moan escape the lips of the kid in the stern, and he knew the injured knee was giving him a good deal of pain. His mind kept working around ways to use that against these people who’d kidnapped him and Lindsay. Although he’d given the tall man his word that he wouldn’t try to escape, he’d break it in a heartbeat if he was certain
he could get Lindsay away from them safely. But he understood the possible consequence for Lindsay Harris and her grandfather, and for him, too, if he failed.
The pain of the kid moved him, and he admired the kid’s effort to be stoic. Cork began to sing quietly:
“My paddle’s keen and bright,
Flashing like silver,
Swift as the wild goose flies,
Dip, dip, and swing.”
He glanced back at the kid. “Know that one?”
“I don’t,” the kid said.
“Dip, dip, and swing her back
Flashing like silver,
Swift as the wild goose flies,
Dip, dip, and swing.”
Cork said, “It’s a round that you sing as you paddle. I learned it when I was a Boy Scout. Makes the time go by. Give it a try.”
“I’m not a kid,” the kid said.
“The voyageurs used to sing as they paddled. Men as tough as you’d find anywhere. They knew the secret. Singing helps take your mind off the hard things. Come on, give it a try.”
He sang the verses again, then said to the kid, “You start and I’ll come in. Like I said, you sing it as a round.”
He pulled his paddle through the water and watched the far shoreline of the lake draw nearer. It took a little while, then he heard the kid sing softly, “My paddle’s keen and bright, flashing like silver.” And Cork joined in.
They were nearing a pine-covered finger of land when Cork heard a little growling in the distance, slowly rising above the sound of his singing and the kid’s. In the canoe far ahead of them, the tall man lifted his paddle from the water, laid it across the gunwales, and listened. He gestured furiously toward the pine-covered jut and dug his paddle into the lake.
Behind Cork, the kid said, “Jesus, a plane.”
Cork felt the renewed thrust of the kid’s strokes, and the birch-bark canoe shot forward.
“Paddle, damn it!” the kid shouted.
Cork put his back into it.
Moments before they made the cover of the point, the plane appeared over the treetops at the far end of the lake. It was a good half mile distant, flying low, flying slowly. Searching for him and Lindsay? Cork wondered.
“You do anything to attract attention, anything, and we’ll kill you,” the kid said. “Honest to God we will.”
It was an almost hysterical statement. Not cold and calculated. Scared. The kid was scared to death. And even a small animal when cornered and scared could inflict great harm. Cork dug his paddle into the water and gave it his all.
At first the plane kept to the north. It vanished from sight behind the pine-covered point. But the roar of the engine grew louder as the canoes hit the rocky shoreline.
“Into the trees,” the tall man shouted.
Lindsay leaped out with the others in the lead canoe and ran for the shadows of the pines. Cork did the same, then heard the splash behind him as the kid stumbled getting out, and the little craft tipped and dumped the packs into the water. The kid went into the lake with everything else. The roar of the plane was almost overhead. The kid struggled to rise, making a great commotion. Cork jumped into the lake beside him and, as the kid tried to fight his way up and out, said to him, “Just relax and lie still. We’ll never make it to the trees.”
The kid stared at him, his eyes huge with panic.
“Lie down with me,” Cork said and prostrated himself in the water.
The kid went limp and did the same. They were like small tree trunks, fallen and waterlogged beside the overturned canoe.
The plane appeared suddenly, like a great bird of prey, streaking over the treetops, dragging its broad-winged shadow across the ground. It flew directly over them, for a brief moment obscuring the sun. Cork saw that it was a floatplane, a yellow de Havilland Beaver. He was almost certain that it belonged to the Forest Service, and although he couldn’t see into the cockpit, he was pretty sure Bud Bowers was at the controls. A strong part of him ached to leap up and wave his arms and call to that lean, familiar figure, a man he knew well and counted as a friend. But the circumstances were so unfamiliar, so unpredictable, so volatile that he put a clamp on all his impulses and lay still in the water, which was freezing him right down to his bones.
The plane moved south across the body of the lake and rose at the far end in order to clear the trees there. It became black and small, like a crow, then smaller, like a bit of ash, and finally was gone altogether.
Cork stood up and reached down to the kid, who, when he rose, did so with great difficulty. It was clear he couldn’t put weight on his injured leg. Thigh-deep in the water, he leaned heavily on Cork for support.
“Migwech,” the kid said. Thanks.
The others came running from the trees.
“What happened?” the tall man asked. His face was stone, his voice stern as he eyed the canoe overturned in the water and the gear that lay on the lake bottom, clearly visible in the pristine water.
The kid couldn’t look at him. He hung his head. “My leg,” he said. “It just gave out under me.”
“Can you walk?” the tall man asked.
“I’ll try.”
“Come out then.” The tall man reached toward him.
With the help of his uncle and Cork, the kid hobbled out and fell on dry ground. He winced and held his knee.
The woman came and knelt beside him and pulled his hands away from his torn jeans and the wound that showed beneath.
“You’ve broken the stitches,” she said, as if he’d done it on purpose.
The tall man bent next to her. “Infected.”
“I’m cold,” the kid said.
“You need to get him dry and warm,” Cork said.
“Right that canoe, O’Connor, and haul out those packs,” the tall man said. “No use the rest of us getting soaked.”
Cork did as he’d been instructed. When the packs had been laid on the ground, the tall man took the sat phone from one of them, shook off the water, and tried it.
“Dead,” he said.
“Sorry.” The kid was shaking from the cold so bad that he spoke in a quivering voice.
“Get him dry,” Cork said again. “Get him warm.”
The tall man eyed the rise at the far end of the lake where the floatplane had climbed and vanished.
“It’ll be a long time before he comes back,” Cork told him. “If he ever does.”
The tall man looked down at the kid, and his face finally changed, softened just a little. “Let’s build a fire,” he said.
CHAPTER 24
They sat at the kitchen table in the house on Gooseberry Lane. Rose was peeling potatoes for the evening meal. Jenny was snapping the ends off pea pods. Waaboo was in the living room, using an old towel to play tug-of-war with Trixie. The growls of the dog and the howls of Waaboo mixed in a kind of familiar music that was oddly comforting. Rose had spent much of her life in this house with the sound of children like music in the background. She and Mal had not been able to have children, and in her own quiet home she sometimes missed all the chaos that came with little ones.
That afternoon they’d received a call from Kathy Engesser at the Sheriff’s Office to say that Marsha Dross and one of her deputies had flown out to join the others at Raspberry Lake. There’d been some trouble, but the exact nature wasn’t clear. She’d promised to update them when she knew more. She hadn’t called back yet.
Rose watched Jenny tear at the little green pods. “Are you particularly mad at those peas?”
“I still don’t get it.”
“What?”
“Why Dad felt he had to go. Now Daniel’s out there, too. Suddenly my wedding’s taken a backseat for everyone.”
“John Harris is an old friend.”
Jenny tore a pod completely apart and swore under her breath. “Th
ey haven’t seen each other in years.”
“It’s about more than that. I think Cork feels he needs to atone.”
“For what?”
“Your mother. Your brother. All those poor, preyed-on kids he couldn’t save after that young girl washed up on Windigo Island last year. I think maybe he feels that he’s let a lot of people down.”
Jenny studied the pile of pea pod ends lying discarded in a small bowl. “He never talks about that.”
“Maybe he never will. That’s not his way.” Rose put down her potato peeler. “You know, every time I look at you, I see your mother. You look so much like her.”
“Did he talk to her?”
“Not nearly as much as she would have liked. I remember her telling me once that getting him to share his feelings was like trying to pick berries off a big, thorny bush. I’m guessing that when she died, there were a lot of things he regretted never saying to her.”
Jenny reached across the table and squeezed her aunt’s hand. “You keep us grounded, you know. I’m glad you’re here.”
The kitchen door burst open. Stephen, Rainy, and Daniel swept in, bringing the cold from outside.
“Is that coffee I smell?” Daniel said.
They all tugged off their coats and hung them.
“Sit down,” Rose said. “I’ll pour coffee for anyone who wants some.”
Waaboo came running and hit Daniel going full-bore. The man stumbled back but held. He lifted the little boy, who said, “You smell like a pine tree.”
“And you smell like a dog,” Daniel said.
“Cuz of Trixie,” Waaboo told him.
At the sound of her name, the old dog came trotting in.
They all sat at the table. Rose gave Waaboo a little plastic tumbler of milk and a cookie, and he ate quietly as the others told of their day on Raspberry Lake, including the great spill of blood they’d found on the island.
“Search and Rescue will be out tomorrow in full force,” Daniel said, shaking his head. “I don’t think they’ll find anything we didn’t.”
Manitou Canyon Page 13
