Manitou Canyon
Page 32
As for Indigo, his real name was James Sparrow. He’d been a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, decorated during his service in Afghanistan, but mustered out as the result of an altercation with a Canadian Army officer that had involved a young Afghan woman. Sparrow’s defense had been that he was protecting the woman. The officer had contended that he’d been the one to intervene to prevent Sparrow from sexually assaulting her. Instead of taking the case to prosecution, the military had simply made it go away by discharging Sparrow for misconduct.
Mrs. Gray’s real name was Mona Fournier, and Mr. Gray—Flynn—had truly been her brother. Everything Fox had said about her family and the hundreds of other First Nations people of Fort Saint Antoine poisoned by the spill from Caldecott’s West Caribou Mine was true. Cork, who’d fought so hard on so many occasions to protect his own family, couldn’t find it in his heart to condemn these people for the bitterness that had led them to be a part of the Manitou Canyon Dam Affair.
Krystal Gore, the dealer who’d been instrumental in the payoff to Trevor Harris, had been granted immunity in return for her testimony in the case. She and her daughter had been sequestered somewhere secret, and Cork had been led to believe they would enter the witness protection program to keep them safe from the Warrior Cohort.
He’d been staring at the linoleum, lost in his thinking. He looked up and found Henry Meloux standing in the doorway, studying him patiently.
“What is it, Henry?”
“For several winters, the worry I have felt for you has been heavy on my heart. That weight is gone now. You finally understand what it is that offers you peace as ogichidaa.”
Cork thought about this and decided it was true. “I learned something from Aaron Commanda. He’s also ogichidaa, Henry. I saw him give everything he could in order to stand between evil and what he loved. He accepted that the rest was out of his hands.”
“To have tried and been true in your heart, that is all any human being could ask of you or that you could ask of yourself. I am proud of you, Corcoran O’Connor.” The old man smiled broadly. His eyes might even have been a little wet. “I will leave now,” he said, “and go dance and make a fool of myself, because that is what joy is for.”
* * *
Rainy saw her great-uncle come from the kitchen in a kind of haste, which was odd for the old man. She was concerned, and she went to the kitchen to see what might have happened. She found Cork there.
“I just saw Uncle Henry hurrying away.”
“He’s going to dance,” Cork said with a smile. “That’s all. Us, too, I hope.”
“He’s okay? You’re okay?”
“The best.”
She kissed him. “I could have told you that. In fact, I have. You just haven’t heard me.”
“I hear you now. So, as I understand it, Leah is staying on at Crow Point. Henry is her life now.”
“That’s the plan,” Rainy said.
“And what about you? Two women out there seeing to one man’s needs? Sounds to me like a recipe for disaster.”
“I’m going to give her my cabin. Although it was never really mine to give. It’s been a good place for me, but I guess it’s time I moved on.”
“Where? You haven’t talked to me about this.”
She laid her head against his chest. She could hear his heart.
“You’ve been a little busy lately. And I haven’t come up with a good plan. I could live with my daughter in Alaska, I suppose, until I’ve figured things out. I don’t see her or my granddaughter enough.”
Cork lightly kissed her hair. “There’s something I’ve been thinking about. But, like you say, I’ve been kind of busy, so I haven’t had a chance to talk to you about it.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve been thinking you could stay here. With us.”
“That would certainly get a lot of tongues wagging.”
“Not if you were my wife.”
She looked up into his eyes. “Is that really what you want?”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t.” He studied her and his face clouded. “It’s not what you want?”
“There is so much about me you don’t know, Cork.”
“I know what’s important to me. I love you, Rainy. Isn’t that enough?”
She could have argued, because in her head she wasn’t at all certain of the answer to that question. Instead, she spoke from her heart. In the sunlight of a November afternoon, with the last sounds of the wedding party still filling the house on Gooseberry Lane, she said to the man who loved her, “Yes.”
CHAPTER 59
Cheval’s de Havilland Beaver, fitted with skis now instead of pontoons, touched down on the snow of a clearing deep in the Manitou Highlands. The sun was a great, blinding face of light beaming down out of a sky so clear and blue its beauty was almost painful to behold. The Beaver taxied toward the edge of the thick alpine forest where Aaron Commanda and his nephew Bird stood awaiting his arrival. The trees wore a mantel of clean white, and in the hills of the highlands the snow was already calf-deep.
Cheval brought the plane to a stop and killed the engine. He got out and greeted Aaron with a bear hug, then gave Bird the same.
“What’s the word?” Aaron asked.
“The river’s got an indefinite reprieve,” Cheval reported. “The Caldecott Corporation’s probably going to throw money at everyone and everything, but nothing’s moving forward at the moment.” He grinned at them. “If this was the old days, Caldecott would have a bounty out on your heads. As it is, you’re the folk heroes of the moment.”
“Folk heroes?” Bird said, and smiled as if this pleased him greatly.
“There’s a defense fund being put together for you,” Cheval said. “And get this, John Harris has contributed a hundred thousand to it. He says he’ll give more if needed.”
“They’ll have to find us first,” Aaron said.
Cheval looked at the hills, an inviting mottle of green needle and white snow that stretched unbroken as far as the eye could see. “I wouldn’t mind staying here with you for a while. There are a lot of people, strangers, in Saint Gervais these days.”
“Things will settle down,” Aaron said. “Maybe then we’ll come back. In the meantime, Bird has his rifle and the woods are full of game.”
From the plane, they unloaded two big Duluth packs filled with supplies.
“This is the last load I’ll be bringing in now. But I put a sat phone in one of those packs,” Cheval said. “Use it if you need me.”
“You should go,” Aaron said. “Dark comes early now.”
They waited as Cheval taxied across the clearing and lifted off. They stood watching until the plane was no larger than a tiny chickadee held in the vast palm of the sky. Then Aaron shouldered a pack, and Bird shouldered the other, and they began to snowshoe back through the forest the way they’d come.
The trail led them to an old cabin on a high ridge, one that Aaron’s grandfather had built. Below them lay the Manitou River, silver in the sunlight, threading its way among the hills of the highlands. Gazing down at that broad, clear run of water, which had been there since long before human memory, Aaron understood what his ancestors must have felt when they first stumbled upon it: the spirit of the Great Mystery in everything it touched. He felt, as they must have felt, the deep certainty of that spirit in his own body, in every breath, every thought, every heartbeat. And he was grateful beyond words.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nancy Stricker / Warren-Newport Public Library.
WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER is the award-winning author of fourteen previous Cork O'Connor novels, including Tamarack County and Windigo Island, as well as the novel Ordinary Grace, winner of the 2014 Edgar Award for best novel. All are available from Atria Books. He lives in the Twin Cities with his family. Visit his website at WilliamKentKrueger.com.
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ALSO BY WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER
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Tamarack County
Ordinary Grace
Trickster’s Point
Northwest Angle
Vermilion Drift
Heaven’s Keep
Red Knife
Thunder Bay
Copper River
Mercy Falls
Blood Hollow
The Devil’s Bed
Purgatory Ridge
Boundary Waters
Iron Lake
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by William Kent Krueger
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Krueger, William Kent, author.
Title: Manitou Canyon : a novel / William Kent Krueger.
Description: First Atria Books hardcover edition. | New York City : Atria Books, 2016. | Series: Cork O’Connor mystery series
Identifiers: LCCN 2016013735 (print) | LCCN 2016020714 (ebook) | ISBN 9781476749266 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781476749280 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: O’Connor, Cork (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Private investigators—Minnesota—Fiction. | Missing persons—Investigation—Fiction. | Ojibwa Indians—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / General. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3561.R766 M36 2016 (print) | LCC PS3561.R766 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016013735
ISBN 978-1-4767-4926-6
ISBN 978-1-4767-4928-0 (ebook)