Vermilion Drift

by William Kent Krueger

  Once the white woman—a rich white woman—vanished, the white community’s concern over misused law enforcement resources seemed to vanish as well.

  Cork didn’t know much about Monique Cavanaugh or the specifics of her disappearance, nor was he able to glean much from the newspaper coverage.

  Monique Cavanaugh had been the only child of Richard and Agnes Goodell, wealthy Bostonians. She’d been raised much abroad and was well educated. She had apparently met Peter Cavanaugh in Boston while she was briefly home visiting her parents, and Cavanaugh was conducting business with Richard Goodell on behalf of the New York City office of Great North. They married a very short time later. They’d had two children, Max and Lauren. When Thomas Cavanaugh, Peter Cavanaugh’s father, fell ill, the son moved his family from New York to Minnesota in order to assume the reins of Great North. Before their arrival, Thomas Cavanaugh built an elaborate home for his son on North Point. A year later, Thomas Cavanaugh died, and less than a year after that his daughter-in-law disappeared.

  Cork paused. Judge Robert Parrant had lived on the North Point property so long that everyone called it the Parrant estate. But it had actually belonged to the Cavanaughs first. Cork had forgotten that little piece of history.

  He read on.

  By all accounts, Monique Cavanaugh had been an extraordinary woman: a wonderful hostess; an accomplished musician; a generous benefactor of numerous social causes, including the Ojibwe of the Iron Lake Reservation; a devout member of the St. Agnes parish; a loving wife; a doting mother.

  On the night she disappeared, she’d gone to Duluth to attend a gala fund-raising event for a hospital charity. She’d left the event alone shortly after 10:00 P.M., intending to drive the two hours to Aurora rather than spend the night in a hotel in the port city. She never arrived home. No trace of her or of her automobile had ever been found.

  Plenty of photographs of Monique Cavanaugh accompanied the news accounts. Hers was a face the camera loved. Cork found it uncanny how much her daughter, Lauren, resembled her.

  His cell phone vibrated, and he picked up the call. It was Sheriff Marsha Dross.

  “Are you available to come to my office now?”

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  “You’ll see when you get here.”

  NINETEEN

  When he arrived at the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department and County Jail, Cork understood what Dross had meant with her cryptic parting comment. The parking lot was full of news vans. Clearly, the story of the bodies discovered in the Vermilion Drift had broken, and, like crows flocking to a carcass, the media had descended. Cork made his way inside and was buzzed through the security door. He found Dross, Larson, and Rutledge in council in the sheriff’s office. Agent Susan Upchurch, the BCA’s forensic anthropologist, was with them.

  Cork took the only empty chair. “So,” he said. “They know.”

  Dross gave a philosophic shrug. “We’ve been able to keep a lid on things for almost two days. I knew that sooner or later this would happen. I’ve scheduled a news conference for noon. Simon and I will handle it. But before we go in there, I’d like to know exactly where we stand with everything. Ed?”

  Larson wore spectacles and was fond of sport coats with leather patches. His hair was neatly cut and just beginning to silver. He spoke in considered tones and had always reminded Cork of a college professor. He removed his spectacles and began cleaning them with a handkerchief he’d pulled from his back pocket.

  “Using dental records, we’ve been able to establish the identity of all but one of the older victims,” he said. “They are Monique Cavanaugh, Abigail Stillday, Fawn Grand, and Naomi Stonedeer. We believe, based on what Cork’s found out, that the final victim is Leonora Broom, but we haven’t been able to confirm it yet. The most recent victim has been positively ID’d as Lauren Cavanaugh. The medical examiner has determined her death was the result of a gunshot wound to the chest. We believe her mother, Monique Cavanaugh, was also the victim of a gunshot wound. Simon’s forensic people have told us that the bullets that killed both women were fired by the same weapon. In the case of the daughter, powder tattooing on the skin indicates that the firearm was discharged at nearly point-blank range. We believe the murder took place somewhere else and the body was transported to the Vermilion Drift site, where it was hidden with the others. So far, we’ve been able to find no witnesses to Lauren Cavanaugh’s murder. We can’t find her car. We have no idea where the actual murder might have taken place. Currently, we have no suspects in any of the killings.” He paused, thought a moment, then said, “I guess that’s it for me.”

  Dross looked to BCA Agent Rutledge. “Simon?”

  “I don’t have anything to add,” he said. “I’ll defer to Susan.”

  All eyes settled on the forensic anthropologist.

  “I haven’t had time to do anything except a cursory examination of all of the remains,” Upchurch said. She spoke slowly, and her words were drawn out slightly with her Alabama drawl. “With only bone left to us, it’s difficult at this stage to speak with any certainty about cause of death. None of the victims show evidence of blunt trauma, nothing broken. Except for Monique Cavanaugh, all of them show clear evidence of sharp force trauma—bone cuts—that appear to be incised wounds, but the locations vary from victim to victim.”

  “Incised wounds?” Dross said.

  “These would be from cuts or incisions rather than stab wounds. These marks tend to be longer than they are deep. But we have to be careful, because sometimes the teeth of scavengers leave the same kind of mark.”

  “Is there a reason why you believe these are from cuts and not from scavengers?” Dross asked.

  “Scavengers large enough to leave marks would probably also have spread the bones around. The skeletons were all intact.”

  “Okay, so what would these wounds indicate?”

  “If they are, in fact, knife wounds, then torture, perhaps. Or maybe something ritualistic. Two of the victims show cuts consistent with stab wounds on the left side of the thoracic cage, which might indicate a knife thrust to the heart.” She paused and thought a moment. “That’s really all I can say for sure at this time.”

  “Thanks, Susan,” Dross said. “Cork?”

  He could have told them that his father, the man responsible for the investigation of the Vanishings more than forty years earlier, knew about the hidden entrance to the Vermilion Drift. He could have told them he had an idea about the weapon that had been used to kill both mother and daughter, that there was a very good possibility it had once been his father’s sidearm and had been his, too, but now it was missing. He could have told them that he’d found journals that should have contained a full and personal account of the final days of his father’s investigation but someone had removed the pertinent pages. But how could he explain any of this?

  He said, “Nothing to add, I guess.”

  “Any speculation on the connection between the Ojibwe women who were the early victims?”

  Cork shook his head. “Leonora Broom and Abigail Stillday weren’t identified as victims during the investigation in ’sixty-four, so they wouldn’t necessarily have been missed. Most folks on the rez thought they’d simply run off. The vanishing of Naomi Stonedeer was the first to raise concern. She was a very young woman, well known, whose absence would be quickly noticed. The final Ojibwe victim, Fawn Grand, was a girl of simple mind and simple understanding—these days we’d call her challenged—and was probably way too trusting. She could easily have been enticed by almost anyone. But her disappearance certainly wouldn’t have escaped notice. So, I haven’t seen anything that ties them together, except their heritage.”

  “Someone who had a significant prejudice against the Ojibwe?” Larson asked.

  “Maybe. But then how do you explain Monique Cavanaugh?”

  “Exactly,” Dross said.

  “Has anyone looked at the old case files?” Upchurch asked.

  “I’d love to,” Larson said. �
��But we don’t have any. The sheriff’s department used to be housed in the courthouse. Back in ’seventy-seven there was a fire, destroyed a lot of our records. Right after that, the county built this facility.”

  “The BCA was involved though, right?” She looked to Rutledge. “You probably have files.”

  Rutledge looked a little sheepish. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  “Finally,” Dross said, “what’s the connection between Lauren Cavanaugh and the Vanishings in ’sixty-four?”

  “Why does there have to be a connection?” Larson asked. “The notes that Haddad’s wife and Genie Kufus and Max Cavanaugh received pretty much indicated she was killed because of the mine.”

  “Or someone wants us to believe that’s why she was killed,” Rutledge said. “Whoever killed her knew about the other bodies, and the other bodies were there long before anyone proposed schlepping nuclear waste into Vermilion One.”

  Quiet descended. Through the opened window came the sound of media vehicles continuing to arrive for the news conference at noon.

  Cork said, “Maybe Lauren knew something.”

  “Knew what?”

  “Something about the Vanishings.”

  “How could she?”

  Cork said, “The Parrant estate belonged to her father before it belonged to Judge Parrant. She spent some time there when she was a child.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she found something when she moved back in. Or returning to the old place caused her to remember something.”

  “You’re suggesting she was killed because of what she knew?”

  “Just throwing mud against the wall to see what sticks, Ed,” Cork said.

  “All right. We need to interview her brother again with that possibility in mind,” Dross said. “If she knew something, maybe he knows the same thing.”

  “Okay if I take that interview?” Rutledge asked.

  Simon Rutledge was well known for his interviewing ability, especially when it came to coaxing a confession from someone. Among Minnesota law enforcement agencies, the particular effectiveness of his technique was known as “Simonizing.” On a number of occasions during his time as sheriff, Cork had seen hardened criminals slowly bend during Simon’s interviews and finally break.

  “That’s fine,” Dross said. “Would you like one of my people with you?”

  “I can handle it by myself, Marsha.”

  “He knows his mother was one of the victims in the Vermilion Drift?” Cork asked.

  “Yes,” Dross said. “I spoke with him at his home earlier this morning.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “Surprised. Stunned, actually. But not emotional, really. It was a long time ago.”

  “And Hattie Stillday?” Cork said. “Does she know about her daughter?”

  “I’ve tried to reach her several times,” Dross said. “Until I do, we’ll refrain from making Abigail Stillday’s name public. Same with the others.”

  “Mind if I track her down and deliver the news myself?” Cork said. “She’s a family friend.”

  The sheriff thought it over briefly, then said, “I sent Azevedo out this morning to request her presence in my office, but he couldn’t find her. If you can, and you’re willing to deliver the news, all right. Just let me know when you’ve connected.”

  “She’ll probably want to claim what remains of her daughter.”

  Dross said, “That’ll be up to the BCA and Agent Upchurch.”

  Cork gave the agent a questioning glance.

  “I can’t say at this point. A week, maybe two,” Upchurch replied.

  “I’ll tell her,” Cork said. “What about Isaiah Broom?”

  “What about him?” Larson said.

  “His mother was probably one of the victims. He ought to know.”

  “When we’re certain of that, we’ll make sure he’s informed. In the meantime, it would be best if you kept it to yourself.”

  “Sure,” Cork said. “Are we done here?”

  Dross waited for someone to say otherwise. “For now,” she said. “By the way, Cork. Lou Haddad and his wife have taken a little vacation, and Kufus and her team are gone. The DOE pulled the plug on their assessment until all this gets sorted out.”

  “But Max Cavanaugh’s still around?” Cork asked.

  “Last time we checked,” Rutledge said.

  TWENTY

  On his way to the rez to see Hattie Stillday, Cork made one stop first, at St. Agnes Catholic Church. He found the young priest in his office there, reading a baseball book, The Boys of Summer.

  “When I was a kid,” Father Ted Green said, marking his place with a strip torn from an old Sunday bulletin, “I wanted two things: to pitch for the Detroit Tigers and to win the Cy Young Award.”

  “What happened?”

  The priest touched his collar. “Got called to play for another team with a manager you can’t say no to. That, and I never could deliver a fastball worth squat. What can I do for you, Cork?”

  Ted Green was a lanky kid, half a dozen years out of seminary. He’d taken a while to get his feet firmly on the ground with the parishioners of St. Agnes but had proven to be an able administrator, preached a pretty good homily, and represented the Church well in a time when much of the non-Catholic world was suspicious of the Vatican and its clergy. Cork quite liked the guy.

  “I’m wondering how difficult it might be to track down one of the priests assigned to St. Agnes years ago, Ted.”

  “If he’s still a priest, not hard.”

  “If he isn’t?”

  “More difficult but not impossible. Care to tell me who?” The priest arched an eyebrow and added, “And I wouldn’t mind knowing why.”

  * * *

  Hattie Stillday was famous and could have been wealthy, except that all her life she’d held to one of the most basic values of the Anishinaabeg: What one possessed, one shared. Hattie was a generous woman. Long before there was a Chippewa Grand Casino bringing in money to underwrite education for kids on the rez, she’d established the Red Schoolhouse Foundation, which helped Shinnob high school grads pay for college. She’d helped build the Nokomis Home and had begun the Iron Lake Indian Arts Council. She lived with her granddaughter, Ophelia, in the same small house in which she’d resided when her alcoholic daughter, Abigail, had run away four decades earlier and had never come home. Except that Abbie hadn’t run away. Or if that had truly been her intention, she hadn’t gone far.

  Hattie had decorated her yard and home with artwork by other Indian artists, which she’d acquired over the years. On her lawn, never well kept and chronically crowded with dandelions, stood a tall, rusting iron sculpture meant to represent a quiver full of arrows. There was a chain saw carving, a great section of honey-colored maple topped with a huge bust of makwa, a bear. There were odds and ends that dangled and glittered and made music in the wind.

  Cork knocked on the door and got no answer.

  “Hey! Cork!”

  He turned and spied old Jessup Bliss crossing the street. Because of his arthritic knees, Bliss walked slowly and with a cane.

  “Lookin’ for Hattie?” Bliss called out.

  “I am, Jess.”

  Bliss walked up Hattie’s cracked sidewalk.

  “Sheriff’s car was here earlier, looking for her, too, I guess.”

  “You tell them anything?”

  “Cops? You kiddin’?”

  “Know where she is?”

  “Sure. Went over to see Henry Meloux, way early this morning. Ain’t come back. Say, true what I heard? Buncha bones in that mine over to the south end of the rez? Buncha dead Shinnobs buried there?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Bliss spit a fountain of brown tobacco juice into the profusion of dandelions that yellowed Hattie’s yard. “When’ll white folks learn?”

  “Learn what, Jess?”

  “Us Indians are like them dandelions there. Don’t matter what you do to get
rid of us, we just keep comin’ back.”

  Cork cut across the rez on back roads and parked at the double-trunk birch that marked the trail to Meloux’s cabin on Crow Point. Hattie Stillday’s dusty pickup was parked there, too. He locked the Land Rover and began a hike through the pines. He’d been down this path so often and was, at the moment, so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t see the beauty of that place. Thin reeds of sunlight plunged through the canopy of evergreen, and if Cork had taken even a moment to see, he would have realized they were like stalks whose flowers blossomed high above the trees. A moment to listen and he’d have heard the saw of insect wings and the cry of birds and the susurrus of wind, which was the music of unspoiled wilderness. A moment to feel and he’d have been aware of the soft welcome of the deep bed of pine needles beneath his feet. But all the confusion, the bizarre nature of the puzzle he was trying to solve, made him deaf and blind.

  Then he stopped, brought up suddenly in the middle of a stand of aspens by the intoxicating fragrance of wild lily of the valley, a scent that reached beyond his thinking. In the mysterious and immediate way that smell connects to memory, he was suddenly transported to a summer day nearly fifty years in the past.

  He was walking the trail with his father, headed toward Meloux’s cabin, feeling happy and safe. He recalled his father’s long, steady stride. He remembered watching that tall, wonderful man float through shafts of sunlight, illuminated in moments of gold. And he remembered how his father had stopped and waited and lifted him effortlessly onto his broad shoulders, and they’d moved together among the trees like one tall being.