Northwest Angle co-11

by William Kent Krueger

  “The signs?” Stephen said.

  “Eighteen signs, Stephen,” Hornett replied with evangelistic fervor. “Five given by our Lord Jesus Christ himself to indicate his coming and the end of the age.” He lifted his right hand and began counting off on his fingers.

  “One, Matthew twenty-four, eleven: ‘And many false prophets will arise and will mislead many.’ Think about it for a moment, Stephen. Jim Jones, David Koresh, Osama bin Laden, the Dalai Lama. All falsely using the name of God to lead masses away from the true path shown to us by our Lord Jesus Christ.

  “Two, Matthew twenty-four, six: ‘And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars.’ Stephen, when was the last time you turned on your television or radio or connected to your Internet and didn’t see some report of war somewhere in this world? The death toll rises daily, and everywhere nations are preparing weapons of mass destruction.

  “Three, Matthew twenty-four, seven: ‘For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.’ When we were in Zimbabwe, Stephen, we saw the good Christian farmers there being driven out and replaced by godless men growing poppies that supply twenty-five percent of the world’s drug trade. Now Africa hungers. There’s famine in Pakistan and India and China, and mark my words, very soon there will even be famine here in America as the climate begins to change because of God’s wrathful hand. As for earthquakes, there have been more recorded in the past one hundred years than in all history before that. Soon the whole earth will shake so badly that people will tremble for fear it’s falling apart.

  “Four, Matthew twenty-four, nine: ‘Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.’ Christians are scorned today, Stephen, under attack around the world. The Muslim nations would love nothing better than to wipe Christianity from the face of the earth. It has been bad, but it will get far worse.

  “And the last sign, Stephen, Matthew twenty-four, fourteen: ‘And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.’ You saw the tower we’re building out there? That’s a radio tower and will have a powerful signal. When we’re finished, we’ll be able to broadcast the word of God for a thousand miles. We already have an Internet site, and every year here we train men and women to travel to the darkest places imaginable to preach the holy word. Make no mistake, Stephen, the end is almost upon us. And those who haven’t accepted Jesus Christ as their savior will suffer torment you can’t even begin to imagine.”

  When he’d finished, Hornett looked hard at Stephen, as if trying to melt the young man’s flesh with the fire in his eyes.

  Stephen didn’t reply for a moment. Then he said, “Do you have a bathroom?”

  “A bathroom?” Hornett seemed caught by surprise.

  “Yes, sir. I have to pee.”

  A flicker of irritation crossed the man’s face, and he pointed toward a door at the far end of the great hall. “Over there.”

  “Thank you.”

  Stephen left the table, and Hornett followed him with a cold, disappointed stare.

  “Long boat ride,” Cork said. “You told me Noah Smalldog trespassed last night and did some shooting. What time?”

  “Shortly after midnight,” Hornett replied. “Everyone was sleeping.”

  “What woke you up to his presence? Did he shoot first?”

  “I happened to be up. Some nights I can’t sleep, and so I come here to pray. I was on my way to the hall when I spotted him.”

  “Where exactly?”

  Hornett looked at Cork with the same irritation Stephen seemed to have engendered. “Does all this really matter?”

  “Cork’s got a long background in law enforcement, Gabe,” Kretsch said. “Just where did you spot Smalldog?”

  “Sneaking around Josh and Mary’s cabin.”

  “Mary?”

  “Joshua’s wife.”

  Cork glanced toward the door where the younger Hornett stood. The man stared at the floor, frowning, lost in deep, unhappy thought. He didn’t appear to have heard his wife’s name mentioned.

  “Did Josh or Mary see him?”

  “No, they were sleeping.”

  “Is that where he fired at you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you returned fire?”

  “I did.”

  “With that?” Cork nodded toward the rifle Hornett had left near the door.

  “No, with my handgun.”

  “What kind?”

  “A Colt Commander.”

  “You always take the Commander with you when you go to pray?”

  “I started wearing it when we first began having trouble with Smalldog trespassing.”

  “After you exchanged fire, that’s when he ran?”

  Hornett nodded. “To the dock, and then he shot off in his cigarette boat.”

  Kretsch asked, “Any idea why he was here, Gabe?”

  “I don’t pretend to understand how evil thinks.”

  A door on one side of the big room opened, and a woman entered. She was stocky, with a single braid of gold hair down her back. She wore khakis and a dark green T-shirt and hiking boots. She reminded Cork of the stout Swedish immigrant women who’d helped their men carve farms out of the wild Minnesota prairie in the 1800s.

  “I thought your guests might be hungry, Gabriel,” she said and brought to the table a plate filled with slices of dark bread.

  “My wife, Esther,” Hornett said and introduced Cork and the others.

  “Abigail is coming with tea,” Esther said.

  As if on cue, the door opened again and a second woman appeared. She was older, maybe late fifties, hair gone gray. She was lean and fit like Hornett and with many of the same sharp features in her face. She wore jeans and a short-sleeved denim shirt and sneakers. There was a fluidity to her movement that made Cork think of an athlete. She carried a tray that held a white ceramic pot and several mugs. She swept across the hall toward the table.

  “The tea, Gabriel.”

  “Thank you, Abigail,” Hornett replied.

  The woman slid the tray from her hand. “Hello, Seth, Tom.” She turned a gracious smile on Cork. “And hello to you. Welcome to Stump Island.”

  “Cork O’Connor,” Bascombe said in introduction. “This is Abigail Hornett.”

  Cork wouldn’t have needed to know she had the same last name as Gabriel and Joshua. It was clear all three shared the same genes.

  “How do you do?” Cork stood up and offered his hand. Her palm and the pads of her fingers were callused. A woman used to hard physical labor, Cork thought. There was something in her face as well, something hard and solid, that spoke of an acceptance of travail and an abundance of grit to face it.

  “You would be Gabriel and Josh’s mother?”

  “I am. I hope you gentlemen are okay with tea. It’s herbal, my own creation, a little sweet. I think you’ll find it energizing. Most folks do.” She glanced around the great hall. “I thought there was a young man with you.”

  “My son,” Cork said. “He’s using your restroom.”

  “Ah,” she said with a smile, as if she understood perfectly.

  The door opened yet again, and a third woman appeared and shuffled toward the table. She was bent, as if from age, though Cork thought she couldn’t have been more than a few years past twenty. She had mouse brown hair cut very short and wore a plain yellow dress and white sandals. If there’d been any life in her face, she might have been pretty.

  “Mary,” Abigail said with a little surprise and a lot of irritation.

  The shuffling woman looked up and seemed astonished to see them all there.

  “They killed my son,” she said.

  The hall fell silent. Cork heard the high whine of a saw cutting metal outside. It came from the direction of the radio tower and reminded him of the sound of cicadas.

  “Joshua,” Abigail sn
apped. “Come and take care of your wife.”

  Before the younger Hornett could move, his wife said again, “They killed my son.”

  “Yes, we know, Mary,” Gabriel Hornett said gently. “They crucified him. But remember, he died for our sins. Josh?”

  The younger Hornett leaned his rifle against the wall and walked stiffly to Mary. Without a word, he turned her roughly and, with a firm grip on her arm, urged her back into the kitchen.

  Abigail said to the men, “Will you excuse us? Esther, we still have work to do. Come along.”

  The two women vanished into the kitchen, where Mary and her husband had gone.

  A moment later, Joshua Hornett returned, drifted back to his place near the front door, and took up his rifle again.

  Stephen came from using the restroom and sat down and looked at the bread and tea on the table, which had appeared in his absence.

  “You should try some of Esther’s date nut bread,” Gabriel Hornett said. “She’s rather well known for it.” He picked up a slice for himself, took a bite, then spoke to Cork and Kretsch. “Josh’s wife has suffered for years from the delusion that she’s the Virgin Mary. We tolerate her delusion and pray daily for her to be cured. In the meantime, we all help Josh care for her.”

  Cork said, “You took in Lily Smalldog and took care of her, too, is that right?”

  “We tried. She was really a sweet girl. But we couldn’t watch her every minute of every day, and her brother and that other Indian, they . . .” He paused and shook his head as if he couldn’t find exactly the right words for what the two men had done.

  “Took advantage of her?”

  Hornett looked at Stephen and seemed to decide that Cork’s delicate characterization was appropriate. “Exactly.”

  “Did you ever actually see them?”

  “We caught sight of them on occasion, but we never actually caught them.”

  “They sneaked onto the island?”

  “It’s a big island, Cork. We can’t watch every inch.”

  “Why did they have to sneak onto the island? Didn’t you allow Lily visitors?”

  “This isn’t a prison. She wasn’t a prisoner. At first, we welcomed Smalldog and Chickaway. But when we found out what they were doing to that poor, sweet thing, we banned them absolutely from coming here.”

  “How did you find out what they were doing?”

  “Lily told us.”

  “She just came right out with it?”

  “Not in so many words. She didn’t really understand what they were doing, what sexual relations were about. They brought her little gifts and filled her head with stories, and she told us the stories. It wasn’t hard to understand what the visits from those two men were really about.”

  “How old was Lily?”

  “She’d just turned eighteen when she disappeared.”

  “So she was a minor, or at least a vulnerable adult, when these men were abusing her. Did you call Tom?”

  “We complained, of course.”

  “Tom, did you investigate?”

  “I talked to Lily, but she wouldn’t say anything to me,” Kretsch said.

  “And nobody had her examined to confirm that she’d been abused?”

  “We knew,” Hornett said. “We didn’t need to have her examined.”

  “What I’m saying here, Gabriel,” Cork said evenly, “is that if you could substantiate a claim of sexual abuse of a minor or a vulnerable adult, a warrant could have been sworn out for the two men. The law could have stopped them.”

  “The law would have had to catch them first,” Hornett replied. “Not an easy thing.”

  “All right,” Cork said, “let’s move on. When Lily Smalldog disappeared, did you know that she was pregnant?”

  “We didn’t suspect it at all. She said nothing to us, and she wore such loose-fitting clothing all the time. Only after we heard about the boxes of formula that Chickaway had carted off across the lake did we put two and two together.”

  “When she disappeared, you notified Tom immediately?”

  “Of course.”

  “What did you think had happened to her?”

  “She didn’t leave the island on her own, we knew that much. We’ve got only two launches here, so they’re easy to monitor. We figured one of the Indians had come and taken her. Then, when we found her sweater, we thought she’d gone into the lake, same as her mother. Both women suffered from periods of darkness you can’t imagine.”

  “Depression?”

  “I’m no doctor, so I couldn’t really diagnose it.”

  “Were they being treated?”

  “We treated them with prayer, Cork. It’s our way.”

  “I understand Lily and her mother had their own cabin.”

  “Yes.”

  “Could we see it?”

  “Now?”

  “As good a time as any,” Cork said.

  Hornett stood up and led them to the door. “You stay here, Josh. And mind Mary,” he said with a note of chastisement.

  His younger brother glared at him but said nothing and obeyed.

  The cabin was several hundred yards east of the peninsula where the other buildings of the camp stood. They reached it by walking a narrow path, almost overgrown now, that ran among the birches along the shoreline. It was a small, isolated little structure built of logs, without electricity and with an outhouse off to one side. The great restless blue of the big water was visible through a wide break in the trees at its back. In the wind off the lake, the sound of the birch leaves rustling was like fast-running water. Cork thought it was a lovely spot.

  “It’s pretty rustic, but Vivian and Lily seemed to be just fine with what they had,” Hornett said as they approached the place. “We were planning at some point to run electricity out here and put in indoor plumbing, but all our efforts for quite a while have been focused on our larger projects.”

  The door was padlocked, but Hornett brought out a set of keys, undid the lock, and shoved the door open. He stepped inside, and the others followed.

  The windows were closed and clouded with dust. Judging from the stuffiness of the room, they hadn’t been opened in a great while. There was a table, and there were two chairs and two small bunks. There was a cast-iron stove for heating. That was all. Nothing personal remained in the cabin, nothing that would have spoken to the nature of the two women, mother and daughter, who’d lived there.

  “What happened to Lily’s belongings?” Cork asked.

  “We’ve got them boxed and stored up at the camp, should anyone ever want to claim them. There’s nothing much, though. Clothing, a few pictures. Vivian and Lily lived a pretty simple existence. Took their food with the rest of us, washed their clothes in our laundry, bathed in our showers. They didn’t need much here.”

  Cork recalled the cabin on the isolated island where Jenny had found the body of Lily Smalldog. It was a simple affair, too. Lily had been used to isolation, to making do by herself. As far as Cork could see, she hadn’t had much in her life, but what little she did have was apparently enough.

  “Dad,” Stephen said.

  He’d wandered away from the men and stood looking at the wall of the cabin above one of the bunks. Cork joined him and saw what he’d found.

  “What is it?” Hornett asked.

  “A word carved into the wood,” Cork said.

  Hornett came and looked, too. “I can’t make it out. Looks like gibberish. But Lily wasn’t good with reading or spelling.”

  “It’s an Ojibwe word,” Stephen said. “Gizaagin.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I love you.”

  Stephen stepped closer and looked down, then slid the bunk out a foot and pulled a folded paper from where it had been caught between the bunk frame and the wall. He unfolded it, studied it, then handed it to his father.

  It was a drawing, simple pen and ink but really quite lovely, of a deer and fawn in a meadow. It was signed “Sonny.”

  Cork handed i
t to Tom Kretsch. Bascombe and Hornett looked at it over his shoulder.

  Hornett said, “One of those little gifts I was telling you about. It didn’t take much to get that poor girl to spread her legs.”

  Not much, Cork thought. Just love.

  THIRTY

  He stared up at Jenny with an intensity that would have been unnerving in someone grown, but he was only a baby and understood nothing except the nearness of her face, the scent of her body, the beat of her heart, the comfort of her presence, the electricity of her love. What had his mother been to him but these same things? Did he understand that, although Jenny offered him all of this, she was not his mother?

  His left hand, so tiny, reached for her mouth, took her lower lip between his fingers, squeezed. He was strong, and it must have hurt her, but she made no move to stop him.

  “Do you know what love is?” Rose asked.

  They sat together in the dining room of Bascombe’s lodge. Lynn Belgea had come with Babs Larson and had offered to take someone back to the houseboat to get suitcases so that everyone would have clean clothing. Mal and Aaron and Anne had gone with them, and Rose and Jenny were left alone. The lodge smelled of the baking meat loaf, of herbs and hot meat juices.

  Jenny carefully removed the baby’s fingers from her lip. “I used to think I did.”

  “I believe it’s a life tied to another life in a way that feels inseparable. We care about a lot of people, but we choose to love a very few.”

  “Choose?” Jenny looked down at the baby. “I didn’t choose this.”

  “Ask your sister, and she might tell you that God chose for you. Are you unhappy with the choice?”

  “Aunt Rose, do you believe, really believe, that I could love this baby? I’ve only known him for a little more than a day.”

  “I believe what I see. And, Jenny, all I see in your face when you look at him is love.”