Upon his recovery, the middle-aged, wiry little French-Canadian made two promises to himself. First of all, he swore he’d never venture out on that treacherous body of water again. “Je suis battu,” he declared. “Le Lac Superior est la propre mer du demon et je l’abandonnerai pour toujours.”
The second promise had to do with the implement of his salvation: the broken mast and mainsail boom. Several days after his rescue, on a clear, calm day, with local fishing boats moving in and out of the harbor, Lecoursier walked the shoreline searching for debris from the wreck that might prove useful in this new phase of his life. The schooner had been small, a coastline hugger, and its cargo of barrels and crates of Canadian grain and eastern hardware had either sunk to the bottom of the lake or been smashed to pieces on the rocks. Debris lay scattered along the shore: broken furniture, hull planks, tattered pieces of sailcloth, and lengths of rope. When he encountered the remains of the mainmast, however, he fell to his knees in a state of shock. Anchored by boulders weighing hundreds of pounds, the heavy wooden beams that had conveyed him safely to shore resembled the biblical wooden cross. From his position on the ground, he studied the shattered section of mast and the crossing mainsail boom. The whole assemblage jutted out above him at an angle from the rocks, looking like the cross of Golgotha he’d seen in pen-and-ink sketches in a Jesuit church back in Canada. Surely this is a sign, Lecoursier thought.
He took up residence in an abandoned trapper’s shanty on the ridge behind town. A well-worn path led up the hill, ending in a beautiful open meadow on the face of the ridge. With little or no topsoil anywhere along the shoreline, townsfolk had found this meadow provided the only available land to bury their dead. Even at that, tall rock cairns had to be piled on top of the shallow graves to protect the remains of the departed from prowling wolf packs. It was a quiet place, covered with bright yellow marigolds and red-orange Indian paintbrush blossoms in summer. The trapper’s cabin was just beyond the meadow in the treeline.
Stephan Lecoursier came upon this hallowed ground about the same time he discovered the cross down on the shore. He knew what he had to do. On this restful piece of property, with its commanding position of dominance over the devil’s own sea, he’d build a church to praise the God of his salvation, and the mainmast cross would be the focal point of the sanctuary. Such an important representation of his faith and adoration could be no mere log and sod structure; he’d build it out of the very stone that had been intended as the instrument of his demise.
Fortunately for Lecoursier, the townsfolk adopted him into their midst. They gave him food and good, warm clothing. They kept an eye on him, especially after it became obvious that something was very wrong with the man. Whether his eccentric behavior represented a lifelong disability or was simply a result of the shipwreck, they had no way of knowing. They couldn’t understand a word he said. His teary-eyed monologues evoked sympathy and compassion, although children tended to run the other way when they saw him coming. He was, after all, a foreign French-Canadian, and the sole Catholic in a town full of Scandinavian Protestants.
With the help of Helmer Holien, Black Otter Bay’s boatwright and blacksmith, Lecoursier refurbished a discarded handcart he found near the wharf and immediately set about hauling great quantities of stone up from the shore. There was an endless supply, all sizes, shapes, and colors, but he hand picked each one for a precise fit. He took long, rambling walks in the forest, and his hair and beard grew out in wild disarray, adding to his peculiar manner. One winter day, almost a year after surviving the shipwreck, a crew of timber men watched Lecoursier wander through the logging camp. They reported that he carried on a nonstop dialogue with himself, but no one could understand his words. A few months later, with spring lying soft across the forest, he set out on another walk and was never seen in town again.
It took a few days for word to get around that he was gone. Someone suggested that he’d probably decided to walk back to Canada now that the snow was gone, but most people figured he was simply lost. A search crew went out, but really, with an endless tract of wilderness beyond the ridge, there was little hope of finding him. An astounding revelation awaited them, however, when some of the townsfolk ventured up to the cemetery that summer. Lecoursier’s stone church greeted them with an open door. Actually, the structure didn’t have a door, and no roof, either, but the view from the empty doorframe covered fifty miles or more out over Lake Superior.
Everyone had known that Lecoursier was hauling rocks up from the shore; they’d seen him wheeling the loaded cart by hand through town. But his lack of tools and indecipherable speech hadn’t prepared them for the primitive grandeur of his work. They found a single square room, twenty feet to a side, with rocks stacked and layered so tight as to make the eight-foot-high walls nearly impervious to wind or rain. The mast-and-boom cross stood in the corner.
For a while after that, when it was finally apparent that the stranger from Canada wasn’t coming back, folks walked up the ridge path on Sunday afternoons to sit in the stone church’s doorway and admire the view. At some point, tools were stored inside for use in the cemetery. A group of volunteers spent a weekend roofing the structure, and before long weddings were held there, as well as family picnics and civic celebrations. Young couples strolled up the hill to sit in the meadow among the marigolds at the edge of the cemetery. It was a quiet place, blessed with a cool breeze off Lake Superior in the summer.
As the years went by, the eccentric character of Stephan Lecoursier faded from the townsfolk’s memory, and when the first roads and cars came to town, the little stone building itself became a neglected piece of local history. Even the cemetery was moved—at least, interments after the taconite plant opened in the 1950s were done in the new cemetery plotted out half a dozen miles up Highway 61. The old handbuilt structure became a hangout for teenagers, a gathering place for beer parties, and occasionally a shelter for hikers using the nearby Superior Hiking Trail.
It wasn’t until Marlon Fastwater was elected sheriff of Black Otter Bay County that the little structure found a new purpose. It was one thing for a part-time small-town cop to share office space in the local hardware store, but a full-time county sheriff needed his own place. Being the oldest continually inhabited town in the county, Black Otter Bay had been the county seat since its incorporation more than a century and a half earlier. The county itself had been named after the town. Time and circumstance had also contrived to make Black Otter Bay one of the smallest communities in one of the largest counties in the state. At more than 2,200 square miles, the county was a sparsely populated tract of wilderness, with nearly as many wolves in the territory as people. As for the town itself, its rich history and independently minded population insured its survival through economic booms and busts.
With state and county funding, the access path to the stone building was widened and paved into a driveway. A buried cable supplied electricity, and a cinderblock back room was added with plumbing for a bathroom. Stationary windows of hardened glass, double-paned against the weather, were installed, along with a heavy steel door. With the new metal roof, the place resembled a small fortress, impervious to fire, the vagaries of Mother Nature, and even most small arms weapons.
Sheriff Fastwater liked the office, especially the way it sat above all the other buildings in town. Just as Lecoursier had chosen the location to honor his God above all creation, Fast-water felt it gave the townsfolk something to look up to. Not that he’d ever think he was better than them, or somehow above the law himself, but it couldn’t hurt to have the visible ideal of law and order presiding over the community.
But for him, the best part was watching the sunrise over Lake Superior. For that reason, Fastwater spent many nights in the office sleeping on an old army cot, Gitch camped out with him on the wide-planked wooden floor. Just before sunrise, with the distant horizon beginning to show pink, he’d lounge on his cot to watch the day begin. Above him, solid twelve-inch-thick rafter logs picked up th
e first hints of daylight, glistening with an antique lacquered sheen. Once the sun was up, however, there would be no more sleeping. Without blinds or shades, sunlight streamed straight in the office, glowing like flood lamps off the sealed mortar-and-stone walls.
He’d let Gitch out then, and usually accompanied the big dog on a short walk through the meadow to the old cemetery, where he’d greet his ancestors. His mother was here, even though she’d died after the new cemetery opened. His father was buried in Duluth, but everyone else was here: great-aunts and uncles and further back to where connections were not so clear. While Gitch sniffed around, Fastwater would pause at his grandmother’s grave. Floating Bird had passed away before he was born, but many times as a child he’d heard the stories about her “medicine.” His mother struggled to explain this strange concept to him, but made it clear that he needed to know about it. He remembered her saying, “Your grandmother could feel things. She told me many times that she saw shadows of events beyond our world. She could hear echoes of sounds beyond normal, everyday noises.”
The outcome of all this was that Marlon, a quiet, shy, straightforward young boy, had understood exactly what his mother meant. He understood because those same things happened to him. Not very often, like his grandmother, but he’d had visions and insights as well. He couldn’t call them up on a whim, but a few times, usually under stress or physical threat, he’d “seen” things not visible to others. Sometimes it was just a feeling, but those feelings spoke to him as clearly as a person talking beside him. That’s how he’d known, all those years ago, that the man in the bar with a gun wasn’t going to shoot. He could smell the incapacitating fear and “saw” the empty cylinder in the gun.
On the rare occasion when Fastwater needed to detain someone overnight, he simply padlocked the office door from the outside, and the large stone building became an overnight jail cell. With an understanding of the character of the local citizenry, he knew that no one would attempt to break one of his windows to escape. Folks around here didn’t think that way. They’d never maliciously ruin a well-made piece of property like the sheriff’s office. But just to be sure, drunk drivers sleeping one off or barroom brawlers cooling down overnight usually shared the jail facility with Gitch. It wasn’t just the dog’s intimidating size that promoted good behavior, but his glowering, opaque blue eye also helped them remember their manners.
The city of Duluth, with a population of nearly one hundred thousand, commanded the jurisdiction of Black Otter Bay’s neighboring county fifty miles to the south. A handful of times in Sheriff Fastwater’s tenure he’d transported potential felony cases to the authorities in Duluth for safekeeping. He wasn’t fond of asking for help, however, and with his smattering of police officers spread around the territory, he generally took responsibility for the county’s law enforcement duties upon himself.
Ever since the morning after Ben Simon went missing, the road leading up to the sheriff’s office had been lined with the vehicles of volunteer searchers, the media, and law enforcement. Many years ago, the county provided Fastwater with a sign that read RESERVED FOR BLACK OTTER BAY COUNTY SHERIFF. Installing it had seemed like a joke at the time, but now, as he eased the squad car past the line of parked vehicles on the roadway, the only open spot in the gravel parking lot was in front of the black-and-red-lettered sign.
Search parties on foot and driving ATVs had started out before sunrise. Fastwater had been in the office early to orchestrate the morning search. After sending the crews out, he met with law enforcement agencies still on site to compare notes. At this point, there wasn’t much to compare. Plain and simple, the boy had disappeared. There were no leads, and no ransom demands. All family members were accounted for, and known sex offenders were being located and questioned. Fastwater didn’t like the feel of any of that, and now he paused before getting out of the squad car to consider again Mrs. Bean’s parting words.
From the very beginning he’d felt that Abby Simon held the key to her brother’s disappearance. Unfortunately, the heavy-handed tactics and unfamiliar voices of investigators had shut her up tight. He had to give the girl credit, though, he thought with a smirk. If she didn’t want to discuss it, there was no way a stranger in a suit was going to get it out of her. Mrs. Bean was right. He really needed to talk to Abby without interference from outsiders, because he also knew a thing or two about the case he hadn’t shared with investigators. The way he figured it, those big-city hotshots with their high-tech gadgets could dig up their own clues. For himself, he’d trust his own instincts and keep his own counsel.
Fastwater adjusted his sunglasses and looked over at Gitch. The dog peered out the windshield, twitching with excitement at all the unfamiliar cars in the parking lot.
“Ready, pal?” Fastwater asked, patting Gitch on the shoulder. “You like all this commotion, don’t you?” As he opened the door and swung his legs out, he added, “Well, all these people drive me crazy. Come on, let’s get this over with.”
Just then the office door opened and Jackie Simon emerged. Fastwater stood next to his car, holding Gitch close. He’d always been struck by the incongruities in Jackie’s looks. Her nose was too long, and her lips too full, but combined with her thick dark hair, the features merged to create a very attractive woman. It was easy to see where Abby got her good looks, but the daughter brought another dimension to the equation: the vitality and energetic poise of youth. Jackie, originally from Chicago, could dress up and blend in with any select crowd in the world, but Abby, from little Black Otter Bay, carried herself with a stubborn resourcefulness sometimes found in young people. The look in Abby’s eyes warned against underestimating her character. For proof, the sheriff thought, just ask the professionals camped out in his office, unable to get a word out of her.
Now Matt Simon came out of the office, too, and Fastwater became a spectator as Jackie turned on her ex-husband. “What you can’t seem to understand,” she yelled at him, “is that this is not about you. You no longer get to make these decisions.”
Matt shot a glance at Fastwater before replying. “Please, Jackie, just calm down.”
She stepped toward Matt and slugged him in the chest. “Don’t tell me to calm down, you asshole.”
“Jackie—”
“No! You listen to me, mister,” she said, jabbing a finger at him. “Abby isn’t some jackpine savage, as much as you may want her to be. She’s coming home with me. It’s not safe here for her. Obviously, you’re incapable of seeing that fact.” She turned to leave, but stopped to add, “I’m going to get a court order, and she’s coming home with me.”
When she finally stalked off, Matt remained in the office doorway, hands in his pockets, dejection and exhaustion stooping his posture. Fastwater and Gitch slowly stepped forward.
“I thought you went out early this morning with the volunteers,” the sheriff said softly, in stark contrast to the sharp words from Jackie.
Matt gave him a brief look, then adjusted his gaze to watch Jackie walk down the hill. Fastwater turned to look after her departure, too. He knew Matt was aware that he’d overheard their argument, and as uncomfortable as that was, it would be even more awkward if he attempted to ignore it. So he said, “Have you thought about sending Abby down to stay with her for a few days? It couldn’t hurt to get her away from this circus for a while.”
Matt fixed his frown on the sheriff. He was tall enough to nearly meet the big lawman’s eyes straight on. “No, sir, I haven’t considered it. And I have no intention of doing any such thing.”
Fastwater gave a last look over his shoulder at Jackie. She was halfway down the hill now, climbing into her car. Gitch loped around the parking lot, sniffing tires, marking territory. When the sheriff again faced off with Matt, he noted the extreme exhaustion in the man’s eyes. It looked like he hadn’t slept in the three days his son had been gone. He knew Matt had been the first one out in the woods each morning, and the last one back after dark. Fastwater wondered if he’d even taken th
e time to sit down for a meal. He was surprised when Matt spoke up again.
“I know that sending her away would be the logical thing to do,” he confessed. “And I tried discussing that with Jackie. I told her that I talked to Abby about staying with her for a few days. How am I supposed to tell her that her daughter doesn’t want to come?”
With that, it was Fastwater’s turn to stuff his hands in his pockets. There was a long pause, the space between them more than filled with exhaustion, frustration, and despair. Then Matt said, “He’s not out there, Sheriff.”
Fastwater nodded.
“Ben isn’t the adventurous type,” Matt went on. “I always told those kids, ‘if you get lost out there, just sit down and wait. Someone will find you soon enough.’” Matt let his eyes wander out to the view over Lake Superior as Fastwater listened, studying the anguish on the younger man’s face. “Now Abby, she’d never sit still. She could put on twenty or thirty miles a day, but then, she’s too smart to get herself lost in the first place. She knows how things work out there. Ben, on the other hand, is too timid, too logical. He’d never go out there by himself, but if he did somehow manage to get lost, he’d do just as I taught him. He’d sit and wait for help.”
“I think you’re probably right,” Fastwater said.
“Over the last three days I’ve tracked every goddamn inch of woods for five square miles. He’d be too scared to go farther than that by himself. We’re wasting our time. He isn’t out there.”
“Well, I’m not calling off the search,” Fastwater said. “Maybe the boy fell. Maybe you didn’t see him because he was unconscious or sleeping when you passed by.” The sheriff’s expression was friendly and kind. “We have a boatload of volunteers, Matt. They need to feel like they’re helping, so as long as they keep showing up, we’ll keep sending them out.”
Matt nodded and sighed.
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