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.
As quickly as it had come, the moment passed, and Cork found himself once again a man older than his father had ever been, alone on the trail. He stood paralyzed, wracked by terrible uncertainty. How could the man in that moment of golden memory have been the same man who knew about the hidden entrance to Vermilion One, whose sidearm had been a murder weapon, and yet who’d claimed bafflement at the Vanishings? How could he be the same man whom Cork, in his nightmares, had pushed again and again to his death?
Meloux wasn’t at his cabin, but Rainy Bisonette was. She came to the door holding a book in her hand. She didn’t seem particularly happy to see him. Meloux, she said, was with someone at the moment and couldn’t be disturbed. Cork looked toward the rock outcroppings near the shoreline of Iron Lake and saw smoke rising beyond them. Without another word, he started in the direction of the smoke.
“Wait!” Rainy called. “Damn it, come back.”
He found Hattie Stillday and Meloux sitting at the fire ring, burning sage and cedar. At his approach, they looked up, but neither of them showed any emotion.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Henry,” Rainy said at Cork’s back. “I couldn’t stop him.”
“Let him come,” Meloux said. “What is it that
cannot wait, Corcoran O’Connor?”
“I have something I need to tell Hattie.”
“Then tell her.”
Cork walked forward and knelt before the old woman. “Hattie, they’ve been able to identify most of the remains found in the Vermilion Drift. They’re certain one of the victims is your daughter, Abbie.”
Her look didn’t change, not in the least. No surprise, no shock, not even the specter of sadness. And Cork realized that she already knew. How? Had Meloux, in that inexplicable way of knowing, understood the truth and revealed it to her? Had the news somehow reached the rez telegraph and traveled, as it often did, with unbelievable speed? Or-and this came to Cork in a sudden rush that nearly knocked him over-had she known from the beginning? Had Meloux?
“What’s going on, Hattie?” She didn’t answer and Cork addressed Meloux. “What the hell is going on, Henry?”
“You are intruding here, Corcoran O’Connor.”
“I need answers.”
“No, you want answers,” Meloux said. “Need is a different animal.”
“What are you hiding? What are you all hiding?”
Their eyes lay on Cork like winter stones.
“I’ll find the truth, Henry, wherever it’s hidden.”
“The truth is not hidden, Corcoran O’Connor. It has never been hidden. You simply are not yet ready to see it.”
“Jesus Christ. For once, can you cut all the mystic bullshit, Henry, and just tell me straight-out what’s going on?”
“Leave,” Meloux said, firmly but without harshness. “Your anger disturbs this place.”
“Anger, Henry? You haven’t seen my anger yet.” Cork turned and began to march away.
“I have seen your anger,” Meloux said at his back. “More than forty years ago I saw it in another man who was not yet ready to understand the truth.”
Because he didn’t care what Meloux had to say, Cork gave no sign that he’d heard. He walked away from the circle of stones, from the fire at its heart, from the cleansing smoke of the cedar and sage, and from the man who held to the truth like a miser to his money.
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