Vermilion Drift co-10

by William Kent Krueger

  “What about you, Max? You’ve worked mines in India, South Africa, Australia, Germany, Chile. You feel at home here?”

  “The truth is I never feel at home anywhere except in a mine. I love the work of mining, Cork. It’s a battle of sorts, and involves all kinds of strategy to get the rock to release what it holds. Done well, it’s an art.”

  “From what you’ve told me, you don’t spend much time in the pit these days,” Cork pointed out. “Why’d you come back here to take an office job? I mean why now?”

  “The economy,” he said with a shrug. “It’s lousy, and making this mine profitable-hell, making any mine on the Range profitable these days-is a challenge, but it’s one I’m good at. Second, when I learned that the DOE was interested in Vermilion One, I figured I wanted to be here to oversee that process personally. Honestly, I felt I had an obligation to do what I could to discourage the government. The Range has been good to my family. And I feel my family has an obligation to the people here. I don’t want what we created with Vermilion One to end up the death of this place or these people. Literally.”

  “What about your sister?”

  “What about her?”

  “Did she love mining?”

  Cavanaugh looked surprised at the question. “She knew absolutely nothing about mining.”

  “But as nearly as I can tell, she followed you everywhere, to every mine location, and finally here. Any particular reason?”

  “We were close all our lives,” Cavanaugh said. “Neither of us were married, and really we only had each other.”

  It was a closeness that seemed more than a little unusual to Cork, but he let it go.

  “Did your father ever talk about your mother?”

  “No. At least not that I recall.”

  “Did that trouble you?”

  “Why should it?”

  “No reason. Did he remarry?”

  “No.”

  “He was still a young man, relatively speaking, when he lost your mother, yet he went the rest of his life without marrying again. Any reason that you’re aware of?”

  There was a knock at the door, and Harry Potter returned with coffee: two white mugs on a tray with a small container of cream, a little bowl of sugar, some packets of Splenda, two spoons, and a couple of napkins.

  “Thank you, Harry,” Cavanaugh said, and the young man left.

  Cavanaugh handed Cork a mug, then stirred cream and sugar into his own coffee.

  “What do you know about my father, Cork?”

  “I’m beginning to think not enough.”

  “For starters, he wasn’t exactly the son my grandfather wanted.”

  “Why not?”

  Cavanaugh sipped his coffee, then said casually, “For one thing, he was homosexual.”

  Cork didn’t bother to hide his surprise.

  “I’m not telling you any secrets. Most people who knew him in later life were well aware of it. But he hid it well in his early years here. Hell, he probably didn’t even acknowledge it to himself then. The war broke out and he enlisted, and after that he went to college, Yale and then Harvard Law, and by that time his life and what he was willing to accept had changed, I guess. New York City was a reasonable place to be gay in the fifties. But he still needed a good cover for the sake of business and my grandfather. My mother gave him that cover.”

  “She knew?”

  “Of course.”

  “But they had children.”

  “To keep the families happy and at bay and to maintain the facade.”

  “Did you always know?”

  “No. They had separate bedrooms, but I was a kid then, and what did I know? They also had very separate lives, but I don’t suppose that was unusual either. My father was a good man, Cork, and a good father. He loved Lauren and me tremendously.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Love wasn’t at all what their relationship was about.”

  “I meant did she love you.”

  “I think we were like expensive vases in the living room, something for people to look at and admire, part of a perfect life. Or the image of a perfect life.”

  “But it wasn’t perfect?”

  “What I remember wasn’t awful. It was just”-he thought a moment-“a vacancy. Air where a mother should have been. But why all these questions about my parents? That’s ancient history. What about Lauren? Shouldn’t you be asking questions that will solve her murder?”

  “Your mother and your sister were killed with the same weapon. That would tend to suggest they were killed by the same person. So, if we could solve the earlier murder we might solve your sister’s murder as well. Theoretically.”

  Cork didn’t necessarily believe his own logic, but he hoped it sounded plausible and would keep Cavanaugh answering the questions that concerned him most at the moment.

  “Do you have any family memorabilia from that period?” Cork asked. “Photographs, letters, journals?”

  “What good would that do?”

  “I won’t know until I’ve had a chance to see the things,” Cork replied.

  “No,” Cavanaugh said firmly. “Nothing.”

  “What about from the time before your folks moved here?”

  “Not then either.”

  “After?”

  Cavanaugh said, “I have some things in storage at home. I suppose I can look and see what’s there.”

  “So these would be items your father kept after your mother disappeared?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He kept nothing from before that, from his time in Aurora and all the earlier places?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Wedding photos?”

  “I told you, nothing.”

  “Even though it wasn’t a marriage in the usual sense, Max, doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

  Cavanaugh considered Cork’s question and appeared to be surprised. “You know, I never thought about it. Or if I did, I suppose I just figured that it was all too painful and he simply wanted to forget.”

  “So he never talked about her and you never asked?”

  Cavanaugh folded his arms on his desk and leaned toward Cork. “My father was in the war, World War Two. Whenever I asked him if he’d killed any Germans, he would always reply, ‘I shot at a lot of them.’ It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it. Whenever I asked him about my mother, he’d say, ‘Why try to remember what’s best forgotten?’ In its way, it was, I suppose, the same response.” Cavanaugh sat back and said with a sigh, “I’ll look through the things I have and see what I can come up with, all right?”

  “I’d appreciate it, thanks.” Cork put his mug down. He realized he hadn’t taken a single sip. “Max, your sister’s death has opened a lot of wounds. I’m sorry that it seems like all I do is pour in salt.”

  Cavanaugh turned away, swiveling in his chair, and stared out the window toward the great wound that bled iron. He was quiet a long time, and Cork realized it was because he simply couldn’t speak. The weight of Cavanaugh’s sadness was undeniable, as if every breath the man exhaled filled the room with suffocating grief.

  “You want to know the truth, Cork?” His voice broke as he spoke. “I feel as empty as that hole out there. I didn’t know anything could hurt so much.”

  “I understand, Max. My own experience has been that, as cliche as it sounds, time will help you heal.”

  Cavanaugh swung back to him. “First I need to know who killed her. Then I can start healing.”

  Millie Joseph sat in her wheelchair on the porch of the Nokomis Home with a lap blanket spread across her knees. From there, she could see much of Allouette, the town where she’d lived all of her eighty years, and beyond Allouette the wide, cool blue of Iron Lake, sparkling under the noonday sun. The air was full of the scent of late-blooming lilac, and Millie Joseph looked perfectly content and seemed absolutely delighted to see him.

  “It’s been a long time, Corkie.” Like Hattie Stillday, she called him by the
nickname all his mother’s friends had used.

  Only two days, Cork thought, but it was obvious that his last visit wasn’t there at all in the perfectly clear sky of her memory.

  “Millie, I’d like to ask you some questions about my mother’s journals and about the people on the reservation many years ago.”

  “When I was a child, the government didn’t want us to speak our own language here. Did you know that, Corkie? But your grandmother said hogwash. And she taught Ojibwemowin to the children in her school. Your grandmother was a strong woman.”

  “Yes. And a woman much loved.” Cork leaned against the porch rail. “Someone cut out pages from my mother’s journals, Millie. Do you know who?”

  “Oh, Corkie, I know I should have looked at everything she gave me, but I never had the time. If something’s missing, well, I suppose it was your mother’s doing. Everybody’s got things in their past they don’t want folks to know, don’t you suppose?”

  “I suppose,” Cork agreed. “Millie, was there someone on the reservation when you were a young woman who was not so well loved? Someone you were warned against?”

  “Mr. Windigo,” she said darkly and without hesitation. “Oh, I used to be scared of him. We were always warned about Mr. Windigo.”

  She was speaking, Cork assumed, of the creature out of Ojibwe myth. In the stories the Ojibwe told, the Windigo was a cannibal giant with a heart of ice. It had once been a man but had become a monster that loved to feast on the flesh of the unwary-children especially. It was often used in much the same way white people employed the bogeyman, to frighten children into obedience.

  “Was there a man or a woman that people on the rez stayed away from?”

  “We didn’t like everyone, but we were all Shinnobs and neighbors and got along. Some people were afraid of Henry Meloux. They called him a witch. The government doctors tried to tell us that. Henry a witch,” she said with a dismissive laugh.

  Meloux. He knew he should be talking with Henry, but his old friend had made it clear that Cork was on his own.

  “And Mr. Windigo, of course,” the old woman added. “There were all kind of stories about Mr. Windigo snatching kids.”

  “When Fawn disappeared, did my mother or my aunt talk to you?”

  “Your mother always talked to me.”

  “Did she talk about Fawn?”

  “Of course.” Millie Joseph smoothed her lap blanket. “And she talked about Mr. Windigo.”

  “Did she think the Windigo had something to do with the Vanishings?”

  “She knew he did.”

  Cork was confused. Why would his mother blame a mythic beast for a real disappearance?

  “She was awfully sad, your mother. Your aunt, too. We all were. And scared, because who would be next?”

  “But the next to vanish was a white woman. And she was the last.”

  “Oh, we were all very happy about that.”

  “That the white woman vanished?”

  “That she was the last Mr. Windigo took.”

  “Did you know her, the white woman the Windigo took?”

  “Sure. From St. Agnes.”

  “Did you know her well?”

  “Not well, no.”

  “What did you think of her?”

  “She was rich.” Which clearly was not a good thing to Millie Joseph. “Your mother knew her better.”

  “What did my mother think of her?”

  “Your mother used to say that she was a woman like a snowshoe rabbit. In the winter, she would be white, in the summer dark.”

  “What did she mean?”

  “A woman who was two women, I guess.”

  And one was light and one was dark, Cork thought.

  “After the white woman vanished, what did my mother say?”

  Millie thought awhile and her hands twitched. “Why, I don’t think she said anything, except what the rest of us said. That it was good Mr. Windigo wasn’t lurking around the rez anymore.”

  An old pickup cruised past on the street and the driver, Ben Cassidy, lifted his hand and called out, “Boozhoo, Millie! Cork!”

  She waved back and said, “We found his truck.”

  “Whose truck?”

  “Mr. Windigo. We found it half-sunk in a bog way south on the rez.”

  “The Windigo drove a truck.”

  “You keep saying ‘the Windigo.’ I’m not talking about the Windigo. I’m talking about Mr. Windigo.”

  “He was a man?”

  “Of course he was a man. His name was Indigo. That’s how he got the name we called him.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “He was tall and thin like a broomstick. Had eyes like black fire. Whenever he looked at me, I burned and got cold at the same time. I didn’t like that man.”

  “Was Indigo his only name?”

  “No, he had a last name. It was perfect for him, because it was exactly what he looked like, a broomstick. His name was Indigo Broom.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  He found Isaiah Broom among the protesters at the gate to the Vermilion One Mine, although, in truth, Broom wasn’t exactly “among” the protesters. He’d separated from them and stood blocking the progress of a huge pickup truck that belonged to Great North Mining Company and that was trying to reach the gate. Cork pulled off the road, parked, and, as soon as he got out, he could hear the heat of the discussion.

  “You’re women, but you work for a company that rapes the earth,” Broom challenged.

  “You’re a man, but you’re going to be dickless if you don’t move out of our way” came a reply from inside the cab.

  That was followed by another from the cab: “Hell, he’s probably already dickless, Bobbi.”

  Cork knew the voices. The Noon sisters, two women no man in his right mind would cross. Not only was Broom in contempt of the restraining order, but he was baring his chest to she wolves.

  Before Cork reached the pickup, the women had opened their doors and stepped out. Kitty Noon held a baseball bat. Bobbi Noon gripped a tire iron. They both were dressed basically the same: faded jeans, work boots, ball caps, and denim shirts with the sleeves rolled high enough because of the heat to show impressive biceps. In the glare of the midday sun, they faced Isaiah Broom, a wall of a man.

  “We’re just a couple of peace-loving females, Broom. And right now we’d love nothing more than a piece of you,” Bobbi said.

  Broom didn’t give an inch, and Cork had to admit those dark Shinnob eyes showed no glimmer of fear. In Broom’s place, Cork would’ve been thinking about the state of his health plan.

  “Lunch is just about over,” Kitty said. “A couple of minutes from now, we’ve got to punch back in. Got work to do on the other side of that gate. Every second we’re late you pay for, Broom, one way or another.”

  “Hey, Kitty. Broom doesn’t get out of our way, what do you say we make him our afternoon work? Maybe use him as fill for a pothole or something.”

  The two sisters laughed.

  Broom said, “You can do violence to me. That would be a small crime. But the violence to Grandmother Earth is another kind of crime. And the violence a nuclear waste dump would do to generations after us, that’s the greatest crime of all.”

  Kitty laid the bat over her shoulder and looked like a hitter waiting her turn at the plate. “We’re not arguing your point, Broom, just your tactic. You’re not winning yourself or your cause any friends by keeping a couple of breadwinners from jobs that put food on the table.”

  “You got a problem with dumping nuclear waste here, fine,” Bobbi said. “The idea doesn’t exactly make me do somersaults. But our work has nothing to do with that. So kindly step aside and let us pass.”

  Broom stood his ground. “If not us, who?” he said, more to the crowd than to the sisters. “If not now, when?”

  “You know, you’re beginning to piss me off,” Kitty said and un-shouldered her bat.

  The gathering of protesters clearly didn’t know which side to
root for: Broom, big as a bear, or the two women, tornadoes in tight jeans.

  Cork approached on foot and said, “Isaiah, you don’t stand aside, you’re in contempt of the restraining order.”

  “And who’d blame us for kicking your ass?” Bobbi said.

  Broom crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m willing to be arrested for doing the right thing.”

  “Nobody doubts that, Isaiah,” Cork said. “But why not save that move for when the big trucks roll up carrying the nuclear waste? It’ll get a lot more play in the media than a confrontation with two women.”

  Kitty turned on Cork. “You saying we don’t count?”

  Bobbi said, “Relax, Kitty. He’s on our side.”

  Cork said, “I’m not taking sides here. I’m just saying consider which battles you fight, Isaiah. You really want the news story to be that you got knocked around by a couple of working females just trying to put food on the table for their families?”

  “Let ’em pass,” one of the protesters hollered.

  Broom held his ground for a moment more, then lowered his arms and stepped out of the way.

  The two sisters started back to the pickup.

  “Thanks, Cork,” Bobbi said.

  Kitty still looked pissed. “You ever insinuate that women don’t count in a confrontation, I’ll shove this ball bat up your ass, understand?”

  “I read you loud and clear, Kitty.”

  “Good,” she said. She opened the driver’s door, threw the ball bat inside, and said over her shoulder to Cork, “Next time we see you at the Buzz Saw, your beer’s on us.”

  The sisters slammed the doors shut. The engine kicked over, and the big pickup rolled through the front gate.

  “Got a minute, Isaiah?” Cork asked.

  “Fuck you, O’Connor.” Broom started back to join the other protesters.

  “I have a question about one of your relatives. Indigo.”

  That stopped Broom in his tracks. He turned to Cork and, for a Shinnob, showed an unseemly amount of emotion.

  “Why the hell are you asking about him?”

  A car approached on the highway where the two men stood. It gave a little warning honk.

  “Let’s talk over there.” Cork pointed toward his Land Rover.