Vermilion Drift co-10

by William Kent Krueger

  They cleared the asphalt, and the car drove past. The protesters settled back into their canvas chairs or returned to quiet conversations in small groups. Cork walked to his Land Rover with Broom fuming at his side.

  “You ever mention that name again and I’ll beat you within an inch of your life,” Broom swore.

  “He was a relative of yours, right?”

  “My mother’s cousin. What’s it to you?”

  “According to Millie Joseph, he disappeared about the same time the Vanishings ended.”

  “So?”

  “Just wondering if there might have been some connection.”

  “Between him and the Vanishings?” Broom seemed genuinely surprised but not offended.

  “Isaiah, has the sheriff talked to you about the remains they found in the Vermilion Drift?”

  “What about ’em?”

  “They’ve positively identified all but one of the bodies. The one still remaining? I think there’s a good chance it’s your mother.”

  “My mother?”

  “Millie Joseph told me your mother disappeared just before the Vanishings began. Everyone thought that she’d taken off, abandoned you. I believe that wasn’t true. I believe she was one of the first victims. And I believe that Indigo Broom may have had something to do with it.”

  Broom was stunned to silence. He stood there, a big man with his mouth open.

  Cork went on. “Millie Joseph called Indigo Broom ‘Mr. Windigo.’ She told me he was a man folks on the rez avoided. Did you know him?”

  Now Broom’s mouth closed and his eyes became hard as fists. “I knew him,” he said, his lips barely moving.

  “What happened to him?”

  “He left.”

  “And went where?”

  “I didn’t care.”

  “Did anyone ever say?”

  “No. And no one gave a shit.”

  “Not even his family?”

  “Family? He fed on family.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Broom looked at Cork. “We called him Mr. Windigo, too.”

  “Was he the kind of man who could have made those women disappear?”

  Broom said, “I’ve talked enough.” He turned his back on Cork and began to walk away.

  “Isaiah,” Cork called after him. “Are you responsible for the graffiti in the mine?”

  Broom stopped and turned back.

  Because the second entrance to the Vermilion Drift was on the rez, Cork had felt strongly from the beginning that a Shinnob was responsible. Although Cork’s question had been a shot in the dark, Broom’s reaction made him think he might have hit the mark.

  “Which would mean you knew about the other way into the mine. Did you know about the remains?”

  Broom walked slowly back and stood looking down into Cork’s face. The big Shinnob cast enough shadow that it completely swallowed Cork.

  “I know nothing about those bodies down there. As for the graffiti, if I had anything to do with it, which I didn’t, I’d know that tunnel was about the most evil place on earth.”

  Broom left, taking his huge shadow with him.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Given what Cork now knew, he believed that Isaiah Broom’s long-lost relative, Indigo, was a very likely suspect in the disappearance of the women on the Iron Lake Reservation more than forty years earlier. It struck him as odd that Indigo Broom’s name had never been mentioned during the investigation Cork’s father had conducted. Cork had made the connection with relative ease. Why hadn’t his father? Or the other people on the rez?

  He thought about these things as he drove back to Aurora, and before he reached the town limits, he’d arrived at some very speculative conclusions.

  Indigo Broom and Monique Cavanaugh had disappeared at approximately the same time, and the Vanishings had stopped. Broom was a man of desires dark enough to be feared, even by his own people. Cork might have suspected that Indigo Broom was responsible for the fate of Monique Cavanaugh except for one salient detail: his father’s.38 Smith amp; Wesson Police Special may well have been the weapon used to kill her. He knew, too, that Cavanaugh was a woman of dark desires and devious motives, which she’d hidden well from others, but not from the priest and probably not from her husband, who refused to speak of her once she was gone. Could she, too, have played some part in the Vanishings?

  It was entirely possible, probable even, Cork concluded, that the Anishinaabeg of the Iron Lake Reservation had not been as ignorant as the official reports of the investigation seemed to indicate, nor had his father.

  But why had they all lied?

  And how had a bullet from his father’s gun come to be lodged in the spine of Monique Cavanaugh? If he knew that, maybe Cork would know how a bullet from the same weapon had found its way into the body of her daughter.

  As he pulled into town, his cell phone rang. Sheriff Dross. She told him that she’d scheduled another news conference for the afternoon. She wanted everyone in her office beforehand, at 2:00 P.M., so that she knew where all the parts of the investigation stood.

  Cork stopped by home, grabbed a quick bologna sandwich, and took Trixie for a short walk. Then he headed to the Tamarack County sheriff’s office. He was the last to arrive. In addition to Dross, there were the other usuals: Captain Ed Larson, Agent Simon Rutledge, and Agent Susan Upchurch. Once again, there weren’t enough chairs, so Cork leaned against a wall.

  “Susan,” Dross said to the BCA agent, “why don’t you give us an update on what you’ve found so far.”

  “All right. Remember the marks on the bones that I indicated earlier could have been made by incisions or by the teeth of a scavenger? I’ve pretty much concluded that they’re the result of a knife blade. I also believe they were delivered perimortem.”

  “Perimortem?” Cork asked.

  “At or very near the time of death.”

  “What makes you believe that?” Larson said.

  “In perimortem wounds, the edges of the bone along the incision often curl, like if you’d cut into a live branch that you’ve pulled off a tree.”

  “So the victims may well have been alive when these cuts were made?”

  “Yes. But it’s also possible the cuts were made immediately after death.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “They might be ritualistic. They might have been the result of some kind of homicidal frenzy, I suppose. But you also sometimes find this same kind of mark on victims of cannibalism.”

  “Cannibalism?” Dross looked aghast.

  “I’m not saying that’s what occurred, just that the marks are consistent with a number of possibilities, and that’s one of them.”

  “Great,” Dross said. “The media will love that, I’m sure.”

  Cork asked, “Did Monique Cavanaugh have any of these marks?”

  “No. We’ve found no knife marks on the remains of the Cavanaugh woman, no evidence of knife wounds.”

  “So cause of death was probably the bullet lodged in her spine?”

  “That’s the best speculation at the moment.”

  Cork looked at the sheriff. “Anything more from the Lauren Cavanaugh autopsy?”

  “Yes,” Dross said. “In addition to the bullet wound to her chest, Tom Conklin found a superficial wound on her right side, just above her hip.”

  “What kind of wound?”

  “Tom thinks it’s a bullet graze.”

  “The killer missed the first time around?”

  “We couldn’t say that officially, but that would be my current speculation. Ed, tell Cork what you’ve got.”

  “We’ve gone over the old Parrant estate,” Larson said. “We didn’t find anything of particular value in the big house. But in the boathouse, which Ms. Cavanaugh had renovated into an additional private living area for herself, we found two things. First, between the floorboards, we discovered traces of what we believe to be blood. Simon’s people are analyzing the samples now.”

  “What do you think
?”

  “Well, the M.E. believes she died quickly from the gunshot wound. The blood covered a significant area, so I think Lauren Cavanaugh lay facedown after she died, lay there quite a while so that gravity pulled a lot of blood out the chest wound. It looks to me like someone eventually tried to clean things up and, except for what seeped between the boards, did a pretty good job.”

  “What was the other thing?” Cork asked.

  “We got really lucky. We pulled a fingerprint from the back of a table lamp. A bloody fingerprint. Simon’s people are analyzing that blood, too, and trying to match the print.”

  “You’re pretty sure she was killed in the boathouse?”

  “Like Marsha says, I wouldn’t state that officially, but that’s my current speculation.”

  “So killed in her boathouse, taken to the Vermilion One Mine, and sealed up with the other bodies in the drift,” Dross summed up.

  “Anybody at the Northern Lights Center hear or see anything?” Cork asked.

  “The current residents didn’t arrive until the next day, and all the staff had gone home by then,” Larson said. “The only person who might have heard was a guy named Huff. He’s a long-term resident. But he wasn’t at the center in the time frame we believe the killing took place. He was out drinking and has someone who backs up his story. So basically nobody’s been able to give us anything.”

  “I’ll give you something,” Cork said. “Huff was quite comfortable in Lauren Cavanaugh’s private area. You might want to lean on him a little, see what gives.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I was there a couple of days ago, talking with Ophelia Stillday. Just an observation I made.”

  “All right.” Larson jotted a note in his little book.

  Simon Rutledge eyed Cork, and there was an enigmatic expression on his face. He said, “I have a little something to add about the earlier killings. The priest assigned to St. Agnes in those days was accused of masturbating in the confessional. Shortly after that, some women’s panties were found hidden there, stained with semen. The investigating officer apparently didn’t feel the situation was such that the priest should be looked at as a viable suspect in the Vanishings, but the Church yanked the guy.”

  “Jesus, where’d you get that information?” Larson asked.

  “You said the files had been destroyed, but I knew that one of your retired deputies, Cy Borkman, had been with the department back then, so I talked to him. Then I tracked down the priest. It was basically the same thing Cork did.”

  Dross leveled a cold eye on Cork. “You knew about this?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were going to tell us when?”

  “As soon as I had a few more things worked out.”

  “Like what?”

  Cork said, “Simon, did the priest tell you about Monique Cavanaugh’s sexual proclivities?”

  “Reluctantly.”

  “What do you think?”

  “If it’s true, she wasn’t exactly Snow White.”

  Dross leaned forward, and, even across the room, Cork thought he could feel the heat of her rising anger. “What are you two gentlemen talking about?”

  “According to the priest, Monique Cavanaugh propositioned him several times,” Cork replied. “She finally threatened him. And that was followed by an anonymous call to the sheriff’s department that resulted in the aforementioned soiled intimate items coming to light in the confessional.”

  “She set the priest up?”

  “That’s certainly what he believes.”

  “That doesn’t mesh at all with the image everyone has of her,” Larson said.

  “You need to press her son a little more on the subject of his mother, Ed. You may discover that he doesn’t consider her Snow White either.”

  “Is there anything else you know but haven’t told us?” Dross asked.

  “I saw Isaiah Broom today,” Cork replied. “I told him I was pretty sure the unidentified body was his mother.”

  “Jesus Christ, what were you thinking?” the sheriff cried. “We haven’t positively ID’d the final remains. If this gets out and you’re wrong…” She took a moment to rein in her anger, and the whole time the smolder of her gaze was directed at Cork. At last she said, “What’s done is done. That’s all for now, gentlemen.”

  The normal tourist traffic had swelled with the influx of folks curious about the grisly discovery in the Vermilion Drift, and Sam’s Place was doing a land-office business. Judy Madsen, Jodi Bollendorf, and Kate Buker had the situation under control when Cork checked in. He promised to be there early that night to close and left things in their capable hands.

  He returned home, gathered the boxes that contained his mother’s journals, and took them out to the patio in the backyard. Trixie jumped up and ran to greet him. He released her from the tether that held her, and she bounded to the far corner of the yard and snatched a dirty tennis ball in her teeth. Cork threw it a few times, then told her gently he had work to do. He grabbed a cold Leinie’s from the refrigerator, settled into a patio chair, and took out the journal that contained the entries immediately following the missing pages that would have chronicled the time of the Vanishings.

  September 17, 1964

  Fall is here and everywhere I look I see blood. It’s in the color of the sumac and the maple leaves and the sky at sunset and at dawn. Henry Meloux is helping Hattie and Ellie and Mom and me. Liam walks like a man made of stone, cold and hard. Cork, ever the quiet, watchful child, sees and wonders but does not ask. Thank God.

  Does not ask, Cork thought. Well, he was asking now.

  He scanned other entries, looking for anything that might be a clue to the missing days.

  September 21, 1964

  The first day of fall officially. Usually a glorious time, but this year we all mourn. Winter is already in our souls. Liam grows more distant. What has been asked of him is great, and he struggles. He is not one of The People. If he were, he might understand and better accept how things must be. There is friction between us. This I can live with. For now. What hurts is seeing how Liam has distanced himself from Cork as well. He’s short with his son. And the Irish in Cork flares up and he lashes back. They battle these days. Except that Cork has no idea of the true enemy here.

  September 29, 1964

  Cork has been suspended from school. He got into a fight with another boy. Over what neither of them would say. Liam is furious. Nothing new. He’s angry all the time now. I’ve asked him to talk to Henry Meloux. He refuses. Cork sits in his room, staring a hole through the wall. My heart is breaking.

  October 16, 1964

  Liam my beloved Liam is dead.

  Dear God why?

  TWENTY-SIX

  In October 1964, the Summer Olympics were held in Tokyo. In that same month, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., received the Nobel Peace Prize. The St. Louis Cardinals became World Champions, beating the heavily favored New York Yankees in the seventh game of the World Series. China detonated its first nuclear weapon. The Star of India was stolen from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Nikita Krushchev was removed as leader of the Soviet Union.

  And in October 1964, Cork O’Connor lost his father.

  In his memory, his life until then had been happy. But one cool fall day, when the oak leaves were a stunning russet against a startling blue sky, when the cry of migrating Canada geese chorused over Iron Lake, when the evening air was full of the scent of woodsmoke curling from the chimneys of Aurora, everything changed. Changed over the course of a few hours. Changed, in fact, in a single instant. Changed forever with the final beat of his father’s heart.

  It had begun with a shoot-out. Cork’s father and a deputy had responded to an alarm at the First Citizen’s Bank, where three inmates who’d escaped from Stillwater Prison were attempting a robbery as they fled toward Canada. During the exchange of gunfire that erupted, a deaf old lady, a cantankerous woman notorious for yelling at children trespassi
ng on her precious lawn, wandered into the line of fire outside the bank. Cork’s father left the cover of the Buick that shielded him to pull the old woman to safety. In those few moments of exposure, a bullet from a stolen deer rifle pierced his heart.

  He didn’t die immediately. He lingered for several hours, unconscious, with his wife and son at the side of his hospital bed. The doctor, a good man named Congreve, didn’t have the ability to mend a heart torn by a bullet designed to bring down a deer and gave them no hope. Cork’s mother had prayed, prayed desperately. Although Cork had said prayers with her, they were empty words. As soon as the doctor had proclaimed that there was no hope, young Cork O’Connor had closed his heart in the way he might have closed a door to an empty room.

  It took him a while to absorb the full impact of his father’s death. He was numb for days, numb during the funeral, numb at the site of the open grave, numb to the words of consolation, numb to his mother’s grief. For a long time he felt nothing, neither joy nor sadness nor fear nor hope.

  That year in mid-November, he helped Sam Winter Moon close up Sam’s Place. The trees by then were bare things, wet, black skeletons in the drizzle of the bleak season. Sam had been his father’s good friend, and as he and Cork put plywood over the serving windows of the Quonset hut, he talked about Liam O’Connor.

  “You know,” Sam said around a nail gripped in his teeth, “that man could outfart a draft horse. Hold your side up a little higher, Cork.” He took the nail from between his teeth and positioned it.

  Cork thought it a little unseemly, speaking of his father that way, but he held his tongue.

  “We were canoeing once up on Angle Lake. Came around a point, headed for the next portage. There not five feet away was a bull moose, munching on lakeweed. We startled him as much as he startled us. That animal lowered his head and was about to do real damage to our canoe and probably to us in the bargain. Your father, he farts and it’s like cannon fire. Echoes off the trees. Sends a tidal wave across the lake. Scares the crap out of that bull moose. The critter turns and hightails it.” Sam was laughing hard enough that he couldn’t hammer. He leaned against the Quonset hut for support and finished, breathless, “And then your father, he says, ‘I just hope we don’t run into a bear, Sam. I’m clean outta ammo.’”