Vermilion Drift co-10

by William Kent Krueger

  He sat on Lauren Cavanaugh’s bed, wondering if this was where she’d had her romps with Derek Huff, or had she used the bed in the boathouse for that? He opened the drawers of her dresser again and went through her vanity. He checked her closets. He returned to the study and rifled the drawers of the desk. He came up empty-handed, even though he hadn’t really known what he was looking for. He sat in an easy chair in the parlor and stared at the east wall, which was hung with an arranged display of photographs of the North Country. Three of the photos together formed a long panoramic view of a dramatic shoreline. They’d been shot in black and white, an odd choice, Cork thought, when the subject in reality was so vivid in its color-Iron Lake, which would have been hard blue against the powder blue of the sky, the face of a rock cliff, probably the gray of wolf fur, topped with aspens whose trunks were ivory and whose leaves would have been pale jade. He’d never understand art or artists, he decided, and got up and started away.

  He’d reached the French doors and was about to step outside when it hit him. He turned and hurried back to the parlor and stood in front of the three photographs. The reason he’d been able to visualize the colors of the scene so well, he realized, was because he knew the place. A place of bimaadiziwin. It was where Cork’s revolver had been hidden but was no more.

  Although he could already tell who’d taken the photos, he leaned close and read the artist’s tag to be absolutely certain.

  Ophelia Stillday.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  He asked at the refreshment table if anyone knew where Ophelia Stillday was. They pointed him toward the dock behind the boathouse, and he found her there, sitting by herself on a bench with her cane at her side. She stared out at Iron Lake, where a few sailboats clipped across the water, the triangles of their canvases like white knives cutting the air. She didn’t hear him coming.

  “Ophelia?”

  Though he spoke gently, she looked at him with surprise and, he sensed, a little bit of fear.

  “Okay if I join you?”

  She didn’t invite him immediately. She had to think it over.

  “I guess,” she finally said.

  He sat next to her on the bench.

  “You look worried,” he said.

  “About Grandma Hattie,” she replied and returned to watching the sailboats.

  “You know what I think about Hattie, Ophelia? I think she didn’t do what she says she did.”

  Ophelia stared hard at the sailboats.

  “I think she’s covering for someone else. It must be someone she loves a lot, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said without heart.

  “I think you would. Ophelia, tell me about shooting Lauren Cavanaugh.”

  When she finally looked at him, it was with something like relief. “How did you know?”

  “Because I know where you got the gun. It’s a place on the rez, a place of bimaadiziwin, of healing. How did you learn about it?”

  “Grandma Hattie,” Ophelia said. “She’s shown me a lot of places sacred to our people. She never photographs them herself, but she said if I thought I could do them justice and be respectful that it would be all right.”

  “You went into the cave?”

  “Yes. That wasn’t part of what Grandma Hattie had in mind, I know, but I wanted to understand the full importance of the place, of bimaadiziwin.”

  “You took the gun?”

  “Not then, but I knew it was there. When I finally understood Lauren, the real evil in her, I went back. But I only wanted to threaten her with the gun, not kill her.”

  “When you took it, the gun wasn’t loaded, Ophelia.”

  “I bought cartridges. I went to a store in Eveleth so no one would recognize me.”

  “Most people when threatened with a firearm wouldn’t know whether it’s loaded. The firearm itself is usually enough to scare them. Putting bullets in, Ophelia, that makes me wonder.”

  She looked back at the sailboats, then up where an egret flew above them, white and elegant. “I don’t know. Maybe I did want her dead. She was an awful person.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  She sighed deeply. “She wasn’t anything like she made people believe. I mean she was smart and charming and all that, but it was all surface. Below that everything about her was dark. She lied. She connived. She manipulated. She had no sense of decency. But unless you were around her all the time, like I was, you wouldn’t know because she was so good at keeping it hidden.”

  “Why didn’t you leave her when you discovered what she was really like?”

  “She promised to make sure the right people saw my work.”

  “That’s it?”

  She looked away.

  “What else, Ophelia? It’s all going to come out anyway, so you might as well tell me.”

  She laughed, but it was a sound without joy. “What was it you told me on the courthouse steps? The reasons people kill?”

  She swung her eyes toward Cork, her young, pained eyes, and he understood.

  “You loved her,” he said.

  “And I thought she loved me. She told me this leg of mine, this ugly, crippled thing, didn’t matter to her. She told me she saw something beautiful in me and in my work.” She was crying now, softly. “And I believed her.”

  “Oh, Ophelia,” he said and took her in his arms and let her cry.

  To love and to be loved, he thought. Oh, God, who didn’t want that? And what parent didn’t want this simple blessing for his child?

  “It’s all right, Ophelia,” he cooed. “It’s all right.” As her sobs subsided, he asked gently, “So there’s nothing between you and Derek?”

  She shook her head. “I hated him at first. I thought he took Lauren from me. Then I realized Lauren simply used people and threw them away. But she didn’t let go of them until she was ready, and I realized Derek was a prisoner just like me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He wanted out of it. She wouldn’t let him. She told him if he left her, she’d ruin him. She’d see to it that no one paid any attention to his work.”

  “The night you shot her, would you tell me about that?”

  She wiped her eyes, then folded her hands and stared at them awhile, gathering herself before she began.

  “We’d met with some of the center volunteers to talk about the new group of resident artists who would be arriving the next day. It was a kind of a cocktail thing. Lauren had a little too much to drink. After everyone left, she went to the boathouse. She called Derek from there and said she wanted to see him. He came down from his room angry. I was finishing up some work in my office. He stormed in and told me he felt like a servant being called to a duty. He basically said to hell with her and went into town instead to drink with Sonny Gilroy.”

  Gilroy was a local wildlife artist, a guy who liked his Johnnie Walker and painted great ducks.

  “After he’d gone,” Ophelia went on, “Lauren called me, demanded I get Derek out there. I’d had the gun for a while. I’d been imagining what it would be like to confront her with it. I don’t know why exactly, but that night I decided it was time to find out. Maybe I’d had a little too much to drink, too. The truth is that I hated her. I hated what she’d done to me and I hated what she was doing to Derek. Everything in me just… hated her. So I loaded the gun with the cartridges I bought and went to the boathouse. I knocked. She told me to come in, and when she saw that it wasn’t Derek, she went crazy, screaming at me all kinds of obscenities. I pointed the gun at her. Honest, I didn’t really know what I was going to do. But it was like she didn’t even get it. She screamed something like, ‘Oh just give me that thing, you stupid bitch.’ She started throwing stuff at me, whatever she could put her hands on. I tried to jump out of the way.” She stopped, thought, then finished, “And the gun… just went off.”

  “How many times?” Cork asked.

  “Once.”

  “You fired the revolver only once?”

 
“Yes.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “I’m positive. I was horrified. I mean, oh, God, I couldn’t believe what I’d done. I turned and I ran.”

  “Did the bullet hit her?”

  “I guess. She fell back anyway.”

  “Did you take the gun?”

  “When I got back to my office, I didn’t have it. So I don’t know, I must have dropped it. I was, like, in shock. I didn’t know what to do. I left the center.”

  “And drove home to your grandma Hattie?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did Hattie do?”

  “Everything. She heard me out, and then we drove back to the center in her truck. There was Lauren lying dead on the boathouse floor. Grandma Hattie told me to help her, and we wrapped the body in a canvas tarp and put it in the back of the pickup. We cleaned up all the blood. Then I took Lauren’s keys and got her car and followed Grandma Hattie out to the rez. She showed me where to ditch the car, and she drove me home and dropped me there. She said she’d take care of the body. She made me swear that I wouldn’t say anything to anyone, that I would just pretend I knew nothing. And that’s what I did.”

  “When Lauren’s body was found with the others in the Vermilion Drift, did you ask Hattie about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Nothing. She said I should never ask about that again, ever, and I haven’t.”

  “Okay, back to the shooting in the boathouse. How far away was Lauren when you shot her?”

  “I don’t know. Ten feet.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She thought a moment. “Yeah, pretty sure.”

  “Did she fall down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Straight down, or did she fall back?”

  She thought a moment. “She kind of stumbled back, like she was surprised or something, and then fell down.”

  “On her back?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  “When you returned with Hattie, how was Lauren lying?”

  Her brow furrowed, and she worked at remembering. “Facedown. I know because, when we lifted her up, there was blood all over the front of her dress and on the side of her face that had been on the floor.”

  “What time was this?”

  “After midnight, maybe twelve-thirty.”

  “How long were you gone to Hattie’s?”

  “Maybe an hour and a half.”

  “So you shot Lauren at what time?”

  “It was a couple of minutes before eleven when Derek left. I went to the boathouse a few minutes later, and I wasn’t inside more than a minute when it all happened.”

  “When you left to go to Hattie’s, did anybody see you?”

  “I don’t think so. Except for my office, the lights in the center were off. All the volunteers who’d had cocktails with us had gone home. The house staff were off for the weekend.” She reached out for her cane. “I need to go now. I need to get Grandma Hattie out of jail.”

  Cork reached out and put a gentle restraining hand on her arm. “I’d like you to wait on that, Ophelia.”

  “Why?”

  “Your grandmother can’t be arraigned until Monday, but I suspect that our county attorney might be reluctant to charge her with anything. There are too many discrepancies in her story. I understand why now. Before you say anything to anyone, I’d like to do a little more investigating. I think I’m close to some answers, and I need a little more time.”

  “Answers? I gave you the answers.”

  “This is more complicated than you imagine, Ophelia. And Hattie’s a tough old girl. She can take a day or two behind bars, especially because she’s doing it for someone she loves. All right?”

  She didn’t seem entirely convinced, but she said, “Okay, Mr. O.C. If that’s what you want. But will you do me a favor?”

  “Sure, what is it?”

  “When I finally do go in to talk to the sheriff, will you go with me?”

  “Kiddo, I’ll be right there holding your hand.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  When Cork returned to the sheriff’s department, Ed Larson was back from the site of Indigo Broom’s burned cabin. He looked up as Cork walked into Marsha Dross’s office, and he shook his head.

  “Nothing?” Cork said.

  “My guys are still out there sifting dirt, but it’s not looking fruitful. Those manacles you mentioned to Rutledge? Not there. No bone fragments either. We didn’t find anything but scraps of metal and broken glass and broken crockery, all of it showing char. Oh, Azevedo got excited about finding a nineteen twenty-five Peace silver dollar, whatever the hell that is.”

  “Did you see the rake marks?”

  Larson nodded. “Somebody went over that area pretty carefully. After you got clobbered, how long were you out?”

  “A couple of hours.”

  “That might have been enough time to clean that small area. Bottom line is that, at the moment, we don’t have a thing to support any allegation against this Indigo Broom.”

  “It appears that somebody’s protecting him. Which is odd,” Dross said to Cork, “if what you’ve told us about him is true.”

  “I’m only repeating what I heard.”

  “Heard where?” Dross said.

  “I can’t divulge that at the moment.”

  “If you did, we might be able to twist some arms legally.”

  “They’d be Ojibwe arms and you’d get nothing. Ed, did you talk to Max Cavanaugh about his mother?”

  “Yes. He claims he doesn’t remember much about his mother, but what he does remember is all good, warm, motherly stuff.”

  “He said that?”

  Larson pulled out a small notepad from his shirt pocket, flipped a couple of pages, read a moment, and said, “Yep.”

  The sheriff and Larson both looked at Cork with blank faces.

  “I can’t give you any more than I already have,” he told them.

  Dross sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Because there’s no more to give or because you’re just not willing to give any more? Or am I being too pushy here?”

  “I told you about the Ojibwe, Marsha. You can’t twist arms. What they give me, they give in their own time and in their own way.”

  “Which is exactly how you give it to us,” she said.

  Cork said, “Any chance I could get my hands on the M.E.’s final autopsy report for Lauren Cavanaugh?”

  “What do you want to know?” Larson asked.

  “Tom Conklin said he found two wounds. One of them appeared to be superficial, right?”

  “That’s right,” Larson said. “A graze on her left side below her rib cage.”

  “Fired at close range or from a distance?”

  “No tattooing, no singeing, so probably from a distance. Why are you asking?”

  “Just collecting pieces of the puzzle, Ed. You checked out Derek Huff’s alibi, that he was drinking with Sonny Gilroy, right?”

  “Gilroy confirmed it.”

  “How long did they drink together?”

  “Until about midnight.”

  “Then Huff went back to the center?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “To bed?”

  “I didn’t ask him that.” Larson studied him a moment. “You like Huff for the shooting?” Larson shook his head. “He was at the Black Bear with Gilroy when Cavanaugh was killed.”

  “That’s true only if Cavanaugh was killed when Hattie said she was. But we all know there are holes in Hattie’s story.”

  “Maybe, but she sure as hell hauled the body away and dumped it. Look, Cork, I know how you feel about Hattie Stillday, but you’re wasting your time with Huff, I can guarantee it.”

  At the moment, there was no reason for Cork to argue.

  Dross said, “The pieces of this puzzle that you’re collecting, Cork, if you put them together, you’ll let us know, right?”

  “I’ll do that, Marsha
.”

  “And not on Ojibwe time,” she added.

  “One more thing,” Cork said. “Any chance you’d let me talk to Hattie again?”

  Dross looked at Larson, who voiced no objection. “I’ll have her brought to the interview room,” the sheriff promised.

  “Mind if I take her a cigarette?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Hattie Stillday listened impassively while she smoked the Marlboro that Cork had brought her. When he finished talking, she said, “You think you’ve been a pretty good father, Corkie?”

  It was a question that caught him off guard, but he answered honestly, “I think I’ve done my best, Hattie.”

  “You probably have.” She sat back, tired. “I was a shitty mother. My girls were less important to me than my photographs. I was tramping all over hell and gone, making a name for myself when I should’ve been home. Couldn’t keep a husband. Let my mother raise my girls. They were little hellions, of course. Into all kinds of trouble. When Abbie disappeared, I figured she’d just run off, which, in its way, was what I’d done. Janie, that was Ophelia’s mother, she couldn’t wait to get away. Ended up dying in a rat’s nest of a place in Los Angeles, heroin overdose. Which was how I ended up with Ophelia. You shoulda seen that little girl when I went out to L.A. to get her. Broke my heart. I swore I’d take care of her better than I did her mother. And I have, Corkie. Hell, life’s not been kind to that girl, but she never gives up.”

  Hattie Stillday let out a trickle of smoke that climbed her cheek, where it met a little stream of tears.

  “I lost two daughters because of my selfishness. I’ve always looked on my granddaughter as a way to make amends. I swear I’ve done my best by Ophelia. I’ll die, yes, I will, before I see that girl lost to me.” She gave him a look that was iron hard and at the same time full of soft pleading. “You can’t tell them. Promise me you won’t say a thing about Ophelia. Promise me, Corkie.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you, Hattie. Tell me how you knew about the bodies in the Vermilion Drift and I promise I won’t say a thing about Ophelia.”

  She drew back, drew herself up. “You got no idea what you’re asking.”

  “That’s the deal I’m offering.”