Lightning Strike

by William Kent Krueger

  “I don’t want to be rich. I just want Mom to be happy.”

  “Maybe getting married is the way.”

  Jorge didn’t respond. He took his sketch pad from where it lay in the clutter on his desk and turned to a page on which he’d recently sketched the dark figure they’d seen at Lightning Strike. It was still mostly a thing of shadow but was more detailed than the first drawing he’d done even before they’d found Big John’s body. They’d talked about the weirdness of that image coming to him in advance of their gruesome discovery, but it was only one inexplicable thing in the midst of so many.

  “Think he’s gone for good?” he asked.

  “If he was sticking around to make sure we knew the truth, I guess maybe his spirit is finally at peace.”

  “If it really was his spirit we saw,” Jorge said. “Mom told me it was just the clouds and the dark playing tricks. She told me not to let my imagination run away with me. There’s one way we might be sure.”

  “How’s that?”

  Jorge set his drawing down, went to his closet, grabbed something, and turned back to Cork. What he held was the Ouija board.

  “Tonight,” he said.

  CHAPTER 37

  When he got home that afternoon, Cork could tell something was up. He felt it the moment he walked into the house. Grandma Dilsey was there, sitting with his mother in the living room. The curtains were drawn against the August heat and something threatening seemed to be hanging in the air. Jackson rose from where he’d been lying at Grandma Dilsey’s feet and trotted to greet Cork, though not eagerly. Cork was afraid someone had died. Turned out he was right.

  “How did it go with your collecting?” his mother asked.

  He considered telling them about his run-in with the old ogre Argus Friar, but decided against it. How could he explain squaw or squaw man or the anger he still felt? Instead he said, “What’s going on?”

  “Sit down,” his mother said.

  He sat on the floor with Jackson, and the dog laid his head on Cork’s lap. Cork stroked Jackson’s mottled fur, as much to settle his own uneasiness as to caress the dog.

  “Do you remember the girl who went missing and her granddad came here looking for her?” Grandma Dilsey said.

  “Her name was…” He thought a moment. “Louise. Louise LaRose.”

  “She’s been found.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Grandma Dilsey said. “She’s dead.”

  Cork absorbed this, a tragic thing, of course, but he didn’t know Louise LaRose, and that distanced him from the impact. “How?”

  “Drowning, it looks like. You know Sherman Kingfisher and Stoney Bright?”

  “Sure. They’re both on the tribal council.”

  “They found her body floating in Naabe-Mooz. They brought her back to Allouette and called Sam Winter Moon. He called your dad.”

  “Where’s Dad now?”

  “With the body at Nelson’s Funeral Home,” Cork’s mother said.

  “How do they know it’s her?”

  “They don’t, not officially. Your dad thinks she was in the water a long time, three or maybe even four weeks. He’s contacted her family down in Leech Lake, and her grandfather is on his way to identify her.”

  “Naabe-Mooz?” Cork said. “Nobody goes out to Moose Lake unless they’re heading into the Boundary Waters. What would she be doing in the Boundary Waters?”

  “A good question,” Cork’s mother said. “And one I’m sure your father will be looking into.”

  There was a knock at the screen door, and Sam Winter Moon called from the porch, “Can we come in?”

  When Sam walked into the living room, Cork was surprised to see Henry Meloux with him, but he could tell that the presence of the Mide didn’t surprise Grandma Dilsey or his mother in the least.

  “Boozhoo, Henry,” Cork’s grandmother said. “Migwech.”

  They spoke in their native tongue for a minute, a conversation Cork could understand only bits and pieces of, then Grandma Dilsey rose, as if to leave with the men.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To meet Calvin LaRose at Sam’s Place and then to the morgue,” his grandmother replied. “We don’t want the girl’s grandfather to be alone in this.”

  Cork and his mother walked them out to the porch. Cork drew the Mide aside and said, “What’s going on, Mr. Meloux? So many bad things all at once.”

  “And you do not understand the connections,” Meloux said.

  “Do you?” Cork asked.

  Meloux shook his head. “But who sees the spiderweb in the night? So, we wait for the sun.”

  “Just wait?”

  “Just wait. But it is the hardest thing of all.”

  His mother drifted into the kitchen, and Cork followed her. She seemed lost, in thought, in purpose, and Cork felt unsettled, too. He did his best thinking while he walked, so he told her he was heading back to Jorge’s place. She cautioned him to be home in time for supper.

  “When will that be?” he asked.

  “Whenever your father and your grandma come home,” she said vaguely.

  As he walked, he tried to put what he knew together in a way that led somewhere, tried to see some pattern woven into all the recent events.

  What was a girl on the run doing in the Boundary Waters? How did she even get there? And Moose Lake? The entry through Spider Creek was on rez land, so it wasn’t one of the official entry points listed on any of the Forest Service maps. Almost nobody entered the Boundary Waters through Spider Creek and Moose Lake unless they were part of a Scout troop, who’d sought special permission, or they were Ojibwe. The girl was Ojibwe. So maybe she’d made a connection with someone on the rez.

  One thought followed another, and by the time he reached Glengarrow, he’d come to a frightening place in his thinking.

  Once again, no one answered his knock at the carriage house. He descended the outside stairway and stood looking at the great stone mansion set on its vast lawn. He’d never been inside, never even wanted to be. It had always seemed like a dark, brooding place.

  But now piano music came from the house through an opened window, and Cork heard singing. He recognized Jorge’s mother’s voice, and he crossed the lawn and stood at the window. It was a large room with vases full of flowers, and in the center stood a big piano, the kind he knew was called a grand. Mrs. MacDermid sat at the keyboard playing a lively tune that sounded Mexican. Jorge’s mother stood beside her singing in Spanish, singing her heart out. And there was Jorge with her, also singing, though not so loud or so lovely. It was like one of the gatherings at the O’Connor house when his mother played her concertina, and he and Grandma Dilsey and his father sang the Irish melodies they all knew by heart.

  He crept away, not wanting to do anything that might interrupt the happiness of a household in which, for so long, only rage had dwelled. He walked to the boathouse and sat on the dock where the huge motor launch and the smaller Sunfish sailboat were both tied up.

  The sun was brutal, and Cork was hot. He kicked off his Keds, pulled off his socks, rolled up his jeans, and dangled his feet in the cool, clear water of Iron Lake. From there he could see the shoreline as it ran past Sam’s Place and the rest of Aurora. He could see where Nick Skinner wanted to build his big hotel and enlarge the marina. If it brought more people to town, as everyone hoped, Aurora would change. But everything changed, even if you didn’t want it to.

  “Hey!” Jorge called to him and came running. “I saw you out the window. You should have come in.” He sat beside Cork on the dock.

  “You were all having your own good time.”

  “Mom wanted to cheer up Mrs. MacDermid.”

  “She sings nice, your mom. And Mrs. MacDermid’s really good on the piano.”

  “She studied music in college.” Jorge had his sneakers and socks off by now and, like Cork, dangled his feet in the water. “She says maybe she’ll start teaching piano or something, w
herever she ends up. But she’s rich enough she wouldn’t have to.”

  Cork let a few moments pass, then gave Jorge the news. “That girl I told you about? The runaway Ojibwe girl?”

  “What about her?”

  Cork told him everything he knew. When he’d finished, Jorge gave a long, low whistle. “That’s really bad.” He shook his head. “One more thing in a long line of bad.”

  “It all feels connected.”

  Jorge gave him a blank stare.

  “I mean,” Cork went on, “Big John gets jumped at Spider Creek and hung at Lightning Strike. Mr. MacDermid gets killed before he can get arrested for the murder. And the runaway girl gets drowned at Moose Lake, which is where you end up when you go into the Boundary Waters through Asabikeshiinh. It’s a big spiderweb, but the main thread runs up Spider Creek to Moose Lake, don’t you see?”

  Jorge frowned, then said, “I guess.”

  “Here’s the thing. Almost nobody except someone who’s Ojibwe uses Spider Creek to get into the Boundary Waters because if you don’t know the right channel to follow, you get lost.”

  “We go in that way, with the Scouts.”

  “Yeah, but who else?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It had to be someone Ojibwe who took her to Moose Lake.”

  “Or a Scout.”

  “Right,” Cork said and rolled his eyes. “A Scout.”

  “Okay, you’re saying someone from the reservation took her? So?”

  “Sounds like she could have been in that lake nearly a month. Now think about this. Who do we know that was out there around a month ago and was Ojibwe?”

  Jorge squinted, but it was not because of the sun. He was thinking hard about Cork’s question. Finally, a light came into his eyes and he whispered low, “Big John.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Liam sat in his office with Joe Meese. Both men had been quiet a long time. Then Joe finally said, “Sometimes I wonder why I wanted to be a cop. Bloody car wrecks, people killing themselves, young girls dead in the water and looking like something out of a nightmare.”

  “I’ve been doing some thinking, Joe,” Liam said.

  “Figured. You haven’t said a word in fifteen minutes.”

  “What was she doing out at Moose Lake?”

  “Hell if I know,” Joe said.

  “She was Ojibwe, but not from around here. So how did she know about Moose Lake and how to get there?”

  Joe gave a shrug. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “I keep coming back to her and Big John.”

  It took a moment for Joe to make the connection. “You’re thinking Big John took her in?”

  “Sigurd Nelson says his best guess is that she’d been in the water three, maybe even four weeks. We’re pretty sure that Big John went into the wilderness about that same time.”

  “Coincidence,” Joe said, then caught himself. “Wait. A good cop never believes in coincidence, right? You’re not saying he killed her?”

  “Maybe an accident,” Liam said. “And maybe he’d have reported it, except that Duncan MacDermid ambushed him on his way out.”

  “Why didn’t he just bring the body back with him?”

  “Bodies generally sink in a drowning. Maybe he couldn’t locate her body. Or maybe he was afraid to bring her body out.”

  “Why?”

  “An Indian shows up with a dead girl, claims it was an accident. What jury is going to believe him? Certainly not a white jury, at least not around here.”

  Joe eyed him. “But you’re also thinking maybe it wasn’t an accident.”

  “I knew Big John. I respected him. But until I know the truth of what happened to that girl, I have to keep myself open to every possibility.” His heart was heavy when he looked at Joe and said, “Don’t I?”

  * * *

  That evening for supper Cork’s mother made spaghetti. The rich smell of the simmering sauce filled the house for a long time before Grandma Dilsey returned. Cork was setting the dining room table, but he stopped as soon as he saw her face. His mother came from the kitchen and stood wiping her hands on her apron.

  “What happened, Mom?” she asked. “Was it her?”

  “It was Louise,” Grandma Dilsey said. “Calvin LaRose identified her, although it wasn’t easy.”

  Cork stood with the dinner napkins in his hands. “Why not?”

  Instead of answering, she said, “I’m going upstairs to lie down for a little while.”

  “I’ll call you when we’re ready to eat,” Cork’s mother said.

  Cork watched his grandmother climb the stairs. She moved slowly and for the first time he could remember, looked to him like an old person.

  “Finish with the table,” his mother said.

  His father was a long time in coming. Cork was sitting on the front porch steps when his father’s cruiser rolled into the driveway. Liam got out and walked to the porch. The sun had sunk low in the sky and the long, slanting rays were honey-colored. He stood at the bottom of the porch stairs, the low sun at his back, his long shadow encasing his son.

  “It was her,” Cork said.

  “It was her.” His father gave a nod.

  “Grandma said it wasn’t easy to identify her. Why?”

  His father sighed heavily, climbed the stairs, and sat beside his son. “A body, when it’s been in the water a long time, changes, Cork.”

  “How?”

  “I’d rather not go into it.”

  “How long was she in the water?”

  “Sigurd Nelson thinks maybe as much as four weeks.”

  “That’s about the time Big John would’ve been out there,” Cork said.

  His father had been sitting bent with his arms resting across his knees. He sat up now but didn’t look surprised. “What made you say that?”

  “Henry Meloux said everything’s connected, like a spiderweb. I’ve just been trying to look at the connections.”

  The screen door opened, and Cork’s mother stepped out. “There you are, Liam. Dinner’s ready, if you’re hungry.”

  “I could eat,” he said without enthusiasm.

  “Cork, would you go up and let your grandmother know that dinner’s ready?”

  Before they stood up, his father looked at Cork and put a finger to his lips.

  They didn’t talk about the dead girl while they ate. They didn’t talk about much of anything. To Cork, it felt as if they were going round and round in pointless circles, not looking at one another. As for him, he barely tasted his food. Finally his mother said, “Why don’t we clear the table, Cork.”

  And that’s when Grandma Dilsey began the fireworks.

  “You didn’t release her body to Calvin LaRose, Liam,” she said. “I hope you understand just how hard that was on him.”

  “My hands were tied. In any case where the cause of death is uncertain, an autopsy is required.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Sigurd promised to get on it first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Her body has already been desecrated enough.”

  “I want to know the truth of her death, Dilsey. Isn’t that what you want, too?”

  “You don’t believe it was just a terrible accident?”

  “What was she doing out there, Dilsey?”

  “Why do people usually go into the woods?”

  “She was in Moose Lake. I can’t imagine that she got there on her own.”

  Grandma Dilsey absorbed this, then said, “Someone took her in, you’re saying? And left her there?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Who?”

  Cork tried not to react, but his grandmother read him too well. “What is it, Corkie? What do you know?”

  “I… I don’t know anything,” he said, but it was a feeble attempt.

  “Corkie!” his grandmother said sharply.

  “Leave him be, Dilsey.”

  Grandma Dilsey’s hard, dark eyes shot to Cork’s father. “You’re both
in on this. What are you holding back?”

  Cork’s mother had been standing beside the table with a couple of emptied plates in her hand, ready to head to the kitchen. She put the plates back on the table and sat down.

  Cork’s father took the napkin from his lap, crumpled it, and set it beside his plate. “All right, Dilsey. Here it is. That girl was in the lake nearly a month. Moose Lake—”

  “Naabe-Mooz,” Grandma Dilsey said, insisting on the Ojibwe name for the lake.

  “Naabe-Mooz,” Liam said with a curt nod. “I don’t believe she got there on her own. Somebody who knows how to navigate Spider Creek took her there. Unless it’s a Scout troop, pretty much the only folks who go up Spider Creek are Ojibwe. And I only know of one Shinnob who might have been in the area at that same time.”

  Grandma Dilsey sat stone still, never taking her eyes from her son-in-law’s face. At last she said, “You think Big John killed her.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. But I am saying that if he were alive, I would certainly question him.”

  Grandma Dilsey’s voice in reply was as hard and sharp as Cork had ever heard it. “No one from the reservation laid a hand on that girl, especially not Big John. But as soon as this thinking of yours gets around, every white person in this county is going to say, ‘Indians killing Indians. What do you expect from savages?’ ”

  “Mom.” Cork’s mother laid a hand on her wrist.

  Grandma Dilsey snatched her arm away. “Am I wrong, Colleen?”

  “Some will say that, I’m sure.”

  “Just listen for a moment, Dilsey. Here’s something I haven’t told you.” His father glanced at Cork, as if hesitant to proceed.

  “What, Liam? What haven’t you told me?” Grandma Dilsey demanded.

  Cork saw his father’s face go hard and determined.

  “That girl was naked, not a stitch of clothing on her when Sherman Kingfisher and Stoney Bright found her. Although people skinny-dip in the Boundary Waters all the time, it’s suspicious. And if the evidence suggests that her death wasn’t just an accident, then the question of who took her to Naabe-Mooz is paramount. I’m no believer in coincidence, so the fact that Big John was out there the same time she died is a circumstance that I have to consider. I’m not saying Big John was responsible. I agree that’s a hard thing to believe. But it’s a thread that has to be followed.”