Lightning Strike

by William Kent Krueger

  “I can’t listen to any more of this,” Grandma Dilsey said. “I’m going home.” She stood abruptly, threw her napkin on the table, and left the house.

  In the silence after the storm, Cork’s father looked at his wife and said, “It’s not about me being white, Colleen.”

  “I know.”

  “And I’m not ready to say anything against Big John. I respected him greatly. But it’s something we have to consider.”

  “It’s like I told Dad,” Cork said. “It’s all part of the same spiderweb.”

  “You already knew?” Cork’s mother said, then cast an accusing look at her husband.

  “He followed the same logic I followed, Colleen, and came to the same conclusion I did.”

  Like Grandma Dilsey, she looked tired of arguing and said, “What about the girl’s grandfather, Calvin LaRose? Did he go back to Leech Lake?”

  “He’s staying with Henry Meloux on Crow Point until I release her body. Henry will do what he can to help the man through this.” Cork’s father looked down at his plate, where his spaghetti was only half eaten. “I’m not hungry anymore. I’m going back to the office. Things I need to do there.”

  After he’d gone, Cork’s mother said, “Your grandma Dilsey is right. Big John would never have hurt that girl.”

  “Maybe not Big John,” Cork said. “But it sure seems possible that someone from the rez could have, don’t you think?”

  She didn’t respond. She said, “Finish clearing the table, then let’s do the dishes.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Near dark, Jorge showed up with his Ouija board. The moment Cork let him in the house, Jorge said, “Man, it feels like death in here.”

  “A few problems,” Cork said. “Let’s go outside.”

  They sat at one end of the porch, facing each other, legs crossed, their knees almost touching. In the soft blue illumination of evening and in the spill of incandescent light through the living room window, Jorge laid the board across their knees and placed the triangular planchette atop it. Before they began, Cork said, “What we talked about today, about Big John and that girl, you’ve got to keep it to yourself, okay? You can’t tell anyone.”

  “I already told my mom.”

  “Then ask her not to tell anyone.”

  “What if she already did?”

  “Then tell her not to tell anyone else. It’s important.”

  “Sure,” Jorge said.

  “Promise.”

  “I promise, all right?”

  They placed their fingertips on the planchette, and Cork said, “If we call him up, I’m going to ask different questions this time.”

  “Like if he killed the girl?”

  “Or if he knows who did. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  But before they could begin the ritual, Sam Winter Moon pulled his truck to the curb in front of the house. He and Grandma Dilsey got out and strode up the walk.

  “Hey, Sam,” Cork said. “Hi, Grandma.”

  “Boys,” Grandma Dilsey said in perfunctory voice and led Sam inside. Through the opened window, Cork heard her call out, “Colleen! We have some talking to do!”

  He laid the Ouija board aside.

  “Sounds serious,” Jorge whispered. “What’s it about?”

  “Big John, I’d guess.”

  “What about calling up his spirit?”

  “That can wait.” He put a finger to his lips and whispered, “Just listen.”

  His mother had joined Grandma Dilsey and Sam, and the conversation had begun quickly and directly.

  “I don’t know how to keep it from getting out, Dilsey,” Sam was saying. “I think it would be best to get word to the rez before anything happens. Maybe we can head off the worst of what might come.”

  “First it’s Oscar Manydeeds. Now it’s Big John. White people never blame white people.”

  “That’s not fair, Mom. Liam never accused Oscar of anything. And he hasn’t accused Big John either.”

  “All he has to do is mention their names in conjunction with these deaths and it opens the door to every prejudicial thought abroad in this county.”

  “All right, Mom, give me another way of seeing these things. Who took that girl to Naabe-Mooz? She didn’t get there by herself.”

  “I don’t know. I only know it wasn’t Big John or any other Shinnob.”

  “And does that come from logic or from your heart?”

  “Do you think chimooks use logic? They convict from their hearts, which in my experience, are more often than not set against anyone who looks Indian.”

  “Dilsey’s not wrong, Colleen,” Sam said. “The first thought most white folks in Tamarack County are going to have is that it wasn’t one of their own who’s to blame. Give them the slightest hint of anything suspicious from one of us, and boom, we’re guilty. If Liam asks for my help trying to get information from the rez, I’m going to turn him down. Any witch hunt in Indian territory, he’ll be going on his own.”

  “Have you told him that, Sam?”

  “I’m going to wait here until he comes home and then I’ll tell him.”

  “That might be a long wait.”

  “We may not have much,” Sam said, “but one thing we Ojibwe have in spades is patience.”

  “Would you like something while you wait? I made sun tea today. And we have chocolate chip cookies in the jar.”

  “Both sound good. Migwech.”

  Cork moved away from the window and sat on the porch steps. Jorge joined him, but neither of them spoke.

  Cork was thinking that he was just like the chimooks Grandma Dilsey railed against. His first thought about the dead girl had been that someone Anishinaabe was responsible. Logic was a part of that, sure, but was something else at work, something dark in him that he didn’t want to acknowledge? He was only a quarter Shinnob. Three-quarters of his blood came from European ancestry. Was his thinking swayed by all that whiteness?

  “I should be going,” Jorge said. “Mom wants me home before it gets too dark.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Cork said.

  He stepped into the house and told his mother what he was going to do. She said, “Fine, but back by ten. And take Jackson with you. He could use a good walk.”

  They went slowly through Aurora toward Glengarrow. Lights shone through the windows of the homes they passed, and Cork wondered if all the houses hid worries that no one on the outside knew or cared about.

  The moon, nearly full, had risen shortly after sunset, and the boys walked on their own moon-cast shadows with Jackson bounding ahead or lingering behind as his nose and other canine inclinations dictated. By the time they came to the big estate, night clouds had begun to drift in, obliterating for brief periods the bright moon and sections of starlit sky. Shadows thrown down by the clouds crept across the grounds of Glengarrow and climbed the walls of the great house like dark wraiths.

  At the wooden steps that led to the apartment above the carriage house, Jorge paused and said, “We could still try.”

  “Try?” Cork said.

  “To call up the spirit of Big John.”

  Cork was finished with giving himself over to childish games. “Bunk,” he said.

  “Yeah, bunk,” Jorge agreed. “See you tomorrow.” He climbed the stairs, opened the screen door, and called out, “Hola, Mama. Esta bién.”

  But Cork knew that all wasn’t well. His head and heart both told him this.

  He wandered with Jackson past the big house, where only one light shone, in an upstairs window. Somehow that single light made the place look even emptier. He reached the guest cottage with its boathouse beneath and the dock where he’d sat with Jorge that afternoon and they’d dangled their feet. He stood looking across Iron Lake, which was like a great friend he’d known all his life. Its cool water welcomed him in summer. In winter, he played hockey on its hard, flat face. It could be a mirror and look exactly like the sky above, blue and tranquil. Or it could be a rage of whitecaps and just bein
g near it got his spirit racing. Iron Lake was ever-changing, but at heart it never changed.

  Everything else, it seemed, did. And not always slowly. Sometimes it came in an instant, like a lightning strike. Like the death of Big John and everything that had happened since.

  The moon slid from behind a cloud and Iron Lake sparkled with a million diamonds. Then Jackson let out a low woof and took his pointer stance, his nose toward the big house at Cork’s back. Cork felt the hair rise on his neck as Jackson growled low and threatening, and he turned quickly toward whatever it was that was coming.

  But there was only the great mansion with its single light, the long empty lawn surrounding it, the carriage house.

  “What is it, boy?” Cork whispered.

  But he knew what it was. Or who it was. Although he couldn’t see a looming figure among the cloud shadows that crept across the grounds, in his heart, he knew. Big John was not yet at rest.

  * * *

  “A little late to be out,” Liam said when Cork walked into the kitchen from the mud porch. He was sitting on one side of the kitchen table, Colleen on the other. Cork eyed them both suspiciously and said, “What’s going on?”

  “A little late to be out, I said.” Although Liam had meant it to sound strict, it came out from a place of anger and his son looked stung.

  “I stuck around Jorge’s place a few minutes longer than I expected, that’s all.”

  “Until I say different, I want you home by dark.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Just do as I ask.”

  “All right. Where is everybody?”

  Colleen said, “Sam took your grandmother back to the rez.”

  “She’s still mad?”

  “She just needs some time. She’ll cool down.”

  Cork headed to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of milk. “Okay if I have the last piece of cobbler?”

  Colleen looked at Liam and raised an eyebrow.

  “Go ahead,” Liam said. “But take it upstairs. You can eat it in your room.”

  They were quiet while Cork put the cobbler on a plate and poured his milk.

  “Bring those dishes down first thing in the morning,” Liam said, again more harshly than he’d intended.

  “Yes, sir.” Cork practically ran from the kitchen.

  When they were alone again, Liam picked up where he’d left off. “I can’t just ignore these things, Colleen. They’re all part of the investigation. Every move I make, I get accused of being prejudiced.”

  “That’s not what we’re saying, Liam. We’re just saying you don’t understand. How could you? You grew up Irish, white, in a nice, suburban house.”

  “It wasn’t that nice.”

  “Compared to a shack on the rez, it was a mansion.”

  “Not everyone on the rez lives in a shack.”

  “No one on the rez lives in a nice, suburban house.”

  “That’s not my doing.”

  “Just try for a minute to see things from our perspective. If you hint, even in the least, that one of The People might be responsible for that girl’s death, you poison the thinking of so many white people in Tamarack County. And you know this, Liam.”

  “That girl didn’t get to Moose Lake on her own, Colleen. Even Cork could see that. If I have to question someone from the rez, I’ll do that. It’s my job.”

  “Are you going to question any white people?”

  “If it makes sense.”

  “Why wouldn’t it? Maybe you should ask Father Cam. He uses Spider Creek as an entry point when he goes with Cork’s Scout troop.”

  Liam gave a brief, caustic laugh. “Father Cam? Can you see Father Cam harming anyone?”

  “That’s my point exactly. He’s white, and you can’t imagine him doing something so despicable as abandoning that girl out there. But if he were Ojibwe—”

  “All right, all right. Let’s not keep going over this. It’s late. I’m tired. I need to get up early to be there when Sigurd does his autopsy.”

  Liam pushed his chair from the table and the legs gave a banshee screech as they slid across the flooring. He stood and leveled a cold look at his wife, who had not moved.

  “Are you coming?”

  “I think I’ll lie down on the couch tonight.”

  “Whatever you need to do.”

  Liam mounted the stairs as if each one offended him and needed crushing. In the bedroom, he stripped to his shorts, threw on a T-shirt, and headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth. As he passed Cork’s room, he glanced in. His son sat with his back against the headboard, hugging his knees. Cork turned his head and looked at his father with eyes full of fear and confusion. What exactly he’d overheard, Liam couldn’t say, but he’d certainly heard the volume and the timbre. Liam wanted to step in and offer some reassurance, but there was still an angry fist balled up in his chest, and he simply moved on.

  In the bathroom, he splashed cold water on his face and eyed himself in the mirror. Even to himself, he looked like a stranger, a man who could frighten children. He took a few minutes, breathed deeply, and went back to talk to Cork. But the door was closed and there was no light seeping out from underneath. Maybe he was sleeping, maybe not. And maybe it was best, because in truth, Liam had no idea what he might have said, with no comfort to offer. In that moment, he believed he’d never felt so alone.

  CHAPTER 40

  Like so many rural counties in 1963, Tamarack County had no medical examiner. Autopsies were typically performed by Sigurd Nelson, the mortician, who’d been the county coroner for more than fifteen years. They were rare, but when required, they were performed in the basement of the Nelson Funeral Home, in a room typically devoted to embalming. Liam O’Connor was present from start to finish during the autopsy of the body of Louise LaRose. The procedure resulted in two major findings: (1) The back of her skull had been fractured and there’d been massive hemorrhaging of the brain; and (2) there was lake water in her lungs, which was the actual cause of death. Liam would have liked to know the blood alcohol level in the young woman as well, but Sigurd told him that after so long in the water, that would probably be impossible to ascertain.

  Liam left the mortuary feeling sick to his stomach. He’d seen death in so many forms, but watching the unnatural procedure in the unnatural light of that basement room, gazing for so long upon the horror he would have to release to the young woman’s grandfather later that day, imagining how he would feel if she were someone he’d watch grow up and had loved, made this one different. Inured as he was to death, this one felt incomprehensively tragic to him.

  But one additional notation that Sigurd Nelson had made about the condition of the girl’s body filled Liam with an angry determination to get to the bottom of her death.

  Before going to the mortuary, he’d left instructions for his deputies to bring in Big John’s canoe from Spider Creek, take it to Big John’s cabin, and put it back on the canoe rack. He’d given Joe Meese the keys to his pickup truck. When he parked his cruiser in his space at the county courthouse, his pickup truck was there, but the damaged canoe was still in the bed.

  In his office, Ruth Rustad explained: “We got a call from Yellow Lake. A robbery at a bar there. Cy and Joe responded. They said they’d take the canoe to the reservation later.”

  “Tell them not to bother,” Liam said. “I’ll take it out myself.”

  When he pulled up to Big John’s cabin, he was surprised to see a bicycle that looked exactly like his son’s Schwinn leaning against the cabin wall. He got out and checked inside the cabin. The air was cool and there was a dank, unpleasant smell to it, but the room was empty. He stepped out, spotted Cork at the little dock by the canoe rack, and joined him.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked.

  “I was headed to Allouette to look for Billy Downwind. Felt kind of wrong just to pass by without, I don’t know, paying respects. What are you doing here, Dad?”

  “I brought Big John’s canoe.�
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  “You don’t need it for the investigation?”

  “I think we got from it what we need.”

  “You’re done with the investigation?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You did the autopsy on the girl this morning, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “We did.”

  “What?”

  His son was twelve years old. Liam thought back to when he was that age. He’d come from a family of cops and had been privy to cop talk all his life. He’d heard funny stories and tragic stories and gruesome stories, and he thought that at twelve he’d been given a pretty good idea of how harsh the world could be for some people. He didn’t believe his psyche or his young heart had been damaged by this knowledge. He decided to share the truth with Cork.

  “Cause of death was drowning. But there was evidence of a blow to the back of her head.”

  “Somebody killed her,” Cork said, as if he’d been certain of it all along.

  “That doesn’t necessarily follow. She could have fallen, hit her head, tumbled into the lake, and drowned. It’s happened before.”

  “So, you think it was an accident?”

  Liam stared across the water. On the far side of the lake, the shoreline of Aurora was just a thin, dark line. “No, I think somebody killed her.”

  “Why? I mean if it could have been an accident.”

  Liam turned his eyes on his son, who still had a good twelve inches to grow before he reached his father’s height. “This gets grisly.”

  “I saw Big John’s body, remember?”

  “And I wish you hadn’t.”

  “But I did. And that was pretty grisly. I can take it.”

  He could see that Cork’s jaw was tight, as if he were biting a strap of leather, preparing for the worst. He hesitated, but he’d already decided his son should hear the truth, all of it.

  “One of the things that happens to a body submerged in water for a long time is that the skin becomes soft and can easily peel away. It appeared that something had been tied around the girl’s ankles, ropes probably, but as the skin peeled off, the ropes went with it.”