Windigo Island Read online

  Cork drove a red Ford Explorer. He’d bought the vehicle slightly used a couple months earlier after a huge buck had leaped in front of the Land Rover he’d been driving. The collision had killed the buck and totaled the Land Rover. All things considered, Cork was content to be driving an American-made vehicle again. He parked at the edge of a gravel county road, near a double-trunk birch that marked the beginning of the two-mile trail through thick boreal forest to Crow Point. His wasn’t the only vehicle parked there. A mud-spattered green pickup sat among the weeds at the roadside. Cork put on his rain poncho and got out. Jenny did the same, while her father walked around the pickup. The plates were Wisconsin.

  “What are you looking for?” Jenny asked.

  “Maybe nothing.” Cork peered through the rain-streaked window on the passenger side. “On the other hand, the gun rack’s empty. Maybe whoever drove here didn’t bring a rifle, but maybe they did. If so, they’ve got it with them. And it’s not hunting season, Jenny.”

  “You’re scaring me, Dad,” she said.

  He pulled out his cell phone and tried calling Rainy but got no answer. He looked at the trail that threaded through the dark pines. “Let’s go. But keep your eyes peeled.”

  “For what?”

  “We’ll know when we see it.”

  The trail to Henry Meloux’s cabin on Crow Point cut through national forest land for a mile or so, then crossed onto the reservation of the Iron Lake Ojibwe, or as they preferred to be called, the Iron Lake Anishinaabeg. In the wet air, the smell of pine was sharp and cleansing. Normally, the trail would have buzzed with insects, but the storm had driven them to shelter. Same with the birds. The only sounds were the rain cascading among the branches of the evergreens and poplars all around them, the crinkle of their ponchos as they walked, and the suck of mud on their boots where the ground was bare.

  “He’s big,” Cork said.

  “Who?” Jenny glanced at him from beneath her dripping poncho hood.

  “Whoever got to Crow Point ahead of us.” He poked a finger at tracks in the muddy ground ahead of them.

  “You make it sound so sinister,” she said. “Lots of people visit Henry.”

  “Carrying rifles?”

  “You don’t know that he’s carrying a rifle.”

  “And I don’t know that he isn’t. Remember Waaboo and the Church of the Seven Trumpets?”

  He was making reference to people who’d tried to kill his grandson when Waaboo was only a baby. That confrontation had taken place on Crow Point. Several people had died that day. Jenny, Stephen, Rainy, and Meloux had almost been among them. So Cork’s concern was not unfounded.

  “Given the urgency in Rainy’s voice and the fact that she’s not answering her cell phone, it seems prudent to err on the side of caution, don’t you think?”

  “I guess it makes sense. So what do we do?”

  They’d crossed Wine Creek, a freshet that was well inside reservation land. Crow Point was another quarter mile ahead.

  “One thing we’re not going to do is come at Henry’s cabin directly, in case someone’s watching the trail. Follow me,” Cork said.

  He cut into the woods and began making his way through the undergrowth, which the thick bed of fallen pine needles and the acidic nature of the soil beneath kept sparse. He angled east, Jenny behind him, until he came to Iron Lake. The shore was lined with aspens and was a favorite roost of crows, the reason for the point’s name. He slipped among the dripping trees and followed the shoreline until he could see three man-made structures: Meloux’s ancient cabin built of cedar logs; the cabin of his great-niece Rainy Bisonette, which was much newer; and the little outhouse that serviced them both.

  The sky above the lake and the point was an oppressive ceiling of charcoal-colored clouds from which rain poured relentlessly. Cork’s boots were soaked, and each step made a squishing noise in the wet ground and the mud. He moved more slowly now, easing his way toward the rear of Meloux’s cabin. He signaled Jenny to hang back while he crept to the structure. A single window faced the lake, and Cork slipped up beside it. The windowpane was lifted a few inches, enough for air to circulate but not enough to let in rain. He could hear the murmur of voices inside but could make out no words. He glanced back to where Jenny remained crouched among the aspens in her olive green poncho. She held up her hands signaling, Cork supposed, So, what’s up?

  He was about to hazard a glance through the window when the pane slid up fully and a familiar old voice inside said, “You come like a thief, Corcoran O’Connor. My front door has no lock. You are welcome to enter as a friend.”

  • • •

  There had come a time, finally, when Henry Meloux accepted the reality of his situation, which was that he could no longer live alone. It had come to him as the result of a strange illness that had made him weak for a long while. That’s when Rainy Bisonette, his great-niece and also a public health nurse, had come to Crow Point. Her purpose was not only to minister to Meloux but to learn from him the healing ways of the Grand Medicine Society. When little Waaboozoons had been given to them—by the hand of Kitchimanidoo, the Great Spirit, Meloux was certain—the dangerous circumstances of that gifting had forced the old Mide to confront his mortality, to put his life on the line for the little guy, and this, in the incomprehensible way of the Great Spirit, had been his own healing. Rainy had stayed on, even after Meloux’s recovery, both to learn and to help the old man who was, after all, somewhere near a century old. Two summers ago, Cork had helped build the one-room cabin that was Rainy’s. And since then, he’d often spent the night with her, sharing her bed and blanket and the blessing of her warm body.

  Rainy stood in Meloux’s cabin, a cup of coffee in her hand, listening as her great-uncle made the introductions.

  “Daniel English,” the old man said, indicating his guest with a nod of his head.

  As Cork had surmised from the boot prints on the trail, Daniel English was a big man, well over six feet tall. Cork judged him to be in his late twenties. English was quite clearly Indian, though Cork couldn’t have said what his tribal affiliation might have been. His hair was raven-wing black, his eyes almond, his nose like a hatchet blade set in a broad face. He wore jeans and a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose his powerful biceps. There was one other thing that Cork noticed about him from the get-go: those dark eyes took in everything, and in a way that made Cork think, Cop.

  “Daniel English,” Cork said. “That name’s familiar to me.”

  English said, “We’ve met before.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was ten,” English said. “Visiting Uncle Henry with my mother. You dropped by.”

  “Eudora English,” Cork said, remembering. “You were Danny then, and smaller.”

  “You were in a sheriff’s uniform and wore a gun. I was afraid of you.”

  “The uniform went a while ago. Same with the gun,” Cork told him. “This is my daughter Jenny.”

  English hesitated when Cork’s daughter reached out, an awkward move. When he finally took her hand, which was small in his own, he did it with care, as if afraid he might break her fingers.

  “Henry’s really your uncle?” Jenny asked. Because on the rez, sometimes familial titles were bestowed though no blood connection was involved. People of a certain age were all cousins, and to them the next generation were uncles or aunts, and above them were grandmothers and grandfathers. To the Ojibwe, traditionally, the community was family.

  Meloux spoke up to clarify. “He is the son of my sister’s granddaughter.”

  “My nephew,” Rainy said.

  Cork noted that the clothing English wore was dry, but he could see no rain gear, which made him think that the man had been there awhile, before the storm broke. A good deal of talking had probably gone on, and whatever it was they’d discussed was probably the reason for Rainy’s call. Cork wa
s deeply interested in that reason and in why Rainy’s voice had been so urgent. But the Anishinaabeg never rushed anything, and so he resigned himself to patience.

  Rainy poured coffee for the two new visitors, and Meloux suggested they smoke together. From a cupboard, he pulled a cedar box that held a small leather pouch and a pipe that was, Cork knew, carved from stone quarried at a site in southwestern Minnesota sacred to many tribes in the upper Midwest. Henry filled the bowl, but before he lit the tobacco, he took a pinch and made an offering of gratitude to the spirits of each cardinal direction. They passed the pipe and smoked in silence and listened to the rain, and then Henry said, “There is trouble, Corcoran O’Connor. Trouble in my family.”

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  Henry Meloux sat at the table he’d made himself from birchwood long, long ago. Cork sat across from him. The chairs were birchwood, too, also of Meloux’s construction. The old man slid a photograph across the tabletop. Cork lifted and studied it. A shot of a body, a girl’s body, naked except for a pair of pale blue panties. She lay facedown on a rocky shoreline, her torso draped over broken rock. Everything below her waist was in water so clear it obscured nothing. Her arms were thrust out above her, as if she’d clawed her way to that place, crawled as far out of the water as she possibly could before she gave up the ghost. Her dark hair lay splayed across her shoulders and back. There were dark discolorations along her ribs—bruises. She was small. And young. There was no perspective, really, that told Cork her age. He simply sensed it. What he was looking at, he knew, was the body of girl still not quite a woman. Now she would never be.

  “Her name,” Daniel English said, “is Carrie Verga. She’s Bad Bluff Chippewa, from near Bayfield in Wisconsin. Ran away from home a year ago. No one’s seen her since. Then last week, her body washed up on a small island in Lake Superior near the Bad Bluff Reservation. Some boys who were out there to paint graffiti found her.”

  “I read about that in the News Tribune,” Cork said. “Is she family?”

  “No,” English replied. “But when she left Bayfield, she didn’t leave alone. A girl named Mariah Arceneaux went with her. She’s family. My cousin.”

  And so kin to both Rainy and Meloux. Cork understood Rainy well, and understood now the urgency in her voice when she’d called him to come to Crow Point. But the ancient Mide was an enigma in so many ways. He was a man whose life was dedicated to the healing of others, yet he’d chosen to spend it in solitude far from any community. People sought him out, but he seldom went seeking others. He had family, but they’d been scattered to the winds long ago. When they were children, he and his two sisters had been taken from the Iron Lake Reservation and forced to go to Indian schools, odd nomenclature for places whose primary purpose was to drive everything Native out of their charges. Meloux had been sent to Flandreau, South Dakota. His sisters went to the government boarding school on the Lac du Flambeau Reservation in Wisconsin. Meloux had simply walked away from the Flandreau school one day and returned to Iron Lake. His sisters had stayed in Wisconsin, married, and created many additional branches in the family tree. As far as Cork knew, Meloux seldom saw them. But Cork also knew that Meloux’s idea of family had nothing to do with blood or tribal affiliation or skin color. Anyone who came to him in need and with an honest heart was kin. Still, looking at the old man’s face, Cork could see nothing there. Not concern, compassion, even interest.

  Jenny stared over her father’s shoulder at the photograph. “She’s just a kid.”

  “Fourteen now,” English said. “Same age as my cousin.”

  “Has anyone heard from your cousin?” Cork asked.

  English shook his head.

  Cork looked at the photograph again. “How did she die?”

  “Drowned. But the medical examiner found heroin in her system.”

  “She didn’t OD?”

  “No. Her lungs were full of lake water. A drowning.”

  “Whose jurisdiction?” Cork asked.

  “Bayfield County. The sheriff’s department there is in charge of the investigation. They’re calling it an accidental drowning, saying the heroin was a contributing factor.”

  Cork heard the stone in English’s voice. “You don’t buy that.”

  “There’s more to it.”

  “What would that be?”

  “I don’t know. I just know there is.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Call it instinct.”

  Cork couldn’t keep the smile from his lips. “You’re a cop.”

  “Game warden. Wisconsin DNR.”

  “Guess my uniform didn’t scare you too much,” Cork said.

  Jenny broke in. “So, what exactly are you doing here, Daniel?”

  She stood in the gray light that came through the west window of the little cabin, her blond hair damp and dismal-looking.

  Daniel English eyed her a long time before answering. “Louise—­that’s my mother’s cousin—is all torn up. She asked to see Uncle Henry, but she can’t come to him. She’s diabetic, lost a leg. I’m here to bring my uncle to her. And she would like you to come, too, Cork.”

  “Me? Why?” Then Cork understood the reason for Rainy’s call. He shot her an accusing glance.

  She gave him a small, helpless shrug. “Family,” she said.

  English went on, but not with great enthusiasm, “The authorities have been no help. You were a cop once. You’re a private investigator now. Louise knows about you, knows that you have Ojibwe blood and that Uncle Henry trusts you. She hopes you can find her daughter.” He paused, then added, “Before it’s too late.”

  Cork stood and paced a little, considering. On the cabin walls hung items that came from Meloux’s long life: a bearskin, a bow with string made from the skin of a snapping turtle, a deer-prong pipe, a toboggan, other things.

  “Do you have a photo of your cousin?” he asked.

  From the pocket of his shirt, English pulled a couple of photographs. He handed one of them to Cork. “That was her ­seventh-grade class photo, taken a little over a year ago.”

  It showed a pretty girl with long black hair, dark eyes, a Mona Lisa–kind of smile that might have been demure or shy. Or maybe it was simply an element unfamiliar to the girl’s face. It was hard to say. She was young. So heartbreakingly young.

  “And here’s the other.”

  English handed him the second photo. At first glance, Cork would have sworn it was not the same person. This girl’s face was layered in makeup. Her eyelashes were clearly false and absurdly long. The look struck Cork as a harlequin attempt at sexy and alluring, the work of someone who had no real idea of what she was about.

  “I got that from her Facebook page,” English said.

  Cork handed the photos back. There was a hollow feeling in his gut, the kind he had when he was facing what he suspected was an assignment doomed from the outset.

  “I suppose there’s no harm in talking to her mother,” he said. “But I don’t want to give her a lot of false hope. Indian kids run away all the time. You know that, Daniel.”

  English nodded. “And if they don’t want to be found, there’s no finding them.”

  “But maybe she wants to be found,” Jenny threw in. “Maybe she needs to be found before she ends up in a lake somewhere.”

  Rain fell outside, dripping off the roof onto the ground with a relentless drumming. The quiet inside the cabin had become uncomfortable, made so by Jenny’s words, which were really a rejection of any choice but to help.

  Meloux finally spoke, and what he said surprised them all. “I will not go.”

  Cork looked at him with astonishment and saw the same reaction on the faces of the others in the room.

  “I am an old man,” Meloux said. “The mother of this girl is still young. If there is something she wants from me, she will come here to receive it.”


  English said, “She has only one leg, Uncle.”

  “And I have no patience with guilt that wears the face of grief.”

  Cork wasn’t sure he’d ever heard such harsh words from his old friend.

  Clearly Rainy hadn’t. “Uncle Henry,” she said, “that’s about as heartless a thing as I’ve ever heard you say.”

  Meloux lifted his dark eyes to English and there was nothing in them. The old man was absolutely unreadable. “Tell her this. I will help, but my help comes at a price. She must bring me her daughter’s most precious possession, and she must bring it herself. When she has done this, I will do what I can for her.”

  “Uncle Henry—” Rainy began.

  “I have said all I am going to say, Niece.”

  “Henry,” Jenny said, feeling the rise of heat inside her. “Forget about the girl’s mother. How can you turn your back on the girl herself? She’s just a child.”

  “You want to help this girl?” He stared at Jenny with profound disinterest. “You save her.”

  Jenny reacted as if the old man had touched her with fire. She looked shocked, and Cork had a sense that her reaction was about more than just the old man’s callous resistance.

  “All right,” she said. “All right, then. If you won’t help, I will.”

  “It is settled.” The old man stood and went to the doorway. “Now I am going to take a walk.” Without further ado, he stepped into the driving rain, neglecting even to put on a hat or jacket against the downpour.