Tamarack County Read online

  Coming from anyone else, the statement might have sounded naïve, but Cork knew Meloux well and knew that the old man spoke only truth. If it hadn’t been truth before Meloux spoke, it became so afterward.

  Rainy looked away from him, toward where her great-uncle stood gazing across the lake, which was already frozen, though not solidly enough yet to support traffic, human or otherwise.

  “Five months is a long time,” she said. “I know he’ll be with family, but it’ll still be tough on him. He hasn’t been away from Crow Point for any significant period of time in sixty years.”

  “Five months,” Cork said. “Then you’ll be back, too?”

  She didn’t answer immediately, nor did she look at him. “I can’t promise,” she said at last. “I’ll stay with Peter as long as he needs me.” She was speaking of her son.

  She hadn’t put on her stocking cap yet, and her hair hung long over the shoulders of her red parka. A single strip of white ran through her black tresses. Rainy was full-blood Anishinaabe, Lac Courte Oreilles Band, out of Wisconsin. Her skin was a soft tan color, her cheeks high and proud. Her hands were rough from the work necessary to live in that remote place, but their touch had given Cork enormous pleasure in the time he’d been with her.

  “You’ll call?” he said. “Often?”

  “I’ll call,” she said. She turned her eyes to him, eyes the color of cherrywood. “Cork, I don’t know what’s ahead for Peter. Or for me. Or for us. I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep, and I don’t want that from you either.”

  “What does that mean? Because it sounds to me like a diplomatic ending.”

  “Not an ending.” Her eyes shone, tears in the gray light. “Maybe a test.”

  “Of what?”

  “What love is made of.” She put her hand, gloved in soft deer hide, to his cheek. “While I’m gone, however long that is, live your life as you have to. Because, Cork, that’s what I’ll be doing.”

  He had no idea what that meant, but he hadn’t pressed her. When she left Tamarack County, Rainy had delivered her great-uncle to Meloux’s son, Hank Wellington, who’d met them in Duluth and had taken his father with him back to Thunder Bay for the worst of the winter months. The old man hadn’t been at all certain about this. With great reluctance, however, he’d accepted that at ninety-something he could no longer make it on his own through the kind of winter that usually came to the North Country. Rainy had gone home to Hayward, Wisconsin, and from there to Tucson, Arizona, where her son now lived, a kid struggling once again in his fight against both alcohol and the siren call of drugs.

  In the quiet of the windless day, as he sat in front of Rainy’s deserted cabin, Cork heard only the sound of the crows using the aspen trees as a roost. The place felt abandoned, hopelessly empty of anything welcoming. He started the engine of his snowmobile and headed back toward Allouette.

  * * *

  He turned his Land Rover off the highway onto the lane that led up to the prefab where Stella and Marlee Daychild lived. The Toyota 4Runner was gone, but Cork parked and knocked on the door anyway, expecting to find no one home. He was mistaken. Stella opened up. She stood behind the storm door, holding a mug in one hand and her robe closed with the other.

  “You look cold,” she said. “Come on in.” She stepped back to let Cork enter.

  He expected to see the residual signs of Stephen’s overnighter there, blankets rumpled on the sofa, maybe, or cereal bowls left on the coffee table, the kind of thoughtlessness he was constantly after Stephen about. To his surprise, the house looked impressively neat, no indication at all of the kind of sloppiness Cork, in his own experience raising three teenagers, had come to expect of them.

  As if reading his mind, Stella said, “Marlee. That girl’s a human vacuum cleaner. Can’t drop a cigarette butt in an ashtray without her sweeping it up three seconds later. Adult child of an alcoholic,” she added, lifting her coffee mug in a mock toast to herself. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, Coke, tea, hot chocolate, spring water? I’ve got it all. Except for the booze now.”

  “Thanks, Stella, I’m fine.”

  “Have a seat,” she offered.

  Cork sat on the sofa. Stella took the swivel rocker. The robe she wore came only to midthigh. Below that she had on red wool socks. Between the hem of her robe and the tops of her wool socks, a lot of bare leg showed. She looked as if she hadn’t been up that long, her hair still mussed from where her head lay on her pillow, no makeup, tired eyes. Cork found himself remarking silently on how lovely she was. In the next moment, he found himself thinking, You just miss the company of a woman, that’s all it is. Even so, he had to be careful not to stare at Stella’s long, bare, slender legs.

  “I followed the track of the snowmobile,” he told her.

  “And?”

  “It led to where the White Iron River feeds into the lake.”

  “And that means?”

  “That the guy could have come from just about anywhere in Tamarack County, but probably not from the rez.”

  “Didn’t we already figure that?”

  “It’s always good to confirm a theory. You’re sure you don’t have any idea who you might have pissed off?”

  “When it happens, I let it go right away. No use dwelling on something like that. But what about the guy who followed me from the casino?”

  “Green pickup, mole on his cheek? Have you seen him since?”

  “No.”

  “Any idea why he might have taken a particular interest in you?”

  “Only the usual interest when it comes to a female bartender.”

  “Okay, so we keep him in mind.” He hesitated, then went on. “Stella, this isn’t meant to pry into your personal life, but have you been seeing anybody lately?”

  “You mean like dating?” She laughed, but there was a bitter edge to it. “I gave up men when I gave up booze. The two seemed to go together in my mind. In the end, both of them always left me feeling pretty bad about myself.” She sipped her coffee. “So you do think it was something personal directed at me?”

  “That, or maybe someone trying to make a point to Marlee.”

  “Marlee? That girl’s as good as I was bad. And the only guy she’s seeing is Stephen. You have any idea how different my life would’ve been if I’d dated guys like Stephen?”

  Cork figured that, given her tough childhood, it would have taken a lot more than dating the right guy to make a difference in Stella’s life. But he admired that she’d turned things around, that she’d worked very hard to do her best for her children.

  “What about Dexter?” she said.

  “What about him?”

  “Is he—I mean his body—still out there?”

  “I haven’t moved him, so yeah, I guess.” He saw the concern on her face. “I’ll take care of it. What would you like me to do with him?”

  “Could you just, I don’t know, bag him up and leave him somewhere out of sight? I’m going to have to tell Ray Jay that his dog’s dead. I’m not looking forward to that, let me tell you. I’ll let him decide what he wants to do. By the way, did you find his head?”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell would someone kill a sweet dog like Dexter and steal his head? Are you sure it wasn’t some kind of Satanic cult or something?”

  “You know any Satanists?”

  She smiled again, this time with genuine humor. “Only people that make me feel like hell sometimes. Does that count?”

  CHAPTER 13

  Stephen looked up from the television when his father walked in. “Were you able to track him?” he asked.

  His father said, “Only so far, then I lost his trail.”

  Stephen had been watching a basketball game, Notre Dame playing St. John’s, hoping Anne, who loved the Fighting Irish, might be tempted to come out of hiding upstairs and watch with him.

  Stephen hit mute. “Where?”

  “Where the White Iron River feeds into the lake. A lot of tracks there,
all mixed up.” His father sat on the sofa. From the coffee table, he picked up the bag of Cheetos Stephen had been munching on, grabbed a fistful for himself, and put the bag back down.

  “Did you find Dexter’s head?” Stephen asked.

  “Nope.”

  “What did you do with his body?”

  His father licked the yellow Cheeto residue from his fingers. “Put it in a big trash bag and put the bag in the Daychilds’ utility shed. The dog belonged to Stella’s brother, and he’s just about to finish up a sixty-day stretch at the county jail. When he’s out, he can decide what he wants to do with the body.”

  Stephen scooped a handful of Cheetos from the bag and fed them into his mouth one by one. “Doesn’t make sense, Dad, that kind of cruelty.”

  “When we know who did it, we’ll understand more. Where are Jenny and Waaboo?”

  “They took Trixie and went sledding.”

  His father nodded toward the television screen. “Who’s winning?”

  “Notre Dame.”

  “Does Annie know?”

  “I told her. She wasn’t interested.”

  His father shook his head and said quietly to himself, “Damn.” The ring tone on his cell phone chimed, and he pulled it from the holster on his belt. He glanced at the number on the display, said, “It’s Marsha. I gotta take this.” He got up from the sofa and went into the kitchen.

  Stephen could hear an occasional question on his father’s end, but mostly there was just the silence of listening.

  “I’ll be right over,” his father said, then called toward the living room, “Gotta go,” and Stephen was alone again.

  He considered going back to watching the basketball game, but his heart wasn’t in it. He thought about calling Gordy Hudacek and maybe playing some video games. Finally he settled for texting Marlee.

  Where RU?

  A minute later, she replied, School. Play practice. Done @ 1. Drive?

  No car, he texted back.

  Got my moms.

  Great. CU @ 1.

  He’d just ended his message when the house phone rang, and he bounded from the sofa and jogged into the kitchen to answer.

  “O’Connors’ residence. This is Stephen.”

  “Hello, Stephen. It’s Hank Wellington, from Thunder Bay.”

  Henry Meloux’s son. Stephen was instantly concerned.

  “Is Henry okay?”

  “He’s fine. But he would like to talk to your father.”

  “My dad’s not here right now.”

  Wellington spoke to someone on his end, then said into the phone to Stephen, “He’ll talk to you.”

  “Great. Put him on.”

  “Boozhoo, Stephen. It is good to hear your voice.”

  “Henry? Is that you?”

  “Let me check.” A moment of silence. “Yes.”

  He could feel the old man smiling, could imagine his face cut by more lines than a tortoiseshell.

  “Is everything okay?” Stephen asked.

  “Here,” the old man said. “It is there that worries me.”

  “Everything’s fine,” Stephen said.

  “That is strange,” Meloux said. “Because I have been dreaming. The same dream three nights now.”

  Meloux fell silent, but Stephen didn’t ask about the dream. He knew that when the old Mide was ready, he would tell him.

  “Stephen, have you dreamed?”

  “No, Henry. No vision dreams anyway.”

  Meloux said, “If you do, I want to know the dream. I want to know if it is my dream.”

  A long silence followed, and Stephen waited patiently for the old man to continue.

  “I saw an evil thing,” the old man finally said. “A majimanidoo.”

  Evil spirit, Stephen translated. Devil.

  “This majimanidoo is always in the shadows. I cannot see it clearly.”

  Stephen almost blurted a question—What was this devil doing?—but he’d learned a long time ago to bridle his impulses when he was dealing with Henry Meloux, to trust that the old man was guiding him.

  “What worries me, Stephen, is what this majimanidoo is up to. In my dream, it is always watching your house.”

  “Just watching?”

  “Yes. But its heart is dark, Stephen, so black I cannot see into it, and I am afraid of what is there.”

  “Do you think we’re in danger, Henry?”

  “I do not know, Stephen.”

  Then Stephen had another thought. “Is it maybe someone we care about, Henry? Do you know the Daychilds, Marlee and Stella?”

  “I know them,” Meloux replied.

  “Somebody killed their dog last night and cut off his head.”

  The old man’s end of the line was silent a long time. “I will dream some more,” he said at last. “Will you tell your father about this majimanidoo?”

  “I will, Henry.”

  “And, Stephen?”

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to dream, too. Maybe you can see this evil clearer because you are there and you are young and you have the gift.”

  Stephen had visions sometimes, dream visions, but they always came unbidden. He didn’t know if he could dream on demand.

  “How do I do that, Henry?”

  “When you go to sleep, clear your mind and leave it open. It will be an invitation.”

  “I’ll try, Henry.” He was about to say good-bye when he thought of something else. “Henry?”

  “Yes?”

  “Annie’s home. She’s having some trouble, personal problems, and she needs a place to be by herself to sort things out. I was thinking . . . well . . .”

  “My door is always unlocked,” the old man said.

  “Migwech, Henry,” he said, offering the old man an Ojibwe thank-you. “I’ll let her know.”

  Stephen hung up and stood at the kitchen sink, staring at the faucet, not seeing the shards of broken sunlight that came off the stainless steel but seeing instead Dexter’s shaggy, headless body lying on white snow spattered with blood. The work of a madman or a majimanidoo.

  “Who was that?”

  He turned and found Anne crossing the kitchen toward the refrigerator. She was wearing a gray sweat suit and her feet were bare.

  “Henry Meloux.”

  “I thought you said he was in Thunder Bay.”

  “He is. He wanted to talk to Dad.”

  She’d opened the refrigerator door, but now she stood looking at her brother with concern. “Is he all right?”

  “Yes. He’s been having dreams that worry him.”

  “What kind of dreams?”

  “Seeing evil spirits here, watching our house.”

  “Coming from Henry Meloux, that’s serious stuff. Does he know what it means?”

  “He doesn’t. But I’m thinking maybe it has to do with the Daychilds.”

  “Because of their dog?”

  “Yeah.”

  Anne nodded, giving weight to the consideration, then she smiled. “And because you’re stuck on Marlee?”

  Stephen didn’t bother to argue with that assessment of his relationship. He simply said, “Yeah, maybe.”

  Anne reached into the refrigerator and brought out a carton of yogurt. When she turned back to Stephen, he saw that a darkness had fallen across her face. “Or maybe,” she said, not meeting his eyes, “it’s a different kind of evil altogether.”

  He had no idea what that meant, but figured it came from whatever demon his sister had chosen to wrestle with alone. He remembered Meloux’s offer. “Annie, Henry says it’s okay if you want to use his place for a while.”

  She took a spoon from the drawer, opened her yogurt, tossed the lid into the garbage pail under the sink, started out of the kitchen, then turned back and said, “I’ll go there tomorrow.”

  “After church?”

  Anne thought about that and finally said, “I don’t go to church anymore.”

  She left the room, left Stephen standing thunderstruck, left him suddenly afraid
that the wall that stood between what was evil in the world and what was good had begun to crumble.

  CHAPTER 14

  The investigation of Evelyn Carter’s disappearance had pulled a number of deputies out of the office, leaving the sheriff’s department shorthanded. As a result, Mary Lou Wolsey, who normally just worked dispatch, was also covering the contact desk. When she buzzed Cork through the secure door, she said, “In her office. She’s expecting you.”

  “Thanks, Mary Lou.”

  Although the sheriff’s office had been occupied by three other people since Cork had left the uniform behind, it was still a little surreal to him whenever he walked into the room that had been his for many years. The truth was he didn’t much miss being sheriff—the politics had been nothing but a headache—but he often missed wearing a badge. Dross had redone the place as soon as she’d taken over the position and had managed to make the room feel somehow more welcoming without losing the professional atmosphere. It had to do with the color she’d chosen for the walls, maybe, a placid hue that reminded Cork of soft desert sand. Or the photographs she’d hung, very personal. Or maybe the plants that she managed to keep looking enviably healthy. There were still file cabinets, and her computer, and bookshelves full of law enforcement manuals and volumes of regulations, but she’d made it a room where, Cork figured, she could spend a lot of time without feeling the onerous grind of the wheels of justice.

  Dross sat at her desk. Justine Belsen, the daughter of Evelyn and Ralph Carter, sat in a chair near one of the windows. Through the panes behind her, the snow and glaring sunlight framed her in a harsh brilliance. Justine was tall and, in Cork’s opinion, cadaverously thin. She was blond, her hair cut in a flip that brushed against her neck whenever she moved her head. She’d grown up in Aurora; he knew her, but not well. She was a few years younger than he, and they’d run in different circles. He’d graduated from Aurora High the year she’d entered as a freshman, and when he came back with his family to take a job as a sheriff’s deputy, she was married and living in New York City. Over the years, he’d seen her occasionally at St. Agnes when she was home for a visit and attended church with her parents, but aside from perfunctory greetings, they’d had little to say to each other. Now here she was, a woman of fifty, who looked whittled down by life to not much more than a matchstick.