Vermilion Drift Read online

  “A little of both, I suspect,” Cork replied.

  Cavanaugh took a step. Not threatening. “What do you know?”

  “That I can tell you?”

  “You’re working for me, remember?”

  “Technically, Max, my job is finished. Your sister’s been found.”

  Cork didn’t have to see the man’s face to sense his rage.

  “I want to know everything you know,” Cavanaugh said. “God damn it, I’ll pay you.”

  “It’s not about money, Max. In a situation like this, there are good reasons for not making everything public.”

  “My sister’s dead. I have a right to know things.”

  “And you will. It’ll just take some time.”

  Cavanaugh was silent. Although Cork considered the man his friend, he knew that Max was used to being obeyed. Perhaps in a mine or in a boardroom his silence might have had the desired effect, but Cork simply held his ground and matched Cavanaugh’s silence.

  Cavanaugh broke first. “They asked me questions, as if I was a suspect. Am I a suspect, Cork?”

  “More likely a person of interest. At this point, pretty much everyone in Tamarack County who knew her is a person of interest. It’s not personal, Max. Did you give them a formal statement?”

  “No. I’ll go in tomorrow morning.”

  “I’d advise you to take legal counsel with you. I know how it will look, but it’s the prudent thing to do.”

  Cavanaugh turned slowly, like a windmill adjusting to a change in the direction of the wind. He stared across the empty lake, where the distant shore was marked by solitary pinpricks of light from cabins hidden among the pines.

  “You had someone you loved die this way, Cork. You’ve got to understand what I’m feeling.”

  Cavanaugh was probably talking about Cork’s wife, Jo. But he might also have been speaking of Cork’s father. Either way, the answer was yes, Cork understood.

  For the briefest moment, he thought about telling Cavanaugh that it was likely one of the old bodies in the Vermilion Drift was his mother. And that he knew what that was like, too, having someone you love disappear and a very long time later learning their true end.

  Instead he waited and listened in vain to hear the earth breathe.

  Cavanaugh straightened. “I’d like you to continue working for me.”

  “In what capacity?”

  “I want to know who killed my sister.”

  “There are a lot of very capable law enforcement personnel who’ll be investigating.”

  “I want someone working on it just for me.”

  “Believe me, Max, the resources they have available to them are light-years beyond anything I could bring to the table.”

  “You know this town, the people in it. You don’t have to walk a thin legal line and go by the book.”

  “You mean I can twist arms and bust faces? I don’t work that way. The sheriff’s people and the BCA are the best there is. I’ve worked with them for years.”

  “And if you were me, would you trust them or you?”

  A complicated question, not just because of the convoluted syntax. Cork thought a lot of his own abilities, and the truth was that in an investigation he had certain advantages over those who were uniformed and badged. Which was one of the reasons Marsha Dross had already sought his help. And that was part of the complication. If Cork agreed to hire on with Cavanaugh, he couldn’t also agree to sign on with the sheriff. Conflict of interest.

  He felt for Max Cavanaugh. He understood the man’s grief, his confusion, his frustration, his desire to rip away the veil of mystery surrounding his sister’s death and, although Cavanaugh didn’t yet know it, his mother’s death as well. Because Cork thought he had a better chance of making that happen working with the sheriff and the BCA, he said, “No, thanks, Max. But if you’re bound and determined, I can recommend a couple of good investigators.”

  The old dock groaned under Cavanaugh’s weight as he brushed past Cork, wordless, and returned to his Escalade. In the quiet by the lake, Cork could hear the angry growl of the engine for a long time after it had disappeared into the night.

  ELEVEN

  The next morning Cork was up before sunrise and running.

  Years earlier, he’d been a smoker and enough overweight to worry about it. When he hit forty-two, his life went into a meltdown. He lost his job as sheriff, lost a lot of his self-respect, nearly lost his family. Part of pulling himself together involved getting comfortable in his own skin, and running helped him do that. He discovered that when he ran all the tight screws in his head loosened, and he seemed to think a little clearer.

  That morning he had a lot to think about.

  He jogged easily to Grant Park, which was situated along the shoreline of Iron Lake, a quarter mile south of Sam’s Place. He spent ten minutes stretching, then began his run in earnest. He headed north along a trail that followed the shoreline, past the poplars that hid the old foundry, past Sam’s Place, past the abandoned BearPaw Brewery. He curved into town and then out again, to the end of North Point Road, where the old Parrant estate stood. This was a halfway point, and he stopped to watch the sun rise over the lake.

  In Cork’s experience there was nothing to compare with sunrise in the North Country. Across any lake on a calm morning, the crawl of the sun played out twice: first in the vault of heaven and again on the surface of the water, which was like a window opened onto another heaven at his feet. Five decades of life and he could still be stunned to silence by such a dawn.

  The old Parrant estate sloped down to the shore. As Cork stood and watched the sun bubble red out of the horizon, something startling occurred. The brick from which that great house was built turned scarlet, and the walls began to melt, and rivulets of blood ran red across the emerald lawn. Cork stood mesmerized and amazed, but it wasn’t the first time he’d had a discomforting vision involving this particularly cursed piece of real estate. Half a dozen years earlier, shortly before he’d discovered the murder-suicide there, he’d observed a sea of black snakes churning in the yard, snakes seen by no one but him.

  He blinked his eyes, and the morning was again as it had been, and the Parrant estate was solid brick, and its broad lawn was clean and green.

  Mudjimushkeeki, he thought. Bad medicine.

  The tall, lean figure of Derek Huff came from the back of the big house. He was dressed only in a bathing suit. As he headed toward the lake, he cast a shadow that followed him, long and black, like one of those snakes in Cork’s vision years before. He reached the dock, dropped the towel he’d carried over his shoulder, and dove into the lake.

  Cork drank water from the bottle he carried, and he stretched some. His muscles were a little sore. Lately he hadn’t been running as regularly as he would have liked. Despite his best intentions, life often got in the way.

  As he prepared to resume his run, he looked back at the lake, where Derek Huff stroked easily away from shore, leaving a wide, undulating wake behind him that rattled the reflection of heaven.

  When he’d finished the run and had showered and dressed, Cork composed and sent e-mails to his children. He didn’t tell them about what he’d found in the Vermilion Drift. He told them he was busy, happy, missed them. The Vermilion Drift would come up sooner or later, he knew. He wanted it to be later.

  He headed to Johnny’s Pinewood Broiler for some breakfast. He could have eaten at home, but he needed to talk to Cy Borkman, and Borkman always breakfasted at the Broiler.

  He found Borkman sitting on a stool at the counter, already doing major damage to a platter of eggs over easy, link sausage, hash browns, and toast. An empty juice glass sat off to one side, and coffee steamed in a cup within easy reach. Borkman had been hired as a deputy when Cork’s father was sheriff of Tamarack County, and he was still a deputy when Cork held that office thirty years later. He’d always been a big man, always overweight, but with retirement from the Tamarack County Sheriff’s Department he’d edged more and mo
re toward the girth of a walrus, and the little stool he sat on seemed hard put to keep from buckling.

  “Morning, Cy,” Cork said and gave Borkman a hearty slap on the back as he sat down beside him.

  “Hey, Cork.” Borkman spoke around a mouthful of breakfast, and it came out something like, “Hey, Hork.”

  It was a busy morning at the Broiler. Kathy Lehman was waitressing the counter. She was blond, fortyish, a transplant from Wisconsin, but nice as they came. She stopped as she hurried past with three plates balanced on her right hand and forearm, shot Cork a smile, and said, “Coffee, hon?”

  “Thanks, Kathy.”

  “Be right back.” And she was gone.

  Borkman put down his fork. He grabbed his napkin and, with a quick swipe, cleaned hash browns and ketchup from his chin. “Say, what was all that commotion at the Vermilion One yesterday? Everybody’s talking about a convoy of official vehicles that trucked in there. The protest getting out of hand?”

  “Nothing like that, Cy.”

  “Me, I didn’t have these bum legs, I’d be walking that protest line myself. Say, heard you’re working for the mine.” It wasn’t the most friendly tone he’d ever used.

  “Security consult,” Cork said. “Some threats have been made.”

  “Now that’s a shocker.” Borkman laughed and gulped coffee.

  “Cy, you remember the Vanishings? Back in ’sixty-four?”

  “Hell, yes. Strangest damn case my whole time on the force. We never solved that one.”

  “Three women, right?”

  “Yep. Two from the reservation and Mrs. Peter Cavanaugh. Now there was a looker. That daughter of hers?” He shook his head and lifted his fork again. “Like I’m staring at a picture of the mother.”

  “You never had a suspect in the case, right?”

  “Not officially.”

  “How about unofficially?”

  He grinned and his face was all folded flesh. “The priest.”

  “Priest?”

  “Yeah. The priest at St. Agnes. Your church.”

  “Why him?”

  “For one thing, he was a young guy. Macho for a priest. Weight lifter. Big muscles. Me, I like my clergy kind of soft like bread dough, you know?”

  “What else?”

  “We got an anonymous tip about him. Said he—” Cy broke off and eyed Cork suspiciously. “I don’t know if I should be telling you this. It’s a cold case. File’s still open.”

  “As a favor between old friends?”

  He thought a moment. “What the hell. It’ll never be solved. This tip said that the priest liked to masturbate while listening to confessions.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Kathy Lehman breezed up with a cup of coffee in one hand and her order pad in the other. She slid the coffee onto the counter in front of Cork, snatched a pencil from where she’d stuck it in the hair above her ear, and said, “What’ll it be, hon?”

  “Oatmeal, raisins, brown sugar.”

  “Coming up.” She whirled and was gone again.

  “Did you follow up on it?” Cork asked.

  “Yep. Priest denied everything. But guess what we found stuffed behind the confessional. Delicates.”

  “Delicates?”

  “Women’s underwear, stained with semen.”

  “I don’t remember any of this.”

  He shrugged. “It was never made public. That was your dad’s doing. The confessional was open to anyone. No way to prove the priest put those things there. No way in those days to prove the stains were his. We didn’t have anything else on the guy. Your father was able to keep it all out of the papers. We could do that back then. But the bishop got involved and yanked the priest, sent him off to Siberia or someplace. And then Mrs. Cavanaugh disappeared. Because the priest was long gone, we pretty much wrote him off as a suspect. And after that the Vanishings stopped. End of case.”

  “FBI and BCA involved?”

  “Yep. Baffled them, too.”

  “Was there ever any word on other missing women?”

  “We watched things in the county and adjacent counties pretty carefully. Followed up real seriously when we got a report of a runaway or missing person. Nothing ever came of it.”

  “Any speculation on disappearances that came before the first victim was reported and that might have been related?”

  Borkman chewed thoughtfully and finally shook his head. “Not that I recall. What’s the big interest in an old case?”

  “Just wondering. You know how it goes.”

  “Yeah. I like retirement, but I miss being involved in the action. I think about old cases a lot. It was a good job, a good life. And your old man, he was a hell of a cop to work for.”

  TWELVE

  Cork found Marsha Dross in her office at the sheriff’s department. She looked ragged at the edges, and it was clear she hadn’t slept much. She cradled a cup of coffee and eyed him over the rim as he sat down on the other side of her desk. It was a lovely morning, and her office windows were open. Cork could hear a cardinal calling in the maple tree outside. Sunlight plunged through the eastern window like a gold sword stuck in the floor.

  “All right,” he said. “Count me in.”

  She put her coffee down. “In?”

  “I’ll consult on the case. I’ll interview anyone on the rez you’d like me to interview. I’ll also interview anyone else I think might be able to help. I’ll keep you apprised of everything I learn. But I want something in return.”

  “And that would be?”

  “I want to know everything you know about the bodies in the Vermilion Drift.”

  “Everything I know now?”

  “Now and as it’s revealed.”

  “Full access to everything?”

  “That’s the deal.”

  She frowned, thinking. “All right. But I want two more things from you.”

  “Name them.”

  “First of all absolute silence. Whatever you learn on the reservation, whatever you learn from me, it stays between us.”

  Cork opened his mouth to say fine, but she held up her hand.

  “I know you, Cork. I know that being part Ojibwe sometimes pulls you in a direction counter to the interests of this department. I have to believe absolutely that in this you’re with me. You understand?”

  “I understand. And the second thing?”

  “Everything you find out that pertains to the case you share with me. You don’t hold anything back. You don’t protect anyone. This goes right back to my concern about your Ojibwe ties.”

  Dross was right. This had been a problem in the past, and so Cork had to think before he answered.

  “It’s a deal,” he finally said. “What do you know about the bodies so far?”

  “Not much. We got all the skeletal remains bagged and they’ve been taken to the BCA lab in Bemidji. Agent Upchurch is working on them now. The preliminary autopsy report on Lauren Cavanaugh indicates death from a single gunshot wound to the chest. The bullet pierced her heart. Luckily, it stayed in the body, and wasn’t badly deformed, so Simon’s people can run ballistics on it.”

  “Any indication of sexual assault?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “One of the skeletons also shows evidence of a gunshot wound, probable cause of death.”

  “What evidence?”

  “Agent Upchurch found a bullet lodged in the spine,” Dross replied. “She’s not able at the moment to say anything about the other victims. Our crime scene techs did a good job of clearing the area. We have clothing fabric still intact. We’ll get good dental impressions. If some of the remains are from the Vanishings, we’ll know.”

  “Time of death for Lauren Cavanaugh?”

  “Tom Conklin’s put that at approximately a week ago. He’s still trying to nail it down more specifically. The last recorded call on the victim’s cell phone was Sunday night at eleven-eleven P.M. Nobody’s seen her since
that night. In their canvass of the neighborhood, one of Ed’s guys talked to Brian Kretsch.”

  “Lives in that sprawling house across the road from the Parrant estate, right?” Cork asked.

  “That’s him,” Dross said. “He recalled hearing squealing tires a little before midnight. Odd, because North Point Road is usually so quiet. He was just locking up for the night and looked out his picture window, but he was too late to see anything. We haven’t found anyone who saw Lauren Cavanaugh the next day or anytime after. So at the moment, we’re operating on the theory that she was killed that Sunday night sometime after eleven-eleven P.M. and before midnight.”

  “Did Kretsch hear a shot?”

  “Nope. Apparently he was watching a Jackie Chan DVD. Lots of gunplay and explosions, I guess.”

  “What about the two bodies we can’t account for, what do we know about them?”

  “Not much. You seem to think they’re Ojibwe. Any way you can be certain?”

  “I’m headed out to check on that now. What about you?”

  “At the moment, I’m trying to keep a lid on what we’ve found. I’d like to get a few more answers before we have the media hopping all over this.”

  “All right.” He stood up and started out.

  “Cork?” Dross called.

  He turned back. She had pushed away from her desk, and the sun through the window had settled on her lap like a sleepy yellow dog. She was as fine a woman as he’d ever known and as skilled a cop as he’d ever worked with. “It’s good to have you on the team again,” she said.

  He nodded, and, though he didn’t tell her so, he liked being there.

  Cork broke from the thick pine of the Superior National Forest and stepped onto Crow Point. On the far side of the meadow, smoke rose from the stovepipe atop the cabin of Henry Meloux, and even at a distance Cork could smell cinnamon and baking dough, which made him realize he was hungry. He had no idea what the old man was cooking up, but whatever it was, he knew Meloux would share, and his mouth watered in anticipation.

  Crow Point was an isolated finger of land that poked into Iron Lake many miles north of Aurora. Meloux lived there alone, his only companion an old yellow mutt named Walleye. He had no running water, no electricity, and did his business in an outhouse thirty yards from the cabin. He was a member of the Grand Medicine Society, one of the Midewiwin, a Mide. He was old, well past ninety. He’d been a friend as far back as Cork had memory. Twice Meloux had saved his life. On more occasions than Cork could recall, Meloux had advised him in a way that untwisted a knot Cork could not undo himself. Meloux offered this gift to many people, not just to Cork, and not just to the Ojibwe.