Vermilion Drift Read online

  It had been a long winter and a cool spring. The green of the poplars and birch that edged the shoreline of Crow Point was so new it was still thin and pale. Many of the wildflowers that should have been in bold color were only just now peeking out from the tall meadow grass. Under the warm morning sun of that June day, Cork threaded his way along the narrow path to the cabin door, drawn both by his desire to talk with his old friend and by the tantalizing aroma wafting from the cabin. He knocked and was surprised when the door opened, for it was not Meloux’s face that appeared there.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Right back at you,” the woman in the doorway said.

  “Where’s Henry?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “My name’s Cork O’Connor. Henry’s a friend.”

  She looked him up and down and seemed disappointed. She appeared to be Cork’s age, more or less. Her hair was long and black but with a wide gray streak running through like a glacial stream. White flour smudged her left cheek, and, as she stood there, she wiped flour from her hands with a dish towel. She might have been pretty, Cork decided, if she’d smiled, even a little.

  “So you’re the famous Cork O’Connor,” she said.

  “I don’t know about famous.”

  “I’ve been hearing stories about you for years from my uncle.”

  “That would be Henry?”

  “He’s my great-uncle actually. My grandmother’s brother.”

  “You must be Rainy Bisonette. I’ve heard about you, too.” But not from Henry. Other people on the rez with relatives who were Lac Court Oreilles in Wisconsin talked about her. “You’re visiting?”

  “Learning.”

  “The way of the Midewiwin?”

  She didn’t deny this, but neither did she confirm it.

  “Is Henry here?”

  “Not at the moment. But he’s expecting you.”

  This didn’t surprise Cork. Meloux had a way of knowing these things. Over all the years of their friendship, Cork had come to take it for granted.

  “He’s waiting for you,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t really know. He said to tell you to follow the blood. Do you understand what that means?”

  “I think so.”

  He looked past her into Meloux’s one-room cabin. “Smells good.”

  “Enjoy your visit,” she said, stepped back inside, and closed the door.

  Cork returned the way he’d come, through the long meadow and into the pines, and soon came to a small stream that flowed west toward Iron Lake. Because of its color, white folks called it Wine Creek, but the Ojibwe called it Miskwi, which meant “blood.” He turned east and followed upstream. It took him only a little while to see that he was on the right track. He found the imprint of a dog’s paw in the soft earth at the edge of the stream. It was a recent print he suspected had been left by Walleye, pausing to lap from the cool water. For nearly half an hour more he shadowed the creek, finally squeezing through a narrow cleft in a rock ridge and emerging into a clearing that lay in the bottom of a natural bowl formed by rugged hills.

  Though it had no real name, Cork thought of it as Blood Hollow.

  A remarkable event had taken place there several years earlier. A young man accused of murder, a man named Solemn Winter Moon, had received a vision of Jesus. Although many people knew about the vision, only Meloux and Cork knew the location of its occurrence, a remarkable place, filled with an abundance of wildflowers, which were much larger and bolder in color than those on Crow Point and which Meloux often gathered for the healings he offered.

  The old Mide was there all right. Cork spotted him sitting next to the stream near the center of the hollow, his back against a tree stump, almost invisible amid the tall grass and the flowers. His eyes were closed as if in sleep, and he didn’t seem to be aware of Cork’s approach. Walleye lay at his side, his forepaws pillowing his old yellow head.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” Meloux said without opening his eyes. “Sit down.” He sounded irritated, as if Cork had missed an appointment.

  Cork did as he’d been told, but for a minute or more Meloux seemed to pay him no heed. Finally the old Mide opened his eyes and, much to Cork’s relief, smiled. Cork pulled out the tobacco pouch he’d brought as an offering. He gave it to Meloux, who opened it, pinched tobacco from inside, sprinkled a little to the four corners of the earth, and then let some fall in the center. From a pocket of his overalls, he pulled a book of matches and a small pipe carved of red stone. He filled the pipe, struck a flame, set an ember burning, and drew on the pipe stem. He passed the pipe to Cork. They sat a long time in this way, smoking silently.

  Meloux’s hair was long and white and fine as spider silk. His face looked as if it held a line for every year he’d lived. His eyes were warm and inviting, little brown suns. He wore a blue denim shirt, old denim overalls, and moccasins he’d sewn himself. He wore no hat, and the breeze in the hollow ran through his hair. The long white filaments quivered and glowed as if electrified. Cork noticed that the old man’s hands, whenever they held the pipe to his lips, trembled, something Cork had never seen before, and though he mentioned nothing to his friend, he was concerned.

  Finally Meloux said, “Isaiah Broom has you in his sights.”

  “Isaiah and I have been exchanging fire since we were kids.”

  “An angry wind, that man. From a child.”

  “Has he ever come to you asking help?”

  Meloux shook his head. “His anger blinds him.”

  Walleye lifted his head briefly, blinked at them, then went back to resting.

  “When he was a boy too young to remember, he was brought to me,” Meloux said. “His father was dead in Korea, his mother gone in the night. He was a child abandoned and wrapped in a blanket of pain. I tried to help him, but he was not ready for what I offered. In his anger, he has been a strong voice for The People. So maybe that was what was meant for him all along.”

  “Henry,” Cork said, changing the subject, “I had a vision today.”

  The old man looked at him closely. “Your face is troubled.”

  Cork described the blood running from the house across the lawn of the Parrant estate. “It’s the second vision I’ve had there, Henry. The second disturbing one.”

  Meloux’s eyes took in the sky. “Everything is alive, Corcoran O’Connor. And everything alive can become ill. That is a diseased place, I think.”

  “Can it infect those who live there?”

  “That is the nature of disease.”

  Cork thought about Ophelia Stillday working at the center, and the situation concerned him.

  “This vision is not the cause of the trouble I see in your face,” Meloux said.

  “No, there’s something else.”

  Cork told him about the grisly discovery in the Vermilion Drift. “If it’s the Vanishings, Henry, then two of the unidentified bodies are definitely Ojibwe. One of the others is probably Monique Cavanaugh. But that leaves two we don’t know about. I’m wondering if there were any other disappearances of women from the rez back then. Someone gone but never reported.”

  “Not all The People love this land, Corcoran O’Connor. There have always been those who abandon it, and sometimes they do not say a word to anyone. They just go.”

  “That’s not an answer, Henry.”

  The old man looked down where his hands quivered on his lap. “Talk to Millie Joseph.”

  “Because her memory is better than yours?”

  “Because you are a man who is happy asking questions and she is a woman happy to answer. Go to Millie. Ask questions. It will make you both happy.”

  “Henry, did you know about the wildcat mine pit sunk on rez land?”

  “There’s not much about this reservation I do not know.”

  “Who else knew?”

  “A long time ago, probably many. Now?” He gave a shrug.

  “Henry—”

  “It is ti
me you talk to Millie Joseph.”

  It was clear to Cork that was all Meloux was going to say on the subject. He stood up to leave. “By the way, I met Rainy. She says she’s here to learn from you.”

  “That’s not the only reason she’s here,” the old man said unhappily.

  Cork glanced toward Meloux’s trembling hands. “You’ll get back to your cabin okay?”

  “Walleye and me, we’ll take our time. That is something we both still know how to do well.”

  “Migwech, Henry,” Cork said. It meant “thank you.”

  Cork started away through the tall meadow grass, but Meloux called his name and he turned back.

  “I will say one thing, and then I will say no more.” The sun was behind the old man, and his face lay in shadow. “Your father was one of those who knew about that pit. Your father knew there was another way into that mine.”

  THIRTEEN

  Millie Joseph had a room in the Nokomis Home, which was an assisted living facility that had been built by the Iron Lake Ojibwe in the town of Allouette, on the reservation. She’d been married three times and had outlived all her husbands. From these marriages, she had eight children. Six were still alive. Only one resided on the rez. The others had scattered to the four winds.

  Millie Joseph had been Cork’s mother’s best friend. She’d also functioned as a kind of unofficial historian for the rez. She’d kept papers and documents and had recorded oral histories. Most of her collection had gone to the Iron Lake Historical Society, which she had helped form. Now she suffered from dementia. Although she was still gifted with periods of extreme lucidity, particularly about details of her past, about other things her mind was often as clean as a freshly laundered sheet. She’d always been a pleasant woman, and her dementia had not yet changed that. When Cork found her in the dayroom of Nokomis Home, she was sitting alone in her wheelchair, staring through the window at the blue stretch of Iron Lake. She was smiling and seemed lost in reverie.

  “Boozhoo, Aunt,” Cork said, using the familiar Ojibwe greeting and calling her by the relational name he used for most reservation women her age, regardless of actual blood connection. He leaned and kissed her wrinkled cheek.

  “Hello, there,” she replied, as if Cork were a stranger, but a welcome one.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” Cork said, looking with her through the window.

  “When I was a girl, I used to swim in that lake every morning.”

  “You were a good swimmer, I’ve been told. Better than most boys.”

  She laughed. “My mother told me it wasn’t good for a girl to beat boys, but I didn’t care. I was fast as an otter.”

  Cork knelt beside the wheelchair. “Millie, there’s something I want to ask you.”

  She smiled at him, expectantly.

  “Many years ago my cousin Fawn disappeared. Do you remember that?”

  Her smiled melted, and a wariness came into her eyes.

  “Another young Ojibwe woman also vanished. Naomi Stonedeer. Do you remember?”

  She looked away from him, and although her eyes settled again on the lake, Cork suspected it was a different vision she was seeing. “Fawn liked to swim, too.”

  “I know,” Cork said. “She was a good swimmer, like you.”

  “They said the lake took her.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t the lake.”

  “Did others disappear, Millie?”

  “Naomi Stonedeer and Fawn.”

  “Yes. I know about them. But were there others?”

  She frowned, thinking, and her eyes seemed more focused. When she spoke, there was gravity in her words. “Hattie’s girl ran away about that time. Seems to me Hattie never heard from her again. A wild child, that one. Didn’t surprise me that she’d run off without a word.”

  “Hattie’s girl?”

  “Abbie.”

  “Anyone else?”

  She thought a moment. “Yes, seems to me before that Leonora Broom had took off. She just up and left her boy. Now that was a shame.”

  “Isaiah?”

  She nodded. “Oh, he was an angry little boy.”

  “So, Leonora Broom first and then Abbie Stillday. Anyone else?”

  She thought some more, and while she thought, her tongue lapped idly over her lower lip. “Not then.”

  “What do you remember about then?”

  She turned her face to him and she smiled. “It was so long ago. But sometimes, when I read your mother’s poems, I remember. Your mother, she was a beautiful writer.”

  “Yes.”

  “She wrote the loveliest poems. She could have been famous, I bet, if she’d wanted to be. And her journals. She gave them to me before she died. I used to read them. I don’t read much anymore.”

  He had forgotten about his mother’s writing. “Did you pass them on to the historical society?”

  She shook her head. “Kept those for myself.”

  “Where are they?”

  “In my room. Push me?”

  He wheeled her out of the dayroom, past two old Shinnob men playing checkers and an old woman nodding in front of the television. Her room was on the first floor. It was small but pleasant. She pointed to the closet. “In there.”

  Inside, Cork found an old steamer trunk taking up much of the floor space. Beside it were stacked four cardboard boxes. One was marked “Allouette” and one “Brandywine,” the names of the two communities on the rez. On the other two were written his mother’s name: Colleen O’Connor. He lifted the first two boxes, set them on the trunk, and pulled free those below that bore his mother’s name. They were sealed with tape.

  “Take them,” Millie Joseph said at his back. “I don’t need them now. I can’t read anymore.”

  “Migwech, Millie,” Cork said.

  “She could have been a famous author, I bet,” she said again. “Are there any famous Ojibwe authors?”

  “A few,” Cork said.

  “Good,” Millie Joseph said and smiled.

  * * *

  He’d loaded the boxes in his Land Rover and was heading back toward Aurora when his cell phone rang. It was the sheriff’s office.

  “We have some preliminary information from the crime scene if you want to stop by,” Dross said.

  “I’m on my way. I’ve got some information for you, too.”

  She was in her office, with Ed Larson and Simon Rutledge. They appeared to have been waiting for him.

  “What did you find out?” Larson asked.

  “And good morning to you, too, Ed,” Cork said.

  “Sorry,” Larson said. “A little eager.”

  There were no chairs available, so Cork leaned against one of the file cabinets. “I’ve got two possible names for the additional bodies in Vermilion One.”

  Larson had his small notebook out in an instant, pen poised above a clean page.

  “Hattie Stillday’s elder daughter, Abigail, who was believed to be a runaway. And Leonora Broom, Isaiah Broom’s mother, who everybody thought simply abandoned him. Check the community clinic in Allouette. There may be dental records for both women available through the Indian Health Service.”

  “I’ll get right on that,” Larson said.

  Dross asked, “Did you find out if anyone knew about the sink on reservation land?”

  “I didn’t get a satisfactory answer to that particular question,” Cork replied. He knew he was spinning out the thinnest thread of truth, but at least it wasn’t a lie. “What did you get from the crime scene?”

  “Something we don’t understand,” Rutledge said with a wistful, unruffled look. Not much ruffled Rutledge. It was one of the things Cork liked about him. “The bullet pulled from Lauren Cavanaugh during the autopsy and the bullet Upchurch found lodged in Monique Cavanaugh’s spine were both thirty-eight caliber. Although they were deformed by impact, both stayed in one piece and our techs were able to examine the rifling impressions pretty clearly. Get this, Cork. Both bullets were fired from the same weapon.”

  “
What kind of firearm?” Cork asked.

  “Because of the right-hand twist to the striations, we’re thinking Smith and Wesson, a thirty-eight.”

  A .38 Smith & Wesson was a firearm with which Cork was eminently familiar. He owned one himself and had worn it when he was sheriff of Tamarack County. Forty years before that, the gun had belonged to his father.

  It wasn’t an uncommon weapon, yet the coincidence made Cork uncomfortable, and he knew that, as soon as the meeting was over, there was something he had to do.

  “Anything else from the mine?” he asked.

  Larson glanced up from his notebook. “Yes. Beneath the older victim with the bullet in the spine we found a gold wedding band. There was an inscription on the inside surface. ‘My Unique Monique.’”

  “Monique Cavanaugh,” Cork said.

  “We can’t say a hundred percent at this point, but it’s sure looking that way.”

  “Anything useful on the other victims?”

  “Clothing remnants still clinging to bone on three of the victims, which may indicate that the other two were nude when they were put there. I can’t imagine the clothing will be much help with IDs at this point. We’ll check dental records at the Indian Health Service, and if the victims are the other vanished women, maybe we’ll get lucky and find matches.”

  “It’s the Vanishings, Ed. I’m sure.”

  He could see that Larson was certain, too, but the opinion of the sheriff’s chief investigator would be an official and quoted one, and so, good cop always, Captain Ed Larson was cautious in his speculations. “We’ll see.”

  Rutledge eyed Cork with arched interest and asked, “What do people on the reservation remember about the Vanishings, Cork?”